On this week's episode of Joe Rogan Experience, the boys are joined by a special guest who's been on the cover of the New York Times for the past few years. They talk about his recent trip to North Korea, the Kim Jong-un regime, and what it's like to be a journalist in the communist country. They also talk about some of the craziest things they've ever done, and why they think it's a good idea to have a TV show about it. Also, they talk about the new Star Trek series Star Trek: The Rise of the Blue Planet and why it's not as cool as it used to be, and how they're going to make Star Trek better than it was before Star Trek ever became a movie. And of course, there's a whole lot of talk about Star Trek and Star Wars and other stuff that's not so cool anymore. Enjoy! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our companies, unless otherwise stated. We do not own the rights to any music used in this podcast. All credit given to any of the music used is given to us by our patrons. If you like the music, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your music, we'll be listening to music on the airwaves. Thank you! -Jon Sorrentino and we'll get back to you next week with a new episode of the podcast, so we can all be in touch on the music we've been listening to the music you've listened to in the past week. -ROBERT AND RYAN BONUS EPISODES! (featuring some of our favorite artists of the past weeks' music from the past two weeks, we hope you'll leave us some love and support us in the next week or we'll send us some more of your music on our socials, we're getting a review of their music in the coming weeks. (we'll be working on the next episode) and we're making a new ad-free version of the new music we're working on a new version of our new song "I Can't Say That" we'll have it out next week, so don't forget to let us know what you're listening to us send us your thoughts on that too!
00:00:25.000When you get lit up colors, that's what I thought the future was going to look like when there was computers in like 2015. I thought it would be like the inside of like a spaceship.
00:01:31.000I want you going to those fake restaurants and having these people take you around and trying to present you with this image of what North Korea is like.
00:01:40.000Like, oh, it's just like everyone else.
00:06:26.000I mean, it really doesn't fit in what we think of as 2015, the modern world.
00:06:32.000Although it wasn't that long ago, you know, that you had Stalinist Russia, you had Maoist China, you had Hitler's Germany...
00:06:39.000Where people just went, yep, that's the dude.
00:06:42.000He's the one who tells us how to do everything, you know.
00:06:45.000I think it's really disturbing because it's happening now.
00:06:48.000And even though like 40 years ago or 50 years ago isn't really that long ago, now feels like that could be us.
00:06:54.000But I think if you look at what's happening in Russia, it's not so far away because obviously the thing about North Korea, which is weird, is it's like going back to 1938. It's like going back in time.
00:07:06.000But the thing about Russia, if you go to Russia now, they're like, there is no economic crisis.
00:07:34.000I mean, it's just so blatant that this guy is a dictator.
00:07:37.000When you see what happens when there's any sort of dispute over there, and even with these oligarchs, they take them, they put them in jail, and they take their businesses.
00:07:48.000And he's done this more than once, right?
00:07:50.000He did it to a guy recently, and he only wound up taking one of his oil businesses.
00:07:56.000Yeah, and he's done it famously with Gazprom and Rosneft, where one guy became the richest dude in the world and three other guys got either assassinated or went to jail.
00:08:08.000So I think that when you look at it, it's a tough place to do business, Russia, unless you've got a key card to the Kremlin, you're not going to get anything done.
00:08:37.000Do you think that they feel like the only way to recharge the economy is being a full-blown conflict with the United States?
00:08:44.000I think that it was a humiliation in Russia.
00:08:47.000You know, we look at sort of Gorbachev and Yeltsin and go, oh, you know, they finally came to their senses and joined the world and whatever.
00:08:55.000You know, Yeltsin drank a bit too much or whatever.
00:09:00.000But that's seen as a huge humiliation.
00:09:03.000We were, if not number one, we were number two for a long time.
00:09:22.000One of the reasons why they're like, oh, let's be friends again, is there's no more oil subsidies, and it's the same thing in the region.
00:09:28.000And then I think what happened is Putin came along and said, Russia's the best again, and we're going to fuck with people, and we're going to take back our land that they took from us, and we're going to take back this, and our military's the best, and we're going to put more money in the military, and we're going to reactivate these bases.
00:09:53.000So it's not too, like, you know, all the old people, like if you look at the Fox News people, they're like, yeah, fucking Russia, they're all commies.
00:10:00.000Well, all the people in Russia are going, I know the Americans, they eat the babies, you know, and so it's not that much of a stretch.
00:10:07.000Well, and if you look at, like, the way we behave abroad, I mean, the fact that we have multiple wars going on, that we have drone attacks.
00:11:39.000If you think about how long people have been alive for, it really is amazing that we've only dropped two nuclear bombs since 1947. I mean, just those two, and that was it.
00:11:50.000Well, they're bad, so they scared the shit out of us.
00:12:14.000But the problem is, is we were rational actors.
00:12:17.000We were like, even if we hated each other, and even if there was propaganda, we're still rational actors.
00:12:22.000The problem, the worry is, you have irrational actors, like Pakistan has over 100 warheads.
00:12:28.000And they're rapidly becoming an irrational actor because they're losing control over their country to the Taliban, whose agenda is clearly stated that they want to fuck us up.
00:12:44.000So, I mean, that's where it gets terrifying.
00:12:53.000The vector for warhead number 6179 is Carmel, California.
00:13:00.000I have these conversations with you more than anybody I know.
00:13:03.000You're the one who actually goes to these fucking places.
00:13:07.000You actually go to all these creepy, scary spots and come back with news.
00:13:11.000But, you know, I used to be afraid of why, you know, I go to all these war zones and I still am, but, you know, war is bad.
00:13:19.000Everyone always says, well, we go to war and they picture sort of manly G.I. Joe type shooting each other and it generally doesn't look like that.
00:13:24.000It's lots of collateral damage and women and children being fucking blown to shit and then guys go in there and get PTSD and get their ass shot off.
00:13:33.000But, you know, the thing is, one of the things that I recently came back from that fucked me up, like really, I mean, to the point where I'm having kind of an existential crisis going, well, what's it all mean?
00:13:45.000Is I went to the South Pole because we did this piece on Greenland melting, which won us the Emmy last year.
00:13:53.000We got a lot of, whatever, discussion around it on both sides of the debate, although why it's a fucking debate, I don't know.
00:14:50.000We'll go down and we'll see what the fuck it is.
00:14:52.000So we go down with NASA. We go down with, you know, the top scientists in the world from, I mean, from, well, from about 20 different countries, but the top guy is a French guy.
00:15:03.000And we go to the South Pole and we're like, so, you know, Arctic is melting and Greenland's melting, but Antarctica is not.
00:18:33.000And you're like, when you see it, you go, oh...
00:18:36.000Rich people or whatever will be able to move up the hill or Colorado or whatever the fuck it is.
00:18:42.000And everyone else is just like, well, you guys have to stay in the garbage heaps and see how you can do it.
00:18:47.000And when you see it going forward, like I'm a positive guy.
00:18:52.000I believe things genuinely have gotten better throughout history and quality of life has gotten better and health has gotten better and all this shit.
00:18:59.000But you're basically saying, well, if there's going to be hundreds of millions of people forced to move because of this, then that's going to cause chaos.
00:19:11.000Chaos generally isn't good for anyone who isn't a young 20-year-old dude with a club in his hand.
00:21:57.000Those people keep fucking, even if they're not in jail.
00:22:00.000Whoever lived or whoever was the product of sex with one of those men, if those women lived and their children lived, even if the Viking didn't live, you're talking about some insane genetics problem.
00:22:11.000It's also not like L.A. or, you know, let's say Panama where you can pick the bananas off the trees.
00:22:16.000Like, to live in Iceland, you've got to be tough as fuck.
00:22:18.000You've got to go out on freezing cold water and, like, stab a cod with a spear.
00:22:48.000My thing is to go to weird countries and shoot the newsy bits, not eat the shit, because I get the shits anyway, so if I'm eating fermented puffin, I'm not getting on that plane.
00:23:06.000Because it comes from matjess, or whatever it's called, which is the fermented herring, which they had to make illegal in Sweden because it stank so bad.
00:23:46.000It's a very interesting pronunciation.
00:23:49.000But it's a Greenland shark or other sleeper shark that's been cured with a particular fermentation process and hung to dry for four to five months.
00:28:03.000They just put a bit of olive oil on top of it, which would seal it.
00:28:06.000And I was like, that means that if you go logically, they were drinking a shit pile of wine because they were like, well, I'm not going to trust the water because I don't know that the animals haven't died in it.
00:28:16.000So I'll just drink wine all day, every day.
00:28:30.000That's really crazy if you stop and think about it.
00:28:32.000Like the people that were traveling and drinking wine exclusively for hydration and what the difference it must have been on the way they thought and behaved.
00:29:09.000Imagine if that's what it came down to.
00:29:10.000We have artificial high rail shower systems over cities.
00:29:16.000It doesn't rain anymore in LA, so LA decided it needed a shower system.
00:29:20.000It would cause a lot of news saying we're going to reuse the Keystone Pipeline not for oil but for glaciers so that we can actually have water.
00:29:50.000Well, when you see those lakes in Texas, if you've been to Austin, they have Lake Travis and Lake Austin, and Lake Travis, they don't artificially feed.
00:29:59.000Lake Austin looks badass, but Lake Travis is vanishing.
00:30:02.000Yeah, all the, yeah, we did a piece on it.
00:30:04.000All the houseboats and everything are sitting just on, like, not even dry land, like caked, like scorched land.
00:30:12.000Yeah, and the docks are nowhere near the water anymore.
00:31:06.000Yeah, I mean, there's not that many left in the wild, and there's a lot of crazy people in Texas who want to buy one, so it doesn't surprise me.
00:31:12.000Texas has a huge population of these wildlife parks.
00:31:17.000They have wild game parks where you could go shoot a zebra.
00:31:32.000My favorite story is not actually in Texas, but in Colombia, where Escobar loved wild animals, so he bought hippos and elephants and tigers.
00:31:43.000And then when it all went to shit, they just went into the jungle.
00:31:47.000And they're just procreating and living there now.
00:31:51.000And you're like, that's kind of cool, actually.
00:33:33.000There's many species of deer that they have that they take from other countries and they bring to America and they put them in these game parks, especially in Texas, and then they can hunt them anytime they want because they become like a commodity instead of it being like there's seasons for deer and there's seasons for elk and there's seasons for everything else,
00:33:51.000but these animals that are non-native, you can hunt them anytime you want.
00:33:55.000So they bring them over there just specifically for that purpose, so they're thriving.
00:34:03.000You know, it's like, yeah, you want the animals to be thriving, but it's kind of weird that the only way they're thriving is if dudes can get out there and shoot them.
00:34:10.000But, and this is, you know, not a tremendously popular sort of argument, but it actually makes a lot of sense.
00:34:20.000Like, when we did this piece on rhino poaching, you know, they kill the rhino just for the horn because they sell it in Vietnam as an aphrodisiac.
00:34:50.000And everyone's, you know, freaking out saying, no, no, no.
00:34:52.000But as long as dudes who are poor can make a ton of money for killing a thing to take the horn, they will.
00:35:01.000Whereas if you just say, okay, well, you know, we'll give you the fucking horn and you can do whatever you want.
00:35:07.000You have as many boners as you want, go nuts.
00:35:10.000That's the only way to save them, is capitalism is killing them, so capitalism has to save them.
00:35:15.000Initially, you go, well, that doesn't sound right.
00:35:17.000But when you think about it, you're like, well, okay, yeah.
00:35:21.000Then the problem is, well, somebody will be, like, someone will regulate it.
00:35:25.000And, like, a company, you know, GM will make the money out of the illegal rhino horns, but they'll still be illegal rhino horns because the guys will get disenfranchised and they'll get screwed out of it somehow.
00:35:38.000But in any way, the argument that you have to make it as economically viable to do the thing, because otherwise they'll just get killed out.
00:35:46.000Imagine if rhino horns really did give you a hard-on.
00:35:49.000Rhinos would have been extinct a long fucking time ago if it really worked.
00:35:52.000But the other thing is, is like, you're like, rhino horns give you a hard-on and whatever.
00:35:56.000You're like, just fucking buy the Angra and Cialis.
00:38:17.000They legally made, you know, drugs, pills, and the meth problem went down and, you know, they were a healthier version of drugs or whatever.
00:38:27.000But they were, like, selling them next to, like, chocolate bars and shit.
00:38:31.000So, you know, the moms and everybody went, well, this is not cool that you can buy meth next to the chocolate bars, quite rightly.
00:40:25.000The guy, all of a sudden, became gay, from this Parkinson's disease, started having risky gay sex with men, leaving ads to meet up places, meeting guys and having sex with them, had no idea who they were, and gambling.
00:43:50.000As if that, in any way, when do we put our foot down and say, I know you're a tolerant person, whoever's saying this, you're trying to preach tolerance.
00:44:00.000You're talking about tolerance for something that kills people that draw cartoons.
00:44:06.000Look, Charlie Hebdo and cartoons and humor in general is meant to be a mirror onto ourselves and we take ourselves so seriously and When you start, I believe if you start any type of censorship, you're fucked.
00:44:21.000Because when, you know, somebody won't like something and then the other person won't like the thing that you like.
00:44:26.000And once you start down that path, And you say, well, you know, Joe, I hate that you like Palestine.
00:44:34.000Well, Shane, I hate that you like Israel.
00:44:36.000Whatever it is, someone's always going to have.
00:44:38.000And the minute someone gets that, then censorship starts.
00:44:41.000And the minute censorship starts, it never stops, first of all.
00:44:45.000Censorship by fear, and we were just, you know, we started the whole conversation about this.
00:45:50.000But the minute you say you're not allowed to say what you want, and if you do, I'll shoot you, then you can fuck off.
00:45:54.000And that's what World War II was fought over.
00:45:57.000That's what World War I was fought over.
00:45:59.000And if we don't say there can be no censorship, then we should have just given up and said, yeah, fuck, we'll just write whatever Hitler wants us to write, because that's what censorship is.
00:46:08.000I was just shocked at how many people who call themselves progressives were taking the stance that the jokes actually were inflammatory.
00:46:16.000But they had the same fucking jokes about everybody.
00:46:19.000They were an equal opportunity asshole.
00:46:44.000What's freaking me out is not just that people are willing to shoot you over a cartoon.
00:46:48.000That's been freaking me out for a long time.
00:46:50.000But that somehow or another people that call themselves progressive will stand up and say, well, you know, I looked at what these people were doing.
00:46:58.000What they were doing was really offensive.
00:47:06.000What's happening now is we're reaching a critical mass, right?
00:47:11.000You're reaching a point where, which by the way, if you look at terrorism, it's been incredibly successful because you're reaching a critical mass where people are saying...
00:47:23.000Now it will be like this, you know, for example, the fight, the reaction was always, well, Islam is a religion of peace.
00:47:31.000Now that's become a joke because everyone's like, well, it's a fucking religion of peace.
00:47:34.000Why does this continue happening, right?
00:47:36.000And so progressives or whatever are trying to say, hey, well, maybe...
00:47:41.000Because they realize that the logical conclusion of this...
00:47:52.000As this polarizes, Islamic fundamentalism gets bigger.
00:47:59.000And then our reaction to that fundamentalism gets worse.
00:48:03.000Because look, I believe I'm a progressive guy.
00:48:07.000I don't know what that means, but I'm non-political on either side.
00:48:11.000And I believe I look at things critically.
00:48:13.000But at a certain point, you're like, well, this is getting bad now, and public opinion is getting heated.
00:48:22.000And the end result of that is going to be you're going to have heated public opinion on one side, a bunch of guys with a bunch of guns on the other, and it's not going to end well.
00:48:31.000So people, it's a type of appeasement, right?
00:48:34.000It's a type of, well, I looked at it, it's not so bad.
00:48:38.000But that type of appeasement by progressives, by really liberal people, which the same type of people that will shit on Christians but use the term Islamophobic for any criticism of any jokes, in fact, any jokes, in fact,
00:48:53.000about Islam or Muslims can be seen as Islamophobic by the same type of people that would have no problem shitting on Christians.
00:49:15.000It's this weird social brownie point thing that they're doing, where they're looking at it as an opportunity to criticize racism or criticize punching down with humor, you know?
00:49:31.000I think, you know, for me, I think it's we're afraid of the outcome because if we keep going on this trajectory, the outcome is going to be problematic.
00:49:43.000I think you have a point there for sure.
00:49:46.000But I also think one of the things that's going on is there's a bunch of people in this culture that have this bizarrely utopian version of what they would like us to be.
00:49:56.000Like the way we should react to anything.
00:50:29.000One thing I would like, if you want, it would be long-winded and boring for most people, but I read a book, if anyone wants to read maybe the most fascinating book ever written about the situation that we're dealing with right now with the rest of the world and Islam,
00:50:51.000It's a journalist who wrote it about in 1979, which was the difference, I believe the year 1400 in the Islamic calendar.
00:51:00.000There was a siege of Mecca and a bunch of dudes who were Wahhabists took over Mecca during Hajj and the royal government, the royal family couldn't go get them because it's illegal to fight in Mecca.
00:51:15.000And so there was a standoff, and they were fighting, people shooting each other, and snipers.
00:51:20.000The French Secret Service gave them drugs to drug them.
00:51:24.000And at the time, it was the same time that was happening the hostage crisis in Tehran.
00:51:30.000So the Ayatollahs, the smart dude, goes, yeah, the Americans, the CIA, have taken over Mecca, which, of course, is, like, the worst thing you could possibly fucking do.
00:51:42.000Embassy in Pakistan, they do all these things because everyone's like, fuck the CIA, they've taken over Mecca, you know?
00:51:48.000And what ended up happening, it's a long story, but an incredible action movie is an incredible story.
00:51:54.000But what happened was the royal family had to go to the clerics and say, you've got to give us a fatwa that we can go into Mecca and fight because you're literally not allowed to bring a gun and a sword and that thing.
00:52:07.000And so you have to give us a special fatwa to go get these terrorists.
00:52:10.000And they're like, well, we kind of believe in what they're saying because the terrorists were actually just Wahhabists saying we need to be more Wahhabists, which is fundamental Islam.
00:52:22.000So they said, we'll give you the fatwa if you then basically give us money to do what they're asking for, to be Wahhabists.
00:52:36.000But then what happens is, from then on, billions and billions of petrodollars, which we pay the Saudi government, then goes to the ulma, the clerics, who then send that money to every country, America, UK... You know,
00:52:52.000France, you know, Pakistan, and they build the biggest mosques.
00:52:56.000And because Mecca is like the Vatican would be, and the Uelma are like the Pope, they build the biggest mosques and they, you know, spend the most money, and then they say, okay, now you teach Wahhabism.
00:53:10.000And, you know, when you look at what's happening with ISIS, you say, how the fuck?
00:53:14.000Can these guys recruit 50,000 foreign fighters in four fucking months?
00:53:21.000They're coming from America, they're coming from France, they're coming from England, because these guys go to these mosques where they're Wahhabist teachings, right?
00:53:29.000And then when you look at it, and when you look at what's happening with things happening in France, with things happening in the UK, with things happening in Pakistan, where we're saying we're not going to go with the Taliban even in Pakistan, now we're We're going with ISIS or the Taliban's aligning with ISIS. And you say,
00:53:46.000how the fuck can that happen overnight?
00:53:49.000How can it happen that all these people are saying, fuck, yeah, that's great, ISIS? It's because we have the Pope and the Vatican saying that that's good, that Wahhabism is good.
00:53:59.000So as long as that continues, the problem on that side is going to get worse, right?
00:54:05.000And then as long as that problem gets worse, we're going to fucking...
00:54:10.000React stronger and stronger as is only human and that's the problem is is we're heading for Some sort of boiling over we're heading for some sort of you know thing and I think and this is me giving people the benefit of the doubt is that some people are saying well fuck if If if we just let into everything now and say those you know everyone's shooting us if we say the wrong thing fuck you let's go and Then it's going to happen sooner rather than later.
00:54:36.000Which might be inevitable if Mecca keeps on funding Wahhabist Sunni doctrine.
00:56:07.000We should be figuring out how to get NFL football into North Korea or like fucking Lassie or Heidi or Dukes of Hazzard or any kind of shit.
00:56:15.000Because I think one of the smartest things that America learned after World War I and World War II is...
00:56:22.000If you expand your troops, it costs a lot of fucking money and it takes a lot of lives.
00:56:27.000Where if you figure out that Marlboros, Cokes, McDonald's and Hollywood, everybody loves them.
00:57:36.000I mean, if Michael Jordan would have gone there, and I hope Michael Jordan, you listen to this, if Michael Jordan would have gone there, it would have been world peace.
00:57:44.000They would kidnap him, force him to do ebony porn.
00:57:46.000No, I think there would have been so much goodwill, he would have said, look, let's just fucking call it a Do you think so?
00:57:52.000If Michael Jordan went to North Korea, I think he would have been a god-like ambassador and he would have been a little bit more sane.
00:57:59.000So you think he could have actually gotten diplomacy accomplished?
00:58:03.000Well, I think there was diplomacy accomplished.
00:58:05.000I think if you look at it, you know, one of the things that, well, besides oil tanking, I think the number one sport in North Korea is basketball.
00:58:29.000And so it's like if Jordan had gone there, or even if the Bulls would have gone there and there had been a real fucking thing and a cultural outreach and whatever, it would have at least sped it up, right?
00:59:08.000Yeah, it's not that much fucking different.
00:59:10.000They had a car, and they had an apartment, and they got two weeks, and they went to Lake Baltum.
00:59:14.000It was a shitty car, and it was a shitty fucking guy from point A to point B. And they kind of were pissed off at their government, but they were kind of like, well, whatever, fuck, there's food in the fucking store, you know?
00:59:45.000But Chinese people who used to come look—you know, they were wearing the Maoist suit and with the stars everywhere, and they looked the same, and they talked the same, and they were still revolutionary— Are now coming in Hawaiian shirts and with a Canon fucking S5 and a fucking thing.
01:01:24.000Because if the army isn't running shit in North Korea, it's over.
01:01:27.000Because the minute the army isn't running shit, they're going to all be in line saying, can I please work at Hyundai for some money because I'm fucking hungry.
01:02:05.000And they wind up taking on the North Korean army, kicking everybody's ass and taking over the country, and they become the president of North Korea.
01:02:15.000I'd like to change it to the best college basketball team in America gets kidnapped by the North Korean despot, which makes them play the...
01:02:27.000Worst pro team in America for a winner-take-all game?
01:02:32.000Because it's always that question at the end of the year.
01:02:34.000If the best college team plays the worst pro team, who would win?
01:04:49.000You know, squatting their haunches for three days while getting kicked in the face.
01:04:55.000I mean, they're in a different level of shit.
01:04:56.000Now, not to take anything away from the best military in the world, which is the American military, but the Russians are fucking tough motherfuckers.
01:05:04.000You hit them in the face with a baseball bat and they smile.
01:06:15.000My question was, I wonder if, like, because Russia suffered the defeat in the Cold War and economic disparity and it was hard times, they've gone through some brutal infighting and all the shit that happened, the people that did survive,
01:06:31.000They're a different, it's like a different lineage.
01:06:36.000Yeah, and I wonder if that's just what happens.
01:06:38.000And then those people rise up, and then the people like us that are on top of things, we start criticizing cartoons, and we get soft and fat.
01:06:47.000Well, maybe the cartoon shouldn't be punching down.
01:06:51.000Yeah, and then we get so unrealistic as to the nature of man and the ways of the world and the way things work right now.
01:06:58.000Not a utopian vision of what could certainly be possible, but the fact, like I saw a t-shirt, you don't like cops, next time you get in trouble call a crackhead.
01:07:07.000Well listen, people that are complaining and bitching about cops, I guarantee you, if someone was breaking into your fucking house, you're gonna call 911. You're right, but whenever I go to any of these places and you see dudes sleeping in the sand,
01:07:22.000eating dirt, cuddling their Kalashnikov for warmth, and then you look at...
01:07:28.000Look, I'll be the first to put my hand up.
01:07:31.000You look at me and I'm like, well, will I have In-N-Out Burger or Wendy's?
01:07:36.000Will I have the super-sized Coke or the Valium?
01:07:59.000You don't want to fight these motherfuckers because they are fucking badass.
01:08:03.000And it's like, I think we've had this discussion before, but when you look at boxing and shit, the tougher the neighborhood, the poorer the neighborhood, the better the boxer because they're fighting for something.
01:08:32.000They're stronger in will and in character because of what they've had to go through.
01:08:36.000I think if you look at the two longest wars in American history, if you look at Iraq and Afghanistan...
01:08:44.000And then I remember when Russia invaded Crimea, which is 90% Russian.
01:08:51.000You know, Fox News was saying this is the first time they've ever gone without a shot and we should go in and what are we going to do?
01:08:56.000And you're like, hold on a second, hold on a second.
01:08:58.000You're talking about going into Russia, which is Russian, to fight Russians about taking over a part of Russia, you know, that traditionally was a part of Russia.
01:09:10.000You know, we had a hard time in Iraq with not the greatest army in the world with a lot of terrorists.
01:09:17.000We had a hard time in In Afghanistan with the Taliban, who aren't even an army in any real sense of the word, you're going to go take on the Russians in Russia's backyard.
01:09:29.000You're going to get a fucking bloody nose like you have never experienced before.
01:09:33.000If you're going to do it, you better be ready to go all in.
01:09:36.000And that's, you know, one of the things that NATO has a thing, that if you attack any NATO country, all of NATO then has to go And go with you.
01:09:45.000Obviously, we're a part of NATO. So that means if anyone fucks with an island of Finland or someone fucks with fucking Norway's fishing rights, whatever, we all got to go in.
01:09:55.000And then you're like, well, we better be ready for that.
01:09:57.000And we better understand what the fuck that means.
01:10:00.000The Russians have been doing fucking...
01:10:03.000Power squads with AK-47s ready to go while we've been sort of eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke and sand.
01:10:11.000I think PlayStation is better than Nintendo.
01:10:15.000What's the real difference between us, though, is economic, right?
01:10:19.000I mean, Russian, they don't have an economy like we do, right?
01:10:24.000There's no difference as far as what they can put into the military, into their budget and their resources.
01:10:30.000Well, you know, Russia and China have always had a different philosophy, which is have a lot more of it.
01:10:35.000You know, so they have more tanks that are shittier, but they've got to shoot ten of them.
01:10:42.000And China used to, that was their thing, waves.
01:10:44.000You know, they'd have waves of people and they would literally, your machine guns would overheat kind of thing.
01:10:49.000So if you look at it, we have the best military in the world, most technologically advanced military in the world, but I don't know what the standing army is, and I'm going to get in shit no matter what number I say, but let's say it's 3 million, right?
01:11:01.000You know, then you look at Russia, it's probably 30, and if you look at China, it's probably 300. A million?
01:11:18.000But yeah, but the thing is, is you can have however many people you want in the most technologically advanced military in the world, but if you're fucking with China, you're in trouble.
01:11:27.000And if you're fucking with Russia, you're in trouble.
01:11:30.000Then it goes to, well, we have a lot more nukes than them, and then obviously that's not a question you want to have.
01:11:34.000Yeah, that's the worst question you can ever get into.
01:11:37.000United States Armed Forces, Standing Army.
01:12:36.000Do you think there is an issue, though, the difference between going to war with someone who doesn't look like what we perceive to be the quintessential or the typical American?
01:12:47.000Yes, but you know what I'm confused about is if you look at America, what would you say the number one security political problem in America is today?
01:13:57.000So Western China, the Uyghurs, or the Uyghurs, are fucking going apeshit in Northern China and Outer Mongolia, and it's causing a huge, massive, massive problem within China, where hundreds and thousands of people are being killed in slaughters and bus stops and train stops.
01:14:15.000And what's interesting is you say, okay...
01:14:18.000The three major powers in the world, America, China, and Russia, right, all share the exact same number one enemy, which is terrorism within their countries, aligned terrorism.
01:17:38.000And so at that point, you know, we're giving money to Pakistan, we're giving money to Saudi, we're giving money to Iran, we're giving money to Iraq.
01:18:20.000But the thing is, because of exactly what you're saying, because of destratification of that power system, That's why you have ISIS. That's why you have all this shit.
01:18:29.000Everyone just thinks ISIS is a bunch of dudes who went out, fucking had a joint and said, you know what, why don't we fucking take al-Qaeda's thunder?
01:18:36.000What happened is you have a huge fucking group from all over the world, international fucking consensus coming in there and saying we're going to make a caliphate.
01:18:45.000And by the way, that caliphate, because they're Wahhabiists, say we want to take over Mecca.
01:18:50.000Once they take over Mecca, if they take over Mecca, hopefully they don't, then you have a real problem.
01:18:56.000Because then you have ISIS saying, we are the Pope and fucking Rome.
01:19:04.000That's why Saudi Arabia is shitting their pants now, is because they were funding all these Wahhabist things, and then ISIS goes, yeah, we're Wahhabists, but we're the real Wahhabists, and we're coming to take Mecca.
01:21:56.000It's like you have to have the veil and you can't be too happy and you can't fucking eat too much licorice and all this shit.
01:22:03.000And, you know, won a ton of awards for it.
01:22:05.000We embedded with ISIS. I personally interviewed a couple guys from ISIS. There was a Canadian guy who was thought to be dead, who's not, and I interviewed him.
01:22:13.000And what's interesting is, I mean, the numbers vary, you know, but the top end, what the number the guy was giving me is they have 50,000 foreign fighters.
01:22:25.000Now, we know that they have 50,000 fighters.
01:22:28.000The argument is, is it like 20,000 or 30,000 foreign and, you know, 20,000 Iraqi Syrian or what the mix-up is?
01:23:09.000You're from America or you're from Canada, you're from France, you're from Germany, you're from the UK. You're fighting...
01:23:18.000In my mind, anyway, for maybe the worst political organization around.
01:23:23.000But in their mind, because they've grown up with these Wahhabist mosques, that's the right thing to do because they need to be Wahhabists in Mecca for it to be true Islam.
01:23:37.000And that's why I think people should take the next look at ISIS. Because ISIS is not going away anytime soon because these people ideologically believe that they are right.
01:23:48.000And the question shouldn't be, what the fuck's happening with ISIS? The question should be, how the fuck could ISIS recruit 50,000 people in fucking six months?
01:23:56.000Well, if you think about what the image of the United States is and how we've invaded these foreign countries, these Islamic countries, and the hatred that a lot of the Islamic radical fundamentalist guys have towards the United States government, if we had a similar enemy to the United States,
01:25:29.000Because you're like, if you just told the American people, we need the fucking oil, and this guy is fucking with our oil, I think that would have been better than weapons of mass destruction and going into the UN and trying to get everybody behind it.
01:25:41.000We understand we are a geopolitical player.
01:25:44.000We're the policemen, the world's policemen.
01:26:17.000In any case, we make shit up and we go in there.
01:26:21.000We fucked shit up so bad for so long that when we leave, right after the day we leave, a fucking cadre of motherfuckers come out called ISIS, which make Al-Qaeda look like a fucking tea party and take over the country.
01:26:54.000There was a time when the British could actually say, you know, we can make decisions that are...
01:26:59.000We are making decisions that are terribly wrong, and the saddest part about that is people are paying for that on our side and on their side with their fucking lives.
01:27:08.000I mean, I'm not in any way downplaying...
01:27:13.000The troops or any military action, but I'm just looking at it from a purely objective point of view, almost like a mathematical point of view.
01:27:21.000Isn't that a cause and effect type situation?
01:27:23.000I mean, you enter into a country, you have what is the number of casualties of civilians in Iraq?
01:27:43.000What does anybody in their right mind think the reaction of those people is going to be unless they're so completely detached from those people on the ground that you don't take that into account at all when you make your decision?
01:27:53.000That's my long-winded answer to your question, which is if someone did that to America...
01:28:17.000And then everybody's sitting there going, well, fuck, we'll just go bomb ISIS, those ISIS motherfuckers cutting people's heads off.
01:28:23.000Fuck ISIS, fuck ISIS. And you're like, I agree, fuck ISIS. I'm a journalist.
01:28:26.000They're going to cut my head off, so I don't like them.
01:28:28.000But at the same time, you're sitting there going, okay, why is no one asking?
01:28:34.000Why is no one asking, how the fuck did these motherfuckers become popular?
01:28:37.000How the fuck did they recruit guys from Virginia?
01:28:40.000How did they recruit guys from France?
01:28:42.000How did they recruit guys from England?
01:28:43.000Where the fuck are these guys coming from?
01:28:46.000And how did they take over Syria and fucking Iraq when you have every army in the world there and every fucking commando unit and every intelligence agency and these fucking bunch of new guys, new kids on the block took over everybody's shit.
01:28:59.000And the reason why is because A... There's institutional fucking money funding them because we fucked up shit bad on our side.
01:29:07.000Now, we should take the learnings that we've done and say, look, ISIS isn't going anywhere.
01:29:12.000And unless we fucking, you know, go apeshit, guess what?
01:29:16.000It's going to make Al-Qaeda look like a tea party.
01:29:43.000Because there's nothing better in life, and I don't know if you agree with me, but when you get older...
01:29:50.000Besides family, because family for me is number one.
01:29:52.000You have your kids, which are everything.
01:29:55.000But you get a bit older, you know a bit of shit.
01:29:58.000You have a drink, you have a steak, you talk to somebody and you say, look, this is important shit.
01:30:04.000The greatest thing that we have, you and I, is that we can talk about this shit and people actually listen to us.
01:30:12.000Because I believe that people all over America, North America, Europe, are having the exact same discussions.
01:30:20.000And unless everybody goes, you know what, that's fucking true.
01:30:23.000These guys are being cocksuckers and fuck ISIS and we gotta stop this fucking sea level rise.
01:30:30.000That's the beauty about what we can do, is that we live in a world where we can talk and have a few drinks and say what we believe in.
01:30:38.000And literally, I get it every time, like, you know, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, Facebook, Twitter, everyone's saying, okay, good, I'm fucking down, what do we do next?
01:30:56.000Is that we live a life where we can have a discussion, and it actually matters, and people will listen and say, what do we do next?
01:31:02.000Well, I think that's one of the things that's held back all cultures, is the ability to communicate with each other and find out that we're more alike than we are different.
01:31:27.000Back in the day, this would be NBC. People would come in and they'd talk their shit and they'd say whatever they say and then they'd leave.
01:31:37.000Now it's a lot less prohibitively expensive than building NBC. But that's why whenever I come here and I try to come here every time I come to L.A., It's because this is the future of...
01:31:49.000It's NBC, but it's NBC for our people.
01:31:57.000But one of the things I love about coming here, and this is why I get rankled about censorship, is Joe Rogan has to be able to say whatever the fuck he wants, no matter what.
01:32:06.000Shane Smith has to be able to say whatever the fuck I want, no matter what.
01:32:13.000You can say, fuck you, Shane, I hate you.
01:32:15.000You're not allowed to shoot me without me trying to shoot you back.
01:32:18.000But while we have freedom of speech and while we have communication, while we have all this shit, we should celebrate the shit out of it and we should tell everybody else out there that they should celebrate the shit out of it because that's what true freedom is.
01:32:31.000Unless we're allowed to say whatever the fuck we want to say, there is no such thing as freedom.
01:32:36.000There is no such thing as true freedom if you can't express yourself.
01:35:13.000The opportunity for contagion increases.
01:35:20.000That's why we're doing our 24-hour news network, because you're like, who gives a fuck about the news cycle?
01:35:26.000They found the plane, so therefore, who cares?
01:35:30.000When we left Iraq, that's when the problem started, and nobody paid any attention while ISIS built up.
01:35:36.000You know, you look at West Africa and you say, Ebola is fucking still raging.
01:35:42.000But now it's fucking, the nurse didn't get it into Houston, so we're okay.
01:35:47.000I mean, there is Africa fatigue, there is Iraq fatigue, there is Iran fatigue, and it's like, now we're going to enter into domestic elections and we'll be fascinated with what goes on there.
01:36:01.000Because as you start looking at all the various aspects of our culture that we could change, it could be better, and we look at life and death, just look at the deaths that we have in this country because of cigarettes.
01:36:10.000I don't have any problem with people smoking cigarettes if you truly want to, but the fact that that's sort of this ignored thing.
01:36:18.000If everyone stood back, if everyone, like the entire government, had a whole anti-cigarette week, Where they said, and every day on the news they broadcast a special about this is a person who started smoking when they were 16, here they are when they're 15, getting half their throat removed and show that shit on television.
01:36:36.000How long would it be before the numbers just radically dropped?
01:36:39.000And the number of people that you saw dead every year radically dropped from cancer.
01:37:07.000That was Obamacare, which, by the way, calling like affordable health care Obamacare is funny because you're just labeling Obama.
01:37:15.000And if you look at it just as if you take a step back, and by the way, I don't want to get embroiled into it because I... I'm not an expert, but globally, you're like, universal healthcare is like a thing.
01:37:26.000Like, people should be universal healthcare or whatever.
01:37:29.000Now, granted, I come from Canada, where universal healthcare when I grew up was good.
01:37:34.000However, that said, I'm not a huge believer in the government...
01:37:39.000Running anything because governments, I believe, because I grew up in a government town, are inefficient and they spend 80% of the money on themselves and 20% on the thing.
01:37:50.000So I'm not like a huge believer in government doing anything.
01:37:53.000That said, universal health care for the richest country in the world seems like fucking we should have it.
01:37:59.000That became the greatest single debate and probably the worst thing for...
01:38:04.000Definitely Obama, but for sure maybe up there in top five for the Democratic Party.
01:38:10.000And essentially it was like a thing that if you looked at it in the world context, every rich industrial country has universal health care.
01:38:19.000It's just a boring, it's a fucking given, it's a nothing.
01:38:22.000And that became such a fucking huge thing because it was the government interfering into...
01:38:33.000And because of that, the extrapolation became a thing.
01:38:36.000And I found that to be an amazing litmus test on the American psyche because you sit there and say, I mean, quite frankly, who the fuck cares?
01:38:47.000You know how much money we're misspending on healthcare?
01:38:50.000I get taxed more in America than I did in Canada, in communist Canada.
01:38:55.000I get taxed more in America and the fucking money gets thrown down the toilet.
01:39:00.000I would be a fucking tea party motherfucker on the taxation side because you tax me the same in Canada but the schools suck and the hospitals suck, whatever.
01:39:10.000But you have to have universal healthcare.
01:39:12.000You cannot be the richest country in the world and have fucking people dying on the street and just rotting there because, well, fuck, you know, they couldn't afford it.
01:39:39.000We're going to argue about, can we fund the government?
01:39:43.000We're going to argue about fucking, are we going to pay our own debt?
01:39:47.000We're going to argue about, you know, what shoe we put on the right foot versus the left foot.
01:39:52.000And that's the problem is, if you talk to Petraeus, who now is up against charges, but Secretary Gates, anyone, they will all tell you the greatest...
01:40:03.000The greatest problem for American security is the inaction of the government.
01:40:08.000The government cannot enact fucking anything.
01:40:11.000And that is the problem that you have today is you have something like Affordable Health Care Act just becoming a huge politicized issue where someone should have just said, look, it's going to cost us 0.01% of the fucking thing to make universal health care, which we can't fucking hold our heads up if we don't have it.
01:40:28.000Just fucking do it and we'll shut up and fucking get on with fucking whatever the fuck else it is.
01:40:32.000Became the number one political issue of last year.
01:41:12.000When something happens, like ISIS, or something along those lines where there's a real military movement against this big machine in America, I wonder if it excites some sort of primal DNA. Yeah, I got it.
01:43:04.000What I was going to say was that someone took a cheap bottle of vodka and poured it through those Brita water filters and did it like seven or eight times, and it came out as good as any vodka you could ever buy.
01:44:24.000They would do the taste test and you'd be like, if you can't taste the difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi, you're fucking...
01:44:29.000I hate your guts because they're completely different fucking things.
01:44:33.000In any case, I always pretend and I've always been waiting for a drink that's going to be as powerful and amazing and hit you as hard as a Coca-Cola.
01:44:43.000And every time you have one, it's just minorly disappointing.
01:45:55.000When you're at Vegas and you're playing, you can drink 50 vodka sodas and just be like, there's the water in there, it's the purest of the spirit, and if you drink 50 fucking jacks, you're fighting the croupier, you're shitting on the floor, you're running around...
01:50:45.000In fact, they've been in four years of trials, 100% success, right?
01:50:49.000And it's blood cancer, so it's leukemia.
01:50:53.000And so I started saying, well, holy fuck, because my mom had cancer and my stepmom died of cancer.
01:51:00.000Everyone's had somebody affected by cancer.
01:51:03.000So I'm like, holy shit, they re-engineered HIV. We're good to go.
01:51:24.000Bone cancer and you see one woman had a golf ball sized tumor in her head and then like they inject her with measles and the fucking measles eat the cancer, like eat it, which was previously inoperable,
01:51:42.000So there's, in Houston they're doing it, in Mayo Clinic, in Penn State, and in Ottawa, Canada.
01:51:51.000The guy who first discovered it was a guy who came across this paper where hookers who used to get cervical cancer also used to get rabies.
01:53:03.000Well, they actually, so they re-engineer the virus.
01:53:07.000The virus, for example, the measles virus actually comes from 1953, and it's the kid whose throat culture they took that we've been using as a measles virus for the last however long.
01:53:20.000These guys in Houston are using a cold virus, which we're all immune to.
01:53:23.000The HIV one, they actually reprogram so that it doesn't eat our T cells.
01:53:30.000But what's incredibly interesting about that is these guys figured out that what happened was cancer puts our immune system to sleep.
01:53:41.000And so that viruses activate our immune system.
01:53:44.000So the virus just goes into the cancer, says here it is, and then the immune system goes and eats it.
01:53:50.000So for the past six months, I've met the top five or six medical teams in the world as they explain this shit to me, and I'm thick as fuck, so I didn't get half of it.
01:53:58.000But what's interesting about it is the first step to curing cancer caused by the shit that used to kill us, because measles used to kill like 150 million people a year.
01:54:09.000It was the fucking worst thing you could Now the measles brings all the fucking white cells and eats the cancer.
01:55:34.000And I don't mean on purpose meaning there's some sort of a grand scheme, sort of an overlying conspiracy to the way the world runs.
01:55:43.000But I often wonder the way people behave, even the way you see people behave when they know they're in a relationship where their husband's never going to leave or their wife is never going to leave or they know they're in a job.
01:55:57.000Like, there's certain college professors when they get tenure.
01:56:14.000I've been listening to the last, and this is like maybe the fourth or fifth time in just the last year that I've listened to this Dan Carlin series on the Mongols.
01:56:38.000It's essentially a dramatic version of history, and not just the Mongols, but everything from World War I. There's so much shit that this guy covers in such an incredible dramatic fashion.
01:56:49.000As I'm listening to these tales of carnage and conquest, I'm wondering, what the fuck is it that compels people to operate in this way?
01:56:59.000What is it about someone who gets in power and abuses that power, whether it's a priest or whether it's a politician or a police officer?
01:57:10.000Like, is it just something that, like, ingrained in us to resist, like, to have the strength to resist opposition so that when the opposition isn't there and you have ultimate power, you spool up your power to ultimately resist opposition again.
01:57:27.000It's like you gather up your resources when you have control.
01:57:40.000And I think that's the one thing that troubles most of us.
01:57:44.000Most of us rational thinking people who live in urban environments who don't have to worry about anything other than like normal petty bullshit, the occasional crime.
01:57:52.000What we're worried about is like, what the fuck is going on in...
01:59:50.000But I woke up, and it was my daughter's first day of school, right?
01:59:54.000And so, you know, I got to take my daughter to the first day of school.
01:59:56.000And I was thinking about school, and I'd always been like, you know, I went to sort of public school, rough schools, and I think that's where I got to where I am, because school is just bullshit.
02:00:39.000Is something that you like doing, and you make some money, and maybe you make a difference, or at least you convince yourself you make a difference.
02:00:46.000And, you know, you make enough money to maybe buy a house, and maybe you can retire somewhere warm, because fucking cold makes your arthritis ache.
02:00:54.000I'm literally thinking about, like, life, you know?
02:00:56.000Because, you know, like, I went to school, and then I worked, and then you got a career, and then you tried this, and you did all this shit.
02:01:46.000I can move to fucking my private island, put my Amadeus wig on, put the fucking ponytail butt plug up the ass and ride my fucking horse into the sunset.
02:02:35.000Going out there and saying, hey everybody, you can listen to me or not, but Antarctica's fucking melting.
02:02:42.000And if I don't say something about that, then I can't look my daughter in the eye when I figure her Kraft macaroni and cheese would be burger.
02:03:34.000And so at this point, you're like, I can either ride off into the sunset And say, fuck it, I'll sit on an island beach and I'll drink fucking mezcal every day.
02:03:44.000Or you can go out there and say, no matter what, I'm going to kick against the pricks.
02:03:48.000I'm going to say, this ain't fucking right.
02:03:50.000By the way, what you're saying is bullshit.
02:04:27.000That's the question you should ask yourself in 2015. Not am I going to lose weight.
02:04:31.000Not am I going to read more fucking books.
02:04:33.000Not am I going to go wear Skechers instead of Nikes.
02:04:36.000It should be, why the fuck do I get up in the fucking morning?
02:04:40.000And now we're very lucky motherfuckers that we're post-economic and we can fucking say, I'm going to get up in the morning because of this.
02:04:47.000I like how the 1% has relabeled themselves post-economic.
02:04:52.000Well, I'm the newest of the 1% and I'm giving it all away because I'll tell you one thing.
02:04:59.000Money means a fuck of a lot when you don't have it.
02:05:01.000My old man told me the only thing that ever made any sense about money.
02:05:05.000He said, life is like a shit sandwich.
02:05:07.000The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat.
02:05:09.000But once you get it, once you get that A +, you just say, fuck it.
02:05:30.000Don't put Joe's Tuna Bards and Tequila Boom Boom Room in there.
02:05:34.000Just leave it fucking gorgeous because fucking that's godhead to me is nature.
02:05:39.000Well, I think one of the things that's changing in our world is that more people have the ability to communicate.
02:05:46.000They might not be able to communicate on the scale that is like a podcast like this, but they have the ability to express themselves to us and maybe, you know, if you were on Twitter or Facebook or you...
02:05:58.000You ran into them in some form of social media.
02:06:00.000You might read what they said and take it into account.
02:06:03.000So something about them trying to express themselves has some sort of a meaning.
02:06:07.000One of the things that has the most impact for those people is someone who can reach millions of people who represents their point of view.
02:06:16.000Because most of them feel disenfranchised.
02:07:03.000But this is just, it's not just as good as being a president, but it's as far as like what I can do with who I am and what personality I've sort of developed along this path of life.
02:07:15.000If I wasn't me and I saw me and I said, hey man, you should talk about this shit because this is kind of weird.
02:11:27.000But what I will say is, it's true, it's true, money won't buy you happiness, but guess what?
02:11:33.000Your family not having to worry about where the next rent check's coming from, you know, being able to fucking feed your kids, all that shit, that is important.
02:12:06.000You're fucking sitting here with me doing a back-to-back podcast, talking about shit, challenging people, putting information into people's minds.
02:12:26.000Because this is important, and we always get to this at the end of the day, is there is a movement of like-minded people who have the A +, who go, I don't give a fuck about the A+. I don't give a fuck about the money.
02:12:39.000I don't give a shit about you were the fucking biggest star.
02:13:43.000As I've gotten older, one of the things that I've really come to grips with in this really strange way is that for this brief glimpse that we're awake and alive, we're really just a blip in this infinite number of blips.
02:13:59.000And what I... Everybody worries about their own finite nature.
02:14:04.000It's one of the things that troubles all of us, and I'm one of those people.
02:14:10.000I think anybody that's not troubled by the idea that you only have a certain amount of days and hours and minutes on this earth before eventually this vehicle shuts down and stops working.
02:14:21.000What are the things that are important to you while you're here?
02:14:25.000And what's important to you while you're here is trying to spread what I would call harmony.
02:14:30.000What I would try to call this community.
02:14:35.000The ability to develop really honest, friendly relationships.
02:14:40.000And I think a lot of what we have, whether it's issues with I think a lot of the issues that we have across the board with human beings with various ideologies is a lack of communication, a lack of understanding that at the end of the day we're like each other more than we're different and what separates us and what you're talking about and the good thing about having financial independence is that once you have financial independence It releases you
02:15:11.000in a way that's indescribable to people that are caught up in the constant, very common web of...
02:16:52.000So, the one thing, the responsibility that I think a person like you has, or a person like I have, is that once you are slightly ahead of that wave, to let people know what it's like.
02:17:03.000Let people know what's going on up here.
02:17:05.000And also let people know, like, you're being misled.
02:19:57.000People like Vice News but they don't like the other Vice?
02:19:59.000Well, because Vice, when we came up, was like poo-poo cacking, crazy Vice, you know.
02:20:06.000General butt naked, that kind of shit.
02:20:07.000Yeah, but now news became so big overnight.
02:20:12.000Vice News and Vice are now fighting each other for being how big they are.
02:20:16.000And so now people are like, I want to see Pupu Kaka and the Bum Bums or I don't want to see your music shit or your travel shit.
02:20:22.000And I'm like, well then just turn it into Vice News, don't turn it into the other shit.
02:20:26.000But the fact is this news became so fucking big that it's now coloring the rest of the brand because the rest of the brand used to be It used to be everything.
02:20:35.000And now everybody just wants fucking news.
02:20:37.000Which, by the way, I love news, but I still like all the other shit too.
02:21:41.000So A, B, and this hits on, well, I don't know about you, but about me and my life, is that you sit there and you say, you know...
02:21:55.000I had a small company before and it was 10 people in a room and you're like, Joe, you got the fucking photo and fucking Ted, do you have the thing?
02:23:18.000And we believe we'll have the largest audience in the world online, collectively online, mobile and TV. And then the question is, okay, great.
02:23:34.000All of the people, the Spikes and the Harmonies and the Us and whoever else, now we're saying like, We can put whatever the fuck we want out to the largest audience in the world.
02:23:45.000We just don't want to put shit out there because why the fuck are we getting out of bed in the morning?
02:23:50.000And that is going to be our 2015 and that is why I believe I'm positive.
02:24:01.000But at least I'm going to have that shot and we're going to go out and we're going to try to do something that doesn't suck.
02:24:05.000Well, there's a bunch of people that will complain about anybody in any position of power that is either above them or has more influence than them.
02:24:12.000But if there's a person that you would be like, oh, that guy got it?
02:24:19.000As a person that I would be relaxed in a position to disseminate information, it would be you.
02:24:24.000And again, this is more of what most people hate about this show is us sucking each other's dicks.
02:24:55.000Because literally, we've said it before, and I would challenge somebody to watch the trajectory of these podcasts, because we're going to launch one of the largest TV networks in the world.
02:25:06.000We'll launch it on the Joe Rogan show.
02:25:20.000And by the way, we are the new audience.
02:25:22.000And one thing I'd like to say for anyone who gives a shit, because I think for 100 people who say fucking Rogan and Shane doing stuff is good, when people say you're so self-congratulatory, the reason why...
02:26:16.000Just to be a human being, the fact that you and I are having this conversation, two freakazoids who would never be on anything any fucking other way, even if we get in the shit for it, I'm going to say it every time.
02:26:29.000Because if I'm going to ever do anything and announce anything I'm going to do on The Rogan Show, why?
02:26:46.000But I see what you're saying, and it sort of aligns with what I'm saying, is that we find ourselves in very unique positions that we didn't expect to be in.
02:26:57.000And those positions happened because everything aligned with information.
02:27:18.000But there's an awareness of the fact that this is being broadcast that makes us stay on point and focus on some, and occasionally a little dick sucking every now and then.
02:27:35.000I would say the hundred people saying I love the Rogan podcast versus the one dick sucker.
02:27:42.000The one thing I would just like to say is what I'm doing is saying that this is the first time in media history where conversations like this can happen.
02:28:33.000I mean, Duncan and I and Ari and I, we've done many podcasts on planes.
02:28:38.000When we're sitting next to each other, one of us will hold the phone up in between the armrests and we'll just talk and we'll have a podcast on a plane.
02:28:45.000You know what also the big difference is?
02:28:48.000Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are out there.
02:28:52.000It used to be maybe it's three, four, five, six.
02:29:28.000But I do, because anyone who couldn't but all of a sudden was given the opportunity would.
02:29:34.000And that's exactly the situation I find myself in.
02:29:37.000All of it has played out for all of us in a very unique way that none of us could have planned out, including just the average person that is on Facebook or Twitter that sends a message that you respond to or I respond to or anybody, Duncan, or anyone responds to.
02:29:54.000We're in this weird era of communication that's never existed before.
02:29:57.000And we're a part of it as much as anyone else.
02:30:00.000And we're a part of it in that we represent that even though you do make a lot of money or you do pay a lot of taxes, you still are just a regular person.
02:30:11.000And you will continue to do those stories that you find fascinating and in need of illumination.
02:30:18.000All these stories, whether it's your story, you went to North Korea, you were rich as fuck, you didn't have to go there.
02:30:22.000You did that because this was compelling and this was also something that you felt like needed to be illuminated.
02:30:28.000But you also have to look at you and say, okay, you know, where's everyone else doing that?
02:31:37.000But the reality is that guy can't do this.
02:31:40.000If Shane Smith wants to go out and have his own podcast, and you do it in a sumo diaper, one of those crazy sumo diapers, and you have all these Thai ladyboys around you, and you're drinking fucking drinks with umbrellas in it, and you're smoking big spliffs,
02:31:56.000But you're still talking about the world and important points.
02:32:18.000But what I will say is, and this is a big deal for me anyways, personally, is we were in negotiations with Time Warner and we were in negotiations with a lot of people.
02:32:31.000And, you know, I could have made a lot of money.
02:32:33.000But they wanted Anderson Cooper and you to go on a cruise.
02:32:49.000Quite frankly, let's be honest, because this goes back to one day you wake up and say, I got the money, I won the game, what the fuck am I doing?
02:32:57.000Why am I fighting so hard for control?
02:32:59.000I vote 95% of the board on the largest single shareholder advice.
02:33:05.000Why didn't I take money off the board and spend it?
02:33:08.000By the way, I'm not setting myself up.
02:33:10.000I don't know the answer to that question.
02:33:12.000But at least for now, I run fucking Vice.
02:33:16.000Now, I don't run it perfectly because a lot of shit gets through that shouldn't get through and a lot of things happen that shouldn't happen because I don't have enough time in the day and there's a bottleneck and I have to get better at that.
02:33:28.000But the thing is, I was able to launch...
02:34:27.000You got two medium old guys here who like a fucking few drinks.
02:34:32.000And by the way, we're regular dudes who just grew up and said, hey, I watched Scooby-Doo when I was young, and then I did this, and then I did that, and now we're just sitting here.
02:34:39.000That said, I believe that we're in the majority.
02:34:42.000I believe that us and people like us are in the majority, and we look at shit now and say, hold on a second.
02:34:48.000All these old motherfuckers are dying off.
02:38:42.000And I think that that's one of the weird things about life is that no one comes out of the box with any sort of understanding of what the grand spectrum of this experience is about.
02:38:55.000The scariest thing in life is teenage boys.
02:39:02.000I was a teenage boy, and I would fuck the shit up.
02:39:06.000And every time I'm in, it doesn't matter if you're in Africa, Afghanistan, whatever, if you see a bunch of teenage kids with guns, you're fucked.
02:39:12.000If you see a guy with a gray beard, you're like, I can talk to this guy.
02:39:47.000Because of the limited amount of information that you've been exposed to, the limited amount of people that you've met, the limited amount of friends that you've had, you start forming your world.
02:40:41.000But the fact of the matter is, no matter how bad the fight or how drunk I was driving my car home or jumping off the bridge into the water In the back of my mind,
02:41:00.000And even because I hung out with this gang of kids and a bunch of them died from drug overdoses and a bunch of them died from car accidents.
02:42:31.000Enjoy your food, enjoy your fucking sleep, enjoy your book, whatever the fuck it is.
02:42:36.000But the other thing is, if you don't have future, if you don't have like, tomorrow's gonna be good too, you know, then you're fucked and that's why we all have to participate in that shit.
02:43:19.000Because if you didn't, you would never learn the lessons that you learned.
02:43:22.000I mean, I'm not claiming that I've gone the perfect path, but...
02:43:29.000Every fucking disaster I've ever been a part of, every mistake I've ever made, it's made me humble, reconsider, be more considerate, be more introspective, be more observant, be more objective.
02:43:42.000Just look at it from, you have to fuck up.
02:43:45.000You can't, like, everybody that fucks up, they feel like they're a bad person because they fucked up.
02:45:01.000It's hard, and you have to have a little bit of luck as well.
02:45:05.000And everyone else tells their kids, it's fine, it's good, it's going to be great.
02:45:09.000And my old man was like, actually, it's going to be fucking hard, so you better really fucking try to hit it, because if you get fucked up, it's only going to travel with you.
02:45:18.000And at that point, you sit there and go, honesty goes a long way.