Comedian Joe Rogan joins Jemele to discuss his retirement from Comedy Central, his life after the show, and why he decided to leave the corporate world to pursue his dream of starting his own podcast. He also talks about why he chose comedy over a career in radio and what it's like being fired from a big company like Comedy Central. And, of course, he talks about what it s like being a stand-up comedian and how to balance it all with a family life and a career as a podcaster. It's a very special episode, and you won't want to miss it! Thanks to everyone for all the love, support, and support over the years, and thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey with me. I can't wait to do it again, and I hope you enjoy this one. -Jon Sorrentino is a standup comedian, podcaster, writer, and podcaster based in Los Angeles, California. He's a friend of mine, and a great human being. I really enjoyed this episode and I think you'll enjoy it. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, and thanks for coming on the pod! -Jemele and I appreciate you for being here. If you like what you're listening, tweet me if you have a question or would like to ask me a question about comedy, I'm open for me to tweet me! or a suggestion on what you'd like me to do on the next episode of the podcast? or any feedback you're looking for? or just want me to send me a shoutout? I'll be listening to the podcast you're having a good time :) Timestamps: 0:00 - Thank you for listening to this episode? 5:00:30 - How do you feel about it? 6:15 - What do you think of the show? 7:40 - What's your favorite thing? 8: What are you looking forward to listening to me? 9:20 - What would you like to see me do next? 11:00 12: What s your favorite moment? 13:00 | What are your favorite part? 15:00 +1:30 +3: What you're a good day? 16:30 17:10 - How does it feel like to be a comedian?
00:01:31.000The contribution that you make, that's what I was doing.
00:01:34.000We were three hours every day talking about issues, talking about struggles that people are having, and it was rewarding and challenging and satisfying, and I had total editorial control, so, you know, I can't, I really can't complain.
00:02:57.000If you're a network, you have to have a million people listening or watching to keep the ratings up to sell advertising.
00:03:02.000You're only making just so much money.
00:03:04.000If you launch your own thing the way you have and so many other people have, you're gambling with everything, which is what I'm doing now with podcasting, which is really an original thing to do, and a very difficult way to make money.
00:03:17.000But if you do, if you're good, then you control it all.
00:03:39.000And it's just one of those things where I see people doing the corporate route and I'm like, man, I get how you needed to do that 15 years ago.
00:04:17.000And frankly, you know you're more talented than a lot of the people that you're working with.
00:04:21.000And you have all these ideas and these inspirations, and they're either going to say yes or no to them, and when you're on your own, you just put the wheels on them and go.
00:04:45.000I guarantee you, he doesn't do fuck all.
00:04:47.000That guy doesn't have anything to do with whether or not this show's any good.
00:04:50.000And all you have to do is press a button and get it out there.
00:04:52.000So there's all these people making decisions about, well, we got marketing and this and that, and we're going to make sure we hit the right demographic.
00:04:59.000I've worked at CNN, I worked at MSNBC, I worked at Fox.
00:05:01.000I feel like that's corporate media or corporate America, where you have to wonder how much work and how much value each person is bringing to whatever their job is.
00:05:50.000I never felt like anybody could sell me the way I could sell myself.
00:05:52.000Oh, Dude, then you have to think about selling yourself.
00:05:57.000For people listening to this podcast regularly, I'm sorry, I apologize for repeating myself, but the way I look at everything, and this is something I've done over the last, really cultivated over the last 10 years, but really specifically focused on over the last couple years.
00:06:14.000Say if you have a hundred units of thinking, whatever the fuck you're involved in to have this negotiation or sell yourself to this and sell yourself to that and talk about this and pitch your ideas to this person and that person,
00:06:31.000that's taking away time that you could be working on your other shit.
00:07:24.000And I'd always say, tomorrow's show, because every three-hour live show, we talked about everything, from tax policy to depression to environmentalism to anything, politics, parenting.
00:07:31.000And so it was really challenging to do that and to prepare for all these interviews with these smart people.
00:07:35.000And then I wanted to go home and be with my girls.
00:07:38.000Like, I had an amazing work-life balance, and I feel like most people never find that.
00:08:13.000Because you get so ambitious, especially as a guy, I feel like, if you're a breadwinner especially, it's just work, work, work, support your family.
00:08:20.000If you've got a family, there's ego, there's money, and you just keep going.
00:08:24.000But then you realize there's got to be enough.
00:08:28.000In my opinion, you have to have an idea of enough.
00:09:57.000As a creative person, it's interesting.
00:09:59.000It's an interesting outlet, and there's a lot of creative people who are great on Twitter, but I don't think in terms of what's a great tweet, or I should tweet right now, or put this up on Facebook.
00:10:34.000People that are really good at promoting usually are not that good.
00:10:37.000Because they spend so much time promoting and they're trying to get famous and trying to get successful as opposed to doing the work, writing the jokes, performing.
00:10:43.000They're also super conscious of how they appear to people.
00:10:46.000They're super conscious and they're trying to cultivate an image.
00:10:56.000To go back to what your deal was at Sirius, when you were there, they don't give you any indication of what kind of numbers you're pulling at.
00:11:23.000I don't want to disparage SiriusXM, not because they gave me a good, you know, exit deal, I guess, but because it almost seems inauthentic because they gave me five contracts, which created an amazing life and amazing community.
00:11:37.000Like, I'm so grateful to what I had there.
00:11:59.000The point is, if you're behind that, you're mostly in the car.
00:12:03.000And I think what I'm trying to say is it's skewed to like 50, 60-year-old affluent men who are in cars, which...
00:12:10.000I was psyched to have every one of them, but I would love to have a lot of young people.
00:12:15.000I'm staying out here with my cousin, and his son is 18, and he found out I was doing the Joe Rogan show, and he's flipping out, but he didn't know what I did at SiriusXM.
00:12:23.000I hate to say this because I'm thankful that Sirius put on Howard and Opie and Anthony and all these comics they had on over the years, but you're better off without it.
00:13:01.000While you're fucking waiting for your gate to be called, you have the podcast, you get on the three-hour flight, you listen to the whole goddamn thing.
00:13:09.000What's interesting is going, I'm really curious to see what you think, but going from live radio and constant interaction with callers, which I love.
00:14:06.000No matter what happens next, what I got to do there and what I did do there on so many tough issues and helped so many people, that's it, man.
00:14:51.000I've never been the best at anything, but I've always been gritty.
00:14:54.000I've always worked as hard, if not harder, than anybody.
00:14:56.000And now it's interesting because I've never been in this type of situation with a family.
00:15:01.000You know, that's different when you're single and you're young.
00:15:03.000But I was working that hard and making no excuses and back then doing no drugs, not drinking, everything.
00:15:09.000It was just about my career and being a good person.
00:15:11.000I thought if I was a good person, that mattered.
00:15:14.000And come to find out, being a good person was the best form of currency.
00:15:21.000Everybody competing and trying to kill other people in our business or in any other business, to me, I have no interest in that and no attraction to those people.
00:15:28.000All I want to do is help people, not think, just for purposes of altruism, not to be virtuous, just because, same reason you are.
00:18:34.000Like him, I got a big, a vast network, and technology has gotten so much better in terms of getting guests, but, I mean, I just, you gotta wonder how it's all going to work, and how do you, if you're gonna go live, there's just so many things it seems to be thinking about,
00:20:03.000I think that one of the things, I've been listening to your podcast for years, but not every episode, not religiously, but since I lost my job, I was like, let me just start listening to Rogan.
00:20:14.000And what's really interesting about you, in my opinion, is you are the perfect example of somebody that everybody wants to put into a box.
00:20:47.000Whatever you think about any issue or any idea, any opinion you have, you're always being so positive and so helpful.
00:20:54.000And it has been, honestly, in this like trying time, the other thing my dad just I get fired, my dad had a heart attack, and then a week later, he's on blood thinners, and he faints and bounces his face off a counter, rips his eye open, goes into surgery.
00:21:10.000Now he can't see out of his eye, and he's a ski instructor and a cyclist, and he's a race car driving instructor, and so I'm dealing with that, dealing with my job, dealing with my family, listening to you, and you And a handful of other people just bringing as much positivity to every scenario and situation.
00:22:12.000The thing about doing it in the city, and I know you don't want to live in the city, but doing it in the city, you can get guests in studio.
00:22:58.000I feel like one cool opportunity is to travel to different places and find the most interesting, articulate people and do gigs there, do stand-up at night, spend a couple days there interviewing the most interesting people in whatever town that you're in.
00:25:36.000But it's just odd that he would just go to callers in the middle of a conversation with some lady who's an actress or something.
00:25:42.000But that's the chaos that he sort of cultivated.
00:25:45.000Well, I think that's what's the great thing about this show is the people that you get and the interaction, the conversation that you have.
00:25:52.000And I was trying to do the same thing at Sirius.
00:28:14.000Might as well be mainstream, but the point is, when you have a long conversation with Bernie Sanders, and he's not like up there, you know what we have to do, all that shit is annoying.
00:30:23.000If you can teach me how to exercise better, but you don't like our trade policies, I don't give a shit what you think about our trade policies.
00:30:44.000To me, that's the fascinating shit about human beings.
00:30:47.000Well, one of the things about something like cable talk shows or news shows or any of these political arenas is that there's a lack of real interaction with the general public in terms of real conversations with people.
00:31:06.000You have a host who's wearing makeup, who's got spotlights on him, and there's a microphone in front of him, and he's talking to his other people, and there's cameras pointed at them, and no one really feels like this is not a normal way of people talking.
00:32:05.000I once got into this long, drawn-out argument with Chris Cuomo, who I like a lot.
00:32:09.000But I was talking to him about, you know, listen, man, the difference between TV and radio, it's simple.
00:32:16.000On radio, you can have a long-form, you can have a 20-minute to 2-hour conversation, and it's real, and you get a lot done.
00:32:21.000On TV, you can have a 5-minute conversation.
00:32:24.000There's so many guests that you have on your show, that I have on my show, they're way more, they have the ability to be thoughtful and nuanced and make points.
00:32:33.000They can't do that on cable, and now he's doing a radio show, so good for him.
00:32:37.000Well, that's what I was getting at, is that this separation between the people and then the just unnatural environment that they're in, no one can relate to it.
00:32:46.000What they can relate to is two people just talking to each other.
00:32:48.000They can't relate to it, Joe, but they also think, because they're conditioned to, that if it's on a network, this person must be an authority and must be intelligent.
00:33:37.000Yeah, and then also the interjection of commercials every seven minutes.
00:33:42.000The things that they're doing on debates is the same thing they're doing on these other cable talk shows where they're trying to encapsulate these things into these very quick five-minute sound bites.
00:33:52.000Have you ever heard of Intelligence Squared debates?
00:34:05.000And you can come in thinking so often one idea about the issue.
00:34:11.000And you leave thinking something completely different because you have these very smart people debating with an excellent moderator who doesn't let any bullshit, and you really learn a lot.
00:34:20.000No commercial breaks, and you can, you know, listen to it.
00:34:23.000Well, even three people is too many people.
00:34:26.000It's like if you want to get to know someone, it's a one-on-one.
00:34:29.000Because even with three people, there's moments where you have something to say, and then someone interjects something else, and then you lose your point, and then you don't express it.
00:34:38.000And then the other person's talking, and you don't know when to talk, and then you find yourself being a little bit more assertive in the way you're talking because you're trying to get your point across.
00:34:47.000And then if there's four people, you're fucked.
00:34:49.000The most ridiculous thing they ever do is when they have those seven people panels and one person just starts fucking chiming in and screaming out loud and they talk over people.
00:36:00.000Right, but it's a bullshit game because as you said earlier, the reason why Kamala Harris or anybody else takes a step backwards is because one stupid moment.
00:36:08.000And how are we possibly picking somebody on one?
00:36:43.000Like, when you got a microphone on me, and I get excited, I go, yeah!
00:36:48.000I mean, you can also talk just about the ego of the people who are running for these offices.
00:36:53.000And they don't seem to have an understanding of the idea of ego and what it means and how they should try to separate from it while using it.
00:37:02.000Like, once you get into politics, much less entertainment, and you get really well-known and famous, you start believing things about yourself that aren't even remotely true.
00:37:12.000There's certainly some of that, right?
00:37:53.000All of politics, there's levels of corruption.
00:37:56.000But in the New York State Democratic Party, there's always been all kinds of issues.
00:38:00.000So I met with a whole bunch of really smart people about running for New York 17, which is the district that I live in.
00:38:07.000Like, the day after I lost my gig at Sirius, the woman who had been representing that district for 33 years announced that she was retiring.
00:38:35.000One person told me that if you want to win, regardless of your party affiliation, you have to, there's a certain special interest group that you had to promise you wouldn't interfere with and make sure they got an envelope of cash.
00:38:51.000And I'm like, well, I'm not doing that.
00:38:53.000I will tell everybody and everywhere I go about that.
00:40:36.000I think there's a lot of criticism going on, but that's because there's a lot of voices.
00:40:40.000Do you think, I agree with you overall, but I mean for politicians, for me to run for office, and you see some stand-up bit I did, and then my opponent's playing that out of context.
00:41:14.000All the allegations, but the We're good to go.
00:41:46.000First of all, you've got to raise a million dollars from people and individuals you don't like, you don't want to be affiliated with, but you have to.
00:41:57.000The whole system is so filled and corrupted with money in almost every district and every state, regardless of the office.
00:42:05.000How does a person, I'm a fairly affluent guy, I'm a white straight guy, whatever, but I don't know how I can afford to apply for a job for a year and pay my mortgage.
00:42:17.000So I want to do it if it looks feasible and if I don't have to take care of my family, my parents, not to mention pay my bills.
00:42:26.000But you have to be an independently wealthy person, which sucks because it makes it much harder for regular people, there's plenty of exceptions, to run for office.
00:42:37.000Now, when you say that you had to give them an envelope and that you had to, what did you have to do?
00:44:54.000In the few instances where someone did make up a source or even plagiarize, which are the two worst things you can do as a journalist, they never work again.
00:45:01.000Or they don't work for a very long time.
00:45:22.000I feel like it might have been plagiarism though.
00:45:25.000And that kind of thing, the point is, that kind of thing ruins you.
00:45:29.000And so I wouldn't come here and do that even though I don't I wouldn't call myself a journalist, but I would want, because of what you're saying, because you're smart, I'm very skeptical too of people and their source and what their interests are, and a lot of people really want me to run for Congress for a lot of different reasons,
00:45:44.000but mainly because they think I can tap my network of wealthy people and, you know, they can make money.
00:45:49.000Love Trump or hate Trump, that is precisely what he was talking about when he said drain the swamp.
00:45:55.000Now, this is the swamp, this sort of convoluted world of influence.
00:47:44.000Because you could be the healthiest 75-year-old in the world, did everything right, and then shit can just shut down because you're 75. Your body's just old.
00:48:12.000Being a president is a ridiculous proposition, period.
00:48:14.000And it's an antiquated idea to have one alpha that runs this whole fucking show.
00:48:20.000It's a great idea when there's 50 people in a trial.
00:48:23.000Yes, I have a chief, but not a president of 330 million people that is an outsized influence and a bully pulpit, and then we have this reverence for them.
00:48:35.000And this defense of them, or this attacking of their every move, their every character, and it's just such an easy thing to dunk on them, and it's just tiresome to me.
00:48:49.000It's unhealthy for our souls every single day, especially, like, the thing that you miss about pre-Trump, whoever it was, Republican or Democrat, like, remember when you used to have weekends?
00:51:41.000When you think so much of you and your ideas, and you come up, in that case, Ted Haggard versus Richard Dawkins is like Mike Tyson versus...
00:52:27.000It would be very interesting if there was some sort of dimensional travel thing that happens to the spirit or the soul or whatever this concept of consciousness is.
00:54:11.000I... Yeah, I have an example of, I mean, I'm sure you have a billion of them, I didn't mean to cut you off, but when my daughter was like three years old, we're visiting family, people I don't really know, my wife's family, and his five-year-old son goes over, my daughter's just looking up at the TV,
00:54:26.000this little three-year-old girl, and he comes over and he just clocks her, knocks her over.
00:55:04.000When I'm running or doing yoga or anything I'm doing, it's strenuous.
00:55:09.000I just had this conversation with Ben Westhoff, who's on here before you, and the way I described it is I think that a human body has a certain amount of physical requirements.
00:55:19.000Your body's a system, and this system is designed through nature and natural selection and...
00:55:25.000Hundreds of thousands of years of being human beings to have issues that come up and to be physically prepared to deal with those issues, whether it's a neighboring tribe invades you or an animal's trying to attack you or you're just trying to hunt and gather food.
00:55:40.000All those things are built into our system and it takes tens of thousands of years for that DNA to shift and change and become something different.
00:55:46.000So we have a certain amount of physical requirements that we're just born with and it's different with every person.
00:55:52.000Some people have less, some people have more.
01:00:19.000That's another nice thing, not having to be live every day and not having to know every single step of everything going on, because you realize that you're a very small minority of people.
01:00:28.000When you found out that thing, when you were told that thing by that guy...
01:00:31.000Let me just make sure this doesn't go to waste, Jimmy.
01:01:44.000I said just what you said right before I came over here because the problem with you running is that do you really buy in to this corrupt system?
01:01:53.000And I think because I'm such an optimist and such a positive thinking person, I've convinced myself and that I do know a lot of people in Congress, know them personally and intimately and I know a lot of people that work in government that I really admire.
01:02:07.000But the system, it's not the people as much as the system, but I also think that the way, I don't want to talk about it in a way that exonerates the public.
01:03:36.000People are protesting and they're getting shot.
01:03:38.000The greatest thing that I was ever a part of in media was probably, well, there was a lot of good things, but CNN and SiriusXM's coverage of the Egyptian revolution.
01:03:54.000Same thing in Iran and the Green Revolution in 2009. What's interesting to me about this whole Hong Kong thing is that they're being introduced to the government of China over the last few decades.
01:04:07.000That this was something they were separated from.
01:04:10.000And then all of a sudden they become property of China again, essentially, right?
01:04:15.000And so then you're seeing this thing where they become accustomed to the British way of things, the original Hong Kong way of doing things, and then things shift over.
01:04:26.000It's a really unique moment of protest because it's very rare that you see the actual government of a country shift the way it has in Hong Kong.
01:05:21.000You've never seen that kind of a shift where a free, democratic, sort of western way of running things all of a sudden shifts over.
01:05:30.000And because of that, I think the resistance to it is very unique.
01:05:36.000I think if you studied the British colonization of the world, there would be a lot of that.
01:05:41.000I think that's what we're talking about, literally, because it was Britain.
01:05:44.000And then, I can't speak to the specifics of the history of that, but what you're bringing up is a fascinating question that I'd love to get to the bottom of, and there's probably a billion people who would be so good on it.
01:06:34.000This is what my brother and a lot of people who I respect and admire, but maybe I'm not courageous enough to challenge our system more, want to see here for something.
01:10:20.000And when people feel like you're treating them unfairly or talking shit about them, and this is a problem we have both in the right and the left, they fucking double down.
01:10:29.000They dig their heels in, and they go, fuck that other group.
01:10:39.000And watching it is so sad, and being a part of it, When we are is the problem and trying to have the answer to that the solution to that is to try to listen to each other and to try to understand because I completely agree with you that they if they don't feel respected you've lost them completely on we can't people enjoy it like a team like when the Celtics win people get pumped when the Republicans win people get pumped you know it's like when the Democrats win people
01:11:09.000get pumped it's their team I had a friend of mine, a comic, who said, you know, we gotta win the House, because if we win the House, we win the White House.
01:11:46.000And then one day, he got knocked out by this guy Mike McCallum, the body snatcher.
01:11:53.000He was another world champion, a bad motherfucker, and he hit him with a left hook to the body and a left hook to the head, knocked him out cold, flat on his back.
01:13:11.000I'm one of those people that feels guilty about I rail against single-use plastic, which is why I want to advocate for you guys to get a big tank and everybody has thermos.
01:13:21.000Because if you do that today, if you made that choice, just get a big thing and a glass or mugs and sell them and raise money or something.
01:13:28.000And Ari would come by and dose the bucket.
01:13:30.000You can't have a big open bottle of water around with Ari.
01:13:34.000Ari Shafir gave out like a plate of pot cookies years ago at Stan Comedy Club.
01:13:58.000She once had like a whole Kit Kat because she was hungry and went to the sink and was washing her hands and just said, this water is so wet.
01:14:22.000I think we need to relax and come to this understanding that most of the stuff we fight about is because we're tricked into this tribal way of thinking.
01:14:30.000I don't mean tricked by some overlords.
01:14:52.000Whoever the fuck's going to win, whether we think about what the real important thing is the economy or protecting our borders, or you think the real important thing is the environment and stopping global warming.
01:15:02.000We've got to do something to engineer biodegradable plastics and make them mandatory.
01:15:09.000Whatever thing becomes your side, and you can make arguments for both sides.
01:15:14.000The problem is people then subscribe to whatever Ideas are in that party.
01:15:25.000But when you said, we're doing well, or relax, we're doing well, I react to that with working with and advocating for all these anti-poverty organizations.
01:15:36.000What do you mean, relax, we're doing well?
01:15:38.000I felt like you were saying, when everybody is getting fired up, maybe I misunderstood you.
01:15:43.000It was like, I don't think we need a revolution, but...
01:15:46.000I think instead of thinking about it like a competition between two teams, we should think about it as a resolution.
01:17:38.000And I think one of the ways that you help it is by having these conversations.
01:17:42.000So people listen, and then it resonates with them.
01:17:45.000And maybe it only resonates to a certain degree.
01:17:47.000And maybe they slip away from it a week later when they're drinking and hanging out with their friends.
01:17:51.000Or they're not exposed to the ideas very often.
01:17:56.000And when they do, it's not as effective as it would be if they were around people that were like-minded.
01:18:01.000But that's just having these conversations, you know, you're affecting, like right now, we're affecting a lot of different people's thinking, right?
01:18:08.000They're listening to this and they go, a lot of interactions could have been different on both sides, depending upon what you did.
01:18:15.000Like sometimes you run into someone and they're douchey, but if you just turn around a little bit, say, it's all right, brother, you know, I'm just here.
01:18:20.000And then they relax and they go, oh, he's okay.
01:18:23.000But if you ramped it up and they ramped it up more, you can go, that guy's a piece of shit, right?
01:18:27.000Well, yeah, he acted like a piece of shit, but maybe part of the way he acted like a piece of shit was the way you dealt with his initial weirdness.
01:18:35.000Because sometimes people are just fucking weird, and sometimes people come off douchey.
01:19:17.000So when you say you have this idea about any number of issues from race to energy issues to guns to abortion to feminism to all the stuff it's like well Where did he start?
01:19:35.000You know, there's so much data about the zip code that you're born into in this country determines where you'll be when you're 18. And it's so accurate.
01:19:44.000It's so hard to get out of certain places.
01:19:47.000I heard you and someone talking about that.
01:20:14.000I'm with you if you're talking about impoverished neighborhoods that have a history of crime and violence, because they don't fix that and it doesn't change, and it's really hard to get ahead if you're not...
01:20:22.000But in other places, if you're in a nice city and you're in a nice neighborhood, it is difficult.
01:20:29.000But compared to the rest of the world, it's far, far easier.
01:20:32.000I'm just talking about social mobility.
01:21:44.000It means where your values lie and you spend what on health care, what on defense, what on anti-poverty, what on nutrition, what on education.
01:21:54.000That's how I determined, by the way, in a thoughtful conversation, not only are you a liberal, not are you a liberal or conservative, you know, pro- or anti-government, it's how do you think we should spend our tax money?
01:22:03.000Where should we spend it around the world and domestically and in terms of, and it's like, we have this huge defense budget with these weapons that will never be used, and Russia beat us with Facebook, and North Korea hacked into Sony.
01:22:17.000It's like, that's where the threat is.
01:22:42.000The anti-argument would be you could do everything that you need to do to protect us with less money.
01:22:50.000And you could take that money and inject it into these inner cities that are impoverished and crime-ridden, and you could, in my words, that's why I always like to say, if you want to make America greater, what's the best way to do that?
01:24:32.000Good luck with trying to figure out how to kill terrorists and do it live on television while the president's watching from the fucking Oval Office or whatever really happened.
01:24:46.000Like, um, I know what a pose picture looks like.
01:24:49.000Dude, every single one of those pictures, it does look bad when every one of those pictures comes to all the Oval offices and a bunch of white dudes.
01:24:57.000Well, God wants you to wear makeup and God wants you to sit right there.
01:25:19.000I'm just happy people enjoy it, but the conversations that we're not having, we're not having enough of, is face-to-face, one-on-one like this.
01:25:28.000You can't get to know people over soundbites.
01:25:30.000You definitely can't get to know them through text messages or little tiny snippets of a conversation that they're going to have before they cut to commercial.
01:25:53.000But if you had a video of me melting down, just smoking weed and feeling my heart thumping and sweating because I'm having a panic attack, that's your internet history.
01:26:04.000You're looking up every lump that you find.
01:26:20.000It's interesting as hell, but it's terrifying because the idea, like, I always get so worried, especially that one, because it's like trail running's my favorite way to run.
01:26:35.000There's this amazing organization, Children of Nature Network.
01:26:38.000Everybody should discover and support and look up the work of Richard Louv, who's just written a new book about relationships, you'll love it, with animals and humans.
01:26:47.000And he wrote a book called Last Child in the Woods that is my Bible, changed my life.
01:26:51.000And kids are afraid to go outside because there's ticks, there's Lyme disease, there's parents afraid that there's kidnapping.
01:29:34.000And also, it has to do with how you interact with those people.
01:29:38.000And we've all been guilty of being loaded up in one way or another, interacting with someone, and it doesn't go as well as it could have gone if you were in a better place when you met that person.
01:31:23.000But the idea is that as people, as a civilization advances, people decide to pursue careers before having children and less and less people have children.
01:31:32.000And that there's some sort of a direct correlation with the amount of children people have versus the amount of technological advancement is around them and the amount of education and the level of the city.
01:31:47.000Like if you're around a place like New York.
01:31:58.000You could have examples of people who came from absolutely nothing and had a gentle heart defect and overcame it to become, you know, a CEO of a McDonald's and then have to step down because they had an affair.
01:32:09.000Well, people start their own businesses and shit, you know?
01:32:11.000Yeah, I mean, a lot of it, and nothing, but certainly I have nothing, but I look at someone who's started a business and ran a business from a dry cleaning store to whatever they're doing.
01:32:23.000My dad owned an insurance agency in Syracuse, New York.
01:33:53.000The idea of someone coming along, the millions of years of life on this planet, and the hundreds of thousands of years of being humans, and the 300 whatever almost years of the United States.
01:34:06.000If someone said, we're going to start a new country now, and we found a new spot in New Zealand or Greenland or something, be like, fuck you.
01:37:28.000The idea that somehow addressing your PTSD as a combat veteran is somehow seen as weak.
01:37:35.000It's like, no, if you're taking on your worst nightmares, that's strength.
01:37:40.000And by the way, how do we measure strength?
01:37:41.000I mean, it's always about what you can lift, not the pain you can endure, which is why I think if you're measuring strength by gender, women can endure more pain.
01:37:53.000But more importantly, that's whatever you overcame in life.
01:37:58.000That's the measurement of strength, not how you can force yourself.
01:38:02.000I mean, I'm a small guy, so that's a small guy mentality.
01:38:04.000I talk my way out of every, you know, my dad's like, just, when you walk into that class, you make friends with the biggest kid in the class, and I've done that my whole life.
01:38:13.000So that's, I just talk my way out, but...
01:40:11.000I think for some people, they have a bad chemical makeup.
01:40:14.000I mean, this is just a fact, just like some people have thyroid cancer, right?
01:40:17.000Some people have, there's a missing link.
01:40:21.000There's something wrong with the way their brain's firing, and this is just a biological issue, because we're, you know, we're not, There's situational depression.
01:40:44.000We're very early in trying to understand it.
01:40:47.000So these medications, like right now, dealing with my career transition and thinking about running for Congress, dealing with my dad, that to me is not a reason to take an antidepressant.
01:41:59.000I have a family member who did everything, including heroin, and it's so great to hear Artie on the show, because I called up Artie when he was doing heroin to ask him how serious it was.
01:42:12.000He goes, let me ask you two questions.
01:45:18.000He is an exception for any number of reasons.
01:45:20.000He happens to be one of the most talentedly funny people that he just can't fail because everybody wants to be around him and be with him and see him perform.
01:45:27.000Drugs in this country, whether they be antidepressants or the opiates, that's something we should come together around as well.
01:45:48.000I beg you to have him on the show because he's a research expert and there's so much to talk with him about in terms of all this stuff, supplements, fasting and nutrition and you absolutely love him.
01:46:01.000I want everybody to know about his work.
01:46:29.000Yeah, no, I mean, we've got to be careful.
01:46:30.000We've got to be very easy on the judgment with all that.
01:46:33.000I kind of feel whatever gets you through the day.
01:46:36.000Well, I don't know how your brain works.
01:46:39.000To pretend that your brain works like my brain and that I know for sure that if I was inside your head I would be thinking the way I think out here, it's impossible.
01:48:32.000Like, right now, in LA, when I come home from the 405, get home from the airport, I'm driving home on the 405, I'm like, why is this 10 o'clock?
01:48:41.000Yeah, this is my first experience on it.
01:48:43.000It's 10 o'clock and it's bumper to bumper for miles and miles and miles.
01:49:19.000Sitting in a car, you've got to try to offset that if that's something you have to deal with because it's really hard.
01:49:26.000I think that having right now in America, in many communities, there are not enough resources for the people that are living there in terms of healthy food and access to education and healthcare.
01:49:39.000Joe, that's how I define morality of a society.
01:54:10.000The numbers are like 4% of people who were killed were innocent.
01:54:15.000That percentage, everybody agrees, is way too high.
01:54:18.000Some people are like if it was only 1% in the community that debates these issues.
01:54:22.000But as long as it's 4% of people are innocent, you can't have that system for that reason, regardless of the penalty A and B. No one's thinking...
01:54:32.000When they're murdering someone about what the penalty for murder is going to be.
01:56:35.000This guy who was killed in the Charleston church shooting, I don't say these maniac's names into microphones, but the white supremacist wanted to start the Civil War, shot all those black people, Obama went down there and sang Amazing Grace.
01:57:13.000I think that that doesn't have to be a religious tenet.
01:57:15.000I think that you can forgive and you can rehabilitate.
01:57:17.000But I won't buy, you know, in the hypothetical situation, obviously I would, by the way, I would defend my, I would kill anybody who ever threatened my family.
01:57:30.000Yeah, it's a different thing than killing someone that you've got detained when deciding that their life is over.
01:57:36.000Yeah, I don't think the state should be responsible for that and the idea that we would give the state the trust.
01:57:41.000The most horrific shit is when you find out that the DA withheld information that would lead to the exoneration of someone or that they're unjustly incarcerated.
01:57:53.000That's one of the most horrific injustices in this country, and obviously it's got a racial component to it, and it's horrible, and the justice system is obviously, that's a really interesting thing to talk about, and constitutional law is a fascinating thing for people studying.
01:58:07.000This idea that we argue about the Second Amendment, like, let's let constitutional lawyers, I think, discuss a lot of those things, and we should all understand that and be curious about it, but I would, our Constitution is also silly.
01:59:20.000What I'm saying about the gun thing, the most fucked up part about the messiness of the gun thing is that even if you made guns illegal, even if you said you can't have any bullets, you'll all go to jail, there's so many guns.
02:00:44.000I mean, I don't think it necessarily makes sense that people would act out in a certain way that's horrific because of video game, But if they were already inclined to violence to begin with, maybe they already had a fucking short circuit, and then they get desensitized to violence in movies and violence in video games,
02:01:52.000I don't think that there's much past the conversation about accessibility to guns that can fire that many rounds that quickly, killing that many people.
02:02:02.000I don't think we have to get rid of those somehow.
02:02:16.000By the way, there's a ton of people in a bind right now.
02:02:19.000That have a rifle, but like, oh my god, I'm not going to be able to afford my insulin.
02:02:22.000Let me get rid of this AK-47 to live another month.
02:02:25.000You buy some guns back, it's a good expenditure of money, and then melt them down and turn them into furniture for people.
02:02:32.000So if you wanted to do that without changing the Second Amendment, like you just have a buyback where you just offer people the opportunity to make some money by giving their guns up.
02:02:43.000Well, the Second Amendment has been interpreted wrong by the Supreme Court, in my opinion.
02:02:49.000I mean, it doesn't say that people should have...
02:04:58.000Like when you read it, it's so interesting because we're going back in time trying to figure out how people in 1776 thought about guns and whether or not that applies to us.
02:05:09.000Because if it doesn't apply to us, we have to think on 1789. If it doesn't apply to us, we have to think, well, then who gets to decide?
02:05:17.000We get to decide as a society on any of these things.
02:05:21.000One of the reasons why it's so interesting to read these things We have, for whatever reason, when things get written into stone or carved into stone or written onto a document, like the First Amendment, like the freedom of expression,
02:06:24.000But it doesn't happen very much, nor does kidnapping, nor do a lot of these crimes that our generation of parents is helicopter parents terrified of everything, not letting their kids go outside.
02:08:13.000I'm a complete hypocrite in all of it.
02:08:16.000I eat meat and I do all kinds of things.
02:08:18.000I think having a thoughtful conversation about guns and why they're a huge part of our culture and not another culture, the way that other cultures and countries regulate their weapons, the problems that they have.
02:08:29.000Our problem, sure, we should talk about mental health, but...
02:08:33.000The problem with that conversation that people don't want to have is everything costs money.
02:10:10.000Do you think they have more or less limitations to what firearms they're allowed to have in Canada?
02:10:15.000I believe the Canadian gun laws are far stronger, more regulated.
02:10:19.000I think they just tried passing something.
02:10:23.000Really recently, Trudeau announced something that was going to severely limit, this is very recent, severely limit the type of firearms you could have, including things that can have multiple rounds in chambers and certain types of guns that are used right now as hunting rifles,
02:10:40.000since there was a big pushback about that.
02:11:22.000What healthcare professionals have the solutions to gun violence?
02:11:25.000I think a lot of healthcare solutions...
02:11:27.000I think certainly surgeons have argued for...
02:11:30.000Why certain ammunition has destroyed the inside of the body and unsurvivable.
02:11:36.000I think public health officials have argued, certainly pediatricians all argued, this idea that you can't ask a parent if they have a gun in the house because the gun lobby...
02:11:46.000Is against that because they're building this conspiracy that the government is going to track your gun?
02:11:55.000Because God forbid, you're not responsible enough or educated enough to know that that kid might accidentally get that gun, and it happens all the time.
02:12:13.000And if there is, I'm happy to be wrong about this or any dumb shit I've said.
02:12:17.000What you're saying is that these public health officials would be able to make these guns less lethal by banning certain types of ammunition because it's destroying people and checking to see if the parents know if they have a gun or where the gun is or how it's treated,
02:13:18.000What I'm saying to you is that I think it's disingenuous to say that public health officials have an answer to why we're having so much mass violence.
02:13:31.000And I could say if these people weren't mentally handicapped or filled with, I shouldn't say handicapped, mentally compromised, filled with all kinds of demons.
02:14:43.000I think a lot of people, I don't know, maybe this is their culture, maybe this is a specific instance, the type of people that would get a job at Microsoft.
02:14:57.000Go back to the gun argument, argue for the four-hour work week and any other type of benefits that civilized nations around the world, especially in Scandinavia, have.
02:15:05.000Studying that culture is really interesting and what they do.
02:15:08.000And you realize that there's any number of things that you can do to help people.
02:16:23.000I mean, they've done studies where they've taken cameras and they put them on opposite ends of the street and they can tell by how fast people walk and they can tell by how many syllables they say in a minute exactly the number of people that are in that city.
02:16:34.000There's a direct correlation between large groups of people and hostile behavior, fast thinking, moving quickly, talking quickly, being impatient.
02:16:42.000All those things contribute to a less healthy society.
02:16:45.000When you deal with a small country that has less people, you have less of that.
02:16:51.000But it still doesn't change the idea, even if we disagreed on that, that looking at how other nations' societies – neighborhoods, by the way, forget about that.
02:20:56.000And I'm happy when someone like Boyan Slott comes around that has a real legitimate solution that could be implemented at large scale and could eventually be a gigantic solution.
02:21:06.000Not only that, but a source of resources.
02:21:08.000We could take this plastic and this plastic, instead of being a detriment, can be used to work at certain things.
02:21:15.000Maybe the money could be used from the sale of that plastic and it would go to charitable causes.
02:21:20.000Maybe it could actually be a positive net benefit to the earth.
02:21:24.000If someone comes along with some technology, they could do that.
02:21:26.000Why do we have in this country an argument about the future of energy and the way that we live and how to create a better renewable future?
02:21:35.000Like, I have no idea why we're arguing everybody wins.
02:21:37.000We're going to make a shitload of money.
02:21:40.000The argument is that if you invest in A Green New Deal.
02:24:33.000The dog, whatever you gotta do, get the fuck out of there and realize, look, you're a human who's doing well living in the United States of America.
02:27:23.000What we're talking about here is there's a bunch of different solutions, but no one's arguing with you saying don't do that one or don't do this one.
02:27:30.000What I'm saying is we've got a real gigantic problem globally.
02:28:09.000Well, I study a lot of ancient history, and I'm really interested in these civilizations that they find, like when, you know, like, for some reason, like a storm takes away some water and moves to a different place.
02:28:23.000They find some structure underneath the water they didn't know existed before, and you realize, like, oh, Jesus, there was a city here at one point in time.
02:28:29.000This happened several times throughout history.
02:29:11.000But it's about the history of wildlife and Native Americans and what changed and that these people who migrated here from Siberia, how long it took them to do it, and that it wasn't even migration.
02:29:26.000We think of it as migration, but it wasn't.
02:34:09.000There's something about a campfire and you're staring up at the night sky and you're cooking dinner with your friends and just knowing around for miles, man.
02:34:30.000The place that I went in Maine that we're describing way out, and we went on a fly fishing trip where I learned how to fly fish and caught zero.
02:35:32.000They didn't have enough contact with people.
02:35:34.000You know how people get rickets and they get scurvy when they don't get vitamin C? Well, people get some weird shit when they don't meet enough people.
02:35:41.000When you're just out there in the woods with your uncle and your cousin and that's it for your whole life and then all of a sudden you're 24, listen to me.
02:36:42.000Okay, but it shows the consequences of these young kids that are getting involved in these screens.
02:36:46.000You think that's any different with us as adults to be indoctrinated into this world of social media and constantly on our screens?
02:36:52.000They're showing a direct correlation, particularly with...
02:36:56.000Young girls are very vulnerable because of the pressures of social media, people talking shit about each other, isolation, bullying, and you're seeing a big uptick in self-harm, big uptick in suicide.
02:37:28.000That smartphones, who every fucking kid who's 11 years old and up now has a smartphone, and every kid that you're looking at from before had a giant decrease in suicide.
02:38:07.000Well, now we're admitting it's real, okay?
02:38:09.000So admitting it's a problem, so there is real data.
02:38:11.000I completely admit it's a problem, and I do think there's a lot of data, just not sure about it.
02:38:14.000I don't know if going to the woods is going to help it.
02:38:17.000It's going to make you feel a little bit better while you're in the woods.
02:38:20.000But I don't think it's going to, overall, there's a problem having these goddamn devices where you're constantly addicted and checking it, and you're getting these little dopamine hits.
02:38:29.000Yep, Jonathan Haidt wrote that with, I think, or he wrote a book about that with Lenore Skenazy, who also advocated that this is the problem with, you know, parents being worried about their kids too much.
02:38:40.000Yeah, Jonathan Haidt talks about that too, letting kids, you know, he's talked about his own fear of letting his own kid walk his way home.
02:39:48.000But the argument is that technology is rough.
02:39:50.000I think it only connects to processors because I don't think they could really measure innovation that well because things come along like splitting the atom.
02:39:59.000There's things that come along that just fucking throw a monkey wrench.
02:40:03.000I don't know if there's a benefit that we're not quite aware of.
02:40:07.000Because I think one of the things that's happening is people are way more aware of virtually everything.
02:40:12.000We can complain all day that we have less freedom in terms of our ability to joke around about things, and people are more restrictive with language, and all these things are true.
02:40:21.000But isn't it interesting that this is something that's happening, right?
02:40:41.000This giant shift is because of social media and these technologies that we're talking about that create problems.
02:40:46.000So the question is, will this ship right itself?
02:40:50.000Are these corrections eventually going to lead to a better society?
02:40:56.000Are we going to be more understanding of each other once we get over these initial growing pains, which is what we're going through right now as a culture, as a society, getting accustomed to these devices?
02:41:07.000And these devices and the connectivity that they have.
02:41:10.000Are we going to get more responsible with them?
02:41:12.000Are we going to be nicer to each other through it?
02:41:14.000We're going to recognize as we get older that, hey, you know, being shitty to someone on social media is just like being shitty to someone in person.
02:41:21.000And we shouldn't support either thing.
02:41:23.000And then we develop this sort of ethic.
02:41:26.000Yeah, it's a really important set of questions you just asked about social media's effect on us.
02:41:31.000I would pinpoint one just for people to watch this Intelligence Square debate that you would love, because given your conversation that you have with people, is, I think it was, the motion was, is Twitter specifically good for democracy or does it create democracy?
02:41:45.000And I was on the side of, yeah, it does, and I would cite examples like Egypt and even China and different places where people, and Iran, where people use Twitter to rise up.
02:41:54.000But the argument was, It's worse because on Twitter, a lie travels so fast, so rapidly, and it's so believable that it creates more damage about things that didn't happen and conspiracy theory than it also,
02:42:10.000you know, it's a little of both, obviously, in terms of it creating democracy.
02:43:35.000Now, imagine you're a truck driver, and imagine that's all you've ever been, and you're 60 years old, and all of a sudden, they come along and say, hey man, we have these self-driving electric trucks that never crashed into anything.
02:44:05.000And so my experience, it's only relative to me, but you have to widen your perspective to understand some people are struggling to just get toilet paper.
02:44:14.000And understanding that, and your point though about the truck driver, his skill set is narrow.
02:44:18.000And maybe his education, his grit, maybe he doesn't know how to network.
02:44:21.000He doesn't know how to use the internet.
02:44:22.000But he did a valuable job, and if he's going to lose his job at 63, I don't want to live in a society that worked hard, a guy who worked hard his whole life, and by the way, he's paying more as a percentage of his taxes as a truck driver than most of these guys in the financial industry, which is a complete injustice.
02:44:35.000You know, tax on your work, how much work you're doing.
02:44:38.000This guy should not have to go struggle and learn a new job.
02:44:42.000He's 63. Let him ride into the sunset.
02:45:30.000But I think we should have all possible options on the table because what's happened in our lifetime from 1994 with, you know, give or take a few years, which is the invention of the...
02:45:44.000Commercial version of the internet, right?
02:45:46.000With all those AOL and all those things that people used.
02:45:50.000It basically all started sort of blossoming around 1994 with mass use.
02:46:51.000That's the conversation, and the idea that somehow, you know, there's got to be a beatdown, and one person has to win, and it has to be a competition.
02:47:27.000I mean, I think we're looking, again, for a binary answer here when it's a very nuanced issue filled with complexities and a lot of issues.
02:47:35.000And people like to have something to do, but the problem is sometimes people get beaten down by life.
02:47:39.000And again, they're 60x whatever it is years old, and they don't know what to do.
02:47:44.000And then they can't live the same lifestyle that they had when they had a job, because when they had a job, they were making $1,000 a week.
02:47:50.000They were making $50,000 a year, and now all of a sudden they're making $1,000 a month.
02:47:54.000So you can kind of live, but how do you live?
02:47:57.000That's why I've got to plug my podcast.
02:48:09.000I completely agree with that argument.
02:48:10.000Listen, I don't have three jobs because it's healthy.
02:48:12.000I have three jobs because I'm crazy and because I need to stay busy and also because I don't trust any one of these things to stick around.
02:49:21.000She doesn't think that they should vote and speak on women's issues and that women are women who are biologically women and then you have a trans woman who dominates women's issues.
02:50:50.000Nadine Strawson, who I think used to be something at the ACLU, wrote a book about speech and about how in Germany you're not allowed to fly the swastika and they have censorship on speech.
02:51:01.000And that it's not effective for any of the outcomes that it's intended for.
02:53:52.000This lady was really into guys shitting in her mouth.
02:53:56.000She was speaking in German and they were translating it to English.
02:53:59.000She was talking about all of her experiences and when the first time a guy did it and what kind of diet she likes a guy to follow when he shits in her mouth.
02:54:09.000And I'm like, okay, this is not pleasant.
02:59:07.000I've been listening to you talk about trying to understand people and listen to people you don't disagree with, and I'm just sitting there beating myself up.
02:59:13.000I'm like, I've got to be better at that.
02:59:15.000And the idea that I would get, you know, that I was too argumentative today, it's like, oh man, I'm sorry.
03:00:56.000Some people pretend they don't, but it's really because they're bored with what they have to do all day, so they don't want to think.
03:01:01.000But if you have some time and you're a curious person, you like to hear other people thinking too, and you like to hear someone who's thinking either in a way like, oh, I would think about that too, or in a way like you hadn't considered.
03:01:34.000I've tried to instill and engender my daughter's sense of curiosity about everything rather than saying, you're going to do it because I'm your father and I said so.
03:01:40.000Like, I'm going to explain to you why that's – and try to, you know, create critical thinking skills.