This week, the boys talk cigars, fake wine, and sneakers. Joe talks about a guy who thinks he can make money with fake wine and sells it to the Koch brothers, and then they find out it's all a scam. Joe also talks about how he thinks he could make a billion dollars with fake sneakers, and how it would be cool if they were made by Ken Griffiths Jr, the man who makes them. Joe also gives his cigar tip of the week, and tells a story about a woman who thinks she can make a million dollars with a fake sneaker company, but it's actually made by a man who's on the run from the law and is hiding somewhere in New York City. Joe doesn't know where he is, but he does know that he's a con artist, and that's a good thing, because no one wants to be caught by the FBI trying to sell them a fake pair of sneakers they don't actually make. Joe's not here to make money, he's here to talk about it. Enjoy the episode, and don't forget to subscribe to The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast by day, and The Cigar Choices by night, all day, by night. Cheers! - Joe and Ollie and Cheers, Cheers. - Olly and Olly "The Cigar Chivalry" by Olly's Cigars and Cigars by Day, by Night, Olly & Joe's Cigarettes by Night by Night. by Joe Rogans Cigar by Night - Cheers by Night Cigars & Cigar Cigars By Night, by Day CigarChig Cigars, Cigars Are the Cigars are the Cigar Choice by Night by Ollies Cigars Cigars? by D.L. by Oly and Oly is a short story written by Joe and Joe are a good cigar choice by Joe is a Good Cigar, so much by Oley is a Bad Cigar Co? Cigar and Cigarco CigarCo by Night is a good Cigar Company by Ole is a Cigarlo & Oly Cigars Have a Good Habby's Cigarman by Oole is a Great Cigar? by Joe talks Cigar Man and Ole and Oles Cigar Is a Good Cigar and Oole Cigar is Good Cigare by Olem Cigar Girl by Oles, by Joe & Oles talks about CigarMan by Ooles Cigar Boy is a New York Cigarboy and Oley Cigar Talk by Joe has a Cigare is by Joe takes by Joe gives Oole and Olem and Oily Cigar's Cigare, by Oelo is a by Joe does it by Oyle and Oile Cigar & Oley and Oyle is by Oiley is by the Cigare and Joe does It by Oile is by D's Cigarby and Oels Cigare does it for Oley does it with Oley, and they do it by Joe, and it's by Oily & Oily, and talks about it's Cigaro and Oiley does it all by Oiles Cigare (and they talk about It's Not Good Cigaro Cigare & Ooles by Joe thinks it's Not Too Much Cigare or Oley by OYOYOODY by Joe Does It by Joes and Oeeeee by Ooey by Oels and OYYO by Oees and Oymes by
00:01:46.000And then the next thing you know, he gets his wine examined, and he's like, bro, you have a bunch of fake wine in here.
00:01:53.000And then they find out this one dude had been making these fake labels and blending these cheaper wines together to try to create a taste that's similar to a really expensive wine.
00:11:52.000There was a woman who was working for a friend of mine.
00:11:54.000She was just in production of his podcast and she would take photos of her feet and put her feet on OnlyFans and she was making $100,000 a month.
00:14:22.000Listen, So he sits down, takes his shoes off, and as soon as he put his feet in the water, I'm talking to him the whole time, just trying to get his mind off of it.
00:16:17.000You know, if you go on the road, and you go to Cincinnati, and you've never been to Cincinnati before, and they've got a local guy opening for you, and he's annoying, you know, and you wake up, and it's 11 a.m., you're like, fuck, what am I going to do today?
00:21:30.000Well, somebody pointed out, and it's a good point, how do we have $40 billion to send to Ukraine and we don't have $40 billion to protect the schools?
00:21:43.000But I said this about every single problem they have in this country.
00:21:46.000Every time there's like a report on the shootings in Chicago.
00:21:49.000How do we have money to send to other countries when we don't have enough money to fix whatever's going on the south side of Chicago or Baltimore or parts of Detroit?
00:22:00.000If we have this money, how is it poverty?
00:23:23.000So whatever your situation is, whether it's mental health, you get that fixed there.
00:23:28.000Whether it's financial literacy, you get that fixed there.
00:23:31.000Whatever your situation is, you get fixed in this building that this is what this recovery center is for.
00:23:37.000Then you put them in jobs within the building because it's ran by grants within the building to heighten the skills that they already have.
00:23:46.000And you ask people, what are their interests?
00:23:54.000And as they are tearing out, the money that's allocated for each particular client through this grant, half of that money is being put to the side for when they get ready to come out.
00:24:08.000You're not letting them out of this program.
00:24:11.000Just naked with just the skills that they acquired in this program.
00:24:14.000You're giving them a new lease on life.
00:24:17.000This is the money that you acquired by being through this program.
00:24:21.000Let's help you start your life from this point.
00:24:24.000And you invest in the businesses that they're starting.
00:24:27.000You invest in their life, whether it's a trade center.
00:25:58.000We throw away more food in this country than most countries produce in a year.
00:26:04.000Our waste ratio, if our waste ratio change, then our condition change.
00:26:11.000Because if you allocate funds to the right thing instead of wasting funds, Even with this, people say it's a misinformation in certain things.
00:26:25.000Yes, it is when the federal government doesn't allocate funds to certain people to eradicate the misinformation in media.
00:26:34.000In media, it's federal funds that go out to media companies.
00:26:38.000Why you don't get that to some of the black media outlets that you say that don't know what's going on?
00:26:43.000Because you're not helping the situation either.
00:26:46.000You're saying that if you know that the number one thing that cripples people in this country is health, and then you don't make it where they can have quality, free health care in this country, then you don't feel like the consumer...
00:27:07.000The human being is the most important commodity on this planet.
00:27:15.000If you invest in the human being, and the human being does the good works that he's supposed to do with that investment, and they invest in more human beings, you create this utopia of I'm
00:29:02.000If I work hard, and if I continue to, like, honor the craft of stand-up comedy, I'm a part of this very small and tight-knit community of people.
00:32:38.000I watched earthquakes and I felt good for Quake.
00:32:43.000And that's the thing that you want to do in this business.
00:32:49.000I remember writing With Bill Bellamy on his special and when he's getting ready to go out and we talking and I'm like, my last words was like, yo man, just go and just do what you do.
00:33:07.000And when it came together, I called him like, yo, I watched it live.
00:33:12.000I was there through the whole process and this shit is still good.
00:33:18.000DL with Clea, I was like, and you, and I think that comics don't understand.
00:33:23.000I'm not chasing other comics in an aspect of the new guys.
00:33:37.000I'm chasing Carlin and Cosby and Pryor and Eddie.
00:33:42.000I'm chasing them so what you're doing doesn't We're good to go.
00:33:53.000Man, Sinbad, like the memorable things that I'm like, I want my special to be in that when people say, hey man, Live from Sunset Strip, Elephant in the Room, Domino Effect,
00:35:00.000Because even if you don't get there, you get pretty fucking excellent.
00:35:03.000Because if you're trying to get pretty good, you'll get pretty good.
00:35:08.000But if you're trying to achieve excellence, like real true excellence, where you can be proud of something, you know, Even if you don't get to where you wanted to go, you get a lot further than where you would go if you have low expectations.
00:35:23.000This is the first piece of work that actually changed my mind on something.
00:36:43.000That's the thing where Ari, when he put together that storyteller show, that was his idea.
00:36:48.000He was like, these stories are too hard to develop when you're doing a 15-minute set on a stacked comedy store lineup.
00:36:55.000You know, you got 10 fucking killers, you want to kill two, and if you're trying to develop a story, and it's a story about going to the park with your dad...
00:37:05.000People are like, where are you going with this?
00:37:07.000But if you could do it on a show that's just people telling stories, then you could develop it and tighten it and then get to the point where it might be your closing bit.
00:37:17.000Man, we already talked yesterday about this is not happening.
00:38:50.000It's like if I see you, and I never thought this before until somebody said, hey man, this dude did a bad set and then he tried to shake my hand.
00:43:02.000Then he came up and started hanging in green with us.
00:43:04.000And he's like, look, I'm going to go out here and do the raggedest 20 minutes that I just put together and trying to get this shit together.
00:43:11.000Now, I'm going out and I'm going to watch.
00:44:03.000So the rest of the weekend, we just chatting it up.
00:44:06.000I'm like, I'm fucking kicking it with Ron White.
00:44:11.000And then my mom's like, man, these places.
00:44:15.000And every night he's just giving me a little more something about, you know, you can go a little deeper in that story, you know, because you had me.
00:47:13.000But Bill Bellamy, he's a nice guy, but he has a mean streak in him that is outstanding.
00:47:21.000On the tour with him, I used to host this tour, and somebody would ask for a guest spot, and he would come in and be like, I'll eat 777. I'm like, oh shit, who just asked for a goddamn guest spot?
00:47:35.000People don't know what we about to do to you.
00:47:37.000Like, I'm going to come out, and usually I would do 15, I'd just skate into it, but I'm coming out with seven minutes of straight fucking home runs.
00:48:51.000But for that person that did that set and bombed, if they can figure out how to follow you when you're crushing, if they can figure out how to ride that wave, that is so important.
00:49:02.000That lady, Mitzi Shore, that's what she did every fucking time.
00:49:07.000If you were a good comic because she thought you had some potential and you were young, she would throw you on after a killer.
00:51:04.000If you go back to You So Crazy, goddamn he was good.
00:51:07.000In my mind, he's like, you know, when you talk about the greats, because, you know, he went and did the TV show and didn't tour as much and didn't put out as much comedy material.
00:51:16.000So a lot of people that weren't around in the 90s forget how good he was.
00:53:03.000And I went out, and I got a standing ovation, and Tony Roberts was the person that said he was right there when the production person said.
00:53:12.000So the first comic got a standing ovation.
00:53:45.000Because I know what I'm going to do when I get there.
00:53:48.000And I learned very early on because I was going up behind people.
00:53:53.000Benji Brown at the Coconut Grove Improv, he had my folks laughing so hard that a dude came in the green room and sat down and was laughing.
00:55:11.000So Joey, this was back in the day when Joey was coming up, and they would have some road act who did HBO in 1984 and still has the same material, and they would have to go on after Joey.
00:56:27.000Bobby Lee had a lady that was in the middle of that.
00:56:31.000And after the first show, Bobby, we at the Houston Improv, Bobby called me in the room, in the green room and said, Hey, I'm not going to fire you.
00:57:31.000You have to go out with your strongest shit first.
00:57:33.000You can't dilly-dally when someone murders.
00:57:37.000You better take them up to the same RPMs.
00:57:40.000And the thing is, I want the young commies out there that's listening probably, don't think that you murdering a headliner with the local shit.
00:57:48.000If it's local, you're not, I'm on Martin Luther King!
00:58:36.000They were local celebrities, and they got trapped doing local shit, and they never did the road.
00:58:42.000I'm just saying, if you want to know how not to be locked into local shit, even if you're in a place where you started, Look at my special.
00:59:17.000I think there's something better about it.
00:59:19.000If I'm watching at home, I'm in my living room, I want to watch it in an intimate environment.
00:59:23.000I want to be in an intimate environment in the audience.
00:59:26.000If I'm watching someone on stage and they're in a fuck, like Kevin Hart did his shit in like 50,000 people.
00:59:31.000It's like, Jesus Christ, how do I even pretend I'm there?
00:59:35.000But when I'm watching you, and I'm watching you on stage at a comedy club, there's a normal-sized stage, intimate with the audience, you're seeing the people in the front row, you're smiling, you're having fun, I'm there.
01:01:16.000It looks like, that was one of the things, and especially when somebody notices it, when my guy called me and said, man, let me tell you the most amazing shit.
01:03:25.000You do 30, I do 30 in each one of these great film clubs and put it out as a series of going to clubs, the best comedy clubs to shoot a special in.
01:03:40.000Comedy Works in Denver is another one.
01:06:25.000It's a great place but it's not perfect.
01:06:29.000Funny, some of these clubs I don't even think...
01:06:35.000Maybe it's me, because I guess I don't have a permanent audience just yet, but some of these clubs, when you go in, it's not even the club.
01:06:43.000The club is fucking fantastic, but the audiences that come there, you're like...
01:06:51.000Hey, look, do I need to read all the shit that I read first and tell y'all about it so I can come do it so you can be familiar with some of the shit that's going on in the fucking world?
01:10:06.000I like going there, but when you think about shooting, the room feels warm and you feel like I can do some other things to the room to make it a little warmer and just go in and fucking crush it.
01:10:19.000They got good audiences in certain places.
01:10:22.000Well, they have a long history of having...
01:10:24.000Charlie Goodnight's been around a long time, so everybody's come through there.
01:10:27.000So all the people that live in that area know that you go to Charlie Goodnight's on any Friday and Saturday night, you're going to get great comedy.
01:11:19.000Like, I grew up, I didn't listen to country music, but I knew about country music because my granddad would watch westerns and, you know, you listen to Hank Aaron.
01:11:41.000I'm just flipping through the stations one time and I heard, you know like when you go to another city you put on Scan and going through the radio station, trying to find a radio station.
01:11:52.000And way downtown on the Chattahoochee, this is, and it called me, a whole bunch of lovin' in a oochie coochie and I had to find out who the fuck sung this song.
01:14:31.000And all the attorneys, all the attorneys for NASCAR were young black women that graduated from law school, and they were all their attorneys.
01:17:07.000Pure exaggeration and fiction with fact and reality and like an assessment of the social dynamics, like a psychological examination of the people that were involved.
01:17:20.000That was one of the first pieces that he did, I believe he did that before he did his big Sports Illustrated piece, which turned out to be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
01:18:05.0001875. 1875. But when a thing becomes a thing, like a place where people go and they know they're going to go get fucked up, and they know they're going to gamble, and it becomes a thing.
01:18:14.000They wear the big hats with feathers and shit, and the ladies wear all their jewels.
01:18:52.000I wonder if Hunter caused more people to act more crazy there, because his writing was so influential and so popular.
01:19:01.000I wonder if he probably accentuated the experience for people that wanted to go to just get fucked up and just watch.
01:19:09.000But it's like you have the aristocrats, the socialites, the people that go there and they wear their expensive suits and their big rings and they pull up in chauffeured cars and they get out.
01:19:19.000And do a bunch of debauchery right after that.
01:19:30.000I don't know all this shit, but I don't have on underwear.
01:19:32.000Like, you think about these experiences that people have with these kind of places.
01:19:37.000Like, if you're one of those people, you're like some oil baron, and you got crazy money, and every year you go to the Kentucky Derby.
01:19:43.000I imagine you just get used to being around all those other kind of people, and then every year everyone kind of ramps it up a little bit, you know?
01:20:46.000And it's so crazy that they know that you cannot get to the bar.
01:20:52.000They know that you can't get to the bar.
01:20:53.000They have bartenders with coolers strapped to them where they end up on the floor in different places and they flip the cooler up and they make your drink right there because they know you're not going to be able to get to the bar.
01:30:12.000And if you're not conditioned for that type of punishment, because you're going to get hit no matter how Big and how good you think you are.
01:38:25.000He's so rugged and so hard that I would never even play with him.
01:38:33.000Just go up and put your hands up just from muscle memory alone and he'll fucking destroy you.
01:38:38.000Like he just does it so much like the shit is a problem some guys can keep it up they can like Floyd 45 years old looks fucking amazing the best example is Tyson 55 years old and they're still talking about him fighting either Logan or Jake Paul like that is crazy and I don't know what would happen if Oh,
01:39:33.000And I think that one of them punches kind of just wobbled the shit out of him and Floyd was holding him up like, yo, don't fuck up your money.
01:44:59.000But meanwhile, being a regular pharmaceutical rep, you can do far more dangerous things, crush people's lives, far more destruction, sanctioned.
01:45:11.000And not only that, you can hire a lobbyist.
01:47:02.000Especially when people watch it, they'll know that I'm not this hardcore criminal or I came from some bad family where you had to sell drugs and make it like my mom had a job and I'm just out being influenced by the people that's outside.
01:47:18.000I never understood a couple things in that life.
01:47:25.000I never understood, as I got older, I never understood why there was no honor amongst these.
01:47:29.000Why were you making these transactions so dangerous and so hard?
01:47:34.000And then I never understood people doing things to their customers just to stretch it or adding drugs to the drug that you're selling.
01:47:48.000I never understood that desire I still don't understand.
01:47:53.000Why would you mix something with something else?
01:48:46.000And if they can cut it and make more money, they don't give a fuck.
01:48:49.000And if they sell it to you, you think you're going to buy what you bought last month, but you're buying a totally different thing now because they decided to try a new formulation with fentanyl.
01:48:58.000And maybe you do one bump, you're okay.
01:49:38.000No, I know it seems like it can't be right, but the folks that are just listening at home, we're looking at a penny from 2012, and the amount of fentanyl that'll kill you will cover up the number 2012, and that's about it.
01:50:56.000Like, they should value their health a lot.
01:50:58.000Like, we on the road, we in different environments all the time, you traveling, you in different hotels.
01:51:05.000Like, your health should be a priority to you.
01:51:11.000And I know some of us, we just fall, and you eating terrible food, if you, you know, you in a lot of these clubs, you eating at the club, you eating everything.
01:52:40.000Thea Vidal used to tell me stories about being with him at the time, being around him at the time, because they were all coming up together.
01:52:48.000And sometimes people forget about Thea.
01:55:18.000If I cross your mind, if I happen to just, you're driving sometime and I happen to cross your heart or your mind, it's because I'm out there praying for the body of Christ to pray for me because I need you.
02:04:52.000It's like a lack of entertainment value.
02:04:54.000They wanted, it's almost like they wanted the bar super low.
02:04:57.000And they could just go up and go, so I'm at Starbucks the other day.
02:05:01.000And so the barista, you know, there's a barista at Starbucks.
02:05:06.000It's a, you know, fancy word for guy who pours your coffee.
02:05:11.000There's this alt style of comedy that's very low energy, very reference-oriented.
02:05:20.000They say a lot of obscure references to be clever.
02:05:25.000And if you're a powerful comic, like if you're a guy who's got a Bobby Lee type dude who runs up there and has all this energy, they don't want you there.
02:05:44.000Me going into the alt scene, because I go in there, and they think that I'm like them, because I'm slow and methodical, and it's like, I don't think he's like us.
02:09:42.000And then he's talking and then he said, your 14-year-old self looking at your new self and he says, He looked at it and he's like, yo, look, some shit fails.
02:10:03.000If I go back and look at my 14-year-old self, my 14-year-old self, looking at what he's going to become, I'm like, look, man, fuck you, man.
02:10:18.000And my role manager, Dre, Dre's always with me, and Dre has probably learned so much about comedy, just being in the room and seeing the different dynamics.
02:10:31.000And last night, He was in the room and he was like, he never knew that white comics talk so much shit just like black comics.
02:10:44.000He was like, y'all all the fucking same.
02:12:09.000Kellyanne Conway, she only does interviews on Fox.
02:12:12.000And I know this because I listen to Fox.
02:12:14.000And I'm listening because I want to hear these interviews of people who never come on Other media outlets to answer any type of fucking question and they call them softball questions.
02:12:28.000So as a comic, if you always get softball, like you bringing your audience to the club, like these are people and they fucking love you and they come in just for you, but you don't have a lineage We're good to go.
02:13:09.000So then when you go into an audience, now you're on what I call one of these conglomerate shows with all different types of comics on the show and you don't have a lineage and you have to follow somebody.
02:18:46.000Like, I didn't want you to fucking stop trying to get it.
02:18:51.000Like, if somebody tells you that you're great up front, and you never, you never strive to be better, Even with myself, I do an album or I do a special and I want the next one to be better than the last one.
02:20:32.000So I'm supposed to develop into something a little better than what I was in the beginning, the first 10, the first 15. If you don't have a lineage, how do you do that?
02:20:51.000I see you running and I want to run faster to catch you.
02:20:57.000But if I don't have that desire in me, I'm cool with being number seven and thinking and having this illusion that I'm great, but I'm only playing in front of these softball audiences for me.
02:21:12.000Yeah, you gotta have a lot of people around you that are good too.
02:22:56.000LA's a pretentious place, and a lot of the people that are in that audience either want to be in the business, wish they were actors, wish they were famous, or they're peripheral to it.
02:23:39.000Willie D and I talked about that with the hip-hop scene in Houston.
02:23:43.000It was the same thing when the Ghetto Boys were exploding.
02:23:46.000When the Ghetto Boys were hot, there was a whole different style of rap coming out of this one section of the country, and you had to respect it.
02:23:56.000Brad Jordan, Scarface, changed the cadence of people.
02:24:04.000But then you had this whole entourage of other rappers that came behind Zero and Slim Thug and Lil' Kiki and Big Pokey and UGK. And that's phenomenal that Our first versus is about to be Bun B with UGK versus A-Ball and MJG. That's the first South versus.
02:24:25.000Everything else has been in LA and New York.
02:24:26.000This is a R&B. This is a South thing, and I know they're going to turn up.
02:27:07.000Man, I remember getting chills when I saw this shit.
02:27:10.000I was like, yo, man, Texas is on the fucking map, right?
02:27:15.000And when you talk about comedy, it's like, if we did that with comedy, with Bill Hicks and Sam Kenison, Thea Vidal, Brumman, Billy Dee Washington, Ruchon McDonald,
02:27:32.000fucking David Raybon, myself, Marcus D. Wilding, Terry Gross, Keira Space, Dez White, Dave Lawson.
02:27:43.000It's so many comics that's been influential.
02:30:29.000Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart and all these other people that come to my city and play the Toyota Center or Gary Owens and Michael Blackson come to the improv and sell out 14, 15 shows and shit like that and then I don't do the same thing.
02:32:34.000I think that I want to try to push the envelope to when people say, hey man, when they feel bad, they'll be like, yo, listen.
02:32:41.000I know them other guys, it was on Netflix or HBO or something else, but it's gonna be a problem if we say this is the best special of 2022 and we give it to somebody.
02:33:10.000The thing is to achieve some shit without them having to, like, I would, I remember DL told me when I was on Bring the Funny, and I was talking to him, he was like, you think he gonna win?
02:33:22.000I was like, God, I hope, but I went in, I went in it, my agent Joe, Joe would tell anybody.
02:35:50.000We did one just a few months ago, but we decided to do it again because on the last one, we were just talking about stuff and HBO didn't like what you said.
02:36:09.000You're supposed to be allowed to have opinions about things, but when you have opinions about what they want to deem protected class, and that's like, I mean, we were talking about gay people, and your opinion was about gay people adopting children.
02:36:25.000Yeah, I said my thoughts, and I didn't, the thing about a thought, I'm not saying I'm right.
02:36:36.000Now it's on what I think to either be altered, corrected, more information, whatever the situation is, but that's not going to happen right off the top without me having a conversation about it.
02:38:42.000Because what your point was is they're not making the children.
02:38:46.000And what other people's points would be, but yeah, wouldn't you just want the kids to be in a loving family?
02:38:51.000And if the gay family loves them and supports them and raises them, it's far better than being in foster care, far better than being abused.
02:39:01.000I think that that's the extreme that people put on.
02:39:08.000I saw a dude who was giving this commentary on the talk without taking in the whole context of it.
02:39:47.000They threatened me with violence, like a lot of people threatened me with violence, and I was sending my address to those people like, yo, you bring that shit on if you want to.
02:43:00.000And when you feel like you can handicap a person...
02:43:04.000And she says on this, she said, I think that it's a bunch of entitled fucking white people that's pulling the strings of what...
02:43:11.000And the lady that she says it to agrees and said, I think it's a lot of people that lobby for power and they feel like they can take a stance on this, that, and the third without no conversation.
02:43:25.000If you manufacturing the consent of anything...
02:43:41.000Your first thing was, because he has a thought, And a person that may not know him, because the person who knows me, who wanted the special, understands to a certain degree,
02:44:35.000So this is expected backlash from you doing the podcast and saying what you said, and then they were anticipating that there was going to be some attack on you.
02:44:58.000But it's also like, what I would like to see is people have a conversation about it.
02:45:07.000Adopting children is a complex conversation.
02:45:10.000It's a complex conversation for everybody.
02:45:12.000And it's not just the skill of what you want.
02:45:17.000You also have to understand that you send...
02:45:21.000If my son or my daughter wanted to do something that I know As a heterosexual parent, I'm concerned about the shit that I do that my kids have to explain.
02:45:36.000They may not be equipped to explain it.
02:45:38.000And you don't have a pamphlet of information that I can go to to explain anything.
02:45:46.000Then right after that, I did this joke, which I still think is fucking funny because it happened.
02:50:17.000But I don't think that they understand how black people operate Even in the space.
02:50:27.000You think there's nobody gay in my family?
02:50:29.000My cousin know I don't fucking hate him.
02:50:32.000I don't give a shit about your sexuality.
02:50:34.000So they want you to not talk about things as loosely, I guess, and take into consideration that you would hurt gay people's feelings that want to be parents?
02:50:49.000I would probably hurt anybody's feelings if I'm up there talking about things that I think that's contrary to you, if that's where your feelings are based.
02:50:58.000But my actions are Contrary to, like I say on stage, I'm not a handyman.
02:52:17.000And by the way, that's an opinion shared by a lot of medical doctors.
02:52:20.000That's an opinion shared by a lot of psychologists.
02:52:22.000That's an opinion shared by a lot of people that are very concerned.
02:52:25.000And he almost lost his job because you can't have an opinion that even...
02:52:30.000Like I told you before in the first podcast, one of my old neighbors, they're gay, and they had a kid, and they adopted this kid, and this kid was great.
02:52:51.000Look, that's what podcasts are all about.
02:52:54.000That's what conversations are all about.
02:52:56.000I want to know why you think the way you think.
02:52:58.000And if you have a perception, and you have a way that you look at things, and it's different than the way I look at things, I just want to see why you think that way.
02:53:13.000You're adopting a child, but this is not the same kind of relationship as a man and woman who have a child and then raise a child, and it's like it comes out of the woman's body.
02:54:49.000But what does your fury do but cause more rage?
02:54:55.000I don't think they're thinking about it that way.
02:54:57.000I think they just, like, in this situation, like, the subject that we're talking about, gay people adopting children, I think people just want compliance.
02:55:05.000They want you to comply with whatever the narrative that they're trying to establish is.
02:55:11.000The same thing when Mario Lopez was talking about children taking hormones.
02:55:15.000It's like, there's a narrative, they don't want you to have an opinion outside that narrative, and if you do, they want to fire you from things.
02:55:23.000And the situation with you and HBO is, look, I told you this last night and I believe it now.
02:56:05.000At 10 that I knew were bad decisions later on.
02:56:10.000But if somebody would have protected me from that decision, my sister tried.
02:56:15.000My sister was like, nah, I don't think that's the way to go.
02:56:21.000Sometimes you got to learn for yourself.
02:56:23.000And so I think even when I'm a child and I'm walking through life as a child and I'm making a lot of bad decisions that I know that Now, I would never want my child to go through,
02:56:41.000I just want to build a confidence up in children that they will...
02:56:47.000Not succumb to these outside forces that's pulling you towards things that's contrary to your moral standings on things.
02:56:57.000It's hard for people because they get to school and there's so many people that want you to believe a certain way.
02:57:04.000I've talked to kids that told me, and these are like 12-year-old kids, that they were getting bullied at school because they weren't vaccinated.
02:57:13.000And I'm like, what 12-year-old understands the ramifications of getting vaccinated for something that they have zero fear of getting sick and hospitalized for?
02:57:50.000And we would wake up in the middle of the night, she in the bed with her sister and her brother that both had COVID. We was trying to keep you safe.
02:57:58.000And she was like, nope, need to be with my family.
02:59:55.000I remember my daughter, my oldest daughter, Jaden, she's a chef at James Harden Restaurant 13. She was in school and the teacher said that she was being disruptive in class.
03:00:10.000And I went And I just snuck and looked to see what she was doing.
03:00:18.000She was in kindergarten and she had already been...
03:01:25.000And I say this, and I know teachers get upset.
03:01:28.000Every time I say this, I get backlash, but when people get upset about things, you have to think about it.
03:01:35.000I've seen teachers walk out for more pay, maybe twice.
03:01:41.000We walk, they get us on strike for more pay, maybe more times than that.
03:01:46.000I'm just going on times that I just currently can think of.
03:01:51.000But they never walk out for a better curriculum for children.
03:01:56.000Like they say, the school system is not this, not that, and it is not challenging, but you never walk out for a better curriculum.
03:02:04.000They can't get it together on the same page.
03:02:06.000We want to teach these kids and really teach these kids, the United States kids, to be in the upper echelon of intelligent children and intelligent people in the world.
03:02:17.000I wonder where we rank at right now Where does the United States rank in education?