Comedian and TV host Joe Rogan stops by to say hi to his brother, Brian Regan, who recently got a new place in Southern California. They talk about how they met, what it's like growing up in Las Vegas, and what it s like to grow up in the big city. They also talk about some of the craziest things Joe has done in his life, including becoming a professional gamer, becoming a stand up comic, and why he thinks he s the nicest guy ever to live in Vegas. And of course, there's a whole lot more. Enjoy the episode, and don't forget to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps! Thanks to everyone for all your support, stay safe out there, and Don't Get Lost in the Storm! XOXO, Brian and Joe -Jon Sorrentino and the crew at The Riveting Room Podcast Check us out on Anchor.fm and use the hashtag on social media to let us know what you thought of the episode and what you'd like to see us talk about it on the next episode of the podcast! - Jon and Joe talk about their new place and what they're looking forward to in the future of the show. - Jon and Brian's new venture, and much more! -Jon and Joe's new home in California! . Thank you for supporting the podcast, Jon and the team at the Riveter Media! - Jon & Joe's place in San Mateo, California, California! - Thank you so much more than you can do the best thing in the world, Jon's new place, Jon is a great place to be the best in the best of the best place in the whole country! -JON AND JOE'S NEW PLACE! -BRIAN ROGAN - THANK YOU! - JON AND THEMSELF! - BRIAN AND THEY'S MOST IMPORTANT THAN YOU'RE THE BEST AND THE BEST THAN ANYONE ELSE! -AND JORDANOTHER THAN THE MOST PRODUCING ME AND JEAN AND I'M TALKING ABOUT EVERYTHING IN THE BEST IN THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING ELSE? -JORDY AND OTHER THAN THAT'S NOT EVEN THAN HE'S GOULDY AND THE OTHER THING LIKE THAT!
00:02:47.000I have mental problems and I've figured out how to boil them down into a healthy mixture of activities that keeps me friendly and sane and kind and generous.
00:04:33.000Right now I like doing it the way I do it, but it'll be my ace in the hole.
00:04:38.000I love what you're doing because you're a guy that has been steadily performing and you've built this massive following where you do these big giant places.
00:07:14.000They used to give you oxygen backstage.
00:07:17.000Yeah, I've done shows at high altitude areas where they will point out where the oxygen tanks are backstage and say, if you need it, they're ready.
00:07:54.000And also, when I used to perform at the Comedy Works in Denver, I didn't realize that alcohol would affect you more intensely at a high altitude as well.
00:08:04.000And I used to drink a couple of beers before a show, and on a three-show Saturday night, you know, on that third show, you might have four or five beers in you.
00:08:13.000I don't do that anymore, but I'd be on stage going, man, I'm lit up.
00:10:24.000It was very strange and very educational.
00:10:26.000I think very valuable, too, because it gave me a real good perspective on the benefits of marijuana and maybe perhaps some of the cons, too.
00:17:07.000Can I say, hey, I need 49 people to come over to my place, and we're going to have some tea, and then we're all going to get shoulder to shoulder and scream at the top of our lungs?
00:17:44.000There's some reason why you're doing it.
00:17:46.000I'll tell you one thing that I did find when I was sober for a month is that I would go out with people who were drinking and they would be annoying!
00:22:31.000I was at a place in Dallas, and there was a late-night place, a Chinese restaurant, where they would serve alcohol after alcohol was supposed to be closed.
00:28:06.000You know what a real problem has been?
00:28:08.000If me and my friends, like say we get a car service on the road, and we're having like a serious conversation, and then they interrupt and start chiming in.
00:29:22.000He had recently had an operation, and long drives are challenging for him, but my drive over to the Las Vegas Hilton isn't too long, so it won't be too uncomfortable.
00:29:33.000And I found it quite odd that I had known this man for five seconds, and we were talking about that part of his body.
00:29:41.000Yeah, you've got to get ahead of that.
00:29:42.000When a guy like that says something like that, you've got to go, okay, good.
00:29:48.000Well, that's a good amount of space for me to drive.
00:29:51.000I don't have to worry about my rectum falling out.
00:31:29.000I didn't mean to force you into bringing up that subject again.
00:31:32.000Well, the other problem with the second season of Fear Factor, and I could say this now because it didn't happen, is I was worried we were going to kill somebody.
00:33:17.000I mean, I wouldn't have, well, that's not true.
00:33:19.000I watched, somebody sent me a clip of Stevo with a gas mask on, and I tweeted it.
00:33:28.000Some guy farting into a tube, and it goes right into Stevo's face, and he threw up into the mask.
00:33:35.000And I laughed so hard that I retweeted it.
00:33:40.000And the guy who sent it to me, it was actually quite rude of him, but it was in response to Eliza Schlesinger's appearance yesterday on the podcast.
00:34:17.000Revive from the dead like Edgar Allan Poe or Mark Twain and put them in a time machine and bring them to now and go All the stuff you did was like really cool.
00:34:26.000Check out what we're doing now Show them that video.
00:34:30.000Well, they didn't even have video back then.
00:34:32.000If Edgar Allan Poe had a cell phone camera He might have given up on poetry.
00:34:38.000Like fuck all this raving stuff Nobody's buying these blackbird poems Does anybody have like a gas mask?
00:34:48.000Yeah, and a fat guy to fart into a tube.
00:35:50.000Steve-O will find it if it's out there further.
00:35:52.000I was with him in Vegas a couple weeks ago.
00:35:55.000He came to the UFC, and we went to dinner, and we were talking, and we were hanging out, and he's telling me all these things that he's planning on doing.
00:36:04.000Like, then I'm going to light myself on fire, and then I'm going to jump into traffic, and then I'm going to pour barbed wire around my dick, and then I'm like, what?
00:36:16.000Those things are written in a notebook.
00:36:18.000He's always got to take it to another place.
00:36:21.000He recently had to cancel shows in Denver because he lit himself on fire, and the burns were so bad that when he went to the doctor, he just wanted to get treated.
00:37:31.000I'm going to be in San Diego, and in between shows, I'm going to be lighting myself on fire and having body fluids and sacks of pus hanging from my arms.
00:38:32.000Just put police chase and let me find out.
00:38:36.000Do you remember a few years back there was a thing that they did on television where there was some sort of a situation where there was a guy who was over a bridge and he had a gun in his mouth and it was on television.
00:38:51.000And then he shot himself on TV and they had apologized because they showed this guy getting shot on TV and it was like this really shocking moment for people.
00:39:01.000And I was just thinking that that's not even shocking anymore.
00:39:05.000Like, the exact same thing today would be like, eh.
00:39:10.000When a guy gets out of a car, and if it's unclear whether he's giving up, the cameras from the news media will pull back to prevent people from seeing something graphic.
00:39:23.000You hear them go, pull back, pull back, pull back, because they don't know if a shooting is about to take place.
00:40:53.000It goes viral, like, viral is a weird word to use, but it's trending on Twitter every night because they're technically live with police like this in five or six, seven different cities on, I think, Friday and Saturday nights, and they just follow what's happening.
00:41:06.000If someone's getting pulled over We're living in a time where people absolutely want attention at any cost.
00:41:21.000Go back to that, because I love those fucking people.
00:41:25.000Those people, pause that for a second.
00:41:26.000These fucking people, these broadcast people.
00:42:35.000Do you think that these shows, though, like this show that you were talking about, Jamie, don't you think that they kind of encourage this kind of behavior?
00:42:41.000I mean, if there's ever an argument that that is very counterproductive for our society, that's almost like you're asking people to submit content for this wacky chase show.
00:42:53.000Didn't you say that it comes on at a specific time?
00:43:12.000And by the way, now they are fucking selling cars that are so much faster than any cop car.
00:43:19.000Corvette just released a new ZR1 that has 750 plus horsepower.
00:43:26.000They think it's going to do an under seven minute lap of the Nürburgring in Germany.
00:43:32.000I mean, this is a fucking insane car that there's not a goddamn cop car in the world that's gonna be able to catch that thing.
00:43:39.000You're gonna be able to go into a Corvette dealership, buy one of those things, and you will be so much more powerful than any cop car on the road.
00:43:49.000But it's still not going to outrun a helicopter.
00:44:23.000They're going to keep better and better to force consumerism, right?
00:44:25.000To force people to purchase these things.
00:44:28.000With cars, the problem is you're talking about acceleration.
00:44:32.000Acceleration is one of the things that people prize the most, like zero to 60. There's cars now that you can buy right off the lot that go zero to 60 in two seconds.
00:45:00.000Ten minutes to get to 60 miles an hour as long as I could eventually get to 60. You say that, but you want to be able to merge onto the highway.
00:47:12.000You just need a handle e-brake, and then you hold onto the e-brake, and then you slowly, gently let it go into gear, and then let go of the e-brake.
00:48:30.000Ken Block is a very famous driver and he has this Mustang called the Hoonigan.
00:48:36.000It's this crazy 1968, I believe, Mustang that has four-wheel drive and some fucking insane amount of horsepower and there's these incredible videos of him driving these things around and One of the things that he does is when he wants to go sideways,
00:48:52.000he's shifting gears and he slams the e-brake as he's driving.
00:49:50.000See right here, if I was sitting next to him, I would hit the e-brake right now and go, what does this do?
00:49:56.000Well, his shifter is a different kind of shifter.
00:49:59.000It's what's called a sequential manual gearbox, which means you don't have an H pattern, where you go up, down, and to the right, and down to the right.
00:50:33.000I mean, especially if you're a person like myself, who's an automobile enthusiast, and you get to watch this guy who's just on the razor's edge of control.
00:50:58.000But the manipulation of the two things, of the e-brake, where he locks up the back wheels, and then, look at how he's going in between these cones, or these stacks of whatever the fuck they are.
00:51:09.000It'd be great if he asked some woman out to dinner, and say, I know a cozy little restaurant at the top of this hill, and then drive her like that to the top.
00:51:22.000You'd get a girl who wants to fuck you immediately, and then you'd get a girl who wants to have you killed.
00:51:28.000She never wants to talk to you again, and she can't wait to go home and write a blog about what a piece of shit you are.
00:51:36.000See, when I bring a woman to a restaurant at the top, I go, I don't know if you know, but this car goes from zero to 60 in about 10 minutes.
00:53:16.000It'll let you know that like there's something on that side.
00:53:18.000He said that if you don't have your blinker on, I haven't tried this yet, if you don't have your blinker on and you start to cross the line, it will automatically pull you back.
00:53:28.000Whereas if you have your blinker on, then the car knows...
00:53:31.000I don't know if he was just BSing or what, but that's what he told me.
00:53:33.000What if you have to make a quick maneuver?
00:53:43.000Yeah, I'm torn because on one hand, I love gadgets and I love technology and I'm fascinated by that.
00:53:50.000But on the other hand, like, the connection that you have to the actual mechanical feeling of the automobile is very muted.
00:53:58.000Also, have you heard about, you know, the technology is getting closer to closer to self-driving cars, but now there's the moral component, and they're...
00:54:08.000Like, if you're not in charge of the car and the car is about to have an accident, a human being has the decision to make a moral choice.
00:54:15.000If there's a woman with a baby stroller on the right and there's a cliff on the left and you have your family in the back, are you making a left or a right?
00:54:24.000The human can make a conscious decision.
00:54:27.000A computerized car Can't make a decision and they actually are trying to figure out how to have the cars make moral decisions In keeping with your own moral decisions, you can gauge it and go,
00:54:43.000I'm more for my family or I'm more altruistic, et cetera, et cetera.
00:55:40.000And as technology gets better and better in that regard, you're going to be able to prevent a lot of collisions.
00:55:46.000The other thing is that with car-to-car collisions, there's some talk about developing technology That literally has cars repel from each other, sort of like how magnets do.
00:55:57.000And that if they could figure out a way to make that efficient and effective enough, they could virtually eliminate car accidents with those two things.
00:56:07.000With automated vehicles, and then with the kind of technology that would force cars to repel from each other.
00:56:54.000He had some kind of crazy heart valve thing where he had some artificial heart in his body that literally was pumping the blood constantly with no heartbeat.
00:59:28.000I think it's like one of those guys that creates the very first wingsuit and jumps off a cliff and then breaks both of his legs versus you taking a flight to New Zealand.
00:59:39.000You can take a nice flight to New Zealand, you can have a lovely dinner, catch a nap, watch a movie, land perfectly, the flight attendants are all great.
01:02:32.000More than I don't know how many hundreds of events with 10 plus fights on each event.
01:02:38.000And then on top of that, I've been to so many tournaments.
01:02:42.000Taekwondo tournaments, kickboxing events, just seeing people get smashed.
01:02:50.000I've taken people to fights for the first time, and there's a thing that happens when they see a live fight for the first time.
01:03:00.000You see the look on their face, like they walk out, they're like, Jesus Christ!
01:03:04.000Like a good buddy of mine, Steve Rinella, who's a hunter, he's got a television show called Meat Eater, and he's a conservationist and outdoorsman, and he's seen a lot of animals die, but him going to see live fights, they have this look on their face like,
01:03:22.000Like once you see, and you're there close, and you see the impact, and you see guys get knocked unconscious, and you see What happens when someone gets kicked in the head right in front of you?
01:04:53.000But live is always better in every entertainment, usually.
01:04:57.000It is, but there's something great about watching things on television, too.
01:05:02.000Because you watch things on television, you get the replays, and you get the commentary that explains if things are going wrong or what's happening.
01:05:11.000Sometimes you're in the dark if you're in the audience.
01:05:12.000You're like, why are they stopping this?
01:05:14.000Like, you don't really know what's going on.
01:05:16.000And then, like, the other thing about watching it live is you're looking through the cage, so oftentimes you catch yourself looking up at the big screen anyway, but you're still there, you know?
01:05:26.000There's a feeling that you get in that, you know, especially now they do them at the T-Mobile arena, which is 20-plus thousand people, and it's just fucking rocking, and it's intense.
01:06:08.000I mean, you have this series of techniques that you're allowed to execute, and then you're trying to do them on a skilled fighter.
01:06:16.000And then if you mess up, if you don't have the discipline to get in the cardiovascular shape that's necessary, if you're not at a camp that has the sufficient technical knowledge and then pays enough attention to you,
01:06:32.000And someone who really understands how to train fighters.
01:07:31.000But in my experience, those are the guys that get hurt.
01:07:34.000Like, I feel like you should, you should own, because you'll run into someone who's trying to be the best in the world.
01:07:39.000And the intensity that someone has that wants to be the best in the world and someone who really might, has the potential to actually reach that goal.
01:08:13.000But even then, the attitude that would say, I don't want to fight anybody 499 or higher, you would run into someone that even though they're ranked 512, they're still more enthusiastic than you.
01:08:26.000Enthusiasm is a big part of it and there's an intangible quality like you could see it happen in fighters and for me When I watch it happen, it's very disconcerting because I remember it actually happening to myself So I recognize it and I see it happen in these guys I'm like oh this guy doesn't want to do this anymore He's got to stop like you got to get out of this because you're just going through the motions and you're hoping it comes out Well,
01:08:48.000it's not going to right right like you have to it has to be it's got to be more powerful a more powerful force driving you It has to be a singular pursuit.
01:08:56.000I really don't believe that you can be an elite professional fighter while doing anything else.
01:11:03.000There's a bunch of guys who are like acrobats, and they stand in front of the bull, and as the bull comes at them, they leap through the air, and they flip over the bull.
01:11:14.000Somebody sent me a video, said, you called it, and I watched the video, and I was like, dude trying to flip over the bull, and the bull catches him on the way up and fucking crushes him.
01:11:24.000Have you seen on C-SPAN the bull debates?
01:11:28.000Where they have two podiums and there's the one person and then the bull is at the other podium and they debate like a controversial issue.
01:16:30.000They have this huge, gigantic tank with sharks swimming around in it.
01:16:35.000It's been a while since I've been there, but I think you can go underneath them, like they can swim above you, and I might have that wrong.
01:16:52.000We did a Fear Factor in Mandalay Bay, and so they gave us this tour of how this all works, and the amount of resources that are involved in running this fucking thing is crazy.
01:17:29.000To go from nothing, maybe it's similar to hunting where you just sit there for most of the time and then all of a sudden there's an elk or something.
01:17:54.000But anyway, there's this, literally like a football-sized, football-field-sized School of these fish fucking up these bait fish and the water just frothy just crazy without like it was amazing and just cast into that Giant football sized field and they would just smash the lure like instantly you just pull and fish as much as quick as you can so as long as this feeding frenzy went on you could pull fish in and And so then we brought those fish back to the hotel that we were staying at.
01:18:23.000We bring it to the restaurant and they have like this whole thing that they do.
01:18:26.000You talk to the chef and the chef says, how would you like it prepared?
01:18:43.000There's a comedian, Jim Colleton, good friend of mine.
01:18:45.000He said he was out with buddies of his.
01:18:47.000I don't know if it's part of his act and if I'm giving him complete credit, but all of his buddies were on a chartered boat and they all caught fish except for one guy.
01:18:56.000So one of the guys that worked, one of the attendants or whatever, said, I'll take care of this and went to the other side of the boat with snorkel.
01:19:03.000And jumped on the opposite side of the boat and grabbed the dead fish that had already been caught, went underneath, hooked the dead fish to this guy's line, and started shaking it underneath the boat to make it look like he was catching a fish.
01:19:19.000And the guy's like, I got one, I got one!
01:19:21.000And they pulled it up, and they just grabbed it really quickly and just threw it so he couldn't see that it had already been caught and dead.
01:19:27.000And to this day, the guy thought that he caught a fish.
01:20:40.000I try to do half the weekends of the year, so 26 weekends a year, and I will do four of those nights, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
01:22:18.000Obviously there's been massive, massive lawsuits from people just stealing riffs with completely different lyrics.
01:22:24.000And they've sued for the entire value of a song just for using samples and using pieces of it.
01:22:31.000I mean, there's a lot of songs that were gigantic hit songs that the people who wrote the songs wound up making no money because it was deemed that they had stolen chunks or parts of that song from somebody else.
01:22:43.000I like the fact that they can go after somebody legally, but what if you're wrong?
01:22:50.000You know, like the Beatles, either the Beatles or one of the Beatles lost a court case about having stolen a song.
01:27:05.000I was talking to a friend of mine who's a musician about this, and I was saying the difference is you can come up with an amazing album in the studio, and you can tweak it and go over things, but we kind of have to do it in front of people.
01:27:18.000I write, but what I write down, just like what you were saying, is a lot of times very different than how you say it in front of people, because once you start doing it in front of a live audience, you just start immediately trimming it and moving things around on it, you know?
01:27:33.000I think it would be interesting if somebody tried to create a comedy hour, but without ever trying it in front of an audience.
01:27:42.000Just like, create the hour the best you can, just on the computer or whatever, going, this is a good hour of comedy, and then the first time you ever do it is in front of an audience as the hour.
01:27:54.000I just wonder how much of a disaster that would be.
01:28:10.000He would write it sober, and then he would smoke pot, and then punch it up, and then he would go and bring it to the stage.
01:28:18.000And essentially, it was almost like a one-man show.
01:28:23.000So you're saying he would create the hour, try it on stage, but then I'm sure he would tweak it before he was going to make an HBO special or something like that.
01:28:31.000I think as time went on, the bits would get better, he would tighten them up, but he essentially never worked his material out and he would abandon all of it every year.
01:28:49.000You know, I hear stories like that, and I like to think I'm adequate at what I do, and then you hear something like that, and you go, if you put a bar graph of people talented at something, I'd be like a blip, you know, George Carlin up here.
01:29:02.000Well, he was an intensely creative guy.
01:29:05.000He didn't have to do a whole new hour...
01:29:08.000Every year and do a whole new HBO special every year.
01:31:31.000Or maybe Black Diamond was so good at it that I didn't realize during the show that he was black.
01:31:38.000Don't you feel like that this, I mean, as far as like comedy having a bunch of landmines that you could accidentally step on, this seems like the most fraught with peril time ever.
01:34:06.000The fact that you can be in your underwear and feel like you're a mouthpiece, you're literally at home in your underwear, you know, typing out, ah, I don't like this.
01:34:14.000Yeah, but you could write some great shit in your underwear.
01:34:16.000Like, I don't care what you're wearing.
01:35:28.000Most people are wise enough to go, like, if somebody that goes to a ballet and doesn't like it You know, at least you're wise enough to go, I don't appreciate the ballet.
01:35:39.000You don't walk out going, that ballerina sucks!
01:35:42.000There's got to be some critical ballerina critics.
01:35:46.000I'm sure, but just because you don't like something doesn't mean it wasn't good.
01:36:26.000That's why it was always weird when comedy clubs started exploding around the country and there would be this building that said Comedy Club on it.
01:36:54.000Is not subdivided, not that I'm saying that it should be, but to just go into a room that says comedy on it and think that you are automatically going to be entertained is kind of ludicrous.
01:37:05.000Yeah, but it's hard, though, if you don't know who the comics are, right?
01:37:09.000It's like you don't know what their take on things is going to be, and that's one of the things about a nice local club.
01:37:14.000Say if you live in Nashville and you go to Zaney's, like, oh, I never heard of this guy, but he's been on Comedy Central.
01:37:24.000It's great that you can go to a place like that or you can go to the improv in Hollywood and you'll see like 10 different comedians one night or the comedy store or where have you.
01:37:32.000But you don't know what you're going to get.
01:38:06.000Like, when you see comedy today, do you think that you would have...
01:38:12.000When you think about when you first started, do you think you would feel the same way about stand-up if you had to start out today, seeing how it's all fraught with peril?
01:38:20.000Do you think you would have jumped in anyway?
01:38:25.000And there were a lot fewer people doing it when I started.
01:38:32.000And to me it was just this internal quest that came from within myself that I want to do this.
01:38:37.000And comedy evolves and now there is a lot of autobiographical kind of comedy and a lot of people really going into their heart and soul and talking about how they feel and stuff like that.
01:43:16.000Oh, I see that they'll laugh if you talk about this, that, and the other, so therefore I will talk about this, that, and the other, instead of it coming from inside you.
01:43:23.000You mentioned earlier about me figuring out a way to reach a wide audience, which I appreciate the kind words, but I never went that route.
01:43:35.000I just want to do what I think is good, and wherever it lands, it lands, and the fact that Okay, maybe a 10-year-old kid can get into it, and maybe a 78-year-old woman can get into it.