Comedian and podcaster Bill Burr joins Jemele to discuss his new podcast, and why he decided to jump into the podcasting world. He talks about why he started it, why he thought it would be a good idea, and what it s like to be a podcaster. He also talks about how he became the king of the podcasters, and why it s important to have a podcast that isn t just about politics. And, of course, he talks about his new show on HBO, . And, he explains why he thinks it s a great idea to do a show that s not about politics, and that s why he s doing it in the first place. This is a great episode, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it! Tweet me if you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to make the podcast better, and we ll get back to you in a week or so! Timestamps: 5:00 - Why did Bill start a podcast? 6:15 - Why he started a podcast 7:00 Why he got into comedy 8:30 - What it s cool to do it 9:20 - What s the point of a podcast ? 10:15 11:30 12:40 - How much money he s getting 13:40 14: What s it takes to be funny 15: What is the best way to make money 16: Why he s a good at it? 17: How to talk about politics 18:00 | How to get older? 19:30 | How he s going to get younger 21: How does he do it better? 22:10 27:40 | What s his favorite part of the job? 26:00 + 27:20 28:00 What is his favorite thing to do? 29:00 Can you have a good time? 35:00 How do you fish in this new pond? 32:00 Do you fish for people who don t have to fish in a new pond ? 33:00 Are you fishing in a pond? 35: What are you going to do more than one fish? 36:00 Is there a good place to fish for me? 37:00 Should I fish for more people who will come over to my pond?
00:01:22.000They pay me very well for exclusivity.
00:01:24.000But I found out that actually, you know what, I can, if I asked nicely, and they were nice about it, and do it in a very different way, which is what we did, I could do a podcast.
00:01:39.000And it's a whole new audience because there's just a lot of people who are turned off to politics and don't want to talk about politics and don't want to hear about it.
00:02:22.000I said, for example, on Real Time last week, the two topics we talked about were the ACLU and NATO. And he's 30 and he said, yeah, I don't know what either one of those are.
00:02:41.000You would not be that interested in Real Time because even though it's a comedy show and there's a lot of funny stuff that anybody could laugh at...
00:02:48.000Yeah, when it comes to the panel discussion, it was mostly about NATO and the ACLU. Whereas this show, you know, the podcast, you know, it's just about anything.
00:03:07.000I'm not the guy in the suit and the tie and the white shirt with perfect hair.
00:03:11.000And I can just, you know, and also I can, like we're doing here, be much more free would be the word I would say before we had to dance around the fact that, no, we can get baked.
00:03:26.000We can drink and we can smoke, which is what we would do normally.
00:03:32.000And I felt like, you know, there's not a lot of podcasts that have a nighttime feel.
00:03:36.000And I had a place in my house that was like perfect for that.
00:04:02.000We already have, from the commentary, from when people write in to YouTube and so forth, saying, oh, I'm going to take a look at Realtime now.
00:04:10.000And that was part of my argument, was like, if you want to get anyone under 40 who don't follow politics that well, you're going to have to fish somewhere else than where you've been fishing.
00:04:22.000And when you do fish in this new pond, you will get people who will come over to your pond.
00:04:29.000Well, I think one of the things that opened up a lot of people to your show during the pandemic, especially, was these clips that you guys were putting up.
00:04:36.000And I think that having those kind of clips, those kind of, you know, viral clips of some of your monologues and some of your rants, I think those opened up a lot of younger people to it as well.
00:04:49.000Same kind of thing, like using an alternative media.
00:05:02.000I mean, James Corden does singing in a car with people, the karaoke.
00:05:08.000A lot of people see that much more than who stay up till 1230. And watch that whole show through their toes like they used to Johnny Carson and sit through commercials.
00:05:18.000I mean, I honestly don't know how those shows still last in the year 2022. Who would sit there and watch commercials that take up probably 30% of the show?
00:07:03.000I mean, I don't agree with every single thing in it.
00:07:06.000But there is a certain type of person, and he is one of them, that just has this breadth of knowledge that comics like us, as much as we might try and kind of stay up and read, we're just not in that league.
00:07:19.000And, you know, it's like I couldn't play basketball with the Lakers either, you know?
00:07:24.000There are just people like that, Salman Rushdie, people who are just, they've read everything, they know everything.
00:07:30.000And so when they write a book like that, they're very often making references to things, oh, I know that name.
00:07:37.000And then you tell me something, oh, I didn't know that about it.
00:07:43.000And it's almost like the cliff notes for being a true intellectual.
00:07:48.000Yeah, there's some stunningly well-read people out there.
00:07:50.000And when you talk to them on a podcast, you realize, like, oh, I would have never known there's people like you if I wasn't talking to you.
00:11:55.000I'm always saying to the Democrats, just don't be the party of no common sense.
00:12:00.000And you will be surprised at how much amazing success you will have, as opposed to what's going to happen, which is they're going to get their ass kicked in November.
00:12:09.000Well, people like you are very important to people like me because you represent what it means to me to be liberal, what it means to me to be left-wing, because you're just a normal person who cares about people's rights and wants a certain amount of freedom and wants people to get along and work things out amicably.
00:12:33.000But the polarization in this country has made it so that people like you are rare.
00:12:39.000It's like that's what I used to think of when I thought of the left.
00:12:41.000I thought of like professors and, you know, intellectuals and these people that would sit down and work through things with the understanding that free speech is one of the most important aspects of communication possible.
00:13:03.000They just get hardened, and they move further and further away, and we get more and more associated with this idea of left and right, and good and bad, and one and zero, and this side does not agree with anything that side says.
00:14:21.000And people know that, and that's why your show works.
00:14:23.000And that's also I always feel like what my bond with the audience is.
00:14:27.000When I started way back on Politically Incorrect almost 30 years ago, people said, you know, this show will never work because a TV host can never reveal his politics.
00:15:27.000And, you know, having people, the people who go to those shows and are in, I guess, where they film them and stuff.
00:15:35.000My audience was too doctrinated for a while.
00:15:39.000We have a much better audience now because we kind of got rid of the groaners, the people for whom I was always too politically incorrect.
00:15:45.000And I was like, I've been doing this forever!
00:15:48.000The names of the shows, politically incorrect, real time, and you still come to this show and groan when I say something too real?
00:15:56.000What fucking show did you think you were coming to?
00:16:00.000Because they do film The Price is Right in the same studio.
00:16:04.000Do you think that the way it's going right now with late night television where everyone has to be political, is that what the audience wants or is that what the executives in the studio wants?
00:21:24.000But they believe that there's this long – it's a fascinating conversation because I honestly don't have an opinion other than it's dangerous if the earth warms.
00:21:34.000I don't have an opinion about the science.
00:21:35.000Well, I mean, it's not an opinion and it's not something you believe in.
00:25:02.000I remember James Hansen of NASA said it, I think, it might have been on my first year of my show in 2003, or maybe I just read it that year.
00:25:11.000But he said definitely like in 10 years, which would be 2013. If we haven't completely reversed how much carbon we use, it's like, okay.
00:26:38.000Because you realize at that point, this is so out of control, you've got to let it burn its path because no amount of people are going to stop this.
00:27:00.000One guy, the first guy was the more conservative guy in terms of his thought about it.
00:27:05.000He didn't think that it wasn't happening.
00:27:08.000He was just saying that the data points are being exaggerated, and if you follow a long curve, he was saying if you follow a long curve of history, it's been way worse at multiple times, and it goes in this erratic pattern that you can kind of follow.
00:27:21.000He said humans are 100% having an influence on that.
00:27:35.000And to your point earlier about talking to each other, when I hear something like this, I don't say to myself, I think what too many people say to themselves, I don't want to hear that.
00:27:47.000I already know the answer to this question about climate.
00:28:20.000Because he's the guy who wrote the book that I'm referring to right now, which was referred to me by another friend of mine who's one of the most brilliant people I know.
00:28:27.000And he had read it, and he's like, I went into this book prepared to call bullshit at every turn.
00:28:31.000I just wanted to know, like, how is this popular that people have this opinion?
00:28:35.000And he said he went through all the data, and he's very progressive.
00:28:38.000He went through all the data, and he was like, you know what?
00:28:43.000So, theoretical physicist, former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, and he's a professor at the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering.
00:29:32.000That I can talk to somebody in six degrees of knowing somebody who is familiar with this guy and will say, oh yeah, and then tell me something that I'm not hearing now.
00:30:47.000One, it is like one of those things in the dark that you think you see and so there's like a pattern in our head for looking for things in the dark.
00:30:58.000I think you can hallucinate because I know people that have hallucinated when they got scared.
00:31:03.000When they got scared like, My wife was telling me a story about her dad scaring her when she was little, and he just snuck up on her and played a trick, and she literally saw a monster.
00:31:27.000People's brains produce dimethyltryptamine, they produce all sorts of weird neurotransmitters, and I have to think that they go in and out, just like your testosterone does, just like your adrenaline does, there's probably waves of them.
00:31:41.000And I think if a lot goes through, which this is not like fiction, your brain makes potent psychedelics.
00:31:47.000So if your brain just lets a little out, And then you're just like, you're tripping balls and you think it's a fucking ghost.
00:31:52.000Why do you think we're doing this today?
00:31:54.000Why are we smoking these closed cigarettes?
00:32:06.000When you, I mean, Carl Sagan said that about marijuana, that he believed that there was ideas that come, I'm paraphrasing in a shitty way, but ideas that come through marijuana that aren't available.
00:32:20.000My act, my podcast, everything I write, you know, there's like so many things in life, well, not so many, but the key ones that I just really can't do without marijuana.
00:33:11.000Terrence McKenna talked about that and he said that he feels like the way to do marijuana is to take a long stretch off and do as much as you can stand.
00:33:21.000He was like, what marijuana really can provide, he goes in terms of like a psychedelic experience, is underestimated by people because they become casual users and they build up a certain tolerance and they get accustomed to getting a little high.
00:34:06.000It was kind of like that, I remember when I first did it, you know, when I was 19 years old.
00:34:11.000And the first time, you're just like out of your mind.
00:34:13.000I remember that whole first year, like I would be home from college and my friend who turned me on to it, he was at a different college and we'd be home on vacation.
00:34:22.000He'd come over and, you know, bye mom, we're going out.
00:34:25.000And I'd go out to the driveway, he'd pick me up.
00:34:28.000I'd get in the passenger seat and we'd be in the driveway for an hour.
00:34:32.000Because we smoked one hit and we were just screaming, laughing in the car.
00:34:37.000My mother looking at the window like, what are they doing?
00:34:39.000They're just laughing their heads off in the driveway.
00:34:47.000As much as I'm patting myself on the back because I don't smoke every day...
00:34:51.000The other thing that I've always wanted to do was exactly what you're saying, take a month off, and I've never been able to accomplish that.
00:36:50.000You lose like probably in the week 10 pounds.
00:36:54.000But, you know, you'll put – I mean the last time I went down from like I was 158 and I think I went down to 148 and then stayed at like 150, which was great because that's my perfect weight.
00:37:35.000It's a fact in terms of your immune system.
00:37:37.000It's a fact in terms of your overall vitality and your physical energy.
00:37:41.000You want to keep a robust body, if at all possible.
00:37:44.000And the key to doing that, if you're going to do anything, you've got to maximize your diet, and then you have to do some sort of resistance training.
00:37:54.000Like, all kinds of stuff's great for you.
00:38:15.000I remember 54. It wasn't that long ago.
00:38:20.000But certainly by 54, I remember mortality is just on your mind in a way that it wasn't on my mind for one second when I was even 40. You just never think of it.
00:38:33.000And your body is so much more resilient that you don't have to consider it when you're out drinking or whatever you're doing.
00:40:56.000In a way that my generation just does not.
00:40:58.000And a lot of what we were talking about is I'm trying in a kind of fatherly way of saying, you don't need to be this sad about shit.
00:41:06.000And have this much anxiety about stuff.
00:41:09.000And, of course, if the generation has anxiety to begin with to this degree, when something like a pandemic comes along that is legitimately somewhat anxiety-producing, you're going to have the people who feast on anxiety OD on it.
00:41:32.000David Leonhardt was on Real Time Friday and he's written great articles about this and made the point that younger people who should be way less concerned are actually way more concerned about COVID. People my age should be more worried and they're less worried than people who are 30. That's not a healthy place for society to be.
00:41:57.000The only people that seem to have escaped the fear of the disease itself is young kids don't seem to be scared of it, which is good because they get it and it's no big deal.
00:42:07.000But the young kids that I see walking around with masks on voluntarily, that disturbs me.
00:42:15.000I was in Chicago, must have been summer of 21, like, less than a year ago, and I remember the driver we had.
00:42:24.000And we were talking, and, you know, everywhere we go, I always tell people, you don't have to put the mask on for me.
00:42:33.000You know, I had vaccinated, then I got COVID. You know, I'm good.
00:42:39.000You know, I wasn't worried about it before I was vaccinated.
00:42:43.000Anyway, so the driver tells us this story about, he said, you know, my four-year-old, if she sees me without a mask, she has a panic attack about it.
00:44:03.000Yeah, it's an easy way to catch social credibility, to say that.
00:44:12.000Yes, and to sort of discount all the Things that we will find out in the years to come that were detrimental because of the steps we took to curb COVID. And some things should have been done,
00:44:30.000of course, and some things I'm very glad we have a vaccine.
00:44:35.000I personally didn't think I needed it.
00:44:38.000I would have chosen to let my immune system handle it, but okay, I'm glad because this is a country that is not in good health.
00:44:45.000And if you're not in good health, you are very vulnerable to this virus.
00:44:50.000But you shouldn't penalize people who have chosen a different path in life.
00:45:00.000The Aaron Rodgers, the Kyrie Irvings, the Djokovics, because what they were saying was, look, I'm a finely tuned athlete with a perfect body.
00:47:34.000Here's my thing about my overarching theme always about anything medical is everyone else I feel, or most people, are giving us too much credit.
00:47:46.000For where we are medically, because we are, of course, further along than we used to be, you know, we're not putting wooden teeth into people.
00:47:54.000You know, I mean, it wasn't that long ago they were rubbing dirt into wounds.
00:47:58.000I mean, just some really stupid fucking things that people did.
00:48:46.000If you can't tell me exactly why people get cancer, and mostly you can't—obviously smokers get lung cancer—other than that, it's not obvious who gets it or why.
00:48:57.000I don't know what confluence of things that are put in my—there's so many thousand things that could change it.
00:49:06.000How much mercury do I have in my system?
00:49:18.000So just don't tell me, well, we are perfectly certain that this vaccine is safe, or we are perfectly certain that these x-rays are a low dose and they won't...
00:49:55.000Not just that, but they're making insane amounts of profit from that.
00:49:59.000We're supposed to pretend that they've been honest about the risks of things in the past.
00:50:06.000They've been, you know, like that Vioxx tragedy, where they pitched that anti-inflammatory medication and wound up killing at least 50,000 people.
00:50:21.000I mean, some of them, only like a hundred were like ordered off, but the rest was like, well, they're going to order it off because it's killing people, so let's withdraw it.
00:51:39.000The point is, it was on the market for 15 years.
00:51:44.000And so whenever something like that is in the news, which it is like on a weekly basis, I just want to say to these people, what else don't you know?
00:53:44.000Okay, you know, so, but if we just stick to doctors, let's pretend that only MDs know things about medicine.
00:53:53.000Even by that standard, there's many dissenting MDs, and many more than you know about because they're intimidated to speak out.
00:54:01.000Because if they do, the repercussions can be extremely deleterious.
00:54:06.000Yeah, and there was a weird sort of cult-like aspect to it.
00:54:10.000You were with us, so you were against us.
00:54:12.000Even if you were a reasonable person that just wanted to talk about different kinds of medications, like monoclonal antibodies in particular, that became a thing.
00:55:04.000I think it's important in any discussion, and you got in trouble for not doing this once, just to say the vaccine, even though they were wrong about how it stops you from getting it or giving it, It at least does work as far as stop you from dying.
00:55:44.000Where things are weird is that you're not allowed to have that discussion, whether or not it should be for, you know, X age or, you know, someone who's this healthy.
00:55:53.000And that, again, not to be a conspiracy theorist, but it is just suspicious to me that...
00:56:00.000We're not allowed to talk about the things that wouldn't be that profitable, like vitamin D. That's a coincidence, Bill Maher.
00:56:15.000I'm talking about a medical issue here that was the biggest medical issue before COVID, and I'm sorry, still is.
00:56:23.000And I'm talking about something that, according to the statistics, I've been trying to get people to understand And again, this is from the CDC. It's like 78% of people who died or were hospitalized were obese.
00:57:30.000It's not the only thing, because there's certain times where people are so indulgent, and if you don't say something to them, they never really understand how you feel.
00:58:14.000All these autoimmune issues start popping up.
00:58:16.000It could be a fucking mess to be really, really fat.
00:58:19.000Just like it's a mess to smoke three or four packs of cigarettes a day.
00:58:21.000But you're a smart guy if you walk up to your friend and a good guy and you say, hey, fuckface, stop smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.
01:00:42.000And the truth is, if the country wasn't...
01:01:06.000I mean, we were talking about healthcare before COVID. As the number one thing that had to be fixed somehow economically because it had become like an unsustainable percentage of the economy.
01:01:23.000I mean, this is why they did Obamacare.
01:01:25.000People said very often they weren't for Obamacare, but nobody said we can keep going the way we're going.
01:01:32.000When you have to pay for stuff, like if you have to pay for insurance, and everybody just assumes that everybody has to pay for insurance, and someone comes along and says, maybe we shouldn't have to pay for that.
01:01:42.000There's this thing we have where this is always how it's been.
01:02:12.000You're telling me that applying those to college or applying those to healthcare are bad?
01:02:17.000Like what are we spending our money on?
01:02:18.000This is where people like you and me probably agree with a lot of things, but you see there's people that go further and further away from that and look at that as like, that's a Republican idea to think that Right.
01:02:55.000I mean, I say this all the time because the...
01:02:58.000The percentage of graft keeps getting higher and higher.
01:03:05.000Now, we found out recently that something like, oh, I'm going to get the number wrong, maybe you can look it up on your magic lightbox, but like 20%, I think, of the unemployment checks we passed out during COVID were complete fraud.
01:04:05.000If I'm complaining about that, again, to your point about a Republican idea, people would say, oh, you're complaining about government spending money.
01:04:14.000And my answer is, okay, but is there any number?
01:04:17.000At which point I am not tipped over into the Republican side.
01:08:18.000Because so much of that money is going to consultants and just siphoned off by all the pigs at the trough, all snorting this shit up with their big fucking snout.
01:08:41.000There was a guy who had the bill in his hand and he was talking about how crazy it is for these people to say that they've read through this.
01:09:01.000Republicans don't deserve to get any pass on this either because they, first of all, are just as responsible for spending money we don't have and not stopping this kind of graft.
01:09:10.000And they could give a shit anymore about a balanced budget.
01:12:58.000So if this global warming shit really does pan out in a negative way, Montana looks sweet.
01:13:03.000I mean, I remember being in Alaska 10 years ago.
01:13:09.000I've never seen a place like that as beautiful because it was so clean.
01:13:13.000I mean it was like this time of year, spring, and everywhere the snow melting and there was just little drippings of water coming down everywhere and it was like the purest, most pristine.
01:13:26.000Of course there was also like moose walking down the street.
01:17:17.000You seem obsessed with protecting me from death by moose, Joe.
01:17:21.000And I promise you, if it does happen, my last words will be, fuck, Rogan told me this would happen and I was cocky that day in Austin, Texas.
01:18:11.000I mean, it's more prevalent than we know, because again, misdiagnosed, and it's a sneaky little fucker that just, I've known people have had it, and the suffering is almost indescribable.
01:19:08.000Had him on the show a number of times.
01:19:11.000But his view on medicine, I think, was much more orthodox until he got this.
01:19:17.000And that's why I wanted to have him on, because I think he's preaching from my choir book now, because he's basically saying, the stuff that I looked into that was supposedly the quackery stuff, like, that actually worked better than the 15 doctors I had to go to.
01:19:35.000I mean, the whole book is about a multi-year...
01:20:09.000I think as far as treatments of Lyme disease, one of the more critical aspects is to get treatment early.
01:20:15.000People that I know that have kicked it, that got Lyme disease and took the antibiotics, they kicked it and they were okay.
01:20:23.000But the guys that I know that didn't take any medication and let it, they didn't know they had it or the doctor didn't know they, you know, the doctor didn't want to believe them and they waited too long, they're the ones who had more problems.
01:20:37.000Well, I always think of Steve Jobs, who said, you know, he got pancreatic cancer, which is the worst kind.
01:24:25.000There's a fucking great book called Empire of the Summer Moon.
01:24:31.000It's all about Texas and the Comanches in the 1800s.
01:24:35.000It's just an incredible group of Native Americans that figured out how to ride horses.
01:24:41.000They figured out how to raise horses the best.
01:24:44.000They were the best at like horse husbandry and they had like tons of horses and their empire consisted of horses and they would just own the plains for like hundreds of years.
01:24:55.000It was an impassable country because they hadn't figured out anything other than muskets and with bows and arrows they were killing everybody.
01:25:22.000But they do know they were reintroduced by Europeans.
01:25:25.000So Europeans that came over and dealt with people in North America and Mexico and a lot of parts of – a lot of Native Americans, they had never seen anybody on a horse before until the Europeans arrived.
01:25:36.000There's a guy named Dan Flores who wrote a book about how Native Americans were probably on their way to extirpating the buffalo.
01:25:44.000Even if the Americans didn't come along and do that horrible market hunting shit, the Native Americans with a horse were so fucking effective that they were just wiping out as many buffalo as they wanted.
01:25:55.000They would have been able to do that too because that was not a normal thing for a person to be on a horse until like whenever it was that the first Europeans arrived with them.
01:26:12.000He was saying they were so effective at it that over time it was possible that they could do that.
01:26:18.000I'm sure it's possible, but what we've always heard, again, I don't know anything because I know what I've been told, and I'm always questioning.
01:26:25.000But what I've always thought I knew about the Indians was that they lived lightly on the land.
01:26:31.000They didn't kill more than they needed to because they understood that it's in our long-term benefit to keep the buffalo herd alive.
01:27:06.000What he was saying was that these people hadn't had horses until this point in time.
01:27:14.000And the reason why there was this amazing population of buffalo, when they first got here and there was millions and millions of buffalo, His theory is that this was because the Europeans gave diseases to the Native Americans during that same time period.
01:27:28.000So during that same time period, 90% of the Native Americans get wiped out by smallpox and all these crazy diseases.
01:27:41.000And he said if you had Native Americans who were effective hunters on horses even without the horrible market hunting that killed them really quickly.
01:27:49.000He's like over time you probably would have killed At least a measurable amount of the buffalo, similar to what we did, but it would just take a lot longer.
01:27:59.000But it was mostly about how the Native Americans had died off from smallpox, and how crazy it was, and that this led to this increase in this massive herd of buffalo.
01:28:08.000His theory was that that's not normal, to have this many, and I'm definitely fucking this up and paraphrasing it, but it's a really good, it's, what is it like, buffalo diplomacy, buffalo, it's Dan Flores.
01:28:22.000Doesn't my t-shirt say Buffalo Soldier?
01:29:29.000Yeah, the Mayans, they also believe were wiped out by disease because Cabeza de Vaca talked about encountering them.
01:29:37.000They talked about the historical stories that people would tell about running into these people with these golden helmets and It was all like this incredible civilization that existed.
01:29:48.000And the theory is that when people came back and it was all completely abandoned, there was no real theory until they started concentrating on the viruses and the different bugs that killed the Native Americans.
01:29:59.000Well, of course, they probably killed the Mayans, too.
01:30:01.000They probably killed people every time they came through.
01:30:03.000They think they killed everybody in the Amazon.
01:30:30.000I'm not sure about the history of the movie, but the movie itself was about British explorers that make their way through the Amazon because there's supposed to be this lost city of golden statues and this incredible wealth and sophistication that exists in the Amazon.
01:30:43.000Well, everybody thought it was nonsense.
01:30:46.000They all thought it was just crazy myth and bullshit, but it's all just jungle.
01:31:27.000So there's these cities that could have held a fucking million people, and they're finding them through Lidar.
01:31:32.000So they're flying over this area of the jungle with this light-penetrating laser shit, and they're seeing these grids and patterns and city streets, and it's all engulfed in the forest.
01:31:43.000The jungle just overwhelmed everything.
01:31:45.000But it was because the Europeans came through and gave everybody's fucking smallpox.
01:32:32.000That just because you're, you know, a Native American doesn't mean you weren't also, like, chopping heads off of people for religious ceremonies.
01:32:41.000I mean, one tribe was brutal to another tribe because we're humans.
01:32:47.000Humans are basically the same all over the world.
01:33:12.000While a guy was alive, they would cut his arms and legs off and then throw him on a bonfire so he would wiggle to death while burning alive with his arms and his legs just freshly cut off.
01:34:15.000I think they were fucking each other in the ranks, if I recall my Greek history.
01:34:21.000But that was to create a camaraderie in the armed services.
01:34:26.000I mean, I think they may have used, I mean, you can check me on your Mr. Google box, but I think that Spartans used homosexuality as a camaraderie-building tool.
01:38:37.000He wrote an amazing book on strategy and he was like an incredibly balanced guy in that he believed in poetry and calligraphy and creating art.
01:38:48.000But he was also the greatest samurai that ever lived.
01:38:50.000And the thing that he said was that you had to be all of those things.
01:38:53.000You had to be in balance, in full harmony.
01:38:56.000And by doing that, you had to be in touch with your artistic side, your creative side.
01:39:00.000And he killed 60 men in one-on-one battle swords.
01:39:04.000I can dig all that, but why does it need to be on your arm?
01:40:58.000And I love such a funny comment that his ex-wife said when they asked her about it because he had said something like, this is a symbol of renewal, the phoenix rising from the ashes.
01:41:13.000And Jennifer Garner said, I think in this analogy, I'm the ashes.
01:44:51.000Certainly makes you stupider because all the time people used to have to read a book at the end of the day, that went up in smoke because they're just scrolling through their phone and playing stupid games and looking at pictures and Instagram.
01:45:06.000It's the ultimate time suck, the way it sucks time all the time you would have to actually learn something.
01:45:16.000I feel like that was the sea change in this century was when a whole generation was raised on the phone and social media.
01:45:29.000I don't know if we're going to be able to reverse that or how we can ever really measure the damage it did.
01:45:36.000Well, it stopped all social interaction in person that would ordinarily be something that, like, if you're having a conversation with a person, it's very rare that you're going to say something really rude to them in person.
01:51:33.000Yeah, and trying to be so sensitive, we've created people that need that sensitivity.
01:51:37.000And I think there's a balancing act that's being missed on people that hate people's descriptions of reality that are uncomfortable to them.
01:52:07.000Like, when you watch any kind of television show where they're giving opinions and they're giving it in this environment where there's a giant group of people behind the scenes and executives and producers, it's very hard to just talk shit.
01:52:40.000So that one thing that she said where you could say, oh, I could see where other people could see it wrong or what I was saying was wrong or insensitive or whatever it was.
01:52:50.000But people still, you have to take off work.
01:53:21.000What I said about it was you can't expect to have treated black people the way white people have treated them in this country for all these centuries.
01:53:32.000And have them have the same opinion on everything.
01:55:55.000Well, I mean, first of all, like we were saying before about the difference between when I started when you couldn't be political or they didn't want you to.
01:57:21.000And there's that feeling, I feel like, in that kind of audience that they're playing to that makes it hard to do comedy because that's a very politically correct mindset.
01:59:01.000I don't think that's the right way to do it.
01:59:03.000But yes, I mean, stopping people from talking.
01:59:06.000Now, of course, in this country now, we have lots of ways to stop people from talking short of killing them and pushing them out of windows and stuff.
01:59:14.000But, I mean, a lot of people would say I would be one of them that, you know, cancel culture and intimidating people and stamping out thought that isn't...
01:59:26.000Our friend Elon Musk getting into Twitter, I think, is about that.
01:59:31.000It's about somebody saying, you know, it wasn't cool that they didn't allow the lab leak theory to be talked about.
01:59:42.000For months, you couldn't even mention it.
01:59:44.000And that is certainly something that was open to question.
01:59:49.000I mean, it was like, to me, the very kind of issue that if Twitter was really doing the job it should, would be a healthy forum for people to go back and forth and say, well, here's why I think COVID probably came from bats, because A, B, and C. And then, well,
02:00:04.000but, you know, there was this lab in Wuhan that was studying coronaviruses, and somebody could have walked out with it on their shoe because Can't we even look into that?
02:01:49.000It seems it would be much more racist to think it came out of eating that primitive fucking crazy food that you're eating in the wet market.
02:01:59.000You're reading the Chicken of the Cave, as they called it in Anchorman 2, Bats.
02:02:11.000It should have no political dimension at all.
02:02:16.000Yeah, I mean, if it was the other way, like if it purely, absolutely came, if all the evidence was pointing that it came from an animal, and then someone was just coming up with this idea that it came from a lab, you'd go, what the fuck are you talking about?
02:03:22.000Now, Trump, of course, always never finds any issue that he can't make worse.
02:03:27.000I mean, he saw an opportunity here, as he usually does, to cater, I think, and pander to his base, some of whom definitely are racist and some of whom definitely like it when he does things like that.
02:05:30.000But I think all of this, whether it's racism or homophobia or any real fear of people getting latched into a toxic mindset, the reason why they have it is because they're recognizing that everything does kind of do this.
02:10:19.000They don't know how to fix it, but they know one of the effective treatments for a lot of people is a heavy dose of antibiotics right away.
02:10:26.000And the people that I know that have recovered, that That's what they've done.
02:12:14.000I have friends who are really young and healthy, and they got MRSA, and one of them was in the hospital for like a month.
02:12:18.000It was very touch-and-go, very dangerous.
02:12:20.000I'd be worried about it if I were you, because you're probably in locker rooms with other weightlifters, and isn't that where you get it, taking showers with other men?
02:12:28.000I think people get it from a bunch of different kinds of infections, but sometimes they get it, unfortunately, in hospitals.
02:14:08.000And again, not to keep coming back to the point that they don't know a hell of a lot, but I assume in the future they will have something better...
02:14:15.000Than the general theory of, if there's something in you that's bad, we kill everything.
02:14:25.000Well, it's interesting, those little, these things that they're developing, these sort of little nanobots, have you seen any of that stuff?
02:14:32.000That's really fascinating, because if they could get that to work, you could target individual problems.
02:14:38.000They could target things, like maybe even target tumors.
02:14:41.000Like, they could send it down to whatever that cancer tissue is.
02:14:46.000I mean, they've been talking about that forever, and I'm sure they're working on it.
02:14:50.000I'm sure people way smarter than us have devoted their lives, and I appreciate that.
02:14:56.000But the bottom line is, we're still not there.
02:14:58.000I mean, the bottom line is, If you get a cancer diagnosis, I mean, it's not an immediate death sentence, depending on where and what it is, and a lot of other different factors, but it's not good news.
02:15:11.000And it's not, I mean, it's not something that they can just say to you, oh, we know exactly why you got it, and we know exactly what to do to take it out completely.
02:16:03.000People live to 100. It's actually more common than ever.
02:16:06.000Some people would say it's actually the normal human lifespan because there are those blue zones in the world where there are sections of the world where people normally, I mean routinely, the whole community, that's about the average lifespan.
02:16:20.000We probably live less because we have bad habits.
02:16:25.000But if you live a healthy life, you probably can live to 100. So my thing is, okay, they got like 34 years to figure out mortality.
02:16:38.000Ray Kurzweil says the solidarity begins in like six years from now, 2028. He said when man and machine become fully integrated with each other, I think that's part of the solution.
02:16:51.000You know, as long as they can keep your brain and your dick alive, I'm good.
02:17:21.000I quit at 40. But is that going to come back and haunt me?
02:17:26.000I think the good news about cigarette smoking and cancer is the risks are greatly diminished within a certain period of time after quitting.
02:17:36.000It's one of those things where they say the way your body turns it around is actually pretty good as opposed to some different kinds of irritations.
02:18:51.000I mean, I've had hippies try to tell me it's actually beneficial, that, oh, it's, you know, coning your lungs with the turpentines or terrapins or whatever.
02:19:36.000I mean, when you're into a certain drug, very often so much of your life revolves around with getting it, preparing it, relighting it, redoing it, re-something.
02:19:51.000I must say, again, I'm kind of like patting myself on the back for my pot use in life.