Jon Stewart left The Daily Show at the top of his game. In this episode, he talks about why he left the show, why he decided to leave, and why he thought it was a good time to go. He also talks about what it was like to be on the set of Comedy Central's "Saturday Night Live" as a stand-up comedian and how he dealt with the pressures of being on camera 24/7. Jon also discusses why he didn't want to stay on the show as long as he did and why it was time for him to move on to other things. And, of course, there's a little bit of politics at the end of the episode, and he explains why he thinks Jon should have been fired from the show in the first place. Jon Stewart is a comedian, writer, podcaster, and podcaster. He is a regular contributor to Comedy Central and the New York Times, and has been a long-time friend of mine. I really enjoyed sitting down with Jon to talk about his career and what it's like to work with him. I hope you enjoy this episode and tweet me if you do! with any thoughts or opinions or thoughts on Jon Stewart's departure. Timestamps: 5:00 - Jon Stewart leaving the Daily Show 8:30 - What was it like being a standup comedian? 9:15 - Why did he leave the show at the very top of the comedy game? 11:40 - Why he left it after 8 years? 16:10 - How much money did he make? 17:00 18: What was the best part of his career? 19: What would you miss from being on TV? 21: How did he miss being on the other show? 22:00 What is the most important part of the job? 27:00 How does he miss working with Jon Stewart? 26:00 Do you miss Jon Stewart now? 29:00 Why did you miss it? 32: What are you looking forward to working with Trevor Noah? 35:30 What s your favorite part of Jon Stewart s legacy? 36:00 Is there any more? 37: Is there a better way to have fun? 39:00 Would you like to see him back on TV again? 40:00 Who do you miss him in 2020? 41:00 Can he come back? 45:00
00:02:34.000But it starts to, like you say, it becomes inauthentic.
00:02:38.000But the same thing would happen to me sometimes with, like I'd be doing shows and you would know you weren't necessarily feeling the Outrage of something or that the commentary was going to be as spicy or as deep as you might want it,
00:02:55.000but you might kick it up a notch anyway because it was performative.
00:02:58.000I always had to fight that instinct to not give in to the gravity of what was expected of me.
00:03:10.000Well, it's such a tightrope to walk because you're commenting, you're doing comedy on something that's actually serious.
00:03:17.000And it's great to mock the ridiculous aspects of it, but really, if you're doing The Daily Show right now, we really are in a legitimately troubled time.
00:03:28.000It's not like a troubled time of ten years ago or eight years ago.
00:03:50.000I just mean, you know, when you walk away from something, I think a kind of nostalgia about how, you know, I took a fair amount of shit while I was there.
00:04:00.000But the point is, like, Charleston happened when I was hosting that show.
00:04:13.000And what would happen is you started to feel like you were expected to say something profound about it.
00:04:25.000And you knew that you didn't really have that in you at times or just that's a bar that was beyond, you know, you really did just want to help your staff get through it more than anything else.
00:04:39.000And so these events would come up and the weight of Feeling like you had to say something meaningful in that moment for people because that's the role that either they had, you know, let you know that you had in their lives or that the show kind of took on,
00:04:58.000you know, became kind of difficult to navigate.
00:05:31.000It's impotent rage at a certain point.
00:05:34.000You rage against it, but over a period of 16 years, if you feel the thing you're raging against grow stronger and kind of collapse on top of you and you not make headway, nobody likes to piss in the ocean.
00:05:52.000You like it, but at a certain point, if that's your job, I think people began to look at the show like it was supposed to change things.
00:06:05.000And that's a hard place to be for a comedy show.
00:06:36.000When you were running that show and you were doing great comedy about real shit, and as this real shit compounds and piles up and it doesn't seem to have any effect on this real shit, all this great comedy, after a while I can understand why it would start to feel like...
00:07:33.000You know, it seems like trying to enact change is so difficult that when actual change happens, it's one of the reasons why it happens in such a big way.
00:07:42.000It's like there were so many people bounding at the wall and pounding at this wall that when, boom, when the George Floyd protests broke through, then all of a sudden it's, we've got real change.
00:07:53.000Let's take down these fucking statues and light everything on fire, and there's this feeling Of change and of chaos that is also representative of the fact that it takes so long to turn our cultural battleship.
00:08:05.000It's like to actually get a real turn is so hard.
00:08:10.000Everything stays the same no matter how mad people get.
00:08:13.000That turn, even at that point, that's still the easy part.
00:08:35.000We're still doing the shit that is symbolic.
00:08:38.000This is where leadership becomes such a crucial component.
00:08:43.000You have this great Awakening of energy, it has to be channeled into something lasting and meaningful, and we have to diagnose the real problem underlying this moment so that we don't make a mistake in just changing the window dressing and the gilding on the buildings.
00:09:37.000There was also a lot of frustration during the bailout period of the COVID crisis that all these corporations were getting so much money that people got one $1,200 check and then there was no more talk.
00:10:09.000But what's underlying that is not just the racial inequality and the inequities, but this whole idea of we build our society economically from the top down.
00:10:25.000Well, like, when you're in a pandemic, right, and tens of thousands of people are dying, and then we say to ourselves, all right, Well, who are the essential workers?
00:10:35.000Who are the ones that are the fabric of our society and culture that keep the wheels turning and the trains running?
00:11:22.000What's more for freedom and liberty than not having your health insurance tied to your job?
00:11:28.000What kind of freedom do you have to make decisions in your life when you fear that if I take a chance, if I go for something, if I try and change my lot in life, my kids will no longer be covered by...
00:11:44.000All the things that we built up to accept, I think we have to...
00:13:13.000It's just not, it's not something that we as Americans would ever consider We're really sheltered in a lot of ways to what a great vast majority of the world faces, but also what a vast majority of our own citizens face in terms of having lives that they feel are built on sand as opposed to granite.
00:13:36.000And so his point was like, yeah, you know, that's what it feels like when you're in a war, but I signed up for that.
00:13:44.000But like bus drivers and grocery store workers, like, They had to fucking decide, like, I need this money more than I need to protect my life and maybe the health of my family.
00:13:57.000What a terrible position to have to be in.
00:14:00.000And unprecedented, and we're ill-prepared for it.
00:14:03.000It really did highlight what's essential, though, which is, back to your point about this idea of income equality.
00:14:11.000People will balk at that, like, hey, this is a game.
00:14:14.000If you want to figure it out, figure out how to make more money.
00:14:17.000Invest and do this and become a banker, and you fucked up and you wanted to be an artist, or you fucked up and you wanted to be a carpenter, you should have been a, you know, whatever.
00:14:44.000None of that money means anything if the fabric of society deteriorates to a point where literally everybody has to stay in their home and you can't work.
00:15:30.000Right, to get a job when you get out where you're not going to make a fraction of that every year, so you're going to be behind the eight ball for the rest of your life.
00:15:36.000Now think about, you know, black people not being able to build equity and wealth through generations of, you know, government policy that excluded them from, you know, from whether it's the Homestead Act or the Federal Housing Administration or the GI Bill.
00:15:52.000You know, all these government interventions...
00:15:56.000Socialism, if you will, entitlements, if you will, were made to help white families build equity, right?
00:18:13.000I still think, to this day, and I don't know how your experience with this is, but I still think there's a large swath of white people in society who feel like they blame black people for not being able to get out of this hole.
00:18:37.000Like, hey man, if they would just pull their pants up and talk different, you know, they wouldn't have such a hard time.
00:19:17.000We don't all start out at the same starting block.
00:19:19.000So all you pull yourself up by your own bootstrap, motherfuckers, you're lucky you have arms.
00:19:25.000There's people out there born with no arms.
00:19:27.000We should all be thinking of ourselves in this country as a community, not as a bunch of people in competition with each other.
00:19:34.000We're all piling our money together every year.
00:19:37.000We throw our taxes into the mix to try to take care of the infrastructure and the government and the housing and all the different things that get paid for by our taxes.
00:19:45.000We're a community, man, and we're not thinking like a community.
00:19:48.000We're thinking like a bunch of people that don't want other people to have the same shot in life.
00:19:56.000I think you struck on something, though, that's very important in all this, and that is a theory of limited resources.
00:20:05.000A lot of the conflict between what you would consider the more nativist wing of American politics and The more progressive side is this idea of resource guarding.
00:20:22.000I play by the rules and they're going to take all my labor and they're going to pour it into these people.
00:20:27.000And I do think we have to address that idea that we're here to build equity.
00:20:34.000Let's all get together and the project of this next generation is to build a stronger foundation, a granite bearing for everyone to stand on so that there's a few people standing on Mount Everest.
00:23:12.000The Fed right now is driving so much money into stocks.
00:23:16.000You're talking about zero interest rates, negative interest rates.
00:23:19.000They're driving everything away from bonds and savings so that the stock market, which for some reason we've come to look at like a pulse oximeter, Of the nation, which it's not.
00:23:33.000It's, you know, oh my God, we lost 300 DAOs today.
00:23:36.000Like, we've come to look at it like it's our temperature.
00:24:40.000If you're not sturdy on the legs, you got nothing.
00:24:42.000My idea is we should get Dick Cheney involved and we should hire Halliburton to fix up the inner cities like it did all the places we bombed in Iraq.
00:26:01.000They have to advocate against the government.
00:26:03.000So we're trying to put together, working with this team coalition, wounded warrior groups and people, VSOs and groups like that, to address this legislatively similar to what was done for the 9-11 community,
00:26:23.000You know, we always have money for war, but we almost never have money to pay for what are the absolutely could have seen coming a mile away consequences of what our veterans face when they come back, right?
00:26:38.000When they're out of sight, they're out of mind.
00:26:41.000And so my idea was you have all these profiteers, Raytheon, Halliburton, all these groups, make them kick in 10% big.
00:26:52.000A contingency in war so that when these guys go home and the government backs away, there is money there to take care of what is the natural damage that's done to these people in the name of fighting for our country.
00:27:13.000So that they don't, and their families, I mean these people have to become their own lawyers.
00:27:17.000They have to go in front of medical boards and they have no support.
00:27:20.000Their families are oftentimes caring for them, whether they have health issues or traumatic brain injury or, you know, other kinds of invisible wounds.
00:27:36.000You know, the UFC had a program back in the day where we were working with the Intrepid Center for Excellence to work with traumatic brain injury patients.
00:28:03.000You're blowing people up and you're not preparing for people to come back injured.
00:28:08.000You're sending young, brave women and men to die for their country or risk severe brain damage and you don't have enough money set aside to treat them when they return.
00:28:25.000You've got a five-year window, but if you get something that they deem was not service-related, so you could have been There's a guy in Texas, we work with his wife Rosie and Leroy Torres,
00:28:40.000who's literally like, his case wouldn't be, they denied his case in front of the Texas Supreme Court.
00:29:58.000Like, stop fucking with these people and help them.
00:30:02.000Yeah, the jet fuel burn at the Trade Center is another excellent example of first responders, right, that were terribly sick, and many, many of them died because of the fumes, and people in the surrounding areas.
00:30:15.000In fact, Donna Summers died of lung cancer, and she lived near there.
00:30:22.000It could be related, but many people did.
00:30:26.000Jimmy Zendroga, he was a cop, and he got really sick.
00:30:29.000I mean, Those guys developed the pile cough like a day into the search and rescue, but Jimmy's and Joey, he gets sick, and they kept trying to tell him that, A, first it was in his head, and then it was, it had nothing to do with where you were and working on the pile in 9-11,
00:30:48.000and then they tried to say, like, it's from snorting drugs.
00:30:52.000They fucking, you know, ruin this man's reputation as he's dying.
00:30:57.000He dies, they do an autopsy, in his lungs.
00:31:01.000Everything you could possibly imagine from a pulverized building.
00:31:28.000for these illnesses so that these guys don't have to fight so hard to get.
00:31:33.000I think along the same lines we're talking about reform of the police department, there has to be some reform of the healthcare system that deals with veterans because it seems to be just this long history of doing it a certain way to save the most money possible and the idea that these guys are sacrificial anyway.
00:31:50.000They're sending them off to potentially die if they come back alive.
00:31:55.000They do their very best to not treat them and to not spend any more money on them.
00:32:02.000It's amazing we have so many guys that are still patriotic, that still want to go and do this, considering the fact that they're treated so poorly when they return.
00:32:11.000And they lose, you know, listen, being in the military is isolating in the first place.
00:32:15.000It's just not that, you know, it's only less than 1%, I think, of the population.
00:32:21.000Put on top of that, when you get out, you know, you're used to being with a unit, you're used to that camaraderie, you're used to all pulling for the same, you know, working as a team.
00:32:29.000Well, now you're removed from your unit, and if you're hurt, that's even further isolating.
00:32:34.000You know, and in that moment, to have to then, you're worried about your future, your family's future, and in that moment, when you, when that's when the government should step in and go, hey man, You fulfilled your service to us.
00:33:25.000Well, I think, again, this speaks to what's going on in this country in terms of revolt.
00:33:29.000That we realize, like, all this stuff, whether you're talking about the healthcare system, whether you're talking about police reform, whether you're talking about impoverished communities that are stricken with crime and drugs, it's not changing...
00:34:43.000And I remember asking the Treasury Secretary at the time, you know, this is a mortgage question, right?
00:34:49.000Because the derivatives made it like a geometric problem.
00:34:53.000So if they're bundling mortgages and 8% of those mortgages go underwater, it sinks the derivatives market, which is trillions of dollars as opposed to billions of dollars.
00:35:01.000So I said, you know, with all that money, what if you just...
00:36:21.000Yeah, I've heard both sides of that argument.
00:36:24.000I've heard the argument that nothing's too big to fail, let it fail, and then I've heard the argument that if it did fail, it would be so catastrophic.
00:36:32.000But I'm saying it wouldn't have failed, so it was a failure because they bundled more.
00:36:37.000Yes, oh yeah, they did it all to themselves.
00:36:39.000But if you made the mortgages at the base of that, okay?
00:36:43.000So let's say 10% of the mortgages were underwater.
00:36:46.000So let's say you had a $200,000 mortgage and now the house is only worth $150,000.
00:36:52.000So instead of giving a million dollars to AIG at the top, give $50,000 to that mortgage, bring it into line with its value, suddenly that thing's not underwater anymore.
00:37:02.000It's like putting ballast into a ship that's sinking.
00:37:05.000Put the ballast in, the ship comes up, rather than just saying, alright, we'll buy you another fucking ship.
00:37:10.000That almost seems too logical, though.
00:37:22.000I was just like, I don't even know what to do with that.
00:37:24.000Incentivizing bad behavior doesn't count when you're the ones who tank the economy.
00:37:29.000It's like what you're talking about today.
00:37:31.000If someone tried to say that these small businesses that are going under because of the COVID sanctions, because everybody's been locked down, if those people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it's a great example why that analogy sucks.
00:37:56.000If I'm the government right now, here's something I could do that's like, again, it seems like a simple solution, which is just suspend and extend.
00:40:21.000Yeah, it shouldn't be that way, and I'm not sure how it started that way, and it's really unfortunate.
00:40:27.000There's got to be more emphasis on testing, and there's got to be more emphasis on showing people how to keep their immune system healthy, and then recognizing people that can't do that, and doing what we can to protect them.
00:42:04.000So, like, when people say political correctness, it's overwhelming.
00:42:08.000I just say, like, hey, man, it's just other people pushing back and getting to say their shit, and that's exactly what they should be doing.
00:42:16.000The internet has democratized, you know, outrage.
00:42:41.000It's all, every day we're just bombarded by what everybody's thinking.
00:42:45.000Well, you're also bombarded by the people that spend the most time doing it.
00:42:49.000Because there's a lot of mentally unwell people that spend their entire day camped out on Twitter having arguments.
00:42:55.000And if you want to venture into that world and risk your consciousness and your health, your literal mental health, by communicating in this really crude manner with text messages and, you know, arguing over semantics with people that you don't even know.
00:43:28.000And I know when I've fucked up, and I know when people are mad at me when it's legit and valid, and I know when they're mad at me for nonsense.
00:43:35.000And I am my worst self-critic, so I don't need other people yelling at me.
00:44:07.000There's value in a little bit of snake venom.
00:44:09.000You develop a tolerance, but if you get a big fat dose, you're dead.
00:44:13.000In many ways, it's the same with interacting with people that are upset with you.
00:44:17.000There's going to be people that are upset with everybody for no reason.
00:44:20.000No matter what the story is in the news, even if it's clear-cut to you and I, there's going to be someone who has a violent opposition to that idea.
00:44:26.000It doesn't mean they're right, and it doesn't mean you're right.
00:44:29.000It just means people have a lot of different fucking ways of looking at the world, and if you want to exist in conflict, in perpetuity, stay on Twitter, and stay on Twitter all day long, and just argue with people.
00:44:59.000Do you feel like one of the hardest things to do is to maintain your kind of creative barometer so that you don't let those kinds of things When you feel like they're not constructive, pulling you too far to the outrage world or some other things,
00:45:20.000And that's why I think it's good, like what you do in terms of conversation, like you basically say, you know, I'm going to do long form because that, you know, feels like, at least from my perspective, The healthiest form is conversation.
00:45:36.000But even in that case, people will take long form, edit things out of context, and then it becomes the same problem that we have with Twitter and with everything else.
00:45:46.000You get these little sound bites, these little video clips, and you don't understand the full context of the conversation or what was actually said.
00:46:04.000Our frustrations for this are going to give birth to a better form.
00:46:08.000And I think one of the things that podcasts, what it's in response to, the popularity of the long form, is in response to people being upset with like these...
00:46:19.000Traditional late night talk show things where there's a window here with one guy on the right and a window here with a guy on the left and there's a person in the center and they're yelling at each other and then you cut to commercial.
00:46:27.000And you don't really feel like things got resolved.
00:46:29.000So the response to that where people are gravitating...
00:46:36.000Was it hard for you, you know, when we came up as comics, it was also at that point, like, it was sort of a gladiatorial environment, you know, and I remember, you know, the Boston scene, you know, was always like, that's a tough scene.
00:49:38.000Just like stand-up, you want the joke to easily enter into a person's mind.
00:49:43.000So it's so well-written and so perfectly timed that the audience goes, Jon Stewart's got this.
00:49:48.000I'm just going to sit back and let him take my thoughts on a ride.
00:49:52.000And that's what really good stand-up is.
00:49:55.000I mean, it's one of the reasons why Dave was able to do that 846 special that way, where he has this long, drawn-out story with so many important points, and a few laughs thrown in there, but so engaged.
00:50:48.000Because there is now, like, I think the best measure sometimes of art or of stand-up or those things is when you hear things or see things that are uniquely that person.
00:50:59.000Like, nobody could have delivered 846 but Dave.
00:51:13.000It's funny because I feel like That's what stand-up helped do for me.
00:51:19.000Because when you do that in front of an audience, even I'll give like Boston as an example, you know, when we'd be working Knicks, you'd do that, that run of Knicks is like the Framingham and the other ones, you know, but you go to the one in central Boston first.
00:51:33.000And I can remember, I hadn't played The Room before and I was a young comic and I'd just done Letterman, I think.
00:53:59.000And if you don't stay on top of it, the energy of that room, it is a bear that will get up and walk out of the room if you're not careful.
00:54:06.000But it's interesting also that now, so you're known now, Stand-up when you're known versus stand-up when you're not is also a different experience because you walk into a room when they know you and there is, you know, you don't have to be as sharp if you don't want to because of that.
00:54:23.000And that's a discipline as well to kind of make sure that you're not coasting on things.
00:54:29.000Maybe some goodwill that they had for you based on something else.
00:56:41.000I mean, I think it's really critical to strengthen your immune system, and I do a lot of things to do that, and I think that that's something that people need to really concentrate on, and I really wish that our elected officials were talking more about that and having speeches with doctors and...
00:57:09.000I mean, just the science on vitamin supplementation and how critical it is for your immune system, particularly vitamin D, that could literally save lives.
00:57:22.000You did those episodes on the Game Changers with James Woods.
00:57:27.000And it was fascinating to watch because I watched that movie.
00:57:31.000And, you know, nutrition is also like diet is such an important part of What we do to ourselves that we don't think and especially in a time of COVID where so many people like you say like when you see what this does to people with type 1 diabetes or with other kinds of you know conditions that might be caused from either poor diet or lack of access to you know healthier options and things like that you realize like shit we've put ourselves in a very
00:58:01.000vulnerable position Yeah, very vulnerable.
00:58:04.000Andrew Schultz had a really good point.
00:58:06.000He said this pandemic highlighted the vulnerabilities both in our economic system and in our health system, like the way we are as human beings.
00:58:18.000The obese people, people with diabetes, older folks?
00:58:21.000I mean, it highlights all these issues where...
00:58:26.000We really need to concentrate on for the future.
00:58:28.000If you want more people to survive this, there are strategies that can be implemented and we really need to talk to people about just being normal stuff, being well hydrated, making sure you're not dehydrated, well rested.
00:59:03.000When you're talking about what we talked about earlier, like economic inequality, it's hard to go into an area And be like, so here's what we're going to do.
00:59:16.000We're just going to sit and breathe quietly for five minutes.
00:59:20.000It's a really difficult, it's like hierarchy of needs.
00:59:25.000How do you work into the idea that those types of theories are actually important to the betterment of like Yeah,
00:59:42.000that's an interesting point, and I think what you have to do is it has to be, first of all, told by people who are doing it successfully.
00:59:51.000So people that are doing it, that maybe were struggling with their immune system, If you see someone who is in the situation that you're in currently,
01:00:27.000But if someone is fat, I'm talking from their perspective, and they see some guy who's really thin and chiseled, then it's not going to make sense to them that they could ever be like that.
01:00:37.000But if they see someone, there's a lot of...
01:00:39.000Really fantastic photos and Instagram and Facebook pages online where you can get inspiration from someone who actually stuck to a diet, actually stuck to an exercise routine, and then speaks really well about how much it improved the way they feel,
01:02:12.000We don't have to look at every success as somehow or another thumbing in the face of people who can't achieve a similar goal.
01:02:18.000But there are enough people out there that can.
01:02:22.000That we should concentrate on that because I think it'll have a significant improvement on the overall health of us, again, as a community.
01:02:29.000And I think this is really how we have to look at the United States and human beings on Earth in general.
01:02:36.000We have to look at each other as a bunch of people that could very well be neighbors.
01:02:41.000And if you're my friend and you were fat and you were willing to listen, and I used to be fat too, and I can tell you, hey man, this is what I did.
01:03:21.000You just got to get your shit together and go through this way.
01:03:24.000I do think you have to present more options but know that it's maybe more complicated and people can be overweight or whatever and be healthy.
01:06:01.000So the story, what I don't want people to do is suffer and I want people to feel better while they're alive.
01:06:07.000And I think that's something that's missed in the message of health improvement.
01:06:11.000You will actually have a better experience on earth and it'll help you mitigate stress.
01:06:16.000It'll help you have better relationships because you won't be burdened down with a lot of anxiety and stress that literally comes from a physical release of energy.
01:09:58.000But, you know, genetics I'm sure plays a part in it as well.
01:10:02.000But the funny thing is, like, I don't even think about it anymore.
01:10:07.000I just don't even think about it anymore.
01:10:09.000Well, once you get into a custom, and once your gut biome changes, you know, you really get accustomed to whatever you're eating, good or bad, unfortunately.
01:10:17.000And that's one of the reasons why people have such a hard time quitting sugar and bread and pasta and things along those lines.
01:11:08.000It feels better for me, but I, I always say, like, but It's such a personal and individual choice, and everybody's got to do for themselves.
01:11:21.000The only thing I would say is, I do think it's important for people to get educated on it, to read up on, like you say, factory farming, or what might be the nutritional cost of it, or what are some of the things that are in it, or what maybe is it going to do to our immunity when we use so many antibiotics.
01:11:46.000Try and educate yourself to how your meal gets to your table.
01:11:51.000That's why I'm a huge advocate for local farming and agriculture because those are the people that are just growing their food and they're bringing it to your table.
01:12:01.000But I also try not to take a position of judgment on people because I feel like that's unfair.
01:12:09.000Well, I think that's very wise of you, and I think that there's a lot of people that share your position on animal death, and I think that's one of the more promising aspects of laboratory-created meat, as long as it can be done in a way that's actually going to be healthy for us.
01:12:22.000It seems like there's some real science behind that, and they're very, very close to releasing that on a large scale, so it would be actual meat that doesn't come with death, which is really fascinating.
01:13:29.000The relationship you have with your food when you actually work very hard and hunt it and kill it is very different than buying food from a store.
01:13:39.000And I would say in a similar way, growing.
01:13:56.000Growing your own food in your backyard is very satisfying, too.
01:13:59.000And I would say to people, that's a microcosm.
01:14:03.000It's a very micro form of what it feels like to hunt an animal and then eat it and feed your family.
01:14:08.000If I shoot an elk, I eat it literally for a year.
01:14:11.000So one animal death equals a year of my meals.
01:14:17.000You know, there's also the moral high ground position.
01:14:21.000You know, I think a lot of people love to look at the moral high ground of eating vegetables and only eating vegetables as being a superior way to live their life.
01:15:22.000Yeah, because I think it's about consideration.
01:15:25.000You know, for me, I think it was, there was a certain part of consciousness that I never ascribed to animals to some extent.
01:15:32.000I mean, it's funny because I always thought of myself as, oh, you know, I love animals.
01:15:35.000I, you know, always had dogs and cats and, you know, you find a bird with a broken wing and you stick him in a box and two weeks later he flies away and you're a hero.
01:15:43.000But I never really ascribed, like, individuality to them and I think that was the change for me was interacting with In an individual way.
01:16:05.000And it just changed my relationship to what I wanted it to be with animals.
01:16:14.000And it just made it untenable in that moment for me.
01:16:19.000But I truly understand, like, That that is a really individualized, personalized experience that I made.
01:16:32.000And like I said, I would love it for people to make that connection because I think it's profound.
01:16:37.000There is something about that connection for people that when they do see it, you know, it's funny, I'll talk about the pigs and they'll be like, you know, Where they just eat everything.
01:16:49.000They're like, no, they're really playful.
01:17:07.000I mean, it's an animal prison and they're domesticated because we give them food and we kind of remove the natural fear that they would have of any...
01:17:16.000Eyeball-facing-forward predator, which is what we are.
01:17:37.000To be sick, like pneumonia, like genetically designed to gain too much weight for their legs.
01:17:47.000It really is, you know, the island of Miss Victoria, like they've genetically modified or done whatever they've done.
01:17:54.000And the health of Yeah, that's why I prefer hunting.
01:18:08.000If you're eating an animal that's a wild animal, you're eating an athlete.
01:18:13.000I mean, they're sinewy and thick and they're strong and they've survived.
01:18:18.000And they're so much more nutrient dense.
01:18:21.000When you're talking about factory-farmed animals, you're talking about, I mean, factory-farmed animals is the worst version of what human beings are capable of.
01:18:30.000They were capable of ignoring suffering to the point where we lock them all in warehouses, their piss goes down in a tunnel and fills a small lake up, and they've flown over these places with drones.
01:19:13.000The animal kingdom, in a way, a different...
01:19:15.000I feel like because of my wife, and she's a much kinder, smarter version of me, so because of her kind of showing me that relationship and experiencing myself, it's just changed the way that I view it.
01:19:34.000And it kind of takes us back around to the earlier part of the conversation, because when you think about animal agriculture and you talk about those hog farms, where are they located?
01:19:42.000They're located in the poorest neighborhoods.
01:19:45.000They locate, and the environmental damage that they do is also damage that's done to poor rural communities that live around them.
01:19:55.000Now, I'm not suggesting that there's not economic, there's an economic incentive and an industry around it, and certainly not, you know, you don't just end industries, but reform, again, like, it's sort of like,
01:20:15.000He goes, I'm going to support Donald Trump because Donald Trump is the only thing standing between America and socialism.
01:20:23.000And I was like, the only thing standing between America and socialism is an inability to meaningfully reform capitalism and its more damaging effects.
01:20:34.000And if we can't do that, then the people take to the streets.
01:20:39.000I think reform, like Bernie was talking about and those other guys, that will save capitalism.
01:20:46.000That will save democracy by showing that we recognize that there is collateral damage to the systems that we use to gain wealth and to gain power.
01:20:57.000And if we can reform those systems meaningfully for the people who suffer most terribly under them, we save it.
01:21:07.000But if we can't, The Bastille gets stormed.
01:21:30.000Yeah, no, I think everyone agrees, but everyone feels like their hands are tied.
01:21:34.000And again, I think that's one of the reasons why these protests and just this whole explosion after George Floyd has been so transformative.
01:21:44.000Because people recognize that this is a real moment of change.
01:21:48.000And of course opportunists and looters and all kinds of other crazy shit happened along the way, but it speaks...
01:22:39.000There's never been a civilization like us today, and we're growing and changing to try to suit our real sensibilities and to try to get better at this fucking thing and not just accept this old, crazy, corrupt structure that's existed forever.
01:23:12.000And hopefully when this all ends, everybody can gather again at the store and do a good set and talk some shit with each other and have some fun.