The Joe Rogan Experience - December 03, 2020


Joe Rogan Experience #1573 - Matthew Yglesias

Topics
one billion americans rat population density studies nationalism white nationalism fortune cookies industry turkey cooking platforming and deplatforming fishing fire and warmth vaccines and side effects side effects of vaccine vaccine side effects vitamin D supplementation vitamin D and health outcomes masks vaccinations return on investment China's market power and influence Chinese censorship in Hollywood films Bruce Lee portrayal in "Once Upon a Time Hollywood" traffic infrastructure waste engineering Los Angeles pollution runoff agricultural sustainability subsidies for corn farmers topsoil issue child poverty tax policy
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Matthew Yglesias
Mentioned
Tom Cruise Bill Gates Donald Trump Noam Chomsky William F. Buckley Jamie Kilstein Dwayne Johnson Ben Shapiro Moderna Austin Pfizer Joe Rogan Podcast Russell Crowe Bill Barr John Wick Mike Lee Icarus Matt Zoom Martin Luther King and 51 more
Joe Rogan Experience #1572 - Moxie Marlinspike Joe Rogan Experience #1574 - Jacques Vallee & James Fox

Episode Stats


Length

3 hours and 8 minutes

Words per minute

171.58

Word count

32,340

Sentence count

3,532

Harmful content

Misogyny

32

sentences flagged

Toxicity

464

sentences flagged

Hate speech

64

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Matthew Iglesias, author of the book One Billion Americans and host of the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience joins me to talk about the idea that we need to have a billion Americans. We also talk about immigration and the role of immigrants in the United States, and why they should get a path to citizenship. And we talk about whether or not we should have a legal process for people to come here once they re here, whether they re adopted or whether they got here with their parents, or whether their parents came here with them once they were born here. And we answer the question: How many people would you like to be born in America if we had a billion people? and why does that seem like a good idea to you? This episode was produced by Alex Blumberg and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser. Our theme music was made by Micah Vellian and our ad music was written and performed by Mark Phillips. We mixed this episode with music written and produced by Matthew McElroy. Additional music was done by Ian Dorsch and Ben Kotler. The show was mixed by Zac Schmidt. Additional mixing and mastering by Matthew McLennan. It was edited by Haley Shaw and Sarah Abdurrahman. Our thanks to our sponsor, Vayner Media, and our producer, Alex Blanchard and our sound engineer, Ben Kwan. Music was made in part 2 and editing by Rachel Ward, and additional mixing by Matthew Bollandrews, and music was provided by Matthew Blanchor, and the help by Matthew Kucharski. and Alex Pizzi. Thank you to our editor, and thanks to Rachel Ward for his excellent mixing and editing and mastering and mastering, and mixing and mixing, and his excellent sound design, and editing, and Matthew Pizzano for his amazing editing and editing skills, and background music, and all of his excellent editing and mixing at the Slow Boring Newsletter and the excellent editing at The SlowBoring Newsletter, and also our good sound design and editing at the Fast Boring Podcast. , and our excellent sound effects, and thank you for all of your feedback, and so much more thanks to the help from our amazing sound effects and his amazing mixing, thanks to a gratefulness, and by our good friend , and our amazing engineering, and the amazing editing, for making this podcasting help and editing.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.
00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
00:00:14.000 Since we don't record an intro for Spotify anymore, tell me who you are and what you do.
00:00:21.000 I'm Matthew Iglesias.
00:00:22.000 I'm the host of the Weeds Podcast, the Vox Media Podcast Network.
00:00:26.000 I'm also the author of the Slow Boring Newsletter and a book, One Billion Americans.
00:00:31.000 And that's what I want to talk to you about. 0.98
00:00:32.000 Pull the sucker up so it's like one fist away from your fist. 0.99
00:00:35.000 All right. 0.98
00:00:35.000 Perfect. 0.98
00:00:37.000 One billion Americans.
00:00:38.000 That's a lot.
00:00:40.000 So explain, if you could, give us the cliff notes of what the concept of one billion Americans is.
00:00:46.000 Okay.
00:00:47.000 So the concept is that there should be a billion Americans.
00:00:51.000 I like to keep it simple.
00:00:52.000 So here's the idea, right?
00:00:54.000 So we got China.
00:00:55.000 It's growing out there.
00:00:56.000 There's a lot of concern, you know, internationally about America's role in the world.
00:01:01.000 We've also got a lot of polarization in our politics, a lot of sort of gridlock, deadlock.
00:01:11.000 I think?
00:01:39.000 How much pushback have you gotten from this idea?
00:01:42.000 Because it seems like a lot of people think that overpopulation is a giant problem.
00:01:48.000 And then when you say, we should triple plus the amount of people in the United States we want to compete with the rest of the world, I would imagine a lot of people are like, what are you smoking, Matthew Iglesias?
00:01:59.000 No, I mean, the book's really good.
00:02:01.000 So everyone who reads it is just like, oh, you convinced me.
00:02:03.000 At least you're humble.
00:02:04.000 There's no pushback at all.
00:02:06.000 No, yes, there is concern about overpopulation.
00:02:11.000 That's something that, you know, so there's people from the right, they don't like immigrants, they don't like immigration, and Why is that?
00:02:17.000 Let's start with that.
00:02:18.000 Because this is a country of immigrants.
00:02:20.000 It's a very strange thing to have a country that is entirely comprised of people who came from somewhere else other than Native Americans. 0.99
00:02:29.000 Right?
00:02:30.000 Entirely comprised.
00:02:32.000 And yet...
00:02:34.000 There's a giant population that doesn't like immigrants.
00:02:37.000 Yeah, I mean, look, some of it's a question of taste.
00:02:40.000 You know, people like different places.
00:02:41.000 People like different kinds of things.
00:02:42.000 I think the best parts of America are places that have a lot of people from different places.
00:02:47.000 To me, you know, whether that's Austin, where we are, New York, where I'm from, it's like, it's cool.
00:02:53.000 Like, that's America at its best.
00:02:55.000 Some people don't like it.
00:02:57.000 There's also the legality question, though, right?
00:02:59.000 Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, we built up a substantial group of people who were living here illegally.
00:03:07.000 It started in the 80s?
00:03:08.000 Is that when it really started?
00:03:09.000 Yeah, I mean, that's when it really took off.
00:03:11.000 Was it because the regulations were made more stringent?
00:03:14.000 Well, so what happened was in 1996, they changed the law.
00:03:20.000 IRERA is the acronym for it.
00:03:21.000 And they made it a lot harder for people who had come here without papers to, quote unquote, get legal.
00:03:27.000 So even if you put roots down, even if you were married to an American citizen...
00:03:31.000 There was no way to obtain legal status.
00:03:34.000 They also made it harder to cross the border.
00:03:36.000 So it used to be people would come over, they'd pick vegetables in California for a season, and then they'd just go back, right?
00:03:42.000 They'd go back to Mexico, take their money with them, get a nice house. 0.84
00:03:45.000 They made it harder to cross the border so people would stay.
00:03:47.000 And people who stayed had no way to get a legal status here.
00:03:51.000 So unauthorized population, it built up, it built up, it built up.
00:03:55.000 There's a movement on one side to say, well, we should create a path to citizenship for those people.
00:04:00.000 Most of them, they're living here peacefully.
00:04:01.000 They're working hard.
00:04:03.000 They're not doing anything.
00:04:04.000 That's where I stand.
00:04:05.000 But there's people who say, look, you know, they broke the rules.
00:04:08.000 We've got to be harsh.
00:04:09.000 So we've been arguing about that.
00:04:22.000 Yeah, but it was easy then.
00:04:33.000 Yeah, my grandparents as well.
00:04:34.000 They just came over from Italy.
00:04:36.000 It was not that hard.
00:04:37.000 So good for them, right?
00:04:37.000 And so, yes, we should have a legal process for people to come.
00:04:41.000 We can have rules, try to make sure you're...
00:04:44.000 You should be working age, right? 0.99
00:04:46.000 You should come here, get a job, pay taxes.
00:04:49.000 You can't just come across and collect Social Security.
00:04:52.000 Fair enough.
00:04:53.000 But obviously, you're okay with children coming across as well.
00:04:56.000 Yeah.
00:04:57.000 Whether they're adopted once they get here or whether they come here with their parents or...
00:05:01.000 I mean, we should make it possible, right?
00:05:04.000 Yes, we should make it possible.
00:05:05.000 That's a great way of putting it.
00:05:06.000 And that's how you could not have people breaking the rules.
00:05:10.000 That's to me.
00:05:11.000 But, you know, a lot of people on the right don't see it that way.
00:05:13.000 Now, on the left, there's some folks, you know, people are concerned about the environment.
00:05:17.000 Yeah.
00:05:17.000 I mean, I'm concerned, too.
00:05:19.000 I don't want to breathe polluted air.
00:05:21.000 I don't want, like, cities underwater.
00:05:22.000 Yeah.
00:05:23.000 But there's a strain of sort of eco-apocalyptic thinking, where people say, oh, we can't handle it.
00:05:30.000 Only degrowth is going to save us.
00:05:33.000 And I just don't think that's right.
00:05:35.000 I am bullish on technology.
00:05:39.000 We've got more and more clean energy sources.
00:05:42.000 We've got better and better electric cars.
00:05:44.000 There's more stuff we can do with electrification.
00:05:47.000 We need to take those steps.
00:05:51.000 Yeah.
00:06:08.000 But that would give us the population density of France.
00:06:11.000 It would give us about half the density of Germany, way less than half the density of the United Kingdom.
00:06:17.000 And if you've ever been to the UK, it's a nice country.
00:06:21.000 They got London, big city.
00:06:23.000 They got countryside.
00:06:24.000 They got rolling hills.
00:06:25.000 They got sheep. 0.99
00:06:26.000 You go up to Scotland, there's fucking nobody there. 0.99
00:06:29.000 So we could have all kinds of places with a billion Americans, countryside, suburbs, cities, all kinds of stuff. 0.98
00:06:37.000 What's the benefit of having all those people though?
00:07:10.000 I'm not a war guy, but...
00:07:17.000 Yeah, you don't want that.
00:07:18.000 I think we want to stay number one.
00:07:20.000 And growth has been important to that historically, right?
00:07:23.000 Like, why is the United States a big deal country, and Canada is like, you know, like our cute little brother?
00:07:29.000 And it's because a lot of people live here.
00:07:32.000 You know, Canada's nice, but there's no people, no real strength there.
00:07:35.000 Second, I think it'll make us a more prosperous country.
00:07:39.000 What we do as modern day Americans is we do stuff for each other, right?
00:07:44.000 Whether that's we make show, we write books, we teach in schools, we run restaurants, we're doing services to each other.
00:07:51.000 And you get more prosperity when you have more people and more ability to sort of have those interactions.
00:07:57.000 When you're talking about China and the NBA and Hollywood movies, a lot of people think of those things, the interactions that Hollywood has and the NBA has with China as being insidious.
00:08:10.000 They don't think it's a good thing at all that China has that kind of an influence.
00:08:14.000 And they also think it's embarrassing.
00:08:16.000 Like a lot of people think that it's embarrassing for the NBA when the negative tweets, when they're in support of Hong Kong, And then all of a sudden there was some pushback and the NBA was removed from viewership in China and there was a lot of sponsorships being pulled and it became a giant issue.
00:08:35.000 And then all of a sudden you saw the NBA kind of backtrack and kind of kowtow and a lot of people found that to be pretty disgusting.
00:08:42.000 We don't want the United States to ever be a country that's doing that to China, right? 0.96
00:08:47.000 If China has a bunch of, I don't know what they're really into over there, ping pong players?
00:08:51.000 What's their primary sport?
00:08:53.000 I don't know.
00:08:54.000 They have a lot of basketball over there.
00:08:55.000 Basketball, they like basketball. 0.98
00:08:56.000 So imagine if Chinese basketball becomes super popular in the United States and then the Chinese basketball players in the United States start talking shit about how Apple uses slave labor. 1.00
00:09:06.000 And we go, hey, hey, watch your fucking mouth, bro. 1.00
00:09:10.000 We won't pay for your Chinese basketball anymore. 1.00
00:09:13.000 And then all of a sudden China backs off.
00:09:15.000 We would think of that as being pretty gross by the United States of ignoring some human rights violations.
00:09:22.000 I think?
00:09:39.000 A lot of people think that's moving in the wrong direction, me included.
00:09:42.000 Like, I don't want that.
00:09:43.000 Well, no, I don't think it's positive.
00:09:44.000 I'm saying we need to be in a position to level the playing field.
00:09:48.000 But is that leveling the playing field, or will we just...
00:09:50.000 Look, corporations have a giant problem with infinite growth, right?
00:09:55.000 Yep.
00:09:55.000 This is a thing that seems completely, totally preposterous, but it's the norm and the standard in the business world.
00:10:02.000 You want...
00:10:03.000 Your growth to increase every year, no matter what, and God knows where that goes.
00:10:09.000 I'm not a mathematician or an economist, but if you extrapolate and keep going with that, it leads to preposterous outcomes, right?
00:10:17.000 That's what people would be worried about tenfold if there's a billion people here.
00:10:22.000 They'd be like, oh my God, we'd be even more ruthless and more cutthroat and maybe more competitive with the rest of the world, but in what way?
00:10:30.000 Well, so here, let's talk about the China thing.
00:10:33.000 The NBA is under China's thumb because they need access to that market. 0.95
00:10:38.000 Do they though?
00:10:39.000 Well, they think they do. 1.00
00:10:41.000 Aren't they rich as fuck? 1.00
00:10:42.000 So we could say, right, maybe we need to have a rule that says, like, well, you know, you can't let the Chinese censor your shit, right? 1.00
00:10:49.000 Yeah. 0.99
00:10:50.000 But the relative size of the markets is going to matter, right?
00:10:54.000 So we're on Spotify here, right?
00:10:56.000 So that's a Swedish company, I think.
00:11:00.000 They make great meatballs out here.
00:11:02.000 Absolutely.
00:11:03.000 It's a lovely country, right?
00:11:04.000 A small country.
00:11:05.000 So Sweden's a little country, right?
00:11:06.000 Yeah.
00:11:07.000 All their companies, you're talking Volvo, Scania, Spotify, they're dependent on a global marketplace.
00:11:13.000 They need access.
00:11:14.000 If China is the biggest market in the world, ultimately, they're going to find themselves playing by China's rules.
00:11:21.000 If America stays the biggest market in the world, I think we're good to go.
00:11:47.000 We're good to go.
00:12:12.000 Why do you think that increasing the population three times, is that the only way that we can be competitive in the world?
00:12:23.000 Is that the only way?
00:12:24.000 When you came to that conclusion by ramping it up to a billion people, what led you to that?
00:12:30.000 Did you know you're being provocative?
00:12:32.000 Was that part of what you were doing? 0.98
00:12:34.000 Like, this is going to fucking piss people off a little bit. 0.98
00:12:36.000 I like to provoke. 0.99
00:12:38.000 I think you may be familiar with that.
00:12:42.000 Yeah, I mean, look, I wanted to grab people's attention.
00:12:46.000 You know, I didn't want to be boring.
00:12:47.000 I don't like being boring.
00:12:49.000 It's a nice round number.
00:12:50.000 Obviously, also science delivered it.
00:12:54.000 Science delivered it?
00:12:55.000 What science?
00:13:00.000 It's also...
00:13:01.000 If the U.S. population were to grow as fast as Canada's is growing for the next 80 years, then we hit a billion at the end of the century.
00:13:10.000 That's the official math.
00:13:11.000 That's really?
00:13:12.000 Yeah.
00:13:12.000 The reality is...
00:13:13.000 Canada's growing that quickly?
00:13:14.000 They're fast.
00:13:15.000 There's a lot of people coming in.
00:13:17.000 How do we do that?
00:13:18.000 Be so polite.
00:13:19.000 How would be as nice as them?
00:13:20.000 Yeah, I don't know.
00:13:21.000 Isn't that...
00:13:21.000 Is that a goal we should work towards?
00:13:23.000 Being as nice as Canadians?
00:13:25.000 Yeah, I don't know.
00:13:25.000 So, you know, I'm from...
00:13:27.000 I'm from New York.
00:13:28.000 We're a little brusque there.
00:13:30.000 But you're nice.
00:13:31.000 Kind of.
00:13:32.000 You seem like a nice guy so far.
00:13:33.000 Well, because we're here in the South now.
00:13:35.000 So we've got to be nice.
00:13:36.000 We've got to ask Southerners how to be more polite like Canadians.
00:13:42.000 Well, one of the things that I think and one of the things that I've said about Austin in particular is that I love the fact that there's friendly people and I think one of the reasons why they're friendly is there's not that many of them.
00:13:55.000 They value people more.
00:13:56.000 I think people get devalued when you get high population densities.
00:14:00.000 I'm not saying that it has to be like Los Angeles in order to reach 3 billion or a billion people in this country rather.
00:14:06.000 I don't think it does, right?
00:14:08.000 It's not like you're trying to turn the whole country into Los Angeles.
00:14:10.000 But there's a problem with Los Angeles.
00:14:12.000 And I think one of the problems with Los Angeles is there's an insane amount of people.
00:14:17.000 Jammed into one area.
00:14:18.000 And when you're on the highway, like if you drive and you have to go to Orange County and you're on the 405, you just want Godzilla to come out of the ocean and just start heating cars. 0.99
00:14:27.000 You're like, this is fucking ridiculous. 0.98
00:14:29.000 There's so many people. 1.00
00:14:30.000 And it never ends.
00:14:31.000 It's like every time you want to go, if you want to go to Orange County, say if you want to go to Disneyland or something like that and take your family, you've got to leave hours earlier.
00:14:40.000 Hours earlier than you think you need to.
00:14:42.000 You want to be there by 5 p.m.?
00:14:43.000 Oh, Christ.
00:14:45.000 You've got to leave at like 2. You've got to leave maybe at 1.30 if you want to be safe.
00:14:49.000 Leave at 1.30 and you'll be stuck in fucking insane traffic and never-ending road construction and it never ends. 0.80
00:14:55.000 And a lot of people get real testy when there's that many people. 0.97
00:14:59.000 This has been recreated in rat population density studies.
00:15:02.000 I'm sure you've probably gotten into some of this when you started looking at the population.
00:15:05.000 But the rats don't really drive though.
00:15:06.000 They don't.
00:15:07.000 But it does, when they have these rat population density studies, it does mimic what happens in big cities in terms of violence, in terms of mental illness.
00:15:16.000 Like when you have a certain amount of rats in a large containment, you know about all this, right?
00:15:20.000 Yeah, I got it, rats, yeah.
00:15:22.000 Yeah, but have you ever...
00:15:23.000 I have, yeah, yeah.
00:15:25.000 Read it, rather, any of this stuff?
00:15:28.000 Yeah.
00:15:28.000 So, okay, so let's distinguish a couple things, right?
00:15:31.000 So, I'm not so sure about the friendliness, right?
00:15:34.000 Because you've been to like, I don't want to cast aspersions, but you've been to like New Hampshire, like small towns up there. 0.99
00:15:40.000 People there, they're kind of assholes. 0.98
00:15:42.000 We kind of keep to ourselves up here. 1.00
00:15:44.000 Yeah, so people are friendly here, but you know, there's some small town weirdos up in New England.
00:15:49.000 I have a fear about that as well.
00:15:51.000 Los Angeles, now the traffic, right on.
00:15:54.000 You know, every time I go to Southern California...
00:15:57.000 I think, oh man, this weather's nice.
00:16:00.000 People here must be happy all the time.
00:16:01.000 And then I try to meet up with somebody and I get on the road. 1.00
00:16:05.000 It's a fucking nightmare. 1.00
00:16:07.000 It's a fucking nightmare. 1.00
00:16:07.000 So, you know, that's going to make people mad. 1.00
00:16:09.000 Now the rats, right?
00:16:10.000 So what they're studying there, I think, is crowding.
00:16:14.000 You know, which is not exactly the same as density because we, you know, like we build buildings, right?
00:16:22.000 So people in New York have small houses by American standards, but big houses by European standards or Japanese standards, right? 0.80
00:16:32.000 We're still taking up space because we're sort of building structures.
00:16:36.000 So I think we have to look at what we're doing with our housing laws, with our land use laws.
00:16:42.000 One of the reasons Texas has been such a center of growth, so many people are coming here, is that the Texas legal framework actually lets you come here, right?
00:16:52.000 You want to throw up some houses in the Austin area, Houston, Dallas.
00:16:56.000 You can do it.
00:16:57.000 So you can get affordable space, and more and more people are coming in, and it's an asset for the state, right?
00:17:03.000 People like you, all kinds of folks come in here.
00:17:06.000 The governor brags about it all the time.
00:17:08.000 I think Hewlett Packard is coming to Houston or something.
00:17:11.000 And it's really good.
00:17:12.000 It's a big kind of success story.
00:17:14.000 And in California, they got terrible, terrible problem where a lot of people want to go there because it's nice.
00:17:21.000 California is nice, right?
00:17:22.000 But they can't find a place to live.
00:17:25.000 They can't get space and they can't sort out their transportation infrastructure.
00:17:29.000 Los Angeles poured all this money into building out the LA Metro, but then they didn't align their zoning, you know, so people don't live near the stations.
00:17:38.000 So nobody rides the thing.
00:17:40.000 Well, it's also there's a culture of driving your own vehicle that's been firmly established in Los Angeles.
00:17:45.000 It's very difficult to get people to deviate from their habits.
00:17:49.000 But also, I mean, you can't take a train if it doesn't go where you're going.
00:17:52.000 If you don't live by it, right?
00:17:53.000 So, you know, my cousin, she was taking the metro to work for a while.
00:17:57.000 And, you know, good for her.
00:17:58.000 But it was, like, very unusual out there.
00:18:00.000 I live in D.C. now.
00:18:02.000 A lot of people ride the metro there, right?
00:18:04.000 You know, it's people from all over.
00:18:05.000 People are used to cars.
00:18:06.000 But when you have a well-designed system where people live near the stations, where the jobs are near, where they come together, you know, people do it.
00:18:12.000 It's convenient.
00:18:13.000 You can, you know, read a book, something like that.
00:18:16.000 Well, we don't want to encourage people to read on their commute.
00:18:19.000 Stick to the podcast.
00:18:20.000 Well, listen, if you can, but whatever you want, I mean, you can make a great argument for it being far more relaxing.
00:18:26.000 All I have to do is just sit down.
00:18:28.000 You don't have to think about traffic.
00:18:29.000 Right!
00:18:29.000 You zone out.
00:18:30.000 You zone out.
00:18:31.000 You can read a book, like you said.
00:18:32.000 You can read the paper. 0.98
00:18:33.000 If you want to kill yourself, you could... 1.00
00:18:35.000 Watch on your phone. 0.99
00:18:36.000 You know, whatever it is, you got to...
00:18:37.000 There's plenty of things you can do, and it can be...
00:18:39.000 I have friends that live in Westchester, and they take public...
00:18:44.000 Take that Metro North down.
00:18:45.000 Yeah, and it's great.
00:18:46.000 I used to do it when I lived in New Rochelle.
00:18:49.000 I did it all the time.
00:18:50.000 New Rochelle?
00:18:50.000 Yeah, I used to live in New Rochelle.
00:18:51.000 Well, there you go.
00:18:52.000 Nice place.
00:18:53.000 So, you know, so I think that there's ways to create those kind of, like, you know, low-key virtues.
00:18:58.000 People have nice-sized houses.
00:18:59.000 People have nice commutes while also having growth, right?
00:19:03.000 And having some sustainability.
00:19:04.000 But the other thing is that, like...
00:19:08.000 We as a country need to get along with each other.
00:19:13.000 Yes.
00:19:13.000 More than we have been doing lately.
00:19:16.000 For sure.
00:19:16.000 And I do think that focusing on what brings us together versus some of the other governments out there and on the possibilities of growth...
00:19:29.000 Me as well.
00:19:33.000 Right.
00:19:47.000 But I think that's something that's important to a lot of people, moderate people, conservative people.
00:19:51.000 I don't think it's a bad thing.
00:19:53.000 It's not a bad thing.
00:19:54.000 And I don't think it has to be xenophobic either.
00:19:56.000 Well, and I think it's part of inclusiveness, right?
00:20:00.000 Like, what holds...
00:20:02.000 This country together, people with different religions, people different ethnic backgrounds, people with different ideas, is loyalty to, you know, certain concepts, right?
00:20:12.000 Like high level political concepts.
00:20:14.000 And it's not bad to be a little corny, and, you know, wave the flag a little bit if that's how, like, we can all be Americans together.
00:20:22.000 Right.
00:20:23.000 And to me, that's important, you know?
00:20:25.000 And I was surprised doing some of the virtual touring on this at how much conservative people were like, wow, I can't believe you wrote this book.
00:20:37.000 And how much some people on the left were just skeptical of not like the specific ideas, but of the general concept of like wanting America to be awesome.
00:20:48.000 Of positive feeling about nationalism.
00:20:51.000 Right.
00:20:51.000 Yeah, nationalism.
00:20:53.000 When you say even the word...
00:20:54.000 Something's happened over the last decade where you say the word nationalism and somehow it gets equated at least peripherally or in the neighborhood of white nationalism.
00:21:07.000 Mm-hmm.
00:21:07.000 It's one of those weird words.
00:21:10.000 If you say, I'm a Texas chauvinist, what do you mean?
00:21:17.000 Do you hate women? 0.75
00:21:18.000 No, no, no, I just think Texas is the best.
00:21:21.000 People will get mad at you because it's too close to male chauvinist.
00:21:23.000 Male chauvinist is a common phrase.
00:21:25.000 If you say you're a patriot, people go, oh great, you're stockpiling food and guns and you're ready to take over and you only like white people. 0.97
00:21:34.000 No, and it should be the opposite, right?
00:21:36.000 That if you think about the history of white nationalism in America, right?
00:21:43.000 It's an anti-American movement.
00:21:47.000 Abraham Lincoln is an American nationalist, right?
00:21:51.000 Yes.
00:21:52.000 You know, in civil rights, Martin Luther King is appealing to the values of the Declaration of Independence.
00:21:56.000 This is a country e pluribus unum.
00:21:59.000 Obviously, obviously, America, like, bad things have happened.
00:22:03.000 We have not lived up to those ideals.
00:22:05.000 But those are the ideals of America.
00:22:08.000 What it is to be an American nationalist is to believe in that kind of human equality.
00:22:14.000 And not abandon it.
00:22:15.000 Universal rights. 0.62
00:22:16.000 Right.
00:22:17.000 And it's antithetical to...
00:22:20.000 I think?
00:22:26.000 I think?
00:22:37.000 Yeah, I think the idea of America should be like the greatest house party ever.
00:22:42.000 Like everybody can come over.
00:22:44.000 That's what it should be. 1.00
00:22:46.000 White nationalism is just fucking stupid. 1.00
00:22:48.000 I mean, you're just fools. 1.00
00:22:49.000 Like the idea that only melanin, that's what counts, and only European heritage, that's what counts. 1.00
00:22:54.000 Everything else, it's nonsense. 1.00
00:22:56.000 It's one of the dumbest ideas ever. 1.00
00:22:58.000 And then... 1.00
00:23:00.000 It's also...
00:23:01.000 It's a scared person's version of America.
00:23:07.000 And the problem with the concept of nationalism being equated to white nationalism... 0.98
00:23:13.000 You're giving that word up to cowards. 1.00
00:23:17.000 White nationalists, you're a coward. 1.00
00:23:20.000 You're afraid of... 1.00
00:23:21.000 What are you afraid of? 0.98
00:23:22.000 You're afraid of brown people, black people, yellow people? 0.98
00:23:24.000 You only like white people. 0.99
00:23:26.000 I only like people who look similar to me. 1.00
00:23:28.000 That's one of the dumbest ideas of all time. 0.95
00:23:31.000 And the fact that that idea is still... 0.99
00:23:34.000 It's so prevalent that you have to argue against it.
00:23:37.000 That it's one of those things that you know it's really...
00:23:39.000 Until Charlottesville happened, when you see those guys walking with their tiki torches going, they will not replace us.
00:23:44.000 I was like, that's never going to happen again. 0.99
00:23:47.000 If that hadn't happened, I would have said, there's no way after the civil rights movement, after all we've been through, particularly today with the internet and the way people can exchange ideas, there's no fucking chance you're going to have a bunch of assholes that only think that America is supposed to be about white people and they're walking down the street with Home Depot torches. 0.99
00:24:05.000 It's like one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in my life. 0.99
00:24:08.000 The whole replace us thing, right? 0.99
00:24:11.000 It's so insecure.
00:24:13.000 Because you go to France, right? 0.99
00:24:16.000 And they're paranoid that McDonald's and our fucking movies are going to take over and replace their culture. 0.99
00:24:24.000 But nobody is replacing us. 0.99
00:24:27.000 American culture is awesome.
00:24:31.000 It dominates everywhere.
00:24:33.000 But they will not replace us.
00:24:35.000 It's... 1.00
00:24:37.000 Well, they will if you suck. 1.00
00:24:40.000 Are you saying you should be allowed to suck and be white? 1.00
00:24:42.000 We're going to replace those guys. 1.00
00:24:46.000 That's really the irony, right? 1.00
00:24:48.000 If you think like that, bitch, you're going to get replaced. 1.00
00:24:52.000 People who come here, right? 1.00
00:24:54.000 People come from Latin America.
00:24:55.000 People come from Africa.
00:24:57.000 Historically, people come from Europe.
00:24:58.000 Now more and more people come from Asia.
00:25:00.000 They don't replace anybody when they come in, right?
00:25:04.000 It's an additive thing.
00:25:06.000 You know, there's like cool stuff.
00:25:07.000 I went...
00:25:09.000 In the suburbs of D.C., there's a lot of Vietnamese people, a lot of Vietnamese restaurants out there.
00:25:14.000 The last time I went out to get a banh mi place, there was a Viet Cajun crawfish broil thing, which comes from Houston because Vietnamese people came there.
00:25:28.000 Louisiana people came to Houston.
00:25:29.000 They got this fusion cuisine.
00:25:31.000 Now they exported it to other Vietnamese enclaves around America. 0.98
00:25:35.000 Goddammit, Matthew, you make me hungry. 0.99
00:25:37.000 That sounds fucking great. 0.98
00:25:38.000 Someday someone's going to open one of those places in Ho Chi Minh City. 0.97
00:25:43.000 It's going to come back out.
00:25:45.000 I went to Shanghai and I met somebody there whose idea was they were starting a business that had fortune cookies. 1.00
00:25:53.000 Because that shit's American. 1.00
00:25:55.000 But it's cool. 1.00
00:25:57.000 So fortune cookies came from America?
00:25:59.000 They added it to American Chinese food?
00:26:01.000 Yeah.
00:26:01.000 No kidding.
00:26:02.000 Well, that makes sense.
00:26:03.000 A friend of mine, Jenny Ate Lee, she wrote a book called Fortune Cookie Chronicles.
00:26:07.000 You want to talk about...
00:26:08.000 It's about Chinese food.
00:26:10.000 It's really the only...
00:26:11.000 I wish I could write a book about Chinese food.
00:26:13.000 But it's a fascinating subject.
00:26:15.000 Fortune cookies, 100% American.
00:26:17.000 It seems like an American thing.
00:26:18.000 But you want to talk about an industry that clearly has had no growth.
00:26:22.000 The fortune cookie industry is stagnated.
00:26:25.000 The English is so bad.
00:26:27.000 Still, the fortunes aren't even fortunes. 0.99
00:26:30.000 Like my fucking ten-year-old read a fortune cookie the other day. 0.99
00:26:32.000 She goes, how is this a fortune? 0.99
00:26:34.000 Well, if you made the English good, people would realize it's not Chinese. 1.00
00:26:38.000 You gotta fake it.
00:26:41.000 So it's on purpose?
00:26:41.000 I don't know.
00:26:41.000 Maybe you're right.
00:26:42.000 I'm just bullshitting.
00:26:43.000 No! 0.89
00:26:44.000 I think I agree with you.
00:26:46.000 You might have a point.
00:26:47.000 That might really be why they made it bad.
00:26:49.000 I think it's why.
00:26:51.000 I mean, you could hire somebody to write a fortune in English.
00:26:54.000 That's not hard.
00:26:54.000 Yeah.
00:26:55.000 I'll do it. 0.94
00:26:56.000 But it's also, they're not fucking fortunes, man. 0.70
00:26:59.000 You know, like, a lot of times they're like, you know, a stitch in time saves nine. 0.99
00:27:02.000 What the fuck? 0.99
00:27:03.000 Like, I got robbed. 1.00
00:27:04.000 Well, they got lottery numbers, though.
00:27:06.000 Oh, they do that, too.
00:27:07.000 You play those lotto numbers and you get rich.
00:27:09.000 That's my tip to you out there. 1.00
00:27:11.000 God, it's so dumb. 0.99
00:27:12.000 And it's also not a delicious cookie. 1.00
00:27:15.000 Yes.
00:27:15.000 I'm going to say it.
00:27:15.000 Okay.
00:27:16.000 If fortune cookies were for sale and they didn't have a fortune inside of them, they would never survive.
00:27:20.000 Yeah.
00:27:22.000 That's true.
00:27:22.000 Chick-fil-A is everywhere.
00:27:24.000 You know what you don't see?
00:27:25.000 Turkey filet.
00:27:27.000 Turkey can't survive without Thanksgiving. 1.00
00:27:29.000 If it wasn't for Thanksgiving, the turkey industry would be fucked. 0.99
00:27:32.000 They rely on one day a year. 0.99
00:27:35.000 Well, but also sandwiches.
00:27:36.000 People get like a turkey sandwich at the deli.
00:27:38.000 Boring people.
00:27:40.000 Boring people that are afraid of salami.
00:27:43.000 Years ago, I was in southern Mexico in Oaxaca, and I went to a restaurant there, and there was just turkey on the menu.
00:27:51.000 Just turkey?
00:27:52.000 No, no.
00:27:52.000 I mean, it's not only turkey, but there was turkey dish on the menu, right?
00:27:57.000 And it threw me for a fucking loop, because who eats turkey? 0.95
00:27:59.000 Right, outside of Thanksgiving. 0.98
00:28:01.000 But apparently in Mexico and Central America, it's like a thing.
00:28:05.000 That's where turkeys are from. 0.99
00:28:06.000 It's a turkey with a mole poblano.
00:28:09.000 Oh, okay.
00:28:10.000 It's pretty good.
00:28:11.000 Oh, that does sound good.
00:28:11.000 But it goes to show it's a kind of flavorless meat.
00:28:15.000 Right, but they use the strong Mexican spices.
00:28:17.000 Yeah, you get that big sauce on it.
00:28:19.000 That's how it makes it work.
00:28:20.000 So sometime next year, maybe, I'll get my mole Thanksgiving. 0.52
00:28:25.000 Well, what I do is with leftovers, I take leftover Thanksgiving turkey and I just take a plate and dunk some habanero sauce all over the plate and then dip the pieces of turkey in that habanero sauce and woo!
00:28:36.000 Now you gotta party.
00:28:38.000 It's all happening.
00:28:39.000 Yeah, but with mole sauce, that sounds good.
00:28:42.000 Now I'm seeing the flavors come together.
00:28:46.000 I made a turkey this year, and I brined it for the first time.
00:28:48.000 I never brined a turkey.
00:28:50.000 That's what the experts say.
00:28:51.000 It was sensational.
00:28:52.000 It was so good.
00:28:54.000 Turkey's a thing, though, that's really best served right after you get it out of the oven.
00:28:58.000 It's really best served while it's still really hot.
00:29:03.000 While it was hot, it was so juicy.
00:29:05.000 It was the juiciest turkey.
00:29:06.000 I cooked it on a Traeger grill.
00:29:09.000 I was going to say, my friend's got a smoker.
00:29:12.000 It makes smoked turkeys.
00:29:14.000 Those are good.
00:29:14.000 They're juicy.
00:29:15.000 They're fucking great. 0.98
00:29:17.000 And then you get some turkey out of your oven. 0.99
00:29:19.000 Yeah, it's kind of dry.
00:29:20.000 It's a different kind of heat.
00:29:22.000 There's something about cooking with that indirect heat from the smoke.
00:29:25.000 It's not like cooking over a regular grill.
00:29:29.000 Because the smoke is really doing all the cooking for you.
00:29:31.000 It's almost like a And they seal so good that it's like you're not losing moisture and you've got this amazing retention of heat so the temperature stays at a good...
00:29:42.000 But having the turkey brined first, man, that made such a big difference.
00:29:48.000 It was so juicy and delicious. 0.99
00:29:50.000 It made me think like, okay, so hey, assholes, if you just do this with all turkeys... 0.99
00:29:54.000 Then people would be ordering turkey all over the place. 1.00
00:29:57.000 Just brining.
00:29:57.000 And they would say how great this turkey is.
00:29:59.000 Just brining.
00:29:59.000 But if you're a restaurant and you have turkey on the menu and you have turkey right next to like a T-bone steak, people are going to be like, mm.
00:30:05.000 It's going to make a steak every time.
00:30:06.000 Yeah, I'm not going with turkey.
00:30:07.000 I agree.
00:30:08.000 I'm not a turkey guy.
00:30:09.000 Yeah.
00:30:10.000 I don't know how we got on this.
00:30:11.000 But chicken is delicious.
00:30:12.000 Chicken is like...
00:30:13.000 Chicken...
00:30:14.000 Here's a weird thing about chicken.
00:30:15.000 It used to be expensive.
00:30:17.000 Like there's one of the...
00:30:18.000 I think it was...
00:30:19.000 Which president?
00:30:20.000 It was running for...
00:30:25.000 Yeah.
00:30:26.000 Yeah.
00:30:41.000 We're good to go.
00:30:55.000 Being a backyard chicken person.
00:30:57.000 Like the weirdos in Portland.
00:30:58.000 Yeah, I was a backyard chicken person.
00:30:59.000 It turned into a coyote apocalypse. 1.00
00:31:02.000 Those motherfuckers. 1.00
00:31:04.000 They killed all my chickens slowly. 1.00
00:31:06.000 It took a long time, but they eventually got them all.
00:31:09.000 We also went through a fire, and the fire actually burned down our chicken coops, but the chickens got out while the fire was burning their chicken coop.
00:31:16.000 It created a hole, and they got out, and they were wandering around the yard, and so we saved them from that and then put them into a smaller chicken coop.
00:31:25.000 But the area that we lived in, there was so much fire that I think the amount of animals was greatly reduced.
00:31:31.000 And the coyotes, they got very clever and they literally pulled the chicken wire off of the chicken coop and created a small hole big enough for them to get inside.
00:31:42.000 And then it was a slaughter fest.
00:31:44.000 This is why I stay in big cities.
00:31:45.000 I'm afraid of the coyotes.
00:31:46.000 Oh, that's the problem.
00:31:48.000 Coyotes are everywhere now.
00:31:49.000 They're in every city in the country.
00:31:51.000 Wait, really?
00:31:51.000 Yeah.
00:31:52.000 Coyotes are a fascinating animal.
00:31:54.000 If you want to really get into what happens when animals get pressured and different methods of adaptation, there's a great book by Dan Flores called Coyote America.
00:32:05.000 And it's all about the coyote and how one of the reasons why they spread across the country, they were persecuted first by wolves.
00:32:14.000 Like when wolves would encounter coyotes, they would kill the coyotes.
00:32:17.000 The wolves are bullying them?
00:32:18.000 They killed them.
00:32:19.000 Yeah.
00:32:42.000 So when more coyotes are missing, they don't just come into estrus.
00:32:47.000 They actually produce more puppies.
00:32:49.000 And so then they expand their range.
00:32:52.000 So they were originally persecuted in the West.
00:32:56.000 That's where they really existed, in the Southwest, in the West.
00:32:58.000 Now they're in New York City. 1.00
00:33:00.000 Shit. 1.00
00:33:01.000 They're everywhere. 1.00
00:33:01.000 Coyotes in Chicago. 1.00
00:33:03.000 One billion coyotes.
00:33:04.000 Dude, there's a fat one living on my block. 1.00
00:33:06.000 He is fucking fat. 1.00
00:33:08.000 My friend showed me a picture of it. 1.00
00:33:09.000 I was like, oh my god.
00:33:10.000 Look at the size of this coyote.
00:33:12.000 He's like a well-fed dog.
00:33:14.000 Because there's so many deer out here.
00:33:15.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:33:16.000 I guess they're just eating fawns and whatever else they can find because there's a lot of wildlife in Texas.
00:33:20.000 Sure.
00:33:21.000 Yeah, coyotes are literally in every city.
00:33:26.000 San Francisco has coyotes everywhere.
00:33:28.000 Now I'm scared.
00:33:29.000 Houston, coyotes.
00:33:30.000 Now I'm scared.
00:33:31.000 Scared to leave the house.
00:33:32.000 Don't be scared.
00:33:32.000 Scared of anything.
00:33:33.000 Don't be scared.
00:33:34.000 Scared to come on here, I think.
00:33:35.000 Will you?
00:33:36.000 I'm going to get canceled.
00:33:37.000 You think so?
00:33:38.000 Yeah, again.
00:33:39.000 Are you really worried about that?
00:33:40.000 Well, people are mad about you.
00:33:43.000 Me too.
00:33:43.000 I don't know.
00:33:44.000 People are mad.
00:33:46.000 Yeah, people are mad.
00:33:47.000 They're mad about everything.
00:33:49.000 They're not necessarily mad about actual content.
00:33:51.000 They're mad about perceptions.
00:33:53.000 They're mad about what they want you to be versus what you actually are sometimes, you know?
00:33:56.000 And then they're also – you're dealing with – it's not a large number of people that are mad.
00:34:02.000 It's a small number of very aggressive people that want to affect the way you do things and want to change the way you talk and change who you talk to and change what you do.
00:34:14.000 Yeah.
00:34:14.000 Well, that's the thing.
00:34:16.000 So I've been promoting a book for a while, doing different shows, going on different things.
00:34:21.000 Mostly, you know, liberal people read me, I guess.
00:34:23.000 Then I went on Ben Shapiro's show.
00:34:26.000 Do you get canceled for that?
00:34:27.000 Well, you know, it's just like a lot of people yelling at me.
00:34:30.000 They're like, why'd you go on that guy's show?
00:34:31.000 I said, well, it's a big show.
00:34:33.000 Yeah, and you want to...
00:34:34.000 A lot of people listen to it.
00:34:35.000 And you want to have a debate with this guy about some of these ideas.
00:34:38.000 I just like...
00:34:39.000 You want to introduce yourself to as many people...
00:34:45.000 I want to sell books.
00:34:46.000 I want people to listen to my podcast.
00:34:48.000 I want people to read my website.
00:34:50.000 I want to talk to different people.
00:34:52.000 I want to reach different audiences.
00:34:54.000 And that just seems to me, 10 years ago...
00:34:57.000 Everybody would think that was obvious.
00:34:59.000 Yes.
00:34:59.000 Right?
00:35:00.000 Not that, like, everyone agrees with everybody, but that, of course, you want to go on the biggest shows you can get booked on.
00:35:05.000 Most people today still think that's obvious.
00:35:07.000 Right.
00:35:07.000 Yes.
00:35:07.000 It's just a small percentage of people that have got into this idea of platforming and deplatforming and going on someone's platform and amplifying someone's broadcast.
00:35:20.000 Like, there's all these terms that people are using now.
00:35:22.000 That is really just...
00:35:23.000 It's separatism in a weird way.
00:35:26.000 It's ideological separatism.
00:35:27.000 And what we're doing is we're taking these echo chambers and putting walls up around them.
00:35:32.000 And enforcing it by yelling at people and being angry at people for having...
00:35:36.000 Like my friend Tim Dillon had a podcast recently with Candace Owen. 0.98
00:35:40.000 And he's like, holy shit, dude. 0.99
00:35:42.000 The blowback was stunning. 0.99
00:35:44.000 So many people were angry with him talking to her.
00:35:47.000 And maybe some of it was angry that he didn't push back on some of the things that she said that they...
00:35:52.000 They believe are untrue or biased or distorted or what have you.
00:35:58.000 But I think conversations with people that have fundamentally different values are important for us.
00:36:05.000 It's interesting to watch how a person's thought process expands.
00:36:10.000 How do you think about things?
00:36:12.000 Why do you think about this?
00:36:13.000 Well, and there's a fantasy that you can sort of make disagreement go away if you, you know, try to shut down certain cultural avenues.
00:36:25.000 I mean, I think you saw that a lot in the election that just happened, and you continue to see it in politics, that it's frustrating to people that they can't just win everything and have all their ideas go through.
00:36:38.000 And shut you up. 1.00
00:36:39.000 Right.
00:36:41.000 But, you know, in the electoral arena, as well as in place else, but it's just true that, like, this is a big country.
00:36:47.000 There's a lot of people in it.
00:36:49.000 People have some different ideas, some different values.
00:36:52.000 You don't need to agree with them.
00:36:54.000 And, of course, in an election, like, it's vote.
00:36:56.000 You try to win, right?
00:36:57.000 You try to get more votes than the other guy.
00:36:59.000 But...
00:37:00.000 Conservatives aren't going to go away.
00:37:02.000 Progressive people aren't going to go away.
00:37:04.000 We're going to continue to exist as an ethnically diverse society.
00:37:08.000 We're going to continue to exist as a society with some very traditionalistically minded people.
00:37:13.000 And we have to find stuff that we can make headway on.
00:37:19.000 And the only way to have that kind of headway is to be communicating.
00:37:24.000 Because you don't actually know what exactly you agree or disagree about.
00:37:30.000 Right.
00:37:32.000 Right.
00:37:32.000 Right.
00:37:54.000 It's a good idea to not go on someone's platform and not talk to people.
00:37:57.000 Whoa, good save.
00:37:58.000 Good reflexes, buddy.
00:38:00.000 It's because some people have been deplatformed.
00:38:03.000 People like Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McGinnis and Alex Jones.
00:38:07.000 There's people that have been removed from these significant portals, whether it's YouTube or Twitter.
00:38:13.000 And so people, they understand that that's effective.
00:38:16.000 And now they want to expand that.
00:38:18.000 And once they learn how to do that, then they want to do it to others. 0.98
00:38:20.000 I mean, I've seen people argue for people being deplatformed for just having dumb ideas. 0.85
00:38:25.000 Like, you should deplatform him. 0.56
00:38:26.000 I've literally seen that in podcasts.
00:38:28.000 And it's so frustrating.
00:38:29.000 It's like, God.
00:38:30.000 That's not how to handle things.
00:38:32.000 We're supposed to have debates.
00:38:33.000 We're supposed to have discussions.
00:38:35.000 And I think because we've accepted this idea of censorship and deplatforming as a viable alternative to listening to things that upset you.
00:38:44.000 I think?
00:39:03.000 To get people to listen to your point of view is to express it eloquently and accurately and in a way that resonates.
00:39:11.000 You say something to the people that are listening that they might be on one side or another.
00:39:16.000 I mean, there's a lot of people that are kind of left and kind of right.
00:39:18.000 And something can come along and they go, well, and they like doing this. 0.99
00:39:21.000 They like going, well, fuck this. 1.00
00:39:22.000 I'm Trump now. 1.00
00:39:23.000 Or fuck this. 1.00
00:39:24.000 Biden's my man now. 1.00
00:39:26.000 Trump's got to go.
00:39:26.000 And it could be one thing.
00:39:29.000 There's a lot of people that don't have nuanced perspectives.
00:39:31.000 They People don't have an educated, long-term idea of what people are and how to communicate. 1.00
00:39:39.000 I watched a podcast, not a podcast, a debate yesterday with William F. Buckley and Noam Chomsky.
00:39:46.000 And it's from 1970 or something.
00:39:48.000 I don't know when it's from.
00:39:49.000 And it's an amazing conversation.
00:39:51.000 It's amazing.
00:39:52.000 Because you have two completely opposing viewpoints.
00:39:55.000 You have William F. Buckley, who's this kind of pompous right-wing guy.
00:39:59.000 And you have Noam Chomsky, who was young and vital Noam Chomsky.
00:40:03.000 And it's amazing.
00:40:04.000 Watching Noam Chomsky shut down William F. Buckley's ideas and have him challenge the points where Buckley was wrong on. 0.98
00:40:13.000 And it's a great fucking conversation. 0.94
00:40:15.000 And there's a lot of people today that would not want that conversation. 0.99
00:40:19.000 Because Noam Chomsky would be Ben Shapiro or whoever.
00:40:23.000 And you'd be like, oh my god, why is Noam Chomsky, or excuse me, William F. Buckley would Sure, yeah.
00:40:27.000 Why are you going on?
00:40:28.000 And Noam Chomsky would be on that show.
00:40:30.000 People go, why are you doing that?
00:40:31.000 You shouldn't do that.
00:40:31.000 You shouldn't give them a platform.
00:40:33.000 You shouldn't go on their platform.
00:40:34.000 But goddammit, that's how people learn that your perspective is better or your perspective resonates more or your perspective makes more sense.
00:40:42.000 Well, and what I think really ideological people don't understand is that most people – like the technical term, political scientists call it, is they're cross-pressured.
00:40:53.000 Right?
00:40:53.000 So like you have some ideas that fit one way, some ideas that fit another way.
00:40:57.000 You have some identities that go one way, some that go another way, right?
00:41:01.000 And so people change over time, right?
00:41:02.000 And you have voters who voted for Barack Obama, right?
00:41:07.000 And then they vote for Donald Trump four, eight years later.
00:41:10.000 And then people who are really ideological, they say like, well, Trump, like he said all these outrageous racist things.
00:41:17.000 So all these people who vote for them, they must be racist too. 0.94
00:41:21.000 And you're like, well, okay, but like they voted for the black guy four years ago. 0.94
00:41:25.000 Like how racist could they be? 0.95
00:41:26.000 They're like, no, no, no, it's racist, racist.
00:41:28.000 And then four years later, well, Trump has actually gained some Latino support, right? 0.87
00:41:34.000 So, okay, so they're white supremacists too, but like, no, right?
00:41:38.000 And probably they don't agree with what Trump said about Mexican immigrants.
00:41:43.000 Yeah.
00:41:43.000 Right?
00:41:44.000 I find it very unlikely that Mexican-American Trump supporters agree that Mexico is sending murderers and rapists across the country.
00:41:51.000 But there's a lot of issues in politics.
00:41:53.000 Maybe they agree with Trump about guns.
00:41:55.000 Maybe they agree with Trump about abortion.
00:41:57.000 Maybe they agree with Trump about I don't know what.
00:41:59.000 Deregulation. 1.00
00:42:00.000 There's a lot of shit happening, right? 0.99
00:42:02.000 And so if you can convince people to care about What you're aligned with them on, you win, right? 0.99
00:42:09.000 And if you can come across as the kind of friendly coalition that's like, hey, you agree with some of our stuff?
00:42:16.000 Get on the bandwagon, right?
00:42:17.000 That's good.
00:42:18.000 You win like that.
00:42:19.000 And you're not going to get anywhere.
00:42:24.000 Yeah.
00:42:28.000 Yeah.
00:42:31.000 Yeah.
00:42:34.000 Yeah.
00:42:45.000 Books like that, things like that.
00:42:46.000 And it's frustrating to me.
00:42:47.000 It's also, there's a tendency to embrace this polarization and to almost solidify it.
00:42:53.000 Even AOC, after the election, wanted everybody to put together a list of people that were supporting Trump and that voted for Trump and donated to Trump.
00:43:00.000 I'm like, Jesus Christ, are you really asking people to make lists?
00:43:04.000 You know where this goes?
00:43:05.000 How is this possible that a congresswoman... 1.00
00:43:07.000 I don't know what kind of list she wanted.
00:43:09.000 She wanted a list of sycophants.
00:43:10.000 I don't remember.
00:43:11.000 That's what she said.
00:43:12.000 She wanted a list of sycophants.
00:43:13.000 Oh, of like Trump?
00:43:14.000 Trump sycophants.
00:43:16.000 So we can kick them out or something?
00:43:19.000 Make sure they don't work.
00:43:19.000 That's what a lot of it is.
00:43:21.000 Make sure those people are polarized.
00:43:23.000 Like, these are the people that aren't on our side. 1.00
00:43:26.000 These are the people that we have to shit on. 0.99
00:43:27.000 And if you support them, you support all these negative things. 1.00
00:43:32.000 You support homophobia, racism, xenophobia.
00:43:35.000 Go down the list and then, I don't want to support that.
00:43:37.000 So you get bullied into a perspective.
00:43:40.000 You know, I got mixed feelings because I cover politics.
00:43:42.000 So it's good for me when people get more geared up about national politics, right?
00:43:48.000 The more people care, like, that's gravy for me.
00:43:52.000 But I do think it's, like, not...
00:43:55.000 Healthy, right?
00:43:56.000 I mean, I want to go back to a time when people felt that the political arena was, like, for boring nerds.
00:44:05.000 And, you know, so you could talk about...
00:44:08.000 So you want to go back when...
00:44:08.000 It's like when you're into a ban, and then the ban becomes big.
00:44:11.000 Hipsters, yeah.
00:44:12.000 No, but not like that.
00:44:14.000 Not that I want to be, like, a Congress hipster.
00:44:17.000 No, it's that, like, the more people care about politics, I mean, it's good to be engaged.
00:44:22.000 It's good that people vote.
00:44:23.000 I think what you're saying is you want people to actually understand what they're arguing about, and the people that are going to actually understand what politics are all about are going to be really into it.
00:44:33.000 But also to have limits, right?
00:44:36.000 To just be able to say...
00:44:38.000 All right, now I'm talking about my favorite band.
00:44:41.000 Now I'm talking about my favorite basketball team.
00:44:42.000 And I'm, like, not bringing politics into all of it, right?
00:44:48.000 That it's, like, it's not...
00:44:50.000 Again, I say it's good for me for people to turn politics into an all-consuming hobby.
00:44:56.000 But I don't think it's healthy for them or for, like, society.
00:45:00.000 It's one of the greatest things.
00:45:02.000 It's one of the last bastions we have is that Everybody in a given city usually roots for the football team.
00:45:11.000 Black, white, Latino, young, old, religious, secular.
00:45:16.000 So you know it's Democrats and Republicans who are in there.
00:45:19.000 They're all rooting for the team.
00:45:20.000 It's fine to me that athletes, you become famous, you want to use your platform, you want to do good.
00:45:26.000 I mean, that's great.
00:45:27.000 But...
00:45:28.000 It's good to see people care passionately about hating the Dallas Cowboys rather than an ideological disagreement.
00:45:38.000 I mean, I'm from D.C., so our team's rivals with the Cowboys.
00:45:43.000 It's cool to see those kind of cross-cutting...
00:45:46.000 Things exist in society, but we have, like, fewer of them, right?
00:45:50.000 It seems like if you, you know, like, you buy a car, and that's going to be a political statement.
00:45:54.000 And I know, so it's like, I drive a Prius, right?
00:45:58.000 So people see me coming, and it's like, they know who I'm voting for, based on that, right?
00:46:02.000 And it's not wrong, but...
00:46:06.000 I don't think it's good.
00:46:08.000 It would be better to be just more random.
00:46:11.000 Yeah.
00:46:11.000 No, I see what you're saying.
00:46:13.000 The more ways that we can separate people, the more separating we're going to have.
00:46:21.000 It is true that if you look at a Prius, I would like to see a breakdown, like a pie chart.
00:46:27.000 How many Prius owners voted for Trump?
00:46:29.000 It's like, It can't be a lot, right?
00:46:31.000 Right.
00:46:32.000 I wonder what the number is.
00:46:34.000 It's probably single digits.
00:46:37.000 I mean, it can't be a lot. 0.99
00:46:39.000 If somebody rolled up in a Prius and got out and had a MAGA hat on, my mind would be fucking blown. 0.93
00:46:46.000 That sounds like something that a provocative comedian would do. 0.96
00:46:50.000 But it's weird, right?
00:46:51.000 Is that healthy for society that we feel like we can infer so much about somebody?
00:46:56.000 For something totally...
00:46:58.000 It's like I wanted a reliable car that got good gas mileage and that fit in my...
00:47:04.000 I've got this tiny-ass garage, so most cars won't even fit in there, but my Prius does, so that's good.
00:47:10.000 Good for me.
00:47:11.000 My friend Greg has a Prius. 0.99
00:47:12.000 I shit on him all the time for it, but it's a good car. 0.99
00:47:15.000 Bill Burr, my buddy Bill Burr, had a Prius forever. 0.99
00:47:18.000 They're not the worst cars in the world.
00:47:19.000 They're super reliable.
00:47:21.000 It's boring.
00:47:23.000 But it's transportation.
00:47:25.000 If I was looking for something to take me to and from the city and I had to park in small spots, it's ideal.
00:47:33.000 It's better than a smart car. 0.98
00:47:35.000 Those things are ridiculous. 0.96
00:47:36.000 That's too small. 0.99
00:47:38.000 That's too small. 1.00
00:47:39.000 See, even Prius is shit on smart cars. 0.99
00:47:42.000 Right? 1.00
00:47:43.000 That's the real question.
00:47:44.000 How many smart car owners voted for Trump?
00:47:46.000 I don't know.
00:47:46.000 Nobody in America owns those.
00:47:48.000 They do.
00:47:49.000 I've seen those.
00:47:49.000 I've seen them, smart cars.
00:47:51.000 I was in Germany one time.
00:47:53.000 I was in this little van with some American journalist, German guy driving.
00:47:58.000 And the alley's blocked because it's just like a smart car and it's not parked correctly.
00:48:03.000 So it's up in our way.
00:48:04.000 And the German guy's like, well, we're going to have to wait. 1.00
00:48:08.000 And the Americans are like, we don't have to wait.
00:48:09.000 He's like, no, no, no, you gotta wait.
00:48:11.000 And this lady, you know, she was like our leader.
00:48:13.000 She was like, no, the young guys, you guys get out of the van, pick the smart car up, and just move it to the side.
00:48:19.000 And the German guy's like, no, it's not possible. 0.94
00:48:21.000 It's not possible.
00:48:22.000 She's like, Matt, go. 0.99
00:48:24.000 And so we go up, you know, it's tiny fucking cars. 0.99
00:48:26.000 We just pick it up. 0.99
00:48:27.000 Move it a few feet over, or like a meter, I guess they would say, over there, and go right by.
00:48:33.000 They're like, this is astounding!
00:48:35.000 What have you done?
00:48:36.000 And then she says to him, she's like, you know, this is why you guys lost the war. 1.00
00:48:40.000 Oh, shit. 1.00
00:48:42.000 It was real ugly American stuff. 1.00
00:48:45.000 That's so rude. 0.96
00:48:47.000 It was.
00:48:48.000 She's trying to be funny, obviously.
00:48:50.000 Did he laugh?
00:48:50.000 We moved the car.
00:48:51.000 He did not.
00:48:52.000 Germans are not... 0.61
00:48:54.000 They're a bit stoic.
00:48:55.000 Yeah.
00:48:56.000 Well, also, look, they're sensitive on that subject.
00:48:58.000 And I guess rightly so.
00:49:01.000 They've outlawed Scientology over there.
00:49:03.000 Have they?
00:49:03.000 Yeah.
00:49:03.000 I don't know anything about Scientology.
00:49:05.000 Really?
00:49:06.000 I mean, there's Thetans.
00:49:08.000 That's what I know.
00:49:09.000 Oh, yeah.
00:49:09.000 And Tom Cruise.
00:49:10.000 Well, they're not into cults.
00:49:13.000 Okay.
00:49:13.000 So if anything is demonstrably a cult, like if they can look at something and go, oh, I see where you're going here.
00:49:19.000 Yeah.
00:49:20.000 That's out?
00:49:20.000 Yeah.
00:49:21.000 I'm pretty sure that's true.
00:49:23.000 Google that.
00:49:24.000 Germany is outlawed Scientology.
00:49:28.000 Yeah, I found a Scientology channel the other day.
00:49:30.000 I didn't know it existed.
00:49:32.000 Flipping through the channels, or maybe I knew and I forgot. 0.99
00:49:35.000 A fucking DirecTV has a Scientology channel. 0.99
00:49:38.000 I saw this very unhealthy looking lady talking about what is possible because of being a Scientologist. 1.00
00:49:46.000 I was like, what is this?
00:49:47.000 Who is she talking to?
00:49:48.000 Why is no one disagreeing with her?
00:49:50.000 I'm like, what is this?
00:49:51.000 And then I look at the channel, it's like, Scientology channel.
00:49:54.000 So it's all Scientology programming.
00:49:56.000 I used to walk past a Scientology church every day on my commute.
00:50:01.000 Do they try to grab you and pull you?
00:50:03.000 No, but there's a lot of illegal parking that they're doing there.
00:50:08.000 They just pull it up on the sidewalk, and I wonder how they get away with it.
00:50:12.000 I want to spin up all kinds of...
00:50:16.000 Oh, remains legal.
00:50:17.000 Uh-oh.
00:50:17.000 Okay, there's been calls to ban—oh, it's banned in Russia.
00:50:20.000 We got fake news.
00:50:21.000 Yeah, that's me.
00:50:22.000 We've got to unplatform you.
00:50:24.000 Well, I always check my fake news.
00:50:26.000 Court in Russia has banned Moscow's Church of Scientology, saying it does not comply with the federal laws on freedom of religion.
00:50:32.000 According to Russia's TASS news agency, the country's justice ministry brought the case against the church, which is heard in Moscow.
00:50:39.000 So— So, Scientology, it says, why is Scientology banned in Germany?
00:50:44.000 The German government does not recognize Scientology as a religion.
00:50:48.000 Rather, it views it as an abusive business masquerading as a religion and believes that it pursues political goals that conflict with the values enshrined in German constitution.
00:50:56.000 This stance has been criticized by the U.S. government.
00:50:58.000 So it does, but it says, why is Scientology banned in Germany?
00:51:02.000 Yeah.
00:51:03.000 So, it is not banned in Germany, or it is?
00:51:06.000 From the same Wikipedia article, it says it's legal and allowed to operate.
00:51:10.000 Okay, so they don't recognize it as a religion, so they allow the people a certain amount of freedom of expression.
00:51:17.000 You probably don't get the tax benefits, right?
00:51:19.000 Do they have the same deal?
00:51:21.000 Scientology is one of those things.
00:51:22.000 You ever have something that you kind of never wanted to look into because you're afraid it's going to be bad?
00:51:28.000 Yeah.
00:51:28.000 So it's like, I want to just keep liking Tom Cruise's movies.
00:51:32.000 Oh, Tom Cruise is great.
00:51:33.000 So I don't really want to know what's up with Scientology.
00:51:35.000 I always hear bad things. 1.00
00:51:36.000 He's crazy as fuck. 1.00
00:51:38.000 And all great actors are crazy as fuck. 1.00
00:51:40.000 And that's just his crazy. 1.00
00:51:41.000 His crazy is that he believes that if you see a car broke down the side of the road, you've got to go over and help them because you're a Scientologist.
00:51:48.000 And that's what you do. 0.93
00:51:49.000 Like, he's fucking super intense and dialed in and he wants to do sit-ups as soon as you're done talking with him. 0.96
00:51:54.000 Like, that's that guy. 0.99
00:51:55.000 Like, he's fucking... 0.99
00:51:56.000 He's gonna help me with my car show. 0.99
00:51:57.000 He's like... 0.99
00:51:58.000 All my friends that have met him, I'm like, dude, the guy looks at you, he remembers your name, he's got like fucking laser beams shooting out of his eyeballs. 0.99
00:52:04.000 Yeah, what does it say? 0.97
00:52:05.000 No, he's just part of the article.
00:52:07.000 I'm talking about him when he was there.
00:52:09.000 I thought you were bringing him up for some important news.
00:52:12.000 Yeah, he's...
00:52:13.000 He's crazy, but so is Daniel Day-Lewis, right? 0.98
00:52:16.000 He's crazy in a different way. 0.98
00:52:18.000 I guess. 0.88
00:52:18.000 Like, they're all... 0.88
00:52:19.000 Christian Bale, that guy's fucking crazy. 0.99
00:52:20.000 You know, Russell Crowe, he throws cell phones at people that work behind the counter at a hotel if he doesn't like what they're saying. 1.00
00:52:27.000 A lot of crazy people are brilliant actors.
00:52:29.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:52:30.000 It's just like, he keeps his shit together with this weird thing. 1.00
00:52:34.000 Weird religion. 1.00
00:52:34.000 Weird religion. 1.00
00:52:35.000 And have you ever read Going Clear?
00:52:37.000 No.
00:52:37.000 Lawrence Wright's book?
00:52:38.000 No.
00:52:38.000 Oh my god, it's amazing.
00:52:40.000 Yeah.
00:52:40.000 It's amazing.
00:52:41.000 The HBO documentary, the series, I think was more than one thing.
00:52:44.000 Maybe it was...
00:52:45.000 I don't remember.
00:52:46.000 But that's really good too.
00:52:48.000 But the book is fantastic.
00:52:49.000 Going clear.
00:52:50.000 So do you have to be crazy like that to be successful in the podcast game?
00:52:54.000 To get to the Rogan level?
00:52:55.000 No.
00:52:56.000 Do I need to become crazier?
00:52:57.000 I just started early. 0.91
00:52:59.000 It's a dirty trick.
00:53:01.000 It's a dirty trick.
00:53:02.000 I'm an early adopter.
00:53:03.000 I just made it through.
00:53:04.000 There's probably a lot of people that make better cotton swabs than Q-tips, right?
00:53:10.000 But Q-tip has been the name forever, right?
00:53:13.000 Sure.
00:53:13.000 So I got in in 2009. So that's a long-ass time ago.
00:53:18.000 11 years of doing a podcast is a long fucking time. 0.98
00:53:20.000 Absolutely. 0.99
00:53:21.000 That's the key.
00:53:22.000 Ground floor.
00:53:23.000 Yeah, and also just doing a lot of interviews.
00:53:26.000 Sure. 0.99
00:53:26.000 Yeah, just give people a lot of shit to listen to. 0.99
00:53:30.000 I don't know. 1.00
00:53:30.000 I don't know what the fuck. 1.00
00:53:31.000 Just kill him. 1.00
00:53:32.000 Kill him with quantity. 1.00
00:53:33.000 I don't know what has made this popular. 1.00
00:53:35.000 I don't.
00:53:36.000 You should find out someday.
00:53:37.000 I don't want to know.
00:53:39.000 I'll probably change it then.
00:53:41.000 Right.
00:53:42.000 I mean, I think if you pay attention too much to criticism or praise, you're going to fall victim to it one way or another.
00:53:49.000 No, I mean, that's true.
00:53:50.000 I mean, it's not healthy to worry too much about what other people think.
00:53:54.000 Too much.
00:53:54.000 But you've got to worry a little.
00:53:56.000 You should think a little.
00:53:56.000 Because you don't want to piss people off.
00:53:58.000 You don't want to be annoying.
00:53:59.000 And I think on both of those things sometimes.
00:54:02.000 But it's also inevitable when you're just thinking out loud, right?
00:54:06.000 Because you and I, like, you could attest to this.
00:54:09.000 We had very little conversation before we got here.
00:54:12.000 Yeah, no, I did ask twice.
00:54:13.000 I was like, what are we going to talk about?
00:54:15.000 And everyone assured me.
00:54:16.000 They're like, no, you just go in.
00:54:17.000 You're just going to talk.
00:54:18.000 So...
00:54:18.000 It works.
00:54:19.000 It's real.
00:54:19.000 It's true.
00:54:20.000 Yeah, it really does work, though.
00:54:22.000 That's what I want to hear.
00:54:24.000 I want to hear a conversation between two people.
00:54:26.000 I think interviews are interesting.
00:54:27.000 I think debates are interesting.
00:54:28.000 But what I genuinely like to do is have conversations with people.
00:54:33.000 I just like to talk to people.
00:54:34.000 It's fun.
00:54:35.000 It's interesting.
00:54:35.000 I want to know why you think the way you think.
00:54:38.000 And especially this subject, because I keep going on about how I think there's something about...
00:54:43.000 Let's go back to this rat population density thing. 0.98
00:54:47.000 What they did was they took these rats, they put them in a large container, a large area, and they only had a couple of rats and the rats just behaved like rats.
00:54:55.000 And then as they ramped up, it mirrored essentially all of the problems you see in big cities.
00:55:02.000 They started getting more violence. 0.95
00:55:04.000 They started getting mentally ill rats that would literally sit in a corner and rock themselves back and forth.
00:55:08.000 Things that just didn't exist when there's small amounts of rats in a containment area.
00:55:13.000 I think people react to the people that are around them in a very tangible way.
00:55:21.000 And one of the things they use to demonstrate this is they've taken...
00:55:24.000 There was a very good Radiolab podcast that talked about this where they took cameras...
00:55:36.000 Yes.
00:55:55.000 Not only do they walk faster, they talk faster.
00:55:57.000 So if you listen to a certain amount of people form sentences, you can get a very accurate number, like really close, to what the population density or what the population of that area is, which is really interesting.
00:56:11.000 Yeah, so there's a reaction that we have to each other.
00:56:14.000 Too many people makes people walk faster and talk faster, and some people love that.
00:56:19.000 And my friends that live in New York City that love it, one of the things they say is the city's got so much energy, so much energy.
00:56:24.000 And I agree.
00:56:25.000 You go there, you're like, wow, so much energy.
00:56:27.000 But you're reacting to other biological entities, right?
00:56:30.000 It's like there's weird things that happen with people when they're around other people.
00:56:34.000 Like women, when they're around other women, get coinciding menstrual cycles, right? 0.98
00:56:38.000 We don't really totally understand that.
00:56:40.000 We know it's like pheromones, and they're reacting to each other.
00:56:43.000 I think there's strange things that are happening around people.
00:56:46.000 I think it's one of the reasons why podcasts in person are far better than podcasts through Zoom.
00:56:53.000 It's great to be able to talk to people that otherwise I couldn't talk to through that, but there's an impersonal, sort of disconnected...
00:57:00.000 There's a magic that's missing.
00:57:03.000 Yeah, but so I'm more on that point, right?
00:57:07.000 Like there's great energy in person.
00:57:10.000 I think that the move to doing everything remotely because of the pandemic, I think has really hurt sort of.
00:57:21.000 I think?
00:57:40.000 Yeah.
00:57:55.000 You know, where our sort of growth comes from as a kind of a modern society.
00:58:00.000 And there's nothing wrong with, you know, people living in small towns, people living in the countryside.
00:58:04.000 There's a lot of great stuff out there.
00:58:06.000 Obviously, also, we need food. 0.98
00:58:08.000 We'd be kind of fucked as a society. 0.78
00:58:12.000 But there's a reason why you see a trend toward urbanization over thousands and thousands of years. 0.96
00:58:19.000 You know, people trying to find more ways to have more interactions with each other.
00:58:24.000 Because I think we're not rats, ultimately, right? 0.99
00:58:28.000 Like, you put those rats in the crowded thing, and, like, they don't invent shit, you know? 1.00
00:58:33.000 They're still rats. 0.99
00:58:35.000 Right, but you understand the issues. 0.59
00:58:37.000 No, no, I mean, I see what you mean.
00:58:38.000 The negative aspects of overpopulation are represented in rat populations.
00:58:42.000 Right, I mean, look, there's definitely more violence in big cities.
00:58:47.000 You see that really clearly.
00:58:49.000 On the other hand, you do see better health outcomes in the contemporary United States in metro areas than you do in rural ones.
00:58:57.000 I don't know exactly why that is, but it tells us something.
00:59:01.000 Better health outcomes in terms of response to hospitalization or better health outcomes in terms of the overall quality of life?
00:59:10.000 I mean, just like life expectancy, obesity, that kind of stuff.
00:59:13.000 The life expectancy is higher, really, in New York City than Boulder, Colorado.
00:59:18.000 Yeah.
00:59:18.000 Is that real?
00:59:19.000 No, Colorado is actually number one.
00:59:21.000 But in general, I mean...
00:59:23.000 But you know, Boulder only has 100,000 people.
00:59:25.000 Yeah, but New York and California are some of the highest life expectancy states in the country.
00:59:30.000 You know, the really low ones, West Virginia, places like that.
00:59:35.000 But that's extreme poverty.
00:59:36.000 Well, they're poor, but that's part of the issue, right?
00:59:39.000 Like wealth comes out of...
00:59:41.000 Now, maybe that'll change, right?
00:59:43.000 Maybe we're going to have the technology...
00:59:47.000 And you know, we're gonna make some investments in broadband, other stuff like that.
00:59:51.000 I mean, maybe we can have much more prosperity in rural areas.
00:59:55.000 And like, that would be great.
00:59:57.000 Because, I mean, A, it would just be good for people there.
01:00:00.000 Also, you know, people like it.
01:00:02.000 It'd be cool.
01:00:03.000 I have some hope that all this Zoom and stuff will do that.
01:00:06.000 But I also have some doubts.
01:00:07.000 I mean, I'm just not sure that you can fully replicate the sort of value of in-person interaction.
01:00:14.000 And it's just a way that I do think we're different.
01:00:18.000 The only way that's ever going to come about is through virtual reality.
01:00:21.000 Virtual reality, if it gets to a point where you and I can put on goggles and be in a room together almost like this, that's pretty close.
01:00:30.000 Well, I think it's...
01:00:31.000 I'm not quite technical enough to know what the problem is.
01:00:36.000 But to me, the issue with all kinds of Zoom things, right? 1.00
01:00:39.000 It's not the visual experience.
01:00:41.000 It's the lags.
01:00:43.000 You know?
01:00:44.000 Like, the hardest thing for me as a professional talker about anything remote, you know, not just video, right?
01:00:51.000 You do...
01:00:52.000 Just latency?
01:00:53.000 Yeah.
01:00:53.000 Yeah, the latency.
01:00:53.000 It's hard.
01:00:54.000 It's hard to have a conversation when you're constantly worried about the timing and the interruptions and how that back and forth works.
01:01:02.000 It's very unnatural.
01:01:05.000 And I don't know if there's going to be a VR solution for that.
01:01:09.000 I think that latency is a killer.
01:01:10.000 The latency is a killer, but the latency is not as bad if you have headphones on, if both of you have headphones on.
01:01:15.000 The problem is oftentimes one person has speakers and the other person is using headphones and when the one person is talking, the way Zoom works and Skype works, It's very difficult for you to hear the other person talking while you're talking.
01:01:30.000 It sort of drowns everything out and it fucks up.
01:01:34.000 I've had some brutal conversations with people where they literally don't even hear what I'm saying.
01:01:37.000 Like, they're saying something wrong.
01:01:38.000 I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
01:01:40.000 What are you saying?
01:01:40.000 And they just keep going.
01:01:41.000 I'm like, hold on, hold on.
01:01:42.000 Hold on! 0.98
01:01:43.000 You can't.
01:01:44.000 That's not real.
01:01:45.000 Like, stop.
01:01:45.000 And you're like, oh, Jesus.
01:01:47.000 And then you realize, okay, they can barely hear me while they're talking.
01:01:50.000 I can't really talk.
01:01:51.000 Whereas if you're talking and I'm like, what?
01:01:53.000 And you hear it.
01:01:54.000 It's like we're in the same room.
01:01:56.000 We're also wearing headphones together, which is better than even being in the same room and not having headphones on.
01:02:03.000 Because your voice in my ears...
01:02:06.000 There's a couple times I've talked to you earlier where I realized it as I was doing it.
01:02:09.000 I was like, oh, I don't want to do that.
01:02:11.000 It's just the thing of learning the rhythm of people communicating.
01:02:15.000 But...
01:02:16.000 When the headphones, your voice is as loud as my voice, and it's at the same, it's right there in the ears, so it locks you in.
01:02:22.000 Well, and we're, you're Italian, is that?
01:02:24.000 Mostly.
01:02:25.000 Yeah, yeah, and I'm Jewish mostly, and, you know, New York, New Jersey, and, you know, it's a stereotype, but, like, we're always talking over each other at dinner, you know, family, and my wife, she's a waspy person, a little more reserved, and I think the first time she came home to see my family, 0.91
01:02:41.000 she was like, what's going on here?
01:02:42.000 Like, Everybody's just yelling constantly.
01:02:44.000 But to me, it's a very natural way to communicate.
01:02:49.000 Yeah, to have a little overlap, right?
01:02:51.000 And part of being human is understanding those cues.
01:02:55.000 And when you intersperse the technology and the latency and the lags in there, it's a very different experience.
01:03:02.000 And professional interviewers figure out how to do it because they're pros, but it's not normal.
01:03:08.000 Yeah, you have to work with it, and it's difficult, and oftentimes professional interviewers, they actually use that to talk over each other.
01:03:15.000 If you're watching CNN, if there's opposing viewpoints, oftentimes these fucking anchors just talk over people, and they don't let the person get their point out, and they also know that they only have seven minutes, and they're also working towards a soundbite.
01:03:27.000 As much as they're having a conversation, they're probably more likely setting traps or anticipating outcomes and working towards some sort of gotcha moment, and this is... 0.97
01:03:38.000 It's not a conversation.
01:03:40.000 And they tell you if you get, you know, I've gotten media training, you know, to go on cable, right?
01:03:45.000 And then what they tell you is before you go on cable, because you're only going to be on there for a couple minutes, you decide what you want to say, right?
01:03:53.000 You distill it to a few quick talking points, and you just make sure to say that no matter what question you get asked.
01:03:59.000 And that's training.
01:04:01.000 That's the advice they give to the pundits, the talking heads who go on.
01:04:06.000 To the politicians who come on.
01:04:07.000 And worst case, you say, well, you know, Wolf, I think the real issue is...
01:04:11.000 And then, boom, you just do your talking points.
01:04:14.000 And that's terrible.
01:04:15.000 It's a terrible product.
01:04:17.000 You watch those shows, and you are not learning anything.
01:04:22.000 Because the people are sent on their program to do that.
01:04:27.000 That's what the pros tell you you should do as a guest.
01:04:31.000 But why would you want to watch that?
01:04:34.000 I mean, you wouldn't want to watch this.
01:04:36.000 I do. 0.99
01:04:37.000 I'll watch some clips sometimes on YouTube, but I never watch it live on television unless I'm at a fucking airport or something. 0.98
01:04:42.000 That's the only thing on. 0.98
01:04:43.000 I think it's a nonsense way of communicating.
01:04:45.000 I think it's a terrible way to express ideas, and it's one of the reasons why I don't do any of those shows.
01:04:49.000 I won't do it.
01:04:50.000 I don't want to do any of those shows where you sit down at a panel and a bunch of people yell over each other.
01:04:55.000 I'm not interested.
01:04:56.000 I'm not interested in being right.
01:04:58.000 I just want to talk.
01:05:00.000 If I go on one of those shows and I have a viewpoint or a perspective that's definitely different than the person who has a perspective, I want to listen to that person.
01:05:13.000 I don't want to just be right.
01:05:15.000 I might be right and I might think I'm right and I might be really looking forward to telling them that I think I'm right.
01:05:20.000 But I really want to listen to them too. 0.99
01:05:22.000 I want to know what the fuck they think and why they think what they think. 0.99
01:05:25.000 And the only way to really have a good argument against it is to have a real clear understanding of what that person is saying. 0.99
01:05:32.000 And I want to look at it through their perspective.
01:05:35.000 I want, like, there's a lot of times people have said, oh, you know, you take the side of your guests a lot of times.
01:05:40.000 Even if, you know, you've taken different sides before, I'm like, that's not what I'm doing.
01:05:43.000 It might seem like that's what I'm doing.
01:05:45.000 What I'm really doing is I want them to fully express what they think.
01:05:49.000 So I want to find out why they think that way.
01:05:52.000 So I want to think the way they're thinking.
01:05:53.000 So if they start saying something like, oh yeah, so you feel like we should do it this way.
01:05:58.000 You're trying to draw it out.
01:05:59.000 You're trying to explicate what's going on.
01:06:01.000 I'm also trying to learn.
01:06:02.000 I'm trying to get it.
01:06:03.000 I'm trying to get it from their perspective.
01:06:05.000 Sometimes people will say things, and I had an idea of what I believed before I started talking to them, and then they start talking, and I go, oh, that makes sense.
01:06:15.000 I get it now.
01:06:16.000 And maybe I did have a different opinion a week ago, but...
01:06:19.000 I'm not married to my opinions. 0.99
01:06:21.000 When you're on those fucking cable shows, you have to be married to your opinions. 0.99
01:06:25.000 You're just talking over each other. 1.00
01:06:26.000 And it's so many gotcha moments. 0.86
01:06:28.000 It's just gross. 0.99
01:06:29.000 If I ever had someone over my house and they talk to me like that, I'd be like, get the fuck out of here. 0.99
01:06:33.000 I don't want to talk to you like that. 0.99
01:06:34.000 Well, what I hate about it is you put you on like that, right?
01:06:36.000 And so you're supposed to be repping your team, right?
01:06:40.000 Yeah.
01:06:43.000 If you ever concede that the other perspective might have some merit or that you don't have all the answers, then you're taking the L for your team.
01:06:54.000 And people are going to be disappointed in you.
01:06:56.000 And I don't ever want to be in that...
01:06:59.000 That's not interesting.
01:07:01.000 As a thinker, as a writer, as a host, to just be out there as a cog in the machine playing the role, it's boring.
01:07:12.000 I mean, the world is a complex place. 0.88
01:07:15.000 I change my thinking about things a lot because, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm stupid, but I like it. 0.96
01:07:23.000 No, you're thinking. 0.52
01:07:39.000 But the idea is to learn, to persuade, to become smarter, to help your audience become smarter.
01:07:47.000 And that's not about trying to beat the other guy into submission.
01:07:51.000 But so much, I mean, really on television, media is constructed that way as this, like, spectacle.
01:07:59.000 And I'm not above why.
01:08:01.000 In other arenas, like, it's amazing.
01:08:04.000 To just watch two sports teams go at it and see who's going to win. 1.00
01:08:08.000 It's stupid. 1.00
01:08:09.000 To score the most points. 1.00
01:08:10.000 But for ideas, it's dumb. 1.00
01:08:12.000 Yeah, it's stupid to do that with conversations. 0.99
01:08:14.000 And I do agree. 0.99
01:08:15.000 It's fun to watch people do that with sports.
01:08:17.000 It's exciting.
01:08:18.000 But sports are a different animal.
01:08:21.000 It's a different thing.
01:08:21.000 I think...
01:08:23.000 Conversations are missing from media.
01:08:26.000 We don't have conversations.
01:08:28.000 The only way they have conversations is if it's an echo chamber and there's two people like Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo agreeing on something and they have some thing and they agree about and they talk.
01:08:37.000 That's a conversation, sort of. 0.93
01:08:38.000 But even that's bullshit because it's pre-planned out and they've gone over what they're going to say in advance. 0.94
01:08:44.000 They're not just talking about things. 0.92
01:08:47.000 And I also think that most ideas...
01:08:50.000 Or like an idea that's controversial, like your idea of a billion Americans.
01:08:54.000 Like this is an idea that I think should be expressed in a long-form conversation because it's the best way to look at all your perspectives and see why you...
01:09:05.000 And I think, you know, like right away, my perspective was I don't think that that's a good idea because that's too many people.
01:09:12.000 But I see what you're saying and I listen to what you're saying and I go, oh, okay.
01:09:16.000 How many people do you want?
01:09:18.000 I don't think there's a number.
01:09:20.000 I don't have a number, but I am pro-immigration.
01:09:24.000 Listen, I would be incredibly hypocritical if I was anti-immigration.
01:09:29.000 I love a lot of immigrants.
01:09:31.000 I know a lot of immigrants because I know a lot of fighters, because a lot of people from the UFC, a lot of them are immigrants.
01:09:36.000 I'm grateful that they're here.
01:09:38.000 I'm grateful that my grandparents had an opportunity to come here.
01:09:41.000 I think this is an amazing place.
01:09:43.000 I'm pro-America as an idea.
01:09:46.000 I think the idea of American people, the idea of this melting pot, the idea of this place that is, in quotes, the land of opportunity.
01:09:56.000 This is what people think.
01:09:57.000 When you say the land of opportunity, if you're on Jeopardy, what is America?
01:10:00.000 It's not what is China. 0.92
01:10:03.000 It's not, right?
01:10:04.000 It's this spot.
01:10:07.000 You wanted to leave Los Angeles.
01:10:10.000 Traffic, big city, high taxes in California.
01:10:13.000 I don't know exactly what's on your mind.
01:10:15.000 But there's a lot of places you can go.
01:10:17.000 So Austin is interesting.
01:10:19.000 I mean, this is a place a lot of people have been moving to.
01:10:23.000 Midsize city, but it's a city.
01:10:25.000 This is urban.
01:10:26.000 You could have been like a solo rat on a mountaintop someplace.
01:10:31.000 I've done that before.
01:10:32.000 The problem is I have a family, and they're not interested in that.
01:10:35.000 If it was me, I would be on a mountain somewhere.
01:10:37.000 Okay.
01:10:37.000 Yeah, 100%.
01:10:38.000 I'd have a fat internet cable, and I'd hire someone to drill through the ground to whatever the fucking nearest point is, and I'd be on a mountain.
01:10:46.000 Not that I don't like people, but I really, really like nature.
01:10:50.000 I mean, I like to go, but the thing is, like, outside of the pandemic, my job involves enormous groups of people together, right?
01:10:58.000 I'm a stand-up comedian, and I do these giant places where there's thousands of people, and then I do the UFC, so I do commentary, and there's thousands of people. 0.98
01:11:06.000 That shit's overwhelming sometimes. 0.94
01:11:08.000 And then there's millions of people that listen to the podcast. 1.00
01:11:11.000 That shit's overwhelming sometimes, too. 0.99
01:11:13.000 And the antidote for that, for me, is nature. 1.00
01:11:16.000 And so to be in a place where I can see mountains and I can just hear birds and I can see trees...
01:11:23.000 That makes me feel good.
01:11:25.000 It's a nice feeling for me.
01:11:26.000 I was never a nature person.
01:11:29.000 And then because of the pandemic, so much stuff, not anymore, but back in March, April, so much stuff was closed.
01:11:37.000 Everything was closed in D.C. And I got a five-year-old and it was like we had to do...
01:11:43.000 So we started going every Saturday, driving someplace, and we'd go hikes. 0.98
01:11:48.000 You know, like easy level ones, because I'm fucking out of shape. 0.92
01:11:52.000 Kids five, you know, what can we do? 0.93
01:11:54.000 But it was like the first time I ever really...
01:11:57.000 Was, like, doing that stuff.
01:11:59.000 And I think it's, like, the one thing that I will take away from this COVID era is, like, I finally get it, right?
01:12:08.000 Oh, that's great.
01:12:09.000 It helps reboot my mind to just kind of walk around some trees and look at a river kind of rolling around.
01:12:19.000 Hey, man, that's how we evolved.
01:12:20.000 Yeah.
01:12:20.000 Mm-hmm.
01:12:21.000 You ever caught a fish?
01:12:23.000 You ever go fishing?
01:12:24.000 I have, yeah.
01:12:25.000 When you catch a fish, there is a weird thing that's going on in your brain that is ancient.
01:12:30.000 It's ancient.
01:12:31.000 And even though fishing tackle is very modern, using a spin casting reel, and you've got monofilament line, and these hooks that have been designed and engineered...
01:12:44.000 You're pulling in this fish.
01:12:46.000 There's something about catching a fish that ignites a primal part of whatever part of you that's left over from back when this was the only way you were going to survive is if you caught a fish. 0.75
01:13:01.000 And it was probably when you were catching it with a net or with a stick or whatever the fuck they figured out how to use back then.
01:13:07.000 Or ancient hooks. 0.59
01:13:08.000 That part gets ignited because it's a part of what we are.
01:13:12.000 Also part of what we are is we lived in nature.
01:13:15.000 Humans always lived in nature until X amount of thousands of years ago when agriculture and cities and condensed living, people were tribal and they stuck together and they were mostly hunters and gatherers. 0.98
01:13:30.000 That shit is in our DNA, and it's very hard to get out. 0.99
01:13:33.000 And I don't think you can. 1.00
01:13:34.000 And as a grown adult, I think one of the things we should do is recognize that we have some requirements.
01:13:39.000 And one of the requirements is to be around nature.
01:13:41.000 Like, there's a physical requirement, and you feel like a better person.
01:13:45.000 You feel like a better version of yourself when you can go on a hike in the mountains.
01:13:50.000 I can tell you, when I went fishing, I just felt weird.
01:13:53.000 But...
01:13:54.000 Exactly what you said.
01:13:56.000 That's how I feel.
01:13:57.000 You know, these days, everybody in D.C. has got fire pits for our backyards, you know, so we can hang out at night.
01:14:05.000 And that's how I feel any time I get a fire together.
01:14:09.000 I learned as a little kid how to build a campfire, summer camp, that kind of thing.
01:14:13.000 It never comes up in real life, because who cares?
01:14:17.000 But you do it, and you're like, oh, this.
01:14:19.000 This is the real-life survival skills.
01:14:21.000 This is what we're supposed to be doing.
01:14:24.000 Yeah.
01:14:25.000 And I do get that.
01:14:26.000 Like, that's something cool.
01:14:28.000 Yeah, that's another.
01:14:29.000 Fire is in your DNA. There's something beautiful about starting a fire.
01:14:32.000 I was on a hunting trip once in Alaska on Prince of Wales Island, and it's one of the rainiest parts on Earth.
01:14:39.000 It rains there basically every day.
01:14:43.000 The entire trip was just, you're soaked.
01:14:45.000 It doesn't matter if you're in a sleeping bag, in a tent.
01:14:48.000 The sleeping bag is filled.
01:14:50.000 That sounds good.
01:14:50.000 Sounds terrible.
01:14:50.000 There's water vapor everywhere.
01:14:53.000 Okay, I'm not going there.
01:14:54.000 Nothing is ever dry.
01:14:55.000 There's nothing ever dry.
01:14:56.000 But there was one night where it didn't rain for like six or seven hours, and we figured out how to start a fire.
01:15:03.000 Okay.
01:15:04.000 And we...
01:15:05.000 Actually, for the entire evening, until like early in the morning, it didn't start raining again, so we...
01:15:10.000 Used corn chips, like Fritos corn chips.
01:15:13.000 Those things are like super flammable.
01:15:16.000 And they stay lit for a long time.
01:15:18.000 So we figured out that we can light corn chips on fire and then slowly dry out these sticks and get them to the point where they were flammable.
01:15:25.000 And then take some wood from some areas where it doesn't get direct rain on it.
01:15:31.000 And like underneath it was kind of dry.
01:15:33.000 And we gathered together some wood.
01:15:35.000 And then once we got the fire going, then we put the wet stuff on there and it dried it out and burnt...
01:15:39.000 And we got a fire going.
01:15:40.000 That's probably not good news about eating Fritos, though.
01:15:44.000 I don't know if it's bad news.
01:15:45.000 I mean, there's a lot of things that are flammable that taste good.
01:15:48.000 It's okay.
01:15:49.000 I mean, it's not good for you anyway.
01:15:50.000 But the point is, this fire was like a drug.
01:15:55.000 Like, all of a sudden we had this fire lit and we were like, oh, it was amazing.
01:15:59.000 And the spirits, everyone's spirits went elevated.
01:16:02.000 Everybody was much happier.
01:16:04.000 And, you know, we were warm already.
01:16:06.000 We had, you know, merino wool and, you know, down puffy coats on.
01:16:12.000 So we stayed warm.
01:16:13.000 But there was something about that fire that, like, it let us know.
01:16:17.000 Like, it was hope.
01:16:18.000 Yeah, it's the meaning of, like, warmth and community and safety, right?
01:16:22.000 And fun stories.
01:16:23.000 Then you're around the fire and everybody's telling funny stories and everyone's laughing and we had a great time.
01:16:28.000 But there's a DNA aspect to it.
01:16:31.000 There's a part of you that recognizes that this fire is one of the things that kept human beings alive.
01:16:38.000 Kept away predators.
01:16:39.000 Kept away the enemy.
01:16:41.000 We got a fire going.
01:16:42.000 We're alive now.
01:16:43.000 And you're like, yes, success.
01:16:45.000 Like a fish.
01:16:46.000 You catch your fish.
01:16:46.000 Oh, here we go.
01:16:47.000 We got one.
01:16:48.000 We got one.
01:16:48.000 We got one.
01:16:48.000 There's an exciting thing.
01:16:50.000 It's a weird thing that people do, this catch and release.
01:16:53.000 There's a lot of fly fishermen.
01:16:55.000 All they basically want to do is just go out there. 0.97
01:16:58.000 The way people have described it accurately is you're kind of just fucking with the fish. 0.98
01:17:02.000 You know? 0.98
01:17:03.000 Because you're not really...
01:17:05.000 Sure.
01:17:06.000 You're not fishing in the sense that you're providing your family with food and sustenance.
01:17:11.000 No, you're just catching it and letting it go.
01:17:13.000 But they want that thrill.
01:17:15.000 Like, I got him, I got him.
01:17:16.000 That thrill.
01:17:17.000 And then they're like, I'll let you live.
01:17:19.000 Go ahead.
01:17:19.000 It's true.
01:17:19.000 It's funny.
01:17:20.000 You wouldn't...
01:17:20.000 I mean, I guess the fish are glad not to be dead, but...
01:17:24.000 It's like shooting an animal with a tranquilizer dart. 1.00
01:17:26.000 Like, I gotcha, bitch! 1.00
01:17:27.000 Take a picture with a moose when it's out cold, like you shot him with a dart. 1.00
01:17:30.000 That's horrible.
01:17:31.000 Do people do that?
01:17:32.000 No.
01:17:33.000 No, okay.
01:17:34.000 It sounds weird.
01:17:35.000 Biologists do that. 0.86
01:17:36.000 Sure, yeah, yeah, no, no, I understand.
01:17:38.000 I understand.
01:17:38.000 Usually they don't do that with anything other than predators.
01:17:41.000 With other animals, they actually net them.
01:17:43.000 They drop, like if they want to tag a mule deer or something like that, they actually drop a net from a helicopter on them.
01:17:48.000 That's also weird. 0.99
01:17:49.000 Well, it's weird because they can fall and break their leg, and then you've got to kill them.
01:17:53.000 But that's the only way they can actually figure out, like, through that, they've figured out how these things, what their range is.
01:18:01.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:18:02.000 And they've got to tag them.
01:18:03.000 Yeah, they get data.
01:18:04.000 They're trying to figure out what's going on.
01:18:05.000 But there's something about fishing that ignites these feelings in people.
01:18:10.000 And there's something about hiking.
01:18:11.000 Like when you're around trees, it's like your body goes, oh.
01:18:15.000 It's like a level of homeostasis occurs.
01:18:18.000 There's sort of a balancing feeling.
01:18:20.000 There's a relaxation.
01:18:22.000 Yeah.
01:18:23.000 You're supposed to be around trees.
01:18:24.000 But I wouldn't discourage people from listening to podcasts on their busy, hectic commutes.
01:18:30.000 No.
01:18:30.000 I wouldn't discourage people.
01:18:31.000 You've got to keep the business alive.
01:18:33.000 There's nothing wrong with doing a lot of things that are going to the movies or going to a concert.
01:18:39.000 All these things have nothing to do with nature.
01:18:41.000 I miss going to the movies.
01:18:42.000 I miss that too.
01:18:43.000 I miss going to concerts.
01:18:45.000 Concerts are good.
01:18:46.000 I miss large groups of people getting together and not worried about dying.
01:18:51.000 Yes, that would be good.
01:18:52.000 Even you and I, when we saw each other, like, how often have you been tested?
01:18:56.000 What's up?
01:18:57.000 We've got to test you, and then as soon as we know we're clear, then you can hang out.
01:19:02.000 It's very weird.
01:19:03.000 I was on an airplane, and it's just the most other people's anxiety.
01:19:10.000 It's like bouncing off the walls.
01:19:12.000 I mean, I don't believe in panpsychism or anything like that, but that's what it feels like.
01:19:19.000 It's like you can tell.
01:19:20.000 Everybody's on edge.
01:19:21.000 Everybody's nervous.
01:19:23.000 And planes are always like that.
01:19:24.000 I mean, that's never the human experience at its finest.
01:19:28.000 How do they eat on planes?
01:19:29.000 They let you take your mask down when you eat?
01:19:31.000 They do.
01:19:32.000 That's nonsense.
01:19:33.000 But then everybody's looking at you.
01:19:35.000 And also, it doesn't make sense.
01:19:36.000 I mean, this could be all of the show.
01:19:38.000 Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
01:19:39.000 Yeah, I mean, obviously, the snacks don't have, like, magic antiviral properties, right?
01:19:45.000 Like, if the mask is important, which, you know, the doctors say it is, then...
01:19:50.000 Also, I mean, you know, it's not that long a flight.
01:19:53.000 You can survive without a snack.
01:19:55.000 I know, but to ask people to fly for five hours with no food, they're like, what?
01:20:02.000 I need to eat all the time!
01:20:04.000 Well, it's weird, though, because it's like, I mean, this is like the worst thing, but, you know, it's so boring being on an airplane, and that's just what people want to do.
01:20:13.000 It's like, sit there and snack.
01:20:16.000 I was trying to read a book, be like a...
01:20:18.000 Smart guy.
01:20:19.000 Well, it was like a Jack Reacher book, so...
01:20:21.000 Oh, really?
01:20:22.000 So not that smart.
01:20:22.000 That's funny.
01:20:24.000 Tom Cruise played Jack Reacher.
01:20:25.000 He did, yes.
01:20:26.000 It all circles back around.
01:20:28.000 I love those books.
01:20:29.000 That movie was not that good.
01:20:30.000 No, the movie was not good.
01:20:31.000 The second one is supposed to be even worse.
01:20:34.000 Yeah, but there's going to be a new Amazon series.
01:20:36.000 Why are you laughing?
01:20:38.000 I love him.
01:20:39.000 I love Tom Cruise.
01:20:40.000 The character.
01:20:40.000 You know the Jack Reacher character?
01:20:42.000 Yes.
01:20:42.000 He's supposed to be a giant guy.
01:20:43.000 Exactly. 0.99
01:20:44.000 So it can't be fucking Tom Cruise. 0.99
01:20:45.000 Right. 0.99
01:20:45.000 Right. 0.99
01:20:46.000 I like Tom Cruise.
01:20:47.000 Doesn't work.
01:20:48.000 But that's like the little guy and he's scrappy.
01:20:51.000 Exactly.
01:20:51.000 That's an interesting character too.
01:20:53.000 Yeah.
01:20:54.000 It's...
01:20:55.000 Yeah.
01:20:56.000 It doesn't work.
01:20:57.000 Yeah.
01:20:58.000 The little guy that's scrappy.
01:20:59.000 No.
01:20:59.000 It's supposed to be like The Rock.
01:21:01.000 Yeah.
01:21:02.000 That's the dream.
01:21:03.000 Just like a giant guy.
01:21:04.000 The book, he's always like...
01:21:05.000 Lee Chao's always writing about how huge his hands are.
01:21:07.000 Yeah.
01:21:08.000 And...
01:21:08.000 And I respect that as a somewhat small-handed person.
01:21:11.000 Yeah, how the fuck do they get Tom Cruise to play a huge-handed guy? 0.96
01:21:14.000 Well, he was into it. 0.89
01:21:16.000 That's probably why it didn't work, though, right?
01:21:18.000 The new book, the author he handed off, Lee Childe handed it off to his little brother.
01:21:22.000 To start writing the series.
01:21:24.000 Oh, no.
01:21:25.000 Is that like Gallagher, too?
01:21:27.000 Yeah.
01:21:27.000 Like that kind of situation?
01:21:28.000 There you go.
01:21:29.000 Oh, Dwayne Johnson explains losing Jack Reacher role and why he...
01:21:34.000 What does he say?
01:21:34.000 Is he mad?
01:21:35.000 He's supposed to be him, though. 0.99
01:21:36.000 Well, that fucking makes sense. 0.98
01:21:38.000 Dwayne Johnson, when you meet him, doesn't even seem like a real human. 1.00
01:21:42.000 You're like, oh, look at this fucking superhero. 0.99
01:21:44.000 Yeah, that's a... 1.00
01:21:44.000 Click on that link. 1.00
01:21:45.000 What does it say there?
01:21:47.000 That's a large individual.
01:21:49.000 Could have been timing.
01:21:50.000 Maybe he had another role to do, you know?
01:21:51.000 Say it again?
01:21:51.000 Go back?
01:21:52.000 Go back to the top?
01:21:53.000 What does it say?
01:21:54.000 It says lose out.
01:21:56.000 Okay.
01:21:57.000 Loses to Tom Cruise.
01:21:58.000 Oh, there he is on Twitter.
01:22:00.000 Love the character.
01:22:02.000 About ten years ago, I went for the role, but Cruise got it.
01:22:04.000 It was a great motivation for me to always stay hungry. 0.72
01:22:07.000 That's a really nice way of saying I would have fucked that movie up.
01:22:12.000 Huh.
01:22:12.000 Yeah.
01:22:13.000 Who makes the better action star, Cruise or Johnson?
01:22:15.000 That's not a good question.
01:22:16.000 No, that's not the right way to think about it.
01:22:18.000 Yeah.
01:22:18.000 But it's who's right for the part.
01:22:20.000 Yeah, Cruise is not right for the part.
01:22:22.000 The part doesn't work.
01:22:23.000 You know, the other thing, you imagine The Rock in, like, Top Gun.
01:22:26.000 Yeah.
01:22:26.000 And it's like, no, because you're not going to be a fighter pilot at that size.
01:22:30.000 Right.
01:22:30.000 Exactly.
01:22:32.000 Fighter pilots are small.
01:22:33.000 Yeah.
01:22:34.000 It's like, you know, The Rock played the greatest jockey of all time.
01:22:38.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:22:39.000 Poor fucking horse. 1.00
01:22:40.000 I know. 1.00
01:22:41.000 You'd be like, what?
01:22:42.000 Wait, hold on. 1.00
01:22:44.000 How big is this goddamn horse? 1.00
01:22:45.000 Those big horses don't run that fast. 1.00
01:22:47.000 This is stupid. 1.00
01:22:49.000 That would be terrifying. 1.00
01:22:50.000 The Rock sitting on a giant horse.
01:22:53.000 Yeah, there's some guys that are just born for roles.
01:22:56.000 Like Keanu Reeves is born for John Wick.
01:22:59.000 Mm-hmm.
01:23:00.000 He's the perfect John Wick.
01:23:02.000 Even though Keanu Reeves is not a physically imposing guy, even in the movie, he's got his shirt off and he's showering.
01:23:09.000 It doesn't look like the rock's back.
01:23:11.000 It's not like you're like, oh my god, look at the size of this guy.
01:23:13.000 He's going to kill everybody.
01:23:16.000 There's something about Keanu's demeanor and the way he plays that role. 1.00
01:23:21.000 He fucking nails it. 0.98
01:23:23.000 It's perfect. 0.99
01:23:24.000 He's got this flat affect, but you can tell he loves the dog.
01:23:29.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:23:29.000 And you can believe that he can kill all those people. 1.00
01:23:32.000 When he's killing all those people, I believe it. 0.99
01:23:34.000 Yeah, he's intense. 0.97
01:23:35.000 He dials in.
01:23:36.000 Yeah, it works.
01:23:37.000 It works.
01:23:38.000 There's some roles that just don't work.
01:23:41.000 I agree.
01:23:42.000 So you're reading Jack Reacher, rather.
01:23:44.000 You're reading this book, and people are freaking out.
01:23:46.000 And you freak out, too, because you're feeling these people freaking out.
01:23:49.000 And so it's hard to concentrate on the book.
01:23:51.000 It's just a ton of bad vibes these days.
01:23:53.000 I don't know what else to say about it.
01:23:56.000 I think my opinion that this pandemic is bad is not that interesting.
01:24:03.000 I honestly had not had a chance to really reflect on it until I was there at the airport.
01:24:13.000 I've been to that airport a million times in normal reality, and you recognize things, but they're so surreal.
01:24:21.000 Everybody's acting weird.
01:24:23.000 Everybody's nervous.
01:24:24.000 There's these hand sanitizer stations everywhere.
01:24:27.000 Who knows?
01:24:28.000 We should all wash our hands more, probably, going forward, just like our kindergarten teachers told us.
01:24:33.000 But it's been such an incredibly stressful time, and I will be fascinated to see when people start getting vaccinated, Like, how bananas do things get?
01:24:47.000 Like, people are gonna be really excited to, like, get back out to the club, you know, to, like, have fun, go to shows, have just, like, huge parties.
01:24:58.000 In a couple years, I think.
01:24:59.000 I think sooner.
01:25:02.000 I don't know about that.
01:25:03.000 I think 2021 is going to be the craziest year that we've ever seen.
01:25:09.000 I think by the end of 2021, things are going to be rocking.
01:25:12.000 I think 2022 is really when things are going to really take off.
01:25:16.000 That's your rocking year.
01:25:17.000 It's not my perspective, really, either.
01:25:20.000 It's Nicholas Christakis, who was a professor at Yale, wrote a book about the pandemic called Apollo's Arrow.
01:25:29.000 He and I talked about it, and one of the things that he thinks is that once the...
01:25:35.000 Yeah.
01:25:47.000 Well, coincidentally, sort of, no, no.
01:25:50.000 I mean, with us.
01:25:52.000 Right.
01:25:52.000 It's not coincidentally.
01:25:55.000 The relationship is very similar.
01:25:57.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:25:58.000 It's basically probably the same impetus, the same reason.
01:26:02.000 I mean, people were locked up for a year or so, and it was a far more disturbing pandemic because it was killing really young, healthy people with powerful immune systems.
01:26:11.000 Their immune system is actually attacking them.
01:26:13.000 That was a really scary, dangerous time for this country.
01:26:17.000 And the bounce back was appropriately wild, right?
01:26:21.000 The roaring 20s.
01:26:23.000 That's a wild-ass time.
01:26:25.000 And now we've got 20s again.
01:26:27.000 Well, now, you know, I think when 2021 rolls around and...
01:26:33.000 Whether it's a vaccine or maybe there will be some therapeutic that makes people not have to take the vaccine.
01:26:40.000 There's something that they figure out where, you know, like if you get syphilis, you get penicillin and wax it out.
01:26:46.000 Like you don't have to take a syphilis vaccine, you know?
01:26:49.000 Whatever it is.
01:26:50.000 I don't know.
01:26:51.000 I don't know either.
01:26:52.000 I like vaccines, you know?
01:26:53.000 Yeah.
01:26:53.000 I'm excited.
01:26:55.000 I like vaccines.
01:26:58.000 I am vaccinated.
01:26:58.000 I mean, not everybody does, I know.
01:27:00.000 The problem that a lot of people have is that this was fast-tracked, and they get nervous about possible potential side effects.
01:27:13.000 And we don't know what those are going to be.
01:27:14.000 And then there's a lot of people that are very uncomfortable with the idea of getting very sick after they take the vaccine, which seems to happen with 80% of the people that take it.
01:27:22.000 And so they're concerned about that.
01:27:24.000 Wait, 80% of people who are taking this vaccine?
01:27:26.000 That's not what I heard.
01:27:28.000 Well, that's what Bill Gates has said.
01:27:30.000 Bill Gates?
01:27:31.000 Yeah.
01:27:31.000 I don't know.
01:27:32.000 I mean, I don't know if we can look it up.
01:27:34.000 We'll play it for you.
01:27:35.000 Pull it off of...
01:27:36.000 I know.
01:27:36.000 It's weird.
01:27:37.000 When people say that, people are like, wait, what?
01:27:39.000 It's on my Instagram.
01:27:40.000 There's an interview with Bill Gates where he's talking about...
01:27:43.000 I believe this is the Moderna vaccine. 0.81
01:27:45.000 The Pfizer vaccine has a very similar effect.
01:27:48.000 Because it's the way this mRNA vaccine works, they've...
01:27:54.000 I've taken the common cold vaccine and added this to it.
01:27:57.000 Your body develops these proteins to fight off.
01:28:00.000 But you get sick.
01:28:02.000 Yeah, I mean, well, I can't say, I don't know, you know, I mean, I've read the sort of report, the readout from Pfizer and Moderna, BioNTech, and they said there were very few serious side effects.
01:28:13.000 I mean, I don't know.
01:28:14.000 I don't know serious or not.
01:28:15.000 I mean, I got the flu shot, you know...
01:28:18.000 Whenever it was, a couple months ago.
01:28:20.000 You know, my arm hurt for a couple days.
01:28:22.000 That's just the shot site.
01:28:23.000 I wouldn't do it just for fun.
01:28:25.000 That's just the injection site.
01:28:26.000 Yeah.
01:28:26.000 But your body didn't feel bad, right?
01:28:27.000 But it was fine.
01:28:28.000 You know, I felt okay.
01:28:29.000 This is different than that.
01:28:30.000 This is different than that.
01:28:31.000 And there's a consequence to taking this.
01:28:33.000 And I'm not saying that I won't take it.
01:28:35.000 I will.
01:28:35.000 And if it's safe, I will encourage other people to take it too.
01:28:39.000 But there's a reality of taking this particular vaccine that it's going to make a lot of people feel like shit. 0.98
01:28:46.000 And it'll last a couple days. 0.99
01:28:48.000 And look, you can play that video.
01:28:52.000 Oh.
01:28:53.000 Okay.
01:28:53.000 But it's in the feed.
01:28:56.000 It's in the IGTV, but if you just go to my Instagram feed from the last time, the Dylan Jones episode, that's just what it is.
01:29:11.000 Hold up.
01:29:12.000 You went way too far.
01:29:13.000 Go way up.
01:29:14.000 Way up.
01:29:16.000 Hold on.
01:29:17.000 Keep going.
01:29:20.000 Wait a minute.
01:29:21.000 Did they remove it?
01:29:23.000 Oh my god.
01:29:25.000 Did they remove it from my Instagram?
01:29:27.000 Is that real? 0.99
01:29:29.000 Holy shit, dude. 1.00
01:29:30.000 That is crazy. 1.00
01:29:32.000 Hold on a second.
01:29:32.000 Let me check.
01:29:34.000 Because that's kind of crazy.
01:29:36.000 If they removed it from my Instagram, that's kind of crazy.
01:29:38.000 Because this was a...
01:29:39.000 I believe it was an NBC interview.
01:29:44.000 They removed it.
01:29:46.000 Wow.
01:29:48.000 Okay, well here, here.
01:29:49.000 I got an article from Science.
01:29:51.000 It says there's fever and aches that are intense in some cases, but not dangerous.
01:29:58.000 You found it.
01:29:58.000 Okay, it hasn't been removed then.
01:30:00.000 Okay, here we go.
01:30:01.000 Why don't I find it?
01:30:03.000 I don't know, it was a month ago.
01:30:05.000 It says October 28th.
01:30:06.000 Right.
01:30:07.000 Okay, play it.
01:30:09.000 This video is edited though, remember?
01:30:12.000 How so?
01:30:14.000 No, no, no.
01:30:16.000 That's a totally different video.
01:30:17.000 That's a totally different video.
01:30:18.000 That video was the video where people were talking about that Bill Gates is concerned with the profit margin from vaccines.
01:30:28.000 We should talk about that, too, because that's actually important.
01:30:31.000 That's actually important because that's really distorted, and that's not what he was saying at all.
01:30:35.000 He was not talking about profiting.
01:30:37.000 And sound concerning.
01:30:37.000 We looked.
01:30:38.000 After the second dose, at least 80% of participants experienced a systemic side effect, ranging from severe chills to fevers.
01:30:48.000 So, are these vaccines safe?
01:30:53.000 Well, the FDA not being pressured will...
01:31:00.000 Look hard at that.
01:31:01.000 The FDA is the gold standard of regulators, and their current guidance on this, if they stick with that, is very, very appropriate.
01:31:13.000 You know, the side effects were not super severe.
01:31:18.000 That is, it didn't cause permanent health problems for the things that are...
01:31:24.000 You know, Moderna did have to go with a fairly high dose to get the antibodies.
01:31:31.000 Some of the other vaccines Are going able to go with lower doses to get responses that are pretty high, including the J&J and the Pfizer.
01:31:43.000 And so there's a lot of characteristics of these vaccines.
01:31:47.000 It's great that we have multiple of them that are going out there.
01:31:52.000 You know the data better than I do.
01:31:55.000 But Bill, the data showed that everybody with a high dose had a side effect.
01:32:01.000 Yeah, but some of that is not dramatic, where it's just super painful.
01:32:07.000 But yes, we need to make sure there's not severe side effects.
01:32:11.000 The FDA, I think, will do a good job of that, despite the pressure.
01:32:18.000 How many doses of the vaccine will we need?
01:32:23.000 Well, none of the vaccines at this point appear like they'll work with a single dose.
01:32:27.000 That was the hope at the very beginning.
01:32:32.000 Maybe one of them, particularly in the second generation, won't surprise us. 0.59
01:32:35.000 We hope just two, although in the elderly, sometimes it takes more.
01:32:41.000 And so making sure we have lots of elderly people in the trial will give us that data.
01:32:46.000 No, so let's be clear.
01:32:48.000 Hold on a second.
01:32:48.000 If that is all it is, it's just you have severe chills and you feel like shit for a couple days, that is way better than getting the coronavirus and risking the potential death and side effects and long haul people.
01:33:03.000 Mm-hmm. 0.95
01:33:03.000 Mm-hmm. 0.95
01:33:26.000 It comes in 80%, right?
01:33:28.000 But, like, what you were talking about is in a subset, you know, of the people who get it.
01:33:32.000 Well, hold on a second.
01:33:33.000 I don't know if that's true, because there's many articles about the side effects of this vaccine.
01:33:40.000 I've never seen one of them that relegated it to 10% of the population that took the vaccine.
01:33:45.000 Well, I mean, obviously...
01:33:46.000 Specifically, the second dose.
01:33:47.000 Yeah.
01:33:48.000 The thing about this is you have to take two.
01:33:49.000 The second dose seems to be the doozy for people.
01:33:51.000 Right.
01:33:51.000 I mean, I guess that's the tough one.
01:33:54.000 Yeah.
01:33:56.000 So this is something that's interesting.
01:33:57.000 I have one set of conversations with people, and they're saying, who's going to be able to get the vaccine?
01:34:03.000 How are we going to roll this out?
01:34:05.000 Healthcare workers, essential workers, all this other kind of stuff.
01:34:08.000 And then there's another conversation where people are like...
01:34:11.000 Maybe you're not going to want to get it, right?
01:34:13.000 And me, I'm like, I'm really eager, you know?
01:34:17.000 Give it to me tomorrow.
01:34:18.000 I don't even care that the FDA is not done.
01:34:20.000 Why is that?
01:34:21.000 You're not worried about side effects?
01:34:23.000 A, I'm not worried about side effects.
01:34:24.000 Why are you not worried about side effects?
01:34:26.000 You guys fever for a couple days?
01:34:28.000 What if that's all we know of now?
01:34:30.000 Yeah.
01:34:30.000 But look, long-haul COVID survivors, one of the things they're finding is these people have blood clots many, many months later.
01:34:36.000 No, I mean, I know.
01:34:37.000 It's like a serious thing.
01:34:38.000 But that's just it.
01:34:38.000 I would really like to not get COVID. Yeah, sure.
01:34:42.000 But what if there's a similar situation with the vaccine?
01:34:46.000 What if the vaccine, and this is not outside the realm of possibility, that the vaccine gives some sort of a side effect that's unintended?
01:34:53.000 Yeah.
01:34:53.000 I mean, I have a lot of confidence in the basic process here with vaccine development.
01:34:59.000 But this isn't the basic process.
01:35:00.000 This is a completely new process, much faster than any process that we've ever experienced before when it comes to the development of vaccines.
01:35:07.000 I mean, it's an unusually rapid development because they have this mRNA.
01:35:12.000 I don't know what that means.
01:35:13.000 I mean, it's messenger RNA, but I don't know what it means.
01:35:17.000 It just means that it's not giving you a dormant version of COVID. Right.
01:35:22.000 So there's no virus, right?
01:35:23.000 There's a particle that's specially designed.
01:35:26.000 It triggers antibodies.
01:35:28.000 We create them.
01:35:29.000 And so I think the basic antibody immune response situation is fairly well understood scientifically.
01:35:36.000 It's why we're pretty confident that the people who've recovered are immune, that younger and healthier people in most cases are okay.
01:35:44.000 If they get sick, they get better.
01:35:47.000 So, to me, it's a good thing.
01:35:49.000 I'm all for it.
01:35:51.000 I'll take it.
01:35:51.000 I'll get the fever.
01:35:52.000 But I'm also not...
01:35:54.000 I want to walk the line.
01:35:56.000 I want to encourage people to take vaccines as a responsible person.
01:36:01.000 But also knowing that the supplies will be short.
01:36:04.000 If somebody doesn't want it, somebody else will take that dose.
01:36:09.000 You know one of the best things in terms of outcomes is vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiencies are a huge part of negative COVID outcomes.
01:36:22.000 I've seen some people, some studies about that, yeah.
01:36:25.000 In one study, 84% of the people that were in the ICU had deficient levels of vitamin C and only 4% had sufficient levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D is a huge problem.
01:36:35.000 And it's not just a vitamin.
01:36:36.000 It's a hormone.
01:36:37.000 You know, when Mackey was on the other day, he was trying to say that it's a precursor to a hormone.
01:36:41.000 So I had to look it up.
01:36:42.000 That's not true.
01:36:43.000 It's a hormone.
01:36:44.000 Vitamin D is actually a hormone.
01:36:45.000 And it's weird because we call it a vitamin, but it regulates so many things in the body and it has a significant impact on the immune system.
01:36:51.000 But you never hear anybody telling you to supplement with vitamin D. You're not seeing this from any of the leaders, any of these politicians that are shutting things down.
01:36:58.000 Even Fauci has said it recently that vitamin D does seem to have a pretty significant impact.
01:37:04.000 But health experts, like people that study the mechanisms of disease and vitamin supplementation, particularly Dr. Rhonda Patrick had a A thing on her Twitter where she published a study that showed positive outcomes in COVID. Vitamin D is a huge factor.
01:37:22.000 Are you supplementing with vitamin D? I am, yes.
01:37:25.000 I mean, I don't want to, I don't know, just like one of those things.
01:37:28.000 But I also, the thing I try to do, I try to make sure I'm going outside, like we were talking about before.
01:37:34.000 I mean, I am not super read in on the vitamin D science.
01:37:40.000 But I have heard this, and it also seems like a situation where there's no possible harm, right?
01:37:47.000 With what?
01:37:48.000 With taking some vitamin D. No, of course.
01:37:50.000 And being precautious.
01:37:51.000 And you do see that the populations where we've had the biggest problems, right?
01:37:55.000 So if you think about nursing homes, or you think about prisons, right?
01:37:59.000 You're talking about populations that, you know, for different reasons.
01:38:02.000 Obviously, if you're in prison, you're in prison.
01:38:04.000 But Are not having outside time and exposure to sunlight and the natural vitamin D mechanisms that come that way.
01:38:14.000 They have no way of avoiding each other.
01:38:15.000 Right.
01:38:15.000 Well, yes.
01:38:16.000 And I do think that there's concern there.
01:38:19.000 I mean, I've heard a fair amount about vitamin D supplementation, at least from our Local public health people in D.C. I don't know if...
01:38:28.000 Really?
01:38:29.000 That's interesting.
01:38:29.000 I don't know if Fauci or whomever else has been...
01:38:32.000 Well, Los Angeles, you don't hear a peep about it.
01:38:34.000 I mean, what they don't...
01:38:35.000 It's significant.
01:38:36.000 They don't have double-blind, you know, what do you call it?
01:38:39.000 Clinical trials.
01:38:41.000 Which I guess...
01:38:43.000 What are the things that we've seen?
01:38:45.000 I mean, obviously, it's important to do those kind of studies.
01:38:48.000 But I do think that one thing we've seen throughout this pandemic is doctors are a little too hesitant to draw conclusions based on lower quality studies when that's the best evidence that's available.
01:39:03.000 You know what I mean?
01:39:03.000 It's like, when you have a problem, you want to...
01:39:06.000 These aren't lower quality studies that are indicating that vitamin D is good for your immune system.
01:39:09.000 What it's saying is that there's no way to do double-blind, placebo-controlled studies on vitamin D with people with COVID. You'd have to give them COVID. It's a real issue, right?
01:39:18.000 But what they are showing is that people with significant levels of vitamin D, people that have sufficient levels of vitamin D, have overall, the percentage of people that have a better outcome is huge.
01:39:29.000 84% is a big number.
01:39:31.000 When you look at the number of people that have insufficient levels that wind up in COVID units, when you're looking at what vitamin D does, that's well understood, its impact on the immune system.
01:39:43.000 It's weird to me that people don't take care of their health and don't actively make conscious decisions to make their body healthier, but are relying only on science to come along and give them something.
01:39:57.000 Give them a medicine.
01:39:59.000 Give them a vaccine.
01:40:00.000 Give them a thing.
01:40:00.000 When there's so much evidence that shows that you can significantly increase your chances for a good outcome if you do catch this disease and maybe even possibly ward off catching it with a stronger immune system.
01:40:16.000 But yet, so many people aren't doing that.
01:40:18.000 Well, and that's something we know about health in general, right?
01:40:22.000 Is that we have...
01:40:25.000 What doctors do, what pharmaceutical companies do, what hospitals do, we're glad that that exists.
01:40:31.000 But that the biggest levers for population health are in diet and exercise and being healthy.
01:40:40.000 But also we can agree vaccines are tremendously important.
01:40:44.000 The reason why we don't have measles.
01:40:46.000 Vaccines are great.
01:40:47.000 I mean, obviously for the childhood illness.
01:40:49.000 One thing that's unusual about COVID is that it doesn't attack Right.
01:41:13.000 Like, hey buddy, you gotta work out more.
01:41:16.000 My point is, I think we can both agree that vaccines are hugely important for health results.
01:41:22.000 It's hugely important to ward off diseases.
01:41:25.000 I'm a big proponent of vaccines.
01:41:27.000 But there's other things that people can do to benefit their health as well.
01:41:32.000 And it's just weird to me that people put all their faith in these one things.
01:41:37.000 Don't do the things that would require some discipline and maybe some changing of the structure of how they live their life.
01:41:44.000 That, to me, is bizarre.
01:41:47.000 No, I mean, I agree with you.
01:41:48.000 It's hard.
01:41:50.000 It's hard?
01:41:51.000 It's hard to be disciplined.
01:41:53.000 Discipline is hard.
01:41:54.000 But if you don't want to die...
01:41:57.000 No, it's good.
01:41:58.000 It is important to try to do.
01:42:01.000 Have you done anything differently during this pandemic where you've made conscious decisions to try to be healthier?
01:42:06.000 Yeah, I mean, look, I said, you know, I started doing outside stuff.
01:42:10.000 I've been trying really hard to, like, take up running because it's something you can do that's out of the gym.
01:42:17.000 You've got to be careful with that, though.
01:42:17.000 That's healthy.
01:42:19.000 It's bad for your joints when you're, you know, running and you're not used to it.
01:42:22.000 Your body's heavy.
01:42:23.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:42:25.000 I mean, it is.
01:42:29.000 What can I say?
01:42:30.000 Like, I am one of the many, many, many Americans who does not do as much as they should to, like, be a healthy person.
01:42:39.000 And it's a big problem, like, in our society.
01:42:44.000 You know, like, Americans, we have...
01:42:46.000 One of the richest, most technologically advanced societies that exist out there, but our population health is not great, right?
01:42:56.000 Primarily because of what we eat and the amount of physical exercise that we do.
01:43:02.000 I think in our lives and in our politics, it's not the subject of enough emphasis because it's less comfortable than kind of hoping for pharmaceutical breakthroughs.
01:43:15.000 Although fortunately, we are getting some pharmaceutical breakthroughs, it looks like.
01:43:19.000 I'm not picking on you, but you understand that the way people would criticize this They would look at you and look at the choices that you've made and say, this is crazy.
01:43:31.000 This guy just wants to get a shot in the arm and doesn't want to do the other things that could significantly impact your health.
01:43:40.000 You've decided to, for whatever reason, just say, I'm going to get this shot and then I'm going to be good.
01:43:48.000 Whereas there's a lot of evidence that shows that you could increase your health.
01:43:51.000 What would have to happen?
01:43:53.000 You should do both of those things.
01:43:54.000 Right, but why don't you?
01:43:56.000 Don't I? Yeah.
01:43:57.000 I don't know.
01:43:58.000 I'm weak.
01:43:59.000 I'm weak.
01:43:59.000 You're not weak.
01:44:00.000 Don't say that.
01:44:01.000 You can decide you're weak.
01:44:02.000 If you had to, if you knew that your life was in danger, you could do some pretty incredible things.
01:44:07.000 But you're comfortable, you're relaxed, and you're pretty sure that it's going to be taken care of with this vaccine.
01:44:13.000 You know, the hardest thing that I ever did health-wise is I used to be a heavy smoker, which is obviously terrible for you.
01:44:21.000 How many packs a day?
01:44:22.000 I was only like a pack and a half a day.
01:44:25.000 And my mother died of cancer.
01:44:28.000 Lung?
01:44:29.000 No, not lung, but she also smoked and, you know, likely related.
01:44:34.000 When I was young, when I was in my early 20s.
01:44:36.000 Was it pancreatic?
01:44:38.000 I think so.
01:44:39.000 That's a big one with cancer.
01:44:40.000 Yeah.
01:44:40.000 She was in her 50s.
01:44:43.000 And you know it was sad, obviously.
01:44:46.000 It was terrible.
01:44:49.000 And they changed the laws about smoking in bars and stuff like that. 0.99
01:44:56.000 It was like a little kick in the butt to actually try to get my shit together in that regard. 0.90
01:45:02.000 How old were you when you quit? 0.99
01:45:05.000 26, 27. How long ago was that?
01:45:07.000 So it would have been like 12 years ago.
01:45:11.000 And it was like... 0.87
01:45:13.000 It was so fucking hard, you know?
01:45:15.000 I mean, I did it, right? 0.79
01:45:17.000 And lots of people...
01:45:18.000 Lots of people have quit smoking over the years.
01:45:21.000 But something that was helpful is that at that time in the history of our society, it was becoming kind of stigmatized.
01:45:31.000 You know, like, you couldn't smoke anymore in a bar or restaurant.
01:45:34.000 They were getting rid of, like, the smoking sections in the airports and stuff.
01:45:38.000 So already before I quit, it was like I knew I was out there, like, on the margins, you know, like, standing outside in the cold and the pouring rain, being like, what am I doing?
01:45:49.000 Like, this, like...
01:45:51.000 Right?
01:45:52.000 Like, I should get it together.
01:45:54.000 And so it was hard.
01:45:56.000 It was hard to quit.
01:45:57.000 It was hard to stay away from, you know, friends and people doing that kind of thing.
01:46:02.000 But society...
01:46:04.000 Like, it was better.
01:46:06.000 Like, my life was worth better.
01:46:07.000 Yeah, so you're not a weak person.
01:46:08.000 That's a very difficult thing to do.
01:46:10.000 Quitting smoking is one of the hardest things to do. 0.99
01:46:13.000 It's a really hard thing to quit, and they've engineered it so that those goddamn things are really hard to kick. 0.99
01:46:18.000 Have you ever seen that Russell Crowe movie, The Insider? 0.98
01:46:20.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:46:20.000 It's great.
01:46:21.000 I don't know how much of that is accurate because I'm just basing it off that movie, but from the things that I've read, the articles about, like, they researched the actual chemicals that they're putting into cigarettes when they were making that movie, and it's based on a real scientist who actually was working for the tobacco companies and was worried about his life because he was testifying about these chemicals that they're putting into these cigarettes that make them even more addictive than just regular cigarettes.
01:46:44.000 Like, if you take, like, American Spirits or one of those home-rolled cigarettes you can make, those are bad, but they're not as bad.
01:46:50.000 Yeah.
01:46:51.000 Well, and you know what was actually the best thing for my health about this pandemic was just working from home.
01:46:57.000 Because I used to work in one of those offices where they would have, like, snacks in the office.
01:47:03.000 And I hated it.
01:47:04.000 I mean, I loved it, but I hated it.
01:47:05.000 And I always wanted to say, like...
01:47:08.000 Like, why do we have M&Ms in the office?
01:47:10.000 Now, some people can just walk between the men's room and a stack of M&Ms and their desk all day, every day, and not stuff their face with M&Ms.
01:47:20.000 I was not succeeding with that.
01:47:22.000 But I never find myself sitting in my basement being like, what I ought to do right now is stop working, go walk three blocks to the store, buy a bunch of M&Ms, and eat a bunch of sugar and gross quality chocolate.
01:47:35.000 Like, nobody does that!
01:47:36.000 What if at your job they had stacks of cigarettes?
01:47:38.000 There you go.
01:47:39.000 No, that would be terrible, right?
01:47:40.000 Like, you know?
01:47:41.000 Could you walk past those while you were trying to quit?
01:47:43.000 That would be so bad.
01:47:44.000 Got a little smoking patio.
01:47:46.000 You could see it.
01:47:46.000 It's right there.
01:47:47.000 I go through those gates.
01:47:49.000 Freedom.
01:47:51.000 And it's like we were talking about on the airplane, right?
01:47:53.000 Even in the middle of the pandemic.
01:47:55.000 They're like, you gotta wear your mask, you gotta wear your mask.
01:47:57.000 Oh, but here's the snacks.
01:47:59.000 And it's like, that's not, it's not natural.
01:48:02.000 There's some cognitive dissonance involved in this whole thing.
01:48:06.000 In LA, you can't do anything.
01:48:08.000 But in Texas, you can go to restaurants.
01:48:10.000 You wear a mask until you sit down.
01:48:12.000 And then when you sit down, you don't have a mask anymore.
01:48:15.000 But we're all breathing the same air.
01:48:16.000 Yeah, I don't know about that.
01:48:17.000 I mean, I think...
01:48:18.000 HEPA filters and doing things that they can to prevent people from showing up at work sick, whether it is a COVID test for all your employers.
01:48:28.000 I have a friend who owns a restaurant and she's implementing that and trying to do COVID tests for everybody that works there.
01:48:33.000 Well, what they should have done was make testing much more available.
01:48:38.000 Much more broad, much more widespread.
01:48:40.000 But you don't understand it's complicated.
01:48:42.000 It's like it's not that they shouldn't have done it.
01:48:44.000 It's like they didn't have a test for it.
01:48:46.000 And then they developed a test.
01:48:47.000 And then implementing that test on a large scale requires an infrastructure that wasn't available.
01:48:52.000 No, no, no.
01:48:52.000 I know.
01:48:53.000 But they didn't – like so the FDA, right, has not been moving aggressively with the testing devices that are out there, right?
01:49:02.000 They have this – You know, a lot of them aren't accurate.
01:49:04.000 It's one of the reasons why they're not.
01:49:05.000 Diagnostic mentality.
01:49:06.000 No, I know, I know.
01:49:07.000 But, you know, like some universities, because they have their own lab infrastructure, you know, have gone really big on testing their students.
01:49:15.000 And it's worked pretty well.
01:49:17.000 And then others haven't.
01:49:18.000 And it's, you know, it's college kids in dorms and they're partying and spreads a lot of disease around.
01:49:25.000 Yeah.
01:49:25.000 I don't know.
01:49:26.000 I mean, this has not been our greatest hour as a country.
01:49:29.000 No.
01:49:30.000 No, it hasn't.
01:49:30.000 We weren't prepared.
01:49:32.000 I think one good thing that may come out of this, if there is any good thing that would come out of this, is that in the future, if another pandemic arises, we'll be much better prepared for it.
01:49:40.000 I think we'll be more accustomed to the idea, and people will take precautionary steps quicker than they did back in, you know, April.
01:49:49.000 And I definitely own more little HEPA air purifier machines than I used to.
01:49:53.000 Yeah, we got one over there.
01:49:54.000 And it's just masks and stuff.
01:49:56.000 People, they understand how they can get them.
01:49:58.000 I mean, one of the more unfortunate things that happened was Fauci told people not to wear masks, and the masks aren't going to help you.
01:50:03.000 And the reason why he did that is because he didn't want people buying masks and them not being available for first responders.
01:50:09.000 Obviously, the problem with that is now you know that they're willing to lie if they think it's within everybody's best interest if they tell you something that's not true.
01:50:18.000 And the problem with that is, of course... 0.99
01:50:20.000 Then everybody's like, well, what the fuck? 0.99
01:50:22.000 Now, how do I know when to believe you? 0.99
01:50:24.000 Like, don't believe me back then, because I only said it back then because I didn't want you to buy them all up.
01:50:29.000 But now that they're available everywhere, yes, you have to wear them.
01:50:32.000 What I really hope they do, and I don't think they'll do it, but, you know, the military does an after-action report on something.
01:50:39.000 You look back, not to point fingers, not to be mad, but to, like, try to understand, what did we do?
01:50:46.000 What worked?
01:50:47.000 What didn't work?
01:50:49.000 What do we do next time?
01:50:50.000 And the public health expert community really needs to do that.
01:50:56.000 Because some of this stuff, you know, I think that's what happened with the masks.
01:51:01.000 But, like, we don't really know.
01:51:02.000 And there's got to be...
01:51:04.000 What do you mean, like, you think that's what happened with the masks in what way?
01:51:06.000 Like, I think that they were concerned about shortages.
01:51:09.000 Oh, they were.
01:51:09.000 That's what Fauci said.
01:51:10.000 And that's why they came up with this.
01:51:12.000 No, Fauci has...
01:51:13.000 Yeah, no, no.
01:51:14.000 But it's like we need everybody.
01:51:16.000 The Surgeon General, the CDC. Everybody's got to get alignments.
01:51:19.000 What happened here?
01:51:21.000 Why did we tell people this?
01:51:23.000 Why didn't we listen to the Asian health experts who dealt with a more similar virus?
01:51:30.000 And what was going on?
01:51:31.000 And how are we going to do better next time?
01:51:34.000 Because you're right, just coming out and being like, oh, no, no, no, trust us next time, like that doesn't work.
01:51:39.000 That's not how anything goes.
01:51:40.000 And you need some real searching self-criticism around some of that.
01:51:46.000 And us in the media, you know, there was a lot of credulity about those kind of statements when they didn't really make sense.
01:51:57.000 Mm-hmm.
01:51:57.000 Right?
01:51:58.000 Just like, logically, I remember a tweet from the Surgeon General, and he said, like, in one tweet, Oh, you don't need to go buy masks.
01:52:08.000 They're not gonna be helpful to you.
01:52:10.000 Also, we have shortages for healthcare workers.
01:52:14.000 And so when somebody says something like that, right, it's like us in journalism, right?
01:52:20.000 You're supposed to be saying, hey, that doesn't make sense.
01:52:25.000 What's going on?
01:52:26.000 And the most reliable source of information at that time was just people living in Asia, you know, people living in Hong Kong, in Taiwan.
01:52:34.000 They had much better information over there.
01:52:36.000 They were broadcasting it.
01:52:38.000 And if you listened at that time, you know, you would know about masks, you would know about the efficacy of quarantines, you would know about aerosolization and ventilation and stuff like that.
01:52:50.000 And we were just really slow and got to be smarter.
01:52:54.000 Yeah, it definitely was not our finest hour, like you said.
01:52:57.000 One thing that I think we've got to really talk about, Jamie, we wanted to talk about this before.
01:53:01.000 There's a thing that's going around that it's a video clip that's been edited, and it's edited to make it seem like Bill Gates is saying that he's pushing this vaccine because it's extremely profitable, and that there's a 20 times the amount you put in,
01:53:20.000 you benefit from it financially.
01:53:23.000 That is not what he's saying.
01:53:25.000 This is really important.
01:53:26.000 What he's saying is in vaccinating people and preventing illness, the health benefits to the economy overall has a tremendous impact in a positive manner and is explaining this with third world countries and he's talking about it purely from a humanitarian perspective.
01:53:50.000 He's not talking about it from this profiteering vulture perspective It's a social prophet.
01:53:57.000 He's saying it, and it's really disingenuously edited, and it was passed around to a lot of people. 0.98
01:54:04.000 I watched the video, and I was like, who would fucking say that? 0.99
01:54:07.000 What is he, crazy? 0.99
01:54:08.000 Why would he describe it like this publicly? 0.95
01:54:10.000 He didn't.
01:54:11.000 It's not what he was saying.
01:54:12.000 It's edited.
01:54:13.000 What he was saying is, when you vaccinate people and prevent these diseases...
01:54:17.000 Let's hear it, just because it's really important, because a lot of people have sent this to me, and they need to hear this.
01:54:24.000 Is it not working?
01:54:29.000 Do you have a Mac?
01:54:31.000 Doesn't it show it in your bar where you can rewind it?
01:54:35.000 Not this one. 1.00
01:54:35.000 Oh, you got a cheap-ass bullshit Mac. 1.00
01:54:37.000 Why else? 1.00
01:54:37.000 I don't have the brand new one with that bar. 1.00
01:54:39.000 Just refresh the page.
01:54:43.000 Okay, here we go.
01:54:44.000 Play it up here.
01:54:45.000 We always do.
01:54:45.000 You kind of looked at the problem from a scientific and business perspective on things.
01:54:50.000 You've invested $10 billion in vaccinations over the last two decades, and you figured out the return on investment for that.
01:54:56.000 And it kind of stunned me.
01:54:57.000 Can you walk us through the math?
01:54:58.000 We see a phenomenal track record.
01:55:00.000 It's been $100 billion overall that the world's put in.
01:55:03.000 Our foundation is a bit more than $10 billion.
01:55:07.000 We're good to go.
01:55:27.000 I think the numbers that you ran through were if you had put that money into an S&P 500 and reinvested the dividends, you'd come up with something like $17 billion, but you think it's $200 billion.
01:55:38.000 Okay, so this is the distorted version.
01:55:43.000 You can see in there that it's edited.
01:55:45.000 Now, play the actual version, Jamie.
01:55:48.000 In the actual version, you see that he's not talking about pure financial benefit from the people that invest in the actual...
01:55:57.000 So this is very important.
01:55:59.000 This is the real version of it.
01:56:01.000 Without the editing.
01:56:02.000 And you figured out the return on investment for that.
01:56:04.000 And it kind of stunned me.
01:56:05.000 Can you walk us through the math?
01:56:06.000 Well, it's pretty impressive that...
01:56:09.000 When you take these vaccines, get them to be very inexpensive by making big volume commitments, have that right relationship with the private sector, Get the delivery system so they're really getting the coverage out there.
01:56:23.000 You literally save millions of lives.
01:56:26.000 And 20 years ago when we created these new multilateral organizations, Gavi for the vaccines, Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria, we didn't know they'd be successful.
01:56:37.000 They've gone through lots of challenges about making sure the money gets there, making sure the efficiency is right.
01:56:43.000 But as we look at upcoming replenishments for those, And we've got so much distractions politically that the international needs like this could get eclipsed if we're not careful.
01:56:58.000 We see a phenomenal track record.
01:57:01.000 It's been $100 billion overall that the world's put in.
01:57:04.000 Our foundation is a bit more than $10 billion.
01:57:08.000 But we feel there's been over a 20 to 1 return.
01:57:11.000 So if you just look at the economic benefits, that's a pretty strong number compared to anything else.
01:57:19.000 The human benefit in millions of lives saved.
01:57:22.000 So, you know, we're here with a pretty strong message that although all these other issues are very important, let's not forget about the great success in global health and maintaining that commitment.
01:57:34.000 I think the numbers that you ran through were if you had put that money into an S&P 500 and reinvested the dividends, you'd come up with something like $17 billion, but you think it's $200 billion.
01:57:43.000 Here, yeah.
01:57:44.000 You know, helping young children live Get the right nutrition, contribute to their countries.
01:57:51.000 That has a payback that goes beyond any typical financial return.
01:57:56.000 Right.
01:57:57.000 See, that's what he really said.
01:58:00.000 And, you know, people have edited that and they're passing it around like, oh, my God, this guy's a monster just wants to give you this vaccine because he wants to make money.
01:58:08.000 Clearly, that's not what he's saying.
01:58:09.000 There's this weird narrative.
01:58:11.000 There's this weird meme. 0.99
01:58:12.000 There's this weird conspiracy that Bill Gates is some fucking demon that just wants to make money off of vaccines and he's pushing vaccines. 0.99
01:58:20.000 It's bad memories of that Clippy. 0.99
01:58:22.000 Clippy?
01:58:23.000 You remember Microsoft Word?
01:58:25.000 His old...
01:58:26.000 What are you talking about?
01:58:28.000 Sorry, Microsoft Office.
01:58:30.000 It used to have this super annoying little helper guy named Clippy that would pop up and correct everything that you're doing. 0.99
01:58:37.000 Oh, that dickhead. 0.97
01:58:37.000 I remember him. 0.97
01:58:38.000 Yeah, he sucked. 1.00
01:58:39.000 No, no, no, no. 1.00
01:58:41.000 Look.
01:58:41.000 I just wanted to put that video out there because...
01:58:44.000 So many people have sent me the original video, and I got really tired of typing.
01:58:48.000 That's not what he said.
01:58:50.000 You've got to listen to what he's talking about as the benefit for society.
01:58:54.000 It's not just financial benefit from the companies that are making these vaccines.
01:58:59.000 It's also the benefit for these children growing up and contributing to society, and that the more we put into this, the better it is for everybody.
01:59:06.000 And what he's talking about is trying to think smarter about philanthropy.
01:59:10.000 So he's a rich guy.
01:59:11.000 Like a lot of rich guys, he gives a lot of money away.
01:59:14.000 But traditionally, you get a lot of put your name on the wing of a museum, just give money to somebody who seems nice.
01:59:23.000 And Gates has really been a leader in trying to think more analytically about what's a high value.
01:59:29.000 He calls it their investment in making the world a better place.
01:59:34.000 There's an organization...
01:59:36.000 Some people I'm friendly with run called GiveWell, and they do all this kind of analysis.
01:59:40.000 And so they show that giving insecticide-treated bed nets to people in West Africa to keep malaria off them, that's incredibly cost-effective.
01:59:51.000 A group called Deworm the World, and they help kids in, I think, Central Africa with these intestinal worms that make it impossible to sort of be well-nourished because you've got parasites living in you.
02:00:04.000 And it's a hard problem, right, to understand not just how can you help people, but what's the best way to help people.
02:00:11.000 And, you know, what Gates is saying is that childhood vaccinations are really up there.
02:00:15.000 They're high on the list of high return public health interventions because when you could save a kid's life, that does so much good, you know, broadly speaking.
02:00:25.000 But it's bizarre that someone was willing to edit that clip and make it look like a completely different thing that he was saying.
02:00:31.000 And that this is one of the things that's going around today, is that Bill Gates is somehow or another this evil person that wants to vaccinate everybody because he wants more money.
02:00:40.000 Yeah. 0.96
02:00:41.000 Like, that guy is worth so much fucking money, and he doesn't really work anymore. 0.97
02:00:45.000 You have to realize, like, he's not really working at Microsoft anymore. 0.95
02:00:48.000 Well, and he doesn't work in pharmaceutical companies at all.
02:00:50.000 No.
02:00:51.000 His whole business model is really around, like, a giant percentage of it is around philanthropy.
02:00:57.000 Yep.
02:00:58.000 And that's what he's kind of dedicating his time and effort to. 0.99
02:01:00.000 The idea that all this positive stuff that that guy does is all bullshit. 0.99
02:01:06.000 He really just wants money from you. 1.00
02:01:09.000 He's old. 1.00
02:01:10.000 He's got so much fucking money. 1.00
02:01:12.000 He's got a lot of money. 1.00
02:01:13.000 It's so crazy.
02:01:15.000 It's just one of the weird things that's being tossed around today.
02:01:20.000 One of the weirder conspiracy theories about...
02:01:24.000 For a lack of a better way to say it, unsophisticated people who are very attracted to conspiracy theories.
02:01:32.000 The first thing I saw, I was like, why would he say it like that?
02:01:37.000 And then Jamie said, actually, that's a very edited clip.
02:01:42.000 Here's the full one. 0.97
02:01:43.000 I was like, well, that fucking makes sense. 0.90
02:01:44.000 We've got to tell people about this. 0.97
02:01:45.000 Because it keeps getting tossed around.
02:01:47.000 And just, I mean, anything you see, videos on the internet, like, before you hit the share button, like, make sure you see context.
02:01:56.000 It's so easy to hit share, though.
02:01:57.000 No, I know! 1.00
02:01:58.000 So he's like, fuck this guy. 1.00
02:01:59.000 This happens with all kinds... 1.00
02:02:01.000 I mean, not just Gates, right?
02:02:02.000 All kinds of things.
02:02:03.000 People get little video clips, and somebody writes it up, and they're like, here we go.
02:02:08.000 Like, your bad enemy just did something horrible. 1.00
02:02:11.000 And everyone's like, oh, yeah, fuck that guy. 1.00
02:02:13.000 And you really gotta... 1.00
02:02:15.000 You gotta see it in...
02:02:18.000 Nobody wants that anymore, though. 0.99
02:02:19.000 It's the dumbest, easiest thing. 0.90
02:02:20.000 They want an abbreviated, very simple, not even new Twitter, old Twitter, 140 characters. 0.99
02:02:25.000 They want to boil it down to a couple sentences. 1.00
02:02:27.000 That guy a piece of shit, he's a fucking Nazi. 1.00
02:02:30.000 Great! 1.00
02:02:30.000 Now that's all I need to know. 1.00
02:02:32.000 Nazi!
02:02:33.000 Yeah.
02:02:34.000 I've seen it.
02:02:35.000 No, I mean, it's a terrible habit.
02:02:37.000 I mean, these kind of things, they prey on our worst information instincts.
02:02:43.000 Yeah.
02:02:43.000 Also, they prey on our reinforcement of our echo chambers.
02:02:49.000 People love that. 1.00
02:02:51.000 If you can solidify your position within an ideology, like this ideology accepts me, I'm a part of this tribe, I'm going to say some shit, that guy's a fucking Nazi. 1.00
02:03:01.000 Yes! 1.00
02:03:02.000 Go Matthew!
02:03:03.000 You call him a Nazi, that's what you're supposed to do. 0.98
02:03:05.000 But what happens when you meet a real Nazi now? 0.61
02:03:08.000 Now you've called Ben Shapiro a Nazi. 0.51
02:03:10.000 He's a Jew. 1.00
02:03:11.000 What happens when you run into an actual Nazi?
02:03:13.000 There's real Nazis out there. 0.96
02:03:15.000 Now, what do you call that?
02:03:17.000 That's a Nazi Nazi? 0.94
02:03:19.000 That's a super Nazi? 0.83
02:03:21.000 Yeah, I don't know.
02:03:22.000 I actually do try to stay away from that.
02:03:24.000 I saw someone who I think is a really smart person called Candace Owens, a Nazi. 0.92
02:03:27.000 I'm like, okay, maybe she's misinformed.
02:03:28.000 Maybe she says things that don't ring true with you.
02:03:32.000 Maybe she's committed to an ideology that maybe there's some financial benefit in doing that. 0.96
02:03:38.000 Maybe she's being paid to promote certain ideas that you don't think are accurate. 0.74
02:03:42.000 That's not a Nazi.
02:03:43.000 A difficulty with saying, I think this person has the wrong ideas about health care policy.
02:03:48.000 Yes.
02:03:48.000 Like, that's okay.
02:03:49.000 That's good.
02:03:50.000 You disagree.
02:03:51.000 Yes.
02:03:51.000 We disagree.
02:03:53.000 Or the wrong ideas about race or the wrong ideas about policing.
02:03:55.000 I mean, about whatever, right?
02:03:55.000 I mean, it's like there's a lot of topics to disagree about without people being Nazis.
02:04:00.000 But there's a lot of people that don't want to have those conversations.
02:04:03.000 They would just rather categorize people in a very simple and simplistic way because it's more convenient.
02:04:07.000 And there's also this willingness to dismiss people today.
02:04:12.000 It's disconcerting.
02:04:13.000 Well, in the extremism, you know, so I was on Twitter and you see somebody saying, oh, well, she's a Nazi.
02:04:19.000 And then I think, oh, that's not really true.
02:04:21.000 But then it's like, well, do I want to butt in?
02:04:24.000 Right.
02:04:24.000 Right?
02:04:24.000 Because then people get upset.
02:04:25.000 Right, right.
02:04:26.000 Well, you don't want to get involved.
02:04:27.000 Yeah.
02:04:28.000 And then you have this conversation that, look, I don't have the time to go back and forth on Twitter.
02:04:32.000 I don't have the time to check in five minutes.
02:04:33.000 How many people have responded?
02:04:34.000 Do I respond to those people?
02:04:36.000 Well, this guy's just attacking me for no reason.
02:04:37.000 That doesn't make any sense.
02:04:38.000 Well, this person's actually got a good point.
02:04:40.000 How do I respond to this?
02:04:42.000 Mm-hmm.
02:04:42.000 You just give up all your hobbies.
02:04:45.000 That's the problem.
02:04:46.000 And the emotional commitment that you have to it and the connection.
02:04:50.000 Like Jamie Kilstein is a guy who used to be like a deep social justice warrior and then he got attacked by them and ostracized for like Not even anything that makes a lot of sense.
02:05:02.000 But then was really kind of open about how crazy he was while he was doing it.
02:05:08.000 He was like, I would post something on Twitter and then I'd be incessantly checking it throughout the day and walking down the street checking it and trying to respond and see who's responding to me and then feeling when someone was angry at you like, ah!
02:05:19.000 And then like getting involved in that and...
02:05:22.000 Just the anguish and anxiety that...
02:05:25.000 I look at so many people that fight on Twitter, and I don't argue with people on Twitter at all anymore.
02:05:29.000 I very rarely even respond to people. 0.96
02:05:31.000 But what I do do is I'll follow a few people that are mentally insane, like literally genuinely mentally ill.
02:05:37.000 They're intelligent people that have gotten lost in the Twitter web, and they're stuck. 0.52
02:05:43.000 I'll go to their timeline just to reinforce that this is actually what's happening, and I'll see the degrading of their mental clarity over time, the fighting with people that goes on all day long.
02:05:56.000 And you'll see 11 hours a day.
02:05:59.000 Literally, you look at their posts from the beginning when they start to when they end for the day, and it's 11 hours of fighting with people on Twitter.
02:06:07.000 And you think about, what else could you have done with that time that would have been productive?
02:06:11.000 Did you learn anything about people during this time?
02:06:13.000 Did you score points?
02:06:15.000 Should you be playing video games instead of this?
02:06:17.000 What do you need to do? 0.99
02:06:18.000 Go fucking get a pickup game of basketball going or something. 0.99
02:06:21.000 What do you need to do that will give you some sort of a competitive feeling that instead you're risking your emotions and I think taxing your mental health? 0.99
02:06:30.000 I think there's a lot of...
02:06:32.000 I don't like the term mentally ill, but it is an illness. 0.97
02:06:37.000 It's an illness. 0.88
02:06:38.000 You're trapped. 0.99
02:06:39.000 Just the same way a gambling addict is mentally ill... 1.00
02:06:42.000 Twitter addicts are mentally ill. 1.00
02:06:44.000 There's something wrong with that. 1.00
02:06:45.000 It's not good for you.
02:06:47.000 And so many people are involved in it.
02:06:49.000 So many people are locked into these really weird, condensed conversations where you're getting what Alan Levinovitz calls processed information.
02:07:00.000 And he's like, it's bad for you the same way processed food is bad for you.
02:07:05.000 It makes sense.
02:07:06.000 The way you describe it that way, I'm like, oh, that is a fantastic way of describing it.
02:07:10.000 That is really what it is.
02:07:11.000 It's processed information.
02:07:15.000 Because it's not a person talking to you.
02:07:17.000 It's true.
02:07:18.000 I will say, though, you know, I feel like Twitter...
02:07:20.000 Okay, I have two minds about Twitter.
02:07:24.000 I see people, and I see myself sometimes out there wasting time.
02:07:28.000 It's like, what are you doing these fighting with people on Twitter for?
02:07:32.000 What's the point?
02:07:33.000 I've also learned, honestly, a lot on Twitter.
02:07:36.000 Like, I've met virtually or in real life a lot of interesting people out there who know a lot about different things.
02:07:44.000 It's...
02:07:45.000 It's cool.
02:07:46.000 For me, that's why it's dangerous, is that it's actually a genuinely powerful tool.
02:07:52.000 And beneficial, occasionally.
02:07:54.000 Right, and hard to just kind of step away from.
02:07:56.000 I've come to have dialogue with Nobel Prize winners, with businessmen, with successful politicians, with a lot of interesting writers and thinkers and academics.
02:08:08.000 Scholars, but then I've also gotten sucked into being mad that nobodies are dunking on me.
02:08:17.000 Yeah, that's a problem.
02:08:18.000 Nobodies.
02:08:19.000 They're people, Matthew. 0.80
02:08:21.000 They're just people.
02:08:21.000 Are they?
02:08:22.000 They're people.
02:08:22.000 I mean, we never know.
02:08:23.000 They might be Russians.
02:08:24.000 Sure.
02:08:25.000 They might be working for the IRA. You know?
02:08:27.000 Internet Research Agency.
02:08:28.000 Internet Research Agency.
02:08:29.000 Yeah, well, you've got to stay away from Russians in general. 1.00
02:08:32.000 Russians on the internet.
02:08:34.000 Really?
02:08:35.000 I don't know.
02:08:36.000 They're doing something.
02:08:38.000 I lived in Russia for a couple months a long time ago.
02:08:40.000 Yeah?
02:08:40.000 What were you doing?
02:08:42.000 I don't know.
02:08:43.000 I was like a high school student.
02:08:44.000 So I was over there and it was like some weird exchange thing in 1998. And we were helping.
02:08:51.000 I was helping the advanced English class of Nizhi Novgorod School 54. And met a lot of interesting people.
02:09:00.000 And at least one of them went on to work in the Russian internet propaganda field.
02:09:06.000 Really?
02:09:06.000 Do you stay in touch with them?
02:09:07.000 Yeah.
02:09:08.000 So she has a different perspective on Russian internet propaganda.
02:09:12.000 What is the perspective?
02:09:13.000 Well, she thinks it's good.
02:09:14.000 Why?
02:09:16.000 Because...
02:09:16.000 Look, I... I don't endorse this viewpoint.
02:09:19.000 I want to be clear.
02:09:20.000 But I do think a lot of Americans don't understand how Russian nationalists see the world, right?
02:09:28.000 And they feel that there was a bait and switch after the Cold War, that it was supposed to be that communism was bad, that the Soviet dictatorship was bad, and that they liberated themselves from this bad regime,
02:09:45.000 and that they were going to now have a better country.
02:09:48.000 But then it flipped to America, quote unquote, won the Cold War.
02:09:54.000 And then there was an ongoing process of anti-Russian American foreign policy that continued forward.
02:10:01.000 And so that instead of disbanding NATO because the Cold War was over, it expanded, right, to the Czech Republic, to Estonia.
02:10:12.000 You know, there was war in Yugoslavia against Russia's traditional ally in Serbia, all these different kinds of things.
02:10:19.000 I don't, I don't really endorse this point of view.
02:10:23.000 I mean, I'm not a Russian nationalist.
02:10:25.000 But it's interesting to hear from Russian patriots, how they see this, that they feel that the United States, instead of saying, hey, congratulations, You're not under communism anymore.
02:10:41.000 There's not a Cold War anymore.
02:10:43.000 That we sort of doubled down, right, on geopolitical rivalry after then, and that they are just pushing back.
02:10:51.000 So they're pushing back by undermining democracy and pretending to be various groups and having them meet up and compete against each other and starting conflict.
02:11:01.000 Yeah, that's where you get into the flaws.
02:11:03.000 You say, well, how does it help to be trying to sow racial chaos in the United States?
02:11:10.000 Who is the winner here?
02:11:12.000 So that's why I say, like, I don't endorse it.
02:11:14.000 But I do think that Americans benefit from, I mean, not just Russia, but just, like, trying to understand what the world looks like to some of these other countries that are, like, the bad guys, quote-unquote, in our narratives.
02:11:30.000 Right.
02:11:31.000 Like Iran. 0.98
02:11:32.000 Like, trying to imagine what it's like to be Iran today when you learn that we assassinated one of their nuclear scientists. 0.88
02:11:38.000 Or if we didn't, the Mossad did.
02:11:40.000 Right.
02:11:40.000 Someone did.
02:11:41.000 We're assassinating people over there. 0.83
02:11:44.000 If someone was murdering American nuclear scientists, we'd be quite upset about it. 0.99
02:11:50.000 On the flip side, Iranians are murdering Iranian patriots. 1.00
02:11:55.000 They murdered one of their Olympic wrestlers. 0.97
02:11:58.000 The government, yeah.
02:11:59.000 The government executed him because he participated in a peaceful protest.
02:12:05.000 So they had him executed, and he's a Russian wrestling star. 0.99
02:12:10.000 And apparently he's like a national star and they wanted to let everybody know, like, we don't give a fuck who you are. 1.00
02:12:16.000 We'll kill you. 1.00
02:12:17.000 If you're not on our side, we'll kill you. 1.00
02:12:19.000 It has nothing to do with whether or not you've done a heinous crime. 1.00
02:12:23.000 Like, you represent the resistance to our totalitarian regime and we'll fucking kill you. 0.99
02:12:29.000 So for the Iranians, I mean, they have to be pretty torn over there. 0.99
02:12:34.000 I mean, I don't know how they feel about us.
02:12:37.000 I mean, I'm sure. 0.99
02:12:38.000 But how the fuck do they feel about their own government? 0.98
02:12:40.000 Right. 0.98
02:12:41.000 I mean, it's a question of, do they feel that we are actually helping them with their problems with their own government, or are we...
02:12:51.000 I mean, you look at some of our friends in that region, the Saudis and the Emiratis and stuff.
02:12:59.000 Those governments aren't so hot either.
02:13:02.000 I don't know how they feel about wrestlers attending protests, but I'm guessing not that good. 0.97
02:13:10.000 The Khashoggi thing is just fucking hot. 0.97
02:13:12.000 I mean, have you, you know, Brian Fogel, the guy who did that documentary, Icarus, you know, he has a new documentary coming out called The Dissident about the Khashoggi.
02:13:24.000 Oh, that's fascinating.
02:13:25.000 Have you seen it yet?
02:13:25.000 No, no, I haven't seen it yet.
02:13:27.000 I've seen it.
02:13:27.000 It's amazing.
02:13:28.000 It's heartbreaking, but it's amazing and it's deeply disturbing. 0.98
02:13:34.000 It's like you watch that documentary and you're like, holy shit, man. 0.96
02:13:38.000 Is this the clip for it? 0.99
02:13:40.000 Yeah.
02:13:41.000 When is that available?
02:13:41.000 January 8th.
02:13:42.000 He'll be in here.
02:13:43.000 There you go.
02:13:44.000 Talk about that.
02:13:46.000 He's amazing.
02:13:47.000 The work that he did with Icarus was bananas.
02:13:51.000 It completely blew the lid off of the Russian doping, Olympic doping.
02:13:56.000 The fact that they literally figured out how to break into the piss supply and change the piss bottles out.
02:14:03.000 They literally took out the bad piss and put in the good piss.
02:14:07.000 There you go.
02:14:08.000 P-heist. 0.97
02:14:09.000 They basically had a state-sponsored pro-doping entity that was disguised as an anti-doping agency.
02:14:20.000 That's crazy.
02:14:21.000 They doped all their athletes. 0.97
02:14:25.000 Yeah.
02:14:26.000 Never here.
02:14:27.000 I don't know.
02:14:27.000 Well, I don't know about that.
02:14:29.000 I don't know about that.
02:14:30.000 We'll see.
02:14:31.000 We'll see.
02:14:31.000 Yeah.
02:14:32.000 I'm nervous about this country because I feel like I've never seen us more divided and more willing to be divided.
02:14:44.000 Like when you were talking about you going on the Ben Shapiro show, the people would be upset with you.
02:14:48.000 This is not a normal thing for us to be so divided.
02:14:53.000 Yeah.
02:14:54.000 And so willfully divided.
02:14:56.000 And I think social media accentuates that.
02:14:57.000 Particularly the algorithms in social media, they accentuate that.
02:15:02.000 Yeah, I think the...
02:15:05.000 Yeah.
02:15:24.000 The nationalization of everything, social media, algorithms, it's troubling.
02:15:31.000 It's a hard way to live.
02:15:35.000 It's a hard way to think about problems.
02:15:37.000 It makes it difficult to think about the concrete aspects of governance.
02:15:42.000 We're good to go.
02:16:05.000 Try it his way.
02:16:07.000 See if it works.
02:16:09.000 On symbolic stuff, what does it mean to be an American?
02:16:13.000 Who are we?
02:16:15.000 That's really challenging.
02:16:17.000 I hope we can turn the dial down a little bit.
02:16:22.000 How do we do that, though?
02:16:22.000 But I don't know.
02:16:23.000 It has to come from people.
02:16:26.000 Everybody complains about what's in the media, but the audience drives a lot of what's in the media.
02:16:35.000 In what way?
02:16:36.000 I mean, it depends.
02:16:38.000 What do people subscribe to?
02:16:39.000 What gets clicked on?
02:16:40.000 What do people watch?
02:16:42.000 Right, but that's saying that the media is only going to produce things that get the most amount of views and not produce things of quality.
02:16:50.000 Not produce things that they think are going to be interesting or intriguing.
02:16:53.000 So instead of...
02:16:54.000 Making their business model, let's do the best show we can do.
02:16:59.000 They make their business model, let's do a show that will get the most views.
02:17:04.000 Let's do a show that will create the most controversy because that will be worth the most money.
02:17:09.000 That's one thing that I've gone way out of my mind.
02:17:11.000 I've had controversial people on this podcast and have controversial subjects, but I don't do it because I want more views.
02:17:16.000 I do it because I want to have these conversations because I think it's interesting.
02:17:20.000 And I like talking to weirdos.
02:17:21.000 And I like talking to intelligent people. 1.00
02:17:23.000 And I like talking to idiots. 1.00
02:17:25.000 I like talking to a lot of people. 1.00
02:17:26.000 They're fun.
02:17:27.000 It's interesting.
02:17:28.000 But having something where your business model is entirely based on getting the most amount of views, that is a problem in and of itself.
02:17:38.000 Absolutely.
02:17:39.000 But it's not the people's problem.
02:17:41.000 It's the problem of the person creating it because you've decided to create something that's only designed to get a lot of views.
02:17:47.000 I agree.
02:17:48.000 It's like an algorithm.
02:17:49.000 You're basically a human algorithm.
02:17:50.000 Your show's an algorithm.
02:17:51.000 Right.
02:17:52.000 Or you're just programming for algorithms.
02:17:54.000 And it's not good.
02:17:55.000 And it's not what anyone says they want to be doing.
02:17:58.000 Right.
02:17:59.000 But it is what happens.
02:17:59.000 This is why I asked you this.
02:18:01.000 Do you think that there's benefit?
02:18:03.000 That maybe there's a way that with this idea that you have of...
02:18:22.000 I mean, the idea is that it would be better to have a big aspirational goal.
02:18:30.000 And so that kind of growth, that we are going to triple the population, that we are going to support people having bigger families or families at all, that we're going to be more open to immigrants, that we're going to build the infrastructure transportation-wise that it takes,
02:18:45.000 that we're going to dedicate ourselves to being number one forever and not kind of slipping behind China and India.
02:18:52.000 How does this help stop this polarization that we're experiencing?
02:18:58.000 Because it gives us something to work on together, right?
02:19:02.000 It's like going to the moon or facing down the Soviet Union. 0.81
02:19:06.000 It's a project that right now for the past 10, 15 years, all of our politics is picking at the scabs of Of sort of division that exists in our society, which are real, you know, like,
02:19:22.000 lifestyles are different, values are different.
02:19:24.000 I mean, everybody knows that you go around.
02:19:26.000 But we have a lot in common.
02:19:28.000 I mean, I started talking about, you know, China is trying to use their market power to sort of censor Americans.
02:19:34.000 And nobody in America thinks that's good.
02:19:37.000 Right?
02:19:38.000 Like, nobody is like, yeah, I think it's great that, like, Marvel had to take a Tibetan character out of Doctor Strange. 0.73
02:19:46.000 Yeah, isn't that crazy?
02:19:47.000 Like, that's, you know, it's not the biggest deal in the world.
02:19:50.000 It is kind of a big deal, though.
02:19:51.000 But it's BS. Like, what is that, right?
02:19:54.000 And...
02:19:55.000 It puts in perspective what our disagreements actually amount to.
02:20:02.000 That when you compare us to China...
02:20:08.000 This is gulf, right?
02:20:10.000 And like, don't we want to stay, number one, don't we want to have the biggest market, the biggest economy?
02:20:17.000 So you think that it's ever possible, though, to, if we got big enough, we could ignore the influence of China?
02:20:24.000 Do you think they would put that money aside?
02:20:26.000 Because China's always going to be big. 0.94
02:20:27.000 Well, I don't think you ignore it, but you are able to have the upper hand. 0.99
02:20:32.000 Do you really think that we could ever get to a point where Marvel would say, you know what, fuck China, we're putting a Tibetan guy in there? 0.99
02:20:37.000 Supposed to be Tibetan. 0.99
02:20:38.000 Well, you're in a place where you can say to them you've got to.
02:20:40.000 We don't have to make it a white woman. 1.00
02:20:42.000 Yeah. 0.72
02:20:42.000 With a bald head. 0.72
02:20:43.000 Let's make it a Tibetan guy like it is in the comic book. 0.99
02:20:46.000 I think in the comic book it's a guy, right?
02:20:47.000 I think so, yeah.
02:20:48.000 Well, either way, it's a Tibetan. 1.00
02:20:49.000 It's definitely Tibetan.
02:20:50.000 Yeah.
02:20:50.000 The ancient one.
02:20:51.000 Yeah.
02:20:53.000 I don't think it's a woman either.
02:20:54.000 I think they went full diversity. 0.99
02:20:56.000 Maybe it's a good move going with a bald lady and people will say less shit than if you go with a white man. 1.00
02:21:02.000 I think that that's right. 1.00
02:21:04.000 You gender bend it. 1.00
02:21:06.000 So then it's like, well, maybe you shouldn't criticize that because it's good.
02:21:12.000 But it's like, no, we know what actually is motivating this.
02:21:16.000 It's gross. 0.99
02:21:17.000 And it sucks. 0.98
02:21:18.000 But do you think we could ever get to a point where China wouldn't have an influence? 0.87
02:21:21.000 Because China is still going to be a billion people in a huge market.
02:21:24.000 They're big, but I think we can be number one.
02:21:26.000 I mean, there's beyond growth.
02:21:28.000 I think that we have to be more forceful, government-wise, in how we treat our own company's willingness to cater into that.
02:21:38.000 I think that we need to put some social pressure, if nothing else, On Hollywood to not do that kind of thing.
02:21:47.000 But see, they did hedge their bets by making it a woman. 1.00
02:21:51.000 It was very clever.
02:21:53.000 Sure. 0.99
02:21:53.000 It's a clever little way of being a bitch. 0.99
02:21:56.000 Do you remember when the World Health Organization, there was a spokesperson for the World Health Organization being interviewed by this woman? 0.98
02:22:02.000 And she kept asking them about Taiwan.
02:22:05.000 And he hung up the phone.
02:22:07.000 He hung up the camera.
02:22:08.000 And then when he came back on, she was like...
02:22:10.000 So we were talking about Taiwan.
02:22:12.000 It's like, well, China's done an amazing job.
02:22:14.000 And I think we've kind of covered that.
02:22:16.000 And she's like, what?
02:22:17.000 And everybody's like, look at this.
02:22:19.000 He won't even mention Taiwan.
02:22:21.000 Because Taiwan is not a recognized entity by the People's Republic of China. 0.98
02:22:25.000 Or whatever the fuck they call themselves. 0.79
02:22:27.000 I mean, you know, the WHO is like a unique... 0.99
02:22:31.000 Bind in that regard.
02:22:53.000 Because, like, you want to have China in the Olympics.
02:22:55.000 It's a big country. 0.99
02:22:57.000 And so, you know, they want to be a pain in the ass about it. 0.99
02:22:59.000 I don't know. 0.99
02:22:59.000 Maybe you've got to give in. 0.99
02:23:00.000 But, like, an American television broadcaster, it's like, have some self-respect.
02:23:07.000 It's called Taiwan.
02:23:08.000 Like, I don't know.
02:23:10.000 I don't know what Taiwan means.
02:23:11.000 I was just like, that's what it's called.
02:23:13.000 Yeah, you're not allowed to say it.
02:23:14.000 I'm not going to pretend.
02:23:16.000 Isn't that amazing, though, that they're willing to capitulate?
02:23:20.000 But that's what people do.
02:23:21.000 It's so weird.
02:23:23.000 The Doctor Strange thing is weird, but there's a lot of instances.
02:23:26.000 The NBA thing is weird.
02:23:27.000 There's so many of these things that are weird.
02:23:29.000 You're like, what?
02:23:30.000 Really?
02:23:30.000 But you just realize how much money is coming from China.
02:23:35.000 They've worked very hard to expand that influence and reinforce that influence.
02:23:41.000 They're very deliberate about it, and I think it's something America needs to be more serious about.
02:23:48.000 And I think people, just like people in culture and society, need to be more outspoken.
02:23:55.000 Because each little compromise, I'm sure whoever in the script meeting was like, can we just make this a white lady? 0.66
02:24:03.000 Was like, well, what's the big deal?
02:24:05.000 Well, okay, but we're completely erasing...
02:24:09.000 The Doctor Strange.
02:24:10.000 Well, also Tibetan culture, right?
02:24:14.000 Tibetan culture is not that big a deal in the United States, of course, because we're the United States.
02:24:18.000 But this is one of its footprints, right?
02:24:21.000 And to just snuff it out like that.
02:24:24.000 Because of Chinese money. 0.66
02:24:25.000 Because you want the Chinese market, and that's... 0.99
02:24:29.000 That sucks. 0.86
02:24:30.000 Yeah, there was a video about all the different things they've done to films to cater to Chinese markets and how different they make these movies. 0.98
02:24:38.000 And it was really bizarre.
02:24:39.000 Yep.
02:24:41.000 Would that change at all if there was a billion Americans?
02:24:44.000 I mean, I think it would.
02:24:45.000 I think that the more America has clout, the more we can say...
02:24:51.000 Look, you have to say no to Chinese censorship if you want to be in the American market.
02:24:56.000 I don't think that's going to be a realistic approach if we slip and fall further and further behind.
02:25:02.000 But they don't know that there's Chinese censorship until after the fact we find out, well, Doctor Strange's mentor was actually supposed to be a Tibetan man.
02:25:10.000 They turned into a bald lady. 1.00
02:25:11.000 Well, no, I mean, with the movies, there's a whole process.
02:25:14.000 Pan America did a good report about this, but, like, where Hollywood films are submitted to the Chinese censors.
02:25:20.000 And, you know, we ought to say, I mean, a whole billion thing aside, like, I think we ought to say, like, no, like, you can't.
02:25:27.000 You can't do that.
02:25:30.000 Didn't someone say no to that?
02:25:32.000 Did Tarantino say no to the editing of scenes?
02:25:36.000 I think there was a thing they wanted edited out.
02:25:40.000 It might have been about Bruce Lee.
02:25:42.000 Because, you know, there's this, which I found distasteful, even though I'm a giant Tarantino fan, his portrayal of Bruce Lee is just not accurate. 0.91
02:25:51.000 It made him look like a buffoon.
02:25:53.000 Oh, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, yeah. 0.92
02:25:55.000 I think they resisted the changing.
02:25:58.000 Is that true?
02:26:00.000 Tarantino, one of the rare directors with the power to demand final cut on his relatively expensive films, reportedly has no intention of re-editing the picture.
02:26:08.000 Not for Shannon Lee, not for Chinese censors squeamish about the film's graphic violence, not for any reason.
02:26:13.000 Yeah, he refuses to re-cut for the Chinese market.
02:26:16.000 Yeah, and I mean, you know, I don't know.
02:26:18.000 I mean, that Bruce Lee was not...
02:26:21.000 It was funny, but it's not really fair to him.
02:26:25.000 Okay, look at that.
02:26:26.000 The film will not be released in China.
02:26:28.000 Wow.
02:26:29.000 He refused to edit the Bruce Lee scene out in order to secure a theatrical release in China.
02:26:34.000 Yeah, the Bruce Lee scene is a problem.
02:26:37.000 For Bruce Lee fans who know of the historically wise Bruce Lee.
02:26:42.000 Bruce Lee was very wise. 1.00
02:26:43.000 And they made him look like a fucking idiot in that movie. 1.00
02:26:46.000 And it's kind of unfortunate. 1.00
02:26:47.000 He's kind of doubled down on the criticism of that.
02:26:49.000 But I don't think he was a Bruce Lee fan.
02:26:51.000 I think if you're a deep fan of Bruce Lee...
02:26:55.000 You could say, because of some things that he said, that maybe he was arrogant.
02:27:00.000 I would argue that he's very confident, and one of the reasons why he's very confident is he was, at the time, the premier martial artist of the generation, and reintroducing martial arts, and also a pioneer of this eclectic style of martial arts, which was...
02:27:15.000 Completely taboo and forbidden.
02:27:17.000 Martial arts were always very segregated.
02:27:20.000 The people who did kung fu felt like what they did was the best.
02:27:24.000 The people who did karate thought what they did was the best.
02:27:27.000 And you did not share information, exchange techniques, and you did not incorporate them together into one system.
02:27:33.000 What he did was completely taboo.
02:27:45.000 I think it's great.
02:28:00.000 That Tarantino had, he wanted to do it that way for, you know, whatever reason.
02:28:05.000 Yeah.
02:28:05.000 And he didn't change it.
02:28:08.000 Yeah.
02:28:09.000 Because the Chinese government wanted him to.
02:28:12.000 Agreed.
02:28:12.000 I mean, it's like, you know, I really like Tarantino movies.
02:28:16.000 I love them.
02:28:17.000 There have always been people who don't like them.
02:28:18.000 Yeah.
02:28:19.000 And that's fine too.
02:28:20.000 They're probably my all-time favorite movies.
02:28:21.000 If I had like one director who's made like a group of movies, I go, I can always count on this guy.
02:28:26.000 It's Tarantino.
02:28:27.000 They're always wild. 1.00
02:28:28.000 They're fucking crazy. 1.00
02:28:29.000 All of his movies. 1.00
02:28:30.000 Yeah.
02:28:30.000 Yeah, they're weird.
02:28:31.000 I mean, that's his thing, right?
02:28:32.000 He writes history.
02:28:33.000 A lot of stuff gets extreme.
02:28:35.000 Yeah.
02:28:36.000 And it's outlandish.
02:28:38.000 And it would be a shame to let the government of China second-guess those decisions.
02:28:47.000 Agreed.
02:28:47.000 You know, and there's always, in any one of those movies, there's something that's too far, that's too much for somebody.
02:28:52.000 Oh, yeah.
02:28:53.000 And it starts right with Reservoir Dogs, and they're sawing the guy's ear off.
02:28:56.000 And, you know, it's horrifying.
02:28:58.000 Yeah.
02:28:58.000 Yeah.
02:28:59.000 But I love that movie. 0.98
02:29:01.000 Yeah, they're fucking great. 0.99
02:29:02.000 They're great. 0.99
02:29:03.000 They're great movies. 0.99
02:29:04.000 Yeah, they're nuts. 0.67
02:29:05.000 But that's also why people go to see them. 1.00
02:29:06.000 You know you're in for a ride.
02:29:08.000 You go for a Tarantino movie.
02:29:10.000 You don't think you're going to see Mary Poppins. 1.00
02:29:12.000 You're going to see some wild, crazy shit. 1.00
02:29:15.000 Some guy's going to smash some woman's face into a mantle on a fireplace and kill her. 1.00
02:29:19.000 And you're like, holy fuck, this is nuts. 1.00
02:29:21.000 The dog's going to bite that guy in the dick. 1.00
02:29:24.000 Oh my god, this is crazy. 1.00
02:29:26.000 They're wild movies, man.
02:29:28.000 It's hard to be genuinely shocking in this day and age.
02:29:32.000 I mean, I was watching Once a Time in Hollywood, and it's like they got the flamethrower out in the pool, and I'm laughing.
02:29:40.000 I'm laughing my ass off in the theater.
02:29:42.000 And then I'm thinking, why am I laughing at this?
02:29:46.000 But it's good.
02:29:47.000 That's the magic of the movies.
02:29:49.000 Well, that's the magic of his movies.
02:29:50.000 Yeah!
02:29:51.000 He knows how to make a Tarantino movie better than anybody.
02:29:53.000 And the amazing thing is that there really haven't been very many people that have tried to duplicate that and be successful.
02:30:02.000 I guess you could say that Robert Rodriguez is in a similar vein with some of his films, but it has his own flair as well.
02:30:09.000 His films, they have...
02:30:13.000 Like, Dust Till Dawn.
02:30:14.000 That's a Rodriguez film.
02:30:17.000 Tarantino's actually in it, right?
02:30:18.000 Yeah.
02:30:18.000 He's one of the bad guys in it.
02:30:20.000 But that film, it's kind of, it's in the same vein, but his own thing.
02:30:25.000 Well, there was this, like, Tarantino ripoff era in the 90s, right?
02:30:30.000 Right.
02:30:30.000 So you would get movies like Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead.
02:30:33.000 Yes.
02:30:33.000 Which is okay.
02:30:34.000 Yeah.
02:30:35.000 A pretty good movie, right?
02:30:36.000 What is that?
02:30:36.000 He wrote it.
02:30:37.000 Oh, there you go.
02:30:38.000 There you go.
02:30:39.000 So that's why it's similar.
02:30:40.000 That totally makes sense.
02:30:42.000 But Tarantino then totally transcends that genre, right?
02:30:47.000 So it's like, no, he doesn't just make hard-boiled crime movies, right?
02:30:50.000 He makes a World War II movie. 0.98
02:30:52.000 He makes fucking Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 0.99
02:30:55.000 He makes a Western. 0.99
02:30:56.000 He makes Django, right?
02:30:58.000 And it's much more...
02:31:00.000 Hateful Eight.
02:31:01.000 Visionary.
02:31:02.000 Yeah.
02:31:02.000 Than looking at Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and saying, oh, well, these are movies about criminals in Southern California who say funny stuff to each other.
02:31:12.000 Right.
02:31:13.000 Right?
02:31:13.000 Right.
02:31:14.000 Well, that's where the frauds come in, right?
02:31:15.000 Right.
02:31:16.000 Yeah.
02:31:16.000 What is that one?
02:31:18.000 There's two fucking stupid movies with the... 1.00
02:31:20.000 Well, you know what I'm talking about. 1.00
02:31:21.000 What is it?
02:31:22.000 The Brothers?
02:31:23.000 Yeah.
02:31:23.000 We're not saints.
02:31:24.000 That's it.
02:31:25.000 That's the worst version of it.
02:31:27.000 Oh, God. 0.99
02:31:28.000 There's a bunch of people who love that fucking movie, and I want to know who they are. 0.99
02:31:31.000 I know what you mean. 0.99
02:31:32.000 Yeah, I want to get their email addresses.
02:31:35.000 Track them down.
02:31:35.000 They're canceled.
02:31:36.000 I'm going to send them nonsense.
02:31:42.000 You do long shows, man.
02:31:43.000 Yeah.
02:31:44.000 You okay?
02:31:44.000 You got to pee?
02:31:45.000 You hanging in there?
02:31:46.000 I'll survive.
02:31:47.000 Okay.
02:31:47.000 Yeah.
02:31:48.000 Well, I feel like that's how you really get to know somebody.
02:31:50.000 Yeah.
02:31:51.000 Yeah.
02:31:52.000 This idea has to have some drawbacks, right?
02:31:56.000 What about all the waste?
02:31:59.000 You're just relying on science.
02:32:00.000 You're relying on technology.
02:32:02.000 There's problems already with dealing with enormous numbers of people.
02:32:06.000 You triple that in America.
02:32:09.000 We already have problems with fracking and problems with nuclear waste and problems with industrial waste.
02:32:14.000 Yeah, so I mean, I do.
02:32:15.000 I want people to know that the United States is a very low population density country right now.
02:32:21.000 I am not talking about us pushing the frontiers beyond what is possible in human societies.
02:32:29.000 Japan, Korea, Taiwan, to say the country's proper name, those are all much denser than even a billion Americans.
02:32:35.000 So...
02:32:36.000 I don't think we need, like, off-the-wall science to address these kind of things.
02:32:42.000 Number one, absolutely 100% real drawback is traffic.
02:32:47.000 You know, it's, like, the pettiest thing.
02:32:50.000 Like, ugh, traffic jams.
02:32:51.000 But it is 100% true that the more people you have, the worse your traffic issues kind of get.
02:32:56.000 So I love transportation policy.
02:32:59.000 And my original draft of the transportation chapter, my editor was like, it's a bit much, Matt.
02:33:05.000 You gotta...
02:33:05.000 You gotta reel it back here.
02:33:07.000 There's a lot that we could do to have better transportation infrastructure in terms of pricing our roads, in terms of being smarter about how our commuter rail works, in terms of being smarter about how we locate houses.
02:33:19.000 I mean, if you like to nerd out on transportation stuff, the book is in it for you.
02:33:25.000 But it is true that this would be tough.
02:33:28.000 That America does not have a great record at its civil engineering.
02:33:33.000 Our projects are incredibly more expensive than what people in Europe and Asia spend on them.
02:33:39.000 And getting control of that and executing things that really make sense would be challenging.
02:33:46.000 Because when you look at our fast-growing cities, I mean, we've talked about Los Angeles, but, you know, you look at Atlanta, you look at Dallas, places that a lot of people are rushing to.
02:33:55.000 It's not...
02:33:59.000 There's nothing wrong with those places.
02:34:01.000 Like, they're great thriving cities, but the infrastructure build-out is not great.
02:34:06.000 They sort of take what works for medium-sized cities and then just do more and more of it.
02:34:11.000 And it's a big problem, you know?
02:34:13.000 I don't think people are wrong to be concerned about those kinds of things.
02:34:21.000 Waste.
02:34:21.000 Waste.
02:34:22.000 What do you mean waste? 0.56
02:34:23.000 Just like trash?
02:34:24.000 Just everything. 0.75
02:34:24.000 Everything that we have. 0.75
02:34:25.000 Plastic.
02:34:26.000 Everything we have.
02:34:27.000 Recyclables.
02:34:28.000 Everything that we have.
02:34:30.000 Waste from...
02:34:31.000 I'm assuming we would have to build things here.
02:34:35.000 Yeah.
02:34:35.000 Gotta build things.
02:34:36.000 Right.
02:34:37.000 So we have to...
02:34:38.000 Manufacturing waste.
02:34:39.000 But, you know, we're getting better at those kind of pollution things, right?
02:34:44.000 The air and the water are much cleaner than they were a couple generations ago.
02:34:49.000 We are, you know, even beyond like the electric cars and all that really good stuff, even our gasoline powered stuff has gotten cleaner, which is all really good.
02:34:58.000 And, you know, so I don't think that we have sort of unmanageable waste problems or are going to in the future, particularly because you consider, look, if more people move here, it's not like there wouldn't be waste, like, back where they were coming from.
02:35:11.000 Have you ever seen what happens in Los Angeles when it rains?
02:35:14.000 What does happen?
02:35:15.000 A bunch of things happen.
02:35:17.000 One of the things that happens is the ocean becomes impossible to go into.
02:35:23.000 People that surf, that didn't know, like a friend of mine was a yoga instructor.
02:35:26.000 Oh, the runoff.
02:35:27.000 He's from Argentina and he didn't understand that when you deal with rain and the runoff, you literally shouldn't be in the ocean because it's toxic.
02:35:35.000 And he got really sick. 0.97
02:35:37.000 Because he basically got poisoned because he's in this water that's just filled with pollution because it's all coming down the LA River, which is really just a fucking cement tube. 0.85
02:35:46.000 So it's in plastic and garbage and all the oil from the water, or the oil from the roads rather, because it never rains. 0.78
02:35:55.000 And when it does rain, you're dealing with layer upon layer upon layer of oil that's just seeped into the city streets. 0.96
02:36:02.000 And all that shit, all the pollution, all the brake dust, everything, it's washed off into the ocean. 0.96
02:36:09.000 Imagine that with three times the number of people. 0.99
02:36:12.000 Yeah, I'm going to be honest.
02:36:13.000 This is like an area that I wish I knew more about.
02:36:16.000 I know that in the part of the country where I live, that there used to be much, much more severe problems with wastewater runoff into the Potomac River, into the Chesapeake Bay.
02:36:27.000 And there was a big effort to mitigate it, and I honestly don't know exactly what it was.
02:36:34.000 This is like, you know, I got to do a good interview.
02:36:37.000 But it's...
02:36:39.000 It is doable, is I guess what I'm saying.
02:36:42.000 A lot of East Coast rivers, the Hudson, around where I grew up, have gotten much cleaner over time by trying to manage the wetlands, things like that.
02:36:51.000 I don't know what the Los Angeles situation is exactly.
02:36:54.000 But so, I mean, this is definitely the area where I kind of take the most heat from people, is on these environmental, ecological-type issues.
02:37:04.000 And...
02:37:06.000 I get it.
02:37:08.000 At the same time, I don't think we can have a solution for our society that involves shrinking and having fewer people, right?
02:37:20.000 Or just wishing away the desire for economic development in the third world, right? 0.97
02:37:27.000 Or developing world, I guess is the polite phrase for it.
02:37:31.000 Either we are going to be able to come up with You know, the electric vehicles, the clean fuels, the next generation nuclear stuff, all those kinds of things that let us have a prosperous, clean planet or else we're not.
02:37:49.000 But saying, well, we're going to like shrink our country or not allow people to move here. 1.00
02:37:55.000 To me, that's like a kind of a fake solution.
02:37:58.000 Yeah.
02:38:01.000 Other drawbacks.
02:38:04.000 What are the main criticisms that people have?
02:38:07.000 First of all, have people criticized this arbitrary number of a billion people?
02:38:12.000 How do you justify that you've come up with this?
02:38:16.000 Is it just to be provocative?
02:38:18.000 How did you come up with that number?
02:38:20.000 Arbitrary, arbitrary.
02:38:22.000 It's triple what we have right now.
02:38:24.000 It would equal China as they're coming in decline.
02:38:27.000 I totally can see it.
02:38:28.000 Like, look, if we had 850 million, or if we had 1.1 billion, it's fine.
02:38:33.000 It's just a ballpark.
02:38:34.000 You gotta have an anchor.
02:38:36.000 I think if you do anything in life, it's good to have a goal.
02:38:39.000 And the goal can be a little bit arbitrary.
02:38:41.000 So the goal's a billion?
02:38:42.000 Yeah.
02:38:42.000 Can you imagine someone saying that, though?
02:38:45.000 Obviously, you are saying it.
02:38:46.000 But imagine someone saying that on television.
02:38:48.000 They're running for president.
02:38:49.000 And like, what we need is a billion people in this country. 1.00
02:38:51.000 So start fucking. 1.00
02:38:53.000 Everybody get together and have more kids. 0.99
02:38:55.000 So Kennedy said, we're going to put a man on the moon within this decade.
02:39:00.000 And as it happens, we did, right?
02:39:02.000 1969. If the Apollo program, if it had taken until 1971, like, what's the big deal?
02:39:08.000 Like, what's the difference?
02:39:09.000 But you set a goal.
02:39:10.000 That's a very different goal than just a billion people.
02:39:14.000 Like, people would want to know, like, why a billion?
02:39:16.000 And what are you going to do with this billion?
02:39:18.000 And why would it benefit us to have so many more people?
02:39:20.000 And how is this going to make us stronger?
02:39:22.000 How is this going to be if you're about American exceptionalism and about American nationalism?
02:39:27.000 What's good about a billion people that's not good about 300 and whatever million people that we have right now?
02:39:34.000 330. Well, bigger is better.
02:39:36.000 Do we have 330 now?
02:39:37.000 Yeah.
02:39:37.000 Is that a fact?
02:39:37.000 I mean, I'd take 2 billion, 3 billion.
02:39:40.000 What?
02:39:41.000 What?
02:39:42.000 Wow.
02:39:42.000 Three billion here?
02:39:43.000 You could get them.
02:39:45.000 Really?
02:39:45.000 Ten times what we have now?
02:39:47.000 I don't know where the three billion would come from.
02:39:49.000 How dare you, Matthew.
02:39:50.000 You're talking crazy now.
02:39:51.000 I want us to be the biggest country in the world.
02:39:55.000 What about the food?
02:39:56.000 How are we growing all the food?
02:39:58.000 Oh, we got lots of food.
02:39:59.000 Oh, do we, though?
02:39:59.000 America's got too much food.
02:40:00.000 Yeah, we also have factory farming that we're also trying to, like, factor out.
02:40:04.000 Yeah.
02:40:05.000 Don't you think that most people, if they could...
02:40:07.000 I mean, that's why they have ag gag laws. 1.00
02:40:09.000 I think it's weird, actually, that we export.
02:40:12.000 We're such a big farm exporting country, which, like, to me, that's...
02:40:16.000 Like, it's fine for, like, New Zealand.
02:40:18.000 You know, to just like sell primary agricultural products.
02:40:22.000 They sell a lot of meat.
02:40:23.000 Yeah.
02:40:23.000 America!
02:40:24.000 We should eat our own food.
02:40:26.000 Right.
02:40:27.000 But you know that a lot of stuff that they send out is just like, you know, surplus corn and things along those lines.
02:40:33.000 Yeah.
02:40:33.000 We probably shouldn't be growing.
02:40:34.000 So we have less farmland, actually, than we did 50 years ago.
02:40:39.000 And yet way, way, way more food.
02:40:41.000 Because the productivity has just...
02:40:44.000 But you know there's also a real problem with topsoil.
02:40:49.000 There's a diminished topsoil in this country that is pretty significant, and they don't really have a way to replenish it.
02:40:56.000 Other than the people that are doing regenerative agriculture, which is a different way of farming than monocrop agriculture.
02:41:06.000 Monocrop agriculture, when they're growing hundreds or thousands of acres of corn, It's totally unnatural.
02:41:13.000 It's not normal.
02:41:15.000 And they have to replenish that soil with nitrogen. 0.98
02:41:18.000 They have to do different things to try to fertilize the ground.
02:41:21.000 But there's an estimation of the number of years that we have of topsoil left, and I think it's less than 60. I think some crazy low number.
02:41:40.000 Mm-hmm.
02:42:00.000 But you can't feed enough people with fast food and all the things that people desire today with the structures that are in place in terms of delivering chicken to Chick-fil-A and beef to Jack in a Box.
02:42:12.000 You're not going to get that through the same kind of regenerative agriculture because it doesn't yield the same amount of animals per acre.
02:42:19.000 You'd have to have much more ground and you'd only have a certain amount of areas that are capable of doing this.
02:42:25.000 You have to have areas that are growing a lot of grass naturally.
02:42:28.000 You have to have areas where these cattle can live year-round.
02:42:32.000 There's a lot that has to be in place.
02:42:34.000 There's going to be a lot of issues about agriculture.
02:42:38.000 This is not really about population growth, but about the sustainability of the food system and also I mean,
02:42:59.000 we were talking before.
02:43:02.000 It's not good for us to have...
02:43:05.000 Like, the processed food machine is an incredible business success story, but it's not good for us as people and probably not sustainable as a sort of soil management thing.
02:43:19.000 So, you know, I agree.
02:43:21.000 Like, we need to go back to that.
02:43:22.000 But the world on a calories basis just has an incredible amount of food to sustain human life.
02:43:31.000 Yeah, but people need more calories.
02:43:32.000 They need nutrition.
02:43:33.000 Right, right, right, right.
02:43:34.000 But we are on the wrong side already of that curve, right, in terms of these, like, meat yields and factory farming and overuse of the antibiotics and stuff there.
02:43:46.000 If we were to pull back on those kind of things that are problematic for completely separate reasons, that actually increases the amount of, like, grain and acres and stuff that's available because meat is this incredibly inefficient use of the land.
02:44:02.000 Wait a minute.
02:44:04.000 So would you say that people have to change their diet then?
02:44:09.000 So if you're ramping it up to a billion people, you're going to have to cut out meat consumption?
02:44:14.000 No, I'm not saying we have to do that to get to a billion.
02:44:17.000 Do they have to change their meat consumption?
02:44:19.000 We could leave everything in agriculture absolutely the same.
02:44:25.000 And have a billion people.
02:44:26.000 We would just not be exporting agricultural goods.
02:44:29.000 We'd be consuming them domestically.
02:44:31.000 Like, America grows far more food than 330 million people.
02:44:36.000 But do we grow enough meat and eggs?
02:44:38.000 Yeah.
02:44:39.000 And all that stuff to reach a billion people?
02:44:42.000 Yeah, because we're right now feeding foreigners with it. 0.99
02:44:46.000 Now, I thought you got into, I think, an interesting point, which is just our agricultural system has a lot of problems with it.
02:44:52.000 That should probably be addressed.
02:44:55.000 But it's separate from the population issue.
02:44:57.000 I mean, right now, agriculture...
02:45:02.000 No, I mean, we would be redirecting our agricultural product from external markets to an internal market.
02:45:09.000 Yeah, but you're saying this like you're the Chinese government and not individual farmers and businesses that have set up a life of doing things a certain way.
02:45:17.000 Like, this is not like you can have some national government mandate where the...
02:45:23.000 They come in and tell you, this is what you're growing now. 1.00
02:45:25.000 Fuck your alfalfa. 1.00
02:45:26.000 You need to start growing wheat. 1.00
02:45:28.000 Wait, wait, wait.
02:45:29.000 I'm just saying we've got two separate questions here.
02:45:31.000 One is, does the United States produce enough food to feed a billion people?
02:45:36.000 And I'm saying it does, right now, already.
02:45:39.000 Is that real, though?
02:45:40.000 It's 100% real.
02:45:41.000 Do we ship two-thirds of our food overseas?
02:45:44.000 More.
02:45:44.000 More than two-thirds?
02:45:45.000 I mean, it's just an incredible...
02:45:47.000 We ship two-thirds of our meat overseas.
02:45:48.000 This is why, you know, when all the trade stuff was going down with China, right?
02:45:54.000 The issue was always the farmers.
02:45:56.000 We made these huge payments to American farmers to make up for their sort of loss of those external markets.
02:46:04.000 Because Americans don't... 0.99
02:46:09.000 We're good to go.
02:46:36.000 It's like they traditionally cultivated corn in Mexico.
02:46:39.000 It's a very Mexican thing to have corn.
02:46:42.000 Also, we're the rich country and they're the poor one.
02:46:45.000 And normally trade would go in the other direction, right?
02:46:48.000 Exports would come, you know, raw materials from the less developed countries.
02:46:52.000 But America is just such an incredible farm...
02:46:55.000 Superstar.
02:46:56.000 The other really weird thing is that we're the world's number one agricultural exporter.
02:47:01.000 Number two is the Netherlands, which, you know, that's like a tiny-ass country, super-duper crowded.
02:47:09.000 But that's because their farming operates on totally different principles from ours.
02:47:14.000 Everything's in greenhouses, and the yield per, what do they call it, hectare over there is astronomical compared to what we do because it's a much more capital-intensive system.
02:47:24.000 So it's more expensive.
02:47:26.000 But, you know, they get staggering amounts of fruits and vegetables and things like that grown out of very, very small areas of land over there.
02:47:36.000 So there's a lot of different things you can do with an agricultural system.
02:47:40.000 But our way is just great at using land lavishly because we have a lot of land and not a lot of people want to work on farms.
02:47:50.000 Yeah.
02:47:50.000 We have very few farmers in America, but an incredible amount of farming.
02:47:55.000 And that's what drives these monocultures because they're very efficient in that sort of sense.
02:48:01.000 But we may want to rethink it because there's a lot of ecological issues.
02:48:06.000 What would be the method that you would rethink this?
02:48:10.000 How do you get these farmers on board, these farmers that are receiving subsidies for growing corn?
02:48:15.000 How would you shift that?
02:48:18.000 It seems like a...
02:48:19.000 You're asking a battleship to do a figure eight. 0.69
02:48:22.000 Well, no, but you were the one who was asking.
02:48:25.000 How so?
02:48:26.000 I mean, I was just saying we grow plenty of food, right?
02:48:29.000 But then you were bringing up these points about the topsoil and other things like that.
02:48:33.000 So what do you want to do? 0.99
02:48:34.000 Just let it fucking die out? 0.99
02:48:36.000 Well, it's a question we're going to have to address one way or the other, right? 0.99
02:48:39.000 And, you know, we got to look at the subsidies, right?
02:48:42.000 We need to change what we pay people to do and pay them to do something that's more...
02:48:49.000 It's beneficial to society, which I think should be possible.
02:48:53.000 I mean, people like money.
02:48:54.000 Yeah, but the growing of all that food is beneficial to society. 0.88
02:48:59.000 And the reason why they received subsidies in the first place was this all post-World War II. You know the whole reason for it, because they thought that there was going to be legitimate—they really thought there was going to be a problem with the food supply.
02:49:15.000 Hunger, yeah.
02:49:15.000 And so to subsidize the farmers meant that, listen, we're going to make sure that we put money into this so we have a stable food supply so that we have stockpiles.
02:49:26.000 So there is a situation where something's wrong.
02:49:30.000 We can get food to people.
02:49:32.000 We will have food.
02:49:32.000 We'll pay these farmers.
02:49:33.000 To this day, we have a national cheese stockpile.
02:49:36.000 Yeah.
02:49:36.000 It's a miracle.
02:49:55.000 Change how they do things.
02:49:56.000 But there has to be a way to use regenerative agriculture where there's a natural method, and the natural method is how the world works in terms of the wild.
02:50:09.000 The animals chew the grass, they shit it out, it fertilizes, and because of that, in the wild you have rich soil in a lot of the places where there is grass and these animals grazing.
02:50:21.000 You don't really have that when you beat that ground into the dirt, you know, literally and figuratively, over and over again.
02:50:29.000 Some method has to be devised in order to make that soil...
02:50:38.000 I don't know what that would be.
02:50:39.000 I mean, it seems like there's a problem with growing what we're growing now for the population that we have now.
02:50:45.000 But you're saying that we give away or we outsource or ship out, export two-thirds of the food that we make.
02:50:51.000 I didn't know it was that right.
02:50:52.000 Well, I'm saying we're exporting these tremendous amounts of meat, right, of pork, especially over to Asia.
02:50:59.000 And to some extent to parts of the world.
02:51:00.000 And that consumes a huge amount of land to grow the feed, right?
02:51:06.000 So we don't need to be doing that.
02:51:08.000 I mean, we do it.
02:51:09.000 It's a good business for pork people. 0.98
02:51:12.000 But the environmental impact of the sort of pork, the like pig shit lagoons and stuff. 0.98
02:51:18.000 Oh, I've seen that. 0.98
02:51:19.000 Like it's horrifying.
02:51:20.000 You ever seen that one video where the guy has a drone and he flies it over this area?
02:51:24.000 Yeah.
02:51:24.000 Yeah.
02:51:24.000 It's stunning.
02:51:26.000 They've got lakes of pig shit. 1.00
02:51:28.000 Yeah, it's not great. 1.00
02:51:29.000 The smell must be fucking insane. 0.92
02:51:32.000 You know, my parents used to live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 0.97
02:51:35.000 And when I went to visit them, I would drive through this area of Pennsylvania that was all farms.
02:51:39.000 And it was so nasty.
02:51:41.000 You'd have to roll your window up.
02:51:43.000 And I'd be like, imagine living here.
02:51:45.000 Imagine if you have a house over there, but this pig farm over here is just...
02:51:51.000 Or cattle farm, I don't know what it was.
02:51:53.000 It's ruining everything for you.
02:51:55.000 You can't smell outside. 1.00
02:51:58.000 Because outside smells like shit. 1.00
02:52:01.000 Like literal shit. 1.00
02:52:02.000 Yeah, that's not great. 1.00
02:52:03.000 And they have the ability to do it.
02:52:05.000 You're not just polluting the air.
02:52:07.000 You're polluting life. 1.00
02:52:09.000 Like, life smells like shit. 1.00
02:52:11.000 Like, you smell the roses? 1.00
02:52:12.000 Yeah, I smell shit and those roses. 1.00
02:52:14.000 Like, no matter what you do, you're smelling shit. 1.00
02:52:16.000 It's everywhere. 1.00
02:52:17.000 And you're breathing in those particles, no matter what you do.
02:52:19.000 Yeah, the pork.
02:52:20.000 The pork people. 0.99
02:52:21.000 I was in Denmark one time, and so people took me to see a factory or some kind of facility where they were turning pig shit into biodiesel to run, you know, fuel trucks. 0.99
02:52:33.000 And it was the most foul-smelling thing that I've ever seen. 0.98
02:52:37.000 I can only imagine. 0.99
02:52:37.000 Because they had to concentrate pig shit in a, I think, probably beyond the lagoon of Illinois. 0.99
02:52:43.000 To pipe it into this place. 1.00
02:52:46.000 Can you imagine, though, running your truck off pig shit? 1.00
02:52:50.000 Well, what people want... 0.99
02:52:51.000 When people talk about a healthy way of life, they talk about sustainability.
02:52:56.000 They talk about having a communal farm that the neighborhood shares.
02:53:01.000 They talk about...
02:53:02.000 You know, figuring out a way to incorporate animal manure and agriculture and food waste and use that for composting and to have some sort of a natural way of living and dealing with the land.
02:53:17.000 You alright?
02:53:18.000 Yeah!
02:53:20.000 That is true.
02:53:20.000 Now, look, I mean, I think these like agricultural questions are really, really fascinating for the sort of long term environmental picture of the planet.
02:53:31.000 But I feel pretty confident that it is solvable.
02:53:36.000 How would you solve the topsoil issue?
02:53:38.000 How would I solve the topsoil issue?
02:53:40.000 I mean, as you say, it is difficult politically to get people to change anything, but we have a lot of money, right?
02:53:47.000 There's a lot of federal policymaking going into the agricultural process, and we probably have to put more into it because, you know, you're going to ask people to change.
02:53:59.000 And then, as you say, we've got to tell you, look, if you want to get this money, you have to move to these more integrated methods where you don't have the same crop in the same field year after year after year.
02:54:10.000 What about people that aren't receiving subsidies?
02:54:12.000 What about people that are just growing food and selling that food?
02:54:16.000 How do you get them to shift and what do you do?
02:54:18.000 Well, I don't think there's a big problem with the smaller, they call it specialty crop kinds of things.
02:54:26.000 I mean, I might be wrong, but my impression is that these problems come from the large, like, one-crop enterprises that are sort of dominant in the Midwest.
02:54:37.000 That's not historically how farms have been But it's very effective labor-saving technique.
02:54:46.000 You know, because if everything's the same, you can run a giant tractor off it.
02:54:50.000 But what could fix the topsoil issue on these enormous places?
02:54:55.000 Well, you're going to have to find a real topsoil guy.
02:54:58.000 But isn't that a big part?
02:55:01.000 Food has got to be a big part of having a billion people.
02:55:05.000 They have to eat.
02:55:06.000 I'm trying to say to you, right?
02:55:08.000 So we have a global food system.
02:55:11.000 Now, obviously, there are people who are hungry in the world, but it's a distributional question.
02:55:16.000 The world is not anywhere short of food.
02:55:20.000 And the United States is not short of food.
02:55:22.000 Moving more people into the United States does not cause a food scarcity problem.
02:55:28.000 There are a lot of other issues, right?
02:55:30.000 Like one billion Americans, it's not everything.
02:55:33.000 Like we got to think about our energy system, our agriculture system, all our kind of environmental type stuff.
02:55:41.000 But I think those problems exist one way or another.
02:55:45.000 Right?
02:55:46.000 The other question is, moving a bunch of people into the country that don't exist here right now, what would change with the quality of life for the people that live there? 0.99
02:55:56.000 And would there be an adverse impact?
02:55:59.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't think so.
02:56:00.000 I mean, I talk a lot in the book about the studies of the, it's called Mario Boatlift, sort of influx of people from Cuba into Miami circa 1980. Scarface. 0.95
02:56:12.000 Yeah, Scarface.
02:56:13.000 Seems like it was negative.
02:56:15.000 Yeah.
02:56:16.000 Well, yes, the portrayal in Scarface is a little bit negative.
02:56:19.000 The statistical work indicates that, you know, it was good.
02:56:22.000 Pay for most people went up.
02:56:24.000 Miami's cool.
02:56:25.000 People like to go there.
02:56:26.000 Pay went up.
02:56:27.000 You know why?
02:56:28.000 Cocaine.
02:56:28.000 All the cocaine.
02:56:29.000 It just did it up.
02:56:30.000 There's a lot of cocaine over there, man.
02:56:39.000 In Venezuela.
02:56:40.000 And it was the same thing.
02:56:41.000 It was like wages for Colombians didn't go down.
02:56:43.000 There was a study about Hurricane Maria which drove a lot of people from Puerto Rico into the Orlando area.
02:56:49.000 And so pay for construction workers went down, but pay for people who work in restaurants and retail stores went up to offset it.
02:56:56.000 So I think that kind of immigration, like, it just can be great.
02:56:59.000 I mean, it enriches culture.
02:57:01.000 It's fine economically.
02:57:02.000 Of course, you don't want 600 million people to just, like, come tomorrow.
02:57:06.000 So what's the plan to get us to a billion?
02:57:09.000 You need controlled chaos.
02:57:10.000 How much time for controlled chaos?
02:57:11.000 It's like an 80-year time schedule.
02:57:14.000 So two parts, right?
02:57:15.000 So there's the immigration part, and then there's we've got to give people with young kids more money.
02:57:22.000 Give them more money.
02:57:24.000 Yeah, give them money.
02:57:25.000 Who's we?
02:57:26.000 Like, the government.
02:57:27.000 The government has to give people with kids more money.
02:57:30.000 What do you mean by that?
02:57:33.000 Most countries have, they call it a child allowance.
02:57:37.000 So, parents of young children get a few hundred dollars a month.
02:57:42.000 To help with the financial cause.
02:57:43.000 They just get it from the government.
02:57:45.000 Yeah.
02:57:45.000 And where does the money come from?
02:57:47.000 Like taxes.
02:57:48.000 I mean, where does money come from?
02:57:49.000 So to give everyone who has children a few hundred dollars a month, how much is that going to cost?
02:57:59.000 It's about 98 billion.
02:58:01.000 And where does that money come from?
02:58:02.000 It comes from taxes.
02:58:04.000 So you increase the amount of taxes that people pay?
02:58:07.000 Yeah.
02:58:07.000 So basically, childless people will be subsidizing people with two or three kids.
02:58:12.000 Do you think that's going to be popular?
02:58:14.000 Yeah, people like it.
02:58:15.000 I don't know about that.
02:58:16.000 Mike Lee likes it.
02:58:17.000 He's a Republican.
02:58:19.000 Mike Lee, okay.
02:58:20.000 Do you think that there would be a lot of pushback on this idea?
02:58:23.000 Because it seems like you're asking for people to pay for other people's lifestyle.
02:58:30.000 I mean, I am.
02:58:31.000 I think that's the American way.
02:58:33.000 I mean, we've got to pay for the health care of people who are sick.
02:58:38.000 I think we've got to pay for, like, the needs of families with children.
02:58:41.000 We pay for Social Security, right?
02:58:44.000 Yeah, kind of.
02:58:45.000 I mean, at least for kids, right?
02:58:47.000 I mean, so, look, if you're elderly...
02:58:48.000 You get Social Security money in the United States, right?
02:58:51.000 And we think that's important, retirement.
02:58:54.000 It's something that we value as a society.
02:58:56.000 Is there a cutoff if your income is, say, over X amount of money per year?
02:59:02.000 Yeah, you could structure it that way, right?
02:59:04.000 So one way to do it is to phase it out.
02:59:07.000 So if you're making over $100K or whatever, you don't get the money.
02:59:12.000 Yeah.
02:59:13.000 The other way is to have more affluent people pay higher taxes.
02:59:16.000 I mean, there's different ways to make it work mathematically.
02:59:18.000 I don't have a sort of dogmatic view about it.
02:59:20.000 Personally, I like the completely universal program.
02:59:25.000 Completely universal, meaning if you make a million dollars a year, you still will get a couple hundred bucks a month if you have kids.
02:59:31.000 Yeah, just like Bill Gates is going to get to Social Security. 0.97
02:59:35.000 Hmm, I think Bill should opt the fuck out. 0.97
02:59:38.000 How about that? 0.97
02:59:38.000 Well, you know, he's probably just going to give it away one way or the other. 0.97
02:59:41.000 Yeah, he probably will.
02:59:42.000 Yeah, a lot of people will.
02:59:45.000 It just seems like this is a kind of, this is a crazy tax situation now.
02:59:51.000 Like, to pay for all this.
02:59:53.000 It's not them.
02:59:53.000 I mean, they just- Well, you're talking about a billion people.
02:59:55.000 You're not even just talking about the people that exist now.
02:59:58.000 Well, you're talking about people having more kids.
03:00:00.000 So just in Trudeau's government, they implemented a policy like this in Canada last year, maybe two years ago.
03:00:06.000 They do a phase out, you know, like you were suggesting.
03:00:09.000 So it's only people, I think it's like the bottom 60 or 70% of the Canadian income service from Get It.
03:00:15.000 It's a very effective way to combat child poverty.
03:00:18.000 The Trump administration, they wouldn't put it this way, but they, in their tax law, they expanded the child tax credit and sort of took a step in this direction.
03:00:27.000 So it's, I think, less radical than you might think.
03:00:32.000 I mean, if the Senate Republicans were doing it, at least moving in that way, It's a pretty liberal idea.
03:00:38.000 I mean, Democrats, Sherrod Brown and Michael Bennett had a proposal that's similar to this.
03:00:45.000 They call it the American Families Act.
03:00:47.000 So there's a fair amount of political support for these kind of ideas.
03:00:51.000 And I think it could do a lot to reduce child poverty, which is good.
03:00:55.000 I think it's sad to have kids growing up in poverty and to strengthen families, which is something conservative people care about, as well as more progressive-minded people.
03:01:06.000 I think it's good.
03:01:07.000 Well, I certainly am in favor of doing anything that's possible to lessen child poverty and child starvation and hunger and child health care and making sure that people are taken care of.
03:01:18.000 But when you're dealing with a billion people and you've got X amount of hundred dollars per month That's going to how many hundreds of millions of families?
03:01:33.000 Well, but it's also more taxpayers, you know?
03:01:35.000 I don't understand how you think this is only a few billion dollars.
03:01:38.000 This sounds like it's in the trillions.
03:01:40.000 Well, no, sorry, sorry.
03:01:41.000 How much would it be?
03:01:43.000 Because it replaces some of the existing child support programs.
03:01:48.000 What are you going to get rid of?
03:01:49.000 So a lot of people currently get the child tax credit, right?
03:01:55.000 So you fold it into the new program.
03:01:58.000 That's the main thing.
03:02:00.000 So the net cost, I mean, $98 billion a year, that's a lot of money.
03:02:05.000 But, you know, that's what it costs.
03:02:07.000 That's what it costs to give this few hundred dollars per month to all these families?
03:02:12.000 To lower income families.
03:02:13.000 And what would you get rid of?
03:02:14.000 I'd say, you know, you get rid of child tax credit, you get rid of some of the tax-deferred savings accounts, like the 529 for kids' college tuition.
03:02:23.000 Because these are other ways the government funnels money to families with kids, but usually in regressive ways that mostly help rich people.
03:02:31.000 A lot of people have a real problem with universal basic income and the same people that have a problem with welfare.
03:02:36.000 They think that it reduces incentives.
03:02:40.000 It reduces people's desire to do better and it increases their reliance on the state.
03:02:47.000 What do you say to that?
03:02:48.000 I just don't think that's right.
03:02:50.000 How so?
03:02:51.000 I mean, I don't think that a modest supplement to people's incomes makes the difference between whether or not they, like, want to go out and work.
03:03:07.000 Well, desperation is the mother of invention, right?
03:03:09.000 When people are desperate, they do things that make them, you know, they work harder to try to get ahead.
03:03:16.000 And a lot of times people with families... 0.56
03:03:18.000 And they realize that, oh my god, I have to take care of this family and these people that I love so dearly, I'm gonna really bust my ass and work hard. 0.93
03:03:26.000 Yeah!
03:03:26.000 And the human nature perspective is that if you give people a safety net, they always use it.
03:03:34.000 If you tell people they have to go out there and they have to earn their own, they're forced into action.
03:03:39.000 And most people will go out there and figure it out.
03:03:43.000 But if you say you don't have to figure it out, Here's some money.
03:03:47.000 And what we're going to do is we're going to take this money from people that are already successful.
03:03:49.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:03:50.000 But look, this is why I am not talking about like the full UBI, right?
03:03:54.000 Where you just get this money, like whatever, you know.
03:03:59.000 $1,200 a month or whatever it is.
03:04:00.000 Young kids doing nothing.
03:04:02.000 Yeah.
03:04:02.000 You know, I'm talking about families with kids.
03:04:05.000 Because kids just come with costs, right?
03:04:07.000 Sure.
03:04:08.000 To help people out with that.
03:04:10.000 I think you are still easily at the margin where going out and working and having some more money makes a real difference in your life and in the life of your family.
03:04:19.000 And do you think that this will strengthen- Poverty.
03:04:24.000 You know, also, economically speaking, right, it's like the value of having somebody work 70 hours a week as opposed to 40 as a low-paid retail worker, like, that's not high.
03:04:44.000 I think the idea is that the best case scenario is that they work their way up.
03:04:51.000 So they work really hard in the beginning and then they use that money to get themselves out of a jam and then they keep improving their condition.
03:04:58.000 That's the best case scenario.
03:05:00.000 Obviously there's examples that we could both pull of pro and con.
03:05:04.000 You know, where it works and where it fails miserably and, you know, people's lives fall apart and you don't take care of your children and they grow up all fucked up because their parents aren't home because they're working for a small amount of money.
03:05:15.000 Look, I think that we have more cases where people are going to be able to work their way up if they, as children, are well taken care of.
03:05:24.000 You know, if they have stable housing and a stable food supply and things like that.
03:05:29.000 I think that that is the...
03:05:32.000 Barrier that we can overcome.
03:05:35.000 Yeah.
03:05:35.000 Right?
03:05:35.000 To let people sort of have that kind of upward mobility rather than saying, well, we've got to, like, crack the whip.
03:05:41.000 Along the lines of what Bill Gates is saying is about making sure that children are healthy and that it pays off in the long run.
03:05:46.000 Yeah, I mean, he's talking on the very low level of, you know, the developed world and basic vaccinations. 0.97
03:05:51.000 But yeah, I mean, to say to somebody in Kenya, like, well, if you want your kids to not get sick and die, like, maybe go work a little fucking harder, man. 0.98
03:06:01.000 Like, that's crazy. 0.99
03:06:02.000 That's Kenya, though. 0.76
03:06:03.000 Right, that's Kenya.
03:06:04.000 No, no, no, I mean, it is.
03:06:05.000 In America, obviously, there's more opportunity.
03:06:09.000 There is more opportunity, and that's why a lot of people want to come here.
03:06:13.000 But I still think that fundamentally...
03:06:16.000 We get more out of human possibility by helping people as kids than we do by being harsh on them as adults.
03:06:26.000 I agree.
03:06:27.000 The problem that people have with relying on the government also is that you're relying on the government to divvy up this money correctly.
03:06:34.000 And then you're relying on the government with no auditing at all.
03:06:38.000 You don't get an account balance sheet of where your taxes went.
03:06:43.000 The government's going to do what they always do when you give them plenty of money.
03:06:47.000 They're going to waste it.
03:06:48.000 There's a lot of suspicion of the government in America.
03:06:51.000 This is not a country of people who love the state, have a lot of confidence in government programs.
03:06:57.000 I think at the same time social security is something that people really like and appreciate because actually cash benefits are much more transparent than the idea that like – sometimes people will say it's very fashionable in the business world to be like, well,
03:07:13.000 we need these like complicated like job training programs and we're going to give people the skills they need.
03:07:18.000 You know what sounds great?
03:07:19.000 Like, I would like people to have skills.
03:07:21.000 I could use some skills.
03:07:23.000 I don't know.
03:07:24.000 But, like, does anyone really believe that, like, Congress is going to sit down and, like, make a program that trains everyone?
03:07:33.000 Like, that to me is unrealistic.
03:07:35.000 They could definitely send money around.
03:07:37.000 I mean, they send money to old people.
03:07:39.000 They send veterans benefits.
03:07:41.000 They can send family benefits to people.
03:07:43.000 So they can send money, but they can't create job programs? 0.52
03:07:47.000 They can't create training programs, right?
03:07:51.000 I don't think so.
03:07:52.000 It's hard.
03:07:53.000 It's hard for the government to guess what's going to be useful to employers.
03:07:58.000 You know, that's the kind of thing that's left better.
03:08:01.000 I don't want to wreck the vibe, but I think I'm going to have to get to the airport.
03:08:05.000 Oh, no.
03:08:06.000 No need to recognize.
03:08:06.000 Dude, we did three hours already.
03:08:08.000 Yeah, it's a lot.
03:08:08.000 Yeah.
03:08:09.000 No, listen.
03:08:09.000 Thank you very much.
03:08:10.000 I really appreciate it.
03:08:10.000 And good luck with your book.
03:08:11.000 And it's a fascinating and it's an intriguing topic.
03:08:15.000 And it definitely opens up a lot of debate.
03:08:18.000 Thank you.
03:08:18.000 I don't know if I agree with you or not.
03:08:20.000 I hope you're right.
03:08:21.000 I hope it works out.
03:08:22.000 Well, this is great.
03:08:23.000 This is like a ton of fun.
03:08:24.000 I enjoyed it very much.
03:08:25.000 I'm really flattered to be on here.
03:08:26.000 Thank you so much.
03:08:27.000 My pleasure.
03:08:27.000 Thank you very much.
03:08:28.000 And good luck.
03:08:28.000 Thank you.
03:08:29.000 Bye, everybody.