The Joe Rogan Experience - #1021 - Russell Brand

Episode Date: October 5, 2017

Russell Brand is an English comedian, actor, radio host, author, and activist. His new book "Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions" is available now, and he hosts a podcast called "Under The Skin" on Spotify.

4, 3, 2, 1 I'm gonna do what you're doing. What are you doing over there man? What is this? Well actually, I was thinking about making sure that I'm in a position mentally and spiritually to talk openly and clearly and connect. But you're doing it with fists, which I found interesting. It's like you're going to talk openly, but you're going to be strong about it. It's not like there's this thing, the meditation thing,

where you're just gently touching your fingers together. Yeah, right. I suppose then I'm looking to be embodied as well. You're tense. Or like present. You're like a hybrid. Yeah, that's right. That's what we've got to become these days

yeah a little bit of both a little bit of spiritual a little bit of warrior the whole thing we've got to survive in this world yeah

you know yeah so you can't be all ethereal it can't be it can't all be right in the consciousness

yeah otherwise you'll never get anything done right you'll just be constantly dealing with other people's wants and wishes and You know unless you're gonna make the decision to be one of those cave people unless you because I suppose I think about that like this put on robes meditate only that only live in the consciousness, but Given my extreme levels of attachment. I've experienced over the years to physical things. I don't think that's my path

You know, I'm here. I'm in the world. I'm Selling books. I'm having a baby. I'm caring about what people think about me. I'm wondering if I'm gonna be in a film I'm dealing with the world. Yeah being a man in the world being the type of man I am it's not like I know I just life myself off in a cave Well, there's a certain amount of attraction that I think we all have to this idea, like, hey, man, I'm just going to get away from it all. But the problem is it's going on, whether you like it or not, it's happening.

Like, even if you're not there, it's going on. So you should probably be there just to go, what is this? Yeah, what is this? Even in Christianity, Christ says, in the world, but not of it. So, like, trying not to be defined and determined by other people's opinions of you, the systems and structures that are set up around you,

particularly if you question those systems and structures and think, well, I don't trust that system. I don't agree with that. So you don't want to be defined by that. But the fact is we are here. And I think there are certain people, you know, that do have a monastic tendency that should be meditating that aren't equipped for the material world and one of the great

things that makes me sad about our times is if you don't have economic and productive value then you're a nobody you know and there are some people that don't know how to resource themselves you found a way of turning yourself into an economy of creating a kingdom i found my own way of like all right i can make my mental illness work for me. People pay me money to be this crazy. But not everyone gets those kind of breaks or has that kind of skill set. Yeah, I mean, obviously there's some people that really do thrive on that monastic lifestyle. Have you ever seen, there's a Vice documentary on this guy.

His name is Heinmo. He lives in the, I believe it's the eastern part of Alaska. He's in this Arctic region. There's a vice piece called Heinmo's Arctic Adventure. That's it. Arctic Refuge. Heinmo. H-E-I-M-O. Heimo's, Heimo Korth is his name. And this guy is a very, he lives in the Elastic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 100 miles from the nearest human. And he lives there with his wife and he lives in this little log house that he's sort of built himself. And he thrives up there.

It's very strange because we're attracted to these people, like to just go, okay, what do you do all day, man? Like what's your life like? And do you miss people? He has like a VCR and he plays old movies. And it's a fascinating thing because I think when you watch someone like that, you always run it through your head. Like could I live like that? Like is this guy happier? happier he says he is i mean he says that the the hunter gatherer lifestyle that he lives is like uniquely attractive to people and and uniquely satisfying and it's something that

we don't get in our everyday world so we're never like completely even whereas he is just running around fishing and hunting caribou and stuff well we're never like completely even whereas he is just running around fishing and hunting caribou and stuff well we're fitting in with someone's else's idea of what life should be yeah the system under within which most of us operate is not this isn't what i would do if right if i had a free start you know i don't mean just personally me, Russell. I mean, anthropologically, yeah, we're designed to be nomadic tribes people. When my podcast I do as a suggestion by you, I had on as a guest Yuval Noah Harari. He wrote that book Sapiens. And he does a lot of anthropology stuff and says about like that, you know, that we're designed to live in tribes of about 75 to 100 people.

At least that's what chimpanzees do. When they get bigger, there's normally a conflict and a separation and a splitting. The nomadic tribes would follow the food sources that were available to them. So in a way, if you can replicate that or get close to that in some way in your own life, it would make sense that it would make you happy. When you're saying that about the guy who is 100 miles away from the nearest person i thought people there's people that live in suburbia that mentally are 100 miles away from the nearest person you just really your life is you sit in front of a screen you don't connect with people you've not spoke to people

for days you know i think about this when people make these desperate attempts to connect through dogging is a thing in my country where people meet up in lay-bys and just have anonymous sex, masturbating in public. What do they call it? Dogging. It's a uniquely British phenomenon Joe. Dogging. Dogging, that's right. I've never heard of this. Well, welcome. Welcome to Britain. Dogging is people go to lay-bys, quiet lay-bys and it's like

could be sort of suburban. It's a bit like swinging you know, but it's like you pull up in a car with you know, this is, I've never done this, I'll just clarify. You pull up in a car with a partner it could be, you know, I think it's a kind of heterosexual thing or homosexual, you can but it's like you pull up in a car with you know this is this is i've never done this i'll just clarify you pull up in a car with a partner it could be you know i think it's a kind of heterosexual thing or homeless you can do it where you know wherever your persuasion is there's particular places of particular people and you know the lights go on and people jerk off and you know you can have sex and i'm sort of thinking these are desperate attempts to find some connection to nature to sort of drop anchor and hit your primal self to get into who you are

because you wake up and you've got to do your job and you've got a screen in front of you and you're a consumer and you're not living in the world anymore you want some visceral experience one of the things i get from listening to your podcast is like oh you're a person that's questing after with the whether it's the archery or the dmt looking for what is it that we're meant to be as humans and i'm doing that in my own way having unfortunately written off substances because my stupid stupid mistakes in my 20s I can't go into the DMT ayahuasca world as much as I would like to and I want to find how is it that I be me in this world and yeah I don't think it is through isolationism I don't think it's like

right I'm going to try and get an island and fuck this I'm not going to participate I think it's like, right, I'm going to try and get an island and fuck this. I'm not going to participate. I think it's like, right, what, you know, we are nature. We created this. This is a form of nature, our civilizations, our manifestations. But is it the best we can do? Can we change it? Can we pull back from what seems more than ever, like some kind of apocalypse with, you know, your current president? No disrespect. And with our country, Brexit, it's sort of like a weird time of fracture and the manifestation of ugliness stuff bubbling up i feel like dark unconscious matter

bubbling up man i was in the airport traveling to here and i was in new york and like just the people that are working the lines when you put your cases through that people felt seem heavy and low and like because if you're british donald trump just something that you know you kind of make jokes about and you hope that there isn't going to be a nuclear war but he seems like a sort of a comic figure but here i sort of sensed oh there's pain now i know there's a lot of people that obviously like him enough to have made him president the united states but i think even in those cases he speaks to a particular rage something that wasn't being addressed the failure of neoliberalism the lies of the last 30 years of a kind of politics that was

just about management and not about giving people truth. I don't know, Joe. I like, you know, like our individual journeys. How can our individual journeys inform our social and tribal journeys and our national journeys? And is there even hope anymore for such a thing as the United States of America or Great Britain? Or should we start looking at smaller projects? Because, you know, if the United States of America and Great Britain lead to colonialism, mass capitalism, consumerism, ecological meltdown, if that's what you believe in, then maybe we need to look at breaking of years of living these tribal existences where we in these tribal existences where you had these small groups of 50 to 60 or 100 people plus that this is the new thing and that part of our chaos is are trying to adapt to the new thing

it's almost inevitable we've created this incredible way where we can get food to people so more people had babies, more people stayed in these areas where they're not growing food. And then you have, you're dealing with these massive numbers of people, you know, in LA, 20 plus million. And we're trying to figure out like, how do we get along? Like how, how do all these different ideologies coincide? How do, how do we, how do we cooperate? How do we, uh, how do we figure out what to do with our waste how to figure out what to do with what we're doing to the environment you know how do we figure out who's right you know is it is the doom and gloom people correct or that we're gonna be okay people correct

you know and what's the right attitude to take about this many of those significant movements that you're talking about agriculture and industrialization and urbanization agriculture obviously meaning food available on mass yeah industrialization products available on mass urbanization people living together on mass none of these things are good for the people on mass they're good for a select strata of people that primarily benefit you know like the they say that the average diet of human beings got worse after agriculture before that varied diet people ate loads of stuff after agriculture you're on potatoes now peasant you're on rice now peasant you know so like i think each of these movements are to

benefit a particular aspect of the system a a particular class, a particular strata, a particular economic class. And, you know, me and you ain't doing bad. We're relatively near the top, but we're not the engineers of it. There are corporations and elites, to use that very popular word these days, that benefit from things being like this. I don't, when you're saying, is there a way that we can all coalesce and get along in urban conurbations of 20 million people? No, because the power is too centralized. The power needs to break down. Mostly we are getting along.

I mean, mostly. Mostly we are getting along in these weird groups. And even with whatever static that we have with each other, even with the weirdness of it all, the diffusion of responsibility that comes in these gigantic groups and you see things happening you just get away from them we still for the most part of getting along in this weird new world i think you're right in a sense joe like i'm not i'm not a doom and gloom guy i think human beings are really really beautiful and brilliant and like

i don't think oh god this is such a mess what i think is is that we're trying to inhabit systems that are not designed for us to live within and i think that yeah people are getting on but i also think don't you think there's a lot of tension in cities that everyone's one right turn or one traffic light away from getting out their car and smashing someone in the face you can like and feel it bubbling under and that in that the feeling i had in the airport is that the people that were working there were under undue stress. Now, this is just one anecdote, but I feel like we're being forced to live on a particular aspect of our consciousness, a particular bandwidth of where we're kind of a bit frightened, a little bit too much desire. I'm talking about most people.

Again, I'm not poor no more. So I'm able to create like money creates distance isn't it money's like you can fuck off problems i'm getting in a nice car and i'm out of here but like i remember the feeling and a lot of people are living like that where the tension's up in their face and so yes i agree that people do muddle along and that's i think shows you that we're not as in a darwinistic model or or some of the ideas derived from darwinism rather like the selfish gene and the richard dawkins idea that people just want to survive and we just want to kill and fuck and you know this is what propels us forward i think no we are we're cooperative

collaborative artistic imaginative beautiful people but we've created systems around the worst aspects of our nature greed selfishness this is what capitalism and consumerism thrive on and they're so all encompassing. Our cultures are domed by them and we can't see beyond them. We exist within them. And I feel like that if we were to break down those kind of systems, live in smaller assemblies, smaller groups where power is as close to the people that it affects as possible, where people would vote on, well, this is how we want to use our resources. This is how we want to run our street, our hospital, our prisons, our schools, our systems.

This is how we want them to run. Then things would really, really slow down. But man, what's the rush? You know, things would slow down, get a lot slower. But I think that people would be empowered and you wouldn't have resources and power filtered to a small group of people. No, I think you're definitely right.

And I think you should probably start a cult. You've got a good idea about how to run it and how to keep the resources in the community. But I think that also this discontent that we have is a sign that people being upset with how this is and the momentum of the way things have sort of established themselves today, that this is like what we need. This is the momentum and the motivation that we need to try to improve upon things. I think we're uniquely qualified to do that today because we're talking about it.

So you could be the doom and gloom guy today. I'll be rose colored glasses. So I think that this tension that we have in this, even like a guy like Donald Trump or Brexit, I think the good thing about those things is that people are looking at what they don't like about the way we're running the world, what they don't like about our culture. And they're getting upset about it. And hopefully we'll sort it out that way. And that being completely content with everything and everybody just sitting on the couch and smiling all day, it doesn't necessarily lead to progress. I think we're more informed now than we've ever been before. to progress. I think we're more informed now than we've ever been before. So I would hope that with our ability to communicate and being more informed now that we have the potential to move towards a

better society. I agree with that, mate. But I also think that what's important in the world is who has power, power being the ability to affect change. I'm not one of those people that I'm not like baffled by what happened with trump i feel oh there's an indication that a good many people feel extremely angry and disenfranchised the same as brexit in our country and i recognize and i understand it similarly i don't think oh wouldn't everything be zippity-doo-dah if hillary clinton was president of the united states that was the way stuff was going that's what the previous 30 years has been like in your country, my country, managerial politicians with no vision. We've seen the failure of recent sort of the kind of promises that were offered by administrations recently.

I think that what Trump is, what Brexit is, is a big fuck you to the system. We want something different. And for me, in a way, these things are good because i believe the people that feel those things are right and i would like to see more power delivered to ordinary people genuine change happening yeah but i think it won't happen unless you sort of look at well what where is the power really the power really is with people that this system works for a sort of a particular corporate elite a particular strata of i don don't know, politicians and bureaucrats. And I hope that what these sort of cataclysms of recent years lead to is devolution of power,

new systems. Because even in the time that I've been in your country on this trip, Joe, you know, there's been that mad sort of massacre that, you know, that's sort of, for me, is a, and this tells me that this is a sick society. Not, you know, I'm not, oh sort of, for me, is a, and this tells me that this is a sick society. Not, you know, I'm not, oh, and Britain's wonderful, of course. You know, we went around plundering the world. We're crazy, crazy. We've got enough problems of our own. But like, for me, what is causing this?

Why is this happening? You know, for me, I don't see it in isolation. I don't believe in lone wolf. I think the system is coughing up these mad events and there are patterns and there's things that we can read and there are things that we can change To improve it. Well, he's certainly a part of the guy that was that shooter is certainly a part of our society Yeah, and so if we have a sick culture, you know, I mean that there's there's evidence of it I mean, is it not it's not a completely sick culture. I mean, we don't we're not all dying, right?

We're not all we don't have all have this disease, but some of us most certainly do So this thing that you're saying, like that people looked at Donald Trump as a big fuck you to system, the tipping over the apple cart, I think that's absolutely what people were hoping for. And then there's a bunch of people that just love saying, fuck you. There's a bunch of people that when fuck you is flying around, yeah, fuck you. They just get in it. Fuck you too.

Fuck you. And then you're seeing a lot of that with Donald Trump supporters as well. You're seeing people that they're looking for some excitement. They're looking for some fun. You're seeing people that enjoy chaos. Maybe they're trapped in cubicles and they're just completely frustrated by this fucking grind, this day-to-day grind. being their soul being ground down on a cheese grater every day being forced to stay under these fluorescent lights and this fucking small little box dealing with human resources in the corporate environment and they're going fucking crazy and anything that happens that that tips that over

it's all fight club right they're just looking to get punched in the face they're looking to go crazy then there's a lot of that as well you But I think this chaos, the worst parts about it, there's no good to, right? There's no good to mass shootings. But what comes out of all these things is the discussions and the intense realization that we have real problems. We have real problems with the way we're communicating with each other. And I don't necessarily know if the solution – I mean, it would certainly be a solution for those involved if you get 100 amazing people and everybody just starts a co-op in Maine somewhere. I mean, yeah, it would be great for those involved. But for all of us, I mean, even while that, I mean, it's almost like that monastic lifestyle we were talking about.

If everybody just isolates, it's all going on around you. If you put your phone in a drawer and never use it again and you stay off the grid and you get your water from a spring, all those people out there are still drinking water with antidepressants in it, and there's a bunch of fucking smog that people have to deal with, there's a bunch of problems with hurricanes now because the water's warmer. It's inevitable. It's inevitable that this is all... I mean, you can decide, hey, man, I only have 100 years on this planet. Fuck this.

I'm just going to ride this out. But if you do make a kid and you have and I've got a bunch of them I mean what's going to happen to them we have to think about what happens with them as well we're all this global community really yes we are and that's why I don't go for a hedonic

lifestyle of oh fuck it I've got a century let's line up some blowjobs I tried that route line up some blowjobs let's get route and like line up some blowjobs let's get me right a century worth of blowjobs great way of putting it let's line up some blowjobs ice cream here blowjobs there and off to the boneyard yeah you know like because i like you believe in the possibility of change and i've been like again i mentioned it again i started a podcast because you said you know start a podcast and it's a good fun like what i do on mine is i get like uh because i'm

doing this university degree religion in global politics in fact this thing happened what happened to me really is i hit 40 and i thought right now i know a bunch of things aren't going to work the ice cream the blow jobs the attention the privilege heroin crack all these things i can chalk off as not working i can't control them i've got to find a way through this and oddly peculiarly it's a sort of a personal version of spirituality that's what i've found william blake the great english poet says each artist must find his own religion we have to find our own way what works for you is not going to be the same as what works for me you know there are ways that we are collective but there are ways where we are individuals so i thought right i'm gonna have to educate myself i'm gonna have to do

things that mean something to me a big part of that was like right you know doing you know in my own small fragile brittle way brazilian jiu-jitsu going like i've never done stuff like that before so going like and you're right live in your body be in there and go to genesis gym in marlow i give them a drop because all these guys are such big fans of your show you know and i go there and i do sessions with Chris, that titanium skeleton of a man, that black belt, twists me up, he can cause pain in ways. I was like, how is he even doing that?

And when I try to do the stuff back, it doesn't work, or puts me and my body in a different way. Learning the history of the ideas that are in religion, the way that the distinction between politics and religion is sort of an imaginary distinction when people talk about religious violence versus secular violence they're saying their violence is irrational and our violence is okay i've learned some amazing stuff in the last few years and as a result of that the kind of guests i get on my podcast like this guy khan

ross mate you'd love him on yours actually he was a diplomat in the foreign service around the time of the weapons of mass destruction and 9-11 he believed in the system he's like you know all he wanted was to work in the foreign service he knew they were lying while it was going on so he's like oh no this thing i believed in is not true like he's being asked to participate in it he's come out of a foreign office and believes that no centralizedised power can ever work. We have to have devolved power, assemblies. Anarchism is the word. Anarchy doesn't mean chaos.

Anarchy means devolved power to the smallest possible groups, that there's no power between you and I and Jamie, that we're equal in here and we should run the space according to what all of us think as a group, that hospitals, schools, institutions, communities should be run on a democratic basis you don't need like you know minimize the amount of centralized authority we need roads to be run there needs to be some security and all those kind of things but it should be minimized where possible that's what this guy came away with and he explained it real well to me and what i like increasingly what i think is that when you talk about that mate the

cheese grater on the sole, that's the phenomena of the West. That's what people in our countries are going through is alienation. It's talked about one of the things another guest taught me about Marxism, the Marxist theory of the way that he criticised and broke down capitalism, how it operates. He wasn't

just talking about the economics, although Marx was a great economist. He goes capitalism will lead to individuals feeling worthless and meaningless because they'll just be cogs in a machine it will break people's spirits and that is what's happened because people sell not the only thing that's happened go on it's also created incredible technology medical innovation all sorts of different ways that we can make the world easier do you think we could keep those things without the cheese grater soul mate because i think we could i think we could we can make the world easier. Do you think we could keep those things without the cheese grater soulmate? Because I think

we could. I think we could. We've got the stuff now. We could progress with it. We could have different, fairer ways of doing that. And people, like, I think people kill that conversation too early because it's working for enough people. Yeah, they're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I think so. Yeah, that's what the whole thing of Marxism is, is the

abandonment of capitalism. It's like, let's go this way. But, you know, you look at what happened when people adopted Marxism. It led to the death of millions and millions of people, as has capitalism in a lot of places. Well, yeah, more deaths, but it's not reported in the same way. But I'm not saying that we all want to live in communist, you know, or the

Soviet Union or China. Terrible, terrible things happen there. But that's what we always revert to. You know, we say, well, is it not possible that we could, for a start, they didn't do it properly. They ignored it. That's what everybody always we always revert to you know we say well is there not is it not possible that we could for a start they didn't do it properly they ignored it that's what everybody says but no one's ever done it properly I mean perhaps we have more freedom today human beings have more freedom more freedom to behave more freedom to communicate more freedom to excel with this capitalist society that we're criticizing today than any human

beings that have ever lived ever there's a lot of negative about it a hundred percent but it's also there's a lot of negative about it, 100%. But it's also there's a lot of benefits and positive about it. There are a lot of soulless people that are just counting numbers and throwing them on a hard drive somewhere and buying yachts. That's true, too. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to evolve and aspire. I don't think evolution is finished.

I know there's loads of good things about capitalism. But I think let's carry on. Let's see what we can do. Could we be doing this better? I believe that we could. I believe that this has taken us about as far as it could go because of certain ecological imperatives and in the spiritual thing that you deftly mentioned that it's destroying the souls of a lot of people and it's not necessary like when is that you know the war we were promised

in the 50s and the technological revolution will mean your work i have an hour a day you know like no one delivered on that and people just went oh actually you carry on fucking working and we'll siphon the profit uphill and we could have leisure-based societies but i think that as long as there is a form of centralized power people at the center of that power will not share it i think you have to go all right this community is going to be run by those people this community is going to be run by those people and that also solves a lot of the other problems that are defining our times. People seem to want different things. Some people want to say absolutely no homosexuality.

Some people say we want total sexual freedom. Some people want we want to live in what would be called a religious extreme way. Some people say atheist. Well, that can't exist under one banner, I don't think anymore. The problem with people saying no homosexuality is that they're deciding about freedom, other people's freedoms to exist, other people's freedoms to behave and to express themselves the way they want to. And the real problem with that is a lot of the people that want to control other people's freedom,

really the reason why they're doing it is they're trying to suppress their own urges and desires. You're completely right. One of the things I'm most interested in is how much of our activity is unconscious activity. Oh, so much. We're doing things, we don't know why we're doing it. The book here that I'm promoting, Recovery, I've written this book. It's my version of the 12 steps. I read some of it last night.

You're in it. Yeah. The 12 steps is a journey from unconsciousness to consciousness. That's what essentially is. You unconsciously pursue pleasure. You unconsciously pursue patterns because's what essentially is you'd unconsciously pursue pleasure you unconsciously pursue patterns because you don't know you're doing it if you're a smackhead or a crackhead like me eventually it gets you into such trouble you have to address it but most people hover along on the cheese grater level lives of quiet desperation never realizing

hang on a minute it is possible to be happy it is possible to be contented move towards nature you are yourself doing it you're going right this is what i'm good at this is what i'm doing i know the way you ran your life i don't you don't want no one telling you what to do you don't want to compromise you want to learn all of this fascinating stuff and fulfill yourself you don't want a bit like so you've created a road for yourself to do that but not everybody can and more people could and i think there'll always be resistance there'll always be corruption because it's in me like i don't i shouldn't spend another second condemning donald trump because i've got an arsehole in me i'm a greedy person

that wants attention and wants people to love me and buy my book and take care of my interests but your introspective thinking has led you to stop that path. I mean, that's essentially you saw the flaws in hedonistic behavior and you hit the pause button. And you're thinking about it. And that's very attractive to people because we all see that in ourselves. You know, and when you talk about, like, what I do and what I've done, the most important thing that I've ever done is surround myself with people that I love. Like, I have a really good group of friends and interesting people. And that leads to more. Like like they find more interesting people. It branches out and spreads out. And then people listening to this, they become like-minded. They pursue their happiness. They pursue their actual

desires. What interests them? What they would like to do for their career, for their life, for their craft. What do you enjoy? Find that thing. Surround yourself with like-minded people. And I think we all get fuel from the people that we're around. And it's one of the most underrated aspects of being a person in a community is if you're around a bunch of ambitious people who are creative, who are open-minded and honest, you are inspired by that and you seek to have like-minded thoughts. Yeah, you're right about that. I think that's another one in the against column for disappearing into the cave and being a hermit or a monk or whatever.

Because I heard someone say, we exist in dialectic, which means we exist in relationship and conversation with one another who are you without other people you're nobody in it in an aluminium capsule floating through space what does your personality matter you're nothing you know so you're right about that you know that we exist in these relationships with one another and i suppose what i have sought out um is to connect with people on the level of the damage on the level of the wound on the level of the vulnerability not on the level of the wound, on the level of the vulnerability. Not in a pessimistic, let's wring ourselves out into the gutter way. No, let's recognise that we're flawed,

but that together we can create supportive, compassionate, loving communities. And for me, the starting point for that is a life that is predicated on spirituality as opposed to materialism. It's predicated on what my consciousness does when I stop thinking, what my consciousness does when I meditate. Now, I don't have the advantage of the DMT experience in the eye west. I'm fascinated by it, listen to it a lot. Why don't you try Kundalini?

I do do that. Well, have you ever had any sort of psychedelic experience through doing Kundalini? Because the people that I know that are really into it they say that they can achieve people that i know that have done dmt i'll say they can achieve the same sort of states wow with kundalini well they're doing it well kundalini is one of the things i believe in this particular tattoo at my finger by mark mahoney of shamrock tattoos los angeles the Kundalini Serpent, as drawn by Carl Jung, one of the great early figures of psychoanalysis. The fire in the belly, the animal energy of survival, the energy of creativity, the serpent energy, the reptile energy that's deep in our DNA when we were lizards, when we were creatures that crawled on our belly and lives in us still, can be coronated.

The serpent, the snake within, can become crowned. It can become royal. Your animal desires can become royal. And I think that the Kundalini, as I understand it, is about harnessing those energies, bringing it up. I do like yoga, and I do have pretty tripped-out experiences where I feel like, oh, my God, I'm awake, but I am not me. I am not my thoughts. I feel this sense of transcendence.

And I only feel them retrospectively. You know, in the moment, there's no me to register it it's only afterwards think wow I lost myself there do you feel weird when you finger people with that finger because it seems like counterproductive it does I know don't send that snake in but and to be honest fingerings become a less significant part of my life finger is a very weird it seems so rude it Like in the expression, fingering. It's a dirty business. It's not functional. There's no need for it in the adult world. People like it.

A lot of people love it. If people ask for it, I say do it. Yeah, let's not deny people fingering. They want to get fingered by the snake. Give them the snake. Hand that reptile right over. Open the chakras. Is this the right moment to tell you I dreamt about you last night?

Sure. Knowing it's a risk always to tell someone that you dreamt about them because once it's out there, it's out there. So, and particularly, you know, check it out. So we were in this dream. We were in some sort of semi-organic forest type world, but they had an industrial component, somewhat labyrinthian. Make of that what you will.

What's the industrial component? Like the, as if, you know, like the Ewoks, how they've made the most of the woods, you they've built little huts and stuff and maybe they'd have little i don't know if the ewoks had another couple of thousand years maybe they'd have built little ewok trains i don't know what they would have done who knows they were lovely cuddly little guys so anyway there was a sort of a small industrial component to it we were somewhere within that world and uh we were doing brazilian jiu-jitsu. Let's use the word rolling. Now, there was a sort of, this is how we know it was a dream

because there was a moment where I had you inside control. Now, from that moment, I moved towards a choke and you did something where you arched and flipped over very acrobatically and very elegantly. I don't even know if it's an actual move or not. It was very, very beautiful and I thought, oh, right, yeah, it's going quite well, this rolling, but it seems that Joe Rogan is betterzilian jiu-jitsu than me but that even in the dream world that seemed like something i had an understanding of well there's jiu-jitsu what's brilliant about

it and what's interesting about it is that the more time you put into it the more you understand the moves the more moves you acquire the more moves you drill the better you get at it the more it's it's literally like a language and that it is as your vocabulary increases and your ability to like even if your vocabulary is very broad if you don't talk a lot you'd probably have stumbling conversations right but if you get used to talking all the time and you're having a conversation with someone and the words kind of flow but if you're talking to talking all the time and you're having a conversation with someone and the words kind of flow. But if you're talking to someone and they're weird and they bark out things and they talk over you, it's awkward and herky-jerky, much like jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu is almost like a kinetic language.

Brilliant. But there's a puzzle that's being solved, right? And there's a problem, right? The problem is this person is trying to apply all these different techniques, whether they're chokes or joint locks, on you, and you are trying to both defend that and then put yours on them. It's beautiful. I've heard you say before high-pressure problem-solving or something.

Well, MMA I always describe as high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. Dire physical consequences. Because MMA is the most high level of-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. Dire physical consequences. Because MMA is the most high level of all the problem-solving because the consequences are so grave. Getting kicked in the head, getting elbowed and kneed. Those things are so... Jiu-jitsu, I think, is better for you, for sure, physically,

because the consequences are not nearly as grave. You get choked out, you're fine. You get your arm you know you tap out if you're as long as you're you're you have as long as you're willing to tap out you have to be willing to tap out you'll you'll get through it okay and if you get injured you just get it fixed and take six months off you'll be back i like that kinetic language thing you said that really makes sense to me because i feel like when I'm doing it, I'm like a person that's going, hello, could you show me the way to the train station? Hold door. Hold door. Hold door.

Yeah. I'm so slow. And other people are like, well, sir, I'll point you in the right direction. You could go a thousand ways. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Do you watch Jujutsu at all online?

No, I don't watch those. But sometimes I look at videos of them Gracies or something and marvel at their effortless capacities and charisma. You should watch, just because you're enjoying it. Watch like current top of the food chain Jiu Jitsu guys like Hoffa Mendes, you know, watch some Marcelo Garcia, watch some, you know, some of the young guys coming up, Gary Tonin. It's fascinating to watch them apply these new strategies to this old language, you know, because that's really essentially what it is.

I mean, what you're seeing is these new approaches. Jiu-jitsu is this never-ending thing. I mean, it really just doesn't, like, boxing, although it's very complex, and it doesn't seem as complex to someone on the outside, but when you watch, like guy like floyd mayweather or sugary leonard or someone who's like just a master at their craft which you see how complex it truly is you see all the different the all the different nuances to it but it's still punching right there's just still too punching whereas jujitsu is this fucking tangle of bodies and

possibilities and potential and there's so many different ways to approach it. There's people that are chokers. There's people that are arm lock guys. There's people that are, they like to get you with their legs. They're triangle people. And they all have their own little way of approaching this conversation. So you've learned a few sort of grammatical pathways through that kinetic language and think, right, I'm going to master that particular area.

So watching videos online is like watching a video of Alan Watts talking. You go, oh, okay, okay. Or Terrence McKenna or Timothy Leary or whoever it is that you think is fascinating. You hear them talk and it develops new pathways

and possibilities for your own thinking. It was one of the things I was going to say earlier that when I was thinking while we were having this conversation about the future

and about possibilities and about civilization that with all due respect, what you and I are doing both of us we're faces a very rudimentary way of trying to figure this out I think where we're we're clubbing at it right you know and I think people are listening to this that will do a far better job than us in the future yeah and I think that that's important and I think that we're doing our best you know we're taking our steps but when Henry Ford created the Model T

He didn't intend it to race against a la Ferrari You know he didn't know what the fuck a la Ferrari was but if he didn't make that Model T the la Ferrari wouldn't been possible But you can't go back and go Henry Ford fucking suck dude ride this piece of shit with its leaf springs It's stupid tires. You know and then get in a 2017 Corvette Zr1 you go. Oh, okay. This is where it's stupid tires, you know, and then get in a 2017 Corvette ZR1. You go, oh, okay, this is where it's at. No, it's like all these things have to be in place for the next evolution of it to advance. And I think what we're looking at today with our society is we're hoping that there's a

solution out there. But there is a solution, but it's goddamn slow, just like all evolution. It's goddamn slow, just like all evolution. It's goddamn slow. It's faster than single-celled organisms to a giraffe, but it's still fucking slow. And we're a part of it, all of us, not just you and I, but the people that are listening to this and the people that are having their own podcasts, their own conversations and doing TED Talks and writing books. We're all a part of thinking this out. and writing books, we're all a part of thinking this out.

And these little pieces all fit together slowly but surely and create this mosaic of ideas and potential. And what we're experiencing now is just what we can experience in this realm, like in this world, with this life that we are currently stuck in. And then someone 50 years from now will be looking back at our stumbling conversation, trying to figure out a way to engineer society correctly, and they'll have a much better way of doing it. I think that's a very beautiful, progressive argument. I agree with much of what you've said, except to some degree, Joe,

even things I've heard on this podcast. Say when you have Graham Hancock, I particularly enjoyed it when you got the more sanctioned academic guy on there, and Graham felt like, you know, you bastards, you're the people that say that my shit ain't real. Well, Graham's such a rebel, you know. It's fascinating to see these people, you know, attacking him for his ideas and his research,

but now having less and less ground to stand on. Graham's ideas have been more proven in the last 10, 20 years than ever before. He's finding these new civilizations and finding this new evidence that human beings have existed on this continent far longer and that they're traveling all over the world for far longer. And the civilization is probably quite a bit older than we thought. That's right. And so we don't therefore know that this idea of continual progression, linear progression, is the only one. that this idea of continual progression, linear progression, is the only one. It is possible that when it comes to the realm of consciousness,

ancient people knew something that we are struggling to understand. And I recognize that your Model T to Ferrari metaphor is a good one. And actually, speaking to young people now, I do feel that they're kind of more switched on geez look at a baby with an ipad it seems like they know already and and but what i feel is and this might just be my personal narcissism but i like to think of myself as the pinnacle of consciousness that there isn't some other realm even though god i want that dmt so bad like why are you afraid of that because it's not it's not a like it's not an intoxicant because i'm a 12-step guy and i'm a sobriety stop all

that 12-step you're not gonna fall back i've just read a fucking book about that that's a whole book you're not gonna fall back into addiction you're it's not this idea that you're gonna fall apart and become a junkie again it's not gonna going to happen, man. You're past that. You can say that, Joe. But also, an integral part of my recovery is the idea of surrender. And I think that's an integral part of a lot of spiritual belief. It's an integral part of DMT. Yeah, I bet.

You have to surrender. I feel you, man. But to bypass the idea of my egoic authorship, my egoic authority of, I am Russell, and this is what I believe, and this is what I'm going to do. I have surrendered to a way of life. I have surrendered. If I can find some people with 20, 30 years in recovery, clean time, that go, you're allowed to take DMT, I'm like, fucking hand me the pipe.

You don't need their advice or their sanctioning. Well, in a way, I do. By the way, you don't even need DMT. You don't need it. But you seem like you want it. Yeah, because I love the transcendent. I love it because I know and I've always known that this experience of being in a body in the conscious individualistic mind. And remember, I've taken loads of acid when I was a kid as well.

I know that this is not all of it. This is just we're just reading one bandwidth of data with our sensory instruments that there is limitless consciousness and limitless reality. Do you miss that acid experience? Yes, I do. I love it. I love it.

Is the concern that if you fell into it, like whether it was mushrooms or whatever it was, that if you fell into that experience again, that it would lead you in a downward spiral of addiction? In a sense, it's that. In a sense, it's that. In a sense, it's that. And the fact is as well that I've turned my life around or my life has been turned around by this program,

by this system. And like, you know, the 12-step thing, it does have something in it that's quite, what do I want to say? Like it's a little bit ascetic. It is a little bit, you think like it's about denial, right? But the reason that I've written this book, this interpretation of 12 steps, excuse me, is because I think it's a masterpiece. I think it's about denial right because but the reason that i've written this book was an interpretation of 12 steps excuse me it's because i think it's a masterpiece i think it's a masterpiece

at a time when people are struggling with ideologies at a time when people are struggling with religion because the bad things about religion are so obvious the bigotry and the violence those things are so clear to us even though there are many many beautiful things about islam and many beautiful things about christ Christianity. Our focus tends to turn on the bigotry and the hatred that is present or used out of those ideologies. The 12 steps is accessible to anybody and can be used as a code to unravel your connection to your own individual experience, your own self-centeredness, your own self-obsession. Now, this might not be a problem that you have. This might be the line that separates us. Me, I'm self-obsession now this might not be a problem that you have that this might be the line that separates us me i'm self-obsessed and i have to firstly like this is how it works one you admit

there's something you want to change and like that could be i'm a smackhead pretty obvious then or you're a sex addict and that's a harder thing to admit because it can be rewarding if you're into adult human females in a culture like i was but if it ultimately leaves you lonely and unable to have a family and you feel like you're having a negative emotional effect on others and yourself, then you need to admit it's a problem. The second thing is, could your life be better?

Of course it could. And the third thing is being willing to accept help from others and whether that's a community or from your understanding of a higher power. Now, I happen to have, I believe in God in the sense that I believe in God, in the sense that I believe that there's limitless consciousness, that my individual consciousness is connected to something that I can't understand, that no one can ever understand.

And again, as I've heard on one of my own podcasts, as a matter of fact, Yanis Varoufakis, who led this political movement in Greece, he said, we will never know whether consciousness preceded matter, or matter preceded consciousness. And in a way way it's irrelevant now because spirit this quality is here it's here and it's a big part of what human beings are and it isn't dealt with by consumerism and it isn't dealt with by contemporary politics people don't

talk about love kindness togetherness but these are the dominant things in our lives that's what's most important to me the people that i love like you said the connections with the people you have that become your reality but a political system that reduces you to a component of an economic machine is never going to fulfill you so what i now believe is that by what i think this book can do is give people a guide to reaching their own spiritual truth because it's completely non-prescriptive it's like your version of god is going to be different from mine your personal inventory that you draw up will reveal the truths of the way you see the world and the problems you've made. The communities that you belong to will support you

and you can change your patterns, you can make amends for your past, you can continue to stay present. And a vital part of this program is prayer and meditation, continued connection to the moments. You don't lose yourself in your past or the projections of your future. Now, whether or not that prohibits me from experimenting with psychedelics in the long term, you know, for me, the jury's out because I do want to. And Bill Wilson, the guy who founded these fellowships, was fascinated by acid and even when he was sober, took a lot of acid. And I think that guy was a prophet. He was on a mission.

He was trying to discover what is truth, what is reality. That's not really discussed much in the 12-step program though is it because i think it's like most things it becomes orthodox you know like most religions most systems in the end they become orthodox and it does such a good job at helping with its primary purpose of stopping people being alcoholics stopping people being drug addicts that's such an amazing job and it's doing that job and it should continue to do that job. What I feel like I wanted to do is extract the thing that I think is amazing about it and say, oh, my God, anyone could use this.

You hear this again and again from people that have got a long time clean in these programmes. Everyone should work this programme. Everyone should know what is the impact because your mum treated you that way or your dad did this or this sort of shit happened to you at school or you were abused. You're still carrying it in your consciousness we touched on it a moment ago joe if you're like i say this you don't choose between having a program and not having a program you

choose between having a conscious program and an unconscious program if you're not working in a conscious program you are being worked by your unconscious program this is what i do if a man makes me feel intimidated this is what i do if a woman makes me feel like i'm important this is what i do if i have a bad day program program program the program of your class the program of your school your family your culture your time and this 12-step system can debug you from it and it's not anybody else telling you what to do because it's your own version of a higher power it's your own version of a truth except it's guided by the idea become free connect to who you really are and become benevolent and loving to others.

You know, I think it's really important that you said earlier about there's no political system or no politicians that are talking about love and values and caring and a sense of community. I think that's the solution to what we're fearing about Brexit and Donald Trump and the rise of, you know, the, just this turning of the apple cart, this, this thing that people are seeing right now that they don't like. And this, this, this, the hateful rhetoric that people are most disturbed about, particularly with Brexit, right? That's like the big thing that people are really disturbed about is that it was fueled by this fear of the other. Yes, that's like the big thing that people are really disturbed about is that it was fueled by this fear of the other

Yes, that's right but Isn't it possible that the when if people decide that that didn't work out whether it's brexit or trump that the response to that Would be the rise of this ideology the rise of someone who's going to talk about love and community Someone who's going to be genuine I mean we don't have that person now, but it doesn't mean that that person can't exist. And we've only had 45 different presidents. We haven't had every single version of what's possible for a human being to be interfacing with the entire civilization of the United States of America.

I think it's pretty clear what that system delivers. I think that those power systems are evolving in this direction. I think that this is, if not the pinnacle, i think it's possible that there are better versions of a president but i think that systems that are that centralized will always deliver inequality i think it's impossible for them not to and i think that they should be evolved altered devolved in a sense broken down but i do agree one of the things in that i think is positive about cataclysm in politics something like when Brexit happened and when Trump happened I felt this sort of I'm a trickster, I'm a comic

I live in mischief, I live in the madness that's just behind reality and I thought in a way this is good not for the, I know people's lives would be negatively effective and we've seen the rise of divisive politics and quite old fashioned ideas about ethno nationalism and that kind of stuff but the good thing is precisely as you say joe that it does

open the conversation up for someone to say hold on a minute i think we've just left out love kindness unity togetherness like these things perhaps people will be open to whereas i think if you know if we'd stayed in the european union if we'd had hillary clinton as president things it's a bit more business as usual. We're not forced, we're not staring into the face of madness. We're not forced to address things are going wrong. You know, I talked to my friend Sturgill, do you know Sturgill Simpson, the musician? He is a brilliant musician.

And he was, he sent me this text message of a conversation that he had with Dr. Rick Strassman. He sent me this text message of a conversation that he had with Dr. Rick Strassman. Dr. Rick Strassman is the guy out of the University of New Mexico who ran those clinical tests on DMT. He wrote the book DMT, The Spirit Molecule. But he was quoting when he was talking about the times that we are constantly in a fight between 49.9% and 50.1%, good and evil, and that they fluctuate back and forth. And that we feel like we are just like a speck of dust because we are both a speck of dust and the most important thing in the world. Brilliant. Because the actions of one individual literally can influence the course of the human race, the course of our civilization. And that this period of flux is what creates growth and change.

And that the tipping of the apple cart and the positive thing about having someone like Donald Trump. And I don't like Donald Trump more than I like Hillary Clinton. I didn't like either one of them. And what Hillary Clinton represented to me was this lifelong politician who didn't support gay marriage until 2013, which she was to me, which she represented to me was an obvious magician, someone who I could see them pulling the cards out of their sleeve and I'm supposed to not pay attention. it's bullshit right yeah and what he represents is the ego unfettered and even flaring out with crazy hair and a fat belly and little hands and the whole deal it's just this

chaos ego putting his name on buildings and and then we're realizing that both of these are terrible options this system is a terrible system this when we have what's essentially a popularity contest to see who controls nuclear weapons it's insane it's literally insane and that the only way this is going to change is by having this incredibly upsetting moment for everybody where they're looking around going, what the fuck is going on? And then new ideas get introduced. And I don't know what those new ideas are going to be or who's going to introduce them or how someone is going to come along within the next three years and challenge this current system in a way that's appealing, not just to the right and to the left, but maybe in some way to just human, but maybe in some way to just human

beings. Maybe in some way to human beings, they realize like, we're not going to get by in this world by enforcing right-wing politics and ideas and this sort of ideology or left-wing ideas and politics, ideology, but freedom and love and community. And to be free, to practice your own level of conservatism on your own, but the idea that I don't want any gays and I have a little tribe where no gays are allowed, that seems to me to be counterproductive. And that seems to me to be counter-revolutionary.

You know, all of that idea. There's any suppressing of people's individual right to express themselves. Sure. I agree with almost everything you said there and i've got since i've been involved in academia do you know one of the main changes i make notes oh so like well yeah notes now i never i never would have dreamt of that when i was a younger man notes are excellent near the beginning you talked about this idea the the percentile of you know good and evil the good and evil both of us now there's great quote by the russian author salzhenitsyn the line between good and evil runs not between creeds religions and empires but through every human heart it's a nice quote for that isn't it now

and here's a personal theory that the reason that idolatry is bad like that it comes like you know most religions say don't worship individuals is precisely because they understand that don't make one individual have too much power even now now, historically, we know that Gandhi had skeletons in the closet. Great, great Gandhi, this wonderful, great hero of bringing down the British Empire, bringing about freedom. Although, interestingly, Gandhi said, there's no point in us kicking the British out of India and then replicating their systems.

This is a country of 70,000 villages. These 70,000 villages should be autonomous, run on their own craft economies trade with one another only in excess so he was trying to get important ideas out there but like your great civil rights leaders Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, these are men that

had flow, Malcolm X did prison time for unusual shit Dr King, you know extramarital stuff, people are not perfect they're great heroes. They're pioneers. All people are people. So we have to change this.

What I think is that we can't have a popularity contest to decide who's in charge of nuclear weapons. These kind of systems need to be devolved because it's mental. I agree with your analysis of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump entirely. I think that the reason that you have a mad option like Donald Trump being successful is because people had had enough of those cheap tricks and cards up sleeves and financial corruption.

So yeah, the apple cart's going over. Chaos too, I agree, is an important part of evolution. We rest on chaos. These patterns that we observe are just temporary. Osho, the sort of cult leader and sort of poetic figure and leader, said, we talk about civilization as if it's this great thing. What is civilization?

A clearing in the forest. You know, for a moment we create our cities and the forest closes in and has it again. Where all these ancient civilization that Graham Hancock talks about so lucidly, where are they now? Where are they now where are they swallowed up by the amazon and i had this great quote in uh herman melville's moby dick that says you know

noah's flood is still happening we are the majority of the earth is still flooded in water these we are connected to these events we are out there in that chaos so i suppose gosh what i'm trying to say here joe is that when we recognize that we're all flawed that we're all fallible we have to sort of think we have to think how can we build systems that tend towards the better aspects of our nature not the worst aspects of our nature can we recognize that any politician in a position of power for too long will make mistakes will be flawed that power has to be spread out as much as possible and as close to the people that it affects as is feasible. Yeah, there's always going to be an issue with someone being able to acquire $100 billion,

like the Amazon Jeff Bezos guy, that that is going to corrupt people. First of all, why would you keep working? Why would you want that amount of money? And what's your plan? What's your end game? Are you trying to make the world a better place? You're going to try to acquire more brown boxes with your logo on them. I mean, what are you doing? Where's it going? And it seems to me that there's a game, right? Everybody plays this game. Some people play it for $10 an hour. Some people play it for $10 billion a year. And that once you make $10 billion a year, you want infinite growth. You want 11 next year. I would like to tell my stockholders

that we have cause to celebrate and we have 20% increase in our bottom line this year and everybody's looking good. Let's go to Tahiti! Woo! Right? And then what are you doing? This is not going to last. You're not going to live forever. What is the end game? Well, there's no no end game you're caught up in the current game

in the current game they are literally capitalists are literally living in the moment because yeah you're right they're just stockpiling shit yeah yeah they're not thinking about the overall objective you know uh sky down looking from the you know looking from the heavens down on earth like what the fuck are we doing? They're not thinking about that. Nor are they accepting that limitless growth is literally impossible, that we have finite resources on a finite planet. Maybe for you, not for me.

I've got a yacht. I've got a fucking island. And I think it's also you get caught up in the momentum of whatever you're doing. You know, whatever you're doing, you just get caught up in it. And, you know, if you're doing something you just get caught up in it. And, you know, if you're doing something and you're trying to get better at it, whether it's make better paintings or acquire more wealth,

like these are quests and you try to get better at these quests, you know? And that's a real issue with human beings. And I think it has evolutionary roots. I think it has roots in our need and desire to make better structures and shelters, to make better weapons, to make a better civilization so that we can stay alive longer, so that we can ensure that our children will be alive longer. bastardized and twisted in this world of ideas where you're talking about like money and and and stocks and and bonds and mutual funds and hedge funds and it's like jesus like where it's it's almost like we have these ancient instincts for for constant improvement that just they these human reward systems get they just get corrupted my theory on this idea is that we have

biochemical drives as you have just described that compel us to move forward and to survive but we also have a culture that's continually stimulating fear and desire in order to cast us in a particular economic role that of consumer and the reason that i believe that this program and indeed this book are important is because it is a code to awakening a code to becoming conscious and once you are conscious you aren't beholden to the same systems so much of our behavior is a result of what we don't know about ourselves we are motivated we're trying to fulfill ourselves because there is that biochemical imperative to get more to survive which as an addict i experience and have experienced in extreme sex sex sex sex sex till there's no more getting out of my head till it's inconceivable that i could do that anymore without killing myself uh want in status

and power and prestige see the reason i think this system works outside of addiction in its as it's currently recognized is i've had to work it in all sorts of ways once i got rid of drugs i got obsessed with sex once i get once i get a handle on sex i'll start being obsessed with what other people think of me power fame and money and what i'm continually recognizing is none of these things can be fulfilling if you're not connected to who you really are that can give you a moment then you're free to pursue your art or your creation of structures in a conscious way. You're not doing it because you feel unconsciously a bit worthless or a bit crap or like it might fulfill you. It becomes pragmatic.

Do you also feel that like less concentrating on yourself and less being self-obsessed has allowed you to have more open communication with other people and more healthy like like back and forth fulfilling communication with other people which literally makes you happier whereas you thought that being obsessed with yourself and being obsessed with success and and adulation and or sex or whatever those other things were that you were obsessed with was going to fulfill those needs and they weren't but that community yes and bonding and i mean that's a big part of jujitsu as well man it's a big part of yeah big big big big part of jujitsu it's like we're a family when you're in there choking each other as weird as that sounds like there's a there's a bond between those people that are in those classes all over the world. They recognize this community in that as well as it being an extreme pursuit

and as well as it being something that is developing your human potential. You're also creating this really intense community of like-minded people. Comedians feel that. I definitely feel that with you. I feel that with most comedians that come in here. I know. We are the same thing in a lot of ways. Yes, yes.

I think that's very important. And in a way, it's a return to what we were saying at the beginning of our conversation, that there are certain anthropological requirements that you need to feel like you're part of a tribe. You need to feel connected to one another. And in my very limited pop in there once a week experiences of BJJ, when I've like done classes with other people instead of just the one-on-one with the instructor because he looks after me do you know i mean he's delicate because he's brilliant but when it's with like other people

that are a similar beginner level there's moments of real intensity within it but afterwards a sense of fraternity and love and closeness and like some stuff that i'm not familiar with not used to being close to men in that kind of way and it's amazing and beautiful and probably very very natural and important and a side of my life that i didn't explore because i did download the myth of our time that you are an individual and you carve your own way in this world and it's what's important is your power, your ability to affect change on others, your ability to sleep with women,

the adulation of others. And as I've got older and having experienced a degree of it, I recognize, ah, it's not real. It doesn't work. And simple things, connection and community, have become more and more valuable to me. But it's an ongoing thing because if you said the percentage is so close you know when i've got involved recently in a campaign like there was a i got involved in a

campaign to save a housing estate a couple of years back like these women asked me to help my our state's going to get turned into commercial flats we're all getting evicted we live here with our families i backed their campaign i got them on the tv this corporate power backed down and it was amazing because like ordinary people ordinary families be you know it was like the rebels beat in the empire it's like an amazing achievement of those people but my ego liked it i am the power i am the power fed back into it you know so like i i see it as an ongoing thing but that my life now is how can I convey ideas that I think will help people in a way that is accessible? How can I be useful?

And knowing that my role in this is to make sure that I don't slip into the egomania again because I would love to be a cult leader on some days. But thinking about it, though, and being aware of it is one of the most important steps because we're all a work in progress. I mean, there's no perfect person out there. They don't exist. And we've already discussed this kind of ad nauseum. I mean, I'm a work in progress. You're a work in progress. I never met anybody who wasn't.

And I never met anybody who doesn't vacillate at least a little bit. There were some days you're better than other days. And those days where you're not as good, you feel uncomfortable about it. And those would lead to better days. When you you find yourself slipping those slipping moments are actually critical because they they give you some self-awareness you realize well i fucked up you know i i yelled fuck you out my car window when i shouldn't have or whatever it was you know well again this system is what provides you a way out of that like you know the recovery system this 12-step system is that you record like

you would not rely on one person to be perfect you recognize everyone is fallible but together as a community we can start to have better objectives and in an instance like i fuck up all the time but there's step nine and step 10 are about making amends when you make a mistake like so i would like now i literally do this if there's a moment where I shout fuck you at somebody, or, you know, I go shuffling back a day later, go, listen, I did this thing where I said fuck you, that was wrong of me, that must have affected your feelings, I'm very sorry.

It's hard to find someone in traffic, though. You've got to find that guy that you yelled fuck you at. Yeah, I try and do it real quick. You've got to move fast. Yeah, and a lot of my fuck yous, maybe it's on a phone call, maybe it's in a shop or whatever. Yeah, like, I mean, in a way, it's it's about i suppose becoming a benevolent force in this world

if i tend towards that better 50.1 as opposed to the 49 then i'm becoming a progressive agent or a benevolent agent as opposed to another person intoxicating the pool i think it's a microcosm of what we were talking about earlier about society itself is that one day in the future look what the way we behave today is light years past the way they behaved in during the Inquisition I mean in in in the future I imagine especially today because people have so much access to the way other people behaved. We have so much data on just written words, listening to people talk in podcasts and speeches and watching videos. There's so much more data than there ever was available 100, 200, 1,000 years ago, that in the future, we're going to

have a much better way of communicating based on the learning and growth if we survive, right? And I think that's the same thing with you and I and everybody listening to this as a human being. If you continue to grow and you don't fall into all these traps, as time goes on, you will be a better version. It's slow and it's fucking brutal and it's painful sometimes because it's just, you feel like, God, why don't i have my shit together

you know i mean there's i mean and i was saying this about donald trump like someone was writing off donald trump like he's never gonna learn you know he's who he is i'm like do you just stop learning when you're 70 like it's 70 that's it it's over there's no more data's getting in there well i don't know i don't i mean maybe donald trump could have a revelation one day you know maybe donald trump could realize the error of his ways and the way he communicates is he's causing more problems than he's fixing. Maybe he'll be aware.

Not even to point him out, because he's just one of us, right? To all of us. I think we're all slowly, brutally piecing this thing together, and hopefully we're better at it than we were a week ago. And hopefully we're better at it than we were a week ago and hopefully we're better at it than we were six months ago and that it's going to continue. Well, that feels like the general tendency in my own life. Does it feel like the general

tendency in your life? Oh, absolutely. And you know, one of the things that's helped tremendously is this podcast. Being able to have these long three hour conversations with people, you sit down and talk to them with no distractions. It doesn't exist anywhere else doesn't exist in nature Someone someone said this to me They said you know you always say on your podcast that you just try to have a conversation He goes, but who the fuck has these kind of conversations? We just sit down and stare at each other and talk for hours at a time. I'm like Yeah, you're right. I mean it is just a conversation still but you're right is that it's sort of an accelerated form of it

It's like if you you know You could kind of apply it to everything else if you spend right is that it's sort of an accelerated form of it it's like uh if you you know you could kind of apply it to everything else if you spend enough time doing it you know you're just you're gonna get better at it and you're gonna a lot of the podcast is thinking right and it's examining your own behavior and examining the way you interface with other people and i do more of that than i ever have before. What do you want to change about yourself? Just keep going the same way I'm going. Get better at being nice. Get better at being honest.

Get better at being loving. I mean, it sounds all hokey, hippie bullshit. It sounds good. It sounds like this is what it is. Yeah, I want to be nicer. I want to have better relationships with my friends, better relationships with my family, better relationships with people that I don't even know that I meet. I mean, I just want to interface with the world in a more positive way.

I think one of the most important things to realize is all the interactions that we have with each other are dependent upon two individuals or more, right? But it's you and whoever you encounter. And the way you encounter them is going to change the way they behave to you. And everybody always wants to put it off on the person who behaved a certain way to them. And in some ways, you're right. But in other ways, your reaction is completely dependent

on your own way of approaching it and your reaction may change the way they react. You're completely right. Like if throwing a ball against that brick wall, it will bounce back back a certain way but if that became a softer surface or indeed a furry wall to quote one of my own films then it will bounce back in a different way so this is another thing that's in the program the necessity for forgiveness yes if you if you instead of blaming your past and blaming other people you come to a point of forgiveness this creates the sort of the nexus for change as long as you're like oh that person felt me up when i was a kid or my stepdad

wasn't a loving figure in my life as long as i hold on to that belief i'm trapped by it the minute i say i relinquish that now it's not happening anymore i'm willing to move forward that's another human being they were doing the best they could suddenly you're liberated and your path changes now joe when you were saying just then mate about like wanting to help more people do you have any particular projects that are specifically about that obviously this podcast is a tool for education but do you have anything that's specifically like right i'm gonna do this thing like i don't know take in martial arts in the communities type stuff no no don't you think you'd be really good at that if i had more time i just don't i don't have enough time to do what

i'm already doing you know i mean in terms of like just sheer numbers of hours in the day and i think i can't just work because if i just work my work won't be any good i mean you have to live it's one of the most important things about stand-up comedy is you can't just do comedy you have to do other things this is something that took me a long time to figure out like you can't just like you ever see a lot of comics they just start talking about like airline travel and hotel rooms and your life is your life and they can relate to it so that's what they talk about well that to me is a failure of gathering research yes yes I mean it's all it's life right yeah but your life has to I think in order to have like a continual body of work yeah you can't just constantly talk about

airline travel you have input you have a very conscious that my thing at the beginning of this was about airline travel and the low level low frequency anxiety i experienced in airline workers it certainly wasn't a comedic bit but it was cultural analysis and did to a degree reveal that i'm in the middle of a press junket and that's my life at the moment i could just as easily have told you about bees i'm a beekeeper i've got bees all right i swim in the river i have experiences you have several it's not just one bee i'm not keeping one bee keep one bee that's bullying because if one bee doesn't work, you're like, fuck this B. I'm free.

That's it. That's my responsibility. If not 60,000 Bs, I'm not taking their honey or anything like that. But yeah, you're right. It's giving me insight. What's your stand-up comedy then? What is it currently? What are your sections, your beats, your bits? What I'm doing right now is working towards a new Netflix special that I'm going to do in either March or April.

I have to figure it out. I want to do it in Boston, and I don't want to do it when it's too cold. Well, that 1,000-seater place in Boston, I think I've heard before. Yeah, the Wilbur. Yeah, the Wilbur. Good place. Yeah. It's an awesome little theater because it's 900 seats, and it's really three 300-seat comedy clubs.

Yeah. It's three stacked on top of each other it's a great venue what what are you going to what you're saying so you're going to do an hour so you probably do over three nights what are your see what have you got like for free 20 minute areas do you know what your bits are yeah what sort of areas if you don't mind me i'm just curious it's difficult to talk about it on the podcast because you know without going into actual bits but can't you tell about the area all right i'll tell you about my area to show you that sort of thing. I talked about when I got heavily involved in politics

and I found myself on TV shows and doing rants on telly and getting into political arguments. Those are great, by the way. Thank you. I love doing those. I love the one you did. Was it Fox News that you did one with it

where you're just breaking down? Like, what are we doing here? I love doing that. I like that because there's a lot of ridicule available once you get into the analysis. Also, you're a fucking runaway train. Once you start a sentence and you start going, you're very fast and powerful,

and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And there's not a lot of ums or uhs. There's no room to interject. And they're sitting there, they're all, you know, first of all, they're a little starry-eyed in the first place. And then second of all, the runaway train's happening, and they're like, uh, uh. And then the ride's over.

Five minutes later, tin cans are rolling down the aisle. And they're like, OK. It's a good technique. We'll be back. See there what we were saying about BJJ. That language I don't know. The other language, the language of comedy, it's a language I've worked on. So one of my techniques is never create space.

Give them no room. No space. That's jujitsu, by the way. That's jujitsu. No space. Jujitsu is no space. Smush. Smush. See, if you take the actual jujitsu out of it, I'm That's jujitsu, by the way. That's jujitsu. No space. Jujitsu is no space. Smush. Smush.

See, if you take the actual jujitsu out of it, I'm brilliant at jujitsu. Yes. It's just the actual physical contact holds, locks, and chokes I struggle with. Well, jujitsu shows itself in all forms. Oh, yes. It's in everything. That is true transcendence to find one universal language, one universal myth, one mind, one consciousness, one love.

Yes. Know the way broadly and you'll see it in all things all right yamato musashi that was pretty good five rings just drop that in there chinese philosophy or something japanese it's my tattoo that's all right there he is what is he some sort of master he was uh a samurai that was uh he was a ronin he was uh during the time where you know the samurais roamed the earth and got into these one-on-one sword fights. And he killed 62 men in one-on-one sword fights. That's a life, isn't it?

It's a bad motherfucker. He wrote an amazing book on strategy and life. And one of the things that he emphasized in that book is that a real warrior must be balanced. You must be good at art and calligraphy and poetry. That's good. You can't have any holes in your game. You have to be a balanced person in order to survive in these intense moments of swords flying at your face

I heard never teach a man to fight who doesn't know how to dance, it's quite good isn't it? I don't know how to dance me neither so pretty safe there but what I've done is I've found things I've approached it from a different angle of pointing out the things

that I did wrong in my political campaigning where I flawed and fell into my ego I do a good long bit about the birth of my daughter like purely from the perspective of watching a birth like like a commentary a sports commentary of the baby coming out I don't use the beat uh the rhythms of sports commentary but just actually describing what happened and what it did to my mind to be present at the birth of my daughter to experience something that's so divine but so animal, tearing flesh, roaring and all that stuff but it's like

God is in the house you know so I do a bit on that and every time I build it up into a point of divinity I undercut it with like you know how sort of mad it looks and the obvious stuff I guess you'd go for so like I do that and the whole whole show rebirth which i'm doing for netflix i believe at some point soon is like uh it's about it's called rebirth and the point of it is how having the

baby is meant i've been reborn to myself but a lot of it's about recognizing the limits because i think i got very narcissistically involved in politics the same way i'm possibly getting narcissistically involved in spirituality right now because I still have this yearning this thing that wants to change You know other people's lives change the world in inverted commas You know but like the comedy comes from recognizing my own flaws within that you do do Any sort of like really difficult exercise outside of Jiu Jitsu do you ever get involved in you know any like yoga like intense yoga like long periods of time like 90 minute hot yoga classes or running

or anything where you like really have to push yourself physically not really push I run and I listen to your podcast sometimes and Sam Harris podcast sometimes or whatever and I like I do do yoga but not like it's interesting that you specifically say push yourself to the limit why do you

think that's important part I think there's a freeing aspect in pushing boundaries and the physical boundaries because it's exhausting and not just exhausting physically but mentally too because there's a strain on your your body's desire to quit like your your mind's desire to seek comfort. And that in pushing past that you find this freedom and you also find a vulnerability in who you are as a person, where it's very difficult to think greatly of yourself and to be egotistic when you know that you're so fucking tired, you have to put your hands on your knees and you're, you're heaving and you know, and then you have to keep going and then don't be a pussy come on keep going and so you're you don't

you you realize who you are you feel yourself for who you really are as opposed to like adulation and and looking at yourself as this uh this thing that's uh above it all like you realize the the flaws in your mental process the flaws in your your physical abilities and i think it's very humbling yeah right i can see that doing that in a bodily way would be useful but like i to tell you the truth the trouble for me and i think a lot of addicts is not that like of course there's self-obsession but self-obsession isn't usually about i'm fucking great it's normally i'm worthless that's where it comes mostly from that position but it's also you're thinking about yourself all the time that is the problem that's

what needs to be decoded and i think you're right that in physical exercise is really really important the level to the level to which i do it i always feel better it's not my like i have to work even to bloody do it i'd rather spend all time all the time thinking or doing something like thinking i'm fucking better things are coming it is thinking that's what's what's confusing about it to people it's thinking but it's thinking in a very different way. Like there's thinking when your body's at rest and you're just using your mind, but there's also thinking when your mind is trying to manage your body under extreme stress. And that is also a mental exercise.

And that's where people get it wrong. People look at people that exercise and especially people that work out really hard and they think of them as meatheads or as like someone who's base or primal and unevolved but i feel like there's a high level of mental evolution involved in being able to push yourself like like i i really admire people that you know like you see like a lot of old people that are uh i see them in yoga class all the time that just never fucking stop. They're in there and they don't have extreme physical abilities at all. There's nothing athletic about them.

They're not strong, but they're in there grinding. And in doing so, you have to, I mean, it can't possibly be comfortable for them, right? I'm looking at their saggy arms and their old legs. This is not like some graceful person who's able to do this easily. This is a person who's really struggling. And in real struggle like that, there is a mental energy that's involved in forcing your body to go through these uncomfortable motions that I think is very freeing. Yeah. I think you're right what you said as well about balance and possibly what you're saying is that I'm a person who will benefit from more of that. I see a guy in the gym once and he said, don't stop exercising.

He was old. He was like in his 70s. He goes, don't stop exercising. Don't let your body find out that it's dying. I just keep going. That's a great way of putting it. Don't let your body find out it's dying. That's great.

Yeah, that's pretty cool, isn't it? That's great. Yeah, but like I think that, you know, any form of... I think that some variety of it. I know you do the yoga, you do the Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you do the running. I think it's very important to have different forms of exercise, different forms of mental activity, different forms of stimulation to live...

Because this is what this machine is designed to do. And again, I return to the problem of capitalism is that it reduces you to your role within an economic system as opposed to, why not get up, go for a run, do a bit of fishing, wander around, shoot some arrows, do whatever it is you're into and spend some time meditating, spend some time exercising, spend your time in loving physical combat. Well, the reason you can't is because there's no fucking time

because your job is to stand on the line or in that... Damn cheese grater cubicle. Get grated. Just get your soul ground down. Yeah, that's the number one problem. It's not necessary anymore. It's not necessary. It certainly isn't necessary enough

to justify spending eight hours plus a day, five days a week inside some sort of a box. It's not. A while ago, you said we are both a speck of dust and limitless consciousness. And this I agree with too. Limitless expansion, limitless contraction possible within

consciousness and what you said if that one idea can change the world very quickly and that's why these systems regulate the kind of information that's available and the way that it's transmitted and also the fact that it exists within the same economic model you can as long as you're making money as long as the money is getting directed in the right way, people will let us talk about real radical stuff. They're quite comfortable for us to say, hey, you should break down the system. You should devolve. I had this good conversation once with this guy called Peter Tatchell. He's an Australian gay rights activist who lives in the UK.

And he said, like, when you're talking like this, this is with no disrespect for the great civil rights heroes and the people who have had civil rights struggles. But he said in his experience as a gay rights activist he goes in the end they will yield when it's to do with those things you know race sexuality people sort of know he goes but when you you know the system will yield they'll go yeah all right gay marriage of course all right yeah we you know we can't fucking have slavery in the end you know of course these are monumental human struggles i'm not diminishing them because but if you go near people's financial interests you are fucked they'll get you there

if you start saying hey why don't we not pay our mortgages hey everyone let's not pay tax then we need to stop using oil right you fucking you're out yeah that's it so straight away so it's sort of like this is what's interesting to me like like these are the these are the access points these are the points where there is vulnerability i'm not suggesting that we all organize ourself into a radical crew of you know tax avoiders or mortgage uh renegers or whatever but well but even though you and i are both doing well we're like you said before we're not in that weird you, upper stratosphere where you're living on the Hamptons and some fucking hundred acre ridiculous seaside mansion where your helicopter and private jet everywhere and you're worth a hundred million dollars. And that's a weird world.

That's a weird world that very few people exist in. And once they get there, they don't want to leave. Once you start flying private everywhere, you don't want to leave. Once you have a mansion there they don't want to leave once you start flying private everywhere you don't want to leave once you have a mansion you don't want an apartment you know once you have a bentley you don't want to you go you know it's like nobody wants to go down you want to keep moving up yeah and it's weird because those things happen they tend to happen in sort of if they're happening in if you've got that money through entertainment maybe you're still sort of you've got some connection to your roots and who you were yeah yeah right entertainment

and art maybe you know you're still connected to the source but when it's like you know tech and finance yeah you've got a vested interest my friend jason siegel the brilliant actor goes um you know because you think all that stuff's about you the jets and the billboards and stuff but it's just the symptoms of other people making money out of you it's not about you at all and you're part of a machine you'll be processed you'll be kicked out it's not a carousel it's a train it will run out of energy and as soon as you're not providing you're out and i was like doing some promo for this book i'm still trying to subtly occasionally promote in this freewheeling conversation at facebook and like i thought fuck me man this place didn't exist like 15 years ago.

And look at it now. It is a monolith. Google, Facebook. These are the kingdoms now. Google's gigantic. Amazon. All these little ideas that were nowhere. Google makes their own phones.

Fucking hell. They just released the newest Google Pixel 2 phone. I mean, they make these incredible devices that you can interface into the Google world and they're optimized for their whole system. Amazing. Amazing. You know, David Foster Wallace, your great American author in his book, Infinite Jest, postulated a world where all stadiums were named after brands, where countries and regions were named after brands. And it's sort of happening. It's happening. The flags of our nations are merely a veil over the true corporate interests.

The British Empire was always about East India trade and all that kind of crap. And this country now is just a veil over true power. I'm going to the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas this weekend for the UFC. Oh, yeah, the T-Mobile Arena. The T-Mobile Arena. That's what it's called now. You know, at first when they started to name football stadiums in our country, you still remembered the name of what it used to be before sponsorship, but we start to forget that it was ever anything else.

You start to forget we were once warriors. We were once connected to the earth. Our gods were once eagles and stags. Now our gods are the T-Mobile Arena. Take back your freedom. It's not the Coliseum. It's the Sony Center. Right.

Where is it? The Christians are being flown to the lions at the Sony Center. Right. Where is it? It's the Sony Center. The Christians are being flown to the lions at the Sony Center at 3 p.m. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, they want people to use T-Mobile.

I get it. Would you mind using it? Well, just ask me. Give me a deal. I'll use it. Don't take away my culture. Hmm. I like what you're saying.

Keep talking. Unlimited data. It's nice. Yeah. Hey, so I learned an important lesson off you, and this was it. After I came on last time, you were doing a very big UFC event in, I think, Vegas. And my mates from the gym that I go to, the Genesis gym that I've already mentioned, they were coming over for a stag do.

They didn't ask me, but I sort of thought, oh, listen, I could further inveigle myself into this little crew of martial artists by hooking them up with Joe Rogan tickets. And I thought, yeah, I'll do that, like ever the politician. So I thought, so I text you, oh, Joe, can you hook up my mates with this thing? And you went, oh, okay, who are these people?

Is it important to you? And I took a moment i thought they are important i like them but what's my motivations here they're like this is a good thing i took a moment to reflect on it i thought shall i do this i'll come up with these tickets you know maybe i'm doing this for the wrong reasons i took a moment of respite i reflected i didn't do it it was a little lesson it was a little lesson because you gave me pause for respite i think you were doing a stand-up show, actually, and they already had tickets for your stand-up.

That's what it was. And I was like, oh, can you give me backstage passes? And your answer wasn't an immediate bend over, yes, of course I'll do what you want, Mr. Brand. It was a bit more questioning. Like, oh, really? Who are these guys? Well, the reason why I ask, I always ask,

is because sometimes people say, look, you don't have to do this, but they've been bothering me about it. It's a guy I work with. Or people have said, hey, would you do this? It's my best friend. I love this guy. And then I go, okay, yeah. So you give people a little junction because some of those people are paying the ass.

Well, it's because somebody might be a pain in the ass to you, and you might just be giving in to it. And I didn't know you as well. So I'm like, well, and I really admired the way you handled it. I said, do you want to give my number? That was the thing. And you went, no. No, I don't think I'll give me your number. It seemed like I might be overkilling it.

It made me look at my own motivations. And I suppose that's anything that, Carl Jung, the great Carl Jung, the mystic and one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis said anything that crosses your path that you didn't intend for that is god in inverted commas an opportunity to learn so this is how i try to approach my life now it's like i didn't plan for that to happen what's the lesson here what can i learn from this situation so like you know you know i'm sure them guys would have been fantastic although they did

later show me videos of what went on and i think it was a stag do, and they were carrying on like idiots, crawling up and down corridors, drunk out of their minds. So perhaps it was for the best. But generally, I'm sure that nothing would have gone wrong. But when I look at my own motivation, ah, what are you doing here? Why do you want to do this? You're doing it a little bit because you want to look cool? Don't bother doing that then.

You know, that's a small evolution in the way that I walk the path a small amendment down the line maybe i will ask again yeah actually joe could you sort these guys out with tickets for this or that but i'll do it with the right motivation the right connection now this again as i keep saying this journey from unconsciousness to consciousness is what has been the myth of my own life i think we have to whether or not we're in just limitless chaos in an ever-expanding universe without meaning without point without love you know maybe that is the way you know that a lot of people see the world that way it's not how i see the world i see there as being meaning and everything poetry and everything beauty and everything and certainly in my own life

i like to find the story what am i meant to learn here what am i meant to do here what did i learn from being a hedonist what did i learn from uh being promiscuous from being a drug addict and it all seems to make a kind of sense it all seems to be guiding me towards something and that thing does seem to be love service kindness awareness not trying to manipulate people not trying to get shit off people all the time it's a good journey and i feel like it's sad if people don't get to do their own version of that journey because they're on the cheese grater or because they're pursuing some myth some code from their childhood that they're not good enough or that they don't deserve to be happy or they can't achieve anything whatever rung they're caught on whether it's the rung of booze or drugs or the

rung of staring at social media the whole time or the rung of hatred of others or the rung of being caught in bad relationships and a crap job. For me, I think that we can accelerate that evolution. I think that there are codes that can slip through in the same way that an Amazon can spring up in 15 years and be this great economic monolith. New ideas, new faiths, new ideologies can slip into the net particularly now we have this access to technology you've slipped past the gatekeepers you have your own media empire out of nothing you know and you've limited it because it's to you you know it's built around you as an individual in your perspective etc but that these are there are ways now of getting information out there that excites me yeah and. And they should, you know, and what we were talking about too, about being a hedonist

and doing things wrong and fucking up and what can you learn from them? I think every time you fuck something up and every time you do something badly, there's a lesson that you get out of the weird feelings of failure, of discontent. And those lessons are extremely valuable. You know, a person who doesn't make mistakes and a person who doesn't do anything wrong, they never learn shit. You don't learn anything from doing everything perfectly every time. I mean, it doesn't happen.

No one, no one. And the more bold and brash you are and the more you take chances and the more you put yourself into these weird positions, even in these like, you know, I'm sure when you were a sex addict and you're in this hedonistic whirlwind experience, you're still, you're taking in all this data and you're taking all this, and the hollow feeling that you had that you didn't like it is what propelled you to your new stage of consciousness once you emerged from it.

Yeah, that's right. Every so often, like because it's like pleasure-laden and orgy, I mean yeah that's right every so often like because it's like pleasure laden an orgy i mean that's the point of it i mean there's flesh everywhere it's there's bits of it they're brilliant i was noting hold on a minute this isn't working and this is a thing i thought would really really work you know like sometimes the the great gift of promiscuity is you get to experience all the intimacy with all of these strangers and it seems exciting and the type of sexuality that i've always had is more about worship than any kind of domination i adore i adore you know so it's not about like i want to control you so like but like you know so all

these wonderful experiences and encounters but within it this kind of ongoing seam of loneliness unignorable and also this is the thing when you get the things your culture tells you you should be doing and you experience them now you know now you know you can stop chasing the carrot because you've had a bite out of it and it's like oh man it's bullshit like you know not and it's a hard one to learn because anything that's got an orgasm at the end of it you know there's a degree of pleasure to be had but it takes it takes a while to recognize what this is the emotional cost on me, the spiritual cost on other people,

the fact that it's preventing me from becoming a father, from becoming a husband, from settling, from becoming rooted, from becoming actually whole, from becoming a man, from becoming connected.

It takes a while to spot that. I think a lot of people don't get the opportunity to break out that pattern. I would never have spotted it had I not first been a heroin addict and gone, hold on a minute, you're doing that thing again. Same with fame and celebrity.

Well toxic, well toxic, exciting and brilliant, and loads of lovely people in there. And I still, like, you know, I might make another film. I don't know what will happen. But, like, it's because I'd had the template and the experiences of, oh, this is addiction, you're expecting this thing to make you feel better. Now what's happened is I am, as a baseline, disabused of the idea that the material world will give me anything,

that it will ever fulfill me, that I am responsible for my own connection and that my role here is to serve other people and help them. But if my objective in life is, what can I do to augment myself, to make myself better? I don't, you know, even self-improvement. I agree with all of that. I agree with it entirely.

It's a brilliant, brilliant thing. And it's necessary, I think. But like in order that I may be of service to others rather than because then I'll just look great in this armchair. Yeah, the self-improvement is about being better at what fulfills you the most, which is almost always establishing community. being better at what fulfills you the most which is almost always establishing community so don't you think then joe that we could do something that's a bit more explicitly that from that you already have this huge community around the joe rogan experience is there something in it i don't bother you like like couldn't there be something that wouldn't cost you that much that might be sort of wonderful didn't these things not float into your world

aren't people going you know you're an influential figure, you're unusual. You have this strong male energy, but you're very open to learning and you're very open to... And you're broad-minded, like, you know, I agree with you, left-wing categories, right-wing categories, that shit's all got to go. But I think that there's a real opportunity for you to have a huge impact on communities that are very neglected.

Young males, for example, not knowing how to use their bodies. Young males that violence is becoming a problem for. There's not that many people that are in as powerful position as you to sort of direct them in a different way. Is that something that you know about? Is that something that's come into your orbit? Well, you're doing it right now. I mean, you're doing it right now. I mean, you're doing it right now

by communicating in a way that you're going to get to way more people than you're going to do it in a physical sense. You know, by spreading these ideas and communicating online in a podcast and allowing people to download it for free and getting it to your phone and your head and, you know, you're jogging

and you're driving your car, you're getting ideas into way more people's heads than you ever would by physically being there physically being there it's very retro you know like you know it really is i mean you can only be there for so many people and what are you gonna do i mean i could i do comedy shows for a lot of people but i mean physically being there and doing something and organizing some sort of thing, that's where you venture into some weird cult thing. That's where the cult thing. Shit gets slippery. Everybody's covered in baby oil and you're just fucking trying to grip nothing.

Right. We're in a jungle now. Blood everywhere. Mass suicides. No, you're right. Maybe you're right, Joe. But I think it's an interesting thing to observe. I do think that's right.

And I do meet a lot of people in England that go, yeah, yeah, I heard you on Joe Rogan, or I listen to Joe Rogan. People talk about it, and it's interesting because it's accessing information that people would not otherwise. People come for the fight stuff or come for the entertainers, but then they're getting hit with Graham Hancock or some neurologist or whatever that you're getting or some behavioralist or whatever. Yeah. It's a good thing well I think the wide variety of guests is very important too for me personally because

otherwise I get bored if I only talk to comedians or only talk to MMA fighters or whatever or even only talk to scientists I'd get bored you know I like I like talking to a bunch of different people you know I mean I didn't plan any of this so the the way that sort of un unfolded is is been pretty organic to use an overused word tell me please just briefly is there something about the phenomena of conor mcgregor that is unique what is it that is happening what has happened with him what does he mean what does he mean into ufc what happens to him now that our post mayweather fight what is he an example of is he a sort of an outlier a pioneer how will he be regarded what does he represent is he an entertainment product

is he a great athlete is he a combination of all those things what does he mean for the sport of ufc and what do you think will happen in mixed martial arts and boxing? Do you think we'll see more of those kind of events? Well, you're never going to see another one like him, right? Because he's a unique person. He's literally being himself. You're going to see a bunch of people try to mimic that. And in a sense, he's sort of mimicked the people that came before him, like the Chael Sonnons and the Muhammad Alis and the people that were really good at talking shit. The difference is that what Conor's been able to do, he's the first guy in the UFC that's been able to do that, that's had spectacular results. And also showed his real character in losing and then coming back and winning very quickly

afterwards with the same guy, like the Nate Diaz fight. I think that was a very important character-exposing fight because he lost a fight, he got humbled, and then he jumped right back on the horse and then wound up winning, and then he comes back and blows Eddie Alvarez out of the water to become the first two-division concurrent champion in the sport. I think he's a unique guy in a very in in the it's almost like we don't have a word strong enough unique is not really a strong enough word so it is founded on ability in a very basic way he's got brilliant ability ability massive

he's incredibly smart and uh very he's very innovative in his techniques and his approaches he's very innovative in his techniques and his approaches and um i think he has phenomenal coaching as well all that animal movement stuff what the fuck is that walk well he's just getting what is that thing that he does he throws it's amazing who does that what does it mean it doesn't mean anything blows my mind he's i've started doing it peacocking peacocking On me own I do it when I come out On stage sometimes It's just an amazing thing To do with the body Yeah

Peacocking you say He's peacocking Because it looks like Oh my god this guy's Fucking out there Look what he's doing He's letting the other guy Know that he's so loose

He can kind of strut With his arms Like rubber bands Flopping around But I mean He's a combination Of a lot of things He has a brilliant team

John Cavanaugh is coach He's a brilliant coach He's got You know Amazing-jitsu coaching and striking coaching in his mind. He understands how to apply these things. And his ability to perform under pressure is fantastic. You saw that in the Mayweather fight. I mean, even though he lost that fight, he hit Mayweather with some pretty good shots. And he won the first three rounds

against the greatest boxer of all time. So that's extraordinary. Extraordinary. I mean, you can say easily that Mayweather was taking those rounds off, and I agree he was. And you could say that Mayweather was bringing him to deep water because he knew he would exhaust him, because he didn't give him enough time to train for it, because he really only gave him two months.

It was very brilliant on Mayweather's part. He knew that he wouldn't be efficient, he would tire, all those kinetic, big, explosive movements that Conor likes to do, they're very taxing. And he knew that he was not going to have the efficiency to go 12 hard rounds with a master defensive fighter like Mayweather. And Mayweather was right. But he didn't want to get hit with that uppercut that he got cracked with in the first round. He didn't want to, like, you know, Conor's movement was very unusual. It took Floyd a while to decipher it. It would have been way better for him if he just blew Conor out of the water from one

round on and just completely outclassed him. But he didn't. And one of the reasons why he didn't is because Conor's an extraordinary person. He has greatness. Yes, he has greatness. I mean, he didn't really have the proper opportunity. And only being able to prepare for two months, in only having this one professional boxing match, there was a lot of things stacked against him.

And yet, I feel, although he clearly lost, he performed admirably. I don't think it hurts his stock in any way. I think it elevates him. And I think his next fight in the UFC, whoever it will be, will be probably the biggest fight in UFC history, if they can do it correctly, depending upon who it is, especially if it's Nate Diaz, because Nate Diaz is a huge name. And if Nate Diaz and him decide to do it one more time, I think that would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the sport, because I think Conor has eclipsed the sport, largely.

And maybe for now, maybe someone else will come along in the next year or two that does it. I mean, look, Conor's only been around for a few years. I tweeted to him in 2013 or 14, I forget what it was, when he had won a big fight in the U.K. And I said, you know, congratulations on an amazing performance. I really hope to see you in the UFC someday. That was like four years ago. Oh, my God. At the most.

see in the UFC someday. That was like four years ago. Oh my god. At the most. So in four years, he's gone from being this unknown fighter that only the really hardcore fanatics like myself knew about to him being this worldwide phenomenon. He's the biggest combat

sport athlete, not just of today. Ever. There's no one like him. No one like him. No one that has the kind of popularity that he has. I mean, this fucking guy has thousands and thousands of people fly from Ireland to Vegas every time he fights. The weigh-ins,

it seems like you're in Dublin. I mean, it's fucking crazy, man. When you look out, when I interview him at the weigh-ins in the UFC in Vegas, you look out, you see nothing but Irish flags. You see people screaming and cheering and singing. Mandalay Bay during the fucking Floyd Mayweather fight, which is not even the venue where the

fight was being held, Mandalay Bay was packed bumper to bumper with Irishmen walking down the hallway, cheering and singing songs in sync. It was insane. Brilliant. There's no one like him in that regard. So first of all, you have to have the greatness. Without the greatness, who gives a fuck? It's just another person.

Like Dennis Hopper said about Van Gogh, who gives a fuck if you cut your ear off if your painting's a shit? Right. Paintings have got to be good. So his game is good. But there are often great geniuses in sport. But to have that, like you say, he used romantic ideas of Ireland and his own Irishness. That became an important part of his perception.

But it's obviously resonating in a very, very powerful way to have that kind of devotion. Well, Ireland's very important. Ireland's a very important part of the equation as well. Because their appreciation and love and support of him is unprecedented. I mean, I've seen Brazilian fans that love Jose Aldo. And I've seen Brazilian fans that love Anderson Silva. And, you know, they're worshipped by their countrymen. But it pales in comparison to the amount of love that Conor McGregor gets.

I understand. Their myth aligns with his myth. The myth of the Irish people as being oppressed by British colonialism and having to fight for their freedom. It resonates with what this man represents. And perhaps this is always what happens with figures of greatness, whether it's within the realm of sport or within the realm of politics. Temporarily, a person sort of captures a particular mood a particular energy and this is what i think

again is to do with unconsciousness i don't think people go like a con like are aware of these kind of feelings i think it's it's stimulated on a level that's not about thought this is one of the things i'm very interested in um what lies beyond the rational you know what lies here we can equate we can work out, we can judge, but there seems to be some ingredient, even in Conor McGregor, that you can't quite pin down. Yes, there's the greatness as a boxer. Yes, the Irish people.

You know, but there's also some flavour is being caught. I wonder if you can ever preempt or understand these things. I wonder if you can ever drill down. But like the sort of the work of Joseph Campbell, the work of Carl Jung, the work of these people to say, oh, there archetypes there are unconscious themes there are stories that are running below the surface patterns coordinates that can be connected to some people well notably the profession of marketing know how to harness these energies if you have enough people feeling then not good enough they will spend money trying to feel better whether it's the purchase of

a car or a coffee or whatever it is one of the key ingredient is make people feel not good enough if you can re-harness and redirect people's sexual energy so that their sexual energy is directed at products and consumerism then you will sell your product but for me it seems like such a shame to waste this force to waste this knowledge to waste this energy just to turn people into consumers, just to turn everything on this planet into a commodity. When what we could be doing is using this energy to imagine new worlds, to imagine new systems, to use our greatness, to use our greatness to, I don't know, Joe, love one another, to create new tribes. I mean, I don't know if you, boy, you tied a lot of things together there. It was pretty good ranch. That coffee's really

kicked in, actually. No joke, man. It's serious. I think I could do another one. I think I can fucking handle it. Really? It's 250 milligrams. I'll mainline this shit. I'll pour it in my eye. You want another one? I do like it, Joe. But I do have a terrible drug problem. Caffeine is a drug. Caffeine is a drug.

Caffeine is a drug. I mean, what you're saying about Connor is, I think, undeniable. He's a hero. And he dares to be great. I mean, he dares to be great in a way that very few people do. And he stands in front of the opponent and looks at the entire crowd and goes like that and puts his hands up like that. I mean, he literally is like some archetypal figure from the past.

Beautiful. Yeah. And he's also, by doing that, he's letting the opponent realize you're in there with greatness. You're in there with someone who's incredibly comfortable in the moment and someone who truly believes that he's great. And the results that he's had, you can't deny that they have a factor in his future success and in the way people love him. The way he knocked out Aldo with one punch to win the title. I mean, this giant buildup over this long period of time. And then he just fucking starches him with one shot, 13 seconds of the fight.

And the deafening roar of the Irish in that arena when that happened, it was fucking insane. He's like a hero hero like a mythical creature i suppose the role of the hero is to embody and represent something inspire to inspire inspire the crowd to put breath in all those people those 15 000 plus people that saw that fight who knows how much energy that gave them to then go forth and pursue their own dreams. Because that's a big part of what heroes represent, what a big part of someone who's accomplishing anything spectacular. It's not just that people get to watch it and get this thrill of watching this experience, but also that you get energized to go and pursue your own ideas.

Yes, this is true. I agree. But I think an integral component of the mythic figure of the hero is sacrifice yeah not fucking critic like i'm in no position bloody well judge uh conor mcgregor on any stage from any angle because people are brave enough to do that it's fucking unbelievable but like uh but what i've felt it while it resonates with us when someone is willing to sacrifice themselves is because it temporarily makes us recognize when someone's like willing to die for what they believe in whether that is you know

these civil rights leaders we mentioned before malcolm x knew he was going to die for doing that and he did it anyway gandhi had a good sense that he was going to die he did it anyway because what he believed in was more important than what he was as an individual and i think that when that happens it reminds us ah there's something like you say inspire it puts breath into us it reminds us we have the capacity for greatness and we are not just contained by our body we are these streams of energy in that moment perhaps there is no disconnection between conor mcgregor and that crowd there is a oneness a purpose in that punch, punching for all of them in that moment. The only thing that saddens me is that it is ultimately,

maybe not ultimately, but at least seemingly, housed by an economic idea. That's the ultimate thing that sort of contains it. Do you know what I mean? How so? You've got to pay money to go there. Ultimately, it's a commodified thing. Conor McGregor will be a commodity.

It energizes it all. It makes people aware of the stakes that a commodity at all that makes people aware of the stakes that are at hand that makes people aware of the magnitude of the event if you can pack 22 000 people into an arena like that it makes people aware of the magnitude of it all if it just happens on a soccer field no one's watching it's not the same thing no you're quite right i'm not criticizing the crowd because or because the crowd is important that's what it's doing it's representing something bigger but i feel like it's a shame and i feel like say when you take it like we've

taken to the arts because there's more sensitivity it's more cerebral and it's less embodied you know so kurt cabane he's like someone like you know like someone in the matrix waking up in their pod he woke up in the pod of oh fuck you know he knew he was a genius he knew that he was connecting with people he knew he was representing something and you know also he was mentally ill and a drug addict and he killed himself now but i think that there is a sort of a comparison there that he knew that he was becoming commodified he was being reduced to a commodity he woke up in the pod and thought oh fuck all of these things that are coming from my heart, this truth, isolation, alienation, the kind of things that he was singing about, that in itself became a product.

The machine can handle it. The machine can take people talking about that, connecting to people's deepest fears of inadequacy and worthlessness, and it can turn that into a product and sell it back to them. I think you're getting caught up in money as always being a negative. And I think Connor has actually embraced the money as a part of the narrative. And I think, you know, another person who's done that without bragging about that is Manny Pacquiao. And Manny Pacquiao, who's made hundreds of millions of dollars in the same form, has actually used that

to spread wealth throughout the Philippines and hands out money to people. And he's famously generous in that regard. And I think what Conor's done is it's part of his hero mythology. He's sitting on a throne on a pile of gold. It's really a part of it all. Yeah, he is a king. He is a hero. It's part of the story. I'm not criticizing him as an individual and saying Conor McGregor should do this.

You're criticizing the money. Yes, I'm criticizing the city. The money is a part of the story it's not necessarily negative and i don't think it is negative at all but joe money is literally a symbol it is nothing but that represents something i promise to pay the bearer we believe this is one dollar in semantics because he can definitely go out and buy a house with that money sure is real as fuck like he can go out and buy mansions and cars it's real as fuck the idea that it represents like i promise to give you this yes it's a promissory note but it's fucking real you know he has all that he has a hundred million

dollars it is a part of the story he is sitting on a throne on a pile of gold. He does have a crown. He has a crown on his fucking neck. I mean, it's real. Sure. I'm not like, I don't see Conor McGregor as the terminus of this point. I see this as an opportunity to critique what the culture is telling us and what the culture is doing to us there.

I understand that with know with money you can acquire goods and services but what i'm saying is is that our ultimate system for evaluating worth has become about commodities instead of perhaps about beauty or about love not like you know i'm not saying that conor mcgregor should give away all his money and start marching around to be the new jesus of ireland although that would be fucking fascinating to watch unfold i'm saying that isn't it a discussed question is it not a little unfortunate that greatness is ultimately given to us as a product that that is how it is received that's how it's understood is it possible that there will be other ways of demonstrating greatness as he does, you know, when he's fighting or as Kurt Cobain did when he was playing?

But ultimately, the dominant thing, the dominant puppet ear, the thing pulling the strings is the dollar. I don't think it is. I think it's a part of the story, much like, you know, your clothes are a part of, you know, what you look like. I don't think it's the dominant thing. I think it's a big part of how you sell it. Like this is going to be the biggest fight ever. He's going to make X million dollars and the way, I mean, but Conor uses it as a part of his narrative while he drives around in a drop top Bentley and he's got beautiful watches and suits that say, fuck you and pinstriping.

I mean, it's part of what he's done by by creating this in incredible mythology i mean i don't think it's necessarily in any way shape or form negative i think it's a part of the story say with hip-hop right this is possibly a similar way of looking at the same idea and this isn't saying i know the answer to do you know i mean i'm not like i know i've worked this thing out and uh i want to teach you it i'm like going i'm trying to fucking work out myself so with hip-hop hip-hop first when it comes out it comes out as this angry roar no not really originally it came out as like a happy rhyme a hip hop a hibbity the hibbity hip pop a dibbity beat don't stop all right there's a jolly bit with african bamba at the beginning and then like it becomes a social tool yeah sugar hill and bamba and yes early hip-hop

pioneers and then we go through the sort of the phase of yeah you're right it goes through the early part of it jolly and jaunty i like that gangster rap gangster rap la terrifying sort of like anger of we are going to have a voice straight out of compton amazing and then that in itself becomes about like what is the subsequent mutations of hip-hop as it becomes sort of claimed by a dominant system it becomes about jewelry bling particular attitudes and lou do you not see what i'm saying that there's a sort of almost like a trend things get pulled into a certain strand a certain way of being it does but it doesn't have to like it didn't with some guys like the really like here's a perfect example one of the best rappers ever nas nas never fell

into that nas remains one of the best lyricists of all time remains brilliant all of his rap has meaning it's creative it's interesting he doesn't fall into all the bullshit and the bling although he has plenty of money and he has all the trappings. He's got this sort of style about him where, I mean, I believe his father was a jazz musician and he grew up with art in his family. And he's an artist, first and foremost. And although he's a brilliant rapper, he's my favorite rapper, I think that he's never really fallen into all the the bullshit bling Mansions all that stuff like the display of it all I mean he has these things, but it's not the primary Display when you're talking about Nas like as an artist as a magician and because again like I suppose what I'm interested in

Is how like sort of cultural movements start off it seems by saying something that's important and powerful whether it's punk or hip-hop like becomes a voice to the disembodied or a way of conveying not disembodied disenfranchised comes a voice for them or like in a similar thing with punk punk very observably because it was a relatively short-term movement you know bands like the pistols and the clash and all this stuff these bands come out of England and and quickly became sort of commodified and sold back to people what i'm saying is is like that and this could be a result of this i'm now starting to drink the second can of that caveman coffee and it's getting deep deep into my mind this is too much for one man i think

it's 540 for the two cans i may as well do the dmt now i'm almost there so like um what i'm saying is is that things start with this original germ greatness beauty glory heroism but there's a hunger and there's an external system though joe that can turn it into a product and sell it to people and i think that that does strip it of its of its real value yeah and you're saying i suppose no it doesn't matter doesn't have that can just be the architecture of it or the the aesthetics of it and i'm saying as long as we have a system that is ultimately about making money and turning everything into profit and that's what i'm not saying this about any of the individual artists in fact that's the point i'm

making he is great nars is great like in theain, great, great, great, great, great. But ultimately, you great, me great. We're like, please, God. Everyone's pulled in the direction of profit. It's a thing you've got to swim through. How is it we become free? Is there something different that could be done here? Can something truly glorious be done here? When you describe that moment of Vegas temporarily being overwhelmed,

not as it has been in recent days by tragedy, death and blood, but in a glorious spirit of Ireland and a hero that isn't it unfortunate that that energy can't be literally used to create better worlds, better systems, better lives. All that really happens is a load of people make a bunch of money. And probably, and I don't necessarily mean the fucking protagonists. You know what I mean? Like people talk a lot about, oh, athletes earn too much money. I don't agree with that. It's one of the few ways that fucking ordinary working class people can make a lot of money.

But there are people at the top of that chain that are siphoning a significant amount of money out of all of those little industries. You know, so that's my question. Yeah, but those people are responsible for making it happen in the first place. I mean, you can't leave it up to the athletes to put something like that together. You need a Dana White. You need a Floyd Mayweather and the Money Team Productions. You need people to promote it. You need people to put together a press junket and a world tour.

And then you need people to organize the pay-per-view. And then the real ultimate result is the inspiration that all the people that watch it get. The inspiration, the entertainment. And it's completely up to the individual whether or not they pursue greatness or whether they just pursue money. And it's a trap. There's trappings in both ways. There's the trappings of greatness with no money. There's the sadness of someone who dies great but penniless and homeless.

And then there's the guy who just threw it all away for money and never realized his full potential, which is equally sad. But I think that in that is like that we are showing a particular aspect of our own conditioning there in believing in the myth of the individual. That the individual will always triumph if you have greatness. You know, but like now you did say like the great person that dies penniless you know it's a kind of a shame that we don't create benevolent systems that are helpful to the vulnerable right but you're talking about sport right if you're talking about and everything is completely i mean look there has to be some sort of a support team behind the individual but it's a complete completely dependent upon the individual.

If you don't have John Cavanaugh, you don't have the straight blast gym, you don't have Ido Portal and Dylan Dannis and all the different people that train Conor, you don't have Conor. But if you have all those things, it's entirely dependent upon the one individual that takes that knowledge and goes in there and performs. That's what's so scary about it, and that's what's so rewarding to people that watch it because they know it's so dangerous. It's so crazy.

It's so fraught with peril to be the one that so much lies upon. Yeah. The weight on his shoulders is massive, and that's one of the most substantial things and the most impressive things about Conor is the way he handles the weight of the pressure. That he goes in there and does this in the giant big moment. That he stands there in front of everybody and throws his arms out like he's the king.

And everybody goes fucking crazy. That is glorious. Yes, it's glorious. It has nothing to do with money. It seems like it does, but money is a part of it all. It's greatness. Greatness is the thing.

The money is a side effect of greatness. That shit when he does that. I don't mean he is beautiful. I'm not kidding. I want to get this out of you because I don't ever want Conor McGregor to listen to this and think like, we're up there at Falkenroth and Brown's criticizing me if I ever see him on my elbow, his head off. Fucking shoulders

on that son of a bitch. My point is... Especially that left. No wonder why he knocks people dead. Look at that fucking shoulder. The left is a bit bigger. Well, it's hard to tell from the angle, but it's big. I suppose so. He fucks people up with that left hand, boy.

Woo! This is not a critique of any individual. This is my... I'm trying to understand how systems work. That's why I'm trying to understand. And I'm suggesting that there are fairer ways of doing things. Even then, when you said...

But let me say this. The system doesn't mean jack shit if someone can't rise. This guy is different. Okay? The system exists all day long, 24-7, 365. The system's going on this weekend in Vegas. There's going to be two world title fights. There's not nearly the amount of attention being paid to these two world title fights this weekend.

As Conor McGregor pulling his dick out and taking a piss in a punch bowl. He could do that on pay-per-view and more people would watch it. Why? Because he's done so much in the past as an individual. The greatness that he has shown. It's more than just money. It's more than just the system. The system exists.

just money. It's more than just a system. The system exists. It's a matter of one person figuring out the frequency that this system operates on and showing this unbelievable performance inside that system. That's the individual. And that individual is, when you talk about his past,

when he was working as a construction worker or as a plumber or some shit, and he'd done some amateur boxing and some MMA fights. He was a regular guy. He grew up in a working class neighborhood. He wasn't rich. There was nothing substantial about him. Even his own parents say they never thought that he was going to be

this guy. He figured out a way through it. He wasn't born the king. He wasn't some person who for whatever reason was gifted with this existence. He worked his way through it, figured it out person who, you know, for whatever reason was gifted with this existence, you know, he worked his way through it, figured it out and once he got to the greatest stage

in the world when the pressure was at its highest he's shown like the brightest star in the universe and that's what's so exciting about him. Yes, I think he's beautiful and fascinating but my question is about commodification You're a fucking money freak, you're freaked out about money

I'm not freaked out about it now hold on but when you say you take a lot of DMT right or not I don't take a lot I've taken a few I've taken it nine times when you have them experiences what does it when you come back from it what is it that you feel

about the way that systems are organized do you not do you come back from it quite fatalistic? Like, oh, yeah, that's just the way the world is. Or do you think, oh, I mean, it's fucking mental. There's so much stuff going on. Things could be different. Well, I don't think about it the way that you think about it. I don't think about these systems.

I think you spend a lot of time thinking about the elites and the 1% and the systems. I don't think about that stuff very much. Nor do I, actually. I think mostly about what I'm interested in is that stuff very much. Nor do I, actually. I think mostly about what I'm interested in is God and oneness. And I think that greatness is a representation of God. I think that what is coming through Conor McGregor or Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix or Dorothy Parker is some kind of beauty that that person is the perfect vessel for. That's what iconography is the realization

of greatness or the realization of god in inverted commas given this is the ancient singing the still playing the star spangled banner at woodstock unbelievable here is some some moment that pulls us all together now what my curiosity is about dmt is that does dmt make you experience that oneness or that loss of self in a way that's kind of religious or spiritual? What does it do to your head? Intense loss of self. I mean, as intense as anything. Well, it's not even, I shouldn't say as, there's no comparison.

I shouldn't say as intense as anything because there's not a word that I could say that's going to come out of my mouth that's going to do it justice. The words haven't been invented. They don't exist. All words that we have created, they represent things that we can reference in the material world. When you have a DMT experience, you're literally having a conversation with God.

You're experiencing something that's everything and something that's infinitely powerful and infinitely wise. The way I've described it is like you're seeing this insane infinite world of complex geometric patterns that are made out of love and understanding.

Right, right. Fucking hell. There's things in there. They're made out of, yeah right, there's entities you feel. Unbelievable. There's something in there that knows you. And I don't know if it's you that knows you. It's like you that gets free of all your bullshit i bet them separations dissolve is my is my my suspicion is that there is no separate there is

no subject object there is only oneness now you yourself just said is about starts to feel like it's about loving and oneness joe so that level of consciousness exists so my belief is that our systems whether it's our athletic systems our entertainment systems and certainly our economic political and social systems should be as close to as possible to that feeling that that feeling should be our guiding light so i'm not criticizing conor mcgregor the great genius who like i'm fascinated by and adore or kurt cobain or anyone i'm just saying isn't it odd that you have personally experienced in your way through dmt and i have through yoga and meditation and all the shit i done when i was a kid this sense of oneness this love that seems to transcend my personal form and everything i

believe in and yet when it comes to our systems for organizing this plane that we live on the material plane the choices we make are not about that love and understanding they're about the kind of uh they're about resources and elitism you know so it's i'm not interested in the one percent and all that stuff i am a bit interested but what i'm more interested in is why are our systems not more representative of the divine pure truth that we can access through spirituality well i think our systems are based on the monkey need for survival. And that's not good, is it? We should get beyond that.

Well, I think we will. But I think it takes a long fucking time, just like we were talking about before. I mean, unless you want to get the world to do DMT tomorrow. I mean, if we had a DMT day, boy, that would change a lot of shit. I'm very interested in that. I think that's the role of the shaman, the role of the artist, I think, and the role of the comic.

And even the role of the shaman, I mean, that's an important point. That gets distorted. There's a lot of people that go down to South America because they have this romantic vision of what a shaman is going to do to them and that they're going to go and experience. And then they encounter some shyster who really just learned how to make ayahuasca to prey on gringos? I mean That's that's a big big part of the narrative that a lot of people experience when they go down and do that with the wrong People yeah, yeah, and that happens may I say because of systems of commodification materialism and profiteering it does but it also it happens because people are just like looking at an opportunity there They're opportunistic. They're they're desperate. Maybe they've been mistreated maybe they sure they don't they don't have a particularly you know healthy view of human beings what i reckon is this i'm starting it's starting to foment in my mind just over the course

of this conversation it's like like you said earlier there's the potential for good and the potential for bad in all of us sure but i see our culture as a magnet, and the magnet is pulling out the worst stuff. And what I think is it would be possible to have a magnet that was pulling out the best stuff. But it has some of the best stuff, too, like what happened in Houston. They have this giant hurricane that comes down in Houston. My friend John Dudley went down there and brought supplies and was feeding people and organized a bunch of other people to help and do the same thing.

And there was a ton of people that were doing the same, a ton of people that were donating their time and their money, and they were using their boats to help get people out of their homes. And there's a video that I saw that was an amazing video, these two guys talking after. They didn't even know each other, and they were being interviewed. And they were saying that the love that they experienced helping all these people, pulling them out of the wreckage of this horrible natural disaster, that it was like nothing they'd ever felt. That this love was amazing.

That all these people were being completely altruistic. They were being completely generous and just helping. And just, I think in times of crisis. Are you familiar with Sebastian Junger? No. Sebastian Junger is an amazing war journalist. and he wrote a great book called Tribe. And his book is essentially all about how human beings really only feel at their best and their happiest when they're coming together to overcome something. something. And so that in this moment of overcoming

this incredible natural disaster that, blame it on industrial capitalism and global warming, blame all that on the fucking hurricane. At the end of the day, it's a force of nature that no one saw coming. There's no one that pulled that trigger, right? There's a guy in Vegas that pulled that

trigger. But there's no one that pulled the trigger on that hurricane. It was collective. It was a thing of nature. And all these people got together. That is beautiful. I obviously agree that anything where human beings come together like that is glorious. But both of those examples that you're using, as you yourself alluded to, you can look at what conditions create hurricanes. Maybe. That hurricane has... Hur hurricanes have happened forever.

But that's only 50% of my point. That's only 50% of my point. The other 50% of my point is that that guy pulling the trigger isn't just an individual. He is, like you said, when I was like touching you on the fucking shaman thing there, oh, maybe that shaman had a bad day and that's why he's become a slippery shaman. Well, no doubt. Slippery shaman's a great band. Slippery shaman.

Like, so this guy, like, so the shooter, like, of course, we all have individual culpability. But similarly, he is a product of our culture. He's a product of this, again, system. So, like, you know, there is one form of analysis that says, you know, there are meteorological disasters that are detached from reality. And, of course, meteorology is its own fucking thing. And individual free will, you know, there are some neurologists neurologists i'm sure you know say that doesn't even fucking exist our inner nature our inner meteorology the biochemistry of our system is governing everything but certainly there are connections between each of us that create the way that we behave you know

if like if if i have an experience in here where I walk out feeling intimidated, maybe I'll be less kind to the people I work with. That's a less extreme example of, you know, the brutal murders and the more obvious examples. But we're aware of it. We're aware of it, which is one of the reasons why altruistic behavior, kind behavior, loving community,

all these things are rewarded because we do understand that those do enforce a better way of people behaving and that real determinism, like people, if you really truly don't have free will, well, we know that we would like people to behave kinder because whatever factors that play into people going out and behaving in a nicer, kinder way, they're a part of that. We know that that's the fuel of that. So isn't then the role of us as individuals finding our own Conor McGregor, our own greatness, our own heroism, to create as much as possible a space for that altruism, a space for that philanthropy, a space for that togetherness, to create those moments, like you said, with that hurricane.

And we've all experienced that. I know when I do something nice for other people, I start to like oh this is who i'm meant to be this is what i'm meant to be doing but i in my own personal life get sidetracked by oh fuck i've got these economic imperatives i want to fucking feel great about myself because of other people's applause or you know verification like it like because we are all flawed because we are continually going to battle between the monkey in us the primal little creature in us and the great angel within us what if we have an agreement on a social level that what we're aiming towards is the most benevolent the most beautiful and on an individual level we try and do it and communally we encourage each other towards it knowing that

we're going to fuck up and fail all the time but that we're heading in that direction together instead of what we have which is a system that's about make as much fucking money as you can and get out you're only here for 100 years line up the blow jobs that is the system that we have that is capitalist consumerism that's what it's based on this is a machine the machine makes money it's got to have infinite expanse and infinite growth that is that is the system i'm not saying that it's a very fatalistic way of looking at it. I don't look at it as fatalistic because I think we can change the world, Joe. But you are doing it and you're not living that way. So the system that you're talking about, it's escapable.

You've escaped it. Yes, and we must. And we're talking about it. And there's no like Willy Wonka golden ticket that's going to get you out of the system. I don't trust fucking Willy Wonka as far as I can throw him. He's a shady character. Who are those fucking Oompa Loompas? Where did he get them?

I don't think they should even be working there. What's in the chocolate? What's in that chocolate? That poor boy drowning in there. Why is Johnny Depp behaving like a young girl? Why is Johnny Depp behaving like a young girl? What's going on in that fucking movie, man? What's his weird way of talking?

A lot of questions. I think it was about Michael Jackson. I think he was saying, Okay, come to my chocolate factory. Everything's beautiful. He's doing a Peter Pan type deal. Exactly. I don't want to grow up. Come here, you. I think, to go

back to it, there he is. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Chocolate factory. Johnny, look at my wand. I think this fatalistic thing that it's just designed to I don't think it's designed to do anything. I just think it is. It is.

I sort of even agree with that. I even agree with that. I think that what we live in is the manifestation of our most primal desires. Greed or not even necessarily greed. Survival. And I think that if you extrapolate on that system, you end up with what we've got. extrapolate on that system you end up with what we've got but i think an alternative way of being something that might be a corrective path for us is to look at those the feelings that you describe of the altruism in that hurricane the feeling of greatness in an individual and the way an

individual can pull communities together it's sort of like it's not a binary choice i know the world's more complicated than that joe but like i suppose my quest and indeed fuck, fuck me, my book, is about how I individually have got my head and I wrench myself away from selfishness and greed and pride on a daily basis and pull myself towards altruism and love and self-betterment, a part of it, keep myself fit mentally, spiritually, so I can be a better part of this, excuse me, system and perhaps through my self-improvement create better systems

because there is all this energy, there's all this power and i think it's a shame that it gets siphoned in a particular direction right well that that feeling you express and as you express it and express it honestly that resonates with people and i think this what we're talking about is the 49.9 and 50.1 that that Rick Strassman was describing. It is this constant battle, and this is not an easy path. I don't think the system operates at the 50-49 level. I think the system's way, way towards the negative. The system...

Like a cultural system. The economic system. The system of human beings in this world? Say capitalism. Country or where? Let's say I don't know enough about what goes down in china so i'll say like sort of global capitalism say and again i'm not a fucking economist i'm just picking up shit from listening to your podcast another podcast i mean that's where i'm getting

educated i've luckily turned up at university lately i'm tripping on that fucking coffee man man it's going deep i gotta have a can i go to the toilet maybe even do a poo how long have i been in here do you feel like I've done enough about my book we've done two hours and twenty minutes we could wrap this up you've fucking got

a clock there you've got all these advantages there's Buddhas in every direction and only one clock I didn't know what the time is there's a clock there there's a clock there there's a clock over there

yeah but they're all facing you Rogan the clocks are all facing the other direction I don't want anybody who's a guest to think about time this is

tune in what this is the fucking system. I do this shit every day. I've been poured into this system. Yeah, I'm just some Johnny come lately kid from England with a dream.

With a dream, I come over here into the lair. A dream to sell books. I'm just a kid who wants to. Hey man, fuck the system, but buy my book.

You're out of order. You're out of order to point out that obvious hypocrisy. How dare you point out that obvious hypocrisy? Can I do a wee? Go ahead, go ahead.

Hold on a minute, I don't want to end on that. Yeah, you're good. Don hypocrisy? Can I do away? Go ahead. Hold on a minute. I don't want to end on that. Yeah, you're good. Don't worry about it, man. You're good. Take a leak. We'll open that door and the first door on the right. Nah, man.

It's beautiful. Don't worry about it. No, no, no. You're good, man. Don't worry. You're good. Told you that caveman coffee was going to get him. You were going to pull something up about Nas, I think.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You were looking i had something uh i didn't know if you knew he was a venture capitalist he has been for what does that mean like i know he opens up uh restaurants he's opened up that sweet chick place potentially if his company sells soon i don't know how that happens or if he comes public he could be what they're saying is hip-hop's first true billionaire oh shit guys his net worth that says is only like if that celebrity net worth is like 17 million but he's that doesn't include all the companies he owns and has been investing in for a long time no i didn't know about that i knew

i knew about his restaurant because uh friends with everlast and everlast goes to that sweet chick i think everlast has a piece of that too i don't know maybe he doesn't but he took me to it in new york and took me to it in la once we went therelast has a piece of that too. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't. But he took me to it in New York and took me to it in LA once. We went there but they were playing music that was so loud it was literally

hurting my ears. Nas is like half man, half venture capitalist. Look at that beautiful suit he's got on. He's got a pocket square and like a little small chain.

Have you ever seen the small chain? I don't know. No, what's the... I don't... Interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of those motherfuckers chain? I don't know. Interesting. Yeah, a lot of those motherfuckers make a shit ton of money. Smart. Why not, you know? I mean, it shows you

that they can figure out a way through just their art to get to this weird position where I mean, if Nas really does make a billion dollars, like, fuck. Still makes amazing music, though. That's my point.

My point is that his music never went commercial. His music's fucking fantastic. Someone was saying, I was reading some stuff that he supposedly tried. Remember he had a rap battle, Beef? He had a couple beefs publicly with Puff Daddy, the Hate Me Now thing. Oh, yeah? He also wrote, Ghost wrote for Will Smith. I don't know if that really means

he's sold out, but. That's not selling out. That's just writing for a friend. But the rap battles, I think is more just ego things. Someone talks shit about him. He talks shit about them. You know, you all right, brother?

You all right? You got a copy of your book. You're not fucking around. You brought a copy back now. You want to show everybody. Here, give it to me. I'll hold it up so you don't feel bad. I'll be like Vanna White.

Joe Rogan. I'm on the Joe Rogan experience. Freedom from our addictions. Russell Brand, ladies and gentlemen. Let's wrap this thing up, man. What are you talking about? I mean, that was two hours and 20 minutes. Fuck yeah.

It's good. It's beautiful. You kicked it into the fucking orbit. I did change the bit that I wrote about you, as a matter of fact, because... I didn't know you wrote about me in there yeah oh yeah now you're fucking interested i'm feeling good excited it was slightly because what it was i realized i asked him to put in the word seemingly because i thought that i'd been too reductive about you and you know me like this is about like i'm having this experience like uh where i'm sort of like this is part of the book is about trying to explain how in the addict's mind you're trapped

in this constant cyclone of self-obsessive thought and the outside world seems somehow sort of distance you and you can't connect to it right so as well as explain now to go through the steps i talk through like this is what it's like to be in my fucking head so i'm like this is me out of my dog and my dog causes all these problems all the time and i run into these people and i say all i know like you know and i run into them and i start i don't want to go and talk to them because i feel sort of self-conscious because they look kind of like cool i think oh no i've got to go over there and talk to these people i'm going to feel inadequate all i know is how i feel and that's all i'll ever know unless i learn i can learn a new system for being bill Bill, this guy, comes over and says hello while I stand now on the goose shit.

We're on this sort of riverbank. Vaguely embarrassed by Bear, my dog. Bear's looping enthusiasm. I heard you on Joe Rogan, he says. Joe Rogan, a former mixed martial artist, commentator, comedian, and host of the world's most downloaded podcast, is himself an interesting example

of new emerging models of masculinity, a fusion of right-wing individualism and new age tolerance a fierce autodidact he has become a champion of american libertarianism and is to me fascinating because he's clever and a good fighter there you go there's me mentioning you in passing now when i when i rewrote it i said you better put in seemingly because i think i've been i've put i've been reductive there saying saying right wing individualism and new but what do you think about that joe there you are yeah i'm i'm i don't know how much right wing i have in me i'm exactly libertarian than anything libertarian but the right wing stuff is probably if you talk to a real right winger they'd go what the fuck are you talking about yeah i think you're right i mean i think uh like libertarianism would

have sort of covered it better, but this was written at a point where I hadn't listened to as much stuff. So I've changed it. Listen, man, you can come on here anytime you want. I love talking to you. You're awesome.

Do you think so? We have a great time. We do have a great time, don't we? I'm looking forward to coming back to your new studio that sounds like your own version of a Willy Wonka podcast land. Oh, it's gonna be crazy.

The thing is, you know, this is why I don't take drugs is because I've drunk quite a lot of caffeine there and I'm sort of slightly scared of going back to my normal life.

You know, parachuting back into that. But I've got a fucking baby. Russell Brand, ladies and gentlemen. Joe Rogan, thank you. Go buy the book.

Download your podcast. What is it called? Under the Skin with Russell Brand. Under the Skin with Russell Brand. ladies and gentlemen. Joe Rogan, thank you. Go buy the book. Download your podcast. What is it called? Oh, yeah, Under the Skin with Russell Brand. Under the Skin with Russell Brand. Goodbye, everybody.