The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1498 - Jon Stewart

00:00:01.000 Hi, Jon Stewart.

00:00:02.000 Hi, Joe Rogan.

00:00:03.000 What's going on behind you?

00:00:04.000 What is all that jazz?

00:00:06.000 Oh, it's all my...

00:00:07.000 When my kids were younger, this is their...

00:00:08.000 I'm in the attic.

00:00:09.000 Oh! 0.60

00:00:11.000 When they were younger...

00:00:19.000 Hey man, I miss you.

00:00:22.000 I miss you on TV right now.

00:00:24.000 I really do.

00:00:24.000 This is a perfect time for you.

00:00:27.000 It's kind of crazy that you're not hosting that show anymore.

00:00:31.000 But there's so many people doing that.

00:00:33.000 I really did burn out.

00:00:36.000 I felt like it's just redundant.

00:00:39.000 The nice thing for what you do is you get to curate and kind of be more active and to follow your own rhythm for it.

00:00:49.000 I was really tied to that rhythm of The 24-hour news cycle.

00:00:55.000 Right. 0.98

00:00:56.000 And how fucking redundant it is and how cyclical. 0.93

00:00:59.000 And at a certain point, I was like, I don't know what else to do with this. 0.92

00:01:04.000 And so I didn't want to stay just because I could.

00:01:07.000 I'd just done it long enough.

00:01:09.000 And so I thought, well, let me just...

00:01:10.000 It was just time.

00:01:11.000 I felt like the audience needed a fresh perspective.

00:01:14.000 I needed a fresh perspective.

00:01:16.000 Like, I just felt done. 0.99

00:01:18.000 Like, I was more mad about shit than... 0.96

00:01:24.000 I appreciate that you decided to go out literally at the very top, but it seems like... 0.98

00:01:33.000 Especially right now.

00:01:35.000 John Oliver's killing it, and Trevor Noah's doing your show.

00:01:41.000 There's so much to mock.

00:01:43.000 It's almost like an overload.

00:01:44.000 And doing real commentary on politics today, it's almost like you're doing commentary on pro wrestling. 0.99

00:01:51.000 This is a rigged game, and you're out here pretending this shit makes sense. 0.99

00:01:58.000 It really is. 0.99

00:01:59.000 You're right.

00:02:00.000 Well, it's also because that's...

00:02:02.000 The economic system that's been set up around politics is the very same that Vince McMahon set up around wrestling.

00:02:11.000 You create...

00:02:12.000 I mean, it is a kind of, you know, kayfabe.

00:02:14.000 It's a sort of like...

00:02:15.000 There are characters.

00:02:17.000 You know what it's like.

00:02:18.000 When you're trying to produce something every day, you're going to go with kind of a boilerplate structure.

00:02:24.000 So you're going to say, all right, our show revolves around...

00:02:27.000 You're from the right.

00:02:28.000 You're from the left.

00:02:29.000 Whatever comes in, we're going to filter it through that.

00:02:31.000 We're going to keep it producible.

00:02:34.000 But it starts to, like you say, it becomes inauthentic.

00:02:38.000 But the same thing would happen to me sometimes with, like I'd be doing shows and you would know you weren't necessarily feeling the Outrage of something or that the commentary was going to be as spicy or as deep as you might want it,

00:02:55.000 but you might kick it up a notch anyway because it was performative.

00:02:58.000 I always had to fight that instinct to not give in to the gravity of what was expected of me.

00:03:10.000 Well, it's such a tightrope to walk because you're commenting, you're doing comedy on something that's actually serious.

00:03:17.000 And it's great to mock the ridiculous aspects of it, but really, if you're doing The Daily Show right now, we really are in a legitimately troubled time.

00:03:28.000 It's not like a troubled time of ten years ago or eight years ago.

00:03:32.000 This is a real troubled time.

00:03:35.000 No, and I think as that builds up, it becomes harder and harder.

00:03:38.000 But I can recall, you know, people will say sometimes, and look, I think there's a certain nostalgia that people...

00:03:45.000 View my time on the show has.

00:03:48.000 And I'm not being self-deprecated. 0.98

00:03:50.000 I just mean, you know, when you walk away from something, I think a kind of nostalgia about how, you know, I took a fair amount of shit while I was there. 0.94

00:04:00.000 But the point is, like, Charleston happened when I was hosting that show. 0.98

00:04:05.000 Ferguson happened.

00:04:06.000 The Iraq War happened. 0.85

00:04:08.000 9-11 happened.

00:04:09.000 Jesus.

00:04:10.000 These types of things were always...

00:04:13.000 And what would happen is you started to feel like you were expected to say something profound about it.

00:04:25.000 And you knew that you didn't really have that in you at times or just that's a bar that was beyond, you know, you really did just want to help your staff get through it more than anything else.

00:04:39.000 And so these events would come up and the weight of Feeling like you had to say something meaningful in that moment for people because that's the role that either they had, you know, let you know that you had in their lives or that the show kind of took on,

00:04:58.000 you know, became kind of difficult to navigate. 0.99

00:05:05.000 Because the shit is so cyclical. 1.00

00:05:07.000 Man, I could go back and do you my 10 War on Christmas bits when that shit would flare up. 1.00

00:05:14.000 But at a certain point when things like Charleston happened or Eric Garner, I had nothing in the tank comedically. 0.97

00:05:21.000 All I could do was stare into the camera and just express sadness and help us.

00:05:30.000 You know what it is?

00:05:31.000 It's impotent rage at a certain point.

00:05:34.000 You rage against it, but over a period of 16 years, if you feel the thing you're raging against grow stronger and kind of collapse on top of you and you not make headway, nobody likes to piss in the ocean.

00:05:52.000 You like it, but at a certain point, if that's your job, I think people began to look at the show like it was supposed to change things.

00:06:05.000 And that's a hard place to be for a comedy show.

00:06:10.000 Well, it's because you're reasonable.

00:06:12.000 And there's not a lot of that out there.

00:06:16.000 Legitimately.

00:06:16.000 And people are like, please, you do it.

00:06:19.000 Look, people are begging for The Rock to run for president.

00:06:22.000 This is how desperate we are.

00:06:23.000 People have asked me to do it. 1.00

00:06:25.000 Look, I'm a fucking bona fide moron. 1.00

00:06:27.000 You don't want me running anything. 1.00

00:06:28.000 You certainly don't want me running the country.

00:06:30.000 And if enough people have actually asked for that, you just know there's a feeling of desperation in the air.

00:06:34.000 And... 0.96

00:06:36.000 When you were running that show and you were doing great comedy about real shit, and as this real shit compounds and piles up and it doesn't seem to have any effect on this real shit, all this great comedy, after a while I can understand why it would start to feel like... 0.97

00:06:53.000 What am I doing here? 0.98

00:06:55.000 How long?

00:06:56.000 Do you know who, what is that guy's name who was doing the resistance, the guy who was in the basement of GQ? Ken Olbermann?

00:07:04.000 Keith Olbermann, sorry.

00:07:05.000 Keith Olbermann.

00:07:06.000 A little unhinged.

00:07:10.000 He was doing this thing in the basement against Trump, and he's like, it's just days from now when Trump is going to be arrested.

00:07:16.000 And I could feel that this was also kind of what he was doing.

00:07:21.000 He was trying to make some sort of an impact, but it just kept not working.

00:07:25.000 It kept not working.

00:07:27.000 It's all thirst.

00:07:27.000 Yeah, and it's still all chaos.

00:07:29.000 And he's like, fuck this. 0.99

00:07:31.000 And then he just walked away from it. 0.99

00:07:33.000 You know, it seems like trying to enact change is so difficult that when actual change happens, it's one of the reasons why it happens in such a big way.

00:07:42.000 It's like there were so many people bounding at the wall and pounding at this wall that when, boom, when the George Floyd protests broke through, then all of a sudden it's, we've got real change.

00:07:53.000 Let's take down these fucking statues and light everything on fire, and there's this feeling Of change and of chaos that is also representative of the fact that it takes so long to turn our cultural battleship.

00:08:05.000 It's like to actually get a real turn is so hard. 0.99

00:08:10.000 Everything stays the same no matter how mad people get.

00:08:13.000 That turn, even at that point, that's still the easy part.

00:08:17.000 Yes.

00:08:18.000 The turn is the easy part. 0.99

00:08:19.000 Like, this shit's not going to get fixed by HBO Max pulling Gone with the Wind. 0.99

00:08:25.000 Like, it's fine. 0.99

00:08:26.000 When you pull a movie, nobody was planning on watching on a streaming service nobody can find.

00:08:32.000 We're still at the symbolic stage. 0.95

00:08:35.000 We're still doing the shit that is symbolic. 0.91

00:08:38.000 This is where leadership becomes such a crucial component. 0.96

00:08:43.000 You have this great Awakening of energy, it has to be channeled into something lasting and meaningful, and we have to diagnose the real problem underlying this moment so that we don't make a mistake in just changing the window dressing and the gilding on the buildings.

00:09:05.000 This has to be foundational.

00:09:10.000 In a way that will create something lasting.

00:09:14.000 And that's the hard part.

00:09:16.000 It seems like the shift is big enough that something is going to happen in that regard.

00:09:20.000 It just seems like this shift is nothing like anything we've ever seen in our lifetime.

00:09:24.000 And it's worldwide.

00:09:25.000 Which is really crazy.

00:09:26.000 Like the George Floyd death sparked all these protests worldwide.

00:09:31.000 Which has really never happened before with anything that really has taken place in America.

00:09:34.000 And it just seems like...

00:09:37.000 There was also a lot of frustration during the bailout period of the COVID crisis that all these corporations were getting so much money that people got one $1,200 check and then there was no more talk.

00:09:50.000 You don't know where the money...

00:09:51.000 There's really no accountability even for where that money went.

00:09:55.000 Right.

00:09:55.000 That's a great point, Joe, because that's...

00:09:57.000 So that's what I'm talking about by structural change.

00:10:00.000 I feel like in this moment, this horrible...

00:10:06.000 A crime and murder sparked something.

00:10:09.000 But what's underlying that is not just the racial inequality and the inequities, but this whole idea of we build our society economically from the top down.

00:10:20.000 Yes. 0.99

00:10:20.000 Like, that's the shit that's got to change. 0.99

00:10:22.000 Right. 1.00

00:10:23.000 It's a rough game.

00:10:25.000 Well, like, when you're in a pandemic, right, and tens of thousands of people are dying, and then we say to ourselves, all right, Well, who are the essential workers?

00:10:35.000 Who are the ones that are the fabric of our society and culture that keep the wheels turning and the trains running?

00:10:45.000 Who are those people?

00:10:46.000 Well, it turns out they're the most poorly compensated people in our society.

00:10:52.000 Yeah.

00:10:53.000 Because we've flipped the paradigm for some reason since the 80s.

00:10:58.000 The investor class has gotten the break and the working class has gotten minimized.

00:11:05.000 We've devalued work while overvaluing investment.

00:11:10.000 It's such a good point.

00:11:12.000 I don't think we can have the structural change until we flip that. 1.00

00:11:17.000 Like, fuck, man. 1.00

00:11:18.000 When people talk about freedom... 1.00

00:11:20.000 And liberty?

00:11:22.000 What's more for freedom and liberty than not having your health insurance tied to your job?

00:11:28.000 What kind of freedom do you have to make decisions in your life when you fear that if I take a chance, if I go for something, if I try and change my lot in life, my kids will no longer be covered by...

00:11:44.000 All the things that we built up to accept, I think we have to...

00:11:50.000 Turn it over.

00:11:52.000 And it has to lean more.

00:11:53.000 People should be able to have, like, a dignity...

00:11:58.000 You should be able to work a job and not be poor.

00:12:01.000 You should be able to work a job and not need food stamps. 0.99

00:12:04.000 Like, that's where we're fucked. 0.99

00:12:06.000 We spent... 1.00

00:12:07.000 How much in this pandemic?

00:12:09.000 Like, three trillion dollars?

00:12:11.000 Something like that?

00:12:12.000 Four trillion?

00:12:13.000 Something along those lines.

00:12:15.000 Who knows if a hundred million of it went to Coca-Cola?

00:12:18.000 Like, we have no idea.

00:12:19.000 Right.

00:12:20.000 But you got 80 bus drivers in New York who were dead because they had to keep going in the middle of the pandemic.

00:12:28.000 Yeah.

00:12:29.000 I think you're making a really good point about what's essential as well.

00:12:32.000 When we found out what the essential workers are, right?

00:12:36.000 People who work at supermarkets, people who build homes, like all these essential jobs.

00:12:43.000 Bunker down.

00:12:44.000 Yes.

00:12:45.000 Can't afford to.

00:12:46.000 Right.

00:12:47.000 You're putting yourself in...

00:12:49.000 You know, it's funny, I was talking, a friend of mine named DT, who is, you know, he was really, like, grievously wounded in war, right? 0.95

00:12:58.000 And I was talking, we were talking about, like, coronavirus, and I was like, I feel like I'm in fucking danger when I go out.

00:13:07.000 And he was like, yeah, welcome to being downrange.

00:13:11.000 You know what I mean?

00:13:13.000 It's just not, it's not something that we as Americans would ever consider We're really sheltered in a lot of ways to what a great vast majority of the world faces, but also what a vast majority of our own citizens face in terms of having lives that they feel are built on sand as opposed to granite.

00:13:36.000 And so his point was like, yeah, you know, that's what it feels like when you're in a war, but I signed up for that.

00:13:44.000 But like bus drivers and grocery store workers, like, They had to fucking decide, like, I need this money more than I need to protect my life and maybe the health of my family.

00:13:57.000 What a terrible position to have to be in. 0.94

00:14:00.000 And unprecedented, and we're ill-prepared for it.

00:14:03.000 It really did highlight what's essential, though, which is, back to your point about this idea of income equality.

00:14:11.000 People will balk at that, like, hey, this is a game.

00:14:14.000 If you want to figure it out, figure out how to make more money. 0.93

00:14:17.000 Invest and do this and become a banker, and you fucked up and you wanted to be an artist, or you fucked up and you wanted to be a carpenter, you should have been a, you know, whatever. 0.99

00:14:26.000 And Oh, my God. 0.99

00:14:41.000 If you don't have healthcare.

00:14:43.000 All that stuff is not...

00:14:44.000 None of that money means anything if the fabric of society deteriorates to a point where literally everybody has to stay in their home and you can't work.

00:14:52.000 And that's what happened.

00:14:53.000 And it really flipped the whole thing on its head because we had to consider survival.

00:14:58.000 We had to really consider survival instead of just existence.

00:15:01.000 We were saying, oh my god, we have to protect ourselves from this viral attack.

00:15:08.000 And what it makes you realize...

00:15:11.000 Is how much money it takes to ante up to the American way of life. 0.68

00:15:17.000 What I mean by that is like, if you just want to buy in to play a hand, right?

00:15:22.000 What's your ante?

00:15:22.000 Well, now they say you've got to go to college.

00:15:24.000 So you're talking about a $200,000 ante. 1.00

00:15:27.000 It's to get in the fucking game. 0.98

00:15:30.000 Right, to get a job when you get out where you're not going to make a fraction of that every year, so you're going to be behind the eight ball for the rest of your life. 0.99

00:15:36.000 Now think about, you know, black people not being able to build equity and wealth through generations of, you know, government policy that excluded them from, you know, from whether it's the Homestead Act or the Federal Housing Administration or the GI Bill.

00:15:52.000 You know, all these government interventions...

00:15:56.000 Socialism, if you will, entitlements, if you will, were made to help white families build equity, right? 0.75

00:16:03.000 Over generations.

00:16:04.000 Black people were explicitly excluded from that.

00:16:08.000 So add that on top of the amount of money that you're going and you start to see the hole that we've dug for people. 1.00

00:16:16.000 And if we don't address that hole, I don't care how many fucking... 0.99

00:16:21.000 Comedy sketches we pull, and how many things... 0.99

00:16:25.000 We're not doing anything.

00:16:27.000 Yeah, we haven't addressed the hole that exists from being 150 years removed from slavery, which is crazy.

00:16:33.000 That's a blink in time.

00:16:36.000 It's nothing.

00:16:37.000 And how crazy is it that... 0.90

00:16:39.000 I always hear it from the butt people.

00:16:42.000 They're like, the George Floyd thing. 0.66

00:16:43.000 Yeah, that was terrible.

00:16:44.000 But... 0.90

00:16:44.000 As soon as they say the butt, I'm like, no, no butt. 0.90

00:16:47.000 No, but he wasn't an angel.

00:16:49.000 No, but he was...

00:16:51.000 It doesn't matter.

00:16:53.000 And when you're upset that people are pulling down Confederate statues, people have been begging for that.

00:17:00.000 Those things got put up in the 1920s to really lock in Jim Crow.

00:17:06.000 Those things aren't there.

00:17:08.000 They're not memorials to the dead.

00:17:11.000 They're hagiography to a war for slavery.

00:17:17.000 We shot the movie down south, man.

00:17:19.000 So I saw these monuments.

00:17:20.000 You would think they would say, like, here's a statue of Robert E. Lee. 1.00

00:17:24.000 This motherfucker. 1.00

00:17:26.000 To keep people slaves. 1.00

00:17:29.000 And then we built this thing in the 20s to make black people kind of afraid so that they knew they couldn't take it.

00:17:33.000 But it doesn't say that.

00:17:35.000 It said, this great man.

00:17:38.000 Of course people are going to pull him down because they've been begging for us to do something about it.

00:17:45.000 For a hundred years.

00:17:46.000 It's also the origins of those.

00:17:47.000 A lot of those statues were actually put up during the Civil Rights Movement.

00:17:51.000 And they're cheaply made.

00:17:52.000 They were put up as a middle finger to the Civil Rights Movement.

00:17:57.000 No question.

00:17:59.000 But we need something.

00:18:04.000 There has to be a process.

00:18:06.000 I always think about what South Africa did.

00:18:09.000 There has to be a process.

00:18:13.000 I still think, to this day, and I don't know how your experience with this is, but I still think there's a large swath of white people in society who feel like they blame black people for not being able to get out of this hole.

00:18:37.000 Like, hey man, if they would just pull their pants up and talk different, you know, they wouldn't have such a hard time.

00:18:44.000 Hey, why don't you just work harder? 0.92

00:18:46.000 It's a ridiculous perspective and it's also not based... 0.94

00:18:49.000 You don't have... 0.97

00:18:50.000 Anyone who would think like that doesn't understand how human beings develop and grow.

00:18:54.000 If you have someone...

00:18:55.000 It's widespread.

00:18:56.000 I would say it's widespread.

00:18:58.000 Yeah, it's a dangerous narrative.

00:19:13.000 No plus.

00:19:14.000 No plus.

00:19:17.000 We don't all start out at the same starting block. 1.00

00:19:19.000 So all you pull yourself up by your own bootstrap, motherfuckers, you're lucky you have arms. 0.99

00:19:25.000 There's people out there born with no arms. 0.99

00:19:27.000 We should all be thinking of ourselves in this country as a community, not as a bunch of people in competition with each other.

00:19:34.000 We're all piling our money together every year.

00:19:37.000 We throw our taxes into the mix to try to take care of the infrastructure and the government and the housing and all the different things that get paid for by our taxes.

00:19:45.000 We're a community, man, and we're not thinking like a community.

00:19:48.000 We're thinking like a bunch of people that don't want other people to have the same shot in life.

00:19:56.000 I think you struck on something, though, that's very important in all this, and that is a theory of limited resources.

00:20:05.000 A lot of the conflict between what you would consider the more nativist wing of American politics and The more progressive side is this idea of resource guarding. 0.99

00:20:20.000 I work my fucking ass off. 0.96

00:20:22.000 I play by the rules and they're going to take all my labor and they're going to pour it into these people. 0.99

00:20:27.000 And I do think we have to address that idea that we're here to build equity.

00:20:34.000 Let's all get together and the project of this next generation is to build a stronger foundation, a granite bearing for everyone to stand on so that there's a few people standing on Mount Everest.

00:20:49.000 Yeah.

00:21:07.000 Food stamps and welfare start to go away.

00:21:10.000 Because we're building something more substantial.

00:21:14.000 We built a great middle class in the 50s for white people.

00:21:17.000 We have to do the same now for the country.

00:21:19.000 And also reassure people who are resentful of that.

00:21:28.000 That they're not being left behind either. 0.99

00:21:30.000 That nobody is saying, and your lives are fucking cake. 0.98

00:21:47.000 More of it away to the government and you think the government is going to solve this? 0.97

00:21:51.000 My perspective was, if you just looked at it this way, if you could give...

00:21:55.000 Let's just get crazy.

00:21:56.000 If you could give 25% more money to taxes, but the world would be 50% better, wouldn't you want to invest in that?

00:22:04.000 I understand that people are check to check.

00:22:06.000 I understand.

00:22:07.000 But if people like me, people that earn a good amount of money are the ones who are going to be hit the hardest.

00:22:14.000 If you wanted a better world...

00:22:17.000 Wouldn't you be willing to invest some of your money into that better world?

00:22:22.000 And if that money goes to making sure that no one has to do this in the future and that we develop this It's a question of,

00:22:42.000 you know, when you look at the greatest anti-poverty program we've ever put in place, it's Social Security.

00:22:46.000 Now, the flip side of that is what they'll say is that...

00:22:50.000 I think?

00:23:06.000 Every administration that comes in is going to stimulate the economy.

00:23:09.000 They all do it.

00:23:10.000 We don't have a free market.

00:23:12.000 The Fed right now is driving so much money into stocks.

00:23:16.000 You're talking about zero interest rates, negative interest rates.

00:23:19.000 They're driving everything away from bonds and savings so that the stock market, which for some reason we've come to look at like a pulse oximeter, Of the nation, which it's not.

00:23:33.000 It's, you know, oh my God, we lost 300 DAOs today.

00:23:36.000 Like, we've come to look at it like it's our temperature.

00:23:39.000 Yeah.

00:23:41.000 So everybody's going to stimulate the economy.

00:23:43.000 So what did, let's look at what Trump did.

00:23:45.000 So $1.5 trillion tax cut, right?

00:23:49.000 Overwhelmingly, though, it went to people who already have a shit ton of money.

00:23:53.000 And then we cut the corporate tax rate from, I don't know, I think it was 35 down to 21, right?

00:23:58.000 Right.

00:23:59.000 Supposedly, they were going to reinvest it, but they mostly did buybacks.

00:24:03.000 So they're increasing their investor wealth through that as well.

00:24:06.000 So you're talking about trillions of dollars of stimulus, right?

00:24:12.000 That are just going to that same theory.

00:24:16.000 Take those trillion dollars and let's invest.

00:24:20.000 Let's stimulate the economy, but not from up there, from down here. 0.98

00:24:25.000 Let's take that And fucking Marshall Plan our country. 0.98

00:24:31.000 And build it so that it's sturdy on the legs. 0.99

00:24:36.000 You know, you know you're a fighter.

00:24:38.000 Sturdy on the legs.

00:24:40.000 If you're not sturdy on the legs, you got nothing.

00:24:42.000 My idea is we should get Dick Cheney involved and we should hire Halliburton to fix up the inner cities like it did all the places we bombed in Iraq.

00:24:50.000 Give him some no-bid contracts.

00:24:52.000 Pour that money back in the community.

00:24:54.000 I mean, I'm joking about Halliburton.

00:24:57.000 But it is a business.

00:24:58.000 There's something there.

00:24:59.000 Well, I had a thing.

00:25:01.000 We're trying to do this thing for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who've gotten sick from burn pits.

00:25:07.000 Are you familiar at all with burn pits?

00:25:09.000 No.

00:25:10.000 What is it?

00:25:11.000 So, in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, I mean, this will go back generations, but in Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of the...

00:25:23.000 They would build these sometimes 10-acre, 20-acre pits.

00:25:28.000 Everything would go into them from mess waste to hazardous materials to computers to everything.

00:25:36.000 They light it with jet fuel and they burn it.

00:25:40.000 So now you've got guys that are downrange that are also down...

00:25:43.000 I mean, they're living...

00:25:44.000 They're basically camping out in a toxic waste dump, right?

00:25:47.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:25:49.000 So they come home...

00:25:51.000 And you're starting to see pulmonary issues, cancer issues.

00:25:56.000 These guys are dying.

00:25:58.000 And they're not being...

00:26:01.000 They have to advocate against the government.

00:26:03.000 So we're trying to put together, working with this team coalition, wounded warrior groups and people, VSOs and groups like that, to address this legislatively similar to what was done for the 9-11 community,

00:26:18.000 right?

00:26:19.000 So I thought...

00:26:22.000 Because it's always about money.

00:26:23.000 You know, we always have money for war, but we almost never have money to pay for what are the absolutely could have seen coming a mile away consequences of what our veterans face when they come back, right?

00:26:36.000 We don't take care of them. 0.98

00:26:38.000 When they're out of sight, they're out of mind.

00:26:41.000 And so my idea was you have all these profiteers, Raytheon, Halliburton, all these groups, make them kick in 10% big.

00:26:52.000 A contingency in war so that when these guys go home and the government backs away, there is money there to take care of what is the natural damage that's done to these people in the name of fighting for our country.

00:27:13.000 So that they don't, and their families, I mean these people have to become their own lawyers.

00:27:17.000 They have to go in front of medical boards and they have no support.

00:27:20.000 Their families are oftentimes caring for them, whether they have health issues or traumatic brain injury or, you know, other kinds of invisible wounds.

00:27:31.000 And they're kind of hung out to dry.

00:27:33.000 Yes.

00:27:33.000 Not kinda.

00:27:34.000 Very much so.

00:27:36.000 You know, the UFC had a program back in the day where we were working with the Intrepid Center for Excellence to work with traumatic brain injury patients.

00:27:55.000 Sure.

00:28:03.000 You're blowing people up and you're not preparing for people to come back injured.

00:28:08.000 You're sending young, brave women and men to die for their country or risk severe brain damage and you don't have enough money set aside to treat them when they return.

00:28:17.000 I'm like, that's insane.

00:28:18.000 Everybody thinks that soldiers come back and they've got health care for life.

00:28:23.000 They don't.

00:28:23.000 No, they don't.

00:28:25.000 You've got a five-year window, but if you get something that they deem was not service-related, so you could have been There's a guy in Texas, we work with his wife Rosie and Leroy Torres,

00:28:40.000 who's literally like, his case wouldn't be, they denied his case in front of the Texas Supreme Court.

00:28:48.000 Yeah, it's evil.

00:28:50.000 This absolute intention to deny healthcare, and it goes all the way back to Desert Storm.

00:28:58.000 Yeah.

00:28:59.000 You remember the whole...

00:29:01.000 To Vietnam.

00:29:02.000 Yes.

00:29:03.000 There are people who are still fighting the government over Agent Orange.

00:29:07.000 Right.

00:29:08.000 And still being denied.

00:29:09.000 Yeah.

00:29:10.000 It's crazy.

00:29:12.000 And the depleted radiation sickness that people were getting from the Iraq war.

00:29:19.000 Right.

00:29:19.000 And the guys that went, you know, that K-2 base.

00:29:22.000 Yeah.

00:29:23.000 And I think it was Uzbekistan.

00:29:25.000 And it was a toxic weight.

00:29:28.000 Like, these soldiers literally had, like, irradiated tar on their boots. 1.00

00:29:33.000 Sick as shit. 0.99

00:29:34.000 And they can't get, you know, there's blue water. 1.00

00:29:38.000 I'm telling you, like, every war, inevitably, and they're always told the same thing.

00:29:44.000 Hey, we don't have the science yet.

00:29:45.000 And, you know, it's going to take us 20 to 25 years on the science.

00:29:48.000 But you do have the science.

00:29:50.000 Because you got the science from, like, jet fuel burned at the Trade Center.

00:29:55.000 So, like, the science is in.

00:29:57.000 Use that science. 0.99

00:29:58.000 Like, stop fucking with these people and help them. 0.99

00:30:02.000 Yeah, the jet fuel burn at the Trade Center is another excellent example of first responders, right, that were terribly sick, and many, many of them died because of the fumes, and people in the surrounding areas. 0.99

00:30:15.000 In fact, Donna Summers died of lung cancer, and she lived near there.

00:30:21.000 I don't doubt that it's related.

00:30:22.000 It could be related, but many people did.

00:30:26.000 Jimmy Zendroga, he was a cop, and he got really sick.

00:30:29.000 I mean, Those guys developed the pile cough like a day into the search and rescue, but Jimmy's and Joey, he gets sick, and they kept trying to tell him that, A, first it was in his head, and then it was, it had nothing to do with where you were and working on the pile in 9-11,

00:30:48.000 and then they tried to say, like, it's from snorting drugs. 0.97

00:30:52.000 They fucking, you know, ruin this man's reputation as he's dying. 0.99

00:30:57.000 He dies, they do an autopsy, in his lungs. 1.00

00:31:01.000 Everything you could possibly imagine from a pulverized building.

00:31:05.000 Jesus.

00:31:08.000 Asbestos, limestone, cyanide.

00:31:11.000 Like, it was an utter disaster.

00:31:17.000 And they just keep fighting people.

00:31:19.000 And they're doing the same thing to these veterans now with the burn pits.

00:31:24.000 And it's, you know, the whole thing's just got to stop.

00:31:26.000 There's got to be a presumption.

00:31:28.000 for these illnesses so that these guys don't have to fight so hard to get.

00:31:33.000 I think along the same lines we're talking about reform of the police department, there has to be some reform of the healthcare system that deals with veterans because it seems to be just this long history of doing it a certain way to save the most money possible and the idea that these guys are sacrificial anyway.

00:31:50.000 They're sending them off to potentially die if they come back alive.

00:31:55.000 They do their very best to not treat them and to not spend any more money on them.

00:32:01.000 It's sick.

00:32:02.000 It's amazing we have so many guys that are still patriotic, that still want to go and do this, considering the fact that they're treated so poorly when they return.

00:32:10.000 Yeah.

00:32:11.000 And they lose, you know, listen, being in the military is isolating in the first place.

00:32:15.000 It's just not that, you know, it's only less than 1%, I think, of the population.

00:32:21.000 Put on top of that, when you get out, you know, you're used to being with a unit, you're used to that camaraderie, you're used to all pulling for the same, you know, working as a team.

00:32:29.000 Well, now you're removed from your unit, and if you're hurt, that's even further isolating.

00:32:34.000 You know, and in that moment, to have to then, you're worried about your future, your family's future, and in that moment, when you, when that's when the government should step in and go, hey man, You fulfilled your service to us.

00:32:51.000 You fulfilled that covenant.

00:32:52.000 We will fulfill that covenant to you.

00:32:55.000 We will send that.

00:32:57.000 We'll do the right thing.

00:32:59.000 And they do the opposite.

00:33:02.000 They do the opposite. 0.99

00:33:03.000 Some of the shit is so simple and fair and obvious. 0.99

00:33:07.000 And you do wonder, like, how has this system become so corrupt and corroded that we can't Anymore as a people, do the right thing. 1.00

00:33:21.000 Just do the right fucking thing. 0.99

00:33:23.000 How did we get here? 0.99

00:33:25.000 Well, I think, again, this speaks to what's going on in this country in terms of revolt.

00:33:29.000 That we realize, like, all this stuff, whether you're talking about the healthcare system, whether you're talking about police reform, whether you're talking about impoverished communities that are stricken with crime and drugs, it's not changing...

00:33:42.000 Under the normal conditions.

00:33:44.000 Something has to happen, and something has to happen in a big way to change it.

00:33:48.000 And all these things need to be addressed, right?

00:33:50.000 Healthcare of soldiers needs to be addressed, reform of the police, reform of these communities.

00:33:54.000 It has to be addressed.

00:33:55.000 If you're going to spend trillions of dollars to bail out these large corporations, you've got to work on these other problems too.

00:34:03.000 You can't just ignore them because they're not the ones who are funding your campaign.

00:34:08.000 But that's a huge issue and that's the thing that's got to stop.

00:34:11.000 Look at even 2008, right?

00:34:13.000 So we have this enormous economic collapse in 2008. The housing market sinks and these derivative mortgage things go down.

00:34:25.000 And the world economy grinds to a halt.

00:34:28.000 Thousands of people lose their jobs, foreclosures all over the place. 0.98

00:34:30.000 So they come in and they pump billions of dollars into the organizations That sunk the fucking ship in the first place. 0.99

00:34:41.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:34:42.000 That's where the money goes.

00:34:43.000 And I remember asking the Treasury Secretary at the time, you know, this is a mortgage question, right?

00:34:49.000 Because the derivatives made it like a geometric problem.

00:34:53.000 So if they're bundling mortgages and 8% of those mortgages go underwater, it sinks the derivatives market, which is trillions of dollars as opposed to billions of dollars.

00:35:01.000 So I said, you know, with all that money, what if you just...

00:35:17.000 Huh?

00:35:21.000 Huh?

00:35:27.000 So moral hazard is a theory that you can't incentivize bad behavior.

00:35:32.000 So what he's saying is the people that took out mortgages on their homes that went underwater, that's their fault.

00:35:41.000 So you can't bail them out because that would be sending a hazardous message morally about the economy.

00:35:52.000 So I said, what's the moral hazard?

00:35:56.000 Of then making the people that actually blew up the economy whole again.

00:36:03.000 What's that?

00:36:04.000 How is that not moral hazard?

00:36:06.000 And he said, the plane was on fire and we had to land it.

00:36:11.000 But they were the ones who lit the plane on fire.

00:36:16.000 You're rewarding them for that.

00:36:18.000 Yeah.

00:36:21.000 Yeah, I've heard both sides of that argument.

00:36:24.000 I've heard the argument that nothing's too big to fail, let it fail, and then I've heard the argument that if it did fail, it would be so catastrophic.

00:36:32.000 But I'm saying it wouldn't have failed, so it was a failure because they bundled more.

00:36:37.000 Yes, oh yeah, they did it all to themselves.

00:36:39.000 But if you made the mortgages at the base of that, okay?

00:36:43.000 So let's say 10% of the mortgages were underwater.

00:36:46.000 So let's say you had a $200,000 mortgage and now the house is only worth $150,000.

00:36:52.000 So instead of giving a million dollars to AIG at the top, give $50,000 to that mortgage, bring it into line with its value, suddenly that thing's not underwater anymore.

00:37:02.000 It's like putting ballast into a ship that's sinking. 0.99

00:37:05.000 Put the ballast in, the ship comes up, rather than just saying, alright, we'll buy you another fucking ship. 0.99

00:37:10.000 That almost seems too logical, though. 0.99

00:37:16.000 Right?

00:37:16.000 That's kind of part of what's the problem with all this.

00:37:19.000 That's what I was saying.

00:37:21.000 That's moral hazard.

00:37:22.000 I was just like, I don't even know what to do with that.

00:37:24.000 Incentivizing bad behavior doesn't count when you're the ones who tank the economy.

00:37:29.000 It's like what you're talking about today. 0.90

00:37:31.000 If someone tried to say that these small businesses that are going under because of the COVID sanctions, because everybody's been locked down, if those people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it's a great example why that analogy sucks.

00:37:43.000 Because there's nothing to do, man.

00:37:45.000 You can't work.

00:37:46.000 There's nothing.

00:37:47.000 What do you want them to do?

00:37:49.000 There's no opportunity.

00:37:51.000 Everything's shut down.

00:37:52.000 If you go under at this time, it's not your fault.

00:37:54.000 It's one of the rare times.

00:37:56.000 If I'm the government right now, here's something I could do that's like, again, it seems like a simple solution, which is just suspend and extend.

00:38:06.000 So the country's shut down, right?

00:38:08.000 What's people's oftentimes biggest worry?

00:38:10.000 My rent or my mortgage?

00:38:11.000 Yeah.

00:38:12.000 Suspend and extend.

00:38:13.000 You know what?

00:38:14.000 We're going to do a six-month suspend.

00:38:20.000 And if the landlords need to be helped out, that's where we'll focus.

00:38:24.000 We'll make sure that the landlords don't go under from having to pay too much in taxes or having to pay too much in repairing.

00:38:32.000 Attack the problem at its core, which is people's insecurity about they're unemployed.

00:38:39.000 They have to still pay the rent and their mortgage or other bills.

00:38:43.000 Let's take a big chunk of their nut. 1.00

00:38:46.000 Oftentimes for people, mortgage and rent is one of the biggest nuts. 0.99

00:38:50.000 Just fucking say, like... 0.98

00:38:52.000 Because clearly we have the wherewithal and the money. 0.99

00:38:56.000 We're suspending and extending.

00:38:58.000 Everybody, like...

00:39:00.000 Give people a chance to breathe just for a moment.

00:39:04.000 And for the landlords, I'm not trying to dick them over.

00:39:07.000 Like, give them some kind of rent, a real estate tax break, or some operating expense.

00:39:14.000 Keep everybody...

00:39:15.000 You know what?

00:39:16.000 It's almost like you're a patient on a ventilator.

00:39:19.000 Like, Until we get past this moment, because they keep saying, well, we gotta reopen the economy.

00:39:29.000 We are the economy.

00:39:33.000 Corporations may be people, but corporations still can't catch COVID. We can!

00:39:38.000 So, I don't understand why they don't do something that seems simple and addresses a real concern, grassroots, on the floor.

00:39:51.000 Again, you're speaking too logically.

00:39:54.000 I think it's just a...

00:39:57.000 It's such a difficult time, too, politically.

00:40:00.000 Because the ideas get segmented into left or right, right?

00:40:06.000 Like, even the ideas of how to address COVID, how to address the economy, how to address all the...

00:40:11.000 Everything becomes politicized.

00:40:14.000 And it's...

00:40:14.000 I mean, that's...

00:40:15.000 Terrible.

00:40:16.000 You know, that's unfortunate.

00:40:17.000 Yeah.

00:40:18.000 That's...

00:40:18.000 It's really unfortunate because...

00:40:20.000 Well, it's even...

00:40:21.000 Yeah, it shouldn't be that way, and I'm not sure how it started that way, and it's really unfortunate.

00:40:27.000 There's got to be more emphasis on testing, and there's got to be more emphasis on showing people how to keep their immune system healthy, and then recognizing people that can't do that, and doing what we can to protect them.

00:40:39.000 You're going to wear a mask.

00:40:40.000 I'm Joe Rogan.

00:40:41.000 He's saying out loud, I'm going to wear a mask now.

00:40:43.000 I've always been... 0.98

00:40:44.000 I was fucking with Bill Burr to try to get him to rant. 0.98

00:40:47.000 People think I'm really serious about that. 0.98

00:40:49.000 I was like, what, are you going to wear a mask?

00:40:51.000 And I see Bill over there steaming.

00:40:52.000 I'm like, here he goes!

00:40:53.000 Here he goes!

00:40:55.000 Like, I wear a mask whenever I go out in public because it's the law.

00:40:58.000 And I don't want anybody yelling at me.

00:41:00.000 Also, though, when you...

00:41:02.000 I get tested all the time, too.

00:41:06.000 On a side note, what?

00:41:07.000 How great is Burr?

00:41:08.000 He's the best.

00:41:09.000 I love him.

00:41:10.000 He's so funny.

00:41:12.000 He's so funny and so prolific.

00:41:14.000 But here's the thing that I almost love even more.

00:41:16.000 He'll just send me a video of a great drummer that he loves.

00:41:21.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:41:22.000 I took it up, but he's really good.

00:41:24.000 But I just love that dude.

00:41:26.000 He's so good.

00:41:27.000 He's great, and I love getting him wound up.

00:41:29.000 That's what I was doing with the whole mask thing. 1.00

00:41:32.000 And people think I was really arguing, you shouldn't wear a mask or you're a bitch. 1.00

00:41:37.000 God. 1.00

00:41:37.000 But that's also the problem with soundbites on Twitter. 1.00

00:41:41.000 Yeah, it's, you know, it exists.

00:41:43.000 It's the content factory.

00:41:44.000 And, you know, anybody that creates content, you know, then that goes out into the world.

00:41:50.000 And look, they're looking for eyeballs too. 0.98

00:41:53.000 And that's why I always feel like Like, I take shit, but I can't complain about it, because that's... 0.99

00:42:01.000 Part of the game. 0.99

00:42:02.000 Right, that's part of the game.

00:42:03.000 It's what I do for a living.

00:42:04.000 So, like, when people say political correctness, it's overwhelming. 0.99

00:42:08.000 I just say, like, hey, man, it's just other people pushing back and getting to say their shit, and that's exactly what they should be doing. 0.97

00:42:16.000 The internet has democratized, you know, outrage. 0.98

00:42:21.000 And...

00:42:30.000 Yeah.

00:42:31.000 Yeah.

00:42:34.000 Yeah.

00:42:41.000 It's all, every day we're just bombarded by what everybody's thinking.

00:42:45.000 Well, you're also bombarded by the people that spend the most time doing it.

00:42:49.000 Because there's a lot of mentally unwell people that spend their entire day camped out on Twitter having arguments.

00:42:55.000 And if you want to venture into that world and risk your consciousness and your health, your literal mental health, by communicating in this really crude manner with text messages and, you know, arguing over semantics with people that you don't even know.

00:43:11.000 It's a terrible way to exist.

00:43:13.000 Are you on Twitter?

00:43:14.000 Do you have a Twitter account?

00:43:15.000 No, I have a Twitter account, but I don't read it.

00:43:17.000 You don't read it?

00:43:18.000 No, I post things on Instagram.

00:43:21.000 They go to Twitter.

00:43:22.000 Occasionally I'll post things on Twitter, but I don't read it.

00:43:25.000 It's just too toxic, man.

00:43:27.000 I get it. 0.98

00:43:28.000 And I know when I've fucked up, and I know when people are mad at me when it's legit and valid, and I know when they're mad at me for nonsense. 0.97

00:43:35.000 And I am my worst self-critic, so I don't need other people yelling at me. 0.90

00:43:40.000 I know what I did wrong.

00:43:41.000 I stay clear.

00:43:42.000 That's a healthy...

00:43:43.000 I think that's the only approach you can have in this environment.

00:43:46.000 I think it's a healthy way to look at it.

00:43:48.000 I always try and keep myself...

00:43:50.000 You figure when people are coming at you, there's probably going to be something constructive in there.

00:43:55.000 Sometimes I have the energy to find it, and sometimes I'm just like, I really can't do it.

00:44:00.000 Yeah, sometimes you can't do it, but yeah, there's value in criticism.

00:44:03.000 It's very important, but not too much.

00:44:05.000 It's like anything else.

00:44:07.000 There's value in a little bit of snake venom.

00:44:09.000 You develop a tolerance, but if you get a big fat dose, you're dead.

00:44:13.000 In many ways, it's the same with interacting with people that are upset with you.

00:44:17.000 There's going to be people that are upset with everybody for no reason.

00:44:20.000 No matter what the story is in the news, even if it's clear-cut to you and I, there's going to be someone who has a violent opposition to that idea.

00:44:26.000 It doesn't mean they're right, and it doesn't mean you're right.

00:44:29.000 It just means people have a lot of different fucking ways of looking at the world, and if you want to exist in conflict, in perpetuity, stay on Twitter, and stay on Twitter all day long, and just argue with people. 0.60

00:44:40.000 I don't want to do that. 0.95

00:44:41.000 And again, it's not that I... I don't have any room for improvement.

00:44:45.000 It's not that I don't appreciate or accept or recognize the value of criticism because I definitely do.

00:44:50.000 It's that it's not healthy.

00:44:52.000 It's not healthy for me.

00:44:54.000 It could directly affect the kind of content I put out.

00:44:57.000 It's not good.

00:44:58.000 That's what I was about to say.

00:44:59.000 Do you feel like one of the hardest things to do is to maintain your kind of creative barometer so that you don't let those kinds of things When you feel like they're not constructive, pulling you too far to the outrage world or some other things,

00:45:18.000 like to maintain that.

00:45:20.000 And that's why I think it's good, like what you do in terms of conversation, like you basically say, you know, I'm going to do long form because that, you know, feels like, at least from my perspective, The healthiest form is conversation.

00:45:36.000 But even in that case, people will take long form, edit things out of context, and then it becomes the same problem that we have with Twitter and with everything else.

00:45:46.000 You get these little sound bites, these little video clips, and you don't understand the full context of the conversation or what was actually said.

00:45:55.000 And then people get outraged at that.

00:45:57.000 You know, we are living in a very strange time, and I believe it's an adolescent stage of communication.

00:46:03.000 And I think it's going to give...

00:46:04.000 Our frustrations for this are going to give birth to a better form.

00:46:08.000 And I think one of the things that podcasts, what it's in response to, the popularity of the long form, is in response to people being upset with like these...

00:46:19.000 Traditional late night talk show things where there's a window here with one guy on the right and a window here with a guy on the left and there's a person in the center and they're yelling at each other and then you cut to commercial.

00:46:27.000 And you don't really feel like things got resolved.

00:46:29.000 So the response to that where people are gravitating...

00:46:32.000 It's theater.

00:46:33.000 Yeah.

00:46:34.000 I think there's the same...

00:46:36.000 Was it hard for you, you know, when we came up as comics, it was also at that point, like, it was sort of a gladiatorial environment, you know, and I remember, you know, the Boston scene, you know, was always like, that's a tough scene.

00:46:50.000 Yeah.

00:46:50.000 And you'd come up and it was kind of gladiatorial, but you had that audience and you developed kind of that thick skin.

00:46:58.000 Is it hard to then make that switch?

00:47:01.000 In your mind to this different form that's so much more considered, so much less about conquering the stage.

00:47:12.000 Yeah.

00:47:13.000 It is about being open.

00:47:15.000 And is that something that for you, what was the switch for you from those two forms?

00:47:22.000 Because that's an interesting switch.

00:47:25.000 Well, in the beginning, there wasn't a very good switch.

00:47:27.000 You know, it's like one of the reasons why the early episodes sucked.

00:47:30.000 It's like I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't think anybody was listening.

00:47:33.000 It was just for fun.

00:47:34.000 And there was a lot of just hanging out with comics and just doing what comics do. 0.98

00:47:38.000 If we were at a diner somewhere, just talking shit and making each other laugh, but we were doing it and videotaping it.

00:47:44.000 And then along the way, I started interviewing actual interesting people and talking to them and having conversations and not... 0.92

00:47:52.000 There's a place for comedy, and then I make a really big point in never trying to force comedy into places where it doesn't belong.

00:48:03.000 I do that also with the UFC. When I do commentary, I'm never funny.

00:48:06.000 There's no reason to be.

00:48:07.000 It's not what my job is.

00:48:08.000 And then when I'm doing a conversation with someone, I just try to talk.

00:48:13.000 I don't try to be a comic.

00:48:16.000 I'm a human.

00:48:17.000 I want to know what they're talking about, and I want to get them to expand upon their ideas as best as they can.

00:48:23.000 And I want to be engaged.

00:48:25.000 That's all I'm trying to do.

00:48:26.000 So it wasn't that was a big transition.

00:48:30.000 It was that I had to learn how to do this thing that I didn't think was a skill.

00:48:34.000 I thought that being on the radio or podcasting was just talking.

00:48:39.000 That's what I thought.

00:48:40.000 You're just talking.

00:48:41.000 And then I realized, no, no, no.

00:48:42.000 You're talking in a way that people want to listen.

00:48:45.000 You're making it entertaining.

00:48:47.000 You're keeping your ego in check.

00:48:49.000 You're moving the conversation along while not being overbearing.

00:48:53.000 You're not letting people ramble too much where it's boring you.

00:48:56.000 You've got to figure out how to juice things up and push them and massage them and move them around.

00:49:01.000 It's a skill, and I didn't think it was a skill.

00:49:04.000 And like I said, that's one of the reasons why my early episodes sucked so bad.

00:49:08.000 There wasn't even any consideration to the fact that people were listening.

00:49:11.000 It was just fun.

00:49:12.000 We were just doing it for ourselves.

00:49:15.000 And then along the way, and this also speaks to the value of criticism, I read a bunch of criticism about what was wrong with the podcast.

00:49:24.000 You know, that we talk over each other, I talk too much, whatever it was.

00:49:28.000 And I took it to heart.

00:49:29.000 And I would think about it.

00:49:31.000 I'd go, okay, I've got to consider that people are listening to this.

00:49:33.000 This isn't just what I want to say.

00:49:35.000 It's what I want people to hear.

00:49:38.000 Just like stand-up, you want the joke to easily enter into a person's mind.

00:49:43.000 So it's so well-written and so perfectly timed that the audience goes, Jon Stewart's got this.

00:49:48.000 I'm just going to sit back and let him take my thoughts on a ride.

00:49:52.000 And that's what really good stand-up is.

00:49:55.000 I mean, it's one of the reasons why Dave was able to do that 846 special that way, where he has this long, drawn-out story with so many important points, and a few laughs thrown in there, but so engaged.

00:50:10.000 And he's so...

00:50:12.000 You just go with him.

00:50:13.000 You just let him take you.

00:50:14.000 Just let him take you. 0.91

00:50:15.000 And that's...

00:50:17.000 Everything, whether it's someone giving a speech or, you know, I mean, even like just almost every conversation that we have.

00:50:26.000 There's a skill to it that we're not taught.

00:50:29.000 I mean, you know what it's like to talk to someone where they're not even really talking to you.

00:50:33.000 They're just kind of waiting for them to talk.

00:50:35.000 They're waiting for you to finish so they can talk about themselves.

00:50:38.000 That's a real problem with people and communicating.

00:50:41.000 And I had to learn how to be a better communicator, really.

00:50:45.000 It also had to be Authentically you.

00:50:48.000 Because there is now, like, I think the best measure sometimes of art or of stand-up or those things is when you hear things or see things that are uniquely that person.

00:50:59.000 Like, nobody could have delivered 846 but Dave.

00:51:04.000 Right.

00:51:04.000 Perfect.

00:51:05.000 It's just authentically, uniquely him.

00:51:09.000 Your voice that you develop authentically, uniquely.

00:51:12.000 And that's a hard thing to develop.

00:51:13.000 It's funny because I feel like That's what stand-up helped do for me.

00:51:19.000 Because when you do that in front of an audience, even I'll give like Boston as an example, you know, when we'd be working Knicks, you'd do that, that run of Knicks is like the Framingham and the other ones, you know, but you go to the one in central Boston first.

00:51:33.000 And I can remember, I hadn't played The Room before and I was a young comic and I'd just done Letterman, I think.

00:51:40.000 I'd gotten like a big break.

00:51:42.000 And so the guys at Knicks booked me on that run to be a headline of my first run on those Knicks properties.

00:51:49.000 So I came into Knicks and they were just going to throw me up on stage.

00:51:54.000 And what they did was such a learning experience because you kind of think like, I'm on Letterman.

00:52:00.000 I'm just going to walk into this place.

00:52:01.000 I'm coming up from New York, hotbed of comedy. 0.99

00:52:04.000 I'm going to fucking strut my stuff at Knicks. 0.98

00:52:07.000 And they threw up before me I think it was Lenny Clark, Kenny Rogerson, and Sweeney. 0.99

00:52:17.000 And I walked down the room and it was like Dresden. 0.87

00:52:20.000 They had so blown that room out with brilliance.

00:52:25.000 And then it was like, from New York, a Letterman guy, John Stewart.

00:52:30.000 And it was like...

00:52:33.000 They were clubbing a baby seal.

00:52:35.000 I was just helpless.

00:52:38.000 Man!

00:52:39.000 They did that to everybody.

00:52:40.000 But so wonderfully humbling.

00:52:43.000 Yeah.

00:52:43.000 Because it makes you realize in that moment, like, oh right, I've got a shit ton of work to do.

00:52:48.000 Yes. 1.00

00:52:49.000 Just murder it with brilliant shit. 1.00

00:52:53.000 And it was just like, oh boy. 1.00

00:52:55.000 Yeah, if you want to be humbled, the Boston comedy scene in the late 80s and the early 90s, that was the place to be.

00:53:03.000 It was a great place to develop, too, though, because it lets you know.

00:53:07.000 I mean, you never want to be overconfident.

00:53:09.000 It's one of the worst things you could be in anything.

00:53:11.000 And you never want to be lazy.

00:53:13.000 Especially when you're delivering something to people that are actually paying to see you talk.

00:53:18.000 Right?

00:53:19.000 Like, man, there's such an important...

00:53:38.000 It's very difficult to describe. 0.79

00:53:42.000 They're mad.

00:53:43.000 They can do that too.

00:53:44.000 They can talk too. 1.00

00:53:45.000 Why the fuck are you talking? 1.00

00:53:46.000 That's right. 0.99

00:53:49.000 There's real valuable lessons to that as a comment coming up that you do apply to, whether it's podcasting or hosting any kind of a show.

00:53:57.000 Yeah, no, there's a fragility to it.

00:53:59.000 And if you don't stay on top of it, the energy of that room, it is a bear that will get up and walk out of the room if you're not careful.

00:54:06.000 But it's interesting also that now, so you're known now, Stand-up when you're known versus stand-up when you're not is also a different experience because you walk into a room when they know you and there is, you know, you don't have to be as sharp if you don't want to because of that.

00:54:23.000 And that's a discipline as well to kind of make sure that you're not coasting on things.

00:54:29.000 Maybe some goodwill that they had for you based on something else.

00:54:33.000 That's very dangerous.

00:54:34.000 That's one of the reasons why the comedy store is so important.

00:54:36.000 Because when I go there, it's not my crowd.

00:54:39.000 It's my crowd and Anthony Jeselnik's crowd and Ali Wong's crowd.

00:54:44.000 There's a lot of people there coming to see everybody.

00:54:48.000 And you're going on after all these murderers.

00:54:50.000 So when you're in that kind of an environment, you sort of have to dot your I's and cross your T's.

00:54:56.000 You've got to do the work.

00:54:57.000 Are you still really involved?

00:54:59.000 Because for me, once I started the show and once I had kids, I don't really get to the clubs anymore.

00:55:06.000 So it almost feels like old-timers day when I show up.

00:55:14.000 But I wish I could get out there more. 0.92

00:55:18.000 Every night it would be like 8 o'clock and I'd be like, oh shit, I should just drive up to the city and go work the cellar.

00:55:27.000 Yeah, well, the way I had been setting it up at the store was all my sets would be after 10 o'clock for the most part.

00:55:36.000 Except rarely.

00:55:37.000 Rarely I would do an 8 o'clock show.

00:55:39.000 So everybody would be in bed.

00:55:40.000 So I'd leave my house and my set wouldn't be probably until 11. So I'd leave my house and everybody would be asleep.

00:55:47.000 And it was perfect.

00:55:49.000 And that's also my favorite time to write too.

00:55:52.000 I would come home from the store and everybody would be asleep.

00:55:54.000 Fire up a joint and sit in front of a laptop and come up with some ideas.

00:55:58.000 I had it down to a science before the lockdown.

00:56:02.000 Right.

00:56:08.000 I don't know.

00:56:09.000 I mean, for my comedy routine, it certainly has.

00:56:12.000 I don't know.

00:56:13.000 I mean, I'm doing my first shows this weekend in Houston. 0.98

00:56:15.000 I don't know what the fuck's going to happen. 0.94

00:56:16.000 I don't know if I know how to do it anymore. 0.97

00:56:19.000 It's going to be very strange.

00:56:20.000 I think Houston is like, you couldn't go more into the belly of the beast.

00:56:24.000 Right now, yeah.

00:56:26.000 It's like being on the surface of Venus.

00:56:28.000 It's off the charts with this thing.

00:56:29.000 Yeah, I'm going to go on stage with two bottles of Lysol.

00:56:32.000 You know how girls do that thing where they spray perfume and they walk through it? 1.00

00:56:36.000 I'm going to do that with Lysol on stage.

00:56:38.000 A little bit on the roof.

00:56:41.000 I mean, I think it's really critical to strengthen your immune system, and I do a lot of things to do that, and I think that that's something that people need to really concentrate on, and I really wish that our elected officials were talking more about that and having speeches with doctors and...

00:56:56.000 You're doing the opposite.

00:56:57.000 You remember Michelle Obama tried to put kale in something, and everybody was like, what the...

00:57:02.000 I'm sorry, we're going back to tater tots. 1.00

00:57:05.000 Fuck that. 0.99

00:57:09.000 I mean, just the science on vitamin supplementation and how critical it is for your immune system, particularly vitamin D, that could literally save lives. 1.00

00:57:19.000 And that knowledge is not secret.

00:57:21.000 That knowledge is out there.

00:57:22.000 You did those episodes on the Game Changers with James Woods.

00:57:27.000 And it was fascinating to watch because I watched that movie. 0.72

00:57:31.000 And, you know, nutrition is also like diet is such an important part of What we do to ourselves that we don't think and especially in a time of COVID where so many people like you say like when you see what this does to people with type 1 diabetes or with other kinds of you know conditions that might be caused from either poor diet or lack of access to you know healthier options and things like that you realize like shit we've put ourselves in a very 0.77

00:58:01.000 vulnerable position Yeah, very vulnerable.

00:58:04.000 Andrew Schultz had a really good point.

00:58:06.000 He said this pandemic highlighted the vulnerabilities both in our economic system and in our health system, like the way we are as human beings.

00:58:17.000 Who's vulnerable?

00:58:18.000 The obese people, people with diabetes, older folks?

00:58:21.000 I mean, it highlights all these issues where...

00:58:26.000 We really need to concentrate on for the future.

00:58:28.000 If you want more people to survive this, there are strategies that can be implemented and we really need to talk to people about just being normal stuff, being well hydrated, making sure you're not dehydrated, well rested.

00:58:44.000 Teach people meditation techniques.

00:58:46.000 It's not hard to learn some breathing exercises that have been actually proven to increase your immune function.

00:58:52.000 It's not hard to teach people about vitamin D and supplementing it if you can't go outside.

00:58:57.000 So how do you get people then to take action?

00:59:00.000 Because here's the other thing you remember.

00:59:01.000 People's lives are hard.

00:59:03.000 When you're talking about what we talked about earlier, like economic inequality, it's hard to go into an area And be like, so here's what we're going to do.

00:59:16.000 We're just going to sit and breathe quietly for five minutes.

00:59:20.000 It's a really difficult, it's like hierarchy of needs.

00:59:25.000 How do you work into the idea that those types of theories are actually important to the betterment of like Yeah,

00:59:42.000 that's an interesting point, and I think what you have to do is it has to be, first of all, told by people who are doing it successfully.

00:59:51.000 So people that are doing it, that maybe were struggling with their immune system, If you see someone who is in the situation that you're in currently,

01:00:19.000 and they turned it around...

01:00:21.000 You already look like that.

01:00:22.000 Well, not me, but listen, I've been working out my whole life.

01:00:25.000 I've never stopped.

01:00:27.000 But if someone is fat, I'm talking from their perspective, and they see some guy who's really thin and chiseled, then it's not going to make sense to them that they could ever be like that.

01:00:37.000 But if they see someone, there's a lot of...

01:00:39.000 Really fantastic photos and Instagram and Facebook pages online where you can get inspiration from someone who actually stuck to a diet, actually stuck to an exercise routine, and then speaks really well about how much it improved the way they feel,

01:00:54.000 their emotions, their depression.

01:00:56.000 All the aspects of their life.

01:00:58.000 And that's, I think, one of the more, like David Goggins is a great example of that.

01:01:01.000 I use him all the time because he's this incredibly inspirational guy who is a Navy SEAL. And at one point in time, he was 300 pounds.

01:01:09.000 He was drinking milkshakes.

01:01:10.000 And he puts those pictures of himself on Instagram all the time just to let people know, hey, I'm not some alien.

01:01:17.000 I'm a person who is weak just like you.

01:01:20.000 I was lazy. 0.87

01:01:20.000 I got fat. 0.87

01:01:21.000 And then I figured out how to train my mind to be disciplined.

01:01:24.000 And I We've figured out how to be happier.

01:01:26.000 And I think that that's really important for people to see that we're not in a static state.

01:01:32.000 We're all in a constant state of improvement and growth, hopefully, or deterioration if you're not careful.

01:01:37.000 But does that, you know, the thing that I worry about those sometimes is similarly to economic distress.

01:01:46.000 Does it make a person's health be a function of their virtue?

01:01:51.000 Does it take something that is beyond a lot of people's control?

01:01:56.000 Isn't that a little bit of like...

01:01:59.000 Hey man, if you just pull your pants up, you could do it.

01:02:02.000 No, it's not.

01:02:03.000 You know what it is?

01:02:04.000 I know what you're saying, but it's not.

01:02:07.000 It's, I did this, and I can show you how I did it, and maybe you can do it too.

01:02:11.000 That's what it is.

01:02:12.000 We don't have to look at every success as somehow or another thumbing in the face of people who can't achieve a similar goal.

01:02:18.000 But there are enough people out there that can.

01:02:22.000 That we should concentrate on that because I think it'll have a significant improvement on the overall health of us, again, as a community.

01:02:29.000 And I think this is really how we have to look at the United States and human beings on Earth in general.

01:02:36.000 We have to look at each other as a bunch of people that could very well be neighbors.

01:02:39.000 We're a community.

01:02:41.000 And if you're my friend and you were fat and you were willing to listen, and I used to be fat too, and I can tell you, hey man, this is what I did.

01:02:49.000 I stopped drinking soda.

01:02:51.000 There are people that are...

01:02:53.000 I mean, I understand the point there.

01:02:56.000 Look, I'm an advocate for plant-based stuff.

01:02:58.000 I think it's a healthy way to do it.

01:03:00.000 But obviously, eating is such a personal experience that I hesitate to ever impart that in any other way.

01:03:08.000 But I just feel like sometimes for people, it's almost more debilitating for that mentality of...

01:03:20.000 This is how you do it. 0.99

01:03:21.000 You just got to get your shit together and go through this way. 0.99

01:03:24.000 I do think you have to present more options but know that it's maybe more complicated and people can be overweight or whatever and be healthy. 0.98

01:03:34.000 It's not necessarily...

01:03:37.000 Something that's corrosive to them.

01:03:40.000 Well, it is, though.

01:03:41.000 Being overweight is necessarily corrosive.

01:03:43.000 It's not healthy for anybody.

01:03:45.000 It's less healthy than being at an optimal weight.

01:03:49.000 That's what's important.

01:03:50.000 It gives you some sort of a burden.

01:03:53.000 Whether that burden is sustainable is debatable.

01:03:56.000 Maybe for some people it is, for some people it isn't.

01:03:58.000 Look, some people can smoke until they're 90 and they're fine.

01:04:01.000 Other people get pancreatic cancer like Hicks and die in their 30s.

01:04:05.000 It depends wildly on the person.

01:04:09.000 But the idea that you can be fat and you can be healthy, I think, is a dangerous narrative.

01:04:13.000 Because you're telling people, listen, don't improve, you don't have to.

01:04:18.000 You can be healthy and be obese at the same time.

01:04:21.000 But the medical science does not really support that.

01:04:26.000 The more weight you lose up to a certain point, if you get to a healthy body mass, your body works better.

01:04:33.000 It's really simple.

01:04:34.000 It doesn't tax your immune system as much.

01:04:36.000 It doesn't tax your heart as much.

01:04:38.000 It's better for you.

01:04:39.000 It's better for your joints.

01:04:41.000 It doesn't mean that we should ignore people that are overweight and pretend that they're not worthy or they're not good folks.

01:04:53.000 I have a very emotional reaction to that because I feel protective over people.

01:05:02.000 You're a sweetheart.

01:05:03.000 It's great.

01:05:04.000 It's a good thing.

01:05:05.000 No, it is.

01:05:06.000 The reason why you're thinking like this is because we're talking... 0.98

01:05:11.000 We're talking about people doing well, and you're like, fuck, what about the people who can't do well? 0.98

01:05:15.000 Let's reach out to them and offer them an olive branch. 0.99

01:05:18.000 Yeah, I get it, man.

01:05:19.000 You're right.

01:05:20.000 You're right.

01:05:21.000 Look, I have very good friends that are morbidly obese, and they don't want to listen, and there's nothing I can do.

01:05:26.000 I just hug them when I see them, and I hope that one day they come to grips with it and they change.

01:05:31.000 But they don't have to.

01:05:32.000 You live this life for a certain amount of time, and if you want to live it eating cake and drinking beer...

01:05:37.000 That's you.

01:05:38.000 You do whatever you want.

01:05:40.000 In the end, we're all going to be on the ground.

01:05:42.000 It's all pointless.

01:05:46.000 Wait a minute!

01:05:47.000 We just had an hour-long conversation about...

01:05:51.000 Optimistically taking this country and turning it around and got very fatalistic all of a sudden.

01:05:56.000 Well, that's true.

01:05:56.000 In the end, we're all dying.

01:05:59.000 That's how the story ends.

01:06:00.000 We're all dead.

01:06:01.000 So the story, what I don't want people to do is suffer and I want people to feel better while they're alive.

01:06:07.000 And I think that's something that's missed in the message of health improvement.

01:06:11.000 You will actually have a better experience on earth and it'll help you mitigate stress.

01:06:16.000 It'll help you have better relationships because you won't be burdened down with a lot of anxiety and stress that literally comes from a physical release of energy.

01:06:26.000 I look at the body like a battery.

01:06:28.000 I think that some people's batteries are just overflowing with corrosive material because they never exert it.

01:06:34.000 They never blow it out.

01:06:35.000 A battery is a bad analogy, but there's a certain amount of physical requirement I think your body has.

01:06:42.000 And if you don't give that Let me ask you a question because now this is I'm

01:07:13.000 wondering, because you're talking about sort of evolving to a place where your body...

01:07:17.000 And, like, when you had James on, and he was talking about plant-based, do you have moral qualms about meat, or do you not...

01:07:27.000 Like you said, we're hunters and that.

01:07:30.000 Is that ever an issue for you, or is it purely a health issue?

01:07:34.000 There's both things.

01:07:35.000 There's a health issue.

01:07:36.000 There is a moral qualm with factory farming.

01:07:39.000 There's not a moral qualm with hunting.

01:07:41.000 I don't know.

01:08:17.000 It's funny, I have such a different perspective on it, in terms of just the...

01:08:26.000 The relationship between myself and I didn't.

01:08:29.000 I was a big meat eater.

01:08:30.000 I was a big like deli guy.

01:08:31.000 Pastrami and corn beef and all that.

01:08:33.000 My wife got into rescue and these types of things.

01:08:37.000 And we ended up with a farm with pigs and goats and sheep and things like that.

01:08:42.000 And it became untenable for me to make that decision. 0.99

01:08:48.000 You know that sort of that decision of I think you'll be better off If I kill you.

01:08:55.000 And it became, it was something I could no longer manage once I knew the process of it.

01:09:04.000 And that was a hard, it's been a very hard process for me.

01:09:09.000 It's only been about four or five years.

01:09:11.000 How was your health?

01:09:14.000 I mean, I'm an old Jew, so baseline, pretty much, we don't age well to begin with.

01:09:22.000 How old are you now, John?

01:09:23.000 We age a bit like avocados when you leave them out.

01:09:27.000 I'm 57. I'm 52, so we're in similar boats.

01:09:33.000 Similar boat.

01:09:33.000 Yeah.

01:09:34.000 But, I mean, it's hard to know I feel good.

01:09:39.000 You know, if you look at markers like cholesterol or blood pressure or those things, it's better.

01:09:45.000 But like you said, I don't know enough about how the body processes to know if I feel better.

01:09:55.000 The numbers say I'm better.

01:09:58.000 But, you know, genetics I'm sure plays a part in it as well.

01:10:02.000 But the funny thing is, like, I don't even think about it anymore.

01:10:07.000 I just don't even think about it anymore.

01:10:09.000 Well, once you get into a custom, and once your gut biome changes, you know, you really get accustomed to whatever you're eating, good or bad, unfortunately.

01:10:17.000 And that's one of the reasons why people have such a hard time quitting sugar and bread and pasta and things along those lines.

01:10:22.000 So your body just craves it.

01:10:24.000 That's what it wants.

01:10:25.000 When you start eating healthier food, your body does crave that.

01:10:27.000 You can go off of meat and still be incredibly unhealthy.

01:10:31.000 Like, you know, you can be vegan and just exist on Lay's potato chips.

01:10:35.000 Right, yeah.

01:10:36.000 So it is...

01:10:37.000 And it's a tougher road, and the world is certainly not built for that, and it certainly feels a little bit...

01:10:49.000 Of a narrower lane that you have to do.

01:10:51.000 And I also think it's an incredibly emotional topic.

01:10:55.000 Like, very little that's as emotional and personal as what people put in their bodies and how they eat and what they do.

01:11:02.000 And I'm always very respectful because I also, I got no leg to stand on, man.

01:11:06.000 I, like, this is what I'm doing.

01:11:08.000 It feels better for me, but I, I always say, like, but It's such a personal and individual choice, and everybody's got to do for themselves.

01:11:21.000 The only thing I would say is, I do think it's important for people to get educated on it, to read up on, like you say, factory farming, or what might be the nutritional cost of it, or what are some of the things that are in it, or what maybe is it going to do to our immunity when we use so many antibiotics.

01:11:42.000 The meat production.

01:11:44.000 That's the only thing I say.

01:11:46.000 Try and educate yourself to how your meal gets to your table.

01:11:51.000 That's why I'm a huge advocate for local farming and agriculture because those are the people that are just growing their food and they're bringing it to your table.

01:11:59.000 I find that incredible.

01:12:01.000 But I also try not to take a position of judgment on people because I feel like that's unfair.

01:12:09.000 Well, I think that's very wise of you, and I think that there's a lot of people that share your position on animal death, and I think that's one of the more promising aspects of laboratory-created meat, as long as it can be done in a way that's actually going to be healthy for us.

01:12:22.000 It seems like there's some real science behind that, and they're very, very close to releasing that on a large scale, so it would be actual meat that doesn't come with death, which is really fascinating.

01:12:32.000 Oh, really?

01:12:32.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:12:33.000 You're talking about, like, the one that they had.

01:12:36.000 I saw, like, it's a tank, and he pulls out, and it's like...

01:12:39.000 $20,000 for a chicken breast.

01:12:41.000 They did that, yeah, it was really expensive at one point in time, but they've gotten it down to a burger now.

01:12:46.000 Like, they can actually make a burger out of this stuff.

01:12:49.000 And they feel like as this technology improves, they, I mean, essentially flesh, when it's not...

01:12:56.000 If you could still have...

01:13:01.000 The part of meat that you like, but it came without death.

01:13:04.000 Do you think you would make that switch, or is that something that...

01:13:07.000 Well, I certainly would with domestic animals.

01:13:09.000 The difference between that and hunting, there's a conservation aspect of it.

01:13:15.000 One thing that leads to protection of wildlife habitat is actually the money that comes from hunting tags and hunting equipment.

01:13:23.000 There's that.

01:13:24.000 There's also the type of...

01:13:29.000 The relationship you have with your food when you actually work very hard and hunt it and kill it is very different than buying food from a store.

01:13:39.000 And I would say in a similar way, growing.

01:13:43.000 Whole Foods.

01:13:44.000 When you go to Whole Foods, sometimes you really got to stop that.

01:13:47.000 There's a lot that goes into the trip to Whole Foods these days.

01:13:51.000 Yeah.

01:13:51.000 It's hard to find a good parking spot.

01:13:53.000 That's right.

01:13:54.000 Yeah, I get it.

01:13:56.000 Growing your own food in your backyard is very satisfying, too.

01:13:59.000 And I would say to people, that's a microcosm.

01:14:03.000 It's a very micro form of what it feels like to hunt an animal and then eat it and feed your family.

01:14:08.000 If I shoot an elk, I eat it literally for a year.

01:14:11.000 So one animal death equals a year of my meals.

01:14:17.000 You know, there's also the moral high ground position.

01:14:21.000 You know, I think a lot of people love to look at the moral high ground of eating vegetables and only eating vegetables as being a superior way to live their life.

01:14:31.000 And that's a good decision.

01:14:33.000 I understand where you're coming from.

01:14:35.000 I understand that there's people that look at life very differently than me.

01:14:40.000 They maybe don't have this sort of fatalistic perspective, even though it's respectful.

01:14:44.000 I have a very fatalistic perspective when it comes to just all organic organisms competing for resources and for life.

01:14:53.000 These animals, I mean, I've run into them when they've killed each other.

01:14:56.000 I've seen animals that have been taken out by other animals.

01:14:59.000 I've come across their bodies torn apart by wolves in the woods.

01:15:02.000 It's a wild, wild thing out there, man.

01:15:05.000 And I think we're so insulated by it.

01:15:12.000 I would hope that, along with that, we're going to be nicer to each other, that we're going to grow to be a kinder human race.

01:15:20.000 I really hope that.

01:15:22.000 Yeah, because I think it's about consideration.

01:15:25.000 You know, for me, I think it was, there was a certain part of consciousness that I never ascribed to animals to some extent.

01:15:32.000 I mean, it's funny because I always thought of myself as, oh, you know, I love animals.

01:15:35.000 I, you know, always had dogs and cats and, you know, you find a bird with a broken wing and you stick him in a box and two weeks later he flies away and you're a hero.

01:15:43.000 But I never really ascribed, like, individuality to them and I think that was the change for me was interacting with In an individual way.

01:15:55.000 On your farm.

01:15:56.000 On the farm.

01:15:57.000 Yeah.

01:15:57.000 You know, I always tell my wife, once we named them, but it's fun.

01:16:02.000 Yeah.

01:16:02.000 You watch them, like, they'll play.

01:16:05.000 And it just changed my relationship to what I wanted it to be with animals.

01:16:14.000 And it just made it untenable in that moment for me.

01:16:19.000 But I truly understand, like, That that is a really individualized, personalized experience that I made.

01:16:32.000 And like I said, I would love it for people to make that connection because I think it's profound.

01:16:37.000 There is something about that connection for people that when they do see it, you know, it's funny, I'll talk about the pigs and they'll be like, you know, Where they just eat everything.

01:16:49.000 They're like, no, they're really playful.

01:16:50.000 They're smart.

01:16:52.000 They're like dogs.

01:16:53.000 They do belly rubs.

01:16:54.000 Yeah, it's...

01:16:55.000 But that was shocking to me.

01:16:56.000 I didn't know that.

01:16:57.000 I just thought, oh, it's like a blob.

01:17:00.000 But they're beings.

01:17:02.000 We're talking about nature, John, and there's nothing natural about a farm.

01:17:06.000 That's part of the problem.

01:17:07.000 I mean, it's an animal prison and they're domesticated because we give them food and we kind of remove the natural fear that they would have of any...

01:17:16.000 Eyeball-facing-forward predator, which is what we are.

01:17:20.000 You know what's interesting about, too?

01:17:21.000 Their health.

01:17:23.000 Having our farm with sheep and goats and pigs, and they're all rescues, is like having a nursing home.

01:17:31.000 You can't believe the fragility of factory-farmed animals.

01:17:36.000 They are poor.

01:17:37.000 To be sick, like pneumonia, like genetically designed to gain too much weight for their legs.

01:17:47.000 It really is, you know, the island of Miss Victoria, like they've genetically modified or done whatever they've done. 0.57

01:17:54.000 And the health of Yeah, that's why I prefer hunting.

01:18:08.000 If you're eating an animal that's a wild animal, you're eating an athlete.

01:18:13.000 I mean, they're sinewy and thick and they're strong and they've survived.

01:18:18.000 And they're so much more nutrient dense.

01:18:21.000 When you're talking about factory-farmed animals, you're talking about, I mean, factory-farmed animals is the worst version of what human beings are capable of.

01:18:30.000 They were capable of ignoring suffering to the point where we lock them all in warehouses, their piss goes down in a tunnel and fills a small lake up, and they've flown over these places with drones.

01:18:39.000 It's horrific, right?

01:18:40.000 The pig farms in particular, they're horrific.

01:18:43.000 But when you're talking about what you're doing on your farm, of course you can't eat those things.

01:18:48.000 They're your pets.

01:18:49.000 That would be...

01:18:50.000 I mean, you're naming them and feeding them and touching them.

01:18:53.000 But I extrapolate that now.

01:18:55.000 So I think what happened was I went, oh, right.

01:18:59.000 That's in the same way that, like, I love my dog.

01:19:02.000 But if you have a dog, I wouldn't kill your dog.

01:19:06.000 Because I look at dogs now in a different way.

01:19:09.000 So I think I extrapolate to...

01:19:13.000 The animal kingdom, in a way, a different...

01:19:15.000 I feel like because of my wife, and she's a much kinder, smarter version of me, so because of her kind of showing me that relationship and experiencing myself, it's just changed the way that I view it.

01:19:34.000 And it kind of takes us back around to the earlier part of the conversation, because when you think about animal agriculture and you talk about those hog farms, where are they located?

01:19:42.000 They're located in the poorest neighborhoods.

01:19:45.000 They locate, and the environmental damage that they do is also damage that's done to poor rural communities that live around them.

01:19:55.000 Now, I'm not suggesting that there's not economic, there's an economic incentive and an industry around it, and certainly not, you know, you don't just end industries, but reform, again, like, it's sort of like,

01:20:11.000 uh, George P. Bush said this.

01:20:14.000 He was talking about Donald Trump.

01:20:15.000 He goes, I'm going to support Donald Trump because Donald Trump is the only thing standing between America and socialism.

01:20:23.000 And I was like, the only thing standing between America and socialism is an inability to meaningfully reform capitalism and its more damaging effects.

01:20:34.000 And if we can't do that, then the people take to the streets.

01:20:39.000 I think reform, like Bernie was talking about and those other guys, that will save capitalism.

01:20:46.000 That will save democracy by showing that we recognize that there is collateral damage to the systems that we use to gain wealth and to gain power.

01:20:57.000 And if we can reform those systems meaningfully for the people who suffer most terribly under them, we save it.

01:21:07.000 But if we can't, The Bastille gets stormed.

01:21:11.000 That's just what Kennedy said.

01:21:13.000 If you make peaceful evolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable.

01:21:17.000 So I think at some point, we have to demonstrate the will and the stamina to be able to attack these problems.

01:21:25.000 And that's why I'm voting Joe Rogan.

01:21:28.000 Ha! 0.89

01:21:30.000 Yeah, no, I think everyone agrees, but everyone feels like their hands are tied.

01:21:34.000 And again, I think that's one of the reasons why these protests and just this whole explosion after George Floyd has been so transformative.

01:21:44.000 Because people recognize that this is a real moment of change.

01:21:48.000 And of course opportunists and looters and all kinds of other crazy shit happened along the way, but it speaks...

01:22:01.000 Are you hopeful? 0.95

01:22:03.000 Yes, I'm always hopeful.

01:22:05.000 I'm very optimistic, even though I have a fatalistic perspective.

01:22:12.000 Yes.

01:22:17.000 They do.

01:22:19.000 They really do. 1.00

01:22:29.000 Better people outnumber shitty people by a long shit. 1.00

01:22:32.000 And we're in an adolescent stage of our evolution as a civilization. 1.00

01:22:37.000 It's growing and changing. 0.98

01:22:39.000 There's never been a civilization like us today, and we're growing and changing to try to suit our real sensibilities and to try to get better at this fucking thing and not just accept this old, crazy, corrupt structure that's existed forever. 0.98

01:22:55.000 Right. 0.97

01:22:56.000 Thank you.

01:22:57.000 You've put a little fire in my belly.

01:22:58.000 Good.

01:22:59.000 Beautiful.

01:22:59.000 I've been coming around doing the thing, but I've really enjoyed the conversation.

01:23:06.000 Listen, man, I always enjoy talking to you.

01:23:08.000 I appreciate you very much.

01:23:09.000 And I don't get to see you enough.

01:23:11.000 Alright, my friend. 0.78

01:23:12.000 And hopefully when this all ends, everybody can gather again at the store and do a good set and talk some shit with each other and have some fun. 0.84

01:23:21.000 Let's do it, brother. 0.71

01:23:22.000 Take care, my friend, and good luck with your film.

01:23:24.000 Irresistible is out when?

01:23:26.000 Now?

01:23:28.000 Tomorrow.

01:23:30.000 I'll watch it.

01:23:31.000 John Stewart, ladies and gentlemen.

01:23:33.000 Thank you, my brother.

01:23:34.000 Thank you, sir.

01:23:34.000 Bye.

01:23:35.000 Bye-bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - June 26, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1498 - Jon Stewart

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