The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1021 - Russell Brand

00:00:11.000 I'm going to do what you're doing.

00:00:12.000 What are you doing over there, man?

00:00:13.000 What is this?

00:00:14.000 Well, actually, I was thinking about making sure that I'm in a position mentally and spiritually to talk openly and clearly and connect.

00:00:23.000 But you're doing it with fists, which I found interesting.

00:00:25.000 It's like you're going to talk openly, but you're going to be strong about it.

00:00:29.000 It's not like there's this meditation thing where you're just gently touching your fingers together.

00:00:36.000 Yeah, right.

00:00:37.000 I suppose then I'm looking to be embodied as well.

00:00:39.000 You're intense.

00:00:40.000 Or like present.

00:00:41.000 You're like a hybrid.

00:00:43.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:00:44.000 That's what we've got to become these days.

00:00:45.000 Yeah, a little bit of both.

00:00:46.000 A little bit of spiritual, a little bit of warrior.

00:00:48.000 The whole thing.

00:00:49.000 We've got to survive in this world.

00:00:51.000 Yeah.

00:00:52.000 You know.

00:00:53.000 Yeah.

00:00:54.000 So you can't be all ethereal.

00:00:56.000 It can't all be in the consciousness.

00:01:00.000 Yeah, otherwise you'll never get anything done.

00:01:03.000 Right?

00:01:03.000 You'll just be constantly dealing with other people's wants and wishes.

00:01:08.000 Unless you're going to make the decision to be one of those cave people. 0.99

00:01:11.000 Because sometimes I think about that, like, let's put on robes, meditate.

00:01:15.000 Only that.

00:01:16.000 Only live in the consciousness.

00:01:17.000 But given my extreme levels of attachment I've experienced over the years to physical things, I don't think that's my path.

00:01:24.000 You know, I'm here.

00:01:25.000 I'm in the world.

00:01:26.000 I'm...

00:01:26.000 Selling books.

00:01:27.000 I'm having a baby.

00:01:29.000 I'm caring about what people think about me.

00:01:31.000 I'm wondering if I'm going to be in a film.

00:01:33.000 I'm dealing with the world.

00:01:35.000 Being a man in the world.

00:01:36.000 Being the type of man I am.

00:01:38.000 It's not like I just life myself off in a cave.

00:01:42.000 Well, there's a certain amount of attraction that I think we all have to this idea like, hey man, I'm just going to get away from it all.

00:01:47.000 But the problem is it's going on whether you like it or not.

00:01:51.000 It's happening.

00:01:52.000 Even if you're not there, it's going on.

00:01:54.000 So you should probably be there just to go, what is this?

00:01:57.000 Yeah, what is this?

00:01:58.000 Even in Christianity, Christ says, in the world, but not of it. 0.99

00:02:03.000 So, like, trying not to be defined and determined by other people's opinions of you, the systems and structures that are set up around you, particularly if you question those systems and structures and think, well, I don't trust that system, I don't agree with that.

00:02:17.000 You don't want to be defined by that.

00:02:19.000 But the fact is, we are here.

00:02:21.000 And I think there are certain people, you know, that do have a monastic tendency that should be meditating, that aren't equipped for the material world.

00:02:30.000 And one of the great things that makes me sad about our times is if you don't have economic and productive value, then you're a nobody.

00:02:37.000 There are some people that don't know how to resource themselves.

00:02:40.000 You've found a way of turning yourself into an economy, of creating a kingdom.

00:02:43.000 I found my own way of like, oh right, I can make my mental illness work for me. 0.98

00:02:47.000 People pay me money to be this crazy.

00:02:49.000 But not everyone gets those kind of breaks or has that kind of skill set.

00:02:53.000 Yeah, I mean, obviously there's some people that really do thrive on that monastic lifestyle.

00:02:59.000 Have you ever seen, there's a Vice documentary on this guy.

00:03:03.000 His name is Heinmo.

00:03:04.000 He lives in the, I believe it's the eastern part of Alaska.

00:03:12.000 He's in this...

00:03:14.000 This Arctic region.

00:03:15.000 There's a vice piece called Heimo's Arctic Adventure.

00:03:19.000 That's it.

00:03:20.000 Arctic Refuge.

00:03:21.000 Heimo.

00:03:21.000 H-E-I-M-O. Heimo Korth is his name.

00:03:25.000 And this guy lives in the Elastic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

00:03:31.000 Hmm hundred miles from the nearest human and he lives there with his wife and he lives in this little log house that he's sort of built himself and he Thrives up there.

00:03:42.000 It's very strange because we're attracted to these people like like to just go.

00:03:46.000 Okay.

00:03:47.000 What do you do all day, man?

00:03:48.000 Like what's what's your life like and Do you miss people?

00:03:52.000 He has like a VCR and he plays old movies And it's a fascinating thing because I think when you watch someone like that, you always run it through your head, like, could I live like that?

00:04:04.000 Like, is this guy happier?

00:04:06.000 He says he is.

00:04:07.000 I mean, he says that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that he lives is, like, uniquely attractive to people and uniquely satisfying.

00:04:17.000 And it's something that we don't get in our everyday world, so we're never, like, completely even, whereas he is just...

00:04:24.000 Running around, fishing and hunting caribou and stuff.

00:04:27.000 Well, we're fitting in with someone else's idea of what life should be.

00:04:31.000 The system within which most of us operate, this isn't what I would do if I had a free start.

00:04:39.000 I don't mean just personally me, Russell.

00:04:41.000 I mean anthropologically, yeah.

00:04:43.000 It's designed to be nomadic tribes people. 0.56

00:04:47.000 My podcast that I do as a suggestion by you, I had on as a guest Yuval Noah Harari.

00:04:54.000 He wrote that book, Sapiens, and he does a lot of that anthropology stuff and says about that we're designed to live in tribes of about 75 to 100 people, or at least that's what chimpanzees do.

00:05:05.000 When they get bigger, there's normally a conflict and a separation and a splitting, that nomadic tribes would Follow the food sources that were available to them.

00:05:14.000 So, in a way, if you can replicate that or get close to that in some way in your own life, it would make sense that it would make you happy.

00:05:24.000 When you're saying that about the guy who's 100 miles away from the nearest person, I thought there's people that live in suburbia that mentally are 100 miles away from the nearest person.

00:05:32.000 Really, your life is you sit in front of a screen, you don't connect with people, you've not spoke to people for days.

00:05:38.000 You know, I think about this when people make these desperate attempts to connect through. 0.92

00:05:42.000 Dogging is a thing in my country where people meet up in lay-bys and just have anonymous sex, masturbating in public. 0.96

00:05:47.000 What do they call it? 0.98

00:05:48.000 Dogging.

00:05:48.000 It's a uniquely British phenomenon, Joe.

00:05:51.000 Dogging.

00:05:51.000 That's right.

00:05:52.000 I've never heard of this.

00:05:52.000 Well, welcome.

00:05:53.000 Welcome to Britain. 0.52

00:05:55.000 Dogging is people go to lay-bys, quiet lay-bys, and it could be sort of suburban.

00:05:58.000 It's a bit like swinging, you know, but it's like you pull up in a car with, you know, this is, I've never done this.

00:06:03.000 I'll just clarify.

00:06:04.000 You pull up in a car with a partner.

00:06:06.000 It could be, you know, I think it's a kind of heterosexual thing or homosexuality.

00:06:08.000 You can do it wherever your persuasion is.

00:06:10.000 There's a particular place with particular people. 1.00

00:06:12.000 And, you know, the lights go on and people jerk off and, you know, you can have sex. 0.99

00:06:16.000 And I'm sort of thinking these are desperate attempts to... 0.91

00:06:19.000 Find some connection to nature to sort of drop anchor and hit your primal self to get into who you are because you wake up and you've got to do your job and you've got a screen in front of you and you're a consumer and you're not living in the world anymore.

00:06:32.000 You want some visceral experience.

00:06:34.000 One of the things I get from listening to your podcast is like oh you're a person that's questing after with the whether it's the archery or the DMT looking for what Is it that we're meant to be as humans? 1.00

00:06:44.000 And I'm doing that in my own way, having unfortunately written off substances because of my stupid, stupid mistakes in my 20s. 0.98

00:06:51.000 I can't go into the DMT ayahuasca world as much as I would like to. 0.99

00:06:54.000 And I want to find, how is it that I be me in this world?

00:06:57.000 And yeah, I don't think it is through isolationism. 0.99

00:07:00.000 I don't think it's like, right, I'm going to try and get an island and fuck this. 0.98

00:07:03.000 I'm not going to participate. 0.99

00:07:04.000 I think it's like, right, what, you know...

00:07:06.000 We are nature.

00:07:07.000 We created this.

00:07:08.000 This is a form of nature, our civilizations, our manifestations.

00:07:12.000 But is it the best we can do?

00:07:14.000 Can we change it?

00:07:14.000 Can we pull back from what seems more than ever, like some kind of apocalypse with, you know, your current president, no disrespect, and with our country, Brexit?

00:07:22.000 It's sort of like a weird time of frustration.

00:07:24.000 Fracture and the manifestation of ugliness, stuff bubbling up.

00:07:27.000 I feel it like dark unconscious matter bubbling up, man.

00:07:30.000 I was in the airport traveling to here and I was in New York and just the people that are working the lines when you put your cases through, people seemed heavy and low.

00:07:41.000 If you're British, Donald Trump's just something that, you know, you kind of make jokes about and you hope that there isn't going to be a nuclear war, but he seems like a sort of a comic figure.

00:07:48.000 But here, I sort of sensed, oh, there's pain.

00:07:51.000 Now, I know there's a lot of people that obviously like him, enough to have made him president of the United States, but I think even in those cases, he speaks to a particular rage, something that wasn't being addressed, the failure of neoliberalism, the lies of the last 30 years of a kind of politics that was just about management and not about giving people truth.

00:08:07.000 I don't know, Joe.

00:08:09.000 I like our individual journeys.

00:08:10.000 How can our individual journeys inform our social and tribal journeys and our national journeys?

00:08:15.000 And is there even hope anymore for such a thing as the United States of America or Great Britain?

00:08:20.000 Or should we start looking at smaller projects?

00:08:22.000 Because, you know, if the United States of America and Great Britain lead to colonialism, mass capitalism, consumerism, ecological meltdown, if that's what you believe in, then maybe we need to look at breaking down some of these great institutions.

00:08:34.000 I wonder if what's going on is that our biology and what we've been sort of programmed to for the thousands of years of living these tribal existences where in these tribal existences we had these small groups of 50 to 60 or 100 people plus that this is the new thing and then part of our chaos is our trying to adapt to the new thing it's almost inevitable we've created this Incredible way where we can get food to people,

00:09:03.000 so more people had babies, more people stayed in these areas where they're not growing food, and then you're dealing with these massive numbers of people, you know, in LA, 20-plus million.

00:09:14.000 And we're trying to figure out, like, how do we get along?

00:09:17.000 How do all these different ideologies coincide?

00:09:20.000 How do we cooperate?

00:09:22.000 How do we figure out what to do with all our waste?

00:09:26.000 How do we figure out what to do with what we're doing to the environment?

00:09:29.000 How do we figure out who's right?

00:09:32.000 Are the doom and gloom people correct, or are we going to be okay people correct?

00:09:38.000 What's the right attitude to take about this?

00:09:41.000 Many of those significant movements that you're talking about, agriculture, And industrialisation and urbanisation.

00:09:49.000 Agriculture obviously meaning food available en masse.

00:09:53.000 Industrialisation, products available en masse.

00:09:56.000 Urbanisation, people living together en masse.

00:09:59.000 None of these things are good for the people en masse.

00:10:03.000 They're good for a select strata of people that primarily benefit.

00:10:08.000 They say that the average diet of human beings got worse after agriculture.

00:10:13.000 Before that, varied diet.

00:10:15.000 People ate loads of stuff after You're on potatoes now, peasant. 1.00

00:10:18.000 You're on rice now, peasant. 0.98

00:10:20.000 I think each of these movements are to benefit a particular aspect of the system, a particular class, a particular strata, a particular economic class.

00:10:30.000 Me and you ain't doing bad.

00:10:32.000 We're relatively near the top, but we're not the engineers of it.

00:10:36.000 Corporations and elites, to use that very popular word these days, that benefit from things being like this.

00:10:42.000 When you're saying, is there a way that we can all coalesce and get along in urban conurbations of 20 million people?

00:10:48.000 No, because the power is too centralized.

00:10:50.000 The power needs to break down.

00:10:52.000 Mostly we are getting along?

00:10:53.000 I mean, mostly.

00:10:54.000 Mostly we are getting along in these weird groups.

00:10:57.000 And even with whatever static that we have with each other, even with the weirdness of it all, the diffusion of responsibility that comes in these gigantic groups and you see things happening, you just get away from them.

00:11:09.000 We still, for the most part, are getting along in this weird new world.

00:11:12.000 I think you're right in a sense, Joe.

00:11:15.000 I'm not a doom and gloom guy.

00:11:16.000 I think human beings are really, really beautiful and brilliant.

00:11:20.000 And I don't think, oh God, this is such a mess.

00:11:22.000 What I think is that we're trying to inhabit systems that are not designed for us to live within.

00:11:29.000 And I think that, yeah, people are getting on.

00:11:31.000 But I also think, don't you think there's a lot of tension in cities that everyone's one right turn or one traffic light away from getting out of their car and smashing someone in the face?

00:11:39.000 You can feel it bubbling under.

00:11:41.000 And the feeling I had in the airport is that the people that were working there were under undue stress.

00:11:47.000 Now, this is just one...

00:11:48.000 I feel like we're being forced to live on a particular aspect of our consciousness, a particular bandwidth of where we're kind of a bit frightened, a little bit too much desire.

00:11:57.000 I'm talking about most people.

00:12:00.000 Again, I'm not poor no more.

00:12:02.000 Money creates distance, isn't it? 1.00

00:12:06.000 Fuck off, problems. 1.00

00:12:07.000 I'm getting in a nice car and I'm out of here. 1.00

00:12:09.000 But I remember the feeling, and a lot of people are living like that, where the tension's up in their face. 0.93

00:12:14.000 And so, yes, I agree that people do muddle along, and that, I think, shows you that we're not as in a Darwinistic model or some of the ideas derived from Darwinism, rather, like the selfish gene and the Richard Dawkins idea that people just want to survive and we just want to kill and fuck, and this is what propels us forward.

00:12:30.000 I think, no, we're cooperative, collaborative, artistic, imaginative, beautiful people.

00:12:37.000 But we've created systems around the worst aspects of our nature.

00:12:40.000 Greed, selfishness.

00:12:42.000 This is what capitalism and consumerism thrive on.

00:12:44.000 And they're so all-encompassing.

00:12:46.000 Our cultures are domed by them, and we can't see beyond them.

00:12:49.000 We exist within them.

00:12:51.000 And I feel like if we were to break down those kind of systems, live in smaller assemblies, smaller groups...

00:12:58.000 Where power is as close to the people that it affects as possible, where people would vote on, well, this is how we want to use our resources.

00:13:04.000 This is how we want to run our street, our hospital, our prisons, our schools, our systems.

00:13:09.000 This is how we want them to run.

00:13:11.000 Then things would really, really slow down.

00:13:13.000 But man, what's the rush?

00:13:14.000 You know, things would slow down, get a lot slower.

00:13:16.000 But I think that people would be empowered and you wouldn't have resources and power filtered to a small group of people.

00:13:22.000 No, I think you're definitely right.

00:13:23.000 I think you should probably start a cult.

00:13:25.000 You've got a good idea about how to run it and how to keep the resources in the community.

00:13:30.000 I think that also this discontent that we have is a sign that people being upset with how this is and the momentum of the way things have sort of established themselves today, that this is like what we need.

00:13:42.000 This is the momentum and the motivation that we need to try to improve upon things.

00:13:47.000 I think we're uniquely qualified to do that today because we're talking about it.

00:13:51.000 So you could be the doom and gloom guy today, I'll be rose-colored glasses.

00:13:54.000 So I think that this tension that we have, even a guy like Donald Trump or Brexit, I think the good thing about those things is that people are looking at What they don't like about the way we're running the world, what they don't like about our culture.

00:14:07.000 And they're getting upset about it and hopefully we'll sort it out that way.

00:14:12.000 And that being completely content with everything and everybody just sitting on the couch and smiling all day, it doesn't necessarily lead to progress.

00:14:20.000 I think we're more informed now than we've ever been before.

00:14:23.000 So I would hope that with our ability to communicate and being more informed now that we have the potential to move towards a better society.

00:14:32.000 I agree with that, mate.

00:14:33.000 But I also think that what's important in the world is who has power.

00:14:38.000 Power being the ability to effect change.

00:14:40.000 I'm not one of those people that I'm not baffled by what happened with Trump.

00:14:45.000 I feel, oh, there's an indication that a good many people feel extremely angry and disenfranchised, the same as Brexit in our country, and I recognise and I understand it.

00:14:53.000 Similarly, I don't think, oh, wouldn't everything be zippity-doo-dah if Hillary Clinton was President of the United States?

00:14:59.000 That was the way stuff was going.

00:15:01.000 That's what the previous 30 years has been like in your country, my country, managerial politicians with no vision, We've seen the failure of recent promises that were offered by administrations recently. 0.99

00:15:13.000 I think that what Trump is, what Brexit is, is a big fuck you to the system. 0.98

00:15:18.000 We want something different. 0.97

00:15:20.000 And for me, in a way, these things are good because I believe the people that feel those things are right.

00:15:26.000 And I would like to see more power delivered to ordinary people, genuine change happening.

00:15:31.000 But I think it won't happen unless you sort of look at, well, where is the power really?

00:15:35.000 The power really is with people that this system works for, a sort of a particular corporate elite, a particular strata of, I don't know, politicians and bureaucrats.

00:15:44.000 And I hope that what these sort of cataclysms of recent years lead to Is devolution of power, new systems.

00:15:53.000 Because even in the time that I've been in your country on this trip, Joe, you know, there's been that mad sort of massacre that, you know, that's...

00:16:00.000 It's sort of, for me, is a...

00:16:02.000 And this tells me that this is a sick society.

00:16:06.000 Not, you know, I'm not...

00:16:07.000 Oh, and Britain's wonderful, of course.

00:16:09.000 You know, we went round plundering the world. 0.99

00:16:10.000 We're crazy, crazy. 0.97

00:16:11.000 We've got enough problems of our own. 0.77

00:16:12.000 But, like, for me, what is causing this?

00:16:15.000 Why is this happening?

00:16:16.000 You know, for me, I don't see it in isolation.

00:16:17.000 I don't believe in Lone Wolf.

00:16:19.000 I think the system is coughing up these mad events, and there are patterns, and there's things that we can read, and there are things that we can change to improve it.

00:16:26.000 Well, he's certainly a part of, the guy that was that shooter is certainly a part of our society, right?

00:16:30.000 So if we have a sick culture, You know, I mean, there's evidence of it.

00:16:34.000 I mean, it's not a completely sick culture.

00:16:36.000 I mean, we're not all dying, right?

00:16:38.000 We don't all have this disease.

00:16:41.000 But some of us most certainly do. 0.98

00:16:43.000 So, this thing that you're saying, like, that people looked at Donald Trump as a big fuck-you system, the tipping over the apple cart, I think that's absolutely what people were hoping for. 1.00

00:16:53.000 And then there's a bunch of people that just love saying fuck you. 1.00

00:16:55.000 There's a bunch of people that when fuck you is flying around, yeah, fuck you, they just get in it. 1.00

00:17:00.000 Fuck you, too, fuck you! 1.00

00:17:01.000 And then you're seeing a lot of that with Donald Trump supporters as well. 1.00

00:17:04.000 You're seeing people that they're looking for some excitement, they're looking for some fun.

00:17:08.000 You're seeing people that enjoy chaos. 0.99

00:17:11.000 Maybe they're trapped in cubicles and they're just completely frustrated by this fucking grind. 0.99

00:17:16.000 This day-to-day grind. 0.99

00:17:19.000 Like, literally being...

00:17:20.000 Their soul being ground down on a cheese grater every day. 1.00

00:17:25.000 Being forced to stay under these fluorescent lights in this fucking small little box. 1.00

00:17:29.000 Dealing with human resources in the corporate environment. 1.00

00:17:32.000 And they're going fucking crazy. 0.96

00:17:34.000 And anything that happens that tips that over, it's all fight club, right? 0.99

00:17:38.000 They're just looking to get punched in the face. 0.92

00:17:39.000 They're looking to go crazy. 0.99

00:17:41.000 And there's a lot of that as well.

00:17:42.000 You know, but I think...

00:17:45.000 This chaos, the worst parts about it, there's no good to, right?

00:17:49.000 There's no good to mass shootings.

00:17:50.000 But what comes out of all these things is the discussions and the intense realization that we have real problems.

00:17:56.000 We have real problems with the way we're communicating with each other.

00:17:59.000 And I don't necessarily know if the solution...

00:18:02.000 I mean, it would certainly be a solution for those involved if you get a hundred amazing people and everybody just starts a co-op in Maine somewhere.

00:18:08.000 I mean, yeah, it would be great for those involved.

00:18:11.000 But for all of us, I mean, even while that, I mean, it's almost like that monastic lifestyle we're talking about.

00:18:15.000 If everybody just isolates, it's all going on around you. 0.88

00:18:18.000 If you put your phone in a drawer and never use it again, and you stay off the grid and you get your water from a spring, all those people out there are We're still drinking water with antidepressants in it, and there's a bunch of fucking smog that people have to deal with.

00:18:31.000 There's a bunch of problems with hurricanes now because the water's warmer.

00:18:35.000 It's inevitable.

00:18:37.000 It's inevitable that this is all...

00:18:38.000 I mean, you can decide, hey man, I only have a hundred years on this planet. 1.00

00:18:42.000 Fuck this. 1.00

00:18:42.000 I'm just gonna ride this out. 1.00

00:18:44.000 But if you do make a kid...

00:18:46.000 And you have, and I've got a bunch of them.

00:18:48.000 I mean, what's going to happen to them?

00:18:49.000 You know, we have to think about what happens with them as well.

00:18:52.000 We're all this global community, really.

00:18:54.000 Yes, we are. 1.00

00:18:55.000 And that's why I don't go for the hedonic lifestyle of, oh, fuck it, I've got a century. 1.00

00:19:00.000 Let's line up some blowjobs. 1.00

00:19:02.000 I tried that route. 0.99

00:19:05.000 Line up some blowjobs. 0.99

00:19:06.000 A century worth of blowjobs. 0.99

00:19:08.000 That's a great way of putting it. 0.99

00:19:10.000 Let's line up some blowjobs. 1.00

00:19:11.000 Ice cream here, blowjobs there. 1.00

00:19:14.000 And off to the boneyard. 1.00

00:19:15.000 Yeah.

00:19:15.000 You know, like, because I, like you, believe in the possibility of change.

00:19:20.000 And I've been, like, again, I've mentioned it again.

00:19:22.000 I started a podcast because you said, you know, start a podcast.

00:19:25.000 And it's good fun.

00:19:26.000 Like, what I do on mine is I get, like, a...

00:19:29.000 Because I'm doing this university degree, religion in global politics.

00:19:32.000 In fact, this thing happened.

00:19:33.000 What happened to me really is I hit 40 and I thought, right, now I know a bunch of things aren't going to work.

00:19:38.000 The ice cream, the blowjobs, the attention, the privilege, heroin, crack, all these things I can chalk off as not working.

00:19:44.000 I can't control them.

00:19:45.000 I've got to find a way through this.

00:19:46.000 And oddly, peculiarly, it's a sort of a personal version of spirituality.

00:19:51.000 That's what I've found.

00:19:53.000 William Blake, the great English poet, says, each artist must find his own religion.

00:19:57.000 We have to find our own way.

00:19:58.000 What works for you is not going to be the same as what works for me.

00:20:01.000 You know, there are ways that we are collective, but there are ways where we are individuals.

00:20:05.000 So I thought, right, I'm going to have to educate myself.

00:20:07.000 I'm going to have to do things that mean something to me.

00:20:09.000 A big part of that was like doing, you know, in my own small Fragile, brittle way, Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

00:20:16.000 I've never done stuff like that before.

00:20:18.000 Live in your body, be in there and go to Genesis Gym in Marlowe.

00:20:21.000 I give them a drop because all these guys are such big fans of your show.

00:20:23.000 I go there and I do sessions with Chris, that titanium skeleton of a man, that black belt. 0.99

00:20:29.000 He twists me up.

00:20:30.000 He can cause pain in ways.

00:20:31.000 How is he even doing that?

00:20:32.000 And when I try to do the stuff back, it doesn't work.

00:20:34.000 Or puts me in my body in a different way.

00:20:37.000 Learning the history of the ideas that are in religion.

00:20:40.000 The distinction between politics and religion is sort of an imaginary distinction.

00:20:45.000 When people talk about religious violence versus secular violence, they're saying their violence is irrational and our violence is okay.

00:20:52.000 I've learned some amazing stuff in the last few years.

00:20:55.000 And as a result of that...

00:20:57.000 The kind of guests I get on my podcast, like this guy Karn Ross, mate, you'd love him on yours actually.

00:21:01.000 He was a diplomat in the Foreign Service around the time of the Weapons of Mass Destruction and 9-11.

00:21:06.000 He believed in the system.

00:21:08.000 He's like, all he wanted was to work in the Foreign Service.

00:21:10.000 He knew they were lying while it was going on.

00:21:12.000 So he's like, oh no, this thing I believed in is not true.

00:21:16.000 Like he's being asked to participate in it.

00:21:18.000 He's come out of the Foreign Office and believes that no centralised power can ever work.

00:21:24.000 We have to have...

00:21:26.000 Devolved power.

00:21:27.000 Assemblies.

00:21:28.000 Anarchism is the word.

00:21:29.000 Anarchy doesn't mean chaos.

00:21:31.000 Anarchy means devolved power to the smallest possible groups.

00:21:34.000 That there's no power between you and I and Jamie.

00:21:37.000 That we're equal in here and we should run the space according to what all of us think as a group.

00:21:42.000 That hospitals, schools, institutions, communities should be run on a democratic basis.

00:21:46.000 You don't need, like, you know, minimise the amount of centralised authority.

00:21:50.000 We need roads to be run.

00:21:51.000 There needs to be some security and all those kind of things.

00:21:53.000 But it should be minimised where possible.

00:21:54.000 That's what this guy came away with.

00:21:56.000 And he explained it real well to me.

00:21:58.000 And what I like, increasingly what I think is that when you talk about that, mate, the cheese grater on the sole, that's the phenomena of the West.

00:22:06.000 You know, that's what people in our countries are going through is...

00:22:10.000 Alienation.

00:22:10.000 It's talked about, like, one of the things that another guest taught me about Marxism.

00:22:14.000 The Marxist theory of the way that he criticized and broke down capitalism, how it operates.

00:22:19.000 He wasn't just talking about the economics, although Marx was a great economist.

00:22:23.000 He goes, capitalism will lead to individuals feeling worthless and meaningless because they'll just be cogs in a machine.

00:22:28.000 It will break people's spirits.

00:22:30.000 And that is what's happened.

00:22:31.000 But it's not the only thing that's happened.

00:22:34.000 Go on.

00:22:34.000 It's also created incredible technology, medical innovation, all sorts of different ways that we can make the world easier.

00:22:42.000 Do you think we could keep those things without the cheese grater soulmate?

00:22:45.000 Because I think we could.

00:22:46.000 I think we could.

00:22:47.000 We've got the stuff now.

00:22:47.000 We could progress with it.

00:22:49.000 We could have different, fairer ways of doing that.

00:22:51.000 And I think people kill that conversation too early because it's working for enough people.

00:22:57.000 Yeah, they're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 0.99

00:22:59.000 I think so.

00:22:59.000 Yeah, that's what the whole thing of Marxism is, is the abandonment of capitalism.

00:23:03.000 It's like, let's go this way.

00:23:04.000 But, you know, you look at what happened when people adopted Marxism.

00:23:07.000 It led to the death of millions and millions of people, as has capitalism in a lot of places.

00:23:12.000 Well, yeah, more deaths, but it's not reported in the same way.

00:23:15.000 But I'm not saying that we all want to live in communist, you know, or the Soviet Union or China.

00:23:19.000 Terrible, terrible things happen there.

00:23:20.000 But that's what we always revert to.

00:23:23.000 You know, we say, well, is it not possible that we could, for a start, they didn't do it properly.

00:23:27.000 They ignored it.

00:23:28.000 That's what everybody says, but no one's ever done it properly.

00:23:30.000 I mean, we have more freedom today.

00:23:33.000 Human beings have more freedom.

00:23:34.000 More freedom to behave, more freedom to communicate, more freedom to excel with this capitalist society that we're criticizing today than any human beings that have ever lived ever.

00:23:42.000 There's a lot of negative about it, 100%.

00:23:45.000 But it's also, there's a lot of benefits and positive about it.

00:23:48.000 There are a lot of soulless people that are just counting numbers and throwing them on a hard drive somewhere and buying yachts.

00:23:53.000 That's true, too.

00:23:54.000 But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to evolve and aspire.

00:23:57.000 I don't think evolution is finished.

00:23:58.000 I know there's loads of good things about capitalism, but I think let's carry on.

00:24:01.000 Let's see what we can do.

00:24:02.000 Could we be doing this better?

00:24:03.000 I believe that we could.

00:24:04.000 I believe that this has taken us about as far as it could go because of certain ecological imperatives and the spiritual thing that you...

00:24:13.000 We're good to go.

00:24:36.000 At the centre of that power will not share it.

00:24:39.000 I think you have to go, alright, this community is going to be run by those people.

00:24:42.000 This community is going to be run by those people.

00:24:44.000 And that also solves a lot of the other problems that are defining our times.

00:24:47.000 People seem to want different things.

00:24:49.000 Some people want to say, absolutely no homosexuality.

00:24:52.000 Some people say, we want total sexual freedom.

00:24:54.000 Some people want, we want to live in what would be called a religious extreme way.

00:24:58.000 Some people say, atheist.

00:24:59.000 Well, that can't exist under one banner, I don't know.

00:25:02.000 Yeah, but the problem with people saying no homosexuality is that they're deciding about freedom, other people's freedoms to exist, other people's freedoms to behave and to express themselves the way they want to.

00:25:15.000 And the real problem with that is a lot of the people that want to control other people's freedom, they're really, the reason why they're doing it is they're trying to suppress their own urges and desires.

00:25:23.000 You're completely right.

00:25:24.000 One of the things I'm most interested in is how much of our activity is unconscious activity.

00:25:29.000 Oh, so much.

00:25:30.000 We're doing things, we don't know why we're doing it.

00:25:33.000 The book here that I'm promoting, Recovery, I've written this book, it's my version of The Twelve Steps.

00:25:37.000 I read some of it last night.

00:25:38.000 You're in it?

00:25:38.000 Yeah.

00:25:39.000 The Twelve Steps is a journey from unconsciousness to consciousness.

00:25:43.000 That's what it essentially is.

00:25:43.000 You'd unconsciously pursue pleasure, you unconsciously It is possible to be contented.

00:26:05.000 Move towards nature.

00:26:06.000 You are yourself doing it.

00:26:08.000 You're going, right, this is what I'm good at.

00:26:09.000 This is what I'm doing.

00:26:10.000 I know the way you run your life.

00:26:11.000 You don't want no one telling you what to do.

00:26:13.000 You don't want to compromise.

00:26:14.000 You want to learn all of this fascinating stuff and fulfill yourself.

00:26:18.000 You've created a road for yourself to do that.

00:26:22.000 But not everybody can and more people could.

00:26:25.000 And I think there'll always be resistance, there'll always be corruption, because it's in me. 0.99

00:26:28.000 I shouldn't spend another second condemning Donald Trump, because I've got an arsehole in me. 0.95

00:26:33.000 I'm a greedy person that wants attention and wants people to love me and buy my book and take care of my interests. 0.96

00:26:39.000 But your introspective thinking has led you to stop that path.

00:26:42.000 I mean, that's essentially, you saw the flaws in hedonistic behavior, and you hit the pause button.

00:26:49.000 And you're thinking about it, and that's very attractive to people, because we all see that in ourselves.

00:26:53.000 And when you talk about what I do and what I've done, the most important thing that I've ever done is surround myself with people that I love.

00:27:00.000 I have a really good group of friends and interesting people, and that leads to more.

00:27:07.000 They find more interesting people.

00:27:09.000 It branches out and spreads out.

00:27:11.000 And then people listening to this, they become like-minded.

00:27:14.000 They pursue their happiness.

00:27:16.000 They pursue their actual desires.

00:27:19.000 What interests them?

00:27:20.000 What they would like to do for their career, for their life, for their craft.

00:27:27.000 What do you enjoy?

00:27:28.000 Find that thing.

00:27:30.000 Surround yourself with like-minded people.

00:27:32.000 And I think we all get fuel from the people that we're around.

00:27:35.000 And it's one of the most underrated aspects of being a person in a community.

00:27:39.000 If you're around a bunch of ambitious people who are creative, who are open-minded and honest, you are inspired by that.

00:27:47.000 And you seek to have like-minded thoughts.

00:27:50.000 Yeah, you're right about that.

00:27:51.000 I think that's another one in the against column for disappearing into the cave and being a hermit or a monk or whatever.

00:27:59.000 Because I heard someone say, we exist in dialectic, which means we exist in relationship and conversation with one another.

00:28:06.000 Who are you without other people?

00:28:07.000 You're nobody in an aluminium capsule floating through space.

00:28:11.000 What does your personality matter?

00:28:13.000 You're nothing.

00:28:14.000 So you're right about that, that we exist in these relationships with one another.

00:28:18.000 And I suppose what I have sought out is to connect with people on the level of the damage, on the level of the wound, on the level of the vulnerability.

00:28:26.000 Not in a pessimistic, let's wring ourselves out into the gutter way.

00:28:30.000 No, let's recognise that we're flawed, but that together we can create supportive, compassionate, loving communities.

00:28:37.000 And for me, the starting point for that is a life that is...

00:28:42.000 Predicated on spirituality as opposed to materialism.

00:28:45.000 It's predicated on what my consciousness does when I stop thinking, what my consciousness does when I meditate.

00:28:52.000 Now, I don't have the advantage of the DMT experience in the Ayahuasca.

00:28:56.000 I'm fascinated by it, listen to it a lot.

00:28:58.000 Well, why don't you try Kundalini?

00:28:59.000 I do do that.

00:29:00.000 Well, have you ever had any sort of psychedelic experience through doing Kundalini?

00:29:03.000 Because the people that I know that are really into it, they say that they can achieve...

00:29:07.000 People that I know that have done DMT... I'll say they can achieve the same sort of states.

00:29:12.000 Wow.

00:29:13.000 With Kundalini.

00:29:14.000 Well, they're doing it well.

00:29:15.000 Kundalini's one of the things, I believe, in this particular tattoo up my finger by Mark Mahoney of Shamrock Tattoos Los Angeles is the Kundalini Serpent as drawn by Carl Jung, one of the great early figures of psychoanalysis that the...

00:29:28.000 Fire in the belly, the animal energy of survival, the energy of creativity, the serpent energy, the reptile energy that's deep in our DNA when we were lizards, when we were creatures that crawled on our belly and lives in us still, can be coronated.

00:29:41.000 The serpent, the snake within can become crowned.

00:29:44.000 It can become royal.

00:29:45.000 Your animal desires can become royal.

00:29:48.000 And I think that the Kundalini, as I understand it, is about harnessing those energies, bringing it up.

00:29:52.000 I do like yoga, and I do have pretty tripped out experiences where I feel like, oh my God, I'm awake, but I am not me.

00:29:58.000 I am not my thoughts.

00:29:59.000 I feel this sense of transcendence.

00:30:01.000 And I only feel them retrospectively, you know, in the moment.

00:30:03.000 There's no me to register it.

00:30:05.000 It's only afterwards I think, wow, I lost myself there.

00:30:08.000 That was beautiful.

00:30:08.000 Do you feel weird when you finger people with that finger?

00:30:10.000 Because it seems like counterproductive.

00:30:12.000 It does.

00:30:12.000 Don't send that snake in.

00:30:14.000 LAUGHTER And to be honest, fingerings become a less significant part of my life.

00:30:20.000 Fingerings are very weird.

00:30:21.000 It seems so rude.

00:30:22.000 The expression, fingering.

00:30:24.000 It's a dirty business.

00:30:26.000 It's not functional.

00:30:27.000 There's no need for it in the adult world.

00:30:30.000 People like it.

00:30:31.000 A lot of people love it.

00:30:32.000 If people ask for it, I say do it.

00:30:33.000 Yeah, let's not deny people fingering.

00:30:36.000 Give them the snake. 0.94

00:30:37.000 Hand that reptile right over. 1.00

00:30:38.000 Open the chakras. 1.00

00:30:39.000 Is this the right moment to tell you I dreamt about you last night?

00:30:42.000 Sure.

00:30:42.000 Knowing it's a risk always to tell someone that you dreamt about them, because once it's out there, it's out there.

00:30:48.000 So, and particularly, you know, check it out.

00:30:50.000 So, we were in this dream.

00:30:51.000 We were in some sort of semi-organic forest-type world, but they had an industrial component, somewhat labyrinthian.

00:31:01.000 Make of that what you will.

00:31:02.000 What's the industrial component?

00:31:03.000 You know, like the Ewoks, how they've made the most of the woods, you know, they've built little huts and stuff, and maybe they'd have little, I don't know if the Ewoks had another couple of thousand years, maybe they'd have built little Ewok trains. 0.99

00:31:13.000 I don't know what they would have done.

00:31:14.000 Who knows?

00:31:14.000 They were lovely, cuddly little guys.

00:31:16.000 So anyway, there was a sort of small industrial component to it.

00:31:20.000 We were somewhere within that world.

00:31:22.000 And we were doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

00:31:24.000 Let's use the word rolling.

00:31:26.000 Now, there was a sort of...

00:31:27.000 This is how we know it was a dream, because there was a moment where I had you in side control.

00:31:30.000 Now, from that moment, I moved towards a choke, and you did something where you arched and flipped over very acrobatically and very elegantly.

00:31:38.000 I don't even know if it's an actual move or not.

00:31:39.000 It was very, very beautiful, and I thought, ah, right, yeah, it's going quite well, this rolling, but it seems that Joe Rogan is better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu than me.

00:31:48.000 But even in the dream world, that seemed like something I had an understanding of.

00:31:52.000 Well, jujitsu, what's brilliant about it and what's interesting about it is that the more time you put into it, the more you understand the moves, the more moves you acquire, the more moves you drill, the better you get at it.

00:32:05.000 It's literally like a language.

00:32:08.000 It is.

00:32:09.000 As your vocabulary increases and your ability to...

00:32:13.000 Like, even if your vocabulary is very broad, if you don't talk a lot, you'd probably have stumbling conversations, right?

00:32:20.000 But if you get used to talking all the time and you're having a conversation with someone and the words kind of flow.

00:32:26.000 But if you're talking to someone and they're weird and they bark out things and they talk over you, it's awkward and herky-jerky, much like jujitsu.

00:32:34.000 Jiu-jitsu is almost like a kinetic language.

00:32:37.000 Brilliant.

00:32:37.000 But there's a puzzle that's being solved, right?

00:32:40.000 And there's a problem, right?

00:32:42.000 The problem is this person is trying to apply all these different techniques, whether they're chokes or joint locks, on you.

00:32:49.000 And you are trying to both defend that and then put yours on them.

00:32:54.000 It's beautiful.

00:32:55.000 I've heard you say before, high-pressure problem-solving or something.

00:32:58.000 MMA, I always describe as high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.

00:33:05.000 Dire physical consequences.

00:33:06.000 Because MMA is the most high-level of all the problem-solving because the consequences are so grave.

00:33:11.000 Getting kicked in the head, getting elbowed and kneed.

00:33:14.000 Those things are so...

00:33:16.000 Jiu-jitsu, I think, is better for you, for sure, physically, because the consequences are not nearly as great.

00:33:23.000 If you get choked out, you're fine.

00:33:25.000 You get your arm, you know, you tap out.

00:33:27.000 As long as you're willing to tap out, you have to be willing to tap out, you'll get through it okay.

00:33:33.000 And if you get injured, you just get it fixed and take six months off, you'll be back.

00:33:37.000 I like that kinetic language thing you said.

00:33:39.000 That really makes sense to me, because I feel like when I'm doing it, I'm like a person that's going, Hello, could you show me the way to the train station?

00:33:49.000 Hodor! 0.92

00:33:50.000 Hodor! 0.92

00:33:51.000 Yeah, I'm so slow, like, and other people are like, well, sir, I'll point you in the right direction, you could go a thousand ways, why I couldn't do it!

00:33:57.000 Exactly!

00:33:58.000 Exactly.

00:33:59.000 Do you watch Jiu-Jitsu at all online?

00:34:01.000 No, I don't watch loads of it.

00:34:02.000 Sometimes I look at videos of them Gracies or something and marvel at their effortless capacities and charisma. 1.00

00:34:08.000 You should watch, just because you're enjoying it, watch current top of the food chain jiu-jitsu guys like Hoffa Mendez, watch some Marcelo Garcia, watch some of the young guys coming up, Gary Tonin.

00:34:20.000 It's fascinating to watch them apply these new strategies to this old language, because that's really essentially what it is.

00:34:28.000 What you're seeing is these new approaches.

00:34:31.000 Jiu-jitsu is this never-ending thing.

00:34:33.000 I mean, it really just doesn't...

00:34:35.000 Like, boxing, although it's very complex and it doesn't seem as complex to someone on the outside, but when you watch a guy like Floyd Mayweather or Sugar Ray Leonard or someone who's just a master at their craft, you see how complex it truly is.

00:34:50.000 You see all the different nuances to it.

00:34:53.000 But it's still punching, right?

00:34:55.000 It's just still too punching. 0.99

00:34:56.000 Whereas jujitsu is this fucking tangle of bodies and possibilities and potential. 0.98

00:35:03.000 There's so many different ways to approach it. 0.98

00:35:05.000 There's people that are chokers, there's people that are arm lock guys, there's people that like to get you with their legs, they're triangle people, and they all have their own little way of approaching this conversation.

00:35:14.000 So you've learned a few sort of grammatical pathways through that kinetic language and think, right, I'm going to master that particular area.

00:35:21.000 So watching videos online is like watching a video of Alan Watts talking.

00:35:24.000 You go, oh, Okay.

00:35:26.000 Or Terence McKenna or Timothy Leary or whoever it is that you think is fascinating.

00:35:31.000 You hear them talk and it develops new pathways and possibilities for your own thinking.

00:35:36.000 It's one of the things I was going to say earlier.

00:35:38.000 When I was thinking while we were having this conversation about the future and about possibilities and about civilization, with all due respect, what you and I are doing, both of us, this is a very rudimentary way of trying to figure this out.

00:35:50.000 I think we're clubbing at it.

00:35:56.000 People are listening to this that will do a far better job than us in the future.

00:36:00.000 And I think that that's important.

00:36:02.000 And I think that we're doing our best.

00:36:03.000 We're taking our steps.

00:36:04.000 But when Henry Ford created the Model T, he didn't intend it to race against a LaFerrari. 0.97

00:36:09.000 He didn't know what the fuck a LaFerrari was.

00:36:11.000 But if he didn't make that Model T, the LaFerrari wouldn't have been possible. 1.00

00:36:15.000 But you can't go back and go, Henry Ford fucking sucked, dude. 1.00

00:36:18.000 Ride this piece of shit with its leaf springs and its stupid tires, you know, and then get in a 2017 Corvette ZR1 and you go, oh, okay, this is where it's at. 1.00

00:36:28.000 No, it's like all these things have to be in place for the next evolution of it to advance. 1.00

00:36:33.000 And I think...

00:36:34.000 What we're looking at today with our society is we're hoping that there's a solution out there. 0.86

00:36:39.000 But there's a solution, but it's goddamn slow, just like all evolution. 0.98

00:36:44.000 It's goddamn slow. 0.99

00:36:45.000 It's faster than single-celled organisms to a giraffe, but it's still fucking slow. 1.00

00:36:51.000 And we're a part of it. 0.98

00:36:53.000 All of us.

00:36:53.000 Not just you and I, but the people that are listening to this, and the people that are having their own podcasts, their own conversations, and doing TED Talks, and writing books.

00:37:00.000 We're all a part of thinking this out.

00:37:03.000 And these little pieces All fit together slowly but surely and create this mosaic of ideas and potential.

00:37:10.000 And what we're experiencing now is just what we can experience in this realm, like in this world, with this life that we are currently stuck in.

00:37:19.000 And then someone, 50 years from now, will be looking back at our stumbling conversation, trying to figure out a way to engineer society correctly, and they'll have a much better way of doing it.

00:37:29.000 I think that's a very beautiful, progressive argument.

00:37:31.000 I agree with much of what you've said, except to some degree, Joe, even things I've heard on this podcast, say when you have Graham Hancock, I particularly enjoyed it when you got the more sanctioned academic guy on there and Graham felt like, 1.00

00:37:46.000 you know, you bastards, you're the people that say my shit ain't real. 0.96

00:37:50.000 Well, Graham's such a rebel, you know, it's fascinating to see these people, you know, attacking him for his ideas and his research, but now having less and less ground to stand on. 1.00

00:37:59.000 You know, Graham's ideas have been more proven in the last 10, 20 years than ever before.

00:38:04.000 They keep finding these new civilizations and finding this new evidence that human beings have existed on this continent far longer and that they're traveling all over the world for far longer and the civilization is probably quite a bit older than we thought.

00:38:16.000 That's right, and so we don't therefore know that this idea of continual progression, linear progression, is the only one.

00:38:25.000 It is possible that when it comes to the realm of consciousness, ancient people knew something that we are struggling to understand.

00:38:35.000 And I recognise that your Model T to Ferrari metaphor is a good one.

00:38:41.000 And actually, speaking to young people now, I do feel that they're kind of more switched on.

00:38:46.000 Jeez, look at a baby with an iPad.

00:38:48.000 It seems like they know already.

00:38:51.000 But what I feel is, and this might just be my personal narcissism, but I like to think of myself as the pinnacle of consciousness, that there isn't some other realm, even though, God, I want that DMT so bad.

00:39:03.000 Why are you afraid of that?

00:39:04.000 Because it's not an intoxicant.

00:39:07.000 Because I'm a 12-step guy and I'm a sobriety. 1.00

00:39:10.000 That's awful shit. 1.00

00:39:10.000 Stop all that 12-step. 1.00

00:39:12.000 You're not going to fall back.

00:39:12.000 Hold on, man.

00:39:13.000 I've just read a fucking book about that. 1.00

00:39:14.000 That's a whole book. 1.00

00:39:14.000 You're not going to fuck that book. 1.00

00:39:16.000 You're not going to fall back into addiction. 1.00

00:39:19.000 It's a masterpiece.

00:39:20.000 This idea that you're going to fall apart and become a junkie again, it's not going to happen, man.

00:39:24.000 You're past that.

00:39:25.000 You can say that, Joe, but also an integral part of my recovery is the idea of surrender, and I think that's an integral part of a lot of spiritual belief.

00:39:35.000 It's an integral part of DMT. Yeah, I bet.

00:39:38.000 You have to surrender.

00:39:38.000 I feel you, man.

00:39:39.000 But to bypass the idea of my egoic authorship.

00:39:43.000 My egoic authority of, I am Russell and this is what I believe and this is what I'm gonna do.

00:39:47.000 I have surrendered to a way of life.

00:39:49.000 I have surrendered. 0.99

00:39:49.000 If I can find some people with 20, 30 years in recovery, clean time, that go, you're allowed to take DMT, I'm like, fucking hand me the pipe. 0.99

00:39:58.000 You don't need their advice or their sanctioning. 0.91

00:40:02.000 Well, in a way I do.

00:40:03.000 And by the way, you don't even need DMT. No.

00:40:05.000 You don't need it, but you seem like you want it.

00:40:07.000 Yeah, because I love the transcendent.

00:40:10.000 I love it because I've known and I've always known that this experience of being in a body in the conscious individualistic mind and remember I've taken loads of acid when I was a kid as well.

00:40:19.000 I know that this is not all of it.

00:40:21.000 This is just we're just reading one bandwidth of data with our sensory instruments that there is limitless consciousness and limitless reality.

00:40:29.000 Do you miss that acid experience?

00:40:31.000 Yes, I do.

00:40:32.000 I love it.

00:40:34.000 I love it.

00:40:35.000 Is the concern that if you fell into it, like whether it was mushrooms or whatever it was, that if you fell into that experience again, that it would lead you in a downward spiral of addiction?

00:40:45.000 In a sense it's that.

00:40:46.000 In a sense it's that.

00:40:47.000 And the fact is as well that I've I've turned my life around, or my life has been turned around by this program, by this system.

00:40:54.000 And like, you know, the 12-step thing, it does have something in it that's quite, what do I want to say, like it's a little bit ascetic.

00:40:59.000 It is a little bit, you think like it's about denial, right?

00:41:01.000 But the reason that I've written this book is the interpretation of the 12 steps.

00:41:05.000 Excuse me.

00:41:06.000 It's because I think it's a masterpiece.

00:41:07.000 I think it's a masterpiece.

00:41:08.000 At a time when people are struggling with ideologies, at a time when people are struggling with religion because the bad things about religion are so obvious, the bigotry and the violence, those things are so clear to us, even though there are many, many beautiful things about Islam and many beautiful things about Christianity, our focus tends to turn on the bigotry and the hatred that is present or used out of those ideologies.

00:41:30.000 The 12-step is accessible to anybody.

00:41:33.000 And can be used as a code to unravel your connection to your own individual experience, your own self-centeredness, your own self-obsession.

00:41:41.000 Now this might not be a problem that you have.

00:41:42.000 This might be the line that separates us.

00:41:45.000 Me, I'm self-obsessed and I have to...

00:41:49.000 Firstly, this is how it works.

00:41:50.000 One, you admit there's something you want to change.

00:41:53.000 And that could be, I'm a smackhead.

00:41:54.000 Pretty obvious then. 0.98

00:41:55.000 Or you're a sex addict and that's a harder thing to admit because it can be rewarding if you're into adult human females in a culture like I was.

00:42:02.000 But if it ultimately leaves you lonely and unable to have a family and you feel like you're having a negative emotional effect on others and yourself, then you need to admit it's a problem.

00:42:11.000 The second thing is, could your life be better?

00:42:14.000 Of course it could.

00:42:15.000 And the third thing is being willing to accept help from others, and whether that's a community or from your understanding of a higher power.

00:42:22.000 Now, I happen to have, I believe in God in the sense that I believe that there's limitless consciousness, that my individual consciousness is connected to something that I can't understand, that no one can ever understand.

00:42:32.000 And again, as I've heard on one of my own podcasts, as a matter of fact, Yanis Varoufakis, who led this political movement in Greece, he said, we will never know whether consciousness preceded matter or matter preceded consciousness.

00:42:43.000 And in a way, it's irrelevant now because spirit, this quality, is here.

00:42:48.000 It's here and it's a big part of what human beings are.

00:42:50.000 And it isn't dealt with by consumerism and it isn't dealt with by contemporary politics.

00:42:55.000 People don't talk about love, kindness, togetherness, but these are the dominant things in our lives.

00:43:00.000 That's what's most important to me, the people that I love.

00:43:02.000 Like you said, the connections with the people you have that become your reality.

00:43:06.000 But a political system that reduces you to a component of an economic machine is never going to fulfil you.

00:43:12.000 So what What I now believe is that what I think this book can do is give people a guide to reaching their own spiritual truth because it's completely non-prescriptive.

00:43:22.000 It's like your version of God is going to be different from mine.

00:43:24.000 Your personal inventory that you draw up will reveal the truths of the way you see the world and the problems you've made.

00:43:30.000 The communities that you belong to will support you and you can change your patterns, you can make amends for your past, you can continue to stay present and a vital part of this program It's prayer and meditation, continued connection to the moments you don't lose yourself in your past or the projections of your future.

00:43:46.000 Now, whether or not that prohibits me from experimenting with psychedelics in the long term, you know, for me, the jury's out, because I do want to, and Bill Wilson, the guy who founded these fellowships, was fascinated by acid, and even when he was sober, I took a lot of acid, and I think that guy was a prophet.

00:44:01.000 He was on a mission.

00:44:02.000 He was trying to discover what is truth, what is reality.

00:44:05.000 That's not really discussed much in the 12-step program, though, is it?

00:44:09.000 Because I think it's, like most things, it becomes orthodox.

00:44:12.000 You know, like most religions, most systems, in the end, they become orthodox.

00:44:16.000 And it does such a good job at helping with its primary purpose of stopping people being alcoholics, stopping people being drug addicts.

00:44:22.000 That's such an amazing job, and it's doing that job, and it should continue to do that job.

00:44:26.000 What I feel like I wanted to do is extract the thing that I think is amazing about it, and say, oh my god, anyone could use this.

00:44:32.000 You hear this again and again from people that have got a long time clean in these programmes.

00:44:36.000 Everyone should work this programme. 0.99

00:44:37.000 Everyone should know what is the impact because your mum treated you that way or your dad did this or this sort of shit happened to you at school or you were abused. 0.96

00:44:44.000 You're still carrying it in your consciousness. 0.98

00:44:46.000 We touched on it a moment ago, Joe.

00:44:48.000 I say this, you don't choose between having a program and not having a program.

00:44:52.000 You choose between having a conscious program and an unconscious program.

00:44:55.000 If you're not working in a conscious program, you are being worked by your unconscious program.

00:45:00.000 This is what I do if a man makes me feel intimidated.

00:45:02.000 This is what I do if a woman makes me feel like I'm important. 1.00

00:45:05.000 This is what I do if I have a bad day.

00:45:07.000 Program, program, program.

00:45:08.000 The program of your class, the program of your school, your family, your culture, your time.

00:45:12.000 And this 12-step system can debug you from it, and it's not anybody else telling you what to do, because it's your own version of a higher power, it's your own version of a truth, except it's guided by the idea, become free, connect to who you really are, and become benevolent and loving to others.

00:45:27.000 You know what I think is really important that you said earlier about there's no political system or no politicians that are talking about love and values and caring and a sense of community.

00:45:40.000 I think that's the solution to what we're fearing about Brexit and Donald Trump and the rise of the Just this turning of the apple cart, this thing that people are seeing right now that they don't like, and the hateful rhetoric that people are most disturbed about,

00:45:59.000 particularly with Brexit, right?

00:46:00.000 That's like the big thing that people are really disturbed about, is that it was fueled by this fear of the other.

00:46:05.000 Yes, that's right.

00:46:07.000 Isn't it possible that if people decide that that didn't work out, whether it's Brexit or Trump, that the response to that would be the rise of this ideology, the rise of someone who's going to talk about love and community, someone who's going to be genuine?

00:46:23.000 I mean, we don't have that person now, but it doesn't mean that that person can't exist.

00:46:27.000 And we've only had 45 different presidents.

00:46:29.000 We haven't had every single version of what's possible For a human being to be interfacing with the entire civilization of the United States of America.

00:46:38.000 I think it's pretty clear what that system delivers.

00:46:40.000 I think that those power systems are evolving in this direction.

00:46:43.000 I think that this is, if not the pinnacle, I think it's possible that there are better versions of a president, but I think that systems that are that centralized will always deliver inequality.

00:46:51.000 I think it's impossible for them not to, and I think that they should be evolved, altered, devolved in a sense, broken down.

00:46:58.000 Yeah.

00:46:58.000 But I do agree.

00:47:00.000 One of the things that I think is positive about cataclysm in politics, something like Brexit, like when Brexit happened and when Trump happened, I felt this sort of, I'm a bit, I'm a trickster, I'm a comic, I live in mischief, I live in the madness that's just behind reality.

00:47:14.000 And I thought, in a way, this is good, not for...

00:47:16.000 I know people's lives would be negatively effective, and we've seen the rise of divisive politics and quite old-fashioned ideas about ethno-nationalism and that kind of stuff.

00:47:26.000 But the good thing is, precisely as you say, Joe, that it does open the conversation up for someone to say, hold on a minute, I think we've just left out love, kindness, unity.

00:47:45.000 We're not forced to address things are going wrong.

00:47:51.000 You know, I talked to my friend Sturgill.

00:47:55.000 Do you know Sturgill Simpson, the musician?

00:47:57.000 He is a brilliant musician.

00:47:59.000 And he sent me this text message of a conversation that he had with Dr. Rick Strassman.

00:48:04.000 Dr. Rick Strassman is the guy out of the University of New Mexico who ran those clinical tests on DMT. He wrote the book, DMT, The Spirit Molecule.

00:48:12.000 But he was quoting, when he was talking about the times that we live in and how fucked up everything is, he was quoting this...

00:48:21.000 I think it was a monk who said this, that we are constantly in a fight between 49.9% and 50.1% good and evil, and that they fluctuate back and forth, and that we feel like... 0.82

00:48:39.000 We are just like a speck of dust because we are both a speck of dust and the most important thing in the world.

00:48:48.000 Brilliant.

00:48:49.000 Because the actions of one individual literally can influence the course of the human race, the course of our civilization.

00:48:57.000 And that this period of flux is what creates growth and change.

00:49:01.000 And the tipping of the apple cart, and the positive thing about having someone like Donald Trump, and I don't like Donald Trump more than I like Hillary Clinton.

00:49:08.000 I didn't like either one of them.

00:49:09.000 And what Hillary Clinton represented to me was this lifelong politician who didn't support gay marriage until 2013. What she was to me, what she represented to me, was an obvious magician.

00:49:20.000 Someone who I could see them pulling the cards out of their sleeve, and I'm supposed to not pay attention. 0.99

00:49:26.000 It's bullshit, right? 0.99

00:49:27.000 And what he represents is the ego, unfettered and flaring out with crazy hair and a fat belly and little hands and the whole deal. 1.00

00:49:36.000 It's just this chaos ego putting his name on buildings and that we're realizing that both of these are terrible options.

00:49:44.000 This system is a terrible system.

00:49:47.000 When we have what's essentially a popularity contest to see who controls nuclear weapons, it's insane. 0.55

00:49:53.000 It's literally insane and that the only way this is gonna change is by having this incredibly upsetting moment for everybody where they're looking around going what the fuck is going on and then new ideas get introduced and I don't know what Those new ideas are going to be or who's going to introduce them or how someone is going to come along within the next three years and Challenge this current system in a way that's appealing not just to the right and to the left But maybe in some

00:50:24.000 way to just human beings maybe in some way to human beings they realize like what's what's we're not going to get by in this world by enforcing right-wing politics and ideas and and and This sort of ideology or left-wing ideas in politics or ideology,

00:50:41.000 but freedom and love and community.

00:50:44.000 And to be free, to practice your own level of conservatism on your own. 0.73

00:50:48.000 But the idea that I don't want any gays and I have a little tribe where no gays are allowed, that seems to me to be counterproductive. 0.51

00:50:54.000 And that seems to be counter-evolutionary. 0.79

00:50:56.000 You know, all of that idea.

00:50:58.000 There's any suppressing of people's individual right to express themselves.

00:51:01.000 Sure, I agree with almost everything you said there.

00:51:05.000 Since I've been involved in academia, do you know one of the main changes?

00:51:08.000 I make notes.

00:51:09.000 Ooh, good move.

00:51:10.000 Yeah, notes now.

00:51:11.000 I never would have dreamt of that when I was a younger man.

00:51:13.000 Notes are excellent.

00:51:14.000 Near the beginning, you talked about this idea, the percentile of good and evil, the good and evil with both of us.

00:51:19.000 Now, this great quote by the Russian author Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil runs not between creeds, religions, and empires, but through every human heart.

00:51:27.000 It's a nice quote for that, isn't it?

00:51:29.000 I love that quote.

00:51:30.000 Now, here's a personal theory that the reason that idolatry is bad, like that it comes, like, you know, most religions say don't worship individuals, is precisely because they understand that.

00:51:40.000 Don't make one individual have too much power.

00:51:43.000 Even now, historically, we know that Gandhi had skeletons in the closet.

00:51:46.000 Great, great Gandhi, this wonderful, great hero of bringing down the British Empire, bringing about freedom, you know.

00:51:52.000 Although, interestingly, Gandhi said, there's no point us kicking the British out of India and then replicating their systems. 0.75

00:51:57.000 This is a country of 70,000 villages.

00:52:00.000 These 70,000 villages should be autonomous, run on their own craft economies, trade with one another only in excess.

00:52:08.000 So he was trying to get important ideas out there.

00:52:11.000 But your great civil rights leaders, Malcolm X, These are men that had... 0.99

00:52:16.000 Malcolm X did prison time for unusual shit. 0.99

00:52:20.000 Dr. King, you know, extramarital stuff. 0.99

00:52:23.000 People are not perfect.

00:52:24.000 They're great heroes.

00:52:26.000 They're pioneers.

00:52:27.000 All people are people.

00:52:27.000 So we have to change this.

00:52:29.000 What I think is that we can't have a popularity contest to decide who's in charge of nuclear weapons.

00:52:35.000 These kind of systems need to be devolved...

00:52:37.000 Because it's mental.

00:52:38.000 I agree with your analysis of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump entirely.

00:52:42.000 I think that the reason that you have a mad option like Donald Trump being successful is because people had had enough of those cheap tricks and cards up sleeves and financial corruption.

00:52:51.000 So yeah, the apple cart's going over.

00:52:54.000 Chaos, too, I agree, is an important part of evolution.

00:52:57.000 We rest on chaos.

00:52:59.000 These patterns that we observe are just temporary.

00:53:02.000 Osho, the sort of cult leader and sort of poetic figure and leader, said, we talk about civilization as if it's this great thing.

00:53:11.000 What is civilization?

00:53:13.000 A clearing in the forest.

00:53:14.000 You know, for a moment we create our cities and the forest closes in and has it again.

00:53:18.000 Where all these ancient civilization that Graham Hancock talks about so lucidly, where are they now?

00:53:24.000 They're getting swallowed up by the Amazon.

00:53:26.000 And this great quote in Herman Melville's Moby Dick that says, you know, Noah's flood is still happening.

00:53:33.000 The majority of the earth is still flooded in water.

00:53:37.000 We are connected to these events.

00:53:39.000 We are out there in that chaos.

00:53:41.000 So I suppose...

00:53:42.000 Gosh, what I'm trying to say here, Joe, is that when we recognise that we're all flawed, that we're all fallible, we have to sort of think, can we build systems that tend towards the better aspects of our nature, not the worst aspects of our nature?

00:53:57.000 Can we recognise that any politician in a position of power for too long will make mistakes, will be flawed, that power has to be spread out as much as possible and as close to the people that it affects as is feasible?

00:54:10.000 Yeah, there's always going to be an issue with someone being able to acquire a hundred billion dollars like the Amazon Jeff Bezos guy like that that is going to corrupt people It's gonna it's like why would you first of all?

00:54:23.000 Why would you keep working?

00:54:24.000 Why would you want that amount of money and what's your plan?

00:54:26.000 What's your end game?

00:54:27.000 Are you trying to make the world a better place?

00:54:28.000 You're gonna try to acquire more brown boxes with your logo on them I mean, what do you what are you doing?

00:54:34.000 Where's it going?

00:54:35.000 And it seems to me that there's a game, right?

00:54:37.000 Everybody plays this game.

00:54:38.000 Some people play it for $10 an hour.

00:54:40.000 Some people play it for $10 billion a year.

00:54:42.000 And that once you make $10 billion a year, you want infinite growth.

00:54:46.000 You want $11 next year.

00:54:48.000 I would like to tell my stockholders that we have cause to celebrate, and we have a 20% increase in our bottom line this year, and everybody's looking good.

00:54:57.000 Let's go to Tahiti!

00:54:58.000 Woo! 0.99

00:54:59.000 Right?

00:54:59.000 And then, like, what are you doing?

00:55:01.000 You can't, this is not gonna last.

00:55:03.000 You're not gonna live forever.

00:55:04.000 Like, what is the endgame?

00:55:05.000 Well, there's no endgame.

00:55:07.000 You're caught up in the current game.

00:55:08.000 In the current game, they are literally, capitalists are literally living in the moment.

00:55:12.000 Yeah, you're right. 1.00

00:55:13.000 They're just stockpiling shit. 1.00

00:55:16.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:55:16.000 They're not thinking about the overall objective, you know, sky down, looking from the heavens down on Earth. 1.00

00:55:24.000 Like, what the fuck are we doing? 0.98

00:55:25.000 They're not thinking about that. 0.97

00:55:26.000 Nor are they accepting that limitless growth is literally impossible, that we have finite resources on a finite planet.

00:55:33.000 Maybe for you, not for me.

00:55:35.000 I got a yacht! 1.00

00:55:35.000 I got a fucking island! 1.00

00:55:37.000 And I think it's also you get caught up in the momentum of whatever you're doing, you know? 1.00

00:55:41.000 Whatever you're doing, you just get caught up in it.

00:55:43.000 And, you know, if you're doing something and you're trying to get better at it, whether it's make better paintings or acquire more wealth.

00:55:52.000 These are quests, and you try to get better at these quests.

00:55:57.000 And that's a real issue with human beings.

00:55:59.000 And I think it has evolutionary roots.

00:56:02.000 I think it has roots in our need and desire to make better structures and shelters, to make better weapons, to make a better civilization so that we can stay alive longer, so that we can ensure that our children will be alive longer.

00:56:15.000 I think there's roots in that that are sort of...

00:56:18.000 Just sort of bastardized and twisted in this world of ideas where you're talking about like money and stocks and bonds and mutual funds and hedge funds.

00:56:31.000 It's like Jesus.

00:56:32.000 It's almost like we have these ancient instincts for constant improvement that just these human reward systems, they just get corrupted.

00:56:43.000 My theory on this idea is that we have biochemical drives, as you have just described, that compel us to move forward and to survive.

00:56:54.000 But we also have a culture that's continually stimulating fear and desire in order to cast us in a particular economic role, that of consumer.

00:57:04.000 And the reason that I believe that this program, and indeed this book, Are important is because it is a code to awakening, a code to becoming conscious.

00:57:14.000 And once you are conscious, you aren't beholden to the same systems.

00:57:17.000 So much of our behavior is a result of what we don't know about ourselves.

00:57:21.000 We are motivated.

00:57:23.000 We're trying to fulfill ourselves.

00:57:25.000 Because there is that biochemical imperative to get more, to survive, which as an addict I experience and have experienced in extreme. 0.97

00:57:32.000 Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex till there's no more. 0.97

00:57:35.000 Getting out of my head till it's inconceivable that I could do that anymore without killing myself. 1.00

00:57:40.000 Wanting status and power and prestige.

00:57:43.000 See, the reason that I think this system works outside of addiction as it's currently recognised is I've had to work it in all sorts of ways.

00:57:49.000 Once I got rid of drugs, I got obsessed with sex.

00:57:52.000 Once I get a hand on sex, I start being obsessed with what other people think of me.

00:57:56.000 Power, fame and money.

00:57:58.000 And what I'm continually recognising is none of these things can be fulfilling if you're not connected to who you really are.

00:58:04.000 That can give you a moment.

00:58:04.000 Then you're free to pursue Your art or your creation of structures in a conscious way.

00:58:10.000 You're not doing it because you feel unconsciously a bit worthless or a bit crap or like it might fulfill you. 0.76

00:58:15.000 It becomes pragmatic.

00:58:17.000 Do you also feel that like less concentrating on yourself and less being self-obsessed has allowed you to have more open communication with other people and more healthy Back and forth fulfilling communication with other people, which literally makes you happier.

00:58:32.000 Whereas you thought that being obsessed with yourself and being obsessed with success and adulation or sex or whatever those other things were that you were obsessed with was going to fulfill those needs and they weren't.

00:58:43.000 But that...

00:58:45.000 Community.

00:58:45.000 Yes.

00:58:46.000 And bonding.

00:58:46.000 I mean, that's a big part of jujitsu as well, man.

00:58:49.000 Is it?

00:58:50.000 Yeah, big, big, big part of jujitsu.

00:58:52.000 It's like, we're a family.

00:58:53.000 When you're in there choking each other, as weird as that sounds, there's a bond between those people that are in those classes all over the world.

00:59:02.000 They recognize this community in that, as well as it being an extreme pursuit, as well as it being something that is developing your human potential.

00:59:12.000 You're also creating this really intense community of like-minded people.

00:59:16.000 Comedians feel that.

00:59:17.000 I definitely feel that with you.

00:59:19.000 I feel that with most comedians that come in here.

00:59:21.000 I know.

00:59:22.000 We are the same thing in a lot of ways.

00:59:25.000 Yes, yes.

00:59:25.000 I think that's very important, and in a way, it's a return to what we were saying at the beginning of our conversation.

00:59:31.000 That there are certain anthropological requirements that, you know, you need to feel like you're part of a tribe.

00:59:37.000 You need to feel connected to one another.

00:59:39.000 And in my very limited pop-in-there-once-a-week experiences of BJJ, when I've, like, done classes with other people instead of just the one-on-one with the instructor, because he looks after me, do you know what I mean?

00:59:51.000 Delicate because he's brilliant but when it's with like other people that are a similar beginner level there's moments of real intensity within it but afterwards a sense of fraternity and love and closeness and like some stuff that I'm not familiar with not used to being close to men in that kind of way and it's amazing and beautiful and probably very very natural and important and a side of my life that I didn't explore because I did download the myth of our time that you are an individual and And you carve your own

01:00:21.000 way in this world.

01:00:22.000 And what's important is your power, your ability to affect change on others, your ability to sleep with women, the adulation of others. 0.81

01:00:31.000 And as I've got older and having experienced a degree of it, I recognize, ah, it's not real, it doesn't work.

01:00:37.000 Simple things, connection and community, have become more and more valuable to me.

01:00:41.000 But it's an ongoing thing because, as you said, the percentage is so close.

01:00:45.000 When I got involved recently in a campaign, I got involved in a campaign to save a housing estate a couple of years back.

01:00:51.000 These women asked me to help. 1.00

01:00:53.000 My estate's going to get turned into commercial flats.

01:00:55.000 We're all getting evicted.

01:00:56.000 We live here with our families.

01:00:57.000 I backed their campaign.

01:00:58.000 I got them on the TV. This corporate power backed down.

01:01:02.000 And it was amazing because like ordinary people, ordinary families beat, you know, it was like the rebels beating the empire.

01:01:09.000 It's like an amazing achievement of those people.

01:01:12.000 But my ego liked it.

01:01:15.000 I am the power.

01:01:16.000 I am the power.

01:01:17.000 Fed back into it, you know?

01:01:19.000 So, like, I see it as an ongoing thing, that my life now is how can I convey ideas that I think will help people in a way that is accessible?

01:01:29.000 How can I be useful?

01:01:30.000 And knowing that my role in this is to make sure that I don't slip into the egomania again, because I would love to be a cult leader on some days.

01:01:39.000 Thinking about it, though, and being aware of it is one of the most important steps, because we're all a work in progress.

01:01:46.000 I mean, there's no perfect person out there.

01:01:48.000 They don't exist, and we've already discussed this kind of ad nauseum.

01:01:51.000 I mean, I'm a work in progress.

01:01:52.000 You're a work in progress.

01:01:53.000 I never met anybody who wasn't, and I never met anybody who doesn't vacillate at least a little bit, where some days you're better than other days.

01:02:00.000 And those days where you're not as good, you feel uncomfortable about it, and those would lead to better days.

01:02:05.000 When you find yourself slipping, those slipping moments are actually critical, because they give you some self-awareness. 0.95

01:02:12.000 You realize, well, I fucked up, you know? 0.99

01:02:13.000 I yelled, fuck you out my car window when I shouldn't have, or whatever it was, you know? 1.00

01:02:17.000 Well, again, this system is what provides you a way out of that. 0.99

01:02:21.000 Like, you know, the recovery system, this 12-step system, is that you would not rely on one person to be perfect.

01:02:27.000 You recognise everyone is fallible, but together as a community, we can start to have better objectives.

01:02:33.000 And in an instance, like, I fuck up all the time, but the step nine and step ten are about...

01:02:39.000 Making amends when you make a mistake. 0.73

01:02:41.000 Now I literally do this. 0.99

01:02:43.000 If there's a moment where I shout fuck you at somebody, or I go shuffling back a day later, go listen to this thing where I said fuck you, that was wrong of me, that must have affected your feelings. 1.00

01:02:53.000 It's hard to find someone in traffic though, you gotta find that guy that you yell fuck you at. 1.00

01:02:57.000 Yeah, I'll try and do it real quick. 0.99

01:02:59.000 You've got to move fast.

01:03:01.000 And a lot of my fuckies, maybe it's on a phone call, maybe it's in a shop or whatever.

01:03:05.000 I mean, in a way, it's about, I suppose, becoming a benevolent force in this world. 0.84

01:03:09.000 If I tend towards that better 50.1% as opposed to the 49%, then I'm becoming a progressive agent or a benevolent agent as opposed to another person intoxicating the pool.

01:03:22.000 I think it's a microcosm of what we were talking about earlier about society itself, is that one day in the future, look, the way we behave today is light years past the way they behaved during the Inquisition.

01:03:33.000 I mean, in the future, I imagine, especially today, because people have so much access to the way other people behaved, we have so much data.

01:03:44.000 On just written words, listening to people talk in podcasts and speeches and watching videos, there's so much more data than there ever was available 100, 200, 1000 years ago, that in the future, we're going to have a much better way of communicating based on the learning and growth if we survive,

01:04:05.000 right?

01:04:06.000 And I think that's the same thing with you and I and everybody listening to this as a human being.

01:04:10.000 If you continue to grow and you don't fall into all these traps, as time goes on, you will be a better version. 0.69

01:04:16.000 It's slow and it's fucking brutal and it's painful sometimes because it's just... 0.99

01:04:22.000 You feel like, God, why don't I have my shit together? 0.99

01:04:25.000 You know? 0.98

01:04:25.000 I mean, there's... 0.98

01:04:26.000 I was saying this about Donald Trump.

01:04:28.000 Someone was writing off Donald Trump.

01:04:29.000 He's never going to learn.

01:04:30.000 He's who he is.

01:04:31.000 I'm like, do you just stop learning when you're 70?

01:04:34.000 That's it.

01:04:35.000 It's over.

01:04:35.000 There's no more data getting in there.

01:04:37.000 I don't know.

01:04:38.000 Maybe Donald Trump could have a revelation one day.

01:04:42.000 Maybe Donald Trump could realize the error of his ways and the way he communicates.

01:04:47.000 He's causing more problems than he's fixing.

01:04:50.000 Maybe he'll be aware.

01:04:51.000 Not even to point him out because it's just...

01:04:54.000 He's just one of us, right?

01:04:56.000 To all of us.

01:04:57.000 That I think we're all slowly, brutally piecing this thing together and hopefully we're better at it than we were a week ago.

01:05:05.000 And hopefully we're better at it than we were six months ago.

01:05:08.000 And that it's going to continue.

01:05:09.000 Well, that feels like the general tendency in my own life.

01:05:12.000 Does it feel like the general tendency in your life?

01:05:14.000 Oh, absolutely.

01:05:15.000 And you know, one of the things that's helped tremendously is this podcast.

01:05:18.000 Being able to have these long three-hour conversations with people, you sit down and talk to them with no distractions, it doesn't exist anywhere else.

01:05:25.000 It doesn't exist in nature.

01:05:26.000 Someone said this to me.

01:05:27.000 They said, you know, you always say on your podcast that you just try to have a conversation. 0.99

01:05:31.000 He goes, but who the fuck has these kind of conversations? 0.99

01:05:33.000 Well, you just sit down and stare at each other and talk for hours at a time. 0.99

01:05:36.000 I'm like...

01:05:38.000 Yeah, you're right.

01:05:38.000 I mean, it is just a conversation still, but you're right is that it's sort of an accelerated form of it.

01:05:43.000 It's like if you, you know, you could kind of apply it to everything else.

01:05:47.000 If you spend enough time doing it, you know, you're just, you're going to get better at it and you're going to, a lot of the podcast is thinking, right?

01:05:55.000 And it's examining your own behavior and examining the way you interface with other people.

01:05:59.000 And I do more of that than I ever have before.

01:06:02.000 What do you want to change about yourself?

01:06:05.000 Just keep going the same way I'm going.

01:06:07.000 Get better at being nice, get better at being honest, get better at being loving. 0.99

01:06:12.000 I mean, it sounds all hokey, hippy bullshit. 0.97

01:06:14.000 No, it sounds good. 1.00

01:06:14.000 This is what it is. 1.00

01:06:15.000 Yeah, I want to be nicer.

01:06:16.000 I want to have better relationships with my friends, better relationships with my family, better relationships with people that I don't even know that I meet.

01:06:24.000 I mean, I just want to interface with the world in a more positive way.

01:06:28.000 One of the most important things to realize is all the interactions that we have with each other are dependent upon two individuals or more, right?

01:06:34.000 But it's you and whoever you encounter.

01:06:37.000 And the way you encounter them is going to change the way they behave to you.

01:06:42.000 And everybody always wants to put it off on the person who behaved a certain way to them.

01:06:47.000 And in some ways, you're right.

01:06:49.000 But in other ways, your reaction is completely dependent.

01:06:54.000 On your own way of approaching it and your reaction may change the way they react.

01:07:00.000 You're completely right.

01:07:01.000 Like if throwing a ball against that brick wall, it will bounce back a certain way.

01:07:06.000 But if that became a softer surface or indeed a furry wall, to quote one of my own films, then it will bounce back in a different way.

01:07:12.000 So this is another thing that's in the program, the necessity for forgiveness.

01:07:17.000 Yes.

01:07:18.000 Instead of blaming your past, blaming other people, you come to a point of forgiveness.

01:07:23.000 This creates the nexus for change.

01:07:27.000 As long as you're like, oh, that person felt me up when I was a kid, or my stepdad wasn't a loving figure in my life.

01:07:33.000 As long as I hold on to that belief, I'm trapped by it.

01:07:35.000 The minute I say...

01:07:37.000 I relinquish that now.

01:07:38.000 It's not happening anymore.

01:07:39.000 I'm willing to move forward.

01:07:41.000 That's another human being.

01:07:42.000 They were doing the best they could.

01:07:43.000 Suddenly you're liberated and your path changes.

01:07:46.000 Now, Joe, when you were saying just then, mate, about wanting to help more people, do you have any particular projects that are specifically about that?

01:07:53.000 Obviously, this podcast is a tool for education, but do you have anything that's specifically like, right, I'm going to do this thing, like, I don't know, taking martial arts into communities type stuff?

01:08:03.000 No.

01:08:04.000 Well, don't you think you'd be really good at that?

01:08:06.000 If I had more time.

01:08:07.000 I just don't...

01:08:08.000 I don't have enough time to do what I'm already doing.

01:08:10.000 You know, I mean, in terms of, like, just sheer numbers of hours in a day.

01:08:15.000 And I think, I can't just work.

01:08:18.000 Because if I just work, my work won't be any good.

01:08:20.000 I mean, you have to live.

01:08:21.000 It's one of the most important things about stand-up comedies.

01:08:24.000 You can't just do comedy.

01:08:25.000 You have to do other things.

01:08:26.000 And this is something that took me a long time to figure out.

01:08:29.000 Like, you can't...

01:08:30.000 Like, you ever see a lot of comics, they just start talking about, like, airline travel and hotel rooms and...

01:08:35.000 Because your life is airline travels.

01:08:37.000 That's your life.

01:08:38.000 And they can relate to it, so that's what they talk about.

01:08:40.000 Well, that to me is a failure of gathering research.

01:08:44.000 Yes, yes.

01:08:45.000 I mean, it's life, right?

01:08:47.000 Yeah.

01:08:47.000 But your life has to, I think, in order to have a continual...

01:08:52.000 Body of work.

01:08:53.000 You can't just constantly talk about airline travel.

01:08:56.000 You've got to have input.

01:08:57.000 You've got to have input.

01:08:58.000 I'm very conscious that my thing at the beginning of this was about airline travel and the low-frequency anxiety I experienced in airline workers.

01:09:06.000 It certainly wasn't a comedic bit, but it was cultural analysis and did to a degree reveal that I'm in the middle of a press junket and that's my life at the moment.

01:09:12.000 I could just as easily have told you about bees.

01:09:14.000 I'm a beekeeper.

01:09:16.000 I've got bees, all right?

01:09:17.000 I swim in the river.

01:09:18.000 I have experiences.

01:09:19.000 Do you have bees?

01:09:22.000 Keep one bee and see if it works out. 1.00

01:09:24.000 Because if one bee doesn't work, you're like, fuck this bee, I'm free! 0.99

01:09:28.000 That's it, that's that responsibility to deal with. 0.99

01:09:29.000 60,000 bees, I'm not taking their honey or anything like that.

01:09:32.000 But yeah, you're right, it's giving me insight.

01:09:33.000 What's your stand-up comedy then?

01:09:36.000 What is it currently, what are your sections, your beats?

01:09:41.000 What I'm doing right now is working towards a new Netflix special that I'm going to do in either March or April.

01:09:47.000 I have to figure it out.

01:09:48.000 I want to do it in Boston, and I don't want to do it when it's too cold.

01:09:51.000 Well, that 1,000-seater place in Boston, I think I've heard before.

01:09:54.000 Yeah, the Wilbur.

01:09:55.000 Yeah, the Wilbur.

01:09:55.000 Good place.

01:09:56.000 Yeah.

01:09:57.000 It's an awesome little theater because it's 900 seats and it's really three 300-seat comedy clubs.

01:10:03.000 Yeah.

01:10:04.000 It's three stacked on top of each other.

01:10:06.000 It's a great venue.

01:10:07.000 It's intimate.

01:10:08.000 So you're going to do an hour, so you'll probably do it over three nights.

01:10:11.000 What have you got, like, three 20-minute areas?

01:10:13.000 Do you know what your bits are?

01:10:15.000 Yeah.

01:10:15.000 What sort of areas, if you don't mind me?

01:10:17.000 I'm just curious.

01:10:17.000 Well, it's difficult to talk about it on the podcast without going into actual bits themselves.

01:10:22.000 Without doing it.

01:10:23.000 But can you tell about the area?

01:10:23.000 Alright, I'll tell you about my area to show you that sort of thing.

01:10:25.000 I talked about when I got heavily involved in politics and I found myself on TV shows and doing rants on telly and getting into political arguments.

01:10:32.000 Those are great, by the way.

01:10:33.000 Thank you.

01:10:34.000 I love doing those.

01:10:34.000 I love the one you did.

01:10:35.000 Was it Fox News that you did one with it?

01:10:37.000 Yeah.

01:10:37.000 Where you're just breaking down, like, what are we doing here?

01:10:40.000 I love doing that.

01:10:41.000 I like that because there's a lot of ridicule available once you get into the analysis. 1.00

01:10:44.000 Also, you're a fucking runaway train. 0.99

01:10:46.000 Once you start a sentence and you start going, you're very fast and powerful. 1.00

01:10:50.000 And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

01:10:51.000 And there's not a lot of ums or uhs.

01:10:53.000 There's no room to interject.

01:10:56.000 And they're sitting there.

01:10:56.000 They're all, you know, first of all, they're a little starry-eyed in the first place.

01:11:00.000 And then second of all, the runaway trains happen.

01:11:02.000 They're like, uh, uh.

01:11:04.000 And then the ride's over.

01:11:05.000 Five minutes later, like tin cans are rolling down the aisle.

01:11:07.000 And they're like, okay.

01:11:08.000 It's a good technique because see there what we were saying about BJJ, like that language I don't know.

01:11:14.000 The other language, the language of comedy, it's a language I've worked on.

01:11:17.000 So one of my techniques is never create space.

01:11:19.000 Give them no room.

01:11:20.000 No space.

01:11:21.000 That's Jiu Jitsu by the way.

01:11:23.000 That's Jiu Jitsu, no space.

01:11:24.000 Jiu Jitsu is no space.

01:11:25.000 Smush.

01:11:25.000 See, if you take the actual Jiu Jitsu out of it, I'm brilliant at Jiu Jitsu.

01:11:30.000 Yes.

01:11:30.000 It's just the actual physical contact holds, locks and chokes I struggle with.

01:11:34.000 Jiu Jitsu shows itself in all forms.

01:11:36.000 It's in everything.

01:11:37.000 That is true transcendence, to find one universal language, one universal myth, one mind, one consciousness, one love.

01:11:43.000 Yes, yes.

01:11:43.000 Know the way broadly and you'll see it in all things.

01:11:45.000 All right.

01:11:46.000 Miyamoto Musashi.

01:11:47.000 That was a pretty good joke.

01:11:48.000 Book of Five Rings.

01:11:48.000 Just drop that in there, Chinese philosophy or something.

01:11:51.000 Japanese, it's my tattoo.

01:11:52.000 That's Musashi in my arm.

01:11:54.000 What is he, some sort of master?

01:11:56.000 He was a samurai.

01:11:58.000 He was a ronin. 1.00

01:12:00.000 He was during the time where these samurais roamed the earth and got into these one-on-one sword fights. 1.00

01:12:05.000 And he killed 62 men in one-on-one sword fights.

01:12:08.000 That's a life, isn't it? 1.00

01:12:09.000 That's a bad motherfucker. 0.99

01:12:10.000 He wrote an amazing book on strategy and life. 1.00

01:12:13.000 And one of the things that he emphasized in that book is that a real warrior must be balanced.

01:12:17.000 You must be good at art and calligraphy and poetry.

01:12:20.000 That's good.

01:12:20.000 You can't have any holes in your game.

01:12:22.000 You have to be a balanced person in order to survive in these intense moments of swords flying at your face.

01:12:28.000 I heard never teach a man to fight who doesn't know how to dance.

01:12:31.000 It's quite good, isn't it?

01:12:31.000 Ooh.

01:12:33.000 Me neither.

01:12:34.000 We'll fight, so pretty safe there.

01:12:37.000 But what I've done is I've found things, I've approached it from a different angle of pointing out the things that I did wrong in my political campaigning, where I floored and fell into my ego.

01:12:47.000 I do a good long bit about the birth of my daughter, purely from the perspective of watching a birth, like a commentary, a sports commentary.

01:12:57.000 Of the baby coming out.

01:12:59.000 I don't use the beat, the rhythms of sports commentary, but just actually describing what happened and what it did to my mind to be present at the birth of my daughter, to experience something that's so divine, but so animal, tearing flesh, roaring and all that stuff, but it's like God is in the house,

01:13:14.000 you know.

01:13:15.000 So I do a bit on that, but every time I build it up into a point of divinity, I undercut it with, like, you know, how sort of mad it looks and the obvious stuff that I guess you'd go for.

01:13:24.000 Yeah, of course, yeah.

01:13:24.000 So I do that.

01:13:26.000 And the whole show, Rebirth, which I'm doing for Netflix, I believe, at some point soon, is called Rebirth.

01:13:33.000 And the point of it is how having the baby is meant I've been reborn to myself.

01:13:38.000 But a lot of it's about recognising the limits, because I think I got very narcissistically involved in politics, the same way I'm possibly getting narcissistically involved in spirituality right now.

01:13:47.000 Because I still have this yearning, this thing that wants to change other people's lives, change the world, in inverted commas.

01:13:54.000 You know, but like the comedy comes from recognizing my own flaws within that.

01:13:58.000 Do you do any sort of like really difficult exercise outside of jujitsu?

01:14:04.000 Do you ever get involved in, you know, any like yoga, like intense yoga, like long periods of time, like 90 minute hot yoga classes or running or anything where you like really have to push yourself physically?

01:14:15.000 Not really push.

01:14:16.000 I run, and I listen to your podcast sometimes, and Sam Harris' podcast sometimes, or whatever, and I do do yoga, but it's interesting that you specifically say push yourself to the limit.

01:14:28.000 Why do you think that's an important part of it?

01:14:29.000 I think there's a freeing aspect in pushing boundaries, and the physical boundaries, because it's exhausting, and not just exhausting physically, but mentally too, because there's a strain on your body's desire to quit.

01:14:41.000 Your mind's desire to seek comfort and that in pushing past that you find this freedom and you also find a vulnerability in who you are as a person. 0.99

01:14:51.000 It's very difficult to think greatly of yourself and to be egotistic when you know that you're so fucking tired you have to put your hands on your knees and you're heaving and you know and then you have to keep going and then don't be a pussy come on keep going and so you don't You realize who you are. 1.00

01:15:07.000 You feel yourself for who you really are as opposed to like adulation and looking at yourself as this thing that's above it all. 0.98

01:15:16.000 Like you realize the flaws in your mental process, the flaws in your physical abilities, and I think it's very humbling.

01:15:23.000 Yeah, right. 0.93

01:15:24.000 I can see that doing that in a bodily way would be useful, but to tell you the truth, the trouble for me, and I think a lot of addicts, is not that, like, of course there's self-obsession, but self-obsession isn't usually about, I'm fucking great. 0.91

01:15:37.000 It's normally, I'm worthless. 0.83

01:15:38.000 That's what it comes mostly from that position.

01:15:40.000 But it's also you're thinking about yourself all the time, right?

01:15:43.000 That is the problem.

01:15:44.000 That's what needs to be decoded.

01:15:45.000 And I think you're right that in physical exercise is really, really important.

01:15:48.000 The level to which I do it, I always feel better.

01:15:51.000 It's not my, like, I have to work even to bloody do it. 0.99

01:15:54.000 I'd rather spend all the time thinking or doing something like thinking and fucking. 0.98

01:15:59.000 But you know the thing, it is thinking. 0.99

01:16:00.000 That's what's confusing about it to people.

01:16:03.000 It's thinking, but it's thinking in a very different way.

01:16:06.000 There's thinking when your body's at rest and you're just using your mind, but there's also thinking when your mind is trying to manage your body under extreme stress, and that is also a mental exercise, and that's where people get it wrong.

01:16:17.000 People look at people that exercise, and especially people that work out really hard, and they think of them as meatheads or as someone who's base or primal and unevolved.

01:16:27.000 But I feel like there's a high level of mental evolution involved in being able to push yourself.

01:16:33.000 I really admire people that...

01:16:36.000 You'll see a lot of old people that are... 1.00

01:16:40.000 I see them in yoga class all the time that just never fucking stop. 0.67

01:16:45.000 They're in there and they don't have extreme physical abilities at all. 0.97

01:16:49.000 There's nothing athletic about them.

01:16:51.000 They're not strong.

01:16:52.000 But they're in there grinding.

01:16:54.000 And in doing so, you have to...

01:16:56.000 I mean, it can't...

01:16:56.000 Possibly be comfortable for them, right?

01:16:58.000 I'm looking at their saggy arms and their old legs.

01:17:01.000 This is not like some graceful person who's able to do this easily.

01:17:04.000 This is a person who's really struggling.

01:17:06.000 And in real struggle like that, there is a mental energy that's involved in forcing your body to go through these uncomfortable motions that I think is very freeing.

01:17:17.000 Yeah.

01:17:17.000 I think you're right what you said as well about balance and possibly what you're saying is that I'm a person who will benefit from more of that.

01:17:24.000 I see a guy in the gym once and he said, don't stop exercising.

01:17:27.000 He was old.

01:17:28.000 He was like in his 70s.

01:17:29.000 He goes, don't stop exercising.

01:17:30.000 Don't let your body find out that it's dying.

01:17:33.000 I just keep going.

01:17:34.000 That's a great way of putting it.

01:17:35.000 Don't let your body find out it's dying.

01:17:37.000 That's great.

01:17:38.000 Yeah, that's pretty cool, isn't it?

01:17:40.000 That's great.

01:17:40.000 Yeah, but I think that any form of...

01:17:43.000 I think that some variety of it.

01:17:45.000 I know you do the yoga, you do the Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you do the running.

01:17:48.000 I think it's very important to have different forms of exercise, different forms of mental activity, different forms of stimulation to live...

01:17:54.000 Because this is what this machine is designed to do.

01:17:57.000 And again, I... Return to the problem of capitalism is that it reduces you to your role within an economic system, as opposed to, why not get up, go for a run, do a bit of fishing, wander around, shoot some arrows, do whatever it is you're into, and spend some time meditating, spend some time exercising,

01:18:14.000 spend your time in loving physical combat. 0.76

01:18:16.000 Well, the reason you can't is because there's no fucking time, because your job is to stand on the line, or in that... 1.00

01:18:20.000 Damn cheese grater cubicle. 1.00

01:18:22.000 Get grated. 1.00

01:18:22.000 Just get your soul ground down. 1.00

01:18:24.000 Yeah, that's the number one problem.

01:18:26.000 It's not necessary anymore.

01:18:26.000 It's not necessary.

01:18:28.000 It certainly isn't necessary enough to justify spending eight hours plus a day, five days a week, inside some sort of a box.

01:18:36.000 It's not.

01:18:36.000 A while ago, you said we are both a speck of dust and limitless consciousness, and this I agree with too.

01:18:42.000 Limitless expansion.

01:18:43.000 Limitless contraction possible within consciousness and what you said, one idea can change the world very quickly and that's why these systems regulate the kind of information that's available and the way that it's transmitted and also the fact that it exists within the same economic model.

01:18:59.000 As long as you're making money, as long as the money is getting directed in the right way, people will let us talk about real radical stuff.

01:19:06.000 They're quite comfortable.

01:19:07.000 It's possible for us to say, hey, you should break down the system, you should devolve.

01:19:09.000 I had this good conversation with this guy called Peter Tatchell.

01:19:12.000 He's an Australian gay rights activist who lives in the UK. And he said, like, when you're talking, like, this is with no disrespect for the great civil rights heroes and the people who have had civil rights struggles, but he said, in his experience as a gay rights activist, he goes, in the end, they will yield.

01:19:29.000 When it's to do with those things.

01:19:31.000 Race, sexuality. 0.60

01:19:32.000 People sort of know.

01:19:33.000 But when you...

01:19:34.000 The system will yield.

01:19:35.000 They'll go, yeah, alright. 0.97

01:19:36.000 Gay marriage, of course. 1.00

01:19:37.000 Alright, yeah, we can't fucking have slavery. 1.00

01:19:40.000 In the end, of course, these are monumental human struggles. 0.98

01:19:43.000 I'm not diminishing them. 1.00

01:19:44.000 But if you go near people's financial interests, you are fucked. 0.99

01:19:49.000 They'll get you there. 0.99

01:19:50.000 If you start saying, hey, why don't we not pay our mortgages?

01:19:53.000 Hey, everyone, let's not pay tax.

01:19:55.000 We need to stop using oil.

01:19:57.000 Okay. 1.00

01:19:58.000 Fuck it, you're out! 1.00

01:19:59.000 That's it, sort of straight away. 1.00

01:20:01.000 So it's sort of like, this is what's interesting to me.

01:20:04.000 Like, these are the access points.

01:20:06.000 These are the points where there is vulnerability.

01:20:08.000 I'm not suggesting that we all organise ourselves into a radical crew of, you know, tax avoiders or mortgage renegers or whatever, but... 0.74

01:20:16.000 Well, but even though you and I are both doing well, like you said before, we're not in that weird, you know, upper stratosphere where you're living on the Hamptons and some fucking hundred acre ridiculous seaside mansion where you're...

01:20:32.000 Helicopter and private jet everywhere, and you're worth $100 million. 0.53

01:20:36.000 That's a weird world.

01:20:38.000 That's a weird world that very few people exist in.

01:20:41.000 And once they get there, they don't want to leave.

01:20:43.000 Once you start flying private everywhere, you don't want to leave.

01:20:47.000 Once you have a mansion, you don't want an apartment.

01:20:50.000 Once you have a Bentley, you don't want a Yugo.

01:20:54.000 It's like nobody wants to go down.

01:20:56.000 You want to keep moving up.

01:20:57.000 Yeah, and it's weird because those things happen, they tend to happen in sort of, if they happen in, if you've got that money through entertainment, maybe you're still sort of, you've got some connection to your roots and who you were.

01:21:06.000 Or art.

01:21:06.000 Yeah, right.

01:21:07.000 Entertainment and art, maybe, you know, you're still connected to the source.

01:21:11.000 But when it's like, you know, tech and finance, yeah, you've got a vested interest.

01:21:14.000 My friend Jason Siegel, the brilliant actor, goes, you know, you think all that stuff's about you, the jets and the billboards and stuff, but it's just the symptoms of other people making money out of you.

01:21:25.000 It's not about you at all and you're part of a machine.

01:21:27.000 You'll be processed.

01:21:28.000 You'll be kicked out.

01:21:28.000 It's not a carousel.

01:21:29.000 It's a train.

01:21:30.000 It will run out of energy and as soon as you're not providing, you're out.

01:21:33.000 And I was doing some promo for this book that I'm still trying to subtly, occasionally promote in this freewheeling conversation at Facebook. 1.00

01:21:41.000 And I thought, fuck me, man. 0.98

01:21:43.000 This place didn't exist like 15 years ago. 1.00

01:21:45.000 And look at it now.

01:21:46.000 It is a monolith.

01:21:47.000 Google.

01:21:48.000 These are the kingdoms now.

01:21:50.000 Google's gigantic.

01:21:51.000 Amazon.

01:21:51.000 All these little ideas that were nowhere.

01:21:53.000 Google makes their own phones. 0.99

01:21:55.000 Fucking hell. 0.99

01:21:55.000 They just released the newest Google Pixel 2 phone. 0.99

01:21:58.000 I mean, they make these incredible devices that you can interface into the Google world, and they're optimized for their whole system.

01:22:05.000 Amazing.

01:22:06.000 You know, David Foster Wallace, your great American author, in his book Infinite Jest, postulated a world where all stadiums were named after brands, where countries and regions were named after brands, and it's sort of happening.

01:22:18.000 It's happening.

01:22:19.000 The flags of our nations are merely a veil over the true corporate interests.

01:22:24.000 The British Empire was always about East India trade and all that kind of crap, and this country now is just a veil over true power. 0.92

01:22:31.000 I'm going to the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas this weekend for the UFC. Oh yeah, the T-Mobile Arena. 0.86

01:22:37.000 The T-Mobile Arena.

01:22:38.000 That's what it's called now.

01:22:39.000 At first, when they started to name football stadiums in our country, you still remembered the name of what it used to be before sponsorship, but we start to forget that it was ever anything else.

01:22:49.000 We start to forget we were once warriors, we were once connected to the earth, our gods were once eagles and stags, now our gods are the T-Mobile Arena!

01:22:59.000 Take back your freedom!

01:23:00.000 It's not the Coliseum, it's the Sony Center.

01:23:03.000 Right, where is he? 0.90

01:23:04.000 The Christians are being thrown to the lions at the Sony Center at 3pm. 1.00

01:23:09.000 Yeah, wow. 0.99

01:23:10.000 Yeah.

01:23:11.000 Yeah, well, I mean, you know, they want people to use T-Mobile.

01:23:14.000 I get it.

01:23:16.000 Put your mind to use it.

01:23:17.000 Well, just ask me.

01:23:18.000 Give me a deal.

01:23:18.000 I'll use it.

01:23:20.000 Don't take away my culture.

01:23:21.000 I like what you're saying.

01:23:22.000 Keep talking.

01:23:24.000 Unlimited data.

01:23:25.000 It's nice.

01:23:26.000 Yeah.

01:23:27.000 Hey, so I learned an important lesson off you, and this was it.

01:23:31.000 After I came on last time, you were doing a very big UFC event in, I think, Vegas, and my mates from the gym that I go to, the Genesis Gym, what I've already mentioned, they were coming over for a stag do.

01:23:45.000 They didn't ask me, but I thought, oh, listen, I could further inveigle myself into this little crew of martial artists by hooking them up with Joe Rogan tickets.

01:23:54.000 And I thought, yeah, Yeah, I'll do that, like ever the politician.

01:23:57.000 So I text you, Joe, you hook up my mates with this thing. 0.99

01:24:00.000 And you went, oh, okay, who are these people?

01:24:03.000 Is it important to you?

01:24:04.000 And I took a moment, I thought, they are important, I like them, but what's my motivations here?

01:24:09.000 They're like, this is a good thing.

01:24:11.000 I took a moment to reflect on it.

01:24:12.000 I thought, shall I do this?

01:24:13.000 Shall I come up with these tickets?

01:24:14.000 You know, maybe I'm doing this for the wrong reasons.

01:24:16.000 I took a moment of respite, I reflected, I didn't do it.

01:24:20.000 It was a little lesson.

01:24:21.000 It was a little lesson because you gave me pause for respite.

01:24:23.000 I think you were doing a stand-up show, actually, and they already had tickets for your stand-up.

01:24:27.000 That's what it was.

01:24:28.000 And I was like, can you give me backstage passes?

01:24:30.000 And your answer wasn't an immediate bend over, yes, of course, I'll do what you want, Mr. Brand.

01:24:34.000 It was a bit more questioning.

01:24:35.000 Like, well, really?

01:24:36.000 Who are these guys?

01:24:38.000 Well, the reason why I ask, I always ask, is because sometimes people say, look, you don't have to do this, but they've been bothering me about it.

01:24:44.000 It's a guy I work with.

01:24:46.000 I'm like, whew.

01:24:47.000 Or people have said, hey, would you do this?

01:24:49.000 It's my best friend.

01:24:50.000 I love this guy.

01:24:51.000 And then I go, okay, yeah. 1.00

01:24:52.000 Ah, so you give people a little junction because some of those people are a pain in the ass. 1.00

01:24:56.000 Well, it's because somebody might be a pain in the ass to you and you might just be giving into it. 0.99

01:25:01.000 And I didn't know you as well, you know, so I'm like, well, I mean, and I really admired the way you handled it. 0.99

01:25:07.000 You know, I said, do you want to give my number?

01:25:09.000 That was the thing.

01:25:10.000 And you went, No.

01:25:12.000 No, I don't think I'll give him your number.

01:25:15.000 It seemed like I might be overkilling it.

01:25:17.000 It made me look at my own motivations.

01:25:19.000 And I suppose that's a, you know, anything that...

01:25:21.000 Carl Jung, the great Carl Jung, the mystic and one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis said, anything that crosses your path that you didn't intend for, that is God, in inverted commas, an opportunity to learn.

01:25:32.000 So this is how I try to approach my life now.

01:25:35.000 It's like, hmm, I didn't plan for that to happen.

01:25:36.000 What's the lesson here?

01:25:38.000 What can I learn from this situation? 0.99

01:25:39.000 So like, you know, I'm sure them guys would have been fantastic, although they did later show me videos of what went on, and I think it was a stag do, and they were carrying on like idiots, crawling up and down corridors, drunk out of their minds, so perhaps it was for the best. 0.92

01:25:50.000 But generally, I'm sure that nothing would have gone wrong.

01:25:52.000 But when I look at my own motivation, ah, what are you doing here?

01:25:55.000 Why do you want to do this?

01:25:57.000 You're doing it a little bit because you want to look cool?

01:25:59.000 Don't bother doing that then.

01:26:01.000 You know, that's a small evolution in the way that I walk the path.

01:26:05.000 A small amendment.

01:26:06.000 Down the line maybe I will ask again, yeah, actually, Joe, could you sort these guys out with tickets for this or that?

01:26:11.000 But I'll do it with the right motivation, the right connection.

01:26:15.000 Now this, again, as I keep saying, this journey from unconsciousness to consciousness is what has been the myth of my own life.

01:26:21.000 I think we have to, whether or not we're in just limitless chaos in an ever-expanding universe without meaning, without point, without love, you know, maybe that is the way, you know, that A lot of people see the world that way.

01:26:32.000 It's not how I see the world.

01:26:33.000 I see there as being meaning and everything, poetry and everything, beauty and everything.

01:26:37.000 And certainly in my own life, I like to find the story.

01:26:41.000 What am I meant to learn here?

01:26:42.000 What am I meant to do here?

01:26:43.000 What did I learn from being a hedonist?

01:26:46.000 What did I learn from being promiscuous, from being a drug addict?

01:26:50.000 And it all seems to make a kind of sense.

01:26:53.000 It all seems to be guiding me towards something.

01:26:56.000 And that thing does seem to be love, service, kindness, awareness, not trying to manipulate people, not trying to get shit off people all the time.

01:27:04.000 It's a good journey.

01:27:05.000 And I feel like it's sad if people don't get to do their own version of that journey because they're on the cheese grater or because they're pursuing some myth, some code from their childhood that they're not good enough or that they don't deserve to be happy or they can't achieve anything.

01:27:20.000 Whatever rung they're caught on. 0.63

01:27:21.000 Whether it's the rung of booze or drugs or the rung of staring at social media the whole time or the rung of hatred of others or the rung of being caught in bad relationships in a crap job. 0.87

01:27:30.000 For me, I think that we can accelerate that evolution.

01:27:33.000 I think that there are codes that can slip through in the same way that an Amazon can spring up in 15 years and be this great economic monolith.

01:27:40.000 New ideas, new ideas.

01:27:43.000 Faiths, new ideologies can slip into the net.

01:27:46.000 Particularly now we have this access to technology.

01:27:48.000 You've slipped past the gatekeepers.

01:27:49.000 You have your own media empire out of nothing.

01:27:53.000 You've limited it because it's built around you as an individual and your perspective, etc.

01:27:58.000 But there are ways now of getting information out there that excites me.

01:28:03.000 Yeah, and they should. 0.82

01:28:04.000 You know, and what we were talking about, too, about being a hedonist and doing things wrong and fucking up and what can you learn from them.

01:28:12.000 I think every time you fuck something up and every time you do something badly, there's a lesson that you get out of the weird feelings of failure, of discontent, and those lessons are extremely valuable. 0.99

01:28:23.000 You know, a person who doesn't make mistakes and a person who doesn't do anything wrong, they never learn shit. 0.97

01:28:28.000 You don't learn anything from doing everything perfectly every time. 0.97

01:28:34.000 And the more bold and brash you are, and the more you take chances, and the more you put yourself into these weird positions, even in these, like, you know, I'm sure when you were a sex addict, and you're in this hedonistic, you know, whirlwind experience,

01:28:51.000 you're still, you're taking in all this data, and you're taking all this, and the hollow feeling that you had that you didn't like it is what propelled you to your new stage of consciousness once you emerged from it.

01:29:03.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:29:04.000 Every so often, like, because it's, like, pleasure-laden, an orgy, I mean, that's the point of it, I mean, there's flesh everywhere, there's bits of it that are brilliant, I was noting, hold on a minute, this isn't working, and this is a thing that I thought would really, really work.

01:29:17.000 You know, like, sometimes, the great gift of promiscuity is you get to experience all the intimacy with all of these strangers, and it seems exciting, and the type of sexuality that I've always had is more about worship than any kind of domination.

01:29:29.000 I adore.

01:29:30.000 I adore.

01:29:31.000 You know, so it's not about, like, I want to control you.

01:29:33.000 So, like, but, like, you know, so all these wonderful experiences and encounters, but within it, this kind of ongoing seam of loneliness, unignorable, and also, this is the thing, when you get the things your culture tells you you should be doing and you experience them,

01:29:49.000 now you know. 0.98

01:29:50.000 Now you know you can stop chasing the carrot because you've had a bite out of it and it's like, hold on a minute, it's bullshit. 0.99

01:29:55.000 Like, you know, It's a hard one to learn because anything that's got an orgasm at the end of it, there's a degree of pleasure to be had. 0.96

01:30:01.000 But it takes a while to recognise the emotional cost on me, the spiritual cost on other people, the fact that it's preventing me from becoming a father, from becoming a husband, from settling, from becoming rooted, from becoming actually whole, from becoming a man, from becoming connected.

01:30:17.000 It takes a while to spot that.

01:30:18.000 I think a lot of people don't get the opportunity to break out that pattern.

01:30:21.000 I would never have spotted it had I not first been a heroin addict and gone, hold on a minute, you're doing that thing again.

01:30:27.000 Same with fame and celebrity.

01:30:29.000 Well, toxic.

01:30:30.000 Well, toxic.

01:30:31.000 Exciting and brilliant.

01:30:32.000 And loads of lovely people in there.

01:30:33.000 And I still, like, you know, I might make another film.

01:30:35.000 I don't know what will happen.

01:30:36.000 But, like, it's...

01:30:37.000 Because I'd had the template and the experiences of, oh, this is addiction.

01:30:41.000 You're expecting this thing to make you feel better.

01:30:44.000 Now what's happening is I am...

01:30:45.000 As a baseline, disabused of the idea that the material world will give me anything, that it will ever fulfil me, that I am responsible for my own connection, and that my role here is to serve other people and help them.

01:31:00.000 If my objective in life is, what can I do to augment myself, to make myself better?

01:31:05.000 Even self-improvement, I agree with all of that.

01:31:08.000 I agree with it entirely.

01:31:08.000 It's a brilliant, brilliant thing, and it's necessary, I think.

01:31:11.000 But, like...

01:31:12.000 In order that I may be of service to others rather than, because then I'll just look great in this armchair.

01:31:17.000 Yeah, the self-improvement is about being better at what fulfills you the most, which is almost always establishing community.

01:31:25.000 So don't you think then, Joe, that we could do something that's a bit more explicitly that, You already have this huge community around the Joe Rogan experience.

01:31:34.000 Is there something in it that would bother you?

01:31:38.000 Couldn't there be something that wouldn't cost you that much that might be sort of wonderful?

01:31:42.000 Do these things not float into your world?

01:31:44.000 Aren't people going, you're an influential figure, you're unusual.

01:31:47.000 You have this strong male energy, but you're very open to learning.

01:31:51.000 And you're very open to...

01:31:52.000 And you're broad-minded.

01:31:54.000 I agree with you.

01:31:55.000 Left-wing categories, right-wing categories. 1.00

01:31:56.000 That shit's all got to go. 0.98

01:31:57.000 But I think that there's a real opportunity for you to have a huge impact on communities that are very neglected. 0.99

01:32:04.000 Young males, for example, not knowing how to use their bodies.

01:32:08.000 Young males that violence is becoming a problem for.

01:32:12.000 There's not that many people that are in...

01:32:14.000 As powerful position as you to sort of direct them in a different way.

01:32:18.000 Is that something that you know about?

01:32:19.000 Is that something that's come into your orbit?

01:32:22.000 Well, you're doing it right now.

01:32:25.000 I mean you're doing it right now by communicating in a way that you're going to get to way more people than you're going to do it in a physical sense.

01:32:32.000 You know, by spreading these ideas and communicating online in a podcast and allowing people to download it for free and getting into your phone and your head and, you know, you're jogging and you're driving your car, you're getting ideas into way more people's heads than you ever would by physically being there.

01:32:48.000 Physically being there is very retro.

01:32:50.000 You know?

01:32:53.000 It really is.

01:32:54.000 I mean, you can only be there for so many people.

01:32:56.000 What are you going to do?

01:32:57.000 I mean, I do comedy shows for a lot of people, but I mean, physically being there and doing something and organizing some sort of thing, that's where you venture into some weird cult thing.

01:33:07.000 Don't go into the cult thing. 0.99

01:33:09.000 That's where shit gets slippery. 1.00

01:33:10.000 Everybody's covered in baby oil and you're just fucking trying to grip nothing. 1.00

01:33:14.000 Right. 0.99

01:33:14.000 We're in a jungle now. 0.99

01:33:17.000 Blood everywhere.

01:33:18.000 Mass suicides.

01:33:19.000 No, you're right.

01:33:20.000 Maybe you're right, Joe, but I think it's an interesting thing to observe.

01:33:23.000 I do think that's right, and I do meet a lot of people in England that go, yeah, yeah, I heard you on Joe Rogan, or I listen to Joe Rogan.

01:33:29.000 People talk about it, and it's interesting because it's accessing information that people would not otherwise.

01:33:36.000 People come for the fight stuff or come for the entertainers, but then they're getting hit with Graham Hancock or some neurologist or whatever that you're getting, or some behaviouralist or whatever.

01:33:45.000 Yeah.

01:33:45.000 It's a good thing.

01:33:46.000 Well, I think the wide variety of guests is very important, too.

01:33:50.000 For me, personally, because otherwise I'd get bored.

01:33:52.000 If I only talked to comedians or only talked to MMA fighters or whatever, or even only talked to scientists, I'd get bored.

01:33:58.000 You know, I like talking to a bunch of different people.

01:34:01.000 You know, I mean, I didn't plan any of this, so the way that sort of un...

01:34:06.000 Unfolded is is been pretty organic to use an overused word Tell me please just briefly is there something about the phenomena of Conor McGregor that is unique?

01:34:19.000 What is it that is happening?

01:34:21.000 What has happened with him?

01:34:22.000 What does he mean?

01:34:23.000 What does he mean into UFC? What happens to him now that our post Mayweather fight or What is he an example of?

01:34:31.000 Is he sort of an outlier, a pioneer?

01:34:33.000 How will he be regarded?

01:34:35.000 What does he represent?

01:34:36.000 Is he an entertainment product?

01:34:38.000 Is he a great athlete?

01:34:39.000 Is he a combination of all those things?

01:34:41.000 What does he mean for the sport of UFC? And what do you think will happen in mixed martial arts and boxing?

01:34:47.000 Do you think we'll see more of those kind of events?

01:34:50.000 Well, you're never going to see another one like him, right?

01:34:52.000 Because he's a unique person.

01:34:54.000 He's literally being himself.

01:34:56.000 You're going to see a bunch of people try to mimic that. 0.99

01:34:59.000 And in a sense, he sort of mimicked the people that came before him, like the Chael Sonnens and the Muhammad Ali's and the people that were really good at talking shit. 0.99

01:35:07.000 The difference is... 0.96

01:35:09.000 That what Conor's been able to do, he's the first guy in the UFC that's been able to do that that's had spectacular results.

01:35:17.000 And also showed his real character in losing and then coming back and winning very quickly afterwards with the same guy.

01:35:24.000 Like the Nate Diaz fight.

01:35:26.000 I think that was a very important character-exposing fight because he lost a fight, he got humbled, and then he jumped right back on the horse and then wound up winning, and then he comes back and blows Eddie Alvarez out of the water to become the first two-division concurrent champion in the sport.

01:35:43.000 I think he's a unique guy.

01:35:47.000 It's almost like we don't have a word strong enough.

01:35:49.000 Unique is not really a strong enough word.

01:35:51.000 So it is founded on ability in a very basic way.

01:35:54.000 He's got brilliant ability.

01:35:55.000 Brilliant ability.

01:35:56.000 Massive...

01:35:56.000 He's incredibly smart.

01:35:58.000 And very...

01:36:00.000 He's very innovative in his techniques and his approaches.

01:36:04.000 And I think...

01:36:06.000 He has phenomenal coaching as well.

01:36:09.000 All that animal movement stuff.

01:36:11.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:36:11.000 What the fuck is that walk? 0.99

01:36:12.000 Well, he's just getting... 1.00

01:36:13.000 What is that?

01:36:13.000 That thing that he does where he throws his arms around.

01:36:15.000 It's amazing.

01:36:16.000 Who does that?

01:36:16.000 What does it mean?

01:36:17.000 It doesn't mean anything.

01:36:18.000 It just blows my mind.

01:36:19.000 Being loose.

01:36:20.000 I've started doing it.

01:36:21.000 Peacocking a little bit too.

01:36:22.000 On me own.

01:36:24.000 I do it when I come out on stage sometimes.

01:36:26.000 It's such an amazing thing to do with the body.

01:36:28.000 Yeah.

01:36:29.000 Peacocking, you say.

01:36:30.000 He's peacocking a little. 1.00

01:36:30.000 Because it looks like, oh my god, this guy's fucking out there. 1.00

01:36:32.000 Look at what he's doing. 0.99

01:36:33.000 He's letting the other guy know that he's so loose he can kind of strut with his arms like rubber bands flopping around.

01:36:39.000 But, I mean, he's a combination of a lot of things.

01:36:41.000 He has a brilliant team.

01:36:42.000 John Cavanaugh, his coach, is a brilliant coach.

01:36:44.000 He's got amazing jujitsu coaching and striking coaching in his mind.

01:36:50.000 He understands how to apply these things.

01:36:53.000 And his ability to perform under pressure is fantastic.

01:36:56.000 You saw that in the Mayweather fight.

01:36:58.000 I mean, even though he lost that fight, he hit Mayweather with some pretty good shots.

01:37:02.000 And he won the first three rounds against the greatest boxer of all time.

01:37:07.000 So that's extraordinary.

01:37:09.000 Extraordinary.

01:37:09.000 I mean, you can say easily that Mayweather was taking those rounds off, and I agree he was.

01:37:13.000 And you could say that Mayweather was bringing him to deep water because he knew he would exhaust him, because he didn't give him enough time to train for it, because he really only gave him two months.

01:37:19.000 It was very brilliant on Mayweather's part.

01:37:21.000 He knew that he wouldn't be efficient, he would tire, all those...

01:37:24.000 Kinetic, big, explosive movements that Conor likes to do.

01:37:27.000 They're very taxing.

01:37:28.000 And he knew that he was not going to have the efficiency to go 12 hard rounds with a master defensive fighter like Mayweather.

01:37:35.000 And Mayweather was right.

01:37:36.000 But he didn't want to get hit with that uppercut that he got cracked with in the first round.

01:37:39.000 He didn't want to...

01:37:41.000 Conor's movement was very unusual.

01:37:44.000 It took Floyd a while to decipher it.

01:37:48.000 Way better for him if he just blew Conor out of the water from one round on and just completely outclassed him.

01:37:53.000 But he didn't.

01:37:54.000 And one of the reasons why he didn't is because Conor's an extraordinary person.

01:37:58.000 He has greatness.

01:37:59.000 Yes, he has greatness.

01:38:00.000 I mean, he didn't really have the proper opportunity.

01:38:03.000 In only being able to prepare for two months and only having this one professional boxing match, there was a lot of things stacked against him.

01:38:10.000 And yet, I feel, although he clearly lost, he performed admirably.

01:38:15.000 I don't think it hurts his stock in any way.

01:38:17.000 I think it elevates him.

01:38:18.000 And I think his next fight in the UFC, whoever it will be, will be probably the biggest fight in UFC history.

01:38:25.000 If they can do it correctly, depending upon who it is.

01:38:28.000 Especially if it's Nate Diaz.

01:38:29.000 Because Nate Diaz is a huge name.

01:38:31.000 And if Nate Diaz and him decide to do it one more time, I think that would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the sport.

01:38:36.000 Because I think Conor has eclipsed the sport, largely.

01:38:40.000 And maybe for now, maybe someone else will come along in the next year or two that does it.

01:38:45.000 I mean, look, Conor's only been around for a few years.

01:38:48.000 I tweeted to him in 2013 or 14, I forget what it was, when he had won a big fight in the UK. And I said, you know, congratulations on an amazing performance.

01:38:59.000 I really hope to see you in the UFC someday.

01:39:01.000 That was like...

01:39:02.000 Four years ago.

01:39:03.000 Oh my god.

01:39:03.000 At the most.

01:39:04.000 So in four years, he's gone from being this unknown fighter that only the really hardcore fanatics, like myself, knew about, to him being this worldwide phenomenon.

01:39:16.000 He's the biggest combat sport athlete, not just of today, ever.

01:39:21.000 There's no one like him.

01:39:22.000 No one like him.

01:39:23.000 No one has the kind of popularity that he has. 0.99

01:39:26.000 I mean, this fucking guy has thousands and thousands of people fly from Ireland to Vegas every time he fights. 0.98

01:39:33.000 The weigh-ins, it seems like you're in Dublin. 1.00

01:39:35.000 I mean, it's fucking crazy, man. 0.90

01:39:38.000 When you look out, when I interview him at the weigh-ins, In the UFC in Vegas, you look out, you see nothing but Irish flags. 0.99

01:39:45.000 You see people screaming and cheering and singing.

01:39:48.000 Mandalay Bay during the fucking Floyd Mayweather fight, which is not even the venue where the fight was being held, Mandalay Bay was packed bumper to bumper with Irishmen walking down the hallway cheering and singing songs in sync. 0.97

01:40:02.000 It was insane. 0.98

01:40:04.000 Brilliant.

01:40:04.000 There's no one like him in that regard.

01:40:06.000 So first of all, you have to have the greatness. 0.99

01:40:08.000 Without the greatness, who gives a fuck? 0.99

01:40:10.000 It's just another person. 1.00

01:40:11.000 Like a Dennis Hopper said about Van Gogh, you know, like, you know, who gives a fuck if you cut your ear off if your paintings are shit? 1.00

01:40:18.000 Paintings have got to be good. 1.00

01:40:19.000 So his game is good.

01:40:21.000 But then, like, there are Often great geniuses in sport, but to have that, like you say, he used romantic ideas of Ireland and his own Irishness, that became an important part of his perception, but it's obviously resonating in a very,

01:40:36.000 very powerful way to have that kind of devotion.

01:40:39.000 Well, Ireland's very important.

01:40:41.000 Ireland's a very important part of the equation as well, because their appreciation and love and support of him is unprecedented.

01:40:49.000 I mean, I've seen Brazilian fans that love Jose Aldo, and I've seen Brazilian fans that love Anderson Silva, and they're worshipped by their countrymen.

01:41:00.000 But it pales in comparison to the amount of love that Conor McGregor gets.

01:41:05.000 I understand.

01:41:06.000 Their myth aligns with his myth.

01:41:09.000 The myth of the Irish people as being oppressed by British colonialism and having to fight for their freedom.

01:41:14.000 It resonates with what this man represents.

01:41:17.000 And perhaps this is always what happens with figures of greatness, whether it's within the realm of sport or within the realm of politics.

01:41:25.000 Temporarily, a person sort of Captures a particular mood, a particular energy.

01:41:29.000 And this is what I think, again, is to do with unconsciousness.

01:41:31.000 I don't think people are aware of these kind of feelings.

01:41:35.000 I think it's stimulated on a level that's not about thought.

01:41:39.000 This is one of the things I'm very interested in.

01:41:41.000 What lies beyond the rational?

01:41:44.000 We can equate, we can work out, we can judge, but there seems to be some ingredient, even in Conor McGregor, that you can't quite pin down.

01:41:49.000 Yes, there's the greatness as a boxer, yes, the Irish people, but there's also some flavour is being caught.

01:41:55.000 I wonder if you can ever pre-empt or understand these things.

01:41:58.000 I wonder if you can ever drill down.

01:41:59.000 But the work of Joseph Campbell, the work of Carl Jung, the work of these people that say, there are unconscious archetypes, there are unconscious themes, there are stories that are running below the surface, patterns, coordinates that can be connected to...

01:42:13.000 Some people, well, notably the profession of marketing, know how to harness these energies.

01:42:18.000 If you have enough people feeling they're not good enough, they will spend money trying to feel better, whether it's the purchase of a car or a coffee or whatever it is.

01:42:28.000 One of the key ingredients is make people feel not good enough.

01:42:31.000 If you can re-harness and redirect people's sexual energy so that their sexual energy is directed at products and consumerism, then you will sell your product.

01:42:39.000 But for me it seems like...

01:42:41.000 Such a shame to waste this force, to waste this knowledge, to waste this energy just to turn people into consumers, just to turn everything on this planet into a commodity, when what we could be doing is using this energy to imagine new worlds, to imagine new systems,

01:42:57.000 to use our greatness, to use our greatness to, I don't know, Joe, love one another, to create new tribes.

01:43:04.000 I mean, I don't know if you, boy, you tied a lot of things together there.

01:43:07.000 It was good, wasn't it?

01:43:08.000 It was a pretty good ranch.

01:43:09.000 That coffee's really kicked in, actually.

01:43:11.000 That's caveman coffee.

01:43:12.000 No joke, man.

01:43:13.000 It's serious.

01:43:13.000 I think I could do another one.

01:43:14.000 I think I can fucking handle it. 0.99

01:43:15.000 Really? 0.99

01:43:15.000 It's 250 milligrams. 0.99

01:43:16.000 I'll mainline this shit. 1.00

01:43:17.000 270. I'll pour it in my eye. 1.00

01:43:19.000 You want another one?

01:43:20.000 I do like it, Joe.

01:43:22.000 But I do have a terrible drug problem.

01:43:24.000 Caffeine is a drug.

01:43:26.000 Caffeine is a drug.

01:43:27.000 I mean, what you're saying about Connor is, I think, undeniable.

01:43:30.000 He's a hero.

01:43:31.000 And he dares to be great.

01:43:33.000 I mean, he dares to be great in a way that very few people do.

01:43:35.000 And he stands in front of the opponent and looks at the entire crowd and goes...

01:43:40.000 Thank you.

01:43:40.000 And goes like that and puts his hands up like that.

01:43:42.000 I mean, he literally is like some archetypal fixture from the past.

01:43:47.000 Beautiful!

01:43:48.000 And he's also, by doing that, he's letting the opponent realize you're in there with greatness.

01:43:56.000 You're in there with someone who's incredibly comfortable in the moment and someone who truly believes that he's great.

01:44:00.000 And the results that he's had Like, you can't deny that they have a factor in his future success and in the way people love him.

01:44:08.000 The way he knocked out Aldo with one punch to win the title.

01:44:11.000 I mean, this giant build-up over this long period of time, and then he just fucking starches him with one shot, 13 seconds of the fight. 0.98

01:44:18.000 And the deafening roar of the Irish in that arena when that happened, it was fucking insane. 0.99

01:44:24.000 He's like a hero, like a mythical creature. 0.95

01:44:26.000 I suppose the role of the hero is to embody and represent something...

01:44:32.000 To inspire.

01:44:33.000 To inspire the crowd.

01:44:34.000 To put breath into.

01:44:35.000 All those people, those 15,000 plus people that saw that fight, who knows how much energy that gave them to then go forth and pursue their own dreams.

01:44:45.000 Because that's a big part of what heroes represent.

01:44:48.000 What a big part of someone who's accomplishing anything spectacular.

01:44:52.000 It's not just that people get to watch it and get this thrill of watching this experience, but also that you get energized to go and pursue your own ideas.

01:45:01.000 Yes, this is true.

01:45:01.000 I agree.

01:45:02.000 But I think an integral component of the mythic figure of the hero is sacrifice. 0.89

01:45:10.000 I'm in no position of bloody world judge Conor McGregor at any stage from any angle because people that are brave enough to do that is fucking unbelievable.

01:45:16.000 But what I've felt, while it resonates with us when someone is willing to sacrifice themselves, is because it temporarily makes us recognise, when someone's willing to die for what they believe in, whether that is these civil rights leaders we mentioned before, Malcolm X knew he was going to die for doing that,

01:45:34.000 and he did it anyway.

01:45:36.000 Gandhi had a good sense that he was going to die, he did it anyway, because what he believed in was more important than what he was as an individual.

01:45:44.000 And I think that when that happens, it reminds us, ah, there's something, like you say, inspire.

01:45:49.000 It puts breath into us.

01:45:50.000 It reminds us we have the capacity for greatness, and we are not just contained by our body.

01:45:55.000 We are these streams of energy.

01:45:57.000 In that moment, perhaps there is no disconnection between Conor McGregor and that crowd.

01:46:01.000 There is a oneness, a purpose in that single punch, punching for all of them in that moment.

01:46:06.000 The only thing that saddens me is that it is ultimately, maybe not ultimately, but at least seemingly housed by an economic idea.

01:46:14.000 That's the ultimate thing that sort of contains it.

01:46:17.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:46:17.000 How so?

01:46:18.000 You've got to pay money to go there.

01:46:20.000 Ultimately, it's a commodified thing.

01:46:22.000 Conor McGregor will be a commodity.

01:46:23.000 Yeah, but that also energizes it all.

01:46:24.000 That makes people aware of the stakes that are at hand, that makes people aware of the magnitude of the event.

01:46:29.000 If you can pack 22,000 people into an arena like that, it makes people aware of the magnitude of it all.

01:46:34.000 If it just happens on a soccer field and no one's watching, it's not the same thing.

01:46:38.000 No, you're quite right.

01:46:39.000 I'm not criticising the crowd, because the crowd is important.

01:46:43.000 That's what it's doing.

01:46:44.000 It's representing something bigger.

01:46:46.000 But I feel like it's a shame.

01:46:48.000 Say when you take it into the arts, because there's more sensitivity, it's more cerebral, and it's less embodied.

01:46:56.000 Kurt Cobain is like someone in the Matrix waking up in their pod. 1.00

01:47:00.000 He woke up in the pod and thought, oh, fuck. 1.00

01:47:03.000 He knew he was a genius. 1.00

01:47:04.000 He knew that he was connecting with people.

01:47:07.000 He knew he was representing something. 0.99

01:47:09.000 And also, he was mentally ill and a drug addict, and he killed himself. 0.89

01:47:12.000 But I think that there is a sort of a comparison there. 0.89

01:47:15.000 That he knew that he was becoming commodified.

01:47:17.000 He was being reduced to a commodity. 0.98

01:47:19.000 He woke up in the pod and thought, oh fuck, all of these things that are coming from my heart, this truth, isolation, alienation, the kind of things that he was singing about, that in itself became a product. 0.99

01:47:30.000 The machine can handle it. 0.99

01:47:32.000 The machine can take people talking about that, connecting to people's deepest fears of inadequacy and worthlessness, and it can turn that into a product and sell it back to them.

01:47:41.000 I think you're getting caught up in money as always being a negative.

01:47:45.000 And I think Connor has actually embraced the money as a part of the narrative.

01:47:49.000 And I think, you know, another person who's done that without bragging about that is Manny Pacquiao.

01:47:54.000 And Manny Pacquiao, who's made hundreds of millions of dollars in the same form, has actually used that to spread wealth throughout the Philippines and hands out money to people.

01:48:03.000 And he's famously generous in that regard.

01:48:07.000 And I think what Conor's done is it's part of his hero mythology.

01:48:10.000 He's sitting on a throne on a pile of gold.

01:48:14.000 It's really a part of it all.

01:48:16.000 Yeah, he is a king.

01:48:17.000 He is a hero.

01:48:17.000 It's part of the story.

01:48:18.000 I'm not criticizing him as an individual and saying Conor McGregor should do this.

01:48:22.000 You're criticizing the money.

01:48:22.000 Yes, I'm criticizing the city.

01:48:24.000 The money is a part of the story.

01:48:26.000 It's not necessarily negative, and I don't think it is negative at all.

01:48:30.000 But Joe, money is literally a symbol.

01:48:32.000 It is nothing but that represents something.

01:48:34.000 I promise to pay the bearer.

01:48:36.000 We believe this is one dollar.

01:48:38.000 You're getting caught up in semantics, because he can definitely go out and buy a house with that money.

01:48:42.000 Sure. 0.99

01:48:43.000 It is real as fuck. 0.99

01:48:44.000 Like, he can go out and buy mansions and cars. 1.00

01:48:47.000 It's real as fuck. 0.99

01:48:48.000 The idea that it represents, like, I... Promise to give you this. 0.99

01:48:52.000 Yes, it's a promissory note, but it's fucking real. 0.98

01:48:54.000 You know, he has all that. 0.97

01:48:55.000 He has a hundred million dollars.

01:48:57.000 It is a part of the story.

01:48:59.000 He is sitting on a throne on a pile of gold.

01:49:02.000 He does have a crown. 1.00

01:49:03.000 He has a crown on his fucking neck. 1.00

01:49:05.000 I mean, it's real. 1.00

01:49:07.000 Sure.

01:49:08.000 I don't see Conor McGregor as the terminus of this point.

01:49:14.000 I see this as an opportunity to critique what the culture is telling us and what the culture is doing to us there.

01:49:23.000 I understand that with money you can acquire goods and services, but what I'm saying is that out The ultimate system for evaluating worth has become about commodities instead of, perhaps, about beauty or about love. 0.71

01:49:39.000 I'm not saying that Conor McGregor should give away all his money and start marching around and be the new Jesus of Ireland, although that would be fucking fascinating to watch unfold.

01:49:46.000 I'm saying that isn't it a disgust, question, is it not a little unfortunate that greatness is ultimately given to us as a product, that that is how it is received, that's how it's understood?

01:49:59.000 Is it possible that there will be other ways of demonstrating greatness, as he does when he's fighting, or as Kurt Cobain did when he was playing, but ultimately the dominant thing, the dominant puppet ear, the thing pulling the strings, is the dollar.

01:50:14.000 I don't think it is.

01:50:15.000 I think it's a part of the story, much like, you know, your clothes are a part of, you know, what you look like.

01:50:21.000 I don't think it's the dominant thing.

01:50:23.000 I think it's a big part of how you sell it.

01:50:26.000 Like, this is going to be the biggest fight ever.

01:50:28.000 He's going to make, you know, X million dollars.

01:50:30.000 And the way...

01:50:31.000 I mean, but Connor uses it as a part of his narrative.

01:50:34.000 Well, he drives around in a, you know, drop-top Bentley. 1.00

01:50:36.000 And he's, you know, he's got beautiful watches and suits that say, fuck you, and pinstriping. 0.99

01:50:41.000 I mean, it's part of what he's done by... 1.00

01:50:44.000 By creating this incredible mythology.

01:50:48.000 I mean, I don't think it's necessarily in any way, shape, or form negative.

01:50:52.000 I think it's a part of the story.

01:50:53.000 Say with hip-hop, right?

01:50:55.000 This is possibly a similar way of looking at the same idea.

01:50:57.000 And this isn't something I know the answer to, do you know what I mean, Joe?

01:50:59.000 I'm not like, oh, I've worked this thing out, and I want to teach you it.

01:51:03.000 I'm like, I'm trying to fucking work it out myself. 0.84

01:51:05.000 Say with hip-hop. 0.95

01:51:06.000 Hip-hop first, when it comes out, it comes out as this angry roar of oppressed people.

01:51:11.000 No, not really.

01:51:11.000 Originally, it came out as like a happy rhyme.

01:51:13.000 A hip... 0.67

01:51:17.000 All right, there's a jolly bit with African Bambaataa at the beginning.

01:51:20.000 And then, like, it becomes a social tool.

01:51:22.000 Yeah, Sugar Hill and Bambaataa and, yes, early hip-hop pioneers.

01:51:26.000 And then we go through the sort of the phase of...

01:51:28.000 Yeah, you're right.

01:51:29.000 It goes through the early part of it, jolly and jaunty.

01:51:32.000 I like that.

01:51:32.000 That's the rap.

01:51:33.000 Gangsta rap.

01:51:34.000 L.A. L.A. comes into the picture.

01:51:36.000 Terrifying anger of we are going to have a voice.

01:51:38.000 Straight out of Compton.

01:51:40.000 Amazing.

01:51:41.000 And then that in itself becomes about what is the subsequent mutations of hip-hop as it becomes sort of claimed by a dominant system.

01:51:49.000 It becomes about jewellery, bling, particular attitudes.

01:51:53.000 Do you not see what I'm saying that there's a sort of almost like a trend things get pulled into a Certain strand a certain way of being it does but it doesn't have to like it didn't with some guys like the really like here's a perfect example one of the best rappers ever Nas Nas never fell into that Nas remains one of the best lyricists of all time remains brilliant all of his rap has meaning it's creative it's interesting and He doesn't fall into all the bullshit and the bling,

01:52:22.000 although he has plenty of money, and he has all the trappings.

01:52:26.000 He's got this sort of style about him where, I mean, I believe his father was a jazz musician, and he grew up with art in his family.

01:52:35.000 And he's an artist, first and foremost.

01:52:38.000 Although he's a brilliant rapper, he's my favorite rapper. 0.79

01:52:41.000 I think that he's never really fallen into all the bullshit, bling, mansions, all that stuff, like the display of it all.

01:52:49.000 I mean, he has these things, but it's not the primary display when you're talking about Nas as an artist, as a magician.

01:52:57.000 And because, again, I suppose what I'm interested in is how cultural movements start off, it seems, by saying something that's important and powerful, whether it's punk or hip-hop, becomes a voice to the disembodied or a way of conveying, not disembodied,

01:53:13.000 disenfranchised, becomes a voice for them.

01:53:15.000 Or a similar thing with punk.

01:53:17.000 Punk, very observably, because it was a relatively short-term movement, bands like the Pistols and the Clash and all this stuff, these bands come out of...

01:53:33.000 I think it's 540 for the two cans. 0.99

01:53:40.000 That's fucking crazy. 0.97

01:53:46.000 Things start with this original germ. 0.99

01:53:48.000 Greatness, beauty, glory, heroism.

01:53:51.000 Hunger.

01:53:52.000 There's an external system, though, Joe, that can turn it into a product and sell it to people.

01:53:57.000 And I think that that does strip it of its real value.

01:54:02.000 Yeah.

01:54:02.000 And you're saying, I suppose, no, it doesn't matter.

01:54:05.000 It doesn't matter.

01:54:05.000 That can just be the architecture of it or the aesthetics of it.

01:54:09.000 And I'm saying, as long as we have a system that is ultimately about making money and turning everything into profit, and I'm not saying this about any of the individual artists.

01:54:18.000 In fact, that's the point I'm making.

01:54:19.000 He is great.

01:54:20.000 Nas is great. 0.91

01:54:22.000 Kurt Cobain, great, great, great, great, great.

01:54:24.000 But ultimately, you, great.

01:54:26.000 Me, great.

01:54:27.000 Please, God.

01:54:29.000 Everyone's pulled in the direction of profit.

01:54:32.000 It's a thing you've got to swim through.

01:54:34.000 Yes.

01:54:34.000 How is it we become free?

01:54:35.000 Is there something different that could be done here?

01:54:37.000 Can something truly glorious be done here?

01:54:39.000 Like, when you describe that moment of Vegas temporarily being overwhelmed, not as it has been in recent days, by tragedy, death and blood, but in a glorious spirit of Ireland and a hero, that isn't it unfortunate that that energy can't be literally used to create...

01:54:59.000 Better worlds, better systems, better lives.

01:55:02.000 All that really happens is a load of people make a bunch of money. 0.97

01:55:04.000 And probably, and I don't necessarily mean the fucking protagonists, you know what I mean? 0.75

01:55:09.000 Like, people talk a lot about, oh, athletes earn too much money. 0.97

01:55:11.000 I don't agree with that. 0.93

01:55:12.000 It's one of the few ways that fucking ordinary working class people can make a lot of money. 1.00

01:55:16.000 But there are people at the top of that chain that are siphoning a significant amount of money out of all of those little industries. 0.91

01:55:23.000 Yeah, but those people are responsible for making it happen in the first place.

01:55:26.000 I mean, you can't leave it up to the athletes to put something like that together.

01:55:29.000 You need a Dana White.

01:55:30.000 You need a Floyd Mayweather and the Money Team productions.

01:55:33.000 You need people to promote it.

01:55:34.000 You need people to put together a press junket and a world tour.

01:55:37.000 And then you need people to organize the pay-per-view.

01:55:40.000 And then, the real ultimate result is the inspiration that all the people that watch it get.

01:55:47.000 The inspiration, the entertainment, and it's completely up to the individual whether or not they pursue greatness or whether they just pursue money.

01:55:55.000 And it's a trap.

01:55:56.000 There's trappings in both ways.

01:55:58.000 It's the trappings of greatness with no money.

01:56:01.000 There's the sadness of someone who dies great but penniless and homeless.

01:56:05.000 And then there's the guy who just threw it all away for money and never realized his full potential, which is equally sad.

01:56:11.000 But I think that in that, is it like that...

01:56:14.000 We are showing a particular aspect of our own conditioning there in believing in the myth of the individual, that the individual will always triumph.

01:56:23.000 If you have greatness, you know, but like, no, you did say, like, the great person that dies penniless.

01:56:27.000 You know, it's a kind of a shame that we don't create benevolent systems that are helpful to the vulnerable.

01:56:34.000 Right, but you're talking about sport, right?

01:56:36.000 If you're talking about sport, it is completely...

01:56:39.000 I mean, look, there has to be some sort of a support team behind the individual.

01:56:43.000 But it's completely dependent upon the individual.

01:56:45.000 If you don't have John Kavanaugh, you don't have the straight blast gym, you don't have Ido Portal and Dylan Dennis and all the different people that train Conor, you don't have Conor.

01:56:55.000 If you have all those things, it's entirely dependent upon the one individual that takes that knowledge and goes in there and performs.

01:57:02.000 That's what's so scary about it, and that's what's so rewarding to people that watch it, because they know it's so dangerous.

01:57:08.000 It's so crazy, it's so fraught with peril to be the one that so much lies upon.

01:57:14.000 Yeah.

01:57:15.000 The weight on his shoulders is massive and that's one of the most substantial things and the most impressive things about Connor is the way he handles the weight of the pressure.

01:57:25.000 That he goes in there and does this in the giant big moment.

01:57:30.000 That he stands there in front of everybody and throws his arms out like he's the king. 0.99

01:57:34.000 And then everybody goes fucking crazy. 0.98

01:57:36.000 That is glorious. 0.99

01:57:37.000 Yes, it's glorious.

01:57:38.000 It has nothing to do with money.

01:57:39.000 It seems like it does, but money is a part of it all.

01:57:42.000 It's greatness.

01:57:43.000 Greatness is the thing.

01:57:44.000 The money is a side effect of greatness. 1.00

01:57:47.000 That's shit, when he does that. 0.99

01:57:49.000 I don't mean he is beautiful. 1.00

01:57:51.000 I don't ever want Conor McGregor to listen to this and think like, Falk and Russell Brands criticizing me if I ever see my elbow his head off. 1.00

01:58:01.000 Fucking shoulders on that son of a bitch. 1.00

01:58:03.000 My point is... 1.00

01:58:04.000 Especially that left. 0.55

01:58:04.000 No wonder why he knocks people dead. 0.55

01:58:05.000 Look at that fucking shoulder. 1.00

01:58:06.000 The left is a bit bigger. 1.00

01:58:07.000 It's hard to tell from the angle, but it's big. 0.98

01:58:09.000 He fucks people up with that left hand, boy. 0.96

01:58:13.000 This is not a critique of any individual. 0.99

01:58:16.000 This is my...

01:58:17.000 I'm trying to understand how systems work.

01:58:20.000 That's why I'm trying to understand.

01:58:21.000 And I'm suggesting that there are fairer ways of doing things.

01:58:25.000 Even then when you said...

01:58:26.000 But let me say this. 0.96

01:58:27.000 The system doesn't mean jack shit if someone can't rise. 0.94

01:58:30.000 This guy is different, okay? 0.95

01:58:32.000 The system exists all day long, 24-7, 365. The system's going on this weekend in Vegas.

01:58:38.000 There's going to be two world title fights. 0.99

01:58:40.000 There's not nearly the amount of attention being paid to these two world title fights this weekend as Conor McGregor pulling his dick out and taking a piss in a punch bowl. 0.99

01:58:49.000 He could do that on pay-per-view and more people would watch it. 0.98

01:58:52.000 Why?

01:58:52.000 Because he's done so much in the past as an individual, the greatness that he has shown.

01:58:58.000 It's more than just money.

01:59:00.000 It's more than just a system.

01:59:02.000 The system exists.

01:59:03.000 It's a matter of one person figuring out the frequency that this system operates on and showing this unbelievable performance inside that system.

01:59:14.000 That's the individual.

01:59:15.000 And that individual is...

01:59:16.000 When you talk about his past, when he was... 0.81

01:59:19.000 He was working as a construction worker or as a plumber or some shit, and he'd done some amateur boxing and some MMA fights.

01:59:25.000 He was a regular guy.

01:59:26.000 He grew up in a working-class neighborhood.

01:59:28.000 He wasn't rich.

01:59:29.000 There was nothing substantial about him.

01:59:31.000 Even his own parents say they never thought that he was going to be this guy.

01:59:34.000 He figured out a way through it.

01:59:36.000 He wasn't born the king.

01:59:38.000 He wasn't some person who, for whatever reason, was gifted with this existence.

01:59:45.000 He worked his way through it, figured it out, and once he got to the greatest stage in the world, when the pressure was at its highest, he's shown like the brightest star in the universe.

01:59:54.000 And that's what's so exciting about him.

01:59:56.000 Yes, I think he's beautiful and fascinating.

01:59:59.000 But my question is about commodification. 1.00

02:00:02.000 You're a fucking money freak. 1.00

02:00:03.000 You're freaked out about money. 1.00

02:00:05.000 I'm not freaked out about it.

02:00:06.000 Now, hold on.

02:00:07.000 But when you say something, you take a lot of DMT, right?

02:00:09.000 No, I take a lot.

02:00:11.000 I've taken a few...

02:00:12.000 I've taken it...

02:00:14.000 Nine times?

02:00:15.000 When you have them experiences, when you come back from it, what is it that you feel about the way that systems are organised?

02:00:24.000 Do you come back from it quite fatalistic?

02:00:27.000 Like, oh yeah, that's just the way the world is. 1.00

02:00:28.000 Or do you think, hold on a minute, it's fucking mental. 0.76

02:00:30.000 There's so much stuff going on, things could be different. 0.99

02:00:32.000 I don't think about it the way that you think about it.

02:00:34.000 I don't think about these systems.

02:00:36.000 I think you spend a lot of time thinking about the elites and the 1% and the systems.

02:00:40.000 I don't think about that stuff very much.

02:00:44.000 Nor do I actually.

02:00:45.000 I think mostly about what I'm interested in is God and oneness.

02:00:49.000 And I think that greatness is a representation of God.

02:00:53.000 I think that what is coming through Conor McGregor or Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix or Dorothy Parker is some kind of beauty that that person is the perfect vessel for.

02:01:03.000 That's what iconography is.

02:01:05.000 The realization of greatness or the realization of God, in inverted commas, given that this is the age that we're living.

02:01:10.000 Jimi Hendrix playing the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock.

02:01:13.000 Unbelievable.

02:01:14.000 Here is some moment that pulls us all together.

02:01:17.000 Now what my curiosity is about DMT is that does DMT make you experience that oneness or that loss of self in a way that's kind of religious or spiritual?

02:01:26.000 What does it do to your head?

02:01:28.000 Intense loss.

02:01:28.000 I mean, as intense as anything.

02:01:35.000 There's no comparison.

02:01:36.000 I shouldn't say as intense as anything, because there's not a word that I could say that's going to come out of my mouth that's going to do it justice.

02:01:43.000 The words haven't been invented.

02:01:44.000 They don't exist.

02:01:46.000 All words that we have created, they represent things that we can reference in the material world.

02:01:50.000 Yes, yes, yes.

02:01:51.000 When you have a DMT experience, you're literally having a conversation with God.

02:01:56.000 You're experiencing something that's everything and something that's infinitely powerful and infinitely wise.

02:02:01.000 The way I've described it is like you're seeing this insane Infinite world of complex geometric patterns that are made out of love and understanding.

02:02:11.000 Right, right. 0.99

02:02:13.000 Fucking hell. 0.98

02:02:13.000 There's things in there. 0.98

02:02:15.000 They're made out of, yeah right, there's entities you feel.

02:02:17.000 There's something in there that knows you.

02:02:20.000 And I don't know if it's you that knows you. 1.00

02:02:22.000 It's like you that gets free of all your bullshit. 1.00

02:02:25.000 I bet them separations dissolve. 1.00

02:02:27.000 Maybe.

02:02:27.000 My suspicion is that there is no subject-object.

02:02:31.000 There is only oneness.

02:02:32.000 Now, you yourself just said it starts to feel like it's about loving and oneness, Joe.

02:02:38.000 So that level of consciousness exists.

02:02:40.000 So my belief is that our systems, whether it's our athletic systems, our entertainment systems, and certainly our economic, political, and social systems, should be as close as possible to To that feeling, that that feeling should be our guiding light.

02:02:55.000 So I'm not criticising Conor McGregor, the great genius, like I'm fascinated by and adore, or Kurt Cobain or anyone.

02:03:01.000 I'm just saying, isn't it odd that you have personally experienced in your way through DMT, and I have through yoga and meditation and all the shit I'd done when I was a kid.

02:03:09.000 This sense of oneness, this love that seems to transcend my personal form and everything I believe in.

02:03:14.000 And yet when it comes to our systems for organizing this plane that we live on, the material plane, the choices we make are not about that love and understanding.

02:03:22.000 They're about the kind of...

02:03:25.000 About resources and elitism, you know?

02:03:29.000 So I'm not interested in the 1% and all that stuff. 1.00

02:03:31.000 I am a bit interested.

02:03:32.000 But what I'm more interested in is why are our systems not more representative of the divine, pure truth that we can access through spirituality?

02:03:42.000 Well, I think our systems are based on the monkey need for survival and this sort of...

02:03:47.000 That's not good, is it?

02:03:47.000 We should get beyond that.

02:03:48.000 Well, I think we will. 0.97

02:03:50.000 But I think it takes a long fucking time, just like we were talking about before. 0.95

02:03:53.000 I mean, unless you want to get the world to do DMT tomorrow. 0.99

02:03:56.000 I mean, if we had a DMT day, boy, that would change a lot of shit. 0.97

02:03:59.000 I'm very interested in that. 0.97

02:04:01.000 I mean, I think that's the role of the shaman, the role of the artist, I think, and the role of the comic.

02:04:07.000 Even the role of the shaman, I mean, that's an important point.

02:04:09.000 That gets distorted.

02:04:10.000 There's a lot of people that go down to South America because they have this romantic vision of what a shaman is going to do to them and that they're going to go and experience.

02:04:18.000 And then they encounter some shyster who really just learned how to make ayahuasca to prey on gringos.

02:04:24.000 I mean, that's a big part of the narrative that a lot of people experience when they go down and do that with the wrong people.

02:04:30.000 And that happens, may I say, because of systems of commodification, materialism and profiteering.

02:04:36.000 It does, but it also happens because people are just looking at an opportunity.

02:04:41.000 They're opportunistic.

02:04:42.000 They're desperate.

02:04:43.000 Maybe they've been mistreated.

02:04:45.000 Maybe they don't have a particularly healthy view of human beings.

02:04:51.000 What I reckon is this.

02:04:52.000 It's starting to foment in my mind just over the course of this conversation.

02:04:56.000 It's like, like you said earlier, there's the potential for good and the potential for bad in all of us.

02:05:01.000 But I see our culture as a magnet, and the magnet is pulling out the worst stuff.

02:05:07.000 And what I think is it would be possible to have a magnet that was pulling out the best stuff.

02:05:12.000 But it has some of the best stuff too, like what happened in Houston.

02:05:15.000 They have this giant hurricane that comes down in Houston.

02:05:17.000 My friend John Dudley went down there and brought supplies and was feeding people and organized a bunch of other people to help and do the same thing.

02:05:25.000 And there was a ton of people that were doing the same.

02:05:27.000 A ton of people that were donating their time and their money and they were using their boats to help get people out of their homes.

02:05:33.000 And there's a video that I saw that was an amazing video, these two guys talking after, they didn't even know each other, and they were being interviewed, and they were saying that the love that they experienced helping all these people, pulling them out of the wreckage of this horrible natural disaster, that it was like nothing they'd ever felt,

02:05:49.000 that this love was amazing, that all these people were being completely altruistic, they were being completely generous, and just helping, and just, I think, in times of crisis.

02:05:59.000 Are you familiar with Sebastian Junger?

02:06:02.000 Sebastian Junger is an amazing war journalist and he wrote a great book called Tribe.

02:06:08.000 And his book is essentially all about how human beings really only feel at their best and their happiest when they're coming together to overcome something. 0.99

02:06:21.000 And so that in this moment of overcoming this incredible natural disaster, blame it on industrial capitalism and global warming, blame all that on the fucking hurricane.

02:06:33.000 At the end of the day, it's a force of nature that no one saw coming. 0.97

02:06:36.000 There's no one that pulled that trigger, right?

02:06:38.000 There's a guy in Vegas that pulled that trigger.

02:06:40.000 But there's no one that pulled the trigger on that hurricane.

02:06:42.000 It was collective.

02:06:44.000 It was a thing of nature.

02:06:46.000 But I may say, Joe, that is beautiful.

02:06:48.000 I obviously agree that anything where human beings come together like that is glorious.

02:06:52.000 But both of those examples that you're using, as you yourself alluded to, you know, you can look at what conditions create hurricanes.

02:06:59.000 Maybe.

02:07:00.000 Possibly.

02:07:00.000 Maybe.

02:07:00.000 You know, it could have, that hurricane has, hurricanes have happened.

02:07:20.000 Slippery shaman's a great band.

02:07:22.000 Slippery shaman.

02:07:23.000 So this guy, so the shooter, of course we all have individual culpability, but similarly he is a product of our culture, he is a product of this, again, system. 0.99

02:07:34.000 So there is one form of analysis that says there are meteorological disasters that are detached from reality, and of course meteorology is its own fucking thing. 0.98

02:07:43.000 And individual free will, there are some neurologists, I'm sure you know, say that doesn't even fucking exist. 0.95

02:07:49.000 Right, a lot of them. 0.95

02:07:51.000 We're good to go.

02:08:13.000 We're aware of it.

02:08:14.000 We're aware of it, which is one of the reasons why altruistic behavior, kind behavior, loving community, all these things are rewarded because we do understand that those do enforce a better way of people behaving and that real determinism, like people, like, if you really truly don't have free will,

02:08:32.000 Well, we know that we would like people to behave kinder because whatever factors that play into people going out and behaving in a nicer, kinder way, they're a part of that.

02:08:44.000 We know that that's the fuel of that.

02:08:46.000 So isn't then...

02:08:48.000 The role of us as individuals finding our own Conor McGregor, our own greatness, our own heroism, to create as much as possible a space for that altruism, a space for that philanthropy, a space for that togetherness.

02:09:01.000 To create those moments, like you said, with that hurricane.

02:09:03.000 And we've all experienced it.

02:09:05.000 I know when I do something nice for other people, I start to feel like, oh, this is who I'm meant to be.

02:09:09.000 This is what I'm meant to be doing. 0.97

02:09:10.000 But I, in my own personal life, get sidetracked by, oh, fuck, I've got these economic imperatives. 0.99

02:09:14.000 I want to... 0.99

02:09:15.000 I don't fucking feel great about myself because of other people's applause or verification. 0.92

02:09:20.000 Because we are all flawed, because we are continually going to battle between the monkey in us, the primal little creature in us, and the great angel within us, what if we have an agreement on a social level that what we're I think? 0.97

02:09:52.000 That is the system that we have.

02:09:54.000 That is capitalist consumerism.

02:09:55.000 That's what it's based on.

02:09:57.000 This is a machine.

02:09:58.000 The machine makes money.

02:09:59.000 It's got to have infinite expanse and infinite growth.

02:10:01.000 That is the system.

02:10:03.000 I'm not saying that it's...

02:10:05.000 That's a very fatalistic way of looking at it.

02:10:06.000 I don't look at it as fatalistic, because I think we can change the world, Joe.

02:10:08.000 But you are doing it, and you're not living that way.

02:10:11.000 So the system that you're talking about, it's escapable.

02:10:14.000 You've escaped it.

02:10:15.000 Yes, and we must.

02:10:16.000 And we're talking about it.

02:10:17.000 And there's no, like, Willy Wonka golden ticket that's going to get you out of the system. 0.99

02:10:21.000 I don't trust fucking Willy Wonka as far as I can throw him. 0.99

02:10:23.000 Who are those fucking Oompa Loompas? 1.00

02:10:25.000 Where'd he get them? 0.99

02:10:25.000 I don't think they should even be working there. 0.99

02:10:27.000 What's in the chocolate?

02:10:28.000 What's in that chocolate?

02:10:29.000 That poor boy drowning in there.

02:10:30.000 Why is Johnny Depp behaving like a young girl? 1.00

02:10:35.000 Why is Johnny Depp behaving like a young girl? 1.00

02:10:38.000 What's going on in that fucking movie, man? 1.00

02:10:39.000 What's his weird way of talking? 1.00

02:10:40.000 A lot of questions.

02:10:41.000 I think it was about Michael Jackson.

02:10:43.000 I think he was like, okay, come to my chocolate factory.

02:10:46.000 Everything's beautiful.

02:10:47.000 Yeah, he's doing a Peter Pan type deal.

02:10:49.000 Exactly.

02:10:50.000 I don't want to grow up.

02:10:51.000 Come here, you.

02:10:52.000 I think, to go back to it, there he is.

02:10:55.000 It's beautiful.

02:10:56.000 It's beautiful.

02:10:56.000 Chocolate factory.

02:10:57.000 Johnny, look at my wand.

02:11:00.000 I think this fatalistic thing that it's just designed to...

02:11:04.000 I don't think it's designed to do anything.

02:11:05.000 I just think it is.

02:11:07.000 It is.

02:11:07.000 I sort of even agree with that.

02:11:09.000 I even agree with that.

02:11:10.000 I think that what we live in is the manifestation of our most primal desires.

02:11:16.000 Greed, or not even necessarily greed, survival.

02:11:18.000 And I think that if you extrapolate on that system, you end up with what we've got.

02:11:22.000 But I think an alternative way of being, something that might be a corrective path for us, is to look at those feelings that you describe of the altruism in that hurricane, the feeling of greatness in an individual and the way an individual can pull communities together, It's not a binary choice.

02:11:37.000 I know the world's more complicated than that, Joe.

02:11:39.000 But I suppose my quest, and indeed, fuck me, my book, is about how I individually have got my head and I wrench myself away from selfishness and greed and pride on a daily basis and pull myself towards altruism and love and self-betterment, 0.92

02:11:54.000 a part of it. 0.94

02:11:55.000 Keep myself fit mentally, spiritually, so I can be a better part of this...

02:12:00.000 Excuse me, system, and perhaps through my self-improvement, create better systems.

02:12:04.000 Because there is all this energy, there's all this power, and I think it's a shame that it gets siphoned in a particular direction.

02:12:09.000 Right.

02:12:10.000 Well, that feeling you express, and as you express it and express it honestly, that resonates with people.

02:12:15.000 And I think this, what we're talking about, is the 49.9% and 50.1% that Rick Strassman was describing.

02:12:25.000 It is this constant battle, and this is not an easy path.

02:12:28.000 I don't think the system operates at the 50-49 level.

02:12:30.000 I think the system's way, way towards the negative.

02:12:34.000 The system, meaning...

02:12:35.000 Like a cultural system.

02:12:36.000 The economic system.

02:12:37.000 The system of human beings in this world?

02:12:40.000 Say capitalism.

02:12:41.000 Country, or where?

02:12:42.000 Let's say, I don't know enough about what goes down in China.

02:12:45.000 So I'll say, like, sort of global capitalism, say. 0.99

02:12:48.000 And again, I'm not a fucking economist. 0.99

02:12:49.000 I'm just picking up shit from listening to your podcast and other podcasts. 0.99

02:12:52.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

02:12:52.000 That's where I'm getting educated. 0.99

02:12:53.000 I've luckily turned up at university lately. 1.00

02:12:55.000 I'm tripping down that fucking coffee man. 1.00

02:12:57.000 Man, crazy shit, right? 1.00

02:12:58.000 It's going deep. 1.00

02:12:59.000 Can I go to the toilet?

02:13:01.000 Maybe even do a poo?

02:13:02.000 How long have I been in here?

02:13:03.000 Do you feel like I've done enough about my book?

02:13:06.000 We've done two hours and 20 minutes.

02:13:08.000 We could wrap this up. 0.99

02:13:09.000 You've fucking got a clock there. 0.99

02:13:10.000 You've got all these advantages. 0.99

02:13:11.000 There's Buddha's in every direction and only one clock.

02:13:13.000 I didn't know what the time is.

02:13:14.000 There's a clock there.

02:13:15.000 There's a clock there.

02:13:16.000 There's a clock over there.

02:13:16.000 Yeah, but they're all facing you, Rogan.

02:13:18.000 The clocks are all facing your direction.

02:13:20.000 I don't want anybody who's a guest to think about time.

02:13:23.000 This is, tune in what? 1.00

02:13:24.000 This is the fucking system. 1.00

02:13:25.000 I want you to tune in. 1.00

02:13:25.000 I do this shit every day. 1.00

02:13:27.000 Yeah, I'm just some Johnny-come-lately kid from England with a dream. 1.00

02:13:30.000 With a dream, I come over here into the lair.

02:13:33.000 A dream to sell books.

02:13:35.000 I'm just a kid who wants to. 0.99

02:13:36.000 Hey man, fuck the system, but buy my book. 1.00

02:13:38.000 You're out of order. 1.00

02:13:39.000 You're out of order to point out that obvious hypocrisy. 0.98

02:13:41.000 How dare you point out that obvious hypocrisy?

02:13:43.000 Can I do a wee?

02:13:44.000 Go ahead, go ahead.

02:13:44.000 Hold on a minute, I don't want to end on that.

02:13:45.000 Yeah, you're good.

02:13:46.000 Don't worry about it, man.

02:13:48.000 You're good.

02:13:48.000 Take a leak.

02:13:49.000 We'll open that door and the first door on the right.

02:13:51.000 Yeah, it seems weird.

02:13:52.000 I've got Nah, man.

02:13:53.000 It's beautiful.

02:13:53.000 Don't worry about it.

02:13:55.000 No, no, no.

02:13:56.000 You're good, man.

02:13:57.000 Don't worry.

02:13:57.000 You're good.

02:13:58.000 Told you that caveman coffee was gonna get him.

02:14:01.000 You were gonna pull something up about Nas, I think.

02:14:04.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

02:14:05.000 I had something.

02:14:06.000 I didn't know if you knew he was a venture capitalist.

02:14:09.000 He has been for a while.

02:14:10.000 What does that mean?

02:14:10.000 I know he opens up restaurants.

02:14:12.000 He's opened up that sweet chick place.

02:14:14.000 Potentially, if his company sells soon, I don't know how that happens, or if he comes public, he could be what they're saying is hip-hop's first true billionaire. 0.99

02:14:22.000 Oh, shit, guys! 0.99

02:14:24.000 Woo! 1.00

02:14:25.000 Woo! 0.99

02:14:25.000 His net worth that says that celebrity net worth is like $17 million, but that doesn't include all the companies he owns and has been investing in for a long time. 0.99

02:14:34.000 No, I didn't know about that.

02:14:35.000 I knew about his restaurant because I'm friends with Everlast, and Everlast goes to that sweet chick. 0.94

02:14:40.000 I think Everlast has a piece of that, too.

02:14:42.000 I don't know.

02:14:42.000 Maybe he doesn't.

02:14:43.000 But he took me to it in New York, and...

02:14:45.000 Took me to it in LA once.

02:14:47.000 We went there, but they were playing music that was so loud it was literally hurting my ears.

02:14:51.000 Nas is like half-man, half-venture capitalist. 0.93

02:14:55.000 Look at that beautiful suit he's got on.

02:14:57.000 He's got a pocket square and like a little small chain.

02:15:01.000 Have you ever seen the small chain?

02:15:02.000 I don't know.

02:15:05.000 Interesting. 1.00

02:15:06.000 Yeah, a lot of those motherfuckers make a shit ton of money. 1.00

02:15:09.000 Smart. 1.00

02:15:09.000 Why not, you know? 1.00

02:15:10.000 I mean, it shows you that they can figure out a way through just their art to get to this weird position where, I mean, if Nas really does make a billion dollars, like, fuck. 0.98

02:15:24.000 Still makes amazing music, though. 0.98

02:15:26.000 That's my point.

02:15:27.000 My point is that his music never went commercial. 0.99

02:15:29.000 His music's fucking fantastic. 0.97

02:15:31.000 Someone was saying, I was reading some stuff that he supposedly tried. 0.99

02:15:34.000 Remember he had a rap battle of beef?

02:15:37.000 He had a couple beefs publicly with Puff Daddy, the Hate Me Now thing.

02:15:41.000 Oh, yeah?

02:15:42.000 He also wrote, Ghost wrote for Will Smith.

02:15:44.000 I don't know if that really means he's sold out, but...

02:15:46.000 That's not selling out.

02:15:47.000 That's just writing for a friend.

02:15:49.000 But the rap battles, I think, is more just ego things. 1.00

02:15:51.000 Someone talks shit about him, he talks shit about them. 0.99

02:15:54.000 You know? 1.00

02:15:54.000 You alright, brother? 1.00

02:15:55.000 You alright?

02:15:55.000 You gotta copy your book.

02:15:57.000 You're not fucking around. 0.98

02:15:57.000 You brought a copy back now. 0.98

02:15:59.000 You wanna show everybody?

02:16:00.000 Here, give it to me.

02:16:00.000 I'll hold it up so you don't feel bad.

02:16:04.000 I'll be like Vanna White. 0.52

02:16:08.000 Joe Rogan.

02:16:09.000 I'm on the Joe Rogan experience.

02:16:11.000 Freedom from our addictions.

02:16:12.000 Russell Brand, ladies and gentlemen.

02:16:14.000 Let's wrap this thing up, man.

02:16:15.000 What are you talking about?

02:16:15.000 I mean, that was 2 hours and 20 minutes.

02:16:17.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00

02:16:17.000 It's good. 1.00

02:16:18.000 It's beautiful. 1.00

02:16:18.000 You kicked it into the fucking orbit. 1.00

02:16:21.000 I did change the bit that I wrote about you, as a matter of fact, because... 0.99

02:16:24.000 I didn't know you wrote about me in there. 0.96

02:16:27.000 Yeah, oh yeah, now you're fucking interested. 0.97

02:16:29.000 Oh, man, I'm feeling good. 0.98

02:16:30.000 I'm excited.

02:16:32.000 It was slightly...

02:16:33.000 Because what it was, I realized...

02:16:34.000 I asked them to put in the word seemingly, because I thought that I'd been too reductive.

02:16:39.000 About you, and you know me.

02:16:42.000 I'm having this experience where I'm sort of...

02:16:44.000 Part of the book is about trying to explain how, in the addict's mind, you're trapped in this constant cyclone of self-obsessive thought, and the outside world seems to somehow distance you, and you can't connect to it, right? 0.99

02:16:55.000 So as well as explain how to go through the steps, I talk through, like, this is what it's like to be in my fucking head. 0.82

02:17:01.000 So I'm like, this is me out of my dog, and my dog causes all these problems all the time, and I run into these people... 0.95

02:17:07.000 And I say, all I know, like, you know, and I run into them, and I start, I don't want to go and talk to them, because I feel sort of self-conscious, because they look kind of, like, cool, and I think, oh no, I've got to go over there and talk to these people, I'm going to feel inadequate.

02:17:16.000 All I know is how I feel, and that's all I'll ever know, unless I learn, I can learn a new system for being.

02:17:22.000 Bill, this guy, comes over and says hello, while I stand now on the goose shit, we're on this sort of riverbank, vaguely embarrassed by Bear, my dog. 0.91

02:17:31.000 It bears looping enthusiasm. 0.94

02:17:33.000 I heard you on Joe Rogan, he says.

02:17:34.000 Joe Rogan, a former mixed martial artist, commentator, comedian and host of the world's most downloaded podcast, is himself an interesting example of new emerging models of masculinity, a fusion of right-wing individualism and new age tolerance, a fierce autodidact.

02:17:49.000 He has become a champion of American libertarianism and is to me fascinating because he's clever and a good fighter.

02:17:56.000 There you go.

02:17:56.000 There's me mentioning you in passing.

02:17:58.000 Now, when I rewrote it, I said, you better put in seemingly, because I think I've been reductive there, saying right-wing individualism.

02:18:07.000 But what do you think about that, Joe?

02:18:08.000 There you are.

02:18:09.000 Yeah, I don't know how much right-wing I have in me.

02:18:13.000 I'm more libertarian than anything. 0.99

02:18:15.000 But the right-wing stuff is probably, if you talk to a real right-winger, they'd go, what the fuck are you talking about? 0.98

02:18:21.000 Yeah, I think you're right. 0.88

02:18:22.000 I mean, I think libertarianism would have covered it better, but this was written at a point where I hadn't listened to as much stuff.

02:18:29.000 So I've changed it.

02:18:31.000 Listen, man, you can come on here anytime you want.

02:18:34.000 I love talking to you.

02:18:34.000 You're awesome.

02:18:35.000 Do you think so?

02:18:36.000 We have a great time.

02:18:37.000 We do have a great time, don't we?

02:18:38.000 I'm looking forward to coming back to your new studio that sounds like your own version of a Willy Wonka podcast land.

02:18:42.000 It's gonna be crazy.

02:18:45.000 The thing is, you know, like, this is why I don't take drugs, is because I've drunk quite a lot of caffeine there, and I'm sort of slightly scared of going back to, like, my normal life, you know, parachuting back into that. 0.99

02:18:56.000 But I've got a fucking baby. 0.99

02:18:59.000 Russell Brand, ladies and gentlemen. 1.00

02:19:01.000 Joe Rogan, thank you.

02:19:02.000 Go buy the book.

02:19:02.000 Download your podcast.

02:19:04.000 What is it called?

02:19:04.000 Under the Skin with Russell Brand.

02:19:06.000 Under the Skin with Russell Brand.

02:19:08.000 Goodbye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - October 05, 2017

Joe Rogan Experience #1021 - Russell Brand

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