The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #463 - Louis Theroux

00:00:00.000 Hello freaks, here we go again.

00:00:03.000 This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is brought to you by NatureBox.

00:00:06.000 NatureBox is a company that sends healthier snacks to your door.

00:00:12.000 Now I really appreciate my message board because every time anyone claims anything now, people fucking crawl up their ass with a microscope and find out what's cracking.

00:00:23.000 And one of the big things about NatureBox is people go, this stuff's not healthy.

00:00:26.000 We're not talking about kale or grapes or blueberries.

00:00:31.000 It is healthy err and quite delicious.

00:00:34.000 I'll tell you what, I'm smitten.

00:00:36.000 What are these things?

00:00:37.000 I'm smitten with these things.

00:00:38.000 I may get addicted.

00:00:39.000 They're sweet blueberry almonds.

00:00:41.000 Oh, they're so delicious.

00:00:43.000 I'm not sure what's in there because I don't have my glasses on.

00:00:46.000 I need glasses to read fine print.

00:00:48.000 Why the fuck do they put fine print on packages where they know that anyone over 12 can't read that shit? 0.86

00:00:56.000 That's ridiculous.

00:00:56.000 All right?

00:00:57.000 Put some print on.

00:00:58.000 I know it's a legal thing.

00:01:00.000 They're putting print on so that you, you know, like you, they can get away with it.

00:01:04.000 But you should have it on there where people can fucking read.

00:01:07.000 So I asked NatureBox, what's the deal?

00:01:11.000 Is it healthy?

00:01:12.000 And their response was very reasonable.

00:01:14.000 They said their products are all natural and contain a much higher quality ingredient than the typical vending machine food ingredients, which makes them healthier.

00:01:22.000 They have over 100 snacks to choose from.

00:01:24.000 And if you're looking for something for certain dietary needs, like wheat-free, which I'm a gluten-free person because I'm very trendy, low-sugar content, gluten-free, which is basically the same thing.

00:01:36.000 I don't know why they had to be redundant.

00:01:38.000 They have it too whenever possible.

00:01:40.000 They also try to use non-GMO food as well.

00:01:43.000 Although, that's the thing about GMO.

00:01:45.000 It's not necessarily unhealthy to eat GMO.

00:01:49.000 It's very tricky.

00:01:50.000 Anyway, their products are made from wholesome ingredients and are nutritionist approved.

00:01:55.000 They abide by strict quality standards.

00:01:57.000 No high fructose corn syrup.

00:01:59.000 No partially hydrogenated oils.

00:02:02.000 No trans fats.

00:02:03.000 No artificial sweeteners.

00:02:04.000 No artificial flavors.

00:02:06.000 No artificial colors.

00:02:08.000 All sounds good to me.

00:02:09.000 And like I said, I've been enjoying these snacks.

00:02:11.000 They're very delicious.

00:02:13.000 It's good to have laying around things that you don't feel terrible about eating.

00:02:18.000 And as I said, they do have things like pretzels, okay, which are impossible to make healthy.

00:02:22.000 They're fucking pretzels.

00:02:24.000 And that was one of the things that was brought up on my message board.

00:02:27.000 But again, I appreciate you guys.

00:02:28.000 You guys are fact-checking motherfuckers.

00:02:31.000 But check out NatureBox.

00:02:33.000 They have some really delicious stuff.

00:02:34.000 Barbecued kettle corn, which is really good stuff.

00:02:38.000 South Pacific plantain chips.

00:02:40.000 That's another one of my favorites.

00:02:42.000 Zero trans fats.

00:02:43.000 Zero high fructose corn syrup.

00:02:45.000 Nothing artificial.

00:02:46.000 And with free shipping anywhere in the U.S., NatureBox is busting up the vending machine's monopoly on your midday hunger.

00:02:53.000 They got rid of that dumb thing where they said that they deliver just like nature does.

00:02:59.000 They deliver for free.

00:03:00.000 That was like something they were doing for a while.

00:03:02.000 They gave that up.

00:03:03.000 So try NatureBox right now and get 50% off your first box by going to naturebox.com forward slash Rogan.

00:03:11.000 That's naturebox.com slash Rogan.

00:03:16.000 So go get some, enjoy it, and get 50 bucks off your first box.

00:03:20.000 Naturebox.com forward slash Rogan.

00:03:23.000 We are also brought to you by Squarespace.

00:03:26.000 Squarespace, one of my favorite podcast sponsors, because I have many friends that have used this sponsor to make their own websites.

00:03:34.000 And I recently met the people that are responsible for this company in New York.

00:03:38.000 Excellent folks.

00:03:40.000 And the product is really fantastic.

00:03:42.000 For the longest time, if you wanted to have a professional website, you really had to either learn HTML or you had to hire someone to do it.

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00:04:23.000 Not difficult at all.

00:04:25.000 Brian Redband, who's not here today, has made dozens of websites while we've been doing shows.

00:04:32.000 During commercials, he's actually constructed.

00:04:34.000 Oh, that's good, Jamie.

00:04:35.000 You learning from Brian.

00:04:36.000 You said Brian's name and you did just like him.

00:04:40.000 The drag and drop interface is super easy to use.

00:04:43.000 You could literally make websites during the time that it takes to do a commercial.

00:04:48.000 No bullshit.

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00:04:56.000 Is that a child or is a trial?

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00:05:01.000 For a free trial and 10% off of your first purchase, go to squarespace.com and enter in the code Joe.

00:05:09.000 So for 10% off your first purchase and a free trial, go to squarespace.com and enter the code word Joe.

00:05:16.000 Another thing I like about Squarespace, they allow you to try it out before you enter in your credit card information.

00:05:20.000 So if you're thinking about making a website, you're like, let me see what this Squarespace shit is all about.

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00:05:38.000 We are also brought to you by Onit.com.

00:05:41.000 O-N-N-I-T. 1.00

00:05:43.000 Onit is a human optimization website.

00:05:47.000 We basically sell things to allow human beings to reach your potential, whether it's physically, strength and conditioning equipment, whether it's cognitively, which I don't think is a word, through things like alpha brain or new mood.

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00:06:50.000 We recently completed a clinical test, the first of another, we were in the process of doing another one right now, a much larger one.

00:06:58.000 The first one was a pilot test.

00:07:00.000 It was 20 people.

00:07:01.000 A couple dropped out, so I think we were left with 17 or 16, but we had excellent results.

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00:07:08.000 That's O-N-N-I-T. 1.00

00:07:10.000 These are all very expensive to do, and the process of selling supplements is a very controversial thing because there's a lot of bullshit out there.

00:07:18.000 I personally believe in supplements.

00:07:20.000 I've been taking supplements my whole life.

00:07:21.000 Not my whole life.

00:07:22.000 When I was a baby, I took nothing.

00:07:23.000 How about that?

00:07:24.000 Took mom's milk.

00:07:25.000 I guess that's a supplement.

00:07:26.000 But since I knew about vitamins and supplementation, I've always been interested in optimizing my health, optimizing my fitness, optimizing the way my brain functions.

00:07:39.000 And I've been a big fan of nootropics.

00:07:41.000 I got turned on to them by Neuro One, which is Bill Romanowski's company.

00:07:46.000 Bill Romanowski, if you don't know who he is, he's a former pro football player who was experiencing a lot of what we're hearing about today in the news, about pro-football players.

00:07:56.000 A lot of these guys get busted up from football, develop a lot of cognitive problems, and he wanted to combat that with nutrition.

00:08:03.000 So he developed a product called Neuro One.

00:08:05.000 That was my introduction to the world of nootropics from Alice from Sarah and No Name in San Francisco.

00:08:14.000 I got into that and then started researching all the various supplements before we ever created Alpha Brain.

00:08:20.000 Alpha Brain is what I believe is the best combination of all of the known ingredients that can increase cognitive function.

00:08:27.000 And again, if you go to onit.com, all of the science behind all the various ingredients individually is referenced.

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00:08:42.000 We also have a 100% 30-pill, 90-day money-back guarantee at Onit.

00:08:48.000 We're not trying to sell you any bullshit.

00:08:49.000 And the last thing I personally want is anybody feeling ripped off.

00:08:54.000 That is also the last thing Aubrey wants, who is my partner in this.

00:08:58.000 We sell you the best shit we can find, and we try to sell it to you at a reasonable rate.

00:09:02.000 That includes strength and conditioning equipment, like kettlebells and battle ropes.

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00:09:15.000 That's O-N-N-I-T. 1.00

00:09:17.000 Go there, enjoy it, get your freak on.

00:09:19.000 All right, ladies and gentlemen, Louis Thoreau is here, and I'm very excited to talk to him.

00:09:24.000 So let's just get cracking.

00:09:29.000 The Joe Rogan experience.

00:09:32.000 Drink my day, Joe Rogan.

00:09:33.000 Podcast by night, all day.

00:09:37.000 Can you not hear the headphones?

00:09:39.000 Is that what you're just too loud?

00:09:41.000 Jamie, why don't you hook them up?

00:09:41.000 Too loud.

00:09:43.000 This is probably something that we should do before the podcast starts.

00:09:46.000 Do, do, do, do.

00:09:47.000 Is that better?

00:09:48.000 Is that beautiful?

00:09:49.000 Louis, first of all, thank you very much for doing this.

00:09:52.000 I'm a huge fan.

00:09:53.000 I've enjoyed your work over the years.

00:09:55.000 You have had probably one of the most unique views of Americans as an outsider, I think possibly ever.

00:10:02.000 You know, your shows are all about What he's done is found the wackiest Americans ever known and put them on television and shown just how fucked up we really can be.

00:10:20.000 But your shows are really excellent.

00:10:23.000 Thank you.

00:10:23.000 Thank you very much.

00:10:24.000 I don't remember which one I got turned on to.

00:10:26.000 It was many, many years ago.

00:10:27.000 But I went on a marathon last night.

00:10:30.000 Last night I watched the wrestling one.

00:10:32.000 I watched the African hunting one.

00:10:33.000 I watched the Indian Gurus one.

00:10:36.000 I watched the Born Again Christian one. 0.95

00:10:38.000 I went on like a five-hour Louis marathon last night.

00:10:41.000 Wow.

00:10:41.000 And live to tell a tale.

00:10:42.000 That's a lot.

00:10:45.000 What got you started in exploring all these bizarre human beings?

00:10:52.000 Oh, man.

00:10:55.000 I've always had a kind of fascination with the dark side of human nature and with life's outsiders. 0.78

00:11:01.000 And, you know, it goes so deep with me that I don't remember ever formulating a conscious decision to explore weirdness.

00:11:10.000 For me, it just came naturally from, you know, from when I was very, very young.

00:11:14.000 I remember my dad having things about the Ku Klux Klan lying around the house and reading them and thinking like, wow, that's so weird.

00:11:23.000 And then I used to subscribe to a magazine called The Unexplained that was all about conspiracy theories and UFOs and ESP.

00:11:31.000 And I remember I subscribed to that.

00:11:33.000 And so it's always been just part of my natural environment.

00:11:38.000 And then my dad's American, so it felt very natural for me to come to America at a certain point, after I left university.

00:11:46.000 And then once I was here, I just felt like I was tuning into something different and strange.

00:11:52.000 Well, you're a perfect guy for what you've done because you're so friendly and so amiable.

00:11:59.000 Like when you're around these bizarre fucking freaks, you put them at ease to a certain extent.

00:12:05.000 Right, right.

00:12:06.000 And again, it wasn't something I sought out to do consciously.

00:12:10.000 My natural mode is to try and be ingratiating.

00:12:12.000 I mean, I'm not a confrontational person.

00:12:15.000 I'm quite a cowardly person.

00:12:18.000 And I try and avoid conflict.

00:12:21.000 And so I have a natural strategy in life.

00:12:24.000 It's not something I just do on my programs.

00:12:27.000 In life, I try to get along with people and put people at their ease if possible.

00:12:33.000 At the same time, I also have a kind of inquisitive side.

00:12:36.000 And so sometimes I get my questions answered by asking a difficult question politely.

00:12:45.000 I don't think you're a coward at all.

00:12:46.000 I mean, I think you're being very self-deprecating right now because you might avoid conflict if you could, and I do as well.

00:12:54.000 But you're also very brave in the situations that you've put yourself in.

00:12:59.000 You've thrust yourself into some very bizarre circumstances.

00:13:03.000 Well, you know, maybe I am cowardly, but I'm more afraid of the consequences of somehow not delivering on a creative idea than I am of the danger that fulfilling it involves, if that makes sense.

00:13:18.000 So sometimes you're in a spot with a story.

00:13:21.000 You know, people say like, you must be afraid when you're out on location.

00:13:24.000 You know what I'm afraid of is going home without a story.

00:13:26.000 Like, that's what keeps me awake at night.

00:13:28.000 Like, are we actually going to get any usable material?

00:13:31.000 So I was in Johannesburg doing a story on crime in Joburg, where the police are hugely under-resourced.

00:13:40.000 And so private security agencies go around policing the streets.

00:13:43.000 They're heavily armed.

00:13:44.000 They're accountable to no one.

00:13:46.000 And yet after, so we went out to do this story.

00:13:48.000 And after about two weeks of being there, we hadn't really seen any violent crime.

00:13:53.000 And I was getting to the point of, you know, we've got to go and cause some crimes ourselves if we have to.

00:13:58.000 Like, we've got to get the story.

00:14:00.000 And so I tended to thrust myself into dangerous situations just out of a sense of panic, you know, that we weren't kind of doing what we were supposed to do.

00:14:11.000 That's hilarious.

00:14:12.000 So essentially what's going on in South Africa is like a lot of what happened, where it was criticized.

00:14:19.000 The American military started using mercenaries that were accountable to no one, Blackwater and the like.

00:14:25.000 And that was a huge, huge issue because these folks were doing a lot of things that if soldiers had done them, they would be responsible for war crimes.

00:14:34.000 But they fell into this very strange and gray area because they were mercenaries.

00:14:40.000 It was a great story.

00:14:41.000 And in fact, we spent a long time looking at trying to do that story and getting into Blackwater.

00:14:46.000 They rebranded themselves as something else now.

00:14:50.000 And the fact that these private citizens, essentially, because they weren't servants of the state, they were citizens of private companies, but they were still in Iraq, but accountable to no government because they could commit crimes, more or less, in Iraq, but go unarrested and unprosecuted because they were in this legal gray area.

00:15:12.000 They changed their name twice, actually.

00:15:13.000 Blackwater was XE.

00:15:16.000 Then they changed their name to Academy with an I at the end of it.

00:15:21.000 Well, I think they don't understand the internet, so they probably didn't know.

00:15:25.000 The only thing is that may work for people, you know.

00:15:28.000 For a little bit.

00:15:28.000 Sure.

00:15:29.000 For a bit.

00:15:30.000 For anybody who doesn't use Google, yes, it'll work.

00:15:32.000 That's why con artists change their names.

00:15:35.000 Yes, yes.

00:15:36.000 I mean, it's interesting that I mean, but this is how beautiful the internet is.

00:15:39.000 I didn't remember what the name was.

00:15:40.000 I found out while you were in the middle of a sentence, and then by the time you were done, I had the answer, which is pretty incredible.

00:15:46.000 We live in strange times.

00:15:48.000 I have a friend who went to Blackwater.

00:15:52.000 He was in the Marines.

00:15:53.000 He was a sniper, and then he got a job with Blackwater.

00:15:56.000 And he didn't like to talk about any of the stuff that he did, but he did it for money.

00:16:00.000 And he went over and made a tremendous amount of money.

00:16:03.000 He did more than one tour with Blackwater.

00:16:06.000 But it's very disturbing that that is this gray area.

00:16:12.000 And these words that we use, like insurgent and contractor, those are also disturbing.

00:16:18.000 Very much so, yeah.

00:16:19.000 Contractor, you know, like, oh, you're a contractor.

00:16:23.000 You're a mercenary?

00:16:24.000 Contractor.

00:16:24.000 No, no, no.

00:16:25.000 Contractor to me is a guy who fixes your house.

00:16:28.000 You know, a contractor to me is a guy that you hire and he builds an addition on your home.

00:16:33.000 It's not a fucking sniper.

00:16:35.000 But it's across the board as well because I've done several stories on prisons and there are private prisons as well.

00:16:44.000 And if I can make a general observation, it's that what I found in the course of making documentaries is that nine times out of ten, you get more access and more accountability from a public agency.

00:16:55.000 I mean, I've been inside and spent weeks inside San Quentin Prison and Miami Jail and a Maximum Security Mental Hospital for paedophiles here in California.

00:17:04.000 And all of those opened their doors to us and let us wander around and document what was going on in a way that I thought was very laudable.

00:17:11.000 I didn't agree with all the practices that were going on.

00:17:14.000 And yet, if there are private prisons, they don't feel like opening up their doors.

00:17:19.000 They don't feel the same sense of public trust.

00:17:22.000 That's just a personal observation.

00:17:24.000 Well, they also, they're a business, and that's a real issue.

00:17:27.000 Anything that you say that's negative could negatively impact their bottom line.

00:17:32.000 They can make less money because of you, and so there's no benefit in having you there.

00:17:36.000 Whereas the public outrage in a public institution can have a real impact.

00:17:42.000 You know, the public can actually vote to get people out of positions that are causing certain rules to be into effect.

00:17:48.000 You can't really do that with private prisons.

00:17:50.000 Private prisons are, in my opinion, one of the most disturbing aspects of the current situation that we're in right now because so few people are actually aware of what's going on.

00:18:00.000 Most folks who have nine to five jobs plus whatever commute time and family, they don't have the time to research any of this stuff.

00:18:09.000 And they're really unaware of what's going on that we have this good percentage of our prisons in this country are actually businesses.

00:18:19.000 They're making money.

00:18:21.000 And even more disturbing, they're lobbying to make sure that certain laws are in place so that they can ensure that they have more people in their prisons and make more money.

00:18:32.000 It's very creepy.

00:18:34.000 Scary stuff.

00:18:35.000 It really is.

00:18:37.000 You've been to the public prisons?

00:18:39.000 Yes.

00:18:40.000 No private prisons.

00:18:41.000 They wouldn't let me.

00:18:41.000 No, no, no.

00:18:44.000 If you could just talk into the microphone.

00:18:46.000 I'll turn it towards you like a little bit better.

00:18:48.000 It's a story I'd be...

00:18:50.000 Yeah, much better.

00:18:51.000 It's a story I'd be interested in telling, but very hard to get.

00:18:55.000 I'm a victim of access.

00:18:59.000 I can only really tell the stories that I get inside.

00:19:06.000 I'm like a vampire.

00:19:07.000 I have to be invited in.

00:19:09.000 I don't really like that analogy.

00:19:11.000 That's only so many horror movies, though.

00:19:15.000 I mean, that's my issue with the recent trend in vampires, that they just fuck around with the rules.

00:19:20.000 Like, Blade was the first, where the vampires could wear sunscreen.

00:19:24.000 They could go outside.

00:19:25.000 I remember I watted a piece of paper up and threw it at my TV when I saw that.

00:19:29.000 I was like, get the fuck.

00:19:30.000 You can't fucking wear sunscreen.

00:19:32.000 You changed the rules.

00:19:34.000 And Wisley Snipes was a vampire, right?

00:19:36.000 He was half vampire, but he was a daywalker.

00:19:38.000 He was allowed to be able to.

00:19:39.000 Did he have to wear sunscreen as well?

00:19:41.000 No, he did not.

00:19:42.000 He was allowed, because he was half vampire.

00:19:44.000 He'd be a good guest for your show.

00:19:45.000 Yes, he would.

00:19:46.000 Yes, I would enjoy having him.

00:19:48.000 Is he at liberty now?

00:19:49.000 Because he was doing time for tax evasion.

00:19:52.000 I wonder what he can say or what he would say.

00:19:55.000 If I was him, I'd probably keep my mouth shut.

00:19:57.000 They locked him in a cage for several years.

00:20:00.000 And not only that, they didn't allow him to just pay the money back.

00:20:00.000 Did they?

00:20:04.000 They imprisoned him, which is really disturbing to me because if someone owes you money, you should just have to pay that money back.

00:20:12.000 And the government is different.

00:20:14.000 When you owe money to the government, they decide that we are going to put you in a cage.

00:20:18.000 And he had gotten a...

00:20:21.000 I've never met Wesley, but he had gotten some really shitty advice from someone.

00:20:25.000 And if you're...

00:20:26.000 I think he was part of a religious group.

00:20:31.000 And there was some kind of Egyptological dimension to it.

00:20:35.000 Yeah.

00:20:36.000 And there's a, I think there is a pyramid somewhere outside Atlanta in Georgia where they worship.

00:20:42.000 Does this ring any kind of bells with you?

00:20:44.000 Well, I knew that his...

00:20:52.000 In a weird way, it kind of aligns with certain aspects of the sovereign citizen movement where you see yourself as not beholden to the federal government and an independent entity.

00:21:01.000 Well, I know his production company was like Amon Ra Productions, I believe.

00:21:06.000 Well, that would make sense.

00:21:07.000 Yeah, he's got a big thing with Egypt.

00:21:10.000 But I believe his thing was constitutional, his argument against taxes.

00:21:17.000 You know, there's a bunch of people in this country that state that federal income tax is actually unconstitutional.

00:21:23.000 Exactly.

00:21:24.000 So for him, it was a philosophical position.

00:21:24.000 Yeah.

00:21:28.000 I don't know if it was or was not.

00:21:30.000 I think it was.

00:21:31.000 But it was a ridiculous position.

00:21:33.000 I mean, you just can't fucking not pay taxes in this country.

00:21:37.000 Without a doubt, this country is run by money, without a doubt, right?

00:21:42.000 They need money.

00:21:43.000 And anyone who comes along and fucks up that system and says, hey, you know, we don't have to give money.

00:21:50.000 What percentage of the United States runs on taxes?

00:21:53.000 A pretty large percentage.

00:21:55.000 If someone comes along and fucks with that, they're just going to throw you in a cage.

00:21:58.000 Well, it doesn't work on kind of ethical grounds because, well, if you're driving on the roads, you're using tax dollars.

00:22:05.000 And on pragmatic grounds, it doesn't work because they will send you to jail.

00:22:08.000 Pragmatic grounds are the most important.

00:22:10.000 The ethical grounds about the roads, there's a large argument for that for sure.

00:22:15.000 But then there's also weirdness, like in New York, where it used to be that they set up the toll systems on the bridges and the tunnels.

00:22:24.000 And what was going to happen is once the bridges were paid off, then the tolls would stop.

00:22:29.000 But the state and the city obviously got addicted to all that money that keeps coming in from those tolls.

00:22:34.000 So even though the bridges are long since paid for, it still costs like nine bucks every time you go across, whatever the fuck.

00:22:41.000 It's really ridiculous now.

00:22:42.000 When I was living there, it was much less.

00:22:44.000 But it's a substantial amount of revenue that they're just not willing to give up.

00:22:49.000 So it doesn't matter if it's paid for.

00:22:51.000 The money has to keep coming in.

00:22:53.000 And then, of course, the money funds this bloated bureaucracy that keeps expanding in order to keep itself alive like any other organism.

00:23:00.000 It continues to expand and just gets more and more ridiculous and needs tax money to stay open.

00:23:06.000 So a guy like Wesley Snipes comes along and says, I'm not paying taxes, you know, it's hard for everybody to be sympathetic to that because here's a guy who makes millions of dollars, doesn't want to pay taxes, and the regular folks that have to pay taxes and make a fraction of that, they don't have any sympathy for a guy like that.

00:23:25.000 Plus, he's half vampire.

00:23:28.000 Indeed.

00:23:29.000 Yeah, indeed.

00:23:30.000 So I don't know what his current situation is.

00:23:34.000 I may have a chance to meet him in Dallas, apparently.

00:23:36.000 There's a martial arts thing that is going on in Dallas.

00:23:41.000 There's a UFC event, Ultimate Fighting Championship event.

00:23:43.000 And there's also something that he may attend.

00:23:47.000 I might get a chance to meet him.

00:23:48.000 If I get to talk to him, I would definitely bring him on here.

00:23:51.000 I was supposed to fight him at one point in time.

00:23:53.000 Get off.

00:23:54.000 We were supposed to have a mixed martial arts fight several years ago.

00:23:56.000 Before he went into jail, he owed a lot of money in taxes.

00:24:02.000 And a promoter, one of the original promoters for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, apparently he contacted them and wanted to have a mixed martial arts fight in order to make some money.

00:24:13.000 And they contacted me and offered me some ridiculous amount of money.

00:24:16.000 And I said, yeah, I'll fight that guy.

00:24:18.000 I'll fight that guy for that much money.

00:24:21.000 But he changed his mind after time went on.

00:24:24.000 And I'm sure he was embroiled in legal battles, and there might have been some chemicals involved in his decision-making.

00:24:30.000 Have you fought?

00:24:32.000 I mean, is that something you do?

00:24:33.000 I used to be a taekwondo champion before I was ever a stand-up comedian.

00:24:38.000 And I've done martial arts pretty much my whole life.

00:24:41.000 I've got a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a black belt in Taekwondo.

00:24:45.000 I've kickboxed.

00:24:47.000 I've fought probably 100 Taekwondo matches somewhere around there.

00:24:51.000 From age 15 to 21, that's pretty much all I did with myself.

00:24:55.000 Since you've been an older man, have you seen that?

00:25:00.000 No, no.

00:25:02.000 It's not advisable to do unless it's absolutely necessary.

00:25:05.000 And I wouldn't do it now if I was given the same offer.

00:25:08.000 But back then, it was like five or six years ago.

00:25:10.000 It was a tremendous amount of money.

00:25:14.000 He doesn't know jiu-jitsu.

00:25:17.000 He doesn't have a background in that.

00:25:18.000 He has experience in striking.

00:25:20.000 And if you don't have an experience in grappling, a person who does have experience in grappling can pretty much have their way with you.

00:25:30.000 It's very disturbing.

00:25:31.000 I found that out firsthand when I first started taking jiu-jitsu in 1996.

00:25:36.000 I thought, you know, I knew martial arts.

00:25:37.000 I was going to take jiu-jitsu.

00:25:39.000 I'll get fucking awesome at this too.

00:25:41.000 And I just got strangled and manhandled over and over again for years.

00:25:46.000 It was a long, brutal, painful, humiliating process of learning.

00:25:51.000 And it's one of the things that was sort of exposed in the very first Ultimate Fighting Championships.

00:25:57.000 If you don't understand grappling, if you don't understand jiu-jitsu and submissions, you're almost helpless.

00:26:03.000 And that's kind of what I was banking on.

00:26:05.000 I was banking on just kind of grabbing him and choking him.

00:26:08.000 And my background was stand-up martial arts was striking, too.

00:26:12.000 I mean, I had competed, and I knew he had never competed.

00:26:14.000 He just was a trained martial artist who was apparently really good, like in the gym.

00:26:19.000 But I thought it was probably a good idea to do.

00:26:23.000 Sounds like he got off lightly.

00:26:25.000 Who knows?

00:26:26.000 I mean, anything can happen when people are throwing punches and kicks at each other.

00:26:30.000 It's a crazy business.

00:26:31.000 I've been doing commentary for the UFC since I started...

00:26:41.000 So many, many, many years.

00:26:43.000 And I've learned along the way that crazy shit can happen.

00:26:46.000 People are throwing bones at each other.

00:26:48.000 Have you ever done a show on mixed martial arts?

00:26:50.000 Well, it's an interesting question because it's one of the few times when now and then we approach a story because it feels like it should be right for us and then it doesn't pan out for whatever reason.

00:27:01.000 So I'm well aware of your work with the UFC and about three years ago we spent a couple of months really trying to crack it as a story.

00:27:11.000 And then what happened was we didn't get, well we were trying to do MMA and we didn't get access to the UFC or not good enough access.

00:27:20.000 So we were looking at the second tier but it's quite a big drop-off from the UFC down to the smaller leagues.

00:27:27.000 There was a guy we were dealing with called Terry Treblecock.

00:27:30.000 I know him.

00:27:31.000 You know him?

00:27:32.000 King of the Cage.

00:27:33.000 I always liked that name, so that was why I remembered it.

00:27:36.000 Yeah, Treblecock's a great Treblecock, you know, I wonder if he should get together with Gene Triplehorn.

00:27:42.000 But he ran, I don't remember what his league was called.

00:27:46.000 Do you know what it is?

00:27:47.000 King of the Cage.

00:27:48.000 King of the Cage.

00:27:49.000 So we spent a bit of time with them.

00:27:50.000 They were doing a series of fights up in northern Michigan.

00:27:56.000 And it was kind of interesting.

00:27:58.000 But there was another one we would, and part of the same shoot, we looked at an outfit that was, I want to say it was cops versus cons, or does that ring a bell?

00:28:08.000 Wow, no.

00:28:09.000 I'm sure it's out there, though.

00:28:10.000 And they did felony fights as well.

00:28:13.000 Beware of them.

00:28:20.000 Ex-felons really wailing on each other in a way that was hard to watch, teeth literally popping out. 1.00

00:28:26.000 Have you seen any of those videos?

00:28:28.000 Well, I saw one where a guy bit a guy's face.

00:28:31.000 He held the man down and bit his face.

00:28:33.000 Some of it's horrible.

00:28:34.000 Horrible.

00:28:35.000 Yeah, really horrible.

00:28:36.000 The full range.

00:28:38.000 If you have a spectrum of fights, that's probably the darkest.

00:28:42.000 But the guy in charge of it had got religion, and he'd started a new outfit, and he was in the awkward maneuver of trying to edge away from the brutal, super brutal, horrible stuff into a lighter mode, more acceptable fare, but still kind of trying to keep his brand viable.

00:29:02.000 And his new thing was called something like cops versus cons.

00:29:05.000 And the concept was it was law enforcement personnel fighting representatives of the criminal fraternity.

00:29:11.000 Does that not ring a bell?

00:29:12.000 That was going to help him with Jesus?

00:29:14.000 That was his, because it was like, he wants to show how there was some rationale, like he wants to show how we can all be on the same team and kind of fight and then shake hands at the end of the day.

00:29:27.000 And there's not a big difference between cops and the street brawlers. 1.00

00:29:32.000 Oh, that sounds like a spin to me.

00:29:33.000 It was a kind of a spin, but when it got down to it, it was nowhere near as brutal as what he'd been doing with felony fights.

00:29:40.000 And the reason we didn't pursue the story was it became clear that it was actually a sport.

00:29:47.000 And if anything, to my mind, and correct me if you think I'm wrong, but less brutal than boxing, that you take more punishment because boxing bouts are so long and possibly because of the gloves as well, you're getting more brain injuries through boxing.

00:30:02.000 And that compared with boxing and even maybe, you know, NFL football and stuff, it wasn't that questionable what the UFC or the MMA guys were doing.

00:30:14.000 They were just going out there fighting and then shaking hands.

00:30:18.000 Well, there's certainly less animosity between fighters and much more camaraderie.

00:30:23.000 In fact, two men who are probably two of the best in the world, Leota Machida and Chris Weidman, who are going to fight for the UFC middleweight title.

00:30:30.000 Wideman is the current champion.

00:30:32.000 They met recently at a seminar or some convention, and there's a photo of them together smiling, holding like arm in arm.

00:30:40.000 I mean, these guys are in a couple months, they're going to try to kill each other, but yet they're smiling and very friendly.

00:30:46.000 It's very common for people to be friendly both before and after the fights.

00:30:52.000 there's with martial arts the true martial art mentality is not one of a thuggish nature it's not one of it's Those are that Wideman, the guy on the left with the Monster Milk shirt on, is the current champion.

00:31:08.000 And the other guy, Leoto Machida, the one on the right, is the number one contender who's two amazing fighters who are going to fight.

00:31:15.000 And you see them hugging and smiling before they're about to fight.

00:31:20.000 And Wideman, who is a wrestler, which I consider one of the very best martial arts, and Machida is a karate master, a true martial artist, Machida.

00:31:29.000 He really embodies what you expect from a martial artist in the bowing.

00:31:36.000 He practices kata.

00:31:38.000 He's very disciplined, meditates, and really is what you would expect in a sort of a movie version of a martial arts competitor, a martial arts master.

00:31:49.000 Except, you know, he really truly is a real deal.

00:31:51.000 But I think that that attitude, the martial arts attitude, is one of the more appealing aspects of fighting, where it's not like a Mike Tyson, you know, the sort of the thuggish, you know, insulting.

00:32:04.000 There's some of that in MMA as well, but it's very rare in boxing that you get someone who has the martial arts ideals and ethics that sort of competes.

00:32:14.000 But when it comes down to whether or not it's more or less dangerous, it really depends upon the bouts and it depends upon the style that a person fights in.

00:32:25.000 If you look at like a Floyd Mayweather fight, Floyd Mayweather is probably like the least hit boxer Of all time.

00:32:31.000 If you wanted to argue that boxing is a super safe sport, watch a Floyd Mayweather fight.

00:32:36.000 Watch how he fights.

00:32:37.000 He rarely gets hit.

00:32:39.000 And he gets hit and hurt much less than mixed martial arts fighters.

00:32:43.000 I would think that his style of fighting is probably arguably one of the safest styles ever.

00:32:49.000 But what martial arts and mixed martial arts provide is more options.

00:32:54.000 When a boxer gets hurt, they're not even allowed to hold on and clinch.

00:32:57.000 Whereas with MMA, that's the number one strategy.

00:33:00.000 If you get hit and you get stunned, you grab a hold of your opponent and try to take them to the ground and fight on the ground.

00:33:06.000 And having all these different options, it definitely gives you less head impacts, but not really much less.

00:33:16.000 There's still a lot of stand-up fighting involved in that.

00:33:18.000 Is there any evidence of degenerative brain injuries stemming from MMA?

00:33:22.000 Most certainly.

00:33:23.000 Yeah, most certainly.

00:33:24.000 From long careers and from a lot of training, hard training.

00:33:27.000 There's also a bit of evolution going on right now in mixed martial arts as far as how they train, how fighters train.

00:33:36.000 And there was a lack of knowledge and understanding about the proper way to go about training in the old days when it was first starting out, where people would just try to be as rough and tough as possible.

00:33:48.000 So they would spar in the gym at 100%.

00:33:51.000 They would basically have fights in the gym.

00:33:53.000 They weren't just sparring matches.

00:33:55.000 They were like full-on fights.

00:33:58.000 Your mic is on, so when you do that, that click is making noise.

00:34:02.000 They're full-on fights where they don't do that anymore.

00:34:05.000 Now, it's very wise to rarely spar at 100%.

00:34:11.000 Most of the time, spar at a lighter impact rate and work much more on technique and much more on strategy and positioning and preserve yourself inside the gym.

00:34:25.000 And so, as I say, we abandoned it almost because of a sense of feeling like it seemed healthy and normal in a non-like kind of masculine.

00:34:38.000 So you would only go after it if it was a freak show.

00:34:42.000 You know, with that story, we needed some extra dimension.

00:34:46.000 And I think that possibly if we'd got to the top tier, like with the UFC, then there would have been a sufficient sort of show business gloss to it to feel or just a sense of stakes.

00:34:58.000 But the guys we were meeting were all part-timers.

00:35:01.000 They were guys who worked during the week as mechanics, teachers, personal trainers.

00:35:06.000 And every couple of weekends, they would fight a few bouts.

00:35:10.000 So it felt like a, I mean, I'm not disrespecting them, but they were not full-time fighters.

00:35:16.000 And it was missing some kind of sense of scale or something.

00:35:20.000 That's interesting.

00:35:21.000 So you decided to just not pursue the story?

00:35:23.000 We left that one.

00:35:24.000 We spent a few days on it.

00:35:25.000 We thought, well, you know, it might be that there's a way of coming back to it at some point.

00:35:29.000 Like I said, the UFC side of it seemed more interesting.

00:35:32.000 The sense of the personalities and the ways in which it intersected with this multi-million dollar business that they were running.

00:35:38.000 That felt maybe more...

00:35:45.000 Do you remember a guy called, there was a guy called Dadda something?

00:35:49.000 Yes.

00:35:50.000 Dadda 5000. 0.62

00:35:51.000 Dudda 5000.

00:35:52.000 Or 3,000 or whatever the fuck his name was.

00:35:54.000 There was a scene in Florida of backyard bounce.

00:35:56.000 So we were, that was going to fit into it.

00:35:59.000 And then they call them smokers.

00:36:01.000 Yes.

00:36:02.000 Do they still have smokers?

00:36:03.000 Yes.

00:36:04.000 Like a true smoker is going to be a sort of no gloves.

00:36:04.000 They still do that.

00:36:09.000 What is a no gloves?

00:36:10.000 A classic smoker.

00:36:10.000 Okay.

00:36:11.000 Kickboxing and boxing is where smokers really came from.

00:36:15.000 And what it is is essentially fights that would take place in the gym.

00:36:18.000 And what they would do is they'd wear headgear, boxing gloves, like sparring gloves, shin pads, which you don't see in regular kickboxing.

00:36:27.000 And they would go at it, essentially full clip, in front of family and friends.

00:36:32.000 And it would be unsanctioned amateur bouts.

00:36:35.000 The problem with a lot of these smokers is there was oftentimes no medical care whatsoever.

00:36:40.000 And they were just, you know, hoping that no one got badly injured.

00:36:45.000 And regulatory commissions frowned upon them because they were really competitions, but they were being labeled as non-competitive sparring.

00:36:55.000 They were calling them sparring bouts.

00:36:58.000 So I've also had smokers where they had full MMA rules with little gloves and no pads at all.

00:37:04.000 They've done those.

00:37:05.000 And I'm sure they've had smokers where they had bare knuckle fights as well. 0.97

00:37:09.000 Especially during the formative days, like from 93 on, there was a lot of evolution in mixed martial arts.

00:37:16.000 There was a lot of things going on.

00:37:17.000 And there was a lot of ways to skirt around the rules.

00:37:21.000 Like for the longest time, it was illegal in California.

00:37:23.000 And that's one of the ways King of the Cage shined is because King of the Cage would put on bouts in Indian reservations. 0.99

00:37:29.000 When they would go to these Native American reservations, the Native American tribes could form their own rules.

00:37:29.000 Right.

00:37:35.000 And so I went to see a lot of the King of the Cage bouts in the 90s.

00:37:39.000 And when we would go see them, they were all on Native American reservations.

00:37:44.000 Then they also started doing a thing called pancrease fights.

00:37:47.000 And what pancrease fights were, there was this strange rule loophole where you were allowed to fight, but you could slap.

00:37:56.000 You couldn't close your fists and punch to the face, but you could pull your hands back and hit with the palms to the face and then kick full blast to the face, kick full blast to the body.

00:38:07.000 So there was a lot of those fights going on in the United States as well when there was no regulatory body for that.

00:38:13.000 It just sort of fit into some strange loophole.

00:38:16.000 But King of the Cage is still one of those places right now where young fighters, when they're looking to get experience, they'll start.

00:38:23.000 They come up through that, and that's still going, is it?

00:38:26.000 Yes, yeah.

00:38:26.000 I mean, I don't know how many bouts that guy's had.

00:38:29.000 Terry Tribblecock.

00:38:30.000 My friend Bud Brutzman, who's a good buddy of mine, was also one of the original owners of that.

00:38:35.000 And he got out and he became part of Shark Fights for a while, which is another organization, but I don't think he does anything with MMA now.

00:38:44.000 But Triplecock's still going strong.

00:38:47.000 Another one that we never quite figured out was bare-knuckle gypsy fighting. 1.00

00:38:55.000 I don't know if you ever saw a documentary called Knuckle.

00:38:57.000 Yes.

00:38:58.000 It's one of my favorite documentaries about Irish traveler families and the feuds that go on between these families spanning generations.

00:39:06.000 There's the Joyce family and another family, I can't remember their name, but and the strange dynamic, it's just really weird.

00:39:16.000 Like the families, they're very traditional, they got no money, like very close to the soil kind of families. 0.92

00:39:25.000 And they issue these like fight videos, like calling each other out into the fights, saying like, you come and see me and I'll tell you, you never insult me.

00:39:34.000 I'm like, you're a bager shit. 1.00

00:39:36.000 Yeah.

00:39:36.000 You're a bagger sit.

00:39:40.000 Yeah, and they're very secretive.

00:39:42.000 And we spent about three or four months trying to get into that world.

00:39:46.000 I always found it fascinating.

00:39:49.000 And the code of honor and the defending your name and the strangeness of the rules whereby there was always this whole code of rules about if you were called out, you had to fight.

00:40:01.000 If they insulted your dad, you had to fight.

00:40:03.000 And then the kids getting groomed into it very young.

00:40:07.000 And we could never build trust with the families.

00:40:09.000 But the guy who made Knuckle, do you remember how he gets in with the families?

00:40:13.000 No, I know.

00:40:14.000 He gets invited to film one of their weddings as a videographer.

00:40:18.000 And so he films the wedding.

00:40:19.000 He's like, this is really interesting.

00:40:21.000 These families, they're wild.

00:40:22.000 They're kind of drinking and fighting and getting married.

00:40:25.000 And having done one wedding, he maybe does another wedding.

00:40:28.000 And then he builds trust, access through the wedding videos.

00:40:32.000 He parlays that into shooting the fight videos.

00:40:36.000 And so, I mean, I was glad someone did it.

00:40:39.000 You know, it's really worth, if listeners who haven't seen that, should check out Knuckle.

00:40:44.000 Yeah, it's a fascinating, fascinating documentary.

00:40:47.000 And there's so many of those call-out videos that are available now.

00:40:50.000 They put them up on YouTube now to really embarrass the person that they're calling out instead of just a video where you hand a cassette off to somebody else like in the olden days.

00:41:00.000 Now they put these videos up on YouTube and they're damn hilarious.

00:41:05.000 They're beautiful.

00:41:06.000 Amazing stuff.

00:41:07.000 I don't want them to stop.

00:41:08.000 Does that exist in the States in the same way as far as you know?

00:41:12.000 Well, I'm sure there's probably a few people that have called people out to fights over the internet.

00:41:17.000 Like traveler fights, gypsy fights? 1.00

00:41:18.000 No, it's very different.

00:41:19.000 It's very different.

00:41:20.000 That's a uniquely European thing.

00:41:23.000 I love it.

00:41:25.000 The language that they use, it's just so unique and unusual.

00:41:29.000 I also feel like that culture, the gypsy culture, it's probably a culture that's not going to be around too many more generations. 1.00

00:41:37.000 It's very odd.

00:41:38.000 People sometimes ask me what the strangest or the most difficult story I've ever done.

00:41:43.000 And one of them was definitely this gypsy one. 1.00

00:41:46.000 And it wasn't for lack of a story being that the story was there, but we just couldn't figure out how to get to it.

00:41:55.000 And there was just no sense of, you'd be having these conversations with the guy, you know, there was a guy who was very high up in the gypsy community, and he had a number of sons, and he was big in the fighting world, and he was just connected in various ways, both legal and probably not legal.

00:42:12.000 But you would have conversations with him, and you couldn't figure out what was real and what wasn't real.

00:42:18.000 And there was a slight sense of, you know, they call non-gypsies gorgeous. 1.00

00:42:22.000 That's a phrase they use.

00:42:23.000 Gorger.

00:42:24.000 I think it's G-O-R-G-I-A-S. 1.00

00:42:24.000 Gorgeous. 1.00

00:42:27.000 Or maybe, I mean, the spellings could vary, but we were gorgeous.

00:42:29.000 And I always felt that because we were gorgeous, you know, non-gypsies, that he as a gypsy just felt like no real sense of needing to tell the truth to us a lot of the time. 1.00

00:42:43.000 You know, I'm not trying to generalize that or be, you know, say that's true for all gypsies or travelers, but for him, it was like, because we were gorgeous, it felt like, you know, we just didn't count.

00:42:53.000 Wow.

00:42:54.000 Well, it makes sense.

00:42:55.000 I mean, what a tight-knit culture.

00:42:57.000 I mean, these people are living in these caravans, these, what do they call those?

00:43:02.000 They don't call them trailers.

00:43:04.000 They call them something else.

00:43:05.000 Well, caravans would be caravans.

00:43:09.000 And they, well, was that movie Snatch sort of highlighted it a bit with Brad Pitt.

00:43:15.000 But these people, they travel, you know, and they set up shopping places.

00:43:19.000 And I have some friends from England, and they have friends that live in this wealthy community, this suburban community outside of London.

00:43:29.000 And these people apparently just moved into the area, set up their caravans, set up shop, and just started destroying the area.

00:43:39.000 They started putting garbage everywhere.

00:43:41.000 They started robbing people.

00:43:42.000 I mean, and they can't do anything about it.

00:43:45.000 Apparently, there's like massive protection of these people in England, and they're trying to be polite about it and the way they go about dealing with the situation.

00:43:55.000 And these folks that lived in these multi-million dollar estates are really kind of fucked.

00:44:01.000 Well, it's one of these situations where it's very hard to find the right line because on the one hand, we're talking about a community that is heavily discriminated against, is deeply poor, has massive dislocation in various respects, very high rates of illiteracy, of children not going to school, their children's health not being good, and massively out of work.

00:44:27.000 And then, so, you know, by all normal sort of barometers, you'd think that's a community that needs help, but also there's various social vices that go along with that.

00:44:38.000 And so then I think it's fair to say many of the traveling folk are not well liked in rural areas.

00:44:46.000 And they are, and there's a cultural thing too, where they say, like, it's not in our culture to stay in one place.

00:44:54.000 We have to roam around and we have to be allowed to build a house in a field where you're not supposed to build houses.

00:45:01.000 So it's like one of these, you know, they can sort of make a cultural argument, say, like, we're culturally, you can't, our tradition is, it's like, you know, it's like Native Americans saying like, we have to be allowed to kill whales.

00:45:14.000 You know, like, you know, there's these debates and there's a spectrum of, and there's a point where you say like, well, it's your culture to mutilate female genitalia, but it's still illegal and you can't do it, right?

00:45:24.000 Right.

00:45:24.000 Or what you say, it's your culture to hunt whales.

00:45:26.000 Well, well, we don't really want you to do that, but maybe you can hunt deer Instead, it's our culture to, you know, so you've got to try and find, it's a tricky area.

00:45:35.000 It's very tricky.

00:45:36.000 The area about the hunting whales is a very unique one because I believe there's certain Inuit tribes that are still allowed to hunt certain animals, like seal.

00:45:45.000 They're allowed to hunt seal.

00:45:47.000 And whales, I think.

00:45:48.000 I don't know.

00:45:48.000 Whales.

00:45:49.000 I don't know.

00:45:51.000 Maybe some type of whales.

00:45:53.000 I think in Alaska they allow certain Inuits to hunt certain type of whales.

00:45:59.000 I think it's a very weird area, though, where for anyone else, it's very illegal, frowned upon, endangered species.

00:46:06.000 The fact that they're intelligent mammals, you know, you can't hunt dolphins.

00:46:10.000 But these people that have this long history of doing that, somehow or another, it's preserved as a cultural artifact.

00:46:17.000 It gets very tricky.

00:46:19.000 And the female genitalia mutilation is a very good example of that. 1.00

00:46:24.000 But my friends who are from England, it's a horror story. 1.00

00:46:28.000 These people that live in this community that is besieged by these gypsies, I don't even think you're so allowed to say gypsies. 1.00

00:46:35.000 I think gypsies is like a sort of a negative term.

00:46:37.000 I think it's again, like, I'm not sure.

00:46:39.000 There's a big show in Britain called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

00:46:42.000 So that made me think maybe it was okay.

00:46:44.000 Maybe it's not.

00:46:45.000 I don't know.

00:46:46.000 I think some of them have a problem.

00:46:48.000 Well, the Eskimo is one that apparently Inuits don't like the term Eskimo, but yet they call themselves Eskimo sometimes.

00:46:56.000 It's very tricky.

00:46:57.000 But the people that I know that have friends that live in England, I mean, to them, it's like this horror story.

00:47:05.000 They lived in this beautiful, peaceful countryside, these elegant manners and beautiful states and multi-million dollar properties.

00:47:14.000 And these people have just sort of destroyed it.

00:47:16.000 And now people are moving out and selling their homes.

00:47:19.000 And it's pretty devastating, according to my friend.

00:47:22.000 Yes, that's, I mean, you've got to have a law, you know, laws.

00:47:25.000 We do need a few laws.

00:47:27.000 We certainly do.

00:47:28.000 But, you know, what is, you know, culture, that's where things get strange.

00:47:32.000 You know, what do we accept?

00:47:34.000 Clearly, you know, we moved, we, meaning North Americans, whoever came here from Europe and wherever, when they migrated here, encroached on Native American land and sort of changed the whole rules.

00:47:48.000 So what are the rules remaining?

00:47:50.000 And that's where this whole Indian reservation thing comes into play here.

00:47:54.000 We allowed them to set up shop in these areas, usually that sucked, places that the new people didn't want at all.

00:48:02.000 They allowed these Native Americans to have these areas and then they allowed them to sort of establish their own rules in these areas.

00:48:08.000 So then that was fine for the longest time and they just sort of lived in poverty until they started making casinos.

00:48:15.000 Then it got really strange because then non-Native Americans were allowed to invest in these casinos and then they established these crazy businesses where they make millions and millions and millions of dollars and they allow gambling, which is frowned upon everywhere else. 0.91

00:48:30.000 And again, it's very strange.

00:48:34.000 Very strange.

00:48:34.000 That's another one that I'd like to do a story on.

00:48:36.000 I didn't figure out a way of doing it.

00:48:38.000 But you know, in talking about this, I think what the realization I had was in the end, the stories I do aren't about wackiness, in my view, or even stuff that's sort of ethically dubious, although I sometimes go into those areas.

00:48:56.000 What I'm interested in is angst and the deepest kinds of human angst, where you are facing issues that emotionally take you to the core of your being and your soul.

00:49:10.000 And in some cases, it's, you know, it could be stuff that seems kind of dubious, like the world, I've done a story on brothels, or I did a story about porn performers, and it's the strangeness of taking the intimacy of the sex act and putting that on TV.

00:49:25.000 And then in other cases, it's stories where the angst is something where you're presented with a choice that is really through no fault of yours.

00:49:35.000 Like you've got a parent who's got dementia, serious Alzheimer's, or a loved one, let's say.

00:49:43.000 Your husband, who you've been married to for 50 years, doesn't recognize you anymore and is having sex at his old people's home with some of the other women there. 0.96

00:49:51.000 Are you still married to him?

00:49:52.000 I mean, we did a story about dementia.

00:49:54.000 And again, so that's not really about a choice.

00:49:57.000 Old people homes that get down? 0.55

00:49:59.000 Is that what happens?

00:50:00.000 We're in the post-Viagra era.

00:50:00.000 Is that common?

00:50:02.000 Ah, so they can get Viagra and the old people. 1.00

00:50:04.000 And some of the homes, as I understand it, there, I mean, we didn't actually film elderly people having sex, but it was clear when one of the women I was spending time with was visiting her husband of 30 years.

00:50:21.000 Whenever she visited him, he would take one of his new girlfriends out.

00:50:25.000 They'd go out for a meal and they went out as a sort of threesome because he didn't remember that he was married to his wife.

00:50:33.000 He thought he had a new girlfriend.

00:50:35.000 And so, I mean, but I'm just taking that as an, so when I come to this question of why didn't the story about the mixed martial arts work out, I think it was to do with, like, there wasn't a great deal of angst there.

00:50:51.000 It was kind of healthy and people just venting a little bit of male aggression.

00:50:56.000 Does that make sense?

00:50:57.000 Yes.

00:50:58.000 So I'm trying to give you the DNA of, we started out by talking about wackiness, American culture, but the DNA for what I do is much more about the fundamental existential kind of the irresoluble.

00:51:14.000 Oh my God.

00:51:15.000 Is that a word?

00:51:16.000 I don't know.

00:51:17.000 Let's let it be a word.

00:51:18.000 Like those sort of like those deep conflicts that we have as human beings from which that are just bundled into the whole package of being human.

00:51:27.000 Do you find it limiting in that you have to have conflict in order to have a story?

00:51:32.000 Can you have a story where you're pursuing conflict?

00:51:35.000 No, no, no.

00:51:35.000 The conflict is like, to me, the conflict, that's what I live for.

00:51:40.000 I thrive on experiencing conflict vicariously through the medium of reporting on the stories.

00:51:47.000 Like I couldn't see a story.

00:51:50.000 Like, did you see this film, Her?

00:51:52.000 No, I did not, but I heard about it.

00:51:53.000 So a lot of people love that film.

00:51:55.000 I got a lot of respect for Spike Jones, but I didn't get that film at all because There was no conflict in it.

00:52:03.000 It was just like a love story.

00:52:05.000 Like a man falls in love with his operating system and then she kind of evolves to a higher consciousness and they break up.

00:52:14.000 But they're just having a lot of cozy chats.

00:52:16.000 I sort of ruined it for you.

00:52:17.000 You fucking spoiled it, man.

00:52:19.000 But they kind of have a lot of cozy chats, and I'm watching this, like, okay, I'm not getting, where's this going to start?

00:52:25.000 And I think like, and maybe I'm programmed in a different way from some people, because I could not watch that film and get what people were getting out of it.

00:52:33.000 So you require conflict in order to be engaged.

00:52:37.000 Yes.

00:52:38.000 You must have it.

00:52:39.000 Now, well, I found one of the things that I found really fascinating about your show was the episode on Indian Gurus.

00:52:48.000 That was my favorite.

00:52:50.000 Really?

00:52:50.000 It's just so fucking bizarre.

00:52:54.000 The American physicist was the most bizarre to me.

00:52:58.000 There was first.

00:52:59.000 Was he called Mike?

00:53:00.000 That was a long time ago.

00:53:01.000 Yes, Mike from California.

00:53:05.000 There was a guy, Swamiji.

00:53:07.000 Swamiji, yeah.

00:53:08.000 Sri Ganapati Satyananda Swamiji.

00:53:11.000 I love those names.

00:53:12.000 Yeah, the Indians have fantastic language.

00:53:15.000 Their names are amazing.

00:53:17.000 But there was this character who is this yoga master, quasi spiritual leader, whatever he is, you know, without judging.

00:53:27.000 And there's this guy named Mike, who was a devotee, who lived in this guy's ashram, I guess, and believed that this man could materialize jewelry and objects.

00:53:41.000 And the story of him stomping his foot down and a 50-pound note appeared in his hand.

00:53:48.000 This guy's a fucking physicist.

00:53:49.000 That's right.

00:53:50.000 Which is so strange.

00:53:52.000 That was a good one.

00:53:53.000 It was my favorite.

00:53:54.000 One of my favorite moments was you sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to him, and you asked him whether or not, you said, try not to take this the wrong way, but did you have sadness in your life before you met this guy?

00:54:11.000 And he took it amiss.

00:54:16.000 He didn't like that question.

00:54:18.000 And he said something like, are you asking me, am I a burnout?

00:54:28.000 Am I a burnout?

00:54:30.000 Well, his quote was fascinating because it was about fundamentalism.

00:54:33.000 Yeah, he says, like, I always say that having a breakdown is like the precursor to fundamentalism.

00:54:39.000 Yeah.

00:54:40.000 Well, I thought he was going to say that he had a breakdown.

00:54:42.000 Yeah, so I sort of went with the question, like what he said.

00:54:46.000 I felt like he was setting me up for that, but he didn't see himself as a fundamentalist.

00:54:51.000 And it was a really, it was a misunderstanding.

00:54:53.000 I normally try and get into the difficult questions a little more gracefully.

00:54:57.000 And because I'd misunderstood what he was saying, I don't think you did.

00:55:01.000 I slid into it a bit.

00:55:02.000 I really don't think you did.

00:55:03.000 I think he changed gears.

00:55:04.000 You think?

00:55:05.000 Yeah, I think he was sort of aware of.

00:55:07.000 You know what happened?

00:55:08.000 The deep story there is that I spent, that was at Weird Weekends Days, which was about 10 years ago.

00:55:13.000 And I used to try and spend, it was like a little rule of thumb.

00:55:16.000 I'd find a contributor who I could relate to the most.

00:55:18.000 Like, you take something that seemed really out of whack, like something that on the face of it, you think, how could people really think it's cool to move to Idaho and not pay taxes and think the UN is going to invade?

00:55:29.000 How could people really think that an Indian guru is going to manifest Rolex watches, they call them Siddhis, by meditating and cure cancer by jamming on a keyboard, right? 0.98

00:55:40.000 An old Bon Tempe keyboard.

00:55:42.000 And so, but the technique we used was to try and find the most likable, reasonable, seeming person who exemplified that belief system.

00:55:51.000 So you take a weird subject, but cast it normal, like cast it a person who's likable and relatable.

00:55:57.000 And Mike was the guy, we thought.

00:55:59.000 And when you found that guy, I'd say, and I'll move in, I'll spend a night with them.

00:56:03.000 It was like supposed to signal my commitment to the story as well.

00:56:06.000 So in that story, I spent the night at Mike's ashram.

00:56:12.000 But they had very thin mattresses.

00:56:15.000 Although I later found out there were different thicknesses.

00:56:17.000 Depending on how committed you were, you would choose a thinner mattress.

00:56:21.000 So you can choose a thick one.

00:56:22.000 But I just found a thin one.

00:56:24.000 So I put it on.

00:56:25.000 And I had one of the worst nights of sleep in my life.

00:56:28.000 And I woke up the next morning kind of groggy.

00:56:30.000 And as you are after a night's sleep, not just kind of bad-tempered, but also just my chi wasn't flowing right.

00:56:36.000 And I wasn't in tune with what was going on around me.

00:56:40.000 And so when he asks, he says something about if you, you know, if you're a fundamentalist because you've had a breakdown.

00:56:46.000 And I think, oh, he's saying he had a breakdown, I think.

00:56:49.000 So did you have some sadness in your life?

00:56:51.000 And then he kind of flips out.

00:56:52.000 Let's play that.

00:56:53.000 You can find that.

00:56:54.000 You can find that, Jamie.

00:56:55.000 It's that video that you just showed.

00:56:57.000 If you back up about three or four minutes before that, find it is you'll see Louis getting out of bed and he looks very groggy and then he communicates with this guy and they have this sort of a weird breakdown.

00:57:08.000 That's also the one where I try and call, because then the guru says he's a big fan of Siegfried and Roy or David Copperfield.

00:57:13.000 David Copperfield, yeah.

00:57:14.000 He says he went to Vegas and I took that as a kind of slightly very subtle coded possible admission that he takes an interest in magic and therefore what he does is a kind of conjuring.

00:57:26.000 So I sort of was trying to edge towards getting him to admit that, you know, like we know that you can't make a Rolex watch appear out of thin air, right?

00:57:36.000 And so why not just let's just get that out there and admit that, you know, that's what you do.

00:57:42.000 But he's a guru, so he couldn't really admit it.

00:57:44.000 Yeah, this is...

00:57:53.000 he comes here.

00:57:54.000 You know, he doesn't He's working on a cosmic level.

00:58:03.000 Don't take this the wrong way, Mike.

00:58:05.000 But was there any sadness in your life before you came to see this Swami and committed to him? 1.00

00:58:11.000 I've always have a little saying.

00:58:14.000 Fundamentalism is the aftermath of a nervous breakdown.

00:58:17.000 You know, it's a little bit coarse, but no.

00:58:23.000 Did you have a nervous break?

00:58:25.000 No.

00:58:27.000 Would I come up with that?

00:58:27.000 Yeah.

00:58:28.000 Yeah, please.

00:58:30.000 No, I know.

00:58:32.000 Meaning like pause this.

00:58:38.000 All this, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know.

00:58:41.000 And then he goes, MIRBERN.

00:58:43.000 yeah.

00:58:45.000 But I think these are all tells.

00:58:47.000 I think he changed gears on you.

00:58:49.000 I really think his statement, his initial statement, fundamentalism and about nervous breakdowns, I think that's what he's really saying.

00:58:57.000 I really do.

00:58:58.000 And then when you confront him on it, he realizes he's on camera.

00:59:01.000 That's why all the you know, you know, you know, he's thinking too much.

00:59:04.000 He's trying to come up with a way to spin that story in a better light.

00:59:08.000 He's not just free-flowing what's going on in his mind.

00:59:11.000 He's dancing around the subject, trying to wrestle it into a more acceptable, palatable form.

00:59:16.000 I think I agree.

00:59:17.000 But I think what I see, my take on it is he's emotionally, you know, close to the surface and probably has been through a lot of difficult things.

00:59:30.000 I mean, I'm getting dangerously close to kind of diagnosing him in absentia, but I also think he's trying to step outside it.

00:59:40.000 He's trying to say, I agree with you, but I'm not one of them.

00:59:43.000 Like, I don't think he thinks that he did have a breakdown.

00:59:46.000 Well, it could be both.

00:59:47.000 He's trying to play it off.

00:59:48.000 Yeah.

00:59:48.000 I mean, I think.

00:59:49.000 Maybe.

00:59:50.000 He was a lovely guy, though.

00:59:52.000 He was from the Bay Area.

00:59:53.000 I hope he's doing okay.

00:59:54.000 He seemed like a very nice guy, which is one of the interesting aspects of it.

00:59:57.000 He also seemed fairly intelligent.

00:59:59.000 But he also claimed to be a total, complete skeptic.

01:00:03.000 But look, you know, Isaac, I mean, I don't want to go on a little lecture, but Isaac Newton believed in alchemy, right?

01:00:08.000 Did he?

01:00:09.000 Yeah.

01:00:09.000 And spent like the last 20 years of his life, having made probably the most important scientific breakthroughs, you know, of all time.

01:00:17.000 the last 20 years of his life, kind of calculating the dimensions of Noah's Ark based on biblical information.

01:00:24.000 I mean, just wacko stuff, and believed in the philosopher's stone and the idea of...

01:00:39.000 Sir Isaac Newton, didn't he also have an issue with sexuality?

01:00:43.000 I believe he was asexual or something.

01:00:45.000 I think he was something like that.

01:00:47.000 He was a pretty weird dude.

01:00:48.000 And then, I mean, at the same time, it may have taken someone with a certain credulity or a willingness to believe in occult forces to come up with the notion of gravitational pull through a vacuum at a distance, when until then, they'd been grappling with science as mechanistic.

01:01:11.000 In other words, what I'm saying is gravity, nothing explains why gravity exists.

01:01:16.000 You know, I mean, why do objects attract one another at a distance through a vacuum?

01:01:16.000 Right.

01:01:23.000 They just do.

01:01:24.000 Like, there's no prior cause before that.

01:01:27.000 So in a strange way, his mind may have been predisposed.

01:01:32.000 Am I going totally on the screen?

01:01:33.000 No, no, no, you're not.

01:01:34.000 And I don't think there's anything...

01:01:48.000 He might have thought that there was some sort of a scientific basis to alchemy that he just couldn't hunt down.

01:01:54.000 Well, exactly.

01:01:55.000 I think that's what I'm trying to say.

01:01:56.000 And at that time, the paradigm of science in the 17th century was that all that nonsense that they used to believe in the Middle Ages was nonsense that you didn't have, and even Aristotelian ideas of things going up.

01:02:10.000 Everything could be explained mechanistically.

01:02:11.000 It was a mechanistic that objects banged into each other, and that's why things moved.

01:02:17.000 So it took a leap of faith to say, you know what, maybe objects move each other through forces that are invisible and can't really be explained.

01:02:26.000 Well, it's also important to note that most scientists were religious back then.

01:02:31.000 Yes.

01:02:32.000 Most scientists were Christians. 0.51

01:02:35.000 Or Islamic. 0.99

01:02:37.000 It was very common to be a Christian, very, very uncommon to be an atheist.

01:02:43.000 In fact, anyone espousing atheistic ideas was thought to be a fucking nut, which is really interesting.

01:02:48.000 Today, where you look at the vast majority of scientists, a huge percentage of them either are agnostic or claim to be atheists.

01:02:57.000 You know, I think it would be comparable to saying, nowadays, saying I'm a pedophile.

01:03:01.000 You know, I think actually being an atheist in the 17th century was so outside the norm of what people considered acceptable.

01:03:10.000 I mean, I think that's the only way we could get our brains around thinking you would be shunned.

01:03:16.000 People would look at you and think, like, what is wrong with you?

01:03:19.000 Because it was just taken for granted in all levels of acceptable society.

01:03:25.000 Well, I think it's really interesting just going back into our past, just recent past, that we have with recordings and television and watching how different our culture is from today, say from the 1920s and 1930s, even films from the 1940s and 50s.

01:03:44.000 They vary.

01:03:45.000 There's so much of a difference.

01:03:47.000 I'm a stand-up comedian, and when I go back and I listen to the stand-up comedians of the 1950s and the 1960s, I mean, it's incredible how much different culture is between now and then.

01:03:59.000 The greatest, probably the most important comedian ever is Lenny Bruce, in my opinion.

01:04:04.000 But if you try to listen to Lenny Bruce today, it's really not funny.

01:04:08.000 No, it's not.

01:04:09.000 It's not funny at all.

01:04:10.000 And that's almost blasphemy to say.

01:04:12.000 But it's true because our culture has changed so much since then that it's just not relevant anymore.

01:04:20.000 The things that he's saying and the way he's saying them, the humor, the shockingness of it then, it's so normal today.

01:04:27.000 Do you find any old, like, do you find the Marx Brothers funny or Chaplin?

01:04:33.000 There's some physical comedy that's still pretty funny.

01:04:35.000 It's okay, but if it was new, it would suck.

01:04:38.000 You know what I mean?

01:04:39.000 If it was released today, if someone tried to release a Three Stooges movie today, you'd be like, what a piece of shit.

01:04:45.000 And that's a person, you know, I have great respect for the Three Stooges.

01:04:49.000 It sounds crazy to say, but I think that it's an evidence of the references.

01:04:57.000 Our culture is just extremely different now.

01:05:00.000 And I think that's one of the more challenging aspects of trying to look back on the 1600s and trying to imagine what life was like, trying to go back to the days when they used to have to put skirts on table legs because they were thinking that people were going to be sexually attracted to table legs and piano legs.

01:05:20.000 It's hard for people to imagine that that was a real thing.

01:05:23.000 What about thinking of 100 years in the future and what we'll look back on now as culturally weird and that we take for granted?

01:05:33.000 Oh, there'll be so much.

01:05:34.000 There'll be so much.

01:05:35.000 What would it be?

01:05:36.000 Oh, there's massive amounts of contradictions that we have in our society.

01:05:40.000 I mean, I think, first of all, the way people dress will be bizarre.

01:05:45.000 Women's high heels will be laughed at. 1.00

01:05:47.000 Women's high heels, like when you see women walk around with spikes, you know, and women love wearing stilettos and pumps and all these really bizarre feet-distorting shoe wear or footwear. 0.97

01:05:58.000 I mean, I think that's one of the things that's going to be looked back upon.

01:06:01.000 Ties.

01:06:02.000 People look back on ties the way they looked at powdered wigs from the George Washington era.

01:06:09.000 So strange.

01:06:10.000 I mean, and racism was normal in the 19th century.

01:06:14.000 And even someone like Lincoln, who we think of as being a hero of the civil rights struggle, freeing the slaves, the Emancipation Proclamation, made a number of deeply racist statements.

01:06:26.000 Yeah, the world was different.

01:06:29.000 The way they looked at the world was very, very, very different.

01:06:33.000 Have you followed the whole story in Britain about show business celebrities being accused of sex crimes based on behavior in the 1970s?

01:06:43.000 I did.

01:06:44.000 I followed the whole thing about that one guy who was that famous talk show host.

01:06:49.000 Jimmy Saville?

01:06:50.000 Yes.

01:06:51.000 Wow.

01:06:52.000 That is fucking crazy.

01:06:53.000 That guy was a pedophile, and apparently for decades, and it was covered up, much like the Jerry Sandusky case in America.

01:07:02.000 A lot of folks are aware of that.

01:07:04.000 The Pennsylvania state, the guy who was a coach, a football coach, who was just a massive pedophile.

01:07:10.000 And they covered it up.

01:07:11.000 They covered it up so much, so I don't know if you're familiar with that case, but the DA, the guy who was a, the prosecutor was trying to try to find out information.

01:07:20.000 He turned up missing.

01:07:21.000 He turned up missing, and they found his laptop in a river with no hard drive.

01:07:25.000 They killed that fucking guy.

01:07:27.000 They killed the guy that is investigating Jerry Sandusky.

01:07:30.000 Someone did.

01:07:31.000 And you would go, well, why would someone do that when you're talking about a pedophile?

01:07:34.000 Well, then you find out how much money the school makes.

01:07:37.000 And the school makes from their football program.

01:07:39.000 The school makes from people who went to that school who donate to the school.

01:07:44.000 And it's an insane amount of money.

01:07:46.000 It's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:07:49.000 But did you know that I was the only person who lived with Jimmy Saville on and off for two weeks and made a documentary about him?

01:07:58.000 No.

01:07:59.000 In 2000.

01:08:00.000 You could find that on YouTube.

01:08:02.000 What was that like?

01:08:04.000 Well, see, it's been a matter of a lot of soul-searching for me because of the strangeness of then discovering that he had this track record of apparently sexually abusing.

01:08:16.000 Were you that keen and excited?

01:08:18.000 Oh my goodness.

01:08:19.000 He's talking and it just appears.

01:08:22.000 Yeah, wow.

01:08:24.000 So go ahead, play some of it.

01:08:25.000 No difference.

01:08:26.000 That's not a bad double.

01:08:28.000 Between us, we should be able to do something.

01:08:32.000 When Louis met Jimmy.

01:08:34.000 So you spent two weeks with that guy?

01:08:37.000 More or less, yeah, off and on.

01:08:38.000 Over about three or four months.

01:08:40.000 For Americans who are not aware of this story at all, it's not a very popular story.

01:08:44.000 Explain who he is.

01:08:45.000 So there's no exact cultural figure in America to compare him with, but he was mainly known as a DJ.

01:08:53.000 And from the late 60s right through to the 90s, he was just on the radio a lot.

01:09:01.000 And then he got a TV show on the back of his DJing career where it was called Jibble Fixit.

01:09:06.000 And people would call in with requests for special fix-its, which were dreams that he would make come true for them.

01:09:12.000 So kids would say, I've always wanted to box with a big box, you know, meet Muhammad Ali or drive a ferry or whatever it was, dance with Shawadi Wadi, or, you know, like just, and they would come on and he would fix it for them to do their things.

01:09:29.000 It was a very popular mainstream TV show for 20 years.

01:09:32.000 And all, so everyone in Britain knew who he was and he was very, very, in his appearance, he was very odd.

01:09:40.000 You know, you could see him there, but even more so in his younger years, he had this helmet of hair.

01:09:44.000 And so you always looked at him and thought, God, he looks really odd, like something not right about him.

01:09:49.000 But at the same time, he became a knight.

01:09:52.000 He was very well in the establishment.

01:09:56.000 He became a knight?

01:09:57.000 Yeah, he was knighted and he raised millions and millions of dollars for pounds for charity.

01:10:03.000 So he was like this unique cultural figure.

01:10:05.000 And then after he died, it turned out that he had sexually assaulted a number of women, and many of them were underage.

01:10:14.000 So it was a women thing. 1.00

01:10:15.000 I thought it was boys as well.

01:10:17.000 Well, that's been alleged.

01:10:19.000 And I don't know, you know, with all this stuff, the truth is not kind of been completely established.

01:10:26.000 Because he hasn't been, you know, he's dead.

01:10:29.000 He can't be tried in court.

01:10:32.000 But some men have stepped forward and said that they were abused by him when they were children.

01:10:36.000 So it was all children, boys and girls.

01:10:38.000 When you say women, it was some of them. 1.00

01:10:42.000 Some of the people who said they were assaulted, they said it happened when they were in their 30s, 20s.

01:10:48.000 And then if he had a victim profile, it seems to have been younger teens.

01:10:54.000 Oh, God, wow.

01:10:55.000 Anyway, so that's a whole other can of words.

01:10:57.000 But I just, since you mentioned it, I felt I should mention that I had a connection with you.

01:11:03.000 So what was your experience when you were with him for two weeks?

01:11:06.000 Well, there was a scene.

01:11:08.000 This is the scene.

01:11:09.000 You should play this bit.

01:11:10.000 In the sense of today, i.e., you're talking about the body, you don't bother with anybody else, etc.

01:11:17.000 No, never.

01:11:20.000 Never.

01:11:21.000 Not even for like a week.

01:11:23.000 No, not even for a week.

01:11:24.000 So he's saying he never had a girlfriend?

01:11:25.000 No.

01:11:27.000 Meaning he wants to fuck other people.

01:11:29.000 Well, he says, don't bother with anybody else.

01:11:31.000 I think, yeah, basically, that's what he's saying there.

01:11:34.000 He's saying that I've never had a girlfriend, I've only kind of flitted from girl to girl.

01:11:41.000 He says, friends that are girls, thousands of them, but girlfriend, no.

01:11:45.000 And he's like 70 there.

01:11:47.000 Yeah.

01:11:48.000 But so I didn't really, even at that time, I didn't, I mean, you decoded that straight away.

01:11:54.000 At the time, I wasn't really sure exactly what he was saying.

01:11:57.000 Really?

01:11:58.000 Yeah.

01:11:59.000 Because I think because he'd been so confusing and he'd said so many different things about the nature.

01:12:06.000 I mean, he'd been so evasive on the subject.

01:12:10.000 But yeah, absolutely.

01:12:11.000 He's saying there that he had lots of different girls who he would sleep with.

01:12:16.000 But this line of conversation leads me to believe that you were suspicious about him, that there's something wrong with him.

01:12:22.000 It was well known that his interests were unclear.

01:12:29.000 Like, in other words, it was well known there was a mystery.

01:12:31.000 I would say that.

01:12:32.000 No one ever, people always said, like, what are his interests?

01:12:35.000 I don't understand.

01:12:36.000 He's never had a girlfriend or a wife or, you know, maybe he's gay or maybe he's celibate.

01:12:43.000 Maybe he's asexual. 0.58

01:12:46.000 And so I knew that there was a blank spot, like a gray area, a space where he kept his sexuality kind of.

01:12:56.000 And if you questioned him on it, it was clear there was a secret, and I didn't know what the secret was.

01:13:02.000 And there were rumors of him being attracted to underage girls was one of the rumors.

01:13:09.000 Wow.

01:13:10.000 So this is not something that just dropped after he died.

01:13:13.000 This was something that was...

01:13:19.000 Because the fact that he was knighted?

01:13:22.000 Not for me.

01:13:23.000 I never felt inhibited from asking tough questions.

01:13:27.000 Well, you wouldn't.

01:13:28.000 Was culture, were they- I don't think, you know, there wasn't like a memo that went out saying, don't touch him.

01:13:28.000 That's your nature.

01:13:43.000 He does a lot of works for charity.

01:13:44.000 But there was an atmosphere of feeling that he was doing good works for charity and that he was a VIP.

01:13:54.000 And, you know, I think abuse victims, even when it's not a celebrity, there's a lot of pressure on them not to come forward due to embarrassment and a misplaced sense of guilt.

01:14:08.000 And when it's a prominent member of the celebrity world who's viewed as a kind of a benevolent philanthropist, even more so.

01:14:22.000 Yeah, that was the issue with Sandusky as well, that he worked in charities, charitable organizations that helped a lot of young kids that were orphans.

01:14:32.000 And he took a lot of these young kids on trips.

01:14:36.000 And this was apparently when he had sexually molested them, allegedly, what have you.

01:14:41.000 I don't know if he's ever admitted to any of this, but of course he's obviously guilty of something.

01:14:46.000 But that was his thing, that he had helped all these kids, and he was involved in all these charitable organizations.

01:14:53.000 But there were suspicions about him, and there was stories about him for a long time.

01:14:58.000 And someone had protected him.

01:15:00.000 And the idea is the reason why they had protected him was because it would take down Penn State, this enormous money-making machine, this huge cultural, it was a huge business, and it was also like a big part of the community.

01:15:18.000 I mean, Penn State is this institution, this established institution that would be brought down by this.

01:15:25.000 And victims had come forward and gone to the police or gone to the university authorities?

01:15:32.000 It's a good question.

01:15:34.000 My friend Dama Reira is actually friends with the prosecutor, the one who chased him down at the end, not the guy that turned up missing, but one of the ones who was involved at the very end when he did wind up getting prosecuted.

01:15:48.000 That guy, he's in jail now, right?

01:15:50.000 Who Sandusky?

01:15:51.000 Yeah, he's in jail, yeah.

01:15:54.000 The whole thing is very disgusting, but it's so disturbing to think that they protected him.

01:16:00.000 Like, that was the whole thing about this Joe Paterno character who was the much legendary coach.

01:16:07.000 Who knew what was going on?

01:16:09.000 Allegedly, yes.

01:16:10.000 Yeah.

01:16:11.000 Allegedly knew.

01:16:12.000 And he took early retirement.

01:16:14.000 He died very quickly afterwards, too.

01:16:16.000 Yeah, I mean, I think the news was just absolutely devastating.

01:16:19.000 And when he was, I don't think he took early retirement.

01:16:22.000 I believe he was removed.

01:16:23.000 I believe he was removed as a coach.

01:16:26.000 And that's when everybody went crazy.

01:16:28.000 I mean, there was like riots when they removed him as the coach.

01:16:31.000 And then the news came out.

01:16:33.000 And then when the news came out, everybody was like, oh, fuck.

01:16:36.000 And then he died shortly afterwards.

01:16:37.000 And I would probably safely say that a good reason why he died was not just old age.

01:16:44.000 The devastating effect of this all becoming public was probably just unbelievably hard to deal with.

01:16:52.000 Of course, you know, not minimizing what happened to those kids is much more difficult for them to deal with it.

01:16:57.000 The whole thing is just totally disgusting, but fascinating in some sort of a strange, bizarre way that human beings are capable of doing something like that, that they're capable of shielding this monster.

01:17:08.000 Hideous.

01:17:09.000 Yeah.

01:17:09.000 It really is.

01:17:11.000 And so, but I'm curious about the fact that you enjoyed the guru story.

01:17:18.000 Because I look back at that and it's not one that I would, I feel is kind of one of my finest moments.

01:17:26.000 I loved it.

01:17:27.000 And I also loved the part where you met the woman who was this guru, this female guru, and she hugged you.

01:17:34.000 Right, and I had a sort of transcendental experience.

01:17:37.000 What happened there?

01:17:38.000 What was that?

01:17:39.000 It's hard to explain, but, you know, sometimes I think, you know, in a male way, I'm not that connected to the deepest sources of my emotions.

01:17:50.000 So I don't really know what it was, but I do think that being hugged is a very simple, and it's a physical act, but It creates all kinds of emotions inside of you, and it just sort of welled up from nowhere.

01:18:06.000 It's just really odd.

01:18:07.000 I don't really know exactly what happened.

01:18:09.000 I thought about that quite a bit after I watched it, and one of the things that I took from it was the emotions and just the whole group of people waiting in line to hug someone, the anticipation of it, and the love that's in the air.

01:18:23.000 There's sort of this group-minded thing that's going on.

01:18:26.000 And there's a lot of music, loud music.

01:18:28.000 There's a lot of people around.

01:18:31.000 There's a very heightened atmosphere.

01:18:34.000 And then she gave me a sort of turbo hug, too.

01:18:36.000 Like, she gave me the executive platinum card hug.

01:18:40.000 And I think they whispered to her, like, give this guy, you know, the works.

01:18:45.000 The works.

01:18:47.000 And so she hugged me for longer, and she was actually muttering things into my ear.

01:18:52.000 What was she saying?

01:18:53.000 Not words that I recognized, but it was like, it was sort of like, So is it Punjab?

01:19:03.000 Comforting noises.

01:19:05.000 That's the word.

01:19:05.000 Punjab is the word for their language, right?

01:19:07.000 Well, there's several languages.

01:19:08.000 She may have spoken Hindi or there's a few others too.

01:19:13.000 Too many to mention.

01:19:15.000 I would think that just the experience itself of being around all those people that were in this sort of dancing, joyous state and this long line to get to this woman.

01:19:25.000 And she probably had some sincere, loving gesture towards everyone as well.

01:19:31.000 I mean, imagine what it would be like to be adored by so many people and such a large group of people that are established there to come see you and get in line to hug you.

01:19:40.000 And then you did it.

01:19:42.000 But you were really like moved by it.

01:19:44.000 I was, yeah.

01:19:44.000 I mean, I think as well, I was under a lot of pressure.

01:19:47.000 You know, when I'm doing those stories, I feel very pent up and I'm aware that I have one chance to kind of get the thing that I'm trying to get.

01:19:56.000 And it was one of those classic things where I was supposed to hug her the day before.

01:20:01.000 And then we took a crew break and went for an Indian meal.

01:20:04.000 And then when we arrived at the hugging tent, they'd packed up and left.

01:20:08.000 And I was like, oh my God, we missed the hug.

01:20:11.000 And then it turned out she was doing two nights.

01:20:13.000 She was doing like two dates in that city because she was on tour, like hugging her way around India.

01:20:18.000 So I was like, oh, we're fucked.

01:20:19.000 How are we going to get the hug now?

01:20:22.000 Just because like our crew wanted a nice meal.

01:20:26.000 And so it turned out, oh my God, they're here another night.

01:20:28.000 So it was like this long lead up to getting the hug.

01:20:32.000 And so it was a tightly wound coil of anxiety.

01:20:35.000 So when I finally got there and had the hug, it was several levels on which I felt just sort of relieved.

01:20:42.000 Wow, that's fascinating.

01:20:44.000 That's fascinating.

01:20:45.000 But you know, religion's, you know, it's one of life's mysteries.

01:20:49.000 And I'm trying to do a thing on Scientology at the moment.

01:20:55.000 And that's proving quite a difficult road.

01:20:58.000 Well, religion is certainly one of life's great mysteries.

01:21:03.000 I think there's also group states of like-mindedness that I find quite fascinating.

01:21:08.000 And you can get them when people...

01:21:14.000 It was a UFC fight for the troops.

01:21:16.000 And they sang the national anthem.

01:21:19.000 It's in the middle of the Iraq war.

01:21:21.000 And when they sang the national anthem, the intensity and the feeling in the air, the patriotism, just the emotions involved.

01:21:35.000 You're dealing with thousands of people in the audience who have lost loved ones, lost friends, maybe been wounded themselves, maybe taken lives themselves.

01:21:44.000 Many of them, I'm sure, taken lives themselves.

01:21:47.000 And the palpable, the patriotism and the emotion.

01:21:51.000 And I am a person who was absolutely against all of these wars, whether it's the Iraq invasion, the Afghanistan war.

01:21:59.000 I thought the whole thing was about money and the whole thing was ill-advised.

01:22:03.000 I thought that the idea of going in for these supposed weapons of mass destruction was incredibly transparent.

01:22:10.000 And then I thought that the government and the military-industrial complex was capitalizing on a horrible event in September 11th and using that as an impetus to go and invade these countries and take over, you know, resources.

01:22:25.000 But that moment when that thing was happening and that person was singing the national anthem, was a soldier that was singing the national anthem and everyone was standing there proud and the energy in the air and the cheer when it was over.

01:22:41.000 You were ready to go to war.

01:22:42.000 I mean, you were ready to support the troops.

01:22:44.000 You're ready to not just support the troops, but support the war.

01:22:47.000 You're ready to back them.

01:22:48.000 I mean, there's this weird thing that happens, these group-minded sort of states that...

01:22:59.000 I felt something for sure.

01:23:00.000 Did you cry?

01:23:01.000 Did you feel something?

01:23:02.000 I could have easily cried if I coaxed myself into it or if I entertained those thoughts.

01:23:09.000 I mean, I was working at the time.

01:23:11.000 I was there for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

01:23:16.000 But the state of mind, the group state, was fucking intense.

01:23:23.000 And it was palpable.

01:23:25.000 It was tangible.

01:23:27.000 It was in the air.

01:23:28.000 And this is coming from a person who I believe that it's very important to have military.

01:23:34.000 I believe that there are bad people in the world.

01:23:36.000 I believe that there's sometimes no other solutions.

01:23:41.000 I don't believe in pacifism when you're dealing with thugs and evil people in the world.

01:23:46.000 But I also believe that there's good people that are sent into bad situations for all the wrong reasons by people that are trying to make money.

01:23:55.000 But in that state, in that state, being there with all those soldiers, being there with all those people, man, you got swept away by it.

01:24:03.000 You just carried away by this intense feeling of patriotism.

01:24:08.000 It's indescribable because you could feel the emotions of those people that are in that room.

01:24:15.000 And I wonder if that's similar to what you were experiencing when you were there.

01:24:20.000 I'm sure.

01:24:21.000 I'm sure, very close.

01:24:23.000 And it's not the only time when, I mean, it's the only time I think I felt that exact sort of emotion of whatever that was, sort of religious transcendence.

01:24:33.000 But I've, you know, there's plenty of times when you are around people.

01:24:37.000 I mean, in a way, a lot of the stories I do are about the altered consciousness of being exposed to people who believe things passionately and the slight sense of Stockholm syndrome that sets in when you're there for prolonged periods, you know, and the weird change in consciousness that takes place.

01:24:57.000 You know, I did a story where I was with the Phelps clan, the Westboro Baptist Church.

01:25:02.000 I spent three weeks with them.

01:25:05.000 In fact, I did two different things, but for the first one, I was there for three weeks.

01:25:07.000 It was called The Most Hated Family in America.

01:25:10.000 And it was really odd because when you're inside their little compound in their castle, imbibing their air and their doctrine round the clock, stuff that seems really weird and hateful on the outside starts to seem mundane.

01:25:28.000 You know, you're still able to step outside and say, I'm here to do a job and this is wrong, but you get anesthetized.

01:25:35.000 Your mind starts to get influenced.

01:25:37.000 It's really strange.

01:25:39.000 I would imagine it is.

01:25:40.000 I found the Phelps one very fascinating because of the one guy that came there to film a documentary on them and then became one of them.

01:25:49.000 He joined up, Steve.

01:25:50.000 Yeah, he's very high up there now.

01:25:52.000 Steve, and his daughter left a couple of years ago.

01:25:58.000 We went back and did a follow-up because a couple of the people we featured in the first one then left.

01:26:03.000 But Steve almost, you could argue, by dint of having been born outside the church, was compensating by being even more hardcore because he was the fiercest and the most, in conversation, he was the hardest and the most abusive, I guess, most verbally full of bile.

01:26:26.000 And he also, when you questioned anything that he was saying, would start insulting you.

01:26:31.000 Yeah.

01:26:32.000 Yeah, and aggressively insulting you.

01:26:34.000 And I found that fascinating as well.

01:26:36.000 It wasn't just that you could have questions.

01:26:38.000 It was that, what are you fucking idiot?

01:26:40.000 It was like immediately this aggressive sort of.

01:26:43.000 He told me I was the most, I can't remember the phrase.

01:26:46.000 He said, it sounded like the most iniquitous or the most evil man in the history of the earth.

01:26:50.000 Or one of the three most evil men.

01:26:52.000 He said, you're right up there with Pontius Pilate.

01:26:55.000 Like I was one of the three most evil men of all time, like, you know, way beyond Hitler.

01:27:00.000 And the reason was because I'd been exposed to the teachings.

01:27:06.000 Like, I'd been given a special opportunity.

01:27:10.000 Like, I was blessed beyond measure because I had been exposed for three weeks to the pure teachings of the only people preaching salvation on earth.

01:27:21.000 And having seen that and still rejected it, then that put me way beyond the pale.

01:27:29.000 I found it incredibly fascinating how effective a guy who sucks at speaking is at running a cult.

01:27:36.000 Like, he's a terrible orator.

01:27:39.000 He's not like this really charismatic.

01:27:41.000 Gremps, the main guy.

01:27:42.000 You know, he's very old now.

01:27:43.000 Like, he's in his time, he could do it.

01:27:46.000 I thought he was, I think you're being a little unfair.

01:27:49.000 Really?

01:27:49.000 You remember the bit where he says, you're going to eat your babies?

01:27:53.000 Like, he's still, he's very old and kind of decrepit, but he still cranks it up and he goes, you're going to eat your babies.

01:28:02.000 See, I don't agree.

01:28:03.000 I felt it was so one note.

01:28:05.000 It was like death metal.

01:28:06.000 You're going to eat your babies. 1.00

01:28:07.000 You didn't mind your babies?

01:28:08.000 Yeah.

01:28:09.000 I mean, it was just so obvious.

01:28:11.000 It's just, there's...

01:28:14.000 You like Billy Graham?

01:28:15.000 Like, what preaching style do you prefer?

01:28:17.000 Sam Kinnison.

01:28:18.000 That's my favorite.

01:28:21.000 I just think that there are people who are better at it than Phelps.

01:28:26.000 Phelps is so negative and so abrasive.

01:28:28.000 I think there's almost his slow build.

01:28:33.000 He starts, dearly beloved.

01:28:35.000 He has a slow build, and then he ramps it up, and then he hits his kind of power chorus of you're going to eat your babies.

01:28:44.000 I think there's something when someone's unbelievably evil and aggressive where you don't want them to be angry at you.

01:28:51.000 So you're willing to sort of like bend your mind to what they're saying and accept it and allow it in.

01:28:59.000 And that's what I felt watching that guy.

01:29:01.000 And I've seen that in him before in his speeches.

01:29:04.000 I've tried to sort of rationalize or understand what's going on when he talks.

01:29:08.000 Why would anybody get sucked into all this evil, hateful talk and not question it?

01:29:12.000 But I think he's so over the top and so aggressive that he's frightening to people.

01:29:17.000 Like when you sat down with him and talked to him.

01:29:19.000 Here's the thing.

01:29:20.000 I mean, by and large, they don't really make converts.

01:29:23.000 They make a few, but he's not trying to recruit new personnel.

01:29:28.000 If anything, it's the opposite.

01:29:31.000 They view it as a confirmation of their holy status and of their salvation that they're rejected because there's some verse somewhere in the Bible saying, ye will be hated of men and people will throw things at you.

01:29:46.000 It's somewhere in the Bible.

01:29:48.000 And so every time someone says, you're full of it, you're scum, we hate you, what they hear is, yes, we are saved.

01:29:58.000 So like 90% of the people in there were born into it and are family members.

01:30:02.000 And in fact, they hemorrhage membership constantly.

01:30:07.000 They kick people out.

01:30:08.000 So when he's preaching, he's not thinking, how do I get new followers?

01:30:13.000 Well, I'm not saying that he's thinking that.

01:30:16.000 I'm wondering the effectiveness of retaining anyone ever.

01:30:26.000 Well, you would know, obviously, much more than I. You were there for three weeks, deeply embedded into that organization.

01:30:34.000 He hated me.

01:30:35.000 Gramps did.

01:30:36.000 And he was one of the few times where you try and do an interview with someone who clearly can't stand you.

01:30:42.000 And I said something like, how can you really believe that there's no, like, even if you accept that what you say is true, you know, their position is there's no other church in the world that is preaching the doctrine.

01:30:55.000 I said, how would you even know?

01:30:56.000 Like, there could be some tiny church in Nigeria that's preaching the exact same message.

01:31:02.000 You wouldn't even know.

01:31:02.000 How would you know?

01:31:03.000 He goes, like, and he says, I know about them.

01:31:06.000 And I asked another question.

01:31:07.000 He goes, asked and answered.

01:31:08.000 And I asked him another question.

01:31:09.000 He goes, asked and answered.

01:31:10.000 And he just kept saying asked and answered.

01:31:12.000 Yeah.

01:31:12.000 Which is a legal term.

01:31:14.000 I mean, and you know, what do you do?

01:31:17.000 What do you do then?

01:31:18.000 Well, there's nothing you could do.

01:31:19.000 He's the epitome of a closed-minded person.

01:31:22.000 I mean, he is closed-minded.

01:31:25.000 Not just that, but this arrogant assumption that he's the man with the word of God and that it comes out of this angry old fuckhead's face.

01:31:34.000 You know, it's an amazing thing that this guy is able to put together this group.

01:31:38.000 I mean, I just, this is the moment where you sat down and talked to this guy.

01:31:43.000 You know, it was true. 0.75

01:31:44.000 How long have you been with him by then?

01:31:46.000 I think this was, I'm trying to, I think it was the end of a, we made three trips each of a week.

01:31:50.000 This was the second trip last day.

01:31:53.000 If you had just a little knowledge of the Bible, you would know that what you just said is stupidity in space.

01:32:00.000 I don't know how to deal with a question like that.

01:32:03.000 You're just too dumb.

01:32:04.000 Sorry.

01:32:06.000 And you've got the duty to know the Bible as well as I do.

01:32:10.000 Why?

01:32:11.000 Because you're a human being.

01:32:12.000 Because God Almighty made you.

01:32:14.000 And God Almighty is going to send you past to hell.

01:32:17.000 Is it accurate to say that you regard the Whisper Baptist Church as the only church that's giving biblical preaching according to the Word of God?

01:32:25.000 Just three minutes.

01:32:26.000 No, the answer to your question is yes.

01:32:28.000 No, it was five minutes.

01:32:29.000 Well, but I've already talked to you, didn't I?

01:32:32.000 So there's three left.

01:32:33.000 Do you believe in Westboro Baptist Church you're preaching the only preaching that is according to the word of God as far as you know?

01:32:40.000 I asked and answered next.

01:32:42.000 Next question.

01:32:44.000 As far as you're concerned.

01:32:46.000 We got it.

01:32:47.000 Yeah.

01:32:48.000 I mean, this is this angry, old, shitty man who's able to get a bunch of people to listen to him.

01:32:54.000 I find his kids and his grandkids.

01:32:57.000 Well, how many people were there?

01:32:58.000 It seems like there was a little 20 or 30 people or 19.

01:33:02.000 Okay, that's a lot.

01:33:03.000 Yeah, he had 11.

01:33:04.000 He had, I think, I want to get this right.

01:33:06.000 I think it was like 12 kids, but four of them had left the church.

01:33:11.000 And each of them had had quite a few kids.

01:33:15.000 But I think if you're an egomaniac, number one, number two, if for whatever reason you cleave to a certain kind of dogmatic religious outlook, it's probably not that difficult to run, to have a cult.

01:33:31.000 It's unfortunate, but I think you're right.

01:33:34.000 It's shocking, but I think you're right.

01:33:36.000 I've often said that all you have to do is speak confidently and clearly, and most people will be like, I can't do that.

01:33:42.000 Yeah, and have no compunction about saying that you speak the word of God or whatever it is.

01:33:47.000 It's really all you have to do, right?

01:33:49.000 You have to be the guy with the answers.

01:33:50.000 You have to be the guy that absolutely, not just the answers as a human, but the answers from above.

01:33:55.000 I mean, have you read the new Menson book, the new Charles Menson book by Jeff Gwynn?

01:33:59.000 It came out last year.

01:34:00.000 No, I try not to read anything that comes out about Manson.

01:34:04.000 I'll ask you why in a second, but when you read it, it's like, oh my word, you just have to be kind of come out with a few kind of riddles that you've learned from street pimps, and people fall into your lap.

01:34:17.000 Or so it would seem.

01:34:18.000 You made me.

01:34:20.000 I ate your garbage, man.

01:34:22.000 You people made me.

01:34:24.000 I'm your product.

01:34:26.000 All that fucking maniacal shit.

01:34:30.000 I think that that guy's the Bob Hope of serial killers.

01:34:33.000 You know, because Bob Hope was a comedian that never really made anybody in my generation laugh.

01:34:37.000 Like, we always knew him as a comedian, but it's like, just really wasn't funny.

01:34:42.000 Manson was never scary to me.

01:34:44.000 Like, there's some real serial killers that were fucking terrifying.

01:34:47.000 But when you think of serial killers, it's always Manson, Manson.

01:34:51.000 Manson is the guy, the crazy guy, the wild guy, because he carved a fucking swastika in his head.

01:34:56.000 if you I mean Henry Lee Lucas the guy from that they made that movie about him Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer allegedly killed somewhere around 60 people you know Right.

01:35:12.000 He got other people to kill.

01:35:14.000 Yes, because he got the children that he sent them out.

01:35:18.000 Tex Watson was his big killer, right?

01:35:20.000 Tex Watson.

01:35:21.000 Become a born-again Christian.

01:35:23.000 And I think he writes children's books or something fucking creepy like that.

01:35:27.000 And you know what?

01:35:27.000 A number of them still believe, you know?

01:35:30.000 That Charlie's still, yeah.

01:35:34.000 Otherwise, they're idiots.

01:35:34.000 Of course.

01:35:36.000 They're fucked up.

01:35:39.000 Well, what he did, what they did do to Sharon Tate, you know, Tate LaBianca murders is fucking unbelievably horrific.

01:35:45.000 I mean, cut a baby out of her body and smeared blood all over the walls.

01:35:49.000 And it was all really, really terrifying shit.

01:35:52.000 I mean, don't get me wrong, but I mean, there's been a series of really, really evil people that almost no one knows about.

01:36:00.000 And it's bizarre what becomes popular, what becomes famous in the world of evil people.

01:36:06.000 You know, and sometimes it's just a name, you know, Manson, you know, and everybody remembers that name.

01:36:12.000 They're too lazy to kind of like investigate and find out about other names.

01:36:16.000 But there's been a, you know, there's so many goddamn serial killers in this country or have been.

01:36:22.000 It's bizarre that that one guy gets so much ink.

01:36:26.000 Yeah, well, Geraldo can take his share of responsibility.

01:36:30.000 It was Geraldo's fault?

01:36:32.000 Well, he did a number of landmark interviews in the, I guess in the 70s or the early 80s.

01:36:36.000 You can see them on YouTube where he sort of turned him into a celebrity.

01:36:41.000 I mean, I guess the cases were big at the time, but then he Geraldo did some shows.

01:36:48.000 I think Diane Sawyer might have done an interview. 0.87

01:36:50.000 And then they passed laws to say that you couldn't, basically you couldn't interview Charles Menson anymore.

01:36:56.000 It's fascinating to see what Geraldo has become.

01:36:59.000 Do you know that Geraldo was like a counterculture figure at one time?

01:37:02.000 Geraldo was the guy who introduced the world to the Zapruder film.

01:37:06.000 He had Dick Gregory on his television show, and he showed the world a Zapruder film, essentially establishing the idea that it was more than one person or someone else other than Lee Harvey Oswald that killed Kennedy.

01:37:19.000 Now he's on Fox News.

01:37:21.000 And what happened to Dick Gregory?

01:37:23.000 Dick Gregory's still around.

01:37:25.000 He's not really a comedian anymore.

01:37:27.000 I think he does some shows, but he's more of an activist.

01:37:31.000 he's very, very old now.

01:37:33.000 But I saw something recently where Dick Gregory was sitting down with Paul Mooney, who's a great old comedian from Los Angeles, who was a writer for Richard Pryor and just a great comedian.

01:37:44.000 And the two of them were sitting around talking about racism and culture.

01:37:49.000 Some of his jokes back in the day were pretty good.

01:37:51.000 He was very good.

01:37:52.000 Dick Gregory was very good.

01:37:53.000 But he was also not just a comedian.

01:37:56.000 He was an activist.

01:37:57.000 He was the guy who somehow or another got a hold of the Zapruder film.

01:38:00.000 The Zapruder film was made, obviously, in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated, but it was bought by Time Life magazine, I believe, by whoever owns Life Magazine or Time at the time.

01:38:13.000 And they just put it on a shelf for years.

01:38:18.000 The 1970s is when Geraldo had it on his show.

01:38:22.000 Before that, it had never been aired?

01:38:24.000 Never.

01:38:25.000 They just made a TV show about it, I think.

01:38:28.000 About the Sapruder film?

01:38:29.000 Yeah, like a Paul Jamantika.

01:38:32.000 Look at the way they're dressed.

01:38:35.000 75, so think about that.

01:38:37.000 Eight years later.

01:38:38.000 Crazy.

01:38:39.000 If you're at all queasy, then don't watch this film.

01:38:42.000 Just put on the late night movie because this is very heavy.

01:38:49.000 It's the film shot by the Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruda, and it's the execution of President Kennedy.

01:38:58.000 By the way, hurrah the hospital.

01:38:59.000 Bob, and just to please narrate what we're seeing as we show this film.

01:39:05.000 Now, this is the Zapruder film.

01:39:07.000 Okay, so the cars are coming along now into Dealy Plaza.

01:39:10.000 Yes, these are the lead motorcycles of the motorcade.

01:39:12.000 All right, now with the President and Mrs. Kennedy is also Governor Connolly.

01:39:16.000 Right.

01:39:17.000 Now, before he goes behind the sign, the President is waving to the crowd.

01:39:20.000 When he comes out from behind the sign, he is shot.

01:39:22.000 Then Governor Connolly is shot.

01:39:24.000 He's already been hit.

01:39:25.000 He's already been hit.

01:39:27.000 And now at the bottom of the screen, the headshot.

01:39:31.000 That's the shot that blew off his head.

01:39:33.000 It's the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in the movies.

01:39:36.000 Now, the Warren Commission said that all of the shots were fired from behind by Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone assassin, firing at the president.

01:39:43.000 And as you can see clearly, the head is thrown violently backwards.

01:39:47.000 Completely consistent with the shot from the front, right.

01:39:50.000 Now this is an extreme blow-up of just the president from the film.

01:39:56.000 Coming out behind the sign, he's shot.

01:39:58.000 He's hit from the front here.

01:39:59.000 From the front, too.

01:40:00.000 From the front.

01:40:01.000 Now, Jackie doesn't realize what's happened yet.

01:40:03.000 She goes to his aid.

01:40:05.000 And now?

01:40:10.000 He's hit again the violent backward motion.

01:40:12.000 I've never seen that bit.

01:40:14.000 Really?

01:40:16.000 You've never seen a Zapruder film?

01:40:18.000 Just like the bits they showed in JFK, you know, the Oliver Stone film.

01:40:22.000 Yeah.

01:40:22.000 I had never seen...

01:40:26.000 I don't know.

01:40:27.000 I mean, it's pretty common.

01:40:30.000 I mean, they've broken it down.

01:40:30.000 It's available.

01:40:32.000 It's been enhanced.

01:40:33.000 There's a variety of different bits.

01:40:35.000 Do you believe there were two gunmen?

01:40:37.000 I think there was probably more than two gunmen.

01:40:39.000 Yeah.

01:40:41.000 But I don't think it's in either or.

01:40:43.000 Was one of them Woody Harrelson's dad?

01:40:45.000 It very well could have been.

01:40:46.000 Yeah.

01:40:47.000 Isn't that fascinating?

01:40:48.000 I don't think it was in either or because everybody wants to say that it was either Lee Harvey Oswald or it was other people.

01:40:55.000 It could have been Lee Harvey Oswald and other people.

01:40:58.000 And that's, I don't understand why people have to have everything black and white.

01:41:02.000 And everybody says, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

01:41:04.000 Like, why do you think that?

01:41:05.000 Why do you think that?

01:41:06.000 Like, why would anybody think that he acted alone?

01:41:08.000 If you look at all the injuries that Kennedy had to his body, first of all, the shot in the neck, it's an entry wound.

01:41:14.000 In Bethesda, Maryland, they called it a tracheotomy.

01:41:18.000 But in Dallas, Fort Worth, when he was first administered by, taken care of by doctors, they said it was an entry wound.

01:41:25.000 They changed what the wound in his neck was in order to fit with the established narrative of Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone shooter.

01:41:33.000 That's one reason to think that there was more than one person.

01:41:36.000 The other reason to think there was more than one person was a single bullet theory.

01:41:39.000 And I've heard a lot of people say that the single bullet theory could have happened, that bullets can act very weird when they go through, and they absolutely can.

01:41:47.000 People have shot people and bullets shot someone from the front and the bullet has ricocheted inside their head and come out their eye and landed in front.

01:41:56.000 I mean, that has happened.

01:41:58.000 Bullets take very strange paths when they ricochet off bones.

01:42:01.000 That's not what's weird about the bullet passing through two people.

01:42:05.000 What's weird about the bullet passing through two people is, first of all, why did they think that one bullet did that?

01:42:11.000 And the reason for that is because a bullet hit the underpass, ricocheted off a curbstone, and hurt some person that was standing in the underpass.

01:42:19.000 So they had to attribute one of the shots, one of the three shots, to that bullet.

01:42:23.000 They knew that Kennedy and Connolly had both been hit, and then they knew that there was a headshot.

01:42:28.000 So those are three bullets.

01:42:29.000 One bullet that hit the curbstone, the other bullet that passed through two bodies, and then the headshot.

01:42:33.000 That's the reason why they had to make the entry wound on the neck a tracheotomy.

01:42:38.000 And that's the reason why they had to say that one bullet had caused these wounds on two different people.

01:42:43.000 They found the bullet on the gurney, in Connolly's hospital gurney, when he was administering the hospital.

01:42:49.000 Oh, look, we found a bullet in pristine condition.

01:42:51.000 If you've ever shot a bullet and that bullet hit bone, when bullets hit bone, they distort.

01:42:57.000 The idea that that bullet came out like that after going through two people's bodies and hitting bone, it's ridiculous.

01:43:04.000 It doesn't make any sense.

01:43:05.000 That's the reason why I think that more than one person was involved.

01:43:09.000 And that's the reason why there's a book called Best Evidence by a guy named David Lifton who goes into great detail.

01:43:16.000 He was a bookkeeper and an accountant.

01:43:19.000 And he had some assignment involving the Warren Commission.

01:43:24.000 And he was such a meticulous guy that he actually read the entire Warren Commission, which is some insane number of pages.

01:43:32.000 But he read it, and he wrote a book called Best Evidence, all about all the contradictions in the Warren Commission report and why he thought that the entire thing was established to make a predetermined conclusion and to establish that with the American public.

01:43:47.000 And he thought it was all horseshit.

01:43:49.000 So I don't think so.

01:43:51.000 I think more than one person was involved.

01:43:52.000 But it could have been Lee Harvey Oswald, too.

01:43:55.000 That's what people, I don't understand why people have to have either Lee Harvey Oswald killed them or there was other people.

01:44:01.000 Like it has to be either a lone assassin or other people.

01:44:03.000 I think Lee Harvey Oswald clearly was a fucked up guy who had some sort of a connection to the government.

01:44:10.000 He went to Russia, lived in Russia, and then came back to the United States, got a passport till he was living in Russia, and then was readmitted back into the United States and had some dubious connections to the world of government.

01:44:26.000 It was a very strange, strange story that in this day and age, you know, all these years later, we're most likely never going to get the full details.

01:44:35.000 How many impacts do you see in that video?

01:44:37.000 It's hard to say.

01:44:38.000 When Kennedy is holding his body like this, most likely he had been hit.

01:44:44.000 But they're saying that it was from the front.

01:44:45.000 How do you know it was from the front?

01:44:47.000 It was from behind the sign.

01:44:48.000 He could have been hit from the back.

01:44:50.000 It's hard to tell what happened.

01:44:51.000 I mean, he's going like this.

01:44:52.000 You're assuming that that's because he was hit.

01:44:55.000 But it might not have been.

01:44:56.000 I mean, he might have dropped his fucking pen.

01:44:58.000 I mean, he might have been like, where's my shit?

01:45:00.000 And then got hit in the head.

01:45:01.000 I don't know.

01:45:02.000 You know, I don't know.

01:45:03.000 It's very difficult to tell from that video how many times he's been hit.

01:45:08.000 But the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone seems the least likely of the scenarios.

01:45:16.000 And then the photos of E. Howard Hunt, who was arrested allegedly, along with a bunch of people that were quote-unquote hobos that they had arrested behind the grassy knoll, but then they were all released.

01:45:31.000 They were hobos, but they were dressed normal. 0.99

01:45:33.000 They were dressed like regular people.

01:45:35.000 And then Woody Harrelson's dad, who is a known murderer, who supposedly has some sort of a connection to it.

01:45:43.000 I don't know.

01:45:44.000 But there's a guy who wanted to get rid of the Federal Reserve.

01:45:44.000 I don't know.

01:45:48.000 There's a guy who wanted to get rid of the CIA.

01:45:50.000 He wanted to pull out of Vietnam.

01:45:52.000 I mean, there's a lot of shit that Kennedy wanted.

01:45:54.000 He wanted to put us out of Vietnam.

01:45:57.000 He wanted to disrupt the military-industrial complex.

01:46:01.000 He wanted to do a lot of things that were very unpopular.

01:46:05.000 I mean, in a way, you could pose the question as not why would he have been assassinated, but why aren't more presidents assassinated?

01:46:11.000 Well, look at a guy like Obama who gets in office.

01:46:13.000 It's amazing to me that given the level of vitriol that's directed at him from quarters in the far right, that someone – But I think every day there are threats, and probably some of them are credible threats against him.

01:46:28.000 Sure.

01:46:28.000 I'm sure the CIA or rather the Secret Service does a great job of stopping a lot of assassination attempts.

01:46:35.000 I mean, if we lived in a time like during the Lincoln administration when everything was very just, you know, they just didn't have the type of security that they have today.

01:46:42.000 They didn't have this sort of technology, the ability to track people, the ability to keep an eye on questionable folks.

01:46:48.000 Did you follow...

01:46:55.000 Did you know that?

01:46:55.000 Question with...

01:47:01.000 He got a visit from the Secret Service.

01:47:01.000 Yeah, about Obama.

01:47:03.000 Yeah, he said that he would wind up in jail if Obama was elected again.

01:47:09.000 He would wind up in jail.

01:47:10.000 And that was construed as a threat.

01:47:12.000 when they visited him.

01:47:12.000 Yeah, I think it was a very interesting thing.

01:47:13.000 Because I made a program about...

01:47:16.000 I started out working at TV with Michael Moore.

01:47:20.000 He gave me my break on TV.

01:47:22.000 And I worked on a show called TV Nation.

01:47:24.000 And one of the early segments was with Ted Nugent.

01:47:27.000 I've always had a sort of fascination with the far right.

01:47:30.000 Yeah, he's a very fascinating guy on the far right because there's been so much bizarre shit in his past.

01:47:39.000 He adopted some 17-year-old girl or became a legal custody, took legal custody of her so he could have sex with her.

01:47:46.000 Is that right?

01:47:47.000 And his parents allowed it, or her parents.

01:47:49.000 I know that.

01:47:50.000 It said in a recent New York Times story that he had admitted to having, I guess, unlawful sexual relations with underage girl or girls.

01:48:02.000 Yeah, there was something that Courtney Love said that she gave him a blowjob when she was 12. 0.89

01:48:02.000 Does that ring up? 0.89

01:48:07.000 Yeah, apparently.

01:48:07.000 Really?

01:48:09.000 Allegedly.

01:48:11.000 He's a fascinating character.

01:48:13.000 He's a radical far-right sort of a guy.

01:48:16.000 But what he said about Obama was clearly a joke.

01:48:21.000 but you can't have jokes about Obama.

01:48:23.000 Like, we had a guy on...

01:48:31.000 Racist?

01:48:32.000 Well, this was a different occasion.

01:48:34.000 This was when he called him a subhuman mongrel.

01:48:37.000 Okay.

01:48:38.000 Yeah, well, that's not what we're talking about.

01:48:41.000 I don't think that was the reason why he got a visit.

01:48:43.000 No, that's not what the visit.

01:48:44.000 Yeah, sorry, I switched the subject.

01:48:46.000 He was more recently in the news because of this comment.

01:48:50.000 Yeah, the visit was before the re-election.

01:48:52.000 He said if Obama got in office again, he would wind up being arrested.

01:48:55.000 Right.

01:48:55.000 I'm sure that was a joke.

01:48:56.000 So the CIA visited him, and I think he's just talking shit.

01:49:00.000 I think he just talks a lot.

01:49:01.000 He does an incredible amount of media.

01:49:03.000 I'm pretty fascinated by that guy.

01:49:05.000 He does an incredible amount of media.

01:49:06.000 When I was with him, he said that I said something about the Oklahoma City bombing.

01:49:13.000 I said, why is your flag at half mast?

01:49:15.000 And he said, because of the Oklahoma City bombing.

01:49:17.000 It was at the time when it had just come out that Terry Nichols had had some relationship with Timothy McVeigh.

01:49:28.000 And I said, well, it seems as though the suspects that they have in custody, it was pre-trial, have the same sort of profile as you, Ted.

01:49:36.000 They're pro-gun rights members of the Michigan militia who you say you support, which was kind of a cheeky question.

01:49:44.000 If I was asking it now, I'd ask it in a different way.

01:49:48.000 But he kind of went nuts and started shouting abuse at me.

01:49:55.000 What did he say?

01:49:55.000 He said he became loggeric.

01:49:58.000 He became incapable.

01:49:59.000 He was so angry.

01:50:01.000 He didn't hit me or anything.

01:50:02.000 He just went, but you see that this is what the media does.

01:50:07.000 Did I mention you could kiss my ass? 0.80

01:50:09.000 Like he said that.

01:50:10.000 That's a good Ted Nuji impression, by the way.

01:50:12.000 You even took the tone.

01:50:14.000 He said, and then he said, I said, what do you think about Janet Reno?

01:50:17.000 He said, she's worse than Hitler. 1.00

01:50:20.000 And I was like, worse than Hitler?

01:50:23.000 Like, even if you hate Janet Reno, she's not rounding people up and sending them to their death in the millions.

01:50:32.000 And then he had a moment.

01:50:33.000 He said, well, no one's worse than Hitler, I suppose. 0.86

01:50:36.000 And he kind of climbed down from it.

01:50:37.000 Well, I think there's a thing that he does where he just talks a lot.

01:50:41.000 And I think when you talk a lot, you just need to keep talking.

01:50:44.000 He's also very angry.

01:50:45.000 He talks a lot and he's very angry.

01:50:47.000 He's just very keyed up.

01:50:49.000 But he watches.

01:50:49.000 Sometimes.

01:50:50.000 He's kind of a likeable guy.

01:50:51.000 Like, he's actually quite...

01:50:52.000 And he can be quite...

01:50:57.000 And he's capable of being kind of a mellow, interesting dude as well.

01:51:01.000 Yes, yes.

01:51:01.000 And that's what I was going to say.

01:51:02.000 Like, you watch him on his hunting show.

01:51:04.000 He seems very happy.

01:51:05.000 Like, I hunt, and I've watched his hunting show many times.

01:51:08.000 And it's his hunting in quotes is very odd, too.

01:51:13.000 And this leads us to another subject that I wanted to cover with you.

01:51:18.000 He hunts in his yard.

01:51:21.000 He's got a fused-in compound of 300 acres in Texas.

01:51:27.000 And he's got one in Michigan as well.

01:51:30.000 And he leaves out food and waits in a tree and shoots these animals.

01:51:36.000 So it would be considered canned hunting then?

01:51:39.000 100%.

01:51:40.000 Yes.

01:51:41.000 But he's using a bow and arrow, which to me, I've got more time for bow and arrow hunters in the sense that it's so much more difficult.

01:51:50.000 Unless you're leaving food out and the animals are eating food 10 feet away from you and you're hiding in a tree.

01:51:56.000 Right, that helps.

01:51:57.000 It helps a lot.

01:51:58.000 It's a very controversial method of hunting.

01:52:01.000 And there's two types of people when it comes to the hunting community.

01:52:05.000 There's people that are fair chase hunters and people that believe in high fence operations.

01:52:09.000 And sometimes they're interchangeable.

01:52:12.000 Sometimes people support both.

01:52:15.000 And this is the way I feel about it.

01:52:18.000 I think that it's a great way of acquiring meat.

01:52:20.000 It's probably way more ethical than being a farmer.

01:52:23.000 You know, if you're going to look at it that way, you're going to say, well, this is how I acquire my meat.

01:52:26.000 I leave food out for them and then I shoot them.

01:52:28.000 Okay, I see that and I agree with that.

01:52:32.000 I think it's better than farming in that sense.

01:52:34.000 But to call it hunting the same way you would call hunting, like climbing up to the Alps and looking for a mountain goat that lives in the wild or going through the Rockies and chasing down a moose that lives in the wild, it's two completely different sort of endeavors.

01:52:54.000 When you've got these animals fenced in, you have an account of how many are there.

01:52:58.000 There's 300 deer here.

01:52:59.000 I need to kill one of them.

01:53:01.000 And that's not really hunting.

01:53:03.000 And one of your shows, which I found very fascinating that I watched last night, was about canned hunts in Africa.

01:53:11.000 And that was really fascinating.

01:53:11.000 Right.

01:53:14.000 What a contradictory and complex subject.

01:53:19.000 Because for folks who don't know, Africa was on the verge of a lot of the animals that are now being hunted were on the verge of extinction.

01:53:29.000 Now they have extremely high numbers, all in these high fence operations.

01:53:34.000 And these people go over there and hunt them.

01:53:37.000 And that guy that you had that owned that operation, that got crazy with you and put his hand on the camera and pulled it down, was very emotional.

01:53:46.000 I was making the exact same point you just made.

01:53:49.000 And I think the phrase I said, you know, if you've got a fence up and the animal knows it's going to be fed, and you just hide in your little bunker until the warthog or the lion shows up knowing that the food's out, and then you take a pop at it.

01:54:05.000 I said, it's like tennis without a net.

01:54:08.000 And that was what he took exception to.

01:54:08.000 Yes.

01:54:10.000 Yeah.

01:54:11.000 You said it's very artificial.

01:54:12.000 Yeah.

01:54:13.000 And he agreed to it.

01:54:13.000 Something very...

01:54:14.000 But then what was fascinating to me, he was like, you don't understand Africa.

01:54:14.000 Yeah.

01:54:18.000 Africa's fucked. 0.96

01:54:19.000 Yeah.

01:54:20.000 Africa is fucked.

01:54:21.000 Yeah.

01:54:22.000 I hate fucking elephants.

01:54:24.000 They don't eat the shitty bush.

01:54:26.000 They always eat the tall trees.

01:54:28.000 Yeah.

01:54:28.000 I hate fucking elephants.

01:54:29.000 And he goes on a rant about Africa is fucked because we eat everything and we kill everything.

01:54:35.000 And he's sort of...

01:54:37.000 I mean, it's a great moment because he...

01:54:40.000 In the act of asking, I don't think the question was that cheeky.

01:54:43.000 It was a fair question.

01:54:44.000 In fact, he'd said similar things to me about, you know, is it real hunting?

01:54:49.000 No, it's not real hunting, but some people don't want a big flesh card.

01:54:52.000 They want a little shitty car. 0.96

01:54:53.000 Right.

01:54:54.000 You know, that was his analogy.

01:54:55.000 And I said, so when I say tens without net, he would agree.

01:54:58.000 But he was kind of a little tweaked.

01:55:00.000 I think his point, though...

01:55:03.000 And it set him up to deliver a very impassioned monologue on many of the problems that are very real, you know, in Africa.

01:55:03.000 And his point was well taken.

01:55:11.000 Yeah, most certainly.

01:55:12.000 I also found it incredibly fascinating when you guys were feeding the lions.

01:55:17.000 Because I saw both sides there.

01:55:21.000 On one side, I saw, like, this is so strange.

01:55:23.000 There's this enclosed, fenced-in small area where these lions are being bred.

01:55:30.000 And they're hurling these calves, these dead calves, over the top of the fence.

01:55:36.000 And these lions are eating these calves. 0.58

01:55:38.000 And you were talking about how clean they looked.

01:55:41.000 And he's like, yeah, they don't fight.

01:55:43.000 They have food.

01:55:43.000 Here it is right here.

01:55:44.000 I mean, but the other thing where he was saying is, like, you think these things are your friend?

01:55:50.000 Like, if I put you over there, if you went through, they would tear you apart, like, instantly.

01:55:54.000 Tear you apart.

01:55:55.000 And play with your clothes.

01:55:57.000 Yeah, and play with your clothes. 0.69

01:55:59.000 That was fucking dark.

01:56:00.000 All that will be reminded of the top part of your skull and your boots.

01:56:03.000 The rest, they will eat everything.

01:56:05.000 And they will play with your clothes. 0.64

01:56:08.000 Oh, that's so fucked because it's so true.

01:56:13.000 When you're close to them, it's like, just to get close to that fence, like, I'm probably, you know, 15, 20 feet away.

01:56:20.000 But just to get, it was something in you that almost prevents you, like, you know you're safe.

01:56:25.000 Like, there's a fence.

01:56:25.000 He's not going to knock the fence out.

01:56:26.000 But you just physically, there's something really embedded in the psyche that tells you don't get any closer.

01:56:33.000 Like, lions, when you're up close with them, they're petrified.

01:56:35.000 Pull that video back again, but a little bit earlier, when you see the, when you throw in the calves over the fence.

01:56:43.000 And you get to see the looks in their eyes when they're staring at you.

01:56:47.000 They're fucking so terrifying.

01:56:49.000 You don't need to put the volume on it.

01:56:51.000 Just to show the images of it.

01:56:52.000 They're so terrifying.

01:56:54.000 It's such an unbelievable, and it's very different than the zoo.

01:56:58.000 The zoo is a different experience.

01:57:01.000 And I don't know if it's because the animals get that food slid to them underneath.

01:57:05.000 I mean, it's a plate of food.

01:57:07.000 It's not an actual animal that they're tearing apart.

01:57:10.000 I, you know, I don't know.

01:57:11.000 I think, I don't know.

01:57:13.000 Maybe they, I think he kept his lions a bit hungrier than the ones you find at the zoo.

01:57:18.000 I think maybe the zoos get handled.

01:57:20.000 So they're used to human contact as part of it.

01:57:23.000 I don't think they get handled ever.

01:57:24.000 At zoos?

01:57:25.000 Yeah.

01:57:25.000 They can't, you can't handle lions.

01:57:28.000 I mean, you can if you train them.

01:57:31.000 But I don't think they're trained.

01:57:32.000 I did a story about, I mean, you know, Seek Freedom Roy.

01:57:38.000 I mean, it illustrates both sides of the equation.

01:57:40.000 I did another story.

01:57:41.000 Those are tigers, right?

01:57:42.000 But same thing, basically.

01:57:42.000 Tigers.

01:57:43.000 I think tigers are a little easier to train than lions.

01:57:46.000 I don't know about that.

01:57:49.000 But I know, I did a story called America's Most Dangerous Pets.

01:57:53.000 And it was about people.

01:57:54.000 I don't know if this is true now, but at the time it was true that there are more tigers in captivity in Texas than there are in the wild in India.

01:58:04.000 I mean, there's thousands and thousands of tigers in America and kept as pets in people's backyards.

01:58:11.000 And what I heard again and again was like, I will get in the cage and stroke my tiger or my lion and cuddle it.

01:58:19.000 But I am not getting close to my monkeys.

01:58:19.000 And that's fine.

01:58:22.000 The big fear was if you have a, especially chimpanzees, like they are, don't go near the chimpanzees.

01:58:32.000 They will rip your nose off, rip your balls off, and eat your face. 0.98

01:58:32.000 They'll fuck you up. 0.98

01:58:38.000 Yeah, there's something really creepy about chimpanzee attacks, too, is they're too aware.

01:58:43.000 They're too intelligent.

01:58:45.000 Like, they go after what makes you a person.

01:58:46.000 They can plan.

01:58:47.000 And they know that you, at some level, they know you are the one keeping them in there.

01:58:52.000 But also, I think they're intelligent enough to become seriously neurotic and dysfunctional from confinement.

01:59:00.000 Yes, yes.

01:59:01.000 That's a good point.

01:59:02.000 Whereas a tiger, I don't say it's a good life for a tiger, but a a tiger doesn't necessarily become dysfunctional from being pent up but a um a chimpanzee is like a person and you need you need stimulation yeah and not only that they also know to go cut the video they also know to to go after your fingers they go after your balls like they know what you want yes well you want to keep your fingers so they bite your fingers off like there's there's a certain intelligence to their attack that's very disturbing,

01:59:32.000 as opposed to like a tiger that just wants to kill you.

01:59:34.000 Tiger will bite your nails.

01:59:35.000 I read a thing about a chimpanzee attack at a zoo.

01:59:37.000 Like, before I went out to do the story, I was reading up on chimpanzee attacks because I knew for the story to work, I'd probably at some point have to cuddle a chimpanzee or something like that.

01:59:48.000 And it was making me nervous.

01:59:49.000 Like, it was making me more nervous than the idea of going into a prison cell or a jail cell where, you know, you know there's enough rationality on the part of the prisoner that he's not going to attack me and bite my balls.

01:59:58.000 I mean, he's not going to shiv me.

02:00:01.000 There's nothing in it for him.

02:00:02.000 You know, why would an inmate attack a journalist?

02:00:02.000 Right.

02:00:05.000 It doesn't make any sense.

02:00:06.000 But the chimpanzee is not going to think like that.

02:00:09.000 And I read an account of an attack at a zoo, a chimpanzee, and the local news turned up and the chimpanzee ran over and bit the cameraman's balls off.

02:00:19.000 Oh, fuck.

02:00:21.000 And so then we're there filming.

02:00:22.000 I'm like, I just don't want to get in the cage with the chimpanzee.

02:00:26.000 Jesus Christ.

02:00:27.000 Yeah, no desire.

02:00:29.000 Animals are fucking terrifying if they're violent, man.

02:00:29.000 No desire.

02:00:32.000 You know, really crazy animals.

02:00:34.000 That was a small one.

02:00:35.000 I was like, okay, I'll cuddle this one.

02:00:37.000 We had a small one on news radio once, a sitcom that I was on.

02:00:40.000 Oh, yeah, I remember news radio.

02:00:41.000 And he was only two years old.

02:00:44.000 Or excuse me, less than two years old, I believe.

02:00:46.000 He was a baby.

02:00:47.000 He was small.

02:00:48.000 He's got a little zapper on him there.

02:00:49.000 They give him electric shocks.

02:00:51.000 If he gets out of line.

02:00:52.000 The one I had a hold of was a little smaller than that one.

02:00:56.000 And he climbed on my back and fucking slapped me on the back.

02:01:01.000 Just so strong.

02:01:03.000 He's so strong.

02:01:04.000 It was so small.

02:01:05.000 It was a small chimp, a baby chimp, but it was... 0.99

02:01:19.000 Like a person, like a full-grown man on your back.

02:01:22.000 It was a baby, but it had the strength of a man.

02:01:25.000 Yes.

02:01:25.000 Like the way it moved me around.

02:01:27.000 That would make sense because the cliche, and it may be true that gets passed around, is that a full-grown chimp has the strength of seven men.

02:01:34.000 A 500-pound man is what I've heard.

02:01:36.000 Yeah.

02:01:36.000 Really?

02:01:37.000 See, that I would pay to see.

02:01:38.000 Like a UFC guy against a full-grown chimp.

02:01:41.000 Well, you would have to take the chimp's main weapon away, which is its mouth. 0.69

02:01:45.000 You would put a mouth guard on it or something?

02:01:47.000 Yeah, you would have to.

02:01:51.000 Are there guys that would do that?

02:01:53.000 I'm sure there's an idiot out there that would do almost anything that you came up with.

02:01:56.000 Those guys that you interviewed that were pro wrestlers that were beating each other with fucking barbed wire, I'm sure if you put a mask on one of those dummies, they would get in there and scrap of the chimpanzee.

02:02:08.000 But my point that I wanted to get back to was the complex, contradictory aspect of those canned hunts in Africa.

02:02:18.000 You had a draw on a warthog. 0.83

02:02:21.000 You were thinking about shooting it, and you're like, I can't do this.

02:02:24.000 Yeah, it didn't make any sense.

02:02:27.000 It wouldn't make any sense.

02:02:28.000 I mean, it was just the whole situation, the idea that I'm going to take the life of this animal just to indulge my own sense of either what I think I need for this program to work or my sense of like, oh, I'm going to experience this to see what it feels like to take the life.

02:02:49.000 It didn't feel like, I just didn't feel an urge to do it.

02:02:52.000 Like, I could have forced myself.

02:02:53.000 If you'd put a gun to my head and said, do it, I would have done it, of course.

02:02:56.000 Of course.

02:02:56.000 Or if you were starving to death.

02:02:57.000 If I was starving, but just to do it, oh, I want to see what this feels like.

02:03:01.000 It didn't feel right.

02:03:03.000 You captured some of the more disturbing aspects of hunting on that show because those people were not doing it to acquire meat at all.

02:03:11.000 And you...

02:03:14.000 Yeah, they were trophy hunters and they weren't doing it to acquire meat.

02:03:19.000 These people were doing it to have this, to kill things.

02:03:23.000 And the video of them being all joyful and happy when they all got together and compared notes after their individual hunts, like several individual hunting parties had went out.

02:03:35.000 They all came out like after the second day, their first full day of hunting.

02:03:39.000 And we do an inventory of, they'd got like, you know, three zebras, two kudu, a gazelle, you know, and there was an inventory of kind of, and they, and you can sort of pick them out like they're on a shopping list.

02:03:52.000 Yeah.

02:03:53.000 And they know it's like $5,000 for a kudu and it's $3,000 for a zebra and it's $20,000 for a giraffe and $50,000 for a rhino.

02:04:02.000 And stuff I thought was endangered is you can actually, I guess, not endangered.

02:04:07.000 And you just, you pay enough.

02:04:08.000 I said, I thought rhinos were endangered.

02:04:10.000 The guy who Rian Fosslewa, who ran the place, he said, if you want 20, I can get you 20.

02:04:17.000 Yeah, how fucking crazy is that?

02:04:18.000 Well, there were $100,000 American in which well that was what was going on in America.

02:04:23.000 There was a big issue recently all over the news where there was a safari club that had auctioned, it was in Dallas, and they had auctioned off a hunt for an endangered rhino.

02:04:33.000 And the idea was that all this money that they had auctioned off would go.

02:04:37.000 There was a controversy about it, that's right.

02:04:39.000 And it was also controversial because they were going to have to do something with that rhino because it was an old rhino.

02:04:39.000 Yes.

02:04:45.000 And the old rhinos will kill the young males.

02:04:47.000 They don't breed anymore, but they're still, they're very aggressive and territorial.

02:04:52.000 And they'll destroy the breeding male population. 0.80

02:04:55.000 They'll actually kill some of them. 1.00

02:04:57.000 And so they had to remove them.

02:04:59.000 They had to remove this rhino in order to keep the herd healthy.

02:05:03.000 Well, this is the thing.

02:05:04.000 If you want to see the most grisly, way more grisly and upsetting than any kind of UFC show, it's watch a nature program with the elephants getting lost in the mist and getting attacked by, you know, like the level of gore.

02:05:18.000 It's like they're like snuff films, in a sense.

02:05:21.000 Sure.

02:05:22.000 And so, and I think one thing that Ted Nugent used to say when I was filming with him was he objected to the Disney of our experience of the natural world.

02:05:32.000 I think he's got an excellent point there.

02:05:34.000 I mean, he's got an excellent point.

02:05:35.000 I mean, think about the animals that we take this weird approach with, like polar bears or, you know, grizzly bears like yogi.

02:05:45.000 We turn them into our friends.

02:05:47.000 You know, polar bears are the weirdest ones.

02:05:49.000 You know, Polar bears are like Klondike bars.

02:05:52.000 What would you do for a Klondike bar?

02:05:54.000 Or they're fucking drinking Coke.

02:05:56.000 It's like this weird thing that we do with the anthropomorphomorphizing these really violent, dangerous animals.

02:06:05.000 And some of the more violent, more dangerous animals are the ones that we make them cuddly and cute and bizarrely twist their nature up.

02:06:14.000 And that sometimes is the only exposure that people have to these animals for a long time.

02:06:21.000 Like my children.

02:06:23.000 My children, I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old that are just starting to understand that the animals that they see in cartoons are not real animals and that real animals don't talk and real animals are very different.

02:06:35.000 I mean, they obviously see the five-year-old especially sees that.

02:06:39.000 But I'm starting to explain to her that if you ever see a bear, like bears are not to be approached and they're not cuddly.

02:06:46.000 They're not your friends.

02:06:47.000 And there's a real big difference between a bear that's trained, like a bear in a movie, and a bear that you see in the wild.

02:06:54.000 And so then they're like, well, are there dogs in the wild?

02:06:56.000 Well, not necessarily.

02:06:58.000 Sometimes there are.

02:06:59.000 And if you see a wild dog, they are dangerous as well.

02:07:01.000 Because the only thing that's not dangerous about dogs is that they are pets and that we train them, we get them used to people.

02:07:08.000 So there's this weird relationship with animals that I have to sort of relay to my children.

02:07:12.000 And in doing so, I start to review this bizarre thing that we have, this weird relationship that we have to certain animals.

02:07:22.000 Absolutely.

02:07:22.000 I mean, I don't think we really know how we feel about a lot of animals.

02:07:27.000 And if we gave half as much thought to the conditions in industrial, in factory farms, in the way chickens and pigs are raised, as we do to endangered species,

02:07:43.000 I mean, I'm more concerned about that in a way, like the conditions of how our food is created, that pigs get fed their own minced up piglets, you know, and just all kinds of hideous practices.

02:08:00.000 Yeah, yeah, it's very hideous.

02:08:02.000 There's a great deal of disgusting practices that are involved in agriculture and farming and taking care of livestock and mad cow disease, which England had a huge issue with.

02:08:17.000 Because they were being fed their own offspring.

02:08:20.000 Yeah, and brain tissue.

02:08:21.000 When an animal eats brain tissue, that's the same disease that cannibals developed, that Jacob Kreutzfeld disease, which is a lot of data.

02:08:30.000 That's how you say it?

02:08:31.000 I think so.

02:08:31.000 Yeah, that is the way to say it.

02:08:33.000 I mean, that is exactly what it is.

02:08:36.000 You have these animals that are eating brain tissue, the same thing as humans that cannibalize.

02:08:43.000 Yikes.

02:08:44.000 Yeah, it's fucked.

02:08:45.000 It's fucking crazy.

02:08:47.000 It's really crazy.

02:08:48.000 It's a weird, weird thing, you know, that we dehumanize.

02:08:52.000 And we also allow ourselves to put money above humanity, above ethics and morality.

02:08:59.000 And when it comes to animals, it's more profitable to stuff them into containers where they can barely move and just feed them their own bodies and fatten them up and then sell them.

02:09:11.000 Otherwise, that body, the dead babies or whatever the fuck they feed them, goes to waste.

02:09:16.000 The parts that we don't use for hamburger and what have you goes to waste.

02:09:21.000 And did you know, I mean, probably everyone knows this, but do you know in the world of raising chickens for eggs, all the male hatchlings get mashed up within a couple of days of being born?

02:09:35.000 Yeah.

02:09:36.000 Did you know that?

02:09:37.000 And then so there's about, I don't know what the figure was, like 10 million baby chicks every year are sent straight into meat grinders. 0.98

02:09:44.000 Yeah, it's fucking crazy.

02:09:45.000 It's crazy.

02:09:46.000 It's really weird and hard to deal with.

02:09:48.000 It's hard to wrap your head around the fact that people can detach so much from what they're doing to do something like that.

02:09:55.000 It's just to take a person who knows what's...

02:10:01.000 I mean, we have...

02:10:14.000 You started giving a cow cow brains and cow meat, and mashing them up and feeding them to each other.

02:10:23.000 Someone would go, what the fuck are you doing, man?

02:10:25.000 Why are you doing that?

02:10:26.000 Cows don't eat cows. 1.00

02:10:27.000 Like, what are you doing, man?

02:10:28.000 I'm making some more money.

02:10:29.000 Oh, man, really?

02:10:33.000 That's how you're going to maximize your bottom line?

02:10:35.000 You're going to feed them cow brains? 1.00

02:10:37.000 And then they see the cows all shaky and fucked up because their neurological system is rejecting this notion.

02:10:44.000 They're rejecting this practice.

02:10:46.000 Nature actually has a whole system set in place to sort of discourage cannibalism.

02:10:53.000 And that's really what it is.

02:10:55.000 I mean, you cannibalize and nature fucks your nervous system up.

02:11:00.000 It's crazy.

02:11:03.000 I wanted to ask you about news radio, though, because you may not know this.

02:11:06.000 But when I started out trying to break into TV, my first objective before I had my own show was to write for news radio.

02:11:15.000 And I actually wrote a spec script and sent it to Paul Sims.

02:11:19.000 Ha ha, that's no kidding.

02:11:21.000 That's amazing.

02:11:22.000 I got a meeting on the back of the script, and it was on the Sunset Gower lot.

02:11:28.000 Oh, yeah.

02:11:29.000 You remember that?

02:11:30.000 Taping there.

02:11:31.000 And in the end, I went off to do my own thing.

02:11:36.000 But I just thought it was funny.

02:11:38.000 That was my dream was to back in the Phil Hartman days.

02:11:41.000 Yeah.

02:11:42.000 Wow.

02:11:42.000 That's incredible, man.

02:11:44.000 That's incredible.

02:11:45.000 Do you keep up with those guys at all?

02:11:47.000 Occasionally.

02:11:48.000 I just was communicating with someone who worked on the crew last night.

02:11:53.000 We're emailing each other back and forth.

02:11:54.000 Do you know what Sims is up to?

02:11:56.000 I don't know.

02:11:56.000 I think he's working on Boardwalk Empire.

02:11:58.000 That's what I'd heard.

02:11:59.000 As a writer?

02:12:00.000 He's writing on Boardwalk Empire.

02:12:01.000 He's such a fascinating guy.

02:12:03.000 Brilliant, brilliant guy.

02:12:05.000 But just a curiosity.

02:12:06.000 He was a Real eccentric.

02:12:09.000 He'd come off.

02:12:09.000 See, he'd worked at Spy, where I'd worked, the magazine, and people kept saying that I looked like him.

02:12:15.000 And I fixated on it, and I thought, wow, and everyone said, oh, he was so funny.

02:12:20.000 And he didn't stay very long, but he was so talented.

02:12:22.000 And he went on to do Letterman.

02:12:24.000 And then from Letterman, he went to Larry Sanders.

02:12:27.000 And Larry Sanders at that time was viewed as sort of the pinnacle of kind of smart, funny TV.

02:12:31.000 And I thought, wow, if I could get on Larry Sanders, that would be amazing as a writer.

02:12:36.000 And then he went and started his own show, which was News Radio.

02:12:39.000 And I thought, so, well, maybe that'll be a smart, funny show as well.

02:12:42.000 That's what I should do.

02:12:43.000 So I wrote a script and went up.

02:12:45.000 But I remember going along there and all the windows were blacked out with tin foil, with aluminum.

02:12:51.000 He said, come along for a meeting.

02:12:52.000 He said, well, normally I get in around six in the evening.

02:12:52.000 I said, what time?

02:12:55.000 I thought, whoa, that's the time people go home, isn't it?

02:12:59.000 So I went along and he was hanging out with a runner or PA or something called Spider.

02:13:06.000 So Spider.

02:13:07.000 He's like, it's me and Spider.

02:13:08.000 And he's like, what kind of music do you like?

02:13:10.000 And I'm like, is this the interview?

02:13:12.000 Like, he's asking me what kind of music.

02:13:14.000 And then I just, and I thought it was just weird.

02:13:16.000 Like, so there was no sense of night or day.

02:13:19.000 No natural light.

02:13:21.000 Windows all blocked out.

02:13:22.000 He's hanging with Spider.

02:13:23.000 I just thought this is kind of...

02:13:26.000 I was getting kind of slight, like very faint cult vibes.

02:13:29.000 I was like, well, there's a little of that going on, but in a good way.

02:13:33.000 They would work all night.

02:13:35.000 Those were his hours, I guess.

02:13:37.000 And everyone had to fit in around that.

02:13:37.000 Yeah.

02:13:39.000 Yes.

02:13:40.000 If you had a family or something like that, you were fucked.

02:13:42.000 Because they wouldn't.

02:13:43.000 But that didn't affect you, right?

02:13:45.000 No, it didn't affect us at all.

02:13:46.000 The actors, well, there's sort of union rules for actors.

02:13:50.000 They couldn't make us start work at 2 o'clock in the morning.

02:13:52.000 But it's Fiend to be like, you were a writer and then you turn on his like, yeah, we work from 6 in the evening till 4 in the morning and we like to hang out with Spider and we basically, we all play Yahtzee for a couple of hours and then we work for half an hour.

02:14:07.000 I mean, it wasn't literally that, but it was kind of like, oh my God, it's like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the kid is in charge of the family and they're all like, oh, we're having a great time.

02:14:16.000 Well, he had a method to his madness.

02:14:17.000 And the method to his madness, he's very talented.

02:14:19.000 But the method to his madness was that you get silly when you are in sleep deficit mode, when you're really late and tired.

02:14:28.000 And oftentimes that's when the most preposterous ideas are allowed to come.

02:14:31.000 That was his theory?

02:14:32.000 Well, that was the practice.

02:14:34.000 I mean, it really did work.

02:14:35.000 He didn't, but was that, in other words, like, did he articulate that or was that?

02:14:39.000 He definitely articulated it, yes.

02:14:40.000 So it was, but it's kind of like Werner Earhart saying, like, after you've stayed awake for 48 hours and peed your pants, then you have an enlightenment experience.

02:14:49.000 Well, sort of, but.

02:14:50.000 Maybe there's another way of doing it.

02:14:52.000 They were definitely, in a lot of ways, they were definitely lazy.

02:14:56.000 Can I tell you my theory?

02:14:57.000 Is that like if you haven't made a creative breakthrough by 6 o'clock in the evening, then, hey, why don't you go home and have a good night's sleep and try again the next morning?

02:14:57.000 Yes.

02:15:07.000 Well, I think they liked the idea of working under the wire as well.

02:15:11.000 I think they would oftentimes deliver the script for the run-through, like we had a run-through in the morning or a table read.

02:15:19.000 So if the table read was Monday morning, Sunday night, they would still be working.

02:15:23.000 Like if we had to be at the table read at 9 a.m., they would be writing at 8 a.m.

02:15:27.000 Like sometimes we would get, we would, we would go to rehearse, we'd have no table read, and we would wind up rehearsing the first, the first like five pages.

02:15:36.000 That's all they had.

02:15:37.000 I mean, we wouldn't have a full script.

02:15:39.000 We would have five pages.

02:15:41.000 And then while we were rehearsing, you know, like Josh Lee would come stumbling down barefoot, his hair would be all fucked up, be smoking a cigarette.

02:15:49.000 Here's the next 20 pages.

02:15:51.000 And we'd have the next, you know, the next X amount of pages.

02:15:54.000 And we would go over that.

02:15:55.000 And then the next day they would.

02:15:57.000 But it always came together as a really solid show.

02:16:00.000 It's a good theory.

02:16:01.000 Michael Moore was a little like that too.

02:16:03.000 It was the feeling that unless your guts are on the floor, you know, then there's a chance you might have been able to improve it with more work.

02:16:13.000 Do you know what I mean?

02:16:14.000 Like stay late and worry and worry and worry and stay late and work on the weekends until you just despair and you just think, I can't give anything more to the process.

02:16:23.000 Well, everybody has their own method, you know, as far as the creative process.

02:16:27.000 And I'm not saying that their method was the best, but it was fun for them.

02:16:31.000 And part of what made them funny.

02:16:33.000 They weren't family guys.

02:16:34.000 They're all single.

02:16:35.000 There's a few guys that were family guys that had real issues and wound up leaving.

02:16:39.000 But they were having fun, and that having fun led them to be funnier.

02:16:45.000 And I think whether or not it was a consequence of their laziness that it was so good, or whether there was a method to their madness, I mean, you would really have to take that up with Paul, and he would have to really soul search to find the actual correct answer.

02:16:59.000 But it worked.

02:17:00.000 It really worked.

02:17:01.000 And it was an amazing cast as well.

02:17:03.000 Like, it was you, Stephen Root, who I always thought was a superb actor.

02:17:08.000 Very, very awesome actor.

02:17:09.000 Dave Foley, too, who is one of the secret producers of that show.

02:17:13.000 I mean, I've had Dave on the podcast before, and I'd love that guy to death.

02:17:17.000 He's so fucking talented.

02:17:18.000 And if you ever want to hear one of the worst divorce stories of all time, listen to the podcast with him on and just what kind of a nightmare divorce can be.

02:17:27.000 Ruined his life.

02:17:28.000 Wow.

02:17:30.000 I'm researching a story at the moment about divorce.

02:17:32.000 Oh, God.

02:17:32.000 Listen to the podcast with Dave Foley because Canada has some wacky laws.

02:17:36.000 Oh, well, I wanna do it in LA though, but is it, But where he got divorced in Canada or here?

02:17:42.000 Yes, Canada.

02:17:43.000 Yeah, he was married in Canada.

02:17:43.000 Really?

02:17:45.000 And Canada has some crazy laws where the wife has access to the bank account for a full year while you're getting divorced. 1.00

02:17:53.000 You're not allowed to get divorced until you're separated for a year.

02:17:56.000 Or at the time, this was the...

02:18:03.000 His child support was based on the highest income he had ever made in his life, an unbelievably unrealistic sum.

02:18:08.000 It was the height of his career when he was on news radio.

02:18:10.000 So he's making an extraordinary amount of money.

02:18:12.000 And that was what his child support was based on.

02:18:15.000 So he had to pay that for the 18 years that his children were alive.

02:18:18.000 And it was all going to his wife.

02:18:19.000 And his wife was redecorating the fucking house and painting Morocco. 1.00

02:18:23.000 Did you hate her?

02:18:24.000 Oh, God, yes.

02:18:25.000 So don't you like that?

02:18:26.000 I just love that whole...

02:18:30.000 You love someone, you love them so much, you're willing to sign a legal contract with them, and then they become your sworn enemy.

02:18:37.000 And of course, obviously, I dealt with that with Phil Hartman and his wife, where his wife shot him in his sleep.

02:18:43.000 Well, they were still together, though.

02:18:44.000 Well, they were getting broken up.

02:18:46.000 But they were living together but separated?

02:18:48.000 They were living together, but he was leaving.

02:18:50.000 He was breaking up.

02:18:51.000 They had gone through some they had broken up, and he had a boat and slept in his boat for a while and then came back to her and wanted to keep the family together and was trying hard to work it out.

02:19:04.000 Yes.

02:19:05.000 Very sad.

02:19:06.000 So when people just are committed in that sort of a situation where they have to stay, or if they do stay, it's devastating to their lifestyle, devastating to their emotional state.

02:19:19.000 It's very troubling and very scary when they start attacking each other as well, when they go after each other to try to hurt that person.

02:19:27.000 Did you get on with Andy Dick?

02:19:29.000 I got on occasionally with Andy.

02:19:32.000 We had a love-hate sort of a situation.

02:19:34.000 He, to this day, maintains it was all my fault.

02:19:36.000 You were so angry.

02:19:38.000 You're always angry.

02:19:40.000 Well, the guy was pulling his dick out in front of me and jerking off my trailer when my girlfriend was in there. 1.00

02:19:45.000 He would show up so fucked up he couldn't read the script and he would forget his kid and leave him on set. 0.98

02:19:51.000 But on the other hand, incredibly talented.

02:19:54.000 Unbelievably funny.

02:19:55.000 I had more laughs like rehearsing scenes with that guy and doing scenes with that guy than anybody in my life.

02:20:02.000 He's an unbelievably talented guy.

02:20:04.000 And deep down inside, he's a sweet guy.

02:20:06.000 But he's very troubled.

02:20:08.000 He doesn't even remember his childhood.

02:20:10.000 Like he's missing up until like before like age seven or something like that.

02:20:16.000 He literally doesn't remember it.

02:20:18.000 He was adopted.

02:20:19.000 He walked it out.

02:20:20.000 Yes.

02:20:21.000 He had some hard times.

02:20:23.000 You don't create a guy like Andy Dick because everything turns out perfect.

02:20:28.000 He's the product of a lot of angst and a lot of issues and a lot of what have you.

02:20:33.000 But looking at the glass half full, he's a brilliant guy.

02:20:38.000 Brilliant, brilliant comedic actor.

02:20:40.000 And it disturbs me when I see him go off.

02:20:42.000 And he was sober when he did my podcast and we talked about it.

02:20:46.000 But then six months later, he was arrested for doing this and that and getting crazy and doing drugs.

02:20:52.000 And he's just a really constantly troubled guy for a variety of reasons.

02:20:57.000 But at his best, one of the most brilliant comic actors ever, I think.

02:21:02.000 He was fucking hilarious.

02:21:04.000 So fun.

02:21:04.000 And that show, News Radio, just really figured out how to utilize him.

02:21:10.000 Very much so.

02:21:11.000 And we were very different people back then.

02:21:12.000 I was very different.

02:21:13.000 I was a much younger, stupider, angrier version of who I am now.

02:21:17.000 And I wasn't very tolerant of people like Andy.

02:21:19.000 It's like easier for me to snap at him.

02:21:22.000 And, you know, I'm sure I would handle him much different now if we ever did.

02:21:28.000 If I was thrust into that same situation with my current personality.

02:21:31.000 But that's that.

02:21:34.000 Brilliant, brilliant.

02:21:35.000 Is that show still on in syndication?

02:21:37.000 Does that still get to work?

02:21:39.000 You still get money from it?

02:21:40.000 I'm not sure.

02:21:41.000 It's not much, I'm sure.

02:21:43.000 It's one of those things, the initial payment, you get a chunk, and then it gets less over time.

02:21:48.000 It's one of those things.

02:21:49.000 I reached out a little bit to Andy Dick last year because we were trying to make a bunch of shows that were all set in LA.

02:21:56.000 Since I was living here, the idea was let's do sort of LA stories.

02:22:01.000 And one of them was going to be stand-up comedians.

02:22:04.000 And we were trying to find intriguing guys, guys who sort of represented something about, I couldn't quite figure out what it was, but I thought it was something to do with the pressure on someone who's their own producer, their own writer, their own performer, and whose performance is the performance of themselves or a version of themselves.

02:22:24.000 And that that entailed a certain kind of vulnerability and a kind of high-stakes professional maneuver that you go on stage and it's just you and a crowd of people and whether you might face heckling and whatnot.

02:22:36.000 So that was how I'd formulated it in my head.

02:22:39.000 And also that you might be cannibalizing your own life to some extent for material and whether that imposed a certain set of strains and whether being funny itself came from some angst or something in your background.

02:22:53.000 Anyway, so that was how I figured.

02:22:54.000 But it was very hard for us to kind of find the right people.

02:22:57.000 So it's sort of, we reached out to Andy and a few other people.

02:23:02.000 And he always said, like, I really want to film with you.

02:23:04.000 Like, oh, yeah, that's perfect.

02:23:05.000 I'd love to do something like that.

02:23:07.000 You can meet me after the show.

02:23:07.000 Come on.

02:23:09.000 And then he'd never show up.

02:23:11.000 He's not the best example.

02:23:12.000 You would want to get a guy that's actually a writer, that actually does write a lot and perform a lot.

02:23:17.000 He does Bill Burr would probably be good.

02:23:19.000 Bill Burr would be good.

02:23:20.000 But Andy does his own material, right?

02:23:23.000 Yeah, I'm sure.

02:23:25.000 But, you know, you want to call it comedy.

02:23:27.000 Right, that was the thing.

02:23:29.000 It's performance art.

02:23:30.000 Yeah, is it actually comedy?

02:23:32.000 That's the thing.

02:23:32.000 Well, I mean, it's funny sometimes, but it's also very strange.

02:23:35.000 It's a very different kind of what just sort of blurs.

02:23:38.000 Well, sometimes, and sometimes he prepares things.

02:23:40.000 And, you know, I mean, but I think he's a very...

02:23:45.000 I'm just saying that his style, if you wanted to find a stand-up comedian, you wouldn't necessarily categorize him as a stand-up comedian.

02:23:52.000 You would categorize him as a performer who occasionally works in stand-up comedy clubs.

02:23:56.000 Right.

02:23:56.000 And so that's a good way of looking at it.

02:23:59.000 And that may have been one of the reasons.

02:24:01.000 But, you know, in our keenness to, eagerness to get intriguing people, we perhaps stretched the categories a bit in a way that wasn't helpful.

02:24:12.000 And that may have been a clue that it wasn't quite the right story.

02:24:15.000 Or do you think there is a good documentary to be made?

02:24:18.000 It felt like, when I was doing it, it felt like the world was not too close to my own world in an odd way.

02:24:25.000 Well, there's certainly something to describing stand-up comedy.

02:24:28.000 I mean, it sort of kind of has been done in a way, in some ways.

02:24:34.000 I guess.

02:24:35.000 Has it?

02:24:36.000 I didn't see that.

02:24:36.000 I am comic.

02:24:38.000 I watched them all.

02:24:39.000 Yeah.

02:24:39.000 No, they didn't get it.

02:24:40.000 I mean, they've all got their moments, but it's almost like...

02:24:46.000 Yeah, that was a really good one.

02:24:46.000 That's the best one.

02:24:48.000 He was really open about the creative process.

02:24:50.000 Ornie Adams.

02:24:51.000 Showed, well, I think Ornie was kind of used there to make Jerry look a lot more likable.

02:24:57.000 I mean, there's a reason why they chose Ornie, you know, in the middle of his struggle and angst.

02:25:02.000 Do you know Ornie Adams?

02:25:03.000 I know very little, very little.

02:25:05.000 You know, I know him from that, and I've had, you know, a few, hi, how you doings in real life?

02:25:10.000 But I almost felt like he was kind of thrust into that situation.

02:25:14.000 He seems like quite troubled in that documentary, and it's almost like they're putting him in there to make Jerry look better.

02:25:22.000 In comparison to Jerry, he's fucking crazy.

02:25:25.000 And it makes Jerry look like this really likable, affable sort of together dude.

02:25:32.000 Well, not that I don't think Jerry is, but I just found it weird that they would choose that guy.

02:25:37.000 Like, why would they choose that guy out of all the comedians in New York City?

02:25:41.000 It was like he lacked a certain level of self-knowledge, which I think made him a spectacle.

02:25:47.000 Yes, a spectacle is an excellent way of putting it.

02:25:50.000 Yeah, he's fucked.

02:25:53.000 In that documentary, at least.

02:25:55.000 I don't know him, you know.

02:25:57.000 But it's just, you know, comedy is a tricky thing, man.

02:26:00.000 You know, it's a very bizarre art form where you...

02:26:07.000 There's so many different styles of comedy.

02:26:10.000 There's so many different ways you can go about it.

02:26:12.000 And you're the only one who really knows your best way, and you have to find it.

02:26:15.000 And the only way you find it is in front of an audience.

02:26:17.000 It's one of the few art forms that you require other people's input.

02:26:22.000 You require them to be there while you're creating it.

02:26:25.000 You write on your own.

02:26:27.000 I write all my stuff.

02:26:30.000 Either I have an idea and I write down notes or I actually physically sit in front of the keyboard and I write long form and then cherry-pick ideas out of those long forms and introduce it.

02:26:40.000 But it doesn't really come alive unless you do it in front of an audience.

02:26:44.000 If I'd approached you, I don't think we did because I'd remember, but if I had approached you to be in the documentary, what would have been your thought process?

02:26:52.000 It would probably be intrusive.

02:26:55.000 I probably wouldn't be interested.

02:26:58.000 What would be the plus side of it?

02:27:02.000 It would seem like I would have to pay attention to all this.

02:27:05.000 And there's something about observing something and filming something and recording something which changes the nature of the thing itself.

02:27:13.000 And I think that in stand-up comedy, what's really important to me when I'm creating it, especially, is just getting it right.

02:27:20.000 This is like working on it and getting it right.

02:27:22.000 I wouldn't want cameras there and observing the whole process of it.

02:27:27.000 Then I would have to think about that.

02:27:28.000 So there's me, where do you write when you write?

02:27:31.000 I write at home.

02:27:32.000 Or on the road of writing at home.

02:27:33.000 Assuming we did, which sounds like we're not going to.

02:27:35.000 But if I was there today, like, Joe, where do you write?

02:27:39.000 Can we see your notebook?

02:27:39.000 This is your room.

02:27:43.000 Can you read out some of the things?

02:27:44.000 I wouldn't do that.

02:27:45.000 No.

02:27:47.000 I just sort of tell you what my process is, but I wouldn't want, and I don't even like people filming things at my shows when I'm working on shit because I don't want it getting on YouTube or whatever.

02:27:58.000 It's not done.

02:27:59.000 It's like, you know, it's a sketch.

02:28:01.000 And then if that gets on YouTube and then someone sees it like three months later and it's better, they still know where it's going.

02:28:09.000 Like part of comedy is you want new stuff.

02:28:12.000 When you go to see a band, you go to see the Rolling Stones, do you want to hear new Rolling Stone songs?

02:28:16.000 Fuck no.

02:28:17.000 You want to hear the classics.

02:28:19.000 You want to hear Sympathy for the Devil.

02:28:20.000 You want to hear satisfaction.

02:28:22.000 You want to hear the songs you already know that you can relate to.

02:28:25.000 Comedy is the exact opposite.

02:28:27.000 You want to always hear new stuff.

02:28:29.000 Like I have a stand-up comedy special that premiered on Comedy Central Friday night.

02:28:33.000 And one of the points that I've made in advertising all these current shows that I'm doing is it's all new material.

02:28:40.000 Like if you saw the thing from Saturday night or Friday night that aired, if you go see me live next week, you're not going to see any of that material.

02:28:48.000 That material is done.

02:28:49.000 Throw it away.

02:28:49.000 It's gone.

02:28:50.000 It's filmed.

02:28:51.000 It's out there in the internet and the ether and Comedy Central and it's there forever.

02:28:56.000 But what I do on stage, now I'm on to new stuff.

02:28:59.000 So I don't want my process to be a part of what's like record because it's not done.

02:29:07.000 I get it.

02:29:07.000 You know, and that's why we didn't do it in the end because that's a very understandable reaction.

02:29:13.000 I don't say we would have got that across the board, but I think you could describe the process.

02:29:18.000 I would describe it, but it's boring.

02:29:21.000 That's not something I could document.

02:29:21.000 That's not a TV.

02:29:23.000 No.

02:29:24.000 And then so we figured it's too much work.

02:29:28.000 Why?

02:29:29.000 It takes away from the finished product, I think.

02:29:32.000 When you know the whole process behind it, I mean, for someone who's like a comedy nerd or a dork, but I say that in all loving terms, like there's comedy nerds that come to dozens and dozens of shows every month, and they'll have seen me three or four times in a period of three or four months.

02:29:49.000 I've had people come up to me and say, I love watching the material grow.

02:29:53.000 I think it's amazing watching you add new bits to it or come up with new things.

02:29:57.000 And I'm always uncomfortable about that because then the last thing you want to do is see someone in the front row two nights in a row.

02:30:05.000 Like that happens.

02:30:06.000 Like you'll see someone, like you'll be in Portland for the weekend and you see a person in the front row Friday and then they're Saturday too.

02:30:13.000 And you're like, shit, this guy knows all my fucking jokes.

02:30:16.000 They know all the setup.

02:30:17.000 So you feel artificial when you're setting up the bits.

02:30:21.000 You would like people to see your bits when they're as close to done as possible.

02:30:26.000 When they're as close to the finished form as possible.

02:30:28.000 That way they're going to get the best show.

02:30:31.000 You have the best economy of words.

02:30:33.000 You have the best manipulation of language, the best setup segues.

02:30:37.000 All that stuff has been fleshed out.

02:30:39.000 It's been worked out on stage countless hours examining notes, listening to recordings, and then performing.

02:30:45.000 That's what you want.

02:30:47.000 You want people to get the show at its best.

02:30:50.000 And which is why when someone releases a special, like right after they release a special, it's oftentimes not the best time to go see them because all the material is like fucking scattered and they're trying to put it all together.

02:31:00.000 And then you see the same person six months later and it's just fucking just boom, boom, boom.

02:31:05.000 It all comes together.

02:31:07.000 It's a long sort of a brutal process.

02:31:11.000 But exciting.

02:31:12.000 It's challenging and it's got a lot of downs to it.

02:31:17.000 But the ups are awesome when it's done.

02:31:21.000 In a nutshell.

02:31:23.000 I feel like we made the documentary.

02:31:25.000 That was great.

02:31:25.000 I want to talk to you about Scientology.

02:31:28.000 What is the issue that you're having in trying to pursue this?

02:31:33.000 And what exactly is the reaction to people in the Scientology community now?

02:31:41.000 Because it seems like the Internet has sort of exposed that religion in a way that before it was always like, What Scientology?

02:31:49.000 What is this?

02:31:50.000 But now the internet is sort of all the Tom Cruise recruitment videos have been released, and all the craziness is out, and the people like that have wrote like going clear that book.

02:32:00.000 I'm reading that right now.

02:32:02.000 Lawrence Wright's book.

02:32:05.000 The whole religion, call it a religion or whatever the fuck it is, the whole movement seems to be in a very state of flux right now.

02:32:15.000 I think that's probably true.

02:32:17.000 At the same time, I think for students of, I guess, religious oddity or new religions or whatever you want to call it, it's known and it's out there.

02:32:30.000 And you're reading Lawrence Wright, I read the Lawrence Wright, but there's a vast mass of kind of mainstream people for whom they still, all they know is that thing that Tom Cruise is involved in.

02:32:41.000 It's kind of weird, you know?

02:32:44.000 And so they don't know.

02:32:45.000 So I think there's a huge, so I think step one for a lot of people is like, what is it?

02:32:48.000 You know, it's something to do with UFOs and Tom Cruise and John Travolta and maybe his sexuality.

02:32:55.000 But beyond that, they don't know it.

02:32:57.000 So part of it is trying to convey what it actually is.

02:33:01.000 I mean, I've been studying in the area for, you know, like reading all the books for about 15, 20 years.

02:33:07.000 You know, before Lawrence Wright's, there was one by Janet Reitman called Inside Scientology.

02:33:11.000 There's a whole laundry list of books about Scientology.

02:33:14.000 I still don't quite get what it is.

02:33:16.000 Do you?

02:33:17.000 Well, I do in a sense.

02:33:20.000 What is it?

02:33:20.000 Well, it's a cult, unquestionably.

02:33:23.000 It's also tax exempt.

02:33:24.000 That's fine.

02:33:25.000 But it was created by a science fiction writer.

02:33:26.000 Okay, but say that's true.

02:33:28.000 Still, like, there's lots of cults out there.

02:33:32.000 Beyond that, how do they practice?

02:33:36.000 How do they practice?

02:33:37.000 Meaning what?

02:33:38.000 What do they, like, we know with Catholics, they go to church, they have confession, they eat crackers, and it's the body of Jesus Christ, right? 1.00

02:33:50.000 And they believe in the Pope, and we know roughly what their sacrament is, and they read the Bible, and they believe in Jesus, and so on and so forth.

02:33:59.000 So what is it with Scientology?

02:34:03.000 That's a good question.

02:34:04.000 I don't know if they have ceremonies.

02:34:08.000 I think when you look at that Tom Cruise recruitment video, which is fucking fantastic, when he's standing out there.

02:34:15.000 Have you seen the one where they give him a medal?

02:34:17.000 Yes.

02:34:17.000 Which is just fucking just so rich.

02:34:20.000 It's a giant medal, many times larger than an Olympic gold medal.

02:34:24.000 He's wearing this medal, and he's standing there in front of a fucking...

02:34:28.000 called the Freedom Medal of Valor.

02:34:36.000 And he's standing in front of all those people, and he's such a charismatic person.

02:34:41.000 There it is, right there.

02:34:42.000 Oh, Jesus Louis.

02:34:45.000 Look at that fucking thing.

02:34:47.000 Just the lack of understanding how you come across that would allow you to wear that.

02:34:47.000 Come on.

02:34:57.000 The lack of objectivity that will allow you to put that on and be able to do this fingertips down thing on the desk, like you're making a very important point while you're wearing a fucking frisbee, a gold frisbee around your neck.

02:35:15.000 It's almost like he's trying to convince himself by tricking all these people.

02:35:21.000 I think there's something to that.

02:35:23.000 There's something to...

02:35:46.000 you know, all the other wacky shit that they believe.

02:35:50.000 There's something to that where he's putting on this massive performance, not just for them, but for himself as well.

02:36:00.000 I mean, to me, it's a bit like the Oscars.

02:36:03.000 Like, that's when I was watching the Oscars last night.

02:36:05.000 I was like, wow, it's like a Scientology event.

02:36:07.000 You know, it's that level of, I think that's like the kind of, the performance or the, that's the semiotics of it.

02:36:26.000 You know, like both Oscars and the freedom, you know, he's wearing it around his neck, but like, is it any more silly than having a little gold man?

02:36:33.000 No, my friend Greg Fisimmons posted this something on Twitter, and I retweeted it.

02:36:37.000 He said, I hope the Oscars get beamed to the troops so they could see all the people get rewarded for brave and courageous work this year.

02:36:48.000 Which is such a great tweet, and especially if you know Greg, who's a brilliant comedian himself.

02:36:54.000 But it's such a great tweet because it's so fucking right on.

02:36:59.000 It's so pompous and self-rewarding and self-aggrandizing and so ridiculous.

02:37:04.000 They're wearing suits with fucking special ties and, you know, formal attire.

02:37:11.000 And it's preposterous.

02:37:12.000 It is.

02:37:13.000 And, you know, not to say they shouldn't be, I mean, you know, do whatever the fuck you want.

02:37:19.000 And my point is, though, is that so, like, with Tom Cruise, okay, he's got his fingers down.

02:37:25.000 But in the end, like, so why pick on TC and Scientology, but we're letting the Oscars, you know, we say that, we'll give that a pass, but we can't have guys wearing little golden ones around their neck.

02:37:43.000 They have to be little men. 0.61

02:37:43.000 You know what I mean? 0.61

02:37:44.000 Oh, sure.

02:37:45.000 Well, and also, why is it okay to pick on Tom Cruise, but it's not okay to pick on Jewish people with curls and their bobbing up and down, and that's their religion.

02:37:56.000 That's their traditions.

02:37:58.000 This is just a tradition where it's not a real religion in our eyes.

02:38:02.000 We know the guy who wrote it.

02:38:03.000 Right.

02:38:04.000 Good point.

02:38:05.000 That's the thing that people have.

02:38:07.000 And I think what I would try and do in making a documentary about it is to try and see past a lot of the things that people find weird or ludicrous about it, you know, which is, you know, the fact that they have big glitzy Scientology events and get to the core of what it is.

02:38:25.000 Well, it is craziness, is what it is.

02:38:27.000 There's nothing, you can't get to the core of it.

02:38:29.000 The core of it is this established sort of pattern of thoughts that allow people who are not normal to feel normal.

02:38:38.000 Allow people that are troubled, allow people that are searching for some sort of a structure.

02:38:43.000 Do you think TC is normal?

02:38:44.000 I do not think he's normal.

02:38:45.000 Based on what?

02:38:46.000 Well, based on the fact that he's so fucking famous, it's impossible to be normal.

02:38:50.000 But he was in it before he was famous.

02:38:52.000 Yes, and it helped become a bad person.

02:38:55.000 I don't know about that.

02:38:56.000 I believe he got in it when he was still a pretty early star.

02:39:00.000 And I think JT got in it.

02:39:03.000 JT.

02:39:04.000 In the Cotter years.

02:39:06.000 I don't know.

02:39:06.000 Maybe.

02:39:08.000 Very early.

02:39:09.000 There's also the ambiguous sexuality aspect of it.

02:39:12.000 There's the rumors of homosexuality that are attached to famous male Scientologists that they shield them, you know, and especially the John Travolta thing.

02:39:24.000 Do you got to get out of here?

02:39:25.000 Pretty soon.

02:39:26.000 Well, it's almost 3 o'clock.

02:39:27.000 We're almost wrapped up anyway.

02:39:29.000 I think there's a lot of weirdness going on.

02:39:32.000 And there's also the people that, if you talk to people that have done exposés on Scientology, what they say is that during the auditing process, when they audit you, meaning you go over past life experiences that are quite troubling, you repeat them over and over again until they lose their meaning.

02:39:48.000 Like the same thing is like, if you say fuck around someone who never says fuck, they're like, oh, say fuck around a priest, they'll act like it's some horrible thing that you've done.

02:39:56.000 But you say fuck around your friends, you don't even, it doesn't even register.

02:40:00.000 It's like, oh, this fucking thing.

02:40:01.000 It's another word.

02:40:03.000 It just, it has no power because it's so used so much.

02:40:07.000 And I think maybe that's a bad analogy, but in a sense, it works because what they're doing is repeating these stories over and over and over and over and over again until they lose their meaning.

02:40:16.000 But in the process, they're recording all this shit.

02:40:19.000 So they have all this dirt on you.

02:40:21.000 They have all these crazy stories.

02:40:22.000 If you're going through the process earnestly, you're telling them all the secrets of your life, all the crazy gay orgies you've been a part of, all the nutty fucking cocaine binges, whatever the fuck you've done that you're ashamed of. 1.00

02:40:37.000 And you think that does that get released at the point you decide to leave, you think?

02:40:43.000 It's a good question.

02:40:44.000 I don't know.

02:40:45.000 I know that.

02:40:47.000 They are adamant that that is held under a priest-penitent bond of confidentiality.

02:40:55.000 Of course they are.

02:40:56.000 But, I mean, what's the mother of all rumors?

02:41:00.000 The greatest rumor of all time.

02:41:01.000 Pre-internet.

02:41:02.000 Yes, thank you.

02:41:03.000 Richard Gere.

02:41:04.000 Do you know when that rumor was released?

02:41:07.000 When Richard Gere left Scientology?

02:41:09.000 I didn't know he was in Scientology.

02:41:11.000 He dabbled.

02:41:12.000 Are you serious?

02:41:13.000 Yes, he dabbled in Scientology, and that rumor was released.

02:41:17.000 When the Tom Cruise or the John Travolta massage therapy stories were released, allegedly, that's when John Travolta was having issues with Scientology.

02:41:30.000 It's a way to keep you under wraps.

02:41:33.000 This is the rumors.

02:41:34.000 Obviously, completely unsubstantiated.

02:41:35.000 I'm talking out of my ass 100%.

02:41:38.000 But that makes sense, doesn't it?

02:41:41.000 I mean, if you have a powerful organization that gets a certain percentage of the amount of money that you make every year and they have a lot of crazy shit on you, you like to go and get massages and talk these guys into letting you fuck them.

02:41:55.000 I mean, I would think that would be something that, you know, maybe if you were going to leave and take all that money away, they might bring, you know, assuming the organization.

02:42:05.000 Any damaging confidences about Leah Remini?

02:42:12.000 Leah Remini.

02:42:13.000 Well, Leah Remini had that situation where she was saying that the leader of Scientology's wife was missing.

02:42:13.000 As far as I know.

02:42:19.000 Shelly Miscavige. 0.72

02:42:21.000 Yeah, what's the story there?

02:42:22.000 Well, Leah, is it pronounced Remini?

02:42:26.000 Remini.

02:42:27.000 She alleged that David Miscavige's wife, who hasn't been publicly photographed allegedly for a number of years, maybe even sort of five or ten years, was being held captive or had been disappeared in some way.

02:42:42.000 And that she'd been at Tom Cruise's wedding to, who would it have been at that point?

02:42:49.000 Katie Holmes in Italy, I think, and said, here's David Miscavige.

02:42:53.000 Where's Shelly? 0.76

02:42:54.000 Why aren't you here with your wife?

02:42:56.000 And it became a scandal within Scientology.

02:42:59.000 People felt it was disrespectful to the head honcho, David Miscavige, to be asking where his wife was.

02:43:05.000 So she got into trouble and then she left.

02:43:07.000 And then after she left, she initiated a police inquiry.

02:43:11.000 She filed a missing person's report.

02:43:13.000 But then the police, after a couple of days, said, no, she's not missing.

02:43:17.000 So I guess she's not missing.

02:43:20.000 The fact is she must be in a retreat somewhere.

02:43:24.000 I think there's people who know know where she is.

02:43:28.000 Scientology watchers say there's a certain church headquarters up in the hills.

02:43:34.000 I can't remember.

02:43:35.000 Somewhere in Southern California, and that's where she's living.

02:43:38.000 Maybe she just doesn't want to be public. 0.61

02:43:40.000 So maybe she just wants to live on her own without going public.

02:43:43.000 I think that's more likely than the idea that she's being held against her will.

02:43:49.000 Yeah.

02:43:50.000 Could be.

02:43:51.000 I don't know.

02:43:52.000 But I think this kind of goes back to the Swami G. Is that what his name was?

02:43:58.000 The guy who was the supposed physicist who's living with Swami G. I think people love being a part of a group, whether the group makes sense or doesn't make sense.

02:44:09.000 I think people, they find comfort in that, and they also get addicted to being a part of a group.

02:44:13.000 And then when you're a part of something as powerful as Scientology, especially when you look at all the examples of people who are Scientologists who are greatly successful, my old neighbor was a Scientologist, and we had this really weird revelation when it came out, where he and I were talking.

02:44:28.000 He was talking about buying a piece of land in our neighborhood.

02:44:31.000 And he said he couldn't buy it right now because his wife was going clear.

02:44:36.000 And I said, what are you talking about?

02:44:38.000 Like, what does that mean?

02:44:39.000 And he said, well, we're Scientologists and my wife is going to go clear and it costs $50,000.

02:44:46.000 And I was like, this is a guy who's a contractor.

02:44:48.000 He builds buildings.

02:44:49.000 He's not a wealthy man.

02:44:51.000 he does fairly well, but he made $50,000 is a giant chunk of his income.

02:44:56.000 And he was talking about how his wife is going to be no longer affected by outside influence, and that by going clear, it eliminates all the negative impact of people talking shit about you or, you know, fucking traffic, anything.

02:45:13.000 Nothing was going to get in anymore.

02:45:14.000 was clear of all that stuff, that she was going to be removed from...

02:45:21.000 It's like the reactive mind is removed so you can make decisions without any interference from your reactive mind.

02:45:31.000 Yeah, what the fuck?

02:45:33.000 I guess.

02:45:34.000 Yeah, I don't know.

02:45:35.000 I mean, but this poor guy was going to spend $50,000 on this.

02:45:39.000 And he had this sort of glassy-eyed thing about him, this sort of lost thing.

02:45:44.000 I think being a part of a group, we have these ancestral instincts that I think are passed down from the time where it was very important to be a part of a tribe, to stay alive.

02:45:54.000 If you're by yourself in the hunter-and-gatherer times, it was very difficult to get enough food to stay alive.

02:46:00.000 It was very hard.

02:46:01.000 And I think we have this bond with being a part of a group, whether it's fucking Mac users, man.

02:46:09.000 I mean, people that love Mac, they hate PC users.

02:46:13.000 People that love PC, they hate Mac.

02:46:16.000 They get in these groups.

02:46:17.000 The Protestants versus the Catholics. 0.98

02:46:20.000 You know, there's Chevy versus Ford.

02:46:22.000 People are weird that we have these weird desires to be a part of groups.

02:46:27.000 And I think someone like the Westboro Baptist Church or someone like Swami G's disciples or someone like Scientology, part of the appeal of that is being in a group.

02:46:39.000 And then when you have Scientology, I'm not too familiar with what Scientology does do that's beneficial, but you look at a guy like Tom Cruise.

02:46:47.000 Sexual stuff aside, you're talking about a tremendously successful person who looks great.

02:46:52.000 He's fucking 50 and he looks amazing.

02:46:55.000 I mean, he's in great health.

02:46:56.000 He seems like really optimistic all the time and very, very charismatic, very appealing to be a part of a group that that guy is in.

02:47:05.000 If he is benefiting from Scientology and from the principles of Scientology, surely it can't all be wrong.

02:47:12.000 Surely it can't all be bad.

02:47:14.000 That's what he's doing.

02:47:16.000 Louie, you're awesome, man.

02:47:18.000 You got to get out of here.

02:47:19.000 And this is, I think we're done anyway.

02:47:21.000 This is, we're run out of, three hours in, we turn into a pumpkin.

02:47:23.000 It's three hours the normal length?

02:47:25.000 Yes.

02:47:25.000 Oh, my goodness.

02:47:26.000 Crazy, right?

02:47:27.000 Yeah, I don't know.

02:47:28.000 Does it get edited?

02:47:29.000 Nope.

02:47:30.000 Not only that, it's live.

02:47:31.000 And people listen to the whole thing.

02:47:32.000 Sometimes.

02:47:33.000 Sometimes they listen to five minutes and they go, fucking bullshit, liberal nonsense.

02:47:37.000 Fucking fuck these people.

02:47:38.000 There's that too.

02:47:39.000 Thank you for having me on.

02:47:40.000 It was really fun.

02:47:41.000 I would love to do it again.

02:47:42.000 If you ever have anything that you're promoting, please don't hesitate.

02:47:45.000 We have you in in a hard part.

02:47:46.000 You know, one of the reasons I came was, well, there were two reasons, but, well, more, there were hundreds of reasons.

02:47:51.000 But one was I was saying before I came on, there was a couple of guys outside Trader Joe's, and they were like, you've got your own cult.

02:47:57.000 You know, they were like brainwashed moonies advocating on your behalf, saying like, you got to go. 0.99

02:48:04.000 I love your stuff.

02:48:05.000 It's on YouTube.

02:48:05.000 I said, how have you seen it?

02:48:06.000 I said, how did you find out about it?

02:48:08.000 Joe Rogan was talking about it.

02:48:10.000 I said, oh, you listen to the Joe Rogan podcast?

02:48:13.000 Yeah, oh, it's so awesome.

02:48:14.000 There's so much information.

02:48:16.000 So I was like, wow, he's obviously got a lot of pull out there.

02:48:21.000 And just more generally, I love getting feedback from people who've seen me on YouTube.

02:48:25.000 And so I'm trying to kind of put the word out that, you know, I think it's illegal, actually.

02:48:30.000 I don't think people are supposed to have it up there, but I'm okay with it.

02:48:33.000 Why is it illegal?

02:48:33.000 Because BBC.

02:48:35.000 Technically, it's BBC.

02:48:36.000 How else would they get it, though?

02:48:39.000 Well, that's the whole thing.

02:48:40.000 I don't think they could get it otherwise.

02:48:41.000 Is it on Netflix or obviously?

02:48:43.000 In the UK, it's on Netflix and on different, around the world, it's on different channels, but the BBC is trying to monetize it.

02:48:49.000 So they want to retain rights and keep selling it.

02:48:52.000 But as far as I'm concerned, it gets a lot of hits on YouTube, and it's nice to for people to see it.

02:48:58.000 I mean, it puts no money in my pocket, but I'm fine with it.

02:49:01.000 Well, you've done some brilliant work, really fascinating stuff.

02:49:04.000 I've enjoyed it.

02:49:05.000 I've gotten countless hours of entertainment out of your programming.

02:49:09.000 So I really appreciate having you on.

02:49:09.000 Thank you.

02:49:10.000 It was really enjoyable.

02:49:12.000 Thank you very much.

02:49:12.000 See you next week.

02:49:13.000 What do you got coming up that people could say?

02:49:14.000 Is there anything they can?

02:49:15.000 Well, I've got three shows going out in Britain, new ones going out at the end of March, and so they'll probably be put up quite soon.

02:49:21.000 And it's the thing I was telling you about, LA stories.

02:49:23.000 The first one is about stray and abandoned dogs and our attempts to rehabilitate them using controversial dog therapy.

02:49:31.000 You know, it's like turning criminal dogs and bringing them, rescuing them, bringing them into middle-class homes, and then sometimes they attack their new owners.

02:49:40.000 And then thousands of them are killed every year in the shelters in LA.

02:49:43.000 There's a huge stray and neglected dog problem in LA.

02:49:47.000 Second one is about the hospitals where people are sort of under pressure to keep trying new, like they're close to possibly dying, but there's a new experimental therapy and they have the insurance to pay for it.

02:49:59.000 And it's this weird 21st century conundrum of when do I stop and say like, I just want to have a peaceful death?

02:50:05.000 When am I allowed to say like I don't want to try any more chemo?

02:50:08.000 Are these on BBC America?

02:50:10.000 No, they're on the UK BBC, normal BBC.

02:50:13.000 And the third one is about sex offenders living down in South LA, especially around Torrance, who live in these hostels with electronic bracelets, heavily monitored lives, and the whole strangeness of having done something so terrible.

02:50:28.000 You know, they've abused their own children or some of them are rapists and so on.

02:50:33.000 But they've done whatever or 10 years in prison and they've come out and they're on parole.

02:50:37.000 And to what extent, if any, do we give people like that a second chance?

02:50:42.000 Like, given that they're out, we are living alongside them, you know, more or less with certain restrictions.

02:50:49.000 How do we relate to those guys?

02:50:50.000 Well, those are three fascinating subjects.

02:50:53.000 I'm just saying that.

02:50:53.000 I can't wait to watch those shows.

02:50:55.000 Really big fan, man.

02:50:55.000 Thank you.

02:50:56.000 Really appreciate you coming on.

02:50:57.000 Thank you very much.

02:50:58.000 All right, folks, you can follow Louis on Twitter.

02:51:00.000 It's Lewis, L-O-U-I-S-Thuru, T-H-E-R-O-U-X. 1.00

02:51:07.000 Follow him on Twitter.

02:51:08.000 And thank you to everybody.

02:51:10.000 Thanks to everybody tuning in.

02:51:11.000 Thanks to all the nice people out there that send me kind tweets and Facebook messages and all that good stuff and come to shows.

02:51:18.000 And I can't say enough about so many positive people I run into because of this show.

02:51:22.000 Thank you all.

02:51:23.000 Thanks to Squarespace.

02:51:25.000 Go to squarespace.com and use the code word Joe and get 10% off your first purchase.

02:51:31.000 Thanks also to NatureBox.

02:51:33.000 Go to naturebox.com slash Rogan.

02:51:36.000 That's naturebox.com slash Rogan.

02:51:39.000 Get 50% off your first box.

02:51:42.000 Thanks also to onit.com.

02:51:44.000 It's O-N-N-I-T. 1.00

02:51:45.000 Use the code word Rogan.

02:51:46.000 Save 10% off any and all supplements.

02:51:49.000 Tomorrow, Robert Green is going to be on along with Aubrey Marcus.

02:51:54.000 And we're going to learn about mastery.

02:51:56.000 Should be fascinating.

02:51:57.000 And then Wednesday, Greg Proups, the fabulous and hilarious and awesome dude, hilarious comedian.

02:52:03.000 Greg Proops is also a brilliant guy with his own podcast, the smartest man in the world.

02:52:08.000 And lots of good shit coming on.

02:52:11.000 And we'll see you soon.

02:52:12.000 Much love.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 04, 2014

Joe Rogan Experience #463 - Louis Theroux

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