Comedian Joe Rogan joins Jemele to discuss his new Netflix special, The Joe Rogans Experience, and what it s like to be a dad to a 14-year-old girl. They also talk about what it's like to grow up in Texas, and how to deal with a dad who likes to eat a lot of food.
00:02:01.000My book, All Things Aside, Absolutely Correct Opinions, Collection of Personal Essays, is out on October 11th, the same day as my Netflix special, Hot Forever.
00:02:43.000The worst is, I will say, now that I'm a mother, my husband is a father, I've noticed the bites he takes of my food when I share with him are like big dad bites.
00:02:53.000Like nothing will infuriate a little girl more than when your dad takes a bite of your food and it's like a moose hunk out of it.
00:03:00.000And you're like, it was just for a little bite because dads have big jaws.
00:05:58.000But, you know, I mean, that's a guy that literally makes his living off of being lean.
00:06:02.000I hear that, but I'm saying, if you go to the top, I know this went recently because this is something that I bond with my old assistant over is looking at his cheat meals.
00:06:09.000I think it's all the way at the top, or, you know, I don't know where it is now.
00:06:13.000It's these pancakes that just don't look right.
00:06:16.000Dwayne The Rock Johnson, I'm calling you out.
00:06:20.000They got like peanut butter and it's like coconut.
00:06:23.000Coconut to me is one of those like sugar substitute kind of things.
00:07:52.000There's actually only, like, three of them, and you can't go because the line is so long.
00:07:57.000So in your L.A. career, you will have eaten there maybe a little bit at the beginning, but you can't be bothered to wait in line with, like, the 4,000 teenagers in front of that high school where the one is on orange to, like, get your burger.
00:09:06.000When you grow up in a city knowing like green means go, red means stop, yellow is maybe you go, adhering to the like civic laws versus like I'll just put my head down, open up Candy Crush and put my foot on the gas and just go.
00:09:20.000People are just they're just walking whenever going whenever.
00:09:23.000Well, there's just too many humans in LA and you lose value.
00:09:28.000Like people become a nuisance rather than like your community.
00:09:35.000You know, it's like there's too many of them.
00:09:38.000I think you have to carve out your community and you spend a lot of time and effort to find your little chunk of a hovel of a community.
00:09:47.000And I used to joke that everyone says LA has too many people and I thought LA actually has the perfect amount of people because half of them moved to Austin and then a bunch of people died in the pandemic.
00:10:38.000Trying to get to Orange County and then try to get out of Orange County and get to LA. That's a joke.
00:10:42.000Especially as a comic, it's such a specific grind because, like, if you were going to play the Irvine Improv just for a quick gig, you have to leave at, like, one in the afternoon.
00:12:46.000But someone, I was like, what if a celebrity comes here and they need something, and they're only running, like we had John Cleese, and he came, and he just waited.
00:12:55.000So that was a question you asked, if a celebrity came?
00:19:21.000I have talked to so many women who've been drugged at nightclubs.
00:19:26.000Where someone gives them a drink and there's something in it and they just feel funny and either their friends rescue them or something horrible happens.
00:19:46.000And I can't believe that never happened.
00:19:49.000And I look back to like a frat boy that I dated in college and like those parties and like just going out in L.A. and as intelligent as you might be the dumb choices you make in your 20s.
00:20:20.000That's the scariest, because they're giving people things in their drinks they don't expect, and most likely there's probably fentanyl in it.
00:20:32.000Because you hear a lot of girls that are like, I was drugged and I just woke up at home or my friends had me.
00:20:37.000So in the mind of someone who's a guy who's going to drug you, because it seems oftentimes they drug you, but then they're not there to collect you.
00:20:45.000So is it just about fucking up someone's night or drugging them and then hoping to move in later?
00:20:51.000It seems like people just drug people just to do it.
00:21:27.000Anybody who's doing that's probably been abused.
00:21:29.000They probably have some really fucked up view of human beings and they- Or just like voting for pro-life legislation, like those kind of people, for sure.
00:22:25.000And look, I think the thing that worries me the most about it is there are the people Yeah.
00:22:52.000But I don't think for the most part people believe it's a religious thing, but then religious warriors take up that cause on behalf of people who will be profiteering off of it and who are doing it for a different reason, be it racial, be it social, be it economical.
00:23:05.000And so I do think it's this thing that you think you're doing something good for your Lord and Savior, for your religion, but you're just carrying out the mission of other people.
00:23:15.000Well, I think there's a lot of people that most certainly do it because it's political football.
00:23:20.000That becomes like a dividing line between the left and the right, and it galvanizes.
00:23:25.000That's also what's unfortunate, is that because this is such a polarizing issue, people become single-issue voters.
00:23:32.000So any agenda you might have as a conservative that may not be a bad idea or may be a fiscally good idea, People don't want to hear it because you've planted your flag in something that we shouldn't have been arguing over.
00:23:43.000So it's very, because you're a single issue voter now, our communities will suffer and anything conservative that one might have agreed with doesn't get heard.
00:23:53.000That's a shame that we can't come together on stuff.
00:23:57.000Well, there's definitely a weird divide of left and right because there's so much crossover ideas and there's so many people that believe in more of a centrist philosophy and it doesn't get represented politically.
00:24:07.000You know, the politics of this country are represented by the far left and the far right in terms of like what people are afraid of.
00:24:17.000When they think of the right, they're afraid of access to abortion, healthcare, gay rights.
00:24:23.000That's another one that's really creepy, is that the same people that were calling for the ban on Roe v.
00:24:29.000Wade are now calling for an appeal of same-sex marriage.
00:24:35.000And it's about taking it back to this, like, 1950s, or we could even say antebellum, because this also plays into race, taking it back to that.
00:24:49.000Antebellum, well, that's why, like, Lady Antebellum had to change the name to Lady A. Antebellum refers to a time in the South pre-slavery, glorifying those days, which I don't think the band meant for that.
00:25:00.000I think antebellum has become associated.
00:26:23.000Do you remember when the Dixie Chicks came out and said that they were embarrassed that George W. Bush was our president and then the fucking South went after them?
00:26:46.000What's unfortunate, and this is when we...
00:26:49.000You know this was an opportunity for Men who hate women to decimate someone and women who uphold that sort of thinking of, you know, women should keep their mouths shut.
00:27:16.000We're in the middle of Texas at a coffee shop, like a local watering hole kind of coffee shop.
00:27:21.000And you could tell, and he was probably in his 70s, nice Texas man, and he was like, this is our coffee shop, what does your shirt mean?
00:27:28.000And I explained to him about the Dixie Chicks, how, given everything that's happened, they didn't deserve the hellfire that rained down on them for expressing an opinion.
00:27:38.000And his opinion was, well, you know, you can't go around saying stuff about your government.
00:27:46.000And I simply said to him, you know, I can get mad at someone for their political opinion, but I strangely draw the line at threatening to kill a woman or rape her over that opinion.
00:27:56.000And he stepped back and he was like, well, yeah, that's a lot.
00:27:59.000So I think people don't realize, especially when a woman says something wrong, the types of threats that come down that you might brush off or a guy doesn't think about.
00:28:09.000But if I get up and I'm like, I hate Joe Rogan, I hate his podcast, and you'll get men that are like, I hope you get raped, I hope you die.
00:28:17.000And these experiences, and I actually talk about this in my new special, it's a lot funnier than I'm making it sound now, are not just online, they get carried out.
00:28:24.000People shoot up schools because of their hatred of women.
00:28:28.000What school's been shot up because of hatred of women?
00:28:57.000So we're talking about she said something as a political belief, and then by and large what happens is you do something and then people come at you.
00:29:07.000You bring a knife to a fight, people come with a gun, literally.
00:29:10.000These are very real things that women have to think about.
00:29:14.000When you exercise your free speech or just ideas, just as a man would, you have to think about your physical safety.
00:29:29.000But if a man came out and said, I'm embarrassed that George W. Bush is our president and he did it like that, he wouldn't have to think about that aspect.
00:29:39.000I mean, it might not be rape, but people might say violent things about him.
00:29:42.000You'll get people that, you know, but when you and I leave a building at night, you think, we've talked about this, you think about your walk a lot differently than I do.
00:30:04.000And so I think that's what bothered me about the Dixie Chicks things was like she said something and it wasn't at a time where people were exercising free thought like they were because the ubiquity of the internet hadn't taken over.
00:30:19.000Well, it's also just a basic human decency thing.
00:30:23.000If someone expresses an opinion, the worst human beings in the world are going to be the ones who express the hope that you get murdered or raped or, you know, like anything.
00:30:32.000I hope your family gets run over by a truck.
00:30:34.000It's just the worst kind of human beings.
00:30:37.000And that is, with any disagreement on anything, the rational, logical thing to do, someone says, you know, I'm embarrassed that that's my president, is to say, Why you disagree or why you think that's not a good thing to say,
00:30:54.000but to hate the person and to wish harm on the person for expressing an opinion is just because you're a fucking idiot.
00:32:12.000There are people who deserve to be canceled for doing terrible things over and over.
00:32:16.000But nobody ever thinks they did anything wrong.
00:32:18.000So then you get this other side that's like, oh, if a guy looks at a woman wrong, he's going to get canceled.
00:32:22.000I used to think no one was getting canceled who didn't deserve it.
00:32:25.000But the more we move into this cancel culture, the more I start to ask, like, if somebody does one thing wrong that really hurts no one or they write a joke or they say something or they hit on a woman, right?
00:32:58.000And it's also navigating this newfound power that people have through the internet.
00:33:03.000You know, what comes with this great power is great responsibility, but there's no responsibility to people that can just attack people online.
00:33:10.000And they enjoy it, and they enjoy it from the anonymity of their own bubble and their tweeting or whatever they're doing.
00:33:20.000It's navigating this new power and navigating this new world that we live in where cancel culture type things that people look for them.
00:33:29.000They're looking for a nail because they have a hammer.
00:33:32.000If you give someone a big box of rocks and there's a window there, there's a very strong urge to throw a rock at that window.
00:33:40.000And it's very rare that someone takes like this compassionate, charitable view of another human being and just goes, you know, people make mistakes and the most important thing is that we all try to do better.
00:33:51.000That everybody tries to do better in their life.
00:33:53.000I think people say that and then when it comes to whatever their agenda is, they forget about that.
00:33:57.000And I understand rage and I understand I understand hurt.
00:34:04.000But I don't think people understand context.
00:34:09.000I think people feel so powerless and so angry.
00:34:12.000So you grab onto whatever you can grab onto.
00:34:15.000And I think we just have to be careful...
00:34:17.000In rallying those troops, you know, I think of the petulant internet masses, and I do talk about this in my book, I think of them as like zombies.
00:34:24.000Like in every movie, it's always like, be quiet, be quiet, because you don't want the zombie to like feel your warmth or hear you.
00:34:28.000And that's, you know, whatever you do, if you can just say nothing and sustain and maintain, if you truly did like nothing really wrong, they'll move on.
00:34:37.000But if you've ever argued with someone in a comment section, you know that that attracts more of them.
00:35:34.000Like it's one thing if somebody has multiple civil rights infractions and you're like, look, this person systemically has done awful things at their company.
00:35:42.000But what if you had a fulfilling life and a goal and a passion and something else?
00:35:46.000Would you spend your whole life trying to ruin other people?
00:35:50.000Most people don't have the time to do that.
00:35:52.000I think it's this new power that exists in the world and this new ability to express themselves and to disseminate information that needs to be navigated.
00:36:45.000And nobody, and I believe this, when the internet came around, you know, fast forward to several years ago, let's say we got Twitter, right?
00:36:53.000We have social media versus just the internet.
00:36:56.000I don't think the average person, I'm sure people at tech companies and some futurists, maybe you, I don't know.
00:37:54.000I watched a video yesterday of this lady.
00:37:56.000She's walking through a store, and she's got flip-flops on and a skirt, and she's just walking.
00:38:01.000It's like a security camera, and then she stops, and she puts her hand over her butt, and then she walks a little further, and she stops again, and you can see her, like, clench her butt cheeks, and then she, like, looks around, and then shit falls out of her skirt onto the ground, and she moves away.
00:38:32.000And also, another thing that you've seen a significant uptick in on TikTok, in particular, is the filming of strangers without their consent.
00:40:41.000And these kids, these are, you got 15 TikTok followers, you live in the middle of nowhere, like, there's no one can come after you because you have no identity associated with your handle.
00:42:08.000You shouldn't have to defend it with bullets.
00:42:10.000You know, you shouldn't, just because somebody decides to, like, post where you sleep, you shouldn't have to be, like, fucking cocked, armed, and ready.
00:43:06.000I'm like, that's an everyday occurrence if you're a waitress.
00:43:09.000The idea that this is now a story, but it doesn't matter because that's the kind of thing that makes people click on things.
00:43:16.000Because journalism is kind of fucked now because it's all about clicks because you don't really make a lot of money off of print journalism anymore.
00:43:26.000So what they're getting money from is advertising clicks.
00:43:28.000And believe it or not, a woman chasing down a guy who left a shitty tip will get you just as much clicks as some climate change accord where some consortium of scientists get together.
00:43:40.000And chain themselves to a Bank of America building.
00:43:42.000It is how do we sensationalize everything.
00:43:45.000The right news doesn't get the correct news doesn't get the appropriate attention.
00:44:32.000It's very hard because everything is biased from one perspective, whether it's a right wing perspective or a left wing perspective, and they flavor and shape and mold the narrative just to suit whatever they think their audience wants to hear.
00:44:44.000Well, you have to have your eyes so open because if you are coming from any sort of marginalized group, that colors it like I'm Jewish.
00:44:50.000So when I see a headline about Jews or Israel or Palestine, I always pay attention to the phrasing.
00:44:57.000You're like, what's the real agenda here?
00:44:59.000And sometimes it requires being of that group to fully see the intention.
00:45:04.000If you're black, you're going to look at a headline about an altercation with police.
00:45:09.000You're going to look at that wording differently than a white person that doesn't think about that.
00:45:14.000It colors your perspective and your history in life colors the way you read those.
00:45:25.000Well, it requires a lot of work, and you can't do that about too many subjects, because you just don't have the time.
00:45:31.000If you're a person that has an eight-hour-a-day job, and then you have a family, and hobbies, and friends, and, like, you don't have the time to be trying to figure out, like, why is fluoride in the water?
00:45:41.000Why is it, like, you gotta shake that shit down, it'll take you forever.
00:45:44.000So then, so here you go, and now it's time to vote.
00:45:47.000And you got some guy that's like, hey, I want to protect us and everything and do everything that's right.
00:45:52.000And all these bullshit things are baked into it that are infringements on our civil liberties.
00:45:56.000And you're like, well, I didn't take the time, so this guy seems like me.
00:47:05.000Someone being idealistic, what is her being a con artist?
00:47:08.000My whole point was that people have locked and loaded these opinions about people and everyone's awful and every woman is called a bitch when they run for politics.
00:47:18.000Sarah Palin, because the types of men that call women bitches voted probably for her in the get-go.
00:47:44.000Also kept people in jail illegally past the time they were supposed to be released to force them to work as cheap labor to fight wildfires.
00:48:19.000What if the first step just said, P.S. I'm high as fuck right now?
00:48:22.000LOL. High AF. Second, I'm calling on governors to pardon simple state marijuana possession offenses, just as no one should be in federal prison.
00:48:49.000I'm asking Secretary, I don't know how to say that name, Becerra, and the Attorney General to initiate the process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.
00:49:00.000I'd also like to note that as federal and state regulations change, we still need important limitations on trafficking, marketing, and underage sales of marijuana.
00:49:25.000There is a disproportionate amount of African American men, but African Americans, in jail for minor marijuana possession while women in Santa Barbara are like having cooking parties with it.
00:50:37.000If you are a farmer in rural Nebraska and you have these conservative values and you don't live in like an urban area, you don't share the same streets that I do, of course your values are going to be different.
00:50:50.000And so I think it's very easy to be pro-life.
00:50:56.000Especially if you're a man because like this doesn't really affect me or I'm a 60 year old like I'm not thinking about this I think it's very difficult I think the exercise in living in a society is thinking about other people and that's what taxes are for those go to schools I pay taxes for schools that my kids might never attend this is what you sign up for when you live in a society is maybe considering how to not hurt your neighbor and so that's why I was so pro mask because it's like this is how you don't hurt someone When we believe that those were,
00:51:23.000and I still do, the thing that helps, right?
00:51:26.000And I think people tend to vote, I want the death penalty.
00:51:28.000Sure, you don't know the fucking guy dying.
00:51:30.000It's not your brother that's been falsely accused.
00:51:32.000So I think the less experience you have with people who are less like you, the more likely you're just going to vote for your own self-interest.
00:51:40.000Yeah, and that's always going to be the case.
00:51:42.000People, they have a limited perspective based on what they've experienced.
00:51:47.000And if you are in the middle of nowhere, in a rural place, and you have a very religious upbringing, and you think that people in Brooklyn or people in South Central Los Angeles should adhere to your values, not only is it not realistic,
00:52:16.000So I just want people to have the choice.
00:52:18.000And I want people to also have the choice to make decisions about their own health, meaning I don't want to be forced to get sick because you chose not to do something.
00:52:28.000It's the same reason you can't go into a movie theater and yell fire.
00:52:30.000Like, your choices shouldn't have to affect or harm other people.
00:52:34.000And that's a very gray area, because where do you draw that boundary?
00:52:38.000Well, the problem with that boundary is we need to know what is actually going on.
00:52:44.000We need to know, like, what are the financial interests involved in making decisions, because especially when you're dealing with anything involving pharmaceutical companies or the government, it's mostly about money.
00:52:56.000I mean, hydroxychloroquine, when that came out as like a cure-all, I remember looking this up because I was so proud of my journalism, but I remember the guy was Indian, who was like the head of the pharmaceutical company that was in charge of that.
00:53:14.000And I Googled and I saw that he had had dinner with Donald Trump, like in March of the pandemic year.
00:53:19.000And I was like, you know, someone shook someone's hand and was like, we'll sell this.
00:53:23.000I don't think so, because hydroxychloroquine is not expensive.
00:53:54.000When you look into the history of the pharmaceutical companies and what they've done in terms of patenting medicine and demonizing medicines that can't be patented that are generic medicines, it's fucking creepy.
00:54:24.000And that kind of goes back to what we were saying before about it is exhausting and really difficult to get objective opinions, to really find stuff out.
00:54:32.000And this is for, I mean, there was this documentary on Netflix about, like, health and beauty business, and they talked about Johnson& Johnson baby powder, and how they, you know, my mom, we used that when I was little, and now it causes cervical cancer.
00:54:52.000Like, it just became not, like, it was a thing that was a family company that was sold to everyone, and then when they found out it caused cancer, they started marketing it to poorer communities.
00:55:03.000When they found out it causes cancer, they started marketing to people?
00:55:06.000They started putting it in black and brown communities.
00:55:24.000Jesus Christ, these people are fucking creeps.
00:55:26.000And then you even just have products that you think, like if you've got curly hair, which I do, which is a very malign thing, you find this product that's great for it, and then they go into all the information that's not being told to you, and it is a full-time job.
00:55:39.000And then you're called a heretic if you come out against some of these things, and it's...
00:55:44.000I applaud a lot of what you do on this podcast.
00:55:46.000I know a lot of your guests are polarizing.
00:55:48.000I know you don't always have the right info, but I do applaud the pursuit of that information because there's always so many levels and layers, particularly in government or products or anything.
00:55:57.000These things that make our lives run, there's darker motives happening and you sound crazy if you say it.
00:56:47.000To get them to do that, to make it, incentivize them to do something that's the right thing, that it's going to, all they have to do is like, do it because they want to get the votes?
00:57:01.000Did you see the clip this morning where he was caught, he was shaking hands with someone and then on a hot mic he said, nobody fucks with a Biden.
00:57:24.000If you talk to any person who treats people with dementia and you show them what he used to be like versus what he's like now, there is clear evidence of cognitive decline.
00:57:38.000I mean, as long as you're making, as long as you're doing stuff like this, I'm okay with it.
00:57:43.000Like the marijuana, like as long as you're calling for stuff like that, at least do something good on your way out.
00:57:48.000It's good that he's doing that, but that's not what we're talking about.
00:57:50.000I'm talking about his, he's got dementia or something.
00:57:52.000There's some sort of cognitive decline.
00:57:54.000You see that thing the other day where he was calling, where's Jackie?
00:59:30.000You ever seen the compilations of him just stumbling and not knowing what to talk about, losing his place and forgetting, oh, I forgot about it.
01:00:29.000And you are under scrutiny 24-7 and you're just living this bizarre world where in this bizarre world where you're in control of the economic future, the environmental future, the international treaties and laws and whether or not we invade countries and interventionalist foreign policy.
01:00:50.000Like the fucking chaos involved in being the president.
01:00:53.000Can't let the guy talk some shit and now watch this drive.
01:02:47.000It's an insanely corrupt part of the world.
01:02:49.000And whenever you have an autocrat, you know, whenever you have one guy that gets to stay in power for as long as he wants, which is essentially where Vladimir Putin is, a guy who poisons and kills his enemies.
01:03:32.000If you don't want a person to express themselves then you don't believe in real freedom.
01:03:36.000Because people should have the ability to express themselves incorrectly and make mistakes.
01:03:40.000And the way to counter that is to express yourself correctly and make better points, make better arguments.
01:03:47.000That's how we find out what's real and what's not real.
01:03:49.000Where you can find the tyrants is who's fucking silencing people, who's stopping people from expressing themselves, who's stopping people from expressing opinions that they disagree with, that other people disagree with.
01:04:01.000I don't have an issue with that, but I also wonder what about people who purposefully disseminate wrong information, disinformation?
01:04:10.000And that is also, it should be like criminally liable, right?
01:04:13.000If you know, like if you're working for a company and that company tells you something and you know that for a fact and then you go out and spread information that is incorrect because it's in the greater interest of that company, it's criminal.
01:04:59.000And I think, too, as comics, you know, like, I have this desire to be on the right side and to know everything and to be as well-rounded as possible.
01:05:06.000But I also have to, like, hold my daughter.
01:05:49.000Because I look at a lot of TikTok and it's great sometimes and then it eats away at your brain at other times.
01:05:56.000It was just this thing that was like, try to avoid...
01:05:58.000I think it was called dread scheduling.
01:06:01.000And I didn't look into it, but I was like, I try to live my life by having as few things on the calendar that I'm like, ugh, I don't want to do that.
01:06:08.000I bet you have the ability to have a life that's dread-free, minus you've got to go to the dentist or something.
01:06:23.000Well, once you're fortunate enough to be able to do that, the key is to not slide into dread just for financial gain because you're not even going to notice that money.
01:06:31.000What you'll notice is your time being used in a way that you don't want.
01:06:36.000And sometimes people, they can't see the forest for the trees and they just focus on money instead of focusing on just, I just want to avoid doing things that suck.
01:08:39.000I think life is a temporary situation and you should enjoy as much of it as possible.
01:08:44.000And I think that one of the ways that I find that I enjoy it as much as possible is if I do things that are intriguing, that are difficult and complex, and where they're challenging.
01:08:56.000And so I overcome obstacles and I figure things out and I get better at stuff.
01:09:04.000Whether it's communicating with people or whether it's doing stand-up or whatever you do.
01:09:07.000I like challenging, interesting things.
01:09:34.000Yeah, it's like, what am I interested in?
01:09:36.000I mean, the only people I have on are people I either like, like you, or people that I think I want to talk to, because they have an interesting topic that they're pursuing, or some documentary, or a book they wrote, or something.
01:09:49.000It's like, I only have people on that I'm interested in talking to.
01:09:53.000I don't have anybody I don't care what they have to say.
01:10:04.000And you still have to do the interview.
01:10:30.000I've had a lot of great interviews, but sometimes I'm being interviewed and I can tell they barely know who I am and I certainly don't want to be there and I'm under my keyboard.
01:10:39.000I'm just like squeezing my thigh because I want to be like, what are we doing here?
01:10:44.000Please don't ask me about balancing at all.
01:10:46.000Please don't ask me how I got into comedy.
01:13:15.000They don't want to hear a woman on stage.
01:13:16.000And it's also, there's certain subjects that some men in particular don't want to hear women express.
01:13:22.000They don't want to hear them talk about politics.
01:13:24.000They don't want to hear them talk about, they don't want to hear them giving advice or, you know, and then when it comes to like sex talk and, you know, and a lot of men have a really difficult time with women making fun of men in their act.
01:15:11.000And I think a lot of times people, they take an easy way out with comedy.
01:15:16.000And they try to find a way that they can mock things that's gonna work on stage, at least some people.
01:15:23.000And then they get into that sort of fucking caricaturist view of humans.
01:15:29.000Well, I just wonder, I like to think the older I get, this special, the last special, this special, like, the stakes are too high.
01:15:36.000You want to make a bunch of dick jokes, that's cool too.
01:15:38.000But if you're going to say something impactful, like, you need to be ready to defend those things that you said, those statements, and you have to back them up.
01:15:46.000First of all, they have to be funny, but back them up with intelligence.
01:15:49.000And I think when you come from a place of only wanting to make people feel good, my jokes are not designed to hurt, those are easier to back up versus I said something mean just for the fun of it.
01:16:22.000I don't love doing this, but other people like that I do it, and that's why you're fucking depressed, America.
01:16:27.000Do you ever look at the fucking user policy on TikTok and how invasive it is and how much it sucks your data and how much it actually, if you're on TikTok, your other computers that aren't even connected to TikTok, they have access to all that data?
01:16:58.000And I find that in watching it, I've gained an education about a lot of things, social things that I kind of just, they weren't in my purview before.
01:17:16.000The company has been funneling information to China and pretending they're not.
01:17:20.000It's like if you go and look at the violations and if you go look at like there was a software engineer that back engineered the TikTok software.
01:17:29.000So it's like the most invasion of privacy software he's ever seen.
01:17:33.000But they have this video where there's a Pomeranian.
01:18:10.000I mean, that is an interesting thing, right?
01:18:12.000That you can cultivate your algorithm, and you just find things you choose on, continue to click on those, and eventually it sort of sorts you out.
01:18:19.000And I think it's more sensitive, I could be wrong about this, than the Instagram algorithm.
01:18:23.000On TikTok, like, it almost, like, morphs in real time.
01:18:27.000Instagram, like, I deeply don't care about Bella Hadid, and it's, like, almost all that it shows me.
01:18:32.000Do you follow other celebrity-type things or models or something like that?
01:19:12.000Because I think it wants to show you because they know that people like this and I'm like, but I don't.
01:19:17.000And Instagram's a very millennial app, and the curation of it and the way it looks, and TikTok is very Gen Z, and I enjoy TikTok, but there's something deeply dark.
01:19:27.000The vibration of it is very low, if that makes any sense to you.
01:19:31.000When you're on it, and I've said this before, I liken it to speed eating candy.
01:19:37.000You're like, this is so delicious, I love this, I want more vanishing caloric density.
01:19:41.000And then when you turn it off, you're like, I feel really awful, I feel sick.
01:20:32.000So like right now, the 90s and the 2000s are very in, right?
01:20:36.000So you get these accounts that will be like, come along with me and remember Christmas break 2002. And they show you images that tap into your nostalgia.
01:20:43.000And these are hyper ephemeral things and then they're gone.
01:20:46.000And you get sad looking at it because the world feels so scary now.
01:20:50.000But the person curating that didn't experience that.
01:20:53.000They're just taking my memories and regurgitating them to me and monetizing them.
01:21:21.000Because then you're going to see incentivized behavior changes in people that are just because they're worried about losing access to their bank account or losing access to travel, which is what they have in China.
01:21:33.000Like if you act like an asshole, you lose privileges?
01:21:36.000Not even act like an asshole if you tweet something bad about the government, if you tweet an opinion that's unfavorable.
01:21:40.000I mean that's what they have in China.
01:21:42.000In China, they have a centralized currency, a digital currency, and they're trying to push for that in America.
01:21:47.000And if they have a centralized digital currency, which means the government has access to turning on or off your ability to spend money.
01:21:54.000So, like, say if you tweet something that you don't like this decision about Roe v.
01:21:58.000Wade and fuck the government and fuck these old Supreme Court people, they'll stop your ability to fly.
01:22:25.000On the other side, when you talk about freedom, when people shit on America and they're like, oh, I hate when people talk about Nazi Germany or the Holocaust because it's people who are just using it as a pawn in an argument.
01:22:36.000The fact that I'm allowed to sit here and say whatever the fuck I want and there's not secret police outside...
01:23:03.000Well, that's the level of freedom that we have here that doesn't exist in Iran, for example.
01:23:09.000You know, this woman who was killed for not having her headscarf on properly.
01:23:15.000It has ignited this wave of protests all over the world and all through Iran where they're just really freaking out and recognizing, like, this has got to fucking change.
01:23:23.000So her name was Masamini and they have this morality police there.
01:23:27.000So her hijab was off by like an inch or two.
01:23:29.000And they will come and take you even if you are properly dressed.
01:23:32.000It's just this like downer police that comes and they beat her into a coma.
01:23:37.000Another girl recently, I have goosebumps because I reposted a story about her, really pretty girl dancing on TikTok, murdered.
01:23:46.000And I'm on TikTok and there's footage of this, of these people being arrested and beaten and killed and they're saying the government is turning off our internet.
01:24:21.000And I've just done my part in trying to amplify that for them and sharing those videos, because I think a lot of people don't know that's happening.
01:24:28.000We don't live in a world where the government, I mean, they control a lot, but, like, they're controlling your internet.
01:24:33.000Like, they're not going to turn your internet off.
01:24:50.000I think somebody said something, I don't know if this was right, that, like, 80% of the population in Iran is, like, Gen Z or something because of how many people get killed.
01:25:02.000And this is not, I think it's very easy for people to look at the Middle East and think of it as the way that we portray it in movies.
01:25:08.000But Iran was a normal, I mean, we have a lot of Jews and a lot of non-Jews in LA that are Persian that came there with tons of money, you know, after the ousting of the Shah in the 70s.
01:25:19.000This was a place that had movie theaters and women wearing skirts and like it was normal, kind of like Afghanistan was at some point.
01:25:25.000The way that these women are being treated now, this was not the way that it always was.
01:25:32.000Nobody deserves anything even close to it.
01:25:34.000It's very scary when a country can decline into a religious dictatorship.
01:25:42.000That a country that didn't used to be because it makes you worry like could that happen here like or any kind of dictatorship like one of I was having a conversation with a friend of mine We were talking about North Korea and I had young me Kim on young me Park rather on who?
01:26:00.000I mean and she's she's a really incredible person and the way she Tells her story and what she went through right to get out and eventually get to America and And we were talking about it and I was like, you know what's fucked is like that is happening right now in 2022 with human beings in the world.
01:26:20.000And that is not happening in America, but it could.
01:26:24.000All we would need is a series of events to go horribly wrong, whether it's some kind of chaotic war, shutting off the power grid, some sort of a civil unrest, something...
01:26:35.000Where some faction of government offered a solution and came in and cracked down on everybody and instituted very rigid guidelines on how you could behave and react.
01:26:45.000They said that, in North Korea, they took away people's land and they said, we're going to make sure that you always have food and the way we're going to do this is to take away your land.
01:26:53.000So they took away everybody's land and then they were fucked.
01:26:58.000They had a—I've watched a couple documentaries on North Korea.
01:27:02.000They had a government program, and the plant was called, like, Let's All Eat One Meal a Day, where everybody—like, they tried to brainwash people into thinking, like, this was the way to be.
01:27:11.000And there was no grain and no rice, no food.
01:29:27.000Well, that's the problem with not having American manufacturing.
01:29:30.000You know, one of the companies I work with is Origin.
01:29:33.000It's a company that's trying to bring back American manufacturing clothes and they make shoes and now they're making like hunting wear and they're trying to...
01:30:06.000We, I believe, bringing jobs here, creating a robust infrastructure, and being self-reliant, not on foreign oil, not on foreign anything...
01:30:16.000It can't just be that our number one export is military services and entertainment in this podcast.
01:31:17.000If they had an American version of these phones and a Chinese version of the phones, and the American version was 50% more or whatever, I'd fucking pay it.
01:31:27.000I think as long as people in positions of power stand and make a lot of money, then they don't really care about a crumbling infrastructure.
01:31:34.000If I am a CEO of a company and my job is to the shareholders, my mission is to them, and profit margins, I will take this to another country, and I won't care when this all burns because I'll be on a yacht to Mars.
01:31:47.000But I would think that if a company came along that did offer an American-made solution where you don't have to feel gross about buying something that you know is made by people that are working for an insanely low amount of money with no benefits whatsoever,
01:32:04.000or a place like Foxconn where they make iPhones where they have fucking nets around the building because so many people have jumped off the building and committed suicide that they surround the building with nets.
01:32:26.000They're so fucked and the working conditions are so horrific that they put nets around these buildings because so many people were jumping to their deaths.
01:32:49.000And he's trying to figure out what to do and, you know, insurance changed his medication and he's in constant pain now and he's falling apart.
01:34:06.000It's such a blurry – the lines are so blurred because there's corporate responsibility, there's civil responsibility, there's moral obligation.
01:34:16.000And so I think we have – in my book I talk about – I'm disgusted with the number of options we have.
01:34:23.000Like there's like eight different colors of blue for Crocs.
01:34:59.000I'm not a big, like, I just, it is all damaging for the planet, but you cannot, to blame one branch of that as if this is, they're operating independently.
01:35:09.000Like, this is all just feeding it, and it's so hard to stand for anything, because at the end of the day, you know, like, oh, I hate capitalism.
01:35:17.000It's like, oh, but I really want those cups overnight, so I'll use Amazon.
01:36:31.000And if Kim Kardashian wants to put fat in her butt, what do you care?
01:36:35.000I don't care and Instagram thinks I care and I deeply, deeply don't.
01:36:40.000I was reading something that there's a lot of women who are taking some new, there's some like an injection that kills your appetite and they're doing it, what is it called?
01:36:53.000I actually know exactly what you're talking about because someone...
01:40:20.000And then if your body doesn't match that, if your lifestyle doesn't match that, and then you have this horrible feeling...
01:40:28.000That you're not valuable, you're not worthy.
01:40:30.000And so the problem is that a lot of people look to these very wealthy people with all this plastic surgery is that that is the highest level of achievement because these are the most popular people, the most social media, and the most money, and it influences people in a negative way.
01:40:50.000You know, if you're younger, that's not your fault that you are looking at that.
01:40:55.000If you are older, and we'll say, like, if you're in your 30s, you have seen this family in particular, but just in general, you've seen social media grow, and you've seen this family grow, and you've seen all of the snake oil over all this time.
01:41:08.000So for you to be surprised or let down at this point is really more an indictment on your intelligence.
01:41:15.000Like, you think the family that would sell their own children for money, you think the family that sold you tummy tea and diarrhea pills, you think the family...
01:43:05.000That empty pursuit of fame for no reason like it used to be that if someone and if you want if you were younger and you look to some Celebrity that was a singer Beyonce or whoever it was you're like god.
01:43:17.000I wish I was like her right well, that's someone who's like putting out like This incredible work of art that affects millions of people.
01:44:16.000I can be okay with that and I can be okay with, and I will say this.
01:44:20.000And I feel like we talked about this on the podcast, but like, if you are not real thin, if you have thighs, if you are, you know, and this is for a lot of women of color in particular, but even if you're just a white girl and you don't have Nordic model boy hips, these women sort of...
01:44:58.000But I can respect making it okay if you have naturally the curvy body that they have surgery to get.
01:45:03.000If you have a body like that, I can respect creating a place where as a girl you might feel okay about the body that you have.
01:45:09.000The fucked up thing about that whole skinny look, like really scrawny look that some women think is attractive, like men don't think it's attractive.
01:45:18.000That's not something that guys like in general.
01:45:21.000It actually has less to do with guys and more to do with an inculcation of an ideal, a brainwashing that is hard to unscrub.
01:45:38.000A lot of gay guys model and they model women's bodies after boys' bodies, right?
01:45:42.000This is all about how the clothes will hang and it's so built into our society to be smaller, which ties to feminism and making yourself smaller.
01:45:49.000But I cannot, even though I love my body, like I look at those women and I'm like, that's what you want.
01:46:03.000You can acknowledge that that's unattainable.
01:46:06.000And I talked about this in my stand-up forever ago.
01:46:08.000Every girl looks at her body like, I just want to lose five pounds.
01:46:12.000Even if you don't need to, like it's a thing.
01:46:14.000And it has less to do with being attractive to a man and just being acceptable.
01:46:20.000And most men, good guys, they don't think about women.
01:46:24.000I always try to explain to women like the thing that what you're putting your body through and what you're putting yourself through mentally with thinking you're unacceptable.
01:46:32.000Most men aren't looking at you like that.
01:46:34.000You at your worst, your husband's probably still like, that looks really good.
01:46:43.000And I think this has to do with self-esteem and the way that we treat, that we educate women and the disinformation about their bodies, vaginas, thighs, hips, all that stuff that good men don't actually care about all that bullshit.
01:46:57.000Yeah, I think it's the skinny, the really skinny thing.
01:47:21.000It's so odd because when you see the cover of Vogue or Vanity Fair and there's some girl with that gaunt face and they're walking and swishing with this little tiny frame body, because something's unattainable, sometimes it becomes very attractive to people that can't attain it.
01:47:38.000For the longest time, up until quite recently, that is what was shown to you.
01:47:44.000Those models, those designers show those models in pictures, in magazines.
01:47:52.000Your body was wrong and that's what it should look like.
01:47:54.000And clothing was made for those bodies.
01:47:57.000And so you grow up and then all of a sudden all bodies all shapes are acceptable but we can't undo the brainwashing in the back of your brain of like your whole upbringing knowing that like because you didn't look like that your body was wrong.
01:48:08.000I wonder if there's ever been a study on the uptick in anorexia in like accordance with like how it correlates with fashion magazines.
01:48:34.000And the ability to, like, have food and have animal meat and chew the fat actually comes from when you'd have your neighbors over, you would break out the fat and you would chew on it with your neighbors.
01:48:44.000This is, like, pre-industrial revolution.
01:51:42.000One of the characters, I want to say it was the prioress, who was this like very pious holy woman, but he goes into great length describing how expensive her outfit was.
01:51:52.000And there's this connection like looking expensive, being close to godliness.
01:51:57.000Like the better I look, like clearly I'm a good Christian.
01:52:54.000There's so much—I mean, we are—I mean, the first thing you often talk about with a woman is her body or her looks, and then we get into something else.
01:53:02.000You know, you're so—we lead with that.
01:53:04.000I have to think about that when I walk into a room or when I walk on stage in a way that a guy doesn't have to—and you can choose to not participate, but it's still scrutiny that you face.
01:54:34.000You don't have to listen to her music.
01:54:35.000I think it's what we were talking about earlier with social media.
01:54:37.000It's this outrage that just people look at things to get upset by.
01:54:41.000There's so many people that wake up in the morning, they grab their phone, they go, what am I pissed off at today?
01:54:45.000And they just go scrolling through Instagram and scrolling through TikTok and scrolling through their newsfeed and they find something to get pissed about and then they post it and hope people will get upset with them.
01:54:56.000With them, and I'll do you one better, not just get upset with them, they hope in taking you down, they can then have your light and replace you.
01:55:04.000They're hoping to capitalize off of taking you down, which is why they've done it publicly.
01:55:09.000If you get a podcaster that's like, I fucking hate Joe Rogan, he's hoping that all of your listeners will be like, yeah, fuck him, and then go over to his podcast.
01:55:18.000They want to replace you, and devour you.
01:56:02.000I mean, there's a reason we're friends.
01:56:04.000The people, the way they sound off, I always say at the end of the day, like, as a comic, you might say things that you make a mistake or whatever, but at least I had the guts.
01:56:11.000To say it, put my face with it and stand there in front of people and say it.
01:56:16.000I didn't fire it off from the fucking toilet behind an avatar of a dumpster.
01:56:22.000Like, at least I had that and nobody ever comes up to you in person and says what they said online.
01:56:31.000I don't want to get in a fight, but at least give respect to the person who's willing to stand there and take the heat, take the joke, take the laugh.
01:56:38.000Yeah, I think there's a real issue that comedians have in particular of reading too many people's opinions.
01:57:51.000What sounds insane, because Elon was speculating that it could be as high as 20 or 30%, I think he was thinking, because, you know, it's hard to know.
01:58:00.000But I mean, if they decide, like, and here it is, over 80% of Twitter accounts are likely bots.
01:58:24.000Former FBI agent noted that bots are generally designed to accomplish a goal.
01:58:29.000In Twitter's case, a key goal is to gain followers.
01:58:32.000More followers mean that an account becomes more influential and could potentially be a security risk.
01:58:37.000What's interesting is that there's means to get bots for Twitter with countless entities offering Twitter accounts, followers, likes, and retweets for a fee.
01:58:50.000Some are even offered in the dark or deep web.
01:58:55.000This is also an explanation for someone who hasn't used the internet before.
02:00:35.000But it's like, we have to learn how to separate noise.
02:00:39.000And the problem is when it's like opinion-based stuff, they can influence other people's opinions by saying outrageous things about people and do it.
02:00:48.000Like, that's why it's scary is during election time.
02:00:51.000Because if they're using these things to try to change the way people view things, there's a lot of people that are very easily influenced.
02:00:57.000And if they can use these Twitter bots...
02:01:02.000I mean, I think that if I were president, and feel free to poke a hole in this, your social security number is tied to your social media handle.
02:01:12.000And you can say whatever you want, but just know there's ramifications.
02:01:15.000And if you want to, and there will be a committee to see if you were stupid or in on it when it comes to dispensing disinformation.
02:01:22.000Because it's not your fault if you thought something was true or good.
02:01:24.000But if you are deliberately saying things like school shootings don't happen, Sandy Hook was a joke, you should be held accountable for this.
02:01:48.000Like, otherwise, this thing that he's talking about, how else would you stop that?
02:01:52.000But then there's problems like, what if you tweeted anti-government stuff and you lived in a country where the, you know, the government was, you know, autocrat government and they cracked down on you and had you killed?
02:02:01.000Because they could connect you to the post where you couldn't have an anonymous account.
02:02:07.000Because anonymous whistleblowers are very important.