The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1655 - Sebastian Junger

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:05.000 Train by day.

00:00:07.000 Joe Rogan Podcast by night.

00:00:08.000 All day.

00:00:14.000 Good to see you, man.

00:00:15.000 How are you?

00:00:16.000 I'm really good.

00:00:17.000 Very good to see you too.

00:00:18.000 I see you're very prepared.

00:00:21.000 Yeah, look at all those notes on those note cards.

00:00:23.000 Yeah, serious stuff.

00:00:25.000 Yeah.

00:00:25.000 We were talking before, there's so much to talk about, but we were talking before and you were saying that over the last year you almost died because you had some crazy internal, you had an aneurysm in your pancreas?

00:00:39.000 Is that what you said it was?

00:00:40.000 Yeah, I had an undiagnosed asymptomatic aneurysm, which is a sort of ballooning in the blood vessel in the artery, in my pancreatic artery.

00:00:49.000 And out of the blue, it was a congenital thing.

00:00:52.000 Like, apparently it developed during my whole life.

00:00:54.000 It was just from a structural problem.

00:00:58.000 And one afternoon, one beautiful June afternoon last year it burst.

00:01:06.000 I just felt this pain shoot through my stomach. 0.96

00:01:08.000 I was like, damn, what is that? 0.94

00:01:09.000 And within a few minutes, I couldn't stand up. 0.99

00:01:11.000 And within about 10 minutes, I started to go blind.

00:01:15.000 And my wife called the ambulance and those guys got there and, you know, I was tanking really fast.

00:01:23.000 And the hospital is an hour away.

00:01:26.000 And by a miracle, I don't even think the doctors understand it, but by a miracle I was still alive when I got to the hospital.

00:01:33.000 I lost 90% of my blood into my abdomen.

00:01:37.000 And...

00:01:39.000 I didn't know I was dying, but I was dying.

00:01:41.000 And I was right in that sort of twilight zone.

00:01:44.000 And a black pit opened up underneath me, and I felt myself starting to get pulled down into it.

00:01:51.000 And I didn't want to go.

00:01:54.000 Like, it was cold and dark and black and bottomless.

00:01:56.000 And I just knew, like, do not go down there.

00:01:58.000 I was getting pulled down into it.

00:02:00.000 And right at that moment...

00:02:03.000 My father, who passed away in 2012, my father sort of appeared next to me and started trying to communicate with me and comforting me.

00:02:14.000 And I... I sort of waved him away and the last thing I remember saying to the doctor – I was sort of losing consciousness.

00:02:21.000 The last thing I said to the doctor was, you're losing me right now.

00:02:24.000 You got to hurry.

00:02:25.000 He was trying to put a – he'd cut my neck open.

00:02:28.000 He was trying to put a line into my neck to – they pumped 10 units of blood into me and that's what brought me back.

00:02:34.000 It was really close.

00:02:39.000 When you say you felt like you were sinking into a pit, like, were you seeing this?

00:02:45.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, your perceptions are very weird because, you know, very little oxygen in the brain.

00:02:50.000 I had a hemoglobin count of 1.2.

00:02:53.000 If you're a doctor, you know what that is.

00:02:54.000 It's almost unheard of.

00:02:55.000 And so I just felt this pit underneath me and it was pulling me into it and I didn't want to go.

00:03:00.000 And you can see a pit?

00:03:01.000 Yeah, I mean, again, see slash feel.

00:03:04.000 Your perceptions are very weird when you're like that.

00:03:06.000 And then my father also was sort of floating above me.

00:03:09.000 He was a presence.

00:03:10.000 I don't know if seeing him is quite the word.

00:03:13.000 It's another perception.

00:03:15.000 Wow.

00:03:17.000 Yeah.

00:03:18.000 So coming out of that, once you regained your health, you must have had an incredible newfound appreciation for all the people in your life and just everything.

00:03:29.000 It was a long path.

00:03:30.000 You know, I mean, I'm a really healthy guy.

00:03:32.000 Later the doctor said, you know, I was a marathon runner when I was young and I don't drink.

00:03:38.000 I'm athletic and I use my body pretty vigorously.

00:03:41.000 And he said that saved your life.

00:03:43.000 Like, you didn't have a heart attack.

00:03:45.000 Like, you owe your life to that.

00:03:48.000 But the next morning, you know, I didn't know that I'd almost died.

00:03:51.000 I had no idea.

00:03:52.000 I have two little girls.

00:03:52.000 I have a four-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old.

00:03:54.000 And the most precious things to me, I mean, I can't even describe it, obviously.

00:04:00.000 And the fact that they almost lost their dad was just devastating when the ICU nurse came in and said, how are you doing, Mr. Junger?

00:04:08.000 You're one lucky guy.

00:04:09.000 You almost died yesterday.

00:04:11.000 I had no idea.

00:04:13.000 And then she came back an hour later and she said, how are you doing?

00:04:18.000 And I said, you know, physically, and I was throwing up blood.

00:04:21.000 I was not doing very well physically, but I said I was.

00:04:24.000 I said, but you know, I'm really struggling with what you told me.

00:04:29.000 And it's really terrifying.

00:04:30.000 I didn't know.

00:04:31.000 And I mean I said I almost died in my own driveway in front of my family and I didn't even know.

00:04:36.000 Like I said I keep thinking about it.

00:04:38.000 I can't stop.

00:04:39.000 And she said the wisest things – one of the wisest things I've ever heard.

00:04:44.000 She said stop thinking of that moment as scary and start thinking of it as sacred.

00:04:52.000 And she didn't elaborate.

00:04:54.000 She didn't need to.

00:04:55.000 And the next five days in the ICU, I thought about the word sacred and what the experience was now giving me access to.

00:05:04.000 And, you know, not to sound sort of like trite, but life is a friggin' miracle.

00:05:09.000 And, you know, I'm not religious. 0.63

00:05:11.000 You know, whatever.

00:05:13.000 I don't think any of us, few of us, I certainly didn't quite understand what a miracle it is that we're alive, that we exist, that we draw breath, that we can think about ourselves, that we're here for even one day is a freaking miracle.

00:05:28.000 And you can forget that because your life gets busy.

00:05:32.000 All of a sudden, I feel like life was sort of returned to me, meaning that I understood how sacred it is.

00:05:40.000 And again, I'm an atheist.

00:05:41.000 I don't mean sacred in a religious sense.

00:05:43.000 I mean in the sense that it has a profound value and you mustn't, mustn't, mustn't forget it. 0.99

00:05:51.000 It's so easy to lose sight of that when you're caught up in your bills or traffic or your bullshit.

00:05:57.000 There's so much of life that is essential in order for you to just keep on existing in society, but not really important. 0.97

00:06:07.000 Yeah.

00:06:08.000 And, you know, we're humans.

00:06:09.000 I mean, we're wired to react to things.

00:06:11.000 You know, someone pisses you off or you're tired.

00:06:13.000 It's not that we shouldn't have those reactions.

00:06:15.000 Those reactions also keep us alive.

00:06:17.000 I mean, our emotional and physical reactions are adaptive and they protect us, right?

00:06:22.000 But at the end of the day, you don't want them to run away with your experience of life.

00:06:26.000 You want to reclaim it and just go right – you know, all I have to do is go back to that moment.

00:06:32.000 Of what happened in that driveway and that I was spared getting pulled into that pit.

00:06:37.000 That didn't happen.

00:06:38.000 And my daughters get to have a father.

00:06:41.000 I get to experience whatever the rest of my life is, whatever it is.

00:06:46.000 Who knows how long I'll live, but I get—that gift was returned to me.

00:06:50.000 And I don't even know who to say thank you to other than I've started giving blood.

00:06:56.000 Ten people— Donated blood and saved my life.

00:07:01.000 I'll never know who they are.

00:07:02.000 And that makes you part of this sort of web of life in a way that when I gave blood for the first time, after this happened, I gave blood and it made me feel so good.

00:07:16.000 And now I can't wait to do it again.

00:07:19.000 I'm part of something bigger.

00:07:20.000 And that's one of the most profound human joys is to be part of something greater than yourself.

00:07:25.000 That is a beautiful thing and a beautiful way to think about it.

00:07:28.000 And I think I'm Find out if this is true.

00:07:32.000 Maybe someone told me this.

00:07:34.000 Is giving blood actually good for you?

00:07:36.000 I think your body having the opportunity to replenish its blood supply actually stimulates some aspects of your system.

00:07:45.000 Yeah, I can.

00:07:46.000 I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I can imagine.

00:07:48.000 You're not a doctor?

00:07:50.000 I don't know if this is even true, though.

00:07:52.000 I mean, it's one of those things where I'm like, it's in a dusty corner of my brain.

00:07:57.000 I'm like, what is that? 0.98

00:07:58.000 Is that real or is that horseshit? 0.98

00:08:01.000 There's a lot of those things in my brain, by the way. 0.99

00:08:02.000 Here it goes.

00:08:04.000 Benefits of donating blood, side effects, advantages, and more.

00:08:08.000 Side effects of donating blood, donation...

00:08:10.000 Health benefits of donating blood, including good health and reduced risk of cancer, hemochromatosis.

00:08:18.000 It helps in reducing the risk of damage to the liver and the pancreas.

00:08:22.000 Donating blood may help in improving cardiovascular health and reducing obesity.

00:08:27.000 So yeah.

00:08:27.000 Okay, good.

00:08:29.000 I'm always worried about my fucking memory. 0.99

00:08:31.000 So there you go. 0.99

00:08:32.000 I knew there was something there.

00:08:33.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:08:34.000 That's good news.

00:08:35.000 It's actually good for people, for you to donate blood, and good for you as well.

00:08:40.000 All right, let's donate blood, Jamie.

00:08:41.000 And lower blood pressure.

00:08:43.000 What do you got for what kind of blood, what type?

00:08:48.000 Great question.

00:08:50.000 You don't know?

00:08:50.000 How do you not know?

00:08:52.000 You're a fucking grown ass man. 1.00

00:08:54.000 Sebastian and I know. 1.00

00:08:56.000 I just found out a year ago.

00:08:57.000 I'll take it.

00:08:58.000 I'll learn soon.

00:09:01.000 Yeah, that's awesome though.

00:09:04.000 So this experience, how long did it take you before you were fully recovered?

00:09:10.000 Well, you know, I had a gallon of blood in my abdomen.

00:09:14.000 A gallon?

00:09:14.000 Well, whatever the amount of blood in your body is.

00:09:17.000 Trying to get it out.

00:09:17.000 Something like that.

00:09:17.000 They can't.

00:09:18.000 You know, it's a hematoma, and my body had to gradually reabsorb it.

00:09:21.000 Whoa.

00:09:22.000 So, you know, that takes months.

00:09:24.000 And now I'm left with this sort of psychological residue of the experience, which is I have this, you know, renewed, reinvigorated appreciation for life.

00:09:37.000 But also...

00:09:39.000 I think we're good to go.

00:10:02.000 And if something goes wrong, you can be dead in minutes.

00:10:04.000 And you can be totally healthy and that can happen.

00:10:07.000 And the fact that the universe can just randomly take you out for no apparent reason, that's pretty startling news if you think about it.

00:10:18.000 I didn't know it worked that way.

00:10:20.000 And it can make you kind of paranoid.

00:10:22.000 Did it make you paranoid?

00:10:23.000 No, totally.

00:10:24.000 Yeah?

00:10:24.000 I mean, I just, every day I was like, I mean, this is gradually going away, but I just, I realized, like, you don't know.

00:10:30.000 You just don't know that you're going to be alive in an hour from now.

00:10:35.000 And you're going running.

00:10:36.000 You're reading a book to your daughter.

00:10:38.000 You're whatever, having dinner with some friends.

00:10:39.000 And now, like an hour from now, I could be dead or the guy I'm talking to could be dead.

00:10:44.000 And none of us know and none of us can do anything about it.

00:10:48.000 And that's just what life is.

00:10:49.000 We're living on a rock hurtling through the universe.

00:10:52.000 I mean we're part of the universe and we exist at its mercy really.

00:11:01.000 Were you afterwards contemplating what that pit was and what it means to slide into that?

00:11:08.000 You know, I started to do a little research into the death.

00:11:12.000 I want to write a book about this.

00:11:14.000 I think I'm going to call it Pulse.

00:11:15.000 Ooh, I like that.

00:11:17.000 The thing that keeps us alive.

00:11:18.000 That's a good name.

00:11:19.000 And why we're alive and what happens when you die.

00:11:22.000 And I've just started doing some research into this.

00:11:25.000 And the visitation by dead ancestors is very common.

00:11:29.000 Oh.

00:11:30.000 For people.

00:11:32.000 And often – I mean there's all kinds of reasons that you might hallucinate when your brain is low on oxygen.

00:11:37.000 But I didn't hallucinate anyone in my family.

00:11:40.000 I hallucinated my dead father, right?

00:11:43.000 And that's very, very common.

00:11:44.000 And I didn't know I was dying.

00:11:46.000 So it's not like I conjured him up because I knew I was headed somewhere.

00:11:50.000 I was very confused and there he was trying to comfort me.

00:11:53.000 And that's a really common experience.

00:11:54.000 So I looked into it.

00:11:55.000 And so they have all these, you know, release of ketamine and like they have all these DMT and they have all these sort of neurochemical explanations for the subjective experience of dying for the person.

00:12:07.000 And we only know this because people come back like I do and report what they saw and it's usually pretty weird.

00:12:13.000 But it's pretty weird in predictable ways.

00:12:16.000 Like a lot of people see the dead.

00:12:17.000 It's as if they show up to help.

00:12:19.000 And I want to repeat, I'm an atheist.

00:12:22.000 I'm not religious.

00:12:23.000 I don't believe in anything.

00:12:24.000 My dad was a physicist.

00:12:26.000 So I want to sort of explain what happens in ways that he would respect scientifically.

00:12:31.000 And so one of the things they said is that you can take low oxygen, ketamine, all these things that physically could happen in the brain, you can subject a healthy person to those things and they don't have the same kinds of hallucinations.

00:12:47.000 Those hallucinations are particular only to the dying.

00:12:50.000 And I want to know, I want to try to figure out what is going on in that weird twilight space.

00:12:58.000 You should see if someone will do a therapeutic DMT trip with you.

00:13:06.000 I've heard about that.

00:13:07.000 They were doing it out of the University of New Mexico.

00:13:15.000 Rick Strassman was doing it, and he had full federal approval for these studies.

00:13:22.000 There was a book called DMT, The Spirit Molecule, that he wrote about the experience of taking these people and doing an IV drip Dimethyltryptamine, but they all had these insanely profound experiences that stayed with them for,

00:13:37.000 you know, depending on the person, but for long periods of time afterwards and profoundly changed their lives.

00:13:42.000 Well, an endogenous form of DMT is released in the brain of dying people.

00:13:47.000 Maybe he wrote about that.

00:13:49.000 They speculated on it, so what the problem was for the longest time is the pineal gland, and the pineal gland is what, you know, ancients used to call the seed of the soul, and it's this small gland that they think...

00:14:06.000 In reptiles, it actually has a retina and a cornea, and I think even a lens.

00:14:13.000 It literally is a third eye.

00:14:16.000 Yeah, Google that.

00:14:17.000 I think the pineal gland in reptiles has, it definitely has a retina, I believe, and I think it has a lens.

00:14:26.000 But it's like the third eye, the concept of the third eye, it actually is an eye in some strange way.

00:14:32.000 And it also, just recently they confirmed, here it goes, the pineal complex of reptiles is a morphologically and functionally connected set of organs.

00:14:42.000 It originates in an event.

00:14:52.000 It's formed by two structures, the pineal organ and the parietal eye.

00:15:03.000 Both the pineal gland and the parietal eye are photosensitive.

00:15:08.000 Go there which reptile has a third eye.

00:15:11.000 Click that.

00:15:16.000 Point is, this has always been thought of as the third eye.

00:15:21.000 If you look at Eastern mysticism and whenever people are enlightened or depicted, they're depicted with that third eye.

00:15:28.000 And this organ...

00:15:30.000 The Cottonwood Research Foundation was the first group that they actually discovered that for sure the pineal gland does produce DMT in living rats.

00:15:42.000 Because before, they knew that it was produced by the liver and the lungs, and there was a lot of anecdotal evidence that pointed to the pineal gland, but they couldn't prove it because you'd have to actually cut into someone's head.

00:15:51.000 There was a lot of problems just based on the structure of the brain and getting in there.

00:15:56.000 But through this Cottonwood Research Foundation, which was working on different DMT studies.

00:16:05.000 So they don't know why and they don't know what it is, but they think that this is also responsible for dreams.

00:16:11.000 They think it's responsible for some of the insane visuals and weird things to experience in dreams, but they also...

00:16:17.000 The really spiritual, the people that are, like, willing to go way out on a limb, think it's a chemical doorway to the afterlife.

00:16:27.000 Well, let me tell you, I mean, that's a pretty stunning thought.

00:16:32.000 And we all, I mean, I'm not a mystic, but also we all need to be humble about what we know and don't know.

00:16:37.000 And we have no idea what there is after death.

00:16:42.000 We might not even be able to be capable of understanding it with the brains that we have.

00:16:46.000 So maybe that's why we keep bumping into the unknowable because it's just unknowable to us.

00:16:50.000 At any rate, let me tell you that two nights before I almost died, I had a pain in my abdomen for a year that I ignored.

00:17:01.000 How bad was the pain?

00:17:03.000 You know, I could tolerate it, which to me meant, okay, well, if you can bear it, then it's not going to kill you.

00:17:09.000 You know what I mean?

00:17:10.000 Problems with being a tough guy.

00:17:12.000 And the corollary to that is if you can't bear it, you should learn to bear it.

00:17:15.000 Because, you know what I mean?

00:17:17.000 So, toughness will kill you. 0.99

00:17:19.000 If it doesn't save you, it will kill you.

00:17:22.000 So it just sort of came and went right in the area where the bleed happened.

00:17:26.000 But I ignored it and ignored it.

00:17:27.000 And then it kind of stopped happening for a month or so.

00:17:31.000 And I had a dream right around dawn.

00:17:35.000 And my family and I, we all sleep in the same bed.

00:17:37.000 It's not even a bed.

00:17:38.000 It's like a pad on the floor.

00:17:40.000 And so I woke up.

00:17:42.000 I was woken up around 6 a.m.

00:17:44.000 by this dream.

00:17:44.000 And the dream was that I died.

00:17:47.000 And I died unnecessarily.

00:17:49.000 I died.

00:17:49.000 I'd made a mistake.

00:17:51.000 I just screwed up.

00:17:53.000 And I'd crossed over. 0.70

00:17:54.000 And now I'm dead.

00:17:55.000 And I'm looking back at my family and they're grieving.

00:17:57.000 And they're my family that I love more than anything, more than I could imagine loving something I love them, you know?

00:18:04.000 And I can't go back because I've crossed over. 1.00

00:18:07.000 And I'm just thinking, you stupid asshole. 1.00

00:18:10.000 You screwed up. 1.00

00:18:12.000 And now you're dead. 0.99

00:18:13.000 And there's nothing you can do about it.

00:18:15.000 And I woke up with a start.

00:18:18.000 Oh, thank God I'm not dead.

00:18:19.000 I'm alive.

00:18:20.000 And here's my daughter was right next to me. 0.98

00:18:21.000 I put my arm around her.

00:18:22.000 I was like, oh, thank God.

00:18:25.000 About 36 hours later, I was dying.

00:18:27.000 Wow.

00:18:28.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:18:29.000 Do you think that that was your body trying to tell you, hey, man, this shit's about to blow? 0.99

00:18:33.000 Listen, I mean, for a year my body tried to tell me with pain that something was wrong and I ignored it. 0.99

00:18:40.000 And then 36 hours left to go.

00:18:43.000 It sent me a dream.

00:18:45.000 And on the morning of the day that it happened, you know, we live partly in New York City and partly in a really remote area at the end of a long, dead-end dirt road in the woods.

00:19:00.000 And it gets overgrown, right?

00:19:02.000 And the fire department said, listen, you've got to clear that because we can't get trucks in there.

00:19:05.000 You're going to have to clear that dirt road.

00:19:07.000 You know, it's a small town.

00:19:08.000 Everyone knows each other.

00:19:08.000 It's like, listen, clear that stuff.

00:19:11.000 And that morning, you know, I'd been meaning to do this for two years, right?

00:19:15.000 I was an arborist for a long time.

00:19:16.000 I know I've used chainsaws my whole life.

00:19:19.000 Like, I do all that work myself.

00:19:20.000 And I'd been meaning to do it for two years. 0.99

00:19:23.000 And that morning, I was like, I've got to clear that damn driveway. 0.98

00:19:27.000 And I took my chainsaw and I took a few hours and I cleared the whole length. 0.99

00:19:30.000 There's a long dirt driveway through the woods.

00:19:32.000 I cleared the whole thing so emergency vehicles could get in and a few hours, like three hours later I was dying.

00:19:40.000 Imagine if you didn't do that.

00:19:41.000 Well, exactly, right?

00:19:43.000 And so the thing is like the body I think can communicate with the unconscious mind. 1.00

00:19:47.000 And then the unconscious mind tries to communicate with the conscious mind, but your conscious mind's a friggin' idiot, right? 1.00

00:19:56.000 And it doesn't take little hints. 1.00

00:19:58.000 It doesn't take clues. 0.70

00:19:59.000 Bomb it with pain, it ignores it.

00:20:02.000 Bomb it with dreams, it's like, wow, that was weird. 0.99

00:20:05.000 But at the end of the day, your body's trying to keep you alive, and it sent me out there with a chainsaw.

00:20:10.000 And I don't, you know, I'm actively avoidant of mystical explanations for things, but I honestly don't know how to explain any of this.

00:20:19.000 And I'm going to try to with my book, Pulse, like my whole life.

00:20:23.000 As a journalist, I've gone to front lines in wars in foreign countries and come back and reported what I saw there, right?

00:20:30.000 And this is the ultimate front line.

00:20:31.000 It's that twilight place between life and death.

00:20:34.000 And I was privileged that I could go there and come back.

00:20:37.000 I made it back and I want to report what I saw.

00:20:41.000 Wow.

00:20:43.000 I want to read it.

00:20:46.000 It's the thing that we all wonder.

00:20:49.000 What is this?

00:20:50.000 Is this a pit stop or is this the life?

00:20:53.000 Is the life a never-ending, infinite experience that goes on forever in many forms?

00:20:59.000 Or is it just this?

00:21:01.000 Or is this a thing that you do over and over and over again until you get it right?

00:21:07.000 I had that conversation with a friend of mine once.

00:21:09.000 And they were really, really bummed out about it.

00:21:12.000 And I said, if this is life, if the life that we all live, like right now, just you have to do this over and over again for infinity until you get it right. 0.99

00:21:22.000 They're like, oh, fuck that. 0.99

00:21:23.000 I don't want to keep doing this. 1.00

00:21:24.000 I'm like, but wait a minute.

00:21:25.000 Don't you want to do this right now?

00:21:27.000 Because I want to do this right now.

00:21:28.000 I love life.

00:21:29.000 I have great friends.

00:21:30.000 I love my family.

00:21:31.000 I love what I do for a living.

00:21:33.000 I'm enjoying life.

00:21:34.000 Why wouldn't I want to keep doing this? 1.00

00:21:36.000 Because if you told me I was going to die tomorrow, I'd be like, shit, not yet. 0.99

00:21:39.000 I have too much to do. 0.99

00:21:40.000 But if you told me I have to do this forever, I'd be like, oh my God, that's forever.

00:21:44.000 That's so long.

00:21:45.000 Yeah.

00:21:45.000 Why?

00:21:46.000 Why?

00:21:47.000 What is this?

00:21:48.000 Is it the concept of infinity or infinite time is so enormous, it's impossible for our puny little brains to grasp?

00:21:57.000 So we think of it as like a run that you can never end or an exercise program that's just going to drag you into the depths of hell.

00:22:05.000 You're never going to get out of it.

00:22:07.000 What is it that bothers us about the idea of living this life forever and ever?

00:22:12.000 That's a good question.

00:22:13.000 I mean, for a lot of people, life is painful, and it may just be that they don't want to go through that their whole life.

00:22:17.000 Yeah, but my friend doesn't have a painful life.

00:22:19.000 Yeah, okay.

00:22:20.000 Well, right.

00:22:20.000 He's fine.

00:22:21.000 He's a comedian.

00:22:21.000 He's fine.

00:22:24.000 I hear that comedians are in the most pain, and they deal with it through comedy.

00:22:29.000 Don't believe that.

00:22:30.000 No.

00:22:31.000 Okay.

00:22:31.000 No.

00:22:31.000 There's a lot of mental illness.

00:22:34.000 Strong mental illness lines.

00:22:37.000 That's probably the underlying...

00:22:40.000 If there's one primary factor, mental illness is a big one.

00:22:44.000 It's usually from traumatic childhood.

00:22:47.000 But overall, Fairly resilient because of the fact they have to deal with adversity constantly.

00:22:56.000 Most people don't deal with the kind of adversity that you deal with when you're bombing or you go on stage and you're dealing with hecklers and stuff.

00:23:02.000 It's a different level of adversity.

00:23:06.000 The adage of the tears of a clown that they're really depressed and on stage is the only place they get to be allowed.

00:23:15.000 Not really true either.

00:23:17.000 You get us together.

00:23:18.000 When we're around our people, pretty fun.

00:23:20.000 I bet.

00:23:21.000 We have a good time.

00:23:22.000 I bet.

00:23:23.000 That's awesome to hear.

00:23:24.000 I'm glad to hear that.

00:23:25.000 There's a tremendous amount of camaraderie in the comedy community.

00:23:30.000 Right, right.

00:23:31.000 Because there's not that many of us.

00:23:32.000 There's maybe on Earth, like, I don't know, a thousand?

00:23:37.000 I mean, I don't know, maybe in other countries.

00:23:39.000 I miss it.

00:23:40.000 But I can tell you in America.

00:23:41.000 In America, there might be legitimately a thousand professional comedians.

00:23:47.000 Out of those 1,000, maybe 500 of them are good.

00:23:50.000 Right.

00:23:51.000 So I might even be overestimating there, like, in terms of, like, who can make a living on the road.

00:23:56.000 And it's not that many of us.

00:23:58.000 I just watched on YouTube the beginning of Good Morning Vietnam.

00:24:02.000 Oh, yeah.

00:24:03.000 It's just sheer genius.

00:24:05.000 Yeah.

00:24:06.000 You know, I know he was in a lot of pain.

00:24:10.000 I mean, like, he suffered, right?

00:24:12.000 Well, he had, like, some serious physical problems.

00:24:16.000 You know, he had Lewy Body Syndrome.

00:24:17.000 Oh, I didn't know that.

00:24:18.000 He had a heart attack.

00:24:19.000 And then a friend of mine who's a doctor actually wrote a paper Yes.

00:24:37.000 Yeah.

00:24:44.000 And he was saying that there could have been, he was a Robin Williams fan as well, and he was saying that there probably could have been a correlation between Robin Williams going through that heart attack, having open heart surgery, and then depression following afterwards.

00:24:56.000 Then there was the Lewy body syndrome, and then all this medication they had to take, which also had profound side effects.

00:25:04.000 I lost a very dear friend who was the funniest man that I knew and pretty much I think the funniest person on the planet.

00:25:10.000 He just wasn't a professional comedian.

00:25:12.000 But he had a long, long illness and some serious mental instability and he took his own life.

00:25:20.000 He was the most brilliant among us.

00:25:22.000 You know what I mean?

00:25:23.000 And so you guys, you comedians, there must be every once in a while like a real tragedy to process.

00:25:29.000 That must be very hard.

00:25:31.000 Yeah, I mean, it's not that common that comedians take their own lives.

00:25:35.000 I mean, it does happen with Robin.

00:25:38.000 Robin was a big one for a lot of people because he was not just a comedian.

00:25:42.000 He was like a cultural icon in terms of like his films.

00:25:45.000 You think of all the different movies like I was in.

00:25:47.000 He had such a range, too.

00:25:49.000 To me, when you know how brilliant a person really is, do you remember that film that he did about the crazy film processing guy?

00:25:59.000 It was like 24-hour film.

00:26:01.000 You remember those little film booths, photo booths that people would go to?

00:26:05.000 Back in the old days, you youngsters, we would have a camera, and the camera would have film in it, and you'd have to bring the film to a place for processing.

00:26:13.000 And Robin Williams did a...

00:26:15.000 Film about a guy who was a psychopath who was obsessed with someone from processing their picture.

00:26:20.000 One hour photo, that's what it was.

00:26:22.000 Nice. 0.98

00:26:23.000 It was fucking great. 0.98

00:26:25.000 And you just, from that film, you realize the range this man had. 0.99

00:26:30.000 Right, right.

00:26:30.000 You know, I mean, from Good Will Hunting, from, you know, so many different...

00:26:34.000 Yeah, he was a genius.

00:26:36.000 Yeah.

00:26:37.000 Yeah, and the human race is so lucky to have geniuses in it.

00:26:40.000 You know what I mean?

00:26:41.000 Like, we all feed off them.

00:26:42.000 Yeah, we do.

00:26:44.000 They elevate us.

00:26:45.000 And it costs them sometimes, but we all need those people, you know?

00:26:50.000 Yeah, to be a guy like that, to be dealing with the kind of RPMs he was dealing with.

00:26:57.000 He would spit out these amazing works, but just a cost on himself.

00:27:09.000 It's pretty clear that it wasn't scripted because there's this kid in the control booth.

00:27:14.000 I mean, the conceit is that it's a military DJ, a radio announcer during Vietnam, right?

00:27:21.000 And the military command didn't really like him because he was saying things that were sort of like not sufficiently sort of respectful of the war or whatever.

00:27:29.000 But of course, the troops loved him.

00:27:31.000 He was a real guy, right?

00:27:32.000 And so Robin Williams, it was pretty clear if you watch the beginning.

00:27:36.000 It's worth watching.

00:27:37.000 He...

00:27:38.000 It wasn't scripted because the kid in the sound booth behind him, you could watch him react to this three-minute outpouring from Robin Williams where he's channeling different people and it's all coming out.

00:27:52.000 It's totally insane.

00:27:53.000 And this kid can't even stand up.

00:27:55.000 He's laughing so hard.

00:27:57.000 I'm like, that's not acting.

00:27:58.000 That's a guy who actually had no idea this was coming.

00:28:04.000 Right, right, right.

00:28:04.000 It's amazing.

00:28:07.000 Yeah.

00:28:07.000 I met him only once, and I met him after one of my shows.

00:28:10.000 I didn't know I was talking to him until a couple minutes into the conversation.

00:28:14.000 He had a crazy big white beard, and he waited in line with everybody else to meet me.

00:28:19.000 And I was talking to him, and he was telling me, oh, I love this bit, I love that, and I love how you put that together.

00:28:24.000 I was like, oh, thanks, man.

00:28:25.000 Thanks, I pre... 0.97

00:28:27.000 I'm like, holy shit, this is Robin Williams. 0.97

00:28:30.000 I didn't know. 0.99

00:28:31.000 I literally had no idea until like several minutes into our conversation.

00:28:35.000 He must have loved that.

00:28:37.000 It was pretty cool, man.

00:28:38.000 Very cool.

00:28:39.000 It was cool that, you know, first of all, it was cool that he just went to the show by himself.

00:28:45.000 Right.

00:28:45.000 You know, he decided he wanted to come see me.

00:28:48.000 Maybe somebody told him I was funny and he came to and then he waited in line to meet me and then wanted to talk about individual bits and how he loved how I put this one together and that one.

00:28:56.000 It was crazy.

00:28:58.000 It was like I realized in the middle and I'm like, oh my god.

00:29:01.000 That's awesome.

00:29:02.000 It was pretty wild.

00:29:03.000 But that just shows you what kind of thoughtful person he was.

00:29:07.000 He wasn't into being seen. 0.85

00:29:09.000 In fact, he had a baseball hat on and glasses and his crazy big white bushy beard. 0.71

00:29:13.000 Couldn't even recognize him. 0.54

00:29:14.000 He snuck around.

00:29:16.000 I mean, I think prominent people have even more of a duty to be humble than people that aren't prominent.

00:29:23.000 I mean, the burden is even more on them.

00:29:25.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:29:26.000 It's part of the responsibility of this unusual position.

00:29:30.000 You need to be, in that sense, you need to be an example if you can.

00:29:35.000 Absolutely.

00:29:36.000 Do your best.

00:29:37.000 Yeah.

00:29:38.000 Absolutely.

00:29:39.000 Yeah.

00:29:40.000 I think just for his mental health, I think it was probably important, too.

00:29:43.000 I mean, the amount of fame that that guy had experienced for the amount of decades that he had experienced, it's a crazy intoxicant.

00:29:51.000 It's not healthy, you know?

00:29:53.000 Right, right.

00:29:55.000 There's something I write about a little bit in Freedom.

00:29:58.000 I know we'll be talking about that later, but just to sort of mention it.

00:30:02.000 Real leadership is someone who is willing to sort of put themselves last.

00:30:11.000 And you can see it in the military.

00:30:13.000 I was watching this one officer, Lieutenant Piosa, and we were in a very bad situation, and he stood up.

00:30:20.000 In this situation, it was hard to imagine doing that.

00:30:22.000 And he stood up because he needed to know where everyone was on the side of the mountain.

00:30:26.000 And we were about to get absolutely hammered.

00:30:28.000 And a sergeant said, sir, please sit down.

00:30:33.000 It's our job to get shot at. 1.00

00:30:35.000 It's your job to stay alive and direct this shit show. 1.00

00:30:38.000 Right? 1.00

00:30:39.000 And that's real leadership.

00:30:42.000 There was a leader during the Easter Rising in Ireland that I write about, and the head of the whole Easter Rising in Dublin, the head of the whole thing, I mean the General Petraeus of the Irish rebels.

00:30:55.000 Would go out into gunfire in the street to figure out where to put the positions and the guns and the sandbags and everything with bullets smacking all around him. 0.97

00:31:01.000 He was ahead of the whole damn thing. 0.96

00:31:03.000 And his aides were like, sir, please take cover. 0.99

00:31:07.000 We need you.

00:31:07.000 And he wouldn't do it.

00:31:09.000 That's real leadership.

00:31:10.000 And that can be a military leader.

00:31:14.000 It can be a comedian who's beloved by people.

00:31:16.000 Like if you make yourself one of everyone else, then you're really, really a leader.

00:31:22.000 Make yourself one of everyone else.

00:31:26.000 Like when you use your position of power to protect yourself, to insulate yourself from things that everyone else is going through, you're actually not a leader.

00:31:33.000 You're an opportunist.

00:31:34.000 Mmm, that's interesting.

00:31:36.000 So how would you guide one to do that?

00:31:39.000 How would you guide one to be a leader in that situation?

00:31:44.000 You know, I think there are people that have that in them and people that don't.

00:31:46.000 And I think there are people who want leadership positions because it gives them opportunity.

00:31:52.000 I think there are people that are...

00:31:59.000 We're good to go.

00:32:19.000 And when someone like Robin Williams comes along and does not privilege himself in a comedy club and just is like everyone else, I really tip my hat to that.

00:32:28.000 That's real grace and dignity.

00:32:30.000 Yeah, I do as well.

00:32:33.000 And this way you're describing leadership, I think this is what everybody wishes we could recognize in our political leaders.

00:32:41.000 We wish there was a shining example.

00:32:43.000 And I think if there was one in the past election, it was Tulsi Gabbard, because you're talking about a woman who had served overseas twice in medical units, had literally worked with people who had been shot and blown up, and had served as a congresswoman for six years,

00:33:00.000 or I guess eight years at the end.

00:33:02.000 So she really was an example of that.

00:33:05.000 But other than that, you saw just a lot more of the same.

00:33:09.000 And it was really frustrating for people.

00:33:11.000 So they had to pick a horse.

00:33:12.000 And they had to pick a horse that they weren't exactly excited about.

00:33:16.000 And that's what led us to what we have in the White House currently.

00:33:21.000 It's like this fake excitement about this supposed leader that doesn't really exhibit any of these characteristics that we would be hoping to see when someone was running the show.

00:33:34.000 Well, you know, I think the willingness to tell the truth as a political leader, even if it puts you in disfavor with your own party, Is a strong indicator of moral courage.

00:33:45.000 And, you know, both parties, I think, have a deficit of that.

00:33:50.000 And, you know, I mean, I'm a registered Democrat, you know, I've, whatever, not that it really matters, but just to be, like, in the open about it.

00:33:59.000 I think that Liz Cheney – I mean she's possibly destroyed her political future. 1.00

00:34:05.000 I don't know.

00:34:06.000 And I don't know what the truth about anything is.

00:34:08.000 But the fact that she's willing to go against this sort of Republican orthodoxy to me means that she's putting what she believes to be the truth ahead of her own political future.

00:34:20.000 I'm not totally aware of what's going on.

00:34:22.000 Can you explain that to me?

00:34:23.000 Oh, yeah.

00:34:24.000 So she's been calling out the January 6th uprising and calling out the sort of big lie.

00:34:31.000 The election was stolen, right?

00:34:33.000 And the entire Republican leadership has acknowledged that it was a free and fair election.

00:34:39.000 And then there's been a lot of sort of hemming and hawing.

00:34:41.000 And Liz Cheney is like, look, the democracy is more important than...

00:34:45.000 Either political party.

00:34:47.000 The country is more important than either political party.

00:34:49.000 And the country will collapse if we keep feeding lies to it.

00:34:56.000 And this is a really dangerous lie.

00:34:58.000 And so she's like, I mean, I don't know where you are politically.

00:35:01.000 It doesn't matter to me.

00:35:02.000 None of this matters really other than to point out that she was saying something that she was...

00:35:07.000 It's gravely punished for it.

00:35:09.000 She did it knowing she would be punished for it.

00:35:11.000 She did it anyway because she really believed in something.

00:35:13.000 There's examples on the left as well of that.

00:35:15.000 That, to me, is leadership.

00:35:18.000 It's putting what you believe to be the welfare of the group ahead of your own personal interests.

00:35:23.000 That is what I would look for in a leader.

00:35:27.000 Yeah, and that's what—I just think by the time someone gets to the position that they're going to run for president, you've already been compromised.

00:35:35.000 You've already gotten through all of the checks and balances that they've laid in place to make sure that you represent the interests of the special interest groups and all the powerful lobbyists and corporations and everybody who's gotten you to the position you're at.

00:35:47.000 Well, right.

00:35:48.000 I mean, the GOP yanked Liz from her position, from her role, right?

00:35:53.000 So she does not have the establishment behind her.

00:35:55.000 And without that, you're never going to be president.

00:35:56.000 I don't know if she wants to be, but- Is it because they want to keep that narrative out there that the election was stolen?

00:36:02.000 Or is it because they don't want to take credit or take responsibility for the Capitol Hill riot?

00:36:10.000 I think it's a mix of things.

00:36:11.000 I mean, honestly, they're in a really tough place.

00:36:14.000 And I think it's a tough place of their own devising.

00:36:16.000 But they're in a tough place.

00:36:17.000 Something like 70% of Republican voters think the election was stolen.

00:36:20.000 Is that real?

00:36:21.000 Yeah.

00:36:22.000 70%?

00:36:23.000 7-0.

00:36:23.000 Right.

00:36:24.000 So what are you going to do with that politically?

00:36:29.000 And then someone like Liz Cheney comes along and sort of calls out the lie.

00:36:33.000 And that's a very tough position for the GOP to be in.

00:36:38.000 And I think in the short term, it was probably a...

00:36:40.000 I think it's a disreputable but smart move politically.

00:36:44.000 In the long term, I don't think it's a good move.

00:36:46.000 I think at the end of the day, truth wins out and it will catch up with them as things have caught up with the Democrats as well.

00:36:53.000 When they say that 70% think – is this just based on a narrative or is it based on something they believe in in terms of like they think there's an actual – I mean,

00:37:09.000 I don't know if poll takers can distinguish that.

00:37:15.000 I mean, I don't know how you would phrase the question to sort of split that.

00:37:18.000 I would like just that answer, even multiple choice.

00:37:23.000 What makes you think the election was stolen?

00:37:25.000 I mean I think a lot of it is just sort of what's called virtue signaling.

00:37:29.000 Like I will say the election is stolen because that means I am part of the current sort of conservative ethos.

00:37:36.000 I'm part of the tribe, right?

00:37:38.000 And so they might not even personally themselves think it was literally stolen but that kind of mythic truth can be more powerful politically than the literal truth.

00:37:49.000 And people go with it.

00:37:50.000 We're humans.

00:37:50.000 We're emotional creatures.

00:37:52.000 Yeah, we love being tribal like that too.

00:37:54.000 Right.

00:37:54.000 So I think there's a lot of tribalism there.

00:37:56.000 But nevertheless, people are saying the election was stolen.

00:38:00.000 Seventy percent of the GOP is saying it was stolen.

00:38:02.000 So that's a tough demographic to go up against if you're a Republican politician who wants to get elected.

00:38:09.000 Like, what are you going to do with that?

00:38:10.000 You're going to kind of have to go along with it.

00:38:14.000 Well, conceivably, what you would say is, we have to try to steal it next time.

00:38:18.000 That's where it gets really scary.

00:38:19.000 If you believe, if you really believe that the other side is cheating, and you say, well, we have to cheat, because we have to win this back, because we were the rightful winners of the 2020 election, and they stole it from us.

00:38:33.000 Right.

00:38:33.000 I think it could get real squirrely.

00:38:35.000 Oh, totally.

00:38:36.000 Then, you know, you get, I mean, as I said, I'm a Democrat, but, you know, so I'm particularly harsh.

00:38:42.000 With wrongdoing by my people, right?

00:38:44.000 And some of the, you know, sort of far lefty fringe woke stuff is really scary to me.

00:38:50.000 You know, like, and I feel like they're a direct equivalent of the crazies on the far right.

00:38:57.000 Like they kind of, they're sort of the mirror image of each other.

00:38:59.000 And, oh, you might like this actually.

00:39:02.000 I thought, I was like, there's MAGA. We know the word MAGA. There should be a word for the sort of the mirror image of that on the left.

00:39:09.000 Like, what is it?

00:39:11.000 And I came up with WAGA. Woke America gets angry.

00:39:15.000 Right?

00:39:16.000 And the thing about them is – I mean there was much smaller percentage of the Democratic vote.

00:39:22.000 But it's the same kind of channeled thinking.

00:39:25.000 Like on both sides, the extremes feel like they personally own the truth.

00:39:31.000 And that they can dictate what this country should be.

00:39:36.000 And they sort of poison the well of public discourse by rejecting any legitimacy to the other side.

00:39:47.000 And that public discourse is the only thing at the end of the day that's going to keep this country together and save us.

00:39:54.000 And it's like we all get most, the vast majority of people that voted for Trump or voted for Biden are good, righteous, decent people.

00:40:01.000 We need clean water to drink.

00:40:04.000 In our public discourse, we get thirsty.

00:40:07.000 We need to drink out of that well.

00:40:08.000 And the extremes on both sides have poisoned it.

00:40:12.000 And I feel like if we were all in a big life raft and someone poisoned the water, we would throw them overboard.

00:40:20.000 And at some point, this country is going to have to do that politically speaking with the extremists on both sides because they're basically rejecting the idea that we can all get along.

00:40:30.000 I couldn't agree more and I think it highlights some of the problems with communicating in text form over the internet and social media websites because a lot of what these people have, whether it's the QAnon people or the woke people, you have extremely low status people who want to import information.

00:40:45.000 Impart some control on other people.

00:40:49.000 They want to get other people to listen to them.

00:40:52.000 They want to get other people to comply with whatever rules they're setting forward.

00:40:58.000 They want to enact change.

00:40:59.000 They want to grab power.

00:41:01.000 Again, whether it's the people that stormed the Capitol Hill or the wokesters. 1.00

00:41:05.000 It's the same kind of mentality.

00:41:07.000 It's just they've adopted different ideologies.

00:41:09.000 But it's almost all low-status people who have sought...

00:41:15.000 New meaning and virtue out of this form of control, attacking the left or attacking the right or attacking what they perceive to be outside of the boundaries of the accepted ideology that they like to enforce on everyone else.

00:41:30.000 Totally.

00:41:31.000 And you can tell it's not a good faith effort because no good faith actor will tell you how you have to think.

00:41:44.000 Exactly.

00:41:45.000 They will give you their best pitch.

00:41:49.000 They'll hope that you come to their way of thinking.

00:41:52.000 But when you're told – and this is one of the things I don't like about religion. 0.79

00:41:55.000 When you're told – I mean organized, established religion – When you're told you have to think like this and if you don't think like this, you are Satan's spawn or you are an enemy of the country or you're a racist or you're this or that.

00:42:09.000 When you're told how to think and speak or you're unworthy of being part of this community, that's how you know that that person does not mean the country well.

00:42:21.000 Yeah, I think you just nailed it.

00:42:23.000 I think that's exactly what's missing in both sides, the far left and the far right.

00:42:29.000 And a big part of that is one of the core tenets of being a human being, which is compassion.

00:42:35.000 Compassion and empathy.

00:42:36.000 Both of those sides, with the far right people who want death to the far left and the far left people who want the far right to be ostracized, it's the same thing.

00:42:44.000 It's like there's a complete lack of empathy.

00:42:46.000 And a complete unwillingness to accept that the other side are just human beings with differing opinions, and maybe there's some common ground.

00:42:53.000 We all have common ground, especially people with children, right?

00:42:56.000 Your common ground is you want the world to be a safer place for these delicate little creatures that you love more than anything in life itself.

00:43:03.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:43:04.000 And I, you know, my fear is that, I mean, I feel like right now the sort of radical voice is now speaking for a large proportion of the GOP politically.

00:43:15.000 I mean, that 70% figure is like pretty alarming.

00:43:17.000 It's pretty alarming, right?

00:43:19.000 My fear is that that will happen on the left.

00:43:21.000 I mean, whatever you think about Joe Biden, he's not like that kind of liberal radical.

00:43:26.000 But that way of thinking, that woke way of thinking, God forbid, That completely take over the Democrats.

00:43:32.000 He's complying with it, though.

00:43:33.000 I don't think he thinks that way, but I think he thinks it's a good political strategy to get the really aggressive radicals on the left to go along with them, the perceived progressive, like the extreme end of it, like the tribe, like AOC and those type of people that really want a much more progressive,

00:43:53.000 much more socialist, It's a different strategy in terms of control of the left.

00:44:02.000 And he's complying with that, I think, to try to get a little bit of their base.

00:44:07.000 Well, I mean, listen, every politician has to somehow collect as much of the caucus as possible under one tent.

00:44:13.000 And so if you completely ignore that voice, of course, you're creating a splinter group that could be really dangerous to the party and the country.

00:44:21.000 I think he...

00:44:22.000 To me, he's a pretty centrist Democrat.

00:44:25.000 One of the first things he did in office, though, was make it so that biological girls had to compete against trans girls in sports.

00:44:33.000 Right.

00:44:33.000 I was so horrified by that.

00:44:35.000 I actually thought that's...

00:44:36.000 I mean, I'm a former athlete, right?

00:44:38.000 And I just...

00:44:41.000 The role of...

00:44:44.000 I mean, you know more about this than me, but the role of hormones and athletics of testosterone is so dominant.

00:44:49.000 And I mean, that's why at 59, I'm not the runner I was at 20. I used to have lower testosterone, right?

00:44:55.000 And what that could do to girls' sports, to me, seems like really, really puzzling.

00:45:01.000 Like, are you sure you want to do that?

00:45:03.000 It's just ideologically driven.

00:45:05.000 It's not driven by science.

00:45:06.000 It's not driven by logic.

00:45:07.000 It's certainly not driven by compassion for biological women. 0.99

00:45:11.000 It's driven by what you would call the oppression spectrum.

00:45:18.000 Who's at the highest end of the oppression spectrum? 0.92

00:45:21.000 Trans people. 0.70

00:45:22.000 Maybe interracial trans people would like, maybe black trans people would trump that. 0.99

00:45:28.000 Like, what is the top, perceived most oppressed?

00:45:32.000 Everyone else has to sort of capitulate.

00:45:35.000 Everyone else has to sort of figure out a way to comply with whatever rules are gonna benefit them.

00:45:40.000 Biological women are clearly not going to benefit from trans girls competing in girls sports. 1.00

00:45:46.000 They're just not. 0.71

00:45:47.000 It's not good for them.

00:45:48.000 And if you think it is good for them, then I get how you would want it to be inclusive and you would want everyone to just feel fully accepted, but we have to look at sports as a different thing.

00:46:03.000 There's a reason why boys don't compete against girls.

00:46:05.000 Right, right.

00:46:05.000 You know, one thing that helps for me when I think about any kind of conflict or disagreement is to start out assuming that the other person or the other group that appears to be proposing something outrageous Just start with the assumption they're trying to achieve something good,

00:46:22.000 and they're doing it through means that you don't think will work.

00:46:25.000 And I do that with the right wing.

00:46:30.000 I mean, I could look at a bunch of policies that came in under Trump and think, oh my god, that just seems cruel, or that seems this or that, the border stuff.

00:46:41.000 I mean, there's so many things.

00:46:42.000 The world's complicated, right?

00:46:44.000 The solutions are complicated and messy and imperfect.

00:46:48.000 But I really try to think, okay, so are they just evil?

00:46:51.000 Or are they trying to achieve a good thing by means that I don't quite understand or agree with?

00:46:56.000 And I would say that about the gender issues.

00:47:00.000 Like, some of it makes no sense to me.

00:47:03.000 I mean, look, I'm an older white guy.

00:47:05.000 I'm in a really lucky place in the world, you know?

00:47:07.000 I mean, people will tell me that, right?

00:47:10.000 So I'm not even really going to judge.

00:47:11.000 But what I would say is, what are they trying to achieve that's good that we can maybe achieve without Right. 0.95

00:47:28.000 Right.

00:47:34.000 Who was a elite male power lifter who transitioned over to female and now is going to compete in the Olympics.

00:47:44.000 I think for New Zealand, I think that's the, Australia or New Zealand, I forget which, but everyone's kind of freaking out about this because this person is just going to dominate.

00:47:55.000 Especially in things like power lifting where there's so many advantages to being male.

00:48:02.000 I looked at that in my book, Freedom.

00:48:04.000 So one of the things that I say in my book is that there's like three ways of maintaining your freedom, your autonomy in the face of a greater power.

00:48:12.000 And one of them is literally running, like staying so mobile that the heavier entity, the bigger guy – The bigger, the empire just cannot, like, find you.

00:48:23.000 And that was what the Apache did in the Southwest. 0.99

00:48:25.000 So at any rate, I looked at the difference between male and female world records in running events compared to weight events.

00:48:33.000 And the difference, if I'm remembering correctly, the difference in running was about 11%.

00:48:39.000 In other words, women were much closer to – the top female runners were much closer to the top male runners. 0.96

00:48:46.000 Then in the weight events, the split was like 30% or 50%.

00:48:50.000 So what I sort of hypothesized in my book is that it was more adaptive to have women be able to keep up with the men while they were trying to avoid a threat than to be of equal strength to the men to share in the fight if they couldn't outrun it.

00:49:08.000 That there was more adaptive to be mobile than to be big and strong.

00:49:11.000 And it's a really interesting difference.

00:49:13.000 And the other interesting thing about that is that as you increase body size, if you double body weight...

00:49:22.000 You don't double strength, right?

00:49:25.000 So if you go from 150 pounds to 300 pounds, the amount you bench press doesn't double, which is really interesting.

00:49:34.000 But dependent upon what?

00:49:36.000 See, because you could double your bench press if you don't lift weights.

00:49:39.000 Like if you don't lift weights and you weigh 150 pounds and you bench 150, you could get up to 300 pounds in a few years.

00:49:47.000 Oh, of course.

00:49:47.000 But if you look at the world records for those weights, right?

00:49:51.000 I see what you're saying.

00:49:52.000 If you look at the world records, a 150-pound man can bench about two-thirds of the weight of a 300-pound man.

00:49:58.000 So the 300-pound man is stronger, for sure.

00:50:01.000 He's definitely stronger.

00:50:03.000 But he has doubled his body weight, which means that he's a lot less mobile.

00:50:08.000 And he burns through a lot more oxygen in a fight or in anything.

00:50:13.000 So there's this interesting negative payoff for being stronger, which is that you burn through less oxygen.

00:50:21.000 So if you don't win a fight in the first minutes...

00:50:24.000 Right?

00:50:25.000 You're now struggling in terms of oxygen debt compared to the guy who weighs less than you.

00:50:30.000 And there's a sort of sweet spot where you're smaller and have an oxygen saving but you're not completely dominated physically.

00:50:38.000 There's a sort of sweet spot where being a little bit smaller is actually a sort of tactical advantage.

00:50:44.000 In a fight.

00:50:45.000 And so I looked at all that and it made total sense because humans are pretty much the only mammal where a smaller combatant can defeat a larger one.

00:50:57.000 And chimpanzees, the smaller chimpanzee loses to the alpha male, right?

00:51:01.000 Humans, that's not true.

00:51:03.000 The smaller individual can win, and wins about 50% of the time.

00:51:08.000 I called ESPN, and they're amazing.

00:51:11.000 They gave me a statistician who looked at all this stuff, right?

00:51:15.000 And he said, yeah, the larger—that size is not a predictor of a win.

00:51:20.000 Yeah, but in what sport?

00:51:22.000 Boxing?

00:51:23.000 No, MMA. In MMA? Yeah.

00:51:25.000 Really?

00:51:25.000 That's what he said.

00:51:26.000 That doesn't make sense because there's weight classes.

00:51:28.000 And on top of that, in the heavyweight division, the scariest guy is the biggest guy.

00:51:32.000 The scariest guy is Francis Ngannou.

00:51:34.000 He has to cut weight to make the 265-pound weight limit.

00:51:38.000 Right.

00:51:38.000 I mean, there are limits, of course.

00:51:41.000 So if you have a guy who's much, much stronger and you're in an enclosed space, I mean, look, if you and I had a fight in a phone booth, you're going to win, right?

00:51:48.000 Like, if we had a fight in a field, I would run away until I ran a 412 mile.

00:51:53.000 I'm going to outrun you, right?

00:51:54.000 And when you're really exhausted, I'm going to turn around, right?

00:51:57.000 Like, that would be the tactic of the smaller adversary.

00:52:02.000 And it scales up.

00:52:04.000 So if there's too big a difference and you're in an octagon, there isn't a lot of room to move around, eventually weight and strength will dominate.

00:52:12.000 But it doesn't always.

00:52:13.000 I know what you're saying.

00:52:14.000 It's like there's a borderline.

00:52:16.000 Like, for instance, there's a guy, his name's Israel Adesanya.

00:52:20.000 He's the UFC middle age.

00:52:21.000 Yeah, of course.

00:52:22.000 Stylebender is...

00:52:23.000 In my opinion, one of the most impressive and most interesting fighters. 0.97

00:52:28.000 And he's so fucking smart.

00:52:30.000 And one of the reasons why he's so interesting is how smart he is. 0.98

00:52:33.000 He was facing this guy, Paulo Costa, who's this just behemoth of a man, just supremely muscled, looks like An Adonis.

00:52:43.000 He looks like a superhero.

00:52:44.000 And Stylebender, although he's obviously very impressive, he doesn't look like that.

00:52:49.000 And he doesn't have this kind of same one-strike knockout power.

00:52:53.000 But he said, look, everybody has power.

00:52:55.000 I have precision. 1.00

00:52:56.000 And I'm going to fuck this guy up. 1.00

00:52:58.000 And he said, just watch. 0.99

00:52:59.000 And in the fight, he did.

00:53:01.000 And he did it by not hitting him as hard, but hitting him much more than he could hit him.

00:53:05.000 Right.

00:53:06.000 Much more technique.

00:53:08.000 Right.

00:53:08.000 And, you know, as you use up oxygen, your movements get slower and less precise, right?

00:53:14.000 And it takes less effort to slip a punch than to punch.

00:53:17.000 Right.

00:53:18.000 So if the big dude tries to punch you 10 times in a row and you slip all of them...

00:53:23.000 Right.

00:53:24.000 He's going to be tired.

00:53:25.000 He's going to be exhausted.

00:53:26.000 So I looked at...

00:53:28.000 I mean, this is really interesting.

00:53:29.000 So I looked at reaction time.

00:53:32.000 So they did a test with Muhammad Ali back in the late 60s or something like that, sort of in his heyday and early 70s, something like that.

00:53:41.000 And so they put up a balsa wood board in front of them and they had some crazy camera timer thing, right?

00:53:48.000 And they said, okay, hit the board with a jab, right?

00:53:53.000 When you see the light flash.

00:53:55.000 So the light would flash and 15 hundredths of a second later, his glove would hit the board.

00:54:01.000 So they broke it down.

00:54:03.000 It took eleven hundredths of a second for his brain to perceive the flashing light and to trigger the punch.

00:54:12.000 And only four hundredths of a second for the punch to travel from his resting position to the board.

00:54:20.000 See what I'm saying?

00:54:21.000 It took longer to perceive the punch, to perceive the signal.

00:54:26.000 A lot longer to perceive the signal than to deliver the punch, which means that if you're fighting Muhammad Ali or I'm fighting you or whatever, you're never going to beat a punch, right?

00:54:35.000 The punch takes four hundredths of a second.

00:54:37.000 Your brain takes eleven hundredths of a second.

00:54:40.000 You will get punched every time, except that before you punch, you can't help it.

00:54:46.000 Your body sends very subtle signals that you're going to punch, and it sends signals of which hand you're going to punch with.

00:54:55.000 And the brain is really good at reading unconscious signals, right?

00:54:59.000 So they did this thing where they had a videotape of poker players, right, putting their chips into a bet, right?

00:55:07.000 And the people, the test subjects were watching the, like, two-second video clips of people just placing bets.

00:55:13.000 And all they did was look at the arm and hand move the chips.

00:55:17.000 And people who didn't even know how to play poker were asked to assess the confidence with which they moved the chips.

00:55:24.000 And some incredible percentage of the time, they could tell who had the winning hand just by the way they moved the chips.

00:55:30.000 In other words, the brain's very perceptive.

00:55:33.000 And the body is very, very, not the face, but the body is very, very revealing.

00:55:38.000 So that means that in a fight, the big dude comes at you.

00:55:41.000 And for any person, there's always a bigger person, right?

00:55:44.000 I mean, I don't care how big you are.

00:55:47.000 There's always a bigger guy out there, right?

00:55:49.000 So that person comes at you and is about to throw a sort of haymaker right to end your life.

00:55:56.000 Your brain will see that coming a mile away, and it's very easy to slip.

00:56:00.000 And that's where a smaller person, if they really are adept at this, can just win the guy.

00:56:07.000 And I interviewed a former MMA fighter named Kyle Sonnen, and he spoke about this really eloquently.

00:56:12.000 Kyle Sonnen?

00:56:13.000 Sonnen.

00:56:14.000 Chael Sonnen?

00:56:15.000 Is that what you're saying?

00:56:15.000 Oh, Chael.

00:56:16.000 Yeah, I'm sorry.

00:56:16.000 I didn't know how to pronounce it.

00:56:17.000 Yeah, Chael Sonnen.

00:56:18.000 Chael Sonnen, yeah.

00:56:20.000 So he said, you want to fight a guy that's one weight class above you.

00:56:23.000 That's the sweet spot. 1.00

00:56:24.000 He's out of his fucking mind. 1.00

00:56:26.000 Let me tell you something right now. 1.00

00:56:27.000 Jon Jones beat the shit out of him, and Jon Jones is bigger than him. 0.72

00:56:30.000 I know what you're saying here, but in absolutes, it's not applicable. 0.60

00:56:37.000 There's actually an adage that the bigger fighter will beat a smaller, better fighter.

00:56:47.000 Well, statistically, it's 50-50.

00:56:50.000 I don't know what that means, though, because there's weight classes.

00:56:52.000 Like, how is it possible that it's 50-50?

00:56:55.000 It really depends on the skill level.

00:56:58.000 Like, there's incredibly skillful big guys.

00:57:02.000 And then there's small guys that are fast, but they're not as technical.

00:57:05.000 They're not as good.

00:57:06.000 Well, of course.

00:57:06.000 And that's why size doesn't always dominate.

00:57:10.000 And either the split is within the weight class or mixing weight classes.

00:57:15.000 Either way...

00:57:16.000 What the statistician said was that size is not a good predictor of a win as long as the differences aren't too extreme.

00:57:23.000 And, of course, the smaller the arena, the more size will dominate.

00:57:27.000 And, you know, if you and I are in a shower stall, like I said, I'm not going to do very well.

00:57:32.000 I would just want to state, like, I'm a big fan of Chael Sonnen.

00:57:35.000 I agree with most of the things that he says, and he's a real legend when it comes to fighting, and his prime, a tremendous wrestler, a beast of a fighter.

00:57:45.000 But he also, he's a showman, and he says a lot of crazy things sometimes, because I think he thinks it's fun.

00:57:53.000 And, you know, he gives hot takes and opinions on things, and some of them are good and some of them aren't, but...

00:57:58.000 Well, that fight you were talking about, I think that's when he got out of MMA. No, he fought after that fight.

00:58:03.000 Oh, did he?

00:58:03.000 Yeah, he fought after that fight.

00:58:05.000 There was one fight that really put him over the edge, and his wife was like, you know, what are you doing? 1.00

00:58:10.000 Well, I go back to the fight.

00:58:11.000 He fought Nate Marquardt, and Marquardt was in his prime, and he worked him.

00:58:15.000 Chael Sonnen came that close to beating Anderson Silva for the middleweight title.

00:58:20.000 I mean, he's a beast.

00:58:21.000 He's a beast. 0.60

00:58:22.000 But a good big man will almost always beat a smaller, better man.

00:58:29.000 There's just things about size and strength and power.

00:58:33.000 And in MMA, it's even more prevalent because there's so many things that go on.

00:58:38.000 Like, you can slip a punch, right?

00:58:40.000 But if you slip a punch that's designed to set you up for a leg kick, you're still stationary, and you're gonna get cracked.

00:58:47.000 But here's the thing, is the guy you're fighting one-dimensional, or does he have a comprehensive game?

00:58:53.000 Is he throwing that punch not really because he wants to hit you, because he wants to set you up for a takedown?

00:58:58.000 Is he throwing that punch because he wants to kick the outside of your calf?

00:59:01.000 Like, what is he actually doing with that punch?

00:59:03.000 Well, right, and that's why fighting is so fascinating.

00:59:06.000 It's complex.

00:59:07.000 Right, and that's the difference between us and chimpanzees.

00:59:10.000 Yeah, we can think about it and learn.

00:59:13.000 The smaller chimpanzee will never win.

00:59:15.000 You know what I'm saying?

00:59:16.000 I mean, that's the difference.

00:59:17.000 We can go around and around about how it breaks down, but the fact that a smaller human ever wins, that's what's uniquely human.

00:59:26.000 What if you could teach a chimp jiu-jitsu? 1.00

00:59:31.000 Well, you know, then you'd have a very scary chimp. 1.00

00:59:34.000 Maybe get a smaller chimp who decides, no, bitch, I'm the alpha. 1.00

00:59:37.000 No, that's right. 1.00

00:59:37.000 He just takes the big chimps back and strangles them. 1.00

00:59:40.000 No, that's right.

00:59:41.000 No, listen, what will work with chimps is a coalition of males can dominate an alpha male.

00:59:46.000 And it's crazy that they actually organize.

00:59:47.000 That's right.

00:59:48.000 And that's where...

00:59:50.000 And sociability and language and all these things come into play with humans because we're no longer – I mean, no group of humans can be dominated by a single alpha individual because a coalition can always take them down.

01:00:05.000 And that makes society livable, right?

01:00:07.000 We're not in this sort of like horrible hierarchy where the biggest person gets to decide everything.

01:00:14.000 Yes, yes.

01:00:16.000 But what we're talking about, I mean, there's just...

01:00:20.000 I just hate absolutes when it comes to fighting because the variables are so extreme and there's so many things that come into play.

01:00:26.000 There's so many styles of how to...

01:00:28.000 I mean, there's a big man that will beat a better, smaller man in one way.

01:00:35.000 And then a better smaller man who has a different skill set will beat that big man in a different scenario.

01:00:41.000 And then the way they interact will change.

01:00:45.000 If they fight ten times, one guy might win six, and then the other guy might win four, and you can't predict.

01:00:52.000 You have no idea.

01:00:53.000 Well, someone at ESPN crunched all the numbers and said that size wins about half the time.

01:00:58.000 But when they say that, like how much size are they talking about?

01:01:01.000 Because of the fact that we're talking about weight classes, that's why I'm confused.

01:01:04.000 Unless they study only the heavyweight division, which has the largest disparity in weight.

01:01:08.000 It might have been that.

01:01:09.000 I didn't ask him specifically, but he was pretty clear about it.

01:01:13.000 It was like it's not, you know, if you're going to put your money on someone, weight is not necessarily the best variable.

01:01:20.000 Skill is the best variable.

01:01:21.000 Yeah, no, totally.

01:01:22.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:01:22.000 But that's exactly what I'm saying about humans.

01:01:24.000 It's skill.

01:01:25.000 Yeah.

01:01:25.000 It's not physical dominance, necessarily.

01:01:27.000 Right.

01:01:28.000 The problem that we were talking about with this trans athlete thing is just a problem of ideology.

01:01:35.000 It's not a problem of fairness.

01:01:36.000 If you talk to most people who actually understand sports, they don't think it's fair.

01:01:40.000 But the people that want to support trans people and think this is a good time to make society more inclusive, they're the ones who want to support it.

01:01:50.000 What's really fascinating to me is that Caitlyn Jenner is now being accused of being transphobic.

01:01:56.000 Because Caitlyn Jenner stood up and said, I don't think it's fair.

01:02:00.000 It's a question of fairness. 0.91

01:02:01.000 And you're talking about someone who, when she was Bruce, was a fucking Olympic gold medalist and one of the greatest athletes the United States has ever produced was on the cover of Wheaties. 0.93

01:02:11.000 1976, I remember. 0.96

01:02:13.000 Yeah, amazing.

01:02:13.000 So that same person is saying that it's a question of fairness and that you shouldn't have biological males competing against biological females.

01:02:23.000 And they came after her.

01:02:25.000 Yeah, right.

01:02:25.000 Which is crazy.

01:02:26.000 I mean, if there is an icon in the 21st century, a true icon of transgender rights and of transgender acceptance, it's Caitlyn Jenner.

01:02:35.000 Right, no, right.

01:02:36.000 Meanwhile, they're calling her transphobic.

01:02:38.000 Well, I mean, again, I don't have a dog in this fight, so I don't really...

01:02:43.000 I don't really care what happens, particularly, and I understand people are trying to usually do the right thing, but could there be a third competitive category of trans?

01:02:56.000 That would be the best way to do it, for sure.

01:02:58.000 But here's the problem.

01:03:00.000 Even in that category, you would have to say, okay, we're going to have a trans category, but are we going to have trans males and trans females compete together?

01:03:10.000 Well, if the answer is no, then that says a lot about trans-competing.

01:03:15.000 Right.

01:03:15.000 And also, do we have enough trans females and trans males to have a whole separate category for each of them?

01:03:24.000 So you have biological males versus biological males, biological females versus biological females, trans females versus trans females, trans males versus trans males.

01:03:35.000 There might be four categories at the Olympics.

01:03:38.000 Look, if they do that, I'm 100% in favor of it.

01:03:40.000 Yeah, totally.

01:03:41.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:03:42.000 Yeah.

01:03:42.000 I mean, it's an interesting idea.

01:03:44.000 I mean, these are very much first world problems, I think, right?

01:03:46.000 Yeah, in many ways.

01:03:47.000 And I think also there's going to come a time where through CRISPR or through some other much more sophisticated form of manipulating the human body where we're going to be able to change what a person is Really.

01:04:00.000 Not just in terms of how they express and how they represent, but actually you can become a biological female.

01:04:08.000 I don't know if that's going to be within our lifetime, but I think that's the future.

01:04:12.000 Right.

01:04:13.000 And then that really is a biological female, right? 0.85

01:04:15.000 A hundred percent.

01:04:16.000 Exactly, yeah.

01:04:17.000 A hundred percent.

01:04:17.000 I mean, the things that they can do now in terms of genetic manipulation are witchcraft.

01:04:24.000 Compared to 100 years ago, 200 years ago.

01:04:27.000 So if we go into the future, another 100, 200 years, we might have no problem with this.

01:04:32.000 It might all go away.

01:04:33.000 And we might be back to male versus female.

01:04:36.000 Or, excuse me, male categories versus male, female versus female.

01:04:40.000 One thing that gets lost in all this is just what an extraordinary creation the human being is as an athlete.

01:04:49.000 I mean, I was sort of looking at athletic performance, particularly with running, because my book is divided into run, fight, and think, like the three ways you can defeat a greater power.

01:04:58.000 Or at least have a chance of it, right?

01:05:00.000 And if you can't outrun them, outfight them.

01:05:03.000 If you can't outfight them, you're going to have to outthink them.

01:05:05.000 And that's what happens with social change within a society, like the labor movement in this country a hundred years ago.

01:05:13.000 So I was looking at our capacity to run, right?

01:05:17.000 And I mean, I'm a former runner, right?

01:05:19.000 I ran competitively in college.

01:05:20.000 I didn't even realize...

01:05:22.000 How amazing we are.

01:05:24.000 There's an ultra-marathoner named Jim Walmsley who has won the Western States 100 a bunch of times.

01:05:31.000 It's 100 miles over the Sierra Nevada, right?

01:05:34.000 A huge elevation gain.

01:05:35.000 His time is 14 hours and 9 minutes and he has beaten – and along the same course, they run horse and rider teams, like basically the same course.

01:05:46.000 He beat the horse and rider team in his year and – And almost every other year for the previous 20 years, he's a human being on foot.

01:05:56.000 Can you imagine?

01:05:57.000 That's so crazy.

01:05:58.000 And the 1,000-mile world record is 10 days.

01:06:02.000 God.

01:06:03.000 A guy ran 1,000 miles in 10 days.

01:06:06.000 Do you know what the Moab 240 is?

01:06:09.000 No, but I can almost guess by the name.

01:06:12.000 It's a run through the Moab Mountains and there's a woman named Courtney DeWalter.

01:06:17.000 I interviewed her in my book.

01:06:19.000 She's in my book. 1.00

01:06:20.000 She's a fucking monster. 1.00

01:06:21.000 She's amazing. 1.00

01:06:22.000 She's amazing.

01:06:23.000 Yeah, she's incredible. 0.99

01:06:24.000 She beat the second place man by ten hours.

01:06:26.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:06:26.000 Ten fucking hours. 1.00

01:06:28.000 So if she took an eight-hour nap, just laid down for eight hours and just yawned, stretched her feet and put her shoes on and had breakfast and drank a cup of coffee, she'd still beat him by two hours. 1.00

01:06:39.000 Which is fucking bananas. 0.98

01:06:41.000 Well, think about this. 0.99

01:06:42.000 So in the American Southwest, just that same area, right?

01:06:47.000 There were two kinds of people when the whites showed up, when Europeans showed up, right? 0.98

01:06:54.000 There were the Pueblo people who were very wealthy.

01:06:56.000 They irrigated, they cultivated, they lived in towns, towns that looked a lot like small towns in Europe, right?

01:07:03.000 Up on top of mesas, very well defended.

01:07:07.000 In material terms, they were doing very well, right?

01:07:11.000 And then there were the Apache and the Navajo. 0.70

01:07:13.000 They were complete nomads.

01:07:14.000 They were very mobile, materially poor.

01:07:17.000 I mean, they only had what they could carry.

01:07:19.000 But no one could sort of catch them, right?

01:07:22.000 So when the Spanish arrived in the late 1500s, What happened?

01:07:27.000 They defeated the Pueblo communities immediately.

01:07:31.000 Like sometimes within hours, they could roll these Pueblos, right? 0.93

01:07:36.000 The Apache remained free until the last band of wild Apache were finally sort of cornered in 1886. That's almost within my grandmother's lifetime.

01:07:48.000 And they did that because they were so mobile.

01:07:51.000 The whole community was expected to be able to move...

01:07:55.000 40 miles a day on foot, whatever.

01:07:58.000 The children, if the enemy was near, the children would sleep with food tied around their waist in case they had to run away in the middle of the night.

01:08:07.000 And there was finally, the warriors were supposed to be able to go 70 miles in a day if they had to, and they'd keep that up.

01:08:13.000 And so there was one war leader NANA, N-A-N-A, NANA. And in the 1880s, I mean, the machine gun's been invented, the light bulb, the, what else,

01:08:28.000 the four-stroke engine, like, it was really modern society at that point, right?

01:08:33.000 And he led, like, a dozen Apache warriors on a raid that, over six weeks, they covered 1,500 miles.

01:08:45.000 And NANA was 75 years old.

01:08:47.000 Pfft! 0.63

01:08:48.000 So the human being, right, is meant to move.

01:08:53.000 It's also really good at fighting and it's also really, really good at thinking.

01:08:57.000 But if you just think of us as sort of animals, like one of the things that has allowed people throughout the ages to maintain their autonomy is that we're mobile and big powerful empires aren't that mobile.

01:09:11.000 I saw that in Afghanistan.

01:09:12.000 I mean the American army is invincible.

01:09:16.000 Until it's fighting a bunch of guys, you know, barefoot guys in the mountains who don't have an Air Force, you know?

01:09:21.000 And then we're not so invincible.

01:09:23.000 And it's because they were so mobile.

01:09:24.000 So this sort of like the discussion we had about MMA, it scales up, right?

01:09:30.000 Like a small insurgency can defeat an empire.

01:09:32.000 And if that weren't true...

01:09:34.000 If the empire always won or if the largest person in the room always won, you mean there would be really no chance for freedom.

01:09:42.000 And, you know, we defeated the British in 1776 precisely because a small mobile force can sometimes squeak out a victory.

01:09:50.000 It's interesting that we keep bringing this back to fighting because I think in many ways fighting is an analogy.

01:09:58.000 There's many comparisons for life.

01:10:00.000 There's a lot of what takes place in life, it plays out in fighting.

01:10:06.000 Right.

01:10:08.000 Choices that you make in terms of strategy and also what you bring to the day.

01:10:12.000 What skills?

01:10:13.000 Like we were talking about Chell Sonnen before.

01:10:15.000 Chell Sonnen was an elite wrestler.

01:10:17.000 And in my opinion, wrestling is the single best skill for MMA. Because the great wrestler dictates where the fight takes place.

01:10:26.000 He can decide to take the opponent down.

01:10:30.000 Or if he's like a Chuck Liddell who's a superior striker who's also a wrestler, he can decide you have to strike with him.

01:10:35.000 You can't take him down.

01:10:37.000 So it's just the single pillar.

01:10:40.000 And in life, there's things that you can be good at and there's strategies that you can apply that really...

01:10:48.000 It's very similar in that way.

01:10:50.000 It's like what you choose to be strong with.

01:10:53.000 Whether it's strong with your willpower or your education or your kindness, your approach to life.

01:10:59.000 It's like these are all like...

01:11:09.000 Right.

01:11:12.000 Right.

01:11:14.000 Right.

01:11:20.000 And that comes out in the more organized form of fighting, which is war.

01:11:25.000 And again, I mean, I looked at the Montenegrins, who were these sort of wild mountain people in the 1600s, and the Ottoman Empire, which was the most powerful military force in the world at that time, Kept invading Montenegro.

01:11:41.000 And, you know, at one point they outnumbered the Montenegrins 12 to 1. They had a cavalry.

01:11:46.000 They had artillery.

01:11:47.000 They had everything.

01:11:48.000 And the Montenegrins just handed them their hat. 0.97

01:11:50.000 I mean, they just, like, destroyed them.

01:11:51.000 They killed a third of the Ottoman forces.

01:11:54.000 So it's just that has allowed humans, some groups of humans, to maintain their autonomy in the face of a great power.

01:12:02.000 And often great powers are very oppressive.

01:12:05.000 I mean, sometimes people ask me, like, why write about freedom?

01:12:08.000 Like, why now?

01:12:11.000 What is about freedom that's interesting to you?

01:12:14.000 And my last book was called Tribe, and we talked about that.

01:12:17.000 And I realized...

01:12:20.000 We're good to go.

01:12:45.000 Isn't it funny that someone would say, why is freedom interesting to you?

01:12:50.000 That's like saying, why is life interesting to you?

01:12:53.000 If you just came back from your experience with your aneurysm, and you realize, oh my god, life is so precious, it's so important, and then some person is just living normally, like, well, what's so important about life?

01:13:05.000 What do you know?

01:13:07.000 When freedom is taken away from you, then you realize how crucial it is.

01:13:12.000 That's right.

01:13:13.000 Well, we're very lucky that we live in a free society and a democracy and, you know, it's imperfect, obviously, and we're trying – you know, I think we're all trying to improve it.

01:13:23.000 Most people are trying to improve it.

01:13:24.000 But I think it's easy to take that for granted.

01:13:27.000 We – Part of the book is about this bizarre trek that I took.

01:13:36.000 We walked along the railroad lines from Washington, D.C., me and a few other guys.

01:13:41.000 We'd all been in a lot of combat, and we weren't going back to combat, and we were trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.

01:13:46.000 We walked along the railroad lines from D.C. to Philly, and we're going to go to New York, then we decided to turn west, and we headed for Pittsburgh.

01:13:53.000 We wound up right outside of Pittsburgh.

01:13:55.000 So over the course of a year, trips of 50 to 100 miles, we sort of like, We journeyed through America along the road lines.

01:14:02.000 We were sleeping under bridges and abandoned houses and cooking over fires.

01:14:06.000 It's really interesting.

01:14:07.000 I just started it a few days ago, but it's really interesting.

01:14:10.000 I'm enjoying it very much.

01:14:12.000 Thank you.

01:14:12.000 When you did this, how old were you?

01:14:15.000 A few years ago.

01:14:17.000 And you just decided this would be a thing to do?

01:14:21.000 I was taking the Amtrak down to D.C. with my buddy Tim that I'd been over in Afghanistan with.

01:14:26.000 We made a film called Restrepo.

01:14:28.000 I was looking out the window.

01:14:30.000 We were trying to think of our next project.

01:14:31.000 And I was looking out the window. 0.99

01:14:33.000 I was like, Tim, man, you could walk this whole damn thing. 0.96

01:14:36.000 Like there's a dirt bike trail or a maintenance road or a cornfield or whatever. 0.93

01:14:40.000 And the thing about Railroad Line is it goes right through the middle of everything, right?

01:14:45.000 Right through the ghettos, right through the suburbs, right through the farms. 0.93

01:14:48.000 You see America from the inside out.

01:14:50.000 And it's this weird swath of no man's land.

01:14:53.000 Like the cops aren't really out there.

01:14:55.000 I mean, it's illegal.

01:14:56.000 So, you know, eventually people will spot you and you have to hide from them.

01:14:59.000 We had a helicopter looking for us at one point.

01:15:04.000 Why?

01:15:05.000 I think they were worried we were up to no good.

01:15:07.000 I mean, it was like...

01:15:08.000 Sometimes we walked at night when it was hot or if people were looking for us, we'd walk at night.

01:15:13.000 And, you know, it was one in the morning and we were like along railroad lines that passed near an Air Force base, I think.

01:15:19.000 I don't know.

01:15:19.000 We were in some sensitive area.

01:15:21.000 I mean, we didn't know that.

01:15:21.000 We were just moving.

01:15:23.000 And...

01:15:24.000 And all of a sudden, this helicopter came riding up on us.

01:15:27.000 And they didn't see us.

01:15:28.000 We could have crouched down and it did its grid and missed us with its floodlight. 0.97

01:15:33.000 But the thing is, it's this weird no man's land.

01:15:36.000 So you can sleep out, right?

01:15:38.000 You can pump your water out of creeks.

01:15:40.000 You can build a fire.

01:15:41.000 You'd have to stay low.

01:15:42.000 And, you know, we'd walk through towns and get food and we'd keep moving.

01:15:46.000 And it was just this weird experiment in autonomy.

01:15:50.000 And autonomy, I got to say, it's hard.

01:15:53.000 It's physically hard, right?

01:15:55.000 I mean, the safer and more comfortable you are, the more entangled you are in society, right?

01:16:03.000 And in some ways, the less free you are.

01:16:05.000 We were, like, every night, we were the only people in the world who knew where we were.

01:16:10.000 But that was a hard one.

01:16:11.000 We were carrying 70 pounds on our back and we were walking all day long and we were dodging the police.

01:16:15.000 And, you know, sometimes we drank pretty shitty water and it made us sick.

01:16:19.000 Really?

01:16:20.000 Did you have filters?

01:16:21.000 We had a pump filter, but sometimes, I mean, we drank the Yokogany River outside Connellsville, and one guy was sick for a week.

01:16:30.000 I wasn't.

01:16:30.000 I have a pretty strong stomach, but it really wrecked him.

01:16:33.000 Wow.

01:16:34.000 So, it's hard won, but look, we were on our own.

01:16:37.000 Like, no one knew where we were, and that's one definition of freedom.

01:16:41.000 There are many, right?

01:16:42.000 I mean, there are many definitions of freedom, but that's one of them.

01:16:44.000 How long did you guys do?

01:16:45.000 Like, how long was this journey?

01:16:47.000 It was off and on for years.

01:16:48.000 400 miles.

01:16:49.000 Wow.

01:16:50.000 Yeah.

01:16:51.000 And so part of my book, Freedom, is about that trek because it was my own personal experience with being physically autonomous.

01:17:00.000 And it was hard.

01:17:01.000 Like I said, it was a hard one.

01:17:03.000 I write about the frontier as well because we walked through what used to be the Pennsylvania frontier, the railroad lines.

01:17:11.000 Go along the Juniata River.

01:17:12.000 It's the only waterway that trends east-west in Pennsylvania.

01:17:17.000 And, you know, the river is sort of carved through the mountains.

01:17:19.000 And so the Indian trails followed the rivers.

01:17:22.000 And then the settlers' roads followed the Indian trails.

01:17:25.000 And eventually the railroads followed the settlers' roads.

01:17:28.000 And so we were walking up the Juniata River going west.

01:17:32.000 And...

01:17:34.000 I wrote in the book – I write it because that was the heart of like the Indian Wars along the Pennsylvania frontier in the 1700s.

01:17:40.000 And a lot of people that went out there, they were very poor.

01:17:43.000 They were often immigrants.

01:17:44.000 They were – often there were people that just didn't want the government – the colonial government breathing down their neck.

01:17:52.000 That was one of the more interesting things about the beginning of the book where you were talking about a sign that you found on someone's property that says that they will resist the federal government by any means necessary.

01:18:03.000 That's right.

01:18:04.000 So fast forward 300 years, we pass a sign nailed to a tree like along the Juniata waterway and it's very wild there, right?

01:18:11.000 It's very, very beautiful.

01:18:12.000 Yeah.

01:18:13.000 And the sign saying, yeah, this is private property.

01:18:16.000 We will resist the federal authority by any means necessary.

01:18:19.000 How old do you think that sign was?

01:18:21.000 Oh, it was contemporary, right?

01:18:22.000 And this was a few years ago.

01:18:23.000 This is 2012, 2013 that we saw that sign.

01:18:28.000 But 300 years ago, the people that settled that area were absolutely like that was what they wanted.

01:18:35.000 But the price that that came with was horrific.

01:18:38.000 So basically, you go into the wilderness and you're a lot more free, but you're in a lot more danger.

01:18:44.000 And danger is a loss of freedom, right?

01:18:47.000 It's its own kind of loss of freedom.

01:18:50.000 And so what the settlers did was they, for example, of course, there's no fire department.

01:18:56.000 These are people who are living in log cabins in the wilderness.

01:18:58.000 So their chimneys were made out of wood.

01:19:02.000 Right?

01:19:02.000 They're interlocking logs that they caked with mud and the mud insulated the wood.

01:19:07.000 It was like little tiny log cabins that ran up the side of the house.

01:19:10.000 That was the chimney.

01:19:11.000 And so they had ropes at the top of the chimneys because if the chimneys caught fire, the whole house would go up.

01:19:19.000 And if a chimney caught fire, they would pull the whole stack down with that rope.

01:19:23.000 That was their fire department, was having a rope at the top of the chimney, right?

01:19:26.000 But when it came to the Indian Wars, I mean, you can't imagine how bloody this was, right?

01:19:32.000 And no mercy given on anybody.

01:19:35.000 People were tortured to death on both sides, right?

01:19:37.000 It was absolutely horrific.

01:19:39.000 So what they did, there was no colonial militia.

01:19:42.000 There was nothing out there.

01:19:43.000 They just had each other.

01:19:44.000 So the settlers had a kind of mutual defense pact.

01:19:49.000 And if you were out there, you owed your life to the common defense of the community.

01:19:54.000 And if you didn't do that, you were an outcast.

01:20:00.000 In fact, if you were an adult male and you failed to carry a gun and a scalping knife and a tomahawk in your belt at all times, if you didn't do that, you were mocked and you were cast out from the community.

01:20:14.000 Which, obviously, is not really a form of freedom.

01:20:17.000 I mean, freedom includes the freedom to not fight if you don't want to fight, right?

01:20:21.000 So basically, my point is, pick your poison.

01:20:24.000 Do you want the government to tell you what to do?

01:20:26.000 Or do you want the community to tell you what to do?

01:20:29.000 And the more danger you're in, the more you need one or the other.

01:20:34.000 And there really is no way to be completely safe, completely comfortable, and completely free without obligation to your tribe.

01:20:43.000 Right.

01:20:44.000 When you wrote this, how much studying did you wind up doing on the various North American tribes and their strategies?

01:20:52.000 Because that's also something that you talk about in the Iroquois, and you go pretty deep into a lot of that as well.

01:20:58.000 Yeah, I mean, I researched that after the trip.

01:21:02.000 I mean, I did the trip years ago, and I wanted to write about freedom, and I thought, wow, interesting to...

01:21:09.000 You know, in the book itself, there's a lot of...

01:21:12.000 I think?

01:21:21.000 We called it high-speed vagrancy.

01:21:23.000 I mean, we really moved, right?

01:21:25.000 10, 20, you know, 25 miles a day sometimes.

01:21:29.000 It was really interesting to weave this trip into the research that I did.

01:21:34.000 And so that's how I came to form the book.

01:21:39.000 So the native tribes of that area, they were dominated by the Iroquois.

01:21:43.000 And so this is where this great truth about freedom comes in.

01:21:50.000 The more people you're with, the better you can defend yourself, right?

01:21:57.000 So the Iroquois were... 0.89

01:21:59.000 It's indomitable until the Europeans showed up. 1.00

01:22:03.000 And one reason the Europeans couldn't be defeated was because they came with diseases that just decimated the ranks of the native people, right?

01:22:10.000 So, you know, you can play the sort of thought experiment.

01:22:13.000 If, say, smallpox didn't exist and the native peoples of North America had their original populations, the Iroquois were an extremely well-organized, huge, huge organization.

01:22:25.000 And...

01:22:27.000 You can make a pretty good argument that the Europeans actually could not have defeated them militarily. 0.66

01:22:33.000 But what was their strategy?

01:22:35.000 I mean, for all those native people, the strategy was...

01:22:40.000 Why fight a, quote, fair fight in the open when you could ambush people, surprise attacks, creep up on them at dawn?

01:22:48.000 You're just going to lose more people if you fight in the open, bows and arrows against firearms.

01:22:53.000 Why would you do that?

01:22:54.000 Yeah, of course.

01:22:55.000 And they were extremely effective at it.

01:22:56.000 And the Iroquois were so mobile.

01:22:58.000 Speaking of mobility, they were so mobile.

01:23:01.000 That the settlers often thought they were fighting five to ten times as many Iroquois as—or this applied to any of the tribes—five or ten times as many men as they really were.

01:23:12.000 That was the tactical advantage of that kind of mobility.

01:23:16.000 Well, that was the issue with Texas and the Comanches was the tactical ability of the Comanche to fight off horseback when the settlers hadn't figured out how to do that yet.

01:23:27.000 And they were still using muskets and the Comanche could launch multiple arrows. 0.88

01:23:32.000 They would keep their arrows interlaced in their fingers.

01:23:36.000 And they would shoot one arrow and then another arrow.

01:23:39.000 So these guys would shoot one musket and then they'd have to reload.

01:23:42.000 It took like 30 seconds.

01:23:44.000 By the time that happened, the Comanche would be on them and filling them full of arrows. 1.00

01:23:47.000 The settlers that I wrote about, some of them were able to load their rifle at a dead run.

01:23:55.000 And this is with a ramrod, you know, they put the ball in the barrel and the patch and then pour the powder in, or the other way around, the powder and then the ball.

01:24:03.000 Anyway, they could do this at a dead run, but still it was no match, in some ways no match for a bow and arrow in the woods.

01:24:09.000 But if you had ranks of riflemen who were alternating firing and reloading, You know, it's just suicide to charge them in a field.

01:24:18.000 Of course, that's what happened in European warfare.

01:24:23.000 The casualties were horrific.

01:24:24.000 It's really interesting about the Comanche.

01:24:28.000 I'm sure you know Empire of the Summer Moon.

01:24:30.000 Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.

01:24:32.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:32.000 Amazing writer.

01:24:34.000 Amazing book.

01:24:35.000 There's a direct equivalent in Genghis Khan in East Asia.

01:24:39.000 A horseback culture that the... 0.96

01:24:46.000 I think?

01:25:00.000 And in some ways, unfortunately, the beginning of a stratification of society.

01:25:04.000 As soon as you can accumulate wealth, some people are going to accumulate more than others, and they become rulers, and they can oppress people, etc., etc.

01:25:10.000 In mobile societies like the Apache, it's very hard to have social classes because you can't accumulate anything. 1.00

01:25:16.000 And so, in history, the sedentary people, although more powerful where they stood, and more wealthy in material terms, We're good to go. 0.93

01:25:59.000 That dates back to this era, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

01:26:03.000 The sort of eternal clash between the migratory nomadic people, herding cultures, and the farming cultures. 0.59

01:26:13.000 I do not have a mill with willow trees.

01:26:18.000 I have a horse and a court. 1.00

01:26:22.000 I will kill you and go. 1.00

01:26:27.000 I will kill you and go. 1.00

01:26:29.000 Wow. 1.00

01:26:30.000 So, of course, those people lost – I mean, the world is dominated by sedentary people that accumulate wealth and can amass huge armies and blah, blah, blah. 0.88

01:26:39.000 But it's good to keep in mind that mobility was, for a very, very long time, was a very effective – I think?

01:26:58.000 Yeah, that was Genghis Khan's thing. 0.85

01:27:00.000 Yeah, totally.

01:27:00.000 He had massive disdain for anyone who didn't live in a tent.

01:27:04.000 Oh, totally.

01:27:04.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:27:05.000 Absolutely.

01:27:06.000 He thought they were weak.

01:27:07.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:27:08.000 Yeah.

01:27:10.000 And, I mean, you can make an argument that wealth and sedentary life make people weak, right?

01:27:17.000 I mean, you can make that argument, certainly from the eyes of a nomadic person.

01:27:21.000 That's what it looks like, right?

01:27:23.000 And, you know, even the sort of ancient biblical story of fratricide of Cain and Abel, you know, even – I mean, you know, Cain was a farmer and Abel was a nomad.

01:27:38.000 And it goes, you know, the thinking, the ethnographic thinking or the anthropological thinking about this is this story goes back to this original bifurcation between farmers, the sedentary people, and the mobile ones.

01:27:53.000 But Cain...

01:27:56.000 Cain kills Abel because Abel is a shepherd and has sheep.

01:28:01.000 And when it comes time to make a sacrifice to God, Abel can sacrifice a fat sheep.

01:28:09.000 And all Cain has is vegetables.

01:28:12.000 And he's jealous.

01:28:13.000 And he kills his nomad brother because he's jealous of what Abel can offer God.

01:28:20.000 And there you see the affluence but the insecurity that wealthy, sedentary people have for those who, quote, have nothing left to lose.

01:28:35.000 There's a great allure to the kind of freedom that we're describing, right?

01:28:39.000 To the ability to just live off your back and go hiking and live in the mountains and do that kind of thing.

01:28:48.000 It appeals to us in a strange way.

01:28:51.000 Where we know there's something wrong with sedentary lifestyle and with living in a city and dealing with just the bullshit of traffic and this unnatural environment that we've created with concrete and asphalt and pollution.

01:29:11.000 Right. 0.93

01:29:12.000 Right.

01:29:28.000 Well, you know, it's the mobile groups that we see as romantic, right?

01:29:35.000 I mean, you know, motorcycle gangs and stuff like that.

01:29:38.000 I mean, you know, they're bad actors, right?

01:29:40.000 I mean, some of those guys don't necessarily bring a lot of joy and happiness to the world.

01:29:44.000 Some do, I suppose.

01:29:45.000 But whatever.

01:29:46.000 The point is they're romanticized.

01:29:48.000 Yes.

01:29:48.000 Right?

01:29:49.000 And the mobile groups are often romanticized.

01:29:53.000 You know, the sort of like guerrilla fighters, you know, whatever.

01:29:56.000 I mean, over and over again in our imagination.

01:29:58.000 Like, that's an appealing thing is the group that is overmatched.

01:30:05.000 They're the underdog, but they're so skilled and mobile that they eventually win.

01:30:09.000 Like, that's very, very appealing to humans.

01:30:13.000 Yeah, that is, right?

01:30:15.000 It's a classic tale.

01:30:18.000 That's right.

01:30:19.000 That's right.

01:30:20.000 And it's even in the Bible, you know, Cain and Abel.

01:30:25.000 It's their seminal story, fratricide, goes all the way back.

01:30:29.000 That sort of division goes all the way back in the jealousy of the – the jealousy that we wealthy, sedentary people have for the mobile people.

01:30:37.000 It's very, very ancient.

01:30:41.000 One thing I should point out, and I think it's worth talking about, We were talking about a little bit before that our safety in the world comes from the fact that we have people around us that we trust who will help defend our community,

01:30:58.000 right?

01:31:01.000 And because if we don't have a community, if we're not part of a tribe, if we're not part of some group, we're alone in the world, we're very vulnerable, humans die pretty quickly by themselves in the wilderness, right?

01:31:13.000 And the larger the group, the safer it is from attack from other groups.

01:31:18.000 I mean, just as a basic fact of human existence.

01:31:21.000 And so one of the things that...

01:31:24.000 I mean, you can sort of divide it up in an interesting way.

01:31:28.000 When you use the word freedom...

01:31:31.000 Freedom works in the sort of simple – the word freedoms or works in the simplest form in the context of freedom from oppression by – freedom from being oppressed by an outside group, by an enemy group, right?

01:31:42.000 When you're talking about your own society, the society that you have signed – born into and have signed on to, you're really talking about your rights, right?

01:31:52.000 They're kind of different things.

01:31:53.000 So as an example, I looked at a group called the Yamnaya.

01:31:59.000 And the Yamnaya were this nomadic horse culture from the eastern steppe, from the Russian steppe, 5,000 years ago. 0.86

01:32:11.000 And they fought on horse-drawn chariots with battle axes and they traveled without their women.

01:32:19.000 They traveled without women. 0.99

01:32:21.000 These groups of male raiders would go out and they swept through Europe and they entered the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal, about 5,000 years ago.

01:32:33.000 Yeah.

01:32:57.000 Completely eliminated all the men in Iberia.

01:33:01.000 Just think about that.

01:33:03.000 All the men, not the women, who clearly were mated with, and the Iberian population now are the descendants of the Yamnaya and the Neolithic women, and then other population groups that moved in,

01:33:19.000 the Boers, and et cetera, et cetera. 0.79

01:33:22.000 But the Neolithic men were completely scrubbed from the gene pool because they could not defend their territory.

01:33:30.000 So one point I want to make is, and this isn't a pitch for militarism, it's a pitch for realism, which is a very important part of freedom comes from being able to defend yourself and the people you love.

01:33:43.000 And if you can't do that, I mean in ancient historical terms.

01:33:49.000 Now there's international laws and there's defense pacts and there's NATO and whatever.

01:33:54.000 Like Liechtenstein does not really have to worry about being invaded because it's part of an agreement between nations.

01:34:01.000 But throughout most of human history, if you could not defend yourself, you were very, very vulnerable to having your freedom taken away and invariably would.

01:34:11.000 There's a resistance in today's culture, particularly from people that are more in line with progressive thinking.

01:34:19.000 There's a resistance to accepting the fact that the military is important.

01:34:24.000 Right.

01:34:25.000 I mean, I think there's a sort of lovely idea that peace is sort of the default state.

01:34:32.000 And if you just don't have a military and start thinking in militaristic terms, that peace will take over and then no one will need a military and then we're all going to be fine.

01:34:41.000 But that clearly...

01:34:42.000 Has not been true throughout history.

01:34:44.000 I mean, if you look at history and the nations that couldn't defend themselves, I mean, look, Montenegro was not overrun by the Ottomans because it could defend itself.

01:34:56.000 Right.

01:34:56.000 Right?

01:34:57.000 Right.

01:34:58.000 And for a lot of human history, and this is true in a playground fight as well, I mean, if you can't defend yourself, you might end up having to do what someone else tells you to do.

01:35:05.000 Right?

01:35:06.000 That's just an eternal human truth.

01:35:10.000 So the trick is, how do you become well enough armed and militaristic enough and sort of badass enough and hierarchical enough because military groups depend on hierarchy in order to fight effectively?

01:35:22.000 A hierarchy of command, not of honor, but of command.

01:35:26.000 How do you do that and also have a society which is just and egalitarian?

01:35:33.000 And as I say in my book, a society that's well enough organized to defend itself can also oppress its own people under the wrong leadership.

01:35:43.000 So how do you have it both ways?

01:35:45.000 How do you defend yourself against...

01:35:48.000 Outsiders, but also not use the apparatus of the military to then oppress your own people the way Pinochet did and Franco did and, you know, etc.

01:35:58.000 I mean, that's the history of dictators.

01:36:00.000 My father grew up in Spain and left when Franco took, when the fascists took over in Spain.

01:36:07.000 I just wrote an article about how that happens. 0.99

01:36:11.000 You know, Spain had a democratically elected government and Franco came in and said, that's bullshit. 0.98

01:36:18.000 It was a fraudulent election and we're going to take over. 0.98

01:36:21.000 And he took over with the military.

01:36:22.000 So that's an example of a military force that was used improperly to oppress its own people.

01:36:28.000 And so for me, that's the eternal human dilemma.

01:36:31.000 If you be strong enough to defend yourself and not allow that to oppress your own people.

01:36:38.000 Well, it's interesting, too, because what we're talking about here, this utopian concept of peace being a default state, there's a lot of people that they have similar utopian beliefs about policing in the United States,

01:36:55.000 and that's one of the reasons why people think we need to defund the police, and that people, if you leave them alone, We're good to go.

01:37:23.000 But there's a lot of confusion as to what's the correct way to go about this and what is the correct way of actually ensuring that people are safe and protected and that law and order is achieved and that people respect this rule of land because it makes our society and our culture better and safer for everyone.

01:37:45.000 Easier for people to innovate and easier for people to live their lives.

01:37:49.000 But how does that balance out?

01:37:52.000 And how does that balance out without the kind of leadership that you do see being necessary in the military?

01:38:01.000 Well, here's what I think is happening.

01:38:03.000 I think the people that say defund the police, I'm not even quite sure what that means.

01:38:07.000 I mean, I remember during COVID there was a phrase like, abolish rent.

01:38:13.000 And I'm like, I'm not even sure what that means.

01:38:16.000 How would you implement that?

01:38:17.000 What specifically are you talking about?

01:38:18.000 Likewise with defund the police.

01:38:20.000 I get the gist of the idea.

01:38:23.000 People are hurting.

01:38:24.000 Abolish rent.

01:38:25.000 But then that has crazy unintended consequences.

01:38:28.000 So likewise with defund the police.

01:38:30.000 I kind of know where you're coming from.

01:38:32.000 I just don't quite know how it would work.

01:38:34.000 So I think what those people are doing is they're saying we have given up trying to reform the police and clearly there are some police departments that need reform.

01:38:41.000 We all remember Rodney King, right?

01:38:44.000 And many, many other disgraceful incidents since then.

01:38:49.000 I think what they're saying is we've given up trying to reform the police.

01:38:52.000 Police unions block any reform.

01:38:54.000 All right, you know what? 1.00

01:38:55.000 Fuck it. 1.00

01:38:55.000 We're just going to defund you, right? 1.00

01:38:58.000 Again, I don't think that's the right solution.

01:39:01.000 There's good policing, bad policing, and no policing.

01:39:04.000 We can look at situations with no policing.

01:39:07.000 So one of the things I looked at in my book was on the frontier.

01:39:13.000 In the 1840s, 50s, 60s, 1870s, on the American frontier out west, there was little to no policing.

01:39:23.000 You know, a sheriff, you know, one sheriff in 500 square miles, whatever it was, minimal policing.

01:39:30.000 And it was a largely male population.

01:39:34.000 Okay.

01:39:34.000 So there weren't even, you know, if you want to just put it this way, I mean, one of the constant causes of violence between individual men is competition over women, right?

01:39:44.000 I mean, bar fights in all kinds of situations, that is one seed of conflict between men.

01:39:50.000 So there were very few women out there to even have conflicts over, right? 0.80

01:39:54.000 The murder rate.

01:39:56.000 It was so high that, I mean, it completely eclipsed the highest murder rates in the eastern cities.

01:40:03.000 There was one town, a railroad town, that killed 7% of the population died by murder in the first three months, if I'm remembering my numbers correctly.

01:40:19.000 Seven percent, right? 1.00

01:40:21.000 Holy shit. 1.00

01:40:22.000 Right? 0.99

01:40:22.000 So, you know, in, what, a couple of years, at that rate, without more people, the town's gone. 0.99

01:40:28.000 That's so crazy. 0.59

01:40:30.000 They've killed them.

01:40:30.000 But bodies were piling up so fast.

01:40:31.000 And these were virtually all-male towns, right, with no police force. 0.92

01:40:35.000 So you've got to be careful about saying, oh, you know, if you take the police out of the equation, people will be peaceful.

01:40:43.000 We know that they won't be.

01:40:45.000 They're a lot more peaceful when women are there. 1.00

01:40:48.000 And what started to happen as the frontier filled up with women, and those women had children and families, and there's a very strong correlation between gender imbalance and violence.

01:40:59.000 And the worse the gender imbalance is, the more violence there is. 0.97

01:41:03.000 And as you bring men and women's numbers into line with each other, violence goes down.

01:41:09.000 Well, then how do you explain places like Japan or China, where there's far more males in China, I believe, than there are females because of that one-child policy? 0.71

01:41:21.000 Isn't there a disproportionate amount of males? 0.76

01:41:24.000 You know, not on the...

01:41:26.000 I mean, I don't know anything about China, and, you know, you're talking about a huge, huge country, and I frankly can't answer that question, but they know from the sort of lab experiment of, okay, you take one community, you have it be 99% men. 0.98

01:41:38.000 I mean, look what happens...

01:41:38.000 There'll be more violence.

01:41:39.000 There'll be more...

01:41:40.000 I mean, look what happens in prison, right?

01:41:41.000 Okay.

01:41:41.000 Right.

01:41:42.000 So then you introduce women to these communities.

01:41:45.000 You know, in this 1870s, 1880s, more and more women were going out west, and they were having families.

01:41:51.000 You know, so what happens is...

01:41:53.000 That in those situations, men want women to like them.

01:41:59.000 And on some level, they understand that if they act too badly, they will not get a mate.

01:42:06.000 Women are the balancing act. 1.00

01:42:07.000 They are.

01:42:08.000 And the other thing is that men get married and they have children and the last thing they want is violence.

01:42:14.000 Right.

01:42:14.000 That's a threat to everything they live for.

01:42:18.000 I have two young kids.

01:42:21.000 If I'm on the New York subway, a couple of years ago my oldest daughter was two years old and I'd go on the subway with her and a carrier.

01:42:31.000 And if some guy was acting weird, I mean, I got in another car.

01:42:34.000 I wanted nothing to do with it.

01:42:35.000 Right?

01:42:36.000 Without her, I might not have.

01:42:38.000 I'd be like, alright, this will be interesting.

01:42:39.000 Let's see what happens.

01:42:40.000 Right.

01:42:40.000 You know what I mean?

01:42:40.000 But God, with your child on your chest, you're out of there.

01:42:44.000 Right.

01:42:45.000 You know?

01:42:45.000 Yeah.

01:42:47.000 I couldn't agree more about this idea that defunding the police and having no police is going to lead to horrific violence.

01:42:54.000 Because, look, that's what you're seeing in New York City.

01:42:56.000 They've already tried it.

01:42:58.000 Right.

01:42:58.000 I mean, you live there, right?

01:43:00.000 How much difference is it, like, where you are?

01:43:03.000 Have you noticed?

01:43:05.000 Well, I... You know, fortunately, the violence isn't a very common thing.

01:43:10.000 But what you can see are all these sort of social indicators of violence.

01:43:15.000 They're correlated with violence.

01:43:16.000 Like, there's a lot more sort of visible drug abuse.

01:43:21.000 Visible how so?

01:43:22.000 Oh, just people shooting up on the street.

01:43:23.000 Really?

01:43:24.000 Yeah, I never saw that.

01:43:25.000 I rarely saw that before.

01:43:27.000 Now, you know, it just really whacked out people.

01:43:30.000 People walking down the street completely out of their minds screaming.

01:43:33.000 You know, I mean, there's stuff that would happen.

01:43:35.000 You know, whatever.

01:43:36.000 It's New York City.

01:43:36.000 You see everything eventually.

01:43:37.000 But it just happens a lot more.

01:43:40.000 And, you know, I live in the Lower East Side.

01:43:44.000 It's, you know, a pretty, you know, mixed income area.

01:43:45.000 A lot of different stuff going on there, you know.

01:43:49.000 But, yeah, I saw an early interesting, you know, in terms of the police restraint.

01:43:53.000 I mean, like...

01:43:56.000 I saw this amazing thing.

01:43:58.000 We're living on a small street, a through street, a small through street in the way lower east side.

01:44:04.000 And there was a cop car pulled over on the sidewalk, and another car pulled up, and a woman inside rolled her window down to ask the policeman some directions, or I don't know what, right?

01:44:13.000 So they're talking through their open windows, right?

01:44:16.000 But that's stopping traffic.

01:44:18.000 So the car behind...

01:44:20.000 I mean, I can't imagine doing this.

01:44:22.000 The car behind the woman who stopped starts honking at her. 0.88

01:44:24.000 She's talking to a cop, right?

01:44:27.000 Err, err, err. 0.97

01:44:30.000 Like, get the fuck out of the—get your car out of the street. 0.98

01:44:33.000 Then he gets out of his car and goes over and starts screaming at the woman while she's talking to the cop, right? 0.99

01:44:42.000 And everyone involved was African-American.

01:44:47.000 Just so happens, right?

01:44:48.000 Everyone involved in that situation was African-American.

01:44:50.000 And the cop didn't get out of the car.

01:44:56.000 Nothing—and I was just amazed at, like— I think it was probably...

01:44:59.000 That guy, he was obviously a little off.

01:45:02.000 And I was like, that was probably a smart move.

01:45:03.000 Like, no one was being threatened with violence yet.

01:45:06.000 And he de-escalated.

01:45:08.000 He stayed in the car.

01:45:10.000 Eventually, the woman drove on. 0.99

01:45:12.000 Way, way better solution than the cop getting out of the car with his belly club. 0.87

01:45:16.000 And then you don't know what's going to happen.

01:45:18.000 Right.

01:45:18.000 So, I think my point is...

01:45:21.000 In that situation, to me – I was looking out the window.

01:45:24.000 To me, it looked like good policing, good, wise policing.

01:45:30.000 And he resisted escalation.

01:45:34.000 He seemed to resist escalation as long as possible and it resolved itself.

01:45:37.000 So I think the real conversation is however much funding the police get, how do we make it the best policing possible with the money that we're going to allocate?

01:45:47.000 Yeah.

01:45:47.000 I do think that there is a great benefit to these police officers realizing that you can't abuse people anymore.

01:45:53.000 Yes.

01:45:54.000 I think the cameras on the phones and the fact that people are willing to film perceived injustices and that this becomes national news, I think that's great.

01:46:03.000 I really do.

01:46:04.000 I think that's great for all involved.

01:46:05.000 Yeah.

01:46:06.000 But I don't think defunding the police is the way to get out of this mess.

01:46:10.000 I think you've got to fund them and I think you've got to train them much better.

01:46:13.000 Right.

01:46:13.000 And you've got to make higher standards for people to get into it.

01:46:16.000 It's got to be...

01:46:17.000 I don't know how to shift the public's perception of what a police officer is, though. 1.00

01:46:23.000 Like, right now, it's in vogue to call cops shitheads and assholes and losers. 0.98

01:46:30.000 It's like to hate a cop is actually popular, which is unfortunately because of the George Floyd case and because of multiple other cases, it's a thing now and it's a narrative. 0.99

01:46:41.000 And if you say you support, like, you know, I'm a supporter of law enforcement.

01:46:46.000 I always have been.

01:46:47.000 I think it's important.

01:46:49.000 I'm always respectful to police officers.

01:46:51.000 I know that they treat me differently than they would a young black man or in a crime-ridden area or in various situations and various cops are going to treat people more discriminatory.

01:47:02.000 And I know that's true, and I wish it wasn't.

01:47:05.000 But I think the solution to that is not defunding.

01:47:07.000 The solution is better training, picking better qualified applicants.

01:47:11.000 And I don't know how you do that at this point.

01:47:14.000 It seems like a long uphill road, a long battle to try to get the respect of the general population again, to get the population to respect police officers.

01:47:25.000 But I think that has to take place.

01:47:26.000 You can't have...

01:47:27.000 What de Blasio's done in New York City by hamstringing the police and by telling them to stand down when people are looting and smashing windows, you've just made things more violent and more chaotic and more uncontrollable.

01:47:40.000 Well, yeah, and there's a zero-sum game going on.

01:47:43.000 I mean, I think if the police unions were even a little bit amenable to disciplining what seem to be rogue cops who have violated their training and their oath and abused people, even in really egregious cases, the police unions really won't acknowledge it.

01:48:00.000 I think they think it's a slippery slope.

01:48:02.000 Oh, I'm sure they do.

01:48:03.000 I'm sure they do.

01:48:04.000 But the problem with that, I mean, when I was in Afghanistan, I was in Afghanistan in the 90s and whatever, before 9-11, but my last trip there was with American forces.

01:48:15.000 And I was there off and on for a year, and I got to know the military very, very well, and I really liked them.

01:48:21.000 I really liked the US military.

01:48:22.000 I grew up during Vietnam.

01:48:24.000 I hadn't really expected to have that reaction.

01:48:26.000 I just loved them.

01:48:28.000 But one of the sort of amusing things was the sort of military bureaucracy and that was – the further you got from the, quote, front lines, the stronger their bureaucracy was.

01:48:36.000 And one of these public affairs guys – I mean they're – technically they're soldiers but they're not really fighting.

01:48:43.000 They're in public affairs and they deal with the press and whatever.

01:48:46.000 And he was a really nice guy and he said to me, listen, tell me, how do I get journalists to trust me?

01:48:52.000 I was like, oh, that's easy.

01:48:55.000 Offer them something.

01:48:56.000 Tell them something true that makes you look bad.

01:49:00.000 Right?

01:49:00.000 That makes you look like the military made a mistake at some point.

01:49:03.000 Because if you're willing to acknowledge a mistake, if you're willing to acknowledge a mistake, then people will believe.

01:49:11.000 I think you're an honest actor in this and they will believe it when you tell the truth, when you say something positive about yourself, right?

01:49:17.000 So, you know, I think the – I mean this is how negotiations stop is that neither side thinks the other side is acting in good faith and so they don't give an itch.

01:49:25.000 That's what's happening politically right now.

01:49:28.000 Yeah.

01:49:52.000 Like, no, no, no.

01:49:53.000 Okay, I know this guy.

01:49:54.000 This cop really shouldn't have done what he did.

01:49:56.000 It's pretty clear from the video.

01:49:57.000 But if we acknowledge that, all of a sudden, all cops are even for things that were complicated and confusing and, you know, whatever, like this sort of gray area where every fight...

01:50:12.000 We're good to go.

01:50:30.000 You can't do that.

01:50:31.000 You have to call out bad actions. 0.98

01:50:52.000 Then we're all screwed. 0.96

01:50:54.000 And that was... 0.96

01:50:55.000 I feel like the original sin with the Republicans was...

01:50:58.000 And everybody's got...

01:50:59.000 Both political parties have an original sin.

01:51:01.000 But, you know, with the Republicans, just watching this unfold was when Trump was introducing this sort of nonsense about that Barack Obama was not an American citizen.

01:51:09.000 I mean, come on.

01:51:11.000 The entire GOP, elected GOP, knew that that's nonsense.

01:51:14.000 But no one said it was nonsense.

01:51:16.000 But he was doing that before he was running for president.

01:51:18.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:18.000 I know, exactly.

01:51:19.000 Right, right.

01:51:20.000 When was he doing that?

01:51:21.000 He was, but he kept doing it while he was a GOP candidate.

01:51:24.000 Was he really, when he was running for president, he was doing that?

01:51:28.000 Yeah, of course he was.

01:51:29.000 The whole time.

01:51:30.000 And that's an important thing.

01:51:31.000 We're fighting a war.

01:51:33.000 The commander-in-chief has to be perceived by our soldiers as being legitimate.

01:51:37.000 He's the head of the whole thing.

01:51:39.000 So if you have a very powerful figure in American politics saying he's actually an imposter and he's not an American citizen, he isn't really president, that's very dangerous.

01:51:49.000 And the GOP didn't call that out.

01:51:51.000 And there's equivalent sins on the left.

01:51:53.000 You have to call it out.

01:51:55.000 Isn't it kind of crazy, though, when you really stop and think about it, that we're a nation of immigrants and you can't be an immigrant and run the nation of immigrants.

01:52:04.000 You have to have been born on this patch of dirt to be legitimate.

01:52:08.000 It's very weird, right?

01:52:10.000 You can't be an immigrant. 1.00

01:52:11.000 Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, who is an American citizen, cannot be the president of the United States because he was not born here.

01:52:18.000 Even though he was the governor of California, he could never be the president.

01:52:22.000 You have to be through no fault of your own. 0.95

01:52:25.000 I mean, it has to be like a dumb luck thing where you're born on this patch of dirt. 0.97

01:52:28.000 Isn't that bizarre? 0.93

01:52:30.000 Well, I think it's to preempt...

01:52:31.000 It doesn't really do this, obviously, as we just saw with Barack Obama.

01:52:34.000 I think it's to preempt sort of like...

01:52:36.000 There are suspicions that this is a bad actor who has come here expressly to take over our country.

01:52:45.000 Some charismatic Russian who sneaks over here and ruins it on purpose. 1.00

01:52:59.000 A birth in your community.

01:53:01.000 And for us, a community of 330 million.

01:53:03.000 But still, it's a community, right?

01:53:04.000 It's unwieldy.

01:53:05.000 It's at odds with itself.

01:53:06.000 But it is a form of community that we're trying to make work.

01:53:10.000 And maybe the only identifier to it is that you were born here.

01:53:14.000 So I kind of understand that the ultimate, that sort of like paramount leader of this whole crazy circus that we have...

01:53:23.000 It also has to be born here.

01:53:25.000 I kind of get it.

01:53:27.000 And that sort of group allegiance, it doesn't guarantee group allegiance being born here, but it signifies something powerful.

01:53:35.000 One of the things I wrote about was, you know, I was talking about how in a dangerous environment, your safety comes from being part of a group.

01:53:47.000 That works because each individual in the group is willing to risk their safety, their life, to protect the whole group.

01:53:54.000 And if no one's willing to do that, you really don't have a group and no one's safe.

01:53:58.000 So the collective deal is that, okay, we're all part of the Hells Angels or we're all part of Second Platoon or whatever it is.

01:54:06.000 And we all value the safety of the group more than our own individual groups.

01:54:11.000 Safety.

01:54:12.000 And our individual safety comes from the fact that we're part of this group.

01:54:15.000 So if everyone does that, everyone's safer.

01:54:18.000 That's a very ancient human arrangement.

01:54:21.000 And I looked at this group in – it was a criminal gang in Chicago in the 1960s called the Vice Lords, right?

01:54:31.000 The term didn't mean that they were committing lots of moral vices, though I'm sure they did occasionally, right?

01:54:42.000 It meant that once you were in, we had you like you're in a vice.

01:54:47.000 It was a strength of brotherhood term, not a sort of moral corruption term, right?

01:54:53.000 So the thing about the vice law is a very, very dangerous part of Chicago in the 60s.

01:54:59.000 And if you were an unaffiliated young – it was African-American community, unaffiliated young male, that you were not in a gang, you were really in danger. 0.97

01:55:11.000 Right?

01:55:11.000 Predation by other gangs.

01:55:12.000 They would rob you.

01:55:13.000 They would beat you up, whatever.

01:55:14.000 You were in danger.

01:55:14.000 You had to join a gang to stay safe.

01:55:16.000 Once you joined that gang, you owed your life to that gang and everybody did.

01:55:21.000 And if you failed, the litmus test of being a vice lord I think?

01:55:45.000 There's a completely functional definition of what it means to be a vice lord.

01:55:48.000 You run towards the fight if any of your brothers are in danger.

01:55:51.000 And if you go the other way, by definition, you're not a vice lord.

01:55:55.000 And what they did with those guys, they didn't beat them up.

01:55:57.000 They didn't – nothing.

01:55:59.000 They put them in the back of a car and they drove them to the heart of enemy territory of some rival gang and they just pushed them out of the car.

01:56:08.000 Like that's what it means to betray your group.

01:56:11.000 And – But in exchange, and this is why it works so well, and this is what I wish we could get back to on some level in this country, though it's much harder with this many people.

01:56:23.000 There was no rank in the vice lords.

01:56:26.000 There was a leader.

01:56:28.000 He had more responsibility.

01:56:29.000 He had the responsibility of sort of organizing people, but he didn't have extra rights.

01:56:34.000 You know what I mean?

01:56:35.000 He couldn't boss people around.

01:56:38.000 He didn't get more money.

01:56:39.000 He didn't get more wine.

01:56:41.000 He didn't, you know, whatever.

01:56:42.000 Like, there was no...

01:56:43.000 He had no advantages, personal advantages to being a leader.

01:56:46.000 He just had more responsibility.

01:56:48.000 And so what that meant is that they were all...

01:56:52.000 It was a completely egalitarian society in that sense.

01:56:55.000 And when they drank...

01:56:57.000 Really interesting ritual.

01:56:58.000 When they drank, I mean, you can do ritual things that signify that you're part of a group, right?

01:57:03.000 And those rituals are very important.

01:57:07.000 And I'll – if I may, I'd like to suggest ways to richly participate in being part of this country.

01:57:13.000 I think there's some things that you can do that sort of remind you in very gratifying ways that you're part of this huge, crazy 300 million person enterprise.

01:57:22.000 But for the vice lawyers, what they would do is they'd pool their money.

01:57:25.000 I mean these kids were always broke, right?

01:57:27.000 And they'd pool their money, their dimes, nickels and dimes or whatever and they'd buy a bottle of wine.

01:57:32.000 They drank wine.

01:57:34.000 And they'd buy a bottle of cheap wine.

01:57:37.000 And everyone in the group would get the same amount of wine regardless of how much money they put in.

01:57:44.000 And if you didn't have any money to put in, you still got the same amount of wine.

01:57:49.000 And that's the ritual egalitarianism between everyone who has pledged their life in defense of the group.

01:57:56.000 And the first thing they did is they poured out a little bit of wine to the vice lords that were in prison and the ones who were dead.

01:58:02.000 So you didn't even have to be alive to be part of this brotherhood.

01:58:07.000 And that's a very, very powerful thing that humans do naturally in small groups.

01:58:12.000 The question for this country and every large country is how do you do that in an eclectic group of 300 million people that is often screaming at each other because they're in disagreement?

01:58:23.000 Like, how do you do that?

01:58:24.000 How do you do that?

01:58:26.000 So glad you asked.

01:58:29.000 Well, what we know is that the more adversity there is, the more people band together.

01:58:34.000 And so there was incredible coming together after 9-11 in this country.

01:58:38.000 And very briefly, there was distinctions of race and class were sort of like took a back seat to we are all Americans.

01:58:44.000 We were attacked.

01:58:45.000 We have to defend ourselves.

01:58:46.000 It's a very natural human reaction.

01:58:49.000 You know, one of the amazing benefits and privileges of an affluent, powerful society is that you're not in fear for your life constantly from an outside enemy.

01:59:01.000 And so we're not on a war footing anymore.

01:59:04.000 So how do you maintain that cohesion even though circumstances don't require it?

01:59:13.000 I've given a lot of thought to it because people keep saying, how can we act like a tribe in this country?

01:59:19.000 How can we return to that state of mind?

01:59:22.000 And so the three ways, and part of this comes out of what happened to me last June.

01:59:27.000 I'm alive.

01:59:28.000 My daughters will have a father because 10 people—I needed 10 units of blood. 0.86

01:59:33.000 It's unbelievable amount of blood.

01:59:35.000 10 people donated blood, right?

01:59:38.000 So the first thing you can do to experience being part of this place, this nation, is donate blood.

01:59:46.000 The amazing thing about blood is that it has no—it doesn't discriminate.

01:59:51.000 Blood is blood is blood.

01:59:54.000 Rich, poor, white, black, it doesn't matter. 0.96

01:59:59.000 All blood saves all people if you're within the blood type.

02:00:03.000 And all of these awful distinctions between people that are so painful to society, they disappear when it comes to blood.

02:00:10.000 And when you donate blood, you might be a Republican, you might be saving the life of a Democrat, or vice versa.

02:00:17.000 I don't know whose blood's in my veins, right?

02:00:20.000 I don't care.

02:00:20.000 We're all human, and they saved me.

02:00:22.000 I owe them.

02:00:23.000 I owe the universe 10 units.

02:00:26.000 I've donated once.

02:00:27.000 I'm going to keep doing it.

02:00:28.000 How many units do you donate at a time?

02:00:30.000 One.

02:00:31.000 One.

02:00:31.000 And how much is that?

02:00:32.000 Like a quart?

02:00:33.000 I think it's about a pint.

02:00:34.000 A pint.

02:00:35.000 A quart.

02:00:35.000 What am I talking about?

02:00:37.000 Donate a quart of blood?

02:00:38.000 Jesus, that's a lot.

02:00:39.000 How much do you carry in your body at any one time?

02:00:43.000 About 10 units.

02:00:44.000 I needed...

02:00:45.000 I lost all my blood, basically.

02:00:49.000 Wow.

02:00:50.000 And I was still talking.

02:00:51.000 That's wow.

02:00:52.000 My heart was still beating, right?

02:00:54.000 So that's why that nurse said, think of it as a sacred moment.

02:00:58.000 Something powerful happened to you, and don't think about it in fearful terms.

02:01:03.000 So, but anyway...

02:01:03.000 And we also learned today that it's actually good for you.

02:01:06.000 That's right.

02:01:06.000 Yeah, that's right.

02:01:07.000 And lose weight, right?

02:01:09.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:01:10.000 So the other way is vote.

02:01:13.000 Vote.

02:01:14.000 When you vote, it means that you need your nation and that your nation needs you, right?

02:01:22.000 You're part of a collective that's collectively coming to hopefully wise decisions.

02:01:27.000 Some days you're going to lose and your candidate's not going to win and some days he or she is going to win.

02:01:33.000 But if you just don't vote, what you're kind of doing is saying, you know what, I don't really care what happens.

02:01:40.000 I don't really feel part of this thing.

02:01:42.000 And so you all do whatever you want.

02:01:44.000 I'm not in.

02:01:47.000 You know what?

02:01:47.000 You're one person out of 330 million.

02:01:49.000 The nation's not going to notice.

02:01:51.000 You're really depriving yourself of the experience, the very profound human experience of being part of something greater.

02:01:58.000 And finally, jury duty.

02:02:04.000 The jury duty is the only thing that keeps one person from deciding the fate of another person.

02:02:14.000 We do not have a system where someone who's accused of a crime may or may not have committed it.

02:02:21.000 We do not have a system where that accused person comes before one other person.

02:02:26.000 They just decide what to do with them.

02:02:28.000 That's too much power in one person.

02:02:30.000 That power is put in the hands of 12 people who hopefully come to a wise, informed decision.

02:02:36.000 And it's the jury duty is why we don't live in oppression and tyranny.

02:02:41.000 It's the mechanism that keeps us in a relatively fair society.

02:02:46.000 You do those three things, jury duty, donate blood, and vote, you will feel like you're part of a country.

02:02:52.000 It also would be, if we all relied on this jury system, which we do, it should be incentive to educate people.

02:02:59.000 It should be incentive to encourage people to have a more balanced perspective because you're going to maybe one day be on the side of those people while they choose your fate.

02:03:09.000 Absolutely.

02:03:09.000 Yeah, and listen, you're put right into the middle of the American drama, right?

02:03:13.000 I mean, it's like a subway car in New York City, right?

02:03:16.000 There's rich people, there's poor people, you know, whatever.

02:03:18.000 And it's amazing.

02:03:19.000 I mean, I was on a jury once.

02:03:23.000 There was a corrupt cop in New York City, and the...

02:03:28.000 The experience of it was really fascinating.

02:03:32.000 What did the cop do?

02:03:46.000 Like somewhere downtown and he would sell the confiscated goods to the Russian guy and he'd sell them on the street. 0.60

02:03:52.000 I mean it was a whole scam.

02:03:53.000 And he was like this sort of sad sack overweight cop who abused the system to the tune of $6,000.

02:04:03.000 It wasn't that much money.

02:04:05.000 Mostly I just felt sort of sad for him.

02:04:07.000 I was like – And we convicted on some counts and not on others.

02:04:13.000 And none of us really wanted him to go to jail, but he definitely was a bad cop, right?

02:04:18.000 So there was this sort of happy medium where we – when the defense attorney saw where this was going and pled out, no jail time, whatever it was.

02:04:30.000 But it was a righteous decision.

02:04:32.000 I mean it was good.

02:04:32.000 Did he get removed from the police force?

02:04:33.000 Oh, yeah.

02:04:34.000 Yeah.

02:04:35.000 I mean, I'm sure a bunch of stuff happened to him, but he didn't do jail time.

02:04:38.000 Have you ever seen the documentary The 7-5?

02:04:41.000 No.

02:04:41.000 Oh, yes.

02:04:42.000 I'm sorry.

02:04:42.000 Yes, I have.

02:04:43.000 Yeah.

02:04:45.000 Yeah, it wasn't quite like that, but it was a sad sack version of that.

02:04:48.000 But how crazy is that documentary when you realize that this is, at least at the time where Michael Dowd was in the police force, this was how it was run.

02:04:58.000 Yeah.

02:04:59.000 And from the very first day on the job, he was introduced to this kind of corruption, the fact that there was this sort of...

02:05:10.000 Right.

02:05:12.000 Well, you know, you don't have a democracy, really, at the small scale or at the large scale if you don't have an oversight mechanism that examines the mechanism that has power over us.

02:05:23.000 Yeah.

02:05:24.000 Right?

02:05:24.000 I mean, if the thing that has power over us, which is the military, the government, and the police, if there aren't mechanisms for examining them, Then we're at risk.

02:05:34.000 Yeah.

02:05:34.000 Right?

02:05:35.000 I mean, that's why you have federal investigations and you have congressional investigations and you have journalists with the military and all this other stuff.

02:05:42.000 And, you know, people bridle at the oversight and they call it all kinds of nonsense.

02:05:47.000 But at the end of the day, that's why we're not living in a friggin' dictatorship. 0.82

02:05:51.000 Yeah.

02:05:52.000 Yeah, so when you set out to write this book, you're incorporating a lot of different things, right?

02:05:58.000 You're incorporating your personal journey along the railroad lines, and you're also incorporating all your thoughts about sort of the mechanisms of freedom.

02:06:07.000 Like, how did you organize this?

02:06:08.000 How did you...

02:06:11.000 So the account of my trip, we just pop up here and there throughout the narrative.

02:06:20.000 And, you know, we are...

02:06:25.000 Outside of direct control by society, I mean, we're moving along the margins in the shadows, you know, on this no man's land of the railroad lines.

02:06:34.000 But we're dependent on society, right?

02:06:36.000 I mean, we're getting our food in town, right? 1.00

02:06:39.000 I mean, walking to town, we look like shit. 1.00

02:06:41.000 We go to a store. 0.99

02:06:43.000 Buy some supplies, some rice, some oatmeal, some whatever and then we keep moving and then we're out of town again.

02:06:48.000 So we're in this weird symbiotic relationship as everyone is and we're trying to figure out like the sort of balance between dependency and autonomy.

02:06:57.000 That's true for everybody, right?

02:07:00.000 It was just true in very raw physical terms for us.

02:07:04.000 So the journey comes and goes throughout the book.

02:07:08.000 And it talks about that level of freedom.

02:07:10.000 And then the rest of it, the research material, is divided into run, fight, and think.

02:07:17.000 Mobility gives people freedom from an oppressor.

02:07:21.000 Oppressors are often more powerful.

02:07:26.000 They're more, in sort of like military terms, are often more mechanized, like a more mechanized army.

02:07:32.000 And again...

02:07:34.000 Oppression is in the eye of the beholder.

02:07:35.000 The Taliban felt oppressed by the U.S. military.

02:07:38.000 They are now free.

02:07:39.000 They have their, quote, freedom.

02:07:41.000 The reason that they were able to fight us to not lose for 20 years is that they were more mobile and we were more heavily armored and slower.

02:07:50.000 And it costs us a lot more.

02:07:52.000 Like a bigger fighter uses more oxygen.

02:07:55.000 A bigger military uses more money for every day that they're fighting.

02:07:59.000 The insurgents use much, much, much less so they can sustain it indefinitely.

02:08:03.000 That's run.

02:08:04.000 Fight is when it comes down to a fight, how does the smaller entity win, be it the Montenegrins or a smaller fighter in the ring or, you know, at every scale?

02:08:17.000 And then finally...

02:08:23.000 And what I looked at there is how does change come – like if you're part of a society, you're really not talking about freedom.

02:08:35.000 I mean you can be free of our society.

02:08:36.000 You could go or I could go to Somalia and be free of the authority of the United States.

02:08:41.000 It's basically a failed state.

02:08:44.000 Maybe there's some corners in Alaska where the government wouldn't find you.

02:08:47.000 Whatever.

02:08:47.000 You can get your freedom from your country by simply leaving, right?

02:08:51.000 If you're going to stay within your community.

02:08:56.000 You're really talking about your rights.

02:08:58.000 So how do you maintain your rights or gain the rights you should have within the community that you're in?

02:09:09.000 And that requires...

02:09:11.000 I mean, almost by definition, no individual is stronger than the U.S. government and the U.S. military and the police and blah, blah, blah.

02:09:17.000 So you have to sort of outthink it, right?

02:09:20.000 So in the Easter Rising in Ireland...

02:09:23.000 The Irish rebels were completely outgunned, right?

02:09:26.000 And they lost the initial fight and they took over Dublin.

02:09:29.000 And the English army came in and just rolled them up, right?

02:09:34.000 But they were playing the long game.

02:09:36.000 And eventually it was too costly for the British to keep control of Ireland and they gave them their freedom.

02:09:44.000 I think?

02:10:02.000 What happened to labor in the absence of unions was really horrific.

02:10:06.000 And so the striker, you know, they started going on strike.

02:10:12.000 And these are very, very poor people.

02:10:14.000 A lot of them were immigrants, right?

02:10:16.000 And they were facing the U.S., the National Guard, the U.S. government.

02:10:21.000 I mean, they were facing unbelievable odds and they out-thought them.

02:10:26.000 And one way they out-thought them was by—and this is super important— They had leadership that was willing to die for the cause.

02:10:33.000 Like literally willing to die.

02:10:34.000 Like Michael Connelly in Dublin during the Easter Rising.

02:10:38.000 Leadership that was willing to die.

02:10:40.000 They did not put themselves behind the people, the frontline people.

02:10:45.000 They were with them, right?

02:10:48.000 And the other thing is that they brought women into the fight. 0.76

02:10:52.000 And the interesting thing about women is that the authorities, this is true all around the world and not without exception, but they are more reluctant to kill women than to kill men.

02:11:03.000 The political ramifications for killing men are much lighter than for killing women.

02:11:10.000 And it's such a powerful factor that if you put women on the front line of a labor strike, the cops don't know what to do. 1.00

02:11:18.000 And so that's what they did in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on the mill strikes in Lawrence.

02:11:22.000 You have to understand how abusive the labor relationship was with the factories back then.

02:11:29.000 And their protests were long in coming and completely legitimate.

02:11:34.000 And the authorities just put the National Guard out there with fixed bayonets.

02:11:38.000 What were the guys going to do?

02:11:40.000 And then they put women out there. 1.00

02:11:42.000 And the strikers put women out there. 1.00

02:11:45.000 And, you know, these boys in uniform, they had mothers, they had sisters.

02:11:49.000 They weren't going to start bayoneting women.

02:11:50.000 They were tactically stymied.

02:11:54.000 And this one cop, police captain in Lawrence, Massachusetts, said, it's such a wonderful line, he said, one cop can handle ten men.

02:12:06.000 But it takes 10 cops to handle one woman. 1.00

02:12:10.000 And that started to change the dynamic.

02:12:13.000 And the other advantage that women had is that their social relations tend not to be hierarchical like men are. 0.86

02:12:19.000 I mean you need a hierarchy if you're going to ask people to charge machine guns.

02:12:23.000 You need a hierarchy, right?

02:12:24.000 You need command and control, mass on the street, and charge, right?

02:12:29.000 So, women tend to have more lateral social relations, and lateral social relations are really hard for the authorities to penetrate. 1.00

02:12:39.000 You can't just take out one person and the whole thing collapses, right?

02:12:42.000 It's a spider web.

02:12:44.000 And so the lateral female relations in the sort of slums of Lawrence, Massachusetts, the authorities could not penetrate. 1.00

02:12:51.000 They couldn't get any intelligence.

02:12:52.000 And so they used women For the sort of like information sharing, planning, strategy stuff. 1.00

02:12:59.000 They use women for that and the authorities just could not get inside it. 1.00

02:13:02.000 They couldn't get ahead of it.

02:13:04.000 So that's the sort of think part of this.

02:13:07.000 It's like how do you – freedom really means freedom from being controlled by a stronger power, a bigger power.

02:13:15.000 And how do you do that?

02:13:17.000 You can run.

02:13:18.000 You can fight.

02:13:18.000 At the end of the day, you might have to think.

02:13:20.000 And that for thousands of years, that's how humans have done it.

02:13:25.000 When you're putting this all together, are you thinking of this as a study on freedom?

02:13:30.000 Is it a guidebook?

02:13:32.000 Is it a series of personal experiences and historical references to freedom?

02:13:38.000 It's in the eye of the beholder.

02:13:40.000 I mean, it's all of those things.

02:13:42.000 I wanted to figure out, using as few words as possible, what allows human beings to be free?

02:13:51.000 And this is what I came to understand about it.

02:13:57.000 It's not a philosophical tract.

02:13:59.000 I mean, you could write a thousand pages on this philosophical implications of and metaphysical implications of freedom and you'd never get to the end of the conversation and no one would read it, right?

02:14:10.000 I want to do like really physical, animal, visceral terms.

02:14:16.000 Why are we...

02:14:22.000 How can humans be self-defining?

02:14:25.000 Either as a group or as an individual.

02:14:29.000 And this is what I came up with.

02:14:31.000 And what I would say is just to reiterate this point about how much we all need groups to be free – And then you have to maintain your freedom, your rights within that group.

02:14:42.000 I mean, that's the sort of the one-two step of being self-defining is the group you're in is not oppressed by someone else.

02:14:49.000 And then within the group you're in, you have your rights.

02:14:52.000 So a two-step process.

02:14:54.000 But the more...

02:15:01.000 The higher the obligations within the group, the more autonomy people have within the group.

02:15:06.000 And so what I would say is that the...

02:15:13.000 Freedom means you have the right to not be oppressed by your leaders.

02:15:20.000 But you don't have the right to be free of obligations.

02:15:23.000 So the question for a modern nation is what are reasonable obligations to ask of people in a crisis and not in a crisis?

02:15:31.000 What is reasonable?

02:15:33.000 As a very simple example, we don't have the right to drive on the left-hand side of the road because we'll frigging kill people, right?

02:15:40.000 That's not a diminishment of your freedom.

02:15:42.000 It means that you're part of a group and you understand that its rules keep human life as sacred.

02:15:47.000 If you don't think so, you really shouldn't be here.

02:15:50.000 And this is one way we keep people from dying in the highways is that everyone – Everyone drives on the right-hand side of the road.

02:15:56.000 I had a journalist friend who was in Goa, I think, which was a Portuguese colony and eventually reverted to India.

02:16:04.000 I can't quite remember the details.

02:16:05.000 At any rate, it was going from a left-hand system to a right-hand system, right?

02:16:10.000 So my friend—this was like 20 years ago—my friend said to the taxi driver, well, when the big day comes and you change, you know, you change jurisdiction— What are you going to do with the roads, right?

02:16:25.000 How are you going to change from the left-hand side to the right-hand side or the other way around?

02:16:30.000 And the taxi driver said, oh, we'll do it gradually.

02:16:34.000 Imagine what that would look like, right?

02:16:38.000 Sometimes left, sometimes right.

02:16:39.000 This part of town, you're right.

02:16:41.000 That part of town, you're right. 1.00

02:16:42.000 What the fuck? 1.00

02:16:43.000 So basically, you're part of a group. 1.00

02:16:45.000 Your group is making decisions about how to keep everyone safe.

02:16:48.000 That's one of the obligations is you follow those rules, right?

02:16:51.000 And when those rules impinge on your rights, then in a democracy, you have fair recourse through the courts and through elections to make a change.

02:17:00.000 What you don't have the ability to do is give yourself rights, right?

02:17:04.000 So if you're late for your airplane and you get to the airport and there's a huge line at security, You cannot give yourself the right to go to the front of the line.

02:17:14.000 But what you can do is say, it's my daughter's wedding tomorrow.

02:17:18.000 I'm going to miss my plane.

02:17:20.000 So all you guys, do you mind if I go first?

02:17:23.000 Rights are given to you.

02:17:25.000 You can't take them.

02:17:26.000 You can take power.

02:17:29.000 Right?

02:17:30.000 Through violence.

02:17:31.000 And you can take your freedom through violence from an enemy.

02:17:36.000 But rights are given by the group to the individual.

02:17:39.000 And you have to go to that line and say, would you mind?

02:17:42.000 And they all say, no, of course not.

02:17:43.000 Go for it.

02:17:44.000 Congratulations.

02:17:45.000 That's what rights are.

02:17:48.000 It sort of brings me to the right of freedom of speech, because we all agree that it's important that people be able to express themselves, but we also impose at least the limitations on that where you can't yell fire in a crowded theater.

02:18:05.000 We have limitations in terms of, I mean, you're able to express yourself, but that's a little slippery, right?

02:18:14.000 Like, when do we decide that what you're doing is not technically freedom of speech?

02:18:22.000 It falls under incitement.

02:18:25.000 To violence, it falls under some unprotected category that although we allow you to express yourself freely, we have to maintain some sort of structure and some sort of order.

02:18:36.000 Well, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but I'll try to sort of think my way through this with you.

02:18:43.000 So...

02:18:43.000 You're not a doctor or a lawyer?

02:18:45.000 No, can you believe I just...

02:18:46.000 This is crazy.

02:18:47.000 What did I do with my life?

02:18:49.000 Okay, continue with my disappointment.

02:18:51.000 So Donald Trump said an untruth, right?

02:18:56.000 He said, our president, Barack Obama, is not a U.S. citizen.

02:19:00.000 He has every right, as a matter of free speech, to say that, right?

02:19:06.000 Mm-hmm.

02:19:07.000 I think it was unwise for the GOP to not call him out on it.

02:19:10.000 But regardless, that's a political question.

02:19:13.000 But as a matter of free speech, he was allowed to say something that was demonstrably not true, right? 0.99

02:19:22.000 Had he said, Barack Obama is not a citizen, someone should kill him. 0.94

02:19:30.000 He does not have the right to say that. 0.99

02:19:33.000 Right?

02:19:48.000 That's where that line is.

02:19:50.000 And so, you know, I don't know how the courts sort of like slice this, but if they feel that a certain kind of inflammatory speech will lead to loss of life—and, you know, I think in a democracy, it's fair to say speech that will undermine—I mean,

02:20:07.000 the democracy we have is part of our physical security in the world.

02:20:13.000 Democracies are very strong systems.

02:20:17.000 Dictatorships don't do very well.

02:20:18.000 I mean they're very unstable.

02:20:20.000 I mean for all of the obsession with control that dictators have, dictatorships are very – usually very short-lived regimes.

02:20:28.000 Rarely transition power to like the son of the dictator or whatever.

02:20:32.000 It just doesn't work very well.

02:20:33.000 Democracies are very resilient and they transfer power very, very well.

02:20:36.000 So our security in the world comes from – The strength of our – in part from the strength of our democracy and the amazing military that protects it.

02:20:48.000 And so I think you could argue that if someone says something which is like immediately, like viscerally, obviously a threat to our democratic system, you can sort of argue – you play that out a few more steps.

02:21:03.000 Real lives are actually going to be in danger.

02:21:05.000 And so then you are sanctioned.

02:21:08.000 And that's the big argument with Donald Trump.

02:21:11.000 That's the big argument with the Capitol Hill.

02:21:14.000 Exactly.

02:21:14.000 That's right.

02:21:15.000 Should he or should he not have access to The sort of megaphone of Twitter and Facebook if he's saying things that some people believe got some folks killed on Capitol Hill and that are a grave threat to the democratic process.

02:21:34.000 I'm not going to weigh in.

02:21:35.000 That's not a journalist's role but I think that seems to be what the discussion is about.

02:21:39.000 It's a gray discussion.

02:21:41.000 It's an interesting one.

02:21:43.000 Because he didn't exactly say, do that, but he didn't say, don't do it.

02:21:50.000 Right.

02:21:52.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:21:53.000 And he's got to know that in this insanely volatile situation where people are really thinking that the relationship between the voters and the Politicians and this whole thing is inexorably flawed and that they're stealing the election.

02:22:11.000 It's over.

02:22:12.000 Democracy has crashed.

02:22:14.000 We're going to lose the republic.

02:22:16.000 This is all madness.

02:22:19.000 Storm the Capitol Hill.

02:22:20.000 What are we saying here?

02:22:23.000 Do what when you get there?

02:22:25.000 What happens when you get there?

02:22:26.000 You got to show a force?

02:22:27.000 Show a force.

02:22:29.000 Okay.

02:22:29.000 What does that mean?

02:22:31.000 And that's where it's open to interpretation, right?

02:22:34.000 Well, look, yeah, it is open to interpretation.

02:22:36.000 But if you don't just look at Donald Trump, but the people who are close around him.

02:22:41.000 So his personal – correct me if I'm wrong, but if memory serves, Lin Wood, one of his personal attorneys, literally said before the January 6th insurrection – Insurrection is too dignified a word,

02:22:56.000 whatever that mob was.

02:22:58.000 Literally said, Mike Pence, the vice president, should be tried for treason and hung. 0.94

02:23:04.000 Right?

02:23:05.000 This is the lawyer to the president speaking.

02:23:07.000 Now, did Donald Trump say that or okay it?

02:23:10.000 No, I'm pretty sure he didn't. 0.99

02:23:12.000 Mike Pence should be tried for treason and hung. 0.98

02:23:15.000 Check me on Google if you want. 0.99

02:23:16.000 Please do.

02:23:17.000 What was the premise?

02:23:19.000 Because he validated the election results.

02:23:24.000 An election that the Republican leadership eventually admitted was free and fair.

02:23:30.000 That was the context?

02:23:31.000 Yes.

02:23:31.000 Tried for treason and hung.

02:23:33.000 That is a crazy thing to say.

02:23:35.000 And there was a lot of rhetoric by other people in that group about what they could do with Nancy Pelosi and other people that they thought had betrayed.

02:23:43.000 Betrayed what?

02:23:44.000 But imagine if the...

02:23:46.000 Real mob got to Mike Pence and murdered him after that.

02:23:51.000 Yeah.

02:23:51.000 Oh, exactly.

02:23:52.000 And really did believe that he was a treasonous person.

02:23:55.000 Right, exactly.

02:23:56.000 So, I mean, again, if I'm wrong, I stand corrected, but that's my memory of what he said.

02:24:02.000 Wow. 0.99

02:24:02.000 This says he should be executed by a firing squad. 0.99

02:24:06.000 Oh, it was firing squad. 1.00

02:24:08.000 Do your way off.

02:24:09.000 My bad.

02:24:12.000 That's the same.

02:24:14.000 Yeah.

02:24:15.000 So that's the personal attorney to the American president.

02:24:18.000 That's so crazy.

02:24:19.000 Firing squad.

02:24:20.000 While he was still president.

02:24:21.000 I mean, he's still president at this point.

02:24:23.000 Jesus Christ.

02:24:24.000 And he didn't, you know, the president, ex-president Trump, did not say, oh, wait a second, what do you say?

02:24:30.000 You know, he let it go, right?

02:24:32.000 So, what's this have to do with free speech?

02:24:35.000 Free speech is there because it's closely tied to human dignity and self-definition and autonomy and all that stuff.

02:24:41.000 But if your free speech undermines the dignity and the autonomy and the safety and the lives of other people, you stop having that right.

02:24:49.000 You cannot drive on the left-hand side of the road.

02:24:51.000 Like that is the equivalent of that situation.

02:24:55.000 Yeah.

02:24:56.000 That makes sense.

02:24:59.000 You got a lot of little tabs on that book there.

02:25:02.000 Oh, you know, if I'm doing a radio interview or something and someone says, oh, read me that section about the Apache, I can find it fairly quickly.

02:25:12.000 That's all that is.

02:25:13.000 Did you have anything in those notes that you wanted to bring up that we hadn't discussed yet?

02:25:17.000 No, you know, we're covering most of it.

02:25:19.000 I mean, most of it's in my head, but...

02:25:22.000 Sometimes I worry that I'm going to forget something important to bring up, and so that's just my...

02:25:27.000 It's like a security blanket.

02:25:29.000 Like, if I can put that next to me, then I never need to look at it.

02:25:32.000 That's how it works.

02:25:33.000 Well, I always enjoy your work, man, and I really enjoy your books on tape because there's something that I always appreciate about an author reading his own work or her own work, and you do an exceptional job of that.

02:25:45.000 Thank you.

02:25:45.000 You've got a great voice for it.

02:25:47.000 Thank you.

02:25:48.000 Thank you.

02:25:49.000 Reading is hard.

02:25:51.000 They put you basically in something the size of a phone booth and you read for hours and hours and hours.

02:25:56.000 But I'm proud that I can do it well.

02:25:59.000 It's very, very gratifying to read your own work.

02:26:05.000 There's a section in my book about a guy named Michael Mallon who was one of the insurrectionists in Dublin.

02:26:12.000 You know, a dozen or so top insurrectionists were executed by firing squad by the Brits.

02:26:21.000 And Michael Mallon was one of them.

02:26:23.000 When they were taking him to the place of his execution, the carriage went right by his own house and he saw his dog.

02:26:32.000 And he got to, you know, in the hours before his execution, he wrote to, you know, he had four little children and a wife, and he wrote a letter to them.

02:26:42.000 And it's almost kind of stream of consciousness.

02:26:46.000 I mean, he's hours from being shot, right?

02:26:49.000 He's never going to see them again.

02:26:51.000 He's never going to see nothing.

02:26:52.000 It's over, right?

02:26:53.000 And he gave his life for Ireland, and he writes this letter, and it's in my book.

02:26:58.000 I reproduce it in my book.

02:26:59.000 I quote it in my book.

02:27:03.000 The words that he said, the last words that he said to his beloved family, and it's almost stream of consciousness.

02:27:09.000 He's very upset, right?

02:27:11.000 And he repeats things and he's, oh my god, my god, I'll never hold you again.

02:27:15.000 I mean, particularly if you're a parent, it's just heartbreaking.

02:27:18.000 At any rate, I was reading that section and I got so choked up and the engineer got so choked up that we actually had to stop for a while.

02:27:30.000 I mean, you know, this is a hundred years later.

02:27:33.000 This man's words that he wrote in the hours before he stood in front of a firing squad and shot, that they can still...

02:27:43.000 Produce so much empathy in us that we cry.

02:27:47.000 That's what humans are.

02:27:48.000 Like, that's the amazing thing about humans.

02:27:51.000 And so it just—I don't know.

02:27:55.000 Obviously, poor Michael Mallon's never going to know that his letter is still bringing a tear to people's eye, but it is.

02:28:03.000 Well, it's also the amazing thing about— It's utilizing language and putting the words together in a way that's going to best represent the way your thoughts are and how to reach someone else's imagination and have them recreate these thoughts in their mind.

02:28:21.000 That's right.

02:28:22.000 And you know, when you have a sort of certainty of purpose, like he did, A sort of sense of meaning of what you're doing.

02:28:31.000 It gives you courage.

02:28:34.000 And hopefully a courage that you'll use justly.

02:28:37.000 And so apparently there was a medical examiner at all the executions.

02:28:42.000 It was in the Stonebreakers yard.

02:28:45.000 In the central prison in Dublin.

02:28:48.000 And the executions were held in the Stonebreaker's yard.

02:28:50.000 And it's a sort of stone enclosure.

02:28:52.000 I mean, a very small place.

02:28:53.000 And there was a medical examiner sort of witnessing this.

02:28:56.000 And, you know, one after another, there was one woman slated for execution at the last moment. 0.98

02:29:03.000 This is what I was saying.

02:29:04.000 They withdrew the execution because they knew that executing a woman... 1.00

02:29:09.000 The Brits knew it would make their job much, much harder in Ireland.

02:29:13.000 They didn't dare do it.

02:29:14.000 The men were no problem.

02:29:16.000 But the medical examiner testified that at the moment where the man stood facing the firing squad, ready, aim, fire, That the only person there who wasn't troubling was the condemned.

02:29:32.000 That all these young boys, I mean, they're just 19, 20-year-old boys in the army, right?

02:29:36.000 They didn't want to be executing people.

02:29:38.000 They didn't sign up for that.

02:29:39.000 And they were all trembling.

02:29:40.000 And they could hardly hold their rifle barrel still.

02:29:43.000 Imagine.

02:29:47.000 Imagine giving that responsibility to a person based on what your government is telling you is right or wrong.

02:29:55.000 It's time for you to take a life.

02:29:56.000 And you know what?

02:29:57.000 If you don't do it, the next person up in front of the firing squad is going to be you.

02:30:01.000 Yeah.

02:30:02.000 It's always been fascinating to me, too, how one person will get blanks.

02:30:06.000 Yeah, that's right.

02:30:07.000 You don't know.

02:30:08.000 That's right.

02:30:08.000 And you know, if society really wants to take moral responsibility for killing, they should make sure no one has blanks.

02:30:15.000 And then we really have a real conversation about if we want to be in this business or not.

02:30:20.000 Someone pointed out, I wish I could claim this thought, but I can't.

02:30:25.000 It's so brilliant.

02:30:26.000 That amazing photograph of Tiananmen Square, where there's that man standing in front of a column of tanks, not moving.

02:30:35.000 And, you know, he's so, obviously, he's so brave.

02:30:38.000 I've stood in front of tanks.

02:30:39.000 They're huge, right?

02:30:40.000 I mean, they crush you in a second.

02:30:42.000 I mean, they're scary things, right?

02:30:44.000 And he's standing in front of this tank, and he's not moving.

02:30:47.000 And the tanks have stopped.

02:30:49.000 And someone pointed out, you know, there's two brave people in that photograph.

02:30:53.000 There's the guy in front of the tank, and then there's the driver of the lead tank.

02:30:59.000 There it is.

02:31:00.000 There's the driver of the lead tank.

02:31:03.000 And he's risking possibly being executed by his own government for insubordination.

02:31:10.000 And he's not running that guy over.

02:31:13.000 And he's the other unseen courageous person in that photo is the guy who's not.

02:31:18.000 Look, look at that.

02:31:21.000 Think of the courage for both of them.

02:31:23.000 Think of that.

02:31:24.000 Think of the courage.

02:31:25.000 And the conversation the tank driver and that man could have had, if it were allowed, the conversation they could have, the government they could form, the good they can do in the world, imagine if that were allowed.

02:31:40.000 That is such an intense video.

02:31:44.000 Is he going to climb up?

02:31:45.000 I don't even remember this.

02:31:48.000 No, that's someone who believes in democracy more than his own life. 1.00

02:31:52.000 Or someone who's just fucking losing his shit. 1.00

02:31:55.000 Yeah, but why, right? 1.00

02:31:56.000 Well, because he's being oppressed.

02:31:58.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:31:59.000 Yeah.

02:31:59.000 But that's someone who does not care what happens to himself or herself, right?

02:32:04.000 That's someone who has put their society, their people, ahead of their own welfare.

02:32:09.000 And that, I mean, if you can watch that in Art's Doc Ryan, you're, you know, like...

02:32:15.000 It's incredible.

02:32:16.000 How does this play out?

02:32:17.000 I don't remember.

02:32:18.000 Eventually they got him out of there.

02:32:19.000 I think he negotiated something with the...

02:32:21.000 Yeah, it got resolved.

02:32:24.000 Something got resolved.

02:32:25.000 I mean, something was said that made him able to save his own life.

02:32:31.000 Beautiful, right?

02:32:33.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:32:36.000 It's heavy shit. 1.00

02:32:38.000 And heavy shit to think that that government to this day is still a dictatorship. 1.00

02:32:42.000 Yeah, and they killed thousands of people in Tenement Square. 1.00

02:32:44.000 They're old people. 1.00

02:32:45.000 They machine gun them.

02:32:47.000 Yeah.

02:32:48.000 And you can't find out about it.

02:32:50.000 No, that's right.

02:32:50.000 If you live there and you try to research it online, it's unavailable.

02:32:54.000 Yeah, that's right.

02:32:59.000 Is there a better example of freedom in the world than the United States?

02:33:03.000 Okay, so freedom and democracy are not the same thing, right?

02:33:08.000 And democracy gives people rights within a country, right?

02:33:15.000 Freedom really is...

02:33:20.000 I mean, it's up to you to define it how you want, but the working definition I'm using is freedom means that you are safe from an outside power controlling you, right?

02:33:30.000 If you consider the U.S. government to be an outside power, which I don't personally, but if you consider it—if you think of it that way— Then, yes, the word freedom is sort of appropriate in the context of January 6th or whatever.

02:33:43.000 But really, when people say, you know, I want my freedoms, right, my freedoms to not pay taxes or not wear a mask or whatever it is, you know, my freedoms to compete in women's sports and I'm trans, you know, whatever it is, they're really talking about their rights.

02:33:57.000 And so, you know, the American democratic system is deeply flawed and deeply amazing.

02:34:05.000 And, you know, like we're still working at it and we make mistakes, but we're improving it, you know, whatever.

02:34:09.000 And the civil rights movement in the 60s was a huge leap forward.

02:34:13.000 Clearly, clearly, clearly it was not a just country before those laws were enacted.

02:34:18.000 And it's still not entirely just in its application, right?

02:34:21.000 Yeah.

02:34:23.000 Freedom is really a different matter.

02:34:26.000 And so I would say we are a free country because we are not under the control of another power and that on paper our rights are amazing and transcend the rights of most people throughout almost all of human history.

02:34:42.000 But obviously we're flawed.

02:34:45.000 We're human.

02:34:46.000 We're racist.

02:34:47.000 We're biased.

02:34:48.000 We're this.

02:34:48.000 We're that.

02:34:49.000 We're rich.

02:34:49.000 We're poor.

02:34:50.000 We don't apply it in fair ways all the time.

02:34:53.000 But is there a better example of what the way society can be structured anywhere else?

02:35:00.000 I mean you need – so you need this sort of balance of a country that is – can defend itself and its borders and defend its democracy, a balance between that and a system that's fairly just and egalitarian.

02:35:16.000 I mean one of the worrisome things in my opinion in terms of justice, which is another category, Is that the gap between rich and poor in this country, the income gap, what's called the Gini coefficient, is growing larger, not smaller.

02:35:32.000 And the larger that gap gets, arguably the less just the society is and the people at the bottom of that gap are arguably not as, quote, free as the people at the top.

02:35:42.000 I mean, just in terms of the choices they have available to them.

02:35:45.000 And that trend has been going on for decades, and it's correlated with all kinds of things that are dangerous to a society, to a democracy.

02:35:55.000 And exacerbated by the pandemic.

02:35:56.000 Oh, of course, yeah.

02:35:57.000 But it's been going on for a long time.

02:35:59.000 So the Gini coefficient is named for an Italian economist around 100 years ago, and it measures the income gap between rich and poor.

02:36:08.000 What's really interesting is that you have hunter-gatherer societies that are really very egalitarian.

02:36:14.000 They have a Gini coefficient of 0.25.

02:36:17.000 It's on a scale from 0 to 1.0.

02:36:19.000 So they're much closer to sort of like complete equality than they are to complete monopoly.

02:36:24.000 And as you go up the scale, you start to find country, you know, really corrupt countries have high Gini coefficients, terrible gap between rich and poor.

02:36:36.000 America has one of the highest Gini coefficients, I think 42, 41,.41,.42, of any of the Western democracies, right?

02:36:46.000 It's on a par with the Roman Empire. 0.71

02:36:48.000 Wow.

02:36:49.000 One of the highest Gini coefficients was in medieval Europe.

02:36:54.000 And that was rectified by the Black Death, the Great Plague.

02:36:58.000 It killed so many people.

02:37:00.000 The Black Death killed one third of the population of Europe.

02:37:03.000 One out of three people died.

02:37:05.000 There was a huge labor shortage and that actually brought the Gini coefficient back down.

02:37:14.000 And so it's – the weird thing about the Gini coefficient is that – I mean you obviously don't want too high a one because it's not just.

02:37:25.000 It has its own instability.

02:37:28.000 But really low Gini coefficients typically are not associated with powerful countries.

02:37:33.000 So the empires that have dominated world events, the Han Dynasty, the Roman Empire, the Ottomans, on and on, America, the British Empire, they have like fairly high Gini coefficients.

02:37:47.000 So as a good lefty, I like to think, oh, well, a just and fair egalitarian society eventually will be the most powerful country in the world because everyone's happy and we all pull together and blah, blah, blah.

02:37:57.000 It's really not true.

02:37:59.000 Typically, the really, really large dominant empires have like moderately high Gini coefficients.

02:38:04.000 So it ruined my liberal fantasies about all that.

02:38:07.000 Trevor Burrus Is that because it's never been attempted successfully in a better way?

02:38:13.000 Or is – I mean like think about democracy, right?

02:38:15.000 We didn't have democracy until the 1700s.

02:38:18.000 It didn't exist in terms of like a global leadership, like a global government.

02:38:24.000 Right.

02:38:24.000 But now we have it, and it's thought to be the shining example.

02:38:27.000 But if you look at 1776 to the rest of human history, we're talking about a drop in the bucket, a blink of an eye, right?

02:38:33.000 Right.

02:38:34.000 In comparison to the hundreds of thousands of years that people lived under the bloody rule of dictatorship and monarchies.

02:38:41.000 Well, I mean, here's the thing.

02:38:42.000 Hunter-gatherers are not democracies, right? 1.00

02:38:45.000 But they have very low Gini coefficients.

02:38:47.000 In other words, in material terms, they're fairly egalitarian.

02:38:52.000 And in a lot of those societies, women are in a subordinate role and all kinds of other things that would offend our modern sensibilities. 1.00

02:38:58.000 What I think we really want is to make sure that the people that are at the very top are not abusing the people at the bottom and that the people at the bottom have a standard of life that's acceptable.

02:39:08.000 That's right.

02:39:09.000 So even if you're fairly poor, but if you have access to good housing, safe communities, and good food, that's what you want.

02:39:18.000 That's what everybody wants, right?

02:39:28.000 The cars and all the stress and all the hassle that goes along with it.

02:39:32.000 This genie coefficient I mean, does it relate to those things?

02:39:38.000 Like, is it...

02:39:38.000 Well, some of that stuff...

02:39:39.000 We want...

02:39:40.000 Yeah.

02:39:40.000 I mean, some of those decisions are personal decisions.

02:39:43.000 Like, you know, some people don't want to be a corporate lawyer or whatever and work...

02:39:46.000 They don't even want to be wealthy.

02:39:48.000 They just want to be okay.

02:39:49.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:39:49.000 I mean, as Mike Tyson said, I was freest when I was poor.

02:39:52.000 Right?

02:39:53.000 And so...

02:39:54.000 And just to be clear, I'm not advocating for a high GD coefficient for the United States.

02:39:59.000 I'm just sort of pointing out historically that really dominant empires in the world...

02:40:04.000 Have had fairly high Gini coefficients, and you can make a very good case for a low Gini coefficient in South America after all those awful dictatorships the United States supported through the 70s and 80s.

02:40:16.000 There was initiatives for real economic reforms that brought the Gini coefficients down.

02:40:21.000 Those countries are way more stable now because they're fairer countries, economically, politically, legally fairer countries.

02:40:32.000 The Gini coefficients have come down.

02:40:34.000 It's just that Ecuador is never going to be a world power.

02:40:36.000 The world powers throughout history for the past thousand years have not been very fair societies.

02:40:43.000 Is it because insane amounts of money are needed to fund military and to fund these corporations that are innovating and that's going to keep you at the cutting edge of cultures in terms of your ability to change things, your ability to affect things globally?

02:41:01.000 Look, there's an accumulation of capital, and very powerful rulers then depend on a huge labor pool to fill enormous armies.

02:41:15.000 That labor pool isn't going to be there in an egalitarian society. 0.98

02:41:18.000 Everyone has more or less the same amount of I think we're good to go.

02:41:39.000 So, you know, I mean, I don't know.

02:41:41.000 I don't know if there is an answer, but I'm just guessing that that kind of top-down hierarchy that comes with the accumulation of wealth also creates a labor pool for your armies.

02:41:49.000 And then those armies are then very, very capable of defeating the enemy.

02:41:54.000 But once – sometimes it doesn't go the right way.

02:41:57.000 So King Darius of Persia, who at the time was the most powerful military leader – of the world.

02:42:04.000 Massive, massive army rode north to fight the Scythians who were this sort of wild marijuana-smoking nomadic people, right? 1.00

02:42:13.000 Completely whacked out, out there people and amazing warriors.

02:42:17.000 And they were totally outgunned by Darius, right?

02:42:21.000 And the Scythians sort of avoided him for days and Darius finally got them into a position to fight him, right? 0.53

02:42:29.000 And this is mobility versus strength.

02:42:30.000 It's exactly that, right?

02:42:32.000 He finally got them in a position to fight him.

02:42:36.000 And right before the battle, I mean, imagine how scared and nervous everybody is, right?

02:42:41.000 The huge armies are drawn up facing each other.

02:42:44.000 At the last moment, the Scythians noticed that there were a lot of rabbits hopping around in the underbrush.

02:42:51.000 And they took their bows and arrows and they started hunting the rabbits so that they would have something to eat for dinner.

02:42:57.000 And Darius saw this.

02:42:58.000 Back in the day, armies were drawn up within sight of each other, right?

02:43:04.000 This isn't a big standoff.

02:43:05.000 They're all looking at each other right across a football field basically.

02:43:08.000 He saw that the Scythian warriors were so calm that they were hunting rabbits in their spare time waiting for the fight to begin and it unnerved him so deeply that he pulled out.

02:43:21.000 He retreated and they fled.

02:43:23.000 Isn't that wild?

02:43:24.000 Trevor Burrus That is wild.

02:43:27.000 Just the rabbit hunting?

02:43:28.000 He was like, anyone who can hunt rabbits before a battle like this has got to be sure they're gonna win.

02:43:33.000 I want no part of it.

02:43:36.000 Now, there must be an equivalent in MMA, right?

02:43:39.000 The guy that yawns before the fight or whatever.

02:43:41.000 Like, I mean, those MMA guys must communicate confidence in a variety of ways.

02:43:46.000 There is a way that you can tell someone's overwhelmed by the moment.

02:43:51.000 You can feel it and see it, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to lose.

02:43:54.000 Right.

02:43:54.000 No, but I mean before the fight.

02:43:58.000 That's a lot of what...

02:44:01.000 Psychological warfare that a lot of fighters engage in.

02:44:04.000 The whole point of it is to get the other person thinking and get them upset.

02:44:07.000 There's a lot of unconscious dominance and submission with humans and all the social primates.

02:44:13.000 And so they did this one study.

02:44:15.000 It's fascinating.

02:44:15.000 They looked at those sort of pre-fight poses where they have the fighters in boxing.

02:44:22.000 They sort of stand next to each other and face each other.

02:44:24.000 And they examined those for unconscious Sort of body language, those kind of visual cues.

02:44:32.000 And so one signal is called an appeasement cue.

02:44:39.000 It's a little signal like, I'm not a threat to you, don't hurt me.

02:44:44.000 And an appeasement cue is usually used by someone who feels that the other person is a threat to them and can hurt them.

02:44:50.000 And they don't want to get into a fight.

02:44:52.000 So a smile – and we've all seen people do this.

02:44:55.000 We've all done it ourselves to cops or whatever.

02:44:57.000 Like when someone seems to be more powerful than you, what you do is – what people do is they sort of do a sort of forced smile.

02:45:03.000 It's called an appeasement cue.

02:45:04.000 What they found when they look at these videos was that once in a while these fighters would sort of briefly smile.

02:45:11.000 And that was overwhelmingly correlated with losing the fight.

02:45:17.000 Is that wild?

02:45:18.000 It is wild.

02:45:19.000 I don't even think they'd know they'd do it.

02:45:21.000 It's an unconscious thing.

02:45:23.000 Wow.

02:45:24.000 So they're trying to find some peace in a place where they're 100% committed to violence.

02:45:31.000 Right.

02:45:32.000 But they're sending a signal, don't hurt me.

02:45:34.000 I'm not a threat to you.

02:45:35.000 I'm like, it's an appeasement cue.

02:45:37.000 Like, I'm not a threat to you.

02:45:39.000 You don't need to kill me.

02:45:40.000 Wow. 0.98

02:45:41.000 Right.

02:45:41.000 Which is what we all do that with cops.

02:45:42.000 Oh, sorry, officer.

02:45:43.000 I didn't know.

02:45:44.000 You know, whatever.

02:45:45.000 I mean, it's automatic.

02:45:46.000 We're primates, right?

02:45:46.000 It's wired into us.

02:45:48.000 Yeah.

02:45:48.000 Right.

02:45:49.000 So what the Scythians were doing was the opposite of an appeasement cue.

02:45:53.000 They were basically yawning before a big fight.

02:45:55.000 Like, oh, what?

02:45:56.000 Is it time to fight now?

02:45:57.000 Okay. 0.56

02:45:57.000 Well, let me kill a rabbit so that I have dinner afterwards. 0.56

02:46:00.000 Right. 0.96

02:46:01.000 How badass is that?

02:46:02.000 That's pretty badass.

02:46:05.000 One more thing.

02:46:06.000 I just wanted to know what your thoughts are on...

02:46:10.000 I like what we're saying here in terms of the imbalance of income in society.

02:46:16.000 But I'm also a person that believes in motivation, and I believe that people have to be incentivized to do things.

02:46:22.000 Absolutely.

02:46:22.000 But I don't think that the society as structured is fair, and I don't think that it's fair that some people grow up in poverty-stricken, crime-ridden, gang-infested inner cities, and some people grow up in the beautiful bird-chirping suburbs,

02:46:38.000 right?

02:46:38.000 But how does one balance these things out to the point where I don't believe in equality of outcome, but I think it would be wonderful if we had equality of opportunity.

02:46:48.000 If people had the chance in all walks of life, in all parts of the country to advance with at least similar obstacles.

02:47:00.000 But do we make it more difficult for the people that live in the bird-chirping suburbs? 0.52

02:47:05.000 Do we make it easier for the people that live in the crime-infested cities?

02:47:10.000 How do we do that?

02:47:12.000 And do we do that through things like universal basic income?

02:47:16.000 Which, in my mind...

02:47:19.000 Completely ignorant when it comes to economics, but I've always found that appealing because I don't think that money should be the motivating factor for someone to choose what to do or not to do with their life, but I do know that for people that were poor, including myself, The incentive to do better is often what spurs you ahead and makes you act and do things.

02:47:40.000 And those things wind up being beneficial. 0.88

02:47:42.000 And some people, if you give them money just for free, they no longer have incentive and they don't do anything.

02:47:51.000 It's just a part of human nature.

02:47:53.000 How does that balance out?

02:47:55.000 Well, I mean, you said it.

02:47:57.000 It has to balance, right?

02:47:58.000 So if you had a system where everyone got the same amount of money, no matter what they did, you're disincentivizing effort.

02:48:07.000 Yes.

02:48:08.000 You can't have equality of outcome.

02:48:10.000 Right.

02:48:11.000 So, I mean, that was the big experiment with communism, right?

02:48:15.000 It didn't work very well.

02:48:17.000 My first marriage was to a woman who grew up in Bulgaria, and there were a lot of great things about that society.

02:48:24.000 I mean, we could talk about that if you want, but, you know, people were not incentivized to—in fact, they were disincentivized.

02:48:31.000 Not only were they not financially incentivized to sort of, like, redouble their efforts, but other people would also look at them with sort of suspicion, like, what are you doing?

02:48:42.000 You're destabilizing everything.

02:48:43.000 But then on the other hand, if it is so economically unjust, no matter how much effort you put into it, you will never achieve the outcomes that a different kind of person will achieve.

02:49:01.000 That doesn't incentivize effort either, right?

02:49:04.000 So, I mean, you can make a pretty good case that if you're like an African-American kid in a really, really poor community with a really shitty school and, you know, in a single-family home, etc., etc., all the correlates to bad outcomes— You can try as hard as you want. 0.98

02:49:21.000 And, you know, once in a while someone gets through or whatever, but, you know, the odds are stacked so much against you.

02:49:26.000 I mean, you can make this case. 0.99

02:49:28.000 The odds are stacked so much against you that it's not an unreasonable thought to have, which is, well, fuck it. 0.99

02:49:36.000 I'm not going to even try, right? 0.97

02:49:38.000 So how do you equalize that?

02:49:41.000 Education.

02:49:42.000 We need good schools everywhere, right?

02:49:45.000 Single parents need some help because they can't work and take care of a child. 1.00

02:49:51.000 I mean, you know, there are structural things we can do that make the society collaborative and just in the way that a small-scale hunter-gatherer society is collaborative and just.

02:50:03.000 I mean basically in a small-scale society, there's collective parenting and no one parent or set of parents does all the child raising, which allows people to do other things that the group needs done and the hunter hunts and the basket weaver weaves, you know, whatever.

02:50:18.000 We have to institutionalize that in this society because it won't happen organically in the kind of way that it does.

02:50:25.000 But even the problem with institutionalizing something like that, you want someone who's actually motivated to help people.

02:50:32.000 You don't want someone who's just doing it as a job.

02:50:34.000 One of the things that's frustrating for people that, you know, when you see some of the school teachers in these crime-ridden communities, they have no incentive.

02:50:44.000 They're not motivated or motivating.

02:50:46.000 They're not good at what they do and there's no incentive for them either because it's a dangerous job and it's better to just show up and collect your paycheck and just do the minimum amount that you have to do and recognize the fact that this is a shitty situation for everybody, which nothing gets better in that way.

02:51:01.000 Well, yeah.

02:51:02.000 I mean, I would say that for every teacher that's like that, there's another teacher that's buying, you know, pencils and erasers out of their pocket for the kids.

02:51:08.000 You know, whatever.

02:51:09.000 Like, it's hard to generalize.

02:51:10.000 But my answer would be, well, that's an institutionalized solution that's not working.

02:51:15.000 We need one that works.

02:51:17.000 Works.

02:51:18.000 You know, I don't think we have time to figure out what that is with the education system, but, you know, theoretically that's the...

02:51:23.000 I don't think we do, but I just wish somebody else was, you know?

02:51:26.000 And I think you're right that it is the education, that education is the key, but also community is the key, like having a safe area where you can go to, whether it's community centers or something with some kind of counseling, something where you feel like you're a part of something bigger that incentivizes you to continue to try to do better with your life.

02:51:44.000 Well, listen, we need to feel community at every level.

02:51:46.000 We need to feel it at the macro level in our nation, right?

02:51:49.000 All the way down to the micro level of our neighborhood.

02:51:51.000 And it's lacking at every level.

02:51:53.000 I will...

02:51:54.000 I mean, let me just quickly tell a story that sort of exemplifies this.

02:51:58.000 I was...

02:52:01.000 I was on a book tour some years ago in Norfolk, Virginia.

02:52:05.000 I'd spoken at the Naval Base and I was coming out of my hotel in the morning and there was this old guy in his mid-70s in a wheelchair and he was missing half his right leg.

02:52:16.000 He was bandaged.

02:52:17.000 He clearly had just lost half his right leg.

02:52:19.000 He was in a wheelchair and he was trying to get into a car.

02:52:22.000 It was like 7 in the morning.

02:52:23.000 I was going to the airport and he was trying to get into his car and it was locked.

02:52:26.000 And I went up to him and I said, sir, can I help you?

02:52:29.000 And I was waiting for my ride.

02:52:30.000 There was no one else out there.

02:52:31.000 And he said, oh, no, I'm okay.

02:52:32.000 I'll just wait for my wife to come out. 1.00

02:52:34.000 She's got the keys.

02:52:36.000 And I looked down at the situation, right?

02:52:40.000 And I said, wow, that seems really hard, you know, what you're doing.

02:52:44.000 I mean, you're missing your right leg.

02:52:47.000 And he said, you know, zero self-pity, which is an enormously noble thing, right?

02:52:53.000 He said, well...

02:52:55.000 I don't know if it's hard, but it's interesting.

02:52:56.000 It's different.

02:52:58.000 Getting used to it.

02:52:59.000 You know, I was like, all right, you're a tough old bird.

02:53:01.000 Like, you know, I'll try again.

02:53:03.000 And I said, wow, well, I got to say, you seem really brave about it. 0.97

02:53:09.000 And he looked at me like I was the biggest fool that he'd met in a long time and he said, brave about it. 0.97

02:53:15.000 There's young people in this country missing both their legs. 0.99

02:53:18.000 Don't think I'm brave.

02:53:20.000 There's a person who's thinking about The entire country.

02:53:26.000 That he's part of a country.

02:53:28.000 And some people are doing worse than him.

02:53:30.000 And don't waste any pity on him because there's other people who need help first.

02:53:35.000 And I got to say, you know, I wish I knew who he was so we could put up a statue to him, right?

02:53:42.000 Like if we all thought a bit like that, boy, we'd be doing better.

02:53:46.000 I just don't know how to get people to do it.

02:53:49.000 Well, I think if any way, your work, you know, I mean, I think tribe is a fantastic testament to that.

02:53:55.000 And I think you're doing more of the same with freedom.

02:53:57.000 And, you know, it's what you always are sort of encouraging people to look at the world in that regard and look at our communities in that way.

02:54:04.000 Thank you.

02:54:05.000 Thank you.

02:54:07.000 That and my children are the most profound satisfactions of my lives and my family, I should say.

02:54:11.000 I feel very honored, very privileged to be able to do this.

02:54:14.000 It comes through.

02:54:15.000 It comes through in your work.

02:54:16.000 I appreciate you very much.

02:54:18.000 Thank you, man.

02:54:18.000 Thank you.

02:54:19.000 I love talking to you.

02:54:20.000 I love talking to you, too.

02:54:21.000 I can't wait to write another book and come back and do it again.

02:54:23.000 Let's do it again.

02:54:24.000 Pulse.

02:54:25.000 And freedom is out right now.

02:54:26.000 Thank you.

02:54:27.000 Thanks, man.

02:54:28.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 20, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1655 - Sebastian Junger

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