The Joe Rogan Experience - #1085 - Kyle Kulinski

Episode Date: February 28, 2018

Kyle Kulinski is a political activist, progressive talk radio host, social democratic political commentator, and the co-founder of Justice Democrats. His show "Secular Talk" is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/SecularTalk

Boom and we're live. Hello Kyle. Hello Joe Rogan. You look very good there in a suit. Thank you. You know I like to pretend that I'm a serious human being by wearing this but I'm just a dick. Well you're a youngish fellow so maybe a suit would give you more of an air of composure or authority perhaps? That's the idea if you look like you're really serious then people assume you're serious and they don't know that I'm making dick jokes and all shit like that. Exactly. It's a good move. It's a very smart move. I've actually had some suits made. I had to do this function for one of my kids' schools, and I had to go to this function. We had to wear nice clothes. It's like a dress-up thing. And I don't really have nice clothes, nothing that fits.

And so I had to have something made, so now I've been wearing it when I go on special dates with Mrs. Rogan. So it's like, it's a suit like this? It's a nice suit jacket and tailored, the whole deal. Fits me. And how do you feel when you put it on? Do you feel like, oh, I'm official now? I feel like I'm a serious person. I feel like a serious person.

Like, if I dress like this with, like, a hoodie and a t-shirt, I feel like a schlub. I feel like a dork. Like I am. There's this thing that I do where, especially when I'm doing my show, oftentimes you do that half-assed move where I look like this. But you have shorts on underneath. I might have basketball shorts on or I might have sweatpants. Do you do that?

Sometimes, yeah, sure. It all depends on what mood I'm in. I mean, sometimes I'll do the whole thing and look nice, but usually I'm just being lazy and a professional. Guy Ritchie was on the podcast and he made a very good statement in defense of the suit. It was a really interesting sort of testimony in defense of the suit in the pocket square. He's a big believer of the pocket square, which I think is preposterous. Yeah, it's a little too far. I think it's too far. I'm with you. But it doesn't go out of style. That's the thing. If you look at

a picture of somebody from 1906 and you look at a picture of somebody from 2018 and they're wearing a suit, you go, oh, okay. But then other aspects of style and fashion change so fast. I mean, you look at... Remember the... I think they were called jankos, like the really baggy jeans that

people wore? Oh, yeah, like Cavaricis. I don't know what that is. Is that like Jankos? Cavaricis was something that we used to wear. I'm dating myself. This was like in the early 90s, late 80s, early 90s. It was like they were tight to like your pelvic region, and then they would flare up when they got past the hips. Like MC Hammer pants?

Yes, yes, yes. So terrible. Yeah, but those didn't really make it, right? But they did make it in the gym. If you go to the gym, there's still guys who wear these kind of sweatpants. That's right. They're like these kind of puffy sweatpants. And they're usually juiced out of their minds, right?

They're so big. These are the workout clothes everybody wears. They probably wear those pants because there it is. There's Cavaricci's. Oh, my God. I used to wear those. Try to get laid. You wore those?

You wear whatever you could. Yes, I had to. That's the opposite of trying to get laid. Not in those days. Back in those days, like people didn't know any better. Right. But that goes to my point. It was like powdered wigs.

Is that things change? Except powdered wigs. Exactly. Do you know where that came from? No, where? We found out on the podcast. It came from syphilis. Yes.

The whole wig thing came out of royalty. These royals had syphilis. What was the whole story? It was about the term big wig. And it was, who were the people? Was it Dutch? Dutch kings? Who were the kings?

See if you can find that story. Because it's a fascinating story. What it was, was there was these, I think they were brothers, and they had syphilis. They were just banging everybody. Yeah, why do people wear powdered wigs? And it all came from a hair loss that these guys would have. There it goes. The

Peruk story begins, like many others, with syphilis. By 1580, the STD had become the worst epidemic to strike Europe since the Black Death, according to William Clowes. Clowes? Clowes? C-L-O-W-E-S. How would you say that?

Either one. Clowes, I'd say. An infinite multitude of syphilis patients clogged London's hospitals and more filtered in each day. Without antibiotics, victims faced the full brunt of the disease. Open sores, nasty rashes, blindness, dementia, and patchy hair loss. Baldness swept the land. So that's them saying, I'm healthy, I'm healthy. Well, it just became a thing because these

scroll down so it'll tell you who the people were that did it. Yeah, so, you went a little too far? Yeah, and so syphilis outbreak sparked a surge in wig making victims hid their baldness blah blah blah blah blah louis the 14th was only 17 when his mop started thinning worried that his baldness would hurt his reputation louis hired 48 wig makers to save his image five years later the king of england louis cousin charles the second did the same thing when his hair started to gray both men likely had syphilis courtiers how do you say that courtiers courtiers and other aristocrats

immediately copied the two kings they sported wigs and the style trickled down to the upper middle class europe's newest fad was born so that's where it came from so the whole powdered wigs with people of distinction in in court right all that came from syphilis, which like most things. Well, whenever somebody tries to, you know, kind of like deify the founding fathers, I always think, well, yeah, they were brilliant on some things. But on the other hand, they wore powdered wigs and shat in outhouses and had slaves. Yeah. So like there's a little bit of a balance that we have to take into consideration there. Yeah. So like there's a little bit of a balance that we have to take into consideration there.

Well, I mean, think about how much cultural change has taken place in our society just over the last few years. Sure. You mean words that were commonplace are now completely unacceptable. You know, styles of behavior and methods of expression are being criticized and critiqued in this really radical way. And I think it's good. Ultimately, I think there's a lot of back and forth. I'd say it's good. But the sentiment is good.

You know, I think the reaction and some of the overreaction, like there's a spectrum, right? There's always going to be like, did you you see the there was something that came out yesterday from portland state university where peter boghossian and james demore the google memo guy and heather hyang she was a professor at evergreen state i remember with the jordan peterson yes and she was actually on my podcast uh last week with her husband brett weinstein weinstein can't say weinstein oh so i'm not thinking of the same person i was thinking on my podcast last week with her husband, Brett Weinstein. Weinstein. Can't say Weinstein. Oh, so I'm not thinking of the same person.

I was thinking of the person who got fired because of... She did not get fired. Oh, she didn't get fired, but they criticized her for playing a Jordan Peterson thing. Is that the same person? No, no, no, no. That's Lindsay something or another. Yeah, sure. She was in a different university.

Okay. Laurier? Yeah, Canada. Yeah, in Canada. Another university in Canada um this is in Portland anyway so they're in the middle of this conversation and Heather who is a she's a biologist and she starts going over the biology of the differences between males and females that are just undeniable and these kids get up and they start yelling that this is bullshit and fuck you and power to the people, all this crazy shit.

And then they tip over the sound system. And they're the most hilarious, classical, liberal, progressive lefties. Green hair. The guy has like this poofy Afro and he's like, you know, we don't tolerate Nazis, man. Like, these aren't fucking Nazis. These are biologists, you Piece of shit you know That stuff is the kind Of stuff that I think turns people

Off to the left yes and almost Provides a gateway to the right Where all of a sudden people can buy Into an even broader right wing ideology Because if you look at the left and that's your Perception of the left is it's the people With the pink hair or the blue hair, and they're just going around, and their whole point is to deplatform people

or censor people or scream about Ben Shapiro or whatever the case is. My whole thing is, if you're on the left, and I think most lefties do this to be fair, put the identity politics aside, okay, and let's talk about the things that we actually already have a majority of the american people with us on so you know like a classic left-wing idea let's have a living wage the minimum wage is not a living wage right now you could work full-time and not make enough money to survive well if you're on the left and you go out there and you talk about we need to fight to try to get a living wage and make our government work for us well then you get everybody to agree with

you right even most republicans agree with you and you can go down the list whether it's legalizing marijuana 60% of the American people are now with us ending the wars. There was a poll that came out in 2013 so it's old admittedly But only 17% of the American people still wanted to be in the war in Afghanistan and we're still there today I'd imagine if anything that number probably dropped even further and everybody's like what are we doing in Afghanistan? Right, but isn't the problem with polls is when you ask people about it, you're not asking them if they're informed. You're just asking them. Yeah, you're just asking their opinion on it, sure. What I was saying is about the left versus the right. The real problem

is anybody can be on either. So you're going to get these people that are going to disrupt this Heather Hying lecture on biology from an informed scientific perspective and like, fuck this man, it's a patriarchy. You're going to get that. But you're also going to get people like yourself. You're also going to get people that are aware of the issues and educated and are debating this in a very public way and trying to figure out what's the best possible solution to these

things. public way and trying to figure out what's the best possible solution to these things. The problem is anytime you have a group, whether it's, pick the group, gun owners, vegans, whatever, anybody can fucking join, man. Sure. And as soon as anybody can join, you can't look at like the worst case scenarios, the green haired dork that kicks over the microphone because they don't like the idea that Heather is speaking logically about biology. Like, you know, you have to look at like the whole thing.

And we don't like to do that. We like to point at the green haired dork and say, hey, liberals, there's your left. Sure, exactly. And, you know, the breakdown to me is when you look at somebody like that, they're in the category of what I would call authoritarian left because they want to control other people's actions, they want to shut down that speech and say, your ideas are so dangerous, I don't even want to hear it. There's a whole other contingent of the left, which again, I would argue is probably the majority of the left, which is the libertarian left, which is people like me and many others who say, listen, live and let live on social

issues. I'm never, even though I don't agree with Stephen Crowder or Ben Shapiro on anything, issues. Even though I don't agree with Steven Crowder or Ben Shapiro on anything, I'm never going to try to protest to get them to not speak their mind at a school. It's foolish. It is, and it makes it look like you don't have an argument when you

say, I can't let that guy talk. And then they get to go around and say, I'm so persecuted because I'm right. Meanwhile, I say, okay, you want to have somebody like that go speak at college? Sure, fine, let him speak. Let me get the speech after. That's good enough.

Well, I mean, I think open conversations are critical. And I also, I mean, this is going to probably be unpopular. I don't think the way to do it is in front of a large group of people. I think you open yourself up to a lot of grandstanding,

a lot of saying things just for applause breaks, a lot of, there's a lot of bullshit things just for applause breaks, there's a lot of bullshit. It changes the nature of the conversation because it becomes theater. You're doing this thing in front of all these people, and you can hear a lot of these times people say things. Like, I'm a comic, so I know when someone's saying things for a reaction.

Right. You're like, there's a way you do it where you say it like this, and that's what we want. And everybody goes, yeah! Yeah. You do not talk like that when it's just you and a person. When it's just you and a person, you are just alone with your ideas. And I think that is the way a guy

like Ben Shapiro and, you know, whoever you want on the left should have a discussion. Yeah. There's something about that that's sophistry, you know? So you're not creating the best argument, you're just trying to sound like you have the best argument. And, you know, Bill Maher, for example,

does this where he's very good at the punchy one-liners. Sure. Like, he's in a conversation with his panel on his show, and he'll be like, ba-ba-ba-ba, and there was, ah! That's his style. Well, he didn't really say anything. It was like a quick, partisan, hacky point you made made but since people already agree with you in the audience they clap right so it's harder to flesh out the ideas and really that's why listen i've always said

i'm not the biggest fan of debate because so i've done a few debates and people online like when i do debates but i'm not the biggest fan of debates because i think it's like the wwe of intellectual pursuits where you go in this person's whole point is to defend this side of it my job is to defend the other side of it and it's like okay clash but it's like okay well then when we come across an issue like the fucking 64 genders on facebook or whatever it is and i actually might agree am i now put in a position where i'm supposed to be like, no, I'm going to disagree because that's the format of the thing that we're doing. Right. It's just weird and it's not normal.

Yeah, and I think that's actually very important for both sides to do. Like, when there's something on your side that you disagree with, you should be honest about it. And even saying that, that there's a side, that there's sides, that there's our side versus their side, I think we're so inherently tribal that we should resist any temptation whatsoever to form teams, especially about critical issues, like really important social issues, really important economic issues, really important civil rights issues. These are just things that we should just talk about without looking at them in terms of,

oh, the left wants this, so I oppose it, or the right wants this, so I have to figure out ways to mock it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even know what to say in response to that. I agree with that. It's just, you know, we were talking about this before the podcast, that, like, what I try to do is have conversations with everyone. I try to have conversations with nutty people, like Alex Jones. I try to have conversations with nutty people like Alex Jones. I try to have

conversations with rational people like Sam Harris. I try to have conversations with all kinds of people, but without fail, every time I have a left-wing person on, I'm some cuck left-wing, you know, and every time I have a right-wing person on, I'm some alt-right Nazi apologist. It's like this weird inclination we have to try to label and categorize people. And I try to resist those labels as much as humanly possible. Well, I feel like what you're really good at is you can have on people who disagree completely on stuff, but you'll kind of find a nugget of agreement in the conversation with that person, and then you can expand on that and you can end up having a very nice conversation and you're not you never really bring anybody on

to try to like browbeat them and tell them that they're wrong on this issue or that issue you know what i mean i have no desire to do that i don't have i mean look i've had i've had a lot of arguments in my life and i don't like them i don't think they're beneficial i mean i think debate is good but every time i've ever been in an argument with someone, like a real argument, I always come out of it feeling gross. There are times in life where arguments are necessary. There's times in life where you're just faced with aggression or conflict and you have to do something about it. You have to meet it head on. There are times in life like that, but whenever you can avoid that, do. And I think

a lot of what arguments are, and I've failed at this in my life many times, but a lot of what arguments are is the way you've reacted to the thoughts and the expression that another person has. And if you just reacted a different way or approached in a different manner or took it into consideration a little bit more before you responded, I think the conversation could have gone another way. And I think I'm learning how to do that more and more as I get better at podcasting and better at conversations, learning how to just settle someone down and learning how to genuinely be a nice person. So I don't want to insult anybody. I don't want to be in a disagreement with someone I want to discuss ideas

sure who was that who was that skeptic guy from years back that he put you on a list of like top 10 conspiracy blah blah blah and Brian Dunning and then I remember watching that clip and it was so frustrating uh when you guys were going back and forth because you would say I think you were talking about the 9-11 thing and you're like I'm 100 not saying it was a conspiracy i'm saying it looked like the building came down in a controlled demolition those are two very different things it's one thing to say i believe it's a conspiracy it's another thing to say the way it came down uh looked like it was a controlled demolition but he kept insisting and trying to tell you what you believe as you're sitting across the room and you're like no i don't believe that he was trying to tell you what you believe as you're sitting across from him and you're like, no, I don't believe that. He was trying to tell me what I was saying, even though it was very clear

in all. Okay. How do I say this? Uh, I don't think Brian is a bad guy. I don't think his brain works correctly. I'm being honest. I think there's, there's a real problem there. And when he does these science These videos he sounds like a strip club DJ. Do you know what I mean like I've never seen his original There's a way that people talk well they take on an effective There's a way he did that thing is done by people that are trying to achieve a desired result like this It's not that they're themselves talking about a very specific thing It's that they're trying to put on an air of

intellectual authority. And, you know, he talks of himself as a science writer, whatever that is. Like, I don't hate that guy. I'm not mad at him. The whole thing was kind of foolish and it was very damaging to him, and he wound up going to jail afterwards. Really? Yeah, not because of that, but because of something that he did. He was involved in some sort of a scam

with, uh, was it Amazon or Google? eBay, that's right. He was involved in some sort of a scam where he embedded cookies. He would go to his site. It made it look like when you were buying things online that you had gone through his site first, when in fact you hadn't. There was just a cookie that was embedded, something along those lines. Whatever it was, it was illegal, and he wound up going to jail.

So, and even his defense of that is like, I think there's something wrong there. I don't know what that something is. There's a spark plug that's not screwed in all the way. There's something wrong. Well, speaking of fake personas, I feel like that's the worst when it comes to politics. Yes. And I do feel like there's very, very, very, very, very few upsides of Trump, in my opinion. But one of the upsides of Trump is that he did kind of break the mold in terms of what was viewed as the right way to communicate as a politician.

Because before him, you had all these very measured people who had the proper posture and they spoke with their thumb pointed down because they don't want to be too strong with their their finger pointing at you like that right so a fist and then he comes along and he's obviously shooting from the hip and he clearly has no filter and he's tripping over his words it's tremendous believe me he's unnecessarily punchy and short with his sentences and i remember there was a report that came out that said he communicates i think it was like a sixth or seventh grade level or something like. And everybody in the media was mocking it. And I did a segment where I said, you guys are mocking, and that's a terrible idea, because guess what? The way he's speaking, even though it sounds stupid, it's going to pierce through. Like, you know how when some people talk, it's hard, you have to focus to pay attention, to listen to where they're

going with it, and it's hard? And then there's other people who talk, and it's like, you just get it. It's immediately right in your brain. And it doesn't matter, agree or disagree with the substance of what that person is saying. You know when somebody's an effective communicator. And when he was out there on the campaign trail and he was, for example, campaigning in the Rust Belt where Hillary Clinton did not go.

And he was like, ah, NAFTA, NAFTA's terrible. They shipped out all your jobs. It was unbelievably terrible. Believe me, let me just tell you. What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna keep your jobs here. It's gonna be unbelievable. Believe me. That's pretty good. It is good, right? I do a pretty good job. People tell me that. The voice is a little off, but the mannerisms are excellent.

How about the fucking thing he did recently where he said that he would have gone into the school when the school shooting was going on. He would have run in there even if he didn't have a gun. Could you fucking imagine any other president saying that? I was with him shitting on the cop... You can't. I was with him when he was like, listen, the cop should have gone in. Everybody's like, yeah, of course the cop should have gone in, yeah.

But then he has to gratuitously take it so much further. Then he goes, I would have gone in. And then he adds, without a weapon. Like, now everybody knows you're just full of shit. Imagine if he was there. Imagine if he was there. Like, if Trump just happened to be there giving a speech at the school when a school shooting started, and he didn't do anything.

He just stood on the outside. We know he would have. It's a guarantee. I mean, he's the guy who said, oh, my personal Vietnam was avoiding STDs at the orgies I went to. That's pretty funny. Yeah, so he's a chicken hawk. Wasn't that a scene in The Dead Zone? Yes.

I didn't see The Dead Zone. Well, in the book, in fact, the guy uses someone to shield him from a shooter, and that's what keeps that guy from ever becoming president, so it keeps him from pressing the button because the guy was going to become president and he was going to launch a nuclear assault a nuclear war and this guy that uh was christopher walken's was christopher walken was right i think so he realized by touching this guy's hand this guy was going to do this and so

there was like some scenario that took place where someone was trying to shoot him, and he used someone else to shield him from the bullet, and that's what prevented him from ever becoming president. It's a movie, The Dead Zone, or it's a show? Yeah, it's a movie, and it was also a book by Stephen King. I'm trying to remember. I read the book, and I saw the movie. I'm trying to remember.

Was it Walken? Yeah. Fuck it. That's right. That's right. Young Walken. Look at that handsome-faced bastard. He's a weird-looking dude. Ah, weird as it gets, but that's what's cool about him. It's a great movie, though.

Fun. It might not be great anymore. This might be one of those movies, like, I always told people, we should watch Altered States. It's amazing. And then I watched it. Certain things age so bad. We were just talking about it. I don't know, but especially with comedy, and you've pointed this out, if you go back and look at old comedy, it's just a different world they were living in. Especially stand-up.

Exactly. If you take the conversation we're having and you somehow get it back to 1950, people would look at us like, just the fact that we casually curse and the concepts we're talking about, they they'd be like this is unbelievably impolite yeah you know what i mean well one of the best examples i think is stephen colbert saying that president trump uses his mouth as putin's cock holster just said it on you know whatever network tv or cable whatever the fuck can you imagine johnny carson doing that i mean no way go back to the old ed sullivan show you know know, where Jackie Mason got banned for life because it looked like he gave the finger.

He did this thing. Right. Like, you know, this is what I do. I'm Jackie Mason. And he says he never even gave him the finger, but he was accused of giving someone the finger, and that was it. He was banned. Didn't they do that with Elvis when he performed? He, like, moved his hips in a way that they thought was too sexual?

Yes. So they're like, we can't show this because there are kids that exist in the world. Well, they would only frame him from the waist up. They wouldn't show all that fuck motion. It was too much fuck motion going on with Elvis. Come on, man. That's so goofy. Like, I don't get what it is about.

Different times. I mean, they were just a few generations away from the powdered wigs. I mean, really. I mean, that's such a different world. I can't wrap my mind around but you know what it's true that uh... by who was it is lenny bruce who had all these different lawsuits against him because in a way he's like

he kind of paved the way for people like us where you especially during comedy too but even just for the internet where we have this you know this free open platform where we talk about whatever i feel like we wouldn't even be able to get away with talking, you know, mentioning the sexual stuff or cursing if it wasn't for guys like that who paved the way because people were getting arrested for doing a standup set and cursing. A hundred percent.

I have a bunch of framed Lenny Bruce posters in my house. Yeah. I think he is one of the most important figures in the history of pop culture. He was way ahead of his time. Just way, way ahead of his time. He had jokes back then that I saw people stealing in the 1980s. Wow.

I don't even know if they were stealing it. I should rephrase that. I think they might have had parallel thinking. One of the jokes was about gay people. that in certain places being gay and like sodomy is actually, I think sodomy is still technically illegal in some places.

In some states, I think, yeah. Like Mississippi or some shit. Which includes going down on somebody, by the way. I know, so blowjobs are technically illegal in some states. Yeah, if you're a sodomite it's fucking hilarious, right? But, um, what was my point? Um, that, oh, so his joke was was that he goes, dig this, man. If you're gay, he goes, they put you in jail with a bunch of men who want to have sex with you.

I mean. That's a joke that can last. That's a fucking joke that would work today. If nobody figured that out today and it didn't exist and somebody just said that on stage today. There's a lot of those, though, that people don't realize it's been said before because it just seems like. That happens, of course. Even in what I do, political commentary. Oh, for sure.

I'll make points and it'll be a point that eight people made before me. Meanwhile, I think I'm some fucking genius over here. It's unavoidable, especially with like obvious points. Like when I started out in Boston doing standup, we're obviously right next to New Hampshire and New Hampshire's state motto on their license plate is live free or die. And I said, yeah, those plates are made by prisoners. How fucked up is that? And I'm sure I am absolutely positive other people thought that up as well. Because that's always been the thing, right? Like, people would make fun of prisoners would make license plates.

Like, it was like in movies. Like, yeah, you're going to go make license plates. Like, that's what happened. You know, they'd put the cuffs on them. You know, yeah, now you'll be making license plates. Like, for some reason, like, being in prison was associated with making license plates. And there's some, just because you brought up prisons, this is a pivot here, but there's some creepy stuff going on in terms of the labor that they're getting from prisoners.

Oh, fuck yeah. We were just talking about that with the fires. That they were paying those guys like a dollar a day to risk their life in the Santa Barbara fires. Fuck, man. How is that allowed? Hey, maybe give me a month off, you know, or a year off or whatever. You know, maybe if you're not a dangerous criminal, like maybe you did something stupid, you know, some petty theft or something like that.

And, you know, look, I'll go out there and fuck the fire, but you got to give me some sort of a break off my sentence. Nope, we're going to give you a dollar a day. So they make them do it and then they still have the normal sentence? They don't even reduce it or anything? I don't know. I wish I did. I mean, I'm sure good behavior reduces sentences. I'm sure that probably does something.

But the idea that they could pay you a dollar a day to fight a fire is fucking crazy. Or a dollar an hour or whatever the fuck the actual number was. The way we do prisons in general in the U.S. is really weird because... So I feel like there's, like, the Norwegian way of doing stuff and the Scandinavian way of doing stuff where they gear everything towards rehabilitation to get them back into society and functioning. And in the U.S., I feel like we don't gear it towards rehabilitation. We gear it towards punishment.

We're going to punish you. And, you know, I think there are fair critiques of the Norwegian system, like, you know, in Scandinavia. Who's the guy? Anders Breivik, he killed all these... And he was complaining because he's like, I only have a PS2 and you guys need to give me, like, a newer video game system. So you can look at that

and go, listen, man, you guys are being too fucking liberal. Fuck that guy. He had, like, two rooms that were his cell and he could walk in a fucking courtyard and shit. So I think there are genuine criticisms of that. But at the same time, what's fascinating is they have a significantly lower recidivism rate than we do. So here, if you go to prison, it's very likely that you're going to end up back in prison. In those places, if you go to prison, you know, especially if it's like a lower level crime, they rehabilitate you and you get out and you're a functioning member of society. So we can learn something from them.

In my mind, I think there should be some sort of a middle ground. Like I think prison should be used. Yes. In some instances, people need fucking punishment in some instances, of course, but we need to mix that in many instances with a healthy dose of rehabilitation as well. So we are, I don't know, functioning like an actual society as opposed to jailing more people in this country than any other country in the world. Yeah, I don't necessarily think that punishment by itself helps anybody. I mean, if you take a guy and you lock him in a cell, and he's in that little tiny cell until his body stops working and he dies, is that helping anybody? I mean, who is that helping?

So are there some situations? So for me, I feel like there are some situations where I get the idea of like life in prison without the possibility of parole. I get it too. I get it too. But I mean, why? Look at a Ted Bundy character, someone along those lines, just indefensible, right? Some serial killer, psychopath. What do you do? Fucking kill him.

I was going to ask you, how do you feel about the death penalty but now I know kill him kill him just come on man there's not enough time in the world to fix Ed Gain

or who was the fucking clown William Gacy the clown guy who killed all those kids and buried him in his backyard yeah was that in Cleveland

was that Cleveland somewhere in Ohio it's your place buddy there are some people who are just the point you're making is there are some people who are too far gone Somewhere in Ohio? It's your place, buddy. There are some people who are just... The point you're making is there are some people who are too far gone. When I say your place, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Jamie. For people who are just listening, like,

why is he fucking with Kyle and saying he's involved with the clown? It's just in Ohio. It might not have even been Ohio. It might have been Pittsburgh. Somewhere dark and cloudy. So the point you're making is that there are people who are too far gone. Yes. And I agree with that 100%.

I think so. But my whole thing on the death penalty is I've always thought the idea of it in principle is something I get. Like you could point out all those people who did those horrific things and like there's no hope of them rehabilitating. Right. They're total monsters. And I say philosophically I have no problem getting rid of those people because you're just eliminating a problem. Right. But in my mind the reason why I'm not in favor of the death penalty is because 4% of the time we get the wrong people.

Right. So if you have a system where you're guaranteed to kill the wrong people some percentage of the time, then what we're saying is, well, we're going to let the state murder people 4% of the time, and that's something I just can't have my tax dollars going towards. You know what I mean? I agree with you 100%, but is it any better to have those people locked up in a cage for the rest of their life until their body stops working? Well, I guess the idea is if you have them locked up

and you have people like the Innocence Project working on trying to overturn cases where there was a wrong conviction, then eventually you can right the wrong of getting those wrong people 4% of the time. But it's finite if you say, no, we're going to put you on death row and you're going to die in eight years or whatever it is. Then, you know, sometimes you can't finish the case in time to overturn it. So that's my whole thing about the death. Like, I agree philosophically, and that's something many people to my left have come after me for and said, no, you're wrong. You should be against the death penalty in principle. But I say, no,

I get it theoretically and philosophically, but it's just that when you actually implement it, there are pragmatic problems. Like, you're going to kill the wrong fucking people, and I'm not okay with that. You know what I mean? I mean, I don't know if it's better to kill the wrong people or to keep the wrong people locked in a cage suffering for the rest of their life. Where did William Gacy live? John Wayne Gacy was in Chicago. Chicago.

His middle name was Wayne? John Wayne? Yeah, John Wayne Gacy. I didn't know that. Yeah. Why did I say it was William Gacy was in Chicago. Chicago. His middle name was Wayne? John Wayne? Yeah, John Wayne Gacy. I didn't know that. Why did I say it was William Gacy? I'm thinking William Macy, the guy from Shameless. I'm all fucked up. I haven't seen the show.

Yeah, well, we were talking about something before the podcast, and I think this is really the future, whether it's in our lifetimes or our children's lifetimes, but I think that they're going to be able to read minds I think it's not we're not far away from that we're gonna really be able to know The actual contents of your thoughts whether or not you really did murder a bunch of kids and bury them in your backyard We're gonna know and until then we're dealing with a bunch of really big fucking problems One of the biggest problems is people's memories.

People's memories are so bad. They're so bad. So when you have eyewitness testimony and you can convict people wrongly, which happens every day, and they think they're right. They think they really do believe they're right. They really believe it.

That's a fucking problem, man. That's just a giant problem, is the human memory is incredibly flawed. And when someone's life is on the line, and you're going to convict a guy who didn't do anything, he just looks kind of like what you remember this person who murdered that guy looks like. Well, that's where a lot of the things get overturned, is because they have DNA evidence that overrides whatever the testimony was of the people at the time. And speaking of technology advancing, there's many scary aspects to it, but the elephant in the room to me is the fact that look at what the NSA is already doing.

They're already spying on absolutely everybody in the country. They collect all of our metadata and store it at some multi-billion dollar facility in Utah. And then there's no doubt that all this technology is going to be used against us. You know what I mean? Well, it certainly can be if they choose to, like, if you become a guy like a, you know, like Julian Assange or anyone who leaks something and then they go, Hey, let's go pull up Kyle's text message records. Oh, look, he likes cross-dressing and fucking shit in people's mouths. Whatever it is.

I mean, they can, and then they could leak that to whatever media people that they're in bed with. There's just a lot of shit that they can get away with. Well, that's partially what they did with Eliot Spitzer. Because Eliot Spitzer, they called him the Sheriff of Wall Street because he cracked down on Wall Street. And then, oops, look at that. of Wall Street because he cracked down on Wall Street.

And then, oops, look at that. His credit card information from the brothel he went to was leaked to a press outlet. Well, how the fuck did you get the credit card information? Because they knew what they were looking for because they were trying to bring him down. Right. Well, worse than that, he was actually going after brothels. That's what I was going to say. And I think it was his hypocrisy that brought him down and not the fact that he went to a brothel.

Yeah. It's that you're cracking down on brothels and going to brothels at the same time. He was arresting people. Yeah. That's fucked up. It was ridiculous. It's like, I mean, it doesn't make any sense that he thought that he could get away with that. But the real problem with that guy is that guy was an interesting politician.

Yeah. He really did have some really good points. A lot like Wiener. Well, Wiener. Like, Wiener is kind of interesting in that way, too. He had some really good points a lot like Wiener Wiener is kind of interesting in that way too he had some really good points he's a great speaker but he's also a freak did you see the documentary on him? I did

I didn't finish it though I watched part of it and then I just got bored you want to talk about a fall from grace he was somebody who was viewed as this fire breather on the left who goes after people and doesn't take any shit and then fast forward and it's like oh you got caught you know sending dick pics to like 80 000 women some of them underage and i feel so bad for his wife sending dick pics while he was holding his kid oh he was holding his kid sending pictures

of him with his kid in his arms with his boner. That's one of those scandals where it's like, nope, you're not coming back for that. Everybody's like, fuck off. This is what I said. This is what I said on the podcast. And I'm going to say it right now. I think he's in jail right now, right? Is he in jail? I don't know if he's in jail. I don't know. Might be going to jail.

Andrew, you're a comic. You just don't know it. You just don't know it. I guarantee you he's a comic. He just don't know it. You just don't know it. I guarantee you he's a comic. He just never did it, and he just went into politics. He's a real good speaker. He's kind of a funny guy. Okay, so I wanted to talk to you about comedy. I really did. I've done a few live things in my life.

I did a live show once, but I also did best man speeches in front of rooms of over 100 people. The first best man speech I did, I cried like a bitch. It was the saddest thing ever. I'm up there talking about one of my best friends, and I'm like, and we used to wrestle on the trampoline. It was pathetic. Why is that pathetic, though? That's just emotions.

You care about the guy. Well, yeah, that's the thing is that people came up to me after, and they liked it, and they were like, oh, man, that was pathetic. Why is that pathetic, though? That's just emotions. You care about the guy. Well, yeah, that's the thing is that people came up to me after, and they liked it, and they were like, oh, man, that was great. It was heartfelt. I was like, I barely fucking said a word that anybody could understand because I was blubbering. Yeah, but that's okay. You know, I think there's a real problem that people have with avoiding emotions.

I was too vulnerable in front of people I didn't know. It doesn't matter. Who cares? Okay, well, you're defending me. Thank you for that. But the second best man speech I gave, I went into it thinking like, okay, I'm going to. I'm going to crush. A little bit.

I was thinking that a little bit. But like, so I like to, when I talk, I like to have just bullet points of what I want to talk about and just a loose outline and then I'll riff off of it. And what happened was all the lines that I thought would get a laugh did not get a laugh but all my throwaway lines got good laughs so i was amazed by that and then also i was amazed at the fucking rush of getting a room to hang on your every word and to genuinely laugh at what you're saying yeah and so every time you do stand-up, is that the feeling you get? You definitely get a rush. There's no doubt about it.

You crush. You get a rush. Yeah. You get a rush. Well, it's a different rush in different size places. Like, there's more of a surreal thing. When you get a...

There's an area you get to, like, around 5,000, 6,000 people where it gets real. That's a lot of people. It gets real weird man it gets fucking weird that gets weird like almost like you are you just uh you're doing a show then more than you're connecting with people sure you're going to come to the comedy store tonight that's a intimate place that's 150 people that's tight little small room. And that's like, you're there, you're there with

the people. It's different. That's a rush too, though. It's a different rush. It's all a rush. But your responsibility to the material and the delivery sort of overrides the rush, because you can't really get caught up and go, wow, this is amazing because you have to be thinking about the timing. You have to be tuned in to exactly what you're thinking about. You can't be thinking about, oh, this is getting a lot of great laughs. You have to honestly be thinking about the actual subject. Sure.

Because people fucking know what you're thinking about, man. It's weird, isn't it? Well, I think it's a type of hypnosis. I think, and I don't mean hypnosis like you trick the people into doing something, but I mean that like you mind meld with the audience in some sort of a weird way. People know when you're on some sort of a script and they know when you're talking from the heart. Yeah. And it's really strange because you could have somebody who's well versed in going through a script

But there's still something that's missing from what they're saying and I feel like that's one of the many reasons why this podcast is very popular because you get people on here and you just have a conversation and You're you two are really connecting and then you're also really connecting with the people who are watching because you're just having a conversation It's like you're at a bar and everybody's just kind of talking and it's not like people come here and they're like let me now go to my point that i was going to make on this and this because that's when people start to yawn and that's actually why i think a lot of the the older shows like you know the not to shit on the late night hosts but that's why i feel like that's kind of dying out and there's this giant

rise of the internet because that's all very segmented and structured and you have to go in and out real fast yeah and it's there's nothing human about it it's almost like it's celebrities telling you we're on this different level and you're going to watch us be on this different level as opposed to just being a regular person what's it like working with spielberg well it's interesting steven is a amazing director it's just what he does. Yeah. It's just so weird. It's so douchey. And also, you would be like the talk show host, so you'd be sitting there, and I'd be sitting

like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'd be like this. Which is weird. And I'd be turning sideways facing you. I mean, it's so follow leader copycat, because this is just the way they did it with Jack Parr. Right.

Back in the fucking 1800s, whatever the fuck that was. Right. And they go from there to Jimmy Kimmel who does it the same way. And then the first time somebody breaks the fucking mold, everybody's like, what is this? This is brilliant. Why aren't we doing more of this? This makes sense. I mean, you could kind of do

this conversation in front of a large group of people. I mean, a lot of people do do live podcasts. Yeah, I feel like it's a little different though. Yeah, they're weird. You feel like that too? They're weird. I don't know, I feel like there's an energy that you get from the audience where you kind of try more to do those punchy one liners as opposed to just flowing. 100%. Yeah, you do. And sometimes it's great. Like I've done some live ones before with friends, and it's great. And we did the end of the world podcast we did um a live podcast from the comedy

store at the night of the election and during the election we realized that trump we were saying it's the end of the world no matter who wins because you're right yeah and but when trump won i mean bill burr was just on fire in front of this fucking that guy's smart man bill burr's smart not just smart but that he had material about this that was just perfect and just was crushing. And there was a panel of like six other comics. We were all just laughing and talking shit. That was a lot of fun, and it worked.

That worked. That's one of the rare times it worked. But the way we did it was we had a table set up, and then we all sat facing the audience and just talked, you know, like a regular podcast, but in front of a live crowd. And then someone would come out, like Brian Hennigan would come out and give us the updates. Trump is ahead by, you know, 18 points. So did you see that coming, Trump winning or no?

I thought it was entirely possible. I thought it was entirely possible. I didn't see it coming. I felt like everybody was so convinced that Hillary was going to win. I just felt like that was probably what was going to happen. So I feel like one of the reasons why my show got popular over time is because I'm sucking my own dick and it sounds so gross, but I actually predicted pretty early on when it was clear Hillary was going to get the nomination. I was sounding the alarms and I was saying, listen, Hillary versus Trump is a worst case scenario because Hillary Clinton

is the status quo. She is the establishment. She is business as usual. She doesn't have a message. She doesn't have a vision. All she's doing is spewing platitudes and cliches, break down the barrier, stronger together, doing identity politics non-stop which is nothing but pandering and not talking about policy substance and then like we touched on earlier you had donald trump who uh i disagree with him on virtually everything but the guy knows how to fucking play to a crowd knows how to tell people what they want to hear so when he's in front of a blue collar audience he's out there ripping the trade deals and saying i'm going to keep your jobs in the country and it's going to be amazing right and that's something

that landed and then when you have hillary so dumb as to not uh campaign in what michigan and some ohio well so how i think she went to but some of the rust belt states well the reason he ended up winning is because of the rust belt so and my whole point was trump is a populist and admittedly when push came to shove now that he's elected, a fake populist, because he has Goldman Sachs throughout his administration and he's serving Wall Street. But a fake populist will always beat a status quo politician. Right. Because people are sick and tired of business as usual, and they feel like, well, I'm getting shafted now, and she's coming along telling me I'm going to keep everything the same. Why the fuck would I be happy and excited to vote for her? It was like there was so many things that were in place that were against her.

First of all, she has absolutely poor health and it was admitted by her husband that she had fallen down and cracked her head open and had pretty severe brain injury that she took more than six months for her to recover. fallen down and cracked her head open and had pretty severe brain injury that she took more than six months for her to recover, according to Bill. We saw her fainting all the time. I mean, she... Yeah, that was creepy at the 9-11 thing when she... That's not good.

She's just... Oh, she had the flu. I've had the flu. I don't fall asleep while I'm standing up. I mean, that shit ain't good. That's not good. And that was just one thing. The other thing is, she's a disingenuous person. When the whole Comey thing with the FBI, when

there was a video that came out where he explained what the charges were and what they had found about the emails, and then she explained the version of it, she's just not honest. Yeah. Then it was the whole gay marriage thing. She didn't support gay marriage until 2013. That's fucking crazy. That's crazy. And then, here's the other thing. She's a woman. There's a lot of sexists.

There's a lot of people that didn't want a woman to be president, period. Especially not a woman that could point to all these flaws. Poor health, liar, dishonest, in bed with Wall Street, gets paid by banks, hundreds of thousands of dollars, won't release the transcripts, Clinton Foundation seems kind of shady. There's so many different things that were against her. Well, she put the fact that she's a woman front and center.

I'm with her. I'm with her was her campaign slogan. And you know what happens when you try to shove identity politics down people's throats? They tell you to fuck off. Because they go, I don't care that you're a woman. i want to know what you're going to do for the country but the people were that were into that were telling her that that was going to be her key to victory we're going to make history nobody knows less about politics than democratic strategists in washington dc because as of right now what they're trying to do is they're trying to fight back against their base.

So their base, it's people like me. And what we want, I'm very clear about what I want. It's not hard to please people like me who are on the left. We want a living wage. We want Medicare for all. Which, you know, every other modern nation has one version or another of a single-payer health care system. We just want to be like the rest of the modern world. We want free college.

Again, Slovenia has fucking free college. We can't afford to do free college when we just spent seven fucking trillion dollars on the Iraq War. We want to end the wars. So I have very clear policy goals that I want. And guess what? Bernie Sanders came along, spoke about those issues. He went from being this obscure senator from fucking Vermont, which has a population of 12 people, to getting 47% of the vote in a race against a political juggernaut,

a behemoth that had the entire Democratic Party machine behind her. Not only that, they were rigging the primaries. A hundred percent, yes, and that's what we learned, and that's why Julian Assange went from being viewed as, oh my god, this guy is great, That's how the left used to view him. And now many people, Democratic partisans, are like, ah, fuck this guy. Russia. He's with Russia. And I was just talking to you about this before the podcast. I was watching CNN before I came here for about an hour and 30 minutes.

Non-stop Russia coverage. Non-stop fucking Russia coverage. And then guess what? Now when Donald Trump goes out there and he's a fake new CNN, everybody's going to go, yeah, you know what? All they do is fucking talk about Russia all day day long so maybe the guy has a point so the institutions that we have and the establishment as it is it opens up the door for a demagogue and a liar and a fake populist like trump to come in there and exploit it yeah so if you give people a choice between a broken system that's fucking them over where half of workers in america make thirty thousand dollars a year or less you give people an option between keep everything

as is or take a fucking human bowling ball and throw it at the establishment they're gonna say okay fuck it we'll roll the dice on this trump guy and then meanwhile look at his agenda and everything that he's done since he's got elected it's the opposite of his populist rhetoric on the campaign trail his fucking tax bill had a 33 favorability rating and they were bragging about it when they passed it this is a bill that cuts corporate taxes from 35 to 21 at a time when corporations are already paying a historically low percentage of the tax burden and it raises taxes on everybody that makes 75 000 a year or less over a 10-year period i mean you couldn't get a piece of legislation that spits in the face of working people more than that.

But the saddest thing is, this guy is so comically easy to beat, but the Democrats can't get their shit together because they're fighting back against the grassroots who care about the issues because they're in bed with corporations. The Democrats are in bed with corporations, just like the Republicans are.

So if you've got this corrupt party establishment and they're trying to tamper down the wing of the party that can actually win, well then guess what? You're going to keep losing to these monsters, these comic book villains on the right. Don't you think that the parties themselves, there's a giant issue with the momentum behind them? The lobbyists, the special interest groups, the embedded just sort of ecosystem that they both carry with them. For someone new to step in and sort of represent the actual people like yourself that have this very clear view. They have so many people that they're beholden to by the time they get into a position where they can even run for president. They've all been vetted and checked. Well, that's why there are some keys here. So one of the most important things is when

you look at a politician who's running, thing number one is check. Do they take corporate PAC money? If the answer is yes, fuck them. Not interested. If you don't take corporate PAC money, that means, okay, at least I know you're being honest and you're being open and when you talk, I can believe you. But the problem comes along is that successful politicians, someone who could actually possibly win, they do take corporate PAC money, but they're a better alternative than, say, Pence. If Pence decides to be president, then you go, okay, we've got to choose the lesser of two evils. That's essentially what we did with Hillary. Right. That's right.

We've got to choose the lesser of two evils. That's essentially what we did with Hillary. Right. That's right. And I get into that weird position where, yeah, she's kind of corrupt. But look, she's it's going to be historic. She's a woman. She's infinitely more qualified than him. And the lesser evilism thing is a big issue because that's the game that's played on the American people. And I think Americans know that it's being played on them. You know, like if you look at the opinion polls on Congress, Congress oscillates between a 14% approval rating and a 21% approval rating in what's supposed to be a democracy.

So in other words, you vote these people in and then two weeks later you go ask people, hey, what do you think of the Congress you just voted in? And like 14% of them are like, I think they're good. Everybody else is like, fuck them. So we all know that there's a problem here. And the root of the problem is the corruption of the system, and the corporate money flooding our politics, and then the politicians get in there, and all they do is represent the corporations, and they don't represent the people. So to your point, yeah, in order to rise up through this

system, that's why the establishment loved Hillary Clinton, because she played by the rules in this corrupt system. Did you know that her and Bill, through their entire career, they raised over $3 billion in private donations? That's hilarious. And that's how you get to the point where it was wall-to-wall, obviously she's going to win, this is a no-brainer, and everybody loves her. No, everybody loves her on fucking Wall Street and in Washington, D.C. But, again, just to go back to the Bernie Sanders point,

now we're seeing more politicians coming up better in his model where they say i'm not going to take any corporate pack money i i don't even want to super pacify run for president and then what happens is people know at the end of the day i can trust that person even if i don't agree with that person and that's why bernie sanders in the most popular politician the country by mile-and-a-half he's the most popular by a long shot.

And the reason is there are even many people on the right who look at him and go, you know what, I don't agree with him on abortion, I don't agree with him on this or that, but I trust the guy and I think he's fighting for me. Well, there's definitely that. I mean, he's a guy that really has a clean record in terms of the money that he's taken. That alone is very unique. And that alone makes him stand out from the other people

that were running for president. When you look at the future, though, who other than him? The problem with him is he's another one. He's not of good health. Well, he's a thousand years old. We could just say it. Well, there's people that are his age that are in very good shape.

Like, how old is he? Uh, 75? Four? 74. Jamie, could you check that? My friend Aaron Snyder had a podcast the other day with a gentleman who's 78 years old who goes on backpack solo elk hunts. And he rides mountain bikes and exercises and does all this shit like there

are people out there that are his age that take care of their body but the problem with bernie 76 76 okay his head sits somewhere in the middle of his sternum he's got like he's got a terrible posture it's like he looks like a schlubby sl slumpy, sort of unhealthy person. I know that's not important, but it is kind of important to people. You want someone to— Yeah, you're saying the optics of it matter to an extent. Sure. I mean, I guess—

Who's out there? Well, there are a few good politicians. So, for example, Ro Khanna is a politician. He's actually from California. He's a congressman. I like the name. He has risen— It's unusual. He's risen through the ranks. Sounds like a Star Trek guy. Well, he's a politician. He's actually from California. He's a congressman. I like the name. He has risen. It's unusual.

He's risen through the ranks. Sounds like a Star Trek guy. Well, he's a badass. He's a badass. Is he? Yes. Legit badass? In fact, I could maybe hook it up.

If you wanted to have him on the podcast, I'll talk to him and see if he would want to come on. I think he would. But he's a young guy. How old? Really smart guy. I don't know exactly how old he is, but he's young.

You have to be what? 39 or something? To run for Congress? 35? Jamie, check that out. How old are you? This is the Jamie fact-checking hour. I think Congress is 30 and President's 35.

There you go. President's 35. There you go. That's so young. I was retarded when I was 35. I'm retarded now when I'm 30. I was so fucking stupid when I was 35. How can you allow people to be 35 years old and run for president?

That's so crazy. Yeah. But, I mean, at the same time, I'm sure there are some people who can do the job. when I was 35. How can you allow people to be 35 years old and run for president? That's so crazy. But I mean, at the same time, I'm sure there are some people who can do the job. But anyway, back to Ro Khanna. Ro Khanna, he's a badass. He doesn't take any corporate PAC money. He's got a great record of fighting for the people. He's one of the few people who remember when

we were talking about going to Syria and doubling down on being in Syria. Trump recently announced we're staying there indefinitely. So we have a permanent military occupation in Syria. Ro Khanna is one of the very few voices in Congress. I mean, all the Democrats should be out there saying, what the fuck are we doing here? Let's get out of it. What's the point of being there?

Ro Khanna was one of the few who actually spoke up about it and actually said, no, this is crazy. Number one, we shouldn't be there. Number two, we haven't even had a vote on it in Congress. The whole idea is if you go do a military intervention, according to the Constitution, you have to get a declaration of war from Congress. And Ro Khanna's like, this is crazy. We're nowhere near abiding by the Constitution here. We have to at least have a vote on it.

He's one person. Tulsi Gabbard is another politician who's fantastic. These are weird names. Let me see this Ro Khanna person first. Let me see what they look like. I'm going to give them the sniff test. This is how Americans do it. They look at them and they're like, I don't know about this guy. Show him Tulsi Gabbard. I'm very curious what you're going to

say about Tulsi Gabbard. Let me go with the Ro Khanna person first. Sure, yeah. My first guess on spelling didn't pull up what I wanted. R-O-K-H-A-N-N-A That's one name. That can't be one name. guess on spelling didn't pull up what I wanted. R-O-K-H-A-N-N-A. That's one name. That can't be one name. No, it's not. Ro is the first name.

Con is the last name. What? R-O is his first name? That's what caught me off guard. Get the fuck out of here with that. Let me see what he looks like. He's from Silicon Valley. How do you say it?

Silicon or Silicon? Silicon. Now you're confusing me. Silicon Valley. I think I say Silicon. I don't know if that's right though well yeah he uh that fucking name i don't know about that name but then again listen hussein obama got elected president we can throw the name out of the window let me scrutinize this fella hmm well we got a lot of good things here going first of all the diversity factor is high

it's off the charts no but what i love about roe is that he doesn't do the fake bullshit identity politics of like i'm not white therefore you know i'm great he does in fact he's one of the very few politicians who regularly speaks up about people in the middle of the country who got their fucking factory jobs outsourced because corporations wanted to make more money, and he's against all these trade deals and stuff. Look at that dork with the t-shirt on, fired up, ready for row. Dude, okay, I need you to just rethink your life. That looks like a young, fatter Mario Lopez to the right, too.

Doesn't it? A little bit. Sorry, Mario. No offense. Is that him with Ted Kennedy down there in the lower right-hand corner? Yeah, but I think that's... What is that about? That's split screen.

Oh, no. That's Asian Ted Kennedy. I'm sorry, whoever that person is, but in the tiny screen, it did look like Ted Kennedy before you blow it up. Yeah, okay. So this guy. Show him Tulsi Gabbard. So he's a congressman in California? Yes. this guy. Show him Tulsi Gabbard. So he's a congressman in California?

Yes. All right. Yeah. Tulsi Gabbard. Yeah, Tulsi. T-U-L-S-I. And so is he one of the people that's being thought of as a possible Democratic candidate?

Because a lot of people are talking right now about fucking Oprah. No, I'll tell you who's going to run in 2020. Oprah. Okay, no disrespect to you, Oprah, if you happen to see this, but fuck off. No disrespect to you to see this, but fuck off. No disrespect to you, The Rock, but fuck off. Tulsi's kind of hot. I knew you were going to say that. She's kind of hot.

That's why I kept insisting you show them. She's very pretty. She's from Hawaii? I think so. I like two things. I like both of those things. But so, in 2020... Maybe a little too hot. Let me see. Close it on her. Make her a little larger. Joe Rogan has spoken. Tuls you your chances are down. She's very pretty. She's a beautiful woman.

I mean, is America ready for a beautiful woman to run for president with all her white privilege? Listen, she... She's a brilliant woman. I believe you. But she's also beautiful. Also takes no corporate PAC money. Also is against all these unnecessary regime change wars. So I think she's...

Also goes to spin class. Also does box jumps. But 2020, so... Was she in the military? She was, yes. Interesting. That's a good, that's a positive. She's got a lot of those little colored things on her shirt.

And again, she's one of the strongest voices against going to Syria and all that. You know who also had a lot of those colored things on his shirt? L. Ron Hubbard. Remember? The C-Org. The C-Org. That guy was fucking creepy. I don't think his were legit,. Ron Hubbard. Remember? C. Org. The C. Org. That guy was fucking creepy. I don't think his were

legit, though. I'm gonna go out on a limb. Yeah, she looks, uh, she looks good. I like it. So, um, for 2020, I'll tell you who's gonna run. Okay. Bernie's gonna run again. He is? Yes. How can he do that? There's a thousand different signs that he's gonna run. He'll be 78 years old. He's riding a fucking wave, though, man. I'm on GH!

I've been lifting! I'm gonna try to straighten my neck out. I'm going to try to pull it back up into its normal position. I got one of those things. It hangs from the door. I'm stretching my neck. He's like Larry David, right? He looks like Larry David.

Yeah. What about Oprah? Oprah's not running. Bullshit. She's not running. She's going to run. I'm calling her right now. She's not running.

Come on, son. No, she's not running. She's running. Well, that'd be fodder for us to laugh at for a long time. I don't know, man. She might win. How about fucking NBC? Whoever the dork is that was running the NBC Twitter that was saying,

Our president. About Oprah? Yeah. Oh, no. When Oprah gave that speech, what was it? The Golden Globes? She gave this big, giant speech. Yeah, yeah.

And everybody was like, she's got a vagina. Let her talk. And she's giving this big big giant speech. Yeah, yeah. And everybody was like, she's got a vagina. Let her talk. And she's giving this big powerful speech. Hollywood is so fucking insular. They love sniffing their own farts and sucking their own dicks. Wow. Clueless actress Stacey Dash is running for Congress in California. But wait a minute.

Stacey Dash is like a Republican. She's like a hardcore. Oh, big time. She was on Fox News. Trump supporter. Republican. Yeah, she was from, oh, Clueless the movie. They meant to say. Right, right, right. Yeah, that's what it's about. Not that she's cl a hardcore. Oh, big time. She was on Fox News. Trump supporter, Republican. Yeah, she was from, oh, Clueless the movie, they meant to say. Right, right, right.

Yeah, that's what it said. Not that she's clueless. That she's not clueless. I read it wrong. Maybe she is clueless, too. But Stacey Dash is like super hardcore. Oh, yeah. Super hardcore Republican.

Fox commentator, known for her controversial opinions. So, Oprah, no, not running. Well, I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Stedman's going to be the first man. The Rock not running. Mark Zuckerberg wants to run, but he might not run. Why don't you think he'll run?

Is he old enough? Is he like 34? I think he's old enough. He'll probably be like getting under the wire. How fucking goofy is that guy, man? I don't know. How goofy is he? He's goofy.

Show the picture of him like fucking feeding a lamb or some shit. Isn't that okay to feed a lamb? What's wrong with this person? I'm anti-lamb feeding. I'm taking a strong stance on the Joe Rogan podcast. Someone wants lambs to starve to death. Tune in to the Secular Talk podcast. Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg, he's been, like, doing this goofy tour where he goes to Iowa and pretends to eat with regular people.

He's like, I spoke to a guy named Ted today and he has a interesting story. I hate the pandering where they try to that's the thing, like when they bring up the personal stories and they're like pretending to care about some random dude in Kentucky. It's like, fuck off. Just tell me what your ideas are. You don't have to do the fake empathy shit. Right, right, right.

So I don't think he's gonna run even though he wants to because he'll get his ass handed to him. Mark Cuban is another guy with a giant ego who's thinking about it, but I don't think he'll end up doing it. I don't think they want that scrutiny. Yeah, a lot of shit comes out. Yeah, I mean, think about who Trump was pre-election and Trump is now. Before the election, he was kind of lovable. He was like this lovable, egomaniac, weirdo guy.

He had a role. Before the election. Well, you know, let me take that back, because there was all that birther shit that was pretty wacky. But pre-birther shit. He was the guy who played the role of the, I'm the big boss, corporatist guy. I'm the guy with the, I'm the Don King of real estate.

He was like a bigger than life character. Large hair, big fucking name on the buildings. Yeah. Gold, gold lettering everywhere. Gold bathroom, gold toilet paper. So silly. Does he not know that like there's such a thing as, what's the word I'm looking for?

Garish? Is that Garish? Yeah, I don't think he does know that. Well, he's old, man. With old people, that was like, someone said it best, and it's one of my favorite quotes about Trump, that he is what a poor person imagines a rich person would be like. That's a great point, yeah. And he's a dumb person's idea of a smart person.

Yes. Because he's very confident and he boasts. And like you say, gold fucking everything. It's almost like rappers who are stunting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got my roles, bitch. Like, Trump is that. You got your grill, roles, bitch. Yeah, you got your- Like, Trump is that. You got your grill, Paul Wall style.

You're showing all your rings. You're in front of your Lamborghini. A bunch of girls shaking their booty in front of you. How did grills ever become a thing? How did they not become a thing? Why don't I have one? That's the real question. We were going to get one.

Paul Wall's people reached out to us. We're going to hook us up. You could actually maybe make grills popular. I don't think so. I'm doing a good job with fanny packs, though. I'm telling you that. Sales are up. Sales are up.

I'm pretty sure fanny packs are back. You know what I haven't given up on? What? Cell phone holder. I saw that. Yeah. I saw that. Because people gave up on that a long time ago, and they'll make fun of me, but I'm like,

fuck you. It's coming back in style, and I'm rocking it. Somebody had a really funny joke. I forget who it was. I wish I could give them credit, but it was something along the lines of that's the type of black guy that's unthreatening to white people. The type of black guy that wears a cell phone holder on the outside. On those buckle clip cell phone holders.

Just don't have him wear it around a cop because they might think it's a gun. That's right. Don't reach for it. Yeah. Don't reach for anything. Yeah. The grill thing. I don't know.

I think a gold tooth would be kind of fly, like one. Maybe a fang, or a gold fang. Because I think that they think it shows status, but in reality it shows an attempt to hit higher status. You know what I mean? Well, it's like that Jay-Z song, 99 Problems But A Bitch Ain't One. If you grew up with holes in your zap-a-toes,

you'd celebrate the minute you were having dough right so critics you can kiss my whole asshole so when you don't grow up with much then you're like yeah i'm gonna fucking get a lot and then i'm gonna show off that i have a lot so you know i got this shit it's a giant part of the culture i mean and even in the more reserved people like naz like who's like a more lyrical artist-type character. Father was a jazz musician. Sure. He drives a Mercedes and has pictures in front of nice things. It's just a part of the whole culture.

You've got to have nice shit. You can't be living in a log cabin spitting out rap music. Nobody wants to hear anybody from, what's that show? Life Below Zero? The show where they're all in Alaska? Alaska, sure. Nobody wants those people rapping. But I feel like if somebody does that,

then for that person it really is about the art of what they're doing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, but it's not going to happen. No one's going to listen to a fisherman rap. Like a dude who's like salmon fishing. Like a commercial. Like one of those dudes from Deadliest Catch.

If one of those guys had like one of their, you can't be a rapper, you smell like fish. You got to be clean. You have to have gold teeth or something. You have to have a grill. That's a. It's Paul Wall. Oh, he lost a lot of weight. It looks good.

Is that beard fake? Yeah. I think it's just trimmed. Why do you think it's fake? Because it looks too good? It looks like... You're a hater. I'm not hating because I...

You sound like a hater. I just from-en-gel the shit out of my hair. So it looks like he puts some just from-en-gel on that. Um, baby? Um, I don't know. He might have, uh, might have darkened up his... Paul, I feel your pain, man, with the... I've been dying my hair since I was 18.

How pathetic is that? Your hair started going gray at 18? 18. Really? Yeah, I don't know. And I have no idea if it was genetics or if it's stress or whatever the fuck. Are you under stress? I don't, I mean, no.

Not any more than a guy who has to fucking go to a coal mine or some shit. I'm privileged compared to most people. So, no, I don't think so. I think it might just be genetics. I'm not sure, but it's... Well, working for yourself is a little difficult, though, right? Like, not having a steady paycheck where you have to... And you were also involved in

the youtube demonetization wave that hit after that pootie pie cocksucker decided it was a good idea to use the n-word on uh video game streams well just for the record when i was an awkward young white boy who used it too but with an a at the end not an er there's a big difference did you throw it around like singing along to lyrics if i sing it along to lyrics, I roll my window up first out of respect. Right, and then you do it. And then I just sort of mouth it. I don't really say it out loud. So in the rap songs, yeah, of course I did it in the rap songs.

But also just being an awkward young white boy from New Rochelle and having a lot of black friends growing up, and we just threw it around like nobody's business. What year were you in New Rochelle? So I was born and raised there. So I was born in 88 and you know in probably when I was 20 is when I left there. Dude, so when I was

living in New Rochelle, you were living in New Rochelle. Because I was living there in like 91. That's when I lived there. Okay, but now I'm going to make you laugh because I was just talking to Corin on the way here about this. So I feel like I have a memory of being a kid watching fear factor you're on it and then i was so young that my mom after it was like okay it's bedtime honey wow and i'm like

that's so i was a little fucking kid watching joe rogan and now i'm doing his podcast well that totally makes sense because that show was 16 plus years ago right 2001 i want to say two or one maybe two let me ask you a question about when you were doing that show did you feel because you you're a really smart guy and you're interested in a lot of different things and you i i can tell just by talking to you you're somebody who needs to pave your own path and be your own boss, and it's clear. So did you feel almost like a caged animal when you were doing Fear Factor? Because you were forced to show up at a certain time every day. No, I felt lucky that I had a job where I could make a shitload of money.

Was that your first? No, you had NewsRadio before that. Yeah, I had NewsRadio, which was extremely, extremely fortunate. I mean, you couldn't, I couldn't have stepped in shit any deeper than with news radio. It was just total luck. I literally had like three acting classes ever because I had to take them because Disney gave me a development deal because of just stand-up. And what is that? They just throw money at you and say do something?

Back in the 90s, they were doing that because they had seen what happened with Roseanne. They had seen what happened with Tim Allen and Seinfeld. And they're like, that's what you got to do. You got to find someone who you think is funny and develop a show around them. And it worked with some people. Brett Butler had a show. You know, there was a lot of that going on. And so they were trying to do that.

And so I had a development deal. And then I had a show that was on on Fox for a few episodes, and it got canceled. And then I got on news radio. So I'm on news radio six years into my stand-up career. I was literally a beginner in terms of stand-up. Like if you talk to a stand-up. You get six years considered a beginner? Oh, yes. Wow. Yeah, that's a beginner.

Yeah, you don't know what the fuck you're doing. Six years considered a beginner? Oh, yes. Wow. Yeah, that's a beginner. Yeah, you don't know what the fuck you're doing. I took a guy on the road with me recently that had been doing comedy for seven years, and he's got 20 minutes of material. Oh, shit.

Yeah, it's fucking to grind, son. And there's other people, like, more advanced, like Tony Hinchcliffe, seven years in, had already done a Netflix special. Wow. Yeah, I mean, it really varies. It varies. And comedy, you feel more as, like, your baby than any of the acting stuff, right? Oh, yeah.

Well, the acting stuff was just an opportunity to make money. And it was also an opportunity to get people to come see you do stand-up. But it was weird to all of a sudden be acting with Phil Hartman and Andy Dick and Stephen Root and Maura Tierney. I shouldn't even be here. Well, how the fuck do you think I feel sitting across from Joee rogan dude we're just talking i know but it's weird well this is normal it's normal stuff i mean that is true it all becomes normal man i mean i still get weirded out when i meet famous people that i really like well but who i mean there obviously are people who are you know like jack nicholson for example is way more famous than you but like

there's not many people you're almost are you a would you say you're a list no no no i'm like a c-list person no you're at least be like act yeah i don't act i'm not on tv i'm c-list and i'm a cage fighting commentator you know it's pretty easy to dismiss me yeah i'm more c-list i just a lot of people your age know who i am it's a different everybody my age knows who you are. It's a different world. But so the fear factor thing was I had done a lot of stuff after news radio that didn't work. Not a lot of stuff, but a few pilot scripts that I had gotten, a few meetings that I had with people that were kind of goofy. There was a lot of like, and I didn't, I loved working with my, my cat, my cast, my friends from news radio. They were great. But I had also worked with a bunch of actors who were actors. It's a, it's not an environment. It's not a job that lends

itself to authenticity. It's a job that lends itself to conformity because you're always auditioning for things. So you want everybody to like you, so you sort of pattern your likes and dislikes, your behavior patterns, your opinions, to whatever, you lick your finger, you put it in the air, where's the wind blowing? I'm going that way, because that's the safest way to make a living. And there's a lot of that in Hollywood. I was going to say, that gets back to my point about how insular they are, how everybody in Hollywood's like, yeah, Oprah, 2020's fucking great. Meanwhile, who the fuck is sitting in

Kentucky like, can't wait for Oprah to be pregnant. Yeah, well, maybe somebody. Maybe some housewives struggling with wrestling with menopause right now. Maybe some housewives all Xanaxed out sitting there like, yeah, Oprah's wonderful. That fucking piece of shit

he says is taking on extra work, but he doesn't. So when Fear Factor came along, two things I thought. One, it was going to be canceled immediately. I was really convinced. It went on forever. Forever.

148 episodes. Then we came back and did seven more. But the getting attacked by dogs and making people eat. Eating bull dicks. Yeah, I was like, this is no way this is going to last. This is crazy. And so I felt like, this is no way this is going to last. This is crazy.

And so I felt like at the very least it would give me some material, and it was a generous amount of money. And it was money that I was like, okay, if I do this and I keep doing this, I don't have to do other things. I can be free. And having that ability to say no to things and to have fuck you money and to just not worry about how to pay your bills. I knew when I lived in New Rochelle is actually when I got my first development deal.

And when I got my first development deal, there was this physical weight that lifted off of me where I didn't have to worry, how am I going to pay my rent next month? How am I going to pay my gas? How am I going to pay? Because I went from that to having some money and the feeling that I got, I was like, oh, okay, this is valuable. This isn't some bullshit idea. Like having money. I'm not saying like that being rich makes you happy. It's not, but having resources is a valuable thing and having the resources to not have to do something you don't want to do and where you can pursue what you want to do, that's valuable as well. So it's funny you bring that up because I covered this study that came out a few weeks ago on my show,

and apparently researchers found out that you hit a certain level of happiness when you hit $75,000 a year because I think they figured out that that's where people can generally pay the bills and be okay. And then they said, if you make up to $95,000, you do see a noticeable increase in happiness when you jump from $75,000 to $95,000. So that's when people pretty much across the border are like, okay, I'm good. And then everything after that, you're playing with house money. So they say, you know, the difference between making $95,000 a year and a million dollars a year, even though there's a big material difference there, in terms of how much it buys your happiness, there's a tapering effect when you hit that $95,000 threshold.

I think also the amount of work that you have to do to make a million dollars a year significantly stresses you out. You don't have time to do things that you love. Like say, if you, you know, you have some hobbies that you really enjoy, you feel like I got to leave those alone for a while. I got to pursue my career and go after my career and really make it happen. It's hard to balance that life comfort appreciation for your, just your existence here and trying to make a living. And sometimes people get that way wrong and they go all in on making a living and then you become some fucking Harvey Weinstein guy

who's just all about just vices and just filling your life up with things that try to make you happy because you've got $500 million in the bank and you're constantly working and you're just... It's not a good example. Harvey Weinstein's a good example because he's a piece of shit. Yeah, fucking people in the bank and you're constantly working and you just, it's not a good example. Harvey Weinstein is a good example because he's a piece of shit.

Yeah, fucking people in the ass and whatnot. Allegedly. The better example would be someone who works so they have a heart attack and then realizes they never had any fun and now their health has deteriorated so radically that they can't have fun and then they can't work and they can't even do what they do and then they have to sort of reboot their life. I mean, I just think it's very important to enjoy your time here. It's fucking fleeting.

Like Kevin Smith, just have a heart attack. Oh, I saw that. Yeah. Yeah, I love that guy. He's a great guy. Has he ever been on the podcast? Yeah, a couple times. I've been on his. He's been on this one a couple times. He's awesome. He's just a sweet a genuine sweetheart

of a guy he's one of those guys where if he doesn't like someone I don't like him oh so you trust him that much that he's his judgment right sure if Kevin Smith doesn't like he's a really nice guy like if he doesn't like you you must be a shit it just doesn't make any sense

and you know but my point is that this is fleeting. It doesn't, you know, like I'm 50 years old. I became 50 years old. I don't know how that happened. It just keeps happening. Well, it's funny. I just turned 30.

I just turned 30 on January 31st. It was the first birthday where I ever went, ooh. Yeah. I remember 30. Shit just got a little real. I remember 30 because I was dating a girl who was kind of a twat. She was just kind of a little, and not her fault. She's a little negative. She's like I already thought you already were 30 I'm like what the fuck does that mean?

I was like I'm telling you something's weird and you're not even you know even thinking about my perspective You're like I thought you already were 30. What is that? What you saying? I look 30 what bitch? What are you saying? It's me. That's a weird thing to date for like a surface thing. Like, oh, I think the person's older. I think the person's worth a lot of money. I don't think that's what it was. She was a deeply unhappy person that was trying to diminish me. Well, that's not good.

Well, it happens. Not a healthy relationship. No, it wasn't a healthy relationship, period. But there's a lot of that happens in relationships, right? People try to diminish each other. Or they feel like they're in a bad position of power power like they feel like they don't have the power in the relationship so then they see that there's possibly a vulnerability and instead of like soothing that person they attack that vulnerability that's how you know you're in a terrible

toxic power struggle sure oh yeah man that's the worst it becomes a weird machiavellian fucking game yeah and it's like well the worst it becomes a weird machiavellian fucking game yeah and it's like well the whole idea of a relationship supposed to be that's where you go to get away from the bullshit of everything so when that becomes part of the bullshit it's like what the fuck are we doing here right what are we doing people probably get addicted to that cycle they for a fucking for sure do man it but it's hard to tell people while it's happening it's hard to tell people hey man you're in a bad relationship. Like, this is not good.

Like, especially, like, rich guys with hot girls that, like, don't, where it doesn't make any sense. And the guy's, like, miserable. And you're like, hey, man, do you see what's happening? This is not going to work, man. And it fucking sucks, right, for that rich guy who's kind of a dork. He's like, well, what the fuck? Look, you know what else sucks when the antelope has a limp that sucks and the the lion's running at him and they're in a goddamn thing they could do the universe does not care about whatever this imbalance is but you yeah as a thinking cognitive species like you as a conscious

aware individual, you gotta pay attention to that. Like, she's gonna get your money. Or she's gonna leave, but either something's happening. Something's happening. So, going back to the point you made about the rat race of life and people who get obsessed with work and stuff like that, here's an interesting fact that

nobody talks about it, I don't know why people don't think it's a bigger deal, but did you know that the United States is the only developed country that doesn't have paid time off by law? Every other modern country, so you go to Europe, for example, they have... That's why we win, bro.

That's why we have people who are hopped up on pills and shit. You're talking to me about losers. Gordon Gekko. All these loser countries, and you're saying, why aren't we like these losers? Yeah assholes with health care and fucking vacation i definitely think people should get paid time off and i definitely think i mean i've had some pretty intense arguments with wealthy people

about a living wage i'm like you're out of your fucking mind if you think someone should be working for less than 15 for an hour of their time so i I'm telling you, a guy's going to go in your backyard, he's going to dig a fucking hole for an hour. You want to give him $5? How much do you want to give him? You want to give him $7? Well, Joe, it's a market and they need to be able to make contracts free of government intervention and blah, blah, blah.

I don't care if he's 12 years old. I don't care if it's a 12-year-old. A 12-year-old digs for an hour, give him 20 bucks. This is crazy. I mean, care if it's a 12-year-old. A 12-year-old digs for an hour, give them 20 bucks. This is crazy. I mean, the number is crazy. And people, well, the businesses won't be able to survive. No, no. And that's just not true. It's not true. The person who's making the most money

at the top of the business won't make as much money as they do. Exactly. In fact, whenever people bring that point up, oh, we can't raise the minimum wage because of reasons and stuff and things, I always bring up Australia. I'd like to point out that I know jack shit about economics. Okay, I know a little bit more than jack shit. But if you look up the minimum wage in Australia, Jamie,

I think it's like $17 and change. They pay you in boomerangs over there, bro. Boomerangs and poison spiders. They pay you in kangaroos. They give you a bucket of poison snakes. Hey, mate. Good luck. So I think it's like $17 and change, and

it's not... They didn't... Look at that. And are they a hellscape, Joe? Is Australia fucking falling apart? I love Australia. All bullshit aside, I think Australia's fucking amazing. So spare me with the bullshit arguments about how you can't afford to pay people a living wage. Read this. The Fair Work Commission has handed down its annual ruling

on Australia's minimum wage, raising it by 2.4% to $672.70 a week. That's excellent. Which means an extra $15.80 per week for the 1.8 million workers who are paid the minimum wage. It will apply from July 1st and equates to a minimum hourly rate of $17.70. And that's in 2016, May 30th of 2016. That's an excellent... Here, $7.25 here. Did you know that the minimum wage here today is actually worth less than the minimum wage was worth in 1968?

Because if you account for inflation, the minimum wage from 1968 would be about $10 and change today. So people who earn the minimum wage today make less than they made in 1968. I believe it. What do you think that is? Do you think that's people just taking advantage of poor people? Do they really believe this is a stepping stone position that no one who's making minimum wage should ever consider this something they're going to do forever? So I don't think that it's bad people. I don't think it's bad individuals who are trying to take advantage of people. I think the problem

is the system. And the only reason why we don't have a system like Australia does with their minimum wage is because corporations have bought the government. So if you look at the polls, 80% of people want to raise the minimum wage, but we don't get that. And we don't get that because there's a tremendous amount of money being poured into our government from the likes of corporations that don't want to raise the minimum wage. So that's the only constituent group that has all the power. And they happen to be the only constituent group against having a living wage. So I think that's the general dynamic behind it. I do think that there are some small businesses where they're like, listen, I genuinely

don't have the money to do this. You know what I mean? So for those cases, yes, we can have a separate conversation about those instances, but if you're a fucking giant corporation, don't bullshit us and tell us you can't afford to pay somebody a living wage. Because in the case of Walmart, for example,

they don't pay their people a living wage, and then they dump all of their workers onto the Medicaid rolls and onto the social safety net. So taxpayers end up paying billions of dollars to support them. Meanwhile, the people who are part of Walmart are running out the back door with all the fucking money. Yeah, that's real. I mean, that's kind of undeniable. And the idea that a CEO should be able to earn that much more money than anybody else is kind of fucking crazy, too.

Like, the whole CEO position is very bizarre. The fact that these guys get payouts when their companies go under and Wall Street bailouts. Oh, God. I mean, stop and think about that for a second, because I don't think that people really got how ridiculous that was. So if you own a fucking deli or you own a dry cleaners And you go under you know what they say Tough shit care buddy Yeah, exactly

But if you're a part of a big bank or you're part of a fucking hedge fund that made the decisions that ended up crashing The fucking economy not only do you not get fired they say in order to retain the talent of these people We're gonna have to pay them bonuses with the taxpayer money that just bailed out the corporation that they bankrupted. That was hilarious. So it wasn't just that these people got bailed out, which was also very arguable, a good position to argue against it. That's right.

I don't know what would have happened if we let the banks fail. I don't know how catastrophic that would have been to our economy, but it's arguable. It was a debatable point. It's not a debatable point to give those fucking people millions of dollars of the taxpayers' monies that's gone to the bailout so that they can get that bonus that's in their contract. Correct. And Obama was like, well, it's in their contracts. Well, fuck their contracts. Their contracts are no good now because the whole company went under. Your banks fucked up. You guys were running the banks. You don't get that 50 million bucks you were promised. And here's what they

don't do. They never come out and say, okay, what we're going to do is a bailout of the people who are hurt by this. They always go, well, what we have to do is we have to give it to the companies that just made the decisions that fucked everything up in the first place and sit down and shut up. Yeah, and those guys are already rich. That's what's even crazier. You're giving rich people

tons of money after they fucked up and did a shitty job. And this goes back to why Trump seemed appealing to so many people, is because you have, you know, somebody who seems like a measured guy and a smart guy, and he said he was going to change the game, but then he also fucking bails out Wall Street. And people look at that and they go, okay, you know what? Fucking anything but this, okay? Forget Hillary Clinton. Forget the status quo.

I'll take the guy who's going to break shit. Yeah, I definitely think there was something like that. There was also that he didn't seem like one of them. He seemed like something different. Like, let's try something different. This is a new thing. The old thing is not working. This whole person who talks like this, who gives these speeches in front of large groups of people, I'm going to promise you change and hope and dignity and whatever else.

Vague words that mean flowery things. Noises you like to hear. So this gentleman, what's his name again? The guy with the short name? Ro Khanna. Ro Khanna, yeah. Ro. What's his full name?

What's his full name? No idea. I just know him as Ro. Rodizio Rigback. Something crazy. How does he speak? Does he speak like a politician? Or does he talk like a normal dude?

Nah, he talks like a normal dude. Can we listen? Very honest guy. I want to smell him out. You can find a clip, I'm sure, on YouTube or something like that. Let's break it down. I'm willing to fucking put my chips in this guy's corner. He's not going to run in 2020.

Bro, don't be a pussy. He's on the radar. He's got a tan suit. It's over. He can't do it. Don't you remember the tan suit Obama thing? I do, yeah. To cover this event. This is a very respectful gathering.

And the purpose is very simple. and the purpose is very simple. As I have had the opportunity to campaign for over a year and a half across this district, the best part has been meeting constituents. Okay, I'm out. I'm out. This is just him going after his opponent when he was running. I get it. Too boring. He's boring. You've got to jazz him up about Medicare for All or something.

We've got to get this guy on Adderall. Listen, he's a good guy. Trump's on. Get him on those fucking energy pills where you really have a lot of vigor, a lot of pep in your step. You think Trump's on pills? A hundred percent. You think he's on Adderall? I think he's on something like it.

I mean, it wouldn't make sense. There's been a lot of reporting on it. Really? Yeah. I didn something like it. I mean, it wouldn't make sense. There's been a lot of reporting on it. Really? Yeah. I didn't see it. Well, apparently, there is a reporter that literally named the pharmacy, the Dwayne Reed pharmacy where Trump had his prescription filled, where he used to be on one form of amphetamine. That was a diet pill.

He was supposed to be on it for six months. He was on it for years. It completely makes sense. It does. If you think about the amount of time that guy spent on the campaign trail.

70-some-odd-year-old guy out there giving speeches endlessly. Fucking energy is incredible. Yeah. And let me tell you something. Everybody that I know that did Adderall,

like I have a good friend. I've done it before. Yeah. I haven't, but I have a good friend who was on it for a long time. It's like Coke. And he got off it.

He gained 50 pounds. He feels like it's hard for him. But he said doctors were just handing him this stuff and that stuff. And one doctor gave him three different amphetamines and told him, find the one that you like the best. That's a heart attack waiting to happen if you take them all at once.

He was just jacked up on these things all the time. And last time I saw him was like four years ago when he was jacked up on them. And I'm like, dude, what's going on? And he's like, I'm on this fucking monadderol. I'm like, you're kind of like out of it he's like yeah i just you know so he's now he's back to normal but he's like i eat anything and i gain weight now this whole system's all screwed up what is it about some people who can't have a little bit of something and experience the upsides of it without getting totally hooked by it because that's something I feel like that's

something that I can do like I could try something and then I Can experience the upsides of it and not you know, you know what I mean? It's a productivity thing. So for example, I brought I brought you you said you already have a bunch of but kratom I wanted to try kratom kratom something that I have and I always feel like It it's like almost like caffeine to me. I feel like it allows me to control my consciousness better. So if I want to make a decision to do something, I feel like if I have Kratom in me, I can focus on it more.

I could be more creative. And it's just upsides of it. You know what I mean? Right. Is that how you feel when you smoke weed? Yeah. Well, weed is like a bunch of different things. There's one of the things that I like about weed that a lot of people are terrified.

One of the things that people don't like about weed is the intense, introspective. I get paranoid. Yeah, that's what it is. But that, I think, is where you get growth. Really? Yeah, man. I think that fear. So do I have like demons in my past that when I smoke it,

I'm like looking at that and I want to run away? I don't want to psychoanalyze, but I feel like from my own personal view, if I feel bad about something, if I smoke pot and then all of a sudden I remember something I did like two years ago, I'm like, why did I do that? Like what the fuck was that about? I think that's an opportunity for psychic growth. It gives me an opportunity to examine my own thoughts and try to figure out

what, I mean, like who you are at any given time is a bunch of different factors, right? It's what's going on in your career, what's going on in your personal life, where's your health at, how stressed out, how many of these factors are outside of your control, what's the state of your success in life and all these various things, and then all those things together. And that's who you are at any given time. And it fluctuates, it moves, it goes back and forth. And if you catch yourself at a good time and you smoke pot, you feel great. And if you catch yourself at a point where maybe you're examining these things, like sometimes you'll think about these various factors and you get very uncomfortable.

And when you were in a state just an hour ago where you were super comfortable about your life, now all of a sudden you don't feel good. Like what is that? Well, it's probably there's some sort of subconscious thoughts and ideas that you've ignored. And I think ignoring those things is probably unhealthy. And even though that feeling of paranoia or whatever you want to call it, I call it ruthless introspective thinking. Right. That feeling is probably healthy because it's making you examine things that you're probably pushing to the dark regions of your consciousness.

They make you uncomfortable, so you push them aside. And I think they're better off explored and dealt with. So I feel I've always felt like substances that either up my mood and make me feel like I want to be very proactive and creative and busy and talkative, fine with taking something like that. Fine with taking the opposite. Something that relaxes me and makes me feel just at ease and calm.

But I've always... So with my limited experience with weed, because I've only smoked weed honestly maybe 8 to 12 times in my life. Want to smoke some right now? No, I will fucking shit myself and realize that there's millions of people watching us right now and I'll realize that.

That happens sometimes too but anyway so I've always had an issue with psychoactive substances where so I've never tried and all the ones the drugs you talk about on a regular basis like psilocybin and stuff like that I've always been scared of them and I always feel like

the drugs that will make me see things that aren't there, hallucinogenics, I'm just scared of them because I feel like I'll take that trip and not come back. You know what I mean? I know that, this is why I'm bringing it up to you because I know you disagree with that, and I'm curious what you think about why I'm scared of those, because with my experience with weed, most of the times I smoked it It really was like a paranoid type. You probably first of all you probably smoked too much. I always sure I did I'm sure I did I always advise people when the first time they smoke pot just take one little hit

Yes, a little hit and just experience the good parts Which is like a good weird kind of funny feeling and then there's also i feel like it's a turbocharger for your imagination it's one of my favorite things that happened but i my i feel like i already have a hyperactive mind and then when i the path my mind will go down when i smoke weed i you know suddenly i'm thinking about i don't know fucking naked vikings and that's good like it's like well how the fuck am i thinking about all this shit? Oh, yeah. But it's like a shock to the system. And did you, the first few times I smoked weed, I didn't

get high. Did that happen with you or no? No. No, you got high immediately? No, I got really high. So, I have a pretty funny story about that. I, the first few times I smoked it, I thought I was cool. I was in high school. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna be a cool kid and smoke weed. So, I smoked it and didn't have any effect.

And then by the third or fourth time, somebody had asked me before I had class, you want to smoke weed? I was like, yeah, sure. Fuck it. Let's do it. It didn't affect me the other few times. Why not? Right. Went and smoked it.

I opened the door to come back in school and I start walking down the hallway I was like this feels weird and then I'm sitting in class convinced my eyes are probably bloodshot red in my mind everybody in the room knows I'm high and they're like thinking like this asshole's high I'm scared to death of the teacher

so anyway there was a few times where I smoked weed and I had a positive experience, but it was like, all it was was just giggling nonstop with my friends

to the point where we'd laugh, laugh, laugh, and then I remember one of us literally asking, hey, why the fuck are we laughing? And somebody said, I don't know,

and then we kept laughing. Well, that's, listen, it's a good thing to laugh. I don't think it's a bad thing, but one of the reasons why you don't remember what you were laughing, and there's a real issue with short-term memory in marijuana. You know, it's one of the reasons why I prefer marijuana with nootropics. I like the combination of the two.

I think they balance each other out because the nootropics accentuate your memory. And then on top of that, the marijuana sort of fucks with your memory a little bit. There's real issues i mean marijuana is it's not it's not 100 innocuous in terms of your like psychic stability well you said when you took off the month you had your dreams were powerful yeah oh yeah they were way different they were very very intense like within the first week it started getting really crazy. Yeah. Like intense, like weird, lucid dreams, like just very, very bizarre and detailed and bright and vivid. And so you think that it's one of those things where that's not good? So are you trying to avoid, smoke weed a little less

so that you don't have the effects on sleep? Or do you, like... I don't think it's bad for your sleep. And what I've read is that what it... God, I wish I could remember. See if you could pull that up. Like what are the... Marijuana and...

There's some positive benefits to it it just bypasses that REM sleep deep REM sleep quicker and you get to the deeper stages of sleep because REM sleep a lot of people think is like the deepest level it's not yeah there's a deeper level of sleep the idea is that marijuana somehow or another gets you to that deeper level quicker there's a lot of people that I know that smoke pop before they go to bed, and it's very helpful for them. One of the interesting things about Kratom and why I think it's kind of similar to weed and how people use it,

even though the feeling is different when they take it, is that many people take it because they were addicted to opioids, and it helps them get off the pills. And on Kratom, if you have too much of it, you just throw it up. If you have too many opioids, you can die from an overdose. And this is one of the reasons why the FDA is cracking down on it, because they're fucking bought by Big Pharma, and they don't want anything that's going to compete with their fucking profits.

Yeah, there's no reason to ban it. There's no deaths. There's no addictive properties. It's not something that's fucking people up. Exactly. So people take it for, because they had an addiction to pills, people take it for PTSD, they take it for depression, they take it for anxiety, they take it for recreational reasons, they take it to wake up in a smaller dose, they take it to sleep in a bigger dose. It's a substance like that. That's a weird substance in terms of like, I don't know any other substance where you take a low dose and it's a stimulant.

Opioids. You take a high. Opioids are the same thing. If you take a lower dose of opioids, it's more of an upper. You take a bigger dose of opioids, it's more of a downer. What's the rationalization for categorizing it as an opioid? Because it affects the same thing. If you take a lower dose of opioids, it's more of an upper. You take a bigger dose of opioids, it's more of a downer. What's their rationalization for categorizing it as an opioid? Because it affects the same receptors in the brain. But it doesn't have the same response. Well, that's why it's a very misleading thing that the FDA did,

is because what they're trying to do is find a backdoor way to be like, sorry, you guys can't have it because it's an opioid and it's dangerous and it's this and it's that. But they're glossing over the most important point, which is the one that we were talking about which is if you take too much kratom you just throw up that's not the case with opioids this is why people overdose all the fucking time and actually the bigger problem is that when people get addicted to opioids and then because of the crackdown now they're they're not prescribing as many opioids then those same people go to the black market and they get fucking heroin. And then when they get heroin on the black market, oftentimes it's laced with fentanyl, which is a fucking elephant tranquilizer, which then kills them.

They killed Tom Petty and Princess here. And Philip Seymour Hoffman. They were speculating that the fentanyl was in his heroin, which is why he died. That was heroin, heroin, right? He didn't have pills. Oh, no, it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't pills. He was doing heroin.

But the stuff that they found in Princess' system, he apparently didn't even have a prescription for fentanyl. Oh, so you're saying somehow. Somehow or another, he got it. I don't know. Okay. You know, I mean, probably wanted something stronger. He apparently had fucked his hips up. Prince had, you know, Prince had done all that crazy dancing on stage and all those years. You know, my friend Maynard from Tool, he had to get a hip replacement from stomping on stage. You those years you know my friend Maynard from tool he had to get a hip replacement from stomping on stage you ever see like how Maynard sings yeah when he would sing he would just be fucking stomping on stage he blew his hip out that's crazy now he's got an artificial hip they cut

the top of his how old is he 50 51 shit human body Shit. The human body is so fucking fragile. It is. Super fragile. And I'm going to have to, everybody's going to be like, shut the fuck up, Kyle. You can't stop talking about Tiger Woods because I love golf and I love Tiger Woods. But Tiger Woods is a great example of, the guy had fucking four back surgeries. Yeah. Four back surgeries. Dude, I know a lot of people that have had back surgery.

My good friend Eddie Bravo has an artificial disc in his back. Shit. And does he still do jujitsu and roll and stuff? He doesn't right now because he blew his ACL out. He has to have ACL reconstructive surgery. I mean, look, jujitsu is rough on the body. I've had two knee reconstructions, one from Taekwondo, one from jujitsu. But then I had a third operation from jujitsu as well.

So two knee surgeries from jujitsu. And then I had a third operation from jiu-jitsu as well. So two knee surgeries from jiu-jitsu. And I had some significant back problems too. Everybody gets them. Just there's no way around it if you're training hard. Your body just can only take so much. And you were talking about the stem cells. I saw the podcast with Mel Gibson with the stem cells. That was fascinating.

I haven't gone to Panama yet to do that. I've only done them in America, which apparently you can't get the same sort of potency. But there's some new research that shows that there's some other stuff they're working on now that is, this sounds gross, but umbilical blood. They're using blood from umbilicals of people that are you know like just giving birth and they're having radical healing response with this stuff well there was a study that came out a few years ago that said when you took the blood of young mice right and put them into old mice yeah different thing but same concept yeah that is uh that's something that erroneously was attributed to peter teal that peter teal was doing. Apparently he said he wasn't. But there's a startup in Silicon Valley that does that, that offers,

and guys are going there. And so like a guy would go there and some 25-year-old kid who does CrossFit every day would give up a couple of pints of blood and they'd shoot it into your system and then you'd go out there and fuck the shit out of your wife. It can't be that simple, right? Like that's almost too simple a concept. Like just take the blood from the young people, put it into the old people, and everybody's a fucking Olympic athlete. Maybe yes and maybe no.

That's kind of like a vampire, too, right? Isn't that like the whole theory? A little bit. Yeah, that's the Elizabeth Bathory thing, right? Remember the story of Elizabeth Bathory? No. It's interesting. And it's interesting, somebody contacted me on Twitter and told me that this story might be a distortion, even though it's sort of in the historical record.

They might have actually been trying to steal her land, so they might have fabricated some of these charges. But one of the ancient stories of Elizabeth Bathory was that she was this incredibly evil woman that as she got older, she would torture and kill young peasant women and like bathe in their blood because she wanted to regain her youth and she was jealous of these. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's real though. This person who said that it was a hoax, it made me go, oh, okay, I could see that happening too. You know, where someone wanted to steal from her,

so they concocted some charges. Or it could be either or. It could be both. You know, who the fuck knows? Well, with the stem cell thing, I feel like it should be here already if the evidence is as solid as the doctor was saying. Yes and no. The evidence is very solid that there's some regenerative properties of stem cells. The problem is we don't have enough evidence of what the potential downsides could be and whether or not there's a very specific protocol that ensures safety. Now, Dr. Neil Reardon is on top of all that stuff, and his books, we used to have them sitting around here, but I think we put them in our little library.

His books detail all all the various studies that have shown efficacy and all the the different benefits that they have and for a lot of people like mel gibson's dad who was 92 when he went in there now he's almost 100 sure and mel gibson's dad was fucked i mean he couldn't walk he was all jacked up and it straightened him right out so not to get all conspiratorial, but it may be, maybe, I have no idea, but maybe the reason why it has,

it's not already here is because there's some preexisting treatment for stuff like that, that they don't want to scrap. You know what I mean? I mean, it's, it's always possible. I think more likely they're skeptical. And then the FDA also wanted to categorize some stem cell preparations as a drug because you have to do something to the stem cells.

And then in the process of cultivating them, there's some sort of a method that they do that they believe categorizes it as a drug. I'm obviously a moron, so I'm not the right person to talk to about this. Me too. Yeah, but Dr. Neil Reardon is lobbying to get it passed in texas goddamn great state of texas hallelujah if anybody can do it texas can do it they don't give a yeah they don't care they don't give a fuck it's barely america that's texas and it's its own thing i would love it if they did that if they did it where you could go to texas and these treatments. Everybody that I know that's gone over there and gotten the treatments has had some radical positive

response. I know quite a few people that have gone there. There are, I know, countless stories of people, so I know somebody who got the LASIK eye surgery, and they flew to the UK to get their version of it because their version of it is on,

is better, is superior. And we have the older one here, and they're still waiting on the approval for the new way of doing it. Well, why would they hold back approval on that, though? That doesn't make any sense. I don't know. And this is what I'm saying. I feel like in many instances, not in every instance, but in many instances, you have the preexisting treatments that are already in place,

and pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money from having those treatments already in place. So if you try to upend the apple cart, overturn the apple cart, I mean, this gets back to the whole Kratom point. There's a reason why. If this is something that's basically a cure for addiction to opioids, why the fuck are we not pushing it like crazy? And the reason is they don't want to stop making money off the fucking opioids. I think that is a much more likely conspiracy because there's just an ungodly amount of money in opioids. Yes, look at the pill mills in fucking West Virginia. Millions of pills in a town that doesn't have that many people.

Did you ever see the documentary, The Oxycontin Express? I did not, no. Actually, I may have. The one where they go to Broward County. Yeah, I think I saw that. They've changed the laws since then because people were going down. I mean, it was one of the most ridiculous things they've ever had in this country. They had a setup where they had these pain management centers.

So it's one box, right, one building. And in this building, there's two different doors. One door is the doctor. You go to the doctor. You go, hey, man, my fucking back hurts. And the doctor says, okay, I'll write you a prescription. Go next door to the pharmacy. The pharmacy has oxycontin yeah it's like if you only have a hammer yeah everything looks like a nail looks like you need a hammer here how am i gonna chop

this tree down i guess i'm gonna fucking use a hammer like it's i mean it's fucking crazy that this was going on for so long and then they also, this is where it got really weird. It wasn't just they had these pain management centers. They also didn't have a state database. So if you went to Dr. Jamie over there and got a prescription for OxyContin, and then you left Dr. Jamie's office with a fat bag of pills, you could go to Dr. Joe's office and I'd give you another prescription. And these pain management centers were all over the place in Florida.

So Florida was literally, because I mean, there's no other way that I could imagine that this would be done conscientiously. I think this was all corruption. I think the only reason why they would have no database is not, we're not in the 1500s man. You guys could keep

records of who's fucking on this shit and who's not. There's a way. I mean, they had records back before the internet. There's no excuse for this. This is, I think, intentional corruption. And what's crazy is now the pendulum is swinging almost too far in the other direction. Ohio attorney general suing opioid distributors. Now this is a good example of what I think is the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction, because I have pain patients who contact me all the time, and they talk about how, since there's new federal regulations over the pills, what's happening is many doctors are

afraid to prescribe them at all, even when it's a legitimate pain issue. And so people contact me, and they go, I don't know what to do, because need my pills because I have severe pain problem and I've had it for an extended period of time and nobody wants to give me the pills anymore and they feel like they're forced to go on the black market now. Right, right. And now that they're eliminating Kratom, it's even more fucked up. Exactly. So what is the status of Kratom currently?

Still legal. Still legal. Still legal, but it's a monitored substance by the FDA. What does that mean? It basically means if they want to, they seize fucking shipments of it when it comes into the U.S. If they want to. If they want to, exactly. And then you can't get that shipment back. No, you can't get it back.

Then you go, fuck off. Exactly. Fuck off, we're going to take your beneficial plants. But it's still, thankfully it's still, there's still leeway. The last time the FDA really tried to crack down on it and make it a Schedule I drug, the fucking bowels of hell opened up on their face

because they opened up a comments section uh comments period and like 99.9 of the comments were like fuck you this saved my life you guys are fucking criminals how dare you do this and then they had to back off because the comments were just so overwhelming so now they're trying to slowly do it again and what's happening is they just referenced, oh, there are 44 cases of somebody who overdosed from kratom. Multi-state outbreak of salmonella. Right, so this is... Infections related to kratom. Exactly, so there were a few cases of salmonella-tainted kratom,

and so the idea, there's another way they try to go, oh, we've got to get rid of it because there's some salmonella cases. At this time, the CDC recommends that people not consume kratom in any form because it could be contaminated with salmonella. We instead suggest fentanyl, which kills rhinos. We could kill a fucking whale with a with a Altoid-sized

piece of fentanyl. They literally could kill a whale. I know, yeah. Dead whale would be fucked. An Altoid. So they said there are 44 deaths linked to Kratom. 28 cases. A few people got diarrhea. 11 hospitalizations.

That's it. 11. 11 hospitalizations. Well, the story gets crazier because there were 44 cases that they cited and said, look, man, 44 cases of people dying when they took Kratom. Is that true? Well, guess what? No.

Reporters decided, let's look into this. Let's dig deeper and see what happened. First of all, one of the cases was a suicide that they counted as a death that they're attributing to Kratom. That's hilarious.

Another was a homicide. That's hilarious. And then other ones were... So now we're down to 42. There were... And then most of them, people had like five or six different drugs

in their system. And they're saying, that's Kratom. That's one of the things they did with marijuana and car accidents. They were saying, ah, that's Kratom. That's one of the things they did with marijuana and car accidents. They were saying, all these different car accidents, people have marijuana in their system. Yeah, but they were also drunk.

Exactly. Yeah, people were partying, man. They're out of their fucking head and they crash into trees. That's not good. So, how do you feel now that California has legalized it? Is it, because you had the medical one before, and now is it more of a pain in the ass to get weed? Because it's legalized? of a pain in the ass to get weed? No.

Because it's legalized? It's very easy to get weed in California. It's very easy. It's not as easy as in Colorado. Colorado's got it down. Colorado's got it nailed. And they are booming because of it. Swimming in money.

Booming to the point where they have to give people money back. That's right. They gave a check to everybody in the state. And I love how they take a lot of the money, and they divert some of it to education, some of it to substance treatment. So they're doing the most responsible thing for it. And like you said, the tax on it, everybody's like, okay. Yeah. Okay. Whatever.

Yeah, I mean, it's a high tax rate. I think they have a 39% tax rate on recreational. I think it's like 11% on medicinal. But here's the thing. It's not exorbitantly expensive. It's a plant that grows easy. It's not hard to grow. It's not like some very difficult grape that needs a perfect climate.

Right. It's not. Marijuana is not hard to grow. So there's not a lot of arguments against it for responsible adults. Yeah. So there's not a lot of arguments against it for responsible adults. And that's the thing is, are we going to regulate responsible adult use of substances? Because if we do, we'd be hypocritical if we didn't eliminate alcohol. Exactly right. It's one of the worst ones.

If you look at it objectively, you would have to say, listen, this substance, which is legal and has been legal for a very long time, is actually more dangerous than many of these ones that are illegal. And we learned from alcohol prohibition how terrible an idea it is to just ban the substance. Because what happened during prohibition? The mafia got incredibly powerful because they're the ones selling the alcohol. They're the ones making the money. And then when you have a dispute and your product is on the black market, you know how you solve that dispute? With fucking guns in the street. You know how you solve the dispute if it's legal you go to court wearing suits and ties and you figure it out like adults well this is another

thing that trump should have recognized when he was jeff sessions yeah he's a perfect example that guy is a goddamn monster he's crazy he's the old school mentality of like i was raised and it's wrong if you put substances in your body well he literally said good people don't use marijuana well that's crazy bro yeah casting a moral judgment on you for that i think there's something like 37 percent of the country is a regular marijuana user so you're saying 37 of the country's bad people yeah exactly and this is another example by the way way, of 60% of people now want to legalize marijuana across the country. Yeah. So this is another issue where if the Democrats

decided, let's not be fucking corrupt idiots and let's actually fight for something. Do you have any idea how big of a blue tsunami there would be in the next election? Yeah. If every Democrat came out there and said, one of the things we're for is legalizing marijuana. We're going to fight for that. We're not going to take no for an answer. And we're going to make a lot of money that can go to the schools, that can go to the infrastructure. Exactly. And the job creation. And these are arguments that also appeal to the right.

If you tell people on the right, hey, you guys say you love small government. You know what's really big government? When they knock down your fucking door and drag you out in handcuffs because you decided to tweak your consciousness slightly. Yeah. That's the biggest government imaginable they kick your door down shoot your dog because you've got a fucking bowl sitting in your coffee table there's there's so many examples of that too if if trump really wanted to stop all this illegal mexican cartel legalize it legalize it tax it regulate it Done. And you swash the cartels.

Yeah, exactly. There's no reason for them to be here. Yeah, and that- see, this is one of the things that's so frustrating to me, doing what I do, and one of the reasons why I think shows like ours have blown up is because we're willing to say the most obvious things that everybody's thinking, but the system is dragging like fucking 50 years behind what we're talking about. Well, you could never do the show that you do, this kind of show if you had like real serious advertisers and a real serious network and producers and executives. If you had a bunch of executives that were above you and, you know, fill in the blanks, CNBC or whatever, and their job depended upon you not saying something fucked up that was going to get the advertisers to crack down on their program and you wouldn't be able to do it you wouldn't have freedom in fact uh jank uger

was on msnbc the reason he ended up leaving msnbc he was too hard on the democrats so his higher-ups were like hey listen man i just heard from our friends friends in Washington that you need to reel it in a little bit. And he's like, wait, I don't understand. So the whole idea of MSNBC is be partisan, be in favor of the Democrats, and support the Democratic establishment. The whole idea of Fox News is be partisan, support the Republicans, support the establishment. If somebody comes along and they go, you know what? Your whole fucking game is bullshit.

Both the parties are corrupt. Nobody's fighting for the people. You're ignoring the fact that only 14% of the American people even support Congress. You're ignoring the fact that 60% of people want to legalize marijuana. If you go and talk about real issues, that's when they step up and they go, listen, we can't have you because, you know, hey, you curse too much or this isn't palatable. And it's always people above you who feel like they should be able to control your content, but they don't understand the reason why the content is popular in the first place is because you're not fucking being controlled.

Exactly. Exactly. They're operating in this archaic format, too. The other problem is they interrupt their show every 15 minutes for commercials and it's just they break the flow of it. And then they've got fucking commercials for antidepressants and diarrhea pills and whatever the fuck else they're selling. And it's just nobody wants that.

It's an archaic version of entertainment, and it made sense back when that was the only way to get your entertainment, when the only way to get your entertainment was the big three, NBC, ABC, CBS. Then Fox comes along and tosses the Apple card up. And then you got cable. Oh my goodness, now things are crazy. Well, cable news has really opened it up.

And now you got wild shit like Fox News and all this. And Megyn Kelly doesn't have any clothes on. She's telling you about fucking history. All that stuff was really an interesting thing. Then the internet comes along, all bets are off. 100%. And they're fucked because a guy like you, I mean, who's involved in your operation? How many people? Three?

Four? It's hilarious. Yeah. Hi, Lilith. Lilith does a lot of my social media stuff. She's awesome. What's up, Lilith? Yeah, I mean, that's nuts. I mean, how many fucking people would be involved in the Ryan Seacrest show? Forget it. Hundreds, right? And the fact that when you keep something... I don't be involved in the Ryan Seacrest show? Forget it. Hundreds, right? And the fact that when you keep something...

I don't know why I said Ryan Seacrest. Yeah, he's so irrelevant. When you keep something small and close to the chest, I feel like that's when you can mold it and make it your own. When it becomes a giant big operation and 43 hands are in it, well, then all of a sudden it feels like it's stale and detached. Yes. And not connected to anything real that people can relate to. No, I've been involved in that kind of stuff before. I know what happens.

Just there's too many cooks in the kitchen. Everything gets fucked up. And everybody's also trying to justify their position, which is almost unnecessary. I mean, there's so many positions. When you work on a television set and you see how many people are just standing around, you go, oh, what the fuck is, why are there so many jobs? Like, why are there so many people working? Well, a lot of it is like they've kind of created these jobs justify their position and then when there's meetings those people all have like an idea that they want to change they want to

change this or tweak that and so they can say that was my idea and that justifies their role well it was my idea to tell kyle that he's got to stop doing this and start doing that. And we got Kyle to wear a suit, and he pushed back, but I was right. I was right. You know, like there's all that kind of shit that happens on these goddamn TV sets, and it ruins the individual idea, like a person's individual point of view. Like there's no way you're going to a real unique individual point of view if you have so many people tweaking and adjusting and restricting and and demanding that a certain behave a certain way or dress a certain way or stay to a certain topic or you know Keep on you know, you have to keep keep within these very clearly defined parameters. Where was it?

Worst for you which show it was it worst for you? Which show? Was it the man show when you did the man show? That was a disaster. Yeah, that was a disaster for a bunch of reasons. But one of the reasons why that was a disaster was because Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake decided to pull Janet's boobie out on TV. Oh, and so they cracked down, started being very PC. They were terrified of everything. But that's also you have a bunch of people, again, that aren't comedians.

They don't know what's funny. And they're trying to impose their idea of what's funny and what's not. You have a lot of that on television now. You have a lot of these people that aren't necessarily comedians, but they might be like super progressive social justice warrior types. And now they're trying to push that kind of comedy as being what everybody likes. And then that shit gets to, you knowie's hometown columbus ohio and these people like what the fuck are you feeding me and then meanwhile like we were talking about for the podcast a guy like joey diaz comes around and everybody's like that's it that's what we want exactly well you

know the realest guy in the world he's a perfect example too because for the longest time i was trying to tell people for the longest time like I had agents Former agents of mine that would tell me you've got to stop working with that. That's literally the dumbest shit I've ever heard my life not funny. It's so easy to see he's like a diamond in the rough. Yeah in how Unique he is and how just straightforward he is. Yeah, he's a genius. He's a comedy genius. I think he's the funniest. In terms of bursts of comedy, he might not be the very best joke writer of all time,

but in terms of being the funniest, I think he's the funniest person that's ever lived. I've seen everybody. I've seen almost everybody either live or on video. I don't think anybody's ever been funnier than Joey. I've seen Joey some nights at the Ice House or some nights at the comedy store hit levels of ridiculousness

that I don't think I've seen anybody. And his whole thing, I mean, he's a goddamn human cartoon. His voice, his cartoon, the way he looks, the shit he says, the way he moves. He's just...

And forever, they're telling me that that guy's not funny, this is not good, this guy can't work and he wasn't getting work other than like character work in movies but then the internet came along and then people got to know him on podcasts and that's what really made joey and you knew that everybody who was telling you that was working backwards from their conclusion that they had this idea in their mind of what somebody who's popular is supposed to be

yeah and he didn't fit that mold because he's too rough around the edges and he curses too much and he talks about eating ass and all that shit. And then you knew, no, I know innately, I look at this guy and he touches something in me, so I know this is going to connect with other people. Well, I'm also, I'm out there in the clubs, and I'm watching Joey go on stage and crush. So them telling me he's not funny, I'm like, you're out of your mind. Yeah, you're just wrong. I've seen it.

Not only that, I'm a fan of comedy. I'm not just a fan of things that are gross. In fact, if someone's gross and it's not well done, it's appalling to me. It's like, ugh. I know when people are just being gross for the sake of trying to get a reaction. It's annoying. It's bad on your brain, especially when you hear it more than once. It's grating.

Joey's not doing that. He's being himself, and I was watching him kill over and over and over again and having these people tell me that it's not good. And then podcasts came along seven, eight years ago. People got to know him. And then now when we have him on, it's like always one of our highest rated shows. A million views in a minute. Always.

So, and I was telling you before the podcast, too, and I'll tell Joey if he's watching. Joey, you don't need guests on your podcast. I really like it when it's just Joey and Lee and they just talk. I like that, too, but I like Joey with guests, too. I just like Joey. I'm going to direct and produce Joey's standup special. Oh, that's great. We couldn't get anybody to do it. It's just like, they still don't get it. Like there's a lot of people that still don't get it and I'm hoping they get it when we put something together, but we're going to film

something at the ice house and I'm going to put it all together and I'm going to direct it and produce it and the whole thing and just have someone edit it and just put it together and just make the ultimate Joey Diaz comedy special so people could know. And we're going to do a shitload of shows too. Because that's the other thing. When a comic has to do one show, ready? Here, Kyle, this is your one moment to be funny. And it's going to be seen forever.

It's like you smoking pot and realizing millions of people are talking yeah exactly that that's uh that's sort of what it's like for a comic to do a special so you do one you get it in the can you feel loose then you get that second one you're like oh we got it and then you do the third one you're like now we really got it and you do the fourth one that fourth one is generally like a real comedy show sure like where there's no no concern no worries no issues well the evolution of stuff is interesting because it's almost impossible to start something and just get it like you it requires a lot of time a lot of effort a lot of cultivation a lot of attention and you know it's it's that book i forget who wrote it but the idea of you have to do something

for 10 000 hours or whatever the fuck it is. Is that Gladwell? No. That might be Malcolm Gladwell. But that's true. And you know what? What I say is even if, let's say you don't get there with whatever you're trying to do, you're definitely going to be better after those 10,000 hours. And also, you might learn a lot about yourself and a lot about what you're capable of and a lot about dedication and discipline if you just stick with something. And I've always said, you know, people like to shit on one-dimensional people and act like,

ah, you know, you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be well-rounded and this and that. But, you know, again, to bring up Tiger Woods, how the fuck do you think he got good at golf? You know how he got good at golf? By only fucking playing golf. And he was able to find something that he got so fucking good at and create meaning in his life and also use that to develop different parts of your personality and It's I'm in favor of people doing whatever they think Suits their creative pursuits don't don't feel bad if you're somebody who's all I do is this one fucking thing, right? Okay, well you can get really fucking good at it. Even if it's some shit like playing video games.

Okay, go be the fucking best video game player in the world. Right. Might as well if that's what you're really good at and you can do the time and put in the work. Especially if you enjoy that. And there's something about getting... Did you ever see Jiro Dreams of Sushi? No.

Really interesting documentary. One of the weirdest things about it is that there's a term that the Japanese use for someone who does something over and over and over again, even a simple task, and becomes a master at it. Do you remember what that term was, Jamie?

Remember that? This is one guy in the film. At first I was very skeptical. I'm like, I'm not watching a fucking movie about a dude who makes sushi. Cuts the fish, she puts it on the rice. But then when you see what really goes into it. It's a Shokunin, I'm not watching a fucking movie about a dude who makes sushi. Yeah. Cuts the fish, he puts it on the rice. But then when you see what really goes into it.

It's a Shokunin, I think. How do you say it? Shokunin. Shokunin. Yeah. S-H-O-K-U-N-I-N. And that is, what is the definition of that?

What is it? What do they call it? What is the actual... Tradesman. Well, that's what... No. It was like someone who practices

something methodically, meticulously forever until they get it. And this guy was just making an egg dish. This really simple, fluffy egg dish. You know how you get sushi sometimes and it has that little piece of egg on it?

I don't eat sushi. You don't eat sushi? You don't eat pussy either? Shut this this fucking camera off this guy's an asshole the pussy one i'll deal with the sushi i'm not dealing with um the um anyway this guy was like almost in tears because he finally reached this state where the guy was like yeah this is the way to make the egg dish. Mastery of one's profession. Shokunin. Oh, Shokunin.

A lot of different things I'm seeing for definitions. Oh, okay. Shokunin. Mastery of one's profession. And that this is this thing that this guy had been studying the art of making sushi, like the properly aging of the fish, which I didn't even know.

I thought the fish was fresh. I thought that was the move. Yeah, really. If it's aging? No, they want to. They age it in refrigerators for long periods of time. I would have never guessed that they did that with fish. They do that, obviously, with meat.

Everybody knows about dry, aged meat. You're literally letting the bacteria break down the meat over long periods of time. But what's interesting is you would never guess that there are so many different angles to doing something as simple as making that dish. Right. But there's so much that goes into it. And if you care enough to look at all the nuances of it and to really get into the specifics of it, then you can create something that has meaning to you and really can develop

you as a person. Yeah. Yeah. There's something in that where you're exploring your own potential for getting good at things. Right. That's what you're doing. You're exploring, like, what's keeping this guy from making this perfect egg dish, and how does he nail it? Is it a timing issue?

Is it a, I mean, is he getting the ingredients correct? I don't know what ingredients are in this egg dish, but I don't know why I'm even using that. But for anything, there's some exploration of these ideas what is this kaizen that's the word you're thinking oh that's the word continuous improvement a long-term approach to work that systematically seeks to achieve small incremental changes in processes in order to improve efficiency and quality. Kaizen. But I think it was Shokunin.

Yeah, the Shokunin definition said, like, the definition of tradesman isn't good enough, but there's more deeper meaning when you get into, like, the Japanese culture aspect. Okay. So either one of those folks. Yeah, both of them together probably. Yeah. I actually think that this topic that we're talking about right now,

this is one of the main reasons why Jordan Peterson got very popular. It's because Jordan Peterson, he talks a lot about stuff that other people take for granted about self-improvement and getting your own shit together. And so that was like a market that was waiting to be served for so long,

where people wanted to have a little bit of direction and structure and framework as to how do I go about doing that? And then this guy comes along and he's very well spoken and he can kind of break that down for people yeah yeah and also he he exemplifies a lot of those traits we were just discussing like he was talking about his first book and um one of the things that he said is that it took him 15 years to write the book. The 12 Rules book? No, the first book. Oh, the first book. The first book was on the Cold War.

And he was talking about how he went over every sentence to see if it can be improved or criticized. Do you do that with your podcast? Do you listen back or no? Because they're wrong. Sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes. Especially if I fucked up.

If I fucked up, I'll listen. Or if I said something I know that could be a bit. I said something ridiculous. Oh, right. Well, I'll have to go back and sort of mine it. Get a nug if I fucked up. If I fucked up, I'll listen. Or if I said something I know that could be a bit, said something ridiculous, I'll have to go back and sort of mine it. Yeah, I'll do that. Or, you know, if some people say something that's really intense, like the David Goggins podcast, I plan on listening to that one again because it was so inspirational.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I turned it on. This guy's talking about how he ran 374,000 miles. And meanwhile, I'm like, great, I'll be on Joe's show next week talking about chronic masturbation. Well, he's intense. Intense, it's not a good enough word. It's like we need a Shokunin word for intensity. Yeah, he's – but also, you could get a lot out of that.

There's something about inspiration in that form, like the exemplified form. There's a term that the Koreans use for a taekwondo instructor. It's a sabonim, and it means one who leads by example. And there's something about a guy like that that really does practice what he preaches and is so motivational just by his own actions. But when you hear him talk about it and you know he's actually done it, like you just want to like, why am I sitting down? I got to go.

I think you said that after the podcast, right? You were like, I'm in the gym, fuck this. You just want to go do something. There's something about guys like him that are very, very valuable to us. And I think people get real cynical about the idea of inspiration. Because there's so many ridiculous, like, not to single out girls, because there's guys who do it too. But there's some funny shit about girls who just stick their butt out on Instagram. And they have all these, like, motivational quotes.

Well, you know, Corin and I were talking about it before. It's amazing how many Kim Kardashian clones exist now. I mean, and even in her own family, I don't know all the names of them, but one of the younger ones, it's like she went to the plastic surgeon and she was like, I want to look like Kim. Yeah. And they just give her the same face. Yeah.

Yeah. What the fuck is up with that? And the butt thing is the most disgusting thing, where they're taking fat and stuffing it into their ass and they develop this diaper butt. I mean, there's a lot of people out there with diaper butt. I met a girl the other day that had diaper butt. She was at the comedy store, and I couldn't look away. I was like, what is happening to her butt?

Because I knew it wasn't real. I knew she had these spindly legs. Yeah, the skinny legs. Well, if a girl has a big, like, hips and a, right. Remember R. Crumb Comics? Do you remember R. Crumb Comics? You know who R. Crumb is? R. Crumb, there was a right remember our crumb comics do you remember our crumb comics you know our comments our crumb there was a great documentary called crumb and it's about this guy who's just like really eccentric perverted cartoonist from the 1970s and he would always

draw these women with these enormous legs an enormous butt but they weren't fat they were just it was voluptuous they well no it was you gotta it's past voluptuous into like super athlete dna like if you could get that girl make some male babies with it you would have a fucking ultimate warrior like that see that woman like they are perfect yeah how to have fun with a strong girl and you see our crumb that's actually him ronnie coleman legs yeah that's actually him with his boner because he was this really frail dorky guy and he's got this image of this woman who just looks like a tank she has these giant muscle legs and and big boobs but not like ridiculous stripper boobs but more like just super alpha dna female boobs yeah he was a freaky guy like look at him he's got sock i mean that's that's who he was like who the one above that

jamie the one to the right yeah right there like oh my goodness this is what he used to draw he was always drawing this enormous powerful women this guy was definitely into getting dominated by oh yeah he would just shove his whole head in their pussy or something. Sure. Like, look at him riding one. I guess he's supposed to be having sex with her. Yeah. And this guy definitely nutted in like two seconds. Yeah. Oh, man. Look, he's choking them in these cartoons.

Like, he's always choking them. Like, you literally couldn't have an R. Crumb today. That looks like... He looks kind of like Woody Allen, too. Oh, yeah. Well, see if you can find a video of him. R. Crumb, the documentary is fascinating. I think he wound up moving to France

or something like that. I think he wound up leaving America. But there's actually, if you go to video, you'll find there's video of him. But that was the guy he's a really fascinating guy that's not him it looks just like him on the right not on the right oh that's not definitely not the right okay maybe it's him on the left is that him um oh there it is oh yeah

he just looks odd it was because he's holding up that picture. Yeah. Maybe it's also because I'm looking at him now as an older man. Yeah. A lot of the video that I'd seen was him. It bothers me to look at him and think, like, that guy has a strong sex drive. Like, oh, that's, yeah, you can see that. He might not. He might just save it up for every couple weeks. And draw one of those cartoons and beat off to it.

Or find a gal. Yeah. Suitable. Exactly. Pay somebody to sit on his face. Strange, strange character though. It doesn't matter, Jamie. It's okay. What's that? I was gonna say, he did Fritz the Cat too. Yeah. Yeah, he did Fritz the Cat. He did a lot of

pretty famous animated or cartoon comic book type things. But they were all like cartoonish features. Everybody was weird yeah and you think kim has now made that that that's the no but that's different see this is like a real like that those women's asses that are crumb drew i'm not justifying his stuff but they were freak dna specimens like those women had giant thighs and giant asses, and that's who they were. Whereas with Kim, she's got those spindly, not, yeah, like, her butt is this, they just,

it's a surgical creation. Like, there's pictures of her that are online that make it look good, but they're all photoshopped. And we found out about that because she got paparazzi'd when she was in Mexico. They caught her on the beach. Yeah, I think that was the one that they were showing right there. No, no, it's way grosser than that. Way grosser. They caught her wandering around the beach and they took photos of her, like real paparazzi photos. She would have fake paparazzi photos where she would hire paparazzi to take photos of her and then she would Photoshop

them up. And they made it look like everything was in place, but it's not. Yeah. It's a disaster. This is what it really looks like. Yeah. Yeah, so... What's that? Okay, so if the legs match the ass, I'd be totally fine with that. Yeah, but even that ass is a distortion. There's so much going on there because you're not supposed to have that much fat in one place.

A girl who has an ass like that has legs to match it. That's what I'm saying. If the legs match the ass, I'd like it. The legs throw it off. Little twig legs and then you got the obnoxiously large ass. It's a bad message. It's like those guys that shoot synthol into their muscles

to get fake muscles. It's the same thing. That's not a real ass. Just like those synthol muscles are not real muscles. It's the same thing. Like, you're not, that's not a real ass. I know, yeah. Just like those synthol muscles are not real muscles. They're so obviously fake. So is that butt.

Yeah, because of the legs, though. But if the legs matched it, I'd be like, that's nice. Yeah, but it wouldn't match it. It's just not possible. I've seen some where it matches.

Yeah, but not like that. Just, the whole thing is a disaster. It's just, have you ever watched the show? Yeah, there's a synthol guy Look at that poor guy

Look at his face He's like, I'm nailing this shit Yeah, look at his neck I got this shit on lock Oh my god, look at this guy He looks like he's got tits He does I mean, these guys wind up getting horrible infections too

Sometimes they get gangrene and shit They say that there's an actual thing Oh my god They say how there's an actual thing called bigorexia Like They say how there's an actual thing called bigorexia. Like there's anorexia and there's bigorexia. Body dysmorphia exists with, I mean, there's people that have body dysmorphia in terms of their facial features. They just can't stop tweaking their nose. Did you hear about, I read an article about how somebody was like, I know I'm supposed to have a hand here, but it feels so fucking foreign that, and there's been

multiple recorded cases of this, where they will shove their fucking hand in dry ice so that they can get it amputated. So that afterwards they can say, look, I'm free. I finally feel normal. It's like you just, and they say that to them it feels like, if I had a fucking third hand just growing out of here, I'd feel like that shit doesn't belong.

There are some people where they feel like their hand doesn't fucking belong. Yeah. And what that shows is, like, the variation in human psychology is so fucking broad that it's scary, because when you really digest that that exists, you also can understand how, well, there's monsters out there, too, who want to fucking massacre people, and they dream about that shit, and that's how they get their rocks off. Yeah, the human mind varies so much there's so many different paths that thoughts can go down and

there's so many different weird pathologies that that the mind is capable of but the idea that you would think that you're supposed to be handicapped and you're not handicapped so you want to chop off a foot or something like that it's really really, I mean, it's not common. I shouldn't say it's common, but it's definitely documented. So let me ask you, what's your take on if somebody's transgender and they want the surgery, and let's say they're either in the military or they're in prison or something like that, is that something that you think should be provided for them or no? It's a good question.

I haven't really thought about it too much. I don't think so. I don't think that that's an elective surgery. And people would say, no, it's not elective surgery. But you think that other people should pay for that? Boy, I don't know. I don't know what it is. I don't have it.

Okay? So if I was going to say, I know why people are transgender. They're transgender because of body dysmorphia. They're transgender because of gender dysmorphia. They're transgender because of this, because of that, because of abuse, because of, you know, they're easily easily susceptible to suggestion I would just be talking out of my ass I don't really know I would imagine though there is a broad spectrum of reasons why someone becomes transgender some of them being that they literally have the wrong programming in their brain some of them being that they I mean they could have

thought that they were fucking wood elf I mean or that they that's the furry shit is the weird shit oh that's weird but the furry shit too is like I've talked to some furries because we were kind of other kin I'm sorry I'm thinking of other kin that's the shit I'm thinking of the other kin shit is nuts but there's also people that identify with being a six-year-old girl I mean there's been documented cases where people identify as being much younger than they are and they think they should be able to have sex with young kids. So I feel like, so on the transgender one, I feel like for a very long time, I don't think I understood

it at all. And then I think I finally got it when it was explained to me, like, okay, imagine that you as a straight, you know, cisgender male, Don't use that term. Whatever it is.

Don't give it power. Don't do it. Okay, as a white male, let's say I walk outside and I'm forced every time I go outside to wear a fucking wig and lipstick and high heels and a fucking dress. Right. And I'd be mortified because this is not who the fuck I am and why am I wearing this shit. Right.

So if you think, the first point you made, which is, hey, maybe they were just born with the wrong programming, that they're born biologically male, but they really feel like they're a woman or vice versa. So if that's the case and it's basically like torture for them to not be the other thing, well, then I kind of understand that. And I'm in favor of them being able to get that surgery. Where they lose me, not transgender people, but where i get lost in this whole conversation is uh like the gender fluidity one like i was a male now i'm a woman and now i'm a man again and then i'm a woman again and then i'm a man again maybe you're just a fucking idiot yeah that's the thing is like at a certain point there are things that are real and there are things that are not real

and i feel like it it delegitimizes the ones that are real yeah when you go too goofy and too far and you try to pretend like gender fluidity is a thing. Well, isn't it what we were talking about earlier when we were talking about left-wing people versus right-wing people that in the term left-wing people, anybody can join. And you're going to get people like the green-haired people that were disrupting Heather Hying's speech because she was saying there's a difference between men and women. You're going to get those nutty fuckers. And then you're going to get people that are just reasonable people that happen to be progressive. You're going to get that with gender fluidity.

You're going to get that with people that are transgender. You're going to get that with people that are you know, you're just going to get a wide variety. It's very difficult to nail things down and decide. But for like, for everybody who looks at that and then gets turned

off to that and says you know what I'm aligned more with the right wing because of that culture stuff like I get that feeling over the culture issues but again the point that I would make to them is just don't forget that when I talk about politics and when I talk about where I fall in the political spectrum to me I break it down toward on policy and where I fall on the policy issues and what we should implement in order to fix the country. And on those issues, like we were talking about earlier, pretty reliably left wing. And the polls show that the American people actually lean in that direction.

So if you focus on those issues, the economic issues, the substantive issues that change people's lives, then, you know, I think that one can look at the culture issues as almost like a diversion because it really is a gateway to other ideas that I think are terrible. So I think the idea of people on the left calling out that goofiness is a good thing so that you can redirect them and be like, well, this is what I actually stand stand for this is what people who are on the left and want to improve people's lives really? Want to fight for yeah, well I? Was talking to Douglas Murray about this yesterday, and there's just this thing where everyone was forced to say that Caitlyn Jenner is beautiful Like you know except that she was a woman you were forced to say that she was beautiful and that she's a hero

And that's where you get the gateway to the right because people go if you're gonna Like you couldn't just accept that she was a woman. You were forced to say that she was beautiful and that she's a hero. And that's where you get the gateway to the right. Because people go, if that's what you're going to tell me represents the left, then go fuck yourself. Because you're just not being, you're not telling the truth. Yeah. So, and it's, I don't, I hate the thing where it's like we have to care more about feelings than what's accurate. Right. So I don't know why. There needs to be a giant wave on the left of the take no bullshit approach to stuff.

Well, I think when it comes to the transgender thing, too, you need to be open to all avenues of this discussion. And one thing that I think we need to be open to, we need to think very carefully about why it is that someone needs surgery to be themselves why it is that someone needs exogenous hormones that aren't native to their biology to be themselves like someone who wants to take estrogen is born a male someone if you feel that you're a woman or you feel that you're in the wrong body, does it make sense that nature wants you to get surgery? Does it make sense that nature wants you to take hormones that don't exist in your body?

I mean, this is a rational area of contention and discussion. This is something that people should talk about. Like, when you say, if someone is forced to wear lipstick and high heels and makeup and walking down the street but that's not who you are, wouldn't that frustrate you? Yes, it would. But it doesn't necessarily conversely work where you are walking

down the street without lipstick and high heels and makeup and you're saying, that's what I'm supposed to have. Well, no, because that's not real. Like, lipstick is something you choose to apply. Like lipstick is something you choose to apply. High heels are something you choose to wear. No one's forcing you to not have those things on. So you're saying that those things are what you really are. Well, no, you're adding those things to you.

What you really are is you. No makeup, naked, wake up in the morning, take off your clothes. That's who the fuck you really are. If you say that you should have the right to wear makeup and the right to wear lip, of course, you should have the right to get your face tattooed like a Maori. You should have the right to do whatever the fuck you want, but that that's who you really are, that that's somehow your true self. There might be an underlying psychological issue there that's relevant and to discuss that puts you in this category of being transphobic or insensitive or or right wing i don't think that's accurate or fair

because i think this is a real weird issue it's very weird and i think the only people that truly understand it are the people that are going through it themselves the people that actually have it and you know we can call upon those people to explain it to us, but you get a broad spectrum of answers from those people as well. What if, so what if it is kind of like depression in a way? So if you give chemical assistance to somebody who's going through depression, everybody goes, right, good, because you want that person to feel like they're happy and normal. I don't necessarily even think that that's good. I think exhaust all other possibilities first, including exercise and diet.

Sure, sure. But there are examples of people who do have that genuine chemical imbalance. They do, but why do they have that genuine chemical imbalance? Johan Hari on the podcast. I saw that. I saw that, yeah. And he makes a lot of really good points about what is it that's happening in your life? I saw that, yeah.

And he makes a lot of really good points about, like, what is it that's happening in your life? Sure. Is it your situation with your relationship, your career, your life, your health? All these different things need to be taken into consideration instead of just putting some duct tape over it. In the term of these SSRIs and all these different psych medications that they're handing out just as easy as they're handing out Oxycontins. They're passing these fucking things around. And they radically affect your consciousness. So let's say everybody has all their ducks in a row. Okay.

And they're exercising, they're eating healthy, they're doing everything by the book. And if you look at it on paper, you're supposed to go, yes, that person should be healthy. And what's, what the fuck's her name? Oh, Cara Santa Maria, who you've had on the podcast before. And she talks about how, listen, I was depressed and they tried a whole bunch of different antidepressants. They finally got me on one that worked. And then she says, like, listen, I want people to understand you need to look at this like treatment. Look at it like, you know, hey, I've got a fucking disease, and they've got to give me antibiotics in order to feel better.

The problem with that is there's real scientists and doctors that disagree with that. And I don't know if she exhausted every other possibility. And Cara, she worships at the throne of science. And she thinks that this is the way to handle it. And she might be right. It also might be possible that if she had rigorous exercise on a daily basis, cleaned up her diet, and did a bunch of other things, that maybe that would be just as effective, if not more. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what she's done. But I think that automatically assuming that this blanket statement called depression, which could be, what does that even mean? You're not happy with your station in life. What does that mean? You're not happy with your body or what other people have. We don't know. But what we do know is the human body reacts in very different ways when it's well-fed with nutrients and when you exercise on a daily basis, you flood your body with the

natural endorphins that come from that exercise. When you surround yourself with a loving community, when you engage in things that are rewarding to you, all these things have a very positive effect on the way your mind works as well as the way your body feels. The way your body feels has a positive result on the way your mind works. To think of either one as being independent of each other, I think, is ignorant. It's the same thing. Sure.

It's all the same. And there's radical – look, I'm not a depressed person, but I feel way better after I exercise. Oh, of course. I mean, when I – There's science on that that says when you exercise, when you eat right, of course you're going to get a... Definitely get a boost in your mood.

But it's hard to do. And that's why people like to take a pill. That's totally true. And they also like to justify their actions. When people take a pill and that pill's effective, they go, well, this is my thing. This is what did it for me. It worked for me. They're like, okay, but at what cost?

Can you orgasm anymore? Like there's a lot of shit that happens to people that when they take those fucking things, they really fuck them up. Sure. So if you're making the point that they're overprescribed and people rely on them too much and it's part of the culture in a negative way, totally agree with you. Yes. If we look at the example of, say, paranoid schizophrenia, where it's somebody who literally

sees shit that's not there and it's a genuine psychological disorder where they need a very powerful drug like Seroquel or something like that. So in the case of transgenderism, what if it's more analogous to a mental state that's as real as that? You know what I mean? Right, but is the solution surgery? Sexual reassignment surgery? And how do we even know?

I don't know, but then this gets back to the point you made about the personal freedom angle of it where they say you know what i'm gonna do this and this is what i want to do i definitely think they should have personal freedom to do it just like they think they should have personal freedom to get their fucking nose pierced and do whatever you want to do yeah but should you have to pay for it well that's then that gets into the broader conversation about who should pay for medical coverage period right but is this is this an elective thing like how about girls that identify with a girl who has big tits I? Identify a little have big tits, and I have little tits, and so you're saying the line is fucking blurry

Well, it's it's certainly blurry. I guess the same thing It's the same thing in terms of you don't like your physical state and you want someone to change it And if you say you would be happy if you had d cups But you have a cups and you're convinced this is the key to your happiness, how is that any different than a person, and you could get mad at me all you want, but we're talking about the physical state. Sure. The physical state of someone.

Like how can you say that the only way to fix this, or how could you not offer that up as a possible avenue that these people can pursue it? Or how could you not offer that up as a possible avenue that these people can pursue it? If there's any surgery that can help you and you want other people to pay for that surgery, I don't care. Just because it pertains to gender doesn't mean we have to automatically acquiesce. I don't think that's rational. And when it comes to breasts or other various elective surgeries, I strongly feel that people should pay for those themselves.

Sure. Well, absolutely, when it comes to the example you give about breasts, totally agree 100%. Well, why is that different than sex change? I'm not saying it is. I'm not saying it is either. I'm just saying if that is the case where, and by the way, I haven't read the science on this, but I'm sure there has been science on this, and they've answered the question as to whether or not doing that surgery is effective. Well, it's not. Here's the problem.

There's a massive, massive suicide rate. It's over 40%. So. Even post-operation. I was going to say, am I wrong in my assumption that pre-operation, that's when more of the suicides are versus post-op? I don't think it changes. Okay. I'm pretty sure.

See if, let's be accurate about this. Suicide rates pre-, post-, transgender, sexual reassignment operations. I am pretty sure that it's very similar, that it doesn't change. And then there's also causation versus correlation, right? Is it because they were depressed because they were in the wrong body that led them down this road, and now here they are, and they just can't get past it. Even after they have the surgery, they're still bummed out. They're not accepted by society. As a woman, even if they become a trans woman, they're still not accepted by society.

And could that be changed by us being more open-minded and loving and caring and accepting? Right. Is it nature? Is it nurture? Is it the environment? Is it innate in the person? I don't know. I don't know what it is.

But if it is a legitimate mental health disorder, which it used to be called, it used to be called gender dysphoria. And now if you use the term gender dysphoria, it's hate speech. In terms of us talking about this might get this podcast demonetized. I'm sure it will be. Probably will. If it is gender dysphoria, then wouldn't it actually be a medical condition where the treatment should be paid for? It's a good question. Is that the correct treatment for gender dysphoria? Is that the correct treatment for someone who thinks that they should have no hand? Should you chop that hand off? What do you think? I don't know. Should you chop a penis off? I don't know. That's what Caitlyn Jenner did. Did she get it? Yeah, she did eventually. But the most hilarious statement after she did that, she said that she is no more of a woman now than she was before well then hey definitely

keep your dick yeah that's a good point if you were still a woman before and pretty much everybody accepted you as a woman which is why i did this really radical thing like no well you did admit that you did that for a reason that you really wanted to do it and now it's different i mean i don't know maybe street cred let her to have the operation to just fully get, I mean, she's fully accepted by that community and become a spokesperson by the community. But you know what, it's funny because she's she's super right wing on other issues. Remember when she went on this

She was like, I'm very traditional Yeah, you're traditional, I'm sure Yeah, I'm very traditional So a lot of people in the trans community were like, you know what, fuck her, because she was out there arguing, I forget, it was gay marriage was one of them. But then there was another one where she was talking about economics, and she was, you know, like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

It's like, you fucking privileged prick. How much money do you have for just sitting around all day and getting paid from the Kardashians? She's a male Kardashian. She always was. That's what she always was. She's on that fucking frivolous, ridiculous show, and she became a really bizarre side note in pop culture. And that's what's going on.

I mean, when you listen to her talk, she's like one of the worst spokespeople ever for the trans community. And a lot of trans people say that. They're like, we don't want her as, because they're, you know, if you, trans people are individuals. Yes. So you have to look at people like they're individuals. And when they, when somebody's put out as this is a leader of this movement, then it's like, well, that makes it... There's way better examples.

The woman who created Sirius Satellite Radio. She also created a satellite navigation system. She used to be a man. In fact, very, very brilliant person. I interviewed her for Sci-Fi

for that Joe Rogan Questions Everything show. Right. She created a model of her wife who, they actually had babies together and then she became a woman.

Wow. Yeah, and they stayed together. And she created a robot of her wife, and she's constantly programming it and changing it and adding new language and new vocabulary to it. And she thinks eventually, as technology improves, she's going to be able to recreate her wife in a robot form. By the way, another great example, Brianna Westbrook is... Hold on, what does this say? The uncomfortable truth that many surveys, including the 2011 Swedish study,

indicate that suicide rates remain high after sex reassignment surgery. The Swedish study reports that people who have had sex reassignment surgery are 19 times more likely to die by suicide than is the general population. To be fair, to be fair, I see the sources LifeSite News, which is a very, very right wing. That's true, but the National Center for Transgender Equality reported in 2014 that 40% of the people identify as transgender have attempted suicide. Very well may be true, I'm just saying that's the National Center for Transgender Equality. They were just breaking up this article here, which is the study.

Oh, PLOS1 is legit. Okay. Yeah. That's true. That's legit. So, but they're reporting facts from studies. And, I mean, this is pretty well established that there's a high suicide rate amongst transgender people pre- and post-reassignment surgery. Okay.

For sure. But then we go back to the same thing. It doesn't necessarily mean that they couldn't be happy if they weren't just fully accepted by society. I mean, I don't know. I think Caitlyn Jenner's probably happier because she gets a shitload of attention now. She was in the shadow of, oh, I'm over here. Guys, I'm over here. By the way, now she's front and center of fucking Vogue magazine.

Yeah, a lot of attention. Speaking of people who would be a better example and and a better you know face of the transgender movement uh brianna westbrook is a candidate who's running for office and there's actually a special election today and she's running for congress and she's really inspirational uh i i know about her because i founded justice democrats which was a group that it was going to primary corporate democrats and run candidates who take no corporate PAC money. And she's one of the candidates. And what you find is the people who are really respectful are the people who, like, she happens to be transgender, but she's not putting that front and center. Right.

You know what I'm saying? She's a person. She's a person, exactly. And she's going, here are the things I believe in, and I think this will improve everybody's lives, and I'm going to run on these issues. And it's not like, hey, I'm transgender, and if you don't vote for me, then you're a bigot. Right, right, right. That's a very good point.

And I think open-mindedness is incredibly critical in our wide, diverse society. And when people push back against that, it creates all sorts of giant problems. And I just think it doesn't matter. You should be able to do whatever you want to do. And if it doesn't affect you, why do you care? I think we should be really, really, really careful about what we do to children, though. Yeah, I saw your conversation on that recently, and I think you made a bunch of good points. Like, when is it okay to say, you know what, okay, if you want to do the surgery now, you can do the surgery?

Well, there's a, going back to Heather Hying and Eric Weinstein, Well, going back to Heather Hying and Eric Weinstein, there was an article that I believe Eric – not Eric, I'm sorry, Brett. Brett Weinstein put up on his Twitter yesterday, or maybe it was Heather, but they were discussing this real problem with kids who are really young, problem with kids who are really young where it becomes a trendy thing to think that they're in the wrong gender and then they get reinforcement from their very progressive friends who also get excited about this idea and then to intervene surgically or chemically when your body's still in development you're 13 or whatever the fuck you are you don't know what you are yet and you should be able to give yourself a chance to grow and develop. But there's a lot of people that disagree, including people that are already transgender,

that in my mind they're probably more supportive of it because they want more people to do it. Like Stephen Crowder had this weird thing where he and Jared, that guy that he does his show with, went to this meeting and they were talking about this undercover film thing where they're talking about their six year old like is that too young to transition them and they're like no matter of fact studies show that it's a good

time to do it and that you could transition back if he changes his mind and he was like what the fuck are you talking about no you can't you're using hormone blockers in a kid you're going to radically affect the way that kid develops as a grown adult I don't know what line is the proper line.

Adulthood. Is it 16? Is it 18? Is it 21? I think it's probably 25. I think it's fully developed frontal cortex. The only problem I have with that is I hate the fact that we have all of these different lines in society. You have to be this age to drink. You have to be this age to get tobacco.

You have to be this age for porn. Well, I think a lot of those lines are incorrect, and I think science will show you that the frontal lobe is not fully developed until you're 25 years old. So, but should you also not be able to vote until you're 25 years old? Really?

Yes. Yeah, I think so. I don't think I agree with that. Why? Because I think... Those green-haired fuckers that were in Heather Hying's speech, they were all, like, 19 and goofy,

and they're going to look back at that video someday and go, what the fuck was wrong with me? Yeah, listen, there's a lot of idiots, of course. They're all like 19 and goofy. They're going to look back at that video someday and go, what the fuck was wrong with me? When they're Republican, they're growing their own vegetables and they have to work for a living. But that's the thing, is that those people are assholes too and also not that smart. Some of them. Some of them, of course. Some of them are just young. You know, in my mind

I think we should just draw a clean line at 16 for everything. Oh god, no. You can fight for your country. You can't, no. What do you want to have? Kylie Jenner as a fucking president? Because I don't. There's a lot of them. I don't want to baby kids. I want to make it so. I don't want to baby them either, but I don't think like really radical choices should be up to them when their

brain's not fully developed. But at the same time. When you're 16, you're so, you're so young. You don't think about it because you're 30. When did you first drink? When did you first drink? Uh, it was definitely before I was 21. At a party. I was in was 21. I had a party. I was in high school. I don't know.

Somewhere around then. Somewhere in your teens? Yeah. So then should you be locked up for that? No, not locked up, but it shouldn't be legal. I shouldn't be able to go into a liquor store and just buy a pint of Jack Daniels. But in Europe, I don't think they have any age laws in Europe for alcohol and stuff, right? Am I wrong about that?

I think there is. I think it's fairly young. Maybe wine and things along like that. I think, first of all, having things that are forbidden definitely accentuates the desire to have them. We know that. Telling a kid that cigarettes are bad, you can't have cigarettes, they want to smoke cigarettes. They want to be rebels. They want to drink.

They want to do things that the adults do. And what age for sexual consent? I mean, we obviously can't do 25 for that. Right, right. So you have to draw a reasonable line where you say, okay, enough people have developed to the point where they're physically mature. But there's a big difference between sex, which I don't think is a bad thing. I think, I don't think it's a disastrous thing. So you don't mind the different lines? Well, I think people should be allowed to have sex with each other when they like it. Like, I think kids should be able to give each other the massage.

A 17-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl should be able to make out, and they should be able to fuck if they want to. I think it's our job to responsibly educate them about birth control and about consent. And also, you know, there's different styles of parenting. You know, some people grow up in horrible households where the the dad's misogynist there's no mom and you know this kid's gonna have a fucked up idea what women are same could be said about women or girls who grow up with a hateful mother who hates men I mean you have a lot of weird shit you have to get over as you become an adult as you move

out of the nest and you become your own person establish your own ideas based on your life experiences and education, what you've learned from all the other people that you've interacted with. I mean, it's not a hard, fast rule. But I think there's a big difference between that and voting on what happens with our future, what happens with war, what happens with – there's so many things that a 16-year-old kid is just not ready for. So, but, like, again, I think my counterargument to that is, but there are a lot of fucking 68-year-old idiots out there, too. It's true. And we don't try to delegitimize their vote because... I think we should.

But any time you have a system where you say, ah, well, you're an idiot, so you can't vote, it's always inevitably just flipped back to be used against the poor in society. So how do you fix that? So, well, look, I mean, there's a great quote from Winston Churchill. I think he said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all others. Yeah, that's a great quote. Yeah, exactly.

And that's like, so that's kind of what we're talking about here. And in terms of drawing the line, I don't know. I just feel like there's something right about drawing one line and saying everything over this. But I do hear you. Like, it is true that sex is a very different thing from voting. Yes. I don't think we should regulate sex except for adults having sex with minors.

I agree, 100%. When I was 17, my girlfriend was 16, and I remember I turned 18 and she turned 17. And there was a year you were a criminal. Yeah, someone told me that if we kept having sex that I would go to jail. I was like, what the fuck? Are you serious?

This is madness. Yes. I mean, we've been banging it out for 11 months now. If we stop now... It makes no sense. Yeah, I was really nervous. I was like, what if I go to jail? I don't think that works that way. I don't think they put you in jail for that. I remember how bad I felt

when I was in high school and I was smoking weed and I thought, if I get fucking caught doing this shit... I'm gonna go to jail forever! But then you think about it and it's like, hold the fuck on. Bill Clinton, I smoked, and I thought, like, if I get fucking caught doing this shit... I'm gonna go to jail forever! But then you think about it, and it's like, hold the fuck on. Right. Bill Clinton, I smoke, but I didn't in hell, and Barack Obama was part of the fucking Chum Gang or some shit, where he would... What?

He was part of this thing called the Chum Gang, where he would... Yeah, look it up, Jimmy. He would smoke weed. There's a picture of him smoking weed on the internet. He's when he's young... I think it's a cigarette. You sure? I'm pretty sure.

Okay, because he did smoke weed a lot, and he'm pretty sure okay because he did smoke weed a lot he admits it and then you know i think that there were charges of bush used cocaine and then obama said he did a little bit of cocaine and shit like that so what drives me fucking crazy is that you have these guys who did all these things they know damn well that what they did at the time was just experimentation there was nothing morally wrong about it and now we have a system where we lock up fucking thousands of people millions of people over the same shit meanwhile they became president when they did that you're ruining lives i mean the eight years that he was in the office how many people were locked up for marijuana exactly exactly yeah not just not just for selling but for recreational use in certain states

there were people who got who have life sentences as a result of non-violent drug offenses yeah now to obama's credit towards the end of his time in office, he started doing pardons and commutations of those sentences. But the thing that drives me crazy, again, to get back to one of my main points here, is I hate the fucking incrementalism and gradualism moving towards the thing that we all know is the right answer. We all know the right answer is to legalize it and fucking let every single non-violent drug offender out of prison and fucking apologize to them. Not only that, the hypocritical nature of having all this coincide with the pharmaceutical industry selling opioids that are killing people at a radical rate while they take contributions

from us it's fucking crazy i mean they're literally a part of a drug dealing enterprise i remember my my grandma on my dad's side i remember she passed away a while ago, but I would go to her place and look at her fucking medicine thing. There were 70 different kinds of pills. I was like, holy fuck, she's getting zonked out of her mind on a regular basis. Like, that's the whole point of it. And I'm not even begrudging an older person who's like, fuck it, I'm checking out. Just give me all the pills you want. But my point is, if you're gonna if that's going to be the mentality for them, why the fuck would you lock up poor people for smoking weed or doing cocaine or whatever the case is?

Yeah, I don't think anybody could rationally argue that. I mean, it just seems, at this stage of the game, especially when it comes to things that are non-toxic or non-fatal, things like marijuana or kratom, there's no argument against it. It doesn't make any sense. Especially when you could go right down the street.

You could go to the CVS and buy enough liquor to kill yourself instantly. Exactly. Easily. Easily. Right here. That table right over there will kill you. Yeah. If you drink all that, for sure.

Yeah. There's a table over there with a big bottle of Gentleman's Jack. There's a couple of bottles of whiskey. There's some whiskey from some place in Bakersfield and a big jug of wine. Dead. Drink all that shit, dead, 100% So, sorry to change topics so abruptly But I'm from New York, the bagels here Are fucking terrible

Yeah, is that the water? I don't know I was like, this isn't a bagel, this is like a fucking Piece of stale bread Yeah, I think it's the water, I think it's the moisture in the air too I wonder if the bagels are better in Seattle Is it moisture up there? Right? It's wet. And then I'm going to try the pizza. I'm going to try the pizza, I think, today here.

Don't do it. I'm going to do it just because I got to compare, man. I got to compare. But for my whole life I heard, like, New York pizza's the best. Where do you live now? Do you live in the city? No, I live just outside of the city. I live in Westchester County still, but not in New Rochelle anymore. Yeah, it's better pizza for sure. Do you used to go to Nicky's Pizza

on the way down the street from White Plains Billiards? I think I've only been there once, but there's one next to that called Mario's. Have you ever been there? I don't think so, no. Executive Billiards, if you walked out of Executive and take a right in White Plains, Nicky's was on the right-hand side, but I heard Nicky's burnt down. Okay. Nicky's had

I only never had white pizza before until I went to Nicky's and I had white pizza I'm like holy shit this is one of the greatest things humans have ever created. When you were there, was there the strip of bars developed yet on White Plains in White Plains or no? It's hard to remember. There was some bars there for sure

but all. There were old dive bars and shit. All we would do is go play pool. Yeah. Yeah. You know. There it is. Nicky's. Is it still there? It's still there. I think it's still there. What's those signs? What's that stickers on the door? Why is that shit on the door?

The right, to the right of that. It looks like there's like closed down. Yeah, look. It's got yellow tape. I mean, I think I was there like two years ago. So, I mean, it could have closed since then. I think that's... But Mario's Pizza in White Plains is the...

You have to try... Oh, it is open. So it is open now. Yeah. Also, they must have... Did it burn down and then they rebuilt it? Because that was yellow tape over the door, like police tape. It looks different now. Oh, yeah, they cleaned it up.

Fucking God damn it. If they have the same recipe, run, do not walk. Run to Nicky's and get some of that white pizza or any of their pizza. So speaking of your crazy stories about at Executive Billiards and all the crazy characters you met there, my friend Corin and I, when we were in high school, we would go play poker at these basically underground spots in New Rochelle. And they were either— Like Rounders, like the movie with Matt Damon? Kind of, but they weren't Russian. They were either like weird fake mafioso dudes or real mafioso dudes.

We couldn't tell the difference. We didn't know because they all talk like this, and they're like, hey, Jimmy, get me a fucking Diet Coke. All they would do is sit there and smoke cigarettes the whole time. And so we played cards there, and we had some friends who did well, and me and my friend probably lost money overall. But there was years later, I was watching, I turned on the TV, just happened to be a local news report, learned that one of the guys who was there got his fucking hand chopped off right in front of the place.

And I was like, well, we were in over our fucking heads now, weren't we? We were in high school. I know. Why'd they chop his hand off? For stealing? I'm sure they were real mafia guys and there was some sort of, you know. That's dark. Chopping a person's hand off is fucking rough.

What if they gave it to them? Here, go get this sewed back on, bitch. But what's funny is they were fucking, even though they're mafia guys, they were fucking, like, they were really nice to us. We're little high school kids. I knew a lot of mafia people who were gentlemen. The thing is, like, you just can't be in the wrong situation you can't owe the money you can't be in a situation where they can get money out of you where they can extort money from you you know yeah if you were running a business or anything where they offered you protection or

any of that kind of shit like you're fucked man and that's why gambling should be fucking legal because it's illegal push it underground now those guys run it and then people get their fucking hands chopped off right yeah well yeah in vegas they just what do they do kick your ass put you in jail then the vegas used to run the mob or the mob rather used to run vegas to run fucking everything yeah even half of fucking hollywood i'm sure was financed with mobster money well you know we've talked about that many times that cero's nightclub was owned by bugsy siegel that's the comedy store. There you go. Yeah. That used to be a total mob run joint. And to this day, I haven't,

I don't believe in ghosts, but I go to the belly room. I've gone to the belly room several times with my friends, like over the 20 years that I've been there, we go by ourselves when it's dark, just stand there. What do you think? You feel anything? I'm fucking scared. Hug me, hug me, hug me, run. I don't believe in ghosts at all, but I think energy is real. And I don't know whether we create it in our own minds where we look at something and we're like, I feel weird looking at. Because rooms give you a feel. You walk into a room, you get a feel off the room.

Well, people have been murdered there for sure. And that's the thought process about that place is that there's probably some leftover weird vibes. And I know a lot of people that have seen weird shit there, but I don't know if I believe them. They say they've seen weird shit. I know Tony Hinchcliffe. I saw the podcast where he was like, I saw a ghost. Maybe. Just so you know, Tony, I love you, but I was at home going, fuck off.

Fuck off, Tony. I've never seen a ghost there, but I felt weird. Like I said, I've gone into the main room when it's dark at night and I've gone by myself and I shit my pants. I gotta get out of here. But I definitely believe people were murdered there. There used to be a tunnel that would go from the back

of the comedy store all the way up to Crest Hill, which is a street above the comedy store that the comedy store used to own. I think they bought the two of them together. And it was like a tunnel where they'd take booze and dead people and shit and fucking scoot them up there and throw them in the back of a trunk. I don't know. It's a fun thing to talk about.

When you look at like all those TV shows that like haunted Hollywood, the comedy store is very high on the list. Have you ever seen like the paranormal fucking Ghost Hunters? They're so stupid. The goofiest shows ever. It's like dark in a hallway. They never find shit. I think I saw something over here.

That is the biggest cock tease of a show. I know. Oh, remember John Edward? The guy who did the crossing? Yes, the psychic guy. Yeah, and then he tried to do it with 9-11 victims. They were like, fuck you. Now you're canceled.

Yeah, that's right. He used to do it up until that time. But I don't, like, how the fuck do network executives approve shows where it's like the fucking Long Island Medium or some shit, and it's like they pretend to talk to the dead. How the fuck are you going to put that on daytime TV like it's not complete nutter horse shit? Well, that was one of the problems that happened when I was doing that sci-fi show, the Joe Rogan Questions Everything show. They wanted to make sure that I wasn't out to debunk

a lot of the shows that they would have on their network. And I go, look, I just want to find out what's going on. I go, some of it's probably real. I want it to be real. That was an eye-opening experience. Doing that show was very eye-opening because I realized what kind of people are really into these things. They're just whimsical, hopeful people that don't have much going on. They want it to be real that there's a 10-foot tall furry

man living in the forest or that aliens come down and suck people out of their beds and bring them through walls in the middle of the night and all that shit. Well, you really took it to the chemtrail people. Yeah, those poor fucks. Do they despise you now? Oh, they get mad. You're fucking your fucking show geoengineering is real, bro What does Alex Jones say to you cuz I know your friends with him What does he say to you about chemtrails to try convince you? No, he thinks that most of what you see

According to him, but see Alex he goes with the weather a little bit, too He thinks most of what you see is just condensation trails that happen when you have a jet engine and you have the cold air and condensation in the atmosphere and the that's what they are i mean you're there are artificial clouds that are created by a jet engine passing through the air that's what they are you can do it over and over again you could do it right now the idea that they're spraying something and that's something happens to have aluminum and barium in it but it also looks exactly like a cloud no that's moisture the reason why it looks like a cloud. No, that's moisture.

The reason why it looks like a cloud is because it's a fucking cloud. And one of the things that I said in the chemtrail thing, I go, you want to talk about real chemtrails? Here's the real chemtrail. They're burning gasoline in the sky above your head every day to the tune of thousands of flights. You're not concentrating on that. Instead, you're concentrating on the natural reaction of jet engines and moisture

in the air. It's so stupid. I don't get, because there's a thing that people do where it's almost like they're trying to find the worst possible fucking argument, and then that's the part of it that they get obsessed with. Exactly. And this goes back to the thing about Trump, where I told you on CNN, all they did for

an hour and a fucking half was talk about Russia. And it's like, I'm sitting there going, I just covered a story on my show last week about how the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a guy named Mick Mulvaney. He took over $50,000 from the predatory payday loan industry. Donald Trump at his inauguration took over a million dollars from the predatory payday loan industry. They just scrapped the rules that were supposed to clean up that industry. And now they're letting them charge

950% interest you want the fucking conspiracy there it is right there and you're not talking about it no no no Putin Russia he's a fucking Manchurian candidate and loud noises and he curses a lot and fucking Stormy Daniels I don't give a fuck about any of that talk about the shit that matters

I care about Stormy I do wonder what's going to happen with the indictments i do wonder so because people are pleading guilty now and you know the the concern is that it's going to trickle so here's the thing here's the thing is donald trump a corrupt businessman fuck yes anybody who says he's not has no fucking idea what this guy's been into. There's evidence he did deals with the mafia. He has a hotel in Panama, which was laundering drug money. So do I think he's a criminal? Yes. Do I think he did money laundering? Yes. Would it be good if Mueller somehow got him on these things? Of course it would be. But the idea that he's a Manchurian candidate or he did treason is so ridiculous that it makes me, a guy who's massively anti-Trump, scoff and get really angry when people try to push that narrative.

And here's the thing. It's an open legal question as to whether or not you can indict a sitting president. Usually what has to happen is you have to impeach a sitting president. Well, right now, Congress is overwhelmingly Republican. You know who's not going to fucking impeach donald trump even if they prove the worst case scenario the some sort of manchurian candidate the republicans are not gonna fucking impeach him so at the end of the day when the democrats focus on this ad nauseum the reason they're doing that is because

it's something that they feel comfortable in safe talking about because they don't have to talk about medicare for all or free college or a living wage or getting the corporate money out of politics or ending the fucking wars, which they also support. So they're not talking about real issues and they're focusing on the fake scandal and sensationalism because they think it will score them cheap points with the electorate and it won't. And they think there's an endgame here and there's not. But there is something there, right? Yes, he laundered money. But if people are getting indicted with this Russia thing.

So I'll break that down. Paul Manafort is one of the people who got indicted. Super duper corrupt, laundering money. Michael Flynn, same thing. Laundering money, how so? So, in the case, I know more of the details about Flynn. So Flynn is a guy, he got, what's his face, Mueller went after Flynn, and it was proven that Flynn took $500,000 from the Turkish government. And in return for

that, he pushed the Trump administration to not arm the Kurds who are fighting ISIS. And the reason why is because Turkey hates the Kurds, and they don't want us to arm the Kurds. in other words michael flynn was doing the bidding of the turkish government and pushing their influence in our government and he didn't register as a foreign agent in the process so exactly so he's doing the bidding of the turkish government and not disclosing that and you have to register as a foreign agent if you're going to take that money and you're going to do that and this doesn't run down to trump um well that's the open question as to whether or not at some point along the way whether it's with russia or with other countries by the way nobody talks about the fact that trump registered eight new businesses in saudi arabia when he was on the campaign trail and then he just gave them over

a hundred billion dollar weapons deal he also took 270 000 from top saudi officials at his hotel when he was president-elect and then again he gave him over a $100 billion weapons deal. The case of Israel, Jared Kushner has millions of dollars from Israeli banks. And then lo and behold, when Donald Trump was president-elect, they tried to push the UN to not condemn Israel over their illegal settlements. So you have his entire administration is just a grab bag of corruption and foreign influence. But it's foreign influence across the board board and it's influence also from corporations. But again, people are not focusing on the corporations and they're not focusing on the

other countries that they're corrupt with because they're hyper focusing on the Russia thing. And at the end of the day, they want to impeach Trump over Russia. But like I said, it's going to be hard to prove. And it's an open question if you can indict. I don't think you can indict a sitting president. You have to impeach. They're not going to be hard to prove, and then it's an open question if you can indict. I don't think you can indict a sitting president. You have to impeach. They're not going to fucking impeach.

So really, this is Democrats sniffing their own farts and acting like they're doing something important when they're really not. And the only there there, in my opinion, is money laundering. He's a corrupt businessman, but he's not some sort of Putin puppet because he's actually done many policies that are against Putin. So, for example, he armed Ukrainian rebels who are fighting Russia right now. You don't arm people who are fighting Russia if you're their fucking puppet. You know, he also is bombing Syria and we're staying indefinitely in Syria. They just announced that recently. You don't, that Syria, the Syrian government, that's one of Putin's top allies. You're not going to permanently occupy their country

and try to fight that government if you're in bed. They're doing a NATO buildup on Russia's border right now. So if you're Putin's puppet, you don't have a military build-up on his border. There was just a story the other day about how now the U.S. are military sending our ships to the Black Sea right on Russia's fucking border. So it's military escalation. And that's another part of this that pisses me off is that if the Democrats really wanted to resist trump resist that say i don't want to send our fucking military to get

into a standoff with russia i don't want to bomb fucking syria and permanently occupy it this is how the democrats should be resisting they should be resisting trump from a left-wing position from an anti-interventionist position but instead everything you hear from the democrats is he's under putin's thumb and he needs to make sure that he's even harder on Putin and he does more sanctions against Putin and he escalates further with Russia. Listen, man, they're a nuclear-armed power. Do you want to fucking get into a confrontation with a nuclear-armed power?

We're sitting here living our lives just going about our business. And this is crazy. We're rolling the dice and we're playing a game of chicken with Vladimir Putin. Do you think that they're just caught up in this sexy thing? Yes, a lot of it is sensationalism bias, yes. It's also what the public

is really focused on right now, so it's something that gathers ratings. I think they're driving it. I think it's driven from the top down, from the establishment media down, from the Democrats down, because again, if you talk to regular people, they're fucking hurting. Right. Wages have been stagnant since 1980.

There's 30 million people that don't have health care. In Trump's first year in office, 3 million more people lost health care because he did all these executive orders that basically took a hatchet to Obamacare. So you have all these people who are really hurting. They care about their wages. They care about not being saddled with over a trillion dollars in student loan debt. This is the shit regular people care about their wages. They care about, you know, not being saddled with over a trillion dollars in student loan debt. This is the shit regular people care about.

So when they turn on CNN and they see Russia, Russia, Russia, even if you don't like Trump, I despise Trump with every fiber of my fucking being. But when I see this, I roll my fucking eyes. And then they have the nerve to say, oh, Trump won't shut up about Russia. You were talking about it all day and he responded to it. And because he responds to it, you're like, oh, there he goes again with Russia. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. I'm really fascinated, and I'm fascinated to see if he can make it out of four years.

Well, I think he's going to run again, and he has a chance. He does. He has a fucking chance, because if the Democrats run Kamala Harris, if they run Cory Booker or any of the other corporatists, he can win because he's going to go right back into his tap dance about being a populist and helping people. And guess what? In the first few years of his tax bill, regular people did get a tax cut. So he's going to say, look at your tax bill. I just gave you an extra thousand dollars this year. Who do you want to vote for? And so there is an argument that he's going to make to the people.

vote for and so there is an argument that he's going to make to the people and if you don't have somebody like bernie sanders or bernie sanders talking about the issues that matter to people well then of course he can fucking win again listen there there was i was laughed at when i said if it's donald trump and hillary clinton he can win people laughed at me because they didn't want it they didn't want it to be true because yeah because in the narrative story i mean all you saw was that there was like a 75 chance that hillary was gonna win oh the fucking huffington post one was over 99 no swear to god before the election a week leading up to the election so silly i know though and the way they calculated they have such good articles too they sprinkle in sprinkle in great articles. It's silly horseshit.

The trick is avoid the opinion section, but if you stick to the actual journalists, then they do a good job. It's got to be embarrassing for them. Oh, for the journalists? Yeah. They're like, you guys are fucking shitting all over the hard work that I do. Yeah. Kyle, it's been a lot of fun, man.

This has been a lot of fun, man. I really appreciate it. Let's do it again. Oh, anytime. Thanks, brother. Anytime. Thank you, man. It was a lot of fun. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this appreciate it. Let's do it again. Oh, anytime. Thanks, brother. Anytime. Really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun.

This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this. Thanks. Tell everybody where they can find your show. Oh, youtube.com slash secular talk. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, it's at Kyle Kolinsky. Boom. That was great.