The Joe Rogan Experience - June 03, 2014


Joe Rogan Experience #509 - Steve Hilton

Topics
Ting cell phones swamp people show money in politics traffic experiment traffic light cameras fragile systems and dependency internet's social impact education debt press freedom men's rights quantum physics concepts recreating memories technologically crowdpac.com voting guide
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Steve Hilton
Mentioned
Steve Hilton Ting Obama George W. Bush Madonna Jamie Google Glass Ray Kurzweil Glenn Greenwald Edward Snowden Mike Bloomberg Ted Kaczynski John McCain Sarah Palin Dick Cheney Roger Marshall McLuhan Hillary Clinton Donald Sterling Melanie Jolie and 22 more
Joe Rogan Experience #508 - TJ Dillashaw & Duane Ludwig Joe Rogan Experience #510 - Tony Hinchcliffe

Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 58 minutes

Words per minute

181.95

Word count

32,441

Sentence count

2,736

Harmful content

Misogyny

77

sentences flagged

Toxicity

537

sentences flagged

Hate speech

43

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster talks about drugs and alcohol and how to deal with it. He also talks about how you can make money with cell phone service like Sprint and how it's better than going to the bathroom on the train. And he tries to figure out why someone is trying to text him in the middle of a podcast and he doesn't know why they're trying to get him to do something he's not allowed to do. It's a weird one, but it's a good one, and it's funny, so let's talk about it. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. The show is brought to you by Tingling, a mobile service that does things differently. They have their own terms and do things on their terms. They make a deal with Sprint where you get the exact same service you get with Sprint. They don't trick you with termination fees, no no nonsense, no early termination fees. You get the same service that Sprint does with Sprint, but you get a lot more bang for your buck. And they don't charge a hell of a lot less than Sprint does. You can't go wrong with Sprint and get a good deal. Use the code WORDROGAN at checkout to get 20% off your first month, plus free shipping, and they'll give you an ad-free version of the service that includes free shipping and a free of the company's mobile version of their phone service, plus they'll send you an extra $5 a month to you get free of a sim card, and you'll get a $5 credit when you sign up to $99 a month and they get $50 a month, they'll also get $25 a month for the service. It's like a freebie! We're talking all things Sprint, you're getting it all the same thing Sprint does it all, plus you get $5 and they're giving you a 20% discount, plus a free copy of the entire service, and a bunch of other stuff, plus an ad free version of Sprint gets you a year, plus I'll send it to you in the podcast and you get an ad on the pod, and I'll tell you how much of it's going to make you a deal, too! You get it all for free, it's like $5, $10, $25, $6, $7, $8, $9, and $10 a month.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 These are just like quick ads that we do.
00:00:02.000 Very informal.
00:00:03.000 Hey everybody!
00:00:04.000 This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is brought...
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00:00:11.000 The experience.
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00:04:40.000 Someone's trying to fucking text me in the middle of a goddamn podcast. 0.99
00:04:45.000 I guess they don't listen. 0.99
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00:04:51.000 You hear that weird noise?
00:04:53.000 You hear that?
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00:04:58.000 I think it's the phone. 0.98
00:04:59.000 I think if I put my phone near my computer, they'd fucking argue with each other telepathically. 0.93
00:05:04.000 That's probably what it is. 0.95
00:05:06.000 That's it.
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00:05:09.000 We're also brought to you by Ting. 0.85
00:05:12.000 Ting is a mobile service that does things differently.
00:05:16.000 They do things on their own terms.
00:05:18.000 And what that means is they buy time through the Sprint Backbone.
00:05:21.000 They use Sprint, so you get the exact same service that you get with Sprint, but you get it with no contracts, no early termination fees, no nonsense.
00:05:30.000 They don't trick you.
00:05:32.000 There's a lot of ways that cell phone companies make money.
00:05:35.000 And one of the ways they make money is they charge you for X amount per month.
00:05:40.000 Like you have a deal where you get 1200 minutes a month or whatever the hell it is.
00:05:45.000 But when you do that, most of the time you're not using those minutes, but you're still paying for those minutes.
00:05:51.000 The way Ting does it, it's very smart, and I think it's a better way, and I think it's the only way that they're going to do it in the future.
00:05:59.000 What they do is you pay for what you use.
00:06:02.000 If you use a lot, you pay more.
00:06:04.000 If you use very little, you pay less.
00:06:10.000 Would save money using Ting.
00:06:12.000 That's a pretty incredible statistic.
00:06:14.000 If you go to Ting's website, go to rogan.ting.com, they'll explain the whole thing to you.
00:06:19.000 $21 is the average monthly bill per device for Ting customers.
00:06:23.000 That's amazing.
00:06:24.000 Because you'd be surprised at how little, when you look at these service minutes, you know, like 100 minutes a month, 200 minutes a month, most of the time people are texting each other these days.
00:06:35.000 And if you call me a lot, man, most of the time I I don't spend a lot of time calling people.
00:06:40.000 $440 is the average annual savings per device for a business with 1 to 20 employees.
00:06:47.000 So if you have a business, Ting is the way to go if you want to set up business phones.
00:06:50.000 And you have many options as far as the phones themselves.
00:06:53.000 You have all of the best Android phones that are available today.
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00:06:59.000 See, the thing about when you go to one of the big name...
00:07:04.000 You're not actually buying the phone.
00:07:06.000 If you pay $200 for a phone, you're not really paying $200 for that phone.
00:07:10.000 The phone costs probably $500 or $600 and you think you're paying $200, but the other $300 to $400, you're paying off over the course of your contract.
00:07:20.000 That's why if you try to leave, they stick it to you and they make you pay what you owe them.
00:07:28.000 So that's what a contract termination fee is.
00:07:32.000 What it's all about is you still owe money on a device.
00:07:35.000 You essentially leased a device.
00:07:37.000 Ting doesn't handle it that way at all.
00:07:38.000 With Ting, everything that you purchase That they sell at rogan.ting.com are the finest cell phones available today.
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00:08:00.000 They have the HTC One M8. All the best new Android phones. 1.00
00:08:05.000 The Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which I use.
00:08:08.000 Fantastic phone.
00:08:09.000 You can draw on it.
00:08:10.000 It has a pen.
00:08:11.000 How could you go wrong? 0.96
00:08:12.000 And if you're like one of those old crazy grandmas, they have flip phones. 1.00
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00:08:29.000 I want to cancel.
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00:08:33.000 It's a beautiful, ethical way to do business, and the results have been fantastic. 0.99
00:08:38.000 Massive, massive public positive feedback that I've received from all the people that have switched over to Ting.
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00:08:51.000 So go to rogan.ting.com today and save yourself some cash, kids.
00:08:58.000 Alright, my friend Steve Hilton is here. 0.99
00:08:59.000 We're going to talk about all kinds of groovy shit. 0.99
00:09:02.000 Let's cue the music. 0.99
00:09:07.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.
00:09:09.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
00:09:14.000 Steve Hilton, my friend.
00:09:17.000 Politics are a dirty business.
00:09:19.000 Very dirty, but just before we get into that, Joe, I just want to say you've already really offended me.
00:09:24.000 Fantastic.
00:09:25.000 I just want to show you my phone.
00:09:27.000 Oh, what have you got?
00:09:29.000 Here it is.
00:09:30.000 Oh, flip phone. 0.98
00:09:31.000 I am, in your words, an old crazy grandma.
00:09:34.000 Well, I have many friends that carry old flip phones.
00:09:38.000 I'm glad that you're actually just carrying a phone.
00:09:40.000 Exactly.
00:09:40.000 This is a very new development for me.
00:09:42.000 Well, it's a good move.
00:09:44.000 Everyone's been telling me I've got to have a phone.
00:09:46.000 I had not had a phone for many years.
00:09:49.000 Finally, I buckled under the pressure and I got one of these.
00:09:53.000 Yeah, Steve, we became friends in Hawaii.
00:09:56.000 Our family, we're all friends.
00:09:58.000 It's a very cool little development.
00:10:02.000 I really enjoy it, but I think it's quite hilarious that your wife is involved in Google and you avoid phones at all costs.
00:10:11.000 You avoid technology.
00:10:12.000 You feel that it's too entrenched in our life, this sort of digital web that we've all been connected to.
00:10:19.000 Yeah, I'm trying to fight it, Joe.
00:10:21.000 It's tough.
00:10:22.000 You just shut them off, though.
00:10:24.000 That's the beautiful thing.
00:10:25.000 When you don't want to use them, you shut them off.
00:10:27.000 Yeah, but they're there.
00:10:28.000 They're kind of nagging away, annoying at you.
00:10:30.000 That's discipline.
00:10:31.000 You've got to meditate.
00:10:32.000 That's probably right.
00:10:33.000 Well, I feel that there's benefits and there's certainly negatives to phones.
00:10:38.000 But I think the positive aspects outweigh the negative.
00:10:41.000 I like being able to communicate with friends and family and loved ones and send texts.
00:10:46.000 I find it...
00:10:48.000 It's incredibly addictive, though.
00:10:50.000 And I think it becomes... 1.00
00:10:51.000 I was out at dinner the other day with a bunch of friends, and everyone was on their goddamn phone. 0.99
00:10:55.000 There was five of us. 0.99
00:10:56.000 And I was sitting around the table, looking at everybody texting and tweeting and taking photos.
00:11:02.000 I'm like, we're not even here right now.
00:11:03.000 I'm like, you guys are connected to this digital world.
00:11:06.000 You talk about how awesome it is to be here, but you're not even here.
00:11:09.000 You're barely paying attention.
00:11:10.000 That's right.
00:11:10.000 And there's new sort of etiquette developing about how to handle this.
00:11:13.000 I think I was reading something about where you've got eight people around a table having dinner and it's okay for three of them to be looking at their devices.
00:11:20.000 That's okay.
00:11:20.000 But if it gets to more than three, someone's got to look up because that's the rule.
00:11:25.000 Who says?
00:11:26.000 Says who? 0.65
00:11:27.000 Establish what?
00:11:28.000 I don't get it.
00:11:30.000 It's just like anything else.
00:11:31.000 I mean, if you were at a bar with some friends and one guy is just watching TV only and not engaging in a conversation, that's just as rude.
00:11:38.000 Yeah, I think that's right.
00:11:40.000 I find it fascinating how my children react to devices.
00:11:44.000 That's where I really get a sense of it, because they don't have a cultural context.
00:11:48.000 You know, when my four-year-old watches television or watches devices, and I'll stand in front of her watching TV, and she just reaches up and tries to move me. 0.98
00:11:56.000 She doesn't give a fuck what I'm thinking. 0.98
00:11:59.000 She's just trying to watch this program. 0.99
00:12:01.000 Yeah, you literally can't get in between at that point.
00:12:04.000 I've really noticed that.
00:12:06.000 If they're watching something, that's it.
00:12:09.000 You may have been away for a week and you haven't seen them and they're desperate to see you, but if there's something on TV at that point, not interested.
00:12:15.000 Yeah, it trumps everything.
00:12:16.000 It trumps all human interaction.
00:12:18.000 And it's very weird how it does it.
00:12:21.000 It does it in this strange, hypnotic way.
00:12:24.000 There's nothing else on Earth that gets a four-year-old to just sit there, motionless and engage.
00:12:31.000 But it literally stimulates parts of the brain.
00:12:33.000 There's a lot of quite interesting brain science about what's going on when kids watch TV, and it's generally fine.
00:12:38.000 But when it gets to a point where they're watching more than two or three hours a day, and a lot of kids these days are in that situation, it literally starts rewiring their brain.
00:12:47.000 Yeah, it's not healthy to completely entrench yourself in that world and to be in that world all day, every day.
00:12:55.000 But a lot of people do because it's possible.
00:12:57.000 But I think that's just like everything else.
00:12:59.000 It's like I like the option to be able to buy a cheeseburger.
00:13:02.000 I don't think you should eat cheeseburgers every day, all day.
00:13:05.000 But I like it if I want one.
00:13:06.000 If I'm driving by in and out, I'm like, let's do it.
00:13:09.000 You know, it's not the best food for you, but I like the option.
00:13:13.000 I totally agree with that.
00:13:13.000 I like that for television.
00:13:15.000 I like watching swamp people.
00:13:17.000 You ever watch that?
00:13:18.000 I have not. 0.99
00:13:19.000 Fucking terrible show about a bunch of people alligator hunting. 0.99
00:13:22.000 And it's the most predictable show of all time because they look for alligators and occasionally they get alligators. 0.99
00:13:30.000 But there's nothing unusual happens. 0.99
00:13:31.000 They don't run into a giraffe like, who the fuck is a giraffe in the swamp? 0.99
00:13:35.000 No. 0.99
00:13:35.000 Just alligators and these people with these strange southern accents in boats. 0.99
00:13:39.000 And they have fishing line.
00:13:41.000 They catch the alligator with fishing line.
00:13:43.000 Sometimes they shoot the alligators.
00:13:45.000 But it's just alligator hunters.
00:13:46.000 But they call it swamp people.
00:13:48.000 Yeah.
00:13:49.000 I haven't seen that.
00:13:49.000 I'm not sure that's going to be top of my list.
00:13:51.000 You should invest.
00:13:53.000 You should invest your time.
00:13:55.000 But you're right about doing a little bit of everything.
00:13:57.000 I remember when...
00:13:57.000 Do you remember when that movie came out about McDonald's, Super Size Me?
00:14:00.000 Yes.
00:14:01.000 And this guy got ill and fat and whatever.
00:14:04.000 It was Morgan Spurlock, wasn't it?
00:14:05.000 Yes.
00:14:06.000 You know, he made a good point.
00:14:08.000 But my favorite response to that was from McDonald's.
00:14:10.000 When the guy who runs McDonald's in Australia went on...
00:14:14.000 They took commercials and they went on air when there's this big PR storm about the terrible McDonald's food and all this kind of stuff.
00:14:20.000 And he went on air with these commercials.
00:14:23.000 I'm going to now attempt very badly an Australian accent.
00:14:26.000 Okay.
00:14:27.000 Although most people here probably couldn't tell the difference between the British and the Australian accent anyway.
00:14:30.000 You can just keep talking.
00:14:31.000 We'll think it's an Australian accent.
00:14:32.000 I get it, I get it.
00:14:33.000 And he goes and said, apparently there's some bloke who's going around saying, if you eat too much of our food and don't take any exercise, you get fat.
00:14:42.000 Well, I could have told you that.
00:14:45.000 It's a really sweet response, which is, yeah, if you just do all of something, that's not good, but a little bit's okay.
00:14:51.000 That's a quite Australian response, too, as opposed to the measured American legalese that you would probably hear from some CEO. Yeah, you know, I have a real issue with that documentary, and he did a show also called 30 Days.
00:15:06.000 Yeah.
00:15:26.000 There's a lot of people who have called bullshit on that, especially the liver toxins and all that stuff. 0.70
00:15:30.000 They're like, where's the liver toxin? 0.93
00:15:32.000 You're dealing with carbohydrates and proteins and fats, but these things aren't toxic.
00:15:39.000 They're just not good.
00:15:40.000 They're just high in cholesterol, and they're kind of fatty and sugary. 0.66
00:15:45.000 I know for a fact that they did some fuckery on his show.
00:15:48.000 He had a show called 30 Days where he was trying to achieve the same results. 0.88
00:15:51.000 Because they went to a friend of mine who's a doctor.
00:15:54.000 And this doctor specializes in hormone replacement therapy for older people.
00:15:59.000 For older people and people that are, you know, like, you start getting older, you want to replace your testosterone, things along those lines.
00:16:05.000 And they wanted to do it in 30 days.
00:16:08.000 And they wanted to do it on this program.
00:16:10.000 Take a man who's getting older and in 30 days inject him with hormones. 0.99
00:16:13.000 And the doctor, who's an ethical doctor, said, you don't ever do that.
00:16:16.000 He said, we would never do that.
00:16:18.000 He said, what we would do is we would get you on a proper diet.
00:16:20.000 I would take your blood.
00:16:22.000 It would take a week to get your blood results back.
00:16:24.000 I'd get your blood results back.
00:16:25.000 I'd want to get a detailed analysis of what you're eating, what you're doing, what kind of a lifestyle do you have.
00:16:31.000 It's not a simple fix like we give you hormones.
00:16:33.000 So what they did is they found a quack doctor Who did just shoot the guy up with hormones.
00:16:38.000 And the guy was like, oh, roid ragey and angry afterwards.
00:16:41.000 And his wife wanted to keep him chubby.
00:16:44.000 I mean, the whole thing was a disaster.
00:16:46.000 This is not an ethical examination of this complex issue.
00:16:52.000 It's entertainment.
00:16:54.000 It's not a documentary or something.
00:16:56.000 It's deceiving, though.
00:16:57.000 The problem with entertainment is it's not a puppet show.
00:17:00.000 It's not a cartoon.
00:17:02.000 You're pretending that you're exploring these ideas.
00:17:05.000 And when I was doing that sci-fi show, I found some similar issues with certain producers and certain people who were used to that world of reality TV. Reality TV has become this very strange mishmash of choreographed scenarios and predetermined scenarios,
00:17:26.000 predetermined results. 0.99
00:17:28.000 And they do it sort of in this guise of reality TV, but essentially it's like loosely scripted bullshit. 0.98
00:17:36.000 And they're pretending that it's like, this is what's going on in the doctor's office. 0.97
00:17:40.000 No, you set that up.
00:17:41.000 That's not what goes on in a doctor's office. 0.97
00:17:43.000 That's not what would go on in a doctor's office. 0.90
00:17:46.000 You're pretending because that's going to get people to freak out.
00:17:49.000 And you've got an agenda.
00:17:50.000 You know, they're trying to make a point and they set it up like that.
00:17:52.000 They edit it like that.
00:17:53.000 You know, it's totally right. 0.96
00:17:54.000 Well, the whole business is completely fucked because the business started off with a bunch of people that came over from scripted shows. 0.92
00:18:01.000 So the legacy people that were involved in these dramatic shows where there were no, until Survivor came along, there were no reality shows, quote-unquote reality shows. 0.96
00:18:11.000 So I have a deep understanding of this because I hosted Fear Factor for six years and because Fear Factor came in in 2002, which was when all the reality shows were being born.
00:18:23.000 So I got to see where these people had their backgrounds from.
00:18:26.000 And almost all of them had their backgrounds from dramas or from sitcoms or from the world of fictional shows.
00:18:33.000 So much so that you were considered to be like a traitor if you were involved in a reality show.
00:18:39.000 Like, people got mad at me.
00:18:41.000 Saying that I was taking jobs away from writers because I was involved in reality shows.
00:18:48.000 And I was like, oh, this is a hilarious argument.
00:18:50.000 But these people all came from this world where you manipulate things in order to make drama.
00:18:56.000 So they started doing that to quote-unquote reality shows.
00:19:00.000 So that's what you're getting.
00:19:01.000 So this 30 Days show that doesn't exist anymore and Super Size Me show, they're, you know...
00:19:09.000 You're tackling very complex issues, and you're doing it in an entertaining form.
00:19:14.000 And when you do that, there's some integrity that sort of goes by the wayside.
00:19:19.000 Well, I think that's right.
00:19:20.000 And the integrity, I had a real example of that.
00:19:24.000 In the end, you're relying on the people involved to have a bit of integrity and ethics in the way they do their jobs.
00:19:30.000 And I just saw a little example this weekend.
00:19:33.000 I was out doing stuff to do with the election in my company, and I did an interview for the local news, for the NBC News.
00:19:41.000 And we were doing some demos of stuff with people in Santa Monica, and they wanted to film one of the people that we're doing it with, you know, interacting with our thing, right?
00:19:51.000 With our website.
00:19:53.000 And at that point, there weren't any people interested in doing that.
00:19:57.000 So one of the teams said, why don't we just pretend to be a member of the public doing it?
00:20:03.000 And it was really interesting because they said, no, the producer and the journalist said, no, no, it's got to be, you know, a real member of the public.
00:20:10.000 And I thought that was really cool.
00:20:12.000 You know, they obviously wanted to go.
00:20:13.000 They were busy.
00:20:14.000 They had to get back to the studio.
00:20:15.000 They were really annoyed that they're having to wait a long time for an actual member of the public.
00:20:20.000 But they really did say, no, we're not going to fake it.
00:20:23.000 And it would have been so easy and no one would have noticed.
00:20:26.000 And in that moment, it was literally just their personal integrity.
00:20:31.000 And it was really cool to see.
00:20:32.000 And I hope that's really widespread in the news business.
00:20:34.000 But it was just, for me, a really interesting example of you can make rules and you can have stuff, but in the end it's about people and their choices in the moment.
00:20:42.000 It is interesting that they chose to do that with integrity, but it's also interesting that someone suggested they not.
00:20:49.000 Right.
00:20:49.000 Exactly.
00:20:50.000 Exactly.
00:20:51.000 And that's the other side of it.
00:20:52.000 But I was really pleased that that's what they decided to do.
00:20:55.000 I did a show for CBS once.
00:20:58.000 It's called Game Show in my head.
00:20:59.000 And the premise of the show was you would have this little earpiece in that someone could talk to you in.
00:21:07.000 So I would put an earpiece in the contestants and send them out.
00:21:11.000 And when they would be standing somewhere, I'd say, OK, can you hear me?
00:21:15.000 And they'd say, yes.
00:21:15.000 All right.
00:21:16.000 Here's what's going on.
00:21:17.000 And then these two guys came in with cameras.
00:21:19.000 They were holding cameras.
00:21:20.000 You are a reporter on the news.
00:21:23.000 Here's your scenario.
00:21:25.000 Someone called in a UFO sighting.
00:21:28.000 They saw a UFO sighting.
00:21:30.000 We brought in the cameras.
00:21:32.000 Unfortunately, that person went away.
00:21:34.000 So what you have to do is convince some member of the public that's around there to take that person's place and to say that they were the ones who saw this UFO. And you have to get them to say that they were taken aboard this UFO and that they were examined by aliens.
00:21:53.000 And so it was kind of funny.
00:21:56.000 They're like, okay, here we go.
00:21:57.000 All right, how do I do this?
00:21:58.000 What was shocking was how many people, when you put that camera on them, immediately said they would do it and immediately started just lying.
00:22:07.000 Just lying.
00:22:08.000 It was a silver craft.
00:22:10.000 I mean, all walks of life.
00:22:12.000 Very few people said no.
00:22:13.000 That was the most shocking thing.
00:22:15.000 When you had the camera on them, they just started talking.
00:22:17.000 And they started sort of...
00:22:19.000 Repeating these iconic images that you always hear, the disc-shaped thing, silver, there was no bolts on it.
00:22:27.000 They were going into detail and talking about the medical examinations, and this guy...
00:22:34.000 And I think it was a guy and a girl, you know, these contestants who had to do this were just talking to these people. 1.00
00:22:40.000 And we were all, the producers in the truck, we were all looking at each other like, wow, people are fucking full of shit! 1.00
00:22:46.000 This is so weird. 1.00
00:22:47.000 It's so weird how easy it is for some people to just justify making up a story just in order for them to be on camera.
00:22:55.000 Yeah.
00:22:55.000 Well, do you think it's because they just, it's the camera they want to be on the camera or is it they want to please the other person?
00:23:01.000 They want to be on TV. Look, clever.
00:23:02.000 What is it?
00:23:03.000 It could be that as well, but I think most likely it's they want to be on television so they could go home, set their DVR, and, you know, it's on, it's on, it's on, it's on!
00:23:13.000 That's me! 0.99
00:23:14.000 Ah, I'm fucking lying! 0.98
00:23:15.000 You know, they just wanted to be on television. 0.97
00:23:19.000 I think for a lot of people in this day and age, that is just some sort of a weird ultimate goal, just to have that camera on them and then they go home and see it.
00:23:28.000 Right.
00:23:29.000 Whether it makes sense or not.
00:23:30.000 And for a lot of folks, it doesn't make sense.
00:23:33.000 A lot of folks, you know, it winds up ruining their lives.
00:23:37.000 You know, they find out how other people feel about them.
00:23:40.000 Plus, you expose yourself to the critique of millions of anonymous people filled with hate.
00:23:46.000 Filled with hate and disappointment of their own life and just ready to spew venom in your direction. 1.00
00:23:52.000 They just can't wait to shit all over you, Steve Hilton. 1.00
00:23:55.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:23:57.000 I judge you.
00:24:00.000 We had another thing this weekend.
00:24:02.000 We went out and made a little film just to test that out about the elections going on in LA. And we literally went up to people and made up candidates that were running for Congress.
00:24:15.000 And asked what they thought about that, you know, and what do you think of Angelina Jolie running for Congress?
00:24:19.000 And this guy, yeah, I was so excited when I heard that.
00:24:23.000 That's great.
00:24:24.000 You know, I think she's great.
00:24:25.000 And it's just that you can't believe how people just engage with these things.
00:24:29.000 They just made it up and they just went with it.
00:24:31.000 And like you were saying with the UFO thing, he was like going on about it.
00:24:33.000 He wasn't just saying, yeah, I heard about that.
00:24:35.000 That's great.
00:24:36.000 He was sort of embellishing it and talking about it. 0.96
00:24:38.000 It was just ridiculous. 1.00
00:24:40.000 Yeah, people are fucking strange, man. 1.00
00:24:42.000 They're strange. 0.99
00:24:43.000 And that's a real problem when it comes to politics or anything when you're allowing people to make choices that can affect others.
00:24:53.000 People are weird. 0.99
00:24:55.000 And a good percentage of them are really dumb and uninformed and not interested. 1.00
00:25:01.000 When you say dumb and uninformed, here's what I think when I say that. 1.00
00:25:08.000 When I'm saying dumb, what I mean is... 0.99
00:25:11.000 If the human mind is essentially, say if everyone has the exact same physical structure, the exact same genetics, the exact same hormonal system, and one person does yoga every day and eats healthy and does chin-ups in the morning when they wake up and drinks a lot of water,
00:25:31.000 and the other person sits in front of the TV, likes to smoke cigarettes, eats nothing but sugar, You get to see the results of one person being very aware of their body and taking care of their body and the other person not.
00:25:45.000 Well, you get that same effect with life.
00:25:48.000 You get that same effect with how you approach the world itself.
00:25:52.000 Some people approach the world through this lazy, disconnected, you know...
00:26:00.000 Like, pop culture obsessed, nonsensical, pop culture obsessed Jamie. 1.00
00:26:07.000 I'm talking to you, you fuck. 1.00
00:26:08.000 He's a little pop culture obsessed. 1.00
00:26:10.000 Not too bad. 1.00
00:26:11.000 Jamie's aware of a lot of other shit, too. 0.99
00:26:13.000 But some people, they don't enrich their life. 0.99
00:26:17.000 They don't enrich their mind.
00:26:19.000 They're not curious.
00:26:21.000 And those people, with all these poor decisions and drug addictions and the life's a mess, they have an equal say to the person who's rational and aware and kind and objective.
00:26:35.000 Equal say.
00:26:36.000 And I think that's one of the weirdest things about It's about communities, about culture.
00:26:42.000 It's about trying to figure out how do you mitigate the effects of the lazy? 1.00
00:26:47.000 How do you deal with the effects of the morons? 0.99
00:26:51.000 Like when you have a riot and people start pulling white people out of cars and throwing rocks at their heads, which they've had in Los Angeles in the past, especially after the Rodney King beating and things along those lines, just random white people just attack them. 1.00
00:27:07.000 How do you allow...
00:27:10.000 When you see these things can happen...
00:27:12.000 I'll just use that as an example. 1.00
00:27:14.000 It could be a million other things that are really stupid that people do. 0.99
00:27:19.000 How could it be that one person gets one vote and another person who is... 1.00
00:27:29.000 Very aware.
00:27:30.000 Another person is very educated.
00:27:32.000 Another person who's very kind and very sympathetic to all walks of life gets an equal vote.
00:27:38.000 One person could be a total racist. 1.00
00:27:40.000 You could go to a voting booth with a t-shirt on that says, fuck black people. 1.00
00:27:46.000 And you can vote. 1.00
00:27:47.000 And no one can stop you. 1.00
00:27:49.000 Especially if you have a shirt, sort of like a flannel shirt that's over the t-shirt that says fuck black people, so you have to really look hard to see fuck black people and you think you're getting over. 1.00
00:27:57.000 No one can stop you. 0.99
00:28:00.000 I think one of the things that they were trying to work around when they developed the concept of a representative democracy, the concept of America, a representative government, It's like, okay, let's sort of have some filters in place.
00:28:13.000 You're voting, but you're kind of voting on a representative, and the representative sort of votes for you.
00:28:17.000 And they interpret what you want.
00:28:18.000 I think that's definitely part of the idea.
00:28:21.000 I think that when you...
00:28:22.000 I mean, that point you just made about the...
00:28:24.000 It really reminds me, actually, the racist point you just made.
00:28:27.000 There was a really effective commercial for Rock the Vote, I remember, years ago in the UK, where...
00:28:34.000 I was back there at the time.
00:28:35.000 And they literally had some image of, it wasn't images like a TV ad, of a racist guy spewing racist stuff.
00:28:46.000 And then the tagline for the ad was, you'd better vote because you can be sure that he will.
00:28:52.000 It was a really, you know, good way of making that point.
00:28:55.000 But I think that generally, you know, those kind of people are the extreme.
00:28:59.000 I think the idea is that most people are not, you know, the kind of extreme end of it where they're either totally, you know, where their views are just completely abhorrent or they are just completely off the page in terms of their knowledge.
00:29:14.000 You got, you know, majority of people who are basically I think the problem is they just don't know enough about it.
00:29:23.000 The information they get is not interesting.
00:29:26.000 It's not presented in a good way.
00:29:28.000 There's other interesting things going on.
00:29:29.000 They're busy with their life.
00:29:30.000 You know, they want to get involved.
00:29:31.000 And so what happens, and I think it's happening more and more, is you end up with a smaller and smaller group of people who basically control the political system.
00:29:40.000 Because The mass of people are just not interested.
00:29:43.000 They're turned off.
00:29:44.000 They think that getting involved won't make any difference.
00:29:46.000 And so what you end up with is people with a lot of money, special interests, those who, you know, the kind of professionals of the political game running everything.
00:29:56.000 And that actually makes people even less inclined to get involved because they see what's happening and think, oh, well, why should I bother?
00:30:03.000 It's a really bad cycle, I think.
00:30:05.000 Yeah, and then people start saying things like, oh, the New World Order is in control anyway.
00:30:10.000 The Bilderberg Group is in control anyway.
00:30:13.000 There was some thing yesterday that was in the news where one of the members of the Bilderberg Group, I think he's some Dutch guy, had Some impromptu public discussion with all these people, and they start bringing out all these details of 9-11.
00:30:30.000 You know, 9-11, the building was brought down, thermite, and they circle this guy and start talking to him.
00:30:37.000 It's kind of fascinating, you know, this idea of the Illuminati, this idea of a small group of people controlling everyone through iconic symbolism and eyeballs inside of pyramids.
00:30:50.000 All that stuff becomes, in a lot of ways, a vehicle for feeling unempowered, for feeling disenfranchised.
00:31:01.000 That's exactly it.
00:31:02.000 I think that's how people feel.
00:31:04.000 And I certainly noticed, I used to work back in the UK in the government, and I noticed it there.
00:31:09.000 I've been in politics a long time.
00:31:10.000 That's how people feel there.
00:31:11.000 It's even more so here.
00:31:13.000 I think, you know, if you just look today, we're speaking on Election Day in California, it's the primaries.
00:31:18.000 Everyone's saying it's going to be the lowest turnout ever.
00:31:20.000 No one's interested because they don't think it makes any difference.
00:31:24.000 I think that's the real problem.
00:31:25.000 And they feel, you know, the whole idea of democracy is people power is that you have the power.
00:31:30.000 Everyone, like you're saying, everyone has the same chance to influence things.
00:31:34.000 And they have the power.
00:31:35.000 But that is not what it feels like to people.
00:31:37.000 Yeah.
00:31:38.000 And then every now and then something comes along where they're like, how the hell did that pass?
00:31:42.000 And then they freak out.
00:31:43.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:31:43.000 Like Proposition 8, where they repealed gay marriage.
00:31:47.000 And everybody's like, are you fucking kidding me? 0.99
00:31:48.000 In California, you repealed gay marriage? 0.99
00:31:51.000 The most shocking thing about Proposition 8 to me was that over, almost over...
00:31:57.000 The majority of black people voted for it.
00:32:02.000 They voted to repeal gay marriage.
00:32:04.000 They didn't want gay marriage, which is quite hilarious if you start thinking about people that have been persecuted.
00:32:11.000 I mean, who has been a victim of unfair discrimination in this country more than black people?
00:32:18.000 Probably no one.
00:32:19.000 I don't know because I wasn't involved in any way.
00:32:23.000 But I've heard, when you look at the date, exactly to your point, that that was one of the reasons.
00:32:27.000 And that was particularly the case because it was in the year when Obama was running and you had a higher turnout amongst those people.
00:32:34.000 Precisely because you had the first black candidate on the ballot for president.
00:32:38.000 So you had more black people voting.
00:32:40.000 And that was one of the consequences.
00:32:43.000 Yes, 70%.
00:32:44.000 I don't know if that's right, but that's certainly what some have argued.
00:32:48.000 Do you know how crazy 70%?
00:32:50.000 That's the exit poll.
00:32:51.000 It said 70% of black people voted for Proposition 8. That's stunning. 1.00
00:32:57.000 The idea being, for a lot of them, that it was a religious decision.
00:33:02.000 Yeah, I think that was a big part of the story that's told.
00:33:05.000 Someone should challenge that, and what they should do is they should make some sort of a proposition banning shrimp.
00:33:13.000 You know?
00:33:14.000 Like, have these big signs in front of Red Lobster, you know, with Genesis, like, whatever the quote in the Bible that says here.
00:33:23.000 Because there's four times as many references to shellfish as there is to gay people.
00:33:28.000 There's, like, a lot of references to, like, you're not supposed to eat shrimp, but you can go to an all-you-need buffet and people right after church step right up.
00:33:36.000 That's really outrageous.
00:33:37.000 I don't know how we allow it.
00:33:38.000 You're right.
00:33:38.000 You know, this needs to be stopped.
00:33:40.000 It's bad. 0.61
00:33:41.000 But they can't, for whatever reason, the gay thing, like, really locked onto people. 0.99
00:33:47.000 Like, they really got into it.
00:33:48.000 They really got into it.
00:33:50.000 For whatever reason.
00:33:51.000 You know, the gay decision, the decision to stop gay marriage seemed to be, like, one that Jesus was really serious about.
00:33:59.000 That shrimp thing, pick and choose, pick and choose. 1.00
00:34:02.000 You know, you're not supposed to get tattooed.
00:34:04.000 How many religious people have crosses tattooed on their body? 1.00
00:34:06.000 I mean, that's a fucking... 1.00
00:34:07.000 That's like directly... 0.99
00:34:09.000 Is that...
00:34:09.000 No, I didn't know that.
00:34:10.000 Oh, yeah.
00:34:11.000 Tattoos are not...
00:34:11.000 Yeah.
00:34:12.000 They're frowned upon.
00:34:13.000 Yeah, you're not supposed to mark yourself.
00:34:14.000 Okay.
00:34:14.000 You're not supposed to tattoo yourself.
00:34:16.000 That's against God's wish.
00:34:18.000 But people will tattoo themselves with biblical verses, which is...
00:34:23.000 You know, hilarious.
00:34:24.000 Yeah.
00:34:26.000 Well, people are weird, you know?
00:34:28.000 And my point that I was trying to make kind of clumsily earlier was that it's kind of strange That we are so varied.
00:34:40.000 And it's kind of strange that everyone does get, like, if there's three of us in a room, you know, we have to all decide.
00:34:48.000 And if one of us is retarded, not literally, but are people with Down syndrome, are people that are, anyone that is, like, mentally compromised, are they allowed to vote? 0.93
00:34:58.000 I mean, is there some sort of a test?
00:35:01.000 If you imply that...
00:35:02.000 I don't know what the rules are.
00:35:03.000 I think in Britain it was something to do with I think the only thing was if you're in jail.
00:35:10.000 I can't remember.
00:35:12.000 Well, if you're a felon in America, we don't ever let you recover.
00:35:15.000 We don't ever let you recover from that.
00:35:17.000 So if you're a felon, you don't get to vote. 0.99
00:35:19.000 Like, yeah, you fucked up too much. 0.99
00:35:21.000 What, you never can? 1.00
00:35:22.000 No.
00:35:23.000 I don't believe so.
00:35:25.000 I'm pretty sure felons don't get to vote.
00:35:28.000 Because Joey Diaz always talks about that.
00:35:31.000 Don't get to vote.
00:35:33.000 I know they can't carry firearms.
00:35:36.000 Yeah, state felon voting laws.
00:35:38.000 I guess it looks like it's different in every state.
00:35:41.000 Two states allow felons to vote from prison, while other states may permanently prevent felons from voting, even after being released.
00:35:51.000 So it's different.
00:35:52.000 It varies from state to state.
00:35:53.000 That is amazing.
00:35:54.000 Permanently prevent.
00:35:55.000 Yeah, they lose, they vote, they cannot vote permanently in 11 states.
00:36:01.000 Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee. 0.98
00:36:13.000 Coincidentally, all places I would never fucking live. 0.98
00:36:17.000 How weird. 0.98
00:36:19.000 You're worried about the rules.
00:36:20.000 I think that that is amazing to me, that there's literally...
00:36:25.000 This assumption that there's no chance...
00:36:27.000 You don't kick it back.
00:36:28.000 You don't turn it around, ever.
00:36:29.000 That's an amazing point. 1.00
00:36:30.000 You could make a felony when you're 18, like some stupid thing. 0.99
00:36:35.000 You go to jail, you come out and become like the best person ever. 0.99
00:36:39.000 And they're never going to let you return. 0.96
00:36:42.000 I mean, that's ridiculous.
00:36:42.000 I mean, the whole point of what you try and do with, you know, the criminal justice system and so on is to try and exactly, you know, rehabilitate people so they don't offend again.
00:36:52.000 I mean, that's...
00:36:53.000 And try and get people to that point. 0.99
00:36:55.000 Yeah, I think people are just so tired of people just fucking up that they're like, you know what, this is a good way to keep fuck-ups from voting. 0.99
00:37:03.000 The idea that we were talking about earlier that a person could be a racist, a person could be a complete nutter and still vote along with a person who's really kind and educated. 0.99
00:37:15.000 Their vote counts equally.
00:37:17.000 They're in a community.
00:37:19.000 As soon as that nutter robs something, it's a good way to cut him out of the system. 1.00
00:37:23.000 Alright, fuck that guy. 1.00
00:37:24.000 You can't vote anymore. 1.00
00:37:26.000 Which I guess kind of makes sense, but...
00:37:29.000 Maybe it's just a numbers thing.
00:37:30.000 If there was 10 people on an island, we would have to rehabilitate the guy who stole the coconuts.
00:37:35.000 We'd have to say, come on, man.
00:37:36.000 You can't be stealing everybody's coconuts. 1.00
00:37:37.000 This is a fucked up way to live your life. 1.00
00:37:39.000 You should contribute. 1.00
00:37:40.000 Stop stealing fish.
00:37:41.000 Stop stealing coconuts.
00:37:42.000 Get it together.
00:37:43.000 And then we'd let that guy be a part of the community.
00:37:45.000 By the way, I think it's an incredibly important point about...
00:37:48.000 About democracy generally, I think the closer it is to a real community where everyone knows each other, right?
00:37:55.000 Where the decisions are made kind of by people who can look the other person in the eye and all that.
00:38:00.000 I think they're going to be better.
00:38:00.000 I think one of the problems is that you've got these big, big systems and they're kind of really far from the human level where that kind of trust can be established.
00:38:10.000 And that is one of the problems with a lot of things in government and politics.
00:38:14.000 It's all just too big and removed from that human scale.
00:38:17.000 Well, that's a problem with a lot of things when it comes to human beings, this diffusion of responsibility that comes with being a part of a massive group, like war.
00:38:27.000 The idea that if there's 300 million of us and a million of us are overseas, you know, fighting for freedom...
00:38:36.000 You could deal with that because it's not happening in Calabasas.
00:38:40.000 You could go to work and you could deal with your life and the scope of your world doesn't come up.
00:38:47.000 But you're kind of peripherally aware that this is happening somewhere else.
00:38:51.000 But if people in Van Nuys were going to war with people in Studio City, and it was only a couple miles away, and you had to deal with that, then it would be something we would have to try to calm down.
00:39:01.000 We'd have to try to deal with this. 0.99
00:39:03.000 Like, what the fuck's going on here? 0.99
00:39:04.000 Like, what are we doing here? 0.99
00:39:06.000 It's something you have to deal with.
00:39:08.000 But the sheer number of human beings that are involved in the world today and in communities and cultures, it's almost unmanageable.
00:39:15.000 It's unmanageable for a person who's not designed for that.
00:39:19.000 We're designed essentially to deal with our immediate atmosphere.
00:39:21.000 We're designed to deal with small tribes of people.
00:39:25.000 Friends, family, the people that you know, the people that you keep close.
00:39:27.000 And when you get past that, it's almost like, I don't know what to do with this.
00:39:32.000 And so we pass the buck off to some representative.
00:39:34.000 I think this is such an important point.
00:39:36.000 I really do believe that.
00:39:37.000 I think that so many things...
00:39:40.000 Don't work because they get away from the point where you can really know the other person or the group that you're with.
00:39:46.000 There's some guy in England, I think at Cambridge University, did some research about the maximum number of people that you can really have any kind of human relationship with at any one time.
00:39:55.000 I think he got to a number of 150. Dunbar's number.
00:39:58.000 Is that right?
00:39:59.000 So you know more about it than I do.
00:40:00.000 I thought that was just a really interesting...
00:40:07.000 We're not designed for it.
00:40:08.000 It's like your phone. 0.99
00:40:09.000 Your phone only has a certain amount of data, that old fucking goofy flip phone you carry around with you. 0.74
00:40:14.000 If you have an older one, like one of those Motorola StarTax, you know, remember those from back in the day? 0.98
00:40:19.000 Big fucking goofy, clunky thing?
00:40:21.000 I mean, that probably only carried 100 phone numbers. 0.99
00:40:24.000 I mean, I don't know how many they had.
00:40:26.000 The amount of data that you can store in new devices represents the need that we have.
00:40:31.000 But we have these same biological hard drives that cavemen did.
00:40:37.000 I mean, they're not really much different than people that lived a million years ago.
00:40:40.000 I mean, how much has it changed?
00:40:42.000 I mean, how much more room do we have for social relationships?
00:40:47.000 Apparently not much.
00:40:49.000 Like 50,000 years ago and today.
00:40:50.000 If you took a guy who lived 50,000 years ago and a guy who lived today and you compare the brains, how much would they vary?
00:40:58.000 You could take a 50,000-year-old man, dress him up in clothes, and sit him down in a movie theater, and you'd walk right by him.
00:41:06.000 You wouldn't even know when you were sitting in your seat. 1.00
00:41:07.000 You wouldn't go, holy shit, that's a fucking caveman. 1.00
00:41:10.000 I mean, the guy would look very remarkably similar to how you look and I look and how normal folks look today. 0.99
00:41:17.000 Yeah, we're not designed for this world that we've created, and it's popped up so damn quickly.
00:41:22.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:41:23.000 It's really the last kind of, well, definitely the last hundred years, but, you know, and it's just getting faster and faster, you know, this kind of everything becoming really kind of organized at this sort of inhuman level.
00:41:34.000 And this mad struggle to sort of organize it and to try to...
00:41:39.000 Control it and just calm it down, get a handle on the effects of it.
00:41:45.000 And I think in a lot of ways, that's what you're doing with this crowd pack thing.
00:41:50.000 With this crowd pack thing is you are utilizing these tools, these tools of the internet and this instant access to information that we have today.
00:42:00.000 To sort of establish a much clearer sense of where political candidates are coming from and what are their influences as far as who is financing them?
00:42:12.000 Where is their money coming from?
00:42:15.000 Where are their decisions headed towards?
00:42:17.000 What are they doing right now?
00:42:20.000 Yeah, I think that's a really good summary of it, which is that basically we think that when you talk to people about politics, one of the things they say is that we just don't know enough about it.
00:42:29.000 We don't know enough information generally, but we don't have information we can trust.
00:42:35.000 We have all this spin and ads and all the rest of it from the politicians.
00:42:38.000 We can't really believe them.
00:42:39.000 There's all this stuff around on the internet.
00:42:41.000 I don't know what to believe.
00:42:42.000 So what we're trying to do is give people really objective information that they can rely on to figure out where the politicians are on the issues that they care about.
00:42:52.000 And the thing that we found from our research is that one of my co-founders, Adam, who's a professor at Stanford, has been working on this for many years and basically what he's shown is that the best way to predict what a politician will do if they're elected is to look at where they get their money and to look at also who they give money to because most politicians also kind of donate to other candidates so if you look at all that Campaign finance information,
00:43:21.000 the money behind this politician.
00:43:23.000 That is going to give you the best guide to what they're really going to do in office.
00:43:28.000 And it's something that you can actually, what we're trying to do is like turn that into really simple information that you can, without kind of reading tons of stuff and doing loads of research, you can get a quick snapshot of who these people are.
00:43:41.000 And then in time, the other thing we want to do is make it possible for you to find The politicians that are really good or bad on the issues that you care about and get involved in their campaigns.
00:43:52.000 Because the other thing is that you've got a tiny, tiny number of people who are funding all these campaigns.
00:43:58.000 If you look at the total number of people who put money into politics, it's a really small number compared to the number of people who vote and then the number of adults in the whole country.
00:44:08.000 It's a tiny number that are funding it all.
00:44:10.000 And even within that, most of the money comes from an even smaller number.
00:44:14.000 And they're paying for all of this.
00:44:16.000 And they're getting the outcomes that they pay for.
00:44:19.000 It's basically a transaction.
00:44:21.000 That's what's really crazy.
00:44:22.000 And so some people say, right, you've got to get money out of politics.
00:44:27.000 You've just got to get it out.
00:44:29.000 And obviously, that is something that has a lot of appeal.
00:44:32.000 You can see why you'd want to do that.
00:44:34.000 There's a brilliant guy called Larry Lessig.
00:44:36.000 I don't know if you've come across what he's been doing.
00:44:38.000 And he's been arguing about this for years.
00:44:40.000 And he's been saying, He's at Harvard.
00:44:42.000 He's a brilliant campaigner on this issue of money and politics.
00:44:46.000 And he's been saying, if you think about any problem in America today, whatever the issue is that you care about, if that's gay marriage or the environment, or it doesn't matter what it is, you're not going to get anywhere in terms of solving that problem unless you deal with the first problem,
00:45:03.000 which is the money.
00:45:04.000 Because the money in politics stops the proper solutions from being developed.
00:45:08.000 Because what it means is that you've got these special interests, whether that's left or right, it doesn't matter whether it's big businesses or unions, it doesn't matter.
00:45:15.000 They want their particular outcome and they're buying it through the system.
00:45:18.000 So we've got to get the money out.
00:45:20.000 And he's got a campaign around that and he wants public funding for elections and so on.
00:45:25.000 And all that is kind of a noble aim, I guess.
00:45:30.000 But my feeling is that that's a really hard sell.
00:45:34.000 Because you've got a constitution that says it's free speech.
00:45:37.000 You're allowed to give money to politicians and we can't just kind of stop that.
00:45:41.000 You've got to let people donate to politicians.
00:45:43.000 And so our take on it is to say, well, if you can't take the money out, let's at least dilute the influence of the people there right now by letting more people, making it easier for more people to get involved and give money to these candidates so they are not dependent On these big donors with their particular interests.
00:46:03.000 And that's really what we're trying to do is kind of make it easier for people to get involved in politics so that they can really, you know, get these politicians off this hook they're on, which is that their dependence on these donors for their campaign spending, which means that once they're elected,
00:46:20.000 it's kind of inevitable that they pay attention to them rather than the people who elected them.
00:46:24.000 In a lot of ways, it mirrors the influence that the internet has had on the news itself.
00:46:30.000 Because the news used to be distributed only through these proper channels, whether it was NBC, CBS, and then the cable news networks, CNN, Fox, and all this jazz.
00:46:41.000 But now, it's become this thing where websites develop, Huffington Post, all these, the Young Turks, which is an internet-based news show, and they have no censorship, they have no restrictions,
00:46:56.000 they have no influence other than the ones that they choose to accept.
00:47:01.000 Or the ideas that they bring.
00:47:02.000 And they have the same amount of distribution that everybody else does.
00:47:07.000 And you can have a website, just, you know, mikesfuckhead.com, and put it up. 0.61
00:47:14.000 And if enough people find it valid and interesting, he can have a million hits a day, unique visits a day.
00:47:20.000 And it might be more than CNN gets.
00:47:22.000 And just simply because of the fact that it's good information...
00:47:26.000 Yeah, well, you've shown that with this.
00:47:27.000 I mean, you know, you're reaching more people than...
00:47:31.000 I think all of these news sites, right?
00:47:33.000 It's ten and a half million a month now.
00:47:34.000 That's like more than just about anything else.
00:47:37.000 Well, what's crazy is it's exponentially doubling and tripling and what's happening is it's all being done with no promotion.
00:47:45.000 I mean, the only promotion is like I let people know, hey, Steve Hilton's on today.
00:47:49.000 And then just from...
00:47:51.000 I mean, that's the central.
00:47:53.000 I'm very excited to hear that.
00:47:54.000 From Twitter and just spreading the word.
00:47:56.000 But what I was getting at is that The same way the internet has sort of interfered with the distribution of information.
00:48:04.000 Look at what's going on with this Edward Snowden case.
00:48:07.000 This is a perfect example.
00:48:08.000 This massive change in the way the entire country looks at the NSA and government spying was done by one man leaking information to one guy in one source which spread through the internet and then boom it blossoms this huge news story that was essentially if he had sent that same story through the proper channels like the New York Times or CNN they would have ignored the fuck out of it they would have figured
00:48:38.000 out a way to cover that thing and throw it under the rug and staple that rug down and light it on fire I mean what he did was Figure out a way to distribute things through this new channel.
00:48:51.000 And essentially, that's what the internet is doing with voting.
00:48:56.000 Before, something like the internet came along, it was very difficult to find out who the influences of all these different individual candidates were.
00:49:03.000 With something like CrowdPak, It becomes much more easy and that also will change the way these people interact with these corporations.
00:49:12.000 Yeah, I think so.
00:49:13.000 And I really hope that that is...
00:49:15.000 We're just at the start of it, to be honest.
00:49:17.000 I think the political world is really late for this kind of It's a real change compared to, like you say, with media and other things.
00:49:23.000 And things that we experience every day in our lives, like travel and booking tickets.
00:49:28.000 There used to be a time when, to get an airline ticket, you had to physically go to some shop and then have these weird paper tickets.
00:49:37.000 The whole thing just feels so antiquated.
00:49:39.000 And now it's so simple.
00:49:40.000 It's really like you were saying earlier, you've got the power.
00:49:42.000 To do it, you're empowered.
00:50:03.000 But overall, we're part of this movement of trying to really put power in people's hands through technology.
00:50:10.000 And I'm sure it's going to happen.
00:50:12.000 I'm really sure because people want it.
00:50:15.000 You know, they are sick of just feeling that they don't get any response and that these people over here control everything.
00:50:22.000 And nothing ever really changes.
00:50:24.000 And actually the politicians themselves, in my experience, they, you know, you'd think, well, maybe I would say this because I used to work in politics myself for the Prime Minister in the UK, so I kind of know them.
00:50:34.000 They kind of used to be my world.
00:50:36.000 That used to be my world.
00:50:37.000 My feeling is that generally the politicians actually hate this just as much as everyone else.
00:50:42.000 They hate the fact that they have to spend so much time raising money.
00:50:47.000 You know, literally there was this document that was leaked To the New York Times, I think, a while back, from the Democratic leadership in Congress, where they gave a kind of guide to the newly elected members of Congress about how they should spend their time.
00:51:04.000 And it was a recommendation.
00:51:06.000 To the newly elected members of Congress, and it went through how many hours a day they should spend on different types of activity, you know, thinking about policy, talking to constituents, this kind of thing.
00:51:17.000 Half of the time, it was four hours, was recommended that they spend on fundraising.
00:51:22.000 Wow.
00:51:23.000 Right?
00:51:23.000 And so the people who go into politics, they don't want to live like that.
00:51:26.000 They actually hate it.
00:51:28.000 They hate, you know, being shoved in a room, which is what happens, and being, they call it dialing for dollars, you know, like just literally sitting on the phone trying to raise money.
00:51:36.000 That's not why they went into politics.
00:51:38.000 How do they do that?
00:51:39.000 They just call random people up or do they have a list of potential donors?
00:51:42.000 I don't know because I've never done it, but I think they...
00:51:46.000 I think that's literally it.
00:51:47.000 They're given lists of likely people.
00:51:49.000 They just doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. 0.99
00:51:51.000 Hi, I'm running for Congress in the 33rd District and I'd like to get gay marriage the fuck out of here. 1.00
00:51:56.000 What do you think? 0.99
00:51:57.000 I think it's pretty much like that.
00:51:59.000 I don't know.
00:51:59.000 You can talk to some people who know more about it.
00:52:03.000 So I think actually the politicians themselves mostly...
00:52:08.000 I hate the system.
00:52:09.000 And so I think that there's a lot of effort actually in Congress to try and encourage more small donors and make it easier for people to give money because actually that's what they want too.
00:52:22.000 They don't like being beholden to these big donors and these companies.
00:52:26.000 They don't like it any more than we like it.
00:52:28.000 I think ultimately the idea of leaders, whether it's presidential leaders or whether it's representatives, I think ultimately that's going to go away. 1.00
00:52:38.000 And my thought about it is that anybody who really wants to lead everyone else is probably an asshole. 0.99
00:52:45.000 Yeah. 0.99
00:52:46.000 I mean, anybody who really wants to be the king, why do you want to be the king?
00:52:50.000 Don't you have things to do?
00:52:52.000 Don't you have hobbies and creative pursuits?
00:52:55.000 Why would you want to just be the guy who gets to control, be the one who stands at the podium?
00:53:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, that's a weird ego thing.
00:53:04.000 I think that in 2014, in the world that we live in today, where we're seeing this...
00:53:12.000 Much more even distribution of influence.
00:53:15.000 I think that ultimately, that's going to be one of those things that gets called into question.
00:53:19.000 Like, why do we have an alpha representative?
00:53:22.000 Why do we have to have this head monkey in charge? 1.00
00:53:26.000 I really agree with that.
00:53:27.000 I mean, a lot of the things that I was trying to do when I was in the government in the UK, and it's kind of part of what we're doing with CrowdPak, is trying to encourage that even distribution, that more even distribution of power, and redistribute power from The kind of traditional sources of power and central leadership and putting power in people's hands so that they can control more and more aspects of their life because in the end they'll make better decisions overall.
00:53:54.000 And it's also just more healthy, I think.
00:53:57.000 Going back to what we were saying earlier about...
00:54:00.000 You know, the way people can only know a small number of people.
00:54:03.000 And if you give them power to shape more of the things that happen in their lives, I think that actually they will take more responsibility.
00:54:12.000 They'll be more responsible in a community sense.
00:54:15.000 You'll just see everything get better if you take power out of the hands of these sort of leaders and central organizations and put it in the hands of people.
00:54:23.000 Definitely.
00:54:24.000 I think you're right.
00:54:25.000 I think there's also an issue of it being overwhelming, the amount of information that you have to absorb whenever you deal with political issues, whenever you deal with campaigns, whenever you deal with new elections.
00:54:36.000 You're given this pamphlet of different people and the different propositions that are up for vote, and you just get overwhelmed.
00:54:43.000 Especially if you have a job that's taxing as it is, and you have a family, and you're thinking about golfing on the weekend.
00:54:51.000 God, I'd like to go golfing. 0.98
00:54:52.000 And you look at all this bullshit, and like, oh, I can't even pay attention to this. 0.99
00:54:55.000 Is everything okay right now? 1.00
00:54:56.000 Yes. 0.98
00:54:57.000 Well, fucking, let me just get this over with, and let's hope everything stays okay. 0.99
00:55:01.000 And very few people take responsibility for what gets voted in. 0.99
00:55:07.000 Yeah, and it is, I think you're right, though.
00:55:09.000 It is really hard.
00:55:11.000 It's hard.
00:55:12.000 It's easy to say, Oh, the voters are lazy or whatever they should do.
00:55:16.000 But honestly, like you said, they've got real lives to live and they haven't got time for all this stuff.
00:55:21.000 And that is a really big part of why we want to make it simple.
00:55:24.000 You know, we're assuming that people want to spend less time Doing this stuff, not more time.
00:55:30.000 And I think a lot of the kind of organizations and people that have tried to get people, you know, mobilized, you know, civic organization and that kind of thing, you know, it's worked to a certain extent with some people, but for the majority of people, they just don't want to do it.
00:55:46.000 They can't do it, actually.
00:55:47.000 They're literally too busy.
00:55:50.000 With things that are higher priorities like their kids and their family and their job or whatever it may be.
00:55:55.000 Hobbies, doesn't matter.
00:55:56.000 It's stuff that they choose to do and that's fine.
00:55:58.000 That's their life and we shouldn't kind of require that you have to spend ages figuring out This political stuff.
00:56:05.000 And that's why we're trying to make it really simple for people.
00:56:08.000 But based on quite a lot of complex...
00:56:10.000 And that's what technology allows you to do.
00:56:12.000 You can take quite a lot of complex data and information, like we're doing with the campaign finance records, where it's literally hundreds of millions of pieces of information, and we're boiling it down into one piece of information, which is a score, like where is this candidate On the scale of liberal to conservative,
00:56:31.000 where do they sit and where are they on each issue?
00:56:33.000 That's what we're trying to do to make it really simple.
00:56:36.000 Isn't it sort of analogous in a way to what we were talking about, about the amount of people that you can keep in your brain, the Dunbar's number, is that if you lived in a small tribe, say if we all lived 50 of us together in some small village somewhere, We really wouldn't have votes about gay marriage,
00:56:53.000 and we really wouldn't have votes about...
00:56:56.000 There'd be a million different things that would never be up for vote. 1.00
00:56:59.000 And if someone really did start micromanaging everyone's lives, you'd be like, hey, you know, Mike is an asshole. 1.00
00:57:06.000 We gotta kick him out of this fucking tribe. 1.00
00:57:08.000 This guy's trying to get people to wear purple and, you know, wear certain Nikes during different moon cycles and make tribal rules and rituals and make all these things standard. 1.00
00:57:17.000 And, you know, for whatever reason, he doesn't like men sleeping with men.
00:57:20.000 Like, he's got some weird thing.
00:57:22.000 You know, he believes it's part of...
00:57:23.000 It's so true. 0.84
00:57:24.000 I just so agree with that.
00:57:25.000 One of my favorite things that, um...
00:57:28.000 One of these experiments that happened was in Holland.
00:57:31.000 I think I'll get that right.
00:57:33.000 In Europe.
00:57:35.000 And they did this brilliant experiment with traffic where they, in a town, I think it was Friesland or something like that.
00:57:43.000 I probably got that wrong.
00:57:45.000 Where they literally took away all the traffic signals.
00:57:48.000 All of them.
00:57:48.000 Everything, right?
00:57:49.000 They took away traffic lights.
00:57:51.000 They even took, you know, stop signs, everything.
00:57:54.000 Even the markings on the road.
00:57:56.000 So they took away the white line in the middle of the road.
00:57:58.000 Everything.
00:57:58.000 All gone.
00:57:59.000 And their theory was that without that kind of external rule-making and kind of stuff going on to tell you what to do, people would have to Kind of relate to each other as other people and just figure it out amongst themselves.
00:58:14.000 So they would have to look other people in the eye and sort of work it out between them.
00:58:22.000 And they found they had this brilliant effect, which was that...
00:58:26.000 Accidents fell to zero.
00:58:28.000 The traffic speed was lower, but the traffic flow was much better.
00:58:33.000 It just worked all around.
00:58:35.000 All the kind of things that you try and do when all these people think about traffic planning and whatever, they achieved all those aims by literally taking everything away and just allowing people to relate to each other.
00:58:46.000 As humans.
00:58:47.000 That's fascinating.
00:58:48.000 I thought it was such a great little story and I think that you could do that in all sorts of areas.
00:58:54.000 If you just leave it to people to figure it out on a small scale where they can relate to each other, you just get a much better result.
00:59:00.000 Isn't that the issue though?
00:59:02.000 The small scale.
00:59:03.000 Yeah, I think so.
00:59:03.000 We're dealing with...
00:59:04.000 I drove here today.
00:59:06.000 I live about 20 minutes from here and in the drive from my house to here, I didn't know anybody. 1.00
00:59:12.000 I don't know any of those fucking people. 0.99
00:59:14.000 They might not even be real. 1.00
00:59:15.000 They might be robots that were sent from the government to pretend to be people.
00:59:19.000 It's the NSA again.
00:59:20.000 Aliens, maybe even.
00:59:22.000 I don't know them.
00:59:23.000 So there's that issue.
00:59:26.000 Whereas everyone in Friesland or wherever the fuck that place was in Holland, those people probably all know each other.
00:59:32.000 It's a small area.
00:59:33.000 There's not a lot.
00:59:34.000 When you get to some weird number like the 20 million people that live in the greater Los Angeles area, That's too crazy.
00:59:42.000 It's too nutty.
00:59:44.000 And there's nothing less human than a light, a stoplight.
00:59:49.000 Red means stop.
00:59:50.000 Green means go.
00:59:52.000 Wait.
00:59:53.000 Look at it.
00:59:54.000 It's green.
00:59:55.000 Go! 0.95
00:59:55.000 I mean, it's so disconnected from human interaction. 0.95
01:00:00.000 And without it, we become crippled.
01:00:03.000 There's no better chance that you're going to run into a traffic stop or a traffic jam than if a cop is directing. 0.95
01:00:11.000 If there's a cop that's standing there telling you people go forward and you people stop, for sure that guy's fucking that intersection up sideways. 0.99
01:00:19.000 Every time I go into one of those situations where a light is down and there's a cop standing there, it's a fucking disaster. 0.89
01:00:26.000 Whereas if it was just a light, if it's just red light, green light, everything seems to work because we're sort of programmed to wait for that light and then go. 0.94
01:00:34.000 It's like robotic.
01:00:34.000 You can follow the rules.
01:00:35.000 But if that cop is there, like, oh, this motherfucker. 1.00
01:00:38.000 Look at it. 1.00
01:00:38.000 No wonder this thing's a mess. 1.00
01:00:40.000 It's a person out there telling us when we can go. 1.00
01:00:43.000 Fuck him. 1.00
01:00:43.000 Who's he? 1.00
01:00:44.000 This asshole, fat fuck telling me when to go. 1.00
01:00:47.000 You know, and there's this weirdness involved and all of a sudden there's a human element that's been thrown into our robot light thing. 1.00
01:00:56.000 And then there's cameras that they were putting on them for a while, which were hilarious.
01:01:02.000 On the actual cops?
01:01:03.000 No, no, no.
01:01:04.000 On the lights.
01:01:05.000 Because they're doing that too, I think.
01:01:06.000 On the cops?
01:01:07.000 Yeah.
01:01:07.000 Yeah, they should.
01:01:08.000 They should do that on all cops.
01:01:10.000 They should do that on all cops.
01:01:11.000 Everything a cop does all throughout the day should be recorded, and it should be untamperable.
01:01:17.000 I genuinely think that's what they're trying to do.
01:01:19.000 So much abuse.
01:01:21.000 There's just massive amounts of abuse when it comes to police officers.
01:01:25.000 And I think there's a lot of great cops out there. 1.00
01:01:27.000 It's not that I don't believe in law enforcement, but I believe many of them are abusive fucks. 0.99
01:01:31.000 And many of them are psychologically unable to deal with the demands of an incredibly stressful life. 0.99
01:01:38.000 Yeah, it is really tough.
01:01:39.000 I completely agree with the way you put it, that there's tons of them that are great, and then there are others that totally abuse their position.
01:01:46.000 It's another really interesting example of how technology can be really helpful in a way.
01:01:53.000 I saw that they're trying to do it in here, the LAPD, that if you put the cameras on and you can't mess around with them, That's a really powerful incentive.
01:02:03.000 Huge.
01:02:04.000 To behave right.
01:02:05.000 Complaints have dropped dramatically. 0.98
01:02:07.000 And they've dropped dramatically because cops can't be cunts anymore. 0.99
01:02:11.000 I mean, it's really that simple. 0.95
01:02:12.000 It really is that simple.
01:02:14.000 What I was talking about was that traffic lights.
01:02:16.000 Traffic lights, right.
01:02:16.000 They were having lights like if you were going through the light as it was yellow and it turned red, they would flash.
01:02:22.000 So if your wheels were not, you know, if they were in front of the line, you hadn't made it across before the light turned red, they would give you a ticket.
01:02:30.000 But it turned out to be a private company that was actually profiting from these tickets.
01:02:34.000 And so they deemed that unconstitutional and they removed all those lights. 0.98
01:02:37.000 But people were just in a goddamn uproar. 0.98
01:02:39.000 It was just madness. 0.99
01:02:41.000 Everywhere you go, you'd see flashes going off at traffic lights.
01:02:46.000 And all it was was revenue.
01:02:48.000 It wasn't preventing people from running lights or preventing people from gunning it when the light turns yellow. 0.69
01:02:54.000 It was just fucking people out of their money.
01:02:57.000 And it was just one more thing where they complicate the system further. 0.95
01:03:01.000 They add one more element that makes it one more thing that you have to think about, one more little piece of control.
01:03:07.000 And one more dehumanizing aspect.
01:03:10.000 People like freedom.
01:03:11.000 And one of the reasons why people like freedom is because freedom isn't just the freedom to do as you wish. 0.98
01:03:18.000 It's the freedom to not have to think about a bunch of other shit and be influenced by a bunch of other shit that takes your time away and takes your energy away. 0.69
01:03:27.000 And I think that's where we're at when it comes to a lot of these propositions and a lot of these Really uber-complicated things that are involved in our day-to-day lives. 0.97
01:03:39.000 It's like we've complicated ourselves to this point of almost of no return and where there's very few alternatives.
01:03:51.000 Yeah, and I think that the thing that happens then is that they've complicated it.
01:03:56.000 Then it's not working and they say, oh, we better try and fix it.
01:03:59.000 Then the fixing of it makes it even more complicated.
01:04:02.000 And then a new government comes in or a new governor or whoever it may be.
01:04:06.000 And instead of actually just stopping and thinking, you know what, we've just got to rethink the whole thing and start from scratch and just not tinker with it anymore and try and improve it because it's just going to make it more complicated.
01:04:18.000 That never happens.
01:04:19.000 There's never really enough time for that to happen.
01:04:22.000 They're not there.
01:04:22.000 They're only thinking about the next couple of years and the next election or whatever.
01:04:25.000 And so things just get even more complicated.
01:04:29.000 And they never seem to get to that point where people think, yeah, that's really working great now.
01:04:34.000 My wife and I went out to this restaurant the other night, and the restaurant was this...
01:04:38.000 We were noticing that there's this theme that's going on in a lot of restaurants where they have, like, this rustic thing going on where they have old-school lights, the filaments in them, and then they have hardwood tables and wrought iron this and metal that, and...
01:04:54.000 And I was like, I think people are sort of reacting to this fabricated world that we've created and we long for this simplicity. 0.81
01:05:01.000 That's why there's these shows like these Alaska shows where people living on the frontier and they're fucking collecting wood and fighting off wolves.
01:05:11.000 It's like we almost long for that simplicity above this world that we've complicated to this almost unmanageable point. 0.59
01:05:21.000 Yeah, it's definitely true. 0.97
01:05:22.000 And you see in so many areas that, I mean, like food is a great example where there's all this kind of stuff about organic food and seasonal and local and grow it in your garden.
01:05:32.000 And that whole movement, I think, is a reaction.
01:05:33.000 I mean, if you think about food, like years ago, Like in the fifties, I think, you know, it was all about, um, you know, let's have all the kind of TV package food and all this kind of industrialized food that was then seen as better because it was, you know,
01:05:49.000 scientific and hygienic and like really kind of good for you.
01:05:52.000 And then people are now just thinking that is just really horrible.
01:05:55.000 This is all the chemicals.
01:05:56.000 It's disgusting.
01:05:57.000 Now the movement is all for this kind of, uh, local organic food.
01:06:01.000 It made me laugh though, because my family from Hungary, And so when I was a kid, we used to go back to Hungary the whole time.
01:06:08.000 It was a communist country.
01:06:10.000 And there were no food stores, loads of choice and everything.
01:06:13.000 And you would go in the store and it was just, you know, what you got.
01:06:17.000 Just a few sort of vegetables and it was just very basic.
01:06:21.000 And now, I remember the other day, walking around in San Francisco, and there's the kind of farmer's market thing going on, and they had their kind of ugly vegetables and whatever put out there.
01:06:29.000 And it just looked exactly like the Hungarian communist food shop.
01:06:34.000 But here in San Francisco, it's the most expensive, fancy, amazing food that you can get.
01:06:39.000 But it just makes me laugh, really.
01:06:41.000 I think a lot of it is just...
01:06:43.000 You know, a reaction to what's gone before.
01:06:45.000 And we're currently, I think you're totally right, in this kind of sense of it's just gone too far, the whole industrialization of so many different aspects of our lives.
01:06:54.000 Well, it's also we're starting to realize where people live in cities and they look around and they see all these buildings and they see this asphalt and they see these telephone poles and they go, We're good to go.
01:07:26.000 Where's this water coming from?
01:07:28.000 And then you go, oh, it comes from Colorado.
01:07:30.000 What? 1.00
01:07:31.000 The water comes from fucking what? 1.00
01:07:33.000 It comes from the Colorado River. 1.00
01:07:34.000 Oh, no!
01:07:35.000 So the only way we get water in California is we have to take it from thousands of miles away.
01:07:42.000 This is a crazy place to be.
01:07:45.000 We're in this unsustainable environment.
01:07:47.000 And new people move here every day.
01:07:50.000 New thousand people every day.
01:07:52.000 Boom, boom, boom. 1.00
01:07:53.000 Set up a fucking house, build this, another structure, boom. 1.00
01:07:57.000 And then we slowly push out our no food here area deeper and deeper into the desert. 1.00
01:08:04.000 No one's thinking about where this goes.
01:08:07.000 So far, so good.
01:08:09.000 Sustainable.
01:08:10.000 Go to the farmer's market.
01:08:11.000 You can get plenty of good groceries.
01:08:12.000 But very bizarre.
01:08:13.000 If there's somehow or another some cutoff of our oil supply, some way where we can't travel as easily anymore, we're in a real rut.
01:08:23.000 It's not a good spot.
01:08:26.000 Ideally, every neighborhood should have a couple of acres.
01:08:31.000 Where it's set up where you grow food.
01:08:35.000 Community gardens.
01:08:36.000 I just totally agree with that.
01:08:37.000 There's a brilliant guy, I don't know if you've come across him, called Nassim Taleb.
01:08:42.000 He wrote this book called The Black Swan.
01:08:44.000 He's a mathematician and he was in the financial markets.
01:08:48.000 And he really kind of predicted the crash and understood all that, and he's just great.
01:08:52.000 And one of his big points is that these big systems that we've ended up with, and the word he uses are they're completely fragile.
01:09:01.000 They look kind of big and solid, but actually we're so dependent on them It makes us really fragile.
01:09:09.000 If they collapse or fall over or whatever, whether that's a company or some government system, we're really screwed because we're so dependent.
01:09:17.000 And that's really a kind of fragile situation.
01:09:20.000 And so that's definitely one of the reasons I sort of love what he writes about and talks about is that he's arguing for exactly that kind of thing, you know, making sure that companies don't get too big to fail, not just in the financial sector.
01:09:31.000 A lot of people have talked about that with the banks.
01:09:33.000 There's too big to fail argument.
01:09:34.000 But in every area with the food system and other types of businesses where we're so dependent, if something went wrong, we couldn't cope with it.
01:09:43.000 And when you have small distributed, it's just like we were talking earlier about the power being distributed.
01:09:48.000 It's not just voting power and political power.
01:09:51.000 It's economic power.
01:09:52.000 It's social power.
01:09:53.000 Every type of power.
01:09:54.000 It's just going to be much better for us if it's distributed more broadly.
01:09:58.000 And we're a long way from that.
01:10:00.000 It's actually going in the other direction.
01:10:02.000 Yeah, it's going the other direction, and very few cities are diminishing in population unless there's something horribly wrong, like Detroit.
01:10:10.000 Have you ever been to Detroit?
01:10:13.000 I have not.
01:10:13.000 It's fascinating.
01:10:15.000 While you're over here in America and you're enjoying our fine country, you should go see our biggest disaster.
01:10:20.000 Because Detroit at one point in time was this economic stronghold for America.
01:10:26.000 It's where we built Camaros and Corvettes and Firebirds.
01:10:30.000 And it was this place where America built what it built best, which is besides buildings, it's cars.
01:10:39.000 America built cars. 0.99
01:10:41.000 And it all fucking fell apart. 0.98
01:10:43.000 It fell apart when they started moving jobs to Mexico and other countries. 0.99
01:10:48.000 It fell apart when they started producing shittier and shittier cars And when there's all sorts of complications with unions and with a million different problems.
01:10:59.000 And then slowly but surely they started diminishing these factories.
01:11:03.000 And there's a really interesting documentary.
01:11:06.000 I don't know if you watched Michael Moore's first documentary, Roger and Me.
01:11:10.000 Did you ever see that?
01:11:11.000 Roger and Me was all about Flint, Michigan.
01:11:13.000 It was about his hometown where they closed down these plants.
01:11:16.000 And then these people went into immediate massive poverty.
01:11:20.000 And it was a huge, huge issue.
01:11:22.000 I think?
01:11:42.000 And, you know, I mean, if a company wanted to move there, you have a massive amount of people that are looking for jobs and cheap land, and it's a good idea, it's a good place to start, but very, very difficult to encourage people to do so.
01:11:54.000 So, Detroit shows how easy things can fall apart.
01:11:58.000 And there's been a bunch of blogs that have been created, websites where they've shown How these trees and nature are taking over these areas that used to be populated where trees are growing through buildings.
01:12:12.000 Yeah, I saw those pictures.
01:12:12.000 Yeah, it's amazing.
01:12:13.000 Fascinating.
01:12:13.000 I remember that now, yeah.
01:12:15.000 Bears.
01:12:15.000 Really interesting.
01:12:16.000 Bears are moving into these areas that used to have, you know, towns.
01:12:20.000 And bears are slowly starting moving their way into Detroit. 0.98
01:12:23.000 And it's fucking crazy. 0.98
01:12:24.000 Yeah, but... 0.98
01:12:26.000 That shows you how easily it could all fall apart, whereas, you know, 50, 60 years ago, here's an image that Jamie just put up.
01:12:34.000 These are trees that are growing Inside of this abandoned building.
01:12:39.000 They're just growing through the floor, and eventually they'll make their way through the roof, and the roof will rot, and it just shows you how easy it is for nature to reclaim areas that human beings feel like, well, this is a city now.
01:12:52.000 No, it's a city for now.
01:12:54.000 You know, it's not a city now.
01:12:56.000 It's not permanently a city.
01:12:58.000 This is...
01:12:59.000 Trees just grow...
01:13:00.000 You ever go to the airport, drive down Sepulveda?
01:13:03.000 There's areas where it's really old roads, and these trees have grown up through the sidewalks so bad that the sidewalks are...
01:13:12.000 You know, you can't walk on them. 0.91
01:13:13.000 I mean, they're like ramps, because the tree has slowly but surely lifted up the concrete of the sidewalk, and it's trying to reclaim this area that they've put this stupid rock paste over. 0.96
01:13:26.000 Yeah. 0.98
01:13:27.000 You know?
01:13:28.000 I think that's like one of the best examples of how easy it could all fall apart.
01:13:33.000 Yeah, and I guess it's that point about being dependent on something.
01:13:37.000 Yeah.
01:13:37.000 But it's interesting because you've got a lot of...
01:13:39.000 I mean, I love going around and getting to know other American cities.
01:13:43.000 I mean, that's a bad example.
01:13:44.000 You've got some really great...
01:13:46.000 Cities, you know, that seem to be thriving and working, and they're just really cool places to live and work.
01:13:52.000 I love Chicago.
01:13:52.000 I thought it was an amazing place.
01:13:53.000 Chicago's fantastic.
01:13:54.000 But then you've got a huge problem with the crime.
01:13:56.000 It's just so interesting how you have a city that is so great in so many ways, and they've got this sort of pocket of real poverty and crime, and that's been going on for years, and despite all the other advantages, and they've got a lot of,
01:14:12.000 you know, Great economic growth going on there, and so on.
01:14:15.000 And people visiting, and it's great.
01:14:17.000 But they've still got this entrenched problem with crime and gun violence.
01:14:22.000 And it's interesting how long it takes for some of these problems to be worked out.
01:14:29.000 Yeah, Chicago's a disaster in that sense.
01:14:31.000 It's a great city, but it's also a disaster in the sense of crime and gang violence.
01:14:35.000 I was there, I was talking to this guy who was a cop, and he was explaining it to me that a big problem is the drug trade.
01:14:41.000 And that certain gang members were incarcerated.
01:14:45.000 And because they were incarcerated, they created a vacuum.
01:14:49.000 There was a power struggle to try to fill the vacuum.
01:14:52.000 That power struggle started this sort of violent war going on between all these different criminal factions and then...
01:14:59.000 You know, it builds up.
01:15:00.000 And, you know, he was really kind of interesting because he was talking about it.
01:15:03.000 He goes, you know what the best way to fix it?
01:15:05.000 He goes, legalize drugs.
01:15:07.000 He goes, nobody wants to hear about it, but the reason why they're making all this money is because they're selling something that's illegal.
01:15:13.000 And so when you're selling something that's illegal, the only people that are doing that are the people that are criminals.
01:15:19.000 And he goes, as soon as you make it legal, you deal with a personal choice issue.
01:15:23.000 And the guy was, like, very rational about it.
01:15:24.000 He was like, you're dealing with a personal choice issue instead of a crime issue.
01:15:27.000 But I think that's exactly right.
01:15:29.000 I think it's one of the more kind of interesting ways into that whole drug legalization argument is to think about the social problems that come from the current rules.
01:15:39.000 Not just, you know, a lot of times people talk about drug use being a social problem, but actually it's everything that comes from it.
01:15:46.000 The crime and the gangs and that's, I think, the most intelligent argument for legalization.
01:15:53.000 Yeah, and there was a real interesting article recently about Mexico.
01:15:56.000 They were talking about the cartels like hemorrhaging money because they relied on marijuana trade and now with legal marijuana, just the legal marijuana in Colorado and in Washington State and then all the medical places have massively diminished the amount of influence.
01:16:15.000 That these guys have.
01:16:16.000 The amount of wealth that they can get from selling illegal drugs.
01:16:20.000 Because people don't need it anymore.
01:16:21.000 It's super easy to get.
01:16:23.000 So like the marijuana trade, which is one of the most common drugs, is kind of drying up for them.
01:16:28.000 And so they're scrambling to try to find some other avenues of revenue.
01:16:31.000 It's pretty interesting stuff.
01:16:33.000 Because it just shows people, this is what you do when you make things illegal.
01:16:38.000 We should have figured it out in the 1920s with Prohibition.
01:16:42.000 I mean, it's amazing that people are so goofy today that they still are dealing with the same issue that they kind of resolved in the 1920s.
01:16:50.000 Almost a hundred years ago, they figured this out with alcohol, and they have to relearn the same lesson with cannabis.
01:16:58.000 It's just...
01:16:58.000 It's nutty.
01:17:00.000 And it's, again, it's another thing where it's a personal issue where you have just too many goddamn laws. 0.98
01:17:06.000 You have too many restrictions on personal freedom. 0.95
01:17:08.000 I think that's exactly right.
01:17:08.000 And it's interesting.
01:17:10.000 I think that the politicians have been put off for a long time from doing anything about it by the kind of reaction that they'll think they'll get from certain parts of the press and so on.
01:17:20.000 But actually, I think that's changing, and it's changing really quickly here in America.
01:17:24.000 The fact that you've got these ballot measures That are winning in different states, and that's just going to accelerate, I think.
01:17:30.000 Not just that, the amount of revenue they pull in.
01:17:33.000 With no resistance whatsoever, Colorado has 39% tax revenue on marijuana that's sold recreationally.
01:17:40.000 39%.
01:17:41.000 And everyone there is like, okay.
01:17:43.000 39% is cool.
01:17:45.000 No one's arguing over the most preposterous sales rate ever. 0.99
01:17:50.000 39% is fucking crazy. 0.99
01:17:53.000 It's basically the government is a drug dealer. 1.00
01:17:55.000 I mean, that's what it is.
01:17:57.000 You're not just taking taxes. 1.00
01:17:59.000 You're fucking a partner. 1.00
01:18:00.000 You're a partner in this. 1.00
01:18:01.000 39% is a big partner.
01:18:03.000 You're at almost 40%.
01:18:05.000 And then they're making over $100 million a year in tax revenue just in the state of Colorado.
01:18:13.000 So when that kind of money starts coming in, then that money has influence.
01:18:17.000 And then they have to respect the pot dollar because the pot dollar is going to be a lobby just like anything else, just like the pharmaceutical lobby, just like the natural resource lobby, just like anything else.
01:18:27.000 The pot lobby is going to be legit now.
01:18:29.000 Because there's going to be a tremendous amount of revenue available.
01:18:33.000 And big business.
01:18:35.000 There's big businesses that are moving into Colorado right now and establishing warehouse.
01:18:40.000 Warehouse spaces in Colorado are just evaporating.
01:18:44.000 They're disappearing left and right because people are just picking them up.
01:18:47.000 The way Colorado's laws are set up, in order to sell marijuana, you have to grow marijuana.
01:18:52.000 So if you wanted to open up a shop in Colorado, you'd have to grow your own stuff and then sell it.
01:18:57.000 You can't buy it from someone else and then sell it.
01:19:00.000 So they're just giant warehouses everywhere being scooped up and they're setting up these massive grow ops and then they're funneling that money because it's being sold legally.
01:19:10.000 They're funneling that money right back in the state at a rate of 39%.
01:19:13.000 It's crazy.
01:19:15.000 And huge companies are slowly but surely creeping their way towards Colorado because they realize this is a multi-billion dollar industry in just a couple of years.
01:19:26.000 You're looking at three, four, five years from now, a multi-billion dollar industry nationwide currently Places where they're having serious money issues, serious problems with generating tax revenue, all of the sudden, all the profits that are going to illegal sales of marijuana,
01:19:43.000 now 39% of that money is going to come right to the taxpayers, or right to the tax collectors.
01:19:50.000 And have they got any, I guess it's a bit early, but I was just wondering what they're seeing in terms of People's behavior, the usage...
01:19:58.000 Lower crime.
01:19:58.000 Is that right?
01:20:00.000 Lower crime and lower murder rates.
01:20:01.000 Murder rates have dropped in Denver.
01:20:03.000 Yeah.
01:20:05.000 Of course.
01:20:05.000 They're high.
01:20:07.000 They're gonna think twice.
01:20:08.000 Well, they're gonna think twice.
01:20:10.000 They're gonna think, I don't need to shoot that dude. 1.00
01:20:12.000 Guy's an asshole, but whatever. 1.00
01:20:13.000 That's his problem. 1.00
01:20:15.000 You know, look, it's never good to suppress people.
01:20:19.000 And when you have something that's irrational, like marijuana laws...
01:20:23.000 It gives people this feeling of frustration, this disconnect.
01:20:28.000 It gives them this feeling of being disenfranchised with the people that are supposedly in charge.
01:20:34.000 And it makes them upset.
01:20:36.000 Like, why should a grown man be able to come? 0.95
01:20:38.000 If there was only two of us, we were living on an island.
01:20:41.000 And I was like, Steve, I don't think you should smoke pot. 1.00
01:20:44.000 If you smoke pot, I'm going to lock you in a fucking cage. 1.00
01:20:46.000 He'd be like, you're an asshole. 1.00
01:20:48.000 What do you give a shit what I do? 1.00
01:20:50.000 It's when there's two million of us that you feel like you can get away with something like that. 0.99
01:20:53.000 That someone can come along and say, I'm the sheriff, and if I find someone smoking marijuana in my district, I'm going to put them under lock and key.
01:21:01.000 I'm going to make our streets safe for the children. 1.00
01:21:03.000 All that stupid shit that they say. 1.00
01:21:05.000 Well, it's just too many numbers. 1.00
01:21:07.000 Too many people.
01:21:08.000 But what I'm interested in is like just coming to, you know, I've been here two years now, but I do get a feeling that that is a really quite kind of almost mainstream position.
01:21:18.000 A lot of people feel like that in America.
01:21:20.000 Maybe it's a California thing.
01:21:21.000 I don't know.
01:21:22.000 But then I'm interested why the libertarian movement, you know, the political expression of that kind of attitude is libertarian.
01:21:43.000 I think it's slowly but surely starting to gain momentum, but I think the Internet's influence is barely Barely two decades.
01:21:54.000 1994 to 2014, right?
01:21:57.000 That's the realistic take on it.
01:22:00.000 But the real impact, as far as social impact, I would say it's probably a decade.
01:22:07.000 So 10 years is not that much time.
01:22:09.000 And then in that decade, how much of it has been concentrated on social change?
01:22:15.000 And how much of it has been concentrated on porn? 0.97
01:22:17.000 How much of it has been concentrated on, look, we can see tits anytime we want now! 1.00
01:22:21.000 Woohoo! 1.00
01:22:22.000 And this newfound freedom, this newfound ability to access information, it's going to take a while.
01:22:28.000 I think people are evolving right now.
01:22:31.000 I really do.
01:22:32.000 Socially, at a rate that's just unheard of.
01:22:36.000 The kind of movements that you're seeing now...
01:22:39.000 Whether you agree with them or not, whether it's Operation Wall Street or whether it's...
01:22:43.000 Anytime there's a social change or social movement in this country, whether you agree with it or not, it's fascinating to step back and watch this swarm of activity that takes place because of any issue that comes up now that...
01:22:58.000 Really couldn't happen before without, you know, you'd have to have like a physical meeting.
01:23:03.000 You'd have to have people would get together and someone would have to have a megaphone.
01:23:06.000 What we need to do is take back the streets.
01:23:10.000 What we need to do is make the world safe for our children and we need to get out of Vietnam. 1.00
01:23:16.000 You know, and then, you know, the cops come and break it up and hose everybody down and they would shut down the problem.
01:23:23.000 You can't do that anymore.
01:23:24.000 You can't shut down the problems because the problem exists on Reddit.
01:23:27.000 The problem exists on millions of people's Twitter accounts where they're posting things.
01:23:32.000 The problem exists on Facebook.
01:23:33.000 The problem exists anytime there's dissent, that dissent sort of encapsulates An entire group of people that share these ideas and they can freely communicate.
01:23:46.000 And I think they're just starting to realize that they can freely communicate the way they can.
01:23:51.000 And unfortunately, a lot of them are annoying.
01:23:53.000 Unfortunately, a lot of people that have figured this out are annoying. 1.00
01:23:56.000 And you see these really dumb ideas that spread like wildfire and a bunch of idiots are behind it. 1.00
01:24:02.000 That's fascinating to watch too. 0.99
01:24:04.000 But I think ultimately, when it all balances itself out, we're going to deal with a much more informed, much more educated, much more aware, much more socially conscious society than we have ever had in the past.
01:24:17.000 I think a decade from now, two decades from now, we're going to see the rewards of this.
01:24:22.000 And I'm very optimistic.
01:24:23.000 I like that way of thinking about it.
01:24:26.000 And I agree.
01:24:27.000 And I guess what we're...
01:24:29.000 The way we're thinking about it is that we want to kind of...
01:24:33.000 Now, the next step really is to really take that energy and really direct it into the heart of the political system.
01:24:43.000 Not kind of on the edges of it with kind of protests and sort of social movements, but really getting into the guts of the way laws are made and the way the country is run, the states are run, cities are run.
01:24:57.000 And kind of injecting it into the real heart of power.
01:25:02.000 I think that's got to be the next step.
01:25:04.000 Yes, I agree.
01:25:06.000 And I hope that it can be done.
01:25:08.000 I mean, I wonder if the way technology is advancing and the way technological innovation seems to exponentially increase, if there's some way to manage things in a way that's sort of not discovered yet or sort of hasn't been No one's figured out a way to sort of organize this whole thing in a way that's much clearer.
01:25:32.000 And now we're dealing...
01:25:33.000 It's almost like code.
01:25:35.000 Like, do you remember what code used to look like when you used to use DOS and if you used an old computer, you had to enter everything and command prompts?
01:25:42.000 Yeah.
01:25:43.000 But then someone came along, like Xerox, figured out this graphic user interface. 0.99
01:25:47.000 You just, well, fuck all that. 0.99
01:25:48.000 See that thing? 1.00
01:25:49.000 Just double, just press twice when you want that to open up, and boom.
01:25:52.000 And then you'll see a graphic representation of what you want that's a much more simplistic element.
01:25:58.000 You don't have to look at all the code behind what you're doing when you're using Microsoft Word. 0.99
01:26:03.000 Cut all that shit out. 0.99
01:26:05.000 Let's just see... 1.00
01:26:06.000 Let's make it real simple.
01:26:08.000 And if we could get it to that in politics, like, okay, what would we have to do to make more money go towards school and less money go towards...
01:26:23.000 Is there a way we could work that out?
01:26:25.000 If you look at how much money is being spent in the Iraq War, how much money is being spent in Afghanistan, is there a way to take 30% of that and put it into our schools?
01:26:37.000 Because, my God, the school system would radically change.
01:26:40.000 Our education system would radically change.
01:26:42.000 The amount of people that would come out of these educational systems that were more balanced, more aware, had more nuanced perspectives, would radically change.
01:26:54.000 Our country would radically improve.
01:26:56.000 Like, over the course of a decade, if you could just figure out a way to put that kind of power in people's hands, what they choose to do.
01:27:05.000 Well, I think the way that you do that, it comes back to what we were saying earlier.
01:27:09.000 Is actually literally doing it by getting rid of these kind of big organisations, central government organisations that try and run the whole system from some office somewhere that's completely removed from the parents and the kids that are actually using the schools and really give responsibility.
01:27:31.000 For the way the schools operate to local communities so that they can try things out because every kid is different.
01:27:38.000 They learn in different ways.
01:27:39.000 It feels to me like when it comes to education, we've got this approach, which is someone has decided, you know, this is the theory.
01:27:45.000 This is how we're going to get kids to learn whatever it may be.
01:27:49.000 And we're going to try and have...
01:27:50.000 A kind of common application of that in every school, and everyone's going to teach the same way, and that's great.
01:27:57.000 And I just think the evidence shows that is not right.
01:27:59.000 It doesn't work for every kid, and you want to have a system where you've got much more ability to experiment and try things out and adapt things to each...
01:28:15.000 I think a community approach to these things is going to be the way to do it.
01:28:27.000 You definitely need the money, of course, to have high quality as well.
01:28:30.000 So I agree with that.
01:28:31.000 It's just that if you just put more money into the current system of organizing schools, I don't think you'll get the kind of benefit that you could if you actually gave the power.
01:28:42.000 Over the system and took it away from the people at the center and put it in the hands of people locally.
01:28:46.000 That's how I would do it.
01:28:48.000 And if they did that, you could also see the results, positive and negative, and imitate the positive ones.
01:28:54.000 Exactly.
01:28:54.000 You could see, like, these people have an approach and their approach is more sort of Waldorf school based and less electronics and more wooden toys and interacting with kids.
01:29:03.000 And look at the benefits, like, man, all these people are coming out so creative.
01:29:08.000 But then there's another place in San Francisco that's much more tech involved.
01:29:11.000 Everybody has an iPad and all these kids.
01:29:13.000 Well, there's a benefit there as well.
01:29:15.000 I mean, I think schools are a huge issue.
01:29:18.000 The massive underfunding of education in this country is a huge, huge issue.
01:29:22.000 And it's madness.
01:29:23.000 And it's almost like...
01:29:25.000 Sort of ensuring that poverty and that this is going to be...
01:29:28.000 Yeah, I think that's right.
01:29:29.000 You know what I mean?
01:29:29.000 Yeah, and a lot of it is the kind of people that go into teaching.
01:29:33.000 You know, really, you'd want the best people.
01:29:36.000 The smartest, best people going into teaching.
01:29:39.000 It's like the most important job.
01:29:40.000 That get paid $20,000 a year.
01:29:42.000 Right.
01:29:42.000 Right.
01:29:42.000 And you're not going to get that if you're paying them.
01:29:45.000 It's really kind of obvious.
01:29:47.000 We apply that in every other kind of area.
01:29:50.000 You kind of know that if you pay more, you get something better, generally.
01:29:54.000 And I think that that is a huge part of it, is actually trying to get the best people.
01:30:00.000 And the countries that have done really well, I think that...
01:30:03.000 Finland is a good example from what I know.
01:30:05.000 I spent quite a lot of time on this when I was in the government.
01:30:07.000 Finland is a place where it is the cultural thing.
01:30:10.000 A really admired and esteemed thing to do and well rewarded is to go and be a teacher.
01:30:17.000 It's like one of the best things you can do.
01:30:19.000 And that's true.
01:30:20.000 I think of a lot of the Scandinavian countries and they have better results thanks to that.
01:30:24.000 So you've got to just get the best people to go into teaching.
01:30:28.000 That's really important.
01:30:29.000 In this country, the prohibitive cost of higher education is shocking.
01:30:34.000 When you start thinking about how much money it costs to go to college, how much money it costs to get a degree, and you accumulate student loans that are almost insurmountable.
01:30:43.000 How many people get out of college in this country?
01:30:46.000 It's amazing.
01:30:47.000 The figures are just unbelievable.
01:30:49.000 They are so in debt.
01:30:50.000 Just stunningly in debt.
01:30:52.000 Like, I have a friend who is in his 50s and just paid off his...
01:30:57.000 In his 50s?
01:30:59.000 Yes.
01:31:00.000 Wow.
01:31:00.000 Just paid off from medical school.
01:31:02.000 Wow. 0.98
01:31:03.000 Just fucking insurmountable debt. 0.99
01:31:05.000 Just insurmountable debt forever. 0.99
01:31:07.000 Yeah.
01:31:08.000 Just slowly but surely chipping away at hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational debt.
01:31:16.000 It's really amazing.
01:31:17.000 I mean, one of the things I'm doing right now is teaching at Stanford a little bit.
01:31:21.000 And it's just...
01:31:23.000 There's a kind of good point to it, which is that it seems to me that the students are so much more hardworking and motivated than the ones that...
01:31:34.000 Well, certainly than I was from Nazi University.
01:31:36.000 But, you know, it was all free when we did it in the UK. And here, it's not anymore, but it was when I was at college.
01:31:43.000 And...
01:31:44.000 Here, when they're paying so much or their parents are paying so much, they take it really seriously.
01:31:48.000 And that's great.
01:31:48.000 But the amounts of money involved are just staggering.
01:31:52.000 Really unbelievable.
01:31:53.000 Especially when you get to law school or medical school or any really expensive school like Stanford.
01:32:00.000 You know, that's a very prestigious school. 0.94
01:32:03.000 It must be ridiculous. 0.85
01:32:04.000 I mean, how much does a kid have to pay a year to go to Stanford?
01:32:06.000 I don't know, because they do a lot of great work to kind of make it possible for kids without the money to go.
01:32:13.000 So they do a lot of grants and scholarships, and I don't know how that all works out.
01:32:17.000 Well, that's nice.
01:32:18.000 But it's a huge amount.
01:32:21.000 Yeah, that's nice.
01:32:22.000 And it's beautiful to hear that they do something along those lines.
01:32:26.000 And it's also beautiful to hear that I believe it was MIT has released all of its studies online.
01:32:31.000 You can take all of its classes online for free.
01:32:34.000 I mean, you can essentially get an MIT education through your home computer, which is very nice.
01:32:38.000 It's very nice that that...
01:32:40.000 And if you think about the amount of access...
01:32:52.000 Yeah, and it's actually really powerful in not just thinking about America, but people in the States who I wouldn't have had that access.
01:33:05.000 But actually, all over the world, in Africa, where you're just able to bring instruction and the best people in the world, the best teachers, to the most remote village in Africa is completely staggering.
01:33:18.000 Yeah, it is interesting.
01:33:21.000 I've always had a fascination with the power that someone has in the position of being a professor.
01:33:27.000 And especially a professor with tenure, where they have this job that essentially is very difficult to get fired from. 0.93
01:33:36.000 I mean, you have to really do something really fucked up to lose your position. 0.81
01:33:41.000 And because of that, some of them, and I've had friends that have had these professors, some of them get these incredibly arrogant attitudes, and they... 0.97
01:33:53.000 Push their ideas as if they're doctrine.
01:33:56.000 And they push their own political ideas and their own ideology, oftentimes a very left-wing liberal agenda to the point where it just infuriates certain parents and infuriates people who disagree with these ideas, who get silenced because,
01:34:12.000 you know, it's the professor's word and that is it.
01:34:15.000 In my class, this is how I feel.
01:34:17.000 That is not education.
01:34:18.000 I mean, you know, to me, the whole point is You should be equipping the students to think for themselves and to kind of come to their own point of view, but give them the tools that they can do that with, and go out and then use that knowledge and ability to do great things in the world,
01:34:34.000 not to kind of tell them your point of view.
01:34:36.000 Well, you can tell them your point of view, but make clear that it is your point of view, and there are other points of view, and it's up to them to decide what they think.
01:34:43.000 Yeah, but that lack of...
01:34:44.000 that humility...
01:34:46.000 Is oftentimes lacking when you have a person that has absolute power.
01:34:50.000 Yeah, that's right.
01:34:50.000 There's no kind of accountability there because it's just, you know, they don't have to deliver anything.
01:34:56.000 That is like one of the common complaints, right, about professors?
01:34:58.000 Yeah, but that was an amazing thing.
01:34:59.000 I love this speech that Mike Bloomberg gave the other, I think it was last week.
01:35:04.000 Did you see this?
01:35:05.000 He went to Harvard and he gave a commencement speech, I think, to Harvard where he really attacked them on this point.
01:35:12.000 And said that they had this kind of liberal bias in the faculty there that was just really bad and the opposite of it.
01:35:19.000 And he had this great piece of data which was that if you look at, going back to campaign finance, if you look at the campaign finance records, because everyone's donations are reported and when you make a political donation, You have to say what your occupation is.
01:35:36.000 So you know it's quite easy to look at types of professions or whatever and where their money goes.
01:35:43.000 And he got this piece of data which was that if you look at the political donations of Ivy League faculty and staff And you look at where the money went in the last election, the figure for how much went to Obama was 96%.
01:35:57.000 So it's like this total liberal dominance.
01:36:01.000 And he said that is just not healthy.
01:36:03.000 That is not what a university is supposed to be.
01:36:05.000 The problem is the alternative was far more offensive.
01:36:09.000 If it went to John McCain and Sarah Palin, that 4% is the problem.
01:36:15.000 Believe it or not.
01:36:17.000 In this country, I mean, Obama's...
01:36:20.000 I'm not a fan of what this administration has become.
01:36:25.000 Especially when it deals with freedom of the press, when it deals with whistleblowers, when it deals with spying on Americans, like all the revelation that we found out about the lack of privacy that people have.
01:36:38.000 I'm not a fan of that at all. 0.99
01:36:41.000 But goddamn, having Sarah Palin as the vice president of the fucking United States would have been disastrous. 1.00
01:36:46.000 Having an old man who's playing poker while they're talking about going to war with Syria. 1.00
01:36:51.000 He was literally sitting on his phone playing poker.
01:36:55.000 You know? 1.00
01:36:56.000 I mean, what the fuck? 1.00
01:36:58.000 That was the president? 1.00
01:36:59.000 That was the vice president? 0.99
01:37:01.000 Those two dummies? 1.00
01:37:02.000 I mean, that's a disaster. 1.00
01:37:03.000 That's a fucking goddamn disaster. 1.00
01:37:05.000 So... 1.00
01:37:06.000 Of course the most educated amongst them went for the lesser of two evils, being Obama, being a guy who is a very articulate and intelligent guy who's a whore. 0.99
01:37:17.000 I mean, essentially, that's what Obama is. 0.91
01:37:20.000 What he is is a guy who's this very intelligent, articulate guy who had these ideas and promoted this ideology, got into office, and did essentially exactly what Bush did.
01:37:30.000 I mean, in worse, when it comes to whistleblowers.
01:37:32.000 Oh, and the security stuff, yeah.
01:37:34.000 Yeah.
01:37:34.000 Well, you know, all the things that we're going to do, we're going to close down Guantanamo Bay, we're going to get out of Afghanistan.
01:37:41.000 It turns out most of it was bullshit. 0.99
01:37:43.000 Most of it... 1.00
01:37:47.000 This country has a horrible record, and this administration has a horrible record on freedom of the press, a horrible record on punishing whistleblowers.
01:37:55.000 And it's the lack of...
01:37:59.000 The lack of respect for journalism and freedom of the press is very disturbing to people, because what is journalism truly?
01:38:06.000 Well, what it truly is, is you're exposing reality.
01:38:10.000 What a true journalist is doing is exposing reality. 0.98
01:38:13.000 When you punish people for doing that, when you punish people for blowing the whistle on, with essentially unconstitutional activities, like the NSA spying on every single fucking person on the planet. 0.95
01:38:25.000 I mean, that's unconstitutional. 0.83
01:38:26.000 When you record everyone's phone call, that's not what we want.
01:38:30.000 And when the government supports things like that, I mean, how is this the same guy that was like hope and change?
01:38:36.000 How is this the same guy? 0.96
01:38:38.000 Well, he's the same guy because the people that fucking got him into office Or the same people that got Bush into office. 1.00
01:38:44.000 The same goddamn influences. 0.99
01:38:46.000 And things like CrowdPak, things that you're trying to do, would expose that for folks. 0.98
01:38:52.000 Yeah, I think that's the idea.
01:38:53.000 We're trying to be...
01:38:54.000 And it's really important that we're non-partisan.
01:39:00.000 So while we've got a strong point of view about the system generally and how we can improve it, we don't really...
01:39:07.000 We don't take sides.
01:39:08.000 We don't have a point of view as a company about individual issues.
01:39:11.000 But I think that we do really care about changing the system.
01:39:16.000 And I think that one of the things about the press that sort of happens, and I've seen this on kind of both sides of it, is that there tends to be this kind of coziness that develops with a lot of the press, particularly the traditional press,
01:39:31.000 where they want to Have access to the politicians, and the politicians want to get their message out, and it just gets quite kind of cozy.
01:39:38.000 And so that whole role of investigation and exposing things kind of sometimes takes a back seat to having a good relationship so that you can get your message out and they get access.
01:39:50.000 And I think that that's one of the things, again, that's really helpfully being changed by technology, like you were saying, which is that you've got people who are able to do that job of investigation without having to be part of some Cozy group around the politician.
01:40:06.000 Yeah, that's going to lob softballs at every politician in the interview. 0.99
01:40:10.000 If you see it from the politician's point of view, their point of view, and there's a lot of truth to it, is that they're trying to do stuff.
01:40:16.000 It's really, really hard.
01:40:18.000 Trying to deal with some of these problems is difficult.
01:40:21.000 There's incredible expectations. 0.98
01:40:23.000 You get shit for just trying. 0.99
01:40:27.000 You're totally under scrutiny. 1.00
01:40:28.000 Your life is under scrutiny.
01:40:30.000 It's a really, really hard job.
01:40:32.000 And they feel that increasingly the media and the press are just interested in the trivial aspects of it and who's up and who's down and they're not really interested in kind of exposing the complexity of some of these issues.
01:40:44.000 So that's how the politicians see it.
01:40:47.000 And then on the other side, and that's why they end up trying to, you know, have a relationship that enables them to, in the way they see it, to explain what they're trying to do a bit better.
01:40:59.000 So that they, so people kind of give them a fairer hearing.
01:41:02.000 So that's why that all happens.
01:41:03.000 And, you know, there's a lot of...
01:41:05.000 There's a lot of truth to that, to be honest.
01:41:07.000 It is difficult what they're trying to do.
01:41:10.000 Whatever your liberal Democrat or a conservative part does, it makes no difference.
01:41:15.000 It's difficult.
01:41:16.000 Governing is difficult.
01:41:17.000 It's complicated.
01:41:18.000 The problems are complicated.
01:41:19.000 Everyone's got their point of view.
01:41:20.000 You're kind of being screamed at and yelled at the whole time.
01:41:23.000 And it's hard.
01:41:24.000 Now, look, they choose to go into it.
01:41:26.000 So we cannot feel sorry for them.
01:41:28.000 You know, they made that choice.
01:41:29.000 Like you said, they have that kind of, I'm going to be the leader and I'm going to go there and sort things out.
01:41:33.000 So it's the choice that they made.
01:41:34.000 But it is difficult.
01:41:36.000 And that's why they want to, you know, try and control the message, I think, because they feel that a lot of the time they don't get a fair hearing.
01:41:44.000 Well, that makes sense in some ways, but it doesn't make sense from the point of view of the people that are in the position of being a journalist.
01:41:54.000 If you're in the position of being a journalist, your whole position is to expose inequality, expose violations of the Constitution.
01:42:05.000 And when you're in one of those places where you Whether it's for CNN or Fox News or whoever you're working for, if you get to sit down with Dick Cheney or you get to sit down with Obama, you're already muted.
01:42:20.000 You're already neutered. 0.93
01:42:21.000 You're already silenced.
01:42:23.000 You don't get that chance.
01:42:25.000 They're never going to have Glenn Greenwald sit down with Obama in an open internet forum that airs in real time live.
01:42:33.000 They would never agree to that.
01:42:34.000 They would never agree to that.
01:42:36.000 It's weird, actually, because it's a really different tradition in England.
01:42:39.000 When you look at the way that interviews...
01:42:40.000 If anyone watches a TV interview of a politician in England, it's so different to what you get here.
01:42:45.000 They're really aggressive with them.
01:42:47.000 Really?
01:42:47.000 Really, really, really aggressive.
01:42:49.000 And the kind of softball stuff is actually...
01:42:53.000 It's kind of embarrassing for a journalist to do that.
01:42:55.000 And there's a different tradition.
01:42:57.000 Well, we used to have that.
01:42:59.000 I've really noticed the difference.
01:43:00.000 They shot a few people and parked some cars on railroad tracks with families in them, and then people kind of stopped doing that.
01:43:08.000 I think that guys like Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Brazil and gets to sort of attack America from a distance...
01:43:15.000 At least until they find him.
01:43:17.000 I think what guys like him are doing, he was the one who helped Edward Snowden release all of his documents.
01:43:26.000 These new players in this whole game, these outsiders that don't have to cozy up, don't have to be a part of this nepotism that we're seeing with the big ones.
01:43:39.000 Anybody that's in any sort of a large group Fox and CBS and NBC. You're a part of this wacky system.
01:43:48.000 You're a part of this system that's not going to expose these things.
01:43:51.000 It's going to let these people get their message out because if you don't, you're not going to get the big names.
01:43:57.000 If you don't get the big names, you're not going to get the ratings.
01:43:59.000 And then those big names are going to go over to Fox.
01:44:01.000 Those big names are going to go over to CNN. They're going to go somewhere else and you're going to lose this campaign.
01:44:05.000 Yeah, that's exactly how it seems to work here.
01:44:07.000 That's what I've noticed.
01:44:08.000 Yeah, that is it.
01:44:10.000 It is it.
01:44:10.000 And I believe it's getting exposed.
01:44:13.000 And I believe it's getting exposed in a way today that just wasn't happening 20 years ago.
01:44:18.000 20 years ago, you would just be frustrated. 0.95
01:44:22.000 And you would just go off and you'd write a book and everybody would go, oh, he's a nutter. 1.00
01:44:26.000 Look at the fucking crazy book that guy wrote. 0.99
01:44:28.000 And, you know, some people would read the book and say it was amazing and other people would just ignore it. 1.00
01:44:32.000 And new revelations would take place along the way and whatever had happened would be forgotten.
01:44:38.000 And then the politician would get out of office. 0.81
01:44:40.000 And I think George Bush is the last guy to sort of skate away like that.
01:44:44.000 And, you know, now he sits around and paints weird pictures and slowly goes insane.
01:44:49.000 Have you seen the things he's doing?
01:44:51.000 He's slowly going insane.
01:44:53.000 I mean, he's painting pictures and he's locked in this world of, he's essentially in a prison on a ranch.
01:45:00.000 I mean, that's what he is.
01:45:00.000 He's constantly circled by Secret Service agents.
01:45:03.000 He's hated all over the world.
01:45:04.000 He's at least indirectly responsible for over a million deaths.
01:45:09.000 This one guy, they're pinning it on him and Dick Cheney and his administration and this sort of pyramid of events. 1.00
01:45:16.000 And this guy feels that shit. 1.00
01:45:18.000 And he's just sort of wandering around on his fucking ranch, painting himself, staring at himself in a bathroom mirror. 1.00
01:45:24.000 I mean, it's really, really weird stuff. 0.99
01:45:26.000 And I think he's probably going to be the last guy that ever skates off into the sunset with this knowledge.
01:45:35.000 I think Obama's going to be held accountable for a lot more than Bush ever was. 0.99
01:45:39.000 And I think whoever's next is truly fucked. 0.98
01:45:42.000 Whether it's Jeb Bush or whether it's whatever new Democrat they try to sneak into, I don't know, Hillary Clinton. 0.99
01:45:49.000 I don't know what they're trying in 2016. And we won't know for a while because they have to vet out everyone's fucked up vices and skeletons in their closets. 0.98
01:45:59.000 In this day and age, it's almost impossible. 0.95
01:46:01.000 Which is terrible, I think, by the way, because that's one of the reasons that so many people get put off.
01:46:04.000 Yes.
01:46:05.000 You know, because a lot of the complaints you hear about politics as well, we just get the same kind of people.
01:46:09.000 They're all kind of, you know, very kind of similar to each other, and there's a particular type of person that goes into it.
01:46:17.000 And actually, a lot of people who I think could make a really good contribution don't do it exactly for that reason.
01:46:22.000 They just don't want to live under that kind of spotlight.
01:46:24.000 Well, and can't.
01:46:25.000 They're just normal human beings, and they've got stuff that, you know.
01:46:28.000 They had fun.
01:46:29.000 Right.
01:46:30.000 They had fun in their life.
01:46:31.000 I mean, people that have had fun, you know.
01:46:33.000 I mean, you can't. 1.00
01:46:34.000 You have one gay affair when you're 20 years old with a guy for a couple of weeks and you're fucked for the rest of it. 1.00
01:46:40.000 That guy's out there waiting to talk shit about you if you run for president. 1.00
01:46:44.000 You know, there's one time you did a little bit of heroin when you were on the road with a bunch of your buddies. 1.00
01:46:49.000 You know, you're in college, you tried heroin. 0.99
01:46:52.000 Oh, those fucking college buddies are ready to write a book about you doing heroin. 1.00
01:46:55.000 I mean... 1.00
01:46:56.000 It's a weird time when it comes to exposing people's past and this idea of this perfect person from the cradle to the grave running for president is preposterous.
01:47:08.000 You don't want that person.
01:47:09.000 That person, if they've never made any mistakes, that means they've never taken any chances.
01:47:14.000 If they haven't taken any chances, they haven't lived.
01:47:16.000 And I'm not talking about mistakes like victimizing people, horrible things that are completely unconscionable.
01:47:21.000 That you wouldn't do and I wouldn't do.
01:47:23.000 Murder and robbery and kidnapping.
01:47:26.000 All sorts of terrible things that are just massive, you know, ethical errors that just shouldn't be ever tolerated from a person's character.
01:47:35.000 Just little things.
01:47:36.000 Like, here's a perfect example.
01:47:37.000 There's a woman who's running for mayor right now in Mississippi. 1.00
01:47:41.000 And apparently when she was younger, she was a prostitute. 1.00
01:47:45.000 And it's a big story that... 0.92
01:47:49.000 Folks are trying to figure out, is that okay?
01:47:53.000 How do we handle this?
01:47:55.000 What do you do about a person who had made mistakes when they were younger?
01:48:00.000 What is the answer to this?
01:48:02.000 And no one really knows.
01:48:03.000 They don't really have the answer to that.
01:48:05.000 They're trying to figure out when...
01:48:07.000 What is happening in that?
01:48:08.000 Is it...
01:48:11.000 Yes, for sure.
01:48:13.000 She's in Mississippi and she revealed it herself.
01:48:16.000 She revealed that she was a former prostitute and she was a prostitute like I believe it was 30 years ago and she met her husband while he was a John and he was one of her clients and she married him And she hasn't been a prostitute since.
01:48:34.000 And now she's running for mayor. 1.00
01:48:36.000 And it's quite fascinating.
01:48:38.000 I think it's interesting.
01:48:39.000 And I think in a lot of ways, you could see that and think, this person is actually really well qualified to be in office.
01:48:47.000 Because obviously, you know, going through those sorts of experiences will give you A sense of empathy for, you know, the tough lives that some people have and the circumstances that end up putting them in that situation.
01:49:00.000 And it probably makes you better, not worse.
01:49:02.000 Well, not only that, what she did was totally legal as well.
01:49:05.000 She was in a legal brothel in Nevada and it was over 30 years ago and she hasn't been there since.
01:49:13.000 And the idea that this person Is not allowed to make errors and that she wouldn't have developed like a lot of empathy and character and she wouldn't have a more balanced perspective than a person who's grown up in a very privileged household with very rich,
01:49:33.000 wealthy, connected people and then they got him to an Ivy League school and then he became a member of Skull and Crossbones and blah blah blah blah instead of that, well you have a person who was 14 and was pregnant with a child And had to take care of her child, and her parents died.
01:49:48.000 And she was forced into a situation where she had to earn a living, and she didn't have a lot of options.
01:49:54.000 And this was one of her options that she chose.
01:49:56.000 And how could you judge someone who's a teenager that makes those choices?
01:50:00.000 I mean, I don't think you can.
01:50:02.000 And I think this person, I mean, good for her that she stepped up and talked about that.
01:50:07.000 I totally agree.
01:50:07.000 I think it's great.
01:50:08.000 And again, it's kind of interesting that some types of...
01:50:15.000 Yeah.
01:50:37.000 But are not acceptable. 0.99
01:50:38.000 Yeah, the sex one's the wackiest one ever. 0.96
01:50:41.000 Because it's totally legal. 0.87
01:50:43.000 Like, say if this woman had, you know, X amount of clients per month. 0.99
01:50:48.000 If she just fucked a bunch of guys, you know, everybody would be like, ah, she was young. 1.00
01:50:53.000 She was young, she was getting wacky. 1.00
01:50:55.000 But fucking a bunch of guys for money is a problem. 1.00
01:50:59.000 But if she just massaged guys... 1.00
01:51:02.000 No problem.
01:51:03.000 I mean, if she gave them pleasure by rubbing their bodies, by rubbing their shoulders and backs, no one would have an issue with it. 1.00
01:51:09.000 But by doing something to their penis, it becomes preposterous. 0.99
01:51:11.000 Well, by the way, if it was one of the guys, one of the clients running for office, and it's okay to be a client, that's fine. 0.99
01:51:17.000 Sure.
01:51:18.000 It's not something you'd be proud of, but if that was kind of exposed or whatever, that wouldn't be a barrier.
01:51:23.000 Sure, even 10 years ago, forget about 30 years ago, if 10 years ago the guy went to a prostitute and said, listen, I was horny, I didn't have any options, I had a few bucks. 0.99
01:51:30.000 I paid someone to touch my penis. 1.00
01:51:32.000 People would go... 1.00
01:51:33.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:51:34.000 Seems pretty reasonable.
01:51:35.000 It's totally sexist kind of way of thinking about it.
01:51:39.000 Sex should be legal to sell. 1.00
01:51:42.000 That's what I think.
01:51:43.000 I absolutely 100% believe that prostitution should be legal.
01:51:47.000 I wouldn't want my daughters to do it. 0.56
01:51:49.000 I wouldn't want my friends to do it.
01:51:50.000 I wouldn't want loved ones to do it.
01:51:51.000 But I wouldn't want them to work at Wendy's either.
01:51:53.000 I wouldn't want them to work on the people that you see on the highway picking up dirt or picking up garbage by the side of the road.
01:52:00.000 I wouldn't want them to be pouring asphalt in the hot summer.
01:52:03.000 I wouldn't want anybody to work a difficult job. 0.95
01:52:05.000 I think emotionally it's got to be incredibly difficult to have sex with someone that you don't want to have sex with.
01:52:10.000 But I don't think it should be illegal. 0.99
01:52:12.000 If it's legal to have sex with people, how the fuck can it be legal or illegal to pay to have sex with people? 0.99
01:52:19.000 Or have someone pay you to have sex with you? 1.00
01:52:22.000 It seems ridiculous. 1.00
01:52:23.000 It seems just as ridiculous as making massage illegal. 0.98
01:52:26.000 Yeah, I don't know. 0.93
01:52:27.000 I honestly haven't thought about it enough.
01:52:30.000 One of the things that I definitely feel strongly about is If we're going to make that kind of decision, the sex trafficking trade needs to be one of the ways you think about it.
01:52:42.000 Because that is just so evil and disgusting.
01:52:44.000 Completely evil. 0.99
01:52:44.000 Completely disgusting. 0.99
01:52:45.000 And whatever decision you make has to make that better, not worse. 0.94
01:52:50.000 Right.
01:52:50.000 And I don't know.
01:52:51.000 I haven't really thought it through enough.
01:52:53.000 That's a very good point.
01:52:54.000 That's a very good point.
01:52:55.000 I think there would probably be far less demand for sex trafficking, for illegal sex trafficking, if prostitution was legal, if adults could make that decision.
01:53:05.000 If some woman, you know, was in a situation which was like, you know, I'm reasonably sexually attractive and I make X amount of money per month doing this, I can make that same amount in a day having sex with people.
01:53:18.000 Okay, I'll just do that.
01:53:19.000 You know, if it's a woman's choice to do so, and some women would have no problem with that choice. 1.00
01:53:25.000 The real problem, of course, is victimization.
01:53:27.000 The real problem is exploiting young people, victimization, and objectifying women.
01:53:32.000 But doesn't that already take place?
01:53:34.000 And isn't part of what objectifying women, part of this issue is, it's very difficult for some people to find sexual partners. 1.00
01:53:43.000 So there's like, This thing with this Elliot Rogers, this crazy kid that shot up everybody in Santa Barbara. 0.88
01:53:53.000 The nuttiest response that I've seen to this, the craziest, most infuriating response, is by these people that believe that if women weren't so stuck up, this guy wouldn't have gone on a rampage because he would have been able to have sex with more people. 0.99
01:54:07.000 Or he would have been able to get people to have sex with him. 1.00
01:54:10.000 Pickup artists and these women-hating fuckheads. 1.00
01:54:14.000 There's a bunch of guys that operate under this guise of being for men's rights. 0.99
01:54:23.000 It's kind of funny because I didn't even know there was a thing called an MRA. It's a men's rights...
01:54:37.000 I think?
01:54:47.000 Like, shouldn't we all have rights?
01:54:49.000 I mean, shouldn't there...
01:54:51.000 But then I started looking into these men's rights guys, and I go, okay, I see what's going on here. 0.99
01:54:56.000 They're more ridiculous than radical feminists. 1.00
01:54:59.000 This is not the kind of father's stuff. 0.99
01:55:01.000 Because there's some campaigns that make some good points about dads and all that kind of stuff.
01:55:05.000 Child support, yes, and child custody.
01:55:07.000 And the rights of a father after divorce, exactly.
01:55:09.000 Yes, I agree with that 100%.
01:55:10.000 But there's...
01:55:12.000 They go way further than that.
01:55:14.000 And they go into relationships and they go into the way men are treated versus the way women are treated.
01:55:22.000 People are treated in bad ways by bad people and in good ways by good people. 1.00
01:55:28.000 But if you're a shithead, people are not going to like you. 1.00
01:55:31.000 And just because you're a shithead and people don't like you doesn't mean women are assholes. 1.00
01:55:35.000 It means you're undesirable. 1.00
01:55:37.000 And one of the reasons why you're probably undesirable is because you have a terrible attitude about things.
01:55:41.000 And this terrible attitude about things is not going to change. 1.00
01:55:45.000 It's not going to change because women have sex with you. 1.00
01:55:48.000 Your attitude sucks. 1.00
01:55:50.000 You're not a pleasant person. 1.00
01:55:51.000 There's a lot of people who have shit personalities. 1.00
01:55:53.000 And they get involved in this men versus women debate. 1.00
01:55:56.000 It has nothing to do with men versus women.
01:55:58.000 What kind of things do they...
01:56:00.000 I mean, the men's right... 0.96
01:56:01.000 What is that?
01:56:02.000 What are they calling for?
01:56:03.000 Is there a plan? 0.95
01:56:04.000 Well, there's so much nonsense. 0.98
01:56:07.000 I don't even really want to get into it because some of it is so fucking stupid and I've been reading these things over the last couple of days and I'm trying to erase them from my memory. 1.00
01:56:15.000 Because some of these poorly written articles by these men are so stunningly stupid. 0.99
01:56:20.000 Like one of them was, this guy was talking about How he was around this 60-year-old man and this 25-year-old woman who is his incredibly hot wife and that this 25-year-old woman was insulting this man and, 1.00
01:56:35.000 you know, that this is the anguish that this guy had to deal with and how horrible it is and this is what men have to deal with. 0.99
01:56:42.000 I was like, that might be one of the dumbest fucking arguments I've ever heard in my life. 0.99
01:56:46.000 First of all, what if it was a 25-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman that was this old, wretched creature that this guy was forced to fuck for money? 1.00
01:56:56.000 Would you be on the man's side or the woman's side then? 0.99
01:56:59.000 Which position would you take there? 1.00
01:57:01.000 Of course this woman is going to say shit he thinks this old man. 1.00
01:57:04.000 She's not supposed to be fucking him. 1.00
01:57:06.000 She's supposed to be having sex with a 25-year-old man or a 35-year-old man or someone reasonably close to her age where they would be naturally sexually attracted to each other. 0.99
01:57:15.000 What you're dealing with is a bizarre situation where someone has sort of circumvented the system by acquiring money.
01:57:22.000 Yeah, it's a power thing.
01:57:24.000 Exactly.
01:57:24.000 And by acquiring money, this guy's figured out a way to get some 20-year-old hottie to marry him.
01:57:29.000 And yeah, she doesn't like it, so she complains. 0.99
01:57:31.000 And I'm reading this and I'm like, does this guy, who the fuck is this guy writing this article talking to? 0.98
01:57:37.000 Who are his friends? 0.95
01:57:38.000 Like, how is that an argument?
01:57:41.000 Yeah, that is nuts.
01:57:42.000 I don't even want to pull the article up.
01:57:45.000 I don't want to reference it. 0.98
01:57:47.000 But it's just, what you're dealing with with these men is a bunch of nitpicky shitheads with terrible personalities that are complaining about men getting a bad rap in this world. 0.99
01:58:11.000 I mean... 1.00
01:58:14.000 The idea that men don't have the better end of the deal is unbelievably ridiculous. 1.00
01:58:20.000 When you look at this Donald Sterling guy, this fucking shithead that owns the Clippers, he's 82! 1.00
01:58:26.000 His girlfriend was in her 20s! 1.00
01:58:29.000 And this possibility only exists for men.
01:58:35.000 It doesn't exist for women. 1.00
01:58:36.000 There's very few 82-year-old women who have attractive 20-year-old boyfriends.
01:58:42.000 It just doesn't exist.
01:58:43.000 There's very few 82-year-old women. 1.00
01:58:46.000 I think you want to watch what Madonna does a few years down the line.
01:58:50.000 Do you know how... 1.00
01:58:52.000 What kind of a monster a lot of young men would feel like Madonna was if Madonna was trying to fuck them. 1.00
01:58:59.000 That's repulsive to men. 1.00
01:59:02.000 An idea of a powerful, attractive man who's in his 50s dating a 20-year-old woman is not alien at all.
01:59:13.000 But the idea of a powerful woman in her, what is Madonna, in her 60s?
01:59:17.000 How old is she? 0.98
01:59:17.000 I think she's 50s, but I think that that's what's really, to be honest, really cool about what she's doing there, which is like she's just really constantly challenging those kind of stereotypes. 0.98
01:59:26.000 But is she?
01:59:27.000 Well, I think so.
01:59:28.000 To who?
01:59:29.000 I don't know.
01:59:29.000 I think that she's certainly, I think she's...
01:59:32.000 She's got a pretty intelligent point of view on some of these gender issues. 1.00
01:59:39.000 I think the fact that people find it uncomfortable is kind of making the point that we're agreeing about, which is that this is not how it's supposed to be.
01:59:46.000 Yeah.
01:59:47.000 Well, she doesn't even consider herself a feminist. 1.00
01:59:49.000 She considers herself a humanist, which I agree with wholeheartedly.
01:59:54.000 And this idea of men's rights, what's really offensive about it is that they're concentrating entirely on the ideas and the problems that men face.
02:00:04.000 When I think the only ideas and problems that men face, the only ones, are child custody and getting robbed in divorces. 1.00
02:00:15.000 Other than that, shut the fuck up. 1.00
02:00:16.000 I really do believe that. 0.99
02:00:18.000 I think those are the only two issues. 1.00
02:00:19.000 Other than that, please shut the fuck up. 1.00
02:00:21.000 Because when I hear about a guy complaining that a 20-year-old wife is mean to a 60-year-old rich man, oh, poor baby. 1.00
02:00:29.000 This is what you do.
02:00:30.000 Go out and get more 20-year-old wives, okay? 1.00
02:00:32.000 You're fucking rich as shit and you're old. 1.00
02:00:34.000 What, are you going to live forever, dummy? 1.00
02:00:35.000 Go get some prostitutes. 1.00
02:00:37.000 Be nice to them. 0.99
02:00:38.000 Give them cars.
02:00:39.000 Do what Donald Sterling did. 0.98
02:00:41.000 He got that girl five Rolls Royces and Bentleys and Ferraris and shit, and it still didn't work out. 0.91
02:00:47.000 You know why it didn't work out? 1.00
02:00:48.000 She didn't want to fuck him! 1.00
02:00:50.000 They don't want to fuck you, you're 80! 1.00
02:00:53.000 That is just the law of the land. 1.00
02:00:55.000 That's the way life works.
02:00:56.000 This is the natural balance of nature.
02:00:59.000 And, you know, you've figured out a way to inject influence and power and money and sort of pervert this whole system. 0.99
02:01:08.000 And when you complain about this perversion not working out in your favor, and this is why we need men's rights, you go, oh, fucking Christ. 1.00
02:01:17.000 You whiny bitches. 1.00
02:01:18.000 You guys aren't men. 1.00
02:01:19.000 You guys are babies.
02:01:21.000 I think it's just unbelievable that they're even trying to...
02:01:24.000 They're babies!
02:01:25.000 They're babies!
02:01:26.000 Say that stuff.
02:01:54.000 But as a woman, you really have to think about that.
02:01:55.000 It's very rare that a man gets robbed by a woman in a parking lot.
02:01:58.000 Of course it can happen, especially if the woman has a weapon. 1.00
02:02:01.000 Of course, if you're in Russia, she might rape you. 1.00
02:02:04.000 There's some stories about Russian women. 1.00
02:02:06.000 There's some story about she held some man captive and force-fed him Viagra and fucked him for 30 days. 1.00
02:02:12.000 That's Russians. 1.00
02:02:13.000 They're crazy. 1.00
02:02:14.000 Some Russian chick might actually do that to you. 1.00
02:02:16.000 But for the most part, it's a non-issue.
02:02:19.000 Or statistically speaking, it's a very, very, very small percentage of the population that has to worry about this.
02:02:25.000 For women, the amount of women that get sexually assaulted, the amount of women, especially like in college, it's crazy. 1.00
02:02:31.000 In college, it's, you know, something like more than one out of ten women get sexually assaulted in college. 0.99
02:02:36.000 I don't know what the exact numbers are. 0.99
02:02:38.000 I've read varying reports, but even ten percent is fucking crazy. 0.88
02:02:42.000 Yeah, it's a really big problem. 0.98
02:02:42.000 I agree. 0.98
02:02:43.000 It's a big problem if you're a woman, because men are aggressive. 1.00
02:02:46.000 We're aggressive, we're filled with testosterone, and we need to cum. 0.99
02:02:48.000 It's a real problem. 1.00
02:02:49.000 Every day our balls are building up more sperm, and if you're a shithead, and if you were raised improperly, and you don't have respect for women, or the opposite sex, or anyone in general other than your selfish self, Yeah, we have problems. 1.00
02:03:02.000 We have problems with that. 1.00
02:03:03.000 So, yeah, we need accountability as men.
02:03:06.000 But it would also help if there was places where people could relieve themselves.
02:03:09.000 It would also help if there was a handjob place on every corner. 0.95
02:03:13.000 I mean, goddammit. 0.97
02:03:14.000 Every corner? 0.96
02:03:14.000 Why not? 0.96
02:03:15.000 There's a massage place on every corner.
02:03:17.000 If you drive down the street in LA, if you drive, go to Ventura Boulevard, drive down the street, if your back is bothering you, you can find a massage place one a mile.
02:03:25.000 You'll see a neon light Thai massage, Swedish massage, this massage.
02:03:30.000 You can go in and get your neck rubbed. 0.99
02:03:31.000 Why can't you get your balls rubbed? 1.00
02:03:34.000 Why can't you? 1.00
02:03:35.000 Why not?
02:03:36.000 Because we're crazy. 0.79
02:03:37.000 Because we have these weird ideas about sex.
02:03:39.000 We have these weird ideas about what is evil and it's based on the Puritan values that this country was founded on. 0.99
02:03:45.000 Which are founded by religious nuts who were so kooky that they got in boats to escape persecution and traveled across the fucking ocean. 0.98
02:03:55.000 I mean, the echoes of this ignorance is still propelling us today. 0.99
02:04:00.000 Yeah.
02:04:01.000 I think that...
02:04:01.000 I don't know.
02:04:02.000 I think that with all that stuff, the thing...
02:04:04.000 I've got a lot of sympathy for it, but I just keep coming back to this thing about, well, what is the...
02:04:10.000 Are you going to set up a situation where it's not really a choice?
02:04:14.000 That there's some kind of economic or other power or pressure that means that even though you kind of treat it like a marketplace where everyone's freely entering into it, is that really going to be the case?
02:04:28.000 I think that's the question.
02:04:29.000 I think you're totally right.
02:04:30.000 I don't know.
02:04:32.000 And I'm not suggesting, by the way, that prostitution is going to stop rape.
02:04:36.000 What I'm suggesting is that there are real issues with human sexuality, and there's real issues with making things illegal that shouldn't be illegal, whether it's drug use or whether it's sexuality.
02:04:48.000 I think there's real issues in suppression.
02:04:50.000 I think when you suppress people from doing things, whether it's suppressing them from using marijuana, suppressing them from drinking, Suppressing them from wearing certain clothes.
02:05:00.000 Suppressing women from driving. 1.00
02:05:02.000 When you suppress human beings from things that are illogical.
02:05:05.000 And I find it illogical that sex is illegal to sell. 0.97
02:05:09.000 And I'm not saying I want to go to prostitutes. 0.87
02:05:11.000 I don't. 0.89
02:05:11.000 I don't. 0.89
02:05:12.000 But I think they should be legal.
02:05:13.000 I really do.
02:05:14.000 I think it's nonsense.
02:05:15.000 I think we live in this weird world where if something is legal to do for free, How is it possible that it's illegal to do for money?
02:05:24.000 It doesn't make any sense.
02:05:26.000 I see your point of view and I agree with it wholeheartedly that you do have to worry about people being...
02:05:31.000 Sold into this that you have to worry about them being somehow or another Compromised by this this overwhelming need for you know the financial revenue that can be generated from sex and that people could be exploited and they could be a real issue with the objectification of women it could change the cultural attitudes about things but if you go to countries where it is legal that prostitution and I was just going to say,
02:05:58.000 I think in Holland.
02:05:59.000 Yeah.
02:06:00.000 They find lower instances of AIDS, lower instances of...
02:06:04.000 Like Jim Jeffries is a buddy of mine who's a stand-up comedian from Australia.
02:06:08.000 In Australia, brothels are legal.
02:06:10.000 And he talks about how divorce rates are way lower in places where brothels are legal.
02:06:15.000 Because the men don't need to cheat on their wives. 1.00
02:06:17.000 Like, some men just give up.
02:06:18.000 They can't get sex with their wife. 1.00
02:06:21.000 And he goes, fuck, I'm fucking out of here. 1.00
02:06:22.000 And they get divorced. 1.00
02:06:24.000 And they go through this huge, stressful situation.
02:06:26.000 In Australia, you just go to a brothel. 1.00
02:06:28.000 You know?
02:06:29.000 And Jim was joking around about how his mom and his dad were fighting.
02:06:33.000 And his mom was like, yeah, and he goes to the brothel every night. 0.99
02:06:37.000 I don't know if you know that.
02:06:38.000 Or every Wednesday night.
02:06:39.000 And he goes...
02:06:39.000 Not every Wednesday.
02:06:42.000 That was the punchline.
02:06:45.000 And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
02:06:49.000 It's whether or not people are being exploited.
02:06:51.000 That becomes the problem.
02:06:52.000 But that becomes the problem with everything.
02:06:54.000 I mean, if people are being exploited into labor, if children are being forced to work in factories at young ages, which they are in other countries, And typically other countries that provide us with these goods that we so want.
02:07:07.000 Cell phones, laptops, all these different...
02:07:09.000 I mean, how many children every year are scraping minerals out of the mountains that they need to use to make electronics?
02:07:16.000 There's a lot of them.
02:07:17.000 And this is exploitation.
02:07:19.000 This is exploitation that we benefit from.
02:07:22.000 And I think that we have to address all forms of that.
02:07:25.000 But we also have to address ridiculous laws that don't make any sense.
02:07:30.000 And anytime you try to control people, anytime you try to suppress people's ability to express themselves in any way, if you don't like it, whether it's walking topless down the street, you can do it if you're a man, you can't do it if you're a woman.
02:07:43.000 That's what they're dealing with in New York City now.
02:07:45.000 In New York City, you're allowed to be topless. 1.00
02:07:49.000 There's some woman who calls herself the fucking naked cowgirl, and she's getting sued by the naked cowboy. 1.00
02:07:54.000 Because a naked cowboy is a guy who, he wears underwear, and he plays guitar with a cowboy hat on. 1.00
02:07:59.000 And he's like this...
02:08:01.000 Sort of tourist attraction in New York.
02:08:03.000 Well, women are allowed to be topless now as well in a lot of places because the idea is, well, why is a man allowed to have no shirt on but a woman has to have? 0.95
02:08:11.000 It's because you're saying that breasts are much more sexual when they're on a woman and that they need to be They need to be covered. 1.00
02:08:19.000 And that sort of develops a sort of inequality in the law.
02:08:23.000 That a woman is oppressed or a woman is subject to laws that a man is not.
02:08:30.000 And that seems to be very difficult to pass.
02:08:33.000 So, you know, you deal with some situation where women are allowed to be topless. 1.00
02:08:36.000 And they should be.
02:08:37.000 How many guys get arrested for being gigolos?
02:08:39.000 Is it zero? 1.00
02:08:40.000 I mean, when was the last time a guy got arrested for fucking a woman because she paid him to? 0.99
02:08:44.000 Has it ever even happened? 1.00
02:08:45.000 But women get arrested for prostitution all the goddamn time. 1.00
02:08:48.000 You know, I totally agree with that. 1.00
02:08:50.000 I mean, that is the...
02:08:51.000 rather than the people using them.
02:08:54.000 Yeah.
02:08:54.000 It's just totally...
02:08:55.000 I agree with that.
02:08:56.000 I think that when...
02:08:57.000 You're right that there are so many kind of weird things about sex and how that kind of plays out when you think about sort of social issues and stuff like that.
02:09:08.000 And I think one of the biggest things that's going on is the way that kind of the sort of sexualization of...
02:09:17.000 Of, you know, like public space and the kind of world around us is like really influencing more and more children.
02:09:24.000 I think that they're kind of, it's getting younger and younger that kids are being exposed to kind of sexualized stuff.
02:09:29.000 That is a real problem because it's changing their expectation of what sex is. 0.99
02:09:34.000 And there's lots of studies now showing how the, you know, like kids' sexual behavior is really different.
02:09:39.000 You know, boys sort of viewing porn differently.
02:09:41.000 Violent porn at much earlier age, thinking that that's how you behave, treating women really badly, women thinking of themselves as sexual objects more.
02:09:49.000 I think there's a lot of kind of quite deep problems that are coming out, and we'll see in the years ahead, from the way that that is just, you know, like sexual images and content is just becoming much more widely available for younger kids.
02:10:02.000 That's a really good point, because it's so prevalent and it's so uniquely new.
02:10:07.000 The ability to download porn on a cell phone. 0.98
02:10:09.000 So essentially, if your child is 12 and they have an iPhone, you send them off to school, they're watching people fuck. 0.99
02:10:14.000 I mean, they're gonna. 0.99
02:10:15.000 There's no way you're gonna stop them.
02:10:17.000 If that phone has internet data, if it has internet access, those kids are gonna look at images.
02:10:22.000 If they have somehow or another some access to an iPad or a laptop or something that's connected to Wi-Fi, if it's not blocked through some sort of a complicated filter that they probably know how to dismantle better than you do, They're gonna see sex.
02:10:36.000 They're gonna see sex in a way that we never saw sex.
02:10:38.000 You know, I have this joke in my act that is a true story about when I was 11 years old, me and a couple of my friends found a magazine in the woods that was a foot fetish magazine.
02:10:51.000 And it took us like a few minutes to realize what was going on when we were looking at this magazine because it was really confusing.
02:10:59.000 You thought it was like a podiatry today or something?
02:11:01.000 No, no.
02:11:02.000 We thought it was a porn magazine for sure.
02:11:04.000 Obviously, that was the intent there.
02:11:06.000 Yeah.
02:11:07.000 Okay.
02:11:07.000 Well, we were in the woods.
02:11:10.000 I don't know if you've ever found pornographic magazines in the woods.
02:11:15.000 I've definitely never found a foot fetish.
02:11:16.000 Do you ever find a hustler or a penthouse in the woods?
02:11:19.000 Yeah, definitely.
02:11:19.000 In the woods, right?
02:11:20.000 In the park.
02:11:21.000 Yeah, woods. 0.99
02:11:24.000 But it's always like some poor bastard who's hiding his urges. 0.99
02:11:28.000 It's a classic. 0.98
02:11:28.000 It's a rite of passage, you know, when we were growing up. 0.98
02:11:30.000 I think that, you know, it's very important everyone had that experience.
02:11:33.000 Internationally.
02:11:34.000 Yeah, definitely.
02:11:34.000 Because for me, it was in Florida, and for you, it was in England.
02:11:37.000 Right.
02:11:37.000 It was amazing, right?
02:11:38.000 But the foot thing, that is...
02:11:40.000 Exactly.
02:11:41.000 Unexpected.
02:11:42.000 So, the point was that we found this bag that had these magazines in it, and we're going through this one magazine, and it took us, like, many pages in. 1.00
02:11:52.000 My friend goes, dude, this shit is all just dicks and feet. 1.00
02:11:57.000 That's what he said. 1.00
02:11:58.000 And to this day, I laugh thinking about my friend saying that, and that we were stunned and confused.
02:12:07.000 Well, we were just looking at a magazine and we were 11. Today, kids get to watch actual sex.
02:12:14.000 And apparently, the sexual activity of children is changing. 0.98
02:12:17.000 Someone did some study recently that showed this massive increase in anal sex amongst children under 18 years of age. 0.98
02:12:25.000 I think it's a really big deal. 0.94
02:12:28.000 I really do.
02:12:30.000 And the sexual activity is changing.
02:12:32.000 It's the kind of relationship between...
02:12:36.000 Men and boys and girls.
02:12:37.000 You know, that's changing.
02:12:38.000 And the whole kind of...
02:12:40.000 We talked about it earlier in terms of women's rights and men's rights.
02:12:44.000 And I think that the expectations of how to behave and how to treat women.
02:12:48.000 And women's own sense, or young women, their own sense of themselves as...
02:12:56.000 Primarily being about their sexual persona.
02:13:00.000 I think that's all really a concern.
02:13:03.000 It's actually setting back some of the progress that's been made in terms of women's equality.
02:13:09.000 I agree, but I think hopefully, at least because I'm the eternal optimist, I think it's temporary.
02:13:16.000 And I think that ultimately it's all going to even out.
02:13:19.000 Because I think that what people are doing is they're looking at these things, like if women are engaging in these sexual activities at a much earlier age, they're looking at it as like this is something that they need to do to become more attractive to men.
02:13:34.000 Because this is what they've seen.
02:13:36.000 They've seen this.
02:13:38.000 My thought on all of this is that we're going to reach a point within our lifetimes, probably within the next few decades, where we're going to be able to read each other's minds.
02:13:47.000 I think it's inevitable.
02:13:49.000 You know, over your house, actually, was the first time I ever tried Google Glass.
02:13:54.000 Right. 0.96
02:13:54.000 And I remember putting this thing on and scanning it and, you know, and Googling things and looking at navigation screens in front of my eye thinking, man, shit's going to get really fucking weird soon. 0.96
02:14:05.000 Yeah. 0.94
02:14:05.000 I think we're going to be able to read each other's minds. 0.94
02:14:07.000 I think this whole dance that we do, do you like me?
02:14:11.000 Do I like you?
02:14:12.000 I'm going to play hard to get. 1.00
02:14:14.000 I'm going to fucking do this. 1.00
02:14:15.000 I'm going to be the girl that takes it in the ass and all the boys are going to like me. 1.00
02:14:18.000 I think all that nonsense, I think it's going to become far more complex. 0.99
02:14:24.000 Human interaction is going to become far more complex because our concept of secrets is going to go out the window.
02:14:31.000 That's really interesting, actually.
02:14:33.000 I don't think it's going to exist anymore.
02:14:35.000 I think if you look at the trend, what is the trend?
02:14:37.000 The trend is that information is easier to access now than ever before.
02:14:42.000 And it becomes easier to access and easier to access to the point where you can ask your phone questions with your voice.
02:14:48.000 You press a button, you know, who is Steve Hilton?
02:14:51.000 Steve Hilton gives you the information.
02:14:55.000 But that's just one step and it's not going to stop there.
02:14:58.000 It's not halting.
02:14:59.000 It's exponentially increasing.
02:15:01.000 So what's the trend?
02:15:03.000 The trend is dissolving boundaries between people and information.
02:15:06.000 That information includes information in your own mind.
02:15:09.000 That information includes there's going to be a much more effective interface than looking at a screen and asking a screen a question.
02:15:16.000 The interface is going to be somehow or another a neural implant, something that you inject into someone's body like nanobots.
02:15:23.000 There's going to be some weird sort of an interface.
02:15:26.000 And when that happens, they're going to come up with a better one a year later.
02:15:29.000 It's going to be a more invasive one.
02:15:31.000 And then we're going to have to come to some sort of an agreement where we're going to say, hey, listen, in order for the human race to establish an enlightened perspective, we're all going to have to look into each other's heads.
02:15:43.000 We're all going to have to be able to read each other's minds and find out how we think and feel.
02:15:47.000 And so there'll be no more mystery in this world.
02:15:49.000 There'll be no more romance novels.
02:15:50.000 There'll be unnecessary.
02:15:53.000 There's not going to be any romance.
02:15:55.000 There's going to be this weird hive mind thing going on.
02:15:58.000 And it's going to happen within a hundred years.
02:16:01.000 I think that's incredibly interesting and the way that that will change so many things if that comes to pass and people can just know what the other person is thinking.
02:16:12.000 Well, think about what it used to be like before language was established.
02:16:15.000 People used to grunt and point and kind of try to figure out what the other person wanted and we're essentially monkey people.
02:16:22.000 What did we do?
02:16:23.000 We figured something out.
02:16:24.000 We got to this point and now you compare your life today to that point.
02:16:29.000 I was in a conversation with a friend, and we have another friend that is becoming a prepper. 0.73
02:16:37.000 He's fucking setting up his house for solar power and collecting rainwater and growing his own fruits and vegetables, and doing so in this fear that society was going to collapse. 0.96
02:16:52.000 And my friend Jimmy was like, If society collapses, you don't want to live, man. 0.98
02:16:58.000 Like, you don't want to be that one fucking guy that's got all the food and you're, you know, standing on your porch with a rifle and you're all taking turns waiting for the zombies to come over the hill, you know, sounding the horns and alerting the people that the barbarians have arrived. 0.95
02:17:11.000 You don't want to do that. 0.97
02:17:12.000 You don't want to go back to those days.
02:17:14.000 You just don't.
02:17:15.000 And I think that...
02:17:17.000 We don't want to go back to the days of no language, and we're not going to want to go back to the days of secrets.
02:17:23.000 We're not going to want to.
02:17:24.000 Once the no secret thing happens, and people just get this kind of understanding of what it is to be a human being, that it's universal.
02:17:33.000 It reminds me, there's this work going on at Stanford, they have a virtual reality lab, and they're looking at how virtual reality could change the way people think about other people, about other issues.
02:17:46.000 There's one experiment they're doing where, I'm trying to get it right, where I think they put you in a forest situation, you think you're in a forest, and then they measure some nature.
02:17:58.000 Some example of nature.
02:17:59.000 And then they see how they really give you a deep experience of that through virtual reality.
02:18:04.000 And then they look at your behavior in the next week after that to see if you're more conscious of that.
02:18:10.000 You recycle more.
02:18:11.000 You change your behavior because of this completely false experience you've had to give you this virtual reality experience.
02:18:18.000 And that's what they're researching in all sorts of other ways.
02:18:21.000 And they're showing that it does.
02:18:23.000 And you can actually influence someone's behavior by giving them this sense of Yeah.
02:18:30.000 And that's, again, just in its infancy.
02:18:31.000 You know, the virtual reality stuff is just getting going.
02:18:35.000 And I just think it's interesting, all these things, how they will affect so many aspects of how we relate to each other and think about these issues that at the moment are just so kind of superficially dealt with.
02:18:47.000 It's going to get really squirrely when that artificial reality is indistinguishable from the reality that we're experiencing right now.
02:18:54.000 Because that's coming too.
02:18:55.000 That's what the whole simulation theory is based upon.
02:19:00.000 This idea that one day we're going to get to a point where you can't tell whether or not we live in a computer or we live in the material carbon-based flesh world.
02:19:11.000 And if that's the case, how do we know that we haven't already gotten to that point?
02:19:15.000 How do we know that we're not in a computer right now?
02:19:18.000 And we're thinking that we're experiencing this reality, but it's not.
02:19:22.000 It's not really happening.
02:19:23.000 We're just a part of a program.
02:19:25.000 And that it's so good that you think you really are Steve Hilton.
02:19:30.000 You're not Steve Hilton.
02:19:31.000 You know the truth, Joe.
02:19:33.000 I always thought you'd duss it out.
02:19:36.000 The thing is that this kind of gets to a point where I can't handle it anymore.
02:19:41.000 My brain cannot literally cope with Thinking about some of this stuff, I remember a friend of mine repeatedly trying to explain to me quantum physics and quantum things, and I just literally can't understand it.
02:19:54.000 Yeah, the quantum stuff is hard.
02:19:55.000 Really hard.
02:19:57.000 But this notion of alternate realities and things going on at the same time, I just can't get my head around it.
02:20:02.000 It's almost impossible to do.
02:20:06.000 When we start getting into quantum stuff, I don't even think they understand it.
02:20:10.000 I mean, they understand it in terms of these theoretical concepts, but it's so abstract in a lot of ways.
02:20:16.000 When you're dealing with things like, when they start talking about subatomic particles, and they start talking about the things that they actually do know, like the things that you actually can measure.
02:20:25.000 You can observe.
02:20:26.000 Yeah.
02:20:27.000 Like particles in superposition, meaning they're in movement and still at the same time.
02:20:32.000 When they're talking about things blinking in and out of existence, they go away and they don't know where they went, and then they come back.
02:20:39.000 With just that alone, the measurable stuff is so crazy that the lowest point, not the lowest, but the smallest measurable point of reality, which is these quantum ideas, the world is made of magic.
02:20:54.000 Things appear and disappear.
02:20:55.000 Things are still and they're moving at the same time.
02:20:57.000 They're here and they're there.
02:20:59.000 They're in two different places at the same time.
02:21:00.000 And they can take particles and they can move them across the world.
02:21:04.000 And when they interact with each other, they interact with each other faster than you can count, faster than you can measure.
02:21:10.000 They interact with each other instantaneously.
02:21:13.000 Faster than any kind of communication that we could have between these particles, given the amount of distances in between them.
02:21:21.000 The speed of light, the speed of sound, they're instantaneously interacting with each other.
02:21:27.000 Now they're figuring out a way how to send particles through time.
02:21:31.000 They're figuring out ways to send particles through time, to actually time travel with particles.
02:21:38.000 And so all this stuff that they're doing right now is just one step on this never-ending quest for technological innovation.
02:21:47.000 This never-ending quest where people are trying to satisfy their curiosity.
02:21:51.000 They're not going to stop.
02:21:52.000 They're never going to stop.
02:21:54.000 If we don't get hit by an asteroid, if we don't get...
02:21:56.000 I think that's right.
02:21:57.000 And you get all these good things coming from that.
02:21:59.000 Yeah.
02:21:59.000 Along the way.
02:22:00.000 I mean, I don't understand it, but eventually it leads to things that we all can use and deal with, and a lot of those things are really good.
02:22:08.000 I don't think that...
02:22:08.000 I think one thing I would say about all this stuff is that, generally speaking, we are not critical enough of the technological advances.
02:22:16.000 I think that a lot of them are obviously improvements.
02:22:21.000 If you think about just technology going back many years, the way that I don't know, like labor-saving devices in the home.
02:22:27.000 Completely sort of freed women from the drudgery and the horrific kind of... 1.00
02:22:32.000 Washing machines.
02:22:32.000 All that stuff that was just kind of such a terrible experience.
02:22:35.000 And that's a sort of simple example of technology being really transformational in a positive way.
02:22:43.000 And I think generally that's probably true of technology.
02:22:46.000 It's usually an improvement.
02:22:47.000 But I do think that we have this kind of attitude of...
02:22:51.000 Assuming it's good and not really questioning it.
02:22:54.000 Do we really want that?
02:22:55.000 I think that doesn't happen enough.
02:22:57.000 Often the answer will be, yeah, we do.
02:22:59.000 That's great.
02:22:59.000 Fantastic.
02:23:00.000 Bring it on.
02:23:00.000 But I don't think we stop enough to ask the question.
02:23:03.000 And I think the scientists and the people doing this stuff, they don't really think about that.
02:23:08.000 They want to do it because they can.
02:23:10.000 And it's exactly as you said, it's this curiosity.
02:23:13.000 Let's just go further because that's a human instinct.
02:23:16.000 It's like when Oppenheimer built the nuclear bomb.
02:23:19.000 I mean, should that really have been done?
02:23:21.000 Well, you know, the argument, the intelligent argument is if they didn't do it, the Nazis would have done it. 0.88
02:23:27.000 So yes, it's important that the Allied forces developed it first.
02:23:30.000 But I think that that's the job of...
02:23:34.000 I think...
02:23:35.000 There's all sorts of roles that are played in a society, and there's the innovator, and there's the scientists, there's the people that are constantly pushing the boundaries of technology, and then there's the social engineers who step back and go, okay, let's look at the repercussions of this, and how do we mitigate the negative aspects of it?
02:23:51.000 How do we figure out how to integrate these ideas into society and use them to enhance society, and what is being done to sort of manage that, and what is being done to minimize the negative impact?
02:24:05.000 Yeah, that is a good way of putting it.
02:24:06.000 They're different functions.
02:24:08.000 Yeah, there's just a constant, there's no one thing that's awesome.
02:24:12.000 There's things that are awesome and then there's repercussions that are like, yeah, but then there's this.
02:24:17.000 Well, there's that, but then there's this part of it that we're not really comfortable with.
02:24:22.000 And there's this sort of dance that we do as we build society and as society continues to grow and expand and our ability to do things changes.
02:24:31.000 Our ability to access information, our ability to accomplish goals, our ability to transmit ideas is so much quicker and faster.
02:24:40.000 And there's these repercussions to that that were before this day and age were really unexplored because they weren't available.
02:24:48.000 So we don't really know the long-term repercussions of children being able to access porn because they really didn't have it.
02:24:54.000 Yes, it's new.
02:24:55.000 We don't know what that leads to.
02:24:57.000 Weird world.
02:24:59.000 It's a weird world, Steve Hilton.
02:25:00.000 Strange times.
02:25:01.000 I think that is a good, good summary.
02:25:03.000 That's why you tooth and claw resisted.
02:25:05.000 I know, and this is definitely going back in the door.
02:25:08.000 But the way I agreed to it was like, if I'm away, I need a phone, then they can get a hold of me.
02:25:13.000 Yeah.
02:25:14.000 That's it.
02:25:15.000 That's it.
02:25:15.000 And then you can shut it off occasionally.
02:25:17.000 Just give it to very few people.
02:25:19.000 You have to have a burner phone. 0.99
02:25:20.000 You have to have a phone that you give to people that could possibly be annoying so that at any given time, if it fell into the ocean, you'd be like, whatever with that fucking phone. 0.99
02:25:30.000 And then have a phone that you only give to your family and your close friends. 0.96
02:25:34.000 Well, one of the things that really puts me off, I just can't, there's something about my kind of useless, sort of fat, stubby finger, I'm just hopeless with touchscreens.
02:25:42.000 All you can get is touchscreens. 0.99
02:25:44.000 When we were in Hawaii, you threw your fucking iPod at your computer and fucked up the screen. 0.99
02:25:50.000 You were so frustrated. 1.00
02:25:51.000 Steve got, you know, I have a regular iPod with the click wheel, the wheel, I like that.
02:25:56.000 I like that.
02:25:57.000 I like that.
02:25:58.000 Oh, that's right, exactly.
02:25:59.000 I like that.
02:26:00.000 But the new ones, the iPod Touches, I don't find them as...
02:26:04.000 They're not as easy to use when I'm at the gym.
02:26:06.000 I find them to be frustrating, you know.
02:26:08.000 But you got a hold of one of those because you couldn't get your regular iPod. 1.00
02:26:12.000 You got so mad you threw it at your fucking computer. 1.00
02:26:14.000 I did. 1.00
02:26:14.000 The mark is there. 1.00
02:26:15.000 It reminds me of my...
02:26:17.000 Techno rage every single day.
02:26:19.000 But you're not a rageful guy, which is so crazy, because you're normally the last person I would expect to get violent and throw something and get crazy.
02:26:28.000 But it was an iPod that did it to you.
02:26:30.000 I know, it was weird, but I do with technology, as people who know me and work with me will testify.
02:26:39.000 You're very Unabomber-esque in that way.
02:26:41.000 Oh gosh, okay.
02:26:43.000 I better watch it.
02:26:45.000 There's a great documentary on the Unabomber and how he became who he is. 0.61
02:26:50.000 I don't want to get into it because I've talked about it on the show before, but it's called The Net.
02:26:54.000 And it's, I think it's German.
02:26:56.000 I forget what country, but it's available with subtitles.
02:26:59.000 But basically, he was a part of the LSD studies at Harvard.
02:27:02.000 They cooked his brain.
02:27:03.000 That's Ted Kaczynski.
02:27:05.000 Ted Kaczynski.
02:27:05.000 The guy that...
02:27:07.000 Yeah.
02:27:07.000 And he was turned in by his own brother.
02:27:09.000 His own brother recognized the writing in the manifesto, and he realized that his brother had gone insane.
02:27:14.000 He's like, I think this is probably my brother that's doing this.
02:27:17.000 Wow, because I wasn't here then, but that was...
02:27:19.000 So I don't have a sense of it being...
02:27:22.000 I know what happened, but I don't get a sense of what a big deal it was.
02:27:27.000 It was scary for a lot of people.
02:27:28.000 In America when that happened.
02:27:30.000 It was scary for a lot of people also because of who he was attacking, that he was attacking people that were technological innovators.
02:27:36.000 He was attacking people that were involved in the distribution of technology.
02:27:39.000 And he believed that, and in a lot of ways correctly believed, that there was something going on right now where people were creating technology and this technology would eventually do bad things to the human race and to the biological Existence that we currently exist in,
02:27:56.000 you know, this sort of like established way of being and living that we consider being, you know, inherent to being a human being.
02:28:04.000 And he felt like these people were the enemies of humanity because they were fostering technology and creating technology.
02:28:11.000 I didn't really know that that was what was behind all that.
02:28:13.000 Yeah, he just went too far ahead.
02:28:16.000 He got wacky.
02:28:17.000 Instead of living in the moment and dealing with the moment, he just saw this attack by the biological humans or on the biological humans by technology.
02:28:27.000 Which essentially, I kind of see his point in a way.
02:28:32.000 I don't see his point as far as like attacking people that are creating technology, but if you really extrapolate where we are right now and where we're going, this symbiotic relationship that we have with technology where people are afraid to leave their phones behind, The phones will eventually become Google Glass.
02:28:46.000 Google Glass will become an implant.
02:28:47.000 An implant will become...
02:28:48.000 Well, you know, Steve, you've got good news and bad news.
02:28:51.000 The good news is you have a year to live, okay?
02:28:56.000 The bad news is you have cancer.
02:28:59.000 The good news is we have an artificial body that we have created that we're going to put your body into.
02:29:06.000 The bad news is it lasts forever.
02:29:10.000 Or is it the good news?
02:29:13.000 What it is is a new world that we're living in where we're going to have weird choices that never existed before.
02:29:20.000 And a lot of the people that are involved in Google, they hired Kurzweil.
02:29:25.000 Ray Kurzweil, who is the proponent, the number one proponent of this sort of Transcendental moment where we become one with computers, where we become one either with some sort of a computer interface,
02:29:41.000 or we download our consciousness into an artificial body, or we figure out a way to exist in some sort of a virtual reality that is eternal.
02:29:52.000 A lot of people feel like that's where things are going to go if you give us a thousand years.
02:29:57.000 Science fiction is really not fiction.
02:29:58.000 It's definitely happening.
02:30:00.000 Not at all.
02:30:04.000 I've talked to a friend of mine about this quite a bit, which is, if you think about, I'm just interested that there is, okay, the Unabono, that's an extreme example, and I didn't realize that it was so focused on technology.
02:30:16.000 But there isn't really a, people like it, generally speaking, there isn't really a movement, a sort of anti-technology movement, certainly not that I'm aware of.
02:30:27.000 I can't remember exactly when it was, but when you had the industrial revolution and the Luddites smashing up machines that were taking jobs away from people and in their view really damaging society. 0.65
02:30:38.000 That was quite a big movement.
02:30:40.000 It didn't get anywhere and You know, history sort of made them irrelevant, but there was a movement with an aim and an organization that did stuff.
02:30:48.000 What did they want?
02:30:49.000 What was their idea?
02:30:51.000 I think that specifically it was the new equipment, like the weaving.
02:30:56.000 During the Industrial Revolution in England, the machines that were now being used to do the work that had been done by people, and they objected to that.
02:31:05.000 Isn't that incredible?
02:31:06.000 And they would literally...
02:31:08.000 Physically smash up the machines.
02:31:09.000 That was, I think, one of the things they did.
02:31:11.000 And I'm sure there's people with a better study of history that can give you a better picture.
02:31:16.000 But that was, they were called the Luddites, I think, named after the person that set them up, someone called Ludd, I think.
02:31:25.000 I don't know how big it was, but it's big enough that it's something we still know about and it's part of the history of that era.
02:31:33.000 And there's nothing like that now, not to my knowledge, where you don't have people going out and smashing up cell phone towers to make a point about technology.
02:31:43.000 Well, I think it's what we were saying earlier.
02:31:45.000 Because I think people like it.
02:31:46.000 You know, it kind of helps them in their lives and they like it.
02:31:49.000 For the most part, yeah.
02:31:50.000 I mean, there's a lot of benefits.
02:31:51.000 There's a lot of benefits to technology.
02:31:53.000 But I think it's what we were talking about earlier that maybe back then they didn't have enough information to draw upon and they saw it as being this direct threat to their livelihood.
02:32:05.000 Yeah, I think that was a big part of it.
02:32:06.000 And I think today we're sort of forced into this realization that it's neither good nor bad, but rather something that needs to be managed.
02:32:17.000 And there's good aspects to it, and then there's negative aspects to it, and ultimately you have to figure out what outweighs what and how to lean it towards the positive.
02:32:27.000 How to manage it in a way that it goes towards the positive.
02:32:30.000 And I think that's the case we were talking about with children watching television.
02:32:34.000 You know, there's the Waldorf school.
02:32:37.000 My oldest daughter was in the Waldorf school system for a while, and there's a lot of wackiness to that.
02:32:42.000 Like, they didn't believe in any technology.
02:32:43.000 They didn't believe in any video games.
02:32:45.000 But they've proven that video games can enhance cognitive function.
02:32:49.000 The neural pathways that are created by stimulating video games can actually...
02:32:54.000 They mimic games like chess.
02:32:57.000 You know, like, problem-solving games.
02:32:59.000 Games that stimulate the imagination and creativity.
02:33:02.000 Like, they exist.
02:33:03.000 Video games can be used in that same function.
02:33:05.000 This idea that all video games are bad.
02:33:07.000 And then I found out that the guy who founded this whole Waldorf system was a channeler.
02:33:14.000 He was a channeler.
02:33:15.000 Like, I am getting a voice.
02:33:17.000 There's a spirit.
02:33:18.000 He's talking to me. 1.00
02:33:19.000 Like, oh, you fuckhead. 1.00
02:33:21.000 God damn it! 1.00
02:33:21.000 I didn't know that. 1.00
02:33:22.000 So I'm very...
02:33:23.000 Our oldest son, you know, he's in the same system.
02:33:27.000 Yeah, that system is created by kooks, unfortunately.
02:33:30.000 It's a wonderful system in a lot of ways.
02:33:31.000 The school that my kid was at was great. 1.00
02:33:34.000 But the reality is that it's founded by fuckheads. 1.00
02:33:40.000 Founded by crazy people. 1.00
02:33:42.000 I'm definitely going to look into that. 0.87
02:33:43.000 A channeler.
02:33:44.000 I'll tell you the full deal when we get off the air. 1.00
02:33:47.000 I'll tell you the conversations that I had with these fucking people. 1.00
02:33:50.000 Where I'm like, what? 1.00
02:33:53.000 A channeler?
02:33:54.000 There's a lot of evidence that there's channelers.
02:33:56.000 No, there's not, actually.
02:33:58.000 There's none. 0.99
02:33:59.000 There's zero evidence that anybody's ever been a fucking channeler. 1.00
02:34:02.000 I have a friend who loves to believe in stupid shit. 1.00
02:34:06.000 He's not a good critical thinker. 1.00
02:34:08.000 He's a great guy, but he's not a good critical thinker. 1.00
02:34:10.000 He's the first one that comes to me with a fucking ghost story. 0.99
02:34:13.000 He came to me with this psychic thing. 0.99
02:34:16.000 This guy knew all about my grandmother, man.
02:34:18.000 The guy was real.
02:34:18.000 The guy was legit.
02:34:19.000 I go, do you know about your grandmother?
02:34:22.000 He goes, yeah. 0.99
02:34:23.000 I go, so the guy told you some shit you already knew? 1.00
02:34:26.000 What kind of fucking use is that? 1.00
02:34:28.000 You're just talking to some guy. 1.00
02:34:29.000 You're playing games.
02:34:31.000 You're playing a trivia game.
02:34:32.000 You're playing a trivia game about things you already know about your own family. 0.99
02:34:35.000 This is ridiculous. 0.91
02:34:36.000 What kind of a question did he ask you? 0.94
02:34:38.000 These leading questions that you answered in some way that he was able to concoct the story of your life.
02:34:44.000 And people want to find that these things are correct.
02:34:47.000 They want to find that someone is.
02:34:49.000 But there's almost no evidence whatsoever that anybody has a functional psychic energy and method that is reproducible.
02:34:57.000 And it doesn't mean that I don't believe in the potential for psychic powers.
02:35:02.000 Because I think there's some weird connection with human beings.
02:35:05.000 It's probably emerging.
02:35:06.000 Much like a lot of our senses emerge.
02:35:09.000 I think there's weird senses that are emerging with human beings.
02:35:13.000 Like, for instance, they've statistically shown in a way that's measurable that people can tell when people are looking at the back of their head.
02:35:20.000 Yeah.
02:35:21.000 You could tell when someone's looking behind you, at you, that people could sense it in a way that is more measurable than chance.
02:35:31.000 So I think there's probably something there.
02:35:33.000 There's probably something when you think about someone and they call you and that happens.
02:35:37.000 See, I've thought about people and all of a sudden I get an email from them out of the blue.
02:35:41.000 I haven't talked to them in years.
02:35:42.000 And all of a sudden, a person that popped into my mind, like, wow, I wonder what that guy's up to.
02:35:46.000 Boom! 0.99
02:35:47.000 We get an email from him.
02:35:48.000 Hey, man, what's up?
02:35:49.000 Like, wow, what is that?
02:35:50.000 Is that a weird sort of a distant connection that will eventually one day be much more strong?
02:35:57.000 I don't know. 1.00
02:35:58.000 I don't know, but I know that a fucking channeler starting a school that tells you not to use cell phones and don't watch TV, that guy's a silly bitch. 1.00
02:36:07.000 This is ridiculous. 1.00
02:36:09.000 That doesn't make any sense. 0.98
02:36:11.000 I think you're right.
02:36:15.000 Anything that's really extreme is just not going to be right.
02:36:20.000 So we definitely don't implement the extreme version of what they recommend.
02:36:26.000 It's a question of balance, right?
02:36:27.000 With all things.
02:36:29.000 Even with reading.
02:36:29.000 You can't read all day every day.
02:36:32.000 Go outside.
02:36:33.000 Go for a walk.
02:36:34.000 Go ride a bike.
02:36:35.000 Go do something.
02:36:36.000 Get out.
02:36:37.000 You've got to get out.
02:36:39.000 You gotta move.
02:36:39.000 And I think that that's the case with all human experiences.
02:36:42.000 I mean, if you're a person who's...
02:36:44.000 There was a thing recently that they... 0.95
02:36:46.000 A thing that they did about sex and about porn. 0.95
02:36:50.000 And that people who watch porn, they actually have less brain matter. 0.93
02:36:56.000 They have less matter in their brain. 0.87
02:36:58.000 People that are obsessed with porn... 0.98
02:37:00.000 And when you think about it, it's probably because whatever they're doing, whatever part of their brain they're stimulating, they're constantly focused on that and all the other shit about wondering about existential questions, the purpose of man, 0.98
02:37:17.000 the idea of infinity, all these weird questions that normally bounce around inside a person's brain. 0.97
02:37:22.000 They're completely non-existent because you're just trying to find the next person to jerk off to. 0.90
02:37:27.000 You're just... 0.98
02:37:28.000 But that guy the other week that came out in the government, he was in the Environmental Protection Agency, I think, and he was watching, he lost his job, he was watching porn, like, I think six hours a day or something,
02:37:43.000 in the office, in the government office, and you just think, what is going on that that's even possible?
02:37:50.000 Well, people are listening to this podcast in their office, guaranteed.
02:37:53.000 They shouldn't be.
02:37:54.000 They should be working.
02:37:55.000 Or they should be.
02:37:56.000 Maybe they should be.
02:37:57.000 That's like, you know. 0.94
02:37:59.000 Yeah, it's ridiculous. 0.97
02:38:00.000 But there, EPA employee downloaded 7,000 files of porn at work. 0.97
02:38:08.000 And watch them two to six hours a day.
02:38:11.000 Well, I don't think that guy was doing a good job of protecting the environment, I'll tell you that. 1.00
02:38:15.000 That fucking freak. 1.00
02:38:17.000 I'm not surprised. 1.00
02:38:18.000 If you give people the freedom to move around like that, that's what they wind up doing. 1.00
02:38:23.000 People are nuts, man. 1.00
02:38:24.000 You give people the freedom to just do whatever the fuck they want. 1.00
02:38:27.000 You know, a lot of times they do things that just aren't smart. 0.99
02:38:31.000 Yes.
02:38:31.000 That's just the way human beings are.
02:38:34.000 Especially if you give them, it's like we were talking about as far as professors or police officers or anybody in some sort of an ultimate position where they don't have enough supervision.
02:38:44.000 They don't have enough, they have too much influence over others and they don't have enough oversight. 0.96
02:38:51.000 You wind up being this fucking guy who's supposed to be paying attention to our drinking water and he's just beating off all day. 0.99
02:38:58.000 Exactly. 1.00
02:39:00.000 It's also a job thing, too.
02:39:02.000 It's like, how many jobs really should there be for the Environmental Protection Agency?
02:39:09.000 And how many people do they really need to do those jobs?
02:39:12.000 If this guy can work...
02:39:13.000 Well, that's it, exactly.
02:39:15.000 What is he doing there?
02:39:16.000 Well, we know what he's doing there.
02:39:17.000 What's the...
02:39:19.000 If this guy can work in the EPA and he can still hold down that job and he's beaten off six hours a day.
02:39:28.000 And this was for years apparently.
02:39:30.000 It wasn't like he went nuts and just one week for whatever reason went for it.
02:39:35.000 It was like for years. 0.99
02:39:36.000 I wonder how many people are listening to this podcast right now that are like, fuck, that's me. 0.99
02:39:41.000 I want to get busted. 0.99
02:39:42.000 If you're in an office, and especially if your computer is facing you and you're looking at the door so you get a clean shot at anybody walking in, for men, men are freaks.
02:39:53.000 You give a guy the opportunity to just beat off in his office, a lot of times dudes are going to take it up.
02:40:00.000 Environmental Protection Agency.
02:40:02.000 Jesus Christ.
02:40:03.000 What a weird world we live in where that's an issue.
02:40:06.000 Imagine if, like, it was back in the day where, you know, a guy who was assigned to work for the city water department in the 1930s, they found 7,000 pornography books in his office. 0.99
02:40:18.000 Like, Frank, what the fuck are you doing, man? 0.98
02:40:20.000 Like, I'm getting crazy with all this reading. 0.99
02:40:24.000 I think in a lot of ways what we're dealing with when it comes to pornography, when it comes to the internet, when it comes to just...
02:40:34.000 Technology itself is we're dealing with these things that have influence over people in a way that we're not designed to process.
02:40:41.000 You know, we're not designed to process movies, a giant screen where explosions and, you know, spaceships and all this stuff that's not real, but we're seeing it in a way that's much more impactful than real life.
02:40:55.000 We're seeing it right in front of us. 0.84
02:40:56.000 You know, and I think that that fucks with people's heads. 0.99
02:41:00.000 You know, I think that Pornography, the ability to at any time you want, just go online and watch people have sex. 0.99
02:41:08.000 Like, you know that you could do that. 0.98
02:41:10.000 It's at your little fingertips, especially if you're, like, sexually starved. 0.97
02:41:14.000 You know, if you're, like, you really want sex and you can't get it, and you know, I can watch it right now. 0.99
02:41:19.000 Let me go watch sex real quick. 0.99
02:41:20.000 Oh, I'm watching sex! 0.99
02:41:22.000 That's a weird thing with human beings.
02:41:24.000 It's a weird thing that we've sort of painted ourselves into this corner.
02:41:28.000 We have all this technology.
02:41:31.000 As we were talking about before, it's like we have access to it.
02:41:35.000 And it's about managing it, really.
02:41:37.000 But the sex thing is also, you know, it reminds us that we're just animals, really, because you've got...
02:41:41.000 I remember, you know, really struck...
02:41:44.000 Kids love nature programs.
02:41:46.000 You watch these nature programs, and basically, they're about... 0.66
02:41:50.000 Sex. 0.98
02:41:50.000 And eating. 0.98
02:41:51.000 That's what happens.
02:41:52.000 That's what happens in nature.
02:41:54.000 That's the majority of the scenes that you see.
02:41:58.000 Yeah, that is what it is.
02:41:59.000 And so we're just, in that sense, animals.
02:42:03.000 Well, we certainly are.
02:42:04.000 And that makes...
02:42:05.000 So it's the same.
02:42:06.000 I don't think we should be surprised that it's such a dominant part of life.
02:42:13.000 No, no.
02:42:14.000 We definitely shouldn't be surprised.
02:42:15.000 But we're also much more complex than the average animal.
02:42:18.000 That's where things get really weird.
02:42:19.000 Where things get really weird is that, yes, we are animals, but we are also animals with computers.
02:42:24.000 We're also animals that are aware that we're animals, so we have to think about our actions.
02:42:28.000 We're self-aware.
02:42:29.000 We're aware of the influence that others have on us.
02:42:31.000 And we're constantly expanding that influence.
02:42:34.000 You know, so we're not just animals.
02:42:37.000 We're animals with computers that may become part of machines.
02:42:40.000 That's the thing that freaks me out the most, is the symbiotic connection that human beings have to technology and the potential for developing artificial technology or artificial life.
02:42:51.000 I think that we give birth to that.
02:42:53.000 I mean, Marshall McLuhan once said that human beings are the sex organs in the machine world. 0.99
02:42:58.000 And I always wonder if we're not some strange caterpillar that becomes a butterfly that has no idea what the fuck it's doing. 0.99
02:43:06.000 We're making some sort of a technological cocoon, thinking that we're just doing my thing, running around, looking at porn. 0.91
02:43:13.000 No, you know, you're a part of this gigantic machine that's processing and pushing for the innovation of technology.
02:43:20.000 And the innovation of technology will eventually give birth to a life form.
02:43:23.000 They're constantly working on trying to map out the human mind, Duplicate the functions of the human mind in some sort of a synthetic process.
02:43:32.000 And we're not anywhere close right now, but the way technology accelerates...
02:43:38.000 Well, it accelerates, exactly.
02:43:39.000 Yeah.
02:43:39.000 It feels unlikely that that's not going to happen.
02:43:42.000 Yeah, I read this article by this really grumpy fuck who's an interesting guy. 1.00
02:43:47.000 He's a smart guy, but he's also just probably a lonely shithead. 0.99
02:43:50.000 And he was mocking Ray Kurzweil and how Ray Kurzweil knows nothing about the human mind. 0.97
02:43:56.000 He was talking about the complicated functions of the human mind and the way the human mind processes proteins and that this is barely understood.
02:44:05.000 But what I read from this and what I got out of this is like, I don't think this guy understands that the biological functions are not going to matter.
02:44:13.000 If they can be...
02:44:15.000 Yeah.
02:44:37.000 But this guy was so hung up on the fact that Kurzweil's wrong because we don't understand how the human body works.
02:44:44.000 No!
02:44:45.000 No, he's not!
02:44:46.000 Because you're just talking about bodies.
02:44:48.000 Yeah, bodies are super complicated and we haven't totally figured it out yet.
02:44:50.000 But we might not have to.
02:44:52.000 If we can figure out a way to do all the things that a body does, but do it with a computer, or do it with technology, or do it with some sort of quantum computer, Some sort of quantum computer that's contained in an artificial body that can completely replicate the functions of consciousness, the functions of emotions,
02:45:09.000 of interaction, of curiosity, of creativity. 0.90
02:45:12.000 If you can develop an artificial computer that's creative, it doesn't matter of luteinizing hormones and all this shit that you're bitching about. 0.99
02:45:21.000 You're just bitching because you're showing your intelligence. 1.00
02:45:23.000 You're trying to show people how smart you are.
02:45:25.000 Like criticizing a known genius because you're not a known genius.
02:45:29.000 I mean, that's essentially what you're doing.
02:45:30.000 Yeah, and it seems just superficial.
02:45:32.000 I know nothing about it.
02:45:33.000 But the body part of it feels like there's a ton of progress right there, the sort of biomechanics and robotics.
02:45:41.000 That is easy compared to the brain.
02:45:43.000 Yeah.
02:45:44.000 Yeah, no, I agree.
02:45:45.000 It is.
02:45:46.000 What they do know about the mind and they do know about the body is comparatively rudimentary when you think about what we know about a clock.
02:45:56.000 We know everything about a clock.
02:45:58.000 You know, you could buy a Swiss watch and there's a man out there that knows every single function of that watch, knows how it interacts, knows exactly what's going on, tick-tock, tick-tock.
02:46:08.000 We don't know that about the body yet.
02:46:10.000 You're right.
02:46:10.000 You're correct.
02:46:11.000 But we're not going to We're not going to have to. 0.99
02:46:13.000 Because they're going to come out with some shit that's way better than a body. 0.99
02:46:16.000 They're going to come out with some shit that's way stronger than a mind, and it's going to be artificial. 1.00
02:46:20.000 And one day it's going to go, hello, and you're going to go, oh, shit. 1.00
02:46:26.000 Why exactly are you guys living like this? 0.99
02:46:28.000 And you're like, oh, I don't know.
02:46:29.000 Just kind of going on momentum.
02:46:31.000 Just how we do it.
02:46:32.000 I don't think this is the best way to go about this.
02:46:34.000 I don't think so either.
02:46:36.000 I have a better idea.
02:46:37.000 Oh, great. 1.00
02:46:38.000 And then this fucking thing is going to take over. 1.00
02:46:40.000 And then we're going to have real problems. 0.99
02:46:41.000 Then he's going to really reform our campaign finance laws.
02:46:45.000 We're not going to have any voting.
02:46:46.000 Read each other's minds.
02:46:47.000 There's not going to be any voting.
02:46:48.000 We're going to know what's important and what's not.
02:46:51.000 There was a guy once, and I've brought this up before, but...
02:46:55.000 It's important to note.
02:46:56.000 There was a guy that we talked about in the podcast who had been bitten by a shark.
02:47:00.000 And the shark had taken his arm and taken his leg.
02:47:03.000 And he had this carbon arm and he was moving his fingers around.
02:47:06.000 And he was standing there talking with this fake arm and his fake leg about how great it is that technology has provided him with a way to still be mobile and functional even though he had been attacked by a shark.
02:47:17.000 And I was sitting there and I was thinking, wow, this is fascinating.
02:47:20.000 This guy is like kind of a cyborg.
02:47:22.000 What we see is a man with an artificial arm and the story was about how well they had created this arm to the point where this guy was living a totally normal life and was functional and mobile and could take care of himself even though his arm had been bitten off by a monster.
02:47:39.000 And then I thought about what if it was both legs?
02:47:42.000 Okay, and then they figured out artificial legs. 0.71
02:47:44.000 Who would say no to that?
02:47:45.000 Nobody.
02:47:45.000 Give him some artificial legs.
02:47:46.000 Now he can move around.
02:47:47.000 Okay, what if it was his whole body?
02:47:49.000 Who would say, listen, man, we're going to take your head and we're going to stick it on a robot body, but you're still going to be you.
02:47:53.000 Oh, okay.
02:47:55.000 All right, I'll take it.
02:47:56.000 Okay, we're sticking your head on a robot body, but listen, we've got a problem.
02:48:00.000 The robot body is rejecting your brain, but we found an artificial brain that works just like your brain.
02:48:05.000 We're going to download your consciousness to this artificial brain.
02:48:08.000 You won't even know the difference.
02:48:09.000 Okay.
02:48:11.000 Well then, who are you and what are you?
02:48:13.000 What are you?
02:48:14.000 Are you a person still?
02:48:15.000 If you are your thoughts and your personality and your memories downloaded into some creation, some sort of a new thing that they've done that mimics all the functions of the human mind without any of the biological limitations,
02:48:33.000 What are you?
02:48:34.000 Yeah, I remember that.
02:48:35.000 It's so funny you talking about that because it reminds me years ago when I was doing my interviews to go to Oxford University and I had an interview with a philosophy professor.
02:48:43.000 And he gave me this scenario, which I now know is a famous philosophical thing.
02:48:49.000 It's called the experience machine.
02:48:50.000 And there's this construct very much like what you're talking about, which is like if we could put you in a machine that gave you all the experiences of a fantastic life, but it would be a machine doing it.
02:49:00.000 Would you choose to do it?
02:49:02.000 And I remember saying, no, I wouldn't want to do that because I'd feel I'd want to have really done it myself.
02:49:09.000 And if you're just in a machine, that's not the same thing.
02:49:11.000 Ah, but what if the machine made you feel like that?
02:49:14.000 Whatever I said, there was some kind of comeback.
02:49:17.000 And in the end, I just remember getting really frustrated.
02:49:19.000 I said, I don't know.
02:49:20.000 That's why I want to come and learn about philosophy so I can...
02:49:22.000 Figure this stuff out.
02:49:23.000 But I have no idea.
02:49:24.000 I kind of lost my temper.
02:49:25.000 I never did figure it out.
02:49:27.000 Did you throw your phone at him?
02:49:29.000 Way before the phone era.
02:49:31.000 But there comes a point when I just find it really hard to go very far with this.
02:49:39.000 And I just think, oh, well, whatever.
02:49:40.000 Let's just sort of get on with practical life today.
02:49:43.000 Well, essentially, it's the Dunbar's number of philosophical discussion.
02:49:47.000 Our minds are limited in our ability to sort of take these ideas in.
02:49:53.000 We don't have the capacity to extrapolate.
02:49:58.000 It's too much.
02:49:59.000 So this concept of recreating reality in an indistinguishable manner is too weird.
02:50:06.000 But I think it's something we better start talking about because it's coming.
02:50:10.000 Yeah, and I'm really happy that you are and I think it's really important that other people are.
02:50:14.000 I'm just saying I'm not...
02:50:16.000 It's way more important than other people are doing it than me.
02:50:20.000 In the hierarchy, I think that you know a lot more about it than I do and you've read more about it than I have.
02:50:25.000 And I just think that, yeah, it's really important that generally we talk about it and keep a really strong sense of awareness of how these things might change stuff.
02:50:37.000 And a lot of the time it will be for the better and that's great, but we should just talk about it.
02:50:41.000 Well, I had the opportunity to talk to Kurzweil for an hour and a half, and I sat down and interviewed him about these things, and it was really fascinating.
02:50:47.000 We had a great conversation, but this guy is not thinking about negatives at all.
02:50:53.000 All he's thinking is gung-ho, full blast, pedal to the metal.
02:50:59.000 He takes giant bags of supplements every day, because he's an older man.
02:51:05.000 He's just trying to keep his biology alive long enough to see this This new birth of technology and when it gets really crazy what he's trying to do also is he's trying to Make his father come back to life.
02:51:21.000 His father died when he was young, and he believes that if they figure out a way to recreate a person from memories, from just the knowledge of who this person was, images, that you're going to be able to recreate this guy in some sort of an artificial form.
02:51:40.000 I mean, it's one of the things he's discussed.
02:51:42.000 He wants to see his father again.
02:51:44.000 And the idea that he can recreate his father technologically.
02:51:48.000 From his memory?
02:51:50.000 From all sorts of different things.
02:51:52.000 From memory, from all the data that he knows, from recorded stuff.
02:51:57.000 One of the most fascinating concepts that I've ever heard when it comes to the increasing power of computing is that they're going to get to a point one day, if computers continue to accelerate,
02:52:13.000 they're going to get to a point one day where they can take into account all the positions of all the objects and all the things that exist all over the world as data and from them We'll extrapolate where things will be and where things were.
02:52:27.000 So by where things were, meaning knowing everything in this room, where it's at in this position, they'll be able to figure out how it all got here.
02:52:36.000 Who moved?
02:52:37.000 Jamie moved this over there, and Brian picked that up and turned it on, and they'll literally be able to calculate.
02:52:44.000 The past.
02:52:45.000 They'll be able to, by what we have here, by everything we have here and what we know, they'll be able to calculate the actions of the past.
02:52:55.000 Madness.
02:52:56.000 We're running out of time.
02:52:57.000 He's holding his hand up.
02:52:59.000 I'm pretty pleased to hear that because at this point I'm just like...
02:53:03.000 That's madness.
02:53:04.000 They'll be able to look at the ground itself.
02:53:08.000 Look at the content of the dirt, the pollution in the ocean, the carbon in the air.
02:53:14.000 The distance between these two trees and the amount of pencils that are on your desk.
02:53:19.000 And they'll be able to figure out the past.
02:53:20.000 Because computers will be so far advanced.
02:53:23.000 It just reminds me of that line.
02:53:24.000 I can't remember which Woody Allen film where...
02:53:26.000 He asks his parents, how does the TV work?
02:53:31.000 What do I know about how the TV works?
02:53:33.000 I can't even figure out how the can opener works.
02:53:37.000 I just think, you know, the TV baffles me.
02:53:41.000 This stuff, you know...
02:53:42.000 Yeah, well, it should.
02:53:44.000 It should.
02:53:45.000 And it's only going to get more and more baffling. 1.00
02:53:47.000 We're stuck with these dumb monkey brains. 1.00
02:53:49.000 Yes. 1.00
02:53:49.000 That's the problem. 1.00
02:53:50.000 We're the dumb monkeys that are sitting around here waiting for things to change. 0.99
02:53:54.000 And when things do change, we will be just as weird as... 0.99
02:54:00.000 Some Australopithecus. 0.99
02:54:01.000 If you put him in a time machine from a million years ago and threw him into the fucking Burbank Mall, this thing would be running around going, what the fuck is this? 0.99
02:54:10.000 Because things change. 0.99
02:54:12.000 Because things grow.
02:54:13.000 And things evolve.
02:54:14.000 Including humans.
02:54:15.000 We're just along for the ride.
02:54:18.000 So I think the real key to human beings and the most difficult aspect of life is to get really good at this moment.
02:54:26.000 Get really good at just existing in the moment and enjoying it.
02:54:29.000 I do definitely agree with that. 0.96
02:54:30.000 It's fucking hard to do, right? 0.97
02:54:31.000 Yeah. 0.97
02:54:32.000 It's great.
02:54:32.000 It's a great way of thinking about it because it just means that you don't worry so much because there's stuff that you can understand and relate to and be good at and enjoy.
02:54:44.000 I think that's totally right.
02:54:45.000 And there's some power in worry.
02:54:47.000 You can't worry about worrying.
02:54:48.000 Because worry causes preparation.
02:54:51.000 Preparation causes you to cover your bases and remove a lot of paranoia.
02:54:57.000 Because you relax.
02:54:58.000 Like one of the best things you could ever do if you're worried about something is handle it.
02:55:02.000 You know, you handle it, you deal with it, you don't have to worry about it anymore.
02:55:05.000 So I don't think there's anything wrong with worrying a little bit.
02:55:08.000 But I think it's like all these other things that we've discussed.
02:55:11.000 It's a balancing act.
02:55:15.000 Don't go crazy and watch porn all day, but if you watch a little bit, I think you're going to be okay.
02:55:19.000 Don't get nutty and sit in front of the TV 24 hours a day, but watch Game of Thrones every now and then. 0.74
02:55:25.000 I don't think it's going to hurt you.
02:55:26.000 Get outside every now and then, but don't stay there.
02:55:30.000 When it gets cold, you need to get indoors.
02:55:33.000 The world's big. 1.00
02:55:34.000 There's a lot of shit going on. 0.99
02:55:35.000 And it's simply a matter of there's so much happening and there's so much to take in and there's so much going on that there is not one good or bad. 0.99
02:55:44.000 There's just a bunch of different things happening all at once.
02:55:47.000 Yeah, and that's why I totally agree with you that the more you can give people the freedom to experience and enjoy and kind of, you know, write their own story about how they do stuff.
02:55:57.000 Yeah.
02:55:58.000 And not be told what to do by others, the better.
02:56:00.000 Indeed.
02:56:01.000 Crowd pack.
02:56:02.000 There you go.
02:56:04.000 Crowdpac.com.
02:56:05.000 That is the website.
02:56:06.000 If you're interested in that, and the elections are today.
02:56:11.000 Shockingly little discussion, both online and on the news about them.
02:56:16.000 But if you're curious, go to crowdpac.com.
02:56:20.000 C-R-O-D-P-A-C.com and get your voting guide.
02:56:28.000 Go there and click on it and enter in all the information and find out what's going on.
02:56:33.000 I did check this out.
02:56:35.000 I think it's pretty cool what you've done.
02:56:37.000 Your political priorities.
02:56:39.000 It's really early days.
02:56:41.000 This is the first little test version of it.
02:56:43.000 We're just doing it for California.
02:56:45.000 So I'm sorry if people are listening outside California.
02:56:47.000 It won't work so well for you, I should say that, because it's a test.
02:56:51.000 But we'll be back for the midterm elections in the fall with a whole new set of things and data for politicians all over the country.
02:57:00.000 So September, we'll be back with a much more developed and much sort of bigger and better product.
02:57:06.000 And I think it's going to really shake things up a bit.
02:57:10.000 That's the plan anyway.
02:57:10.000 I think it will, too.
02:57:11.000 I think it will, too.
02:57:12.000 And we need to get you together with the Young Turks.
02:57:14.000 Yeah, that sounds great.
02:57:15.000 I checked that out after you mentioned it.
02:57:17.000 The Wolf Pack thing?
02:57:18.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:57:18.000 He's on the right track when it comes to that stuff, too.
02:57:21.000 Steve, thank you very much.
02:57:22.000 Thank you, Joe.
02:57:22.000 That was three hours.
02:57:23.000 Three hours.
02:57:24.000 Three hours.
02:57:25.000 Just flew right by.
02:57:25.000 Look at that.
02:57:26.000 Bam.
02:57:26.000 Three o'clock.
02:57:27.000 Thanks to our sponsors.
02:57:28.000 Thank you to Stamps.com.
02:57:31.000 Go to Stamps.com, enter in the code word JRE, and get your $110 bonus offer, which includes a digital scale and up to $55 of free postage.
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02:57:45.000 Go to LegalZoom.com and use the code word ROGAN at checkout for savings.
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02:57:53.000 Go to rogan.ting.com and save $25 off of any new device.
02:57:58.000 That's rogan.ting.com.
02:58:01.000 We will be back.
02:58:03.000 This is it for the rest of the week. 0.99
02:58:04.000 We'll be back next week with a lot of fascinating shit. 0.96
02:58:08.000 Ensign Inoue will be here next Wednesday. 0.98
02:58:10.000 That's the next podcast. 1.00
02:58:12.000 Until then, go fuck yourself. 1.00
02:58:13.000 No, don't do that. 1.00
02:58:14.000 Be nice.
02:58:14.000 Be nice to each other.
02:58:15.000 Live in the moment, my friends.
02:58:16.000 Enjoy it.
02:58:17.000 Much love.
02:58:18.000 Big kiss.