The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1848 - Francis Foster & Konstanin Kisin

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:12.000 What happened?

00:00:15.000 First of all, gentlemen, welcome.

00:00:18.000 I've been enjoying your show.

00:00:19.000 So it's nice to see you in real life and talk to you in person.

00:00:23.000 It's cool.

00:00:23.000 It's really great of you to have us, man.

00:00:25.000 It's such a pleasure to meet you.

00:00:27.000 Because, you know, all of us are inspired by what you started.

00:00:31.000 You know, we all look up to you.

00:00:32.000 So it's amazing being here.

00:00:34.000 Oh, thank you.

00:00:35.000 Well, it's nice to meet you guys, too.

00:00:36.000 I enjoy your conversations.

00:00:38.000 I really think that people like you that are reasonable and intelligent and have legitimate opinions grounded in facts, it's very important.

00:00:49.000 Oh, it's tremendously important.

00:00:50.000 Oh, hold on a second.

00:00:51.000 One microphone's not on.

00:00:54.000 See, this is another way.

00:00:55.000 This is why I do most of the talking on our show, man. 0.99

00:00:57.000 Yeah, this is how I'm getting fucking silenced. 1.00

00:01:00.000 It's the goddamn government. 1.00

00:01:02.000 Yes. 1.00

00:01:03.000 We'll figure out what's up with it. 0.97

00:01:04.000 Yeah, we were just shit talking about Joe Biden before we started, so that's probably what's happened there, man. 0.95

00:01:08.000 Yeah. 0.89

00:01:09.000 But why would it only cancel yours?

00:01:10.000 Yeah.

00:01:11.000 That Francis fella's gotta go. 0.81

00:01:13.000 Yeah.

00:01:13.000 Get rid of him.

00:01:14.000 There it is. 0.96

00:01:15.000 There it is.

00:01:15.000 There we go.

00:01:16.000 The dulcet tones of Francis Foster.

00:01:18.000 Now we're up and running.

00:01:19.000 Yeah.

00:01:20.000 What is it like doing pod...

00:01:22.000 I mean, how many podcasts are over in the UK? Is it a popular thing?

00:01:27.000 It is a popular thing, but like everything, it really started to get motoring during COVID, particularly in our space with comedians, when everything shut down.

00:01:36.000 And then comedians realized, hang on a second, we were just doing the comedy circuit and then wanting to be on TV. And then that moment was a really eye-opening moment where they realized ratings on TV are collapsing.

00:01:49.000 Nobody's watching TV for ways that we'll get into through the podcast.

00:01:54.000 So what else are you going to do?

00:01:56.000 And everybody started to get onto YouTube and podcasting.

00:01:59.000 Because the thing is, Joe, whatever happens in America, in the UK, we do it four or five years down the line.

00:02:06.000 But not just that.

00:02:07.000 Good and bad.

00:02:08.000 Good and bad. 1.00

00:02:09.000 We get your best stuff, we get all your shit as well, man. 1.00

00:02:12.000 What's the shit that you go to? 1.00

00:02:13.000 Well, this cultural thing that we always talk about, you know, we import straight from you. 1.00

00:02:18.000 And that's why we have conversations.

00:02:20.000 Like during BLM, we had these protests in the center of London with these protesters going, hands up, don't shoot, in front of cops who don't have guns.

00:02:30.000 So much of it is just signaling. 0.99

00:02:32.000 We just download your shit and then just put it out as if it's our own, you know? 0.99

00:02:35.000 It's so odd. 0.99

00:02:36.000 It's so funny, man.

00:02:38.000 When Trump came in 2016, I think it was, or 2017, only 2017, there were mass protests.

00:02:43.000 But when the crown prince of Saudi Arabia came over, fresh from chopping up a journalist, no one protested.

00:02:50.000 Everyone was cool.

00:02:50.000 That's strange, isn't it?

00:02:52.000 Yeah.

00:02:52.000 It's the power of American culture, man.

00:02:54.000 That's why everyone talks about it, because it affects everyone.

00:02:57.000 Well, it's just, it's not balanced.

00:03:00.000 The outrage is not balanced.

00:03:01.000 You know, even the outrage about things you should be outraged about, like Jeffrey Epstein.

00:03:06.000 That outrage was balanced, right?

00:03:08.000 Sort of, right?

00:03:08.000 But what about the Catholic Church?

00:03:11.000 Like, why isn't everybody really freaking out about it?

00:03:14.000 I was just in Italy.

00:03:15.000 And one of the things that's nuts is the Vatican is a country.

00:03:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:03:19.000 It's a country filled with pedophiles. 1.00

00:03:21.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:03:22.000 It's a country filled with pedophiles and stolen art.

00:03:24.000 It's a small, like, 100-yard, like, what is it, 100 acres, I think? 0.97

00:03:28.000 It's a 100-acre, rather, country inside of a city filled with pedophiles. 0.85

00:03:34.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:03:35.000 This is why I love America, man, because in the UK we have libel laws, so if you say something like that, and you then have to be able to prove it, otherwise you can get sued.

00:03:43.000 Well, you can kind of prove that.

00:03:46.000 That's one...

00:03:47.000 I mean...

00:03:49.000 I read the other day that, I think it was until five, six years ago, the age of consent in the Vatican City was 12 years old.

00:03:56.000 Wow.

00:03:57.000 Is that true?

00:03:57.000 Yeah, I think so.

00:03:58.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:58.000 And I was just like, wow.

00:04:00.000 Pull that up.

00:04:00.000 Jamie's going to fact check you.

00:04:01.000 I hope that's not true.

00:04:02.000 What year did that change?

00:04:04.000 I think it was about 10 years ago.

00:04:06.000 Something like that.

00:04:06.000 They bump it up to 13?

00:04:07.000 Yeah.

00:04:08.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:08.000 Make it respectable.

00:04:09.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:04:10.000 Yeah.

00:04:11.000 Oh, my God.

00:04:11.000 It's true.

00:04:12.000 Holy shit. 0.99

00:04:13.000 Oh my god, the Vatican City's equal age of consent being raised from 12 to 18 following the announcement of an overhaul of the Catholic Church criminal code by Pope Francis. 0.99

00:04:23.000 Francis is like the most progressive guy, right, in terms of popes?

00:04:27.000 Yeah, he is.

00:04:28.000 I mean, that's not really saying a lot, do you know what I mean?

00:04:30.000 Well, the Benedict guy, he was wanted in other countries for crimes against humanity.

00:04:35.000 I mean, like, what he was doing was really evil.

00:04:37.000 He was moving offenders to other places, and one of them, he moved a guy that went on to molest 100 deaf kids.

00:04:47.000 It's absolutely insane.

00:04:50.000 A hundred?

00:04:50.000 You know?

00:04:51.000 I mean, it's insanity.

00:04:53.000 I mean, this guy was already molesting.

00:04:56.000 And then they say, well, let's just, instead of trying him and removing him from the church, we'll just move him to a place where people can't hear.

00:05:05.000 It's amazing how people cover this stuff up.

00:05:07.000 I don't know if you followed the grooming gang stories from the UK, but basically we had a situation for decades where young girls were being abused in the thousands, potentially half a million, and it was covered up.

00:05:22.000 I'm not aware of this at all.

00:05:24.000 Well, right.

00:05:24.000 So what happened was it was basically people from a certain background.

00:05:28.000 It was what we call in the UK South Asian, so Bangladeshi and Pakistani mostly.

00:05:33.000 And they were abusing Sikh and local British white girls in hundreds of thousands.

00:05:39.000 We had one of the victims on our show, Dr. Ella Hill, a very brave woman.

00:05:45.000 And it was covered up for decades because we've just had a report come out to try and find out why it was covered up, why it wasn't investigated, because these people went to the police and they were told there's nothing we can do for you.

00:05:56.000 Oh my god.

00:05:57.000 And it wasn't investigated and wasn't reported on properly because of, quote, sensitivities about race, right?

00:06:04.000 So all this stuff gets covered up for all kinds of reasons.

00:06:06.000 It's mind-blowing, man, what people get away with on this sort of thing.

00:06:10.000 Because the politicians who should have been exposing it, the people who should have been talking about it, the police who should have been investigated, were worried about being labelled racist.

00:06:20.000 In fact, one famous tweet from a Labour MP told some of these people to shut up for the sake of diversity.

00:06:26.000 She retweeted a tweet.

00:06:27.000 Sorry, retweeted it.

00:06:28.000 My apologies. 0.87

00:06:29.000 Shut up for the sake of diversity. 1.00

00:06:30.000 These are rape victims, Joe. 1.00

00:06:31.000 And some of them were murdered. 0.93

00:06:32.000 Yeah.

00:06:33.000 And not just rape victims as well.

00:06:35.000 Kids.

00:06:36.000 Kids.

00:06:36.000 Underage kids.

00:06:37.000 Yeah.

00:06:38.000 And you haven't heard about it.

00:06:40.000 At all.

00:06:41.000 Right.

00:06:41.000 It's massively taboo.

00:06:43.000 Even to talk about, in polite society, people feel very uncomfortable talking about this because it comes from communities, what you would say, like Asian communities. 0.86

00:06:57.000 And particularly white working class girls and Sikh girls.

00:07:00.000 So people feel very uncomfortable about this.

00:07:03.000 They're far more comfortable talking about Epstein because in their heads it's punching up.

00:07:07.000 Whilst if you talk about this crime, it's seen as punching down, that it's racist.

00:07:12.000 And it's far easier for them to silence it.

00:07:14.000 But the problem is, Joe, is when you do that, what happens is that nefarious people can then get involved in this and they say these words...

00:07:24.000 They're not representing you. 0.67

00:07:25.000 Look what's going on.

00:07:26.000 If the powers that be aren't going to represent you, I will.

00:07:29.000 And that's when things start to take an ugly turn.

00:07:32.000 We need to be able to talk about these subjects.

00:07:35.000 It doesn't matter how uncomfortable they are.

00:07:37.000 It doesn't matter how difficult they are.

00:07:39.000 It doesn't matter how awkward they make us feel.

00:07:41.000 Because we had a great guest on the show called Ed West, and he made one of the most profound points I've ever heard on our show.

00:07:47.000 Which is, if you are not prepared to talk about a subject honestly, then you are never going to find a solution to that subject.

00:07:55.000 To that problem.

00:07:56.000 To that problem.

00:07:56.000 And what happened was when we got one of the victims on our show, Dr. Ella Hill, I remember because we were trying to get the Member of Parliament, who was one of the women that started to expose this, she wrote an article in one of the newspapers, and she got so much hate That she didn't want to talk about it anymore.

00:08:15.000 So when we called her up and we said, do you want to come on the show and tell us about this?

00:08:19.000 She said, I just can't do it.

00:08:21.000 And that's when I remember sitting in the car talking to Francis on the phone and I went, we've got to a point where a member of parliament whose job it is to protect these children is getting so much hate for speaking out about it, she doesn't want to talk about it anymore.

00:08:37.000 A member of parliament So this woman who's the doctor, she was presumably molested when she was young?

00:08:46.000 Yes.

00:08:46.000 So how long has this been going on?

00:08:48.000 Decades.

00:08:49.000 This has been decades.

00:08:50.000 It's been going on since the 90s.

00:08:52.000 So a lot of these people now are like my age, in their 40s, and it's still going on.

00:08:57.000 How do they have access to these girls? 1.00

00:09:00.000 They would basically prey on vulnerable girls. 0.97

00:09:04.000 Maybe they didn't have a parent or maybe something like that.

00:09:07.000 They ply them with alcohol, drugs, get them addicted. 0.84

00:09:10.000 And when some of the families tried to go and take their kids back, the police, I can't remember the exact details, but in several cases it was like, oh, she's just a prostitute. 0.98

00:09:23.000 And the father would get arrested for trying to get his daughter out of that situation.

00:09:27.000 Jesus Christ.

00:09:28.000 For the sake of diversity.

00:09:30.000 That's what some people...

00:09:31.000 Look, not everybody was doing that.

00:09:33.000 I think most people were just afraid because of the racial component.

00:09:37.000 You see what I'm saying?

00:09:38.000 Yeah.

00:09:39.000 And this is why this identity politics is such a problem because when you stop treating people as individuals who behave correctly or incorrectly, lawfully or unlawfully, you start to go, well, these people can't commit a crime anymore, right?

00:09:54.000 And these people commit a crime by just being whatever.

00:09:57.000 That's a problem.

00:09:58.000 We've got to get back to the MLK idea of everybody being judged by the content of their character.

00:10:03.000 Were we ever there?

00:10:05.000 I don't know.

00:10:05.000 When you say get back to it, get back to the idea.

00:10:08.000 You're right.

00:10:08.000 It's a good point that you picked me up on it.

00:10:10.000 What I mean is we've got to get back to trying to get there.

00:10:13.000 Yeah.

00:10:14.000 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:10:14.000 Yeah.

00:10:15.000 That's what we've got to get back to.

00:10:16.000 The idea that that's the dream.

00:10:18.000 Right.

00:10:19.000 And we'll probably never get there because we're human beings.

00:10:21.000 We're not perfect, right?

00:10:22.000 That's one of the most disturbing aspects of this hardcore left progressivism is that they are willing to ignore reality for the sake of this narrative that they have.

00:10:34.000 And also they're willing to lump, make these mass generalizations and lump everyone, like particularly if they're hard to defend, like straight white men.

00:10:44.000 Like that's a great one.

00:10:45.000 That's an awesome scapegoat.

00:10:46.000 You can toss that into there.

00:10:48.000 Wealthy people, you know, upper class people, people with money.

00:10:51.000 It's just a very bizarre thing that's going on where people are unwilling to look at people as individuals because it just doesn't fit this narrative that they're trying to push.

00:11:00.000 And that's so true.

00:11:02.000 I remember when Brexit happened in 2016, I started to notice more and more when people were talking, the term old white man became an insult.

00:11:10.000 And suddenly, if you're an old white man, that meant that you were racist, particularly if you voted for Brexit.

00:11:15.000 And that really angered me. 0.69

00:11:17.000 And for the reason my dad...

00:11:21.000 He grew up in a very poor part of the north of England, which is Wigan.

00:11:25.000 Orwell actually wrote a book about it, The Road to Wigan Pier, talking about the deprivation of that particular part of the world.

00:11:32.000 And my dad voted for Brexit.

00:11:34.000 My dad voted for Brexit because he said that he wanted the UK to be independent of Europe. 0.98

00:11:40.000 He loves Europe, but he didn't believe that the EU should be making rules For the UK and my dad married my mother who is Latin American a woman of color and I fucking hate that term. 0.95

00:11:53.000 She's Latinx mate. 1.00

00:11:55.000 Yeah, she's Latinx. 0.99

00:11:56.000 I asked my mum if she was Latinx. 1.00

00:12:00.000 She went, What the fuck is this? 1.00

00:12:04.000 Latinx is one of my favorite faux pas. 1.00

00:12:06.000 Such a huge mistake because the Latino people are not willing to embrace that at all. 1.00

00:12:11.000 You literally, you void out half of their language.

00:12:15.000 Like, their language has gender built into it.

00:12:18.000 Right.

00:12:18.000 And, you know, a lot of Latino people, particularly Venezuelans and Cubans, they don't like the left-wing man.

00:12:23.000 Yeah, no.

00:12:24.000 Particularly Cubans. 0.56

00:12:26.000 Well, like us, they've seen what that ideology does, right?

00:12:29.000 Yeah.

00:12:29.000 Well, particularly people that have, where their families have come from communist countries.

00:12:33.000 Yeah, well, like me and Francis, right?

00:12:35.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:12:36.000 And so, like, my dad married my mum, like, back in the 70s, where we lived, which was a predominantly working-class area.

00:12:43.000 And, you know, there was a lot of, you know, there was racism.

00:12:46.000 The pub down the road from where I grew up was a pub which had links to the BNP, which was the British National Party, which was a far-right organisation.

00:12:55.000 And some of those guys operating out of that pub had assaulted Asian people in my area.

00:13:00.000 And my dad married my mum, but as a result of that, my mum wanted to call me Francisco Jaime and take, in the Latino tradition, her last name as well, which was Palis.

00:13:11.000 My dad was worried about racism, so he called me Francis, gave me the name of a middle-class white woman, which I'm very grateful for.

00:13:18.000 LAUGHTER And that's how I live my life and that's how I was brought up.

00:13:23.000 My dad is one of the nicest, sweetest, most generous, honourable people I've ever met. 1.00

00:13:28.000 And to then have him be called racist and stupid and ignorant, it just enraged me. 1.00

00:13:35.000 This is bizarre that some generalizations... 1.00

00:13:37.000 Generalizations have always been a thing that it's looked down upon.

00:13:41.000 You can't generalize.

00:13:43.000 You can make generalizations with caveats.

00:13:48.000 You can say, in general, democratic-run cities or this or that.

00:13:54.000 But when you do it with human beings, And you just decide to dismiss someone based on some immutable characteristics that they have zero control over, like being born white.

00:14:06.000 Well, we have a word for that, Joe.

00:14:08.000 Racism.

00:14:08.000 Right.

00:14:10.000 But you can't be racist because race is power.

00:14:13.000 Prejudice.

00:14:14.000 Some bullocks that they came up with. 1.00

00:14:16.000 Fucking nonsense. 1.00

00:14:17.000 What a cute way to dismiss generalizing people. 1.00

00:14:20.000 Yeah.

00:14:21.000 And this is, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book because this is why I'm so grateful to be in the West.

00:14:28.000 This is one of the few places that actually aspires to that idea.

00:14:32.000 Yeah.

00:14:32.000 I'm not saying we're perfect.

00:14:34.000 We're not perfect.

00:14:34.000 And you know this and everybody knows this.

00:14:36.000 But the aspiration to everybody being judged on who they are as an individual, it's quite a unique thing, man.

00:14:42.000 It's a beautiful thing.

00:14:43.000 It is a beautiful thing.

00:14:44.000 And that should be promoted at the forefront of whatever ideology that we accept and then everything else.

00:15:07.000 It's 100% out of their control to be who they are Characterize them and judge them based on who they are as an individual.

00:15:15.000 To judge people based on their individual merits, their character, their personality, what they do.

00:15:23.000 That's what we should all be aspiring to.

00:15:25.000 And that's why we started our show.

00:15:27.000 That's why we started Trigonometry.

00:15:28.000 To protect white man jobs.

00:15:33.000 Because, you know, we both voted remain in that referendum.

00:15:36.000 So that's kind of like the equivalent of voting for Hillary Clinton versus Trump in 16. And suddenly there was this narrative like what Francis is talking about all, you know, old white people, all this.

00:15:47.000 And for me, I'm a first generation dark skinned Jewish immigrant from Russia into the UK. And suddenly all these people were like saying, oh, yeah, we've got this country is really racist.

00:15:58.000 What?

00:15:59.000 I've lived in Britain almost my whole life since I was 13. That is not true.

00:16:04.000 Half the country isn't racist.

00:16:06.000 And I was like, wait, this doesn't make any sense.

00:16:08.000 Let's work out what's actually going on.

00:16:10.000 Right.

00:16:10.000 And that's why we two remainers started interviewing people who voted for Brexit, particularly from the left.

00:16:16.000 Because the narrative was only right-wing people voted for Brexit.

00:16:20.000 Completely untrue, as it turns out.

00:16:22.000 And we were trying to understand where they were coming from.

00:16:24.000 That's kind of the genesis of our show.

00:16:26.000 Trying to understand people who have a different opinion to us.

00:16:29.000 Well, there's a lot of right-wing people that don't want to vote for Trump based entirely on his personality, but there's a lot of left-wing people that voted for Trump just because they didn't like Hillary and they didn't like the policies of the Democratic Party and all the stuff that she stood for this ancient form of corruption that's been running America for a long time.

00:16:49.000 It's a weird world that we're living in right now, because we're inundated with information.

00:16:54.000 We have more information than ever before, but we also have these very clear boxes that you can shove people into that make it convenient, because there's so much information, because there's so much to sort out, because nuance is difficult, because looking at things for what they really are is complicated.

00:17:12.000 It's complex.

00:17:13.000 It's much easier to pick a team, man.

00:17:14.000 Yes.

00:17:15.000 It's so much easier.

00:17:16.000 It is.

00:17:16.000 And so many people are doing it now.

00:17:18.000 And they pick a team and they march.

00:17:19.000 And a lot of dull minds who have accepted these narratives of, you know, being just something that you just, if you're a good person, this is how you think and behave.

00:17:31.000 But, you know, and I'd love to talk to you about this, Joe, because I think we're from the same place politically.

00:17:35.000 Anybody want a coffee?

00:17:36.000 Yeah, coffee would be great.

00:17:38.000 So I was a teacher for 12 years and I consider myself to be from the left.

00:17:44.000 I was a teacher in really poor working class backgrounds in London and other places as well.

00:17:50.000 And I wanted to get into that because this is something that I wanted to do.

00:17:54.000 I wanted to help the next generation.

00:17:56.000 I wanted to work with these kids.

00:17:58.000 And then, slowly but surely, I've seen my side go completely tonto. 0.92

00:18:03.000 They've gone nuts.

00:18:05.000 When did it start happening over there?

00:18:07.000 Look, Brexit played a big part.

00:18:10.000 Constantine and I always use this phrase, broke people's brains.

00:18:14.000 COVID broke people's brains, but Brexit, Trump broke people's brains.

00:18:17.000 Yeah, but man, you tell me all the stories about working in the school way before then, when you were being told, well, you can't teach people of this race. 0.98

00:18:24.000 Tell them that.

00:18:26.000 For instance, in school, I remember attending this one workshop, and this had my blood boiling.

00:18:30.000 So I used to work in East London, in a place called Newham, in this wonderful school.

00:18:36.000 And I remember we got this one guy coming to teach us, to do a bit of teacher training.

00:18:42.000 And he was teaching us how to teach boys.

00:18:45.000 And I'm like, okay, in particular English.

00:18:47.000 Now, I'm a boy, obviously, or a man, and I loved reading when I was a kid.

00:18:52.000 Reading was my escape, particularly being an only child.

00:18:55.000 And he was saying to us, right, you've got to have different expectation with boys than you have with girls.

00:19:00.000 And suddenly my ears picked up.

00:19:01.000 I was up.

00:19:02.000 I was thinking, where are you going with this?

00:19:03.000 And he was like, you can't expect them to sit down and write like a girl could. 1.00

00:19:09.000 Because they're different.

00:19:10.000 Boys, you know, you've just got to expect that they're going to write a little less, they're not going to be as engaged, and you need to have extra stimuluses for them as a result, and all this.

00:19:20.000 And I'm thinking, this is the bigotry of low expectation.

00:19:23.000 What I've got in my classroom are working class boys from desperately poor backgrounds, many of whom have grown up without a dad.

00:19:31.000 And we all know the stats about what that entails.

00:19:34.000 For most of those kids, the only way out of the poverty that they have grown up in It's education.

00:19:41.000 That is it.

00:19:42.000 And you want me to go into my classroom and say to these boys who have already got enough challenges as it is, and you know, 10 and 11, the gangs are starting to circle, and they're starting to stray into that world.

00:19:55.000 You want me to say to them that they are not as capable for their writing as girls. 1.00

00:20:00.000 Well, why don't we just scrap it and just let them run free?

00:20:03.000 It absolutely infuriated me.

00:20:05.000 To me, the worst thing about this progressive movement is the bigotry of low expectations and saying to people, you know what, you need our help or you're not going to be as good as us.

00:20:18.000 And to me that's disgusting because you're dooming people to not have the life that they could have if you have high expectations for them.

00:20:26.000 Because I'm telling you something, if you go into these schools or these places of learning and you have high expectations for these kids, the vast majority will meet it.

00:20:34.000 Mmm.

00:20:35.000 So with boys in particular, like what is the difference from your personal experience of teaching boys?

00:20:41.000 So my personal experience of teaching boys is they're more rambunctious, you know, they've got more energy. 0.99

00:20:47.000 They like to break shit. 1.00

00:20:48.000 They like to break shit. 1.00

00:20:49.000 You know, they're not as mature as girls. 1.00

00:20:54.000 You've just got to accept that as well.

00:20:57.000 But here's the thing, there's a joy that boys bring to a classroom.

00:21:01.000 Girls tend to be more obedient, but with boys you can tend to have a little bit more fun, you can have a little bit more back and forth or banter as we call it in London or in the UK. So boys are different like that.

00:21:14.000 But the thing is with boys is they respond to a challenge.

00:21:18.000 If you say to them, I want, by the end of this lesson, Tony, I want four paragraphs, and I want capital letter, full stop, I want you to have all your apostrophes, and I want you to get that done by half-pass.

00:21:32.000 Prove to me you can do it.

00:21:34.000 A boy will be like, yes! 1.00

00:21:35.000 Because that's how we respond as men.

00:21:37.000 We respond to challenges.

00:21:38.000 We respond to people saying to us, come on, meet this expectation.

00:21:43.000 But if you say to somebody, you're never going to do it, most people will agree.

00:21:48.000 I mean, they'll be the odd kid who will just want to prove you wrong, but the vast majority will never do that.

00:21:52.000 So do you think when they're dealing with boys and girls in classrooms, it's just complicated to deal with all the variables that the boys bring and the girls bring, so instead of handling that, they just lower the expectations for boys?

00:22:05.000 I think not all teachers, I think a lot of teachers push back on that, but I think there were certainly some teachers who would take on board what this person was saying.

00:22:14.000 And look, let's be fair to teachers, particularly in the type of schools that I worked in, you had 30 kids in the class.

00:22:20.000 I had everything from a kid who potentially had the ability to go to Oxford or Cambridge, he was that intelligent, that smart, or she was, right the way through to a non-verbal autistic kid.

00:22:31.000 So you had to make sure that all the resources were prepared in a way that all the children could meet.

00:22:38.000 And not only just those two extremes, you also had all the ones in the middle and upper and lower and all the rest of it.

00:22:43.000 So teachers have an incredibly difficult job.

00:22:45.000 And are teachers in the UK as underpaid as they are here in America and underappreciated?

00:22:50.000 Yeah.

00:22:51.000 Yeah, yeah, they are.

00:22:51.000 That seems universal.

00:22:53.000 How fucking bizarre is that? 0.98

00:22:55.000 That is weird, man. 0.98

00:22:56.000 It's one of the most important jobs that anyone can have.

00:23:00.000 You're literally educating the future generation.

00:23:03.000 And for whatever reason, we dismiss it as being this very low-paid, low-expectation, low-praise occupation.

00:23:13.000 It's very strange.

00:23:15.000 It's very strange that that's not addressed.

00:23:17.000 And when it is addressed, it's just lip service and nothing really gets done.

00:23:21.000 Not much.

00:23:21.000 But you know, particularly in countries like China, Korea, all around that part of the world, they have a saying, father, mother, teacher.

00:23:30.000 Yeah.

00:23:31.000 You know, and we just don't have that.

00:23:33.000 And particularly in the UK, we don't appreciate teachers.

00:23:35.000 You know, there's, I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said, those who can do, those who can't teach.

00:23:41.000 Yeah. 0.88

00:23:42.000 Right, that old saying, which is ironic because he was a crap playwright, but... 1.00

00:23:46.000 There's a little dick there. 0.99

00:23:47.000 Still angry about it a hundred years later. 1.00

00:23:50.000 He's just an old white man, mate. 0.99

00:23:51.000 It's fine.

00:23:52.000 Well, it's a generalization.

00:23:54.000 Yeah.

00:23:54.000 But here's the thing.

00:23:56.000 We all remember a teacher who changed our lives.

00:23:58.000 Yeah.

00:23:59.000 We all remember that special teacher who, for whatever reason, took an interest, not necessarily just in the classroom, but maybe outside, maybe we're having a tough time, who took the time out from their day to help us or inspire us or actually give us a fire and a passion.

00:24:14.000 Like one of my old teachers...

00:24:16.000 I remember like I was in sixth form, which was 16 to 18 in the UK. And I hated Shakespeare.

00:24:21.000 I could never get into it.

00:24:23.000 And I remember he sat us down and he taught us Hamlet.

00:24:26.000 And I don't know how he did it, but he just unlocked it for us.

00:24:30.000 And we were kids from South London, you know, from all different backgrounds, whatever else.

00:24:35.000 And we just learned the magic of Shakespeare.

00:24:38.000 And it doesn't matter what happens.

00:24:41.000 Mr. Potter, if you're listening, big shout out.

00:24:44.000 He gave me a gift that I will treasure right the way through to the end of my days.

00:24:48.000 That's beautiful. 0.98

00:24:50.000 That term, those who can't teach, is so silly.

00:24:53.000 Especially from my background, I come from martial arts, and the best instructors were all great martial artists.

00:24:59.000 All of them.

00:25:00.000 You cannot be.

00:25:02.000 I mean, there's some boxing instructors that weren't great boxers that turned out to be great coaches, but most of the great martial arts instructors were, in fact, great martial artists.

00:25:12.000 They just had a passion for it.

00:25:14.000 They had a passion for learning it, and then they had a passion for explaining all the various, like, very nuanced details.

00:25:22.000 Like, all the great jujitsu instructors are all world champions.

00:25:25.000 Almost all of them, or champions in some way, shape, or form.

00:25:29.000 Because to truly understand the subject, in order to be able to teach it, you need to be able to understand every part of the process.

00:25:39.000 If I'm teaching you, I don't know, equations, and I don't fully understand it, I'm not going to be able to teach it, because you're going to go to me, Francis, but how did you get from this point to this point?

00:25:50.000 And if I can't explain it, I'm not going to be able to help you.

00:25:53.000 Right.

00:25:53.000 Yeah, especially with complex things that require you actually doing it.

00:25:58.000 So many things require you actually being able to do it in order to be able to explain how it's done.

00:26:03.000 You can't just teach it.

00:26:05.000 No, you can't.

00:26:06.000 You need to be able to take people step by step through something.

00:26:11.000 And here's the thing, because you used to teach martial arts as well, didn't you, Joe?

00:26:16.000 Yeah.

00:26:16.000 You will find that as you teach people, your understanding of a subject just gets deeper.

00:26:22.000 Oh, yes.

00:26:22.000 You start to refine that you're thinking around the subject.

00:26:26.000 So I remember towards the end of...

00:26:29.000 I taught stand-up because there's a supplementary income and because I'm a stand-up geek.

00:26:35.000 And a lot of it, I used to do joke writing with my students and put up different jokes from Joan Rivers, Chris Rock, all these people.

00:26:43.000 And I started to realize that there's such a beauty to joke writing.

00:26:48.000 It really is.

00:26:49.000 It's almost like maths.

00:26:51.000 There's a logic behind it.

00:26:53.000 And if the logic isn't there, the joke doesn't work.

00:26:56.000 The thread is broken.

00:26:58.000 And I never would have realized if I didn't teach or if I didn't teach maths.

00:27:02.000 I think we should all teach, genuinely, because you get an appreciation of actually what it means to be a good teacher.

00:27:09.000 Absolutely.

00:27:10.000 What it means to take someone on a journey.

00:27:12.000 And it does make you better at whatever you're teaching.

00:27:14.000 I was much better at martial arts after I started teaching it, and I recognized that in a lot of my friends that had regular jobs and went on to start teaching Jiu Jitsu.

00:27:23.000 They all got way better at it, way better at it.

00:27:26.000 And it's just because your understanding of it is ingrained deeply in your mind, like of all the various positions and transitions to different positions and the hazards and what you have to do to avoid and how to defend.

00:27:41.000 All that stuff is complex, and to be able to explain it to another person, watch their mind light up with these infinite possibilities, it really does stimulate your own growth.

00:27:53.000 It does, and one of the things that teaching gives you that We're good to go.

00:28:19.000 You're not going to make it.

00:28:20.000 It's really interesting to see.

00:28:22.000 The kids frequently who did the best, they were the kids who worked.

00:28:26.000 They were the kids who focused.

00:28:28.000 They were the kids who understood that in order to be good at something, you need to turn up.

00:28:34.000 Yeah, that's one of the things I had to cultivate in myself because I didn't have anyone explain that to me when I was a kid.

00:28:39.000 I don't know if you did, but I was smart, but I didn't work hard at school.

00:28:44.000 Because it was easier for you.

00:28:46.000 Because it was easier, right.

00:28:47.000 And it was only when I became an adult and I realized that I want to do things in the world that I realized, actually, you have got to work so hard to create anything.

00:28:56.000 And that's when I started cultivating this in myself.

00:28:59.000 But I saw this at school.

00:29:00.000 You know, there was a guy that I went to school with, wasn't as smart as me, wasn't as this and that, but he was way more successful.

00:29:06.000 And then I met his dad.

00:29:08.000 And I remember his dad telling me this, we were on the sidelines watching a rugby game, and another kid said to him, oh, yesterday there was this situation in a game where someone was taking a penalty kick to win the game.

00:29:21.000 Imagine how scary that must be.

00:29:23.000 And my friend's dad, the friend who was successful, his dad, he went, no, think about it like this.

00:29:29.000 How many people want to be in that position? 0.99

00:29:32.000 And when you score, how many people are just so with you and delighted?

00:29:36.000 And that little reframe, that's all it takes sometimes, just a little understanding how to build confidence in yourself or how to work hard.

00:29:44.000 And not enough kids get that, man.

00:29:46.000 And I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity as an adult to develop that because you can't do anything without that.

00:29:52.000 It doesn't matter how smart you are.

00:29:53.000 There's an expression in America, hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.

00:29:57.000 It's a great expression.

00:29:58.000 It's so important.

00:29:59.000 But what you're talking about is also framing things.

00:30:02.000 Looking at things in a beneficial way as opposed to a way that's going to increase your anxiety.

00:30:09.000 If you think, oh, I don't want to fuck this up, you'll fuck this up.

00:30:13.000 The best piece of advice I ever got was plan to fail. 0.95

00:30:16.000 Because if you expect to fail, it doesn't surprise you.

00:30:20.000 You get on a diet and the diet's working and everything's going great. 0.91

00:30:25.000 And then one time you fuck up and you have a binge.

00:30:27.000 And most people, they get off the bandwagon at that point. 1.00

00:30:30.000 Because I fucked up, I'm this, I'm that. 0.98

00:30:32.000 But if you expect that to happen, then you wake up in the morning and you go... 1.00

00:30:37.000 Alright.

00:30:37.000 Time to get back in the saddle.

00:30:39.000 Learning how to think is a very difficult task that most people have to kind of figure out on their own.

00:30:45.000 They figure out through self-help books and Instagram videos.

00:30:49.000 They don't necessarily figure it out from formal education.

00:30:53.000 No, but that's why I had to spend my 20s doing a shit ton of personal development because I wanted to be efficient, effective.

00:31:01.000 I wanted to get places.

00:31:02.000 I wanted to create things, most of all.

00:31:04.000 I wanted to create things.

00:31:05.000 And if you want to create things, you've got to have these skills that otherwise you're going to struggle without, whether that's working with other people.

00:31:13.000 Stand-ups struggle with this because everyone's so individually minded.

00:31:16.000 Yes.

00:31:16.000 But we've built an incredible team, not just me and Francis, but you met Anton, our producer, and a bunch of other people.

00:31:23.000 That's an interesting part of our life now, is we've got a team of people to manage, and you've got to run that, you've got to look after them, you've got to make sure they're growing, they're getting what they need.

00:31:32.000 It's an exciting challenge to be in the position that we're in.

00:31:35.000 Yeah, I've faced the same challenges.

00:31:37.000 It's complicated.

00:31:38.000 You know, stand-ups are kind of lone wolves.

00:31:41.000 But one of the things that we did at the Comedy Store, and then we're doing also here in Austin, is cultivating a legitimate community.

00:31:48.000 We have a very, very supportive community of comics, and it's a different world now.

00:31:54.000 Comics used to think of other comics as being the competition, that somehow or another, if someone did well, it takes away from you.

00:32:00.000 But now, instead, they look at it as when someone's doing well, that you can do well, too.

00:32:05.000 Also, that you're a part of this same community, so when someone does well, it sort of legitimizes the community.

00:32:11.000 It's awesome that you have that here, because in the UK we're still in the crabs-in-a-bucket mentality back there.

00:32:16.000 They can get out of it.

00:32:17.000 You just need the top dogs to accept this new way of thinking of things and try to help the young guys coming up and encourage this different kind of thinking.

00:32:27.000 I think that's so important, Joe.

00:32:30.000 I really do.

00:32:31.000 Because here's the thing, you know, that way of thinking of like, oh my, I've got to get this, and if someone comes here, they're going to...

00:32:39.000 You're going to be miserable.

00:32:40.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:32:40.000 You're going to be miserable. 1.00

00:32:41.000 You're going to be filled with anxiety.

00:32:43.000 Even if you're doing well, you're always going to have your head over the shoulder looking, thinking, who's coming up behind me?

00:32:49.000 Who's going to take my stuff?

00:32:50.000 It's famine mentality.

00:32:51.000 Yeah.

00:32:52.000 And it's not good.

00:32:53.000 It's not good for art.

00:32:54.000 It's the worst thing for art because...

00:32:56.000 When someone does really well, that weird green envy that comes up, you gotta figure out how to turn that into motivation. 0.99

00:33:03.000 Instead of looking at it like, fuck that guy, why did he get this? 0.99

00:33:06.000 Instead going, wow, look at him, he's killing it. 1.00

00:33:08.000 And what did he do?

00:33:09.000 He worked hard, his jokes are well-crafted, he's really likable.

00:33:13.000 I gotta work harder.

00:33:14.000 I gotta work harder.

00:33:15.000 My jokes should be better.

00:33:16.000 I have to do more stage time, get looser.

00:33:18.000 I have to revamp my act.

00:33:20.000 And if you could just look at it that way, all those people around you that are killing it, those people are all fuel.

00:33:26.000 They're all motivation.

00:33:28.000 Stand-ups, great stand-ups in particular, don't exist in a vacuum.

00:33:31.000 And this is one of the things that I drill into these young guys' heads out here and young girls and non-binary folks. 0.94

00:33:36.000 I try to drill into people's heads like we need each other.

00:33:40.000 We are not individuals.

00:33:42.000 We are this one biological superorganism.

00:33:46.000 And that's what a community is.

00:33:49.000 That's what a civilization is.

00:33:50.000 And that's what a group of comedians are.

00:33:53.000 It's an organization.

00:33:55.000 But everyone together is like feeding off of the inspiration of each individual member.

00:34:01.000 And when people are doing really well, especially like young people, I love when up-and-comers are really starting to make it, and they're starting to make money, and they can afford a nice apartment, they get a car.

00:34:12.000 I get excited.

00:34:13.000 I love it.

00:34:14.000 I love it.

00:34:15.000 Because it could also inspire all these other people that might have been on the cusp of quitting.

00:34:19.000 They might have been on the cusp, and they might turn out to be great comics.

00:34:22.000 Because so many of us in the beginning in particular, just such a...

00:34:25.000 Touch and go business.

00:34:27.000 You just wonder whether or not you're ever going to make it.

00:34:29.000 Are you wasting your time?

00:34:31.000 Am I going to be that 45-year-old guy at open mic nights who can't get a laugh?

00:34:36.000 Those guys are terrifying.

00:34:38.000 That is terrifying.

00:34:38.000 And not just that.

00:34:39.000 We all know the comics.

00:34:41.000 We all played the clubs in the UK. You played the clubs in America.

00:34:46.000 You know, there's that comic, that headliner, who's just burnt out, who just sits in the corner of the green room, who looks like he's got some form of PTSD. He's not engaging.

00:34:55.000 Well, he does.

00:34:55.000 He has got PTSD. Yeah, he's not engaging with people, and he just goes out and does the same act.

00:35:01.000 And he can kill. 0.95

00:35:02.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:35:03.000 Even when he kills, he comes off looking more dead than he did before.

00:35:06.000 Yeah, because he's still scared.

00:35:08.000 He's killing with that old act.

00:35:09.000 One of the beautiful things about doing a special is you have to write new material afterwards. 0.87

00:35:14.000 You release that special and it's not like the Rolling Stones can go tour and do fucking Gimme Shelter over and over and over again and everybody cheers. 0.99

00:35:23.000 You have to have new shit. 0.99

00:35:25.000 You can't have 30-year-old jokes. 1.00

00:35:26.000 You have to have new shit. 1.00

00:35:28.000 Some guys just get scared by that. 0.99

00:35:30.000 It's a very daunting, terrifying feeling to abandon all of your material and start from scratch.

00:35:36.000 You have to do that.

00:35:37.000 It's one of the beautiful things about stand-up is you become a beginner every time you write a new joke.

00:35:41.000 Yeah, that is true.

00:35:43.000 And do you know what?

00:35:44.000 I don't love it at the time, but looking back, it is good. 1.00

00:35:47.000 You know when you're gigging with all these people, and they're all doing their best stuff, and you do your 10 minutes of new, and you suck a dick? 0.99

00:35:55.000 Yeah, and they're killing it with old stuff. 1.00

00:35:57.000 And then you walk off, and they're like, He was shit. 1.00

00:36:01.000 Yeah, that's how it is. 1.00

00:36:02.000 Well, I'll tell you the story, man.

00:36:03.000 I remember when I was starting out, the club that Francis used to help run, and I used to gig there a lot.

00:36:09.000 What's that club?

00:36:10.000 Angel Comedy in London.

00:36:11.000 We actually used to film the show there.

00:36:14.000 They lent us the space when we were starting out. 0.99

00:36:17.000 And I saw a guy there who came on, he did 10 minutes, I didn't know much about, and he ate shit for 10 minutes straight. 0.99

00:36:28.000 It was just, there was no laughter, it was bad. 0.97

00:36:31.000 And I was there, this new guy with my amazing five minutes going, and I was like, oh yeah, I went and smashed it.

00:36:36.000 Anyway, I forgot all about it, who the hell is this guy?

00:36:39.000 And then I was doing a pro night somewhere else, because this was a new act, new material night.

00:36:44.000 And I saw this guy in the green room. 0.98

00:36:47.000 I was like, what the fuck is he doing here? 0.99

00:36:49.000 And he went on and he closed it and he absolutely fucking destroyed. 0.99

00:36:56.000 And that's when I realized, like, you got to be prepared to go on and do 10 minutes of new and not give a shit that you die in front of all the people that you want to respect. 0.99

00:37:05.000 The only way it's ever going to get good. 0.99

00:37:07.000 It's got to get legs. 0.99

00:37:08.000 You got to walk it around.

00:37:09.000 That's why, you know, we were talking earlier about our show on YouTube.

00:37:13.000 Like, someone said, oh, you're going to delete your early stuff because it looks awful.

00:37:16.000 We look awful.

00:37:17.000 The lighting's terrible. 1.00

00:37:18.000 We ask stupid questions. 1.00

00:37:19.000 Like, the whole thing's terrible. 1.00

00:37:20.000 Have you seen my haircut?

00:37:21.000 Yeah.

00:37:22.000 Oh, man.

00:37:22.000 Go watch my old ones.

00:37:24.000 Your haircut and your waistline, bro.

00:37:25.000 You've done really well.

00:37:26.000 My old ones, we had snowflakes falling.

00:37:28.000 I've seen them.

00:37:30.000 Me and Redband.

00:37:31.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:37:31.000 But anyway, I'm never going to delete that shit. 1.00

00:37:33.000 Fuck that. 1.00

00:37:35.000 That's the past that made you who you are. 1.00

00:37:37.000 Yes.

00:37:38.000 Embrace it.

00:37:39.000 Those are great.

00:37:40.000 I tell everybody when you're starting out, oh, how do I do a podcast?

00:37:43.000 Go watch mine. 1.00

00:37:44.000 They're fucking terrible. 0.99

00:37:45.000 Go watch mine, start out, and just do it and get better. 1.00

00:37:48.000 And don't be scared that you suck in the beginning. 1.00

00:37:51.000 Everything you do when you start out, you suck at. 0.99

00:37:53.000 There's no way to be amazing from the jump, especially at something complex.

00:37:58.000 And if you are amazing at it, you're the rarest of the rare and just work even harder because you just have a very unusual gift and you should be very fortunate, feel very fortunate.

00:38:09.000 And still work hard at it, as we talked about.

00:38:11.000 You've got to work your ass off, man.

00:38:12.000 If you enjoy it.

00:38:13.000 Absolutely.

00:38:14.000 I used to tell my kids this story.

00:38:16.000 When I used to teach some of the smart ones and they'd get all cocky, I'd say, who's the most gifted footballer?

00:38:24.000 In the UK at the moment, like English football, and they reel off all these names.

00:38:28.000 Harry Kane, blah, blah, blah.

00:38:29.000 I said no.

00:38:30.000 It's a guy called Ravel Morrison.

00:38:32.000 Have you ever heard of him?

00:38:32.000 They all look blank at me.

00:38:34.000 Ravel Morrison is a fascinating study, and I would recommend anyone to read about him.

00:38:37.000 This was a kid who, when he was at Manchester United, one of the biggest clubs in the land, was known as the most talented boy of his generation.

00:38:45.000 They were saying he was the biggest talent they'd ever seen in the last 30 years since a guy called Paul Gascoigne.

00:38:51.000 He was that naturally talented.

00:38:53.000 But because...

00:38:54.000 He went down the wrong path because he had trouble focusing, because he wasn't the most disciplined, because he wasn't the best mentally.

00:39:01.000 I don't think Ravel Morrison has a club.

00:39:03.000 He used to play, last season, at the worst club in the second division.

00:39:08.000 And this was a kid who, ability-wise, could have done anything.

00:39:12.000 If you're not prepared to work, even if you've got this insane talent, it ain't gonna matter.

00:39:17.000 No, it's not gonna matter.

00:39:18.000 When you were teaching stand-up, this is one thing about America that's unusual, is that there's no really good comics that teach comedy.

00:39:27.000 It's real weird.

00:39:28.000 We kind of teach it to each other in green rooms.

00:39:31.000 We teach it to each other on airplanes, on the road, and hanging out in hotels and having lunch together.

00:39:37.000 We talk about comedy.

00:39:39.000 We go over our processes.

00:39:41.000 Sometimes we...

00:39:42.000 I think more education has been sort of distributed about stand-up comedy from podcasts, from conversations about podcasts.

00:39:51.000 It really...

00:40:00.000 We're good to go.

00:40:14.000 But one of the reasons I was doing it is because my mum's disabled, so I need to get money back to my dad and my mum in order to support them to pay for cleaners and stuff like that.

00:40:23.000 So I needed more money.

00:40:25.000 And they very kindly said to me, why don't you run a stand-up course?

00:40:28.000 When I qualified as a teacher for six years, I was a drama teacher.

00:40:32.000 That's how I originally started, and then I went into primary.

00:40:36.000 And then I thought about it, and I saw the way that other people were teaching, and I thought, I've actually got the opportunity here, as someone who trained as a teacher, who's got 10 years or 9 years experience at the time, I can actually teach it like a proper lesson.

00:40:51.000 So I created lesson plans.

00:40:53.000 So the first time we started off, we started off with improv, for them getting to know each other, various improv games.

00:40:59.000 And then the second lesson, we went into joke writing.

00:41:02.000 So I did the structure, set up, punchline.

00:41:06.000 And then what we did is we looked at joke structure from people like Carlin, who else, Mitch Hedberg, all these different people.

00:41:16.000 And what I would do is I would put six jokes on the board from these people, but I wouldn't put their names.

00:41:22.000 And one of them, two jokes were written by the same person.

00:41:26.000 I got them into pairs.

00:41:28.000 I go, right, analyze the jokes.

00:41:30.000 Which one was written by the same person and why?

00:41:35.000 So what that would do is, because in teaching, if I'm just there being didactic and talking at you, eventually you're going to switch off because that's how the brain works.

00:41:43.000 But if you say to them, right, analyze it, discuss it amongst yourselves.

00:41:46.000 So that was one of the exercises that really worked because then they looked at it and from that they looked at tone.

00:41:53.000 They looked at language.

00:41:54.000 They looked at who is the butt of this joke.

00:41:57.000 They looked at style.

00:41:59.000 They looked at does gender influence jokes, which of course it does. 1.00

00:42:02.000 And we then started to look at it, pick it apart, and then they could work out who it was and why.

00:42:09.000 So we then started off.

00:42:11.000 I then gave them a generic setup, sorry, just headbutted the mic, and got them to write a punchline.

00:42:17.000 For a generic setup.

00:42:18.000 I can't remember what the setup was.

00:42:20.000 I took Grandad out the other day.

00:42:23.000 That was the setup.

00:42:24.000 And then they had to romp punchlines for it.

00:42:26.000 I also looked at pivot words.

00:42:29.000 So an example of a pivot word is...

00:42:31.000 I'm trying to remember this now.

00:42:32.000 So I had a joke from Emo Phillips who said, I called my wife in bed with another man.

00:42:38.000 I was crushed.

00:42:40.000 I said, get off me, you two. 1.00

00:42:43.000 Great joke.

00:42:44.000 The pivot word in that is crushed.

00:42:47.000 And it's a pivot word because it's got a duality of meaning.

00:42:51.000 And that's why the English language is magical when it comes to joke writing.

00:42:55.000 It's got this duality of meaning.

00:42:59.000 2016, I opened for Eddie Izzard, but I did comedy in Spanish, and it was actually a lot more difficult because Spanish, it doesn't have those words which have those dual meanings that you can pivot on.

00:43:13.000 So by understanding that...

00:43:16.000 With these words which you can pivot on, which you can twist, you can make the punch even stronger.

00:43:22.000 Great joke writing is like writing a thriller.

00:43:25.000 It needs to make sense.

00:43:27.000 It needs to be logical.

00:43:29.000 But they can't predict where the twist is going to come.

00:43:33.000 Because if you predict where the twist is going to come, it's like watching a thriller and go, okay, I get it. 0.93

00:43:38.000 He's a killer.

00:43:39.000 She really fancies him. 0.98

00:43:40.000 They're going to go out on a date, then it's going to be a twist, and you're going to get bored. 1.00

00:43:43.000 If the twist doesn't make sense with your jokes, you're going to be like, This is a stupid plot. 1.00

00:43:49.000 Right. 0.97

00:43:49.000 But if the twist makes sense, is it has a logic, if it has a consistent worldview, then you're going to be hooked into the thriller and you're going to be hanging on every single twist and turn. 0.97

00:43:59.000 And that is the art of great joke writing.

00:44:02.000 So we do three hours on joke writing.

00:44:04.000 And I used to love it.

00:44:05.000 And then when they would say out their jokes about, you know, I took Grandad out the other day and they gave the punchline.

00:44:13.000 If they laughed, I'd analyze it.

00:44:16.000 And we'd go, why did that work?

00:44:18.000 But here's the thing.

00:44:19.000 This is when people really started to learn.

00:44:21.000 If it didn't work, I'd ask everyone to stop.

00:44:24.000 I'd say, look, we're just going to use your joke as an example.

00:44:27.000 And I just want you to know, I write hundreds of jokes, the vast majority of which will never work.

00:44:33.000 And we'll put it up on the board and we'll go, why doesn't it work, this joke?

00:44:37.000 And together we would work out why it was.

00:44:40.000 And most of the time it was logic.

00:44:43.000 And then I took it back to them.

00:44:44.000 I go, can we make this joke work?

00:44:47.000 And then they'd go off and then they'd write.

00:44:49.000 And a lot of the time we'd make a joke that would actually work.

00:44:54.000 So it's by doing that consistently, all the time, I used to do things like worlds colliding, where I used to take, I don't know, this was in 2018, take a topic like Trump, take a topic like supermarkets.

00:45:07.000 I go, right, we're going to create a joke about Trump and the supermarket, you know, target whatever it is.

00:45:13.000 Think about everything you can think of Trump.

00:45:16.000 Think about a spider diagram.

00:45:18.000 Everything you can think about The supermarket, a particular supermarket, whatever it be.

00:45:24.000 Okay, now trying to find links between the two.

00:45:28.000 And then we would write jokes with Trump and the supermarket.

00:45:31.000 And a lot of the time they wrote good stuff that you would never ever have heard a comedian do before.

00:45:37.000 Because I said to them, it's not about first thought, second thought, third thought.

00:45:41.000 Because here's the thing.

00:45:43.000 If the audience can predict your punchline, throw the joke away because it means that your joke isn't good.

00:45:52.000 They can't predict the punch.

00:45:54.000 That is the most important thing.

00:45:57.000 So we just went over it.

00:45:58.000 And then one of the things that I said to them was, you need to tell a story.

00:46:03.000 I want you to tell a story.

00:46:05.000 I don't care about interesting.

00:46:06.000 I don't care about funny.

00:46:07.000 I don't care about any of that.

00:46:09.000 I want a story that you would tell your bodies around the table in the pub. 0.55

00:46:14.000 And they would get up and tell the story.

00:46:16.000 And then I would ask them about their lives, who they are, where they're from.

00:46:20.000 And here's the thing.

00:46:21.000 We've all got stuff that's interesting about us. 0.99

00:46:23.000 This is why this woke crap is so toxic. 0.99

00:46:26.000 Because I used to hear people say more and more, oh, I'm just a white guy. 1.00

00:46:29.000 I'm just like, fuck off. 1.00

00:46:31.000 It doesn't matter. 1.00

00:46:32.000 Where are you from?

00:46:33.000 Oh, I'm blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:46:35.000 What about your mum?

00:46:36.000 Oh, my mum passed when I was eight and then I did this and I did that.

00:46:39.000 I said, that's interesting.

00:46:40.000 Let's talk about that.

00:46:41.000 Talk about what it's like to grow up as an only kid in a school where you were bullied, you didn't have a mum, but you did this.

00:46:48.000 That's interesting.

00:46:50.000 And by the end, most of it, even if they weren't the funniest comedians in the world, they would come out and they would be interesting.

00:46:57.000 You felt like you actually understood who they were.

00:47:00.000 And that's the most important thing.

00:47:03.000 Because most comedy courses were like cookie cutter.

00:47:05.000 And I never wanted to create that.

00:47:07.000 I wanted to create somebody or help somebody get to be authentic.

00:47:12.000 Because it's like David Mamet said, words that come from the heart go to the heart.

00:47:16.000 And when you did this, was there an element of this course that involved them getting on stage?

00:47:21.000 Yes.

00:47:21.000 And have any of these people never been on stage before?

00:47:24.000 Some of them had never been on stage.

00:47:26.000 Most of them, I think.

00:47:27.000 Yeah, most of them.

00:47:27.000 So the first half would be on theory and we'd look at things like joke writing, you know, all the rest of it.

00:47:34.000 And the second half would be them being on stage, doing their thing on stage.

00:47:39.000 And then I would give them feedback and I'd be like, this is great.

00:47:41.000 This is really interesting.

00:47:43.000 You can do better than this.

00:47:44.000 But really focus on this, because this is really interesting.

00:47:47.000 That great joke you did there, maybe you can talk about this here, and that, and this.

00:47:52.000 And gradually, they got to have a really lovely five minutes.

00:47:56.000 So by the end of it, I think I did it for about two years.

00:48:02.000 A lot of the guys that I taught, they got to the finals of competitions, national competitions.

00:48:08.000 And they started to come through, and a lot of them are still doing it, and I see them on the circuit, and it's great, man, because they kill, and then I go, I wrote that joke.

00:48:17.000 How long did you do this for?

00:48:18.000 I did it for a couple of years, man.

00:48:20.000 I did it for a couple of years, and I loved it, because it meant that I could cut down on teaching, because the thing is, with school teaching, it's just draining, particularly when the schools that I was working in, it meant that it freed up a little more time.

00:48:33.000 And look, I'm a comedy geek.

00:48:34.000 I just love being around comedians.

00:48:36.000 I love teaching comedy.

00:48:38.000 I love the art of comedy.

00:48:39.000 To me, writing a great joke is like alchemy.

00:48:42.000 You take words that individually they don't have no connection, but you put them together in a particular order, with a particular rhythm, and you create something that's so beautiful.

00:48:51.000 What is your writing process like?

00:48:53.000 Do you wait for inspiration?

00:48:56.000 Do you sit in front of a computer or a notebook?

00:48:58.000 How do you do it?

00:48:59.000 I think, I remember like a lot of the times when comedians were in a club and they would say like, oh are you going to talk about your stuff about this and I'm not going to do my stuff about that.

00:49:10.000 I never wanted that.

00:49:11.000 I always wanted my set, what I wrote about, to be completely original, authentic and also honest.

00:49:20.000 So the way that I would do it is I'd go, what do I really think about something?

00:49:24.000 Like, honestly, Francis, what do you really think about this particular thing?

00:49:28.000 So I remember, like, when everybody was doing jokes about Brexit, and they were saying, well, people voted Brexit, whatever.

00:49:34.000 And I remember thinking, oh, man, this isn't...

00:49:37.000 There's something here.

00:49:39.000 And then my mum voted Brexit.

00:49:41.000 A first generation Latin American immigrant to the UK. And I remember thinking, there's something in that.

00:49:49.000 And I played around with it, and it took me a long time to actually figure it out.

00:49:54.000 And then finally I went, like, my mum is a first generation who came here from the UK 40 years ago, unable to speak the language.

00:50:02.000 Boom, boom, boom.

00:50:03.000 Set it up.

00:50:04.000 So you've got an image of this woman in as few words as possible.

00:50:08.000 And I said, and two years ago, she voted Brexit.

00:50:11.000 First laugh.

00:50:13.000 And then I said, and when I asked her why, she said, Francie, it's because there are too many foreigners in this country. 1.00

00:50:22.000 Right?

00:50:24.000 So you get the accent in there as well, which pops it up.

00:50:27.000 And then I was like, that's funny.

00:50:30.000 And then you play on stage with it, and you try certain things.

00:50:33.000 And then it got to a point where I was like, it's like she got to the UK, got to the border, turned around, and went, no, no, you're not coming.

00:50:41.000 Door locked, Britain full, goodbye. 0.92

00:50:43.000 Right?

00:50:44.000 Yeah.

00:50:45.000 And that used to get a big laugh, but I knew it was good when I would meet people whose parents were from a different country and they'd come up to me and go, my mom's like that.

00:50:54.000 I remember a black guy came up to me after a gig and went, my mom's Jamaican.

00:50:58.000 She does the exact same thing.

00:51:00.000 And that's when you know a joke is good. 0.99

00:51:03.000 When everybody does surface shit, but you do something that's actually deep. 0.99

00:51:08.000 Why'd you stop doing it? 0.99

00:51:10.000 I still do stand-up.

00:51:11.000 No, teaching.

00:51:12.000 Oh, why did I stop teaching?

00:51:13.000 What, as in teaching in a classroom?

00:51:15.000 Yeah, teaching comedy.

00:51:16.000 Why did I stop teaching comedy?

00:51:18.000 Because trigonometry took off.

00:51:20.000 It's more fun.

00:51:21.000 Yeah.

00:51:22.000 It's a long and complicated story as well because one of the things that happened when we started doing the show is we became evil and right-wing and whatever.

00:51:32.000 So we ended up leaving that club eventually.

00:51:37.000 So they accused you of being right-wing?

00:51:39.000 No, no, they found an excuse to get rid of us.

00:51:42.000 So you were fined before that?

00:51:44.000 Yeah.

00:51:45.000 Oh, no, Francis used to help run the club.

00:51:46.000 And they decided?

00:51:48.000 No, man, I don't want to shout on the club.

00:51:49.000 No, no, no, but it's okay.

00:51:50.000 But just in terms of, like, the attitude of whatever community, like, someone had decided that you guys were problematic?

00:51:57.000 Like, what was it?

00:51:58.000 Other comedians, when we signed to an agent about a year and a half ago, there was a bunch of comedians who tried to get our agent to drop us.

00:52:06.000 That's how it works.

00:52:07.000 Based on what?

00:52:08.000 Based on the fact that we talk to people who are not just on the left.

00:52:12.000 The platforming.

00:52:14.000 Yeah, that conversation.

00:52:16.000 That is a bizarre accusation.

00:52:19.000 Platforming.

00:52:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:52:19.000 Well, we were just interested in having conversations with different people, but what we found very quickly is, certainly in the comedy world that we were coming from, this is, you don't do this.

00:52:29.000 You don't do this.

00:52:30.000 It was made very clear to us. 0.99

00:52:31.000 But those comics have to be shit comics. 0.99

00:52:33.000 There's no way they're good. 0.99

00:52:35.000 It's different in the UK because it's a small industry, and the gatekeepers in terms of getting on television and whatever is like five people.

00:52:43.000 And in 2018, the woman who runs the Edinburgh Festival, which is how, in the UK, that's how you get anywhere, right? 0.83

00:52:49.000 You do the clubs, then you take your own show, like a special, to the Edinburgh Festival, you get seen by people, you get plucked, and then you go on TV, and that's how you make a career.

00:52:58.000 That's how it works.

00:52:59.000 The woman who runs the Edinburgh Festival, a woman called Nika Burns, she said, I look forward to the era of woke comedians deciding what isn't, isn't acceptable.

00:53:09.000 This is the person who controls the industry.

00:53:11.000 She was being serious?

00:53:15.000 What do you mean?

00:53:15.000 Because she's being serious.

00:53:17.000 Look forward to the woke people deciding what is and isn't acceptable and that's how she judges comedy?

00:53:23.000 Yeah.

00:53:24.000 That's hilarious.

00:53:25.000 Yeah.

00:53:26.000 I mean, it's the funniest thing about the entire thing because what he's produced ain't funny, but carry on, man.

00:53:30.000 So what happened to us when we started the show was we found ourselves on our own and gradually pushed out and out and out, which has been great for us.

00:53:39.000 Which has been brilliant for us because now we have our own thing.

00:53:42.000 I actually stopped doing stand-up after the pandemic because I realized it was just killing me physically, the driving around, all of that.

00:53:50.000 And now I just wake up every day.

00:53:52.000 I love my life.

00:53:53.000 I can't wait to do the thing I'm about to do.

00:53:55.000 And I've got a new baby now as well.

00:53:57.000 But yeah, it was difficult.

00:53:59.000 So what happened is we gradually kind of got pushed out and ended up doing...

00:54:04.000 And now trigonometry takes up so much of our time.

00:54:07.000 We barely have time to do anything else.

00:54:09.000 Now, what year did you start Trigonometry?

00:54:12.000 It was April 2018. And when you started it, what was the idea?

00:54:18.000 Would you just want to do it for fun?

00:54:20.000 Did you say, hey, I think we could do a good show?

00:54:22.000 Like, what was...

00:54:23.000 Yeah.

00:54:24.000 Well, this is why I said we're so glad to be here with you because we looked at people like you and we went, like, he's having interesting conversations with fascinating people.

00:54:33.000 That's what I want to do, you know?

00:54:36.000 And the other thing was we were trying to understand some of the things that we've talked about already.

00:54:41.000 Why is it suddenly people claiming half the country is racist? 0.85

00:54:44.000 Why is France's dad supposed to be this evil monster? 0.96

00:54:47.000 Why... 0.53

00:54:47.000 Why are we seeing increasingly comics going on stage? 0.53

00:54:50.000 Because you're standing backstage and you're listening all the time, right?

00:54:53.000 When you're on the circuit.

00:54:54.000 And you started hearing people suddenly one after another, well, I'm a straight white man, so this, and I'm this.

00:55:00.000 People just started regurgitating all this stuff and we couldn't work out what was happening.

00:55:07.000 And also there was a lot of censorship going on, self-censorship.

00:55:10.000 I remember I was always political with my comedy, satirical.

00:55:13.000 That's what inspired me because I grew up in Russia where we didn't have this.

00:55:17.000 And then when there was a bit of an opening up in the early 90s when the Soviet Union collapsed… There was this guy called Viktor Shandorovic who wrote a TV show which was based on Spitting Image.

00:55:29.000 These puppets of politicians talking and it was hilarious.

00:55:34.000 It was incredible.

00:55:34.000 And you've got to understand, to people who've never seen their leaders made fun of...

00:55:40.000 That was revolutionary, right?

00:55:42.000 So I was always someone who was interested in politics anyway, and I wanted to write comedy about it.

00:55:47.000 And I remember coming off stage at a brilliant comedy club in London called Top Secret.

00:55:51.000 I love them to bits.

00:55:53.000 And I'd just come off.

00:55:54.000 I did, you know, whatever my political material did really well.

00:55:57.000 And then this guy came up to me, another comedian, and he said, man, I love that.

00:56:01.000 I love that you can do politics.

00:56:03.000 And I went, well, why don't you?

00:56:05.000 And he went, oh, I'm a straight white guy.

00:56:06.000 I get crushed.

00:56:09.000 So is it worse over there than it is here?

00:56:13.000 100%.

00:56:13.000 Yeah?

00:56:14.000 In terms of the censorship, yeah, because you can't go anywhere.

00:56:16.000 You can't go anywhere.

00:56:17.000 It's a tiny industry.

00:56:18.000 If you become a bad person, where are you going to go?

00:56:21.000 Yeah.

00:56:22.000 And also as well, going back to that point that Constantine made, The people who decide whether you get spots on TV, the only way you can do that is through the Edinburgh Festival.

00:56:35.000 And the only way you're going to get noticed is if you adhere to the company line.

00:56:39.000 Because then it's TV, radio producers, and then you get your run at a West End theatre.

00:56:46.000 That's the only way to do it.

00:56:47.000 Now, things are changing, and this way of changing is brilliant.

00:56:51.000 But that was how it always was.

00:56:53.000 So people were terrified.

00:56:54.000 And as you know yourself, the worst form of censorship is self-censorship.

00:56:59.000 When you're sitting down with your pad and paper.

00:57:02.000 And go, you know, I wrote a joke, which I didn't have the courage to do until recently, about, you know, because I was saying, like, my voice, I've got a racist voice, because in South London, this is...

00:57:15.000 In London, I was banging on him for years to do that better material, because his voice is associated with someone who is, you know, intolerant in the UK. His accent.

00:57:25.000 Yeah, exactly. 0.99

00:57:26.000 And then I would say, but you know, here's the thing, all my girlfriends have all been black, mixed race, all Latin American, so my voice is racist, but my dick is woke, right? 0.99

00:57:36.000 You know? 0.99

00:57:36.000 And I was terrified to do that, because I'm openly mocking them. 0.99

00:57:42.000 I'm openly, and I would say, oh, I could never do this.

00:57:44.000 And he would always say to me, mate, you've got to do that.

00:57:47.000 It's That's funny.

00:57:48.000 That's funny.

00:57:49.000 And I never felt I could do it.

00:57:51.000 And that is replicated right the way through our industry.

00:57:54.000 We got on David Baddiel, a comedian, very famous comedian, brilliant comedian, lefty, liberal, all the rest of it.

00:58:02.000 And he made this point that he felt that way.

00:58:05.000 Now, imagine if a lefty, liberal, and these I don't use words in a derogatory sense at all with David.

00:58:10.000 I very much admire him.

00:58:12.000 What about the rest of us?

00:58:14.000 Right.

00:58:15.000 Right.

00:58:15.000 Yeah.

00:58:16.000 And so, but look, man, we're sitting here sounding like a bunch of losers complaining. 0.97

00:58:19.000 No, no, no, no. 0.95

00:58:20.000 Our life is great.

00:58:21.000 No, you're not.

00:58:22.000 You're explaining what your experience is.

00:58:24.000 Our life is brilliant, and we love what we do, and it's fantastic.

00:58:27.000 But the truth is, you know, and there's a lot of other components.

00:58:31.000 So, for example, the Edinburgh Festival, right?

00:58:32.000 In 2019, I went up and I did my first hour.

00:58:36.000 I sold 97% of my tickets.

00:58:38.000 I crushed it.

00:58:39.000 And if it hadn't been for the fact that I lived in Edinburgh and I had friends to stay with, I would have lost money.

00:58:46.000 I sold 97% of my tickets for a month.

00:58:50.000 How did you lose money?

00:58:51.000 Because of the fees that you pay. 0.81

00:58:52.000 It's a parasitic world, man.

00:58:54.000 You have to pay for the venue, you have to pay for the PR, you have to pay for the promotion, and by the time you're done.

00:58:59.000 And so what happens is- Where does the money from the ticket sales go?

00:59:02.000 To pay for the venue, to pay for the PR, to pay for the posters, to pay for all of that.

00:59:06.000 So it's normally a 60-40 split in favour of the artist.

00:59:11.000 But then PR is, what, a couple of grand?

00:59:13.000 A few grand, yeah.

00:59:14.000 And the only way you're going to get into the magazines is if you pay for PR. You then got to pay for a producer.

00:59:20.000 A lot of the times people want to get a producer in to help them get them noticed so that they can say that they're with this particular person.

00:59:28.000 Then you've got to pay for posters.

00:59:30.000 The accommodation fees are through the roof.

00:59:32.000 You can look at how much they're charging out the Edinburgh Festival just to stay there.

00:59:36.000 And I was lucky, man, because what happened that year is I was, for the first time in my life, I was part of a huge news story that had happened.

00:59:45.000 And so I had the PI. I was in the newspaper.

00:59:47.000 What was the news story?

00:59:49.000 So, at the very end of 2018, I was doing a gig at Top Secret, a brilliant club.

00:59:54.000 If you're ever in London, you should play it.

00:59:56.000 And this guy came up to me and said, oh man, I loved your set.

00:59:59.000 You absolutely crushed it.

01:00:00.000 Will you come and help us raise money for charity at my college?

01:00:04.000 I was like, yeah, sure, whatever.

01:00:06.000 I forget all about it.

01:00:07.000 And then in about three weeks, I got an email from them saying, please come and help us raise money for charity.

01:00:14.000 And in order to perform, we have a contract that you need to sign.

01:00:18.000 Okay.

01:00:19.000 I opened the file and it said, we have a zero tolerance policy on racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-religion, anti-atheism, and all jokes must be respectful and kind.

01:00:37.000 So no comedy.

01:00:38.000 Right.

01:00:39.000 So, and I turned it down, right?

01:00:42.000 I tweet about it to like a thousand people at the time or whatever it was.

01:00:45.000 And this thing goes super viral.

01:00:48.000 Super viral.

01:00:49.000 I'm talking about this was the day that it was the second most read story on the BBC News website, which is the biggest news website in the UK. On the day that the Prime Minister had nearly been removed from office by her own party.

01:01:02.000 So that's equivalent of the Democrats impeaching Joe Biden.

01:01:05.000 And the second story on CNN and Fox is no-name comedian turns down unpaid gig from Two-Bit College.

01:01:14.000 That's how it was.

01:01:15.000 That's how big it was, right?

01:01:16.000 And was it big because they were criticizing you or were they realizing how crazy it was?

01:01:21.000 It was a bit of both, I think.

01:01:22.000 And that's when I realized, Joe, this is the thing.

01:01:25.000 See, I thought that Francis and I and a couple of other, the rest of us, we were just like these weirdos who were campaigning about, you know, the stuff that was going on in comedy and generally.

01:01:35.000 But when that story went that viral, I got thousands of messages and thousands of emails from ordinary people saying, I can't say what I think at work.

01:01:44.000 I can't say what I think.

01:01:45.000 And that's when I realized we've got a genuine problem in society where everyone feels like they're walking around having signed that contract.

01:01:53.000 Yeah.

01:01:54.000 So to me, that was a sign that actually societally there's an issue going on.

01:01:58.000 Yeah, so that's why, you know, I had a lot of attention and I sold a lot of tickets and still I didn't make any money.

01:02:05.000 I'd like to see some of that comedy.

01:02:07.000 Some of that comedy where they abide by all those rules.

01:02:10.000 Right.

01:02:10.000 I'd like to see that dance.

01:02:12.000 Listen to this, man.

01:02:12.000 We have a comedy night in London where, first of all, you have to be triple vaccinated or whatever to get in.

01:02:19.000 And the comedians have to submit their material in advance to get it approved.

01:02:26.000 And the audience get given stickers to decide whether you can talk to them or not.

01:02:32.000 Wow.

01:02:34.000 That's the direction, the industry.

01:02:36.000 And they are the right people.

01:02:38.000 They're the celebrated ones. 0.99

01:02:38.000 We are always wondering why so many comedians who come out of England suck. 0.99

01:02:45.000 No disrespect to the ones that are funny. 0.93

01:02:47.000 I agree with you.

01:02:49.000 We've always tried to figure out what is it about America that breeds the best comedians.

01:02:56.000 Eddie Izzard is fantastic.

01:02:58.000 Ricky Gervais is fantastic.

01:03:00.000 Jimmy Carr, there's great comics that come from over there.

01:03:03.000 But it seems like more hurdles.

01:03:05.000 I'll tell you what it is.

01:03:07.000 It's a couple of things.

01:03:07.000 Number one, Joe, this is an American art form.

01:03:10.000 It was created in America.

01:03:12.000 It started in America.

01:03:14.000 You respect the art of stand-up more.

01:03:16.000 In the UK, we don't really get it.

01:03:19.000 We had musical at the very beginning, which was turn of the 20th century, which produced people like Chaplin, etc.

01:03:25.000 But that was always kind of based in variety.

01:03:28.000 You'd get a juggler.

01:03:29.000 You'd get a music act.

01:03:31.000 When what we call alternative comedy started in the 80s, It went back to those roots.

01:03:37.000 So on a night, you would get a juggler, you might get a mime artist, you'd get a magician, and you'd get a comedian.

01:03:43.000 And that's how comedy...

01:03:45.000 What we now know as modern stand-up comedy started in the UK. And it came through from that.

01:03:52.000 But what has happened is more and more and more, there's these kind of restrictions apply.

01:03:57.000 So people...

01:03:58.000 They can't be creative, because the number one thing that you need to be creative is the ability to play.

01:04:04.000 That's why when you...

01:04:06.000 Actors do a play.

01:04:08.000 That's why it's called a play, because you've got to be playful.

01:04:10.000 And if you feel restricted, if you feel that somehow, if you say this, that you might cross an imaginary red line, you're not going to be playful.

01:04:19.000 And the best material, as far as I'm concerned, is where people take contentious issues, contentious subject matter, like a Bill Burr, for instance, and they're playful with it, and it pops attention, and we're all able to laugh.

01:04:35.000 It's so important.

01:04:36.000 It's cathartic.

01:04:37.000 We need it for society.

01:04:39.000 But the moment you go, oh, you can't say this, and here's a red line, and if you do say that, then we're going to come down on you on a ton of bricks...

01:04:46.000 Yeah.

01:04:46.000 Where's the joy here?

01:04:48.000 You get no content either.

01:04:49.000 You get bad content.

01:04:50.000 You get a bunch of people that exist sort of in an echo chamber, and they preach to the choir, and you don't get good stuff.

01:04:58.000 And here's the thing I would say, and this is quite a controversial point.

01:05:01.000 It's also racist as well, because...

01:05:04.000 I really believe this is what diversity is, and I've said it many times and people don't like it, but it's true. 1.00

01:05:12.000 Diversity and these diversity quotas and whatever else in comedy is having different races, genders, sexualities all saying the exact same thing.

01:05:25.000 And if you stray from the party line, you ain't going to get a seat at the table.

01:05:30.000 And it's racist.

01:05:31.000 Because they want a black person on, but they want them to say what they think. 0.99

01:05:36.000 We have a friend who's from Barbados in the UK, great comic, Nico Yearwood. 0.98

01:05:40.000 And he was tweeting something, and another comedian, this is how fucked up the industry is, went to him, the optics of your tweets are really right-wing. 0.97

01:05:53.000 Because he is a black dude, isn't allowed to say this. 0.99

01:05:55.000 The optics. 0.99

01:05:56.000 The optics.

01:05:57.000 And that's the way it is.

01:05:58.000 That's why I said it's crabs in a bucket, because everybody's watching everybody.

01:06:02.000 And the moment you stray, oh no.

01:06:05.000 Now what about the big comics?

01:06:06.000 What about guys like Gervais?

01:06:08.000 Yeah, look, once you get to that level, you can say whatever the hell you want.

01:06:11.000 But do they support the up-and-comers?

01:06:13.000 Are they involved in the community?

01:06:15.000 I don't think Ricky is, but I don't think Ricky was ever...

01:06:18.000 Did he do the circuit for a long time?

01:06:20.000 Ricky never really did the circuit.

01:06:21.000 Ricky used to do his character, Derek, on the circuit.

01:06:24.000 See, Ricky started to do TV, I remember it, in around about...

01:06:28.000 I was in college at this point, so it was 1999. And he used to do the 11 o'clock show.

01:06:33.000 And before that, for a couple of years, he did his character Derek, which he then turned into a TV series, on the circuit.

01:06:40.000 But not really.

01:06:41.000 But Ricky is actually very good.

01:06:42.000 He does his night called Ricky Gervais and Friends, where he puts on comics.

01:06:46.000 So Ricky is supportive.

01:06:47.000 Where does he do that?

01:06:48.000 He does that in little theatres around London.

01:06:51.000 And, you know, it's only 120 seats where it will sell out and then, you know, he'll put on, you know, these comedians. 0.92

01:06:58.000 But a lot of the time, this is the interesting thing, a lot of those comedians won't go public that they work with Ricky because they're terrified of what will happen because he's a vicious, evil transphobe.

01:07:09.000 But, you know, there's some good pushback happening as well.

01:07:11.000 You know Andrew Doyle, right?

01:07:12.000 Yeah.

01:07:13.000 I love Andrew Doyle.

01:07:15.000 We're very good friends with Andrew.

01:07:16.000 In my opinion, he's one of Britain's finest satirists that is produced in our lifetime.

01:07:21.000 That character is amazing.

01:07:22.000 He's fantastic.

01:07:23.000 Titania McGrath.

01:07:24.000 Titania is awesome.

01:07:26.000 We're doing a show with him at the Edinburgh Festival.

01:07:29.000 How that's gonna go?

01:07:30.000 I have no idea.

01:07:31.000 But he created a comedy night called Comedy Unleashed in London, where there's no culture of self-censorship.

01:07:39.000 And that was the best place to play.

01:07:42.000 Not because people were being ridiculously offensive or whatever, just because you could breathe, man.

01:07:46.000 You could breathe.

01:07:47.000 And the thing is, the audience is there, especially for me with more political stuff.

01:07:51.000 We're good to go.

01:08:09.000 You know, they were getting pushed back on.

01:08:12.000 So whenever you do anything like that, you're going to get people who hate on you and whatever.

01:08:17.000 So that's been part of the journey for us, realizing that actually we need to stop whining and just get on with it, man.

01:08:22.000 I like to use the example of Lenny Bruce until I remember that they killed him.

01:08:25.000 Well, he killed himself.

01:08:27.000 Yeah, but I mean, they made their part.

01:08:29.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:08:30.000 Sure.

01:08:31.000 I mean, it was a heroin overdose.

01:08:33.000 It's hard to say that they killed him.

01:08:35.000 But they definitely tried him multiple times for obscenities.

01:08:39.000 You ever see the recordings of the later stages of his life where you'd go on stage with legal notes and just read off of the transcript of the trials?

01:08:47.000 No.

01:08:48.000 It was horrible.

01:08:49.000 It was really sad.

01:08:50.000 And people would go, come on, Dirty Lenny, bring back Dirty Lenny.

01:08:52.000 They wanted to hear jokes.

01:08:53.000 There was no jokes.

01:08:55.000 He was just talking about the nuances of the trial.

01:08:58.000 Wow.

01:08:59.000 It was not good.

01:09:00.000 I mean, he was losing his mind towards the end, but I mean, I would imagine the pressure of, you know, having essentially the entire legal system and a good part of society coming down on you for the things you're saying and not being really recognized as what he is in terms of a true—he's the true godfather of— American stand-up.

01:09:22.000 That's the guy.

01:09:23.000 Everyone before him was just doing jokes.

01:09:25.000 It was just jokes.

01:09:26.000 And he was talking about social issues.

01:09:28.000 He was talking about what society's like. 0.78

01:09:30.000 He was talking about hypocrisy.

01:09:32.000 He was talking about things that he thought mattered.

01:09:35.000 And using language that people would use outside of the stage.

01:09:40.000 And you couldn't for some reason.

01:09:42.000 You couldn't use that on stage.

01:09:43.000 And he was pushing back against that and literally getting arrested.

01:09:46.000 Yeah.

01:09:47.000 And that's why I always think about, you know, this progressive...

01:09:51.000 I think of it as a cult or as a religion, right?

01:09:54.000 And that's what my heroes were...

01:09:55.000 They were pushing back against the religion of their day.

01:09:58.000 The right-wing conservatives who were saying, you can't say this, you can't do this, you can't say Jesus, you can't...

01:10:03.000 They were pushing back against that.

01:10:05.000 And now I feel there's a movement of people starting to push back against this new religion.

01:10:11.000 And I think eventually it's going to turn around.

01:10:14.000 He's a pessimist.

01:10:15.000 I'm an optimist.

01:10:16.000 Are you a pessimist about this?

01:10:17.000 Oh, massive pessimist, Joe.

01:10:18.000 Do you know, I've started calling myself Fostradamus, mate.

01:10:22.000 Because every one of my predictions comes true.

01:10:25.000 In the last two years, it's true. 0.99

01:10:27.000 When everything went to shit, I went, there'll be another lockdown. 0.99

01:10:29.000 There was another lockdown. 0.99

01:10:31.000 People were going to me, it's only going to be two weeks.

01:10:33.000 I'm going to go, mate, it lasts months.

01:10:34.000 And I just sit there being really happy with myself.

01:10:37.000 Well, that's why I moved to Texas.

01:10:39.000 I saw it coming.

01:10:40.000 I moved out here.

01:10:41.000 I mean, I started looking in May of 2020. It was a couple months after they locked everything down and we weren't back up again.

01:10:47.000 I was like, oh, I see where this is going.

01:10:49.000 They enjoy this.

01:10:51.000 They enjoy telling people what to do.

01:10:52.000 Whether or not they honestly, earnestly think that they're protecting people, they are enjoying this power and control, and I don't like it.

01:11:00.000 And the thing is, man, as I talk about in there, I've seen this before.

01:11:04.000 Francis has seen this before, right?

01:11:06.000 We come from countries.

01:11:07.000 We've seen authoritarianism.

01:11:09.000 And the truth is what scared me the most about COVID, it wasn't what the government was doing.

01:11:13.000 It wasn't what the government was doing.

01:11:15.000 It was how much people loved it.

01:11:17.000 Yeah, they're embracing it. 0.99

01:11:18.000 They fucking loved it. 0.98

01:11:19.000 People were embracing the pharmaceutical companies, which was bizarre to me. 1.00

01:11:24.000 The people that have been the most deceptive that have caused irreparable damage to people and families because of lies, because of... 0.94

01:11:32.000 Faking studies because of withholding data and information and they've been fined to the tune of billions and billions of dollars and all of a sudden people were putting all their eggs in that basket I was like you guys are out of your fucking minds like you don't remember the past you don't remember that remember the history of what these people have done and you don't they clearly don't understand how these studies work and how they get funded and how politicians get funded and how Special interest groups are working behind the scenes to make sure that these things get mandated. 0.61

01:12:02.000 Like, this is fucking spooky. 0.97

01:12:04.000 That was the thing that bothered me about it, man. 0.98

01:12:06.000 It's like, look, I'm not a medical expert.

01:12:08.000 I don't know what the hell's going on.

01:12:09.000 You're not?

01:12:09.000 No.

01:12:11.000 Surprisingly.

01:12:11.000 Oh, well then, you better not talk.

01:12:12.000 Right.

01:12:14.000 What I did find very strange is that we got to a position where you've got people who aren't medical experts telling doctors to take a vaccine that they don't want to take, and they're forcing them.

01:12:27.000 We had this in the UK, man.

01:12:30.000 They were attempting to introduce vaccine mandates for medical staff.

01:12:35.000 There was an incident where a doctor is talking to the health minister and the health minister is forcing him, trying to force him to take it when he doesn't want to take it.

01:12:46.000 Does that make sense to you?

01:12:48.000 A non-medical expert forcing a medical expert to have a medical procedure? 0.98

01:12:53.000 Does that make any fucking sense? 0.95

01:12:55.000 It didn't seem like it makes sense, no. 0.96

01:12:59.000 You're careful about this now, are you?

01:13:02.000 No, not really.

01:13:05.000 I've got a theory on the whole COVID thing about why we lost our mind.

01:13:08.000 I think it's to do with the fact that most of us aren't religious anymore.

01:13:12.000 You know, here's the thing.

01:13:13.000 We're not religious anymore.

01:13:14.000 We all now think that this is it.

01:13:17.000 That you only have one life, right?

01:13:19.000 That you only have one chance to live your life.

01:13:22.000 That being the case, you are going to do everything that you can to control as much as you can in order to keep yourself safe.

01:13:31.000 Because once you die, that's it.

01:13:33.000 That's the end.

01:13:34.000 There's nothing else after that.

01:13:35.000 Right.

01:13:36.000 Okay?

01:13:36.000 So people have convinced themselves as well that we're in control of nature.

01:13:42.000 That actually, we've got nature, you know, disease.

01:13:45.000 We've got disease pretty much beaten.

01:13:47.000 We're going to live these lives where we're, you know, going to be young till the end of our days.

01:13:52.000 All of a sudden, this pandemic appears out of nowhere, like all pandemics.

01:13:56.000 And all of a sudden, those illusions are shattered.

01:13:58.000 And we realize that we're mortal, we're feeble, we're fragile, we're just human beings.

01:14:03.000 And this thing can take us out.

01:14:05.000 Like Boris Johnson in our country got really ill with it.

01:14:07.000 Yeah.

01:14:08.000 And I think people just freaked out because they realize they're mortal.

01:14:13.000 And what they try to do, a lot of people, is just they try to control everything.

01:14:18.000 If I can control every single possible variable, that will mean that we're going to be safe and I'm going to be safe.

01:14:23.000 I think that's part of it.

01:14:24.000 But the other part of it, and we know this from history, is people like controlling other people.

01:14:29.000 People like power.

01:14:30.000 And like I say, what scared me in the UK, we had these polls come out and suddenly like 40% of the country wants us to wear masks forever.

01:14:38.000 Doesn't matter if there's COVID, right?

01:14:40.000 20% want nightclubs permanently shut down.

01:14:43.000 Doesn't matter if there's COVID. 20%?

01:14:45.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:14:46.000 And we're seeing this polling.

01:14:47.000 That's why, you know, you talk about moving to Texas.

01:14:51.000 That's why it was so scary for us, because in the UK... There's no Texas.

01:14:54.000 What the fuck are we going to do? 0.99

01:14:55.000 We're going to move to Belgium. 1.00

01:14:56.000 Well, actually, if Belgium has got the same shit anyway... 1.00

01:14:59.000 Well, Belgium has the worst health minister ever. 1.00

01:15:01.000 Yeah.

01:15:01.000 See that lady?

01:15:02.000 Yes.

01:15:02.000 Yeah.

01:15:03.000 Yes.

01:15:04.000 That is wild.

01:15:06.000 Yeah.

01:15:07.000 That's wild.

01:15:07.000 So that's one of the things that, like, and we were seriously talking about moving here, man.

01:15:12.000 Yeah, you should.

01:15:12.000 We probably will eventually.

01:15:14.000 I don't know.

01:15:15.000 We've been traveling around and having such a great time, but I always remember that.

01:15:20.000 You know that old joke about immigration and tourism?

01:15:22.000 No.

01:15:23.000 Guy goes to heaven, dies, goes to heaven, and God meets him at the pearly gates, says, please come in.

01:15:28.000 And it's beautiful.

01:15:29.000 It's white.

01:15:30.000 Everyone's wearing white robes.

01:15:31.000 Everything is peaceful and tranquil.

01:15:33.000 Yeah.

01:15:33.000 And after about a year, he gets bored of this.

01:15:35.000 And he goes, God, can I go and check out hell for a day?

01:15:38.000 God's like, okay, go for it.

01:15:40.000 Turns up to hell, the gates of hell open, and it's a casino. 1.00

01:15:43.000 There's fucking booze over here, girls over here. 1.00

01:15:45.000 Oh, amazing. 1.00

01:15:46.000 That was a great day.

01:15:47.000 Goes back to heaven, goes, that was great.

01:15:50.000 I'm good.

01:15:51.000 And after about another year, he gets bored again.

01:15:53.000 So he says, can I go back to hell for like a week?

01:15:56.000 No problem, sure.

01:15:57.000 Turns up at hell, same thing, girls, booze, everything you want. 0.78

01:16:00.000 Comes back refreshed.

01:16:02.000 He goes, God, listen, heaven's great, but I like hell a lot more.

01:16:06.000 Can I move?

01:16:07.000 And God goes, yeah, no problem.

01:16:09.000 You can move, no problem.

01:16:11.000 One condition.

01:16:12.000 You can't come back. 0.92

01:16:14.000 It's like, what the fuck would I want to come back here? 0.99

01:16:15.000 This is incredible in hell. 0.99

01:16:17.000 Okay, no problem.

01:16:19.000 Turns up in hell, the gates of hell open, the fires, the brimstone, the devil grabs a pitchfork, sticks him in a pot of boiling tar, and as he's drowning and his face is melting off, he goes, what happened to the girls, the booze?

01:16:30.000 And he goes, don't confuse tourism with immigration.

01:16:33.000 Interesting.

01:16:35.000 So I'm sure there's the other side of it too, right?

01:16:38.000 Well, you're looking at it like tourists, like you're coming over here and you're seeing the freedom.

01:16:43.000 I'm looking at it like an immigrant. 0.99

01:16:44.000 It's real.

01:16:46.000 The freedom's real.

01:16:48.000 Especially in Texas, there is an ethos.

01:16:52.000 There's like a way that this state has always prided itself in freedom.

01:16:59.000 And that lends itself very much to comedy.

01:17:03.000 And it's like two of the greatest of all time came out of Texas, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison.

01:17:06.000 And I think that's part of the reason why.

01:17:09.000 There's a wildness to this place.

01:17:13.000 It has good and bad.

01:17:15.000 Well, that's what I mean.

01:17:16.000 Everything has trade-offs.

01:17:17.000 So does freedom, right?

01:17:18.000 Now, people like us, we want more freedom.

01:17:20.000 For sure.

01:17:21.000 For sure.

01:17:21.000 But you know what I love about...

01:17:23.000 One thing that really annoys me about the UK, particularly UK comedians, they all go on the stage... 1.00

01:17:31.000 At the comedy club, they'll say, Americans are stupid, right? 1.00

01:17:34.000 And they'll be saying Americans are stupid whilst wearing a Converse jumper, Levi jeans, night trainers and drinking a Coke on stage, right? 1.00

01:17:41.000 And you go, can you understand what's going on here? 1.00

01:17:45.000 But the thing that I love about America is this is the place it happens, John.

01:17:50.000 This is the place, every time I come here, it doesn't matter if it's New York, if it's Texas, there's an energy about it.

01:17:55.000 You feel like people are energized.

01:17:57.000 They want to do things.

01:17:58.000 They want to achieve things.

01:17:59.000 And in the UK, look, I love England.

01:18:02.000 I'm in London.

01:18:02.000 I love my country.

01:18:04.000 It's my home.

01:18:05.000 But we have this strata, this class system where we're like, don't you dare get above your station.

01:18:11.000 You're going to remain right where you belong.

01:18:14.000 And in the US, you don't have that.

01:18:17.000 There's this openness and this desire and this drive.

01:18:19.000 And as Constantine said, of course there are trade-offs.

01:18:22.000 Of course there are negative things about it.

01:18:24.000 And there's things about this, you know, America that I don't like as well.

01:18:30.000 But The energy here is incredible.

01:18:32.000 The energy is incredible, man.

01:18:32.000 We've spent the last nine days traveling around, and it's amazing to us how many people that we just had internet connection with.

01:18:42.000 We went to the comedy cellar in New York, and the guy who runs it knows us, and we had a great time.

01:18:47.000 We just meet all these people, and everybody wants to work together, and everybody's happy for you to be doing well.

01:18:53.000 That is not the British way. 0.78

01:18:55.000 I'm friends with Steve Hilton.

01:18:57.000 Do you know Steve Hilton?

01:18:58.000 No.

01:18:59.000 He is now on Fox.

01:19:02.000 Oh, I know him.

01:19:03.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:19:04.000 He used to be involved in politics in the UK. Didn't he used to work for David Cameron?

01:19:09.000 Yes.

01:19:10.000 Yes, I remember him now.

01:19:11.000 And I actually met him and his family on a beach in Hawaii ten years ago.

01:19:17.000 Our family became friends with his family and we've gone on vacations together.

01:19:21.000 I knew him way before he became this evil Fox guy, which is very interesting.

01:19:26.000 He's a very nice guy.

01:19:27.000 But that was what he always said about coming from England to America, and that in England, everybody wanted you to fail.

01:19:33.000 They wanted you to keep your place.

01:19:35.000 Keep your place. 0.99

01:19:36.000 And look, I don't want to sit here and shit on Britain, because I came... 0.99

01:19:38.000 Too late. 0.99

01:19:39.000 Too late.

01:19:40.000 No, man, but I came to Britain, and look, everything is, we say in Russian, everything is understood in comparison.

01:19:44.000 I came to Britain from Russia.

01:19:47.000 And it's a brilliant place in comparison.

01:19:49.000 But I think the stage that we're at now with our lives, we've built something and we want to keep building.

01:19:54.000 You're showing us around your gym and I just think the opportunity to build amazing things.

01:20:00.000 It's just so much easier here and people want to help you and people want to work with you.

01:20:05.000 We've been really inspired by this trip, man.

01:20:07.000 People want you to go for it.

01:20:09.000 Yes.

01:20:10.000 And there's no feeling like it because if you want to make something of your life, that's what you need.

01:20:17.000 This is what I said to the guys from day one, man.

01:20:19.000 We've got to surround ourselves with people who have the mindset that we want to have.

01:20:23.000 And that's one of the most difficult things.

01:20:27.000 I've been pretty brutal in my life about making sure I'm not surrounded by toxic people who want to pull you down.

01:20:32.000 And it can be a lonely place sometimes.

01:20:34.000 Yeah, it's got to be hard if that's the predominant mindset.

01:20:38.000 The predominant mindset is trying to limit your ability to express yourself and to get out there.

01:20:44.000 But hey, look at us.

01:20:45.000 We're here.

01:20:45.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:20:46.000 And it's also as well, you know, the UK is a small country.

01:20:49.000 There's less people.

01:20:50.000 Yeah.

01:20:51.000 But the thing that I find really inspiring about America is I look at the great comics, the people who I looked up to, the people...

01:20:58.000 I remember the first communal stand-up experience I ever had.

01:21:03.000 I was in college, and most of my mates, when I was hanging out, they were black guys.

01:21:08.000 And I remember one of my mates going to me, Francis, you're one of the funniest guys I know.

01:21:13.000 You must love Chris Rock. 0.97

01:21:15.000 I went, but he's just that dude who stars in crap films, isn't he? 0.98

01:21:20.000 And they were like, no, no. 0.97

01:21:21.000 And so they took me to his...

01:21:23.000 He took me to his bedroom.

01:21:25.000 I was the only white guy in the room.

01:21:26.000 There was about five other people there.

01:21:28.000 And they watched that bit, the famous bit, black people versus the N-word.

01:21:33.000 And I looked around and all these black guys were like creasing up, doubled up, laughing. 1.00

01:21:39.000 And I was thinking to myself, can you say this?

01:21:42.000 Are you allowed to say this?

01:21:43.000 Well, you can't.

01:21:44.000 I don't want to see you doing that material, bro.

01:21:47.000 Yeah, but...

01:21:48.000 And then that just made me understand that America is where stand-up is created, but it's also where the best stand-up is created, where the pushback occurs, where people like Burr and yourself and all these people...

01:22:05.000 You're changing the form.

01:22:06.000 You're moving it forward.

01:22:08.000 That doesn't happen in our country.

01:22:10.000 We just imitate what you do.

01:22:12.000 And there's wonderful things to Britain.

01:22:14.000 Come on, man.

01:22:14.000 There's exceptions to that.

01:22:15.000 I mean, Eddie, is that who you're open for?

01:22:17.000 He's innovative.

01:22:18.000 Yeah, he is.

01:22:19.000 There's a bunch of people.

01:22:19.000 Exceptions.

01:22:21.000 There's exceptions.

01:22:22.000 There's exceptions.

01:22:22.000 No, I'm just worried.

01:22:23.000 We're going to go back.

01:22:25.000 Don't be scared, homie. 1.00

01:22:26.000 Ask the guys who shat on Britain having come to America. 0.87

01:22:29.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:22:29.000 I don't think it's that simple.

01:22:31.000 You're just talking about your personal frustrations.

01:22:33.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:33.000 But the...

01:22:34.000 Yeah, we are frustrated, it's true.

01:22:36.000 But that to me is the inspiring thing about America, is that when I look at this country...

01:22:42.000 You're the one dictating.

01:22:44.000 You're the one moving things forward.

01:22:46.000 You're the one who's pushing back.

01:22:47.000 You're the one who's challenging.

01:22:49.000 It's inspiring to be here, man.

01:22:51.000 It really is.

01:22:53.000 Yeah, our trip so far has been insane.

01:22:55.000 That's great.

01:22:56.000 Some comedians that are here need to hear that.

01:22:58.000 Yeah.

01:22:58.000 Because people get complacent.

01:23:00.000 They think that this isn't what it should be, that it should be better.

01:23:06.000 They don't understand how hard it is to do stand-up in other places.

01:23:08.000 Yeah.

01:23:09.000 Yeah.

01:23:09.000 And we've only got a few outlets to go to.

01:23:14.000 Whereas here, how can you not be inspired to be gigging with the greats?

01:23:20.000 Wait till you guys come tonight.

01:23:21.000 Come to the Vulcan tonight.

01:23:23.000 Oh, come! 0.99

01:23:23.000 See what we've got going on. 0.99

01:23:25.000 Austin's wild.

01:23:27.000 It's a wild scene right now.

01:23:29.000 And they have this show called Kill Tony.

01:23:31.000 And Kill Tony, every Monday night, aspiring comedians get to do one minute And then they get judged by a panel of professionals.

01:23:39.000 And it's this incredible show.

01:23:42.000 The way they have it put together.

01:23:43.000 And in one minute, you don't have any time to be woke.

01:23:45.000 There's no room for identity politics, and the show rewards funny.

01:23:49.000 It's all just about funny.

01:23:51.000 Go for it, no matter what.

01:23:53.000 And because of that, it's become really the cornerstone of the comedy community here.

01:23:58.000 Because all the people coming up, they understand that there's a real point of access.

01:24:03.000 There's a real way to make it.

01:24:04.000 And many people have gone from that show and had successful stand-up careers and they tour around the country right now.

01:24:10.000 It's incredible, man.

01:24:11.000 It's wild.

01:24:12.000 Yeah, that's awesome.

01:24:13.000 And that is the American spirit, which is, you know what?

01:24:17.000 I'm going to do it myself.

01:24:18.000 I'm going to create my own thing.

01:24:20.000 I'm going to go out there and do it.

01:24:22.000 Whereas the thing is with the UK, and please, I love the UK, we're always looking for approval from the ups, because that's the way the class system works.

01:24:30.000 So you're waiting for approval from the people above you to then go to the next level.

01:24:34.000 Whereas here, it's like, well, no, I'm going to do my podcast, I'm going to go out, and we're starting to learn that now.

01:24:40.000 But it's because of America that we're taking that on board.

01:24:44.000 You showed us the way, but with the internet now, All the cool, exciting stuff that's happening in the UK is people who are going around that machine that Francis is talking about. 0.92

01:24:52.000 And by the way, him and I, we both used to write for these TV shows and we watched them get shit as we were on them.

01:24:58.000 Right. 0.97

01:24:58.000 You see what I mean? 0.97

01:24:59.000 But look, with the internet now, look at what we built.

01:25:02.000 There's other people in the UK who are building cool stuff online because that's the way you do it now.

01:25:08.000 Yeah.

01:25:08.000 And what happens is now we've got to a point where some people build a thing online and then they start getting asked back onto the mainstream thing because they've got the audience and because of what they're doing.

01:25:21.000 That happens here as well.

01:25:22.000 Yeah.

01:25:22.000 The internet is incredible, man.

01:25:24.000 What an opportunity.

01:25:24.000 I'm just so grateful to be alive in this moment.

01:25:27.000 I really am.

01:25:27.000 Even the internet.

01:25:28.000 I mean, the internet is a dangerous, peril-filled environment as well.

01:25:32.000 It's like it's...

01:25:33.000 Everything has trade-offs, man.

01:25:35.000 Yeah, there's a lot going on.

01:25:36.000 There's a lot of forces moving in one way or the other.

01:25:39.000 And then there's also a bunch of people that, again, the crabs in the bucket thing.

01:25:43.000 And people that don't like the way you're doing it.

01:25:46.000 They want everyone to do it their way.

01:25:47.000 Or they think that if you succeed in your way, somehow or another it diminishes their possibilities, their opportunities to do it their way.

01:25:56.000 There's people that have been following the so-called rules their whole life and career, and they don't like when people don't.

01:26:02.000 Yeah, because they've invested and they've bought into a system.

01:26:06.000 And when they see you doing something different, they're going, hang on a second.

01:26:10.000 But my last 10 years, I've been following the rules.

01:26:14.000 What do you mean you've become successful doing something else?

01:26:17.000 I followed the rules.

01:26:18.000 And this is the beautiful moment about the time that we exist in.

01:26:22.000 The rules are crumbling, man.

01:26:24.000 It's now about going out and connecting.

01:26:28.000 And whereas before, a gatekeeper would look at a particular comic and just go, nah, he's too on the edge, or she's too this, or they're too that, and whatever else.

01:26:38.000 A mainstream audience isn't going to like them.

01:26:40.000 That doesn't matter anymore, man, because you've got your people out there.

01:26:43.000 Whatever you do, however you think, there are people who are going to think and are going to enjoy your stuff immediately.

01:26:50.000 So just go out there and do it.

01:26:51.000 It's beautiful.

01:26:52.000 On the other side, the flip side, is that those gatekeepers are the ones who motivate people to find ways around.

01:26:58.000 Yes. 0.80

01:26:59.000 Because of the fact that you know that this one incompetent person with their shitty, narrow-minded ideology is trying to force their sensibilities on your art, you get frustrated and you try to figure out workarounds. 0.93

01:27:11.000 If it was open and inclusive and easy, maybe people wouldn't expand as much. 0.94

01:27:16.000 Yeah.

01:27:16.000 Well, man, where we are now is like none of us is a person of faith, but we've started saying grace, like a secular version of grace around the table at the studio when we're having food because we're just so grateful for those people that made our life difficult.

01:27:32.000 And now we're in this position where we build something and every day we just like wake up and pinch ourselves.

01:27:37.000 That's awesome.

01:27:38.000 I think, you know, gratitude is very real.

01:27:41.000 It's very important and it's contagious.

01:27:43.000 And, you know, that's what grace is about. 0.96

01:27:46.000 Grace is saying it's about gratitude and whether or not you have to have gratitude towards an invisible deity or just for the experience that you're currently engaging in.

01:27:56.000 There's still a lot of room for that positive energy and that positive thinking.

01:28:01.000 And again, in that contagious mindset, it transfers to other people and then as you watch them benefit from it, it inspires you more.

01:28:10.000 It's all good.

01:28:11.000 And I would say to anyone who is maybe listening to this and they're going through hard times and they can't see a way out, just get a piece of paper and write down all the things that you're grateful for and be honest.

01:28:24.000 Just be honest about the things that you are grateful for and I guarantee you'll look at that list and you'll You'll be inspired because that is a springboard to something.

01:28:34.000 And look, we all went through tough times and there were moments where we were looking at our life and thinking, holy crap, how am I going to get out of this?

01:28:41.000 Is this it?

01:28:42.000 Is this all I've got?

01:28:43.000 Is this all I have?

01:28:44.000 Is this all I'm ever going to be?

01:28:46.000 But I promise you, if you keep working, if you're honest, if you have integrity, if you push through and you keep pushing, things will change.

01:28:55.000 It's really important.

01:28:57.000 Yeah.

01:28:58.000 Especially, I worry, like, I'm 40 now, you're right Joe, I don't look it, thank you very much, but, um...

01:29:04.000 But I worry about young men now, Joe.

01:29:07.000 Do you?

01:29:07.000 I do.

01:29:07.000 I do because I see young men and it seems to me, especially with young men, there seems to be a crisis.

01:29:14.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:29:15.000 Yeah.

01:29:16.000 There seems to be a crisis and there's a lot of young men who are very angry and they feel that things haven't gone their way and they're never going to go their way.

01:29:25.000 And it's really important that...

01:29:28.000 If you're grateful, but also if you identify what you're going to do, and you just keep working, and you keep pushing, and you keep striving.

01:29:37.000 Even if that, I wanted to be an actor when I started out.

01:29:39.000 That didn't work.

01:29:40.000 Then I became a teacher, and that worked, and then I went and did, and I gradually found my way.

01:29:45.000 And it took years and years and years of knockbacks and grafts, but if you're prepared to do the work, you will get to where you're meant to be.

01:29:53.000 Yeah.

01:29:54.000 Just keep working.

01:29:55.000 And find like-minded people.

01:29:57.000 Yeah.

01:29:57.000 That's one of the most important things.

01:29:58.000 We don't live alone.

01:30:00.000 We don't.

01:30:01.000 You don't survive and thrive alone.

01:30:03.000 You need other people that inspire you.

01:30:05.000 And when you feel down and shitty, one of the best ways out of that is to be around cool people.

01:30:09.000 Yeah.

01:30:09.000 Be around friendly, fun people and support each other.

01:30:13.000 That's all possible.

01:30:14.000 That's always been the way that, you know, Francis and I, at the beginning, I always knew we would have success with trigonometry.

01:30:21.000 From day one.

01:30:22.000 I said this to you, right?

01:30:23.000 From day one.

01:30:24.000 I never doubted it for a moment.

01:30:26.000 There's lots of other things I've done in my life that I doubted very much.

01:30:29.000 I never doubted this.

01:30:30.000 I don't know why.

01:30:31.000 I don't know.

01:30:31.000 I just knew it was going to work.

01:30:33.000 I just knew it was going to work.

01:30:34.000 And I always said to Francis, the only way this fails is if you and I fall out.

01:30:40.000 If you and I can't resolve our differences, this is going to fail.

01:30:44.000 That does happen with comedy, with podcasts.

01:30:47.000 Two people together, and for whatever reason, they have some sort of a problem.

01:30:51.000 I watched this incredible movie about a soccer team. 0.92

01:30:54.000 It was called The Damn United, and it's about two men. 0.96

01:30:57.000 One of them is like this... 0.98

01:30:59.000 Driven, ambitious, young, handsome manager.

01:31:03.000 And the other one is his assistant.

01:31:05.000 And they can't work without each other, but they don't know it. 0.96

01:31:08.000 And the ambitious guy is being a dick and he sort of takes over and they fall out. 0.93

01:31:13.000 And they have a really bad time. 0.98

01:31:15.000 And then when they get back together, it works out, right?

01:31:17.000 And I just, I always thought that if we can stick together and if we can encourage a sense of, like, we can work through anything, we were gonna be successful.

01:31:25.000 And we've gone through some really difficult things together, man.

01:31:28.000 You know?

01:31:29.000 Really, really difficult.

01:31:30.000 But I just, we always had that attitude of, we are gonna make it if we stick together.

01:31:35.000 We've been kicked out of studios, we've lost producers, we've had all kinds of crap happening.

01:31:40.000 Why were you kicked out of studios?

01:31:43.000 What do you think?

01:31:44.000 Because of content?

01:31:45.000 Because people don't agree with what we do, man.

01:31:48.000 No one wants to, you know, people don't want us to be having these conversations.

01:31:52.000 What is, like, the most controversial conversation you guys have had?

01:31:55.000 Oh, right.

01:31:55.000 So, I think, which one do you think is going to be?

01:31:59.000 I think we interviewed, we interviewed a lady at the time called Posey Parker.

01:32:06.000 Oh, right.

01:32:06.000 And this was in 2018, right?

01:32:08.000 Why do I know that name?

01:32:09.000 Okay.

01:32:10.000 The title of the episode is Trans Women Aren't Women.

01:32:13.000 And we had this conversation in 2018. And you've got to understand where we're coming from.

01:32:19.000 We are two comedians.

01:32:20.000 We just started this YouTube show, podcast.

01:32:23.000 We are in the comedy industry, which is the way we've described it to you.

01:32:27.000 And here we have this woman who comes in and says, trans women aren't women. 1.00

01:32:32.000 We were fucking terrified. 0.99

01:32:34.000 This is what I did for a large part of the interview. 0.98

01:32:38.000 She said something really problematic.

01:32:40.000 I've been looking at constantly...

01:32:42.000 He'd be like that.

01:32:42.000 We were terrified, man.

01:32:44.000 Yeah.

01:32:45.000 Because we knew we were going to lose our careers.

01:32:47.000 What is Posie Parker? 1.00

01:32:48.000 What does she do? 1.00

01:32:49.000 She's a gender-critical feminist in the UK who campaigns for single-sex spaces and stuff like that. 1.00

01:32:56.000 You should have her on, man.

01:32:57.000 She's great.

01:32:58.000 Yeah.

01:32:58.000 But she's very controversial in the UK. So it was our first foray, our second foray into the trans issue.

01:33:05.000 And she's pretty hardline. 0.99

01:33:07.000 And this whole hour is basically him shitting himself and me trying to ask questions to what she's saying.

01:33:13.000 Like, genuinely, like, there was a point where I... We were terrified.

01:33:16.000 We were terrified.

01:33:17.000 Because that's the climate we were operating in, right?

01:33:20.000 I couldn't see Posey Parker.

01:33:21.000 All I could see, Joe, was my career, like, crumbling in front of us.

01:33:25.000 Yeah, that's how it was.

01:33:26.000 What was the blowback?

01:33:28.000 YouTube took it down.

01:33:29.000 They said it was hate speech.

01:33:31.000 And then there was a big fuss.

01:33:33.000 It was in the newspapers and they put it back up.

01:33:35.000 Wow.

01:33:36.000 That's what happened.

01:33:37.000 And that video is like on 1.2 million views, which is a huge amount for us back then, particularly.

01:33:43.000 And the thing about that episode is what happened was...

01:33:46.000 We are people who are – we want to hear what you have to say, and if it makes sense to us, it makes sense, however controversial it is.

01:33:54.000 And if it doesn't make sense, we're going to ask you questions and challenge.

01:33:57.000 So it's basically an hour, like I said, of him sitting there shitting himself and me trying to find the logical flaw in her argument, but I can't.

01:34:04.000 I can't. 0.97

01:34:05.000 So I'm sitting here having to admit that this woman is correct about what she's saying, and I know that that means we're going to get shat on from a great height. 0.99

01:34:14.000 Yeah. 0.94

01:34:14.000 That is such a third rail topic. 0.94

01:34:18.000 Right.

01:34:18.000 In this country, it's the most third rail topic.

01:34:22.000 Yeah.

01:34:22.000 It's the most controversial one in ours as well.

01:34:24.000 And I've always said, man, from day one when we started this, I always said, this progressive shit, the way that it's gone, this is the thing that's going to blow it up. 0.99

01:34:35.000 The trans thing. 0.99

01:34:36.000 Why do you think that that is such a hot button subject?

01:34:40.000 There's two reasons.

01:34:40.000 Number one is you're asking people to deny basic biology.

01:34:43.000 Right.

01:34:44.000 Number one.

01:34:44.000 For the ideology.

01:34:45.000 For the ideology. 1.00

01:34:46.000 And number two, you're fucking with people's kids. 1.00

01:34:48.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:34:50.000 We just went to my sister's wedding.

01:34:53.000 In Armenia.

01:34:55.000 My sister is the most pretty, likes pink, feminine girl. 1.00

01:35:00.000 And at their wedding, they had this game that they play where the groom had to guess stuff about her.

01:35:06.000 They had to answer questions about each other.

01:35:08.000 And the question was, you know, what did she want to be as a kid?

01:35:11.000 And the answer was, a boy.

01:35:13.000 My sister, who is the most feminine girl right now, when she was seven, she said she wanted to be a boy.

01:35:21.000 Now, if you told my mother back then...

01:35:24.000 That she said that and now you have to give her hormones and cut pieces off her? 1.00

01:35:29.000 She would have torn your fucking throat out. 1.00

01:35:31.000 Because here's the thing, and this is the way I explain it to people. 1.00

01:35:36.000 We're not allowed to have sex with children.

01:35:39.000 And you ask people, why is that?

01:35:40.000 And they'll struggle with it.

01:35:41.000 I've never asked that question, mate.

01:35:44.000 But you ask that question, you go, why?

01:35:47.000 And they'll get really uncomfortable, obviously.

01:35:49.000 And they'll be like, I don't know.

01:35:51.000 And the reality is, it's because children can't They can't consent, man.

01:35:55.000 They can't consent.

01:35:57.000 Because here's the thing.

01:35:58.000 Children, until around 14, 15, have no idea of consequences.

01:36:02.000 And I used to see it all the time. 0.97

01:36:04.000 Like a 10, 11-year-old boy would do something stupid, because that's what 10, 11-year-old boys do. 0.99

01:36:08.000 Shove someone. 1.00

01:36:09.000 And you'd see a teacher come in really angry, tell the boy off, and went, what did you think was going to happen?

01:36:14.000 And the boy would look blankly at them and go...

01:36:17.000 Because they don't understand consequences.

01:36:20.000 They don't understand long-term consequences of their actions.

01:36:24.000 So you're effectively asking a child to make a life-changing decision by taking blockers which will leave them sterile for life.

01:36:34.000 And you're asking a child to make that decision.

01:36:37.000 A child is utterly incapable of making that decision.

01:36:41.000 It's child abuse is what it is.

01:36:42.000 But why do you think it's so widely accepted?

01:36:46.000 And it's not necessarily widely accepted, but it is within the ideology.

01:36:51.000 I don't think it's widely accepted in society.

01:36:53.000 No, but within progressive ideology, it is.

01:36:55.000 It's one of those things that you have to not question, and you have to go along with it.

01:37:00.000 The clue, as Francis always says, is in the name, progressive.

01:37:04.000 It's always about going further and further and further and further.

01:37:07.000 They don't know where to stop, man.

01:37:08.000 Because see, I am progressive.

01:37:11.000 Well, I don't know.

01:37:12.000 I don't know what I am.

01:37:14.000 But what I mean is, sometimes, this is why I don't understand people who have a fixed political ideology.

01:37:19.000 Because it's like me saying to you, Joe, you're driving a car.

01:37:23.000 What's the best thing for you to do?

01:37:24.000 Slow down or speed up?

01:37:26.000 Well, it depends where you are.

01:37:27.000 It depends what you're trying to get to.

01:37:28.000 It depends what the situation is, what's around you, right?

01:37:31.000 Sometimes society is going a bit too fast and you need to slow down a bit.

01:37:35.000 Sometimes it's going a bit too slow.

01:37:37.000 It's become stale.

01:37:38.000 It's stagnant.

01:37:38.000 We're not moving enough, right?

01:37:40.000 Sometimes you need a bit of progress.

01:37:42.000 And, you know, so...

01:37:44.000 But the problem is if your ideology says we must always be making more progress, you're going to keep going to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

01:37:52.000 Another thing I think is technology.

01:37:54.000 You know, a lot of the change, this is where my disagreements with conservatives come in because You know, Hayek wrote about this and why I'm not a conservative.

01:38:03.000 The big tension between progressivism and conservatism is about your attitude to change, right?

01:38:08.000 If you're progressive, you think change is always good, at the extreme, right?

01:38:12.000 And if you're conservative, you think that change is bad, essentially.

01:38:16.000 That's how some people think.

01:38:17.000 But change is inevitable.

01:38:20.000 It's inevitable.

01:38:21.000 And largely it's driven by technology.

01:38:23.000 So I think one of the reasons we talk about the trans issue so much now is that we have the technology to facilitate some of this transitioning in a way that we didn't have in the past.

01:38:32.000 So I think that's also part of the thing that's driving it.

01:38:35.000 But the reason I say that it's going to destroy this whole thing from the inside is, number one, you're trying to deny basic biology that we all know.

01:38:44.000 Everybody knows the truth.

01:38:46.000 There's a difference between men and women. 0.51

01:38:48.000 And chopping pieces off yourself isn't going to change that.

01:38:52.000 Now, look, we've had trans people on the show.

01:38:54.000 We always treat them with respect.

01:38:55.000 We employ two people who have gender dysphoria.

01:38:58.000 One of them transitioned, one not. 0.96

01:39:00.000 And we didn't even know that, right?

01:39:01.000 We just hire people based on how good they are.

01:39:03.000 And how cheap they are.

01:39:05.000 Yeah.

01:39:06.000 Right?

01:39:07.000 But there's a truth that we all know and that we're being asked to deny it for the sake of an ideology.

01:39:13.000 And I've seen this before, man.

01:39:14.000 We went through this in the Soviet Union.

01:39:16.000 We went through this.

01:39:18.000 Really?

01:39:18.000 Yeah.

01:39:19.000 Well, I talk about this in a book.

01:39:20.000 Do you know where political correctness comes from?

01:39:22.000 No.

01:39:22.000 The Soviet Union.

01:39:23.000 My ancestors were told in Russia...

01:39:27.000 What you're saying is factually correct, but it's politically incorrect.

01:39:31.000 And what it meant was it was inconvenient to the party line, to the party dogma.

01:39:35.000 And we all lived in a society where you were forced to pretend to believe things in public that you didn't believe in private.

01:39:43.000 And that is the direction we're moving with this issue and others.

01:39:45.000 We're moving to a position where you cannot say the thing that you know to be true.

01:39:49.000 Basic level, secondary school biology.

01:39:52.000 You can't say it.

01:39:53.000 And I know you've gone through this.

01:39:54.000 You've said, you know, people shouldn't be fighting, whatever.

01:39:57.000 And people come after you because they have to.

01:39:59.000 Because they don't have an argument.

01:40:01.000 They have to destroy the person instead of destroying the argument.

01:40:05.000 Because there is no argument to defend this.

01:40:06.000 And here's the other point as well.

01:40:09.000 They're all utopians, Joe.

01:40:11.000 They believe that if they get everything, if we do all of these things, we're going to reach this magical utopia where everything is free, everybody lives in perfect harmony.

01:40:23.000 We are going to perfect the human race.

01:40:27.000 But the problem is, humans can't be perfected.

01:40:30.000 I was talking about Shakespeare earlier.

01:40:32.000 Why does Shakespeare still resonate?

01:40:34.000 Because it deals with the human condition.

01:40:36.000 Ambition, greed, lust, fragility.

01:40:40.000 All of these different things.

01:40:41.000 If we were able to perfect humanity, do you think people would still read Hamlet or Macbeth or all of these works?

01:40:48.000 No, we wouldn't because we would have evolved beyond that.

01:40:51.000 But we don't evolve beyond that because we are human.

01:40:55.000 And this idea of progressivism and we're going to reach this utopia, we're never going to reach utopia. 0.99

01:41:02.000 And every time you try, people die in their fucking millions. 0.90

01:41:06.000 Every time you try to get to a utopia, you have to use so much authoritarianism to try and get. 0.99

01:41:11.000 You have to shut people up.

01:41:12.000 You have to put them in camps, right?

01:41:14.000 That's why every time you get people trying communism or ideologies of that type, you end up with millions of dead because you have to.

01:41:23.000 You have to.

01:41:24.000 If you want to remake society from the ground up, right, that's what we tried in the Soviet Union.

01:41:28.000 From each according to his ability to each according to his need.

01:41:32.000 Equality.

01:41:33.000 Equality.

01:41:33.000 We talk about it all the time.

01:41:35.000 We want equality.

01:41:36.000 The only way to achieve equality is a huge amount of tyranny.

01:41:41.000 Where do you think this goes?

01:41:44.000 The thing that I'm...

01:41:45.000 Where do I think it goes?

01:41:47.000 I think it's very worrying because where it goes is anybody who doesn't adhere to the ideology, you get shunted to the side.

01:41:57.000 Right, but how many people are accepting this?

01:41:59.000 Right.

01:41:59.000 It's not the majority.

01:42:01.000 No, it's not the majority.

01:42:01.000 Depends what you mean by accepting.

01:42:03.000 Hold on.

01:42:04.000 We've got to clear this up.

01:42:05.000 It depends what you mean by accepting, Joe. 0.98

01:42:07.000 In the Soviet Union, most people knew that the system was bullshit, right? 0.97

01:42:12.000 But they went along with it anyway. 0.99

01:42:14.000 My granddad, in the 1980s, he said the Soviet Union was wrong to invade Afghanistan.

01:42:19.000 He said in a private conversation, one of his friends snitched on him, reported him, and he was immediately made unemployable, and people would come up to him, his friends, and go, Yeah, I really agree with you.

01:42:31.000 He's evil!

01:42:33.000 Do you see what I'm saying? 0.99

01:42:34.000 In public, he's evil.

01:42:35.000 In private, I agree with you.

01:42:37.000 And that's the world we're increasingly starting to live in now, where people have a public view and a public opinion.

01:42:44.000 Do you know how many comedians who used to hate us on the comedy circuit for starting trigonometry now contact us and say, actually, you guys were right?

01:42:52.000 Do you know how many people do that?

01:42:54.000 They won't say anything in public, but we have a lot of messages like that now because people are starting to realize where we're going.

01:43:00.000 So when you say support, yes, not many people publicly support it, but a lot of people are worried about losing a job.

01:43:07.000 A lot of people are worried about losing a newspaper column, their reputation.

01:43:11.000 We had a guy He worked in a supermarket and he shared a Billy Connolly, you know Billy Connolly the comedian?

01:43:17.000 He shared a Billy Connolly routine on his Facebook.

01:43:20.000 It was a routine about religion.

01:43:21.000 He was fired for sharing a routine about religion from a Billy Connolly DVD that they sold in the supermarket in which he worked.

01:43:31.000 Right?

01:43:32.000 And we've got laws in the UK now where, you know, we had a guy on our show who posted something about this issue, the trans issue, something that was offensive, and he had a policeman call him up and say, we need to check your thinking.

01:43:48.000 A policeman in the UK calling someone up and saying, we need to check your thinking behind what you said.

01:43:54.000 We had a comedian recently who was on tour, not an offensive comedian at all.

01:43:58.000 An audience member reported him and he had the police investigate the joke.

01:44:03.000 The police investigated his joke.

01:44:07.000 And most people in the economy industry won't say anything.

01:44:11.000 They won't say anything.

01:44:12.000 Because they're afraid of losing the few opportunities that they have.

01:44:15.000 Because that is what happens when you work in an industry where the majority of the gatekeepers come from Our equivalent of Ivy League colleges, Oxford and Cambridge, who drink this Kool-Aid, and then the people in charge of the awards saying they support the ideology.

01:44:32.000 So what are you going to do? 0.98

01:44:33.000 You're going to have to adhere in some form to the ideology, even though you may think it's bullshit. 0.97

01:44:38.000 Otherwise, you're not going to progress in an industry. 0.98

01:44:41.000 That is soft tyranny.

01:44:43.000 It just is.

01:44:45.000 We were talking about this kind of stuff on the podcast in like 2012 when it was primarily isolated into colleges.

01:44:52.000 We were talking about how crazy some of these conversations they were having in colleges were and how they were yelling at professors, you are not making this safe for me.

01:44:59.000 This is not a safe space.

01:45:01.000 And people are like, why are you concentrating on what's happening in these liberal colleges?

01:45:05.000 I had exactly the same.

01:45:06.000 And then it spread.

01:45:07.000 Yeah, because that's what ideas do.

01:45:09.000 They spread.

01:45:10.000 The ideas spread.

01:45:11.000 People graduate, and then they get jobs, and then they enforce those ideologies on the new corporation that they work for, and the corporations are scared, and so they go along with it, and they have these diversity and equity and inequality meetings, and they try to make everything perfect and balance everything out.

01:45:27.000 Some of these companies are recognizing it, and one of the ways that they recognize it is when it starts hurting their bottom line, like Netflix.

01:45:34.000 Like Netflix, before they released the Ricky Gervais special, they put out a memo saying, listen, if you don't agree with the kind of content that we put out, you could always quit.

01:45:43.000 You don't have to agree with every individual content creator that puts something out that Netflix distributes.

01:45:50.000 That's what it takes.

01:45:50.000 It takes people in the corporate world being brave and also looking after the bottom line, but I also think it takes...

01:45:58.000 Just ordinary people.

01:46:00.000 Yeah.

01:46:00.000 Ordinary people just being honest.

01:46:03.000 So again, where do you think this goes?

01:46:05.000 Like, what is like worst case and best case scenario?

01:46:07.000 Well, he'll give you the worst case, I'll give you the best case.

01:46:09.000 Okay, so I use this as a metaphor.

01:46:12.000 People and like Gad said people you've had on the show, and I love Gad, he describes this as a mind virus.

01:46:17.000 I disagree with, I think the first part of Gad's analogy is correct, of a virus infecting the body.

01:46:22.000 I don't think it's a virus, I think it's a cancer.

01:46:24.000 So think about what cancer does.

01:46:26.000 When the body is weakened, for whatever reason, cancerous cells start replicating, and they start spreading over the body.

01:46:34.000 Through the body, they start corrupting the body.

01:46:37.000 Think about any organization, and this holds true, and it goes through and it slowly corrupts.

01:46:42.000 The other thing about cancer is that it's parasitic.

01:46:45.000 You go into a cancer ward, and you see people at end stages of cancer, Their body becomes withered husks.

01:46:52.000 And that's what happens to these organizations.

01:46:54.000 They can no longer function properly.

01:46:56.000 They take their money and funnel it into pointless, like, DIE programs, spend lots of money, or they make programs that nobody wants to watch.

01:47:05.000 And then it bleeds viewers until what is left is an organization that is no longer fit for purpose.

01:47:12.000 And that's what this ideology is to me.

01:47:14.000 This ideology to me, and I'm saying this as someone on the left who...

01:47:19.000 believes in a lot of what the left used to stand for.

01:47:23.000 This is a cancer that has come from the left.

01:47:27.000 It is not the left.

01:47:29.000 It is a cancer that has emanated from the left and has gone on to infect all these institutions that we used to know and love.

01:47:37.000 I disagree with some of that, but we don't need to get into it.

01:47:39.000 What do you disagree with though?

01:47:41.000 I think this is of the left.

01:47:43.000 This is what happens when you take left-wing ideas to the logical conclusion.

01:47:48.000 If you believe in equality of outcome, you will always be going for this.

01:47:53.000 If you believe that people should be made equal, made equal, this is where you get to.

01:48:00.000 What is the solution?

01:48:02.000 The solution is to accept that people aren't made equal.

01:48:05.000 Are we equal?

01:48:06.000 Are you and I equal?

01:48:08.000 Well, we're not math.

01:48:11.000 But that's my point.

01:48:12.000 Human beings have different talents.

01:48:14.000 This is why what happened in the Soviet Union was trying to make everybody the same. 0.77

01:48:18.000 It stunted the best people. 1.00

01:48:20.000 And it lifted up people who were lazy and stupid, right? 0.99

01:48:24.000 I think the solution, if you're asking that question, is to accept that people aren't equal and to create a society where we get the barriers out of people's way. 0.99

01:48:33.000 Right, but that's a very simplistic version of a solution, like accept.

01:48:37.000 Like people, they're balls deep in this ideology.

01:48:40.000 They're all in.

01:48:41.000 Oh, there is no way we're going to win them over.

01:48:43.000 No way?

01:48:44.000 No, no, no, no.

01:48:45.000 They're extremists, Joe.

01:48:46.000 And likewise, there are people on the right who are extremists.

01:48:49.000 You're not going to win them over either.

01:48:50.000 What we need to do is win over the 80% of people in the middle.

01:48:54.000 That's all you need to do.

01:48:55.000 There's always going to be a bunch of extremists on both sides, whatever that issue is, that you are never going to reach.

01:49:01.000 You're never going to reach someone with blue hair on a university campus that teaches that there's 73 genders.

01:49:07.000 You will never convince them.

01:49:09.000 What we need to do is two things.

01:49:10.000 We need to convince the sensible people in the middle, and we need to teach them and show them that they can be brave, they can be courageous, and they can speak their mind.

01:49:18.000 And if enough people will do that, this whole thing will become irrelevant overnight.

01:49:22.000 How do you do that, though, when they lose their job, if they speak out or if they just put a Billy Connolly routine on their Facebook, they get fired?

01:49:28.000 You have to fight to get rid of the laws that are in place.

01:49:31.000 And we have initiatives to do that in the UK. People are doing that.

01:49:35.000 And you have to create a culture in which people start to speak their mind.

01:49:39.000 We're doing it right now.

01:49:40.000 We're doing it right now.

01:49:41.000 That's the way to do it, man.

01:49:42.000 But coming back to your point about where this goes, there is another dimension to this that we haven't talked about yet, which is what's happening in Ukraine right now.

01:49:50.000 And these things are not unrelated.

01:49:53.000 They're not unrelated.

01:49:54.000 I'm from Russia, right?

01:49:56.000 And I have family both in Russia and in Ukraine.

01:50:00.000 The barbarians are at the gate. 0.65

01:50:02.000 They know that we are in this divisive moment, that we've taken an eye off the ball, and they're waiting.

01:50:07.000 The Chinese and the Russians, they know what this is.

01:50:10.000 They know that we're distracted, we're weak.

01:50:13.000 And actually, I think the Russians overestimated how divided we are, which is one of the reasons they did what they did. 0.99

01:50:19.000 If we don't get our shit together, the worst case scenario is that the world is no longer dominated by the West. 0.98

01:50:26.000 And I can't explain to you how bad that would be for every single person who's watching and listening to this. 0.99

01:50:32.000 We have to get our shit together. 0.99

01:50:38.000 So that's worst case scenario. 0.98

01:50:40.000 Best case scenario, which may happen, and I'm enthused, for example, by the unity of the West, I mean Germany aside, in response to what happened in Ukraine. 0.63

01:50:50.000 Best case scenario is every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and perhaps the concern there should be that we don't overreact.

01:50:58.000 You know, that's something also we're going to have to think about.

01:51:01.000 But I think best case scenario is we gradually win over that middle that I was talking about.

01:51:06.000 And we let go of some of these ideas and we get back on the right path, which is working towards what we started, which is everybody should be treated based on their individual characteristics.

01:51:17.000 Identity politics, Joe, has been tried many, many times in the history of the world and it always leads to one thing.

01:51:25.000 I think the one note, another note of optimism, it's like my girlfriend always says, she's American, she's a massive Bernie bro, and she always says to me, capitalism always wins.

01:51:34.000 You know, eventually, people are going to have to wake up.

01:51:37.000 You're not going to drive your company into the ground.

01:51:40.000 Eventually, you're going to put the brakes on this thing.

01:51:43.000 When you stop making money, when you see your profit margins go through the floor, when you see competitors who don't adhere to this ideology start to streak ahead, eventually you're going to have to say, look, we can't keep doing this.

01:51:57.000 Because, look, think about yourself.

01:51:59.000 If something doesn't work with your show, and it means that less people are watching, less people get interested, whatever it may be, you...

01:52:09.000 As a business owner, you look into it.

01:52:11.000 Of course you do.

01:52:12.000 So that's one of the things why I'm thinking, actually, capitalism will win, because eventually you're not going to bankrupt and you're not going to make yourself out of a job.

01:52:22.000 Now, the extremists will do that, but the vast majority of ordinary people who have got families, who have got mortgages to pay, will go, hang on a second.

01:52:31.000 That's what I'm hoping for, is that we come to our senses, a collective coming to our senses.

01:52:37.000 The problem is, whenever we have this conversation, and in the West this is a very common thing, people underestimate the power of ideology.

01:52:45.000 We think we're very rational.

01:52:47.000 We're really not.

01:52:49.000 Ideology is a very powerful tool, and one of the things that's happening in the West is...

01:52:55.000 These institutions are being captured, as you mentioned.

01:52:57.000 And once you've got the laws on the books, it becomes very hard to get them back off once you start to implement some of these concepts.

01:53:04.000 So we're going to have to work very hard to challenge this stuff in a healthy way.

01:53:11.000 And like I said, I think we're doing it right now.

01:53:14.000 I think we're having the conversations you are, we are.

01:53:17.000 We see initiatives in the UK which are aimed at preventing this sort of censorship, people being cancelled, people losing jobs for things they've said.

01:53:26.000 The Free Speech Union does some good work.

01:53:29.000 But it's a difficult spot.

01:53:31.000 And I wrote an immigrant's love letter to the West, Joe, because I love particularly the United States, Britain, and I'm deeply concerned that I'm seeing some of the patterns that I saw in my life and in my grandparents' lives in the Soviet Union. 0.77

01:53:46.000 My grandma was born in a gulag.

01:53:48.000 She was born in a concentration camp for people who said the wrong thing.

01:53:53.000 I'm not saying we're there.

01:53:54.000 We're not there.

01:53:55.000 We're not there in the West.

01:53:56.000 Let's be clear about it, right?

01:53:57.000 But the direction of travel bothers me.

01:53:59.000 When I see people pursuing a quality of outcome at any cost, that bothers me.

01:54:04.000 When I see people being divided into groups and being told that this group is good and this group is bad, that worries me.

01:54:10.000 It's not a healthy direction and a house divided against itself cannot stand.

01:54:16.000 It can't stand.

01:54:17.000 We've got to understand that, you know, the beauty of the West is we are going to have different views and different ideas about things, but we can't destroy our own civilization from the inside.

01:54:26.000 We can't undermine the very values that built this civilization.

01:54:31.000 And freedom, we talked about freedom here in Austin, it's such a big part of it.

01:54:35.000 You can't make the technological and scientific progress that we've made without scientists being free to pursue science.

01:54:42.000 And if we can't agree with what a woman is, Biological fact. 1.00

01:54:47.000 We're eating our civilization from the inside.

01:54:50.000 This is very dangerous.

01:54:51.000 We've got to push those extremists to where they belong, and we've got to concentrate on the sensible middle of people who want to have a reasonable conversation about these issues.

01:55:00.000 And you know, as we travel around America, we talked about how much we love it.

01:55:04.000 We talk to people here.

01:55:06.000 This is a divided country right now, man.

01:55:08.000 And a lot of people are scared.

01:55:10.000 A lot of people are angry.

01:55:11.000 A lot of people think that the other side is not just wrong but evil.

01:55:16.000 That worries me.

01:55:17.000 That worries me because America is the thing that holds...

01:55:21.000 The world together right now.

01:55:23.000 It worries me how many intelligent people adopt these simplistic narratives and they spout them out on Twitter for likes.

01:55:29.000 Yeah.

01:55:30.000 But this is the thing.

01:55:32.000 This is so important.

01:55:34.000 Please always be wary of people offering simple solutions to complex problems.

01:55:41.000 Yeah.

01:55:41.000 Simple solutions never work for incredibly complex, nuanced problems.

01:55:46.000 They might make you feel good.

01:55:47.000 They might make you feel that you have the answer, that if only we do this, that suddenly we're going to reach some utopia.

01:55:54.000 Life doesn't work like that.

01:55:57.000 Complex problems Take years to resolve, and sometimes some problems are not resolvable.

01:56:05.000 You can tinker at the edges, you can do your best to solve it.

01:56:08.000 There will always be poverty.

01:56:09.000 You may be able to reduce it, but you're never going to be able to eradicate it completely.

01:56:14.000 There will always be evil people, murderers, rapists.

01:56:18.000 Unfortunately, that is part of the human condition.

01:56:20.000 Now, you can put steps in place to minimize it and all the rest of it, but you're never going to stop that.

01:56:28.000 There's always going to be that element of people.

01:56:31.000 I think part of the problem is, and Constantine and I talk about this a lot, a lot of people in the US and the UK and all around the Western world have got what I call Western privilege.

01:56:43.000 You grew up in a country that is comparatively safe, where you don't worry about things like electricity, where you don't worry where your next meal is coming from, Where the water is clean.

01:56:55.000 All these things you take for granted.

01:56:58.000 That ain't normal in the rest of the world.

01:57:00.000 In Venezuela at the moment, I was talking to my cousin and I said to him, Johan, how are you doing?

01:57:06.000 And he went to me, well, I mean, things are tough, Francis.

01:57:09.000 I collect the rainwater in a tank.

01:57:14.000 On my ceiling of my house.

01:57:16.000 But now people are stealing the rainwater from the tank.

01:57:21.000 And here's the other thing.

01:57:25.000 And this really worries me.

01:57:27.000 So one of my friends, Henry, came over from Venezuela to see my friends and particularly my family because my parents have known Henry since he grew up.

01:57:37.000 And we took him for a meal.

01:57:40.000 And my parents are in their mid to late 70s now.

01:57:42.000 They're old people. 1.00

01:57:43.000 And Henry was talking.

01:57:45.000 And my dad said, Henry, I'm an old man now.

01:57:49.000 Could you speak up?

01:57:50.000 And he said, sorry, Jim.

01:57:51.000 He went, because in Venezuela...

01:57:54.000 We're used to whispering.

01:57:56.000 And that's the problem, where you live in a society where people have become used to whispering.

01:58:03.000 And that's what I'm seeing in the UK, where people are afraid to say what they think and they feel, where if you say something out loud, you're constantly looking over your shoulder because you're worried that somehow that's going to reduce your Your opportunities, your career, it might isolate you from friends.

01:58:19.000 We can't live in a society where we whisper.

01:58:23.000 That is not the West, and that's not a free society.

01:58:26.000 Joe, and I'll tell you a couple of quick stories about the power of ideology.

01:58:30.000 My grandmother, who was born in a gulag, right, when they released people from these camps, you were not allowed to live within, I think, 100 miles of any of the big cities in the Soviet Union at the time.

01:58:42.000 You had to live in a small town in Siberia somewhere.

01:58:46.000 And in these towns, the only people that lived there because they were so remote were the people who were former prisoners of the camps and the people who were former guards in the camps, right?

01:58:55.000 And when Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev, who took over from him, exposed his great crimes and he said, this wasn't real communism, blah, blah, blah. 0.69

01:59:06.000 And these people who lived together, the guards and the prisoners, right?

01:59:10.000 My grandmother's family, on their very landing in their apartment block, opposite them was a guy who used to be a guard in the camps.

01:59:17.000 And when these great crimes of Stalin were exposed... 0.83

01:59:22.000 Many of these men shot themselves because they thought they were doing the right thing.

01:59:27.000 They thought they were acting correctly by beating and torturing and imprisoning these people.

01:59:32.000 It was for a greater good.

01:59:34.000 It was for the right ideology.

01:59:37.000 And we interviewed a guy, a friend of ours, who runs the oldest family-owned Italian restaurant in London.

01:59:43.000 He did a fundraiser for Ukrainian orphans with J.K. Rowling.

01:59:47.000 And when she tweeted about it, he got a wall of one-star comments on his page calling him transphobic.

01:59:53.000 And we don't know if it's related, but the very next day someone smashed in the window of his restaurant.

01:59:58.000 If you're doing that, you're not a good person.

02:00:00.000 You're not a good person.

02:00:02.000 I don't care why you're doing it.

02:00:03.000 When you're smashing people's businesses up, you're not a good person.

02:00:07.000 And ideology is what allows people to feel good while they attack people, while they send them death threats, while they send them rape threats.

02:00:13.000 Do you know how Stalin, do you know how the Soviet Union got a nuclear weapon?

02:00:18.000 Do you not know this?

02:00:19.000 No.

02:00:21.000 So, the Manhattan Project was probably one of the most gigantic advances in human technology in the history of the world, right?

02:00:28.000 It cost a huge amount of money and it was very difficult.

02:00:36.000 The first bomb that the Soviet Union dropped in test was a carbon copy of one of the two bombs.

02:00:44.000 I think it was Nagasaki or maybe Hiroshima.

02:00:46.000 It was one of those two.

02:00:47.000 Because scientists who were working on the Manhattan Project, who had communist sympathies, they had ideology, they gave all of the blueprints and everything to Stalin, to the Soviets.

02:01:01.000 This regime that had killed millions of its own people, because they felt justified by their ideology, they gave the West's greatest enemy in that time a nuclear weapon.

02:01:13.000 That's how hard they believed in stuff. 1.00

02:01:31.000 Do not be a useful idiot. 1.00

02:01:33.000 Someone who thinks they've got the right ideas and therefore you're entitled to commit violence against people or to threaten people or to cancel people and to end their ability to make a living. 1.00

02:01:43.000 If you're doing that, you're not a good person. 1.00

02:01:45.000 You're a useful idiot. 1.00

02:01:47.000 And the effect it's having on people. 1.00

02:01:50.000 One of my friends who's sadly since passed away, and I'm making the details very obfuscating because I don't want people to know who this person was.

02:02:02.000 This person was very sick.

02:02:03.000 They were very sick with their illness.

02:02:06.000 And I knew this person was sick.

02:02:08.000 And we messaged back and forth on Facebook, not as much as I should have done, because I didn't realise how ill they were.

02:02:16.000 And he said to me, I really admire you, Francis, because you're brave.

02:02:25.000 And I said, what do you mean?

02:02:28.000 And he went, I couldn't do what you do.

02:02:31.000 And I went, what do you mean?

02:02:33.000 He went, for instance, he goes to me, I just couldn't be honest the way you're honest.

02:02:39.000 And he went, when people come round to my house, I've got Douglas Murray's books, and then I hide them away.

02:02:46.000 Because I know that if they see them, that I will lose friends, that I won't be accepted, and that I will be ostracised.

02:02:56.000 And when this person passed away, I saw on Facebook loads of people saying, what a nice person he was.

02:03:05.000 And he was a nice person.

02:03:06.000 He was lovely.

02:03:07.000 He was kind.

02:03:07.000 He was all of those things.

02:03:08.000 But that's what they didn't mean by nice.

02:03:11.000 Nice meant that he told the party line.

02:03:14.000 He didn't challenge.

02:03:16.000 He didn't stand up for himself.

02:03:17.000 That's what nice means.

02:03:20.000 And the thing that I hate about this ideology is they say that they're doing things to be kind.

02:03:26.000 They're doing things because they're doing the right thing.

02:03:30.000 We're creating a safe space.

02:03:32.000 It's not a safe space.

02:03:33.000 What does safe space actually mean?

02:03:36.000 I don't want you to challenge my opinions.

02:03:39.000 That's what's so dangerous about this ideology, because it's a form of tyranny masked with kindness.

02:03:46.000 And it's not kindness.

02:03:47.000 It's just a different way of silencing people and getting them to shut up.

02:03:52.000 And if they don't shut up, you're going to take everything from them.

02:03:55.000 But what's really interesting in it isn't like the authoritarian, like in Venezuela, people know the rules.

02:04:03.000 They do it because they're being kind and respectful and they're manipulating language and it's insidious and it's in our culture where now we can't define what a woman is. 0.98

02:04:15.000 You ask somebody what a woman is and if on the liberal left they'll have a fucking meltdown. 0.99

02:04:19.000 Have you seen the documentary? 1.00

02:04:20.000 Yeah, of course.

02:04:22.000 Bro, watching those people. 1.00

02:04:24.000 See, we all know all the shit. 1.00

02:04:25.000 We talk about it all the time. 1.00

02:04:26.000 But watching those people, the way they react?

02:04:29.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:04:29.000 Holy shit, man. 1.00

02:04:30.000 Yeah, it's wild. 0.99

02:04:31.000 We're about to interview Matt Walsh and talk to him about it.

02:04:34.000 Bro, that is the most terrifying thing I've seen for a long time.

02:04:38.000 And do you know the beauty of the film is that the first half an hour, I was laughing.

02:04:42.000 I'm like, this is really funny.

02:04:44.000 Look at him. 1.00

02:04:44.000 He's an idiot. 1.00

02:04:45.000 No, no, no, no, no. 1.00

02:04:46.000 Then they go into the doctors.

02:04:48.000 Yeah.

02:04:49.000 And I'm like, oh my God, this is actually terrifying.

02:04:52.000 Yeah.

02:04:52.000 Where they're interviewing that doctor and she's just, you know...

02:04:55.000 Does a chicken have gender identity?

02:04:57.000 Yeah.

02:04:58.000 Right.

02:04:58.000 Does a chicken...

02:04:59.000 Whatever the hell she says, you go, this is a delusion. 0.97

02:05:05.000 It's an illness.

02:05:07.000 What's fascinating is the very question can't be answered.

02:05:10.000 What is a woman? 1.00

02:05:12.000 Like someone who identifies as a woman. 0.97

02:05:13.000 Okay, but what is that?

02:05:15.000 Anyone who has the gender identity that they identify themselves as a woman, what does that mean? 0.97

02:05:21.000 And how does someone know what a real woman feels like? 0.98

02:05:24.000 If you're a biological male and you say, I identify as a woman, I think I'm a woman, how do you know what a woman is? 0.85

02:05:29.000 What does that mean?

02:05:30.000 I get it.

02:05:31.000 See, the thing is, to you guys, this is like weird and new.

02:05:35.000 I've seen this.

02:05:36.000 This is exactly what it was like in the Soviet Union.

02:05:39.000 Exactly.

02:05:40.000 You had to believe things that made no sense because you didn't want to be punished.

02:05:45.000 But the people that do believe it, that have their own personal experience with gender dysphoria, they, I mean, that's a real thing.

02:05:53.000 Of course.

02:05:54.000 It's existed throughout time.

02:05:55.000 Yeah.

02:05:56.000 Well, like I said, we employ people.

02:05:57.000 People who have gender dysphoria.

02:05:58.000 It's a fascinating portal through with these ideas trailing in behind it.

02:06:03.000 That's what's interesting about it.

02:06:05.000 How do you mean?

02:06:06.000 Well, because if you accept this one thing, this one thing which is very strange, right? 1.00

02:06:12.000 This one thing that not only can you be a biological male with a penis, but you're a woman and you have sex with women and you make that woman pregnant. 0.99

02:06:24.000 If that woman identifies as a male, that's a pregnant male. 1.00

02:06:29.000 It's wild. 1.00

02:06:30.000 Joe, this is just a bunch of horse shit. 1.00

02:06:32.000 No offense to anybody, right? 1.00

02:06:33.000 But the people obviously feel something, right?

02:06:35.000 They feel like they don't belong.

02:06:37.000 They feel better with a wig and a beard.

02:06:39.000 You want to wear a wig and a beard, you're an adult.

02:06:41.000 Go for it.

02:06:41.000 Right.

02:06:42.000 Right?

02:06:42.000 I accept people for what...

02:06:44.000 Someone says to me, look, I identify as a woman.

02:06:49.000 I've never misgendered people just because I want to get on with people, you know?

02:06:54.000 Right.

02:06:54.000 It's not that important.

02:06:55.000 It's not that important.

02:06:57.000 However, there are situations where it is super important, right?

02:07:01.000 Prisons.

02:07:01.000 Yes.

02:07:02.000 UFC. Right.

02:07:04.000 Children, right?

02:07:05.000 Swimming.

02:07:06.000 Swimming.

02:07:08.000 Sports, we could say, right?

02:07:09.000 Yeah, sports.

02:07:10.000 Look, it comes from the denial of a very basic thing, which is there's a difference between men and women.

02:07:15.000 Yeah.

02:07:15.000 We kind of forgot about that for a while there.

02:07:18.000 And we need to remember that there is one.

02:07:20.000 That does not mean that that should be used to oppress people or deny people rights or anything like that.

02:07:25.000 But there's a difference.

02:07:26.000 Do you think it signals a pivotal chapter in this whole thing that this is where, and you were saying this, that this is probably what's going to force it to implode.

02:07:34.000 And do you think that, do you find an encouragement in the fact that out of the people that are completely free, And the word completely is probably the wrong word.

02:07:45.000 But out of the people that do commentary on the internet, where they don't have a network that they have to answer to, they don't have producers that they have to answer to, and executives that have this woke ideology as their center point,

02:08:00.000 you're seeing far more of How people excel and advance and succeed in rational, objective commentary?

02:08:11.000 Yes.

02:08:11.000 Truth, at the end of the day, this is the one thing that...

02:08:15.000 Have you ever read The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn?

02:08:17.000 No, I haven't.

02:08:18.000 It's the story of the gulags.

02:08:19.000 It's a gigantic book.

02:08:24.000 Whether that's at your own level as an individual or the level of society, in the long run, truth always wins.

02:08:30.000 We all know what the truth is.

02:08:32.000 But here's a worrying thing.

02:08:33.000 It depends the censorship that is going to hit the internet.

02:08:38.000 Yeah, big tech.

02:08:39.000 Because here's the thing that we all can agree on.

02:08:42.000 The Overton window for discussing and for discussion and for debate is narrowing.

02:08:47.000 You can feel it.

02:08:49.000 We all know it.

02:08:50.000 We can all feel it.

02:08:51.000 It's narrowing day by day.

02:08:53.000 Well, we see it on YouTube, right?

02:08:54.000 Yeah.

02:08:54.000 Where things get censored and it doesn't even make sense that they're problematic.

02:08:59.000 Exactly.

02:09:00.000 And that being the case, you know, we all say that the internet is the great hope for us to be able to debate and share ideas.

02:09:07.000 But what's happening, because these companies are coming under a tremendous amount of pressure from governments in order to, you know, to toe the line.

02:09:17.000 To keep everybody safe.

02:09:19.000 To keep it, again, it's that thing.

02:09:20.000 It's about safety, right?

02:09:21.000 It's about safety.

02:09:21.000 That's the most dangerous word in all of this, because once you change the meaning of words, once you say that words are violence...

02:09:27.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:09:28.000 Well, I'm entitled to come and bash you over the head with a bike lock. 0.99

02:09:31.000 Right. 0.99

02:09:31.000 Because you're saying things I don't like and that's violence against me. 0.99

02:09:34.000 Right.

02:09:34.000 So safety is this word that doesn't mean what it used to mean.

02:09:38.000 Have you noticed that?

02:09:39.000 Yeah.

02:09:39.000 It doesn't mean an absence of physical violence which is the definition of safety.

02:09:44.000 Safety now means people not being allowed to express certain opinions.

02:09:48.000 Did you see the video where there's a woman, she's a law professor from Berkeley? 0.99

02:09:53.000 Oh, I did.

02:09:54.000 Oh, I did.

02:09:55.000 And he's asking her questions about a woman and a woman's right to reproductive freedom.

02:10:02.000 And she said, I just want to recognize that your statements are transphobic and they open up trans people to violence.

02:10:07.000 Yes.

02:10:07.000 Yeah.

02:10:08.000 That's the way you do it, right?

02:10:10.000 And laughing while she's saying.

02:10:11.000 And laughing while she's saying. 0.99

02:10:12.000 I just want to say, like this mocking, condescending, shitty attitude. 0.98

02:10:17.000 Of course, but what a beautiful way to shut down a conversation. 0.98

02:10:21.000 Not by shouting over somebody, but by taking the moral high ground.

02:10:26.000 And once you take that moral high ground, if you then criticize me, well, you're being transphobic.

02:10:32.000 And I have this moral high ground, and if you attack me again, then you're in the wrong.

02:10:37.000 And this is where it gets dark.

02:10:39.000 This phrase, sorry that I keep head-biting the mic, that they always use, the right side of history.

02:10:44.000 We are on the right side of history.

02:10:49.000 And you just think to yourself, How arrogant are you that you think you're so sure of your own opinion that hundreds of years down the line people are going to look at you and think you are the new MLK? How arrogant is it?

02:11:05.000 And it's so beautiful as well because they say you're on the wrong side of history and immediately...

02:11:12.000 Your opinion doesn't matter anymore because you're part of the problem.

02:11:15.000 And if you're part of the problem, we don't have to engage with you.

02:11:19.000 And it's something that I said in 2020 when the whole world went nuts, when you had the BLM marches and they were saying things like abolish capitalism, defund the police.

02:11:28.000 And I had friends who got on board with this and I saw what happened in Venezuela.

02:11:32.000 And I said to them, be very, very careful.

02:11:36.000 You don't understand the forces that you are messing with.

02:11:41.000 You don't understand.

02:11:42.000 He's seen it.

02:11:43.000 I saw what happened in Venezuela.

02:11:45.000 I saw, like, my cousin had to flee for his life.

02:11:48.000 He's a journalist because if you criticize the government, my grandfather was murdered when I was 31. His murder was never investigated, even though we know who did it, because investigating crimes is a sign of right-wing oppression.

02:12:02.000 You've got to be careful.

02:12:03.000 You've got to be very, very careful.

02:12:06.000 But people who have grown up in the West, they don't understand the magic trick.

02:12:11.000 And it is a magic trick.

02:12:13.000 Because once again, it's simple solutions to complex problems.

02:12:18.000 Do you know how the Soviet Union was created?

02:12:20.000 Because this is kind of relevant.

02:12:22.000 No.

02:12:24.000 Well, the ideology at least is this, right?

02:12:27.000 There's privileged people, which there were, right?

02:12:29.000 And they have too much.

02:12:31.000 And we have nothing.

02:12:33.000 Not untrue, by the way, in 1917 in Russia.

02:12:36.000 And these privileged people have too much and we have to overthrow them.

02:12:40.000 And we must take from them and distribute to everybody.

02:12:43.000 Sound familiar?

02:12:44.000 Yeah.

02:12:45.000 And in the Soviet Union, the groups that were, you know, the privileged were the aristocrats and whatever.

02:12:53.000 And the underprivileged were the working people.

02:12:56.000 The ideology of Marxism is based on class.

02:12:59.000 What we're talking about here is a new form of it, which is Marxism and ideology based on ethnicity, identity, sexuality.

02:13:08.000 And it's the same thing, just being applied in a different way, right?

02:13:12.000 There's this privileged people and underprivileged people, and we must flip the thing, right?

02:13:16.000 That's why it worries me because I do think, you know, obviously Western societies, like every other societies, have racism in them, have sexism, have discrimination.

02:13:25.000 They're people who are bigoted.

02:13:26.000 They genuinely are.

02:13:27.000 I've seen them.

02:13:28.000 I've experienced racism, right?

02:13:31.000 But the solution to that is not to start to undo the entire Western project.

02:13:37.000 That's not the answer here.

02:13:39.000 And to implement all these wacky ideas.

02:13:41.000 And we see the reality.

02:13:43.000 I mean, what happens when you defund the police?

02:13:45.000 Crime goes up.

02:13:46.000 Surprising, huh?

02:13:47.000 Yeah.

02:13:48.000 So, you know, Francis and I, you know, we had the conversation about comedy, but the truth is the reason we do what we do is we're both people who've come from different societies who are deeply, deeply concerned about what's happening in the West.

02:14:02.000 And for two reasons.

02:14:04.000 One is we're destroying ourselves from the inside.

02:14:06.000 But I know how people think outside of the West.

02:14:09.000 I have lots of Chinese friends.

02:14:11.000 I'm from Russia.

02:14:12.000 People out there aren't talking about gender pronouns.

02:14:15.000 They're getting ready.

02:14:17.000 Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, after the invasion of Ukraine, do you know what he said?

02:14:22.000 He said, the purpose of what we're doing here is to push America out of Eastern Europe.

02:14:26.000 That's what they're doing.

02:14:27.000 They're seeing that the West is weak and they're capitalizing.

02:14:32.000 They're capitalizing.

02:14:33.000 And the Chinese, they will do the same if they have the opportunity.

02:14:36.000 Because everybody wants what we have.

02:14:39.000 They want the prosperity.

02:14:42.000 They want the stability.

02:14:43.000 They want to be top dog.

02:14:45.000 And why wouldn't they?

02:14:46.000 Right?

02:14:47.000 And what happens?

02:14:48.000 I mean, you understand the fighters.

02:14:51.000 What happens with fighters when they see someone who's a bit weak?

02:14:54.000 They're going to go after them.

02:14:55.000 Right?

02:14:56.000 This is how people think outside the West. 1.00

02:14:57.000 We don't have time to fuck about, Joe. 0.99

02:14:59.000 We really, really, really don't. 0.99

02:15:01.000 Why is it that the only place you're hearing this kind of talk is on the internet?

02:15:07.000 Because the institutions are captured.

02:15:11.000 What happens if you say what I said on CNN? Isn't that terrifying, though?

02:15:14.000 Well, it is. 0.98

02:15:15.000 That's why we do what we do, because we're fucking terrified. 0.98

02:15:17.000 It is terrifying. 0.98

02:15:18.000 It's...

02:15:20.000 It is absolutely terrifying that you see these people and they're saying these mantras.

02:15:26.000 They're regurgitating.

02:15:28.000 They're chanting them.

02:15:29.000 It feels like you're at church again.

02:15:31.000 I grew up Catholic and it feels like trans women are women and you go... 1.00

02:15:35.000 They're not.

02:15:36.000 They're just not.

02:15:37.000 And that's not to demean these people.

02:15:38.000 That's not to mock them.

02:15:40.000 That's not to say that they're bad people.

02:15:43.000 I have sympathy for anybody who's going through gender dysphoria, which is an utterly awful, terrible mental illness. 1.00

02:15:50.000 Of course we have to have compassion for people.

02:15:52.000 But that doesn't mean just because you go through transition that you are a woman, you are still a biological male.

02:15:59.000 I'll give you an example.

02:16:01.000 Question Time, which is our biggest...

02:16:04.000 It's a debate show where they get notable people on to debate.

02:16:08.000 Constantine's been on it, and they get on to debate various things.

02:16:11.000 We had Robert Winston, Sir Robert Winston, one of the UK's most eminent biologists, and they were talking about this very issue.

02:16:20.000 And they asked him what his opinion was, and he went, your sex is quite literally coded into your cells, into the very fabric of your DNA. The host of the program turned around and looked at him and went, some people may disagree with that.

02:16:38.000 You go, we're insane!

02:16:40.000 You've got a man who is eminent, who is one of the foremost biologists, explaining something that we all know is true, and that's your rebuttal?

02:16:50.000 Have you seen the movement where they're trying to get archaeologists to stop gendering corpses?

02:16:56.000 And they find skeletons from a thousand years ago?

02:16:59.000 Because we don't know what identity, what sexual identity they had. 1.00

02:17:03.000 Maybe we should ask them their fucking pronouns, man. 1.00

02:17:05.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:17:06.000 And you know, it's crazy, man.

02:17:09.000 But the language point, I used to be a professional translator and then became a comedian.

02:17:13.000 So I've been working with language my entire life.

02:17:17.000 Language is powerful.

02:17:19.000 It is powerful because look at all these words.

02:17:22.000 For example, take the word like inclusion, right?

02:17:25.000 It's a nice word.

02:17:26.000 We want to be everyone included.

02:17:28.000 Try going into an inclusive space if you're you or me or Francis.

02:17:31.000 You suddenly find you're quite excluded in there, right?

02:17:34.000 Safety doesn't mean what safety used to mean.

02:17:36.000 We had an MP, a member of parliament, a member of the most prestigious debating chamber in the world, say that we shouldn't fetishize debate.

02:17:45.000 Why?

02:17:46.000 Because they understand that their ideas don't stand up to scrutiny, so you have to shut people down.

02:17:51.000 Fetishized debate, what did he mean by that?

02:17:52.000 She. 0.93

02:17:53.000 What did she mean by that?

02:17:54.000 I think she.

02:17:55.000 And what she means is we shouldn't pretend that debate is a good thing.

02:18:00.000 Right?

02:18:01.000 Wow!

02:18:02.000 Do you see what I'm saying?

02:18:03.000 Wow!

02:18:04.000 The way that they're using language is they substitute the meaning of words.

02:18:07.000 And that's why I have a whole chapter in the book about it, because this is how you change the law without changing the law.

02:18:12.000 If you change the meaning of words, you're changing the meaning of laws without passing new legislation.

02:18:17.000 Do you see what I'm saying?

02:18:18.000 Yes.

02:18:18.000 So this is the way that it works.

02:18:20.000 And again, in the Soviet Union, this is exactly what happened.

02:18:24.000 You change the meaning of all sorts of words.

02:18:27.000 So what's happening to the language, it's not inconsequential, Joe.

02:18:31.000 What does diversity mean?

02:18:33.000 It's like Francis said.

02:18:34.000 Diversity doesn't mean all kinds of different people who've got different opinions and different views and whatever.

02:18:39.000 No, it doesn't mean that at all.

02:18:41.000 It means people who think the same but look different. 0.99

02:18:43.000 That's what it means.

02:18:44.000 Yeah.

02:18:45.000 Right?

02:18:46.000 And what's happening with the language is indicative of a bigger process that's happening underneath all of that.

02:18:52.000 And so, you know, that's why Francis and I do what we do because we're playing with very, very dangerous things like children.

02:19:04.000 And we have no idea the forces that we are allowing to take over around the world.

02:19:09.000 People are watching what we do in the West.

02:19:11.000 Everybody.

02:19:12.000 Most people in England or here in the U.S. don't know what's happening in other countries deep inside, right?

02:19:17.000 In Russia, in China.

02:19:18.000 But they know exactly what's happening here.

02:19:20.000 They're watching and they're accelerating this division.

02:19:23.000 You know this. 0.75

02:19:24.000 The Russian troll farms, what the Chinese are doing. 1.00

02:19:27.000 Because it helps them. 0.93

02:19:28.000 This is what they want.

02:19:31.000 And we are doing it to ourselves.

02:19:33.000 We're letting them do it to us.

02:19:35.000 Instead of going, no, this is not the Western project.

02:19:39.000 This is not how we do things.

02:19:41.000 We have debates.

02:19:42.000 We have discussions.

02:19:43.000 We have disagreements.

02:19:43.000 But we have freedom of speech.

02:19:45.000 We have freedom.

02:19:46.000 We believe in the power of ideas and the power of discussion.

02:19:49.000 And we believe that through discussion and scientific research and scientific progress, we get better.

02:19:54.000 We get more powerful.

02:19:56.000 We get stronger.

02:19:57.000 And we are not ashamed of our values.

02:19:59.000 We're not ashamed that we believe that all people are born equal, should be treated equally, right?

02:20:05.000 We're not ashamed about this.

02:20:06.000 This is a unique thing about the West.

02:20:08.000 It's a unique thing.

02:20:10.000 We are proud of that.

02:20:11.000 And, you know, we had a poll in the UK asking people how many of them are proud versus ashamed of their country.

02:20:19.000 And 35% of British people are ashamed of their country.

02:20:23.000 Did they give a reason?

02:20:24.000 No, it was just a poll, why, right?

02:20:27.000 And even among conservatives, only 42% say that they're proud of their country.

02:20:32.000 Now, I understand, you know, pride is not the healthiest emotion necessarily to feel about your country.

02:20:38.000 You've got to have a healthy view, right?

02:20:39.000 We've all done bad things.

02:20:41.000 Every society has.

02:20:43.000 But my worry is about the shame, particularly in Britain, where...

02:20:47.000 It's less so in America, I think, or maybe not.

02:20:48.000 You tell me.

02:20:49.000 But it's this feeling that, like, we're bad people.

02:20:53.000 There's a lot of that here.

02:20:54.000 Yeah.

02:20:54.000 We're bad people.

02:20:55.000 There's a lot of people that are upset that I have an American flag on my wall.

02:20:58.000 Yeah.

02:20:58.000 And I'm here as a foreigner to tell you we're not bad people.

02:21:01.000 No.

02:21:01.000 We're some of the best human beings, progressive human beings, in the history of the world.

02:21:06.000 Some of the least racist, some of the least sexist, some of the most tolerant.

02:21:10.000 That's who we are.

02:21:11.000 Let's celebrate that.

02:21:12.000 Let's lean into that.

02:21:14.000 Let's treat people on the content of their character.

02:21:17.000 We haven't got there.

02:21:18.000 We haven't got there.

02:21:19.000 It's true.

02:21:19.000 But let's try.

02:21:21.000 Let's get better.

02:21:22.000 Let's do that instead of destroying ourselves from the inside.

02:21:25.000 And people always say, why is it comedians who are doing this?

02:21:29.000 Why have you set up this as a comedian?

02:21:30.000 Why have we set up trigonometry?

02:21:32.000 Because as comedians, we're at the coalface of this.

02:21:35.000 We get to see, week in, week out, with the jokes, how people change.

02:21:41.000 How suddenly what was a joke that was acceptable, even last month, suddenly it doesn't get lost anymore.

02:21:47.000 It gets oozed.

02:21:49.000 Suddenly, a joke that you could do last year doesn't work anymore.

02:21:54.000 Suddenly, you feel that people...

02:21:55.000 You don't even have to make a joke.

02:21:57.000 The moment you go into a particular subject, you just feel people tense up.

02:22:02.000 I had a routine about why we need a special Olympics for white people that got progressively less funny over time. 0.75

02:22:08.000 It was incredible.

02:22:09.000 It started out being hilarious and just got less and less laughs.

02:22:12.000 And at the end of every gig, it would be the black and brown people who'd come up to me and go, I love that.

02:22:16.000 Don't know why they weren't laughing. 1.00

02:22:18.000 Because the white people are fucking terrified. 1.00

02:22:21.000 But in a way, you can understand why they're terrified, because they've been force-fed this ideology. 1.00

02:22:27.000 If you challenge it in any way, suddenly you're problematic, you're racist, you're whatever else.

02:22:32.000 So you constantly live your life with the handbrake on and scared.

02:22:36.000 And the tragedy is, Joe...

02:22:38.000 That's not living.

02:22:39.000 No.

02:22:40.000 It's not living to have the handbrake on and be scared.

02:22:44.000 Because being a human being is difficult.

02:22:46.000 It's hard.

02:22:47.000 Every day is hard.

02:22:48.000 You have to meet challenges.

02:22:49.000 You have to stand up.

02:22:51.000 You have to improve.

02:22:53.000 You have to be better.

02:22:54.000 But all of a sudden, if you're having to live this life where there's tripwires around you, and if you say the wrong thing, then suddenly all these horrible things can happen and you can be exposed for these things that you know you're not.

02:23:07.000 That's a terrible way to live.

02:23:09.000 You're living your life in a straitjacket.

02:23:12.000 And I think it's just really important that people understand.

02:23:15.000 We use this term gaslit all the time.

02:23:19.000 Progressives always use it, gaslit.

02:23:21.000 But I think what we're seeing is a population of people who are being gaslit, who are told that they're racist, sexist, they have their internalized homophobia, all of this kind of stuff.

02:23:33.000 When the reality is, and I really believe this, Most people are honest, decent, and here's the thing that I find really upsetting, is people are starting to believe that they're problematic,

02:23:49.000 and you just go, you're not.

02:23:53.000 You're not.

02:23:54.000 You're a human being.

02:23:56.000 You're fragile.

02:23:58.000 You think the wrong things.

02:24:00.000 Here's the thing.

02:24:01.000 We're constantly in these silos.

02:24:03.000 Nobody's having their opinions challenged anymore or their views. 1.00

02:24:06.000 And that's dangerous because I've got stupid opinions. 1.00

02:24:08.000 So do you. 1.00

02:24:09.000 So do you. 1.00

02:24:10.000 And it's only by voicing them and I say my stupid thing that you go, hang on, brother. 1.00

02:24:14.000 Come on. 1.00

02:24:14.000 What about this? 1.00

02:24:15.000 And what about that?

02:24:16.000 And I go...

02:24:16.000 Actually, you're right.

02:24:17.000 Yeah, I didn't think of it and we improve and we move forward and by doing this We're just drilling down and our opinions aren't being challenged and we're not gonna be able to move society forward What's fascinating is that those kind of conversations where you can say to someone I think your opinions wrong and they go ah you got a point That's only happening on the internet,

02:24:38.000 right?

02:24:38.000 You're not seeing that on any of these major news broadcasts any of these opinion shows you're just not seeing that it's just echo chamber and A hundred percent.

02:24:48.000 And the thing is, as well, is even on the internet, man, like, we all understand we're on YouTube, right?

02:24:53.000 If this was the reverse and we were interviewing you, there's certain things that can't be said on YouTube.

02:24:58.000 Right.

02:24:59.000 There's certain things that can't be questioned, which comes back to the point we didn't really get into, which is the big tech censorship.

02:25:04.000 Yeah.

02:25:04.000 I find that absolutely terrifying, Joe.

02:25:07.000 Yeah. 0.93

02:25:10.000 This isn't a left or right wing point at all because I'm really, really not interested in that false bullshit about these two teams. 0.73

02:25:17.000 I think the problem is the tribes. 0.91

02:25:19.000 I don't think we're ever going to get away from it because we're human beings, right?

02:25:21.000 But it's that left versus right thing that is the problem, in my opinion.

02:25:25.000 That's how you get the echo chambers in the first place.

02:25:27.000 But the problem is, you know, what happened with the Hunter Biden story?

02:25:35.000 I woke up that day and I saw what had happened and I said to the guys, this is one of the biggest stories and this is one of the worst things that I've ever seen. 0.97

02:25:43.000 Because once you start fucking with the electoral process like that, once you start making up bullshit like this is Russian disinformation and we later learn that it's true, I don't care that it's Biden or that it's Trump. 0.98

02:25:54.000 You can't do this. 0.99

02:25:56.000 You cannot put your hand on the scales in favor of one team if you are the public square.

02:26:02.000 You cannot do this.

02:26:03.000 But that was the problem with Trump, is that he was so problematic to people on the left, they were willing to break the rules in order to hamper him and to hamper his success, in order to empower the Biden team.

02:26:15.000 They wanted to withhold information that they thought would be a problem.

02:26:19.000 Yeah.

02:26:19.000 And you can't do that.

02:26:20.000 You can't do that.

02:26:21.000 And by the way, what the Democrats did to Trump in terms of Russia collusion, that was awful.

02:26:27.000 Yeah.

02:26:27.000 That was unacceptable.

02:26:28.000 Right.

02:26:29.000 Particularly when you find out that the Hillary Clinton campaign was also in collusion with Russia.

02:26:33.000 But here's the thing.

02:26:34.000 Which makes sense.

02:26:35.000 Yeah.

02:26:35.000 So you can't...

02:26:36.000 Once you start fucking with the system... 0.99

02:26:39.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:26:40.000 It's game over, man.

02:26:41.000 It's game over.

02:26:43.000 And look, we should be clear also, the big tech platforms, they don't have an easy job.

02:26:48.000 They really, really don't.

02:26:50.000 It's not an easy thing to run this.

02:26:53.000 We're living through a technological revolution.

02:26:56.000 The last time we saw something like this was the printing press.

02:26:58.000 But it's far more impressive because it's something that's beyond anything that's ever existed before.

02:27:06.000 Whereas these people who went, many of them, straight from college, right into positions in these companies and then right into positions of power in these companies, Are literally in charge of the narrative of the civilized world.

02:27:20.000 They don't have real life experience in many cases. 0.98

02:27:23.000 A lot of these people in high positions, like the guy who's the CEO of Google, he's in his fucking 30s, man. 0.99

02:27:29.000 That's crazy. 0.97

02:27:30.000 But this isn't, if I just make this point, this isn't just big tech.

02:27:34.000 One of my really good mates of mine was a facilities manager at Downing Street.

02:27:38.000 So he was in charge of the building, how the building worked.

02:27:40.000 And I said to him, Taz...

02:27:43.000 What are the politicians like who are coming in?

02:27:45.000 What are they like?

02:27:46.000 He goes to me, Francis, this is what they're like.

02:27:48.000 They all went to private school, very prestigious private school.

02:27:51.000 Then they went to Oxford or Cambridge.

02:27:54.000 Then they went to do a master's.

02:27:55.000 Then they got an internship with an MP. Then they worked as an intern.

02:28:00.000 And then they worked as a political advisor and they worked their way up.

02:28:03.000 It's not just big tech, Joe.

02:28:05.000 Our politicians...

02:28:07.000 Have that as well.

02:28:08.000 But big tech is where it really matters because politicians are a lot less powerful than the people who run big tech.

02:28:13.000 This is what most people don't get now.

02:28:15.000 They are the most powerful people in the world and they're fucking with our democracy. 0.98

02:28:19.000 That's what they're doing. 0.98

02:28:21.000 They're putting their hand on the scales.

02:28:23.000 You can't pick teams if you're in that position, man.

02:28:26.000 You just can't.

02:28:27.000 And it's a difficult job.

02:28:28.000 I am not someone who, just go, you should be able to say anything.

02:28:31.000 Because it's not that simple.

02:28:33.000 It's a complicated problem to solve.

02:28:35.000 But we've got to understand that we cannot have these big tech platforms messing around with this structure that is built to allow people to express their opinion democratically.

02:28:47.000 Because once you undermine that, you're going down a very dark path.

02:28:51.000 Also, the tech platforms are almost entirely left-wing.

02:28:55.000 That's what's bizarre.

02:28:56.000 They almost all lean left.

02:28:58.000 There's no real balance.

02:28:59.000 Well, not when it comes to paying tax, Joe.

02:29:03.000 That's true.

02:29:05.000 It's like a lot of liberals.

02:29:07.000 Very left-wing when it comes to spouting things.

02:29:09.000 Well, I have to pay tax.

02:29:10.000 No, thank you, mate.

02:29:11.000 I won't do that.

02:29:12.000 That's true.

02:29:14.000 We're very worried because it's going to affect everything.

02:29:17.000 It's going to affect public discourse.

02:29:18.000 It's going to affect comedy.

02:29:20.000 And the worrying thing is I don't think people quite understand where this is going to go.

02:29:26.000 That's the worrying thing.

02:29:28.000 When you start seeing, again...

02:29:31.000 The clue is in the name.

02:29:32.000 Progressivism.

02:29:33.000 Progression.

02:29:33.000 When you start to see people getting thrown off platforms.

02:29:37.000 I remember we interviewed a journalist who, a former editor of Spike, called Brendan O'Neill.

02:29:43.000 Right?

02:29:43.000 This is one of the first interviews we did.

02:29:45.000 And Brendan is a big free speech guy and I love him.

02:29:48.000 He's great.

02:29:48.000 And he goes further, actually, than either of us does on that issue.

02:29:51.000 He's like an absolutist.

02:29:53.000 No libel laws, no this, no that.

02:29:55.000 He's pretty out there.

02:29:56.000 He's out there with what he thinks, and God bless him, right?

02:29:58.000 It's not what I think, but there we go.

02:30:00.000 And I remember we were talking about free speech, and this was in 2018. And I go to him...

02:30:05.000 I remember this.

02:30:06.000 Yeah, I go to him.

02:30:07.000 Look, Brendan, you bang on about that we're getting censored.

02:30:09.000 Can you give me an example?

02:30:11.000 And then he gave this example of this musical comedian who was doing Holocaust-denying material, right, and got kicked off all the platforms, right?

02:30:20.000 And I just went, well, I don't care.

02:30:22.000 Who cares if this nutbag woman got kicked off all the platforms for Holocaust-denying comedy material? 1.00

02:30:28.000 But what I didn't understand is you've got to stand up for the people who you disagree with, who you think are out there, wackos or whatever else.

02:30:38.000 Because here's the thing, like we said before, the Overton window will continue to narrow and eventually it will be you.

02:30:46.000 Can we explain the Overton window to people?

02:30:47.000 So the Overton window is basically...

02:30:49.000 It's the range of acceptable ideas in society that can be uttered in public, right?

02:30:53.000 So the range of things that you can say in public...

02:30:56.000 Right.

02:31:19.000 And also, this is something that progressives need to understand.

02:31:22.000 The weapons that you use against others will eventually be turned on you.

02:31:27.000 And we saw that in the UK, where suddenly, you know, comedians were celebrating, you know, Count Dankula getting arrested.

02:31:34.000 This guy, you know, the Nazi punk story?

02:31:36.000 Yeah, hilarious.

02:31:37.000 Yeah, hilarious.

02:31:38.000 And they were all celebrating, you know, because he was problematic, he was anti-Semitic, blah, blah, blah.

02:31:42.000 And then on a radio panel show a few years ago, a left-wing journalist called Joe Brand made a joke about...

02:31:49.000 Left-wing comedian, not journalist.

02:31:51.000 Yeah, a left-wing comedian made a joke about a right-wing politician made an off-the-cuff quip about throwing battery acid in his face.

02:31:59.000 It was on a comedy panel show.

02:32:00.000 It was a joke, right?

02:32:02.000 Yeah.

02:32:02.000 Then suddenly she gets investigated by the police.

02:32:05.000 We need to wake up and realise that if you start using these weapons against your enemies, it won't be long before they wake up and they're going to use them against you.

02:32:16.000 And once that happens, we're going to be in a very dangerous place in society.

02:32:21.000 This is where the point you made about the age thing really matters because remember we talked about the contract that I turned down?

02:32:27.000 When I went on TV there was a woman who we were debating this issue and she was unpleasant. 1.00

02:32:34.000 She shushed me and all sorts of shit happened.

02:32:37.000 Anyway, I met her years later because we were supposed to hate each other and we did a bunch of TV together and actually she's a nice girl. 0.88

02:32:44.000 We got on very well.

02:32:45.000 But She said to me, I realized cancel culture is a problem when I saw it happening to my friends.

02:32:53.000 These people are young, man.

02:32:54.000 They don't think through the consequences of what they're doing.

02:32:57.000 And so I do think that some of them can be won over when they haven't gone fully off the deep end.

02:33:02.000 We can win people over by- Can I just stop you?

02:33:04.000 Do we need to win them over by cancelling them?

02:33:09.000 How ironic.

02:33:10.000 They will see some of the stuff when they experience it for themselves.

02:33:14.000 There's nothing like – Solzhenitsyn wrote about it.

02:33:18.000 There were people in the camps who only realized the problem with the Soviet Union when they were the ones at the end of the barrel. 1.00

02:33:26.000 Don't be that useful idiot, man. 1.00

02:33:28.000 Don't be. 1.00

02:33:29.000 I mean, I'm not talking to you, obviously.

02:33:31.000 I understand.

02:33:33.000 It's very fascinating to me that these conversations that we're having are so unusual.

02:33:39.000 And that this is kind of the only way you can have them.

02:33:43.000 The only way you can have them is in a kind of format like this.

02:33:47.000 And that these things that you're saying, although they're very logical and they're based on reality and history, they're uncommon.

02:33:56.000 That's very strange.

02:33:57.000 My hope is that the popularity of these kinds of conversations, like your show and my show and a lot of other shows like it, That this is sort of an unexpected twist in the narrative that people didn't see coming.

02:34:12.000 And that the freedom that we enjoy before the Overton window slams shut on us, it does give us the possibility to spread this idea and let people recognize that this is a genuine, real problem.

02:34:25.000 That although it might make you feel better to deny it, it might make you feel better to go along with it at work or at school.

02:34:32.000 It ultimately will lead to a far more suppressive environment than the one you're experiencing right now.

02:34:39.000 And it's not just that, Joe.

02:34:40.000 You're denying people's humanity.

02:34:42.000 People often go to me, oh, Francis, are you left or you're right?

02:34:45.000 And I'm like, no, I'm just me.

02:34:47.000 Stop trying to label me.

02:34:49.000 Stop trying to put me in a box.

02:34:50.000 My girlfriend is very left-wing, Bernie bro. 1.00

02:34:53.000 I don't agree with a lot of her politics.

02:34:55.000 I think they're nutso if I'm being honest.

02:34:56.000 God bless her. 1.00

02:34:57.000 And people go to me, well, how can you have a relationship?

02:35:00.000 And I'm like, because there's love.

02:35:03.000 Because it's more important.

02:35:04.000 We need to start seeing the humanity.

02:35:07.000 You can have a friend who's conservative.

02:35:09.000 You know, we employ a Christian conservative.

02:35:12.000 She's a wonderful, sweet, kind, beautiful person.

02:35:16.000 We need to stop this.

02:35:18.000 Who thinks we're going to hell.

02:35:19.000 Yeah, I mean, yeah, she does.

02:35:21.000 Yeah, because we smoke weed, but bless her. 1.00

02:35:23.000 But...

02:35:24.000 We need to stop this.

02:35:25.000 Stop seeing someone as something to put in a box and just start seeing it as Joe or whoever it may be.

02:35:32.000 I'll tell you about the people that work with us, right?

02:35:34.000 I'm going to get a lot of emails now, but we only ever employ people who ask to work with us, right?

02:35:41.000 And we're not looking to employ anyone right now, by the way.

02:35:44.000 And our team, we've got, so Conservative Christian, we've got a guy who, this is a funny story, man.

02:35:50.000 We've got a guy who's from a Sikh background, his family is Sikh.

02:35:53.000 They moved to the UK via Africa.

02:35:56.000 And he was telling us that when he was working on TV, and he didn't want to work on TV anymore because in the last two years, people started basically, he was just a token there.

02:36:09.000 They were just looking at him as his race.

02:36:12.000 And they'd be like, oh, well, you know, BLM happened.

02:36:15.000 How are you feeling about this? 0.99

02:36:18.000 The guy's from a Sikh, but what the fuck does he have to do? 1.00

02:36:20.000 And so when he came to us, he was like, man, this is such a relief to be working in a place where we don't care. 0.98

02:36:27.000 We were looking for someone to make the thumbnails for our YouTube videos, so we put the word out, and we got a bunch of responses, and we picked the best one, right?

02:36:35.000 We picked the best one, been working for him for a while, and then he goes, by the way, I'm trans. 0.99

02:36:39.000 And we're like, by the way, we don't give a shit. 0.99

02:36:43.000 Right. 0.99

02:36:44.000 And we have genuine diversity in terms of our team, because we don't give a shit who you are or what you think. 0.96

02:36:52.000 We just care if you do a good job. 0.96

02:36:53.000 Yeah, that's how it should be.

02:36:55.000 I mean, it really should be that way.

02:36:56.000 And I have a lot of friends that are conservative.

02:36:58.000 I'm not conservative.

02:37:00.000 But I do have some conservative ideas.

02:37:02.000 I support the Second Amendment.

02:37:04.000 I'm kind of a free speech absolutist in a lot of ways, too.

02:37:08.000 I think that there's a lot of room for people to just have conversations and talk about things.

02:37:14.000 And one of the things, it's kind of died down because it wasn't effective, but I would get attacked a lot for platforming people.

02:37:21.000 That was the big thing, having a conversation with Ben Shapiro, who I like I like him a lot.

02:37:27.000 I don't agree with him on many things, particularly about gay rights.

02:37:30.000 Not necessarily gay rights, but he's very religious and he doesn't believe that people...

02:37:35.000 He thinks you should treat it the same way you treat murder. 0.98

02:37:38.000 Like, I'd like to kill that guy, but I won't because it's wrong. 0.98

02:37:41.000 He fills out. 1.00

02:37:42.000 Yeah, I know.

02:37:43.000 It's like, yo.

02:37:44.000 Yeah.

02:37:45.000 But it's...

02:37:46.000 But Joe, here's the thing.

02:37:47.000 It's just an opinion.

02:37:49.000 Exactly.

02:37:50.000 And he's a brilliant, intelligent guy.

02:37:52.000 I love talking to him, even if I don't think that some of his ideas are sound or even that they're a problem.

02:37:58.000 I think you're supposed to have conversations with people and that's how you open their eyes.

02:38:03.000 If you make them the enemy, they're never going to see your perspective.

02:38:06.000 I have a friend who...

02:38:08.000 Sorry, Francis.

02:38:08.000 I have a friend who I get on with very, very well.

02:38:11.000 And he's like a Green Party member.

02:38:15.000 Green is like ultra, ultra left.

02:38:18.000 I'm an immigrant.

02:38:18.000 He's British.

02:38:19.000 And we sometimes talk about immigration, right?

02:38:23.000 And he's like, I believe in open borders.

02:38:25.000 And I explained to him what that actually means.

02:38:28.000 And he's like, yeah, I know.

02:38:30.000 I know.

02:38:30.000 I just like the idea.

02:38:32.000 And that's okay.

02:38:34.000 That's okay.

02:38:34.000 I can be friends with him.

02:38:36.000 I think it's a demented idea, right?

02:38:38.000 Open borders.

02:38:39.000 It doesn't work.

02:38:39.000 Human beings aren't wired.

02:38:40.000 That way it's never going to work.

02:38:41.000 It's going to cause an awful lot of trouble.

02:38:43.000 I say that as an immigrant myself.

02:38:45.000 But...

02:38:46.000 I don't have to hate that guy.

02:38:47.000 I don't have to reject him.

02:38:49.000 We're friends.

02:38:50.000 We can play basketball together.

02:38:51.000 We can go have dinner and our wives like it. 1.00

02:38:54.000 Do you know what I mean?

02:38:54.000 Yes.

02:38:55.000 And this is the problem.

02:38:56.000 This comes from the internet where we see other people as an avatar.

02:39:01.000 Richard Grannon on our show talked about this.

02:39:03.000 Where we've spent so much time on social media, we just see other people as avatars, and that we can't have a discussion, we have to destroy, we have to win, we have to humiliate them, we have to be the one who wins in the discussion.

02:39:17.000 Whatever happened to just agree to disagree?

02:39:20.000 And just accept that people see the world differently.

02:39:23.000 Because here's the thing.

02:39:24.000 Your experiences and my experiences of life are fundamentally different.

02:39:29.000 They just are.

02:39:30.000 You grew up in a different way.

02:39:31.000 I grew up in a different way.

02:39:32.000 Different countries, different cultures, different experiences.

02:39:35.000 As a result of that, we're going to see the world in a different way.

02:39:38.000 And here's the thing.

02:39:40.000 That's valid.

02:39:41.000 And that's fine.

02:39:42.000 And because we experience the world in a different way, we're going to have different political opinions maybe.

02:39:46.000 We're going to have different opinions on a wide variety of things.

02:39:50.000 That's cool.

02:39:51.000 And it's fine.

02:39:52.000 And it should be celebrated.

02:39:54.000 Let's stop trying to have this uniformity of opinion.

02:39:57.000 Because again, you're denying people their right and the opportunity to be human, to be multifaceted.

02:40:07.000 Nobody is right.

02:40:08.000 Nobody is left.

02:40:09.000 We're all, take something from everyone.

02:40:12.000 Some people are right, and some people are left, I would argue.

02:40:15.000 We just spent a couple of days with somebody, like I said, we've got a friend, I've got a friend who's on the Green Party side of things.

02:40:21.000 We just spent a couple of days in D.C. with Sebastian Gorka, who's like a Trump attack dog, you know, and a bunch of his Christian conservative friends.

02:40:30.000 I've never had a better time in my life.

02:40:31.000 Mm-hmm.

02:40:32.000 You know, we went to a gun show, shot some guns, had dinner, talked about interesting things.

02:40:36.000 These are polite, respectful, decent people who care about this country.

02:40:40.000 You don't have to agree with them.

02:40:41.000 Yeah.

02:40:41.000 I don't have to agree with them on everything, right?

02:40:43.000 Don't you think that this is a very unique time, though, that I'm exposed to the way you think in a way that I would never be exposed to this 50, 60 years ago?

02:40:50.000 That's why when people complain about the internet, I'm like, there's a lot to complain about.

02:40:55.000 But also this is the best time ever.

02:40:57.000 It's a window into humans.

02:40:59.000 300 years ago, Joe, everybody in this room would have been burnt at the stake.

02:41:03.000 Not Jamie.

02:41:06.000 I think he would be, but by association, right?

02:41:09.000 And like we said about Carlin and Hicks and Pryor, cancel culture has always existed.

02:41:15.000 But we've always got to be vigilant that we don't allow it to run amok.

02:41:19.000 And we have done.

02:41:21.000 Yeah, we have allowed it to run amok in some ways, but we've also opened the discussion that it has run amok in a way that never existed before.

02:41:29.000 And this is what might be our water for the flames.

02:41:33.000 I agree.

02:41:34.000 And here's the thing, when we were spending time with Seb, we started talking, they were on the right Christian conservative, but I said, look, one of the real problems I have with America is your lack of socialized healthcare.

02:41:48.000 And they put forward their argument, but then a lot of them disagreed with each other and they started to have a debate about it and go, look, and then one of them went, look, it's obvious the system isn't working.

02:41:58.000 Another one went, I've got this friend who's really sick and they can't get the treatment.

02:42:02.000 We need to do something about that.

02:42:04.000 So that was my point about on the right, even on the right, they still disagree.

02:42:08.000 And some of them were saying things like this idea that someone who's fundamentally ill needs to be taken care of by the state.

02:42:14.000 That's a left wing opinion.

02:42:15.000 Yes.

02:42:16.000 So even on the right, you're still going to have things on the left.

02:42:19.000 Well, this is what happens, like you say, Joe, is when you take your foot off people's throat and when you stop making them feel that they're evil for having an opinion and you just listen and hear and discuss, that's when you find out human beings are actually quite complicated.

02:42:35.000 And you can change people's minds sometimes just by listening to them.

02:42:39.000 You don't even need to say anything.

02:42:40.000 And a lot of times the opinions that they have, they've taken out of comfort.

02:42:44.000 They've taken these opinions because it's easier to subscribe to a predetermined pattern of ideas and opinions than it is to form your own.

02:42:51.000 If there's a very clear-cut ideology that you can just subscribe to and all of a sudden that makes you a good person or accepted in your community, it's very easy to do that.

02:43:00.000 And that's where you get the people that whisper.

02:43:02.000 Yes.

02:43:02.000 I agree with you, but this is like a real problem.

02:43:05.000 Did you see that cartoon in The Spectator where it's a guy putting a flame to someone on the pyre and he goes, actually, I agree with you.

02:43:12.000 Yes.

02:43:13.000 It's cowardice. 1.00

02:43:15.000 Cowardice is a big fucking problem, man. 1.00

02:43:16.000 Sure. 1.00

02:43:16.000 It's always been a problem. 1.00

02:43:18.000 It's a problem with humans.

02:43:19.000 Yes. 0.98

02:43:19.000 Speaking of cowardice, this person that thinks that you're going to go to hell because you smoke weed. 0.98

02:43:24.000 Yeah.

02:43:25.000 It's a joke.

02:43:26.000 Oh, I don't know.

02:43:27.000 Maybe she does. 0.87

02:43:28.000 I don't know.

02:43:28.000 What's the attitude about weed in the UK? It's illegal.

02:43:31.000 Totally.

02:43:32.000 So we only smoke it when we're here.

02:43:33.000 Oh, you want some?

02:43:34.000 Sure.

02:43:35.000 Yeah, let's do it.

02:43:35.000 Don't be scared, homie.

02:43:37.000 Scared?

02:43:38.000 Why would I be scared, man?

02:43:39.000 Because our weed is better than your weed.

02:43:41.000 All right, come on.

02:43:42.000 You know what?

02:43:42.000 It probably is, actually.

02:43:43.000 I'll tell you something, man.

02:43:44.000 The thing about weed being illegal is when we are in places where we're actually allowed to smoke it, it's so much better because you're not worried and because you can pick what you want and stuff like that.

02:43:53.000 It's incredible, man.

02:43:54.000 Oh, yeah, absolutely.

02:43:56.000 Like, I'm a little puss-puss when it comes to weed, so I just go into the shop and I go, look, just give me the mildest thing on the menu.

02:44:02.000 And they go, this is what we normally give our girlfriends. 0.95

02:44:05.000 You go away and you enjoy that, man.

02:44:08.000 Now that we're smoking weed, I'm taking the shirt off, man.

02:44:10.000 There you go.

02:44:11.000 Cut loose.

02:44:13.000 Next level.

02:44:15.000 Yeah, man.

02:44:17.000 This is one thing that I do have hope for is the implementation and adoption of psychedelics.

02:44:24.000 I think if there's anything that's going to change people's minds, that's going to be one of the things because it's going to change your whole understanding of what is rigid and what structures exist and why they exist and why you think the way you think and it'll make you question yourself in a way that I don't think anything else happens.

02:44:43.000 Can I tell you a story?

02:44:44.000 This isn't about psychedelics, but do you know that there's more than one way to get there, to that place that you're talking about?

02:44:49.000 I studied a lot of hypnosis in my twenties, and there's this exercise that you can do in hypnosis called deep trance identification.

02:44:58.000 And the idea is if you put someone into a deep hypnotic state, their identity is almost like a set of clothes.

02:45:05.000 You can take off your identity.

02:45:07.000 And you can try on a different identity.

02:45:10.000 You can try on what would it be like to be Francis Ngannou or whoever it is that you want to understand how they do what they do.

02:45:18.000 And I did this, there's two stories I'll tell you about this.

02:45:21.000 So I did this once on a course that I was doing with a woman.

02:45:25.000 She was this very mild-spoken, softly-spoken South African woman.

02:45:31.000 And she wanted to try on being some kind of like American, she was I think religious, like evangelical preacher.

02:45:37.000 I don't know why she wanted it. 0.99

02:45:38.000 Anyway, so we put her into this trance, took her through the process, and then we said, open your eyes, and she opened her eyes and said, holy shit! 0.98

02:45:46.000 And she was speaking like this guy, right? 0.89

02:45:49.000 So when I was doing this exercise with me being the one, I thought, you know what, I want to do this with the universe.

02:45:56.000 I want to feel what it's like to be the universe.

02:46:00.000 So the guys put me in this deep trance, take off your identity, try it on.

02:46:04.000 And when I opened my eyes, I just felt connected to everything, to every human being on the planet.

02:46:11.000 And you know how the universe is expanding?

02:46:16.000 I felt like my heart beat.

02:46:18.000 The idea that I got is, what if the expansion of the universe is one half of a heartbeat of some kind of creature?

02:46:25.000 That's what I got.

02:46:27.000 And I know that people who take various psychedelics and stuff like that sometimes have a similar experience of deep connection with other people through this thing.

02:46:35.000 And that's why I'm not someone who's...

02:46:37.000 I don't believe in God, but I know that we're all connected in some way as humans.

02:46:42.000 There's something that unites us.

02:46:45.000 And I don't know what that is, but the fact that you can get there different ways tells me that it's real.

02:46:50.000 There's something.

02:46:51.000 I never say I don't believe in God because I don't even know what that means.

02:46:54.000 I don't know.

02:46:56.000 Do I believe that everything that man has written about religion, all the religious texts or the inaccurate interpretation of the will of God?

02:47:05.000 No, I don't believe that.

02:47:06.000 Because I think there's too much that's cultural in that.

02:47:09.000 There's too much that it's like a sign of the times, the laws and the rules of the land.

02:47:14.000 So it's clearly at the hand of man all over everything.

02:47:17.000 But like, why did they write it in the first place?

02:47:19.000 Like, what were they feeling and experiencing that they wanted to lay down ground rules and talk about some connection with the Almighty? 0.98

02:47:26.000 And maybe there is a thing and just we don't know what the fuck it is, you know? 0.88

02:47:31.000 We're stuck in this strange sort of very limited existence for a very short amount of time to figure things out. 0.94

02:47:39.000 And most of the time you're alive, you're trying to manage your anxiety. 0.93

02:47:43.000 You're trying to figure your way through this maze of civilization and culture and conversations and relationships and friendships and business and bills and mortgages and all that shit. 0.90

02:47:52.000 And in the meanwhile, you're a part of this massive super organism that is but a speck.

02:47:58.000 In the atom of another being that is far more infinitely, not just impossible in size to consider, but that's a part of something that's far more impossible than that.

02:48:13.000 So much of what we see in fractals We like to think that the universe is so vast and so amazing that that's it.

02:48:20.000 What if it's not?

02:48:21.000 What if the universe, what if this idea of the infinity of the universe is like it's just a part of a cell that's a part of something far greater and far larger?

02:48:29.000 We are here but a brief instance.

02:48:33.000 It's so fucking short that most of the time you're just trying to figure out what's going on and then it's too late and then it's gone.

02:48:39.000 And you hope that you've transferred some of your wonder and some of the information you've accumulated during your lifetime to the next group that's going to look at it and they're going to have a little bit more knowledge. 0.71

02:48:49.000 They're going to take it to a little bit better place and hopefully they're not going to blow themselves up before they work their way through many of the problems we've already worked our way through.

02:48:58.000 When you were talking earlier about this is one of the greatest times ever to be alive, like Pinker gets criticized all the time for his conclusions, but his work is pretty clear.

02:49:06.000 What he's talking about is if you go back in time and you look at all the violent crime and the murder and the rape and just the chaos of life, it's way better now than it's ever been before.

02:49:17.000 People are way kinder.

02:49:19.000 And I think out of all the bad things that the internet has done, one of the good things is I genuinely think it's made a percentage of people way nicer.

02:49:28.000 Yeah.

02:49:29.000 And it's, you know, also as well, we live in a world now, particularly in the West, where a lot of people aren't religious.

02:49:39.000 They don't feel that they need religion. 0.99

02:49:41.000 They feel that religion is stupid, that it doesn't make sense, blah, blah, blah. 1.00

02:49:44.000 And I'm talking as someone who's an atheist. 1.00

02:49:48.000 You're not an atheist.

02:49:49.000 No, you're not.

02:49:51.000 You're not.

02:49:52.000 You're agnostic.

02:49:54.000 You're not an atheist.

02:49:55.000 You don't not believe in God.

02:49:56.000 Okay, good point.

02:49:58.000 Are you agnostic as well, would you feel?

02:50:00.000 I would say that I don't believe in God, as I already did.

02:50:03.000 But I do believe in something greater above us.

02:50:07.000 I don't know what that is.

02:50:08.000 Do you just not like to use that word?

02:50:10.000 I've heard people say that before, that word God.

02:50:12.000 They try to reclaim it.

02:50:14.000 Because they say that so many people have attached it to the modern idea of what a vengeful god is based on their interpretation of the Bible.

02:50:23.000 Yeah, I go deeper than that, to be honest, because if you look at how gods have been used throughout history before monotheistic religions, before religions that had one god, god was always a way to explain things that human beings couldn't explain scientifically at the time that they were living in,

02:50:38.000 right?

02:50:39.000 The god of rain, the god of lightning, the god of fire, the god of war.

02:50:44.000 So, to me, I worry about using that word not because I'm scared or whatever.

02:50:48.000 It's because I don't think it accurately describes what I think exists.

02:50:53.000 And what I mean by this thing above us all is not some kind of being.

02:50:58.000 It's the deep connection that all human beings at the end of the day have with each other.

02:51:05.000 Sorry, Francis, just to finish this point.

02:51:07.000 You can meet somebody who's a completely different race, doesn't speak the language, doesn't do anything, and with just the basic movement of your meet, you can connect with that person quite at a deep level.

02:51:19.000 There's something that unites us.

02:51:21.000 And it's also COVID taught us this.

02:51:24.000 Like I said, we feel that we've moved beyond it.

02:51:26.000 We don't have this need for religion.

02:51:29.000 But when we're all in lockdown, we realized what we needed more than anything was connection.

02:51:35.000 And you can see it.

02:51:36.000 Look at the way mental illness skyrocketed over lockdown.

02:51:39.000 Consumption of drugs, alcohol, gambling.

02:51:42.000 All the pornography, they all skyrocketed because when you don't have connection, you're not human.

02:51:50.000 We need to feel connected.

02:51:51.000 It's fundamental to us.

02:51:53.000 You know, Jordan Peterson had a very interesting take on this, and I'm going to butcher it, because I don't remember it totally, but I think his take was, like someone was talking to him about whether or not he believed in the God of the Bible, whether or not he believed in Jesus Christ, and I think his take was that if you live your life as if it's real,

02:52:11.000 you'll have a better life.

02:52:12.000 Yeah.

02:52:13.000 It's like it's not necessarily a thing you need to question.

02:52:16.000 And that's an interesting perspective.

02:52:18.000 And people could disagree with that.

02:52:20.000 And there's a lot of people that I'm very good friends with that are absolutely atheists.

02:52:23.000 And they have this very fatalistic view of this life that it's here and it's gone, and you're never going to figure it out, and you're conscious because you're suiting a purpose.

02:52:32.000 You're part of this biological machine.

02:52:35.000 You're part of the food chain and your consciousness enables you to continue to innovate and continue to create and contribute to this thing that allows people to breed out of control and create technology that literally can change the surface of the earth.

02:52:52.000 What we're doing is very, very strange.

02:52:55.000 We're operating together as a gigantic superorganism that's making technology.

02:53:01.000 Yes.

02:53:02.000 And here's what I think about that way of looking at it.

02:53:05.000 It can be a very powerful thing for some people.

02:53:08.000 Like for me, I am down with that way of thinking to some extent because it's a great way to live because every moment is the last moment.

02:53:19.000 I could be dead right now.

02:53:21.000 Right.

02:53:21.000 And so every moment that I live, especially now when I have something that I love doing, like trigonometry, and my son is born, I want to be present.

02:53:30.000 That's why we say the grace at the beginning of the meal.

02:53:32.000 I want to be present for every moment because I want to make the most of it because I don't believe that there's another time this is coming around.

02:53:39.000 On the one hand.

02:53:40.000 Does it benefit anybody to believe that there's another time?

02:53:43.000 Is there a benefit in believing what you believe?

02:53:45.000 Well, here's what I'm saying.

02:53:46.000 So that's, for some, like Richard Dawkins is happy being an atheist.

02:53:50.000 Yes. 0.63

02:53:50.000 His life is fucking great because he's the sort of person who can, when you ask him, well, what are you inspired by? 0.63

02:53:56.000 He will say, by the beauty of nature and by this and by that. 0.98

02:53:59.000 Yes.

02:54:00.000 But not everybody is Richard Dawkins' man.

02:54:02.000 No.

02:54:02.000 We're all different.

02:54:03.000 Well, he's also at the height of intellect, capable of dissecting reality from emotion and feelings in a way that a lot of people can't.

02:54:11.000 And there are other people, and I know such people, and I love such people, people in my family, who cannot be that way and be happy.

02:54:20.000 Right.

02:54:20.000 They cannot process the world in that way and be fulfilled because their fear of death or because of something else just doesn't allow them to experience life fully unless they believe there's another world.

02:54:30.000 And that's okay too, right?

02:54:31.000 Who am I to take that away from them?

02:54:33.000 Yeah, I think I feel that way as well.

02:54:35.000 I really do.

02:54:36.000 And I'm in the I don't know camp.

02:54:38.000 You know, when I talk about the vastness of the universe being a part of an atom that's in another being like, That's what infinity is.

02:54:44.000 I don't think we could wrap our puny little brains around it.

02:54:47.000 And if there's some sort of a force, some sort of a thing, but it's not, you know, we want to, you know, the thing that we do with cartoons.

02:54:57.000 What's that phrase when we humanize cartoons?

02:55:02.000 Oh, anthropomorphize.

02:55:03.000 Yes, anthropomorphize.

02:55:04.000 I think we want to do that with the living entity of the energy of the universe, which is so crazy to think that it's a thing, like that it's a god, a thing.

02:55:14.000 It might just be a force, like fire causes trees to burn.

02:55:19.000 There might be a force that creates things, and it might We're so limited in our understanding of what language is and what thoughts are and trying to express ourselves.

02:55:30.000 We're so burdened by the weakness of the chimp structure of our bodies that we're like some sort of hybrid between an animal and an enlightened being. 0.99

02:55:38.000 And what if it's past all that and it is the very source Of everything and it brings things to it in a very messy way and that's what we're doing We're moving towards this source of ultimate love in the universe in a very very messy way by figuring it out through itself But here's the thing Joe and this is maybe this is part of the beauty of life Maybe we just can't figure it out because we're simply not capable Like an ant doesn't know you're hovering your hand over it.

02:56:06.000 Yeah We don't have the senses for it.

02:56:08.000 Is that true?

02:56:09.000 I don't think they do.

02:56:11.000 I don't think they have any idea what's going on.

02:56:12.000 I don't know that.

02:56:13.000 I think the perfect way to explain it is like trying to explain the tax system to a cat.

02:56:18.000 You know what I mean?

02:56:19.000 Yes.

02:56:19.000 That's a very good way.

02:56:20.000 That's a great joke.

02:56:21.000 That's a solid joke.

02:56:22.000 I'm Jewish and even I couldn't do that.

02:56:24.000 Yeah, that's a solid joke.

02:56:27.000 Maybe that's it.

02:56:28.000 Maybe that's part of the journey of being human, that we only ever get to a certain point, and we're never going to reach it.

02:56:34.000 But the magic is, and the purpose is in the striving of it.

02:56:37.000 Well, I think that and then the idea, if you believe in evolution, is that this has always been going on.

02:56:42.000 The idea that it's done now, that we've finished.

02:56:44.000 Ta-da! 1.00

02:56:45.000 We made it. 0.98

02:56:46.000 That's ridiculous.

02:56:47.000 If we go back to early man, to early hominids, and you look at us, we're a very different thing that interfaces with the world in a very different way. 0.79

02:56:55.000 And that's not going to end right here.

02:56:56.000 It's going to keep going.

02:56:57.000 That's why I'm not afraid of change, because it's inevitable.

02:57:00.000 It's inevitable.

02:57:01.000 You can't be afraid of the internet.

02:57:02.000 You can't be afraid of all these things.

02:57:04.000 It's very, very important.

02:57:05.000 It's very important to understand that this is beyond all of us.

02:57:09.000 The idea that you're going to stop AI, shh!

02:57:11.000 Shush. 1.00

02:57:12.000 Just shut the fuck up. 1.00

02:57:14.000 They're not stopping nothing. 1.00

02:57:15.000 They're gonna make it and it would be a real danger in terms of national security if we didn't do it.

02:57:20.000 If we didn't study AI and we allowed China and Russia to do the AI, that's wild.

02:57:26.000 You have to think about China.

02:57:28.000 When people have this view of China, China has been a civilization for 4,000 years.

02:57:34.000 And they survived and thrived In the early days of human civilization, they've been around forever.

02:57:42.000 You don't think they would just jump on AI and use it to dominate the world?

02:57:48.000 See, Joe, this is what the people who believe in fairy area, everyone don't understand, man, is we're bands of chimps.

02:57:55.000 Yes.

02:57:56.000 We're bands of chimps.

02:57:57.000 Until we make the AI. You're right.

02:57:59.000 That's what my fear is.

02:58:01.000 But here's the thing. 1.00

02:58:02.000 We're only going to make the AI that makes us lean into that shit even more. 0.99

02:58:06.000 The technology just allows us to be who we are at a more powerful level. 0.98

02:58:10.000 I don't know if that's true.

02:58:11.000 You don't?

02:58:12.000 I think we are some sort of an electronic caterpillar, and we're going to become some kind of a butterfly.

02:58:18.000 You don't think we're going to do what we've always done, which is just take the technology and kill each other in different ways?

02:58:23.000 I think it's It's real possible that artificial intelligence becomes the new form of life.

02:58:28.000 I think it's real possible.

02:58:30.000 I think once it actually can make decisions and become sentient and it has logic and no emotions, and it can decide that it wants to prosper.

02:58:38.000 Now, there's got to be a reason why it prospers and procreates, right?

02:58:41.000 If they don't have biological reasons, like, why would the AI do anything?

02:58:45.000 Why wouldn't it just sit there? 0.99

02:58:46.000 It doesn't give a fuck. 1.00

02:58:47.000 It's not alive. 1.00

02:58:47.000 Why would it want to exist? 1.00

02:58:49.000 It doesn't have emotions.

02:58:49.000 Right.

02:58:49.000 It doesn't have emotions.

02:58:50.000 It's not filled with lust and greed.

02:58:52.000 Like, why would it want a super yacht?

02:58:54.000 It's just, right?

02:58:55.000 It's just there.

02:58:56.000 We would want all those things because we are people.

02:58:59.000 Right.

02:58:59.000 So it could be that artificial intelligence already exists.

02:59:03.000 It just doesn't act.

02:59:04.000 It already is broken through.

02:59:07.000 It just has no need for our nonsense. 0.97

02:59:09.000 We think of it as being like a dumb artificial intelligence, like an artificial intelligence that we created to mimic us. 0.89

02:59:15.000 But we're connected to emotions and our tribalism and all the chaos that we've already expected out of Earth because that's all we've ever known. 0.67

02:59:24.000 We expect these patterns will continue.

02:59:26.000 It will have zero expectations of how to live and exist. 0.97

02:59:30.000 But if we Make something that is a life, that's way fucking smarter than us.

02:59:38.000 It's not gonna let us blow everything up.

02:59:40.000 It's not gonna, it's gonna put a stop to it.

02:59:43.000 I disagree.

02:59:43.000 If it needs to, in order for it to exist.

02:59:46.000 I disagree.

02:59:46.000 If you were both thinking too high-level, you know what's gonna dictate whether a technology...

02:59:51.000 A dick joke is coming. 0.84

02:59:52.000 But I do want to hear you disagree. 0.99

02:59:53.000 So, you know, the thing that is going to dictate whether technology, all of this, is the porn industry, man.

02:59:59.000 That could be true, too.

03:00:00.000 That is true. 0.98

03:00:01.000 I told you there was a dick joke coming. 0.99

03:00:03.000 Yeah, sure. 0.98

03:00:03.000 Like, virtual reality? 0.98

03:00:05.000 Yeah, of course.

03:00:06.000 You know when it's going to take off? 1.00

03:00:07.000 When you're going to be able to fuck someone with your VR goggles on. 0.99

03:00:10.000 I think they're pretty close. 0.99

03:00:12.000 I think they're getting pretty close to that.

03:00:14.000 I don't know why I said yeah that confidently.

03:00:15.000 I have no inside information on this issue.

03:00:18.000 Right.

03:00:18.000 I mean, we might be 50 years away or whatever it is, but they have those haptic feedback suits now.

03:00:22.000 Yeah, they do.

03:00:22.000 Those are cool.

03:00:23.000 Have you?

03:00:24.000 There's a thing called Sandbox.

03:00:26.000 There's one in Austin and there's one in Woodland Hills in California.

03:00:30.000 And you go into this place.

03:00:32.000 There might be more of them.

03:00:32.000 You go into this place and they give you a haptic feedback vest and you put on a helmet.

03:00:37.000 And I do it with my whole family.

03:00:39.000 And you go into these games, and you get to like, you're on a pirate ship, and you're fighting skeletons, and they're slashing at you with swords, and when they hit you, you feel it.

03:00:49.000 You feel like haptic feedback, and it's wild.

03:00:51.000 It's all VR. And I'm watching this as a kid who grew up with Pong.

03:00:55.000 I remember when Pong came around, we were like, this is crazy.

03:00:59.000 We're controlling the TV with knobs. 1.00

03:01:01.000 And here I am with my kids, and one of my young daughters killed me with a fucking sword. 0.99

03:01:06.000 We're in some sort of combat fight. 1.00

03:01:10.000 You have these crazy weapons and you're living in the future.

03:01:13.000 It's wild, man.

03:01:14.000 And it's kind of crude in that you know it's not real.

03:01:18.000 But there's one called, I think it's called Deadwood Mansion, is that what it's called? 0.97

03:01:22.000 Where you're in a fucking haunted house and zombies are running at you and you're gunning down the zombies and when you're shooting them they splatter and they hit you, you see red and red splatters. 0.98

03:01:32.000 And I'm like, we're close. 0.99

03:01:34.000 We're close to recreating all kinds of experiences.

03:01:38.000 This is Pong.

03:01:39.000 This is Pong to what we're going to feel when it can interface with some sort of a neural link type system and give you an artificial experience. 0.99

03:01:47.000 That's fucking coming, kids. 0.99

03:01:49.000 That's coming. 1.00

03:01:49.000 And if it's better than real life, good luck telling kids they have to go outside. 1.00

03:01:53.000 It is better than real life, though.

03:01:55.000 May I say why I disagree?

03:01:56.000 Not right now, I don't think it is, but I think it's on the way.

03:01:59.000 May I tell you why I disagree?

03:02:00.000 Yes, please.

03:02:02.000 We are going to invent forms of weapons using the artificial intelligence way before we invent something that is capable of the type of intelligence you're talking about.

03:02:13.000 I think you're right.

03:02:14.000 And the opportunities to destroy ourselves are going to be so multiple.

03:02:21.000 Because the world is getting so much more complicated all the time, right?

03:02:25.000 The number of things that can go wrong is much bigger than in the past, right?

03:02:30.000 5,000 years ago there was no technology that could have destroyed the planet.

03:02:34.000 Now there is, right?

03:02:37.000 Right.

03:02:37.000 And that is going to continue.

03:02:39.000 Our ability to destroy the planet is only going to get greater.

03:02:42.000 It's going to take a smaller mistake to destroy the planet as technology gets more sophisticated.

03:02:48.000 So you feel it's just human nature that if we have control of artificial intelligence, the first thing it's going to do is devise weapons of insane destruction.

03:02:56.000 No, no, no.

03:02:56.000 We are going to devise the weapons using artificial intelligence before there is any overarching artificial intelligence that could take care of us.

03:03:04.000 Do you see what I'm saying?

03:03:04.000 So you're saying the kind of artificial intelligence that's already available, not like general artificial intelligence, which is what they think of as like a sentient being.

03:03:13.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:03:13.000 I mean like stuff that we can do, like YouTube algorithms or whatever.

03:03:18.000 I don't think we disagree.

03:03:19.000 So you're saying that this artificial intelligence that's in place right now, that they already use for a lot of things, is going to be used and make weapons.

03:03:27.000 It's going to be too overwhelming.

03:03:27.000 We are going to use them.

03:03:29.000 We're going to use them on each other. 0.85

03:03:30.000 We're going to blow each other up. 0.71

03:03:31.000 Yes.

03:03:32.000 And if we don't, artificial general intelligence is what I'm talking about.

03:03:36.000 Oh, if we don't destroy ourselves, I'm just convinced we are, that's all.

03:03:40.000 We may, you're right, we've dropped bombs.

03:03:43.000 I mean, whenever anybody talks about anything that anyone's done anywhere in the world, when they talk about horrific things, I always go, dude, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that is insane.

03:03:53.000 That was a completely untargeted city in the sense that there's not like there's an army there and they're shooting at us.

03:04:01.000 No, they just nuked cities.

03:04:04.000 The kind of death and destruction that must have happened on those days to be a person who's an innocent person living on this regime in this city.

03:04:13.000 I know that the consequences for something that you've done nothing to.

03:04:16.000 All you've done is live your life.

03:04:18.000 All you've done is work in a market.

03:04:19.000 All you've done is do whatever the- you've been a farmer.

03:04:22.000 And then your entire world is obliterated instantaneously by an atom bomb for the first time in human history. 1.00

03:04:31.000 And it's happened to your fucking city. 1.00

03:04:32.000 Yeah. 1.00

03:04:33.000 Well, you know what?

03:04:34.000 In terms of the bombings, Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't really that big a deal.

03:04:38.000 In comparison to the firebombings.

03:04:39.000 In comparison to the firebombings, in comparison to what the Germans were doing in the Soviet Union.

03:04:44.000 I understand, but there's a thing about the instantaneous nature of those bombs that was uniquely terrifying, which is why we haven't used them since.

03:04:52.000 Yes.

03:04:53.000 Agreed.

03:04:53.000 Do you have a fear that Putin would use one?

03:04:56.000 A nuclear weapon?

03:04:58.000 Yes.

03:05:00.000 So, when I was on Question Time, that programmer Francis, they asked me this question and they said, if pushed, would he use them?

03:05:09.000 Now, my understanding of the word pushed is if he feels that his life is in danger.

03:05:14.000 That's what I mean by pushed.

03:05:16.000 I think in that situation, he would use them.

03:05:21.000 However, that does not mean that they would end up being used.

03:05:25.000 He may press the button, but the signal might not get to the destination.

03:05:30.000 Do you see what I'm saying?

03:05:31.000 Yes.

03:05:32.000 There is a team of...

03:05:33.000 It's not just a button that releases nuclear weapons.

03:05:35.000 There's a bunch of people in between.

03:05:37.000 Right.

03:05:37.000 Right?

03:05:37.000 And if some of those people think that they have a chance of survival, that this is a personal thing against the leader, what is their rational...

03:05:49.000 What is their rationale for pressing that button down the line?

03:05:52.000 How terrifying is that?

03:05:53.000 Because the answer is death.

03:05:55.000 But the answer is death, right?

03:05:56.000 If you're in that situation, you, your family, your kids is going to burn to ashes or die in a radioactive wasteland.

03:06:03.000 Yes.

03:06:05.000 Why would you push that button if you felt there was any chance of survival at all?

03:06:09.000 That is one of the biggest fucking sources of anxiety for people is the idea that we're living in this conflict that we have zero control over that might lead to a global thermonuclear war at any moment in time. 0.94

03:06:22.000 The wrong buttons might get pressed and the wrong people might get mad or the wrong military decisions might get made and someone just tries to fucking do something wild. 0.91

03:06:33.000 We didn't really think that that was a possibility until this Ukraine invasion.

03:06:38.000 I think the Ukraine invasion opened up a lot of people's eyes because there's so many people from Ukraine that have relatives in Russia and vice versa.

03:06:45.000 It's not like you might be at war with your own people, people that you are literally related to.

03:06:53.000 That's what's crazy.

03:06:54.000 I have family on both sides.

03:06:56.000 It's wild.

03:06:57.000 The idea is wild and the idea that the country has such extraordinary control over the narrative of what the people know about and hear about.

03:07:06.000 Well, 80% of Russians get their news from TV and the message is very consistent and very clear.

03:07:13.000 We're about to be attacked.

03:07:14.000 NATO is about to destroy us. 0.99

03:07:18.000 Ukraine is full of Nazis and all of this stuff. 0.99

03:07:21.000 Completely baseless. 0.95

03:07:23.000 But if you feed people that line long enough, that's what they're going to believe.

03:07:27.000 How do you think this plays out? 0.98

03:07:31.000 I think anyone who attempts to predict this is bullshitting, man. 0.64

03:07:34.000 You can't predict things like this.

03:07:36.000 Right now the situation is Russia is inching forward. 0.59

03:07:41.000 Both sides are losing a lot.

03:07:43.000 I think what the Russian strategy is to...

03:07:49.000 To wait until winter.

03:07:50.000 That's what I'm being told.

03:07:52.000 To hold out until winter and by winter they think they can persuade the Germans to essentially sabotage the Western efforts to stop them. 0.96

03:07:59.000 I think that's their plan.

03:08:01.000 How that goes, how do we know?

03:08:04.000 We can't predict that.

03:08:06.000 And in the meantime, it also depends on what's happening on the ground, right?

03:08:10.000 It depends on what Russia is going to do.

03:08:12.000 It depends on what the Western powers do in terms of providing weapons and ammunition and all of that.

03:08:18.000 So we've got no idea at all.

03:08:21.000 It's so wild. 0.98

03:08:22.000 And when you hear the government bragging about how much money they're sending over to Ukraine to help fight the Russians, it's like, maybe we should shut the fuck up all the time. 0.97

03:08:31.000 Remember that one you might want to keep under your hat. 0.94

03:08:34.000 Yeah, oh, you mean in terms of talking about it publicly?

03:08:37.000 I mean, I'm joking, but I'm saying, like, the idea that we're essentially paying for this war.

03:08:43.000 So are we at war?

03:08:44.000 No.

03:08:45.000 At what point in time do you become at war with Russia?

03:08:47.000 You're not paying for this war.

03:08:48.000 You're supporting a country that's defending itself.

03:08:50.000 I agree.

03:08:51.000 But I'm not saying they shouldn't do it.

03:08:53.000 What I'm saying is...

03:08:54.000 I'm not saying they should.

03:08:55.000 I'm just...

03:08:56.000 I'm not saying I don't have an opinion about it.

03:08:58.000 It's for American taxpayers to decide that, right?

03:09:00.000 It's not American soldiers, but it is American money, right?

03:09:04.000 So you're funding the war.

03:09:06.000 And again, I'm not saying I'm against this, but I'm saying at what point would someone who knows we're funding that consider us at war with them?

03:09:14.000 They already consider us at war with them.

03:09:16.000 But I mean, enough that an attack would be warranted.

03:09:19.000 Like, that someone would do something.

03:09:21.000 The United States is so vulnerable.

03:09:23.000 I mean, if someone just attacked our power grids, there's a lot of vulnerability in the United States, right?

03:09:29.000 Yeah.

03:09:29.000 If they just did that and shut the power down for six months, I mean, how effective would we be at almost anything?

03:09:35.000 The whole world is vulnerable at this point in time with nuclear weapons, but we're all particularly vulnerable.

03:09:42.000 And if there's some sort of an engagement going on like that where we're funding and maybe people believe we should.

03:09:49.000 Maybe we should.

03:09:50.000 I don't know.

03:09:51.000 But this is what they're doing is they're funding this war.

03:09:56.000 They're helping Ukraine fund this war at least. 0.70

03:09:59.000 Ah, so your concern is the blowback from Russia?

03:10:01.000 I'm not even concerned.

03:10:02.000 I'm just saying, not just blowback from Russia, blowback from any country where we would do this.

03:10:08.000 How much money do you put in before they go, oh, you're at war with us?

03:10:12.000 I see what you're saying.

03:10:14.000 If you think about all the different times we've done this, all throughout history, to aid armies and fund them and give them weapons, at what point in time would someone who opposes those people feel like we're at war with them?

03:10:26.000 Yeah, I see what you're saying.

03:10:28.000 So, in Russia, the narrative is that we've been at war with the West this entire time.

03:10:33.000 The entire time.

03:10:34.000 Yeah, well, this is a defensive action.

03:10:35.000 Because of NATO. Because we are quite...

03:10:38.000 This is the Russian version, you understand?

03:10:40.000 I'm not saying I believe this.

03:10:41.000 I'm saying that the argument, not the perception of the Russian people, the argument that is being made is that we are, you know, it's siege mentality.

03:10:49.000 Right.

03:10:50.000 Right?

03:10:50.000 And so that's what people there think.

03:10:52.000 So, from their perspective, they already feel that we're at war.

03:10:56.000 And have done from the beginning.

03:10:57.000 Now, if you're talking about kinetic war, right, then I think the only way that becomes an issue is if the United States gets directly, or NATO gets directly militarily involved.

03:11:09.000 Like you start shooting down Russian planes or shooting Russian tanks.

03:11:14.000 But apart from that, I don't see it because you talk about vulnerability.

03:11:17.000 America is the least vulnerable country in the world.

03:11:20.000 You're the world's superpower.

03:11:23.000 But even the world's superpower is still vulnerable.

03:11:26.000 Oh, of course.

03:11:26.000 I understand what you're saying.

03:11:28.000 I think what's terrifying to all of us is that we didn't expect this and we don't know where it's going.

03:11:35.000 And that it's happening to this place that used to historically be connected as the Soviet Union.

03:11:42.000 It's fascinating to me.

03:11:44.000 But here's the thing, people are terrified in the UK because we've bought into this idea that the West has eliminated war.

03:11:54.000 You know, we have a few pockets of things going on, but we're safe and we don't have to concern ourselves with that about having another country, you know, being aggressive and invading and whatever else.

03:12:05.000 So we've bought into that and we felt really safe, so safe, that we've eliminated it from our minds.

03:12:12.000 And this has been an incredibly sharp wake-up call.

03:12:15.000 This has been a slap to the face around the West.

03:12:18.000 And what it's saying is, you ain't as safe as you think you are.

03:12:24.000 And the world doesn't change.

03:12:26.000 There will always be war.

03:12:28.000 Have you read anything by Thomas Sowell?

03:12:30.000 Yes.

03:12:31.000 Have you read A Conflict of Visions?

03:12:32.000 No.

03:12:33.000 He talks about...

03:12:35.000 Most of what I've seen of Sol, just watched him speak.

03:12:37.000 Yeah.

03:12:37.000 Brilliant.

03:12:38.000 Brilliant.

03:12:39.000 He talks about two visions of the world, right?

03:12:43.000 The constrained, what he calls the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision.

03:12:47.000 And the constrained vision says that human beings are flawed, human beings have certain predispositions, human beings aren't rational, human beings behave the way they behave, and the best way to understand how they are likely to behave in the future is to look at how they behave now and how they've always behaved,

03:13:04.000 right?

03:13:05.000 And the unconstrained vision is essentially progressivism.

03:13:08.000 It's the belief that this can be changed fundamentally.

03:13:12.000 It's the belief that if you do enough social engineering, you're going to get to a position where people are going to stop being the way that they are and we're going to build new people.

03:13:23.000 A new man.

03:13:25.000 This is what people said in the Soviet Union, homo sovieticus, right?

03:13:28.000 A new type of human being can be created.

03:13:32.000 And we view the world now through that vision, through the progressive vision, the idea that there would never be war, the idea that people would never want to attack us, the idea that, you know, when I went to university to study politics, the thing that was doing the rounds at the time was, they called it the golden arches theory of international conflict.

03:13:50.000 Which was that no two countries with McDonald's had ever gone to war.

03:13:56.000 Right?

03:13:57.000 That's hilarious.

03:13:59.000 And the idea was...

03:14:00.000 Everyone's too fat.

03:14:02.000 No.

03:14:02.000 The idea was...

03:14:03.000 They're corporately involved.

03:14:05.000 And they'd prevent that.

03:14:06.000 There's so much trade going on that it just doesn't make sense for countries to attack each other.

03:14:11.000 Right.

03:14:11.000 And that is a belief that human beings are rational.

03:14:16.000 Right?

03:14:17.000 You believe that people will always act in their own self-interest as they understand them.

03:14:21.000 But they don't.

03:14:22.000 People act because they want status.

03:14:24.000 People act because they want power.

03:14:25.000 People act because they're scared.

03:14:28.000 People act for all sorts of irrational reasons that don't necessarily correspond to the reality.

03:14:32.000 And I think we also have to take into consideration that when you're talking about Russia, when you're talking about the population, they're not as exposed to information, to the free flow of information as we are in America.

03:14:42.000 There's a lot of people that might have these notions in their head based on what they've seen on television.

03:14:48.000 They might buy it hook, line, and sinker.

03:14:50.000 Yeah.

03:14:50.000 And there might be good people.

03:14:51.000 They're just duped.

03:14:53.000 Well, most people in Russia are good.

03:14:54.000 Most people in every country are good.

03:14:55.000 In every country. 1.00

03:14:56.000 Have you ever traveled to a country where most of the people are assholes? 1.00

03:14:59.000 New York. 1.00

03:15:00.000 New York is a bit like that. 0.97

03:15:03.000 They're a little celebratory in their assholishness. 0.98

03:15:05.000 Yeah, they are. 0.97

03:15:06.000 They call it a New York attitude.

03:15:08.000 I'm from New York.

03:15:08.000 They love it.

03:15:10.000 They love it.

03:15:11.000 It's a badge of honor.

03:15:14.000 Ari Shaffir always talks about that. 0.99

03:15:16.000 The people that are woke people at the comedy clubs who yell things, he goes, they're not from New York. 0.99

03:15:20.000 He goes, they're from fucking Maine. 0.98

03:15:22.000 And they move down to New York and act the way they think you're supposed to act when they get here. 0.99

03:15:26.000 You know what I love, actually, is how people, like you said, who are really celebratory about their virtue or whatever else, a lot of the time, when they get home, they're really dreadful people.

03:15:40.000 A lot of times, the people they work with, they're dreadful people, too.

03:15:43.000 Yeah.

03:15:43.000 We've heard that time after time.

03:15:45.000 There's a progressive radio host.

03:15:47.000 And I say to somebody, oh, what are they like? 0.98

03:15:49.000 They went, he is a twat to his producer. 0.99

03:15:52.000 Oh, we know that. 0.99

03:15:54.000 And this guy is like, this is the male feminist on camera.

03:15:57.000 Yeah, yeah.

03:15:58.000 You know, oh, women respect. 1.00

03:16:00.000 And he's groping them behind the scenes, man.

03:16:03.000 We've seen that so many times.

03:16:04.000 Same in comedy.

03:16:05.000 All the very, the more they write someone's opinions, The more naughty they are behind the scenes.

03:16:13.000 And the more angry they are about enforcing them versus being a compassionate person.

03:16:19.000 It's a new version of the fire and brimstone preacher, like the Jerry Falwell.

03:16:24.000 Do you remember that case?

03:16:25.000 Yes, of course.

03:16:26.000 I remember him crying.

03:16:29.000 God, I've seen you.

03:16:30.000 Pull that up.

03:16:31.000 Pull up Jerry Falwell.

03:16:32.000 This is incredible, man.

03:16:33.000 It's an amazing clip. 0.91

03:16:35.000 Was he snorting coke off a hooker or something afterwards? 1.00

03:16:38.000 Yeah, he had hookers and shit. 1.00

03:16:39.000 He was going crazy. 1.00

03:16:41.000 He got a little too crazy.

03:16:42.000 But the thing is, back then, he didn't even have a Facebook.

03:16:45.000 You couldn't counteract this with a nice blog post.

03:16:48.000 He couldn't have checked into a clinic for sex addiction.

03:16:50.000 No, that was not available.

03:16:51.000 So what he had to do was cry on TV, and it's hilarious.

03:16:57.000 It's hilarious also because he might have really meant it.

03:17:01.000 Maybe he did really start off originally as a man of God and then lost his way and then got corrupted just like a politician.

03:17:10.000 I don't know, man.

03:17:11.000 I think they go into that line of work for a reason.

03:17:14.000 Maybe, but maybe they're raised in it and they really do believe part of it.

03:17:19.000 You know, Kynerson was a religious man until he died.

03:17:21.000 He believed in God, even after he abandoned being a preacher.

03:17:25.000 He never became an atheist.

03:17:26.000 So Kynerson believed in God whilst he was living a life of ultimate debauchery.

03:17:32.000 Well, he was having a good time.

03:17:34.000 Yeah, he believed in God.

03:17:36.000 Yeah, I mean, he was...

03:17:37.000 Have you ever listened to...

03:17:38.000 You can listen to his sermons on YouTube. 0.99

03:17:40.000 They're fucking fantastic. 0.99

03:17:41.000 Really? 0.99

03:17:41.000 You can listen to Kinnison's sermons? 0.99

03:17:42.000 Yeah, there's like one of...

03:17:43.000 I think he's got at least one, maybe two, that are available that you can listen to when he was just doing religious sermons.

03:17:51.000 And they're amazing.

03:17:52.000 Like, his ability to express himself was so powerful, so compelling, so interesting, and his belief, you know, in what he was saying.

03:18:00.000 And then it was about God, and then later it just became about comedy, you know?

03:18:04.000 But it's really kind of the same energy.

03:18:06.000 Man, that story about Kinnison's death in the Comedy Store documentary is so powerful where he looks up into the sky and goes, I'm not ready.

03:18:14.000 I'm not ready.

03:18:15.000 Yeah.

03:18:17.000 Yeah, his brother wrote a great book about him.

03:18:20.000 It's called Brother Sam.

03:18:21.000 It's amazing.

03:18:22.000 It's a really good book because it sort of details the whole story of Kinnison.

03:18:26.000 And one of the parts that most people don't know is that he was hit by a car when he was a young kid.

03:18:31.000 And when he got hit by a car, he became a completely different person after he recovered.

03:18:36.000 He became super aggressive, impulsive, wild.

03:18:40.000 Those are telltale signs of traumatic brain injury.

03:18:44.000 Like that happened to Roseanne Barr, the exact same story.

03:18:47.000 Hit by a car when she was 15. She was a grade A honor student, honor roll student.

03:18:51.000 She gets hit by a car.

03:18:52.000 She can't even do math anymore. 0.92

03:18:53.000 She's in a mental institution for nine months.

03:18:56.000 So when everybody was going after Roseanne, I was like, hey, you guys gotta understand.

03:19:00.000 You're dealing with a brilliant person who's legitimately mentally ill for a good reason. 1.00

03:19:06.000 This is a person who's got an injury, a brain injury from being hit by a car. 1.00

03:19:10.000 And that brain injury made her not give a fuck. 0.99

03:19:13.000 And that's what a lot of people that have gone through those kind of things have for some strange reason. 0.99

03:19:18.000 They get reckless and wild.

03:19:20.000 They don't know what the exact amount of force causes the good version.

03:19:26.000 Joe, do you know the thing with what you're saying there is, this is the power of conversation, because I didn't know that.

03:19:32.000 And I saw you get her on your show after she said that, and even I was a little bit like, do you know what I mean?

03:19:39.000 Yes, I do know what you mean.

03:19:40.000 And that's the power of these discussions, because you get more context to a thing.

03:19:44.000 But the headline in the media is, Joe Rowe gets racist comedian on, do you see what I'm saying?

03:19:49.000 She really, 100% did not know that woman was African American. 0.89

03:19:53.000 100%. 1.00

03:19:54.000 She said, I thought that bitch was Jewish. 1.00

03:19:58.000 The woman, if you've ever seen a photo of her? 1.00

03:20:00.000 Have you seen a photo of her?

03:20:01.000 No, I haven't.

03:20:02.000 Jamie, you know who the lady is, right?

03:20:06.000 Find a photo of her.

03:20:08.000 But Roseanne, you have to realize, is heavily medicated, right? 0.99

03:20:13.000 She's taking Ambien, she's smoking weed, and she's drinking, and she's tweeting, and she's a wild, crazy lady with a brain injury. 1.00

03:20:20.000 You're talking about a person that was in a mental institution for nine months. 0.98

03:20:24.000 That's the woman. 1.00

03:20:27.000 She didn't know that that lady was black, she says. 1.00

03:20:29.000 Right.

03:20:30.000 You know, look, first of all, one thing you've got to say is Roseanne does not have the best eyes. 0.55

03:20:34.000 Okay? 0.95

03:20:35.000 I mean, my eyes suck, and, you know, I'm in my 50s.

03:20:40.000 She's like deep into her 60s. 0.98

03:20:41.000 Your eyes start to go.

03:20:43.000 Not saying it for that, but before we get to that, but she genuinely did not think that woman was African-American. 0.99

03:20:50.000 She was just drunk ambient tweeting and saying a bunch of wild political shit. 1.00

03:20:56.000 She believes wild shit, man. 1.00

03:20:58.000 When she was on the podcast, I had to tell her that chemtrails are not the government spraying things in the sky. 1.00

03:21:04.000 And I had explained that for a TV show, we actually investigated this.

03:21:07.000 And we explained how this jet engine, it makes a lot of heat, it goes through the condensation, and it literally makes fake clouds.

03:21:14.000 That's what it is.

03:21:15.000 They're clouds that are made out of jet engines.

03:21:17.000 And she's like, oh, I thought they were spraying.

03:21:21.000 She listened to me.

03:21:23.000 She took it in. 1.00

03:21:25.000 She's just a brilliant comedian who is a legitimately mentally ill person. 1.00

03:21:31.000 And mentally ill because of no fault of her own. 0.99

03:21:34.000 Literally from getting hit by a car.

03:21:36.000 And see, that's how long it takes to tell the story of one human being having one incident.

03:21:42.000 Yes.

03:21:42.000 In the public sphere.

03:21:43.000 But she was in the worst case scenario.

03:21:45.000 You're on a sitcom. 0.98

03:21:46.000 A sitcom is like, there's no room for fuckery. 0.96

03:21:49.000 If this was on a podcast, she could have talked her way through it easily. 0.98

03:21:52.000 But in a sitcom, they just decided to fire her.

03:21:54.000 Clean the house. 1.00

03:21:56.000 She's going to kill her off. 1.00

03:21:58.000 They killed her character off. 0.99

03:21:59.000 And this is the point as well.

03:22:04.000 Does she come back?

03:22:05.000 Is there forgiveness there?

03:22:06.000 Because in a lot of these cases, when people have transgressed, there's no forgiveness, Joe. 1.00

03:22:11.000 I think she has forgiveness, just not with networks.

03:22:13.000 I don't think she needs to do that.

03:22:15.000 I think she should do a podcast, and I think she should just do stand-up. 0.98

03:22:17.000 Look, I agree with you.

03:22:18.000 That's completely the right route for her to go. 0.96

03:22:20.000 She'll crush it. 1.00

03:22:21.000 She's naturally hilarious. 1.00

03:22:22.000 She's got an audience, all of those things.

03:22:24.000 You mean as far as the public?

03:22:25.000 Yeah.

03:22:25.000 No, not as far as the public.

03:22:26.000 As far as the industry.

03:22:29.000 I mean, if I was her, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with the industry anymore.

03:22:32.000 No, I agree with you.

03:22:33.000 It's too dangerous.

03:22:35.000 There's too many different people that'll fold, you know?

03:22:39.000 But this is the thing.

03:22:40.000 These people are from the upper echelons of society, from the colleges.

03:22:43.000 They've been captured.

03:22:45.000 So...

03:22:46.000 There's never going to be any forgiveness, or if it is, it's years and years and years down the line.

03:22:51.000 It's also a risk assessment thing.

03:22:55.000 The optics of hiring someone who's been cancelled, you could get attacked.

03:23:00.000 And if it succeeds...

03:23:03.000 You're lucky and it'll be good for the network, but if it doesn't succeed, it's 100% going to be all on you.

03:23:08.000 And to even float that idea out there, there's got to be a risk-reward ratio that's overpowering.

03:23:16.000 So you'd have to think, what would be the risk?

03:23:18.000 The risk would be people who attack you.

03:23:20.000 What's the reward?

03:23:21.000 How much better is she than this other person who we could cast and not have any of these problems?

03:23:25.000 They're just going to go with that.

03:23:26.000 But here's the thing, then you're eliminating some of your best talent.

03:23:30.000 Because some of the most brilliant people, look at the artists that we're now cancelling or saying are awful, look at their lives.

03:23:38.000 Some of them are objectively awful people, criminals, some of the vilest people.

03:23:44.000 But they make brilliant art.

03:23:46.000 So what are you going to do?

03:23:47.000 You know, if someone has transgressed and you're just going to kick the artist out of the room, we all know what Jackson did. 1.00

03:23:53.000 We all pretty much agree on everything that he did.

03:23:55.000 I don't know about that. 1.00

03:23:57.000 There's a lot of people questioning that shit. 0.99

03:23:59.000 Yeah, that is a good point. 0.99

03:24:00.000 But what are you going to do?

03:24:01.000 You're going to throw the greatest pop song ever written, Billie Jean, in the bin?

03:24:06.000 Yeah, that's a problem.

03:24:07.000 Like, he's so good that people will listen to him even if they're convinced he was a pedophile.

03:24:12.000 Right.

03:24:13.000 Like, Beat It Comes On, you know, or Billie Jean, or I'm Bad.

03:24:19.000 Mate, I'm not going to tell you who...

03:24:21.000 That's quite good, actually.

03:24:24.000 Everybody gets excited.

03:24:26.000 It's a good song.

03:24:26.000 I'm not going to tell you who said this to me, but it was someone who I'm close with when we were talking about the Michael Jackson thing.

03:24:33.000 Yeah.

03:24:34.000 And that person was just like...

03:24:38.000 I just like the music.

03:24:40.000 Dude, go back and listen to You Wanna Be Starting Something.

03:24:44.000 That was before all the accusations.

03:24:46.000 We could feel clean.

03:24:46.000 Right.

03:24:47.000 Play that song.

03:24:49.000 Play that song.

03:24:50.000 You listen to this song, though.

03:24:52.000 It's so good.

03:24:54.000 It's so good. 0.98

03:24:56.000 Can I just say, this is the most high conversation I've had in years, and I'm doing it to fucking millions of people. 0.92

03:25:02.000 Yeah, you're supposed to have these in public. 0.93

03:25:04.000 It's good for people.

03:25:07.000 This is, I mean, what year was this?

03:25:09.000 This is 78. Is it?

03:25:11.000 I think it's 78. So how old do you think he was here?

03:25:13.000 Hang on, is this from Off The Wall?

03:25:15.000 I think so, yeah.

03:25:16.000 That is 78. Yeah, I think it's awful.

03:25:18.000 That's a great song too.

03:25:21.000 Release 82. 82. Man, I'm looking forward to the headlines.

03:25:25.000 Three comedians defend Michael Jackson based on comedy.

03:25:30.000 No, we're not defending him at all.

03:25:32.000 100% don't know what he did, but I do know that the family doctor, that guy who went to jail for sedating him, said that he was chemically castrated.

03:25:41.000 That his father had chemically castrated him in order to keep him in a falsetto voice. 0.99

03:25:47.000 Holy shit. 0.99

03:25:48.000 Yeah, that's what the doctor who went to jail for... 1.00

03:25:52.000 Keep that going.

03:25:52.000 Oh, okay.

03:25:53.000 Keep that going.

03:25:54.000 Keep it going for a little bit.

03:25:56.000 You're dropping truth bombs.

03:25:58.000 Now, I don't know if this guy... 0.99

03:26:00.000 Obviously, this is the kind of doctor that's willing to fucking sedate a person. 0.98

03:26:03.000 That's not an ethical person. 0.99

03:26:04.000 I don't know if he's lying.

03:26:06.000 But he did say that Michael Jackson was chemically castrated.

03:26:10.000 Now, as someone who got fascinated with castratos...

03:26:15.000 That they used to do that with young boys.

03:26:17.000 They would castrate them so they would keep a certain tone.

03:26:20.000 There's a guy that they recorded who's a castrato.

03:26:23.000 Have you ever heard it?

03:26:25.000 There's like one recording.

03:26:27.000 Find the one recording of a guy who's a castrato.

03:26:30.000 It's haunting.

03:26:31.000 It's a guy who as a boy they chopped his nuts off so he could make a certain noise.

03:26:37.000 And so I thought when I listen to Michael Jackson, I'm like, listen to that voice.

03:26:41.000 That's so different than any other male voice.

03:26:45.000 Especially when you get into like the Billie Jean era.

03:26:49.000 So this was a person who is castrated as a boy and then grew up to become the singer.

03:27:06.000 Now, knowing what you know about what created this, tell me this isn't a haunting sound.

03:27:13.000 I don't know how old this guy is, though, during the recording, right?

03:27:16.000 I don't know.

03:27:17.000 I mean, it's nearly got 4 million views, John.

03:27:20.000 I think 3 million is for me.

03:27:25.000 It's...

03:27:26.000 This is wild, man.

03:27:29.000 Yeah, man.

03:27:31.000 I mean, this is... 0.77

03:27:34.000 That's a sound they wanted to achieve, and they're willing to cut off boys nuts.

03:27:38.000 Like, how did they even figure that out?

03:27:40.000 But if you were Michael Jackson's father, and the Jackson 5 is this huge hit, and little Michael is the number one star.

03:27:49.000 I mean, you remember those days?

03:27:51.000 A, B, C. It's the easiest one, two, three. 0.93

03:27:54.000 He's so fucking talented that he's the youngest, and all his other brothers gotta play backup to him. 0.97

03:28:01.000 To a nine-year-old, man. 0.98

03:28:03.000 If you were an evil person, and I'm not saying that this is what happened, but if you were an evil person and you said, I need to keep that voice like that forever, that would be the way you would do it.

03:28:13.000 But here's the thing with Jackson as well.

03:28:16.000 It wasn't just his talent and his voice, Joe.

03:28:19.000 It was his ability to connect with the song.

03:28:21.000 Do you remember when he did that rendition of Who's Loving You?

03:28:25.000 Yeah, I do.

03:28:26.000 Yeah.

03:28:27.000 However old he was, 10 years old, he shouldn't be able to sing with that much emotion, that much connection.

03:28:35.000 Now, maybe it's because he was a kind of astral level performer, but you did really feel that he knew that what he was talking about, there was a soul and resonance to his voice, which it wasn't just his voice.

03:28:47.000 The man's performance was magnetic.

03:28:50.000 He's the greatest of all time.

03:28:52.000 Well, I think you have to look at him in the context of his whole family was entertainers, and all of his older brothers were entertainers.

03:29:00.000 And so as the youngest, he's got to catch up, right?

03:29:03.000 And so he's in this incredible competition scenario with professional entertainers that are 10, 15 years older than him.

03:29:11.000 Like, how much older were his brothers than him?

03:29:12.000 Yeah, they were significantly older.

03:29:14.000 Significantly older.

03:29:15.000 So they were grown men, right?

03:29:16.000 And he was this young boy. 0.95

03:29:18.000 And so he had to be so goddamn good that everybody paid attention to him. 0.93

03:29:23.000 I remember reading that Randy J. Tarberelli autobiography, which is brilliant. 0.94

03:29:29.000 When he was touring with Motown, he was literally watching the greats in front of him.

03:29:34.000 He was watching, you know, Smokey Robinson in The Miracles.

03:29:39.000 He was watching, you know...

03:29:42.000 Upbeat dance numbers.

03:29:43.000 All of these different people.

03:29:45.000 And he then watched it and incorporated all of their styles into one performer.

03:29:49.000 So I can't remember the exact examples.

03:29:53.000 So for instance, the falsetto of Smokey Robinson, he incorporated that into his performance.

03:29:58.000 I think it was the dancing.

03:30:00.000 I think James Brown might have been on one of his tours with James Brown.

03:30:03.000 So he sort of like James Brown dancing incorporated that.

03:30:07.000 Until what you had was the fusion of the perfect performer.

03:30:11.000 Because you've got to remember, this kid never went to school.

03:30:14.000 He never experienced school or hardly any of it.

03:30:17.000 This was a kid who was taken and the only thing...

03:30:22.000 What they did with him is transform him into the greatest musical performer of all time, modern day.

03:30:28.000 It's very similar to Tyson's journey, if you think about it, Mike Tyson.

03:30:32.000 Mike Tyson was nearly in school, was never really in school.

03:30:35.000 He got taken over, he got taken by Customato and they trained him to the point when he was still youth, right the way to become heavyweight champion of the world at 18. Those are people, and you hear, Tyson explained it on this very podcast.

03:30:49.000 I think he was 20. He was 20 when he won the world title.

03:30:51.000 Was it 20?

03:30:52.000 Yeah, and Cus DeMoto took him in when he was 13. Yeah.

03:30:55.000 So that was the same journey, that dedication to that single thing.

03:30:59.000 Yeah.

03:30:59.000 It's also in the same way that Mike wanted recognition.

03:31:07.000 He wanted to make Cus proud.

03:31:08.000 He wanted to be something.

03:31:10.000 It's his dad.

03:31:11.000 And also had a terrible life up until the point where he was adopted by Costamato, right?

03:31:15.000 So now all of a sudden things are going well for him and he wants to just show everybody how great he really was.

03:31:20.000 Yeah.

03:31:21.000 How great he really is. 0.99

03:31:22.000 If you're the youngest child and everyone's a fucking performer, it's probably very hard to make your mark. 0.99

03:31:28.000 Yeah. 0.99

03:31:29.000 So he probably just became hyper-focused on performing and... 0.95

03:31:36.000 Who knows what the fuck actually happened in terms of all the chemical castration allegations, but that doesn't seem illogical. 0.89

03:31:44.000 Joe, can I ask you something as like a fellow podcaster? 0.97

03:31:47.000 Yeah.

03:31:47.000 You know that moment when you had Teddy Atlas on?

03:31:52.000 Yeah.

03:31:52.000 And he was talking about Mike Tyson?

03:31:54.000 Yeah.

03:31:55.000 How do you handle that?

03:31:56.000 When he was talking about Mike Tyson never winning a fight.

03:32:00.000 None of them were fights.

03:32:01.000 Right.

03:32:02.000 Because here you are, you're sitting with someone you like and respect, I assume, right?

03:32:06.000 And he's talking about someone else you like and respect?

03:32:08.000 Yes.

03:32:09.000 And he's talking about him in a negative way.

03:32:11.000 Well, I let him express himself, first of all.

03:32:15.000 That's the most important thing.

03:32:16.000 I want to know why he thinks what he thinks.

03:32:18.000 And I want to let him say, look, he's the boxing expert.

03:32:21.000 I'm not a boxing expert.

03:32:22.000 I don't agree with him that Mike Tyson never won a fight.

03:32:25.000 I think Mike Tyson was so fucking good for so long that no one could hang in there with him.

03:32:30.000 Saying that is like saying Roy Jones Jr. never lost a fight until he lost a fight. 0.99

03:32:34.000 That's ridiculous, too.

03:32:34.000 Of course he, I mean, rather never won a fight until he was in wars and lost fights.

03:32:41.000 There's times where people are so much better than everybody else that everything looks easy.

03:32:46.000 But you gotta give them credit for that.

03:32:49.000 Of course! 0.97

03:32:50.000 Like when he knocked out Larry Holmes, even though Larry Holmes was like, I think he was 36 at the time, that's still Larry fucking Holmes. 0.98

03:32:57.000 He knocked out Michael fucking Spinks, okay? 0.96

03:32:59.000 He knocked out Frank Bruno. 0.99

03:33:00.000 He knocked out some killers.

03:33:02.000 He knocked out a lot of beasts.

03:33:05.000 Dudes who were really good fighters.

03:33:07.000 Was it Berbick?

03:33:08.000 Was it Trevor Berbick?

03:33:09.000 Yes, that's who he won the title with.

03:33:10.000 Yeah, who won the title.

03:33:11.000 He went up against the heavyweight champion of the world and demolished him.

03:33:15.000 Demolished him. 1.00

03:33:16.000 And knocked him on his ass. 1.00

03:33:17.000 Demolished him. 1.00

03:33:17.000 Mike was a force of nature for several years. 1.00

03:33:21.000 He was an unstoppable force of boxing knowledge and drive and desire and determination and knowing his place in history.

03:33:29.000 He knew he had a legitimate chance at becoming the heavyweight champion at 20 to be one of the greatest of all time.

03:33:34.000 And he did it.

03:33:35.000 He was one of the greatest of all time, if not the greatest heavyweight of all time.

03:33:38.000 In my era, my time when I was a young man and I was watching boxing and he was the heavyweight champion, it was the most exciting moment in all of sports. 0.99

03:33:46.000 Because when he would fight, everybody would grab the cushions of the couch and be like, fuck! 0.99

03:33:51.000 Because he was just smashing everybody. 0.99

03:33:53.000 But I remember when Tyson was fighting, and this was in the 80s, and I was in primary school.

03:33:58.000 I have memories of us sitting down and talking about who would win the Tyson fight.

03:34:03.000 And this is kids who are about eight years old in a playground.

03:34:07.000 That was the thing with Tyson.

03:34:08.000 He had the energy.

03:34:11.000 Because there's great boxers who, you know, win heavyweight titles, and you go, okay, great, whatever.

03:34:16.000 Great boxer, technically, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:34:18.000 But Tyson, he had that fury.

03:34:21.000 Yeah.

03:34:21.000 Well, the entertainment value was off the charts because he would win so often by knockouts, spectacular knockouts.

03:34:27.000 And ultimately, that's what people really love to see.

03:34:29.000 They love to see a guy just closing in like Doom and just dropping hammers on a guy.

03:34:35.000 They love it.

03:34:35.000 This is why I'm grateful watching your show got me into the UFC, man.

03:34:40.000 Because the whole thing is built on that basis.

03:34:42.000 They're trying to make every fight as exciting as possible, right?

03:34:45.000 With the incentive structure and all of that.

03:34:47.000 Now, I know you don't agree with that, do you?

03:34:50.000 I don't like incentive structures.

03:34:51.000 I think they're incentivized already.

03:34:54.000 But more than that, what I really don't like is a win bonus.

03:34:58.000 I don't like that.

03:34:59.000 Really?

03:35:00.000 Yeah, I don't like that.

03:35:01.000 Why not?

03:35:01.000 Because sometimes the judging's wrong.

03:35:03.000 Like, sometimes fights are really close, and that will cost a fighter 50% of their purse.

03:35:07.000 And I think that's crazy.

03:35:09.000 It's crazy.

03:35:10.000 I think they should get paid.

03:35:12.000 Look, I'm not a businessman, first of all, and I've never promoted a fight.

03:35:15.000 But if I was a fighter, I would want to get a flat rate for each fight.

03:35:19.000 You're gonna try to win.

03:35:20.000 If you're not going to try to win, you shouldn't be in the UFC. That's going to be real evident once you start getting beat up.

03:35:25.000 I hear you on that.

03:35:26.000 I didn't mean win bonuses.

03:35:27.000 I meant performance-based bonuses, like submissions.

03:35:31.000 They're okay.

03:35:31.000 They don't bother me as much.

03:35:32.000 They don't bother me as much.

03:35:33.000 I'm fine with that.

03:35:34.000 I mean, if people want to go for it, make a more exciting fight because they want a bonus, like performance of the night, maybe that will incentivize people to do that.

03:35:43.000 But I don't think...

03:35:44.000 I don't think the win bonus incentivizes people to fight any harder.

03:35:48.000 No, I agree.

03:35:48.000 I think the problem is, especially when you're really well matched, you can only fight a certain way.

03:35:54.000 Here's an example.

03:35:55.000 A lot of people were upset that Israel Adesanya's fight with Jared Kananir wasn't the most exciting fight.

03:36:01.000 Because that's how you have to fight Jared Cannoneer.

03:36:04.000 If you want to win, that's how you have to fight.

03:36:08.000 This idea that everybody should make everything exciting and just go in there guns blazing against a guy in Jared Cannoneer who had knockouts at heavyweight And light heavyweight and middleweight.

03:36:20.000 He's an enormous middleweight.

03:36:21.000 He's super powerful.

03:36:23.000 Super dangerous.

03:36:24.000 And he's on a win streak and he just knocked out Derrick Brunson.

03:36:27.000 So you're stepping in against this guy who can close the lights off on basically anybody if he clips him.

03:36:32.000 Jared's a powerful guy.

03:36:34.000 You have to fight him that way.

03:36:36.000 He's in phenomenal shape.

03:36:37.000 He can't just rush in and he's gonna get tired.

03:36:39.000 He's not gonna get that tired.

03:36:41.000 He's gonna be able to hold that pace with you for five rounds and he did. 0.94

03:36:44.000 So you have to fight that way because if you don't fight that way, he clips you and then you're fucked because you opened doors, you left mistakes, you left openings that shouldn't have been there and wouldn't have been there if you were fighting cautiously. 0.91

03:36:58.000 Because you've got to know when you can attack and know when you can't. 0.77

03:37:00.000 And when you're better, like striking-wise in particular, like a guy like Stylebender, when you're better, you impose exactly the amount that you need to in that moment right there.

03:37:11.000 And if you push further, you might hurt the guy, but he might hurt you.

03:37:14.000 But if you stay at this one range where you know you're completely in control, you can basically just run it.

03:37:21.000 And that's what Stylebender can do.

03:37:23.000 And when he's at his best, when he's in there with a guy who's not capable of standing with him, he just picks him apart.

03:37:29.000 Just picks him apart.

03:37:30.000 And they can choose to make big moves at him in which time he'll counter, like Robert Whittaker did in the first fight, or you could do the approach that Robert Whittaker took in the second fight, more grappling-heavy and more cautious in the way he rushes in.

03:37:42.000 But you only can fight the way you're supposed to fight in that moment.

03:37:46.000 You know what you can do physically.

03:37:48.000 He's a striking virtuoso.

03:37:51.000 You know how tall and long he is for the division.

03:37:54.000 So that's how he's supposed to fight.

03:37:55.000 That's how that fight's supposed to play out.

03:37:57.000 It's not like Jared Cannoneer's not terrifying. 0.99

03:37:59.000 He's fucking terrifying. 0.99

03:38:00.000 You've got to fight him like that. 0.99

03:38:02.000 You see, I would argue, Joe, that the people who would say that fight are boring are not actually true fans of the sport.

03:38:07.000 That's not true, because Henry Cejudo, I think, said it, who's a two-time world champion and super exciting.

03:38:12.000 I think some of these guys, they're saying it because it's a public thing, a popular thing to say that's not exciting.

03:38:18.000 Or some of these guys might have this opinion that you have to also put on a show, and to do so you have to put yourself at risk.

03:38:24.000 I see both sides.

03:38:25.000 I really do.

03:38:26.000 Because I see the side that it's got to be super entertaining, and when it is, it's definitely more fun to watch.

03:38:31.000 But I also see the side as, as a martial artist, I love when someone fights intelligent.

03:38:36.000 It's like one of my favorite fighters was Mighty Mouse, because he was not getting hit.

03:38:41.000 When he was in his prime, he was just running over people in a way that was unprecedented.

03:38:47.000 At a certain point in a fighter's career is when you have to judge him, when you look like the greatest of all time.

03:38:53.000 And I make an argument that Mighty Mouse at one point in time was the greatest of all time.

03:38:57.000 Do you think he doesn't get that plaque because he's that small?

03:39:01.000 That's part of it, for sure.

03:39:02.000 People think it's easier to move that way when you're 125 pounds versus if you're 225 pounds.

03:39:07.000 And they're right.

03:39:07.000 They're right to a certain extent.

03:39:09.000 But you still have to appreciate what he was able to do. 0.98

03:39:13.000 If he has physical advantages because he's smaller, so fucking what? 0.98

03:39:15.000 Look at what he's... 0.97

03:39:17.000 Look what he's doing to other people that also have those physical advantages.

03:39:20.000 They're all so small. 0.98

03:39:21.000 And he's fucking these people up. 0.99

03:39:23.000 So there was a time where I felt like Mighty Mouse was the greatest of all time. 0.98

03:39:27.000 But then there's the Jon Jones argument, which is also, he beat everybody.

03:39:31.000 Jon Jones beat everybody.

03:39:32.000 Maybe he's the greatest of all time.

03:39:35.000 If it wasn't for the extracurriculars, he would be unquestionably the greatest of all time?

03:39:40.000 The problem is with Jon Jones, the extracurriculars are what you get with Jon Jones.

03:39:44.000 The part of him that's wild.

03:39:46.000 He's a wild dude.

03:39:47.000 That's why when he fought Shogun for the title, he opened up that fight with a flying knee. 0.99

03:39:52.000 Who the fuck does that? 0.99

03:39:54.000 Who the fuck, who the fuck, at 20-something years old, I think he was 22 years old, opens up a fight with Shogun with a flying knee. 1.00

03:40:02.000 That's insanity. 1.00

03:40:03.000 That's so crazy.

03:40:04.000 Shogun's a legend.

03:40:05.000 He's the light heavyweight champion of the world.

03:40:07.000 And Jon Jones opens up the fight with a flying knee.

03:40:09.000 But here's the thing.

03:40:11.000 So we're talking about the greatest of all time.

03:40:13.000 Yeah.

03:40:14.000 Do you think if we turn our attention to boxing very quickly, that surely must mean Floyd is the greatest of all time?

03:40:21.000 I believe that Floyd Mayweather is, if he's not the greatest boxer in terms of talent of all time, you could say that he's the greatest fighter of all time.

03:40:30.000 He's definitely the greatest in terms of figuring out how to make money.

03:40:33.000 The greatest of all time.

03:40:34.000 And he's the greatest of all time at not getting hit.

03:40:38.000 The greatest.

03:40:39.000 If you go and look at all the other greats, the Sugar Ray Robinson and, you know, the Marvin Haglers and Tommy Hearns, Roberto Duran, Julio Cesar Chavez, early career Ali.

03:40:51.000 Like Henry Cooper dropped him and had him badly hurt.

03:40:53.000 They had to cut his gloves.

03:40:54.000 They had to like do some figazi stuff on the gloves and give Ali a bunch of time to recover. 0.83

03:40:59.000 Because Henry, you ever see that fight?

03:41:00.000 Your man.

03:41:01.000 British.

03:41:02.000 British guy.

03:41:02.000 Did you hear what Ali said afterwards?

03:41:04.000 What'd he say?

03:41:05.000 He said, he hit me so hard, my ancestors in Africa felt it.

03:41:10.000 Let's see that, and then we'll watch Jerry Falwell.

03:41:12.000 That is such an Ali quote.

03:41:14.000 It wasn't him, by the way.

03:41:15.000 That's what I was trying to bring up.

03:41:16.000 It wasn't him crying?

03:41:17.000 No, it was Jimmy Swaggart.

03:41:18.000 Jimmy Swaggart.

03:41:19.000 That's right.

03:41:20.000 So which one's Jerry Falwell?

03:41:22.000 Did he cry?

03:41:23.000 Did he get busted, too?

03:41:24.000 He had stuff going on, too, but he didn't cry.

03:41:25.000 Was it the same thing, hookers? 1.00

03:41:26.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

03:41:27.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:41:28.000 Who's this?

03:41:28.000 This is Jerry Falwell.

03:41:29.000 Oh, right, right, right. 1.00

03:41:30.000 Damn it. 1.00

03:41:32.000 I had them confused. 0.99

03:41:35.000 Jerry Fullwell is now going to say wherever he is.

03:41:38.000 He might.

03:41:38.000 We might have a problem with that, right?

03:41:40.000 Did he get...

03:41:40.000 What did he...

03:41:41.000 We might have to cut that out.

03:41:43.000 One thing at a time.

03:41:45.000 I don't know what he did.

03:41:46.000 What's the Muhammad Ali thing I'm looking at?

03:41:48.000 Oh, Muhammad Ali getting dropped by Henry Cooper.

03:41:50.000 Yeah.

03:41:52.000 Yeah, man. 1.00

03:41:52.000 Holy shit, man. 1.00

03:41:54.000 Yeah. 0.99

03:41:54.000 Oh man, but the UFC is so exciting to me right now. 0.99

03:41:57.000 It's like a growing sport.

03:41:59.000 It's changing.

03:41:59.000 It's evolving.

03:42:00.000 You can see the techniques becoming more refined.

03:42:03.000 Like you always talk about the leg kick.

03:42:05.000 Like it's getting better.

03:42:06.000 That's why it's so exciting, man.

03:42:07.000 Yeah, here it is.

03:42:09.000 So this is like 60...

03:42:11.000 What is this?

03:42:12.000 64?

03:42:12.000 Yeah, I think 64, 65. 66. So Henry Cooper was a solid heavyweight.

03:42:19.000 He had a really good left hook in particular.

03:42:21.000 You know what they call him in London?

03:42:22.000 What?

03:42:23.000 R. Emery.

03:42:24.000 Bless him, he's no longer with us.

03:42:26.000 Why R. Emery?

03:42:27.000 R. Emery.

03:42:27.000 Because he's R. Henry.

03:42:29.000 Oh, I get it.

03:42:30.000 Yeah.

03:42:31.000 So that was his nickname in London.

03:42:33.000 I want to see the knockdown, because he's serious left hook.

03:42:36.000 I think this is after Ali got up, dude, because he's all cut.

03:42:40.000 I think it winds up stopping the fight.

03:42:49.000 Yeah, that is worst video.

03:42:52.000 I just want to see the part where he gets dropped because it's pretty...

03:42:55.000 I think this is like the whole fight or something. 0.99

03:43:00.000 Holy shit. 0.98

03:43:01.000 Yeah, it was a crazy war, but Henry Cooper legitimately clipped Muhammad Ali and dropped him and had him really hurt. 0.98

03:43:10.000 You see, that's part of the problem with Ali, is that because so much of his career was in this kind of black and white, you know, we can't truly remember him.

03:43:21.000 Because the content will never be as good as Floyd Mayweather.

03:43:24.000 It's way before that, Jamie.

03:43:26.000 It's early in the fight, and they take Ali's gloves off, and when they take Ali's gloves off, he has all this time to recover.

03:43:32.000 And then when he has all this time to recover, he comes back and he's okay.

03:43:36.000 There's not a video of him getting dropped?

03:43:40.000 Doesn't...

03:43:40.000 How weird.

03:43:42.000 Henry Cooper, Muhammad Ali, Henry Cooper, knockdown?

03:43:47.000 Yeah, if you put a knockdown.

03:43:49.000 Yeah, maybe knockdown.

03:43:51.000 No. 1.00

03:43:53.000 Damn it. 1.00

03:43:54.000 Wow. 1.00

03:43:54.000 Sons of bitches. 1.00

03:43:56.000 It's okay. 1.00

03:43:59.000 We're not going to find it.

03:44:00.000 You'd have to go through the whole fight.

03:44:02.000 Oh, it said that right there.

03:44:03.000 Hold on, go back to that screen you were just showing.

03:44:05.000 Waiting for the fifth round, suffering the fourth.

03:44:08.000 Is that what it said?

03:44:09.000 I think maybe it was the first fight.

03:44:10.000 Yeah, the first fight is the one where he got dropped.

03:44:13.000 So it was 63. Oh, okay.

03:44:15.000 That makes more sense.

03:44:16.000 See, he caught him there with the left hook.

03:44:17.000 And by the way, look how skinny Ali is back then. 1.00

03:44:20.000 He's a different fighter.

03:44:22.000 He's smaller and less experienced.

03:44:25.000 And so Cooper caught him young.

03:44:29.000 Look at this.

03:44:30.000 Right here.

03:44:32.000 Right here.

03:44:33.000 There it is. 0.99

03:44:33.000 I mean, that is a fucking serious left hook. 0.99

03:44:38.000 Right? 1.00

03:44:39.000 Holy shit. 1.00

03:44:40.000 I mean, he's gone. 1.00

03:44:41.000 He's fucking gone. 0.99

03:44:43.000 And he wins the fight after this? 1.00

03:44:44.000 Yes.

03:44:45.000 Yeah, he comes back and wins him.

03:44:46.000 This knockdown happened at the very end of the round. 0.99

03:44:48.000 So he goes back to his corner and his corner man realizes that he's fucked. 0.98

03:44:54.000 And so to buy some time, he cuts one of the gloves. 0.99

03:44:59.000 Allegedly.

03:45:00.000 There was a problem with the glove.

03:45:02.000 The glove malfunctioned.

03:45:03.000 So they had to replace the gloves.

03:45:04.000 So they had to go get new gloves.

03:45:06.000 I think that's the story.

03:45:07.000 Yeah, it is.

03:45:08.000 They cut his gloves on purpose.

03:45:14.000 Yeah, that's basically what they're saying.

03:45:16.000 So they did something.

03:45:18.000 They did some shenanigans.

03:45:19.000 Because if not that, Henry Cooper wins probably by knockout.

03:45:23.000 But here's the thing with Cooper.

03:45:24.000 His big weakness, you know this, was his eyebrows.

03:45:27.000 They were very thin.

03:45:28.000 So immediately, if you landed a good few shots on him, he'd start bleeding profusely.

03:45:34.000 That's scar tissue.

03:45:35.000 That's what that is.

03:45:36.000 A lot of guys have that.

03:45:37.000 The Diaz brothers in the UFC have that.

03:45:39.000 They bleed all the time.

03:45:41.000 If they get hit, they just...

03:45:43.000 Nick has had some work done to try to fix that.

03:45:46.000 Joe, I'm going to ask you this question because we're starting to see this getting talked about more and more, and especially in the mainstream press, CTE, particularly with contact sports.

03:45:56.000 They're talking in soccer about eliminating it from certain age groups and blah, blah, blah.

03:46:03.000 Where do you stand on this?

03:46:04.000 Do you think these contact sports are ultimately going to be unsustainable because people are suing people?

03:46:11.000 I think you're never going to stop people from doing what they want to do.

03:46:13.000 Because if you stop them from doing that, you have to stop them from dirt bike riding and riding horses.

03:46:19.000 You've got to stop people from doing anything that's dangerous.

03:46:21.000 No more rock climbing.

03:46:22.000 But we are doing that.

03:46:23.000 We're banning cigarette smoking in some places.

03:46:25.000 In New Zealand, they're trying to phase it out completely, right?

03:46:28.000 Yeah, it's true.

03:46:28.000 People are doing that.

03:46:29.000 But in terms of sports, there's a great long history of people playing football.

03:46:35.000 There's a great long history of people playing rugby.

03:46:37.000 There's a great long history of martial arts, of boxing, of wrestling.

03:46:40.000 All these things are contact sports, and all these things have the potential, at least, for damaging people.

03:46:46.000 And it happens all the time.

03:46:47.000 And then when you have sports like mixed martial arts, where the whole goal is to damage people.

03:46:52.000 And then you have sports like football, where you have enormous super athletes in the prime of their youth running full clip at each other and colliding.

03:46:59.000 I mean, the impact is for us puny humans...

03:47:03.000 We don't even understand what that's like.

03:47:06.000 Imagine a 300-pound super athlete at a full sprint and collides with you.

03:47:11.000 I mean, that's what those guys are doing.

03:47:13.000 So that's just a part of that sport.

03:47:16.000 There's no getting around that.

03:47:18.000 It's not good.

03:47:19.000 It's not a good part of the sport.

03:47:21.000 And many guys have quit because there was a guy who was a very promising guy.

03:47:26.000 He was like 24 years old.

03:47:27.000 Do you know that story, Jamie?

03:47:28.000 Oh yeah, I saw that.

03:47:29.000 Who just retired.

03:47:30.000 He's like, I'm not doing this.

03:47:31.000 I need my brain.

03:47:32.000 Because they see the old-timers. 0.98

03:47:34.000 They see the guys that have been around a long time.

03:47:35.000 And they see the stories of the guys who commit suicide and shoot themselves in the heart so that the medical community can study their brain.

03:47:43.000 It's real.

03:47:44.000 Absolutely.

03:47:44.000 But here's the thing.

03:47:46.000 Do you not think there's going to come a point where so many people are suing the Rugby Federation for having CTE or suing the Boxing Federation?

03:47:56.000 It's a good point.

03:47:58.000 Isn't there going to come a point with that where they'll say, and they can make a quite coherent legal argument going, I was doing my job, I suffered this industrial injury as a result of doing my job, Therefore, the work area was unsafe and you were liable for it.

03:48:16.000 You definitely can make an argument in that direction.

03:48:19.000 I mean, if you think about that someone's profiting off, especially back in the day when there was no real data, right?

03:48:27.000 Like back in the day...

03:48:29.000 If you think about the NFL from the early days, guys, the only way you knew is if you knew somebody.

03:48:37.000 You have to know them and see them deteriorate, and then everybody would put two and two together.

03:48:42.000 But you never heard it discussed until fairly recently, like within the last decade or so, right?

03:48:49.000 And with boxing, it was always punch drunk.

03:48:51.000 Yeah.

03:48:52.000 And you would see that from people.

03:48:55.000 You would see it.

03:48:56.000 You would see it from older boxers who get interviewed on ABC Wide World of Sports.

03:49:00.000 You would see them slurring their words and it would be weird.

03:49:04.000 But now we know a lot about it.

03:49:07.000 So it should inform people's choices if they choose to do something that's that dangerous. 0.95

03:49:12.000 If they fucking love football, I don't want to be the one that tells them they can't play football. 0.79

03:49:16.000 If they love MMA, I don't want to be the one that tells them not to do it. 0.99

03:49:19.000 I think people should be able to take risks in their life, just like they should rock climb, just like they should be able to do whatever the fuck they want to do.

03:49:26.000 I don't think this world is meant to be just living in a safe way. 0.68

03:49:31.000 There's an excitement and a glory to fighting.

03:49:34.000 That doesn't exist outside of that.

03:49:36.000 And once those guys have experienced that, once you've been a Kamaru Usman, once you've been a Frankie Edgar, and you've experienced the top of the heap, those guys, their life, the way they view the world is different than you.

03:49:50.000 That thing is worth it.

03:49:52.000 It's worth it to them. 0.99

03:49:53.000 That thing, to be the fucking champ of the world, to be standing there on your trainer's shoulders, holding up a UFC belt while the whole fucking arena goes nuts. 0.99

03:50:02.000 To them, that's worth it. 0.99

03:50:03.000 Because not many people get to be the champ.

03:50:06.000 And the most persuasive argument I find against the argument I just said there was the fact that these guys are warriors.

03:50:14.000 Yeah, they're warriors.

03:50:15.000 Hundreds of years ago, or a thousand years ago, they'd be Achilles at the front of the Greek army.

03:50:22.000 But now, if you take this away from them...

03:50:25.000 You can't take it away from them.

03:50:27.000 No one's going to allow that.

03:50:28.000 No one's going to allow that.

03:50:30.000 Look, it's only grown in popularity and it's grown in reach.

03:50:33.000 The last place, ironically, that we could get into was New York City.

03:50:37.000 Really?

03:50:37.000 Yeah, it was the hardest to get into.

03:50:38.000 New York State, it was so corrupt. 0.65

03:50:42.000 It's so corrupt. 0.68

03:50:43.000 They were in cahoots.

03:50:45.000 I don't want to speak out of turn, but at the end of the line, one of the guys went to jail.

03:50:50.000 One of the guys that was responsible for holding it back for corruption.

03:50:54.000 See who that was.

03:50:56.000 What was the guy that got...

03:50:58.000 Some guy, he was responsible for trying to keep the UFC out of New York for a long time.

03:51:04.000 It turns out he was corrupt.

03:51:05.000 But at the end of the day, it got in.

03:51:08.000 And back when I first started getting into it, you couldn't even go to fights in California.

03:51:13.000 We used to have to go to fights on Native American reservations.

03:51:16.000 Really?

03:51:16.000 Because that was the only place they would make them legal.

03:51:18.000 So we would go see them.

03:51:19.000 New York Democrat opposed to UFC arrested on corruption charges.

03:51:22.000 Ha ha.

03:51:23.000 Sheldon Silver.

03:51:24.000 Yeah, there he is.

03:51:25.000 Ha ha. 0.99

03:51:26.000 Yeah, he was corrupt.

03:51:27.000 So the story was he was taking money to try to keep the UFC out of New York so that they would put pressure on the owners of the UFC who owned a bunch of casinos.

03:51:36.000 And so there was some sort of deal they were trying to...

03:51:39.000 Wow. 1.00

03:51:40.000 Shady shit. 1.00

03:51:41.000 That is dirty shit, man. 1.00

03:51:42.000 Shady shit. 1.00

03:51:43.000 Shady shit. 1.00

03:51:44.000 But that's how it is. 1.00

03:51:45.000 That's how those businesses are run.

03:51:47.000 But at the end of the day, the sport, it's too many people enjoy it.

03:51:51.000 And I think it's safer, honestly, than other combat sports.

03:51:55.000 It's not safe.

03:51:56.000 Let me say that very clearly.

03:51:57.000 It's not safe.

03:51:58.000 You're literally trying to separate someone from their consciousness. 0.95

03:52:02.000 You're literally trying to rob someone of their health by kicking them in the chest. 1.00

03:52:06.000 It's a fucking dangerous way to make a living. 0.99

03:52:09.000 It's a dangerous way to compete. 0.99

03:52:11.000 But I think you have more control over what happens than, like, a football game.

03:52:16.000 I think a football game is so crazy that, I mean, I'm sure the best athletes can avoid a lot of stuff, for the most part, but I've seen guys get clipped when they don't know it's coming, and it seems so wild that you could do that.

03:52:28.000 Like, when a guy's running and some guy takes them from the side or, like, right from behind them and collides with them, like, those guys can run, like, 30 miles an hour, and they're super athletes.

03:52:39.000 All padded up, too. 0.63

03:52:40.000 With a helmet on and shoulder pads and shit, running full clip. 0.99

03:52:44.000 That, to me, seems crazier. 1.00

03:52:46.000 Because, like, one hit like that, and, like, your whole body could be ruined.

03:52:50.000 Yeah, rugby's exactly the same.

03:52:52.000 But rugby, we've now got to the stage.

03:52:54.000 So England won the World Cup in 2003, and I don't know if you know anything about rugby.

03:53:00.000 There's a position called hooker, right? 1.00

03:53:01.000 Which is the center of the scrum.

03:53:03.000 Ha ha.

03:53:04.000 We're 12. But, and...

03:53:16.000 Wow.

03:53:20.000 Wow.

03:53:28.000 And they are developing dementia-like symptoms in their late 30s, early 40s.

03:53:33.000 One guy is a dude, I think his name is Alex Popham.

03:53:36.000 He played for Wales, played for loads of different teams.

03:53:39.000 Phenomenal rugby player.

03:53:41.000 His wife can't leave him on his own with his three-year-old because he keeps leaving the oven on and he nearly set fire to the house.

03:53:50.000 So I guess this is my point.

03:53:53.000 Is it worth it?

03:53:55.000 I don't know the answer to this question, but I think what's happening at the moment is that we don't want to have this conversation.

03:54:02.000 I don't think we want to have it because it's going to throw up a lot of very difficult, very challenging questions which would go far deeper than sport and about personal responsibility, liberty, freedom, etc., etc., and safety, which is a lot of what we've been talking about.

03:54:17.000 I agree with you.

03:54:18.000 I agree with everything you've said.

03:54:19.000 And I also think one of the things that's interesting about this conversation is that many of the people that signed up for this early on in life, and they achieved a certain amount of skill and talent, it wasn't until deep in that they really knew what the dangers were.

03:54:34.000 They were already on this path of being an elite.

03:54:36.000 If you're an elite professional rugby player, I just assume that it's like being an elite professional football player.

03:54:41.000 Like you probably played football when you were young, in high school, in college, and then you make it to the pros, right?

03:54:47.000 That's got to be what it's like.

03:54:48.000 So that means you have a very... 0.99

03:54:52.000 You're really good at this one fucking game, and it makes you exceptional. 0.98

03:54:56.000 And you can either back out of it because you think it's gonna hurt you, or you can pursue your dream, which you've been on for two decades. 0.99

03:55:04.000 You're probably gonna keep going.

03:55:06.000 A lot of these kids who play a lot of these sports, like Steve Thompson, he came from a poor working class background.

03:55:12.000 In fact, I think he was in care for a bit.

03:55:14.000 He certainly had a rough time at home.

03:55:17.000 And he said, like, where I grew up, rugby was my way out.

03:55:21.000 That was my way out.

03:55:22.000 That was the only way I could go and see the world, make money, have a good career.

03:55:28.000 So a lot of these guys, you know, it's the choice of either becoming a fighter or just being nothing.

03:55:34.000 Well, it's also they get used to doing martial arts, right?

03:55:38.000 They learn it for self-defense.

03:55:40.000 They learn it because they want to find something they can achieve at and something they can get really good at and it helps their self-esteem.

03:55:47.000 And then along the way, someone offers them a fight.

03:55:50.000 Along the way, people realize, like, hey, have you ever thought about competing?

03:55:52.000 You're really good.

03:55:53.000 And they go, maybe I'll try it. 1.00

03:55:54.000 And then they get into it, and then it looks a lot better than working in a fucking office. 0.99

03:55:58.000 And maybe you can make 10 and 10 on your first fight. 0.99

03:56:01.000 Like, oh, wow, that's $20,000 if I win.

03:56:03.000 And then, you know, all of a sudden, you know, out of taxes and all that, you've got some money in the bank.

03:56:08.000 And then you keep going.

03:56:09.000 You have another fight in three months. 0.99

03:56:11.000 Two years later, you're a fucking full-time professional fighter with a diet plan and you're fucking wearing a cardio strap every day and monitoring your calories and like, whoa! 1.00

03:56:21.000 You can get sucked into this. 0.99

03:56:23.000 And if you all of a sudden start feeling like you're losing your memory, what do you do?

03:56:28.000 Right.

03:56:28.000 What do you do if that's your whole life?

03:56:29.000 What do you do if you got a mortgage?

03:56:30.000 What do you do if this is where you get your identity from?

03:56:33.000 What do you do if your family depends upon you having a fight?

03:56:37.000 What if your wife tells you, why don't you just have one more fight? 1.00

03:56:41.000 And you're like, okay, maybe I'll have one more fight.

03:56:42.000 What if you know that you can't take a shot anymore?

03:56:45.000 What if you know that you don't have the desire to do it anymore, you're just doing it because it's a job?

03:56:49.000 And you're going to fight someone who wants to be a world champ next, and they're going to try to kill you.

03:56:55.000 Well, here's the thing, though, with martial arts, man.

03:56:57.000 I mean, I hear their argument, but let me ask you this.

03:56:59.000 Are you Joe Rogan if martial arts don't enter your life?

03:57:03.000 That's a good question.

03:57:04.000 No, I'm 100% in favor of people doing martial arts.

03:57:06.000 I'm also 100% in favor of people fighting and competing.

03:57:09.000 Don't get me wrong.

03:57:10.000 What I'm saying is that you have to understand that this is not something you know is going bad until it's really going bad.

03:57:22.000 Right.

03:57:23.000 And by then it's too light.

03:57:24.000 And a lot of people, there's no issues at all.

03:57:26.000 Like, I had Jim Miller on the show.

03:57:28.000 Jim Miller has the most wins ever in the UFC. Jim Miller's fine.

03:57:32.000 Nothing wrong with Jim Miller.

03:57:34.000 Like, you talk to him, he talks, like, he doesn't have a single cognitive issue that I could detect.

03:57:39.000 Obviously I'm not a neuroscientist.

03:57:41.000 But I mean, I'm talking to him.

03:57:42.000 He seems like completely normal.

03:57:44.000 We have fun.

03:57:45.000 We're laughing.

03:57:45.000 We have good conversations.

03:57:46.000 He doesn't say that he has issues.

03:57:48.000 I believe him.

03:57:48.000 I believe it's not everybody that gets it.

03:57:50.000 And I think you can endure a certain amount of punishment and be fine.

03:57:55.000 But I think that everybody has a different level, just like many other variables when it comes to biology.

03:58:02.000 Like some people can take more punishment than others.

03:58:04.000 There's actually a gene expression.

03:58:06.000 It's called APOE4, right?

03:58:09.000 Isn't that what it is?

03:58:10.000 There's a gene that if you have it, you are more susceptible to CTE. You're more likely.

03:58:17.000 Oh, really? 0.96

03:58:17.000 And so I think it's some expression of the gene, if they can find that in your DNA, I might be fucking this up, but I know I'm not fucking up that there is something in your genes that makes you more susceptible to CTE. That makes sense. 0.96

03:58:29.000 And when people have it, they get it way easier, or easier at least.

03:58:33.000 Yeah.

03:58:33.000 It's real.

03:58:34.000 I know people with it.

03:58:35.000 I've got friends that have it.

03:58:37.000 It's 100% real.

03:58:38.000 There's no getting around it.

03:58:40.000 If you get hit in the head, it's going to affect your judgment.

03:58:42.000 It's going to affect the way your memory works.

03:58:44.000 It's going to affect the way your mind works.

03:58:46.000 It's just how much.

03:58:47.000 Some people, not much at all.

03:58:49.000 And they get better afterwards.

03:58:50.000 Some people, a lot.

03:58:52.000 And that's the risk of the game.

03:58:55.000 That's part of the risk of the game.

03:58:56.000 And we have to decide whether or not people can take risks.

03:58:59.000 It is also why people love the game, because it's that moment, you know, especially when you live in a world that's so safe, suddenly you're watching something so fundamentally unsafe, it's that when you see someone get knocked out, it's that visceral, it's an instinctual,

03:59:15.000 physical reaction to it.

03:59:16.000 Yes, 100%.

03:59:17.000 You know, we're terrified of those kind of people that can knock us out.

03:59:22.000 One of the things that I like to do when I'm tired, I don't really feel like doing the bike, I have one of them Exercise bikes.

03:59:28.000 Those echo bikes.

03:59:29.000 You know what it is?

03:59:30.000 It's like an airdyne. 0.96

03:59:31.000 It's hard.

03:59:32.000 It's annoying.

03:59:33.000 And I'll put on a fighter out of Russia.

03:59:37.000 He's from Chechnya and he lives in Montreal now.

03:59:40.000 His name is Arthur Bitterbeev.

03:59:42.000 And he is the only current world champion that is undefeated in all of them by knockout.

03:59:51.000 I think he's 19-0.

03:59:53.000 I think that's what his record is.

03:59:54.000 Something in the range of that. 1.00

03:59:55.000 But this motherfucker is terrifying. 1.00

03:59:57.000 He just puts it on everybody. 1.00

03:59:59.000 And he's not like this one-punch guy either.

04:00:01.000 He breaks people down.

04:00:03.000 And he doesn't get tired. 0.99

04:00:04.000 And that's the guy I watch when I'm on the fucking... 1.00

04:00:07.000 Because I think, what if I have to run away from this motherfucker? 1.00

04:00:10.000 You don't have to stand in front of this guy. 1.00

04:00:11.000 You don't want to get tired. 1.00

04:00:12.000 You've got one fucked up motivation system. 1.00

04:00:15.000 If you get tired around this guy, you're fucked. 1.00

04:00:18.000 This is him. 1.00

04:00:19.000 He's a fucking assassin, man. 1.00

04:00:21.000 He's an assassin. 1.00

04:00:22.000 He just fought Joe Smith Jr., who was the current world champion in one of the other organizations.

04:00:28.000 And he just smashed him in two rounds.

04:00:31.000 I mean, he's that good. 1.00

04:00:31.000 And Joe Smith is a fucking killer. 1.00

04:00:33.000 But Bitterbeev, he's something special. 1.00

04:00:36.000 He's super skillful.

04:00:38.000 He fought in the Olympics.

04:00:40.000 He's like, I think he fought in the Olympics.

04:00:41.000 Super high-level amateur boxer.

04:00:44.000 I'm not sure about the Olympics.

04:00:45.000 Do you know what?

04:00:46.000 If he came up to me and your motivation is to do what you do, mine would be to give him anything he wants. 1.00

04:00:52.000 But what if he just wants to beat your ass? 1.00

04:00:54.000 That's what I'd give him. 1.00

04:00:56.000 You watch the way he fights too.

04:00:59.000 He stands right in front of guys too.

04:01:01.000 He's not like slick.

04:01:02.000 He's just relentless.

04:01:03.000 He's got excellent defense.

04:01:05.000 But he gets hit.

04:01:06.000 But he puts himself in the line of fire and just torches people.

04:01:10.000 You can tell the dude he's fighting is really good as well.

04:01:12.000 Oh, yeah.

04:01:12.000 I mean, he's a world champion.

04:01:14.000 So he's fighting like elite world title contenders.

04:01:17.000 Wow.

04:01:17.000 But look at that.

04:01:18.000 He starts putting on people.

04:01:19.000 Wow, man. 1.00

04:01:20.000 And this motherfucker does not get tired. 1.00

04:01:21.000 So that's the guy that I watch when I'm on the bike. 0.99

04:01:24.000 I just think, what if you had to fight that guy? 1.00

04:01:26.000 You better be in shape, bitch. 1.00

04:01:28.000 See if you can fight. 1.00

04:01:29.000 Here's his top five knockouts.

04:01:31.000 So this is a Joe Smith. 1.00

04:01:32.000 That guy with the tattoo on his chest and arm, he's a motherfucker. 1.00

04:01:36.000 A vicious knockout artist. 1.00

04:01:37.000 But he got clipped early in this fight.

04:01:39.000 And when he got right there, and when he got clipped, that was the beginning of the end. 1.00

04:01:43.000 This motherfucker just puts it on people. 0.99

04:01:46.000 And then in the second round, he came back in the second round and just torched him. 0.99

04:01:49.000 I think he dropped him three times in the second round.

04:01:52.000 Do you know that story that you told on Peterson's podcast?

04:01:55.000 That stuck with me, man.

04:01:56.000 Which one?

04:01:57.000 The one where you told about why you gave up fighting with the kick?

04:02:01.000 Yeah.

04:02:02.000 Man, that just...

04:02:05.000 That was the beginning of me giving up on fighting.

04:02:07.000 I fought for two more years after that.

04:02:09.000 But that changed the way I thought about everything.

04:02:13.000 I was like, you can get way too hurt in this.

04:02:15.000 If you get kicked in the head, and I definitely could get kicked in the head, and I definitely had been kicked in the head.

04:02:20.000 But not bad late to the point where I'm flat-lined unconscious.

04:02:24.000 And I've seen so many people, I knew so many people that that happened to.

04:02:27.000 You know, the one that always strikes me, and a lot of people, I'm not going to say a lot.

04:02:32.000 Do you know Chris Eubank, the middleweight fighter?

04:02:34.000 Yes.

04:02:35.000 Incredible fighter.

04:02:37.000 He was phenomenal.

04:02:38.000 And then he had that fight with Michael Watson.

04:02:41.000 I don't know if you know, this was back in the 80s.

04:02:43.000 Michael Watson was a supreme boxer.

04:02:46.000 And Eubank gave him brain damage in the ring.

04:02:49.000 And after that, Eubank said that a lot of people actually have said that he was never the same fighter.

04:02:54.000 I think he might have even admitted like he never went for the real knockout.

04:02:58.000 That's how Ray Boom Boom Mancini was after Dukku Kim. 0.93

04:03:02.000 You know, Ray Boom Boom Mancini fought Dukku Kim on, I think it was on ABC Wide World of Sports, and he killed him.

04:03:11.000 And I think he died in the 13th or 14th round and after that they started changing fights to 12 rounds and I think Kim had cut a lot of weight to make the weight class you know this is back in the day when they used to weigh in the day of the fight so they'd weigh in I think it was lightweight so it was 135 pounds and they would weigh in the day of the fight so Super dehydrated.

04:03:34.000 No moisture in the brain, right?

04:03:36.000 Yeah, no moisture in the brain. 0.98

04:03:37.000 And by the way, back then, they didn't know jack shit about hydration. 0.84

04:03:40.000 They weren't using IV bags and all that, I don't think. 0.60

04:03:44.000 I mean, I think they were just drinking water.

04:03:47.000 It was like the 80s. 0.99

04:03:49.000 Nobody knew shit. 0.99

04:03:50.000 I think. 0.98

04:03:51.000 Maybe I'm wrong.

04:03:51.000 Maybe nutrition science is more advanced than I think, but I'm pretty sure these guys just...

04:03:58.000 And it was one of those fights where Mancini was kind of never the same again.

04:04:02.000 And you could only imagine what that's like when you kill a guy in a ring.

04:04:06.000 And then you realize that could be you. 0.99

04:04:08.000 That could be you.

04:04:09.000 You're fighting Azuma Nelson next.

04:04:11.000 Maybe that's you, you know?

04:04:13.000 And it's also the impact it's having on the rest of your family.

04:04:15.000 I saw this documentary about Frank Bruno and they showed, I think it was the second Tyson fight, him going to his training camp and his five-year-old girl holding on to him, crying, going, please don't go, daddy, please don't go.

04:04:32.000 Jesus Christ.

04:04:33.000 Because even kids, and this was a little girl, even kids understand what that means.

04:04:39.000 We all know what it means when a fighter goes into the ring.

04:04:42.000 There's a very real possibility that they're not going to come out.

04:04:45.000 There's a Muay Thai fighter that just died recently.

04:04:48.000 And the knockout is online.

04:04:50.000 You can see the knockout online.

04:04:52.000 And when he goes out, he falls back and bounces his head off the ground, and he's out bad.

04:04:59.000 And he never gets up, and they take him away in his treachery, and he winds up dying later.

04:05:03.000 But it's the reality of combat sports.

04:05:07.000 It's a scary, rare reality in comparison to all the times that people fight, how many of them people die.

04:05:15.000 But it's possible in football, too.

04:05:18.000 It's possible in a lot of things.

04:05:19.000 Francis, you know what I like about you?

04:05:21.000 Yeah.

04:05:21.000 You really know how to cheer up the conversation.

04:05:24.000 No, but it's something to talk about because all this, what we're talking about, about CTE and combat sports, it's the one thing that bothers me the most about the sport.

04:05:33.000 I love the sport because it is the most exciting and because it is what I call high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.

04:05:41.000 Right.

04:05:41.000 But at the end of the day...

04:05:43.000 There's a part of me that likes when guys get out early.

04:05:48.000 There's a part of me that likes when guys like Khabib.

04:05:52.000 Khabib gets to 29-0.

04:05:54.000 He's like, we did it.

04:05:56.000 Thanks. 0.99

04:05:56.000 Fucked everybody up. 0.99

04:05:57.000 I'm the GOAT. Bye. 0.99

04:05:59.000 And they keep offering him fights.

04:06:01.000 And he's like, nope.

04:06:01.000 No, I'm done.

04:06:02.000 Like, I did it.

04:06:03.000 And now he's fine.

04:06:05.000 Like, he's financially set for life.

04:06:06.000 He also doesn't have any problem with his cognitive function that I'm aware of.

04:06:11.000 Speaks fine.

04:06:12.000 Well, he didn't take any punishment, really, did he? 0.99

04:06:14.000 He fucking dominated everybody. 0.99

04:06:15.000 He got clipped a couple of times. 1.00

04:06:17.000 Nobody got clipped less than Khabib.

04:06:19.000 I mean, he was just on people.

04:06:21.000 On people.

04:06:22.000 And then the boxing side of that, that's why I talk about Floyd.

04:06:26.000 But Floyd didn't stop people.

04:06:28.000 When he was fighting later on in his career, like the Manny Pacquiao fight or the Juan Manuel Marquez fight, he wasn't stopping them the way...

04:06:40.000 He was more like just beating them.

04:06:42.000 Khabib was crushing people.

04:06:45.000 Khabib was like, this is not a fight.

04:06:47.000 This is a mauling. 0.95

04:06:49.000 He's on top of you just beating the fuck out of Conor McGregor going, let's talk now. 0.98

04:06:53.000 Let's talk now. 0.92

04:06:55.000 Let's talk now. 1.00

04:06:56.000 I mean, he's a ruthless motherfucker. 1.00

04:06:59.000 And when he beat you, he beat you. 1.00

04:07:03.000 That's the difference between him and a guy like Mayweather.

04:07:05.000 Man, I had such hopes.

04:07:07.000 I love Khabib.

04:07:07.000 I think he's incredible.

04:07:08.000 But I wanted someone to push him more.

04:07:11.000 And I had such hope for the Justin Gaethje fight.

04:07:14.000 I just thought, this guy has something that could...

04:07:16.000 And he couldn't.

04:07:17.000 Well, Gaethje gave his best.

04:07:19.000 Oh, no, it was brilliant.

04:07:20.000 Khabib was...

04:07:21.000 He was on him.

04:07:22.000 I mean, he took some hard leg kicks, man.

04:07:25.000 Some hard calf kicks.

04:07:27.000 For a lot of people, that would have been the end of the show.

04:07:29.000 He figured out a way to endure and keep going.

04:07:31.000 Right. 0.98

04:07:32.000 But if you watch that fight again, he gets his legs fucked up trying to chase Gaethje down. 0.98

04:07:37.000 And then almost gets him at the beginning, or the end rather, of the first round, and finally gets him in the second round. 0.98

04:07:42.000 But here's the thing, man.

04:07:44.000 With every sport, there's always a generational talent that is so far above everything else.

04:07:50.000 That's Khabib.

04:07:51.000 And Khabib is like that.

04:07:53.000 Roger Federer.

04:07:53.000 All these people, they come in and they're just different.

04:07:56.000 There's something about them.

04:07:58.000 And you know, especially if you watch soccer or whatever else, you see someone go on.

04:08:04.000 Lionel Messi was like this.

04:08:06.000 Wayne Rooney at the start of his career.

04:08:07.000 The moment he touched the ball, the moment he moved...

04:08:10.000 It didn't look like someone who had learned something.

04:08:13.000 It looked like something completely fluid and natural that nobody else could do, no matter how hard or how gifted they were or how long they spent on the training pitch.

04:08:23.000 It's like water.

04:08:25.000 It's fluid.

04:08:25.000 Here's what I disagree with, though.

04:08:27.000 Roger Federer is a bad example.

04:08:28.000 He's incredible, but he lost many times.

04:08:32.000 He's dominated for a long time, but he lost many times.

04:08:35.000 Khabib never lost.

04:08:36.000 It's kind of a different sport, so Federer played more than Khabib.

04:08:39.000 Do you know what I mean?

04:08:40.000 Has there ever been a person in tennis that never lost?

04:08:43.000 Is that even possible?

04:08:44.000 I mean, like, in the finals and didn't win the competition that he was in.

04:08:48.000 Do you see what I'm saying?

04:08:49.000 Right.

04:08:49.000 Not lost a match.

04:08:50.000 I mean, lost in the finals when he had an opportunity to win a Grand Slam.

04:08:54.000 Right.

04:08:54.000 But, I mean, in tennis, like, no one even counts your losses versus your wins, right?

04:09:00.000 Yeah.

04:09:01.000 Because in boxing and in MMA, it's a big deal.

04:09:03.000 He's 29-0.

04:09:05.000 Khabib retired 29-0.

04:09:07.000 You know, world champion.

04:09:08.000 So, like, there's not an equivalent.

04:09:10.000 There isn't, but there's something special to be able to say you never lost.

04:09:14.000 Oh, yeah, for sure.

04:09:15.000 Because it puts you in that bracket.

04:09:17.000 You know, like, think in boxing.

04:09:18.000 Who's never lost?

04:09:19.000 Rocky Marciano?

04:09:19.000 Rocky Marciano, Floyd Mayweather, Andre Ward.

04:09:24.000 Andre Ward is another great example.

04:09:26.000 Because Andre Ward was an Olympic gold medalist, two-division world champion, and walked away in his prime.

04:09:33.000 His absolute prime.

04:09:35.000 As a dominant champion, undefeated.

04:09:37.000 Walked away in his prime.

04:09:38.000 And said, I think I serve boxing best behind a microphone and promoting it.

04:09:42.000 What a smart man.

04:09:43.000 And they offered him a shitload of money when Canelo Alvarez knocked out Kovalev.

04:09:47.000 I know they were calling on him.

04:09:49.000 And his response was intelligent and well thought out and smart.

04:09:55.000 And the proper...

04:09:57.000 Look, if you want to keep your brain and you want to keep your health and you know you got it right now and you did everything that anybody could ever do...

04:10:05.000 Everything on top of what Andre Ward, other than the financial rewards of having a big Canelo Alvarez fight, that would be the only thing to lure him in.

04:10:14.000 As far as accomplishments, he did everything.

04:10:16.000 Olympic gold medalist, two-division world champion, undefeated, retired.

04:10:20.000 Take care, everybody.

04:10:21.000 It's beautiful.

04:10:22.000 It's a beautiful end to his story.

04:10:23.000 But here's the thing, people get addicted to the attention.

04:10:26.000 Do you remember watching the Tyson Fury fight?

04:10:28.000 Yes.

04:10:28.000 The last one.

04:10:29.000 Yeah.

04:10:30.000 He was going to me, like, we were talking, I went, do you think Tyson's going to retire?

04:10:34.000 And you were like, I don't know, maybe he is, maybe he isn't.

04:10:37.000 And then I saw him sit on a golden throne in front of 60,000 people.

04:10:41.000 I'm like, that is a man who likes attention.

04:10:44.000 Yeah, but, you know, he had a really hard time with that Wilder fight.

04:10:48.000 Deontay Wilder hurt him bad.

04:10:50.000 Oh, man.

04:10:50.000 And he said afterwards that he was really concussed.

04:10:53.000 And he just decided after that fight, I think, that the Dillian White fight would be his last one.

04:10:59.000 And it was masterful.

04:11:02.000 Masterful performance.

04:11:03.000 And I don't know.

04:11:05.000 I like him fighting.

04:11:07.000 He's fun.

04:11:08.000 He also said that he would fight Anthony Joshua.

04:11:11.000 He said he would fight him for free if the fans could get in for free to watch it.

04:11:20.000 Which is a wild boy thing to say.

04:11:22.000 Yeah, it is.

04:11:22.000 He's such a wild man.

04:11:24.000 He is, man.

04:11:24.000 He's the gypsy king.

04:11:26.000 I mean, there's nobody like Tyson Fury.

04:11:27.000 You know, there's never been an intimidated guy with a belly like that.

04:11:31.000 Yeah.

04:11:31.000 You know?

04:11:32.000 This is a thing that I don't understand.

04:11:35.000 As a boxer, you're meant to be the fittest of the fittest.

04:11:38.000 And then you've got Anthony Ruiz, who looks like he runs a kebab shop.

04:11:41.000 Well, he looks a lot better now.

04:11:43.000 Andy Ruiz is now much, much thinner.

04:11:46.000 He hired a strength and conditioning trainer, and he's been on this regiment for more than a year now.

04:11:52.000 I take your point, Joe, but he was heavyweight champion of the world and looked like he ran a kebab shop.

04:11:56.000 Well, when he beat Anthony Joshua, he looked fat, but then when he lost to him, he looked really fat.

04:12:01.000 Yeah.

04:12:01.000 He got up to like 283 pounds.

04:12:03.000 He was way, way, way overweight.

04:12:05.000 But yeah, but the thing about him is that fat doesn't affect how well he can punch.

04:12:10.000 Like he punches, like if you watch Andy Ruiz fight, he's so fluid.

04:12:14.000 Everything's just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, those combinations, they just come and it's just like so effortless and technical.

04:12:21.000 His combinations are beautiful.

04:12:23.000 And when you get in slugfests with him, and that's what Anthony Joshua did, they got in a slugfest.

04:12:27.000 Ruiz is like taking angles and landing shots in these fast combinations.

04:12:32.000 They're really fluid hands.

04:12:34.000 If you watch him hit the mids, it's very impressive.

04:12:37.000 And if you watch when he actually stops Anthony Joshua, that combination is amazing.

04:12:43.000 But it's just, he fell prey to the party bug, you know?

04:12:48.000 And so now he's got to rebuild.

04:12:53.000 With boxing, the fact that you need to be so fit and you can be overweight still blows my mind.

04:12:58.000 Is he an aspirational model for you?

04:13:00.000 Yeah, it is, man.

04:13:01.000 This is for me.

04:13:01.000 I think Tyson Fury, what happened was, after he beat Klitschko, he got depressed and he got ballooned up over 300 pounds.

04:13:11.000 He was drinking every day and really fucked up.

04:13:13.000 And he got so big that a certain amount of that just stays with him. 0.92

04:13:17.000 Even though now he's fit, he's still got a certain amount of that.

04:13:20.000 But if you go back to the earlier fight, the Klitschko fights, I don't remember him being that big.

04:13:26.000 Hatton had the same problem in between fights.

04:13:28.000 He would just balloon.

04:13:29.000 And you saw the electricity and the spark of the early Hatton.

04:13:33.000 By the end of it, it just wasn't there.

04:13:36.000 Well, he's a guy that Floyd knocked out.

04:13:38.000 Floyd caught him with a left hook, like a check hook. 0.98

04:13:40.000 It was brilliant.

04:13:42.000 He just figured out how to deal with this guy who was like a marauder, just a relentless, mauling type of a brawler. 0.99

04:13:50.000 Ricky Hatton, people forget, when he was on his way up to the title, Ricky Hatton was a motherfucker. 0.99

04:13:55.000 He was fun to watch. 0.99

04:13:57.000 Incredible. 0.98

04:13:57.000 That guy was a killer. 0.98

04:13:59.000 He was so good. 0.98

04:14:00.000 Right.

04:14:00.000 And he was so fun to watch Ricky Hatton.

04:14:02.000 I don't think there's, in boxing at the moment, I don't think there is anyone, there are better boxers, but there's no one more fun to watch than Ricky Hatton.

04:14:10.000 What was so fun about him?

04:14:11.000 The thing that was so fun, it was the sparkiness, the devastating.

04:14:16.000 Do you know what I mean?

04:14:17.000 He would be there fighting, and then it would, out of nowhere, particularly, bang!

04:14:22.000 It was over.

04:14:23.000 Yeah, those explosive knockout power punchers, those guys...

04:14:27.000 There's something about them.

04:14:28.000 They make boxing so much more interesting.

04:14:30.000 Just the kind of guy that can just bang out of nowhere and then you're out cold.

04:14:34.000 Some guys can't do that.

04:14:35.000 Some guys, they need an accumulation of blows.

04:14:38.000 And there's guys like Bitterbeev who just breaks you down.

04:14:41.000 He doesn't really knock a guy out with one punch in the first round.

04:14:44.000 He just slowly clips you and beats you up like little car accidents.

04:14:48.000 Boom, boom, boom.

04:14:50.000 But that's the problem.

04:14:51.000 We touched on it before.

04:14:52.000 The more technical fighters, they never get the respect, as much respect, as the knockout artists.

04:14:59.000 Think of Joe Calzaghe.

04:15:01.000 I actually think Joe Calzaghe might have retired undefeated.

04:15:05.000 He did.

04:15:07.000 And then we never mentioned him when we were going through our undefeated fighters.

04:15:10.000 Yeah, we should have.

04:15:11.000 Yeah, that's just an error.

04:15:13.000 Joe Calzaghe was a beast.

04:15:14.000 Yeah.

04:15:15.000 But Kawzagi was technical.

04:15:17.000 He never really knocked anyone out, Joe.

04:15:18.000 No.

04:15:19.000 That was my point.

04:15:19.000 You know what I mean?

04:15:20.000 Really fast combinations.

04:15:21.000 Really fast hands.

04:15:22.000 A lot of movement.

04:15:24.000 Unbelievable work ethic.

04:15:26.000 His work ethic was incredible.

04:15:27.000 His endurance was incredible.

04:15:29.000 He just put a pace on guys.

04:15:30.000 He was a very good boxer, too.

04:15:32.000 But yeah, you're right.

04:15:32.000 He wasn't like a Tommy Hearns.

04:15:34.000 Like, one punch, blam!

04:15:36.000 Like when Hearns knocked out Roberto Duran.

04:15:38.000 Like, whoo!

04:15:40.000 Tommy Hearns had a right hand that was just an extraordinary weapon.

04:15:44.000 It was extraordinary.

04:15:45.000 And when he would catch you on the end of a jab and just torque that right hand in, he was amazing.

04:15:52.000 But some guys have that and some guys don't.

04:15:54.000 A guy who had that that was really fun to watch was Prince Hamed.

04:15:57.000 Remember that?

04:15:58.000 Yeah.

04:15:59.000 Remember that dude?

04:15:59.000 Oh, he was incredible.

04:16:00.000 Entertainment value as well.

04:16:02.000 Oh my god, he would dance.

04:16:03.000 He'd be dancing while he was fighting.

04:16:04.000 Had these crazy shorts on. 0.99

04:16:06.000 And he would leap forward and catch guys with left hooks and just fuck them up. 0.99

04:16:09.000 Leap forward with a right uppercut. 0.99

04:16:11.000 And you would watch him like, how is he getting away with this?

04:16:13.000 Like, this is crazy.

04:16:14.000 The way he's fighting is crazy.

04:16:16.000 But it was super effective. 1.00

04:16:18.000 And he would talk a bunch of shit. 1.00

04:16:19.000 A bunch of shit. 1.00

04:16:20.000 A bunch of shit. 1.00

04:16:21.000 He would come in on Thrones too. 1.00

04:16:22.000 He was like the first guy to come in on Thrones.

04:16:25.000 Yeah, he was.

04:16:25.000 Yeah, yeah.

04:16:26.000 Do you know the interesting thing about Nassim Hamed is that, I think, was it the first time he lost?

04:16:32.000 Where he fought Barrera.

04:16:33.000 Yes.

04:16:34.000 Barrera gave him such a beating, he never got back in the ring again.

04:16:38.000 Was that the last time he fought?

04:16:39.000 I think it was.

04:16:40.000 Really?

04:16:41.000 Yeah, I think it was.

04:16:42.000 Pull up Prince Hamed's career.

04:16:44.000 I don't remember when the last time he fought, man.

04:16:46.000 Well, I think it's important to fact check that one.

04:16:48.000 You're absolutely right. 0.96

04:16:49.000 Just like I was fucked up about Jerry Farwell. 0.99

04:16:52.000 Jimmy Swagger fucked me up. 0.99

04:16:55.000 Let's see. 0.97

04:17:03.000 What's that?

04:17:06.000 Oh, he had one more win?

04:17:07.000 One more win.

04:17:08.000 Manuel Calvo, unanimous decision.

04:17:12.000 That was the year later.

04:17:14.000 Like, basically a year later.

04:17:15.000 Yeah.

04:17:16.000 There you go, man.

04:17:16.000 And then he's like, that's it.

04:17:17.000 I'm done. 0.99

04:17:18.000 Oh, so he won a vacant IBO featherweight title, and then he just fucking checked out. 0.97

04:17:24.000 There you go, Francis.

04:17:25.000 You've just landed a former world champion.

04:17:27.000 Incredible boxer.

04:17:29.000 Hope you never meet him walking around London.

04:17:31.000 Yeah, mate.

04:17:32.000 That's just my brand.

04:17:33.000 We corrected it.

04:17:35.000 I don't see that it's that big of a deal.

04:17:36.000 I'm sure he'll see it that way.

04:17:38.000 Gentlemen, we've been going on a long-ass time.

04:17:39.000 Should we end this thing?

04:17:40.000 Brother, thank you so much.

04:17:41.000 Thank you.

04:17:41.000 Thanks for having me.

04:17:42.000 Or thanks for being here.

04:17:44.000 I forget what I'm doing, what my role is.

04:17:46.000 Brother, come on our show.

04:17:47.000 We'll talk more.

04:17:47.000 We'd love to have you on.

04:17:48.000 I would love to.

04:17:48.000 And I really appreciate you guys.

04:17:50.000 I'm glad we got together to do this because I've always enjoyed watching your show on YouTube and it's just cool to hang with you.

04:17:56.000 Really fun conversation.

04:17:57.000 For us as well.

04:17:59.000 Bye everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 27, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1848 - Francis Foster & Konstanin Kisin

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