In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with a good friend and former colleague of mine, Alex Blumberg, to talk about the early days of Vice and how he got into the news business, what it's like to be a reporter in the late 90s and early 2000s, and what it was like growing up in a small town in the south of England. We also talk about his time at Vice and some of the things he's been up to since leaving the job. It's a good one, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it. Thank you so much to Alex for being on the podcast and for being a friend of mine. I really appreciate it and I know you will too. If you like it, tweet me and let me know what you think! Timestamps: 4:00 - How did Alex get into journalism? 5:30 - What's the worst job he's ever had 6:00 - What was it like being a reporter? 7:20 - What is it like working at Vice? 8:15 - What kind of work Alex has been doing 9:40 - What does it take to do the job 10:30 - Who's better than Brian Williams? 11:20 12:40 13:00 | What's your favorite part of the job? 15:30 | Is there something missing from a journalist? 16: Is there a broken part? 17:15 | What s missing? 18:00 // 17: Is he's built for the job ? 19:40 | What is the broken part of a broken? 21:00 / 22:10 | Is he built for me? 22:30 // Is he a broken guy? 25:00 + 22:00/23: What s his broken part ? 26:10 27:10 / 26:30 / 27:00 @ what s he's really built for this job? & 27: What do you like about him? 29:00? 32:30 Is he on antidepressants? 35:00 Is he missing a broken head? 36:00 & 33: Is this guy a broken 33:00 Can he be a broken person? & 35:50 / 35:30/36:00 Do you think he's a broken man?
00:00:47.000We did our weekly show, and then that was doing well, so they gave us a daily show, and they were going to just put it on HBO Now and Go, but then it was doing so well, they put us on the air on TV, so it's every night.
00:00:57.000This is the best possible compliment for your show.
00:01:00.000Your show is like what I would expect someone who's never done a show before to do if you just gave them a fuckload of money.
00:01:08.000And gave the hosts who have really never hosted anything before and gave them a fuckload of money.
00:01:30.000And when we started, the criticisms came.
00:01:33.000My favorite was from the New York Times.
00:01:36.000It's just a bunch of hipsters in skinny jeans and tattoos high-fiving in war zones.
00:01:42.000And I was like, if you aren't criticizing the news, aren't criticizing the truth or the facts or the stories, you're just criticizing that we have tattoos and we don't look like you, we won.
00:02:01.000It's really interesting to see a bunch of young weirdos in war zones.
00:02:05.000You know, there was one that you guys did, I don't remember the location it was, but one of your reporters was out there, and he had a flak jacket on, and he was surrounded by all these rebels in these bombed out buildings, and you could hear, boom!
00:02:19.000You hear things going off in the distance, and he's kind of calmly explaining, okay, so what's going on is they're bombing the location very close to us, and they're over there, and he's pointing at it.
00:02:32.000We just did a thing on the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and how it's basically going back to the same borders that it was pre-invasion.
00:02:42.000And he's under fire the whole time, and he's just like...
00:02:47.000And he just goes down on one knee and he keeps talking, unfazed.
00:02:50.000And as they're driving back, they're clearing out these IEDs and they're just pulling it with a rope and pulling out the IEDs with a rope.
00:03:11.000I asked him about it one time, and he goes, you know, I have this thing where there's like a 30-second lag between like some guy like, you want to die?
00:03:19.000And he's got a 30-second lag between like when he realizes that.
00:03:23.000And so he comes across as just sort of like, you know, unflappable, but it's a genetic thing.
00:03:30.000He's also fucking the best war journalist out there.
00:03:50.000And then the meme comes, you know, with the sunglasses fall down, the thug life meme with him.
00:03:55.000And you do get a lot of fake news, though.
00:03:59.000You're getting a lot of these unsubstantiated reports about him with prostitutes and urine, and they're talking about it on the fucking news, which is unprecedented.
00:04:32.000The problem is, you know, we view ourselves as centrist and sort of press record, all that stuff, but if the world takes us over a giant leap to the right with You know, fake news and all this crazy shit happening, then you're sitting there sort of going, well, all of a sudden we're put in this position.
00:04:49.000Like, for me, I always bring it up and say, like, I'm an environmentalist because there's a boogeyman there.
00:04:53.000Like, we all get fucked if the environment gets fucked.
00:04:56.000And there's a boogeyman that we can sort of, you know, go against, and it's good for everybody, you know, whatever.
00:05:03.000And the problem is, is I don't know when environmentalism became a left thing.
00:05:08.000It should be for anyone who's sane, anyone who's smart.
00:05:11.000And, you know, I spend time, like, going back to war, like, when you spend a lot of time in war zones, the one thing when you talk to people in those war zones is war is fucked.
00:05:21.000It's not fun, it's not heroic, it's not like a manly shot in the, you know, it's like, you know, catheter bags and you're fucked up and, you know, you're on PTSD. Half your head's missing.
00:05:30.000Half your head's missing, your ass is missing, your balls are missing.
00:05:33.000And so when you go to these things, you never want to go back kind of thing.
00:05:37.000You know, when you talk about the environment, when you talk to the scientists, they're all like, well, of course it's a global scientific consensus.
00:06:19.000We said, what the fuck is happening here?
00:06:22.000And there's now three AGs, three attorneys general, with 20 other in support who've come out for this lawsuit now against Exxon.
00:06:33.000CEO of Exxon is now our Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.
00:06:37.000And so what happened was they knew in the 70s and 80s that fossil fuel...
00:06:47.000You know burning fossil fuels carbon in the air carbon emission caused global warming and was a factor for global warming and Then they realized this is gonna be bad for business so in the 80s and 90s and now they spend billions of dollars on You know discrediting the science.
00:08:04.000You're like, no, the science isn't settled yet.
00:08:06.000Well, that whole argument that the science isn't settled yet, like you said, it's being perpetrated by the people that can profit on the science not being settled yet.
00:08:18.000And what gets scary is it makes it real convenient for right-wing people who just classically think and vote and behave right-wing to just adopt that thinking and then repeat and pair those words.
00:08:42.000There was a new report that came out today about the infrastructure in terms of the water supply, the pipes that we have, that the water's being carried with, that they're all rotting out in a place in this country.
00:09:04.000America's 1.2 million miles of deteriorating lead pipes and they'll cost one trillion dollars to fix.
00:09:10.000One thing that I like about Trump is that he has been saying that he wants to address the infrastructure and he wants to put people to work fixing all the problems that exist and creating jobs by fixing all these types of problems.
00:09:21.000Which is another famous president said the same thing.
00:09:35.000Well, it's interesting, you know, because the president, if you really look at it, traditionally, you know, their big power is right now is when you do appointees or when you get a judge through or when you do an appointee, you put your cabinet together.
00:09:51.000And then the cabinet has power and the president goes on to opening, you know, bridges and, you know, flying around the world and shaking hands and kissing babies.
00:10:00.000And I think that that's what, you know, what we said is we're not going to, as a news agency, look at the boombastic or the, you know, the titillating headlines or the, oh, my God, he said that.
00:10:14.000We're going to look at what is the EPA's With a guy who runs the EPA who tried to sue the EPA and shut it down.
00:10:22.000What does the Department of Energy look like with Rick Perry, who, when he ran for president, said, I would shut down the Department of Energy.
00:10:29.000What does that look with him actually running it?
00:10:32.000Or Sessions, who actually is now the Attorney General, who sued the government many times against climate change reform.
00:10:40.000Or Rex Tillerson, you know, who ran the largest fossil fuel company in the world, now being Secretary of State.
00:10:46.000So we're looking more at just policy, what policy, you know, changes because of this cabinet, etc., etc.
00:11:35.000Which is, you know, obviously for some people that don't like abortions, it's a very touchy subject, which ironically are the same people who love war.
00:12:09.000I don't really think so much about Trump as much as two things.
00:12:13.000I think, A, it shows a sort of generational divide.
00:12:18.000You know, it's not just Trump, because you saw it in Brexit, you're seeing it in France, you saw it in Italy, you're seeing it in many countries around the world, where you have the largest cohort, the largest demographic now is Gen Y. But the socio-economic and political power is mostly still controlled by the boomers.
00:12:38.000So you have this sort of generational, you know, divide.
00:12:42.000And what happened in America was, you know, the Gen Y was more fractured.
00:12:49.000You know, we talked a little bit about this.
00:12:51.000It fractured because of Bernie Sanders and Hillary and people just didn't like Hillary.
00:12:55.000And so, and by the way, she's, you know, an older generation as well.
00:12:59.000And then Trump was the sort of baby boomers, like, living in the gated community, saying, we don't want all that bad shit to happen.
00:13:04.000I understand why people don't want to believe in environmental change, because it's scary and it's bad, and it's like, fuck, I don't want to believe in that, so I'm not going to believe in that.
00:14:57.000They have armored cars and guys with guns.
00:14:59.000I know a lot of guys who are former SEALs and guys who work for Blackwater, and now they're fucking holding guns at weed shops because they got a million dollars in cash in the back.
00:15:09.000Which is bad enough with one state, but when it's 20 states...
00:15:12.000Not only that, how many fucking places in that state?
00:15:33.000And, you know, the whole thing, to me, it was really disappointing when the DEA didn't change the classification from Schedule 1 in August.
00:16:45.000And instead of looking at it pragmatically, objectively, looking at the science, they're looking at it like some goddamn 1950s episode of Dragnet.
00:17:31.000They give you, you know how those old ladies that take pills?
00:17:34.000Like if you're, like someone else take your arthritis medication and you have like seven days and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those little things.
00:18:38.000And they're passing around bongs and pipes and cookies and cakes, and they had security there to make sure no one didn't come, and they had it all blocked off.
00:18:46.000They did a smart job, like the way they handled it, but as far as actually judging what's the best pot, get the fuck out of here.
00:19:53.000At least five days a week, I probably smoke weed.
00:19:56.000So when I see people that tried for the first time, and you see that terrified look in their eye, they're confronted with their own mortality, and they feel the earth spinning, and they're like, Jesus!
00:20:05.000I've got a question for you, Mr. Smoker.
00:20:37.000Okay, but the thing is, I got a question because I was thinking about this the other day, because I'm like reading all about, you know, how it stops cancer, and this is great for this, and great for that, and all this other stuff, so I'm like, fuck yeah.
00:20:48.000But isn't smoking it still bad for you?
00:22:48.000See, the whole deal is that they're packaged already, and when you're getting these ones that are pre-packaged, you throw them away when they're done.
00:23:22.000Anything that shows some promise re-cancer, we should be going whole hog after.
00:23:28.000And the fact that we're not is just ridiculous.
00:23:30.000I'm worried that Trump has such incredible connections to money, and that all the good parts that's going to come from that, like his no-nonsense approach to infrastructure, wanting to rebuild a lot of things, put a lot of people to work because of that, and a lot of people benefit from that.
00:23:46.000What scares me is that money connection with the pharmaceutical companies who have just gone way, way out of their way to just try to stifle marijuana research at every possible turn and legalization at every possible turn.
00:24:05.000Because when you make something illegal, it's not just making something illegal, which is why I had to drill this into the head of a friend of mine who is pro-Hillary, and he's asking me why I'm upset with her.
00:24:16.000And I said, look, dude, there's a fucking email that was leaked, the WikiLeaks email, that said she's against marijuana in every sense of the word.
00:25:52.000If it doesn't go in that direction, we're going to have a fucking revolution.
00:25:56.000And they need to understand that what you saw with that women's march, the day after Trump was inaugurated, when you see millions of people, there was a million people in LA, they expected 80,000.
00:27:28.000It's the same thing when you do politics here.
00:27:32.000We thought we were incredibly even-handed.
00:27:35.000We gave Republicans the same amount of time as the Democrats.
00:27:38.000The Democrats were like, you made the Republicans look too good.
00:27:42.000The thing is, when you look at it, you say, You know, it's so broken that it used to be just like, you know, pendulum swings, pendulum swings.
00:27:51.000But now what's going to happen is that Trump gets in.
00:27:54.000He's going to undo a lot of the last eight years.
00:27:58.000Then the Dems, when it swings to them, will undo what he undid.
00:28:05.000And so you're sitting there saying there's a lot of shit that we've got to solve.
00:28:10.000And we can't solve it if we just keep going backwards politically.
00:28:14.000And I think that's why there's so much frustration, is because you're sitting there going, let's unwind what they did for the past eight years, and then someone else will get in and unwind what we unwound.
00:28:23.000We have a real problem as human beings in getting into that team mentality.
00:28:28.000There's so many of us on the left that have so many...
00:28:33.000We agree with so many things that the right stands for.
00:28:36.000And there's so many on the right that agree with so many on the left.
00:28:39.000I mean, I'm more left than I am right, but I'm pretty fucking right.
00:28:43.000I'm right on a lot of shit, like gun control.
00:28:46.000You're a centrist, which is hopefully what most people should be, that they can see the logic in both sides.
00:29:01.000France elect a socialist, you know, PM, and then all of a sudden the Front National, who were a joke, become the leaders in the next election.
00:29:15.000And so you sit there and say, okay, well, everyone's moving far and far...
00:29:19.000It's best when we're all just fucking working together.
00:29:22.000The economy's doing well, we're all getting it done, and we're sitting in the sort of logical middle.
00:29:28.000That's the problem with going too far to any side.
00:29:32.000You can be on either side on issues and all this stuff, but if you go too far and you're too sort of dogmatic on either side, that's when it gets scary.
00:29:58.000And if we address it as a gun problem, you're going to make that human being problem even worse.
00:30:01.000Because you're going to take people's guns and you're going to make them more angry.
00:30:05.000Any kind of legislation that fights against their rights that they think are there by the founding fathers, You're gonna have a giant problem.
00:30:13.000And when people think that you could just pull it away from them, we're just gonna take away the guns.
00:30:58.000And so that when you actually go into, you know, into Congress or into the executive or into the Senate and you try to get anything done, you can't.
00:31:09.000Because you promised that you're not going to, you know, do anything, you're not going to have any sort of, you know, partisan, you know...
00:31:35.000So you're always going to be this sort of opposition.
00:31:38.000Yeah, and that influence, the problem is like, this is what people have to realize, a lot of your opinions, and my opinions too, are not really my opinions.
00:31:46.000They're opinions that I've decided are good, that I've heard from other people.
00:31:49.000And a lot of our patterns of behaviors, from accents to the way we approach culture, the way we think about women, the way we think about religion, a lot of that is learned.
00:32:01.000And we have these two deeply ingrained patterns in this country.
00:32:05.000We have the Democrats and we have the Republicans.
00:32:07.000And the Republicans are these no-nonsense, get business done, you know.
00:32:11.000And the Democrats are, you know, we always think of, oh, these people are all crybabies, and they're all wishy-washy, and they're bleeding hearts.
00:32:29.000Because you could exhibit a lot of traits on each side and still be a very good person or a lot of ideas on each side and still be a very good person.
00:32:38.000But if you look at, I remember when, you know, looking at sort of the Clinton administration, he took the largest deficit in history, made it the largest surplus in history, shrunk government, you know, basically the tenants of the Republican Party.
00:32:52.000W gets in, takes the largest surplus into the largest deficit, expands the government, etc., etc.
00:34:18.000So your genealogy, your family line, all your history, everyone you love could be easily dead in a couple of days.
00:34:23.000So that was my question because it seems to me, what I'm getting the feeling now, like humanity when they have a big thing, like a war or something, it's just like we're all getting together and we're all going to fucking do this together and we're going to, you know, science and we're going to work hard and we're going to do all this and we're like, yeah, fuck.
00:34:38.000And then when, you know, this has been the largest or longest period of peace and prosperity the world's ever known.
00:35:41.000And so anyway, we can go on for our, but I think, you know, both you and I are sort of coming to the same point that you can put any name you want on it.
00:35:50.000What you're coming to is a sort of dysfunctional relationship.
00:35:55.000What I'm hoping, and this is totally possible, that Generation Y, like you're talking about, Generation X, all these people that are growing up right now and just sort of waking up as adults, like realizing, like half those people that are wandering through the streets when you look at the Women's March, half those people are,
00:36:18.000I am really hoping that this message will get out that it is high time we abandon this fucking goofy system and that we demand a better system for running 350 million people and one figurehead and all of his cronies that he stuffs into some office and has massive influence over all of us.
00:39:08.000I like, there's a guy named Eric Schmidt, and he's the chief, or one of the head NASA scientists.
00:39:16.000And these guys are just super smart dudes, right?
00:39:20.000Men and women, actually, because the chief scientist at NASA, I met as well, and she's fantastic as well.
00:39:26.000But you just need like a common sense...
00:39:29.000person who just goes in there with no rhetoric or no politics or anything just saying look we have to reduce emissions by 80% if we don't we all die so here's what we're gonna do we're gonna get a lot of batteries and we're gonna put the things on because the batteries can finally do it now and this is what we're gonna do you need someone to do that because when it gets hyper politicized and stuff and everything gets fucking lost in the bullshit you just need a commonsensical person who just says this is what needs to happen because this is what the fucking science says The
00:40:01.000logjams that you must have at a big corporation, say if you worked for Under Armour, the logjams you must have if you want to get something done, they're probably monumental.
00:40:09.000It's probably a million people, you're trying to talk about this and you have to have design meetings and sit down and try new fabric, oh this fucking sucks, let me try this.
00:40:33.000Well, I was watching, actually, ironically, I was watching the LBJ documentary.
00:40:37.000And what was interesting about that was that, you know, here's this guy who's basically a political mechanic.
00:40:44.000You know, who's sitting there, and everybody wants something.
00:40:47.000Everybody, you know, is trying to get this, and basically, it's completely fucked, and you can't get anything done.
00:40:54.000And the only thing that came across there was he got everything done by lying to everybody, by just saying, I'm going to give you what you want, and I'm going to give you what you want, and I'm going to give you what you want, and then just sort of figuring it out at the end.
00:42:18.000In fact, in Washington now, they're saying the biggest thing is the Supreme Court...
00:42:25.000Because everything's so fucked, and everybody realizes it, that everything will have to go up to the Supreme Court and be decided there.
00:42:31.000Because it will not be decided in the Senate, in Congress, or in Executive.
00:42:34.000That's how fucked it is, is that we're going, that's what's really important, because we have to sue each other on everything we want to do.
00:42:40.000Okay, I got another member of our council of elders, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
00:42:49.000There's a guy that I would take to, if you're looking at that kind of thing, this guy, Taylor Wilson, he built a fusion reactor in his garage when he was 14. Oh, yeah, I heard that story.
00:44:10.000Well, now he's 23. But the thing is, he's into dark matter, dark energy, and he's going around the Hydron Collider and CERN. And I'm just like, this kid...
00:44:28.000The reason why I like him so much is he came up with a fail-safe reactor, a little tiny one, and he's like, with all the sort of the old...
00:44:42.000And the weapons that we have to store, which we can't store for more than 100 years, but they need to be stored for 10,000 years, he can take little pea-sized bits of that, put it into a fail-safe reactor that sort of drains into a salt thing, whatever, and it can't be,
00:45:14.000So when I hear this, and this is his thing, and by the way, he's being backed by Elon and all the big names and whatever, but the thing is, I'm like, I want that kid on my side.
00:45:54.000They turn them into batteries made out of diamonds that last for thousands of years.
00:45:59.000And so you just want somebody to say, got it, here it is, we roll it out, boom.
00:46:04.000Well, it's always made sense to me that if we're putting carbon out in the atmosphere, and carbon's valuable for construction and a lot of different things, there's got to be a way to...
00:47:42.000Who is someone that's just got a big picture, understands everything, is going to sort of smooth out everything?
00:47:50.000It's really hard to find people like that.
00:47:52.000It's really hard to find people that are open to the facts, that are willing to change their mind, aren't attached to their ideas, and willing to look at every side of things before they form an opinion.
00:48:04.000Most people don't have the time to do that.
00:48:07.000Part of the issue, I think, when anyone's talking about anything related to the environment or politics or gender or race or anything is there's only so much fucking time in the world, so it's so much easier to form this prejudiced opinion or this predetermined opinion on everything across the board,
00:48:23.000which is why, like, being on the right is so popular.
00:48:25.000It's so easy to dismiss everybody as a bunch of babies and shit on them, you know?
00:48:30.000It's much easier to shit on things than to say, here's a solution.
00:49:20.000Because Taylor and Elon are not going to be communicating You know, the batteries and the physics behind, you know, the little peas and the thing.
00:49:29.000I mean, you need someone to say, this is what we're doing.
00:50:24.000He was worked, and he was worked towards the end by the Reagan administration when they were coming in, the Reagan campaign, because they were the first campaign to ever use the rights connection to Christianity.
00:50:38.000This is the first time they had organized the hardcore religious base.
00:51:20.000And that's why I'm saying you need a communicator who can sort of get things across...
00:51:26.000But nobody really believed Carter, and half the country didn't believe Reagan, or they believed him after he was gone, because everyone's like...
00:51:33.000Well, it's convenient to love Reagan now, but I remember, and you remember, when we were kids...
00:51:38.000That's what punk rock started in America, was because Reagan got in, and we all went fucking New York hardcore and all that shit.
00:51:44.000But, you know, it's a shame that we cannot think...
00:52:21.000They kept those American citizens over there longer than they had to be because they wanted to make sure that it all looked good.
00:52:27.000You had that happen, which was not good.
00:52:30.000You also had, I mean, there's also an economic timing issue, and you had this oil crisis, and you had a recession, you have all these bad things happening, and you're like, well, that's Carter's fault.
00:52:39.000And it was also when they ruined American cars.
00:52:49.000They were the coolest looking cars, and to this day, they're like the biggest collector cars, like Barracudas and Corvettes and all those old cars.
00:52:56.000As soon as that gas crisis hit, man, those cars turned to shit.
00:53:00.000Well, also, same thing, every time there's a gas crisis, so that's when the Japanese cars became popular, that's when they became popular.
00:53:07.000You know, the SUVs were the highest sellers before the last oil crisis, or when they went through the roof, and then that's when the Prius, they couldn't make them fast enough.
00:53:20.000It was exactly the same thing that happened in the late 70s.
00:55:21.000Start sending people to Mars and shit.
00:55:24.000Now, here's the other thing, is the Council of Elders for the world or for the country, because then you also need some military dudes to say, we can't.
00:55:33.000The one thing that is sort of, whatever, a truism, is that you have to preach that sort of There is no democracy without safety.
00:55:47.000And you have to have guaranteed sort of protection.
00:55:51.000And if you look at Europe, it's quite interesting because when they sort of said, okay, we're going to protect this area and there's an economic benefit for this area, you had all the little groups start to say like Scotland or the Basque countries or Catalonia or all these different say,
00:56:10.000Because it's more democratic to have smaller sort of runnable countries that – and they're like, well, we want to have our own thing because we'll be part of this bigger thing, but we want to be more democratic.
00:56:21.000And I think that's quite interesting because you have these supranational political entities that sort of guarantee safety and economic security, and then therefore it's much more democratic.
00:56:30.000So you sort of sit there and say, okay, well, if that's the case, then you have to have that guaranteed security.
00:56:44.000Treat each other now, because we are so big and we are so connected, treat each other now as one organism, one gigantic superorganism, the human race.
00:57:04.000See, what I was going to go back to is, like, we're great at, like, war.
00:57:09.000Like, when there's a war, oh, fuck, we've got to go get them, you know.
00:57:12.000What if, or let's say, so I view it like this, but, like, let's say there's a fucking asteroid coming towards us.
00:57:18.000Like, we're going to put all over the global, you know, like a movie.
00:57:21.000We're going to put everybody, the smartest guys, the Russian guys, and the Chinese guys, and us, and everybody's going to go up and do this thing.
00:57:26.000So if that's the case, and I always say humans aren't going to move unless we have a gun to our head.
00:57:31.000But at some point what happens is, let's say Greenland, a big chunk, four feet, Miami goes away.
00:57:39.000And everybody goes, oh shit, now we got to do something.
00:58:06.000Don't you think, though, that if Mumbai goes away, Miami goes away, New York goes away, whatever, all the sea, the big sea next to the sea cities go away.
00:58:16.000Now, this is interesting, because when we were shooting this doc on Sea Level Rise, One of the things that's damning to oil companies is they're like, well, we didn't know.
00:58:30.000While this was happening, they raised, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, more, billions of dollars, they raised all their oil platforms by eight feet.
01:00:52.000I think it can be done if we're facing extinction.
01:00:54.000I don't think it can be done otherwise, because what I see happening, to go back to if we don't have war, like global war, we have this eating ourselves thing.
01:01:03.000And if you look at the world, you have half the world, roughly.
01:01:40.000So you have this sort of duopoly in the world of people who are going one way and then people who are going the other way.
01:01:45.000And I don't think that unless you have a common goal, which is, by the way, we're all going to die unless we do this, that everybody does it.
01:01:55.000In Star Trek, they did this thing where everybody from the world is finally together and then we're all working together for this great thing, which is exploring space.
01:02:07.000And I think we need that focus and that goal, which is why, again, to go back to war zones, when you go to war zones, you say, oh shit, we shouldn't be fucking dropping bombs on each other.
01:02:15.000And then when you go and talk to scientists, they go, oh, it's coming.
01:03:12.000I got two interesting things about that.
01:03:14.000One is, we went up to lakes in both Russia and the Arctic, and you pop a hole in the lake, and you put a torch in front, and it shoots out like an oil flare.
01:04:36.000They ate all the fucking shrubs and the trees and shit, which actually, you know, made the ground...
01:04:43.000It'll freeze much deeper because, you know, there's a lot of things like dark sort of, you know, brings in heat and it, you know, takes the insulation away, all this stuff.
01:04:53.000Because the foliage is not there anymore, so the sun beats directly down the earth.
01:06:30.000With the South Koreans, they're cloning mammoths in the hopes that they're just going to put all these clones of mammoths up there and it's going to freeze the permafrost.
01:06:39.000Wouldn't it just make more shit and more dead animals, which makes more methane?
01:06:46.000The amount that they would make versus the amount of methane that's going to be released from the permafrost, which has been collecting this shit for fucking millions of years, is de minimis.
01:06:55.000So the idea is, they're going to go up there, they're going to eat the fuck out of all the vegetation, and that will cool the area down.
01:07:05.000Why don't they just make ice cubes and just dump them out of helicopters?
01:07:08.000That seems like just as good of an idea.
01:07:10.000There's another guy we need for our council is this fucking crazy Russian dude who's just up there saying, fuck it, let's get some mammoths to fix us.
01:07:18.000And that'll get you 60% of the way there, but still 40% fucked.
01:08:07.000Because we actually talked to NASA and said, is this guy crazy?
01:08:09.000Is he like Don Quixote, like tilting that windmill?
01:08:11.000And he said, actually, the environmental or the organic solution, rather than dropping ice cubes at a helicopter, is the best solution because it used to be that 40,000 years ago this shit regulated itself, and this is when the planet was cold.
01:10:46.000On one hand, though, I got to admit, though, I read the thing and I was like, why would they complain about people supporting this Women's March?
01:10:52.000Why would they complain about something good?
01:10:53.000And then the other part of me went, well, imagine if you were them.
01:10:57.000Imagine if you were them, you're protesting against people getting shot and killed by cops, and you're trying to make a movement out of that, and you don't get near the kind of traction, nor near the kind of positive press.
01:11:09.000Then, the other part of me goes back to the Women's March, you go, you know what's crazy about the Women's March?
01:11:13.000Not a single fucking arrest all across the country.
01:11:15.000Yeah, it was apparently super good vibes.
01:11:25.000So they have these fucking cats were wearing, or cops, rather, were wearing them.
01:11:28.000And women were taking pictures with these cops.
01:11:30.000I think that's important because, you know, you sit there and you say, okay, look, you know, people can do this and we can do it peacefully and we can do it rationally.
01:11:36.000And we're all, at the end of the day, we're all...
01:11:55.000I will say the universe does things for a reason, I think.
01:12:00.000And I have two amazing daughters, and it changed my life.
01:12:03.000And it changed the way I view the world, and it changed the way I see things.
01:12:07.000And that's why I look at that march, and I say that's a great thing.
01:12:12.000You know, it definitely, you know, it alters, you know, how you think about things, for sure.
01:12:17.000It also alters how you think about the future, because a lot of people are like, fuck Lobo Ryan, it's not gonna fucking do anything in my...
01:12:34.000We've got to pick up our own shit here.
01:12:37.000In any case, I think it's a good idea.
01:12:39.000I think we will submit our Council of Elders idea to the world via the internet and see if we get a billion votes, then I think everybody has to adopt it.
01:12:51.000And then we get to sort of be special advisors.
01:12:55.000I seriously think this could actually happen one day.
01:13:06.000You know, Joe Biden, we used to have Joe Biden night at Stitch's Comedy Club back in Boston where we would plagiarize each other's material because Joe Biden got busted doing Kennedy speeches when he was running for president back in 88. Really?
01:14:10.000But I think that what I'm saying about technology is...
01:14:14.000I think we're way more connected as human beings than we ever have been before.
01:14:18.000And I think a lot of this crazy super social justice warrior progressive shit that you're seeing today where it's getting...
01:14:25.000The far, far, far outreaches of it are so out of hand.
01:14:28.000I think all of this is possible and all of this is because of this newfound opportunity we have to communicate with each other that just previously just didn't exist.
01:16:06.000And they're like, but it's only a TV because your brain is used to it being a TV. When you get used to it, we'll just flip a button and you're on the 50-yard line.
01:16:50.000It's going to happen because technology is there and it's fucking better than a phone.
01:16:55.000Now, once that connectivity happens, to go back to your point, there's a power in there for positivity and all this stuff.
01:17:03.000But if you look at, for example, social media, you know, one of the things that is destroying Twitter is they can't keep, and by the way, the fake news on Facebook and all this stuff, they can't police it.
01:17:17.000It's too many people, too much shit, and it's like bad people, it's this people, and everybody's got an opinion.
01:17:22.000And by the way, when you're across the table, the reason why we eat, the reason why we have feasts, the reason why we do all this shit is because when you're eating together, you form social bonds and all this shit, and you're like, oh, I'm not going to kill you because we had a beer together or whatever.
01:17:34.000But when you don't, and it's just this anonymous, I can say and do whatever the fuck I want, it just becomes like...
01:17:56.000And it was about this guy who had been stalked online by his friend's son.
01:18:05.000And they were, I mean, it got to the point where this guy was just, they were doing all, he was doing all sorts of horrible shit and sending them horrible, evil messages.
01:18:23.000He didn't think about what he broke down crying when they confronted him and it was it was awful, but it was like wow There's like some sort of weird perverse thing that people enjoy doing just fucking with someone as a game And that all takes place because of that lack of social interaction,
01:18:39.000The problem with that is is as those tools let's say augmented reality get more and more powerful than that sort of Unless it's unless we look at that aspect of it.
01:18:53.000You and I are going to be able to have this conversation where we're nowhere near each other, exactly the same way that we're having it right now.
01:19:00.000We're going to be able to look at each other in the eye and have this kind of a conversation, and you're going to represent you.
01:19:05.000There's going to be some sort of a video version of you that I will not be able to distinguish from you, and you'll be sitting there right now.
01:19:11.000It won't be much different other than physical contact.
01:19:13.000There's an interesting point though, which is when humans are hungry and thirsty, our immediate reaction is no.
01:19:23.000And when we're fed and when we're a bit boozed up, the reaction is yes, which is why everyone says let's have a business lunch or a business dinner or whatever.
01:19:32.000And also if you look at how we socialize with the family, how we socialize with each other, if you actually look back At your history and say, oh, I'm that guy's buddy, or I'm, you know, my family, whatever.
01:19:42.000If you look back at the majority of the positive memories that you have, they're generally, you know, we got Thanksgiving with the family, or Christmas with this, or we got drunk with this guy, or we had burgers late at night, or whatever it is.
01:19:52.000Because that's, you get these sort of endorphin, you know, rushes, and oh, we're bonding.
01:19:57.000So I think once you take that out, and I, it's interesting, because I was talking to someone the other day, I was saying...
01:20:06.000The more technology gets sophisticated, the more you kind of have to fly.
01:20:12.000Because to have that meeting, like we have the technology, I can call you.
01:20:16.000But now you have to fly and you have to have the meal.
01:20:19.000Because if you're doing a big deal with somebody and you don't do that, even though it doesn't make any sense at all, it's become a thing.
01:20:28.000Everyone's flying way more, ironically, because the technology is seen as...
01:20:44.000You know, and not meeting them even for a while, even being in communication for a long time without meeting them, you sort of disassociate.
01:22:01.000But what I'm thinking is something even crazier than that, where you close your eyes and you're transported, you know, like, what was that movie with Arnold's work?
01:22:29.000So interstellar space travel is hard and impossible because people will die before they get to where they're supposed to be going and all this stuff.
01:22:40.000So, theoretically, what we can do is we can, you know, have clones in other places, and you download your brain into, like, a computer.
01:22:55.000You send that Brain to another computer through laser beam traveling at the speed of light, and then it gets downloaded into the clone on the other side of the thing.
01:23:21.000You come home, there's 15 of you in your house, you know, and they all want to watch the game and scream the same things, and you're competing to see who says the witty shit first.
01:23:29.000Well, this is another interesting thing.
01:23:30.000This is another interesting thing, because technology...
01:23:34.000When we go back to sanity versus insanity.
01:23:36.000So for example, right now we have CRISPR technology where you can edit the genome, right?
01:24:02.000And so because of that, we said, okay, well, we're not going to do that because we're playing God and all this stuff.
01:24:09.000But they have places in China already where they're going to do that.
01:24:14.000Now, if you extrapolate, because they're already experimenting on human fetuses.
01:24:18.000But if you extrapolate and you say, okay, they start doing this and everybody comes out genius plus IQ and seven feet tall and super strong and whatever...
01:25:24.000Well, that's the other thing, is they're saying now, with advances in medicine, that the kids being born today are going to live into their hundreds.
01:25:31.000Yeah, I've heard that, that they're going to live to be 150 years old.
01:25:50.000Long enough for them to figure that out, how to turn it back.
01:25:53.000And, you know, that's the real playing god.
01:25:55.000Turn you back, go back to when you were younger, and then you're going to be a younger you dealing with a new super race that's been developed, where everyone is 300 pounds of solid muscle, and every Olympic wrestling match is between two enormous gorillas.
01:26:14.000And we're all going to be fighting AI sort of...
01:26:39.000They're going to turn 20 and then they're going to be on a rampage.
01:26:42.000They're going to just hit the clubs and fuck everybody.
01:26:45.000Well, I've got to tell you, you know this, that your evolutionary clock stops at 40. At 40, you don't continue on saying, oh, we're going to try this and ourselves will keep on making new shit.
01:27:35.000I would do it just because it would be a better experience.
01:27:38.000Like if they all of a sudden gave you something and your immune system worked better, your body fat was lower, you had more vitality, you got more things done, you're more energetic, and you don't have to lose any experience.
01:27:52.000You don't have to lose any understanding of the world.
01:28:08.000Yeah, well, I think the China factor is huge, because I think if China really does start doing that with CRISPR and make these super athletes and super humans and make people that are just infinitely smarter than what we have today, that...
01:28:20.000That also plays into my idea of technology-induced evolution.
01:28:25.000I think symbiotically introduced, where it's like human beings interacting with technology, but I think also that technology being applied to our biological being.
01:28:56.000But basically, he sort of foresaw all of this stuff happening.
01:29:02.000And by the way, it's interesting because he gets credited with a lot of the tech stuff because a lot of people who were in college read him and then used those ideas to invent the things that are coming out now.
01:29:49.000All the shit we're talking about now, just you and I talking about potential technologies, those thoughts between people like you and I that are not technologically savvy at all, those thoughts can get into the mind of someone who is, and then they can project that idea in their own way and start working on it.
01:30:09.000It's going to be a huge revolution, and then they'll say, Joe and Shane, the Council of Elders, we made it.
01:32:21.000But if you have someone who's mentally deranged and they just haven't committed a crime yet and you read what they have to say about life and about people and they're racist and sexist and crazy.
01:33:50.000Well, it would be interesting because you were talking about with other countries, having small, more manageable groups is more democratic.
01:33:59.000Not a bad idea in the current state that we exist in.
01:34:02.000Not a bad idea to run things that way.
01:34:05.000If it's dysfunctional, in fact, it's worse than dysfunctional, you're just going back to undo what they just did, why wouldn't you just say, fuck it, California's going to go off and do our own thing, and Texas is going to do its thing, and Oklahoma's going to do its thing, and by the way, if you don't like it in Oklahoma, you can move to fucking California.
01:34:38.000If you guarantee that economic security and you guarantee that sort of, you know, political and military security, then it kind of makes a ton of sense to just say, well, if we're like-minded people in New York or LA or whatever, like, Okay, California.
01:37:43.000If you're good and you're smart and whatever, and you rise to the top, you're hardworking.
01:37:48.000You know, this was a country built by immigrants, and then all of a sudden they're saying, well, they were the good ones, now there's bad ones.
01:37:54.000Yeah, and even better, because you were born in Canada, you can't be president, which is a shit job in the first place.
01:38:00.000So it makes you the ultimate American.
01:39:25.000You know what's really interesting, too, is they're almost universally leaning left.
01:39:30.000If you look at all these powerful tech giants, and even social media companies like Facebook and Apple, they almost predominantly lean left despite the fact that they're worth billions of fucking dollars and they're a main driving force.
01:39:47.000I think that this is my problem, because I don't know if they're leaning left necessarily.
01:39:56.000Backing things that are perceived as left-leaning.
01:40:00.000Like, for example, if you have a fucking brain, and you've talked to scientists, and you've read, and you're like, oh shit, we're up against the wall.
01:40:09.000Like, I always say humans won't do anything to tell the fucking guns to the head.
01:41:17.000If you have a real problem with- I got a gay neighbor, these folks that live down the street, they have a kid, they adopted a kid, they have a fucking dog they walk by, they're the nicest fucking people in the world.
01:41:27.000I feel like- What the fuck do you care?
01:42:26.000Yeah, and a lot of that is also because they need to get ayahuasca because dimethyltryptamine, the active compound of it, is illegal in the United States, even though your body produces it.
01:42:45.000If you have someone who you know who has an opiate addiction, my friend Ed Clay, he runs a center down in Mexico, and he started it out because he had a problem with them.
01:42:56.000He kicked them by using Ibogaine, and now he's like...
01:42:59.000We did a story on it, and it's incredibly successful.
01:43:03.000The guy who we followed through that, he's still clean.
01:43:33.000Part of the problem is all these fucking people that have already made a fuckload of money and they're trying to protect those investments...
01:44:02.000And if you're in a business and your only way to make profit is by eating babies, and you go, look, my country, we've been eating babies over here for a long time, and we're not going to just stop eating babies.
01:44:35.000And all of those, they're being exposed now.
01:44:38.000It's one of the more interesting things about this time, is that because of all the information that's out now about opiate addictions, that's the reason why doctors prescribe less and less now.
01:44:49.000That's the reason why they're under more and more scrutiny.
01:46:24.000Whoever is making that stuff is a monster.
01:46:27.000If you're making that stuff, you are a monster.
01:46:29.000Whatever company that's making that, and the fact that the government hasn't stepped in, Trump immediately steps in and fucking stops the protests in the Dakota pipeline and starts that back up again, and he doesn't do anything about fentanyl?
01:49:07.000I think that's what I had read, that there was 39 million prescriptions, which is 1 out of 10. But it's not really, because how many times do they refill it, right?
01:49:18.000When you say someone has a prescription, are you saying it's prescribed to you, or are you saying I write you a new prescription when it runs out?
01:49:26.00039 million people on opioids, I mean, that's a large country.
01:50:21.000And there's that whole thing of like when someone dies of a heroin overdose, everyone goes to their dealer and buys from them because, oh, then it's really strong when I'm not going to die.
01:50:35.000It's such a bizarre state that we're in when it comes to that.
01:50:39.000And then there's all sorts of other prescription pills that people are taking.
01:50:41.000You know how many people are addicted to Xanax?
01:50:44.000You know, not a lot of them are dropping like flies, but it's a huge issue.
01:50:47.000And all, like, these wives that I meet in these, like, wealthy communities, all these people, it's like so many fucking people are on Xanax.
01:51:55.000And so you're like, basically, you know what it reminded me?
01:51:58.000It reminded me of, like, Platoon, when Elias' dudes were all smoking pot, and they were like the freaks, and then the other dudes were drinking whiskey and beer and whatever.
01:56:01.000Because somebody must have looked at it at some point and said, fuck, there's a lot of hippopotamuses getting their livers removed here in New York City.
01:56:11.000Well, once those woolly mammoths start fucking roaming through Russia and chewing everything apart, we're going to have to shoot them with darts.
01:56:16.000We're going to have to crank them and check them out.
01:56:18.000Make sure they're not doing anything weird.
01:57:00.000And because of that, the speed is ramping up.
01:57:08.000Kind of like it though because you know, I do a lot of medical research and I'm like You know one of the reasons why I'm not drinking here is because I got to go for my annual physical and I'm you know Gotta go in and not you don't have too much booze or whatever my body But it what's interesting about it is they map your shit and they check out your shit and they say well This is gonna happen or that can happen whatever else,
01:57:28.000but you sit there and you go in five years You're gonna have Aggressive therapies, if not cures, for many forms of cancer.
01:57:39.000So you're just sitting there going, please, for fuck's sake, just get me another fucking 10 years so that I can get to this sort of stage.
01:57:46.000And I think a lot of people with a lot of diseases that hitherto have been incurable are sitting there going, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
01:58:01.000Well, there's also more understanding about nutrition now than ever before and the causes of all these illnesses, and a big part of that is inflammation.
01:58:18.000Yeah, I was listening to this podcast today where they were discussing, this one was discussing having, she had some sort of an illness and they gave her two, oh she had an ear infection, and they gave her two big doses of antibiotics and she was fucked up for a decade.
01:58:35.000She had constant pain, chronic pain, all these illnesses and injuries.
01:58:39.000And then finally she went to a homeopathic doctor.
01:58:42.000And the homeopathic doctor sorted it out with probiotics.
01:59:47.000So, you know, what was happening was C. diff and Crohn's disease and all these things were happening because there was superbugs in hospitals because they were over-prescribing antibiotics.
02:00:54.000And if you can make the gut biome healthy, it radically improves their state.
02:00:57.000Parkinson's and Alzheimer's starts in your gut, moves up, starts to play.
02:01:00.000And that's another thing that apparently has a giant effect on people with autism is medical marijuana.
02:01:05.000Medical marijuana, especially edible marijuana.
02:01:08.000I have a friend and he moved to Washington State particularly because of that because when they they made it legal and another friend who this kid was also autistic moved to Colorado for that reason so he could get it easily.
02:01:19.000And people with cancer we have a story of all these parents who are like Bible thumpers who found the only thing that worked was CBD and they're like fuck it we're moving from Texas and wherever to Washington and Colorado because it's the only thing that helps my kids.
02:01:36.000And here's my message to them If you believe in God, you've got to believe that God made marijuana.
02:01:41.000It's man that decided it was bad for you.
02:02:42.000He decides to demonize it because he doesn't want to convert his wood, his trees that he's turning into paper, he doesn't want to convert it to hemp and spend millions of dollars.
02:02:49.000So instead, he starts publishing stories about Mexicans and blacks that are taking this new drug called marijuana and raping white women.
02:02:57.000This drug, marijuana, wasn't even the name for cannabis.
02:03:00.000When they made cannabis outlaw, when they made it illegal, when they made marijuana illegal, they didn't even know they were making hemp illegal.
02:03:09.000The general public did not know it was the same thing.
02:03:12.000Because this word marijuana was never associated with hemp or with cannabis.
02:03:16.000Marijuana was a wild Mexican tobacco, totally unrelated to cannabis.
02:03:20.000They called it marijuana so that they could demonize it, and that's when they funded Reefer Madness and all those crazy propaganda movies and posters.
02:03:28.000And we are still, to this day, trying to shake off what William Randolph Hearst and Harry Anslinger did in the 1930s.
02:03:37.000It's a very interesting anecdote that sort of is very pertinent to what's happening today, where you can just make up a story about something and then it's fucking, it's the truth.
02:04:22.000They have thousands of earthquakes in Yellowstone every year.
02:04:26.000It's a giant caldera volcano that at one point in time blew up and killed everything on the continent.
02:04:32.000Every six to eight hundred thousand years it goes and when it goes that's a wrap baby and the last time it went 600,000 years ago and we they have thousands of earthquakes every year in Yellowstone and you go there and you watch Steam shooting out of the ground because the fucking boiling magma is so close to the surface that the rivers and streams and the underground water runs into it heats it up and shoots it up in the sky on a regular basis It's fucking bananas!
02:04:57.000What I love about that is everyone goes and says, look at that, that's fucking awesome.
02:05:17.000I mean, maybe some people on the East Coast will survive.
02:05:19.000But they're going to go in a nuclear winter.
02:05:20.000And it's going to fuck up everybody all over the world.
02:05:23.000But that's why, just speaking about technology, that if you ever talk to, for example, our guy on our Council of Elders, Elon Musk, he's like, why are we a single planetary species?
02:05:35.000Why wouldn't we just hedge our bets and be a bi-planetary species?
02:05:39.000Because if something does go wrong, at least you've got your data and your culture and your people and whatever.
02:05:45.000And why wouldn't you do that if you could do that?
02:05:47.000And when they put it that way, you're like, well, that sort of makes sense.
02:05:49.000Because everyone's like, oh, I want to live on Mars, those crazy nerds.
02:05:52.000There's no evidence that we can live there, though.
02:05:53.000The real problem is we can't really stay in that atmosphere for very long.
02:06:09.000We should be a multi-planetary species.
02:06:11.000It's a good argument, and it's also arguable that with all this CRISPR technology, they might be able to figure out some sort of a medical solution for people that do move to a...
02:06:19.000You know, like the moon has one-sixth Earth's gravity.
02:06:21.000You know, there might be some way that they could figure out a way to colonize the moon and, you know, develop some sort of a new technology.
02:06:58.000What I always just think about that is, you know, they get the equation wrong, and then something's like, oh, fuck it, it throws that, you know, the gravitational pull off by four centimeters, and then you're like...
02:07:13.000And then aliens land on it and take it over.
02:07:16.000As soon as the air comes up, those, like the actual alien from the movie Alien with the big fucking head, those things, they just camp out right over there and start building spaceships and plan their attack.