The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1479 - David Pakman

00:00:00.000 Coming to us live via technology from the other side of the continent, David Pakman, ladies and gentlemen.

00:00:08.000 So good to be back with you.

00:00:09.000 Good to be with you, too.

00:00:10.000 And I love your facial hair, as I was saying before.

00:00:12.000 I say stick with it all the way.

00:00:14.000 Maybe get some kind of a cult leader guru thing happening.

00:00:18.000 I'm actually five days from a man bun, and I wanted to see what you thought about that.

00:00:23.000 The man bun's the starter kit for a cult leader, right?

00:00:26.000 The man bun is like, I'm trying to get people to listen to me more and take me more seriously.

00:00:30.000 I'm spiritual.

00:00:31.000 I need like a gimmick of some kind.

00:00:34.000 I think your gimmick is just being a nice guy and smart.

00:00:37.000 How about that?

00:00:37.000 That's rare.

00:00:38.000 To a fault.

00:00:38.000 Nice to a fault.

00:00:40.000 You're nice to a fault?

00:00:42.000 I don't know.

00:00:42.000 I get emails from people who are like, you don't have to I love that you listen to those people.

00:01:04.000 I think you should be yourself.

00:01:06.000 And if you feel like you need to say that, I feel like you should just say that.

00:01:10.000 It's nothing wrong with it.

00:01:11.000 It doesn't hurt my feelings when you say things like that.

00:01:14.000 Even if I understand what you're doing, it's no big deal.

00:01:17.000 I feel like there's too many opinions, and it sucks for the people with opinions, and I think it's one of the problems with what we do, and one of the reasons why people get so angry at us. 0.99

00:01:27.000 So if you and I are having a conversation, and perhaps we agree on something, but someone listening is like, fuck that! 0.98

00:01:34.000 This is what's wrong with that idea, and they want to say it, but they can't! 0.93

00:01:38.000 And so the comments are almost inherently angry because it's really so much of it is just people who want to say something but there's no forum for them.

00:01:48.000 They only can say it in the comments.

00:01:50.000 They feel like they're in on this conversation that they want to jump in on and interject.

00:01:56.000 I got an email today from someone who said, I love everything you've been doing for the last six years, but yesterday you used the word anti-vaxxer.

00:02:05.000 And I just, that's it.

00:02:07.000 That was it.

00:02:07.000 When you used that word, that was it for the David Pakman show.

00:02:10.000 And it's like, I... You can't win with that.

00:02:12.000 You can't win, you know?

00:02:13.000 But it's the same thing.

00:02:14.000 It's like they're angry, right?

00:02:16.000 And this is the way to get you to listen.

00:02:18.000 Like, oh, you're leaving?

00:02:19.000 Wait a minute.

00:02:20.000 They're being completely unreasonable. 1.00

00:02:22.000 Can you imagine if there was a show that you enjoy, and the guy said one thing that you disagreed with, especially something like calling someone an anti-vaxxer, and you're like, fuck this! 0.99

00:02:30.000 It's over. 1.00

00:02:31.000 My relationship with you is over.

00:02:33.000 That purity standard is impossible to achieve, especially when you're doing something like what you and I do, where we're basically just talking with a very...

00:02:43.000 I mean, I'm sure you have some bullet points of things you want to cover, but you're ad-libbing all the time.

00:02:48.000 What we call free-balling all the time.

00:02:51.000 And it's a crazy standard to try to hold, to ask someone to not say anything that you're going to disagree with.

00:02:58.000 I say things I disagree with.

00:03:00.000 I'll listen to it a half hour later.

00:03:02.000 I'll think about it a day later.

00:03:04.000 I'm like, why did I even say it like that?

00:03:06.000 I have videos from seven years ago where it's not that my foundational values haven't changed, but I do look at it and I say, if I had known then what was going to happen four months later, I never would have done it that particular way.

00:03:23.000 Yeah, there's a lot of things that happen in the news that force you to sort of shift your opinions and go, oh, that kind of stuff does happen.

00:03:30.000 Oh, I've been naive.

00:03:32.000 I've had this perception of whether it's the government or the intelligence agencies of being beyond reproach, and now I find out, oh...

00:03:41.000 Alright, now I've got to go and revisit a lot of things that I was saying were nonsense, a lot of things that I was dismissing openly.

00:03:46.000 Now I've got to go, oh, well, we like to think that, when it comes to governments and intelligence agencies, we'd like to think that there's some level of, whether it's government or military, there's some place that you could reach where you're like a super person,

00:04:02.000 where you're not going to make any of the mistakes that we'd attribute to people based on Greed or ego or pettiness or short-sightedness that when you get to that point You're a proven commodity and that you are you're what we're looking for as a leader and you have to be upheld You have to uphold these very strict standards at that spot and we assume that there is an actual thing like that and I think it's one of the reasons why people get so frustrated at Trump It's

00:04:32.000 because he doesn't even try to pretend he's one of those things.

00:04:36.000 He behaves the same way he used to.

00:04:39.000 Well, one of the things that I was kind of in a battle with in with my audience during the primary was I would get emails from people who would say, And then I would get people who would say, the only person who could beat Trump is Tulsi Gabbard.

00:04:57.000 Everybody else is straight up a bad person.

00:04:59.000 And my message was always, listen, we shouldn't deify any of these people.

00:05:04.000 These are just people.

00:05:05.000 You've met a lot of them.

00:05:06.000 They've been in your studio.

00:05:08.000 We're just talking about people.

00:05:10.000 You're not going to agree with them on every policy position.

00:05:12.000 You're not going to agree with everything they've done personally.

00:05:15.000 And where I think it gets dicey is where...

00:05:18.000 They start movements.

00:05:20.000 It's a cult of personality, really, where a movement is built around the person as an idea, and they can do no wrong.

00:05:26.000 And there's no way to talk those folks down about issues or about practical decisions that we have to make.

00:05:34.000 No, I think you're 100% right.

00:05:36.000 And I also think that the position itself, the world has grown too large for the position.

00:05:43.000 I feel like if we left from all parts of the land and all parts of the world and found an empty continent, well obviously the United States wasn't really empty, but if we found a place where we resettled and we tried to restructure government from scratch,

00:05:58.000 We would take that into consideration now.

00:06:00.000 I think our Founding Fathers, they were just dealing with this archetypal structure of one person that sort of runs things, but in this case it would be a person that we all agreed to, and it was a much better step moving forward than kings, right?

00:06:14.000 Now that we've kind of done that for a while, we realize, well, yeah, that might be great when it's 100,000 people or a million people.

00:06:20.000 But once it gets to 320 million people and complicated things like international business and trade agreements and the environment and nuclear power versus solar and wind, one person is going to be responsible for all these insanely important decisions?

00:06:37.000 That seems crazy.

00:06:39.000 And to blame one person when any one thing goes wrong.

00:06:42.000 Seems crazy as well.

00:06:44.000 It's just I don't think we would do it this way.

00:06:46.000 I think we would have some sort of a council of wise people or something along those lines.

00:06:51.000 You know what's interesting to me about that?

00:06:53.000 I mean we're like diving headfirst right into a bunch of stuff here.

00:06:57.000 What's interesting about that is when you think about who to vote for for president, and I know that we'll get into this stuff, I'm sure, you're not just voting for the person, you're voting for who are they likely to have working for them, what is likely to happen in courts,

00:07:14.000 what is likely to happen regulation-wise.

00:07:17.000 And so, of course, you want to think about who it is that the person is, but you also want to think about who do they bring with them.

00:07:25.000 And for me, I see voting in November at this point.

00:07:29.000 Yeah, most people have made that concession.

00:07:31.000 And it's an interesting concession, right?

00:07:33.000 Because it's not a concession we had to make.

00:07:35.000 If it was Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie Sanders or Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg or, you know, go down the line.

00:07:43.000 There's a lot of very credible candidates that would have made like interest, like maybe this person could be.

00:07:49.000 The next great president.

00:07:50.000 Maybe this person could be a great leader.

00:07:52.000 But now we're in this position, we're like, oh, God, okay.

00:07:55.000 So listen, we're voting for the cabinet.

00:07:57.000 Like Biden is so...

00:08:00.000 Whether or not he's having moments that are related to cognitive decline, which you could speculate, or whether or not this is just his reaction to the most extreme amount of pressure he's ever faced in his life and that does happen with people we know people lock up I would imagine that a guy who's been in the spotlight as long as he has for so long probably would would be able to handle stuff but I think running for president is a whole different ballgame.

00:08:27.000 I think everything gets turned up by 10, and I think it gets turned up in this society that we're experiencing today.

00:08:33.000 It gets turned up even more so because of social media.

00:08:35.000 Like, no president other than Trump has really had to deal with this kind of wave of social, viral, you know, feedback online with Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and all the stuff that we're experiencing right now.

00:08:49.000 They didn't...

00:08:51.000 I think that when Through these steps to try to become president,

00:09:09.000 he's experiencing a wave of attention and scrutiny that he's never experienced before.

00:09:14.000 And that could also exacerbate...

00:09:16.000 What am I, a doctor here?

00:09:17.000 I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with his head.

00:09:19.000 But that could also exacerbate...

00:09:21.000 Have you taken a position on the Biden cognitive stuff?

00:09:26.000 Something's wrong.

00:09:27.000 Something's wrong.

00:09:27.000 If he was my friend and he was fighting, I'd ask him to retire.

00:09:31.000 I mean, if I'm looking at it that way, I have friends that I've seen their cognitive decline from fighting.

00:09:38.000 I'm not saying that Biden's the same, because I don't really know him from, you know, I don't know him over a long period of time.

00:09:43.000 I don't know him at all, personally.

00:09:45.000 But something's wrong.

00:09:47.000 Are any of your friends, are they close to 80, any of them?

00:09:52.000 No, no.

00:09:53.000 The guys who are experiencing cognitive decline are younger guys who have been hit in the head.

00:09:57.000 When you get to 80, I have known people that have had problems, and it's very unfortunate.

00:10:04.000 I don't think he's there, because he could still talk to him.

00:10:09.000 If that was just a guy that you knew, and he was like, And he said something like, we've all been endowed by, you know, the thing.

00:10:17.000 You know, that one famous...

00:10:19.000 You wouldn't say, oh, Jesus, what's going on with Ray?

00:10:22.000 You would say, oh, he locked up. 0.82

00:10:24.000 He had a brain fart.

00:10:25.000 He had a mental lapse, which I've had...

00:10:28.000 Doing podcasts all the time.

00:10:30.000 It can happen.

00:10:31.000 But in that moment, in front of those people, to do it that way, while he's running for president and while he's had a few of those before, he could be dealing with anxiety, too. 0.99

00:10:39.000 There's probably a lot of shit going on. 0.99

00:10:41.000 But I would be concerned. 0.99

00:10:43.000 Yeah, I mean, listen, so I don't have any, I don't, my view is just based on actual professionals that I've talked to and people that have been in a room with him because I'm not a professional and I've not been in the room with Biden.

00:10:55.000 So Andrew Yang was on with Sam Harris recently, I don't know if you saw it, and this topic came up.

00:11:00.000 And Andrew Yang basically said, listen, he's 78 years old.

00:11:05.000 If you compare a video of Biden debating Paul Ryan in 2012 to Biden a month ago, obviously it's different.

00:11:12.000 And to some degree, that's normal when someone's 78 years old.

00:11:17.000 But Andrew Yang's perspective was that he didn't see anything that he would call dementia or cognitive decline beyond that.

00:11:25.000 So it's just one data point.

00:11:27.000 It doesn't tell us anything definitively.

00:11:29.000 The other thing is, I've interviewed a few people, and I think you and I maybe have even messaged about some of them.

00:11:37.000 Neurologists and mental health professionals who are very concerned about Trump, like the oranges of an investigation, where he seems to sort of lock up when his shoulders sort of, you know, this thing that he does where his shoulders kind of lock up in a weird way.

00:11:52.000 I haven't seen that.

00:11:53.000 Oh, there's a few of those, yeah.

00:11:54.000 I got video of that.

00:11:55.000 So that could just be an injury?

00:11:56.000 You think it's a neurological thing?

00:11:58.000 I don't know.

00:11:59.000 That's the thing.

00:11:59.000 So it could be neurological, mental health, side-effective medication.

00:12:04.000 There's a whole bunch of stuff it could be.

00:12:05.000 Could it also be an injury?

00:12:07.000 Maybe.

00:12:08.000 Yeah.

00:12:08.000 Maybe.

00:12:09.000 I mean, if he's doing something with his back or shoulder?

00:12:12.000 Well, it's weird because he, when it happens, he has a verbal...

00:12:30.000 I need to see this while I'm talking to you.

00:12:33.000 So, Jamie's going to search for one.

00:12:35.000 So, what would he search for?

00:12:38.000 I think if you went to like search.twitter.com and just searched in videos the way you can do and you put like Trump brain glitch, I'm guessing that some of these would come up.

00:12:51.000 But the gist of what I was getting to was some of these They're Democrats.

00:13:05.000 They're hardcore Democrats.

00:13:07.000 Come on, man.

00:13:08.000 He's had these moments where for sure something doesn't look good, right?

00:13:13.000 I agree.

00:13:14.000 Totally agree.

00:13:15.000 So why would they say any differently?

00:13:16.000 They've got to be Democrats.

00:13:17.000 They've got to be hardcore party loyalists.

00:13:19.000 I think that to assume that absent any evidence is maybe unfair.

00:13:24.000 Yeah, it is.

00:13:25.000 But I'm an unfair guy in some respects.

00:13:28.000 But here's my thought on this right now.

00:13:30.000 So, like, let's imagine that Biden's having a problem, right?

00:13:35.000 It's absolutely for real.

00:13:37.000 I'm still voting for him over Trump, right?

00:13:40.000 I mean, like, so I think last time we talked, you mentioned you were pro-choice.

00:13:43.000 Do I remember that right?

00:13:44.000 Oh, yeah.

00:13:45.000 Yeah.

00:13:45.000 I am, but I feel like it's a controversial subject for a reason.

00:13:51.000 Fair.

00:13:51.000 If Donald Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice, it will be someone who would love to overturn Roe v.

00:13:59.000 Wade.

00:14:00.000 I mean there's not even a chance.

00:14:01.000 He said it, right?

00:14:03.000 This is what Trump has said, that he is pro-life and that he would pick someone that would – or it's just by virtue of picking conservative.

00:14:13.000 There's two parts to it.

00:14:15.000 One is Donald Trump was pro-choice almost his entire life.

00:14:18.000 He became pro-life when he was, I think, 68 because he met a kid he liked and he imagined if that kid wasn't born.

00:14:25.000 No, I'm serious.

00:14:26.000 I believe you.

00:14:27.000 It's just hilarious.

00:14:28.000 It's crazy.

00:14:29.000 It's like an ABC after-school special.

00:14:31.000 Let's imagine that that's true, that he had an awakening at age 68 after being pro-life his whole life.

00:14:36.000 He said he would pick justices that were recommended to him by, I forget which conservative group.

00:14:43.000 You're only going to get so-called pro-life justices from these groups.

00:14:48.000 On the other hand, Joe Biden will absolutely pick a pro-choice justice.

00:14:53.000 So if I was pro-choice like you are, how do I justify voting for the guy who's going to That's a good point.

00:15:07.000 I'm going to get into it in a second, but Jamie just pulled up this video of Trump, and I'm going to get to watch him have this weird twitch for the first time.

00:15:15.000 Okay, hit me with it, Jamie.

00:15:18.000 Okay, so he's talking.

00:15:28.000 I'm watching it.

00:15:29.000 Is that it?

00:15:30.000 That little move that he made? 0.99

00:15:32.000 Oh, this is hilariously silly. 0.99

00:15:35.000 Trump neurologically malfunctions with a full spasm. 0.99

00:15:38.000 No, he's talking and he just went like this.

00:15:40.000 People do that. 0.98

00:15:40.000 That's silly. 0.98

00:15:42.000 Maybe that video is silly. 0.95

00:15:44.000 There's a dozen of them.

00:15:44.000 Yeah, I don't know.

00:15:45.000 I couldn't hear that.

00:15:46.000 I think a better thing is something that you showed me on your show, a better example, when there was real problems with him enunciating words.

00:15:55.000 You know, there was speculation like, was he falling?

00:15:58.000 Was he sick?

00:15:59.000 Was he on a sedative?

00:16:00.000 Was something going wrong?

00:16:03.000 It almost seemed like his tongue wasn't working correctly.

00:16:07.000 Right?

00:16:08.000 Yeah.

00:16:08.000 Like he was wrestling with a paralyzed tongue.

00:16:11.000 Your perspective matches mine, but I think I really, for me, it's like this stuff, we're not probably ever going to really get an answer to this.

00:16:20.000 And I don't know that it's imperative to know the answers for me to know who it is I'm going to vote for, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make.

00:16:30.000 It's fascinating that pro-choice is such a hard-line issue on left-wing people and right-wing people.

00:16:38.000 It really is that it's this line in the sand and people are willing to make concessions In favor of going in that direction.

00:16:52.000 Because they recognize the slippery slope of limiting people's rights and the dangers of going in the other direction.

00:16:58.000 You're not going to stop abortions. 0.94

00:17:00.000 You're just going to stop legal abortions. 1.00

00:17:01.000 It's going to be very dangerous for the women. 1.00

00:17:04.000 It's almost...

00:17:06.000 You know, it's almost a black and white issue in that regard.

00:17:10.000 But what's not a black and white issue is abortion itself, right?

00:17:13.000 Like, there's a time in the baby's life, the fetus, when it's inside the woman, where everyone gets uncomfortable. 0.98

00:17:21.000 Whether it's five months in, four months in, three, whatever it is for you, where you're like, oh Jesus, that's a baby now.

00:17:26.000 And to deny that, I think, is very odd.

00:17:30.000 That's a weird thing because it's so uncomfortable.

00:17:34.000 What it is is so uncomfortable.

00:17:36.000 It bothers us so much that we just draw these lines and we've got this opinion in a box.

00:17:45.000 Here we go.

00:17:45.000 We got this bulletproof right-wing box and you can never have an abortion.

00:17:49.000 Okay, what if your daughter gets raped by some robber? 0.99

00:17:54.000 You think that your daughter should have to carry this man's child? 0.99

00:17:59.000 Like, if they know about it immediately when it's a bundle of cells.

00:18:03.000 Really?

00:18:03.000 You think that?

00:18:04.000 Like, that to me is insane.

00:18:07.000 Right.

00:18:07.000 Now, if you knew that it was It's conceivable that Trump would put someone on the court who has that view.

00:18:15.000 That'd be pretty scary, wouldn't it?

00:18:16.000 Well, it's scary in a lot of ways.

00:18:18.000 It's scary in a lot of ways.

00:18:19.000 I think the more control government has over your body and the more it can dictate what you can and can't do, the scarier things get.

00:18:27.000 And then it gets scary in that this is a subject that...

00:18:32.000 You know, it's so polarizing.

00:18:34.000 And if you move in the direction of limiting it, you run the risk, I always feel, of shifting, even like the consciousness of the public, shifting the way people approach things like this, accepting control, that the government has control of your body.

00:18:51.000 The idea that they can come and decide what you have to do for the rest of your life now based on maybe something that wasn't even your choice, that to me is crazy.

00:19:01.000 But that's not the only thing.

00:19:03.000 That's going on.

00:19:04.000 There's so many other issues.

00:19:06.000 It's one of the reasons why picking a president and picking a party, it's so crazy that we let one person and then his group that he gets with him shift the consciousness of the public or shift the direction of the country one way or the other.

00:19:21.000 It's just, it's a really weird choice that we make in even making a president.

00:19:26.000 And then doing it every four years and having all these checks and balances that you have to follow.

00:19:31.000 I mean, I think it's a great system for the time when they invented it.

00:19:35.000 I mean, it's amazing how well it holds up from 1776 to today.

00:19:39.000 It's incredible.

00:19:39.000 It shows you how amazingly wise they were.

00:19:42.000 But just think about what we know now in 2020 about just the nature of communication like what you and I are doing.

00:19:49.000 I mean, this is going to affect millions of people and their opinions.

00:19:53.000 If you knew that today in 2020 and someone asked you to make rules based on what was going to be in place 300 years from now, you would be like, I'm not qualified to do that.

00:20:04.000 It's incredible how well they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights back then.

00:20:10.000 It's one of the most amazing things ever if you really think about all the different times that it's come up and then you think about how long it's been that it was created.

00:20:23.000 I mean, it's really an astounding piece of human work.

00:20:27.000 It is.

00:20:28.000 Your argument, though, is really one for having to update the infrastructure that we...

00:20:35.000 As you're saying, in order to change the way that we govern the country, as you're saying, one person making all these decisions with all of these different areas that they're responsible for, if you want to change that, you do have to change that document that you just said.

00:20:51.000 I know.

00:20:51.000 It's kind of crazy, right?

00:20:52.000 It's like we don't want to update Windows 95. I'm comfortable with it.

00:20:55.000 I know where the icons are.

00:20:57.000 But Windows 10 is like, hey, come make the switch.

00:21:01.000 We've got a better system.

00:21:02.000 We figured it out better.

00:21:03.000 We don't have a Windows 10 of government.

00:21:06.000 We're still working with 95. We still have the older versions of Apple's software.

00:21:11.000 We don't have OS X 10, whatever the latest...

00:21:15.000 We are in this weird place where, you know, we have this system that's better than anything that we could see anywhere else, but yet it really, it doesn't necessarily work perfectly for the complicated issues that exist in managing just the 330 million people and all their problems.

00:21:36.000 What is your sense of, I mean, is there...

00:21:46.000 Trump's side in terms of the political position?

00:21:50.000 Hmm, like what political positions?

00:21:53.000 See, my opinions on political positions, especially like the really scary ones, right?

00:21:58.000 Like the possibility of war, the environment, things along those lines.

00:22:03.000 I wish I was more informed.

00:22:06.000 I wish I knew exactly, you know, like when there's some negotiations in these trade war deals with China, for instance, like I wish I understood that better.

00:22:16.000 I wish I really knew what was at stake and what China's actually trying to do and whether or not In particular, when you think about China and the military and their engagement with the companies, I never understood why they were trying to keep Huawei out.

00:22:32.000 I was like, that doesn't make any sense to me.

00:22:34.000 Shouldn't they show that they've done something bad?

00:22:37.000 But it's a company that they feel is inexorably connected to the Chinese government.

00:22:42.000 So that's negotiating with them. 0.99

00:22:45.000 For me to say that I think that this person is doing a better job, or I like the way Biden would handle it better, Do I really know what the fuck I'm talking about? 0.99

00:22:53.000 I don't. 0.97

00:22:54.000 I really don't.

00:22:56.000 And that's the case with a lot of issues.

00:22:58.000 Social issues, I think.

00:23:00.000 That's what I was going to say.

00:23:01.000 I feel like there's low-hanging fruit where just from listening to you, it's like when you said that you were mostly sort of a Bernie guy, that in the primary you seem to...

00:23:11.000 I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that Bernie would be your primary, the person in the primary that you would lean towards or support.

00:23:17.000 If you pick environment, just for one example...

00:23:24.000 We're good to go.

00:23:54.000 Joe Rogan is left, right, center, whatever.

00:23:57.000 You and I have spoken enough now where you've made it clear that your actual positions on social issues environment, they're pretty left.

00:24:02.000 They're all left.

00:24:03.000 Bernie is really who aligns with me.

00:24:05.000 Okay, Biden is not Bernie for sure, but it's closer.

00:24:09.000 And so that's where I'm interested in whether there's really anything you can identify where you're like, I just don't agree with Biden on this.

00:24:15.000 Well, when you talk about Bernie and why I was interested in Bernie, what Bernie represented to me was someone who wanted change at a societal level, wanted to help people in a way that wasn't going to make anybody any money.

00:24:31.000 It wasn't something where he was clearly doing this because of the special interest groups.

00:24:35.000 They put him in a position, think that this would ultimately be more profitable.

00:24:39.000 When he's talking about things like eliminating student loans and making school free for everyone, when you say that, I go, first of all, that's not making anybody any money, right?

00:24:51.000 That's one of those things you're only doing because you think it would be better for humans.

00:24:55.000 Better for our culture.

00:24:56.000 Better for our civilization.

00:24:57.000 I'm all for that.

00:24:59.000 Those are the things.

00:25:01.000 Eliminating these catastrophic healthcare bills that people get when they get sick and they go bankrupt.

00:25:08.000 That, to me, is crazy that we have this community.

00:25:11.000 That's what it's supposed to be, right?

00:25:12.000 The United States is supposed to be almost like a giant team.

00:25:15.000 And we would let others just by... 0.99

00:25:18.000 Simple misfortune we would let their life completely fall apart because they got injured and they come up with this bill that literally changes the whole course of their life if you're a person who makes $50,000 a year and you know you're doing fine and then all sudden a catastrophic injury comes along and you get hit with a bill a medical bill that's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and You're fucked. 0.62

00:25:42.000 Like, your life, you don't have enough time to make that up unless you do something significantly different in terms of earning more money. 0.95

00:25:50.000 So you're stuck.

00:25:51.000 That's it.

00:25:52.000 That's, to me, crazy.

00:25:53.000 And that doesn't make any sense.

00:26:00.000 We can help and it makes everybody feel good.

00:26:02.000 If you can help someone who came upon some bad fortune, they feel better.

00:26:06.000 They feel protected and loved.

00:26:08.000 You feel better for being able to use your, you know, your privilege or your fortune to help these people.

00:26:15.000 That's what we need more of.

00:26:17.000 That is what stood out for me about Bernie Sanders.

00:26:20.000 Now the argument against that Is the pro-business argument, right?

00:26:24.000 The pro-business argument is the stronger the business is, the better business does.

00:26:29.000 There's a trickle-down effect, and the whole society will rise up because the economy is stronger.

00:26:35.000 And, you know, yeah, there's going to be some ruthless capitalism going on, but ultimately, it benefits everybody.

00:26:41.000 And that's...

00:26:42.000 I don't think you have to have one or the other there.

00:26:45.000 I mean, I don't think that these are mutually exclusive.

00:26:48.000 You can have capitalism, but you can also have compassion.

00:26:51.000 And we could work together as a community and try to take all these problems that we have that are really clear, right?

00:27:01.000 Like these inner cities that never get any better.

00:27:04.000 They never show any improvement. 0.99

00:27:05.000 Unless they get gentrified, everything stays fucked, right? 0.99

00:27:09.000 That's not an insurmountable problem. 0.91

00:27:11.000 If we can fly across the planet and try to fix countries that we've blown up in war, why can't we try to fix the inner cities that our kids go to school in?

00:27:22.000 That doesn't make any sense to me, that people are forced to live in.

00:27:25.000 That's why I was interested in Bernie Sanders.

00:27:28.000 That's what he means to me.

00:27:30.000 The healthcare example is an interesting one because it really comes down to what is the main point of the healthcare apparatus, right?

00:27:39.000 If the main point is to get people as healthy as possible so that they can live the longest, most fulfilling lives that they want or are able to, that gets you one set of policies.

00:27:51.000 If the perspective is healthcare is just an industry like any other where the participants just are there to make money, That's a totally different policy prescription and regulatory infrastructure.

00:28:04.000 It's night and day.

00:28:05.000 Yeah, it really is.

00:28:06.000 It really is night and day.

00:28:07.000 And it's one of those things that I think people are probably going to be more interested in hearing about now after this pandemic.

00:28:17.000 They realize, hey, through no fault of your own, you could be broke.

00:28:21.000 Through no fault of your own, you can lose your business.

00:28:23.000 Through no fault of your own.

00:28:24.000 So all these ideas that like...

00:28:27.000 I know people that are pretty right-wing that would give me a hard time about calling me a socialist and a commie because I'm really into Bernie Sanders.

00:28:34.000 A lot of those very same people are now wanting to get that stimulus check.

00:28:39.000 A lot of those very same people are now understanding why I supported Andrew Yang and his concept of universal basic income because his concept is based on his understanding of technology and his knowledge of AI and the potential possibility to just take millions of people out of the market,

00:28:56.000 out of the workplace like that almost like this like a virus of technology that removes diseases excuse me removes jobs instead of removes your health and I think that More people probably would be better off if we shifted our ideas about what socialism means and what democratic socialism means.

00:29:17.000 I think the word is so toxic.

00:29:19.000 Maybe we should just call it community support.

00:29:22.000 You know, that we should think of these really key things like student loans.

00:29:27.000 I think we both agree about this.

00:29:28.000 It is insane to start your life At 21 years, 22 years old, just getting out of school, with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.

00:29:38.000 That's insane.

00:29:38.000 And if you go on to get a PhD, ah!

00:29:41.000 It keeps going.

00:29:42.000 It keeps going.

00:29:42.000 And you get to this point where you have this weight over you.

00:29:46.000 Everywhere you go, there's this big ass weight. 0.88

00:29:48.000 And you're carrying it around.

00:29:49.000 And you're carrying around this debt that even if you go bankrupt, you have to pay.

00:29:54.000 How did that happen?

00:29:56.000 How are businesses able to pollute the environment, make terrible mistakes, go under, go bankrupt, and they're absolved of their debt, but a kid who wanted to learn something goes to a school and winds up, you know, you're 22, 0.99

00:30:11.000 you're not even a fully formed human yet, and you're in debt, you're fucked, you're starting out of the gate, crazy, crazy behind the line. 0.95

00:30:20.000 Well, you're completely right, of course, about the toxic nature of the word socialism. 1.00

00:30:28.000 I think that that hurt Bernie.

00:30:30.000 In 2015, I was saying Bernie may well have been a socialist in the 1970s.

00:30:39.000 On social democracy, which is what they have in Northern Europe, it's a type of capitalism.

00:30:43.000 And this is what I think Andrew Yang actually did well.

00:30:46.000 I don't know if it was people-centered capitalism that he called what he was doing or what phrase he used.

00:30:53.000 But I do think in my post-mortems about what happened with Bernie, because it wasn't by a little bit that Bernie lost.

00:30:59.000 Even before he dropped out, he was down 1.8 or 2 million votes to Joe Biden.

00:31:04.000 This was really not close.

00:31:06.000 I do think that the continued use of that word socialism was not helpful.

00:31:12.000 And I know people will hear me say this and they'll say, David, either way they were going to call him a socialist.

00:31:17.000 What difference does it make if he embraces the term or says it's not the right term or whatever?

00:31:21.000 Sure, that applies to some people, but I failed to see what the advantage was to using a term that didn't really describe what his campaign was.

00:31:46.000 Yes.

00:31:55.000 There was really no advantage to Bernie Sanders from using or at least to some degree allowing that term to continue being used.

00:32:03.000 Well, he wanted to redefine it.

00:32:04.000 And when he came on to my show, he actually did try to define it and describe the difference between the concept of socialism, which a lot of people connect to communism, and what he calls democratic socialism.

00:32:17.000 You know, and he was showing a more tamed-down version of this concept that, you know, a lot of like real young lefties, like my friend Bridget was on the podcast the other day, Bridget Phetasy, she's a hilarious writer,

00:32:33.000 very funny comedian, and she was talking about how she found some stuff that she wrote when she was in her early 20s.

00:32:40.000 And she read it, and she's more center today, I would say.

00:32:46.000 Left on many issues politically, socially rather.

00:32:49.000 But she was like AOC, she said.

00:32:52.000 She said she's reading this stuff, and she was like a radical when she was young.

00:32:57.000 I think that happens to people.

00:32:58.000 I'm sure Bernie was probably a full-on socialist at one point in his life, but what did that mean back then versus what does it mean now?

00:33:06.000 And even the term socialist, when you look at the term conservative or the term socialist, you're talking about a spectrum.

00:33:14.000 You're not talking about a one or a zero.

00:33:17.000 No one has the same number factor of conservatism.

00:33:21.000 There's a lot of people that are conservative that they're very liberal on a lot of social issues, but yet they still vote red.

00:33:28.000 And I think there's a lot of people that consider themselves Like a socialist, but at what level?

00:33:36.000 If you're pro-fire department, I think you embrace some socialist values, right?

00:33:43.000 If you're pro a lot of the services that we use that are a part of your tax dollars, we're combining our money so that the world is better for all of us.

00:33:52.000 It's not just a dog-eat-dog fight.

00:33:54.000 We recognize value in community and society and a civilization where we all work together.

00:34:00.000 We just don't want to work together too much.

00:34:02.000 We don't want people leeching off of it.

00:34:04.000 And I'm on that side as well.

00:34:06.000 Because I know that although there are, and we're seeing these more than we've ever seen in our life, multiple circumstances beyond your comprehension, totally out of your control, that fucks up your life. 0.95

00:34:16.000 But yet we also see people who are lazy and who keep fucking up their life and you keep enabling them and helping them. 0.96

00:34:22.000 It doesn't help anybody either. 0.98

00:34:23.000 Both those things are true. 0.81

00:34:25.000 Just because you agree with one thing that we need to help each other doesn't mean you deny the fact that there's a real problem psychologically to giving people free money and to giving people free room and board and taking away incentive for them to survive.

00:34:40.000 There's something, for whatever reason, that a lot of us need this sort of inner drive, this knowledge that you're responsible for your own destiny and you have to go out there and you have to put in the work.

00:34:51.000 You have to get out of bed when the alarm goes off.

00:34:53.000 You have to do the things you're supposed to do.

00:34:55.000 And there's people that don't do that, and yet they still want to be rewarded.

00:34:59.000 They still want money.

00:35:00.000 They still want their check.

00:35:01.000 They still want the thing they feel society or government owes them.

00:35:07.000 That's not good either.

00:35:09.000 See, both of those things are not good.

00:35:10.000 It's not good to let people who are sick rot and live their life in a compromised position because they don't have enough money for the medical care.

00:35:19.000 That's sick too.

00:35:20.000 It's not...

00:35:22.000 It's not a good person.

00:35:24.000 It's not a good society.

00:35:25.000 It's not a good model to have people starve.

00:35:27.000 That's not good.

00:35:28.000 If there's money and food and we could distribute it more evenly, especially to people that are unfortunate, but it's also not good to let people just camp out on the sidewalk where you can't walk through it.

00:35:38.000 Los Angeles is filled with tents now, especially now because of all this craziness and the pandemic.

00:35:43.000 It's gotten way worse.

00:35:44.000 There's areas where you can't go anywhere.

00:35:46.000 You literally can't walk under underpasses.

00:35:49.000 There are these campgrounds.

00:35:50.000 That's not good either.

00:35:52.000 Now we're dealing with mental health problems, I'm sure, and a lot of other issues.

00:36:21.000 Law enforcement that's socialized to protect your offices.

00:36:25.000 Law infrastructure that you count on to protect your intellectual property.

00:36:30.000 So put that aside for a second.

00:36:32.000 But then they're okay socializing the cleanup or the fixing in many cases.

00:36:37.000 So with drilling and fracking companies, for example.

00:36:40.000 Great, great examples.

00:36:42.000 Capitalism for the profits.

00:36:44.000 Look at me, capitalist.

00:36:45.000 I figured out how to do this drilling, how to extract this energy from the earth.

00:36:50.000 I bought the land, I bought the equipment, I'm hiring employees, look at me, pulling myself up by the bootstraps.

00:36:57.000 Something goes wrong, people downwind, get sick, whatever.

00:37:02.000 Now, They're going to say, let's socialize that cleanup cost, though.

00:37:07.000 Because we should do this through taxation.

00:37:10.000 Let's make sure that we're cleaning this up at the state level.

00:37:13.000 We want state funds to get this all cleaned up.

00:37:17.000 So that is an area of hypocrisy that's more difficult than just like, we mostly all agree the fire department should be socialized.

00:37:24.000 A few people will say, no, if you call and there's not really a fire, you should owe money.

00:37:28.000 That's like a tiny percentage.

00:37:31.000 It's an easy one.

00:37:32.000 The ones I'm talking about are a little bit tougher, and you're going to get a lot more pushback, I think, if you were to focus on those.

00:37:40.000 Well, I think you've got a really good point with the environmental cleanup, like something like the BP oil spill.

00:37:45.000 That's a really good point.

00:37:46.000 And that's a weird one.

00:37:48.000 It's like you don't want to...

00:37:49.000 It's almost like it's such a catastrophic event.

00:37:52.000 You don't want to leave it in the hands of someone who is so... 0.99

00:37:56.000 I mean, they fucked up in the first place to make this happen. 0.99

00:37:59.000 I don't trust them. 0.99

00:38:00.000 I don't trust the way they do business.

00:38:02.000 I mean, maybe it's just something that happens when you drill under the ocean and you pull oil out.

00:38:07.000 Occasionally things go wrong.

00:38:09.000 But I don't want to trust them to fix that.

00:38:12.000 I want to have some sort of environmental cleanup crew that's in place and maybe give them the bill.

00:38:17.000 I mean, I don't know what did it cost.

00:38:18.000 How much did it cost BP to have that?

00:38:21.000 And isn't it still leaking?

00:38:23.000 Hasn't it been proven that it's still polluting the ocean?

00:38:26.000 I don't know.

00:38:27.000 Over the last year, I honestly don't know what's going on.

00:38:30.000 Did you ever see the videos of when it was coming out of the ground?

00:38:32.000 Oh, yeah.

00:38:33.000 It's crazy.

00:38:34.000 Like, the world's ending.

00:38:35.000 It's a high pressure.

00:38:37.000 It's just open for days, right?

00:38:39.000 I mean, months.

00:38:39.000 I don't even remember how long it was.

00:38:41.000 But that's the point.

00:38:43.000 If you don't...

00:38:44.000 So this is where it starts to get tricky because it sounds like you might trust them...

00:38:50.000 To monetize it, but then if it gets messed up, hey, we shouldn't trust them to clean it up.

00:38:57.000 Someone else should do it, which maybe I agree with, and you're right, we should give them the bill, but that's the role of regulation to begin with.

00:39:03.000 If they were better supervised, we could have prevented this from the start.

00:39:06.000 I mean, with the BP oil spill, I'm going back like 10 years now, but there was some $500,000 valve, I believe.

00:39:14.000 That was not required.

00:39:16.000 I'm going from memory, so I hope I'm getting this 90% right.

00:39:19.000 There was some regulation that was removed where they were no longer required to have this $500,000 safety on these rigs, which would have prevented it.

00:39:29.000 And obviously the $500,000 they didn't want to spend up front, but it would have been way cheaper than what ultimately happened.

00:39:34.000 Mmm, Jesus.

00:39:35.000 You know, when I see those rigs outside, like, um, there's a place that I love to go to in Santa Barbara that they have these offshore little oil rigs.

00:39:43.000 I always look at them like that. 0.97

00:39:45.000 One day in the future, we're going to look back and go, why the fuck did we ever let them put those there? 0.99

00:39:49.000 That is so crazy. 0.97

00:39:51.000 Any other business, like first of all, that's not even our land, right?

00:39:56.000 No one even owns that.

00:39:57.000 It's like if you're an oil company and you're in Texas, you have to have either a lease on the land or you have to have rights to the land, it has to be yours, in order to dig into the ground and get oil.

00:40:06.000 But out there in the ocean, you're just kind of doing it on public...

00:40:11.000 You're doing it in the world.

00:40:13.000 I mean, once you get a certain amount of miles, I forget how many miles it is offshore, it's international waters, right?

00:40:18.000 So we're making agreements, we're letting these companies go into the ground, and we're not profiting from it at all.

00:40:26.000 All the money goes to them, and they're sucking it out of the ocean, and at any moment, it could go wrong, it could be an explosion, and the beaches are ruined for the rest of your generation.

00:40:35.000 Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.

00:40:37.000 I don't know if it's going to be like in 50 years or 200 years or, you know, however many years.

00:40:42.000 At some point, we're going to look back and there will be, you know, the books will say, we used to pull this stuff out of the ground and then refine it and then burn it.

00:40:52.000 And people would say, you guys did what?

00:40:55.000 How did that work?

00:40:56.000 How did you even get away with that?

00:40:57.000 Do you drive an electric car?

00:40:59.000 I don't currently, but I plan to get one.

00:41:02.000 I have a lease which is up in three months.

00:41:05.000 And the next card will be electric.

00:41:07.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:41:08.000 Once you get one, other cards feel stupid. 1.00

00:41:11.000 Not just stupid because of the environmental risk. 1.00

00:41:14.000 I have a Tesla Model S. It's the craziest thing I've ever driven. 1.00

00:41:18.000 It literally doesn't make sense.

00:41:20.000 They're so fast.

00:41:21.000 It's like it's violating physics.

00:41:23.000 It's so strange.

00:41:24.000 It's like you see this enormous screen where the navigation's on.

00:41:28.000 You're like, why did anybody ever have a little screen when you can have one of these things?

00:41:32.000 It's like having a map open in front of you.

00:41:35.000 They're incredible.

00:41:35.000 Now, if you do a long trip...

00:41:38.000 I don't bring it on a long trip.

00:41:40.000 I don't trust it.

00:41:41.000 I was going to say, are you planning ahead of time where you're stopping to charge it?

00:41:46.000 I have friends that have driven many, many across the country even with Teslas.

00:41:52.000 Yeah.

00:41:52.000 There's a little supercharger map that's built in to the software.

00:41:55.000 It's amazing.

00:41:56.000 You can do it.

00:41:57.000 But I don't want to wait around in some town for 20 minutes while my car charges to 80% and look around for weirdos. 0.99

00:42:02.000 What if some shit's going down, man? 0.98

00:42:04.000 What if you have 14 miles left on your charge and all of a sudden a building explodes half a block away? 0.99

00:42:12.000 You've got to get out of there.

00:42:15.000 If I'm taking a road trip and I'm going across the country, I want options.

00:42:20.000 Maybe if they have a little engine that could get you by, just a little tank of gas, a little engine to get you by in case you run out of batteries.

00:42:27.000 It's going to be solar eventually.

00:42:29.000 You could also just always not go below 50%, right? 0.99

00:42:33.000 And then you would know if the shit hits the fan, you've got 50% at least. 0.99

00:42:37.000 Yeah, you could do that. 1.00

00:42:39.000 But that would be annoying.

00:42:40.000 The 50% is like 150 miles. 0.57

00:42:43.000 If you're on a long trip, you go to 150 miles and pull over...

00:42:47.000 And then you gotta wait there for whatever amount of time.

00:42:49.000 They're getting better at it, though.

00:42:50.000 They're getting faster.

00:42:51.000 But the point is, like, it's such a clear leap in the evolution of technology that once you drive one of those, you're like, oh, it's game over.

00:43:00.000 Like, he told me that when Elon was here, he told me that, and I was like, oh, you're just saying that because it's your product, and we were joking around about it.

00:43:06.000 But then when I drove one, I'm like, oh, okay.

00:43:09.000 Yeah, I mean, it's like, it doesn't even make sense.

00:43:12.000 They're so much better than regular cars because it's instant acceleration.

00:43:15.000 There's no gears.

00:43:17.000 It's one gear.

00:43:18.000 It's instant torque.

00:43:19.000 And it also is so quiet.

00:43:22.000 Like, oh, I can think.

00:43:24.000 I can just drive around this thing and think.

00:43:26.000 And total peace and quiet.

00:43:27.000 The quiet part is really appealing to me.

00:43:29.000 And I'm looking...

00:43:29.000 In a few weeks, I think right now the Model 3s are like 10 weeks out.

00:43:33.000 So I'm probably going to put in an order in four or five weeks so I get it right when I need it.

00:43:37.000 But as far as the Elon Musk Tesla stuff...

00:43:40.000 So, I bought Tesla stock a long time ago, years, years ago.

00:43:45.000 I don't remember exactly when.

00:43:47.000 And obviously, it did really well for a really long time.

00:43:49.000 And I don't remember when it was, if it was a year and a half ago or two years ago. 0.99

00:43:53.000 But when Elon smoked pot on your show and the shit hit the fan, I panic sold half my stock. 0.99

00:44:00.000 No! 0.99

00:44:01.000 And the thing is, I always say, I don't know anything about stocks.

00:44:05.000 I invest in mutual funds.

00:44:06.000 You just let it ride long term, reinvest the dividends, don't think about it.

00:44:10.000 But I have like five or six stocks that I actually chose to buy.

00:44:14.000 And this is exactly why I don't invest in stocks.

00:44:23.000 And I was like, I'm selling half.

00:44:24.000 And obviously I regret having done that at this point.

00:44:27.000 Do you smoke pot, Dave?

00:44:29.000 I don't.

00:44:30.000 I don't smoke anything.

00:44:30.000 I just think inhaling any smoke I just don't think is good.

00:44:34.000 And so I've not done it.

00:44:37.000 Well, there's definitely better ways to do it than inhaling smoke, but inhaling smoke is very effective.

00:44:42.000 But eating sugar is not good either.

00:44:45.000 I'm sure you do that, right?

00:44:47.000 I try to limit it, certainly.

00:44:50.000 Worrying that much about what would happen in the market, I get it if you don't smoke pot.

00:44:54.000 If you smoke pot, you're like, oh, just relax, everybody.

00:44:58.000 Because it seems like a drug, but we were drinking whiskey.

00:45:01.000 It wasn't the smoking pot that worried.

00:45:03.000 It was the reaction to it?

00:45:03.000 It was what happened with, I think it was around the same time where he said, I might have found someone to take the company private, and SEC got involved, and I just panicked.

00:45:12.000 And I was like, I'm up so much, I'll just sell half.

00:45:15.000 So, it's not the end of the world.

00:45:18.000 I'm hedging my bets here.

00:45:21.000 He has two qualities that I would never bet against.

00:45:23.000 And the first one is an insane work ethic.

00:45:26.000 His work ethic is insane.

00:45:28.000 It's insane.

00:45:29.000 I mean, that guy will work 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

00:45:32.000 He just keeps going.

00:45:33.000 When he was trying to get the Model 3 production out, he was sleeping on the floor of the factory. 0.94

00:45:39.000 I mean, he's a maniac.

00:45:40.000 And he's weirdly intelligent. 0.99

00:45:43.000 Like, weirdly.

00:45:44.000 Some...

00:45:46.000 When I'm talking to him, I feel like I'm talking to someone in the future.

00:45:50.000 If I had to go back in time and have dinner with a Neanderthal, I feel like it'd be real similar to when I sit down and hang out with Elon, how he feels. 0.95

00:46:03.000 Because I think he's another level of human being.

00:46:07.000 I think that that is a natural course of progression for evolution.

00:46:11.000 We are going to eventually find people that are getting smarter.

00:46:18.000 We're not going to stay in a static state forever.

00:46:20.000 Just like we didn't stay as an Australopithecus.

00:46:23.000 We became human beings over natural selection and evolution and all that good stuff.

00:46:28.000 That's going to keep going.

00:46:29.000 And if it's going to keep going, you're Especially when it's integrated with this insane access to technology that kids have today and insane access to information.

00:46:38.000 You're gonna have smarter people.

00:46:40.000 It's gonna be a different thing.

00:46:43.000 He's a person.

00:46:45.000 He's a human being.

00:46:46.000 So he does make mistakes just like human beings make. 1.00

00:46:48.000 Like when he called that guy a pedo guy and that kind of shit. 0.99

00:46:51.000 But when it comes to his ability to allocate resources and do things and get things done, he's so smart they just let him drill tunnels under LA. They're like, okay, go ahead. 0.99

00:47:04.000 How many people would be able to go to the city of Los Angeles and go, I've got an idea.

00:47:09.000 I want to put a tunnel, go all the way to Vegas.

00:47:12.000 They'd be like, this guy's on coke.

00:47:13.000 Get him out of here.

00:47:14.000 But with Elon, they let him try.

00:47:16.000 I think he's a really important person for our culture.

00:47:19.000 Really important.

00:47:20.000 Probably one of the most important people.

00:47:23.000 Where are you on?

00:47:24.000 I mean, I guess at some point, coronavirus is a topic.

00:47:27.000 Where are you on what's going on with him reopening the factory and saying, arrest me?

00:47:33.000 I mean, I've been following it to some degree.

00:47:36.000 It's really complicated, right?

00:47:38.000 It's like, who should be able to decide when you can or can't go back to work?

00:47:44.000 It's not straightforward.

00:47:45.000 It's not cut and dry.

00:47:47.000 Because If you say the people should be allowed to make their own decision, you run into the very real possibility that especially if you have to go to work at that factory and you can't not work and you do get sick and you do go home and you do spread it to your family, a loved one could die.

00:48:03.000 That's real.

00:48:04.000 On the other hand, the government doesn't really seem to have any sort of straightforward plan as to how people can economically bounce back from this.

00:48:14.000 I mean, there was one of the weirdest quotes.

00:48:18.000 I think it was Trump that said this.

00:48:20.000 We were talking about businesses and restaurants that they'll be open, maybe not with the same owners, but they'll be open again.

00:48:27.000 Did you see that quote?

00:48:29.000 No, I didn't see that.

00:48:31.000 But it's like, what does that really mean?

00:48:32.000 Does that just mean like a different business will be created?

00:48:35.000 That's exactly what it means.

00:48:36.000 It means that he's just being pragmatic and maybe cold, whoever made that quote.

00:48:41.000 That is probably how it's going to go down.

00:48:44.000 Trump says restaurants will make comeback just maybe with new owners.

00:48:48.000 Yeah, that's what he said.

00:48:49.000 I mean, that does not make me feel good, man.

00:48:52.000 If I'm a restaurant owner, you know, and there's a few restaurants that I'm always shouting out on the podcast that, like...

00:48:59.000 Are owned by friends of mine that these businesses are hurting so bad.

00:49:05.000 They went like that to no customers or a very small percentage of customers who order takeout when they had dine-in every night and they have these bills and they had their business set up in a way that you have to make X amount of money in order to stay open.

00:49:21.000 And they were successful and they were doing well and one of the toughest businesses to be successful in.

00:49:25.000 And then all of a sudden the rug gets pulled out.

00:49:27.000 So what's the solution?

00:49:28.000 Should people just be able to go to restaurants and everybody who works there is a waiter or a cook or they just maybe get sick and then more people die?

00:49:34.000 Boy, that doesn't sound good to anybody either.

00:49:37.000 So what is the solution?

00:49:38.000 I don't know, but I don't think that in our particular case, I don't think our governor has the answers.

00:49:44.000 One of the things he's been criticized for is he's decided to open up production for television and films, but not churches.

00:49:52.000 You know, there's another thing they've done that's really nuts that my friend Adam Curry turned me on to.

00:49:56.000 They closed Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but liquor stores were an essential business.

00:50:05.000 That's not good government.

00:50:06.000 It's not good thinking.

00:50:08.000 There's so many things where they've put into place these lists of what's approved and not approved, and I just don't think that it's an—first of all, I think the information's constantly changing.

00:50:20.000 And I think that they're going off this old information and they haven't made adjustments.

00:50:24.000 And then on top of it, I don't think they're qualified to.

00:50:26.000 I don't think they're qualified.

00:50:27.000 Just like we were talking about a president, like one person who's involved in the economy and the environment and all these different things.

00:50:33.000 I don't think one governor can really be smart enough to know, A, what kind of impact it's going to have economically to close all these businesses down, and B, which ones get to open up and what is essential and why.

00:50:48.000 It's very frustrating for all involved, and it highlights one of the reasons why the way we do government is not perfect.

00:50:58.000 It's definitely better than a lot of ways in a lot of places in the world, but still, there's a lot of holes in it.

00:51:04.000 Yeah, I share your frustration with constantly changing messages.

00:51:11.000 What is essential in one state versus in another state?

00:51:14.000 The issue of churches is a big one.

00:51:15.000 I mean, on the other hand, In Massachusetts churches were included in the first phase of reopening and a lot of public health officials say that doesn't make any sense and the suspicion is that it's there because of a lot of pressure and that it probably should have been in phase two or maybe even phase three.

00:51:35.000 But I think it's hard to really talk about the state by state without acknowledging The disastrous response from the federal government.

00:51:44.000 And I don't know where you stand.

00:51:45.000 You may totally disagree with me on that.

00:51:46.000 And I think that there's a lot of straw men that are being put in place to argue that Trump handled it beautifully, to use his term.

00:51:53.000 But I think if you start with the idea of the coordinated federal response we could have had, a lot of these other issues that we're having now Just wouldn't be issues, and I'm glad to get into it more if you want.

00:52:06.000 I don't know if you've talked about that a lot.

00:52:07.000 Yeah, I think it'd be really interesting to talk about this, because what do you think they could have done differently?

00:52:12.000 What do you think the government should have done differently, the federal government?

00:52:15.000 Got it.

00:52:16.000 The narrative has been a lot of two sides that are arguing.

00:52:22.000 People who just vaguely say Trump failed, he didn't do enough, and he was slow, without really giving specifics, which I will give.

00:52:31.000 And then on the other hand, you've got a lot of people who are just reflexively defending, hey, he shut down travel from China really early, and he took it seriously, and we've done the most tests, which is a whole other fiasco talking point that we can get into.

00:52:46.000 But for the most part, I think that the critiques and the praise is just not tied to real dates.

00:52:54.000 So in January, we had our first case, January 20th, I think it was, and South Korea had their first case, January 20th.

00:53:02.000 We then often skip over February.

00:53:04.000 So a lot of people will defend Trump by saying, you're not going to shut down a country when you've got one case.

00:53:10.000 And I totally agree.

00:53:11.000 You're not going to shut down a country over one case.

00:53:13.000 We're not going to shut down a country over 15 cases.

00:53:15.000 There was this point where we had 15 and Trump said, we've got 15 and soon it's going to be zero.

00:53:20.000 I don't think that it was logical at that point to say, shut it all down, but just to pick a date and then we can work around it.

00:53:27.000 March 5, okay?

00:53:29.000 March 5, China had 80,000 cases, so we already had proof that this was going to be big.

00:53:36.000 Italy had 4,000 cases, so this is March 5. So we already had proof that it'll travel really far and it'll get bad far from China.

00:53:46.000 And we had 221 cases on March 5. It would be very reasonable on March 5 for Trump to say, this is a problem, FDR-like, Delivery.

00:53:59.000 Hard to imagine Trump doing that, but we've got to work together.

00:54:03.000 This is going to be difficult.

00:54:04.000 We're going to do a 30-day.

00:54:05.000 I need all 50 governors to help me on this.

00:54:09.000 Let's do 30 days of stay at home.

00:54:11.000 He probably would have then, on April 5th, have had to ask for another 30. So we would have done like 60 days, March 5 to May 5. And where would we be right now?

00:54:21.000 We'd be in really, really good shape.

00:54:23.000 So it's really easy to just say, dude, you're not going to shut down a country with five cases.

00:54:28.000 I agree.

00:54:29.000 But we had the information on March 5th, March 10th, March 12th.

00:54:34.000 At any one of these points, if we did a real shutdown, we'd be in such good shape.

00:54:39.000 First of all, I think that the support for a shutdown that early would have been almost zero.

00:54:43.000 I think you would have a really hard time convincing people that this was going to be that big of a deal and that there wouldn't be something they could do to stop.

00:54:50.000 I think a lot of this is Monday morning quarterbacking, right?

00:54:53.000 We're looking at what happened factually.

00:54:57.000 Like, we're looking at it in the past.

00:54:58.000 This is when there was this amount of cases.

00:55:01.000 When it was happening live, There was a lot of confusion.

00:55:05.000 First of all, the World Health Organization, as recently as January, was saying that, according to China, this is what they wrote on a tweet, it doesn't get transmitted from person to person.

00:55:15.000 So this is in January, right?

00:55:17.000 In March, they were saying you don't need a mask.

00:55:21.000 There's been a lot of confusion.

00:55:23.000 It's not like there was real, straightforward, clear advice.

00:55:26.000 It's hard for us.

00:55:27.000 It's so easy for us to sit back, here we are in late May, and say, oh, he should have done this.

00:55:34.000 And if he'd done that, everything would have been great.

00:55:36.000 The support for shutting down the whole country for 30 days at the beginning of March was zero.

00:55:41.000 I don't think anybody would have agreed with that.

00:55:43.000 There's no question.

00:55:44.000 And I also, I do think we want to be careful, though, If we write any retrospective analysis off as Monday morning quarterbacking, then it's not even worth discussing, right?

00:55:54.000 Because we could just say, throw it out, it's Monday morning quarterbacking.

00:55:57.000 No, you're right.

00:55:58.000 You're right.

00:55:58.000 Look, it clearly wasn't perfect.

00:56:03.000 So there's always going to be room for critique.

00:56:05.000 But the idea that we could have shut everything down, boy, that is such a hard sell.

00:56:12.000 Remember when Cuomo was saying that they're not going to shut down New York?

00:56:15.000 It'd be too hard to shut down New York.

00:56:16.000 Yeah, I think Cuomo and de Blasio, I mean, they're Democrats and Trump's a Republican.

00:56:21.000 I don't care about that.

00:56:22.000 I mean, certainly there's no doubt that Cuomo and de Blasio are deserving of some In one other example, there was a period, we'd have to look at covidtracking.org to get the exact numbers, but there was a period in either late March or early April where South Korea,

00:56:39.000 remember South Korea had their first case the same day we did, within like six or eight hours.

00:56:44.000 It might have been January 1920 or vice versa, but there was a point in late March or early April where South Korea had as many positive We did tests total.

00:56:57.000 So this is really important to understand the discrepancy here.

00:57:01.000 There was a day where we tested 800 people in the United States and they did so many tests that they had 800 positive cases.

00:57:09.000 And so the slow testing response is a disaster.

00:57:14.000 And the proof is, you know, we can say it's Monday morning quarterbacking, but South Korea got it right. 0.99

00:57:21.000 Taiwan got it right. 0.58

00:57:22.000 In terms of places in Europe, Greece did really well.

00:57:25.000 New Zealand did really well.

00:57:27.000 So we may be looking at it retrospectively.

00:57:35.000 Yeah, it did.

00:57:36.000 There's no doubt about that.

00:57:37.000 David, maybe you would know the answer to this.

00:57:40.000 Wasn't there some sort of a pandemic department?

00:57:43.000 People were moved out of that department and it sort of was absorbed?

00:57:48.000 Yes, so there's video of this.

00:57:51.000 It's so funny because Trump was asked about this at a press briefing a couple months ago.

00:57:55.000 This is when Anthony Fauci was still allowed in public.

00:57:58.000 And when the question was asked, why did you shut down the pandemic response team, Trump turned, the video's out there, Trump turned and said, I don't know anything.

00:58:07.000 Tony, do you know anything about that?

00:58:09.000 There's video of Trump from 2018 bragging about shutting that down.

00:58:13.000 Oh my God.

00:58:14.000 To get back to our cognitive decline thing, is it possible Trump literally had no memory of that when he was asked about it a couple months ago?

00:58:21.000 Maybe.

00:58:21.000 Yes, there is.

00:58:22.000 Here's why.

00:58:23.000 Here's why I think that. 1.00

00:58:24.000 My brain, my memory's going to shit. 0.99

00:58:26.000 And I think one of the reasons why my memory's going to shit is I do too many things. 0.99

00:58:29.000 I have too many podcasts going. 0.82

00:58:31.000 There's too many subjects.

00:58:32.000 I'm...

00:58:33.000 Researching too many different topics for future guests, and I really feel like you can only have so much data in your head.

00:58:41.000 You know what Dunbar's number is?

00:58:45.000 Yeah, it's related to some number of items, right, that you can keep track of simultaneously.

00:58:51.000 Humans that you can have some sort of a by-name relationship, recognize their face, people that you know are going to be in your circle of humans you interact with.

00:59:01.000 It's Dunbar's number.

00:59:02.000 And it's somewhere around 150, and they think it's based on how we evolved in these small tribes, and we've evolved to know the people that are around us, and that's all the database you needed.

00:59:13.000 You didn't need a full terabyte for people's names and addresses.

00:59:16.000 You just needed 150 of them.

00:59:18.000 I think that's the case with everything. 0.99

00:59:20.000 And I think when you see a guy like Trump, and he's got fucking... 0.99

00:59:23.000 Towers all over the place with his name on it and how many different businesses is he juggling and all these different deals going on and he's cheating at golf and all this different crazy shit. 0.99

00:59:32.000 I mean, there's so much data. 0.96

00:59:35.000 And then on top of that...

00:59:36.000 But isn't he supposedly not doing it?

00:59:37.000 Like, as far as they've told us...

00:59:39.000 He hasn't been involved in his businesses for three and a half years.

00:59:42.000 Yeah, but he must have something to do with it.

00:59:45.000 I believe that.

00:59:46.000 This has been something that people say to me, like, hey, I'd love you to get involved in this business.

00:59:51.000 And I would say, I don't have any time.

00:59:52.000 Well, you wouldn't need the time.

00:59:54.000 Well, it doesn't matter.

00:59:55.000 I would need the time because I'd have to think about it.

00:59:57.000 If I give you money, now I have to think, like, oh, what's that money?

01:00:00.000 What's happening over there?

01:00:01.000 That's one more thing.

01:00:02.000 It's one more unit of the mental bandwidth that you have. 1.00

01:00:06.000 This fucking guy's taxed out. 0.99

01:00:08.000 He's taxed out with just the arguments that he's getting with the press. 1.00

01:00:11.000 Just think about how much real estate that's taking up in his head, right?

01:00:16.000 And then you think about the disease.

01:00:17.000 You think about restarting the economy.

01:00:20.000 He very well might not remember bragging about disbanding the pandemic team.

01:00:25.000 It's very possible.

01:00:26.000 Maybe he doesn't.

01:00:27.000 To your question, there was this pandemic pandemic.

01:00:40.000 Whoops.

01:00:45.000 And he's busy between the press and the virus and reopening and all this different stuff.

01:00:49.000 I don't know if you saw the reports that he often gets into what we would call work at noon or later after watching five or even more hours of TV and tweeting.

01:00:59.000 It doesn't strike me that he's that busy with actual work.

01:01:03.000 I think he is and he isn't.

01:01:05.000 I think it's still taking up bandwidth in his head.

01:01:08.000 But look, it is so American that he does that.

01:01:12.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:01:13.000 I mean, in not the best way possible, but we're so comical in so many ways that our president, he's eating junk food and watching TV and tweeting, angry tweeting at people while he's watching Fox News.

01:01:28.000 So, okay.

01:01:30.000 Here's the point I want to make about that.

01:01:31.000 Okay.

01:01:36.000 This president is sometimes covered by, sometimes it's people who call themselves centrists or sometimes it's people who say, I'm just reporting facts and not giving an opinion or whatever.

01:01:49.000 One of the things that really scares me Is that this is being treated like a normal presidency, when as you're pointing out, it's really not a normal presidency.

01:01:58.000 And the analogy that I would sort of apply to it would be, imagine that you're doing UFC commentary, and this is me going out on a limb because this is not my area of expertise, but let's see if the analogy will work.

01:02:10.000 Imagine that one of the fighters comes in, And he at one point tries to light his opponent on fire.

01:02:18.000 And you as a commentator say, this is an unusual strategy that's very aggressive.

01:02:24.000 You're treating it like it's within the realm of normality when this is a destruction of the system, right?

01:02:31.000 It's not an aggressive strategy.

01:02:33.000 This is crazy, right?

01:02:35.000 And that's what scares me.

01:02:36.000 It scares me because I see, you know, I like to use the term enlightened centrist, and it's a little bit pejorative, but it's Where they'll say, you know, listen, Trump kind of has a different way of talking about politics,

01:02:54.000 but I think he's pretty good on trade.

01:02:56.000 It's like, what are you talking about?

01:02:58.000 And that really scares me because there's like a normalization going on that's crazy to me.

01:03:03.000 Well, there's also a thing that we desire as humans that's for our leaders to exhibit virtue and dignity.

01:03:14.000 There's like a thing, we expect them to be a statesman or a stateswoman, right?

01:03:18.000 You expect them to, like Tulsi Gabbard's an excellent example that, to me, of someone who speaks like someone That I would appreciate addressing the nation in some sort of a disastrous state.

01:03:30.000 If something was going wrong, I would want someone who speaks the way she speaks talking about it.

01:03:36.000 Cuomo has it.

01:03:37.000 There's a certain characteristic that you would want from someone who is in a position of leadership.

01:03:42.000 I get a certain amount of calm out of listening to him break down the current situations and what they're doing to remedy and mitigate all the problems in New York.

01:03:51.000 And when you think about it, New York got hit harder than anywhere in the I guess anywhere on the planet, right?

01:03:58.000 It turns into a city?

01:03:59.000 I mean, yeah, I think so.

01:04:00.000 Yeah, so at this point, it's anywhere on the planet.

01:04:02.000 I mean, he's done a remarkable job of exhibiting all the characteristics, whether or not you think his decisions were correct or not, because there's some real arguments, especially with the early days of letting old people go back to nursing homes when they had tested,

01:04:17.000 and that's obviously horrible.

01:04:21.000 The way he communicates, he communicates like a guy that you would feel comfortable, he's going to make good decisions.

01:04:27.000 He seems like a president.

01:04:29.000 Yeah, and I think that this is why a lot of mistakes have been made during this, and a lot of it came from, like you're pointing out, we had incomplete information, masks are good, then they don't work.

01:04:40.000 It's transmitted through droplet versus how much is happening via surfaces, and it's dangerous for this group versus...

01:04:48.000 A lot of mistakes were made because of lack of information.

01:04:51.000 But not everybody was saying stuff like 15 cases will soon be zero.

01:04:57.000 Anybody who wants a test can get a test.

01:04:59.000 It'll wash through by April and we're not going to have cases by the...

01:05:03.000 That stuff has a very particular effect on people who basically want a license to go out and act however they want to act regardless of what the facts are.

01:05:14.000 And that's why it's been so dangerous to see that stuff.

01:05:17.000 Well, it also is dangerous because people dismiss some of the things that he said when he was talking about using UV inside the body as a disinfectant or using Lysol as maybe a cleaning, he was saying.

01:05:31.000 One of the problems that came out of this, I don't know if you're aware of this, there was a publicly traded biotech company.

01:05:36.000 That had a concept for UV light that would go in when someone was intubated.

01:05:43.000 It would go in through the same tube and they would use that UV light and it would kill the virus from inside.

01:05:50.000 That is something that UV light actually does work to kill bacteria and viruses.

01:05:55.000 In fact, at my house I have a cell phone cleaner.

01:05:58.000 You put it in there and you close it and it uses UV light to kill all those things.

01:06:02.000 I mean this is something that they've had forever.

01:06:05.000 In SteriPens.

01:06:06.000 A SteriPen is something that backpackers and hikers use.

01:06:09.000 You can take water out of a creek and you take this light bulb, it's like a long wand, and you wave it for a certain amount of time in the water and that UV light kills all the bacteria.

01:06:20.000 Yeah.

01:06:20.000 So this company had this product that was going to use that UV light through the tube, and they got pulled off of Twitter.

01:06:30.000 Their account got banned because it looked like something that was aligning with what Trump said, even though it's legitimate science.

01:06:39.000 Okay.

01:06:40.000 That was a real issue.

01:06:44.000 There's a bunch there, and I want to get to the Twitter stuff because I saw when you talked to Bridget over the weekend about the regulation of social media.

01:06:54.000 I don't know this one, so I can't say too much about it.

01:06:58.000 So Trump mentioned in that wondering aloud, he said, what if you hit the body with heat or light?

01:07:05.000 And what if you put the disinfectants that were up on the TV behind him inside the body?

01:07:11.000 So we got like four things, four things that he mentioned, right?

01:07:13.000 So UV light, heat, and I think isopropyl and bleach were the four elements, so to speak, to use his term, that were up on the screen behind him.

01:07:23.000 After the fact...

01:07:26.000 There were these couple papers about this UV technology, and a couple people on Twitter started saying, this is the stuff Trump was referring to.

01:07:36.000 And it's like, no, he wasn't.

01:07:37.000 Trump said, I don't know anything about this.

01:07:40.000 I'm asking you, is this something we might look at?

01:07:43.000 He was winging it.

01:07:44.000 He was completely winging it.

01:07:45.000 So that's number one.

01:07:46.000 After the fact, That's Monday morning quarterbacking.

01:07:49.000 Going through PubMed and saying, here's something I found with UV light.

01:07:53.000 I'm sure it was what Trump meant when he said hit the body.

01:07:56.000 Yes, for sure.

01:07:57.000 So that's number one.

01:07:59.000 But in terms, this is kind of an example of like, that was a wacky statement.

01:08:04.000 That was an out-of-control statement that I can't imagine almost any other politician wondering aloud about.

01:08:10.000 But there is nothing that this guy's supporters won't defend.

01:08:15.000 Right.

01:08:16.000 It doesn't matter.

01:08:18.000 That's the scary thing.

01:08:19.000 That is a scary thing.

01:08:20.000 And that was one of the weirdest ones to try to justify.

01:08:24.000 I think the correct response was he was winging it.

01:08:28.000 He obviously didn't know what he was talking about.

01:08:30.000 And he was asking questions.

01:08:33.000 He was throwing some questions around.

01:08:34.000 They just weren't good ones.

01:08:36.000 Say if you or I don't know much about...

01:08:42.000 Internal combustion engines.

01:08:43.000 I don't really understand them that much. 0.75

01:08:45.000 I kind of know there's spark plugs and there's fuel injection, but I don't really know what the fuck's going on.

01:08:49.000 If I had to explain it to somebody, like how the gas gets converted into energy and how the pistons go up and something fires and what's regular...

01:08:57.000 I would be doing...

01:08:58.000 So I go, it's probably...

01:08:59.000 You got to get the gas in there and the fire and then it's exploding.

01:09:02.000 And, you know, it would be similar to the way he was describing using disinfectants on people.

01:09:09.000 But one of the things that I think he did say was something about getting light in the body.

01:09:12.000 I think he did say something about getting light in the body.

01:09:15.000 Yeah, he listed it and said, is that something you can look into?

01:09:19.000 He got stuck.

01:09:20.000 He got stuck rambling.

01:09:23.000 And it's probably pretty safe to assume he enjoys some kind of stimulant.

01:09:30.000 And I don't know what it is.

01:09:32.000 I don't know if it's legal or illegal.

01:09:33.000 And I think if he was taking all that ephedrine that he had in his – remember in that famous picture where he was eating the taco bowl?

01:09:42.000 So someone wrote to me and said that it is true.

01:09:46.000 There's this picture where Trump tweeted he loves Hispanics.

01:09:49.000 I don't know if you remember that tweet. 1.00

01:09:51.000 That was after he had said crazy shit about Mexicans possibly coming over here to rape and murder. 1.00

01:10:02.000 It's his left shoulder. 1.00

01:10:04.000 And there's a bunch of Sudafed packs.

01:10:07.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:10:09.000 If I was going to get people to...

01:10:11.000 Hold on, let me open up this drawer real quick.

01:10:14.000 Alright, now take the picture. 1.00

01:10:16.000 Just to fuck with people. 1.00

01:10:18.000 Let's put a needle and a baggie and a spoon in there. 1.00

01:10:23.000 Just don't say nothing.

01:10:23.000 Someone wrote to me though and said that that version of Sudafed, which is I guess the UK version, doesn't contain the same...

01:10:32.000 I don't know the truth, but I want to make sure we're careful about what we say. 0.96

01:10:37.000 I like talking shit though, so let's keep going. 0.96

01:10:40.000 I wonder if the UK version is stronger. 1.00

01:10:44.000 Do we even know?

01:10:45.000 Is that possible for you to look right now?

01:10:48.000 Jamie's...

01:10:48.000 I thought it was the opposite of that.

01:10:49.000 I thought it was the opposite as well.

01:10:50.000 I thought the UK version was stronger.

01:10:52.000 Yeah.

01:10:52.000 Interesting.

01:10:53.000 Yeah, that's what I had heard.

01:10:54.000 But I've done zero research.

01:10:56.000 Yeah.

01:10:56.000 No, listen.

01:10:57.000 I mean, you and I have talked about the tongue thing where it looks like he's essentially...

01:11:00.000 Like, his tongue is attacking him.

01:11:02.000 It was like his tongue was Weekend at Bernie's. 1.00

01:11:05.000 And he was moving that fucker around in his mouth trying to keep talking. 1.00

01:11:09.000 There's the stuff where he's like... 1.00

01:11:11.000 He seems to struggle with S's where it's like a shh sound.

01:11:15.000 And there was speculation that it's dentures, but rich guys don't have dentures.

01:11:19.000 They have dental implants.

01:11:23.000 Unless you're super old school.

01:11:25.000 Yeah, I guess.

01:11:26.000 I don't know.

01:11:26.000 And then there's pictures of him having really dilated pupils, even under TV lighting, which is weird because TV lighting is really bright.

01:11:35.000 Really?

01:11:36.000 But are those real pictures?

01:11:37.000 That's the problem.

01:11:38.000 I've seen some pictures.

01:11:40.000 Well, I don't know.

01:11:41.000 I guess we have to look at them one by one.

01:11:42.000 Well, dilated pupils is usually a response to some sort of drug, right?

01:11:48.000 Some people get that with MDMA. They get that with certain amphetamines.

01:11:53.000 To be fair, I think that the most sort of innocuous explanation would be Sometimes it's like the very high-key Trump, very agitated Trump talking fast and sweating.

01:12:07.000 And then sometimes there's this depressed Trump where he's talking really, really slowly and he has a totally different delivery.

01:12:15.000 He looks depressed and sad.

01:12:17.000 It's possible that...

01:12:18.000 For either some medication that he's actually prescribed or just like his energy cycle during the day.

01:12:24.000 I mean, we all to some degree have it.

01:12:26.000 Maybe there's times a day where he's up and sometimes when he's down, like it's not necessarily stimulants, I guess.

01:12:33.000 Maybe.

01:12:34.000 But he's also a guy who's willing to take hydroxychloroquine in preventative doses.

01:12:40.000 Do you think he's taking it?

01:12:41.000 Yes.

01:12:42.000 I know many doctors who are taking it and have asked me if I want it prescribed to me.

01:12:49.000 Yeah, because they're taking it in very small doses.

01:12:52.000 And I said, but my friend had it when he was, my friend Michael Yeo was hospitalized with COVID-19, and he was in a terrible place.

01:12:58.000 And he said, when they gave him hydroxychloroquine, it had a terrible effect on his body.

01:13:02.000 He said it was devastating.

01:13:03.000 And my doctor said, there's a giant difference between the dosage and the response to the dosage of A dose that you would get if you are sick with a disease versus a preventative dose.

01:13:14.000 And he said there's many, many doctors that are taking preventative doses of this hydroxychloroquine and that this stuff has been around for a long time as a malaria medication.

01:13:23.000 Of course.

01:13:23.000 And Dr. Drew did a whole video segment that I watched recently about that as well, saying basically the same thing.

01:13:30.000 I think that anyone though who's willing to just start taking hydroxychloroquine I mean, maybe take stuff.

01:13:38.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:13:38.000 As long as your doctor prescribes you stuff.

01:13:41.000 Do you remember that article?

01:13:41.000 I think you and I had discussed this.

01:13:43.000 There was a journalist that claimed they found the right pharmacy that prescribed Trump speed, that where Trump would pick up this stuff that he would get, this amphetamine, for a metabolic condition.

01:13:56.000 Do you remember that?

01:13:57.000 I don't remember that one.

01:13:58.000 Okay.

01:13:59.000 But, if your doctor prescribes you something, like, I have friends that take Adderall, and they take Adderall, the doctor prescribes them Adderall, and they take it, and they don't think there's anything wrong with it, because the doctor prescribes it.

01:14:09.000 They don't even think that they do drugs.

01:14:11.000 I'm like, you're on a hardcore stimulant all the time, and it's really, really, really common.

01:14:17.000 So, if he's a guy that's willing to take hydroxychloroquine, which, I mean, maybe it's a good thing to take, and he's around a lot of people, and it is possible that it has some sort of a preventative effect.

01:14:27.000 Obviously, I don't know.

01:14:28.000 But if you're the guy who takes things, you probably take things to go to bed.

01:14:33.000 You take things to wake up.

01:14:35.000 I need a little pick-me-up.

01:14:37.000 There's a lot of people out there that take stuff.

01:14:39.000 There's a type of person who's just into trying stuff and seeing what it does for them.

01:14:44.000 Yeah, that's me.

01:14:45.000 I'm into stuff.

01:14:46.000 Yeah.

01:14:46.000 But I don't take medication, though, like that.

01:14:50.000 That seems to me like, whoo, what about the immune system?

01:14:54.000 How much do you trust your immune system?

01:14:55.000 Is there things you could do to boost your immune system?

01:14:57.000 So I like to talk to legitimate clinical researchers and nutritionists that understand the body's effect and what...

01:15:06.000 Nutrients you're putting in and heat shock proteins from sauna and things like that.

01:15:10.000 All kinds of different stuff that you can do.

01:15:12.000 Making sure you get enough sleep.

01:15:14.000 That's a giant factor.

01:15:15.000 All these factors that we're not getting discussed in the news.

01:15:19.000 When we're hearing all these things about social distancing and covering your face, it would be really nice if the exact same amount of effort was put to Let's all use this time to make healthy choices and to understand that there's a real benefit to having a healthy body and a healthy immune system.

01:15:36.000 And this is the best example of it we could ever possibly face.

01:15:39.000 It's a pandemic that with some people, they brush it off like it's nothing.

01:15:43.000 And I know many people that have had it like that, and then I know Other people that got it, and they got it really bad.

01:15:49.000 I've had two friends that were hospitalized, one who was on a respirator.

01:15:52.000 He was there for over a month.

01:15:54.000 He's an older guy, but the situation for them was terrible.

01:15:58.000 But there's a bunch of factors.

01:16:00.000 Nutrition, body being run down, being exhausted, too much travel, alcohol.

01:16:05.000 There's all these different things.

01:16:06.000 We need more education about that.

01:16:09.000 There are preventative measures that we can take.

01:16:11.000 It's not just as simple as put a band-aid on it, cover your face, use hand sanitizer.

01:16:16.000 That's good advice too.

01:16:18.000 But better advice is both of those things together.

01:16:22.000 Yeah, so on hydroxychloroquine, my understanding of the randomized controlled trials right now is that it's essentially been tested as a treatment when someone is already sick.

01:16:32.000 Yes.

01:16:33.000 And it doesn't seem particularly effective and there can be serious side effects.

01:16:36.000 There is a study going on, I think, in the UK looking at the low dose prophylactically.

01:16:41.000 I get emails from people who are like, you're against hydroxychloroquine because Trump's for it.

01:16:46.000 I've been talking about hydroxychloroquine longer than Trump.

01:16:49.000 We're good to go.

01:17:02.000 He seemed confused about how long he had been on it and what kind of dose he was getting.

01:17:08.000 At one point, it wasn't clear whether he was getting the weekly dose, which is how it's taken for malaria, or a small daily dose.

01:17:14.000 He seemed confused.

01:17:15.000 And then the letter that his doctor put out didn't actually say he was taking it.

01:17:19.000 It was one of the weirdest letters, I don't know if you saw it, where there's one paragraph which just says, We talked about this drug and determined the potential benefits outweigh the risks or something like that.

01:17:30.000 Maybe the doctor did that because it's off-label?

01:17:32.000 Because it is an off-label drug.

01:17:34.000 So if he is prescribing it to Trump, it's not FDA approved.

01:17:38.000 Who's going to get in trouble?

01:17:39.000 It's the president.

01:17:40.000 I mean, I think that's why they would write the letter.

01:17:41.000 The letter was weird, is the point.

01:17:43.000 It said everything other Well, maybe the doctor hesitated and said it's controversial.

01:17:53.000 Maybe Trump asked for it.

01:17:54.000 We're going way out on the speculation limb here.

01:17:57.000 These are thin branches.

01:17:58.000 Maybe he said, I want to take it, and the doctor's like, wow, there's some downsides.

01:18:06.000 He's like, look, I'm going to get it either way.

01:18:07.000 And so he gets it from another doctor.

01:18:09.000 It could be that.

01:18:10.000 I know a guy.

01:18:11.000 Don't worry about it.

01:18:12.000 I'll call a guy.

01:18:12.000 I'll have it tomorrow.

01:18:13.000 But Trump asked for the letter.

01:18:14.000 The point is, after he mentioned it and people said, is he really taking it, clearly the White House directed the doctor, put out a letter proving I'm taking it, and the doctor writes a letter, doesn't say Trump's on it. 0.99

01:18:24.000 Well, maybe the doctor was like, hey man, why the fuck did you say that? 0.97

01:18:29.000 I mean, I don't know. 0.99

01:18:30.000 I don't know.

01:18:32.000 There's a lot of speculation.

01:18:33.000 I don't think you would outright lie about that because the reason being is that I do know people are taking it.

01:18:39.000 And I do know doctors, and I've discussed it with doctors, and I've even been offered it.

01:18:43.000 And I think people are willing to, if they really think there's a possibility of getting ahead of this thing and some sort of a preventative measure, they'll take it.

01:18:55.000 And especially if you're the type of person who takes things.

01:18:58.000 So, do you think that there's going to be a period where wealthier folks with connections will be able to buy a vaccine before it's available?

01:19:08.000 I think that's a possibility, for sure, right?

01:19:10.000 Don't you think?

01:19:11.000 If there's a small quantity, that's always going to be the case.

01:19:14.000 I mean, one thing that people were getting upset at me in the early days of the pandemic was that I was testing everybody that came into the podcast studio.

01:19:21.000 Like, where are you getting these tests?

01:19:22.000 Well, I'm just buying them.

01:19:24.000 I'm paying for them.

01:19:25.000 There's a concierge service in Los Angeles.

01:19:27.000 They come to you, and the doctor will administer these tests.

01:19:31.000 You just have to pay for it.

01:19:32.000 And I understand that people don't have that money, that that sucks, but I'm not going to not do it if I can.

01:19:39.000 This is a similar situation.

01:19:41.000 I can understand why people would be upset, but if you had money and someone came up to you and said, David, we have this perfect vaccine.

01:19:48.000 It's absolutely been proven.

01:19:50.000 However, only 1% of the population is going to be able to get it.

01:19:54.000 But if you get it and you and your family can have it and we'll make sure you're safe.

01:19:58.000 Would you not take it because you wanted other people to have access to it?

01:20:02.000 I think a lot of people who have access to it would probably say, listen, I have to do the right thing for my family.

01:20:07.000 I'm going to try to help people get it.

01:20:09.000 I'm going to try to spread the word and hopefully they'll be okay, but I have to take care of myself right now.

01:20:14.000 Yeah, I don't disagree with that.

01:20:15.000 I don't disagree with that.

01:20:16.000 It's unfortunate that anybody would ever have to choose that.

01:20:19.000 Yeah, and how it'll go down, I guess, is a question mark.

01:20:22.000 Like, how will people in the know be made aware that this is now something they'd potentially be able to buy?

01:20:28.000 Are you aware of, I mean, look, there's a bunch of different trials going on right now where they're trying to figure out how to make a vaccine, but so far no coronavirus vaccine has ever been successful, right?

01:20:39.000 There's not one that they can use as a model.

01:20:41.000 Is that correct?

01:20:43.000 There is, so there are coronavirus vaccines that have worked in poultry, from my understanding, which can be modified potentially.

01:20:53.000 So I think at least one or two of the vaccine candidates are modified potentially.

01:20:57.000 Poultry coronavirus vaccines that could potentially be used in humans.

01:21:03.000 And the other unique thing about this vaccine, potentially, as I understand it, is that this would be, if I understand correctly, it would be the first vaccine of its type that instead of having a weakened version of the virus,

01:21:20.000 Instead, it would be a compound that triggers the body to create certain proteins, if I'm understanding that correctly.

01:21:28.000 It would be innovated in that sense as well.

01:21:30.000 Yeah, that was explained to me by Alex Jones.

01:21:33.000 I had a long conversation with him about it last night.

01:21:37.000 It's an mRNA vaccine.

01:21:41.000 But there's never been one of those that's successfully been used on humans, right?

01:21:45.000 This is a new thing?

01:21:47.000 Well, I don't know that there's been...

01:21:49.000 Now all of a sudden we're both biologists.

01:21:51.000 So yeah, from what I've read, there's not been an opportunity like this where the technology would be near enough where we would try to make that type of vaccine versus the traditional kind, is my understanding.

01:22:03.000 Dude, that one sounds scary.

01:22:05.000 I don't want to be an early adopter of that one.

01:22:09.000 Especially if this is something that for a giant percentage of the population, in terms of the virus itself, it's not deadly.

01:22:20.000 Wouldn't you want to know if there's a new thing that's never been tried on people before?

01:22:24.000 Wouldn't you want to know what the long-term ramifications of taking that are?

01:22:28.000 Just on anything, any kind of medication, anything.

01:22:30.000 I think what is important to remember is, Even if phase three of the trial is shortened, that would only lead to maybe a question mark as to how long the immunity lasts.

01:22:42.000 But before you even start testing it to see whether it generates immunity, it's safety tested.

01:22:47.000 And by the time it's available, even to buy it as a wealthy person, I think that the safety piece of it will be widely established.

01:22:55.000 And it might just be a question of, does it give you six months or 12 months of immunity?

01:22:58.000 That doesn't really scare me.

01:22:59.000 It seems like six months is still better than zero.

01:23:02.000 Yeah, if it works.

01:23:03.000 Yeah.

01:23:04.000 And if it is really safe.

01:23:06.000 For sure, look, if it works and it's safe, we'd all want to take it.

01:23:08.000 Real simple, right?

01:23:10.000 The real question is, if this is a totally new thing, and obviously I'm grossly unqualified to be talking about this, but if it is a new kind of vaccine, what are the possibilities of this going wrong?

01:23:22.000 And what could that mean to people that do have an adverse reaction to it?

01:23:26.000 So I want to be really careful not to say things I'm not sure of, but also not to allow false fears about the vaccine to be perpetuated.

01:23:35.000 That this would be the first widely used mRNA vaccine for a human virus.

01:23:43.000 Does not mean that it would be the beginning of the research into using these types of vaccines in humans.

01:23:49.000 And my understanding is that it's been decades that this has been researched and that it's been under development, generally speaking, and now it's being used specifically for coronavirus.

01:23:59.000 So I want to make sure that I'm not like in any way implying that I have any broader concerns about the type of vaccine because I don't.

01:24:06.000 And I'm not saying that somebody might not present one of those concerns, but I'm not aware of any of those concerns.

01:24:10.000 But that's a well-worded way of describing it.

01:24:13.000 Yeah, I mean, obviously we're all hoping that it works.

01:24:16.000 We're all hoping that everyone's going to benefit from this and that we'll have a cure so we can go back to as normal as possible.

01:24:22.000 But, you know, again, like I said, I think we really, more than anything, we're under...

01:24:29.000 Under-appreciating the value of the immune system, and I think that's something that is really driving me crazy about the short-sightedness of this response, is that it's all about sanitation and avoidance and all these different factors, and very little of it is about strengthening the immune system and keeping the body healthy and making a shift of recognizing that,

01:24:50.000 you know, hey, we're all very vulnerable here.

01:24:52.000 We're all very vulnerable, and we've had a wonderful Goldilocks Yeah, I've seen some really scary numbers about for the younger Maybe

01:25:22.000 even under 60. Obesity is extremely prevalent.

01:25:26.000 That's really scary.

01:25:27.000 There's some correlation studies about vitamin D, but there's really a lot of question marks about whether it's a causal thing and whether the infection itself can reduce your vitamin D. It would be delightful to learn that if you have low vitamin D, you supplement it and it protects you.

01:25:44.000 But there's a correlation and it's really not clear what the deal is with that.

01:25:50.000 Because vitamin D is so cheap.

01:25:51.000 I mean, it's free from the sun, and it's one of the cheapest supplements around.

01:25:54.000 It is, but do you know that 70% of the United States is deficient in vitamin C? It's a giant...

01:26:00.000 C or D? D. Did I say C? You said C, yeah.

01:26:03.000 I meant D. It's some enormous number of people do not have sufficient vitamin D, and as many as...

01:26:11.000 I had Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the podcast a couple of days ago discuss this.

01:26:14.000 It's more than 20% have insufficient vitamin D to the point where it's dangerous.

01:26:21.000 Vitamin D apparently is a hormone as well as a vitamin.

01:26:24.000 The best way to get it is out in the sun, but...

01:26:27.000 You can supplement it.

01:26:29.000 And in supplementing it, it changes so many things about your body, about your body's ability to recover.

01:26:35.000 It's for muscle development.

01:26:37.000 There's a lot of different factors if vitamin D benefits you.

01:26:40.000 And most of us don't have enough of it.

01:26:44.000 It's kind of a crazy thing.

01:26:46.000 Zinc has also been connected to recovery from COVID. And then one of the things they were speculating about with hydrochloroquine and zinc, they would use the two of them together.

01:26:57.000 And there's been some speculation that maybe it wasn't, in fact, the hydrochloroquine that was really benefiting these people.

01:27:03.000 It was possibly the zinc.

01:27:05.000 And that zinc in combination with hydrochloroquine was what was helping people.

01:27:09.000 Yeah, I mean, we're just spitballing here.

01:27:11.000 But on the zinc thing, what I saw was it seems to only be useful for recovery from viruses and colds if you are deficient.

01:27:20.000 But that if you have a normal level of zinc, that it doesn't really seem to do that much.

01:27:24.000 So the best, well, It's probably just like vitamin D. The best move is to keep your body at a good state.

01:27:29.000 And so few of us ever do get your vitamin levels checked.

01:27:32.000 It's really an important thing.

01:27:33.000 And supplementing, I feel very, very strongly about this.

01:27:37.000 It's been dismissed by some people as being not necessary if you have a balanced diet.

01:27:41.000 The reality is most people don't have a balanced diet.

01:27:43.000 And particularly when it comes to getting a wide range of nutrients that we know are beneficial.

01:27:48.000 I mean, you really should kind of vary what you eat to try to get as much of that stuff in as you can from natural sources.

01:27:55.000 But man, especially in times like this, it's just very important to keep your B12 high, C, D, zinc, all those things.

01:28:04.000 Keep your body in a great state.

01:28:06.000 Drink a lot of water, you know, and we're not hearing, again, I mean, I'm beating a dead horse, but we're just not hearing enough about this.

01:28:12.000 Yeah, I got a vitamin D and B12 at home test a month ago because I was just curious, what are my levels?

01:28:17.000 I live in Boston, you don't go outside that much in the winter and it's only starting to be spring now.

01:28:22.000 And they were both fine, but had my D been low, Yeah, we're very fortunate.

01:28:31.000 I mean, it's really easy to get some vitamin D and it can make a giant difference in your body.

01:28:36.000 Are you changing anything about your lifestyle?

01:28:40.000 Obviously, you're stuck at home, but are you changing anything in terms of going, okay, I need to make some corrections to make myself healthier or corrections to get better sleep?

01:28:49.000 Yeah.

01:28:50.000 Not really.

01:28:51.000 I felt pretty good about what I was doing before.

01:28:53.000 Obviously, my gym's closed, so I'm running outside and riding my bike and working out at home.

01:29:00.000 Do you feel weird when you run past people and you're real close to them?

01:29:05.000 I'm wearing a mask anytime I go anywhere inside.

01:29:09.000 I go to the grocery store, I'm wearing a mask.

01:29:11.000 If I have to go to the post office, although I'm trying to avoid it, I wear a mask.

01:29:14.000 From what I've read...

01:29:16.000 90% of the contagion is in four places, home, offices, public transit, and large gatherings.

01:29:22.000 The other 10% is happening mostly indoors in other situations. 0.99

01:29:28.000 The outdoor contagion from what I'm reading is almost zero unless you're doing something really stupid. 0.95

01:29:33.000 So I don't feel like if I go running, I need to wear a mask, but I do it to avoid dirty looks to be totally honest with you. 0.95

01:29:42.000 It's terrible breathing through that thing, isn't it?

01:29:45.000 It's terrible.

01:29:45.000 While you're running?

01:29:46.000 It's terrible.

01:29:46.000 Ugh, your bad breath coming back at you.

01:29:48.000 I went out on my bike and I thought, you know, I'm outdoors.

01:29:54.000 Nobody's really getting this outdoors if you're not in a group of people.

01:29:57.000 And I didn't wear my mask.

01:29:59.000 And three bikers coming the opposite way were swearing at me.

01:30:03.000 So I was like, alright, just to avoid that situation, I guess I'll wear the mask even when I'm just walking around.

01:30:08.000 I think there's a lot of unhappy people that are looking to yell at people, and this is their new way to do it.

01:30:13.000 They see you with no mask on running.

01:30:15.000 I don't know why, though, it wouldn't be spread through the air outside.

01:30:19.000 That logic doesn't make sense.

01:30:21.000 If it's spread through the air inside, why, if you're passing someone and you're breathing out heavy because you're running, it would make it seem to me that that would be a better way to walk right into it if it's in the air.

01:30:31.000 It's a particulate matter.

01:30:33.000 It's in the air and you're breathing it out.

01:30:34.000 Well, this is why I'm wearing the mask, but from the studies I've seen, there were these really scary-looking images where it was like black, where the particles were different colors.

01:30:45.000 I saw that, yeah.

01:30:46.000 Yeah, and it was like, you know, you could be 20 feet in front of someone on a bike, and you could sneeze, and the wind could bring the droplets directly back, and they could breathe in at that exact moment.

01:30:56.000 I don't deny at all that it's physically possible, but every single study that's coming out where it's possible to sort of figure out, like, where are people getting this?

01:31:04.000 I'm just not aware of it being a real risk on a six-foot-wide bike path to run past two people.

01:31:10.000 It's got to be one in ten million, right?

01:31:13.000 No, I don't think so.

01:31:14.000 Really?

01:31:15.000 Nah.

01:31:16.000 Why?

01:31:16.000 If you're breathing it out, if you're breathing it out, and you got spit, there's stuff that comes out of your mouth, and then someone's going this way, it just makes sense.

01:31:29.000 Yeah, all right.

01:31:29.000 I mean, listen, I'm wearing the mask.

01:31:33.000 Yeah.

01:31:35.000 Oh, right now, Jamie just pulled this up.

01:31:38.000 Joe Biden asked Amy Klobuchar to undergo vetting to be running mate.

01:31:42.000 Wow.

01:31:44.000 Is that the only person who's being vetted?

01:31:49.000 I don't know, but she's one of them. 0.90

01:31:53.000 Democrat of Minnesota has been asked by Joe Biden to undergo a formal vetting to be considered vice president's running mate, one of several potential candidates now being scrutinized by his aides.

01:32:01.000 Right.

01:32:01.000 Okay, so she's just been announced as being one of them.

01:32:05.000 Senator Gene Shaheen, oh, they said something about Gene Shaheen there as well, did it?

01:32:09.000 Where's that?

01:32:11.000 Yeah.

01:32:13.000 Gene Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who's running for re-election this year, declined Biden's invitation.

01:32:20.000 Okay.

01:32:21.000 She said, no, son.

01:32:24.000 Senator Maggie Hassan, other New Hampshire senator, has agreed to be vetted.

01:32:28.000 So it's interesting that he's definitely, like, he wants to have a woman.

01:32:34.000 Yep.

01:32:34.000 Do you think that's a political ploy?

01:32:37.000 Or do you think that it just, it makes sense?

01:32:41.000 Like, why do you think he would do that?

01:32:43.000 I think that the timing of when he made that call...

01:32:47.000 It was calculated to be advantageous.

01:32:50.000 I don't remember exactly what was going on right when he said it.

01:32:53.000 But I think that it was a calculated move at the time.

01:32:58.000 Honestly, unless you pick someone who's going to actively damage your campaign, I don't think it matters that much.

01:33:04.000 You need someone who's essentially going to stay out of the way, not cause any kind of new scandal.

01:33:10.000 Like Tim Kaine with Hillary Clinton.

01:33:13.000 I don't think he did anything for her one way or the other.

01:33:15.000 He was just kind of out of the way.

01:33:17.000 I forgot him.

01:33:17.000 Until you just brought his name up, I forgot.

01:33:19.000 Right, right.

01:33:20.000 And I think that really you just want to avoid someone who's going to cause a problem.

01:33:23.000 Like Palin for McCain was such a...

01:33:27.000 That was a little bit of a problem.

01:33:29.000 It was a problem, exactly.

01:33:30.000 So you just want to avoid a problem, I think.

01:33:33.000 And I think Elizabeth Warren is probably up there.

01:33:36.000 Kamala Harris is probably up there.

01:33:38.000 Amy Klobuchar, now we know for sure.

01:33:40.000 It's just funny when you say, I'm going to have a specific kind of person.

01:33:47.000 One of the big speculations was, I'm going to have a woman of color.

01:33:50.000 He needs to have a woman of color. 0.97

01:33:52.000 Very specific.

01:33:54.000 It would be hilarious if someone said, I want a Chinese lady. 1.00

01:33:58.000 Period.

01:34:00.000 Mainland, Chinese lady. 1.00

01:34:01.000 That's going to be my running mate.

01:34:02.000 I'm going to heal this nation and China together.

01:34:06.000 Just only Chinese ladies. 1.00

01:34:07.000 I don't care how good you are. 1.00

01:34:08.000 If you're some white guy, you can fuck off. 1.00

01:34:10.000 It's kind of hilarious. 1.00

01:34:13.000 Yeah.

01:34:14.000 I would want the best person that he could possibly get, especially when you consider his physical state and mental state's been questioned.

01:34:20.000 He doesn't look that great.

01:34:21.000 I would want someone who I really feel like could make the cut.

01:34:25.000 Yeah, I'm not big on this type of identity politics.

01:34:30.000 I mean, listen, last time I was on, we talked about that time where this, we won't even say her name, but where this woman tried to get me fired from my teaching gig because I said, saying you will not consider a white or male candidate, that's not okay.

01:34:44.000 But I do think that when you think about all of the people that have been president, so it's like almost all white men, and then Obama, who was half black, I mean,

01:35:07.000 you and I have talked before.

01:35:08.000 For me, categorizing people in these ways is not my first instinct.

01:35:14.000 Yes, but it's also, we're recognizing that there is racism and sexism in the world.

01:35:19.000 It's not a fake thing.

01:35:20.000 It's a real thing.

01:35:21.000 We would love it if there was none.

01:35:23.000 If there was none, there would be no consideration whatsoever towards image, because no one would care.

01:35:28.000 No one would care.

01:35:29.000 How good would it look to have a woman in there? 1.00

01:35:31.000 No one would care if there was zero sexism. 1.00

01:35:34.000 And no one would care if it's a woman of color, if there's zero racism. 1.00

01:35:37.000 But there is some.

01:35:37.000 So we go, well, that would be a great thing.

01:35:39.000 I get it.

01:35:40.000 It would.

01:35:40.000 If there was a woman president, it's one of the reasons why I thought Tulsi Gabbard would be amazing.

01:35:44.000 If she ran for president, became president, and you're talking about a woman who's a veteran, who's served overseas twice, who's been a congresswoman for six years, I mean, that would be great for everybody.

01:35:56.000 Like, a really qualified woman who's the president. 1.00

01:35:59.000 That would be great for everybody.

01:36:01.000 It just happens to be a woman. 1.00

01:36:03.000 If your kids, maybe they have asked you, but if they said, how come there's never been a woman president?

01:36:09.000 How would you answer that question?

01:36:11.000 That's a good question.

01:36:12.000 It would depend on which kid.

01:36:15.000 I would probably say that...

01:36:22.000 Our society up until, first of all, until the beginning of the 20th century, women weren't even allowed to vote. 0.74

01:36:29.000 And so there's a lot of catching up to do.

01:36:31.000 And then women weren't really even in the business place in terms of working alongside men in offices and in industry. 1.00

01:36:41.000 When did that start?

01:36:42.000 Well, there was a big push towards that in the period during and after World War II in trying to stimulate a lot of new industry and just get more people working and producing stuff.

01:36:53.000 Yeah.

01:36:53.000 So what I would say is that men, in terms of public positions of leadership, have...

01:37:00.000 We've had this massive head start and that we're changing the way we look at what a leader is.

01:37:07.000 We used to look at a leader as being like the alpha chimp that leads us to battle.

01:37:14.000 You go back in time 10,000 years ago, that's essentially what a leader was.

01:37:18.000 And now we look at a leader as someone who can navigate the treacherous waters of the environment and industry and Unions and all the different things that the president has to deal with and it's it's not it doesn't require someone who's male or female It requires someone who again I hate to keep bringing up Tulsi Goward,

01:37:37.000 but I think she's great She seems like a leader, right?

01:37:40.000 That's what you're looking for you were looking for someone who's gonna make good decisions someone with good ethics and good morals that's gonna sort of Guide you in a way that the country will be better off with them doing that job than it would be without them.

01:37:55.000 But again, if I was talking to my kids about it, it's a complicated discussion.

01:38:00.000 And it would be a long discussion.

01:38:03.000 And I think you'd really have to go back to How different human beings are now than they were even in...

01:38:10.000 You know, I've talked to my kids about my grandparents.

01:38:12.000 My grandparents came over from Italy during the early days of the 20th century, and they had a hard life.

01:38:21.000 And when my grandfather used to talk to me about living on a farm and coming over here from Italy and, you know, how hard it was to struggle and what their life was like...

01:38:31.000 I think?

01:38:49.000 The reason why there has been no woman president. 1.00

01:38:52.000 It's not just that there's never been a woman president because society is weird, but it's moving in a better direction.

01:38:58.000 It's just been humans are changing.

01:39:01.000 We're changing what we find acceptable.

01:39:05.000 We're changing what we find to make sense and what doesn't make sense.

01:39:09.000 And we're readjusting things all the time.

01:39:12.000 But I think one of the things that you said that is An important point was that if a woman becomes president, it does send a message that this is possible and it gives people hope.

01:39:22.000 And I think in a lot of ways, Barack Obama did that.

01:39:26.000 And when Barack Obama was in office, we were like, hey, even if people are racist, Even if there are racists, there's such a small amount that you can get this guy to win the popular vote and become the president of the United States while he's black.

01:39:38.000 This is amazing.

01:39:39.000 This is amazing for everybody.

01:39:40.000 That it shows that a guy who's a son of a single mom can make it as far as the highest office on the planet Earth.

01:39:47.000 The elected office.

01:39:49.000 The commander-in-chief of the greatest army the world has ever known.

01:39:52.000 So there's great value in image.

01:39:56.000 And this is where I think a lot of people are correct in their anger about Trump, even people who are Trump supporters.

01:40:02.000 The value of the way a person conducts themselves in that highest of high offices, it's important for the morale of all of us. 0.99

01:40:12.000 And when someone says ridiculous shit or attacks some reporter and the way he kind of goes about it, it's so petty. 0.99

01:40:21.000 It's so unbecoming of what we would hope for in terms of someone who gets to that spot. 0.99

01:40:28.000 We want that person to be better than us.

01:40:30.000 We don't want you to do things that we would also do.

01:40:33.000 We want you to be better.

01:40:35.000 Well, that's what really scares me about when I see the people who, for 20 years or for however long they've been following politics, talk about what matters...

01:40:46.000 Republicans I'm talking about now.

01:40:47.000 What matters is That you've got to be religious and you've got to pray and be God-fearing and you've got to, you know, divorce is bad and you've got to speak a certain way and all of these different things. 0.52

01:41:02.000 It was all kind of a ruse, right?

01:41:04.000 Like they never really cared about that.

01:41:11.000 Well, he represents them in some ways.

01:41:17.000 You know, you just have to make concessions to be on their side.

01:41:20.000 And that's one of the real problems with having two parties, right?

01:41:23.000 It's like, if you're not in the other party, you must be in my party.

01:41:26.000 If you're not with those people, you must be with...

01:41:28.000 If you're saying Hillary Clinton is, you know, she's a problem and you've got to drain the swamp and these career politicians, oh, well, then you must be over here. 0.67

01:41:36.000 You know, if you're against corruption, oh, well then you must be on my side, because I'm against corruption too.

01:41:43.000 You know, if we had 10 different parties to choose from, it would be way better.

01:41:47.000 We would have a way better understanding of the subtleties of human characteristics and what we enjoy and what we don't enjoy, what we believe and what we don't believe.

01:41:55.000 I think a big part of what you're saying when you join a team, whether it's the Republicans or the Democrats, you're sort of adopting a predetermined group of opinions.

01:42:08.000 You know how to fall in line.

01:42:10.000 To a person, you ask someone, are you conservative?

01:42:14.000 Yes.

01:42:15.000 You can almost guess how they're going to feel about the environment or how they're going to feel about climate change.

01:42:25.000 Freedom of choice.

01:42:26.000 That's a big one, right?

01:42:27.000 Like pro-choice.

01:42:28.000 If you ask someone if they're a Republican, boy, what percentage are you going to say that they're pro-life?

01:42:33.000 It's going to be a high percentage.

01:42:35.000 It's going to be a high percentage.

01:42:36.000 You know, what percentage are you going to be in support of the Second Amendment?

01:42:40.000 It's going to be a very high percentage.

01:42:42.000 Now, if you ask someone who's on the left, what do you think about gun control?

01:42:47.000 It's going to be a high percentage that are in favor of gun control, in favor of maybe doing something different about the Second Amendment.

01:43:17.000 Yeah, you're signing on to the package to the orthodoxy in a certain way.

01:43:21.000 And one of the crazy things is I get emails from viewers, particularly in Northern Europe, who say, you know, one of the craziest things about American politics when you're in Europe is, compared to the diversity of parties that they have in many of those countries, the standard Democrat and the standard Republican are really,

01:43:39.000 really close.

01:43:39.000 Like, what are they even really arguing about?

01:43:42.000 It's a lot of social issues.

01:43:44.000 On economic stuff, you know, 39.7% top tax rate or 36% top tax rate?

01:43:52.000 I mean, of course, there are Democrats who want a much higher top tax.

01:43:56.000 There are Republicans who want to do away or really drop it.

01:44:00.000 But in a lot of cases, a lot of this stuff is created as, I don't want to say as theater, but it's to create a package people can sign on to.

01:44:09.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:44:10.000 And I think that's one thing that Trump has done well, ingratiating himself with religious folks.

01:44:14.000 Because it's never really been his thing.

01:44:16.000 And now all of a sudden, you know, he kind of goes through the motions, does all the God stuff, he says all the things.

01:44:24.000 So you don't believe it for a second, right?

01:44:26.000 What?

01:44:27.000 Santa Claus?

01:44:28.000 What do you mean?

01:44:30.000 If I believe he's become religion?

01:44:32.000 Yeah!

01:44:33.000 One of my favorite interviews was this one guy who was a preacher.

01:44:38.000 He's one of those televangelists and he was talking about Trump and someone trying to bring up Trump's past.

01:44:42.000 He goes, that was before he was born again!

01:44:46.000 Can I get an amen?

01:44:47.000 And everybody was cheering, yes!

01:44:48.000 That was before he was born!

01:44:51.000 And their concept is completely absolve someone.

01:44:54.000 That would be nice if you could just...

01:44:55.000 How many times can you be born again? 0.98

01:44:57.000 Can you fuck up a gang of times and just be reborn every time with a fresh slate? 0.99

01:45:01.000 That would be very beneficial. 0.98

01:45:03.000 Yeah, I don't know what the answer is to that.

01:45:05.000 As a concept, that's a great idea.

01:45:07.000 Like, I would love if I, you know, like, you're a man, I feel real haunted by my mistakes.

01:45:12.000 Son, just raise your hand!

01:45:14.000 We're gonna take those mistakes away!

01:45:16.000 You have done them, but you're free!

01:45:20.000 Do you know who General Butt Naked is?

01:45:23.000 No.

01:45:23.000 This is the best example that you're ever going to hear.

01:45:26.000 General Butt Naked was...

01:45:28.000 He was in the Civil War in Liberia. 0.75

01:45:33.000 And he was known for getting buck naked, taking off all his clothes, and going to war.

01:45:39.000 So he would go to war, and he's killed many, many, many people.

01:45:44.000 And on video, on Vice, back when they had the Vice Guide to Travel...

01:45:48.000 On video, he was talking about what they would do if they captured children from the opposing army, that they would cut their heart out and eat pieces of their heart. 0.89

01:45:58.000 He was talking about this, murdering children and eating their heart. 0.96

01:46:01.000 Then he found Jesus.

01:46:03.000 And they absolved him of everything.

01:46:05.000 And now he's a preacher.

01:46:06.000 So General Butt Naked is now a preacher.

01:46:09.000 And he runs around and, you know, he's killed who knows how many thousands of people and eaten kids' hearts.

01:46:14.000 And they're like, but that was before!

01:46:16.000 Now he's a man of Jesus!

01:46:19.000 It's pretty amazing.

01:46:20.000 It's a great clause if you want someone to join up.

01:46:23.000 Oh my goodness.

01:46:25.000 Have you seen the preachers and the televangelists selling the coronavirus stuff?

01:46:32.000 Either you send them money and they'll pray it away, or the silver stuff and all of these different things?

01:46:37.000 Yeah, we were watching that one guy who was blowing...

01:46:40.000 What's his name again?

01:46:41.000 Kenneth Copeland?

01:46:42.000 That same guy, you know, he's the same guy that that lady came up to him and asked him about flying public and he was like, you know, saying that there's demons on those planes.

01:46:50.000 Are you calling poor people demon?

01:46:52.000 I never said that!

01:46:53.000 And he got crazy with her. 0.97

01:46:54.000 That video alone of him and his wild eyes pointing at her is so goddamn terrifying. 0.96

01:47:02.000 Yeah, it's dark. 0.95

01:47:04.000 All that stuff is dark.

01:47:06.000 But again, it's what you talked about where We're good to go.

01:47:18.000 We're good to go.

01:47:33.000 He was selling these buckets of survival food that you could actually use as the base of your table.

01:47:38.000 You don't know where to put this stuff. 0.99

01:47:40.000 And he had tables where he had the tabletop sitting on these survival buckets and he's selling this shit. 0.99

01:47:46.000 And he's even eating it on the show. 0.99

01:47:48.000 Very good!

01:47:51.000 Televangelists are one of the very weirdest elements of society. 1.00

01:47:56.000 Where we're allowing people to just lie, like clearly lie, but we feel like the lie is so obvious that you have to be so dumb to believe them, I can't help you.

01:48:08.000 I made this analogy recently because I was talking about YouTube censorship and how YouTube has decided that they're going to pull down videos from doctors who have different opinions on how to handle the coronavirus and criticisms of how things are.

01:48:23.000 And I'm like, it's really interesting that they make that line.

01:48:26.000 That that's the line that doctors, practicing physicians, they'll pull their video down.

01:48:31.000 But people talk about the flat earth.

01:48:33.000 They'll leave that up. 0.99

01:48:34.000 Because it's like, it's so dumb. 0.97

01:48:37.000 It's like, ah, you can leave that up. 1.00

01:48:39.000 That one's so dumb. 1.00

01:48:40.000 You have to be a moron to think the earth's hollow and that there's aliens living inside it, traveling around on laser beams. 1.00

01:48:45.000 There's videos that say that. 1.00

01:48:46.000 They'll leave those up.

01:48:48.000 And they'll leave televangelists up.

01:48:50.000 But then it gets to these doctors...

01:48:53.000 That are saying, we're looking at the statistics, this is the deaths, this is the deaths in terms of age groups, and this is why it's not nearly as dangerous as we thought it was, and these quarantines are not the best way to handle it, we think there's better way...

01:49:07.000 They'll take that video down.

01:49:08.000 Even if it's someone who's saying rational things.

01:49:11.000 And I don't think...

01:49:14.000 That's smart.

01:49:15.000 I don't think that's a healthy way to handle things.

01:49:17.000 I don't think it's good for the debate.

01:49:18.000 I think, in fact, it strengthens the resolve of the people on the other side that watch those videos and some of those points resonate with those people.

01:49:25.000 I think That's not the way to handle it.

01:49:28.000 I don't think removing those videos is the way to handle it.

01:49:30.000 I think the way to handle it is let other people with opposing points of view put their videos up and let people discuss and debate and see which one makes more sense to you and usually the weight of the information overwhelms the bullshit and at least with most people.

01:49:47.000 I don't understand why it's okay to leave some obviously full of shit videos up, but take down things that are very, very controversial but debatable.

01:49:58.000 Okay, so this now gets into that part of your episode with Bridget from over the weekend that I saw, where you basically accurately characterized the view that I had last time I was on with you about the regulation of social media. 0.89

01:50:12.000 Yeah.

01:50:12.000 So first, just to play devil's advocate just for a second on why do you leave up flat earth but take down the coronavirus videos that YouTube or whoever disagrees with.

01:50:24.000 One can make an argument that there is no real action someone would take because they believe the earth is flat that would endanger others.

01:50:33.000 I mean, I guess you might try to go to the edge and see if you fall off or something, right?

01:50:37.000 But there's no actionable thing, for the most part, that flat earth belief could cause.

01:50:43.000 That's a good point.

01:50:43.000 Whereas if this disinformation about...

01:50:46.000 There was a video I saw about coronavirus where there was a doctor saying, you know, these quarantines are dangerous.

01:50:53.000 Because if you're not exposed to bacteria, your immune system will be out of practice essentially and it's going to shut down.

01:51:05.000 It's not going to work as well.

01:51:06.000 And then another doctor, a guy who has a YouTube channel, did a counterpoint where he said, He's talking about the hygienic theory, but he has it backwards.

01:51:16.000 It is true that if you were never exposed to dirt and bacteria and whatever, it will impact your immune system.

01:51:23.000 But it's actually the opposite is what happens.

01:51:25.000 It's that because you're not regularly exposed to things, your immune system will overreact and it'll start attacking things that aren't really a threat.

01:51:33.000 Okay, so What's the harm, I guess, right?

01:51:35.000 Like, there was a video where these doctors identified what they think is the problem with the quarantine, and then another doctor came in.

01:51:42.000 Can I pause you for a second there?

01:51:42.000 I think it's both things, though.

01:51:44.000 I think it's actually been proven that, yeah, that does happen, where your immune system overreacts to people that don't get exposed to enough.

01:51:50.000 But I think it's also been proven that people that are around a lot of different people and constantly exposed to people have stronger immune systems because of that.

01:52:00.000 That it does get practiced, and it does get strengthened by exposure.

01:52:04.000 Oh yeah, I think that's what the sort of fact check was saying, which is it's completely true that exposing kids to the world out there is good, but that what is being asserted will happen from staying home for two months is both wrong and it wouldn't happen in two months ever.

01:52:21.000 Like the idea that it weakens the immune system.

01:52:23.000 Yeah, I was wondering about that, whether or not it was like a cardiovascular system.

01:52:26.000 Like that it only responds to the level of, you know, work that it needs to do.

01:52:31.000 Like your cardiovascular system, you know, if you run, if you take some time off, boy, it slacks off really quickly.

01:52:37.000 It would be a real shame if that was the case with the immune system.

01:52:40.000 I don't think it is, but I mean...

01:52:42.000 I guess the point I was trying to make was...

01:52:46.000 There are a lot of people who are understandably frustrated by what's going on, and they're looking for any excuse to just let it rip, so to speak, and go and do whatever.

01:52:57.000 And so I think that the play devil's advocate, there is a different level of risk from allowing some of this disinformation to be propagated that doesn't exist with leaving flat earth up.

01:53:07.000 That's a very good point.

01:53:09.000 Very good point.

01:53:09.000 But that being said, last time we talked, we had this Yes.

01:53:34.000 They were basically spreading the actual facts of fatalities and age groups and, you know, they just had a different perspective.

01:53:42.000 Different interpretation.

01:53:43.000 Well, not even the different interpretation, because they're basically just going over the statistics, but they had a different viewpoint of how they should move forward.

01:53:51.000 And they were also discussing things like furloughed doctors and nurses because hospitals are no longer doing elective surgery, and then many hospitals are on the verge of bankruptcy, which apparently is true.

01:54:01.000 Yeah.

01:54:02.000 The problem is that's not disinformation.

01:54:05.000 And so if you're saying that if giving people disinformation makes them make poor choices and they could be putting themselves at risk or putting loved ones at risk because of that, yes.

01:54:15.000 Okay, I'm with you.

01:54:16.000 Yeah, I agree.

01:54:17.000 But this isn't disinformation.

01:54:18.000 This is actual information.

01:54:20.000 It's just information with a different perspective other than what we're getting Which is only one point of view from the World Health Organization and people who subscribe to those ideas.

01:54:29.000 So it's not a lie, but I think your point of if someone believes in the flat earth, there's no harm in that.

01:54:34.000 That's true.

01:54:35.000 So if someone believes in Pizzagate and they think that there's kids being held in a basement somewhere and they go and shoot up the store, then it is a problem. 0.92

01:54:43.000 And that kind of a video, I could understand where someone would say, hey, that shouldn't be up there because this is bullshit and this is what gets caused from that.

01:54:51.000 I don't think it's the same argument when we're all trying to figure out what's going on with a medical situation and two practicing physicians, two actual medical doctors, are talking about their perspective on this virus.

01:55:05.000 So I don't think they're really on the same line.

01:55:08.000 Yeah, I totally agree that these are not all equivalent Our conversation about what regulation should be in place, who gets to regulate or this sort of thing.

01:55:23.000 The point that I had made last time we talked about this was not necessarily that I'm in favor or against having some kind of infrastructure that says here's how a social network has to operate, YouTube, Twitter, whatever.

01:55:36.000 We could talk about that and I'm glad to.

01:55:38.000 My argument last time we talked was I don't know what the legal case is.

01:55:44.000 How do you define legally what it is that is supposed to happen?

01:55:49.000 What would be the legal framework for that?

01:55:51.000 And there's also a double standard element of it because there's a lot of really, really loud right-wingers who are saying the left is being propped up on social media and the right is being suppressed, to put it very simply.

01:56:05.000 And they're calling for regulation.

01:56:08.000 They're against new regulation on gun safety.

01:56:11.000 They're against business regulation.

01:56:13.000 They're against stay-at-home order, etc.

01:56:16.000 Now they want to regulate tweets?

01:56:18.000 That's where now they want regulation?

01:56:20.000 That seems extremely cynical and David, I think we're dealing with a thing that's very similar to what we talked about earlier.

01:56:34.000 The founding fathers who set up this country in the 1700s had no idea what 2020 was going to be like.

01:56:40.000 And I think when you're talking about freedom of speech...

01:56:44.000 It's like, do you still have freedom of speech if you could just talk and you can't tweet?

01:56:48.000 Well, I guess you do, right?

01:56:50.000 Do you still have freedom to get the word out?

01:56:53.000 Well, you do, but you don't have freedom like you or I do, where you could tweet or you could make a YouTube video.

01:56:58.000 And who gets to have that?

01:57:00.000 And is that an essential thing?

01:57:03.000 Is that a thing like the post office or a thing like the electricity and the utilities?

01:57:10.000 Is it an essential thing?

01:57:12.000 I think one could make the argument that in 2020 it's used by so many people to convey so much information and it's so significant that I believe it is an essential thing.

01:57:26.000 Right.

01:57:28.000 Right.

01:57:33.000 Right.

01:57:39.000 That's not good either, right?

01:57:41.000 There's laws about that in person.

01:57:43.000 You can't harass people in person.

01:57:45.000 Why can you harass people online?

01:57:47.000 Why can you put up your address and have a bunch of people send terrible things to your house?

01:57:51.000 Why is that okay?

01:57:53.000 Well, it shouldn't be okay either.

01:57:54.000 We need to figure out what's okay and what's not okay.

01:57:57.000 And I think one of the problems with isolating...

01:58:00.000 Tech, I think tech people, whether it's Google or Apple, and you've made a really good argument that they...

01:58:14.000 I think that when you're dealing with the ability to discuss things and you might say that your perspective is the one that you want to hear because you're a left-wing person and these are your beliefs But you're isolating the whole other team from being a part of that conversation.

01:58:33.000 And maybe they have something you want to hear and maybe they don't have anything you want to hear.

01:58:38.000 But to not allow them to communicate, you are alienating a giant chunk of the population.

01:58:45.000 And if someone gets to a prominent level where they're communicating a certain way and you just decide that that certain way is unacceptable and you kick them off, you don't just kick them off.

01:58:56.000 You also silence all the other people that are along or aligned with them because they have similar ideas and they don't want to speak out either.

01:59:03.000 When you ban James Woods, you don't just ban James Woods.

01:59:07.000 You ban a lot of other people from saying something.

01:59:10.000 They might be furious about You know, the Russia investigation or whatever.

01:59:14.000 They want to express themselves.

01:59:16.000 And they panic.

01:59:18.000 They get scared.

01:59:19.000 They worry that they're going to get...

01:59:20.000 That's censorship.

01:59:21.000 That's a form of censorship.

01:59:23.000 And I think these companies...

01:59:24.000 I don't blame them.

01:59:26.000 Because I don't think they had any idea what they were going to become.

01:59:30.000 And I think they're all adjusting along the way.

01:59:32.000 I think when Twitter first came out, do you remember that?

01:59:35.000 Like you would write, at David Pakman is going to the Move Me's.

01:59:38.000 You're like, you know, at Joe Rogan, just had a great pizza.

01:59:42.000 That's what you did.

01:59:42.000 I mean, it wasn't this thing where you got to express yourself in 240 whatever characters.

01:59:48.000 We're in a different world now.

01:59:50.000 And I think this different world needs some different examination about what the ability to communicate online is.

01:59:56.000 And this is an important point because Alex Jones made some crazy video after our conversation that I had with him yesterday where he was saying that I'm going to war against censorship and a war against YouTube.

02:00:07.000 I'm not doing any of those things.

02:00:09.000 I made this deal with Spotify because it's a great company and it's a great deal and I'm excited to be in a partnership with a company as opposed to a company that I just put my stuff up on their platform, whether it's Apple or YouTube.

02:00:25.000 I don't like that YouTube censors things.

02:00:27.000 I don't like that they do that with those doctors in Bakersfield.

02:00:31.000 But I'm not at war with them.

02:00:32.000 I'm not at war with anybody.

02:00:34.000 I don't envy them their position.

02:00:38.000 I don't think it's smart to censor practicing doctors when they have differing opinions.

02:00:43.000 I think we need to find out who's right.

02:00:45.000 I think the way you find out who's right is you get people who are experts and they disagree.

02:00:50.000 There's Nobel laureates.

02:00:51.000 I've watched several videos that are talking about this lockdown and that it's not a good idea.

02:00:56.000 There's people that believe in herd mentality versus immunizations and or vaccines and I don't know who's right and I would like them to all be able to discuss it equally and openly.

02:01:06.000 That said, I don't envy Twitter.

02:01:09.000 I don't envy YouTube.

02:01:11.000 I don't envy any of these people.

02:01:12.000 The idea of trying to manage this in real time while it explodes and takes over the way human beings communicate over a period of a decade, just like that.

02:01:22.000 That's so instantaneous.

02:01:23.000 And mistakes have been made.

02:01:25.000 And in my opinion, when it comes to the way things are censored and the way...

02:01:29.000 These mistakes, particularly on Twitter, far favor the left.

02:01:34.000 And they're not balanced.

02:01:36.000 There's some horrible things that people on the left say about people on the right, and it's nothing.

02:01:41.000 It just gets washed away.

02:01:43.000 But when the people do it who are on the right about people on the left, they get banned.

02:01:46.000 It's not fair.

02:01:47.000 And when things aren't fair, one side has a better argument that they're being censored and that there's some sort of a conspiracy.

02:01:53.000 And it divides people even more.

02:01:55.000 It strengthens the hate.

02:01:58.000 I think most people...

02:02:01.000 The vast majority, 70-80%, are reasonable people that you could have a conversation with if you were in front of them one-on-one. 0.94

02:02:06.000 When they don't feel like they're a part of the conversation or when they speak their side and their stuff gets deleted or removed or put into some shadow ban category, it's fucking infuriating for people.

02:02:19.000 And it's not good for all of us as a community.

02:02:22.000 And I think that is the burden that these places like YouTube or Twitter...

02:02:28.000 They have to shoulder this burden.

02:02:29.000 And I don't know how to do it.

02:02:32.000 I don't know.

02:02:32.000 You know, Republicans have one perspective.

02:02:34.000 There's many people like yourself that have the perspective like, listen, it's their company.

02:02:38.000 Should not they be able to make their own rules?

02:02:40.000 I think they're too big.

02:02:42.000 I think they're too big for that now.

02:02:44.000 And I think that it's in this position where it literally is a part of who we are as human beings.

02:02:51.000 The ability to express ideas and communicate is so critical right now.

02:02:55.000 And as we're evolving and as we're evolving our culture and our civilization, discourse is so important.

02:03:04.000 It's a giant part of being a human being in 2020. And I don't think it should be just flippantly removed from people.

02:03:11.000 So my personal view is very similar to yours in terms of, short of illegal content and really very specific things, my instinct is leave it up and let people evaluate it, let people publish counterpoints.

02:03:28.000 That's my personal view.

02:03:29.000 Now, the conservative view on this is, if this cake baker doesn't want to bake a cake because of who you want to marry, You don't do anything to the baker.

02:03:42.000 If there's a demand for those types of cakes, for those types of weddings, bakers will enter the market and that's it.

02:03:50.000 If you apply that here, and we'll get to the differences in a second.

02:03:53.000 If you apply that here, if the James Woodses want to say stuff, and a whole bunch of people want to hear that stuff, Why don't they just go and make their platform and bring everybody over?

02:04:04.000 It sounds like a great business, right?

02:04:05.000 Yeah, it does sound like a great business.

02:04:07.000 It's way harder to do.

02:04:09.000 Way harder to do than just do it.

02:04:10.000 I mean, to say, why don't you make another Twitter?

02:04:12.000 Well, there would be a thousand Twitters.

02:04:14.000 It's obviously very difficult.

02:04:16.000 No one's ever been able to do it.

02:04:19.000 You're talking about something that takes an enormous amount of resources.

02:04:23.000 It's not that simple.

02:04:26.000 It's not that simple.

02:04:27.000 But everybody already does use Twitter.

02:04:30.000 So I think the question really is, does Twitter have a responsibility for fair and even treatment?

02:04:38.000 I'm sure you've seen some of those James O'Keefe, Project Veritas videos where they have secret cameras filming executives talking about how to censor conservative people.

02:04:50.000 I've seen a little bit of it.

02:04:52.000 What I do remember is from the Planned Parenthood era where what they published was pretty dramatically dishonest from what I recall, but I've not seen the one you're referring to specifically.

02:05:02.000 That was a long time ago, was it?

02:05:04.000 How long ago was that?

02:05:05.000 The Planned Parenthood stuff?

02:05:07.000 Was it five years?

02:05:09.000 Are you talking about the Acorn stuff?

02:05:11.000 The stuff where they brought in a pimp to try to get money for opening up a brothel? 0.82

02:05:18.000 It's been so long that the details escaped me, but I remember that incident.

02:05:23.000 I've not really seen anything recently that they've done.

02:05:25.000 Whenever you have deceptive editing, the problem is even if in the future you don't do that anymore, it's like everyone's always going to remember that you did do something.

02:05:34.000 Yes.

02:05:34.000 You did do something that wasn't straightforward, cut and dry, no emotion journalism, just here are the facts.

02:05:41.000 Planned Parenthood awarded $2 million in lawsuit over secret videos.

02:05:46.000 Interesting.

02:05:46.000 That's not good.

02:05:48.000 That's my big memory when you mentioned that organization.

02:05:52.000 So I think that let's say we agree about something needs to be done.

02:05:57.000 Once you're at a certain level, you enter a new category and some kind of regulation has to be done.

02:06:01.000 Who does the regulation? 0.99

02:06:02.000 When you look at...

02:06:08.000 When Republicans are in power, they draw the districts in a way that's favorable to them.

02:06:12.000 Democrats are in power, they take the opportunity to redraw districts that are favorable to them.

02:06:18.000 You have these ideas of, okay, we'll have a commission with three Democrats and three Republicans, and together they'll figure out how the districts could be drawn fairly.

02:06:27.000 How do you apply that?

02:06:28.000 The lesson from that, how do you apply it to, does the Trump administration decide what kind of content must be left up versus what can be removed?

02:06:38.000 But then that administration gets replaced.

02:06:40.000 Now the next administration says, here's how Twitter is supposed to operate.

02:06:44.000 How do you do it?

02:06:46.000 It's a really good question.

02:06:47.000 It's a really hard question.

02:06:48.000 That's what I'm saying.

02:06:49.000 I don't envy those people.

02:06:51.000 I really like Jack Dorsey as a person.

02:06:53.000 I really enjoy talking to him.

02:06:55.000 I think he's a very thoughtful guy.

02:06:56.000 And in discussing this with him, both on the show and off the show...

02:07:03.000 You know, they don't really know exactly how to handle these things.

02:07:07.000 They don't really know what the perfect solution is.

02:07:10.000 And he's even proposed a Wild West Twitter and then a Twitter that's under some sort of moderation.

02:07:18.000 And I don't know where they stand on that right now, but that was something that he was actively...

02:07:24.000 Bringing up, like, let's have a Twitter where anything goes.

02:07:27.000 You could, like, Reddit in the early days.

02:07:29.000 You could do whatever the fuck you wanted versus what they have now.

02:07:34.000 But here's another example. 0.99

02:07:36.000 When a person gets so big like Trump, you can get away, you could do shit on Twitter that there's no way you could do. 0.97

02:07:43.000 Have you seen the recent thing where he's accusing Joe Scarborough of possibly being a part of a murder or something like that? 0.98

02:07:51.000 Yes, I saw that.

02:07:52.000 He's bringing up – I mean apparently totally – I don't know the exact details of the story, but it had been investigated.

02:07:58.000 It had nothing to do with it.

02:07:59.000 It was just somebody he worked with, and Trump is – We're good to go. 0.97

02:08:24.000 When it when it comes to the president and the president when you get to a certain level like you could just do shit like that like you could just threaten North Korea like you could say we have the best missiles will fuck you up like he could tweet that he could tweet hey hey buddy I'm glad you fake your death and I know you're still alive but I just want you know we got the best missiles and we'll fuck you up have he tweeted that like whoa but this is not really unique the Twitter in the sense that if you look at our justice system there's sort of like the justice system for the And then 0.96

02:08:54.000 for other people, the focus on street crime instead of white-collar crime.

02:08:58.000 This exists in a lot of different places.

02:09:00.000 What can a really big business get away with versus what can a small business sometimes get away with?

02:09:05.000 So I don't think that's different.

02:09:07.000 One of the things I'm thinking about is, what's the main point of Twitter?

02:09:12.000 Twitter is a publicly traded corporation.

02:09:15.000 So at this point, is it fair to say that the main point of Twitter is to be profitable and deliver a return to shareholders?

02:09:22.000 Because if it is, All the stuff we're talking about, about how we would like to see it operate, is sort of irrelevant because they now have this fiduciary responsibility to just make money.

02:09:30.000 Right.

02:09:31.000 What do you think Twitter's worth?

02:09:33.000 I don't know.

02:09:37.000 What if the government bought Twitter and just applied the First Amendment to Twitter? 0.98

02:09:41.000 What if the government said, listen, you guys are kicking ass, great job.

02:09:44.000 However, you're basically a public utility for communication of ideas and it's imperative that for liberty and for the ability for people to have free speech, everyone has to have access to this.

02:09:55.000 And so when you go to, maybe it's like one of those things, you go to jail for a horrible felony, you lose your ability to vote.

02:10:00.000 Maybe you go to jail for something, you lose your ability to tweet.

02:10:03.000 I mean, could it be $300 billion?

02:10:06.000 I have no idea.

02:10:07.000 I wonder how much it is. 0.99

02:10:09.000 I mean, how much are they spending on these goddamn stimulus packages? 0.98

02:10:12.000 I wonder if they could probably buy it cheap right now, too. 0.97

02:10:15.000 I mean, I don't think Twitter really makes money either.

02:10:18.000 I don't think it makes money.

02:10:19.000 I think Twitter is one of those weird situations where it's worth something, but I don't know if it actually does.

02:10:26.000 I don't think it's in the profitable area.

02:10:30.000 I don't think it's making...

02:10:32.000 Maybe it's not.

02:10:33.000 Jamie and I talked about this fairly recently.

02:10:36.000 Yeah, it's complicated.

02:10:38.000 You know, some things make sense, like Google makes sense, right?

02:10:41.000 They use Google ads, they make a shitload of money.

02:10:43.000 YouTube makes sense.

02:10:44.000 It's profitable.

02:10:44.000 It all makes sense.

02:10:45.000 Twitter's like, where's the money coming from?

02:10:47.000 It's so valuable, and it's such a useful tool.

02:10:51.000 But how do they make money?

02:10:53.000 I mean, so, literally, there are ads on Twitter as well, right?

02:10:57.000 Boosted posts, promote advertisements, etc.

02:10:59.000 I have no idea how much money they're making from that versus what is the value of the user base.

02:11:04.000 Wasn't there a point recently where a very conservative investor bought a giant chunk of Twitter and was thinking about kicking out Jack Dorsey?

02:11:13.000 Wasn't that something that was brought up really recently?

02:11:15.000 No, I don't know about that.

02:11:17.000 You remember that, Jamie?

02:11:18.000 That was a...

02:11:20.000 That was the situation, right?

02:11:21.000 I don't know if that's how it went down.

02:11:23.000 Like, fairly recently, someone just bought a controlling stake or a large stake.

02:11:26.000 Look, man, I just think...

02:11:28.000 Is there anyone you would trust to regulate Twitter and YouTube and Facebook?

02:11:32.000 Like, who would do it?

02:11:33.000 Ooh, that's a good question.

02:11:34.000 I don't think it should be one person either.

02:11:36.000 I think it's also, like, president.

02:11:38.000 Like, being president, I don't think it should be the president of Twitter.

02:11:41.000 I really think it might be wise for all of us to consider it, like, a public utility.

02:11:47.000 You would socialize Twitter.

02:11:49.000 Yeah, I'd give it to Bernie.

02:11:51.000 That's incredible.

02:11:53.000 I think something that has that kind of power when it comes to expression.

02:12:00.000 It's valuable for human beings.

02:12:03.000 I would never want to take it away from the people that own it, obviously.

02:12:05.000 But I just think as a concept that we should consider that what we have here with something like Twitter, or even maybe there's a good argument for YouTube as well, that what these new abilities to express yourself are They're incredibly important in terms of the process of our culture,

02:12:27.000 the process of going over ideas and evolving those ideas.

02:12:31.000 There's no better way to do that than open communication.

02:12:34.000 There's no better open communication than Twitter and YouTube.

02:12:36.000 Like, in terms of regular people, you can start a YouTube video right now on your phone.

02:12:40.000 I could just set the phone up here, press record, and start talking, and then upload it, and bam, my thoughts could be available to anybody.

02:12:47.000 And I think that's so valuable.

02:12:50.000 It's so important in terms of our ability to go back and forth with ideas.

02:12:55.000 And we're changing those ideas.

02:12:57.000 Obviously, the way we thought about life in 1960 is very different than the way we think about life today.

02:13:02.000 And a lot of that comes from discourse.

02:13:04.000 A lot of that comes from discussion and the evolution of these ideas.

02:13:07.000 Jamie has something.

02:13:08.000 Hold on.

02:13:09.000 I think there was a potential corporate takeover that tried to happen.

02:13:12.000 Maybe it happened, but they made an agreement to not do it.

02:13:14.000 Twitter reaches deal with activist fund that wanted Jack Dorsey out.

02:13:18.000 They made a deal. 0.99

02:13:19.000 They met on Fuck Island, and they all... 1.00

02:13:22.000 No. 0.96

02:13:23.000 Well, listen, I mean, I couldn't agree more strongly with you about the importance of these platforms.

02:13:28.000 My entire business is built on them.

02:13:30.000 I mean, I'd have no business if it weren't for these platforms.

02:13:32.000 Nor would I. I think the difficulties are...

02:13:35.000 What are the standards that are applied?

02:13:38.000 I don't want to sound like one of these free market right-wingers, but you would have to first establish a legal basis.

02:13:47.000 You would have to establish law that says...

02:13:49.000 Once you have this number of users or this number of page views or whatever, you now are bound by this new set of laws.

02:13:57.000 And that is complex, to say the least.

02:14:00.000 It's very complex.

02:14:01.000 It's very complex.

02:14:02.000 And I have no idea how one would even begin and how long the process of figuring out what the rules should be, how long it would take before we all agreed on that.

02:14:12.000 And I think that would be another great argument for the ability to express yourself, because in forming these laws, we would want to hear all perspectives.

02:14:23.000 Perspectives from people that have been harmed by social media, and Twitter mobs and shit like that, and what should be done about that, and the same thing could be said about YouTube as well.

02:14:34.000 But one thing that no one can deny is how significant these tools are.

02:14:40.000 Whether it's Twitter or YouTube or any new one that comes out, whether it's TikTok or whatever, they're really powerful.

02:14:47.000 There's something to them that's unprecedented in the history of humanity.

02:14:52.000 And we can't just apply the old rules to them.

02:14:56.000 It just doesn't make sense.

02:14:57.000 I don't think it's good for us.

02:15:00.000 I've talked to conservative people about this.

02:15:04.000 If you're not accustomed to it, if you're not accustomed to feeling like you're censored and you're angry, you don't know what it's like until you're around these people.

02:15:12.000 And then you see their frustration and their anger and their fury at Twitter for doing that and for censoring voices that are similar to their perspectives.

02:15:22.000 Instead of just letting the process take place like it always has been, it's just in a different form, the process of being able to talk through ideas.

02:15:30.000 One of the risks of this is that once you assert a right to a platform, to exist on a platform that supersedes Twitter or YouTube's ability to say, for whatever reason, because they're a company that can have terms and conditions,

02:15:46.000 and they say, we just don't want this.

02:15:47.000 If YouTube was determined that they don't want gardening content on YouTube, I can't think of a legal reason why they can't say no gardening content.

02:16:03.000 Right.

02:16:27.000 I was censored because a certain school wouldn't have me to speak there.

02:16:31.000 It's like, well, hold on.

02:16:32.000 You don't have a right to speak at any particular school.

02:16:35.000 Schools can make decisions about what they want and what they don't want as long as you're not being discriminated against based on your identity.

02:16:42.000 Is it not sort of the same thing with YouTube?

02:16:45.000 What is the legal basis for saying they can no longer make these decisions?

02:16:49.000 Well, there's a big difference.

02:16:51.000 First of all, a school is a single destination that's a physical place.

02:16:55.000 So you can decide, you know, this is a conservative school, we don't want people coming over here and talking about this, or this is a very progressive school, we don't want to have someone from the KKK come here and tell us how all races are not equal.

02:17:08.000 That's a very different thing.

02:17:09.000 When you're doing something like YouTube, the real question is, Is it just a business?

02:17:14.000 Is it just a business that's owned by people and they have the right to do whatever they want?

02:17:18.000 Or is at least...

02:17:20.000 I mean, you know you're on YouTube.

02:17:22.000 You're called a partner, right?

02:17:24.000 They refer to you as a partner.

02:17:25.000 David Pakman is a YouTube partner, right?

02:17:28.000 And in some ways you are, right?

02:17:31.000 Because you put out a lot of content.

02:17:32.000 You're huge.

02:17:33.000 You put out a lot of content and that content is an integral part of...

02:17:38.000 Like, look, they have a progressive news sort of empire.

02:17:43.000 Really, when you really stop and look about...

02:17:46.000 And homemade shows like yours, you know, like...

02:17:50.000 There's many, many of them that you could watch.

02:17:52.000 Kyle Kalinske and Jimmy Dore and all these folks are doing these shows basically from scratch, right?

02:18:00.000 There's no large production company behind it or any of the things that...

02:18:08.000 You're a part of it.

02:18:09.000 You're part of this whole news empire and there's many categories, but what they are is not as simple as just a business.

02:18:19.000 They are a business, but what they all are as well with, you know, all the executives, all the people that...

02:18:26.000 YouTube as an entity is one of the most powerful tools for expression the world has ever known.

02:18:32.000 So if you have this incredibly powerful tool for expression At what point in time, or when are you able to deny people the use of that thing, and why?

02:18:42.000 You know, and what is freedom of expression if it doesn't apply to these new tools?

02:18:47.000 What is the First Amendment if it doesn't apply to these new tools? 0.74

02:18:50.000 If someone can come along and say, hey, I know you're a doctor and a practicing physician, but I'm 28, and I live in Palo Alto, and I say, fuck you, because I believe in the WHO, and I don't believe in you, and I'm just gonna delete your video, and it seems to me that I followed the rules that YouTube has set forth, If you don't agree with the WHO and you're giving some sort of contrary coronavirus information,

02:19:10.000 delete. 0.91

02:19:11.000 And I don't think that's wise.

02:19:14.000 I don't think that's wise.

02:19:14.000 I think that's a very, very complicated issue that should be debated publicly and discussed publicly whether or not these people have the right to be heard.

02:19:24.000 And this is just one example that we keep bringing up, but there's many different kinds of things that fit along those lines.

02:19:29.000 You know, when you just want to ban all conspiracy theories, air quotes.

02:19:35.000 The problem with conspiracy theories is, first of all, the word as a pejorative was created to try to steer people away from the Kennedy assassination, which is like one of the greatest conspiracies of all time.

02:19:46.000 Some people did that, whether it was Lee Harvey Oswald by himself.

02:19:51.000 I highly doubt it.

02:19:52.000 I think there's probably other people involved.

02:19:53.000 I think it was a conspiracy.

02:19:55.000 I don't know enough about this.

02:19:57.000 I know too much about it.

02:19:59.000 We could spend the rest of the day discussing that.

02:20:02.000 Let's not.

02:20:02.000 When you mention the First Amendment, though, I don't think the First Amendment is in play here because you're not talking about the government when you talk about YouTube.

02:20:09.000 But I think we should revise the First Amendment.

02:20:11.000 This is what I'm saying.

02:20:12.000 I think freedom of expression used to be, I can't infringe upon your right to express yourself. 0.99

02:20:17.000 But that was like yelling on a fucking Apple box. 0.86

02:20:21.000 When that was created, other than writing something in print or yelling something in a public square, there weren't a lot of ways to express yourself. 0.99

02:20:30.000 Now, the most powerful way the world has ever known has come along to express yourself.

02:20:36.000 And that's social media.

02:20:37.000 That's YouTube and Twitter.

02:20:38.000 And what are those things?

02:20:41.000 And how much of a responsibility do the people who own those things have to adhere to the fundamental ideas that got us to this republic in the first place?

02:20:51.000 And I think there's a real good argument that they're more powerful than simply just a company.

02:20:56.000 That they have this amazing ability to get information out.

02:21:00.000 And that this is, I mean, it should certainly be profitable.

02:21:04.000 I don't deny them their profitability.

02:21:06.000 I mean, they've made an amazing thing.

02:21:08.000 They've created something that we all benefit from.

02:21:09.000 They should make a shitload of money.

02:21:11.000 But I think we should really be careful about who gets to use this and who doesn't get to use this.

02:21:17.000 Just because someone says something that you disagree with that get other people to also agree with them doesn't mean they should be shut down.

02:21:24.000 If you don't agree with what they're saying, if you don't like what they're saying, you probably shouldn't View it or listen to it or read it.

02:21:31.000 You should probably find something else or examine why you don't like it.

02:21:36.000 And this is where thinking comes in.

02:21:38.000 This is where critical thinking and discussion comes in.

02:21:40.000 And this is a huge part of managing a community, of managing a civilization.

02:21:45.000 So one of the biggest parts of managing this civilization, this kind of discourse, is limited.

02:21:51.000 And it's limited and censored, and people can arbitrarily decide to just remove you from it.

02:21:57.000 Do you know the Zuby story?

02:21:59.000 Do you know what happened with Zuby?

02:22:01.000 I only vaguely Zoobie is a he's an entertainer a rapper out of the UK Great guy wonderful guy doesn't even swear very religious guy He was in a discussion with someone on Twitter didn't know if that was a male or a female or what they prefer to be Mentioned as what their pronouns are,

02:22:20.000 but they said I bet I have sex with more women than you and he writes Okay, dude That's all he writes.

02:22:28.000 And he gets suspended from Twitter. 0.96

02:22:30.000 He asked them to review it.

02:22:32.000 They reviewed it and upheld it.

02:22:33.000 They're like, yes, this is a good suspension.

02:22:35.000 You can't just say, okay, dude, to someone.

02:22:37.000 That kind of stuff is crazy, right?

02:22:40.000 I'm sure you know the Megan Murphy story.

02:22:42.000 Where she's in an argument with someone over trans rights versus radical feminist rights.

02:22:48.000 And she's what you call a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. 1.00

02:22:52.000 And she says a man is never a woman.

02:22:54.000 This is what she said.

02:22:55.000 She doesn't believe that transgender people should be able to have a say in traditional women's issues.

02:23:01.000 And so she gets banned for life for that. 0.98

02:23:04.000 She basically said an opinion on something.

02:23:07.000 A man is never a woman, though. 0.99

02:23:09.000 They asked her to take it down.

02:23:10.000 She took a screenshot of it and then put the screenshot up.

02:23:12.000 She took it down and she's obviously being rebellious, but should that keep her from being able to use that platform? 0.98

02:23:18.000 No!

02:23:19.000 No.

02:23:19.000 No, you should be able to debate that statement.

02:23:22.000 You should be able to refute that.

02:23:24.000 If you want to be angry at her, tell her what you think.

02:23:26.000 Tell her what's wrong with it.

02:23:27.000 Tell her what's hurtful about it.

02:23:29.000 But banning someone for that, it sends a ripple of self-censorship that changes the discourse and makes you feel like you're oppressed.

02:23:37.000 Makes you feel like the overlords who watch over the social media platforms, you know, they have the final say in power and it might not align with my ideas and there's nothing I can do about it.

02:23:46.000 Yeah, again my view personally essentially lines up with yours in terms of my tolerance of speech.

02:23:54.000 I still think that there's a huge issue and hypocrisy here Where you have large swaths of people that are only in favor of this type of regulation because they believe that it benefits them based on their biases.

02:24:09.000 And they don't want the regulation when it comes to, like I said, guns, business, everything else.

02:24:15.000 There's another hypocrisy which I think is important.

02:24:18.000 When you talk about net neutrality, there's this debate.

02:24:20.000 Is the internet so necessary and ubiquitous now that it should be like the phone and like electricity?

02:24:26.000 Just a straight up utility.

02:24:28.000 If you believe YouTube, which is a piece of the internet, Should warrant this degree of additional regulation?

02:24:36.000 How can you not say that the infrastructure that carries it obviously should be democratized and treated like a public utility?

02:24:45.000 And yet you have a ton of people who want to regulate tweets, but they don't think that at this point the Internet is so important that it should be a public utility.

02:24:53.000 How do you square that?

02:24:54.000 That's a really good question.

02:24:56.000 You know, I think there's a way to balance it out where...

02:25:01.000 Everyone has access to it, but if you want really hardcore, high bandwidth access, it's very expensive, you pay for it differently.

02:25:09.000 Sort of like how in places that have public healthcare, they have the option for a private specialist that's really good at certain surgeries.

02:25:16.000 Something along those lines.

02:25:18.000 You could pay for it as long as everybody has access to it, but you don't have access to it the way that maybe, say, a business would need, like a really fat pipe with a lot of bandwidth.

02:25:28.000 It's a good question, though.

02:25:29.000 But I think what you nailed earlier about discussions for regulation is so important because it does highlight the hypocrisy that people have with ideas that are controversial.

02:25:42.000 And one of the things that they feel when it comes to...

02:25:45.000 Whether it's the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, whatever it is.

02:25:48.000 They want it.

02:25:49.000 This is what's written down.

02:25:51.000 It's in.

02:25:51.000 We're not changing it.

02:25:53.000 It's that way forever. 0.99

02:25:54.000 Whether it's the 14th Amendment, whatever the fuck it is. 0.99

02:25:56.000 Pick an amendment. 0.99

02:25:57.000 They just, nope, nope, nope.

02:25:59.000 Written down.

02:25:59.000 That's it.

02:26:00.000 That's what it is.

02:26:01.000 And you're right that when it comes to something like social media where there isn't really a precedent, now they want regulation.

02:26:07.000 They want the government to come in and step in because it doesn't favor what their ideas are.

02:26:11.000 I see that there's some hypocrisy in that.

02:26:14.000 But I also favor regulation.

02:26:17.000 In that regard, I favor regulation.

02:26:19.000 I favor regulation in a lot of ways.

02:26:22.000 I've had these discussions with many people where they let the market decide.

02:26:27.000 That's...

02:26:27.000 Okay.

02:26:28.000 A lot of people get fucked over when you just let the market decide that eventually things even out and sometimes maybe not even. 0.96

02:26:34.000 It's almost a cliche. 0.87

02:26:34.000 It's almost a cliche at this point because even a lot of times that people say that they don't really want a free market. 0.87

02:26:39.000 Right.

02:26:39.000 They want a free market until who could have seen the pandemic coming?

02:26:43.000 Let's give cash to all of these 10 types of businesses all of a sudden.

02:26:47.000 And I'm not saying I'm against that, but I'm saying let's instead of pretending Yes.

02:27:03.000 Yes, yes, yes.

02:27:07.000 Very good point.

02:27:08.000 And I think this is what we talked about earlier that we hope happens out of this pandemic, is that we have a greater understanding of some things are out of our control, and we should be prepared as a community, as a large community.

02:27:20.000 We should be prepared to help each other.

02:27:23.000 And I think that can be done.

02:27:25.000 I really do.

02:27:25.000 And I think we could shift in that direction.

02:27:27.000 And that's what I really enjoyed about some of the concepts that Andrew Yang had about universal basic income.

02:27:33.000 Like saying, look, we need to take into consideration that this change is probably going to hit us and it's going to hit us hard.

02:27:39.000 And we've got to be prepared.

02:27:40.000 And the way he called it, I believe he referred to it as a freedom dividend.

02:27:44.000 And so he gave it a different spin.

02:27:45.000 This is something you earned by being a part of this country.

02:27:49.000 We're going to have to adjust some of these hardline values that we have in terms of what people are responsible for and what people aren't.

02:27:58.000 My argument has always been you can't... 1.00

02:28:01.000 I hate that pull yourself up by your bootstrap shit. 1.00

02:28:04.000 I hate it. 1.00

02:28:04.000 It drives me crazy because Not everybody is in the same situation from the start. 1.00

02:28:11.000 You're not born into the same family.

02:28:13.000 You're not born into the same community.

02:28:15.000 You're not born into the same stresses and troubles and crime and gangs and this and that and abuse and sexual abuse and physical abuse.

02:28:22.000 It's not an even playing field.

02:28:24.000 It's just not. 0.98

02:28:25.000 So all this, you know, you need to get your shit together. 0.99

02:28:27.000 Like, no, we need to help people get their shit together. 0.99

02:28:30.000 And we need to figure out how do we... 0.98

02:28:31.000 If we looked at the number one problem, and this is, again, going back to Bernie Sanders...

02:28:36.000 The number one problem with people that are young that are coming up is having opportunity, having healthcare, having safety, having a place where you actually have a fighting chance to thrive.

02:28:50.000 And my perspective is, if you're a person that thinks America as a team, that we are America and I'm proud to be an American, well, what's the best way to strengthen an America?

02:29:00.000 Less losers. 0.98

02:29:01.000 Less people that have a shitty hand of cards from the jump. 0.96

02:29:06.000 That's what we should be concentrating on more than anything.

02:29:08.000 You know, there's a number that, a corresponding number, as unemployment rises, there's more people dying because of heart attacks, suicide, depression, all these different factors.

02:29:21.000 You can apply that to poverty.

02:29:23.000 You can apply that to despair.

02:29:25.000 You can apply that to growing up in an environment where it seems like there's no hope.

02:29:30.000 You know, you can only ask someone to hold their breath and swim for so long before they just want to give up.

02:29:35.000 And that's what you see with a lot of people in our culture today, in our society, in these inner cities.

02:29:41.000 That's not addressed.

02:29:43.000 One after the other, people run for office and they don't address those things.

02:29:47.000 Especially run for the top office.

02:29:48.000 Bernie was the only one who was.

02:29:50.000 He was the only one who was addressing it.

02:29:51.000 So that was why I was for Bernie Sanders.

02:29:53.000 He, to me, represented some revolutionary change in our perception of what our society is and what our obligations are as good citizens.

02:30:06.000 Yeah, deaths of despair, I think, is a category that encompasses all of that stuff.

02:30:11.000 So I was just reminded of this because we went back to Bernie.

02:30:14.000 So are you voting Biden or are you voting Trump or do you know what you're doing?

02:30:18.000 I don't know what I'm doing, man.

02:30:20.000 I think I'm probably going to vote independent.

02:30:23.000 I think California is going to go Democrat no matter what.

02:30:27.000 Yeah.

02:30:29.000 Who knows? 0.99

02:30:30.000 If Biden has some lady who's badass who tells him to sit down and shut the fuck up, I got this. 1.00

02:30:36.000 Maybe I'll be more inclined to vote for him based on his vice president choice. 0.98

02:30:41.000 I don't know.

02:30:42.000 Do you feel that, like, from my perspective, 70% of what I'm very cynical.

02:30:56.000 I'm very cynical about that.

02:30:57.000 I think so many of these choices, like even just having a female president, they're done for perceptions and they're done to...

02:31:04.000 He's appealing to the people that want him in power in the first place, those old guard Democrats, you know, and the business of the Democratic Party.

02:31:13.000 It's a giant business.

02:31:15.000 The whole thing is getting control and, you know...

02:31:19.000 There's some social carrots that are dangling out there at the end of the stick that we would like to think that, you know, having someone in there that's going to vote left in terms of Supreme Court justices and things along those lines would help us all tremendously.

02:31:32.000 But I don't know.

02:31:34.000 I'm cynical.

02:31:35.000 The way this whole Bernie Sanders thing went down, I'm cynical about that.

02:31:38.000 How they all dropped out right before Super Tuesday and it was Bernie versus Biden. 0.97

02:31:43.000 There's so much of it that I felt like there's so much coordinated shit that he had to endure from the DNC in 2016 that he was enduring similar shit running into the 2020 election. 0.95

02:31:57.000 I don't have a lot of faith in the same standard I mean, I guess, I don't know, I'm thinking, like, I don't have kids, but thinking if I did, 0.96

02:32:14.000 all, like, frustrations with the DNC, the coordinated dropouts, all of that stuff.

02:32:20.000 It's just for me so simple where like, if Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice, that could affect your kids' kids in horrible ways.

02:32:29.000 Whereas if Biden gets to pick the next Supreme Court judge, like that alone, and you know, these other 250 judges that Trump selected that we don't really hear about, but that make way more decisions.

02:32:43.000 Tax policy, I think you'd be more with all these different issues.

02:32:47.000 Just the judges part would impact society for 20-30 years and that just seems so huge.

02:32:54.000 It would be huge.

02:32:55.000 Yeah.

02:32:55.000 I mean, and we should probably consider whether or not that makes sense, whether or not Supreme Court justices should be lifetime appointees.

02:33:03.000 Does that make sense?

02:33:04.000 And should it be so significant that you're willing to ignore everything else just because you want someone in the Supreme Court that aligns with your politics because they're not going to be there for a couple of years.

02:33:15.000 They're going to be there until essentially they either retire or die.

02:33:18.000 That's a weird thing to have.

02:33:21.000 It's a weird amount of... 0.96

02:33:22.000 It's almost like there's something that happens to professors when they get tenure, where they can kind of get away with wacky shit and do whatever they want. 0.94

02:33:29.000 It gets real weird. 0.95

02:33:30.000 And I think that whenever you get people in a position where they don't ever have to worry about getting fired, I mean, obviously a scandal, they murder somebody or something, but they're appointed for life, you know, I think.

02:33:43.000 And they have immense power.

02:33:45.000 It's just...

02:33:48.000 I don't know.

02:33:49.000 Obviously, I'm not a law student or a lawyer, but is that really the best way to do it?

02:33:53.000 Yeah, I tend to favor term limits for Supreme Court justices.

02:33:56.000 The counterpoint, which is not a crazy counterpoint, is if they know that eventually on the tail end of I see both sides of it too.

02:34:20.000 It seems to me like also to have a president that gets to choose The Supreme Court judges. 0.93

02:34:28.000 It's like, all the other shit he has to do too, that should be the only job he does. 0.96

02:34:34.000 If he was just going to pick Supreme Court judges, he should mull over that for years. 0.98

02:34:38.000 He should have stacks of paperwork in his office.

02:34:43.000 First of all, he should be a lawyer.

02:34:45.000 Obama would be uniquely qualified for that gig.

02:34:47.000 Hillary would be uniquely qualified. 1.00

02:34:49.000 You should be a fucking lawyer that understands what you're actually going to vote on and what the implications of giving this person this gig is going to be. 0.98

02:34:56.000 And also, wouldn't it be logical if we're just assuming that there's probably a terrible idea because it would result in... 0.99

02:35:06.000 Big stalemates.

02:35:08.000 But wouldn't it be great if we're...

02:35:10.000 We're admitting that there's only two parties.

02:35:12.000 We kind of are.

02:35:14.000 There's independent and green and all that.

02:35:16.000 But really, there's two parties.

02:35:18.000 Right?

02:35:18.000 There's conservative and liberal.

02:35:19.000 Wouldn't it be great if there was half and half?

02:35:21.000 Five of each?

02:35:22.000 Or four of each?

02:35:23.000 Or, you know, pick a number?

02:35:24.000 If you're going to have a Supreme Court, wouldn't it be great if it was equally representative of...

02:35:29.000 Well, by definition, that cannot happen.

02:35:31.000 Because in order to avoid stalemates, you've got to have an odd number.

02:35:34.000 Right.

02:35:35.000 Yeah, but maybe just one.

02:35:37.000 That one is what happens.

02:35:39.000 The president gets to pick that one.

02:35:41.000 So if you're a Republican, you get one.

02:35:45.000 You have like one that tips it towards your side.

02:35:48.000 One.

02:35:51.000 I mean, it's a terrible idea. 1.00

02:35:52.000 I'm a moron, and don't listen to me. 0.98

02:35:54.000 But wouldn't it make more sense to have equal representation of both sides when it comes to complex issues that's going to affect the entire country? 0.99

02:36:02.000 I mean, it shouldn't just be a simple matter of this one guy as the president, he gets to just appoint all these right-wing Jesus bangers, and they come in and burn all abortion clinics.

02:36:13.000 It shouldn't be that simple.

02:36:15.000 Now that's interesting because you're pro-choice.

02:36:18.000 Do you really want it to be mandated that half the court is against abortion?

02:36:23.000 Why would that be good?

02:36:25.000 Again, whenever it comes to abortion, there's one thing that you keep bringing up and that you keep bringing up pro-choice.

02:36:34.000 You keep bringing it up.

02:36:35.000 I brought it up because you mentioned abortion.

02:36:37.000 Right, right, right.

02:36:37.000 But you brought it up earlier too.

02:36:39.000 Yes, yes, yes.

02:36:40.000 It's one of those when it comes to picking a Supreme Court.

02:36:43.000 That's like the number one thing.

02:36:45.000 Should you...

02:36:46.000 I mean, I hate to say it this way.

02:36:47.000 Should you be able to abort a baby?

02:36:49.000 That's what it is, right?

02:36:51.000 Or a fetus or, you know, the bundle of tissue before it's ever really anything.

02:36:56.000 Should you be able to do that?

02:36:57.000 And it's so crazy that that is like one of our number one considerations.

02:37:02.000 Should someone be able to infringe on your rights as a human being to tell you you have to carry this baby and then you have to either put it up for adoption or raise it?

02:37:10.000 Like...

02:37:12.000 What a uniquely human conundrum that is and a conversation that is.

02:37:18.000 Because as we discussed earlier, everybody gets very disturbed when it gets older.

02:37:25.000 When you're dealing with five and six months, everybody has a problem with it.

02:37:29.000 Almost everybody.

02:37:30.000 But when it's early on, It's less and less.

02:37:34.000 It's one of those uniquely human things where we're all just like, whoa, that's a messy discussion.

02:37:41.000 It's a messy problem.

02:37:43.000 It's not unique to abortion, though.

02:37:45.000 I mean, if you think about a speed limit, right?

02:37:48.000 I mean, you get engineers and they say the speed limit here is going to be 35. Does that mean when it's dry, 40 is unsafe?

02:37:56.000 No.

02:37:56.000 Does that mean if it's icy, 35 is safe?

02:38:00.000 The fact that there is an arbitrary nature to it often gets you into a philosophical black hole where people end up saying, you just can't have it because it's not clear in the way we would like it to be clear.

02:38:12.000 And I think we don't want to fall into that kind of philosophical black hole because it's not unique to abortion that that exists.

02:38:19.000 Yeah, you could make a good argument about being something you could apply to a lot of different things, but abortion is so emotional because when you talk to the pro-life people and they're screaming that you're killing a baby, there's nothing else like that that sort of has the consequences of...

02:38:36.000 You know, on one side, people looking at a woman's right to choose, and then the other side looks at it, you're killing a baby. 0.76

02:38:42.000 Like, whoa!

02:38:43.000 That is a really polarizing and complex issue.

02:38:47.000 But I agree with you about the speed limit thing, and the other problem with the speed limit thing is you're turning cops into glorified revenue collectors.

02:38:55.000 Because they're out running around giving people tickets and collecting money for going too fast.

02:39:00.000 Like, that's not what they're supposed to be there for.

02:39:02.000 I mean, for sure, if someone's driving unsafe, they should do that.

02:39:05.000 But they shouldn't be waiting to catch people going three miles an hour over the 45 limit.

02:39:10.000 And also, like, what kind of a car do you have?

02:39:13.000 Because if you have a, you know, a 1965 Buick and it doesn't stop at all, like you hit the brakes and it skids for like 15 feet before it even starts to break, Your car is dangerous.

02:39:27.000 Your car is dangerous probably even going 35 miles an hour.

02:39:30.000 If you had an old tank of a car with shitty brakes, those cars, they're not designed to go fast in comparison to today's cars at all.

02:39:39.000 Maybe you shouldn't even be allowed to drive those.

02:39:41.000 When you see someone with one of them classic cars like Jay Leno drives all around Burbank... 1.00

02:39:46.000 Hey man, those brakes barely work on that fucking piece of shit. 1.00

02:39:49.000 But if you have a Tesla, like my god, man, those things are super fast. 1.00

02:39:53.000 They're super comfortable and safe.

02:39:55.000 The brakes are amazing.

02:39:57.000 Like there's modern cars today that you can make the argument that 55 miles an hour is preposterous.

02:40:02.000 Like I know all around Massachusetts, I used to live there, the speed limit was crazy.

02:40:07.000 55 miles an hour is maddening.

02:40:09.000 You just want to eat your steering wheel.

02:40:10.000 You're like, this is going to take so long.

02:40:13.000 When was that?

02:40:14.000 I don't even remember when the speed limit was 55. Sammy Hagar, bro.

02:40:17.000 I Can't Drive 55. Don't you remember?

02:40:21.000 Do you remember that?

02:40:22.000 Maybe I'm too young, but I remember 65. I remember 65. How old are you, David?

02:40:26.000 36. Yeah, I'm ancient.

02:40:28.000 I'm 52. And when I was a kid, Sammy Hagar, before he was even in Van Halen, he had this song, I Can't Drive 55. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:40:37.000 No, I know this song.

02:40:39.000 I just thought, I don't know when it was that slow in Massachusetts.

02:40:42.000 Oh, man.

02:40:43.000 Well, when I lived in there, I moved out of Massachusetts in probably 92, 91, 92, and it was still 55 then.

02:40:49.000 When I used to drive to Connecticut for gigs, you'd get busted all the time. 0.99

02:40:53.000 These fucking guys be hiding behind bushes with radar. 0.99

02:40:56.000 We'd have radar detectors you hang from your steering wheel or your rearview mirror. 1.00

02:41:00.000 Remember those things?

02:41:01.000 Yeah.

02:41:01.000 Oh, yeah.

02:41:01.000 I used to have one.

02:41:02.000 Didn't work at all, but I had one.

02:41:04.000 But yeah, there's...

02:41:05.000 I mean, you know, Montana had no speed limits. 1.00

02:41:08.000 Montana was like, fuck you, until the federal government said, listen... 1.00

02:41:12.000 If you want money from us, you've got to do something. 1.00

02:41:14.000 You've got to have a speed limit.

02:41:15.000 So they came up with some wacky 85-mile-an-hour speed limit up there.

02:41:20.000 Also, it's a place where there's just not that many folks.

02:41:24.000 It's big, wide-open stretches of land.

02:41:26.000 It's not like driving 85 miles an hour through downtown Boston.

02:41:30.000 Are you like out and about a lot right now with what's going on with the virus?

02:41:34.000 I mean, not really.

02:41:36.000 I went to Florida for the UFC. That was really weird.

02:41:39.000 That was last weekend or the weekend before last.

02:41:42.000 That was very strange, you know, wearing a mask everywhere and everyone else has a mask on.

02:41:47.000 But once we got to the actual event...

02:41:50.000 It was just strange because there was no audience.

02:41:52.000 The fight had no crowd.

02:41:54.000 And then I came back home and mostly I've been just coming here to the studio and going home.

02:41:59.000 Aside from being freaked out and all the anxiety and being sad that people are suffering, I myself have enjoyed the time off and enjoyed the ability to reflect and to just think about What is important in life and what is important in terms of how I spend my time and how critical health is,

02:42:24.000 that it's not just a luxury or a vanity, that health and exercise, it's imperative.

02:42:30.000 And I may not beat people over the head with that maybe too much. 0.94

02:42:34.000 But I think it's so goddamn important. 0.94

02:42:37.000 And that, to me, that's really been hammered home to me about this pandemic. 0.71

02:42:42.000 Love, friendship, how important my friendships are, how I value them so much.

02:42:48.000 My obligation in doing this thing, you know, in this thing, it's like, I want to express a beneficial idea.

02:42:56.000 I want to express ideas in a way that maybe people could get something out of it.

02:42:59.000 I want to...

02:43:01.000 I want it to be entertaining, but I want people to get something out of it.

02:43:06.000 And I think that that's all been highlighted, and what a unique position I'm in, and how fortunate I am, and what obligation comes with that fortune.

02:43:16.000 That's all been really highlighted by this pandemic.

02:43:20.000 Yeah, I just feel so lucky that my job doesn't depend on me driving somewhere, on some boss, whatever.

02:43:28.000 The community that, you know, people are home watching stuff.

02:43:31.000 And for that reason, you know, shows like these are particularly important right now.

02:43:37.000 But also, that responsibility thing about, I really need to make sure I'm informing people about what's actually going on.

02:43:43.000 I don't want to be spreading disinformation.

02:43:45.000 The feeling of that responsibility, I've always had to.

02:43:50.000 Yeah, and it should.

02:43:53.000 And, you know, David, it's interesting.

02:43:55.000 We were talking about this earlier, but your show couldn't exist in any other time, and nor could mine.

02:44:01.000 And we're very, very similar in that way.

02:44:04.000 If you had someone standing over you, telling you what to do, or, hey, David, here's the data we've got from the polls. 0.99

02:44:11.000 They don't like it when you talk about this, or they say not to talk about that, and the sponsor wants you to change the way you're dressed, and that kind of shit... 0.99

02:44:19.000 You would never become you. 0.97

02:44:22.000 And I think one of the reasons why shows like yours resonate with people is because it's very obvious that no one is telling you what to do.

02:44:29.000 You're just a guy who has your perspectives, and you're a brilliant guy, and you have very interesting thoughts on things, but these are home-brewed thoughts.

02:44:37.000 Like, you've thought about these.

02:44:38.000 These are not things that are being handed to you on a printed sheet by the network executives.

02:44:44.000 And that's what makes what you do and what I do so interesting. 0.99

02:44:50.000 People can clearly see I'm a moron. 0.99

02:44:53.000 So if this moron is to be able to talk to all these people and have these intense conversations, there's not really a barrier of entry that we once thought it was. 0.99

02:45:03.000 To be a person who has that kind of an audience, you used to have to be vetted and you used to go through a long process. 0.98

02:45:11.000 There was a lot of other people in consideration.

02:45:13.000 You had to play games and politicking and you had to be chosen.

02:45:17.000 You don't have to be chosen anymore.

02:45:18.000 You just have to do it and get better at it.

02:45:20.000 And I feel so fortunate to be in the situation that I'm in where this is happening and to have this ability to just do a show, to not have to talk to anybody, to be able to just go and have conversations with whoever I want,

02:45:38.000 whether it's you or whoever, anyone.

02:45:41.000 Yeah, my hope is when we look back at this, whenever it's done, you know?

02:45:47.000 That I can just feel good about the work that happened during this time, right?

02:45:52.000 Yes.

02:45:52.000 Because I think it's going to be a phase where we'll kind of remember the beginning, middle, and end of it, and I don't know when the end of it is going to be, but I don't want to feel like the time was squandered in any way.

02:46:01.000 No, I don't think it is, man.

02:46:03.000 I think perspective-wise, I think we're all going to benefit from this.

02:46:06.000 The real problem is people with businesses.

02:46:08.000 The real problem is people that didn't do anything wrong and everything's taken away from them, and I feel fucking terrible for them, and if there's any way we could save them and do something, I mean, I just don't know what the answers are.

02:46:19.000 I don't know what the answers are medically.

02:46:21.000 I don't know what the answers are.

02:46:22.000 I mean, in terms of managing our economy from here out, I don't. 0.79

02:46:28.000 But man, it's a fucking weird time. 0.67

02:46:31.000 It's one of the weirdest times. 0.97

02:46:33.000 Like sometimes I'll just be driving down the street and I'll have forgotten that we're in the middle of a pandemic and I'll see some person with a mask on like, oh yeah.

02:46:42.000 Oh yeah, the world's fucking haywire right now. 0.77

02:46:44.000 I forgot. 0.96

02:46:45.000 We're all afraid to touch each other and everyone's far apart and you get hand sanitizer squirting every five minutes on yourself.

02:46:52.000 It's just the weirdest time of my life.

02:46:55.000 Yeah, my biggest concern is that all the stuff that we figured out we weren't ready for We learn nothing from it and then just the next one of these happens and we're just as unprepared and things go just as haywire.

02:47:08.000 That would be like the biggest waste and I fear that that is a good possibility.

02:47:12.000 That's a big fear and it's also like how, what, in terms of money to allocate, what's left?

02:47:19.000 Like after the stimulus packages, after all this stuff that we're doing, what is going to be left?

02:47:25.000 How much money is there going to be to try to restart everything?

02:47:30.000 Do they have enough money to really put together another pandemic response team and do a better job with it?

02:47:35.000 To really fund research on the flu and various viruses and to find out what's going on.

02:47:40.000 I know there's talk about these things, about picking up these programs and really stepping up.

02:47:46.000 There is absolutely, I mean listen, six trillion already.

02:47:50.000 Prevention is so much cheaper than emergencies.

02:47:53.000 It's a fraction of the cost.

02:47:56.000 Obviously, pandemic response team never should have been disbanded.

02:47:59.000 It would cost pennies on the dollar to what is being spent right now, no doubt.

02:48:03.000 It's crazy when you go back and listen to Bill Gates' TED Talk in 2015 talking about the possibility of a pandemic and wiping everybody out.

02:48:11.000 And then five years later, you see it happen.

02:48:14.000 And you're like, nobody listened.

02:48:15.000 Nobody listened.

02:48:16.000 But how crazy is it that people are...

02:48:17.000 Now Bill Gates is the bad guy.

02:48:19.000 I've got people I went to high school with.

02:48:27.000 How did that happen?

02:48:29.000 Help me there.

02:48:30.000 Help me there with that one, because that one's weird.

02:48:32.000 I was watching this video from Newport Beach, or Huntington Beach, where all these people are protesting free California, and they're running around, and this guy's got a megaphone, and he's like, Bill Gates is the devil!

02:48:42.000 How did that happen?

02:48:43.000 It's one of the weirdest memes.

02:48:45.000 It's one of the weirdest cultural memes that this thing has happened that Bill Gates, this philanthropic billionaire who's literally made toilets in Africa and spent millions of dollars to try to get people education and millions of dollars on all sorts of great social good.

02:49:06.000 All of a sudden he's a bad guy.

02:49:08.000 It's inconceivable.

02:49:09.000 It's weird.

02:49:10.000 The number of people I've just muted or unfriended that I personally know.

02:49:14.000 I mean, it's not just random people on Twitter, but it's people I went to high school with who say he wants to profit from the vaccine or he wants to use a vaccine to control the population.

02:49:28.000 Nanotech.

02:49:29.000 It's weaponized disinformation is what I call it.

02:49:32.000 Well, it's very prevalent.

02:49:33.000 It's really interesting too because like...

02:49:37.000 Here's the problem.

02:49:39.000 There is profit in vaccines.

02:49:41.000 That's a problem.

02:49:42.000 So when someone looks for a conspiracy and they say something like, Bill Gates, he just wants a profit on the vaccine, you can't say no one ever profits on vaccines. 1.00

02:49:52.000 So that's a stupid idea. 0.98

02:49:53.000 You go, well, how much is a vaccine worth and how much profit is there in vaccines? 1.00

02:49:57.000 Then you look into it and you go, whoa, there's a lot of profit in vaccines. 1.00

02:50:01.000 Shit! 1.00

02:50:02.000 I wish there was none. 1.00

02:50:03.000 I wish, you know, they're making them just for the greater good of mankind.

02:50:06.000 And it's not like people are buying private jets and Ferraris off that money.

02:50:10.000 But look, everything where people do it and do it well seems to require incentive.

02:50:17.000 But that's also a critique of the system, right?

02:50:19.000 It is.

02:50:20.000 Because it's not just vaccines.

02:50:21.000 But it's funny to me that people don't have a problem with that with capitalism.

02:50:24.000 But the same people that would vote right and don't have a problem with capitalism, maybe be anti-regulation, are angry that people make money off of vaccines.

02:50:34.000 But they're also angry because we're cynical and we wonder, okay, if they're making money off vaccines...

02:50:40.000 Would it be possible for them to incentivize doctors to vaccinate people more?

02:50:45.000 Or if they got more people involved, they would make more money?

02:50:48.000 Like, that is a problem in just human nature.

02:50:52.000 When you can make more money...

02:50:54.000 Okay, give me the reality.

02:50:56.000 Not vaccinating and having way more people to treat for stuff is way more profitable.

02:51:03.000 That's a good point.

02:51:04.000 And it's also devastating to civilization, right? 0.99

02:51:07.000 I mean, if they never came up with a fucking polio vaccine, how many people would be just a mess because of that and die because of that? 0.99

02:51:14.000 Smallpox? 0.99

02:51:15.000 You've seen those images of, I mean, I probably never saw them until the internet, of the images of what people look like when they were devastated by smallpox.

02:51:22.000 It's horrifying.

02:51:23.000 Vaccines are important.

02:51:26.000 My cynical nature comes up whenever there's anything where people can make a lot of money.

02:51:30.000 It's not just vaccines.

02:51:31.000 It's like anything, whether it's fracking.

02:51:33.000 When I hear people talk about how safe fracking is, and then I remember Gasland, the documentary, where they're lighting water on fire.

02:51:40.000 I'm like, what?

02:51:42.000 Tap water's not supposed to be flammable?

02:51:45.000 Something's going on here, man.

02:51:46.000 I mean, this place is in Pennsylvania where people can't live. 1.00

02:51:49.000 They have to get out of their fucking house. 1.00

02:51:50.000 They can't live. 1.00

02:51:51.000 They can't wash themselves with the water.

02:51:53.000 They can't drink it.

02:51:54.000 They're worried about breathing in the fumes near their houses.

02:51:57.000 I mean, it's devastating.

02:51:59.000 It's a tragedy.

02:52:00.000 It's a tragedy.

02:52:01.000 Profit.

02:52:02.000 Clear area where profit and not enough regulation are the recipe for disaster.

02:52:07.000 And oddly enough, an area where the right wing tends to poo-poo it.

02:52:11.000 Oh, come on. 0.87

02:52:12.000 Fracking has made this country an oil stronghold.

02:52:16.000 You know, there's that argument, which I guess it kind of has, right?

02:52:19.000 I mean, that's again a problem with humans.

02:52:23.000 Life is so complicated. 0.99

02:52:25.000 Being a human is so fucking complicated. 0.94

02:52:27.000 There's so much to us. 0.87

02:52:29.000 How long do you think this will go?

02:52:33.000 I don't know.

02:52:34.000 I'm worried about a second wave.

02:52:36.000 The second wave concerns me.

02:52:38.000 And I'm worried that that could lead to shutdowns that people are not going to be able to make it through, that made it through this one.

02:52:45.000 Or they barely made it through this one with their business.

02:52:48.000 And then the second lockdown comes and they lose everything.

02:52:53.000 I'm also worried that people are going to lose their health and their life.

02:52:57.000 I mean, I'm worried about both things.

02:52:58.000 I'm worried about the second wave coming and people...

02:53:02.000 Being ignorant to the possibility of it hitting and then it does hit and it's devastating.

02:53:07.000 Both those things are terrible, you know, but again my My thinking is, if we're going to quarantine people, we really should make more of an effort to quarantine people who are sick and old.

02:53:20.000 That seems to me to be a better way of handling it from here forward than quarantining all of us.

02:53:26.000 I don't think that's tenable. 0.93

02:53:28.000 I think maybe we could pull that off for a month or so, but I think after a while, the fucking wheels fall off, and I feel like that's where we are right now. 0.78

02:53:35.000 So I think, as I said before, Much more emphasis on health and your immune system and taking care of your body and being smart. 0.82

02:53:42.000 Those things are underappreciated and critical.

02:53:47.000 But I don't know how long it's going to last.

02:53:49.000 I think the best scenario is a widespread vaccine by March, April 21, right?

02:53:56.000 But would you jump right in with one of those mRNA vaccines?

02:54:00.000 Well, unless I go out and buy one, by the time I get it, millions of people will have had it already.

02:54:06.000 It's going to be healthcare workers first, and then the most vulnerable.

02:54:09.000 By the time there's one available for me, unless I just figure out who I can buy it from, millions of people will have had it already.

02:54:15.000 At this point in the movie, the screen would go black, and we'd open to David Pakman, covered in dirt, carrying a club filled with spikes, running down the street with his friend, trying to avoid the zombies.

02:54:26.000 Because by the time it got to you, they had already turned to zombies, and you couldn't afford it, and lucky you.

02:54:33.000 Now there's millions of zombies running through the streets of Boston trying to eat people.

02:54:37.000 We don't have to go into this, but I am doing some prepping now, and I have no clue what I'm doing.

02:54:44.000 What are you doing?

02:54:45.000 I looked up what are the 80-20 idea, right?

02:54:50.000 I just tried to figure out what's the stuff that will cover 80% of the scenarios.

02:54:56.000 So it's like three days of water.

02:54:58.000 I don't need a month of water.

02:55:01.000 Some additional first aid supplies.

02:55:03.000 But then I got into really weird stuff where I got convinced that I need a flat tire repair kit.

02:55:08.000 And so I bought this thing and then I looked at it and I was like, wait a second.

02:55:13.000 I still need to pump up the wheel at the tire after I use this thing.

02:55:18.000 And then I realized, like, I've got AAA and a flat.

02:55:21.000 Why did I buy a flat or a spare?

02:55:23.000 Why did I buy a flat tire repair kit?

02:55:25.000 So, like, some of the stuff I bought made no sense at all.

02:55:27.000 That's actually wrong.

02:55:27.000 That makes plenty of sense.

02:55:28.000 First of all, you can get one that plugs in your cigarette lighter.

02:55:31.000 It's an air compressor.

02:55:32.000 Very easy.

02:55:33.000 Right.

02:55:33.000 Okay.

02:55:33.000 And I got one of those.

02:55:34.000 It's awesome.

02:55:35.000 So, you're covered there. 0.96

02:55:37.000 Second of all, AAA, if a lot of shit goes down, they're going to be busy, man. 0.98

02:55:40.000 And they might not be answering their phone. 0.99

02:55:42.000 And you might be stuck in the middle of nowhere.

02:55:44.000 No, a tire repair kit is good.

02:55:47.000 Knowing how to feed yourself, that's good.

02:55:50.000 Like, having rice and beans, things that are easy to store and that last forever, that's really good.

02:55:56.000 All that stuff's very important.

02:55:57.000 But I got real super prepper-y at the beginning of this.

02:56:00.000 I was real worried. 0.99

02:56:01.000 The first couple of weeks, I was scared out of my fucking mind. 0.98

02:56:04.000 I was like, this could just be... 0.99

02:56:06.000 10% of us are dead.

02:56:07.000 People just dropping dead in the street left and right.

02:56:10.000 I was really worried about it.

02:56:11.000 Because you hear the stories, the salacious, crazy, horrible stories are the ones that get the most press.

02:56:19.000 Whatever subject the subject is.

02:56:21.000 And of course when it comes to a pandemic, the ones that people want to hear about is there's a 28-year-old guy.

02:56:26.000 He was a fitness instructor and now he's in a coma. 1.00

02:56:29.000 Holy shit! 1.00

02:56:31.000 Those ones that really scare the fuck out of you. 1.00

02:56:33.000 Those were what you kept hearing.

02:56:35.000 So...

02:56:36.000 I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking, does my breath feel short?

02:56:38.000 And then also the anxiety kind of was keeping me from sleeping well.

02:56:44.000 So then I have a whoop strap that measures my sleep and I check the app and I would look at my recovery and it was like 13%. 0.99

02:56:50.000 I was like, what the fuck? 0.98

02:56:51.000 It's because I'm freaking out because I'm up all night worrying about whether or not society is going to fall apart and everyone's going to die. 0.99

02:56:58.000 So it took a while for me to relax, I guess probably a couple weeks before I was getting real consistent sleep and feeling much better.

02:57:07.000 But I'm still very, very worried about what it's going to be like once things restart.

02:57:15.000 Yeah, I totally agree with you.

02:57:17.000 I thought four different times I had coronavirus, first of all, so that whole thing went on.

02:57:22.000 But there's some stuff that is going to take a while to get back to just like human interaction type things, right?

02:57:29.000 I mean, I don't think there's not going to be a day where we say we're back to hugging and handshaking and sharing drinks and that type of stuff.

02:57:38.000 Like some of this stuff will persevere for a long time.

02:57:40.000 Maybe.

02:57:41.000 Yeah, maybe.

02:57:42.000 I don't know.

02:57:43.000 When I was at the UFC, I was shaking a lot of people's hands and hugging people.

02:57:46.000 But they were all tested.

02:57:47.000 Everyone was tested.

02:57:48.000 So everyone had to walk around with a bracelet on that showed that they had been tested and tested that week.

02:57:53.000 So everyone was cleared right before we got there.

02:57:56.000 So I was pretty sure everyone was fine.

02:57:58.000 It just seemed so normal, all the friends that I've been working with for years.

02:58:02.000 So I was shaking their hands and hugging them.

02:58:04.000 And some people were critical of that.

02:58:06.000 They were like, you've got to stay away and social distance and all this.

02:58:08.000 And I was like...

02:58:10.000 When everyone's clear, if we're all tested and everyone's testing negative, why can't we act like normal again?

02:58:17.000 Is it magically going to sneak into the building?

02:58:18.000 Somebody could be incubating it, right?

02:58:21.000 Imagine if three of those people tested negative because they're incubating it.

02:58:25.000 They got it on the flight there or something like that.

02:58:28.000 I don't know.

02:58:29.000 Again, the horror movie.

02:58:30.000 I think they didn't get on the flight there because everyone was tested once they arrived.

02:58:34.000 But either way, yeah.

02:58:36.000 I know what you're saying.

02:58:37.000 It could be in your system from the flight.

02:58:39.000 You get a test two hours later, but the test is negative.

02:58:42.000 But if you just wait 24 more hours, then that test would be positive.

02:58:47.000 Alright, Dr. Pakman.

02:58:48.000 You got me.

02:58:48.000 I don't know.

02:58:49.000 I don't know either, man.

02:58:51.000 But I hope we go back to normal.

02:58:53.000 I think people need touch.

02:58:54.000 We need hugs.

02:58:55.000 And it weirds me out already when I see how scared people are of each other.

02:58:59.000 Walking down the same sidewalk and people cross the street so they don't go near you.

02:59:03.000 They give you a weird feeling.

02:59:05.000 It's not optimal.

02:59:09.000 Dystopian.

02:59:09.000 Yeah.

02:59:10.000 Listen, David, we just did three hours, if you can believe it or not.

02:59:13.000 Incredible.

02:59:14.000 I appreciate you, man.

02:59:15.000 You're a very intelligent guy.

02:59:16.000 I really enjoy your show.

02:59:18.000 I like watching your clips.

02:59:19.000 I love your well-thought-out perspective, and I think you're very valuable, especially in this crazy time we're living in.

02:59:25.000 I so appreciate it.

02:59:27.000 Three hours went by in an instant and just really appreciate talking to you again, having me back.

02:59:32.000 Next time, let's do it in person.

02:59:34.000 I'm going to hug you.

02:59:35.000 We're going to hug each other.

02:59:36.000 We're going to do it.

02:59:36.000 We're going to get over our fears.

02:59:37.000 I hope so.

02:59:38.000 I think we will.

02:59:39.000 All right, brother.

02:59:40.000 Will you take care of yourself, man?

02:59:41.000 Thank you again.

02:59:42.000 Take care.

02:59:42.000 Bye-bye.

02:59:42.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 22, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1479 - David Pakman

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Summary

Transcript