The Joe Rogan Experience - #1131 - Dave Rubin

Episode Date: June 13, 2018

Dave Rubin is a stand-up comedian, talk show host, and television personality. He is the creator and host of political comedy talk show “The Rubin Report” available on Spotify. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Five, four, three, two, Dave Rubin, ladies and gentlemen. How are you, buddy? What's up, brother? Dude, I haven't seen you. Well, the last time we saw each other was just now, but before that was right before the election. The day before the world changed. Squirrely times.
Starting point is 00:00:22 Squirrely. Doesn't that literally, it seems like a lifetime ago? Not even a lifetime ago. It's like a different life for me. I think it's a different life for you. Think about how much has changed for both of us in that time. But it seems like another planet. Yeah. Like an alternate universe the day before the election. It is in a lot of ways, right?
Starting point is 00:00:38 I mean, people are the world's going, well, people, the world's trying to find its footing. Yes. You know, it's a lot of craziness. Well, I hate to tell you, Joe. Uh-oh. But you are a little piece of the finding of the footing. Because people are finding the footing.
Starting point is 00:00:54 You know, I'm on tour with Peterson right now. I just got in this morning from Atlanta. And it's like there is, without being hyperbolic, there is some kind of awakening happening right now. People are kind of getting their shit together. They're kind of sorting out things. They're through long form conversations like we're all having and all these people that we're now connected with.
Starting point is 00:01:14 There's something happening where people are going, there's another way to make sense. And let me figure out what that is. Doesn't mean we have all the answers and I'm sure as hell know I don't. And I don't think you think you do either, but we're at least giving them a little room to figure it out. And it's pretty cool. or more moral or better or more intellectual. There's so many articles being written about him almost on a daily basis that misrepresent what he's saying. It's epic bullshit.
Starting point is 00:01:50 It's weird. That's all it is. These guys want clicks. That's all they want. I mean, we've done about 20 shows in the last six weeks or so, bounced around from Nashville and Houston and Atlanta and Chicago and everywhere else. The crowds have been incredible.
Starting point is 00:02:04 It's probably split. First off, they always go, well, it's angry white men. That crowds have been incredible. It's probably split. You know, first off, they always go, well, it's angry white men. That's the main thing. It's all angry white men. Now, first off, let's say it was all angry white men there. That in and of itself doesn't mean it's bad. Let's say there was like a really disaffected group of angry white men that really felt like either masculinity had been compromised or they couldn't get jobs or they didn't feel
Starting point is 00:02:24 good about their lives. Like if there was someone talking to them that was helping them, that would actually be good. But let's just put that aside. Right. Cause they don't mean it in a positive way. So they say it's all angry women. Now I can tell you it's about 60, 40 male to female, roughly. At Jordan shows? At Jordan shows. Yeah. And it's- Do you think that's like dates that reluctantly go along with men? Like, all right. There are some, I mean, there will be guys that you will, it's actually usually girls will come up to me after and they'll go, you know, he's a big fan of you guys, or he loves Jordan or he
Starting point is 00:02:52 loves you or blah, blah, blah. And I'm just here, but then they all have a great time. I mean, I'm telling you, this thing has been an insane love fest. I know you saw the video that Jordan posted last night. It was his birthday last night. We were at, where the hell was I? Atlanta, the Tabernacle in Atlanta. You know, almost 3,000 people singing happy birthday to him. We brought out this freaking stuffed lobster and a piece of meat because he's on this crazy meat diet now. And it's like, it's an endless love fest.
Starting point is 00:03:20 Every street we walk down, people high-fiving us, saying hi. We did a little meet and greet impromptu thing at the Lincoln Memorial, and about 100 people showed up just out of nowhere. And it's like these people are just trying to figure shit out. They're not white supremacists. They're not alt-right. They don't hate women. It is literally nothing that they say because they want clicks. And the way they get clicks, I mean, you know, the way they get clicks is they say the absolute reverse from the truth.
Starting point is 00:03:45 It's not that they lie a little bit like a little lie. I think nobody would even pick up on it. We don't think that's what they do. I think they're just misrepresenting. I don't think they're saying the apps, the opposite of the truth. They just they just look, they're finding these little categories like homophobia, transphobia. Well, he's not a homophobe. He's on tour with a gay guy.
Starting point is 00:04:05 He's not a transphobe. There are trans people that show up there and I've discussed it with him every freaking night. I ask, you know, we do a, so I basically do like
Starting point is 00:04:11 15 minutes of standup up top. He does an hour and a half and then we do a Q&A together. And we bring out all of these things and every night to clear it up and sometimes I'll have people
Starting point is 00:04:21 bust out their phones and I'll be like, why don't you guys record this tonight and let's get it out on Twitter where he takes down the alt-right because he hates the identity politics of the right as much as the identity politics of the left. I mean, I think, I think the reason we all focus on the thing of the left is because it has encompassed culture and media and politics and what you're allowed to say and, and, uh, universities and all of that.
Starting point is 00:04:42 So it makes more sense to focus on that. The little sliver of it that's on the right, yeah, it's shitty. It's horrible. You should not look at your skin color as some great thing that makes you better. But it's not a right thing? Is racism always a right thing? No, not at all.
Starting point is 00:04:57 Are all racists right? No, I think the left is far more racist than the right at this moment. Yeah. Why do you think that? Because identity politics is based in racism. You happen to be white. I know nothing about you by the color at this moment. Yeah. Why do you think that? Because identity politics is based in racism. You happen to be white. I know nothing about you by the color of your skin.
Starting point is 00:05:09 I know about Joe Rogan because I watch the show. I listen to the show. We've done this several times. And for the hours that we're going to sit here now, we can dive as deep into any issue. And that's the only way that I can sensibly judge you. But the idea that you will look at people, that you would look at a
Starting point is 00:05:25 black person, a black person would be sitting there or a Muslim person would be sitting there or a trans person sitting there. And you'd go, I have even the inkling of what you think because of that immutable characteristic. That is actual racism. That is prejudging, right? Judging first before you know somebody. So I have a much bigger issue with that because that has infected everything in American society right now. The identity politics of the right that this should be a white ethnostate or something like that. But is that real? Of course it's nonsense.
Starting point is 00:05:53 Hold on a second. That's not really the identity politics of the right. So what are they? Well, I don't think the left is necessarily that way either. I mean, I think the identity politics there's a real issue, right, with people that only identify with other women, women that only identify with women and don't care about men. There's a real issue with people that are only American. They don't care about the rest of the world. There's like, there's all these weird groups. But I think we run into problems when
Starting point is 00:06:20 we start saying, oh, it's the left that's doing this. It's the right that's doing this. I think it's just tribal. It's just this weird thing that human beings tend to gravitate towards tribes. For sure. And look, we can, we can, I talk about things usually from a little more of a political lens than I think you do. So yes, of course, ultimately it is tribalism. However you want to parse that tribalism, right? So yes, the left, and I say this all the time, but the left, right thing doesn't make that
Starting point is 00:06:44 much sense anymore. You're either basically, you're basically for freedom. You're for the individual to live freely, however they see fit, or you believe that the government should engineer things and that there should be central planning
Starting point is 00:06:57 so that people- I think that's always shitty thinking. I think there's people that say that the government should engineer things. They're just looking for a solution and then they think the government should handle it. Well, yeah, but I think. People that think we should pay more taxes.
Starting point is 00:07:09 Right. Where is that going to go? It's going to go to the government. So you're agreeing with me? Yeah, in a lot of ways. Oh, okay. I thought you said. No, no, I don't mean your thinking.
Starting point is 00:07:17 I mean their shit. Oh, okay, okay. I mean like they're having shitty thinking. Yeah. It's like this idea that the government's going to fix it. The government's filled with people. Like we don't have our own individual solutions. We don't have our solutions as human, just as human beings, objective human beings looking at problems.
Starting point is 00:07:30 Why would we ever think that elected officials, these people that are, for the most part, full of shit. Yeah. Like, they're just trying to say whatever they can say that's going to appease both the special interest groups and the lobbyists and the people that are helping them get into place. both the special interest groups and the lobbyists and the people that are helping them get into place, the people that are going to vote for them and, you know, and then just sort of like skirt around all the other issues that are controversial to the point where they can get into office. Let's try it this way. Name three politicians that you really like.
Starting point is 00:07:57 I don't know any of them. I mean, I know. All right. Then Gary Johnson. Yeah. So Gary Johnson, who was like who I like him too. And I voted for him But he was the worst Possible libertarian candidate
Starting point is 00:08:07 You know Well who's the best Libertarian candidate I mean Rand Paul Should be If he really had the balls To be what he is He's gotta learn
Starting point is 00:08:15 How to stuff a takedown Yeah Right He's got a lot Right The guy's coming at you You gotta figure out A way to sprawl
Starting point is 00:08:22 You could do You could do two hours With him And he'd be a lot better in a lot of ways. But he should be the guy. But he doesn't have the balls to do it because he wants to maintain being a Republican senator in Kentucky. And he's not going to do it if he has to leave the party. But I've seen a major shift, I think, in Republicans or at least conservatives or generally people on the right, whatever you want to call that thing, there is a massive libertarian streak that is alive in them right now, which is why most of
Starting point is 00:08:50 the people that I like these days, that I get along with, that I think are fair and decent and honest, are pretty much libertarian. All right, define libertarian. So libertarian and classical liberal is what I get more than anything else, because I say I'm a classical liberal, which basically means you believe in the individual, the sovereignty of the individual is the simple, most important thing. It is your life. It is your duty to do what you see fit. The government is supposed to do pretty much nothing other than protect your life. So it's supposed to have an army and police and stuff like that. And then really just laissez faire economics. And then the difference between classical liberal and libertarian is how far do you want to go with the government? So I think
Starting point is 00:09:28 there is some utility for the state. But the more I do this, the more I have these conversations, and I talk to ANCAPs and real libertarians and all that, I find it hard to defend the state at almost any level at this point. But I do think that because I don't want to live in Mad Max Fury Road just yet, although we may be heading there, I still will defend the state at some level. But I would say everything should be local. We have an incredible experiment here with 50 states. If your state taxes too high, move, go somewhere else. If your state doesn't have good education, you can go somewhere else. If you don't like the weather somewhere. But the second we make everything federal, and this is what, it's not just the left, this is what people who were using lazy thinking that you referred to, they think we should just have one law, that we should all
Starting point is 00:10:11 live exactly the same no matter where we are geographically, no matter what our religion or however we set our set of uses. That is a nightmare. That is a nightmare for a totalitarian state. Because if the federal government, if one government controls everything guess what if you don't like it you got to leave the country you know go to mexico go to canada you probably won't like it but what are you referring to like in terms of like you want set of laws well because you want states rights you what you should care about is states right so for example we live in california we are taxed out the fucking wazoo i bought a house last year it's my first time at 41 years old that I own property in America. I made it.
Starting point is 00:10:48 I own property. I don't have to tell you about my property taxes. They're insane. They're very high. They're absurdly, absurdly high. That's the price you pay for living in a spot where everybody wants to live. Yeah. No, but that's it.
Starting point is 00:10:59 That's the beauty, right? So like there's a trade-off there. Now, I could move to Texas and the property taxes would be way low. And maybe because they don't tax as much, the schools aren't as good or a series of other things. But that's the beauty of the foot vote. You can go. This is an experiment. This thing in America. Who's against that? Anyone that wants to keep giving more power to the federal government, which is pretty much everybody these days. to the federal government, which is pretty much everybody these days, pretty much everybody in mainstream,
Starting point is 00:11:25 certainly all of the Democrats, all of, you know, the mainstream set of Democrats and the Bernie and the progressive crew, they would love for the federal government to control everything. And that is an absolute nightmare. But when you say like control everything,
Starting point is 00:11:39 like how so? They want to control all economics, Department of Education, can figure out all the environmental regulations, all of those things. I would kick back everything to the states. Let the states decide. And if you don't like it, get going. I mean, that's that's a beautiful thing.
Starting point is 00:11:54 If you if you really care about marijuana and you live in Alabama right now and it's not legal, guess what? Go to Colorado. Go to California. I mean, that's that's that's how you'll influence things, because you can move your family, your value, whatever you bring to your community go to California. I mean, that's how you'll influence things because you can move your family, your value, whatever you bring to your community and your life. I mean, think about it right now. If California just kept taxing higher and higher and kept screwing up a lot, there's a ton that's going wrong in the state. Eventually, Joe Rogan might be like, you know, I just built this freaking kick-ass new studio here. I'm now paying hundreds of thousands of dollars
Starting point is 00:12:25 in taxes and all this stuff. You might want to try it somewhere else where they're going to tax you less. But that's the beauty of the thing. You don't have to leave the country. So the federal government should pretty much do nothing. It should make sure we're not warring with each other, that the states aren't warring.
Starting point is 00:12:39 That's about, and then protect the borders. Beyond that, it doesn't have to do a lot. Leave it to the states. Look, if you had a problem here, you know, your sewage leak right outside, you want the federal government to deal with that? Or do you want the local municipality to deal with that? You want everything to be as local as possible because that's how you'll influence things. And that's how you as an individual will be empowered. And that's all I have to say about that.
Starting point is 00:13:01 No, I'm hearing what you're saying, but I'm just hearing this this clamoring for the government to take care of everything i mean you hear you heard a little bit from bernie yeah you know but i just think again a lot of that is like it it's not doing it now so the idea is that the solution would be if the government takes over and we take more rich people's taxes you know and he'll spout off about income inequality and take that money and redistribute it. And then somehow or another, that's going to fix everything. But it's not. You're just going to make government bigger.
Starting point is 00:13:30 You're going to have more jobs. You're going to have more jobs in government, more red tape, more bureaucrats, more bullshit. So you're agreeing with me. Yeah. Yeah. For the most part. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing.
Starting point is 00:13:38 It's like they look, you want to give free college education to everyone. First off, it's not free. I mean, that this is just stupid, lazy thinking to say it is free. It's not free. You got to pay the janitor and you got to pay the professors and everybody else. They mean free for students. And the idea being that our taxes, instead of going towards the military, they would go towards education. Sure.
Starting point is 00:13:58 So they should at least be honest and say that because a certain amount of people just hear free and you just think it's free. But it's not free. You obviously have to pay for it. Right. certain amount of people just hear free and you just think it's free, but it's not free. You obviously have to pay for it. But also we're moving into an economy where robots are taking over. Automation is taking over. Go to what I think McDonald's said within five years, it's all going to be iPads. Go to half the McDonald's and fast food places and airports now, it's all iPads. So the more you're going to, the government, which doesn't do anything right or well or efficiently, the more they say, okay, private business, you're going to have to spend more on employees.
Starting point is 00:14:28 Well, then all these businesses are just going to figure out ways, which they should do. I mean, that's ingenuity, right? They will figure out ways to save costs, save expenses, and then less people will be hired. And then at the same time, we're going to be subsidizing all these people to go to college, where often in college they're learning nothing in gender studies and all of these other crazy classes. And we're just going to have this set of people who have no real skills and we're going to set up businesses that will never want to hire them because the government is going to tell them how much to pay. I mean, you have employees here. You pay them what you think is fair. And if they don't want to do it, they don't have to. But imagine if the government came in and was like, Joe, you're going to have
Starting point is 00:15:04 to pay your guys this amount. It's ridiculous. Well. Think how many people would love to work for you for free. I'm sure you get emails every day as I do. Stockers? Stockers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:15 I don't want people to work for me for free. I don't like interns. I don't like the idea of it. It's silly. But you're a small business owner. I mean, that's the fact. And you should be able to do whatever with your business and your property that you want. It's as simple as that.
Starting point is 00:15:28 I think we get real. There's a lot of cliche terms. And one of them is like that people who go to college are studying gender studies or lesbian dance theory. But how much of that is really happening? It's very small. It does exist in some weird states. I'm sure you're aware of that lady who was the professor from Fresno State
Starting point is 00:15:51 who got in trouble recently. There's so many of them. Which one was this? Some big lady who was talking a bunch of shit. She said she could never get fired, and they didn't fire that lady. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of them i mean
Starting point is 00:16:05 there's a lot of really wacky professors out there that do have tenure yeah that woman was tweeting out some bananas stuff and she has tenure and she's not going to go anywhere there's universities all over the country they're constantly teaching kids i mean that for the most part these are there it's a small percentage it's a small percentage but they have way over influence on the amount of people. They have scared the majority into silence. I mean, I don't know how often you're doing colleges these days. But I don't do them.
Starting point is 00:16:31 Yeah. I'm doing them all the time. And what I find, so I did this thing at University of New Hampshire. I saw it. So look, first off, what they did was they were supposed to be about 300 people there. So they, at first, because of the protesters, the school said we can't secure a room. So think about that. What are they protesting you about? Well, technically I was supposed to be there that day with Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk from Turning Point. And we were going to talk about cultural appropriation and some of the
Starting point is 00:16:56 hot button stuff. So I don't even know that they all were there to protest me specifically. But anyway, that day was the day that Candace and Charlie ended up on TMZ with Kanye. So they bailed on me and just left me for the wolves. They were on TMZ with Kanye? What do you mean? Just a couple of weeks ago. Kanye showed up at the TMZ offices with them. So they just showed up with him and they blew off their appearance?
Starting point is 00:17:20 Yeah. It's all right. It was me and University of New hampshire or kanye and tmz yeah but they had a schedule like they were supposed to be there and they just decided not to what are you gonna do so the people like paid to have you come yeah right yeah and they were supposed to be paid to go to come to think of it i didn't get more money for this that is ridiculous the whole thing is ridiculous that they would just blow that off it's like that's a gig yeah you don't blow off a gig because kan Kanye wants to go on the gossip show.
Starting point is 00:17:47 Yeah. That's fucking stupid. Well, now you're talking to me like, as a comic. Yeah. We wouldn't do that. It's just a different- You don't blow off a gig. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:54 It's just a different- People come to see. You don't just decide, oh, this gig is better for me right now. Yeah. This gig's with Kanye on TV. Hi, Harvey. How are you, Harvey? To think that they spent time with Harvey Levin
Starting point is 00:18:05 instead of me. Well, he seems like a nice enough guy. His business is a little shady. But the whole thing behind it is you don't cancel a gig because you got another gig that you think is better for you last minute. That's terrible.
Starting point is 00:18:22 What's that phrase, man? The show must go on? Yeah. It's supposed to go on yeah for sure so i saw you getting uh was that the lady that the coins they brought they brought noisemakers they were slamming on shit they were screaming this is where it's so ridiculous like you would let them talk and they didn't have anything to say i mean the best part of this so first off 300 people supposed to be there they say we can't secure a room on campus so think about what a defeat that is. So this is where you might say, okay, it's a minority of students.
Starting point is 00:18:48 But think how they affect the majority. That meant that a University of New Hampshire, it's a pretty solid school in the live free or die state, right? They could not secure, because I'm showing up, a room on their campus. So that's already a massive loss, right? When you say could not secure, you mean safety-wise? They said they could not secure it safety-wise. There were too many threats, whatever the hell that means. Twitter chat or other nonsense.
Starting point is 00:19:11 So Candace and the other guy are gone. So it's just you. Yeah. The gay libertarian guy. And they're like too dangerous. Too dangerous. Too crazy. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:21 Like what is he going to say? We're going to have to silence him. Yeah. Well, I flipped the script on their heads. I mean, Like, what is he going to say? We're going to have to silence him. Yeah. Well, I flip the script on their heads. I mean, that's what it comes down to. Like, they don't know what the fuck to make of me because I don't play their game. But I'm just doing what I think is right. I don't think I'm a freaking rocket scientist.
Starting point is 00:19:36 I don't think I'm some massive intellectual. I think I'm someone that can communicate these ideas pretty well. And hopefully we'll talk about it. But I'm back in stand-up now. Like, I'm doing, I'm just doing what I think is right on this planet while I'm here that's it and so when you do these speeches what do you do when you go to these colleges so so I get up there so they move it from this from the University 300 seat room they move it to a hockey rink of 7,500 seats
Starting point is 00:20:00 so think how absurd this think how absurd this is 300 people yeah and they're in a how many people are in the audience? 300 people. Oh, God. So apparently another 100 supporters of mine showed up, but they didn't even let them in, even though they were roughly 7,100 empty seats. Why wouldn't they let them in? I don't know. Because at that point, security starts. Everything just gets whacked. I mean,
Starting point is 00:20:20 this happens at every college thing. Nobody knows who's in charge anymore. It's just like this big clusterfuck. So anyway, so they put up, you know, like a step and repeat with the turning point symbol behind me and I'm doing my thing, but there's a freaking Zamboni back there. I'm like, what the hell am I doing? Like, this is ridiculous. And turning point is that conservative think tank things. They're the largest conservative, uh, college, uh, nonprofit. So why do they have that behind you? Well, cause it was sponsored by them. Charlie, Charlie runs turning point. Okay. But he didn't even have the fucking, he didn't even show up. It was either that that thing goes there or I sit literally, I stand there literally in front of,
Starting point is 00:21:01 you know, 6,000 seats. Seriously. Why? Yeah. I mean, that's for, for them to figure out why they did that. But anyway, 7,000 empty seats. I do my thing. I talked for about a half hour and I knew there were a certain, you know, 250 of those kids were there to listen and agree or disagree. I mean, think about it. This is the conservative group. They're bringing a gay married guy who's pro-pot,
Starting point is 00:21:16 who's pro-euthanasia, who's against the death penalty for reforming the prison system. I'm pro-choice. Like I could go on and on about the liberal cred that you and I don't get anymore. And they're applauding me. What are they mad at you for?
Starting point is 00:21:30 Well, so it's not those guys mad. It's the other 50. It's the other. They're mad. They don't know. They just want you to bow forever. They don't come to listen. Right. They want to silence you. That's it. But what do they want to silence you about? What is it that they oppose that you're saying? Joe, I literally every time they would scream or they'd start robotically, you know, they set timers and then they robotically chant.
Starting point is 00:21:51 We're not the problem or just some other nonsense. Is that what they say? We're not the problem? We are not the problem. And I'd go, I'd look at them right in the eye and be like, I'm standing right in front of you. Do you have a question for me? Is there something that I said that upset you? Any of that?
Starting point is 00:22:04 And they can't respond. I mean, they just can't respond because they're not there to exchange ideas. They believe they are oppressed. I mean, look, I always go up there. What do I say at every college thing? I go, think about it. Do you think you have it worse than your grandparents? I want everyone in this room to think about your grandparents right now.
Starting point is 00:22:21 And 99.9% of people in America right now have it better than their grandparents had it. I'm sure you have it better than your grandparents had it. I have it better than my grandparents had it. All of these kids, they're at University of New Hampshire studying whatever the hell they want to study. They have it better than their grandparents. But the power of thinking that you're oppressed, the power of thinking that the world is warped against you,
Starting point is 00:22:43 it's a drug. It is truly a drug. And one other thing on that. So it turns out, did you see the exchange I got in with the trans woman? Yes. So it turns, so this trans woman is telling me to go fuck myself and whatever she's saying and screaming along with everybody. What was she upset about? Well, cause I mentioned the Jordan Peterson pronoun thing. And I said, look, I want trans people to be treated equally under the law. I want trans people to be respected. I hope you find, I literally said to her, looking right at her, I hope you find someone that loves you in your life. I want you to be as equal and happy as anybody else on this planet.
Starting point is 00:23:13 That is what I want for you. She's still telling me to go fuck myself. It turns out, I didn't know this till weeks later. I found this out about a week ago. She's a professor of gender studies at University of New Hampshire. about a week ago, she's a professor of gender studies at University of New Hampshire. Wait a minute. She's literally trying, you have a professor that is part of the protesters and she's live tweeting the thing about alt-right Dave Rubin.
Starting point is 00:23:33 I mean, so that's where, when people think it's this little thing, it's, yeah, it's this little thing that's metastasizing and spreading like a cancer. And I truly believe that identity politics, that this thing, I think is the biggest threat to the West and to freedom that exists. Did you communicate with her at all? I communicated her from, with my mic. But was there, did she exchange, did she say what she has a problem with? No, so she kept yelling at me and I kept- What did she yell out?
Starting point is 00:23:59 People can, you know- Do we have a video of this? Oh yeah, it's there. Pull the video up. I don't know where, it's probably maybe an hour in or so. I saw it and I just was like, oh, poor Dave. What's he dealing with? I got a lot of pity for that, which was nice.
Starting point is 00:24:10 Yeah, it was like when the girl was shaking the jar of coins, I was like, oh. You know what was really funny is that I realized that there's one, so there's one moment in it. I never lost my cool, because it's like a bunch of kids yelling at me. No, I saw you didn't. Good for you. Yeah, and as long as they're not going to take a samurai sword out and stab me or anything, then it's a bunch of kids yelling no sorry didn't good for you yeah and as long as they're not going to you know take a samurai sword out and stab me or anything then it then it's fine but there was one moment where they just kept going and going so i sarcastically said it i was like guys shut
Starting point is 00:24:33 the fuck up and it got a big laugh and then i repeated it a couple times but then i realized that when the school newspaper wrote about it they said and then dave rubin told them to shut the fuck up but it's like in print shut the fuck up is very different than shut the fuck up. So that was my one, my one lesson in there. Well, nothing. It seems like is the answer. She didn't want anything from me. She wanted me to bow. You should be thrown out for doing that. Because if you are doing that, you're, you're disrupting a performance. You're, I mean, I'm sure you would have a Q&A with those people, right? You'd be happy to do that.
Starting point is 00:25:07 Dude, after a half hour, I opened it up for Q&A. I said, let's do the rest, the last hour. But you didn't even get a chance to get to that with her, right? She was already yelling at you. No. And then I think I even said to her, I know I did it with several people. I'm pretty sure she was too. Do you have a question for me?
Starting point is 00:25:20 And I think her last thing was, i hate you or something to that effect i mean this is a professor there she should be disqualified for teaching she's an illogical thinker this is not what you want raising your children yeah but essentially that's what they are they're still children you got this fucking dummy who can't focus enough to have a a coherent argument they're yelling out in the middle of your performance. Yeah. And by the way, for the record,
Starting point is 00:25:47 the authorities or the police or the campus safety, whatever it was, did at one point try to have some people sit down and be quiet. And I was like,
Starting point is 00:25:55 guys, don't worry about it. Because it's like, yeah, I guess we could escalate it to that point. Oh, and by the way, I didn't even want this video to be released. When they videotaped this,
Starting point is 00:26:03 I did not want it to be released because I don't want to add fuel to the fire. I'm trying to fix some of these problems. That's part of the problem, right? Is that this becomes something that they know that they can get a video of if they go to your next performance and interrupt you. Yeah, but you know what? I don't think they won one person over to their side.
Starting point is 00:26:17 I don't think one screaming lunatic who did not come to respect me, even though I was there to respect them. I don't think they won anybody. I think I actually won a lot of people to my side. And I think, I mean, I know it because I've received tons of emails about it. I know what you're saying, but I don't think it's about winning to your side. I think it's about other lunatics that realize there's an opportunity to get attention if they go to your show and yell things out. Yeah. Well, that's why we ended up putting the video up because a couple of them would put up these little clips, very selectively
Starting point is 00:26:44 edited that made it seem like I was doing things that I wasn't like I was silencing them or just some other nonsense. So then finally I was like, all right, if this is the way the internet is, and it just is, then we'll just put up the whole thing unedited. Even though I had 10 minutes before I said, guys, don't even record this. I said, don't even record this because, because Charlie and Candace hadn't showed up. And I was like, it's ridiculous. I got 7,000 empty seats behind me. But then once people start playing that like, it's ridiculous. I got 7,000 empty seats behind me. But then once people start playing that game, you can either just be the bitch,
Starting point is 00:27:09 which I refuse to be, or you can fight back. Yeah, it's a weird place to be because you know what they're doing and they're essentially just trying to rile you up. And if they're not willing to have a real dialogue with you, they're just yelling, fuck Dave Rubin. That really should disqualify you from being a teacher I mean that's that's the
Starting point is 00:27:27 worst way to communicate you're demonstrating that your thinking sucks yeah and that you want to teach about gender studies but yet you know you you you're interrupting a car and you're trying to claim transphobia or whatever the fuck he's she is trying to claim. She it's a she. Right. She's a trans woman. Right. But she was a man. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:49 Now as a woman. Yeah. OK. Yeah. And by the way, I treated her with complete respect. Like, that's the thing. They they truly they want you. They want to put their foot on your neck and have you stay there forever. And that's why every time now that somebody mainstream writes something about you, half the time they're calling you a conservative because they don't know what the fuck to do with this guy who's talking about drugs and all the crazy shit you're talking about all the time.
Starting point is 00:28:15 But also you're woke enough to actually identify there is a problem here with what's happening in the mainstream. So they can't categorize us in any sensible way. So in a weird way, especially because me and you also, because of the nature of what we do, we sit from people that are a little scary. You know what I mean? Like you've had Jones on, I've had Molyneux on, you know, I had Cernovich on at the beginning. And I'm sure you've had plenty of other controversial people. And it's like, so there's an odd way that they want to look at the two of us more than other people, because by the nature of our jobs, by the nature of how we exist, that's a threat if you want to control the way everybody thinks. Yeah, you're not supposed to give people a platform. That's what I keep hearing.
Starting point is 00:28:58 So what's your policy on that? Because that seemed to be – after this IDW, Intellectual Dark Web article came out, that was the big thing that people kept hitting me on. It's like, you don't want any gatekeeping. You'll talk to anybody. Now, first off, I won't talk to anybody, but I'm a general believer that you let ideas out there. But what is wrong with talking to people? I mean, it's always been what people have done. There've always been interviews with controversial people. Guess what happens when you stop talking to people? Yeah. Not good. Yeah. That's when shit goes down. But there's a lot of people that don't want us talking to people. Guess what happens when you stop talking to people? Yeah, not good. Yeah. That's when shit goes down. Yeah. But there's a lot of people that don't want us talking to people. I mean,
Starting point is 00:29:28 I look, a lot of people were pissed. You, you smoke pot with Jones, right? You smoke pot with Alex Jones. I watched it. It's bananas. I watched all the memes and it's like, look, that guy has done some seriously twisted, crazy shit. There is no doubt about it. The Sandy Hook stuff. And yeah, I didn't know about the Sandy Hook stuff, by the way, before we did the podcast. I knew that he believed a bunch of stupid conspiracies that I genuinely just dismissed. But I didn't know that he was saying that those kids never died or that it was. Now, would that change the equation for you? Yeah, I would have been mad at him and I would have talked about it right away.
Starting point is 00:29:58 I would have been like, the fuck are you talking about? Those kids are dead. Like there's a guy that was a it was a terrible story about a guy who is a conspiracy theorist before Sandy Hook, and then his kid died at Sandy Hook, and a bunch of people were threatening him and calling him a crisis actor and saying his kid never died. And then he realized how insane it really is. I keep hearing them now about Anthony Bourdain, that Bourdain was going to expose some child pedophile ring and that's why they suicided him. It's fucking stupid, man. Without going down fully on that road, there is one odd thing about the Bourdain thing, which is just a few weeks ago, didn't he tweet some odd thing about having the, he's met the Hillary Clinton like machine or something? And he was talking about, no, no no i'll tell you exactly yeah what was it he was talking about the same people that Harvey Weinstein used. Some Israeli intelligence group to, you know,
Starting point is 00:31:11 there was something that Harvey had done to his victims where he was trying to silence them by scaring them with these, you know, Israeli mercenary type folks. So point being, don't go down that conspiracy. But that's not what he was doing. He was just saying, he was just standing, he had some crazy thing with his girlfriend where he was fully invested
Starting point is 00:31:31 in her battle with Harvey Weinstein. So that's what he tweeted about. It's like they would kill him for that? That's so fucking stupid. What about Ronan Farrow? What about all the people that wrote the story? What about all the people that are accusing him of rape? The guy's going broke, too.
Starting point is 00:31:48 People don't understand that Harvey Weinstein's business is going bankrupt. He's fucked. Yeah. He's going to jail. Yeah. The walls are caving in. He doesn't even have his business anymore. He's not hiring a mercenary to go kill a chef.
Starting point is 00:32:00 I mean, this is fucking stupid. This is stupid thinking. Yeah. And, you know, know look it's not That it's impossible for someone to want to hire Someone to kill someone but I don't think that's What happened I think he killed himself And I think it's a terrible terrible tragedy
Starting point is 00:32:13 And I think it's really disrespectful To have all these dumb Speculative ideas because they're sport In conspiracies it's a sport It's a game there's a hobby that people Have and looking to fucking I'm looking for the truth, bro. I'm looking to fucking close the gaps and feel, this is what
Starting point is 00:32:30 it is, man. It's the Illuminati. The second you think you got it, that means you lost it. Here it is, right here. Okay, here it is. Hold on. Scroll up. I'm in no way here with Quentin. I've been on the receiving end of her operatives wrath, and it ain't fun. Right, and that's from about a month ago operatives here we go now you're gonna fill some gaps for me
Starting point is 00:32:50 her operatives wrath okay I don't know but he was the thing is Hillary Clinton was before the before the the scandal happened there's a lot of photos of Hillary Clinton hanging out with Weinstein. Oh, yeah. Oprah hanging out with him. Yeah. Everybody. Cuddling up with him. Meryl Streep.
Starting point is 00:33:10 Meryl Streep cuddling up with him. Like, the whole thing is, there's people that are complicit, for sure. Yeah. In one way or another. So, after everything you just said, and knowing that Jones plays that game a little bit, would you have him on again? If I had him on again, that would be the first thing I would talk about. You know, I've been friends with Alex
Starting point is 00:33:27 since 1998. I've known him for a long time. Yeah. I don't think he's a bad guy, but I think he's very wrong about a lot of things. He's very misguided about a lot of things.
Starting point is 00:33:36 And I think he loves conspiracies. There is a bunch of people in this country that love to make, they love to connect the dots and find conspiracies in fucking everything. Everything that there there is and sometimes they're right and alex has been right definitely he's been right about a bunch of things he was right about the world trade organization
Starting point is 00:33:55 in particular about when they were using agent provocateurs to disrupt protests and make them violent protests by smashing windows and And he documented all of it, how these people were, none of them were arrested. They all went to one safe house and then negotiated with the police. Then they were released. They all had military issue footwear. He's got all these documents from people that worked inside either police or law enforcement that say that there is a standard practice, and this has existed for a long time. And when you have peaceful protests and you can't do anything about it, the best way to do something about it is to take that peaceful protest and turn it non-peaceful.
Starting point is 00:34:38 The way you do that, you have these guys wear masks, they go in, they pretend they're one of the protesters, they start smashing windows, flipping over cars, and then you move the cops in. Then they shut the protest down. So you essentially shut the peaceful protesters down by introducing non-peaceful people. These are military operatives. These are people that are working for the government or working for whoever the fuck decides to pull the trigger on this. This is real. This has happened.
Starting point is 00:35:03 Well, there's a lot of people saying that's happening with the Tommy Robinson protests in the UK right now. See, I don't know enough about that story other than the fact that a bunch of people are mad at me on Twitter for not talking about it. For not talking about it. I saw it. I was like, I don't even know what that is.
Starting point is 00:35:15 I'm going to back away. And then I saw it was something about he was filming outside of a trial of Muslim pedophiles. Is that what they- Yeah, they're these grooming gangs. Yeah. Grooming gangs. Yeah. Where they rape- Tell me the whole story.
Starting point is 00:35:28 So I don't want to do this as if I'm the freaking lawyer of the whole thing, but in effect, he was filming outside of the trial for this group of men that are raping, they're raping like 12 and 13 year old girls, basically. They're on trial. He had already been on probation or something for something else. And you're not allowed to film outside a courthouse. So technically, I suppose he is in jail now for the right reasons. But there's a lot of people that think he's not going to survive being in jail. And look, I had the guy on my show. Have you ever talked to him?
Starting point is 00:35:55 No. I didn't know anything about him until this thing happened. Yeah. I mean, there's too much to pay attention to. No, I know. It's a lot. It's all the time, man. You can't keep up with everything.
Starting point is 00:36:04 No, I know. I have shit to do. I. No, I know. It's a lot. It's all the time, man. You can't keep up with everything. No, I know. I have shit to do. I have kids. I have hobbies. Don't you have to occasionally just pick one and you're like, this one. Dude, there's a lot of them. I just don't know. I don't know what's going on.
Starting point is 00:36:12 Like people go, how come you're not commenting on this? I'm like, I didn't even know about it, you fuck. I know. I love that. When you sit out saying on Twitter for six hours and people start screaming at you like, ah, that proves it. You didn't say anything about it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:36:23 Oh, you talk all day long about this and that, but then this comes up and you don't hear a word. I'm like, I didn't even hear about some just now. Yeah. Well, all right. Let's not dive too deep in that. But quick on Jones though. So I'm not actually, in case you think I am, I'm not giving you shit for doing it. I'm just curious. I'm just curious because I think part of the article that Barry Weiss wrote in the Times about us, she was talking about that. And there's a line in there where she said, you know, if you talk to these people, meaning Jones and Cernovich and Molyneux,
Starting point is 00:36:50 that you're either cynical or stupid. And in effect, that was a shot at me and you. It wasn't a shot at anybody else because they don't have to talk to other people. You know what I mean? Like, I love Eric and Brett Weinstein. Is that what she said? You're cynical or stupid?
Starting point is 00:37:02 We can probably find the line, but it was that you'd have to, I think it was, you'd have to be I think it was you'd have to be cynical or stupid. I would argue that. I mean, I'd argue against that because I don't think you have to be either cynical or stupid. You just have to be a person talking to someone. Just because you're talking to someone doesn't mean you agree with them. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:15 This idea of giving someone a platform, like I'm going to have Ted Nugent on the podcast, right? You obviously endorse everything he's ever said. That's what you're saying, right? If you have one, that's the only way to look at it. Sorry, Rogan, that's it. How come you can't just talk to the guy and find out, like Candace Owens? I don't agree with everything Candace Owens says.
Starting point is 00:37:31 I don't agree with a lot of it. And there's nothing wrong with having a conversation like that. In fact, it's illuminating. What do you got here? What are you pulling up? The line, this is from the Times piece. Okay. It says, it seems to me that if you're willing to sit across from an alex
Starting point is 00:37:46 jones or mike cernovich and take him seriously there's a high probability that you're either cynical or stupid now if there's a reason for shorting the idw it's the inability of certain members to see this as a fatal error so that's that's rogan and ruben that's what that's saying well i get it i'm just definitely seeing the things you can criticize about me but um i have the list right but here's the thing if you're saying i'm taking him seriously i got alex high and drunk and he started talking about interdimensional child molesters like if anything it showed people who he really is like i've known the guy forever i've partied with that dude i've had him come to my comedy shows. We've gotten fucked up and ran around the town and went to bars together.
Starting point is 00:38:30 Back before everybody knew who he was, too. We could go places. He's a fun guy. I don't believe everything he believes. I think he's silly in a lot of ways. But I like a lot of people that I don't agree with. I don't have to agree with them. I didn't know about his Sandy Hook denial. If I did, it would have been the first thing I pressed him on.
Starting point is 00:38:47 When I talked to him, I wanted to do it with my crazy friend, Eddie Bravo, because he believes every fucking conspiracy theory. And I wanted to get him with Alex together. And it was the clusterfuck that I hoped it would be. It was. But the good thing about it is it showed people who Alex really is. It showed a side of him that you just don't get from his Info war show you get to see him high and laughing and drunk and pounded whiskey and fucking around and people like oh
Starting point is 00:39:12 I could see why you like that guy. I can see why he's fun. We had a good time together Yeah, doesn't mean I endorse his opinions on things and the idea that this is only red or white that it is one or zero It's binary. That's ridiculous or zero, it's binary. That's ridiculous. Yeah. I think that's ridiculous. I just didn't, those two choices of adjectives, I just thought were slightly, like you could say-
Starting point is 00:39:31 She's defending her position. Yeah. I think she's doing a smart thing because she's a writer for the New York Times. I do have a lot of ridiculous people on and you have had ridiculous people on too. So what she's saying makes sense if you take them seriously, but she left that caveat. If you take them seriously, I do not take Alex Jones's opinion on interdimensional child molesters seriously.
Starting point is 00:39:51 I don't. His opinion, I only smoke pot once a year to test to see what George Soros has done with the marijuana. Right. George Soros is giving the marijuana fucking dosage recommendations.
Starting point is 00:40:02 That's ridiculous. I'm pretty sure Roseanne told me that too. Yeah. Well, she thinks that's another thing. I don't know what to do with her now. She apologizes for that, but she said George Soros was a Nazi or something. Yeah, I saw the apology.
Starting point is 00:40:14 He was captured by the Nazis. I mean, he was like... Well, anyway, this gate... Conspiracies. Yeah, this gatekeeping thing, I just think it's interesting because if we're going to do what we do well at whatever level we do it, it's like we're going to have to talk to people that people don't like. Listen.
Starting point is 00:40:31 Look, Larry King, this is the one thing I always say. It's like Larry King in his heyday. Think of the prime Larry King, right? So 1991 CNN primetime. Yeah. time. He could have, you know, the OJ Simpson lawyers on Monday. He could have the cast of Seinfeld on Tuesday. He could have a magician on Wednesday. He could have Lucille Ball if she was still alive on Thursday. And then, you know, George, the secretary of state or something. So no one thought he endorsed all of those ideas or was friends with all those people. But I think somehow now, because this feels like your home mine is actually in my home the way we are we're different we're friendlier we're not sitting here with note cards and with ifbs and it doesn't feel all produced and planned and all that even though i think we
Starting point is 00:41:16 both do a hell of a fucking professional show that i think we're both really proud of um i think because of that they think ah now you're seeing the real them or something like that like it's something i just think they're looking for shit to complain about listen that might be the easiest one of the reasons why i decided to do a podcast in the first place because i wanted to be able to do whatever i wanted i wanted to be able to talk to my friends have a good time fuck around along the line it became something different and along the line it became not just talking to my friends it became talking to people that are famous or interesting people or professors or writers or whoever it is.
Starting point is 00:41:51 And I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want. And that's why I'm doing this. I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want. If I want to talk to, and if you don't like who I'm talking to, it's super simple. You just don't listen to that episode and go, oh, Drogon, you're alt-right now. All you have is alt-right people. You think you're balanced out because you have Abby Martin on once a year? I just think I talk to people.
Starting point is 00:42:10 I talk to a lot of people. I like talking to people. I like talking to people I agree with, and I occasionally talk to people I disagree with, and I get something out of that too. Yeah. How aware are you of the thing that you just said there that like you did exactly what you set out to do? I don't know that you fully set out to do it this way, but you did it like this thing that you have created is so it. It is so what you wanted to do, whether you fully got it or not, but like you created it.
Starting point is 00:42:37 It's awesome. Like I'm I'm doing it at, I think, a lower level than you are. But I'm very aware of that, that like i somehow i hated what the system was offering and i was like i gotta do something that feels right for me and i somehow did it because i didn't come at it from a place like i need a gig i came at it from a place like it'll be fun yeah fuck around right you were already on the other side things yeah i mean i was already a professional stand-up i was already uh the commentator for the UFC so this wasn't like when I came I mean I did it for years for zero money yeah for years because I just did it for fun like literally for fun do it once a week have fun sit down have some comics over we'd smoke some pot talk some shit have a couple of laughs and then next thing you know I've got Graham
Starting point is 00:43:21 Hancock on and uh you know next thing you know I've got Bourdain on and I've got Graham Hancock on. And, you know, next thing you know, I've got Bourdain on. And I've got, you know, this professor and this author. And then it got weirder and weirder. But to me, it's just what's interesting. Talk to people. And I've never looked at it like there's anything I have to do. I've never looked at it like that. I've just always like, well, this would be cool.
Starting point is 00:43:45 Oh, that guy sounds cool. Let me get him. This guy might be interesting. Oh, I'd like to talk to that dude. I want to find out about sleep. I want to find out about exercise. I want to find out about diet. I want to find out about, like, how the fuck does finances really work?
Starting point is 00:43:57 I want to talk to Peter Schiff. Tell me how this works. What do you do? How are you making your money? Like, what the fuck is going on in Puerto Rico? I love talking to people, man. It's a fascinating thing to, to pick the brain uninterrupted with no distractions to sit down and talk to someone for hours at a time. You learn a lot about yourself.
Starting point is 00:44:18 You learn conversation. I'm much better, much better at talking to people and being sensitive and open-minded and being considerate and listening. And that's a big thing, like listening and communicating with people, not just waiting for my time to talk, but communicating with people. It's like, I feel like conversation is a lost art with a lot of folks. And I've gotten way, way better at it over the whatever many years, nine years, nine years of doing this show. Yeah. I'm with you. I mean, I hear you all. I mean, I said at the beginning, but I just am doing what I think is right. Yeah. It's fun too. It's fun. I like it. When I see like the barrage
Starting point is 00:44:56 of hate that I'll get online for this or that, or just, you know, it's the same thing. It's just these people that just endlessly want to hate on everything and all that. I'm always like, I'm always like, if you're spending all day long hating on me, like if you think what I'm doing is the real problem here. You know what I mean? Like let's say I'm wrong on everything. Let's say everything I said for the first 10 minutes about politics is wrong and we should have strong federal government and identity politics. Like even if that is how it really is, am I really the biggest problem here that people are all day long devoting Twitter accounts, people that make accounts all day long? Fuck Dave Rubin.
Starting point is 00:45:26 Dave Rubin sucks. It's like, what are you doing? Is that going on all the time? Yeah. All the time. It's like, go get laid. Do people get laid anymore? You shouldn't know that that's happening.
Starting point is 00:45:34 That's the part of the problem is you're sort of indulging it by paying attention to it. There's just too many people out there, Dave. I'm paying way less attention. That's good. Yeah. You can't pay attention at all. Dude, I was in a sensory deprivation tank just two, three days ago, thanks to you. I've been doing it more.
Starting point is 00:45:49 I was just in one of these infrared saunas. I'm doing all my August off the grid. I did it last August. Just literally nothing. I locked my phone in a safe. Really? Locked my phone in a safe for 30 days. Do you call it anything?
Starting point is 00:46:00 No TV, no nothing. Off the grid August? We had some Ruben, something Rubenesque, something or other. Yeah, off the grid August, something like that. But I'm going to do it from now on. I'm doing that every August. Really? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:11 I am completely shutting down. I'm working on this book that I started last August. And then, of course, the year gets so crazy that I have to pick it up again in August. I've been writing it now while I'm on the road. What's the book about? I mean, I don't want to go too far in it. But in effect, it's when I did that PragerU video about why I left the left. That's sort of the genesis of it, of sort of giving people a little bit of a roadmap.
Starting point is 00:46:31 What is the PragerU video? I'm not aware of it. So you're familiar with PragerU, right? Yeah, with Dennis Prager. Yeah. Super conservative fella. Yeah. So he does, he has this, you know, online university where they do these five minute cartoon videos on different ideas. So they'll do on economics and foreign policy and race and religion,
Starting point is 00:46:48 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so I did one, it was about a year and a half ago, February of last year called, well, I had actually never said the phrase why I left the left, but I just talked about my frustrations with the left and why I believe in freedom and in liberty. They titled it why I Left the Left. And actually the first half hour when it dropped, I was pissed because I was like, man, did they just like blow my gig? Like I really felt at that time, I feel a little differently now that I was trying to fix the left from within, or at least have conversations as someone that was one of these people. Like that's why I was focusing on the left. All these liberals were my people. This is the thing that I grew up in,
Starting point is 00:47:29 that I always believed in. So the fact that they did that first half hour, I was like, fuck, like, did I just get booted out? And then quickly I realized that video went so viral. It's their number one viewed video on YouTube that I was like, you know what? I have to just kind of embrace this. And again, it goes back to the labels thing. It doesn't really matter whether you left the left or whether you're a libertarian or a classical liberal, the rest of it. But anyway, that's the genesis of the book of like, just how do you escape this sort of monolithic totalitarian thinking? And how do you just be whoever you are? how does that how does being an individual
Starting point is 00:48:05 basically lead you to being happy because I think that's actually the only way that you can be happy I think that that's it you have to you know it's the most cliche thing ever it's what Peterson's telling these people every night that thousands and thousands and thousands of people are showing up every night and he talks about the individual he talks about stand up straight you know clean your room. Like these things all sound silly at some level. And the more that I'm with the guy, it's like he is giving these people something that has just been so lost, like so absolutely lost. People think you can just be pathetic, blame the system.
Starting point is 00:48:41 Everything else is somebody else's fault. You should be given shit, all of this stuff and it's like, think about every movie, any movie, whatever your 10 favorite movies are. Is it about a guy who just was like, oh, the world sucks and what the fuck am I gonna do
Starting point is 00:48:52 and it's somebody else's fault. No, every great movie, whatever, you guys got a problem and guess what he does? Solves the problem. And that's what you're supposed to do. This is an adventure,
Starting point is 00:49:02 this life. But when you mean the individual, like being an individual is the only way to be happy what do you mean by that that well first off that we should only be judged as individuals right that's it so remove all the immutable characteristics i'm gay big damn whoop but you got any specific questions for me on that like big damn whoop how is that big damn right. But like, you know, like that. Just saying that means nothing other than you can figure out. Right. You know who I sleep with.
Starting point is 00:49:31 Right. OK, that that's it. All we can do is judge people as individuals and you have to just figure out what is right for you. So for all the people that I disagree with that are sort of like big government lefties and blah, blah, blah. And I get why that you need, maybe need a little more of that. If you live in a big city where you might need more noise regulations than if you lived in the freaking, if you live in the middle of Idaho on a farm or whatever, it's like, if that's the life that you want to live, then fight for that. But what we're doing now is this collectivist craziness is causing people to be unable to think clearly. So like Huffington Post yesterday wrote a thing about how you have to choose between being for gay people or said, I think it was for queer people or for Chick-fil-A.
Starting point is 00:50:10 Now I happen to be the- Oh, is this because of Jack? Yeah, because Jack retracted his tweet about Chick-fil-A and it's like- Did he have a tweet about Chick-fil-A? Yeah, he tweeted that he showed like a digital receipt that he bought Chick-fil-A and then Soledad O'Brien was like, you tweeted that on gay pride month and it's like this endless but why would he tweet a chick-fil-a receipt who the hell knows the guy likes chick-fil-a who cares yeah not allowed to like it yeah you better not like chick-fil-a because that means yes i eat chick-fil-a i took
Starting point is 00:50:39 a picture yesterday there was a chick-fil-a next door to uh to the theater we were at i took a picture of chick-fil-a there and i tweeted out the thing and it's like i like chicken sandwiches every time i've gone into a chick-fil-a the people are going to find me one fast food restaurant is that what he got here so that's what he did tweet oh it's a cash app that's one of our sponsors your 10 boosted chick-fil-a was applied you were charged 28 43 chick-fil-a and he dared save 10 on gay pride he wrote boost and then he tagged chick-fil-a and soledad o'brien showed who's showed him who's boss but that's what i'm saying that that sort of this endless guilting and and you know, you do this so you're evil.
Starting point is 00:51:27 It's ruining the fabric of society. It really is. Eat chicken if you like chicken. Don't eat it if you don't like it. But that's what individualism is about. If you want to make the choice, if you think that whatever Chick-fil-A is doing to gay people, whatever they're secretly doing to gay people, if you think that's so evil, even though, by the way, during the Pulse nightclub shooting at the gay club in Florida when 51 people were killed, they gave free food to everybody.
Starting point is 00:51:49 But if you think they hate gay people that much, then don't shop there. But you don't have to harangue everybody else into doing everything that you want them to do. That's actually the reverse of freedom. Live and let live. That's what I believe. I could see people, if they're saying that Chick-fil-A is a homophobic institution, that you shouldn't endorse Chick-fil-A, particularly if you're a gay man. But what does that mean? I go into Chick-fil-A. Is Jack gay?
Starting point is 00:52:14 Not that I know of. Okay. So it's not that. That seemed weird. I have no idea. I don't know either. I don't know either. But he clearly is an influencer.
Starting point is 00:52:27 know either i don't know i'm just but he clearly is an influencer and i think that the cash app if i had to guess because they sponsor this podcast they're very active in sponsoring podcasts they probably have some sort of an endorsement deal with him which is why he did that so it was a financial thing for the cash app if i guess all right so we don't know about that specifically but if they were paying him to do it i mean that's again, that's for him as an individual to decide I am going to accept. When's Gay Pride Month? Is it this month? It's this month. This is the gayest month there is. Damn. And I'm here with you.
Starting point is 00:52:54 Hello. This is the gayest thing I'm going to do all month. June. All right. Yeah, June. It's very gay. But that's what I'm saying. But how many people are upset? How many people? But it goes exactly to where we started with this whole thing. There is this loud group of people and most of them have some sort of odd influence in media. They're all of these blue check BuzzFeed, 4,000 Twitter follower people that retweet all of the articles of the people like them at Salon and Vox and BuzzFeed. And they make it seem like we're all hysterical, crazy people.
Starting point is 00:53:23 And I simply don't believe that. I believe that most people, I would say the vast majority of people probably, I mean, I think it's something crazy. Like 80% of people I think are good, decent people who just want people to live. They want, you can fuck who you want to fuck. You can smoke what you want to smoke. You can't do it on my property. You can't take what's mine.
Starting point is 00:53:40 You can't force me to bake a cake or do any of those things. But you can allow people to live as they see fit. I think that's what most people are. And that's why there's such a pushback. That's the answer to the Peterson thing. Peterson said, I'm not going to use pronouns that the government forces me to use. That's what put him on the map. Well, it's also, I mean, there's so many of them.
Starting point is 00:54:01 They got so silly with that that it made sense that someone was pushing back. There's 78 different gender pronouns. And you're obviously dealing with people that are being silly. Yeah. This is not like there's like- But it's not just people being silly. Well, you remember when Miz came along? There was Miss and there was Mrs.
Starting point is 00:54:17 When was that? What year was that? I don't know. I was a kid. I remember being super confused. I'm like, they made a new thing? You know, what's the matter? He's the CEO of that company, too.
Starting point is 00:54:25 Who is? Jack. Yeah. Of Cash App. Oh, he's the CEO of Cash App, too. So he's advertising his company. Oh. Well, that makes total sense.
Starting point is 00:54:34 That makes total sense. Yeah. Okay. Well. Oh, there you go. I just think that, well, that's a tricky one. I know. That's different.
Starting point is 00:54:44 Well, look, he's a guy promoting something on one of the things that he owns. That's it. All right. So he's a tricky one that's that's different well look he's a guy promoting something on one of the things that he owns and that's it all right so he's a guy but he's doing it on gay pride month who cares i mean really like it just so so what is it that they so i guess at one point they were against gay marriage and maybe they still are now who knows what every think of all the product late ceo Isn't the CEO dead? I think the CEO that was like super Christian is dead.
Starting point is 00:55:08 Yeah, I think it is the original guy and he's dead. I think they honor his wishes though and keep it closed on Sunday still. You know what,
Starting point is 00:55:13 every time I've- Which is stupid as fuck because I want a chicken sandwich on Sunday. Yeah. So somebody should be opening the- Somebody should be opening
Starting point is 00:55:21 the Sunday chicken sandwich pro-gay. Not in June. Not in June. Solidarity to my gay brothers and sisters It's all so stupid Eat a sandwich if you want a sandwich Don't Every time I've gone into Chick-fil-A
Starting point is 00:55:32 When you've gone into Chick-fil-A Are they nice or not? Yes or no? I've only been there literally twice And are they nice? I don't remember Nobody yelled at me They're friendly
Starting point is 00:55:39 They don't look at you and go I think everything's okay Yeah Yeah I don't know man I just don't think that I don't think at you and go – I think everything's okay. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. I just don't think that – I don't think there's that much outrage. I think there's a business in outrage, though. And there's certainly a business in a lot of people that write these articles.
Starting point is 00:55:53 And the Jordan Peterson thing has been very illuminating to me because I've watched them misrepresent his positions on so many different things and call him so many horrible names, transphobic, racist, alt-right, all these different things and do so with no justification or rationalization. Like you look at the actual article and they don't post to what he actually said. It's like that woman in the monk debates. What was it called? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What is it called? The monk debate, yeah.
Starting point is 00:56:21 Yeah. Whoever that woman was. Goldberg, I think. Whatever her name is. It was her and Eric Dyson. oh yeah yeah what is it called the monk debate yeah yeah um whoever that woman was um goldberg i think whatever her name is it was her and eric uh dyson yeah when she said you know that he doesn't want her to wear he doesn't think she should be able to wear makeup at work he's like i never said that well you can google it well we can google it we can google it we can find out you made me google something that you were wrong about yeah that's that's upsetting to me yeah i don't want you to do that.
Starting point is 00:56:45 You know, that bothers me more than anything. That is dishonest. It's 100% dishonest. She knew he did not say that. He was having an intellectual exercise with an interviewer. And I think one of the things that's gotten him into trouble is his openness to discuss things with question marks. With just bad- Question marks.
Starting point is 00:57:05 I don't know. I don't know if we can work together. We've only been doing it for 40 years. I don't know. Why do women wear makeup in the workplace? Why do women wear short skirts and high heels? Why do they? I don't think he's saying you can't do that
Starting point is 00:57:18 or you shouldn't be able to do that. He's saying why. He's saying that there's obvious realities. When you turn on CNN, why is it that Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, and the rest of the men are all in suits? They dress exactly the same. Anderson's are a little more tailored, but everybody dresses. What do the women all wear?
Starting point is 00:57:34 Every single woman. Dresses. They all wear dresses with cutoff sleeves. Right? They're all sprayed tan. They all have gorgeous hair, lipstick, blah, blah, blah. Why isn't Wolf blitzer walking in there with a with a cut off i mean i don't know what that arm would look like netflix special i have
Starting point is 00:57:49 a whole bit about it yeah about women on fox news versus men on fox news watching it with the sound off smoking pot like it's some sort of a wildlife show yeah it's something very strange it's a weird cultural dance that we're doing right so if so the idea that Jordan's talking about this, that men and women dress differently, women put on lipstick to look attractive. Why do you work out Joe Rogan? Uh, because I don't kill people. I don't want to be angry. So number one, so you don't kill people, but number two, you want to look good. You want to feel good. You want to be in a body that is, you want to look good for your wife and blah, blah, blah. And you want to live long, right? Like the, to deny these realities all the time and to think that that's because of your toxic masculinity and all of this nonsense.
Starting point is 00:58:30 I agree that it is a loud minority. But what I think maybe where we're having a little difference is that I think this thing has spread in a way. It is so easy to believe this nonsense, this abject drivel, that it is infecting young people at an alarming rate. But by the way, there's a lot of hopeful signs on this because now they're doing all these studies that the generation right after millennials, so the kids that are like 15 now, that they're actually more conservative now because they see all this as absolute hysteria. So I think there is, we are getting like a little bit of a rubber band effect on this
Starting point is 00:59:03 thing. And I think things are shifting into normalcy. And that's why people are listening to your show and listening to Sam's podcast and everything else. I think there's an issue with people commenting on things that other people were saying and just sort of jumping in and not having the other person there to discuss these subjects with. Particularly like why do women wear makeup at work? Why do women dress the way they dress? I think if you were sitting down with Jordan talking about it, he's willing to engage in these subjects with a very, very broad canvas.
Starting point is 00:59:38 I mean, he's willing to look at all the various aspects of them because as a legitimate intellectual, that's what he's doing. It's an intellectual exercise in discussion of cultural norms. Like why do women wear these shoes where you can see their toes in the, in the workplace? Whereas if a guy showed up with flip flops on, you're like, Mike,
Starting point is 00:59:57 the fuck we're at work here. Get out of here with this bullshit outfit. Go put on some goddamn dress shoes. We're in the office. You know, it is strange that women wear very little clothes in comparison to the way men do on these shows. And I don't think there's anything wrong with the discussion.
Starting point is 01:00:12 The problem is framing it as if he's saying you shouldn't be able to. If someone got on TV and said, you shouldn't be able to wear makeup at work, you shouldn't be able to dress like that. That would be a problem. So think about what these guys are doing in effect. So, right, so you're saying that Jordan's taking basically a decent but potentially confusing position, but it's basically a right decision of let's have a conversation.
Starting point is 01:00:38 So when they write all these hit pieces, and why do they do it? Because they can't get anyone, you know, they just did release this study about journalists and they're basically all paid like forty five grand a year. And they're alcoholics, you know, just broadly speaking. And they just want all these clicks. They want their jobs. And they realize that these websites that are faking as journalists, faking as places of journalism, that they're just trying to hold on to their jobs as long as they can. But if you're one of these people, what's a great way to keep your job?
Starting point is 01:01:02 Oh, there's a guy out here who's sold over a million copies of his book, who's on tour selling out Beacon Theater and blah, blah, blah all over the world. I'm going to write a hit piece on him because guess what? That's going to drive a hell of a lot more traffic than writing something honest. So that's part of the game. And I've discussed this many times, including on stage with him. Why does he keep retweeting the articles? His belief is, well, I'm still here.
Starting point is 01:01:26 I'm still here. I have exposed them and I'm still here and if anything I'm bigger because of it and now one of them was a guy who's His friend yeah, I know he's pissed about that one. That was a weird one. Yeah, because the guy's argument was shit It was like I was like why I think Jordan Peterson is dangerous. Yeah, like dangerous You didn't explain do it like why well this the problem with that is I don't give you many chances like that. If you write something like that, it doesn't make any sense. Now I'm going to discredit your opinions. I'm not going to think about, I'm not going to go, ooh, let me listen to this intelligent person's perspective.
Starting point is 01:01:56 I'm going to go, oh, this is that silly fuck that had that dumb idea about Jordan Peterson that I feel like it was just, it was some sort of rationalization for him getting attention to virtue signal over what Peterson is saying. Yeah. But he didn't have any real points. It didn't make any sense. I don't think I actually read that full one, but I know that- I read it twice. Yeah, so I know-
Starting point is 01:02:16 Just try to go back over it and see if it made any sense to me. At nothing. You got nothing that- Well, he just didn't represent his opinions accurately. That's the problem. When people don't represent the opinions accurately They set up a straw man and then attack the straw man and then have this click Beatty title like oh, you just need a hug Yeah, you need attention. Is that what it is? Yeah getting attention. They need a hug
Starting point is 01:02:37 I mean, that's what they need but I'm telling you man this tour It has been a freaking love fest every night when i go up there and i'm warming up the crowd and i'm doing silly lobster jokes and you know some of his other buzzwords and i'll talk about make a couple jokes about kathy newman or like some other silly things so what you're trying to say is yeah yeah so like i do like a roll on those like five different ones like a whole bunch of other stuff but like when i i'll go up there and i i usually make some reference to the intellectual dark web and if i say your name or i say Shapiro or Sam or whatever, people go crazy. And what I'm realizing about it is all of these people, think about all the people,
Starting point is 01:03:13 however many hundreds of thousands of people are watching this or listening to this right now, and then how many millions will, you know, in the next two weeks or whatever. Most of them are doing it alone, right? They're watching on their phone or they're listening on their iPad, whatever it is, or you're maybe watching with your boyfriend or girlfriend, but most people, it's a pretty solitary experience in the, in the world of what we do now imagine. And it's like, when you do standup now, 3000 people piled into this place and you can look around and go, Whoa, there's some other people like me and they're not bad people. And actually what I've found is that
Starting point is 01:03:45 these people look good. They dress right. Like I'm not to make it all about material stuff, but like they look like people who are trying to get their shit together. And I think I said it to you right before we sat down, but me at this moment, I truly feel like, like the best that I've ever been. I really do. And it's partly because of that, because you cannot be around that constantly. I'm not saying everything he says is right. And I'm still not with him on some of the religious stuff. And I have Sam, I'm doing my show when I leave here to go with Sam Harris. And they're, they, you know, they're really at loggerheads on some of the truth stuff. They need a moderator. I swear to God, and Sam has said this too. I swear to God,
Starting point is 01:04:20 if I was there with the two of them, I could have worked it out when that whole truth thing yeah that they bounded back and forth for an hour on the meaning of truth i i wish i was there and we talked about doing some live event together we never got around because sam's doing a lot of live events yeah as well so they're doing it with they're having brett weinstein uh moderate it but i would have been thrilled if it was look i love brett there's nothing about brett would be nice yeah yeah like so either it could have been one of us or or whatever it's completely fine and i think they just wanted like a more sciencey yeah focused person and he's a great biologist powerhouses so that's like if there's any like they're doing jujitsu on each other yeah this is any like openings they're trying to choke each other it's like right it's kind of but that's how we find out if ideas are
Starting point is 01:05:02 valid you know you you let guys like them discuss them. It was very unfortunate that at least their first podcast, the second one I think was much better. But the first one was just a clusterfest. I called Sam up afterwards. I was like, this is crazy. This is a non-conversation you guys had. He's like, yeah, I just got stuck. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:05:20 But think how cool that is that two of them are some of our leading public intellectuals in the country, in the world probably. They're debating over the nature of truth. And millions of people care. Yeah. That's a little different than what's going on on CNN on any given day. Oh, for sure. Well, there's a real problem with mainstream news. And first of all, there's a problem in that it's a ratings driven thing.
Starting point is 01:05:44 It's like everything they're doing doing they're trying to get ratings anytime there's a big story in the news it's just like what is what are people going to pay attention to that's what we're going to put on there's no consideration like is this interesting to us is this what we want to discuss it's it's a news program but it's not a news program because it's also an entertainment program yeah and then they have commercials every 15 minutes you know did you see the jim acosta thing what what he did during the Korea thing? That is crazy. That's crazy that a journalist would insert himself into that sort of a situation and
Starting point is 01:06:13 interrupt and yell things out. And people don't have a problem with that. We are truly watching the implosion of the media. And that's why I meant before, it's like if they would just lie a little bit, just lie a little bit on the margins, as they probably always have done. I don't think we'd be in this position because people wouldn't be able to so clearly see how messed up the whole thing is. But because they've become so hysterical writing articles that are completely the reverse of the truth, because they're actually acting like petulant children all the time and because because they half the time, it's like they pretend they're nonpartisan.
Starting point is 01:06:48 But if you just look at any of these journalists, Twitter feeds, it's like pretty obvious what you all are, all of you in the mainstream media. They've created an opening so that now if people want some sense of truth, you turn into Joe Rogan and you're turning to all of these other shows. I think it's very difficult to get employment if you're not on one side of the fence or the other side of the fence and you're a journalist. It's not a simple world like the world of podcasting where you truly can be independent. I think in a lot of ways it's like Hollywood. I've always described Hollywood as one of the main problems with it is you get a bunch of people that come here seeking attention, right?
Starting point is 01:07:25 That's the reason why they're here in the first place. They want fame. They want exorbitant amounts of attention. And then on top of that, you're entered into this system where you have to be chosen for each part. It's not like you have a sprint and the guy who's the fastest is the one who wins. Yeah. No, it's not like that. It's someone who goes, well, Dave, why don't you read these lines?
Starting point is 01:07:44 Like, hmm, I might like you, Dave. How do you feel about Hillary Clinton? Cause I'm pro Clinton. I mean, we want Clinton to win. Don't we want Clinton to win Dave? And you're like, Oh my God. Yeah. You'll drop your standards. I'm a huge supporter of Clinton. I think she's amazing. And I've seen this because you you're, you're, it's this weird environment where you want these people to like you. So you're terrified of saying anything, even remotely controversial, that doesn't stick to the script of this left-wing discourse. So there's all these people that are just faking it. They're bullshitting. They might not even have real opinions, but they've adopted this predetermined pattern of opinions that they think that is going to help them get through the door with these producers and these studio executives.
Starting point is 01:08:28 And that's Hollywood. And then when someone breaks free, occasionally someone becomes right wing, whoever the fuck they are, whether it's Chuck Woolery or Dennis Miller. They're like, look at that fucking crazy man broke from the pack. What's his name, the fucking actor? The older guy? Oh, John Voight. at, what's his name? The fucking actor? The older guy? Oh, John Voight? No, not John Voight.
Starting point is 01:08:49 The other one. Very good actor. Well, there's Gary Sinise. Got a big dick, supposedly. Got in trouble with Dave Cross's wife. He said, like, Dave Cross's wife said that he tried to hit on her when she was 16. James Woods. James Woods, yeah. Yeah, he's really dealt himself in.
Starting point is 01:09:06 He's got a giant dick. Yeah. That's what I hear. Yeah, he's dealt himself in. He's all in. He's all in. And he's sort of resigned himself to never work again. I mean, but he's probably like 75 years old or whatever he is.
Starting point is 01:09:18 He's probably like, I don't give a fuck anymore. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure he's got fuck you money. Probably. Yeah, he's definitely saying fuck you. So if he doesn't have the money, he might want to read to their stats. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But doesn't that prove, though,
Starting point is 01:09:30 why doing this was the right thing to do? Because I'm very aware right now. It's like, I got a lot of good shit going on. I'm getting offers and all sorts of different things. And I'm like, I'm my own boss. I'm not going to fire him. I'm not going to accidentally tweet something one day and then go, I'm going to fire
Starting point is 01:09:45 Dave Rubin. Like, you know, like my fans fund most of what we do. And it's like, I need to grow. Like, we definitely need to grow because there's we're just my guys are just doing too much. But I'm also very aware that the more we start growing, that all the problems that you just laid out will start becoming more and more real. So I like being as slim and trim as possible, at least for now, because I don't want to be down the road where we've had, we got too many people. There's too
Starting point is 01:10:10 many just different competing interests and business interests and political interests and everything else. So it's like, that's why, I mean, what you're doing here, it's freaking, it's amazing, man. It's amazing. Yeah. It's nice to be able to do it for sure. It's nice to be able to just have opinions on things. Yeah. And also just know that you're a nice person. Yeah. And that you're not trying to, like, I'm not trying to do any evil. Like, I look at, like, who I am, like, I'm a nice guy.
Starting point is 01:10:41 Like, okay. All right. Well, what are my opinions? Why can't I talk to this guy? Why can't I have discussions on these subjects? You know, like there's a lot of people that feel like if you're not in a certain group, you shouldn't have discussions on certain things. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:53 If you're a straight man, you shouldn't talk about gay rights. If you're a man, you shouldn't talk about women's issues. You shouldn't talk about Me Too unless you're 100% supportive. You shouldn't discuss the subtle nuance of human interaction. Yeah. Well, didn't Martin Luther King, he wanted us to be judged by those things right and he said if you're only this color you can talk about that if i'm not i'm pretty sure it was something like that's what he said yeah but that that's where we're at but also you know there was an article right after that idw
Starting point is 01:11:17 thing came out in the times that was calling you a conservative and i think i i think i emailed it to you because i was like man it was a Twitter thing. Twitter thing said renegade conservative. Oh, right. That's what it was. Pro-gay rights, pro-women's rights, pro-choice, pro-marijuana, pro-universal health care, pro-universal basic income. Like, what else do I have to do? Like, what other things am I?
Starting point is 01:11:39 Oh, pro-Second Amendment. He must be right, man. Yeah. Well, Joe, you're off the range. You can't just have, what do you think? You can have a series of thoughts that don't all lock in? What are you, stupid? Well, you have to be in a pattern.
Starting point is 01:11:50 You have to be in the pattern. I just don't understand why someone's willing to be dishonest like that. Like a cursory examination of people's thoughts and positions on things would lead someone to realize I'm definitely not a right-wing person. But the thing is that they have owned the narrative for so long. They can still get away with it. Yes. And what's happening is now it's shifting. And that's what I mean by I think we're starting to win.
Starting point is 01:12:16 And I don't mean it win like we're going to destroy these people. I mean I think the narrative has started to shift a little bit where the enthusiasm behind the conversations that we're all having, whoever it is in this thing, the enthusiasm is so great and there is no counter enthusiasm. Like where are all the versions of us on the other side of this? On the right? No, I don't even mean on the right. Like the people that really are selling identity politics at a really great way at a comedy level who have a huge podcast. And like, where is the where is that intellectual set of people? Where's the Sam Harris of the other side of this or the that have real followings? They don't exist. And that's partly
Starting point is 01:12:53 why the hysteria has been ramped up. They can't believe that out of nowhere, just because of our own all of our just wherewithal and desire to do what we think is right or what makes us happy or whatever the hell you want to call it they can't believe we all freaking created something well i'm weirded out that we're all in a group i'm weirded out that we're in a super boy band we're in a boy band or i guess christina hoff summers is in that band too who else is in that band is heather in it yeah is she in there i mean look we don't married to brett well you didn't get the card yet i didn't get the card dude the club didn't get the card. Dude, the clubhouse is under your studio.
Starting point is 01:13:27 Me and Shapiro were joking around about it. We're like the super friends. Yeah. Like, what is this? This is the weirdest Avengers ever. It's a weird group of humans. I mean, me and Ben, we disagree on a lot of shit, but we're super friendly to each other. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:13:38 Like, when I do his show or he does my- I really enjoy that guy. Oh, by the way- I like him. You do freaking Shapiro's show before my show? Sorry. The guy's had a show for three weeks. I'll do his show. Oh, by the way. I like him. You do freaking Shapiro's show before my show? Sorry. The guy's had a show for three weeks. I'll do a show. What are you doing?
Starting point is 01:13:48 People are mad at me with the way I dressed. See that? They're like, everybody else is wearing a nice shirt and a tie. I'm like, listen, man. I told the guy I was on my way to the comedy store. You want to take a photo of me? I'll be there. You're not in the bush, in the brush.
Starting point is 01:14:01 Yeah, I should be in a bush. Everybody else is in a bush. I had a freaking succulent up my ass. I'm wearing in a bush. I have a freaking succulent up my ass. I'm wearing fucking chucks. I'm wearing Converse and some sort of a flannel shirt. I bought that jacket in Alaska.
Starting point is 01:14:15 That's how I was wearing. That's just what I was wearing at the comedy store. They said they wanted to take a picture. I said, alright, man. That's what I'm wearing. No greenery around the comedy store. You'd have to go up to Sunset. Yeah. A little north. Either way, I just don't give a fuck. That's what I'm wearing. No greenery around the comedy store. You'd have to go up to Sunset, a little north. Either way, I just don't, I don't give a fuck. That's what I look like.
Starting point is 01:14:29 That's who I am. I'm not interested in portraying an image. Just, it is what it is. It's like this intellectual dark web. It's fucking Eric. He's crazy. He gets mad when I call him crazy. He loves it.
Starting point is 01:14:44 He's trying to get me to you on the whatsapp Oh, I'm on the group the little fucking chat group. Are you in there? No, I haven't jumped in yet. I'm busy Just two or three messages a day four different group text Conversations with comedians where we're talking shit about things and I don't have time for this I'm busy man. All right. Well, then you can't come to the club trying to make a things and jumping around. I don't have time for this. I'm busy, man. All right. Well then you can't come to the club trying to make a yoga class. I've got no fucking time.
Starting point is 01:15:10 Yeah. Who the hell knows? Like, are we a group? Do we, do we have a meeting and shellacked cards? What do we have in common? I think we have a respect for our audience and intellectual curiosity.
Starting point is 01:15:20 Intellectual curiosity for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, um, that's where, that's where a guy like me and shapiro although we have very different opinions on many different things
Starting point is 01:15:30 you know i think we both are intellectually curious yeah so think about it i've had ben on many times i consider him a friend we've we've broke bread together although he's kosher which makes it fucking pain what do you have to eat how does such a smart guy follow that voodoo well I eat whatever I eat whatever I want but he usually brings something
Starting point is 01:15:50 or you know why don't you eat at a kosher restaurant I did eat at a kosher restaurant with him once but then it was all these orthodox Jews there
Starting point is 01:15:56 and then they treat him like Jesus and I was like dude I'm not your photographer you know what I mean I have to take all these pictures of him and they're like
Starting point is 01:16:01 who's that guy I was like alright I'm not doing that again that's funny but you know I've had Shapiro on. Look, he's not inherently for gay marriage, right? My studio is in my house where I am married. What is his thoughts on gay marriage?
Starting point is 01:16:12 Well, now he takes the libertarian position, which is the government shouldn't be involved. But I don't know. But I see a lot of conservatives doing that where they should have all like this is where Rand Paul, who I mentioned before, he should have been years ago screaming that he's for gay marriage. Because if you're truly a libertarian, the government doesn't tell me what to smoke, what to sleep with, then the libertarians could have taken a really awesome, powerful, principled position and said, this isn't about religion. It's not about anything. It's about freedom. That's one of the things that I shove in the face of people that were Hillary Clinton supporters. I'm like, do you know that she didn't support gay marriage till 2013? You know how goddamn crazy it is. I supported it when
Starting point is 01:16:48 I was 13. This fucking grown up old lady with grandchildren is telling people that she's not for gay marriage until it became convenient politically. And she just wanted to separate herself as being at least the semi conservativeconservative option compared to Barack Obama. Yep. Look, Barack Obama was not for gay marriage at the beginning. He got pinned into it because Biden made that stupid comment on Meet the Press where he was basically like everyone's for it and then Obama had to come out for it. But think about it.
Starting point is 01:17:14 If all of this stuff that we're talking about keeps winning, if it all keeps winning, what will happen in 50 years? They will literally look back at video of Barack Obama campaigning the first time around saying that he's for traditional marriage and they will call Barack Obama a homophobe. And they will eventually want the Barack Obama library that's being built now in Chicago. They will want that being taken down because that will be the statues of our day. So that's why I don't know where you're at on the monument stuff, but I would not take any of them down. You can put up a counter plaque or something right next to it to say Robert E. Lee did this or that. But the idea that they're removing this shit, I think is absolutely terrible. You can't erase history. No, I agree with you. I think they should, there's a problem
Starting point is 01:17:56 with having them in town squares and celebrating them, but there's also a problem in that they were all, most of them, the ones that you're, they're talking about in the South, they were resurrected during the civil rights movement to sort of counteract the civil rights movement so like these these are really this is not like a celebration of these people back in the day when they were viable this is during the civil rights movement they erected these fairly cheap and they put them up quickly and they did it in response to black people wanting more rights and i would still i would still face yeah i i get it i would still be not for taking them down you put up something next to it you put you what i would be if you want to compromise i'm for taking
Starting point is 01:18:37 them down and replacing them with something else and putting them somewhere else like if you want to have a civil war museum so that would be the compromise where you could get me. I'm not saying you should melt them, but it's, there's something to, there's something to the argument that they're racist statues. And especially if you've understand the motivation behind creating them in the first place. Yeah. The problem though, is that, you know, I mean, I know, you know, this, it never ends where it's supposed to end. No, people wanted to go after George Washington and Trump said that.
Starting point is 01:19:04 Trump said that and people were ridiculing him. And then almost immediately afterwards, someone wanted to take down a statue of George Washington. I was in Old Town, Alexandria, where George Washington's church was. And it's actually the same church that Robert E. Lee went to. So they had a plaque for both of them.
Starting point is 01:19:19 And because they took down the Robert E. Lee one, they also took down the George Washington one at the church that George Washington went to. I mean, if you follow that logic, and this is what you have to do when you're doing these sort of historical trackings, they will come for everything. So think about it. Thomas Jefferson's my favorite founder.
Starting point is 01:19:37 Thomas Jefferson, you can go to his house in Monticello, and they do, if you go on the tour, it's incredible. They are incredibly honest about his relationship to slavery, that he owned slaves his whole life. He was having an affair with at least one slave and most likely had children with that slave. At the same time, he was writing the laws that freed the slaves. So without this man, these things don't move forward. So we all live with these odd inconsistencies. George Washington, George Washington, who gave up power after the after the revolution, like he did the most incredible thing. You know, who gave up power after the after the revolution, like he did the most incredible thing. You know, he gave up power as the commander of the army after the revolution.
Starting point is 01:20:09 The most incredible thing that a that a leader of a country could do. He owned slaves his entire life when he died. And they do this at his house. And it's outside. It's outside D.C. I'm blanking on it for a second. I'll get in a second. But you can go on the tour there.
Starting point is 01:20:23 And he had his slaves his entire life. When he died, his half of the slaves got freed. But Martha Washington's half didn't. Martha kept the slaves. Martha kept the slaves. That bitch. Yeah. So it's like all of these things.
Starting point is 01:20:36 It's like, so should we. Martha had half the slaves? What kind of weird relationship did they have? Because she had inherited them, I think, from her parents or something like that. Like it's all, it's deeply twisted and warped. And of course it was, now of course we can objectively look at it and go, slavery was wrong and you shouldn't, of course, but they all were doing things in their time that the world doesn't magically become what you want it to be just because you exist and think something. And the more that we start thinking that, the more we'll eventually come after Obama for running
Starting point is 01:21:04 against gay marriage the first time. And all of these things, there is more that we start thinking that, the more we'll eventually come after Obama for running against gay marriage the first time and all of these things. There is something that we think, you love meat, right? You love elk and all this other stuff. Guess what? One day, if this craziness keeps going, they will look back when you're a grandfather and they'll be like, they eat meat? Because at that point, we'll be eating artificially produced whatever. And they'll literally watch videos of you chomping on, you know, some ribs and go see what a savage he was. So that's why you have to just be aware of what your time is, your time in this world. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:21:33 They're doing it right now. Exactly. Yeah. Did you ever see the video of Obama talking about illegal immigration? It's incredible. It's really amazing. It's when he was a senator and running for president the first time. And he is more like he's stricter than Trump. Yes. I mean, it's a fascinating thing because no one brings that up and no one called him racist. I guess we're dealing with a long time ago.
Starting point is 01:22:01 Well, I mean, there's a couple of things. When was it? Was it 2011 he was doing that? He was a senator. So it was probably around 2010, 2011, something like that. I mean, look, there's a lot of things there, right? I mean, he's black, number one. So it's like they're not going to call him racist. It creates a thing where they can't compute what does that actually mean.
Starting point is 01:22:17 But he was saying the things that people wanted to hear. He also wanted to be elected. Yeah. He wanted to be elected. So they elevated him to a point that he was God. Play this. Let's listen to this. 2005.
Starting point is 01:22:28 2005? Yeah. This is early on. We all agree on the need to better secure the border and to punish employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants. You know, we are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States. But those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law, and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law. We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented,
Starting point is 01:23:02 unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country. So that's why we need to start by giving agencies charge with border security new technology, new facilities, and more people to stop, process, and deport illegal immigrants. Having said that, securing the borders alone does not solve immigration management. We're going to have to better manage legal immigration in order to end illegal immigration. Senators McCain and Kennedy point us in the right direction on that point. Right now, we've got millions of illegal immigrants who live and work here without knowing their identity or background. That's part of the reason that we need a guest worker program to replace the flood of illegals with a regulated stream
Starting point is 01:23:55 of legals who enter the United States after checks and with access to labor rights. Part of the reason that illegal immigration is so damaging is that it ends up creating a pool of workers with depressed wages and no rights. And that's not something that we find acceptable. It's crazy. Dude. American employers also need to take responsibility. I mean, I just scribbled down like I was doing homework in seventh grade.
Starting point is 01:24:21 Think about what he said there. We have to secure the border. Secure the border. Trump. Yeah. Secure the border. Trump. Yeah. Secure the border. Punish you if you hire, if you hire illegal workers. If you enter illegally, you're showing disregard for our laws.
Starting point is 01:24:34 We cannot allow illegals to pour in. We can't let them go ahead of lawful people who are trying to enter the country. We need better border security, more process and deportations. We have to better manage legal immigration. And then he talked about the millions that are here now, which in effect is a pathway to citizenship, which, by the way, Trump is basically for at some level. So it's like, so what are we really talking about every time we scream that everybody is racist? Did he just make a wild—so I assume he's talking about latino people so is barack obama racist against latino people well this was when he was a senator it's like he was elected in 2008 and so he was probably gearing up to run when he was in 2005 the things that he was saying he was letting people know who he is and that he's out there and starting the ball rolling. You know, this is a different time, too. 2005 was just a different world.
Starting point is 01:25:30 And it seems like it shouldn't be because it was only 13 years ago. But God damn, is it different. So what does that say then? What does that actually say about the way things have changed or the cult of personality around Trump or just sort of the general derangement of the media that they can't view these things? It's not just the media. I think it's also people's access to communication. The fact that anyone can voice their opinion, whether it's on Facebook or YouTube or what have you, you know, it's, it's a different world. Twitter, you just, you just tweet instantaneously.
Starting point is 01:26:00 This is fucking bullshit. You know, people should be able to do whatever they want or whatever, you know, whatever you want to say. And then a bunch of people can agree or disagree or retweet it or screen grab it because they think that it's damaging to you and they can't believe you support this piece of shit. Think about it. You can wake up on any given morning,
Starting point is 01:26:18 find someone you've never heard of who said something you slightly disagree with and you can help get them fired. That's a lot of power. There's a lot of people want to do that too, which is really interesting. That people want help get them fired. That's a lot of power. There's a lot of people want to do that too, which is really interesting that people want to get people fired for opinions. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But really, if we were to do a deep dive on that, it's like, well, what did we just hear
Starting point is 01:26:34 that is different than what Trump is trying to do right now? Does Trump use sloppy language? Yes. Does Trump lie? Yes. But they all lie. Obama, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Lie. Syria red line, lie. Those are pretty big lies that he did. Now, does Trump lie about everything constantly? Yes, but what he has a way of doing is getting these odd big picture things correct. And then it causes this. Like what? So like almost anything.
Starting point is 01:27:00 So like they'll say, okay, you know, just in the last couple of days with North Korea that Trump said, I've been traveling a lot. So like getting the exact quote will be tough, but it'll be something like, you know, Trump said to the North Korean dictator that they're, that they're good friends now or something like that. Like he's already giving him respect. Well, it's like if Obama, Obama, when Obama ran, he said he would sit down with Ahmadinejad and he would sit down with the leaders of North Korea and the rest of those things. Now Trump is doing it. So it's like, do you want him to sit down with them and tell him to go fuck himself at the same time? Like, I'm not even saying this thing's good or bad.
Starting point is 01:27:33 I have no freaking clue. Nobody has a clue. But everyone has every opinion on everything. Well, people want him to fail, too, which is fascinating to me. Well, did you see the Bill Maher thing? No. So Bill Maher on Friday said that he's hoping for a recession because that's how we'll get rid of Trump. Now we talked a little bit about Bill before this thing, but like, Oh my God, he's been a huge influence of mine. I like
Starting point is 01:27:57 him. I used to want to be on the show. I've kind of moved past that at this point, but think about it. You know, Bill's probably worth a hundred million bucks or something. I have no idea, but like he can afford living through a recession. But when people talk about the liberal elite that they hate, it's that type of person. It's this person on the coast who's like, yeah, yeah, have a recession so we can get rid of Trump. I hope he does amazingly well. Yeah, I agree. I hope Trump does amazingly well and turns the country around.
Starting point is 01:28:22 I hope he evolves his ideas as a human being. I hope he does amazingly well and turns the country around. I hope he evolves his ideas as a human being. I hope he does mushrooms. I hope he grows to love people. Why would you hope for failure, especially failure for the whole country and sending people into a recession, which is undoubtedly going to cause suicides and turmoil and crisis and people going to panic thinking and panic voting, which is not what you want. I mean, literally, that's what started Hitler. I mean, that's what started Nazi Germany, right?
Starting point is 01:28:49 They were in the middle of a horrible recession, and this guy came along that proposed a solution. You're not going to get a better version of the future by people living in fear and poverty and sadness. Like, I didn't vote for Trump, but he's the president. I want him to do great. I don't agree with him on a lot of shit. He lies about a lot of shit. Still want him to do great. You know why? Because he is the
Starting point is 01:29:16 guy that's running the country. If he's running the country, I want the country to do well no matter who's running it. My thought was like, this is almost what it's like it's like i don't like this doctor so when he fixes my knee i hope he fucks it up right that's it that's it it's really almost what it's like it's like he's the goddamn president okay if you want him to be impeached because he's done some fucking horrible crime which i still i've gone
Starting point is 01:29:40 over all this russian stuff i still am not convinced that he did anything horrible I don't see it seems like the Democrats did more horrible things early definitely been caught on something Yeah, they definitely did something and just what they did to Bernie Sanders alone. Yeah should be a Devastating blow to the credibility of the DNC it really should yeah, and the fact that it's not it's just It's just blind allegiance and that he could could say, I hope for a recession. Maybe he said that without thinking. Maybe it was just a flipping remark or- No, no. I'm pretty sure it was a package line. Never hope for a recession, no matter what. I hope the guy does fantastic,
Starting point is 01:30:15 even if he's hated across the board. I hope he does an amazing job and I hope the economy soars and I hope people have more jobs. I hope there's a method to his madness I really do why would anybody hope differently I don't understand well I agree with that and and basically and again I voted for Gary Johnson look if I had my choice I'm pretty sure you know me well enough like I would much rather have like a really bright intellectual person who I probably would rather have Rand in yeah I'd much rather have Rand Paul I'd rather have a libertarian who basically is kicking everything back to the states but you know what Trump is cutting a ton of regulation and doing a lot of states right stuff. The economy is doing really well. Do you have any sense that we're going to get into some intractable war in the Middle East to nation build?
Starting point is 01:30:53 I don't think under his watch, there may be some level of some peace now in the North Korean peninsula. So it's like. That's a fascinating thing, man. I don't think anybody else would have done what he did with North Korea. So talked a bunch of shit to that guy. Call fascinating thing, man. I don't think anybody else would have done what he did with North Korea. Talked a bunch of shit to that guy. Call him fat and short. It was very funny. What he does is kind of funny.
Starting point is 01:31:12 And then he gets to have a meeting with the guy. And the guy agrees to a meeting with him. I think they're baffled by him. They don't know what to do with him. North Korea and South Korea, when the presidents of the two countries met at the DMZ and shook hands, that was an historic moment. Yeah. Maybe they can get past all this fucking bullshit that's been going on forever.
Starting point is 01:31:30 And if part of that was helped in some way by Trump being crazy, maybe it's good to have someone that fucks things up a little bit and mixes it up. It doesn't mean he's a perfect person. It doesn't mean he's not a liar. Right-wing conservative neocon joe rogan but think about it so then like what does he do so he brings in john bolton who's thought of as a neocon like a warmonger neocon and then he has mattis as the secretary of defense warmonger neocon maybe what he was doing is that he was scaring people from the going i'm going to bring in all these people
Starting point is 01:32:00 who are really scary who don't talk about peace that often, who don't, who talk about exercising our power and all of that stuff so that Kim Jong-un is going to go, hmm, maybe this time they're actually being, they might actually depose me. Yeah. He's looking at Trump. He's like, this guy's fucking crazy. And by the way, this is where I would say my, my side in this, the libertarian side is pretty weak on this because a guy like Rand Paul, what he would say is, you know,
Starting point is 01:32:24 we should be cutting all military and never doing anything, blah, blah, blah. In which case you can make a strong argument that you're constantly emboldening your enemies all the time, because if they know you never want to do anything, then it's not a great argument to get bad actors to stop doing things. But I think that's a great place to have a good conversation. And Rand Paul has supported a lot of the stuff Trump has done at the same time. Yeah. I mean, I just don't understand the logic behind wanting a recession. I mean, I can understand the logic around wanting someone else to take over in two years or three years when the new elections take place. But don't you think things are basically going pretty well right now? They are.
Starting point is 01:32:59 Like if you remove the Twitter hysteria, like remove just like hysteria stuff, like this he said, she said, like in terms of what's happening in the country right now, black and Latino unemployment, all time low economies chugging along, like the basic things that matter for a society are working. That's pretty good. Right now, pretty good. I don't know enough about this, but what I've understood, what I've what's been explained to me is that a lot of this is the momentum of what Obama did when he was in office and that the economy, he's riding the work of Obama. He's riding the wave of the previous administration's policies. Does that make sense? Yeah, I've had economists on my show argue kind of both sides of this thing.
Starting point is 01:33:43 Most don't agree with that, but I've had probably more libertarian-leaning economists in general. What do they think? Well, because they're all about cutting regulation all the time, and Trump has been very good at that. I think it's something like at one point it was like for every 63 – or for every one regulation he passed, he cut something like 63 regulations. So if you're a libertarian economist or someone on the right, economically, you want the government out of all of that stuff. So they're very happy at the economic level right now. But all right, but let's even say that's completely true what you just said there, that this is all just because of Obama stuff. Well, it's working. Like we've got a guy that maybe has just picked up the ball
Starting point is 01:34:19 and he's the lucky guy and maybe he's going to get it to the next thing. But what I'm actually more enthused by is that I think after all this craziness that we're in right now, I actually think people are so starved for sanity and like a reset to decency. I actually think things are going to get much better. I think, again, this is where I think the conversations that we're all having are affecting things in a big way. And I think that even politically, it's going to start bubbling up.
Starting point is 01:34:45 When I was in DC the other day, I was at a small dinner with a pretty influential senator who probably doesn't want me to say his name at the moment. I'm not going to say it, but I'll tell it to you later. But it was somebody, it was somebody big and he got it. He really got it. Like he knew about us, like this whole thing. And that's what I'm saying. Like, I'm not sitting here like, oh my God, it's so amazing what we're doing. But there is something happening. And I think it will reach the political level too, that people will not want the hysteria anymore and that eventually Trump will, because of his own craziness, become unnecessary.
Starting point is 01:35:18 You won't always need the icebreaker. We needed the icebreaker to get all this shit out. Now it's all out. Everyone's reevaluating everything. And shit out. Now it's all out. Everyone's reevaluating everything. And then out of that is going to grow. I mean, look, maybe it grows something horrible, right? Like maybe the Hitler comes. I don't, I obviously hope it doesn't happen. But what I think is that something decent is going to come. That's just, that's just where I'm at. I think eventually something decent is going to come. And I think there is, there's a
Starting point is 01:35:43 lot of decent that's coming right now, but I think there's some people that are always going to resist that. Oh, of course. There's people that are just ideologically driven and they can't be shook from that position. They're hard left or they're hard right or whatever they are. They have this rigid idea in their head
Starting point is 01:35:58 of what reality is and anything that's contrary to that, they're going to oppose. And I think Jordan has been one of my favorite lightning rods for observation, for watching this. Because all the disingenuous articles about him, deceptive, talking about his positions in extremely inaccurate ways and labeling him as some sort of a prejudiced, terrible person. terrible person. What those have done is solidified this idea that there is a campaign of people that just are completely ideologically driven and they don't mind being deceptive. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:36:34 And that strengthens the position. It helps people like us to just talk about stuff and don't mind talking about being incorrect or ignorant or not worried. We're not worried about our stance. We're going about most conversations from a place of objectivity as much as we possibly can. Most people are subjective, at least to a certain extent. As much objectivity as we can, as much honesty as we can, and just talking about things is um this is something that's not happening in these little clickbaity articles or in people that interrupt your shows and shake fucking jars of nickels or whatever they're doing it's like there's that all that stuff strengthens this position that we're in that we're in this weird time of intellectual dishonesty and turmoil
Starting point is 01:37:23 and i think a lot of it is because there's a lot of people that were just extremely upset that Trump got into office and anything that seems to represent that position or that side must be opposed violently. Yeah. So I think underneath everything you're saying right there, you're very hopeful right now. I actually sense that you're really hopeful and I am too. And it's like, how could we ever do this if we weren't right? Like I would say that I'm a, if I had to like sort of whittle it down what I am too. And it's like, how could we ever do this if we weren't? I would say that if I had to sort of whittle it down what I am at the core, I basically, I'm a world weary optimist.
Starting point is 01:37:51 I'm an optimist by nature, but I believe that the world is rough and tumble and all the things that Jordan would say about existence, I believe, but I'm still an optimist despite that. And what you just said right there basically is showing that the Trump thing was necessary because imagine if Hillary was president right now and the same machine and bullshit nonsense and media and all of that stuff kept churning along. wrong side of things, so to speak. And the forces that don't want us to do anything good and have conversations would have been so emboldened. Trump just came and took a freaking bat to the whole thing. Now, as I discussed with Eric Weinstein, it's like Trump was the bull in the China shop.
Starting point is 01:38:35 I think most of us would have preferred a panther. We kind of wanted something to walk through, knock a few things off. Trump just blew up the whole thing. The phrase is bull in a China shop, not a panther in a China shop. So that's what you get. But after this, for every reason you just said, there is going to be a return to sanity. It goes one of two ways, but I just am a firm believer that it will go that way, that there is enough of us out there now trying to reset things. And because I don't think people are evil, I don't think people want to be talked down to. I don't think people are dumb. And even the people who are dumb, I don't think they want to be dumb. And because of all of that, I think this was the necessary thing to happen right now. I'm with you that I think, I hope that he continues to do basically good things.
Starting point is 01:39:20 And that if that means that he gets in for another four years and continues to do good things, then so be it. But yes, what I prefer that it's sort of more of a small government calm person who could tell you how many branches of government there are. And like all of that shit and all of the stuff from that flag that's right behind you. Yeah, I've got a freaking Declaration of Independence in our control room and a constitution and a big American flag. Like, would I rather someone who knew what the Federalist Papers are and all of those things be in the Oval Office? Yes. You don't get everything you want in life. So you just kind of work with what comes. And I think we have a little room to work right now. I think also, as more people open themselves up to the ideas that Jordan is espousing, or you are, I am, or more people are genuinely objective about these ideas and start discussing them,
Starting point is 01:40:09 the more frantic the people on the radical left and what they call the regressive left, the more ridiculous they're going to get and the more obvious it's going to get that they're out of control. It's just what happens. People start ranting and screaming louder because their initial message doesn't work. It's not like they're going to go back and revamp the message and make it more logical. There's no logical message there. But think about that. So when that's exactly what they're doing with Trump too, you keep screaming Trump's Hitler, right? You keep screaming Trump's Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Now Hitler killed millions and millions of people and many more millions were
Starting point is 01:40:42 killed because of Hitler that he didn't directly kill. Now, if you keep doing that with Trump and then someone plays that Barack Obama clip and you go, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're calling Trump Hitler. Here's Obama saying something that actually sounds possibly even more extreme if you believe this is an extreme position to take. So now is Obama Hitler? And what they're doing is they're creating a situation where they're going to cause a rebound so that people will be like, oh, these guys aren't all nuts. But if they destroy all of our ability to have this conversation, then when the real Hitler comes in, we won't even be able to recognize it because they will have cried wolf to the point that someone's going to come in and they're going to have a big smile. It won't be a Trump. When Hitler, the Hitler type, and I hate using Hitler as the metaphor because it's so overplayed. But like when the Hitler type comes, it ain't coming as the angry guy like Trump is. It's going to come with the smile on its face, right?
Starting point is 01:41:36 That's that socialist t-shirt, like, you know, socialism smiley face. That's how it will come because it will be masked in identity politics. It will be masked in all of this nonsense that will rip us apart, that will literally have us killing each other on the streets. What do you think would cause that? What scenario do you foresee that could be possibly that extreme? The ideas of what I consider the fringe left, which are pretty much mainstream Democrat ideas already. If the Democrats keep going more towards the Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Keith Ellison, real hard left progressive stuff, it is rooted in identity politics, which we've done already. But it is rooted in something that separates us. It is
Starting point is 01:42:16 rooted that you should, that even today, did you see this, that Harvard, I just tweeted out when I was on the way here, Harvard released this statement defending the fact that they are okay with basically having quotas that work against Asian students because they want to have more other minorities, basically meaning black or Hispanic minorities. So think about it. Why would you discriminate? If you were hiring right now,
Starting point is 01:42:38 let's say you're hiring today, right? You're hiring for your studio. Who are you gonna hire? You're gonna hire the most qualified person or are you gonna try to figure out every little identity thing to figure out who you should hire? Diversity, bro.
Starting point is 01:42:49 I'm all about diversity. Yeah, exactly. You'd hire. It's, it's racist against Asians. It's racist. I haven't been very vocal about it cause they,
Starting point is 01:42:57 they tend to just put their fucking nose to the grindstone and keep kicking ass. So they have to use that against them now. That will, so that that's the new thing. You will not be, if you're Asian, and why did Asian Americans or Indian Americans, you're a great example,
Starting point is 01:43:10 they have succeeded at every level that we measure success. I think the highest socioeconomic, average salary over a hundred grand, education, et cetera, et cetera. If you now say, well, wait a minute, these people played by the rules. They came here as in most, like all of our ancestors virtually came here pretty much with nothing. People own small
Starting point is 01:43:28 businesses, busted their ass, worked in coal mines, et cetera, wherever you had to do it. If you do all of those things, and then you focus on education and on family and all of those things, and now the system is going to say, well, it worked for a while, but we're going to have to put you at the bottom of the thing now. And guess what? You're not going to get into Harvard because you're Asian. That is racism. So I've been calling this out for at least two years. That the next move by this identity politics, this evil oppression Olympics machine is that they will come after Asian people. And it's starting to happen now.
Starting point is 01:43:59 So I see all these minorities, by the way. So Candace, who I watch the show, and I know you guys definitely have disagreements on stuff, as do I do when it comes not only to politics, but tactics sometimes and stuff, but I really do like her. You know, look, she's causing a massive rift in the black community. And you can see it in the numbers, black male support for Trump, or for Trump doubled was at 11%. It's now at 22. No, well, it's Kanye. Kanye was the wrecking machine. But I actually think I think in the grand scheme of things, Candace is much bigger. I really believe that. Why?
Starting point is 01:44:29 Because I think she could be a direct line to all of the political parts of this if she decides to go that route. Because I think she could run for Senate. What? Yeah. Are you okay? Are you high? Yeah. I'm not high.
Starting point is 01:44:44 I'm not high today. I'm only smoking maybe once a week on Sundays. And now I'm on? Yeah. I'm not high. I'm not high today. I'm only smoking maybe once a week on Sundays. And now I'm on tour, so I'm not really at all. Maybe I'll spark up a joint and have you reconsider what you just said. You can smoke a joint and maybe I'll reconsider. You said you watched the podcast I did with her. Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 01:44:57 Yeah. I watched, I don't know, maybe at least an hour and a half of it or so. Okay. Yeah. Why? Why what? I don't know. Why are you saying it that way?
Starting point is 01:45:05 Because I don't think she should run for Senate. No, no, I'm not saying. I think she's a young girl with some interesting ideas and she's got a lot of passion. No, no, I didn't say you. And she's real fun. I didn't say you think she should. I didn't even say I think she should. I think she could have a bigger effect even than Kanye when it comes to just everything going on politically and socially.
Starting point is 01:45:22 I'm going to ask you again if you're high and you need to be honest with me. This girl, she wants it. She wants it, man. I'm sure she does you again if you're high and you need to be honest with me. She wants it. She wants it, man. I'm sure she does. But when you hear- She's affecting people in a big way. I think maybe in a bigger way than perhaps either one of us understand. But forgetting Candace specifically.
Starting point is 01:45:36 Okay. I like her. Don't get me wrong. She's a nice person. Yeah. My point was though that I think all minority groups are reevaluating what's going on here. If you're in the black community, clearly there is at the moment a reevaluation of do we have to be democratic? If you're.
Starting point is 01:45:50 That is an issue. Yeah. It's a racist issue. Yes. Because people assume that if you're black, you must be a Democrat. If you're not, you're some sort of an Uncle Tom. Yeah. It's kind of fucked up.
Starting point is 01:46:00 Yeah. Talk to my friends, Larry Elder. I had Thomas Sowell on the show or my buddy, David Webb, or many. There are many black conservatives. Sure. You are allowed to think however you want, despite your skin color. Right. So I think the black community, Ben Carson, I mean, I think the black community is starting to split. I think the gay community is starting to split because the left has sort of had this odd embracement of Islam, which is bad for gays. So I think the gays are starting to split. embracement of Islam, which is bad for gays. So I think the gays are starting to split. I think that Latinos are even starting to split a little bit differently because I think for all the people
Starting point is 01:46:30 that came here legally, they're actually not as thrilled with illegal immigration as the media may imply that they are. So I think there's just massive shifts happening all over the place. And the way we look at voting, where every election, what's his name? John King goes on CNN and shows you the map and he goes, well, the white working class people here voted this way and the black inner city people. I think all of that is about to explode and they won't know what to do because they haven't been listening. But I think some others have been listening. Do you think there's real room in this country for a third party? in this country for a third party? I mean, I think for sure someone could take a position that's outside those two boxes and make some real valid points and have a little bit of ideas from each side. But the real concern in this country seems to be throwing your vote away, right? That's
Starting point is 01:47:16 the thing that people are always worried about. Well, if you go that way, you're throwing your vote away and you're essentially giving it to the person that is on the other side. So I used to kind of buy into that, right? Because realistically within – but this is why I was so disappointed in Gary Johnson. Half the country hated Hillary. Half the country hated Trump at the highest levels that you could hate a candidate, right? So if there was ever a time for just a decent guy, right? Like Gary Johnson is just a decent guy.
Starting point is 01:47:40 If he was here, like he'd probably want to spark up a joint. He's a nice guy. He's just a nice guy. If he was here, he'd probably want to spark up a joint. He's just a nice guy, but he was such an ineffective, confused memory problem, couldn't lay out his basic principles simply. He wanted, as a libertarian, he wanted the baker to bake the cake. That's a crazy position to hold as a libertarian. It's completely against what would be your line of thinking as a libertarian. You would never want the government your line of thinking as a libertarian. You would never want the government to force someone to do a specific task.
Starting point is 01:48:09 You're talking about the gay couple that wanted a wedding cake made? Yeah. Yeah. What's your position on that, by the way? Well, there's two issues. One issue is that they apparently went to places they thought would deny them so that they can make a story out of it. It wasn't as simple as a loving couple went to some place, they wanted to get a cake made, and the people said no. And they're like, what the fuck?
Starting point is 01:48:33 No, they wanted a story. So they sought out places that they thought were going to deny them, and then they made a giant national event out of it. I don't think people should discriminate to the point where they're not going to make someone a cake. I mean, I think there's something fucked up about it. Do you think the government shouldn't step in? No, I think you should let people know publicly that these are people that they discriminate against gay people. And so if you want your dollars to represent your opinions and your feelings on things, maybe you shouldn't buy a cake from these folks that don't want to make a cake for gay
Starting point is 01:49:10 people. But the idea that government's going to step in, it seems crazy to me. But then as soon as I say that, I go, okay, well, what if they wouldn't make a cake for black people? Should the government step in then? So, okay. So there's a couple of things, right? So there's a couple of things there. So first off, it was about the specifics of the cake i know this a lot of people are going to get into the nitty-gritty of every legal part of this thing but it was about a specific it wasn't that he wasn't going to sell them a cake that was on the shelf right he didn't want to make he didn't want to make them a cake for this wedding now that's asking him to do something that's artistic or that's not on what... What was the variables? Like, did he want two men holding hands?
Starting point is 01:49:48 So apparently the conversation actually never got to that point because he denied them before that because he knew what it was going to be. So it never got to like, oh, are you going to draw us together or whatever, but he knew it was going to be a gay wedding. So he just said, no, I'm not making a cake for a gay wedding. Right. Now look, but they could have bought a cake that was there. What if it was an interracial wedding? Would you have a more of an issue with that? So, so here's the deal. So it's, look, we have the civil rights act of 1964. You have to serve people based on race and, uh, all of the minority statuses that there are. I'm not for relitigating that, but, uh, but there are, there is a libertarian argument
Starting point is 01:50:24 that basically would say we don't need those laws anymore because the Civil Rights Act was in response to Jim Crow laws where states in the South had discriminatory laws. So we had the federal government come in and clean that up for everybody. So you have to serve everyone equally. You can't deny a black couple to come into your restaurant or you have to serve them a cake. So why can you deny a gay person then? No, but it was a specific thing. It was a specific... So look, put it this way.
Starting point is 01:50:50 If there was a Jewish artist who took commissions for paintings, would you force that person to paint neo-Nazi signs? Of course not. You would never have the government come in and say that they are forced to paint something that's against their conscience. So I would say that your original position is the right one, which is it kind of sucks. Right. It kind of sucks. Like I wish in my heart of hearts, I'm gay again. Like I wish that every baker would treat everyone equally and every person would treat everyone equally. equally and every person would treat everyone equally.
Starting point is 01:51:23 They're not allowed. He wasn't allowed to deny them something that was in the store already because you can't deny based on those protected categories. So he wouldn't have, by the Civil Rights Act, he wouldn't have been allowed to deny an interracial couple a cake that existed there already. Could he have denied them one that he would have had to draw a black woman and a white woman if he was a real racist? I think the answer is that he could have denied them that and that would have had to draw a black woman and a white woman if he was a real racist. Yeah. I think the answer is that he could have denied them that, and that would have been very shitty and he would be a racist and a really awful person. But if the answer is that the
Starting point is 01:51:53 government should then come in and tell this man what to do, I would not be for that. I see what you're saying. Um, I just, that's just the cleanest way to deal with this related to freedom. It's kind of shitty. Like freedom is messy. It's definitely shitty. Um, I just that's just the cleanest way to deal with this related to freedom. Mm hmm. It's kind of shitty. Like freedom is messy. It's definitely shitty. Yeah, it's shitty.
Starting point is 01:52:10 And but the government can't protect you from shitty. Yeah. No. I mean, obviously, that's why the KKK still exists. Yeah. And what's the alternative? I mean, what's the alternative? We would all love the KKK to go away.
Starting point is 01:52:23 We would all love there to be not all of us, but most sane people don't want racism to exist. But should we not let people meet? Should we be bugging people? Should we force people to do something they don't want to do? I mean, I just fundamentally do not believe in that. I don't want people to be racist. I don't want people to be homophobic or transphobic. But the idea that the government can use its authority to make people do all of these things, I just think is absolutely crazy. So whether they decided to intentionally inflame this or not by finding people that weren't going to do it, if you're listening to this right now and you're getting married, you're getting gay married or untraditionally married, as they
Starting point is 01:53:02 call it, if you're doing that and you live in Alabama and there's only one baker there and he doesn't want to bake a gay cake, it sucks. It does suck. But what you might want to do is what I said about an hour ago, which is maybe leave that town. Like maybe take your skills,
Starting point is 01:53:14 whatever worth you bring to a community and move to a bigger town where there probably is someone that do it or order a cake online. I mean, the technological part that you just mentioned that you can now tweet about stuff and go, don't go. Like, we have power as people. And the idea that we outsource all the decision making to the government is extremely dangerous.
Starting point is 01:53:34 I mean, every horror in human history is a government doing things, basically, you know, as long as governments have pretty much existed. It's not bands of nice individual people that disagree on some stuff murdering people yeah i mean i i understand your position and i'm with you to a certain extent i wish there was a clean answer there's no clean answer no but freedom's not clean that's the point yeah yeah i mean even the freedom to be a piece of shit yeah and to be racist and to be sexist or homophobic or whatever it is and you know, we have to define what that is in the first place, right? Like, by whose definition is something homophobic? Or by whose definition, I mean, is it homophobic or is it religious freedom? Like, if, you know, if someone is deeply religious
Starting point is 01:54:15 and their religion discriminates against gay people, are they discriminatory or are they religious? Well, you'd have to give me an example of what they were actually doing. Like, you're allowed to hate gay people. You are. I hope that you do not. Are they discriminatory or are they religious? You'd have to give me an example of what they were actually doing. Like you're allowed to hate gay people. You are. I hope that you do not. And I actually think this is somewhere where the conservatives have moved.
Starting point is 01:54:35 I really do think they have moved. There's virtually no mainstream conservative that's screaming about gay marriage anymore. Even Mike Huckabee, who's sort of irrelevant or like the Christian conservative side of that. They pretty much have. Ted Cruz, what does he say about gay marriage anymore? But that's, again, why Rand Paul should have led, or the real, the true conservatives that believe in limited government should have led the charge on this. So this is where the progressives did do something right years ago, because they were fighting for real equality. Because real equality means you should be able to marry whoever you want.
Starting point is 01:55:04 They weren't going for extra rights for anyone. Now they're going for extra rights because we all have equality. It doesn't mean we all have equal everything, but we have to have equality under the law. That's all the government can provide you. And then once you have that, some of us are going to be born into more money, right? Like your kids are going to have more money than you did, right? Fact. Should they be punished for that? A lot of people would say yes. There's a lot of people who do think that.
Starting point is 01:55:29 Yeah. I mean, look. A lot of people don't believe you should be able to give your kids money when you die. I mean, the estate tax. I hope that I'll be able to make enough money in my life that that will be a problem, but it will be a problem for you, for sure. Short of you going bust on everything you you're doing which I'm assuming is not Gonna happen. Do you think at the end of your life that you've paid taxes your whole life? You've paid payroll taxes because you have employees you've done all of these things
Starting point is 01:55:53 You've done everything right as a citizen Do you think at the end of the day the government should be able to come in and take something like? 55% of your money at that point. No, that's creepy. It's creepy that they're able to do that to take money From taxed money yeah so the money's already been taxed for your whole life yeah you earn that money and then they're going to tax it on top of that but that's a mainstream democratic yeah well talking point it's one of those things where they're dealing with the redistribution of wealth that that conversation the redistribution of wealth is super slippery because like who's going to redistribute it and to who?
Starting point is 01:56:26 And like when do you decide that someone has too much money or what's the standard? What's the metric? And what occupation? Are we only going to go after the bankers? Are we going to go after artists as well? Like what if someone's a successful artist? Are we going to take all their money? Are we going to go after artists as well? Like, what if someone's a successful artist? Are we going to take all their money? Are we going to remove incentive for success?
Starting point is 01:56:47 There's a certain line that you're going to cross where you shouldn't be more successful because they're going to tax you harder. Are we going to keep people on some sort of an artificially constructed glass ceiling to avoid being taxed? Like, it's real weird. I hate to tell you, but everything you just said there is completely against what Democrats basically are for. They are for the estate tax. I mean, but why? What's the argument? The argument is you died.
Starting point is 01:57:11 And now in the greater good, which is which is a phrase that sounds really good, but is but is your face pretty much summed it up. It never leads to good. Well, we could. OK, let's just give more money to this thing that wastes money on everything. That has no accountability. This giant money churning monster. Yeah, that's the real issue, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:57:34 Is that this thing doesn't have accountability and that it does waste a shitload of money. Think about this. If the government was slim and trim and effective and, you know, we were all tax right and it was transparent and effective and functional, there would be no reason to be a libertarian. I'd be sitting here going, I'm for government. You know what I mean? Like if it really operated in a slim way, but what the government doesn't do anything good. Name one problem you could possibly have in your life, Joe Rogan, that you'd be like,
Starting point is 01:57:55 get me, get the government to solve this. Do they do the post office well? No. Like what do they do well? They do the post office pretty good actually. But guess what? If the post office closed tomorrow, it would be all right.
Starting point is 01:58:05 You'd still get mail. It would suck. Amazon would pick, no, it wouldn't. Amazon would pick that up. You'd have to send things through UPS. It would cost a lot more. It wouldn't, though. Competition would start kicking in.
Starting point is 01:58:14 And between UPS and FedEx and Amazon and drones and blah, blah, blah, and DHL, they'd all start, it would probably drop prices. Because right now we've just got this artificial thing that sits there that then allows them to price according to that. But if you drop that, why is the government in that business anymore? I have three chickens. I've really done the Joe Rogan lifestyle here over the last couple of years. So I have three chickens right now. We had, I'm going to give you a good UPS story. We ordered them. They were born in August on a Monday in Cleveland. They hatched that day. They threw them in a box with a little hole, USPS, and they showed up at my door in LA on a Tuesday.
Starting point is 01:58:50 The USPS has been doing that for about a hundred years. It's the only way you can do it, by the way. You can't order chickens through any other method. Oh, is it just USPS? So actually I was giving the USPS credit there because my chickens all arrived live. Yeah. They send them to chicks. Yeah. You're buying these live chicks. That's the way you get them. You get them through the U.S. Postal Service. You don't get them through UPS. I'm pretty sure, though,
Starting point is 01:59:11 that if the USPS stopped, it didn't exist anywhere, you'd still get chickens delivered. And Amazon could probably do it even more effectively. That's my point. It's like, I'm not saying these things have to be eliminated tomorrow. I'm not even really calling
Starting point is 01:59:20 for them to be eliminated. But just generally, what problem would you, everything you're building here right now, right? Do you want the government to tell you how to do all these things and all the regulations that you got to have your electric thing this far from this and like all of it? Regulations like that for construction are important though. You do have to make sure that people don't do stupid shit.
Starting point is 01:59:38 But generally- Make sure you don't have a power line that's near a water line. There's a lot of- But I would put most of that on the builders though they want to build things that are good now i get it oh that's not true listen people no people are going to build corners all the time like you have to have regulations when it comes to construction methods or people are going to get fucked they cut regulate they cut corners when there are regulations anyway they do they would cut a lot more if there weren't regulations i'm not totally
Starting point is 02:00:02 third world countries and look at construction methods. They're fucking dangerous. Yeah. That's why schools collapse on kids in foreign countries sometimes. Like, well, I'm not complete. I'm not telling you that I'm against all regulation period. That's where, but that's where I said intellectually. I like that argument because you could make it. I think you can make a very sound argument that competition would force people to do
Starting point is 02:00:22 better work. Like if you're a plumber, you have a vested interest in doing the best plumbing job you can so that people will rate you on Yelp so that you will get more work. You don't have a vested interest in cutting corners. Now you might, right? You're going to push it as much as you can
Starting point is 02:00:34 to save as much time and energy and money as you can. But once you go over that edge, yeah, you don't want to be known as the guy that you tighten something too much so that you flooded the house or when you're building a house. You're thinking logically, though. When people fuck things up and short things and do things terribly, they're not thinking logically.
Starting point is 02:00:51 But I don't think it's the government. I don't think it's the government that they're like, the government gave me this regulation, so that's why I'm going to do it right. Well, if they didn't have any regulations, there'd be no incentive whatsoever to do it right. No, there would be an incentive. If they knew there were no inspectors, no one was going to check their stuff and make sure that their stuff was up to code. Listen, man, I was in construction my whole life. My dad was an architect.
Starting point is 02:01:12 I've been in construction since I was a little kid. You fucking need regulations. These guys, a lot of people that are in construction, they'll do whatever the fuck they can to make money. And it's not good for the people that have the house because they might have that house for five, ten years before that problem manifests itself. The people who are establishing these codes are licensed builders
Starting point is 02:01:33 or people that have been involved in construction for a long fucking time, and they know what's safe and what's not safe. That's why those codes exist. They exist to protect the consumers. You can't just protect the consumers through the marketplace because it takes a long time for these problems to become a real issue. And these problems could potentially damage everybody in the neighborhood. It's not just
Starting point is 02:01:54 going to affect the person on this one lot. Like if a fire starts, it burns all the houses in the neighborhood. Or if a flood happens and it floods everyone downhill, it's a real problem. You have to be real careful with construction i get it and you know my dad wasn't in construction so i'm not privy to like all of that the little stuff but i genuinely believe that as a general level people have a vested interest in especially now because of phones and apps and yelp and all the things doing good work because that's how you will get more work.
Starting point is 02:02:25 I agree. You're never going to remove the people who will do shoddy, shitty, malicious shit. But you can keep them at bay with regulation. So this is where I say you can have some regulation. Educated regulation. People who actually understand what's going on and make sure that someone doesn't do something stupid with a power line or someone do something stupid with the way they constructed main beams where they're just subject to collapse. That's important because most people buying a house don't know what the
Starting point is 02:02:53 fuck they're looking for. Most people getting a house built, they have no idea about construction methods and they need someone to inspect things and make sure that it's up to code. That's why code exists. It's very important. Yeah. So I'm not, I'm not totally with you on that. Like I do think most, I think most of it, probably 90% of it would be who has the most vested interest to build a good house. It's the builder because he wants more work. He doesn't want the house to collapse because then he'll be out of work. I'm telling you. No, I gotcha. I gotcha though. I get it that it will not always. These guys are jerk offs. Yeah. There's a lot of them that are jerk offs. So construction may be a specific thing.
Starting point is 02:03:25 You know what I mean? It's a dangerous thing, too, because it's where you sleep. It's where your kids sleep. It's, you know, you just, I think there's a lot of idealistic notions about deregulation. And I think there's some consumer protection has to be put in place because people don't have the time to spend all this time researching construction methods and making sure everything's done correctly and be there and make sure that the joists are a certain width and they have a certain amount of
Starting point is 02:03:54 support like all that stuff has to be done by people who understand code assuming that the government regulators understand code correctly and aren't just on the take or just try you know you know just basically just taking money and signing off on things i mean when i got my house inspect things man have you ever had a construction project done yeah well i got my house last year and we had to go through all the inspections and had several guys come back and we didn't build it no right there's a big difference between an insurance inspector yeah and a code inspector code inspectors are very different when you're having a house built, and I've had
Starting point is 02:04:25 construction projects where I had to explain to people and go through it with builders, they're making sure that the house doesn't fucking fall on you. That the power lines are done correctly. That all the electricity is done correctly. The pipes are laid in correctly. Your septic system or your sewage system is
Starting point is 02:04:42 done correctly. Do you think that could be privatized then? See, because again, I'm not, I'm just, I just think it's an interesting. The regulations? How would it? There would be no incentive. Well, no, you could have companies that would, that their job would be to make sure, to inspect. Yeah. But they wouldn't have the threat of law to enforce these things.
Starting point is 02:05:03 Like if someone is, if someone is building something and they're not up to code, they lose their license and they can't build. If you privatized it, what's the incentive for them to follow the guidelines? Yeah. So this is where I'm not telling you that I'm calling for all this. I just think intellectually, it's just an interesting space to argue something. Because I think that there's more, the more that you can give to people to freely do what they think is right. I think generally they will like, again,
Starting point is 02:05:28 I get it. There's going to be some real shitty construction people out there. Um, you know who you should have on to talk about this. And I think people have looped you in before is your on Brooke from, uh, from Ayn Rand Institute. He's cause he's obviously big.
Starting point is 02:05:40 No, no. All right. So I'll be happy if they have, I haven't paid attention. Okay. So I'll be happy to do it. He's a really interesting guy. Who's moved my thinking a little bit on this
Starting point is 02:05:47 those ayn rand people are fucking harsh they like ideas man those are they're they're not the most fun people on the on the planet but i generally i generally like them because they just want they're kind of live and let live that's really it like that's like the crux of it pretty much is that really the crux of it i mean yeah people think that there's like the crux of it pretty much. Is that really the crux of it? I mean, yeah. People think that there's like sort of a cruelty aspect to it. Well, Ayn Rand philosophy. Well, they believe in,
Starting point is 02:06:10 in rational self-interest, which if you say self, it makes people think you're evil. But I, but we all basically operate in rational self-interest all the time. Right. But espousing it, that's the thing.
Starting point is 02:06:21 It's like proclaiming it is the thing that people go, you're, you're, you're essentially setting up the idea, the Gordon Gekko idea. Greed is good. Yeah. I kind of buy into that idea. Do you buy into greed is good? Yeah, basically. Not greed to destroy the world, but if you do, you, Joe, do what is good for you. And by extension- Is that greed?
Starting point is 02:06:41 Well, that's good. Or is that ambition? Well, all right. Exactly. That's my point. Right. But that's where it gets conflated, isn't it? Right. So with so without whittling it to the definition of greed versus ambition, it's like you do what's good for you. But but it doesn't mean you're just running this like rampaging program to destroy the world in the name of Joe Rogan. You're doing what's good for you because you actually like your audience and you want them to learn. You want to have money so that your family can live in a house that you can afford and that you can send your kids to good schools and all of those things. That's all rational self-interest. If at the same time, you were running a nuclear power plant and you were Mr. Burns and you were dumping in the river, well, no, that's actually no longer rational self-interest because now you're polluting the very environment that you live in. So rational who takes care of that who regulates that so
Starting point is 02:07:27 this comes in so those guys I don't want to speak for who gets you in trouble if you in your opinion if you if you're this deregulation guy yeah who goes after you when you dump shit into the river so I'm not saying there should be no regulation I just was saying that I like this generally I like this line of thinking there has to be some regulation. I agree. You can't. But what I would say is, you know.
Starting point is 02:07:48 So that's where the regulation comes in. Let's put it this way. When you pollute the environment? Yeah. That I would say there has to be some. But I've had some interesting people on conservatives who are doing environmental stuff from a conservative perspective. That there's ways to make money actually in green stuff, in green products.
Starting point is 02:08:03 Of course. And in. Look at Al Gore. Yeah. I don't know that he's creating anything other than movies, but he's making a lot of money. He's invested a lot of money in green corporations. Right. But that's him doing it privately.
Starting point is 02:08:15 Right. Yeah. Yeah. But what's the solution if someone pollutes? If you're not going to have regulation, what is the solution if someone does something that's illegal? Well, if you're not going to have regulation, it is the solution if someone does something that's illegal? Well, if you're not going to have a regulation, it wouldn't be illegal. But your question is.
Starting point is 02:08:28 Well, it's illegal to dump things into the river. Right. I mean, it's just right. That's not a matter of regulation. I mean, polluting willful poisoning of rivers. I'm sure it's actually terrorism. Right. It would be a bunch of like.
Starting point is 02:08:43 So what those guys would argue is what I said before, which is that ultimately, especially now because of technology, like in the old days. So like every time someone cuts regulation, I've heard Bill Maher say this a lot. They're going to start polluting the river immediately. That implies that these businessmen, whatever they're, you know, whether whatever they're, whatever industry that they're in, that they're immediately going to be like, ha, the regulation's gone. Start polluting the water. We live in a time now where everyone's walking be like, ha, the regulation's gone, start polluting the water. We live in a time now where everyone's walking around with an iPhone, where maybe 50 years ago, you could have got away with a lot of bad shit, right?
Starting point is 02:09:11 Coal miners that were breathing all kinds of horrible shit that nobody was ever going to find out about, where now everybody is walking around with Snapchat and Instagram and blah, blah, blah. So a lot of the stuff would be exposed more so that all of the things that we've been talking about for the last couple hours about people getting involved, a lot of the things I think would start self-regulating. But again, and then I won't say it again, I'm not for just deregulating everything. I just think there's probably better ways to do it than just having the government come in and say, this is what you got to do and now figure it out. Because the government isn't that good at most things.
Starting point is 02:09:48 Yeah, I know what you're saying there. But I do think that obviously there has to be laws in place, specifically laws in place that protect people from someone doing something that's going to damage all the other people in the community. Yeah. Well, by the way, so you can do that from, look, the government's supposed to protect your life and your property. I mean, that's a very simple libertarian thing. You know what I mean? Like, so that there's a good argument there for why you could have some level of regulation. Right. But I don't think it's just like specifically in terms of like someone polluting rivers. I don't think it's good enough to Snapchat about it. I think
Starting point is 02:10:21 people should be locked up and go to jail. If they find out that someone's dumping toxic waste into the river because it's too expensive to process it and get it removed and put in some place where it's safe, that's a crime. Yeah. Well, I'm all for fining those people and having the companies fire them and all those things. As far as putting them in jail, I don't know that I'm- Lock them up. Yeah, I don't know that I'm- Get them them up. Yeah, I don't know that I'm cool. Get them off the streets. Take the money. Give it to Bernie's kids. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:10:50 I'm not a fan of putting more people in jail generally. Yeah, no, I'm not either. I think that's one of the more interesting things that happened in this administration is when Kim Kardashian got that lady exonerated or whatever he did, got her released, got her sentence commuted. That's kind of crazy. She showed up and she presented this case about some woman who's uh been in jail for she's essentially jail
Starting point is 02:11:12 for life for non-violent drug offense right yeah and think how many other people are like her for non-violent drug offense for doing something with your own body yeah, that's where we're in a full and total agreement. I just think that this idea that the pharmaceutical companies can sell drugs, but people can't sell drugs, that they're responsible for the untenable, unimaginable number of people that have died from opiate overdoses, fentanyl. I mean, fentanyl just last year, we lost Tom Petty. We lost Prince. A couple other people too. I can't remember. There's some other famous people that died from fentanyl. Patton Oswald's wife, she was another fentanyl. It's a horrible, horrible, horrible drug. And no one's clamoring for these people to go to jail.
Starting point is 02:12:07 Prescription drugs all day long. You could watch cable news all day long. What are they selling all day long? Prescription drugs with a zillion side effects that are seemingly far worse, including thoughts of suicide and depression and blah, blah, blah, than the original thing they're trying to treat. Right. But specifically opiates. Yeah. Opiates are the real deadly ones.
Starting point is 02:12:26 And then you think about how many people that are in jail right now for marijuana, how many people that are in jail for cocaine, how many people are in jail for psychedelics, MDMA. I mean, there's no comparison in terms of the amount of damage done per capita. I completely agree. Look, when the thing happened with Roseanne and then she blamed Ambien or she at least said she was on Ambien, you know, the Ambien, the parent company, whatever it was, they tweeted out something like there are a lot of side effects, but it doesn't make you racist. But think how glib and ridiculous that was. Yes, no one is saying that Ambien makes you racist, but Ambien does have a litany of, I don't know, 50 side effects. litany of, I don't know, 50 side effects, you know, sleepwalking, saying crazy things,
Starting point is 02:13:09 eating it, you know, literally just being unable to control what you're doing while you're on Ambien, being in this zombie-like state. So is it possible that even though she has also said that she didn't realize that Valerie Jarrett was black, which I actually kind of do believe, I don't know. She said it to me. Yeah. I don't know her. I know her. I know.
Starting point is 02:13:23 I mean, I know her a little bit. She didn't think she was black. I believe her. I know her a little bit. She didn't think she was black. I believe her. I believe her, 100%. But look, she's said dumb shit in the past. The Susan Rice thing was much more egregious. The one where she said that Susan Rice was a man with big swinging eight balls. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:13:38 You know. Yeah, so I'm not defending what Roseanne said. All I'm saying is that Ambien, the maker, sends out this glib tweet like, we don't make people racist, but guess what? You have people doing all kinds of crazy shit that they can have in conversations. Yeah. People have driven their cars on the wrong side of the highway. People have done all kinds of crazy shit on Ambien. Right. So is it possible that made her impaired enough to have a stupid thought and then. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's a hundred percent. There's definitely side effects. effects the whether or not they're
Starting point is 02:14:05 responsible for those side effects is where it gets into uh the realm of personal responsibility like if you take ambient and you do something are you responsible for it no yes what are we going to say if you drink and you go commit a violent crime are you responsible for we all agree yes so it gets real strange you know it gets real strange i mean um that's one of the weird things when it comes to gender and responsibility because there's been so many issues of men and women particular it's almost always men and women you never hear about these from gay couples but men and women or i haven't heard about it at least men and women uh getting drunk and having sex and then the man gets accused of sexual assault and this has gotten so weird that a guy
Starting point is 02:14:45 preemptively guy and a girl got yeah had sex and the guy called the police and wanted her charged with sexual assault because he was drunk and he did it as a preemptive measure because he was worried that she was going to come after him and so the university took action against the girl and i'm like jesus christ are we playing little stupid games and pretending the girls rape guys when they're drunk or that it's really devastating for the guy? Like what the fuck are we doing? We are gonna criminalize everything we're gonna criminalize every but think of all of the stupid things You've done in your life whether on drugs or not or whether we when you were in college or not Well now add social media to that add the amount of pictures that people send to each other and everything else.
Starting point is 02:15:27 If we don't stop this out of control monster, we are all just going to destroy each other. But there's a gray area because we know that some people do take advantage of people that are drunk. For sure. If someone was like pouring drinks down someone's face and they were sober
Starting point is 02:15:41 and they were doing it with the intention of raping them once they were intoxicated and they couldn't consent anymore. That's one thing. But if two people are getting together and drinking and then having sex, then the woman has regret in the morning when she sobers up. So she decides that it was rape because she and he were both drunk. That's preposterous, but we don't have this ability to rationally process each individual case. But by the way, here's something that Trump did that was really good. He got rid of those ridiculous Title IX laws that Obama instated, where they were basically having these clown courts in colleges that you could go to them and instead of having
Starting point is 02:16:16 due process, which is perhaps the most important piece of a functioning Western free society, where you are innocent until proven guilty. They were suspending male students just by accusations. And then it was leaking. I had Laura Kipnis on, who's a professor, that she was fighting against Title IX. So then they brought up Title IX charges against her. I mean, and there's many, many other stories on this.
Starting point is 02:16:39 That's something that Obama brought in that Trump actually got rid of, that evil, what's her name? Evil Betsy DeVos got rid of. So it's like we've we've just gotten to the point where we've politicized everything we've politicized our own capacity to be free and make decisions for ourselves if you get drunk and are fooling around with somebody some of that's on you you might regret it in the next week every every single one of us listening to this has had sex with someone or done drugs with someone or something, woke up the next morning and been like, fuck, I shouldn't have done that.
Starting point is 02:17:08 Not Jamie. Jamie's clean. Except for Jamie. Here's my thing. I was thinking about driving. If you drive and you're drunk, no one says you're exonerated because you're drunk. Right. No, man.
Starting point is 02:17:22 You are drunk. You fucked up and you did something drunk you're responsible for your actions but if you have sex drunk all of a sudden for some strange reason you're not responsible for your actions that's preposterous it's not it doesn't they don't match up it's not doesn't make any sense yeah but again this is where the the identity politics of all this ruins everything because you're not saying that anyone that gets drunk you're saying if a girl really although that one example that you gave is true. The one example is ridiculous.
Starting point is 02:17:46 Right. It's a complete throwaway ridiculous example. It just shows you how fucking stupid the university is that they let that fly. They should have smacked him. Send him back to class. Smack him in the face. Yeah. Send him right back to class.
Starting point is 02:17:57 Congratulations, buddy. You got laid. Yeah. Good for you. Oh, you were drunk and a girl took advantage of your penis? Oh, did you orgasm? You did. Shut the fuck up then. Get out of here. Yeah. What, you were drunk and a girl took advantage of your penis? Oh, did you orgasm? You did. Shut the fuck up then. Get out of here. What are you doing? It's ridiculous across the
Starting point is 02:18:10 board. It's far more ridiculous though when a guy is accusing, and let's just be honest about this, it's far more ridiculous when a guy is accusing a girl of rape in those circumstances. And I don't want to hear all your progressive nonsense, screaming and yelling and no, it's not. We're all equal. Fuck you. It's not the same. Yeah. If a guy does that to a girl, if a guy purposely gets a girl drunk and does it because he knows that she wouldn't consent any other way and then gets her to the point where she's like, and she's barely conscious and fucks her.
Starting point is 02:18:39 In my opinion, that's rape. Yeah. In my opinion, that person. But if a couple gets together and they have a few drinks and they're laughing, they're flirting and they make out and then they go back to her place or his place and they have sex. It's not rape. We know it's not rape.
Starting point is 02:18:51 All right. So let's split the difference on that one. So now it's a, it's a sorority party in college. The girls decide they're going to drop roofies in a couple of the guys things late at night. Girls are just, you know,
Starting point is 02:19:02 let's just, I don't know what the girls look like. Right. Okay. So girls look good. Right. So, right. so a bunch of hot chicks now there they drug these guys I mean, I'm sure this has happened. This is definitely I've never heard of it if you're sure it's happened It's gotta have happened. They roofied a guy. I'm sure a guy has been I'm pretty sure I got roofied by a girl in college Really? Yeah. Yeah now I'm married to a dude. So who knows what's going on? She fucked your brain up
Starting point is 02:19:25 She she seriously it was some high-level roofie shit. I was like girl in college. Really? Yeah. Now I'm married to a dude. So who the hell knows what's going on? Maybe she fucked your brain up. She seriously, it was some high level roofie shit. I was like, we went all night and then I was like, you know what? I've had just about enough of this. Enough of this gal stuff. You really got roofied by a girl? I was roofied once in college at like, just like a keg party. But you don't know who did it?
Starting point is 02:19:41 I don't know who did it. I don't have much of a recollection of it other than I remember I had like half a beer. I could not really think. And I remember I couldn't stand. Did you realize something was wrong and try to get out of there? I knew something was wrong, but your mind doesn't operate correctly. And I remember I was kind of, I remember my friends were there, but we were all like stoners at the time. So I don't even know that I was like thinking clearly like something you don't realize fully,
Starting point is 02:20:03 you know, you know, something's not right, but you're like, at least what happened to me was I just couldn't like put all the pieces together did you get tested do you find out what it was no I mean I saw I remember I remember at one point just sitting on a couch in the corner I remember a very bright lamp light above me I have no recollection of how I got home or like any of that but what makes you think it's roof and all like why wouldn't you think it's, how do you say it? Ruhifinol? Something. What is it?
Starting point is 02:20:27 How do you say that? Let's just say Rufi. Rufi. What makes you think it was that, not like acid? No, maybe, well, because I didn't trip. I mean, I wasn't, you know,
Starting point is 02:20:35 I've tripped, I've done acid. What is that other stuff that people give people? Or G or something like that. GHB, yeah. Like, I don't think I was in like a K-hole or I've never done that. But I don't think I was in that kind of state.
Starting point is 02:20:44 I was just in this like, my body kind of couldn't move, you know, a little aura kind of stuff, bright light. And like, I kind of couldn't think straight that that's the way I would describe it. But I've, I mean, I've done mushrooms. I've done most things that are out there. I wasn't hallucinating in any way. So, but, but just playing that one out for a second, if a girl did that to a guy, managed to get him hard, fucked him, I think you'd think it's the same thing. No. I'd say walk it off. Walk it off, pussy. Those are my four words.
Starting point is 02:21:15 Suck it up. Suck it up. Walk it off, pussy. You got laid. Yeah, it's not good. It's definitely not good for anybody to take advantage of someone's body and in particular give them a drug where they have no control and then rape them. Yeah, it's the same thing. If a girl does it to a guy, it is the same thing.
Starting point is 02:21:32 If she roofies the guy and has sex, especially what if the guy has a girlfriend and he doesn't want to have sex with her or fill in the blank. He's not attracted to her or he's gay and you do that to him and he's repulsed by it. Yeah, it's rape. Yeah. Yeah. But now we're in the realm of bill cosby right the bill cosby situation is fucking rape right 100 no doubt it's a big difference between that and a couple that gets together and has a couple of drinks have you heard it from a gay perspective like two gay guys getting drunk and and having sex and one of the guys accusing the other one of sexual assault because he was drunk but i've definitely heard of the first part two gay guys getting drunk and having sex and one of the guys accusing the other one of sexual assault because he was drunk?
Starting point is 02:22:05 I've definitely heard of the first part, two gay guys getting drunk and having sex. Yes, I've heard that happens. That's happened a lot. Yes. The rape one. I haven't heard of that. I've heard so many stories about a woman
Starting point is 02:22:17 and this one story about a man claiming that he was sexually assaulted because they were drunk. I've never heard it about two gay guys. I actually do know one story of a guy that was given something. But that was given something. Yeah. But not two guys that willingly got drunk.
Starting point is 02:22:31 Not willingly got drunk. Yeah. No. So not that. I'm sorry. Definitely of people been given things and it's happened. Sure. A hundred percent.
Starting point is 02:22:38 Yeah. That's probably just a guy thing. That's a fucking dark thing, man. That's a dark thing that people are willing to do that. That Cosby thing shook me to my fucking core. Yeah. The idea that this guy who was America's sweetheart, America's dad, was possibly the greatest, not the greatest, but one of the worst serial rapists of all time, if not the worst. Dude, the first time I came on, we talked about Cosby.
Starting point is 02:23:02 He's the reason I got into comedy. Four years old. I think it was 1981 or 1982, maybe I was five, I saw Bill Cosby himself on HBO. I remember sitting in my family room, buckled over and laughing to the point, you know, when you just, your whole body, you cannot move, pain in my stomach. And I remember thinking, I want to be be funny and now my comedy hero is basically the biggest serial rapist of all time what the fuck man it's like i used to have cosby records hanging up in my house even to three years ago and eventually as the story started leaking out i had one of his one of his great records and i at first i was like i'm just gonna leave it up like it doesn't change my feelings about him as a comic and then i remember people would be coming into my house oh you got cosby over there you do, you just take it and then put bars over it. That's what I should do. I might do that. Just leave it up there and put bars over it. Yeah. The whole thing is just
Starting point is 02:23:53 so fucked. Like how could he, how could he be that guy? How could he be the guy who's so funny and everybody loves him and also be the guy that, that drugs people and rapes them. It's like, what a dark, dark, dark secret. I mean, I think Jordan would have a lot to say on this. That these inconsistencies that we live with that often drive us and that, you know, why did we find out that, you know, these people preaching about morals all the time
Starting point is 02:24:17 are the same people that are doing all this weird shit. Of course. Or that we've all done things that we're not proud of or whatever it is and it's like... That's a part of being a human, right? It's just part, yeah, yeah. But you're talking about like the truly- Yeah, the evil.
Starting point is 02:24:29 I mean, someone who's doing this into his fucking 60s, he was doing this. I guess it becomes an addiction like anything else. Like your mind, I'm sure people do studies on this about what happens to the actual brain chemistry when you're doing these things. And I would guess it has something to do with the dopamine levels that are released at the same time when when, you know, somebody's snorting coke and doing whatever they're doing.
Starting point is 02:24:51 Yeah, whatever it is. I don't know what it is, but it's just so stunning to me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a and again, this is this goes back to laws. There's a need to protect people. But there's also a need to go, hey, college boy who got drunk and had sex with a girl who was also drunk. He didn't get raped.
Starting point is 02:25:10 Fuck off. It's really disrespectful to people that actually have been raped. Yeah. You know, and I get it's kind of funny that he's turning the tables and he's doing it to her. I think there was the story. Part of the story was something about she had done it to one of his friends. She had said that to one of his friends. So he's preemptively doing it because he thought that she was going to come after him next.
Starting point is 02:25:29 Well, part of it is that it's gross that it's all public, right? Like everything has become so public. And I think that that's part of the problem all the time. Like who banged who in college? The idea that that now is like this thing that gets written about and people get interviewed on all these things. Like, again, all of that is kind of dangerous. And that's why I try all the time. And I think what you usually do is you usually talk about ideas, not people, because it's
Starting point is 02:25:54 the underlying philosophical ideas that matter, not the specifics of this kid. I mean, you didn't pull up the picture of the kid and mention the girl's name and hers or Twitter and all that. But that it's the underlying philosophical issues of why are we doing this? Why are we exposing everybody? Why are we attacking and destroying everybody and all that? That that's much more interesting to me than just the specifics of the people or, you know, all the people that I'm so sick of, all these blue check writers and BuzzFeed people.
Starting point is 02:26:20 Like, I never call them out specifically like that guy. I hate that guy. Because like that guy's nobody. Well, they're just in the business of writing. You know, I think a lot of it is, I mean, we can decide that these people are our enemy. But, like, we're in some ways foes on the battlefield. You know, I just. In a very perverse way.
Starting point is 02:26:40 In a very perverse way. And I just think it's just, like like their job is to write about things. And when we're involved in a story, they find an angle and they go after it. Just like I do with jokes. When I, if I crack a joke about somebody, I do a bit about somebody. I don't hate them. Like I had this whole bit about Bruce Jenner and the Kardashians, what led Bruce to become a woman.
Starting point is 02:27:04 It's not because I hated him. It's because I thought it was funny. I thought there's an angle there. It's a story. It's a big thing that's on people's minds. And so it became a target for me. The same way it is when a lot of these folks write articles. And a lot of them are in their 20s.
Starting point is 02:27:21 And they're idealistic or they're young and evolving their thoughts and maybe they wouldn't write that article five years from now or 10 years from now whatever and i think we have to take that into consideration as well these people are embarking on a career in journalism and you know for a lot of them shitting on jordan peterson gets them social brownie points yeah yeah you know what you want to shift topics for sure. Can we do a little mid shift there? Sure. We can do a little mid shift. So I was talking to Jordan about something that I think is kind of interesting that I
Starting point is 02:27:51 haven't talked about publicly before. And I thought if I'm going to come on Joe Rogan, let me see if I can bust out something kind of personal. So, you know, Jordan was having all these autoimmune problems and that's kind of what led him to, uh, to doing this crazy diet where he, in effect- He's on the carnivore diet. Yeah. Like meat, that's it. That's it. How does he feel doing that?
Starting point is 02:28:09 Great. He looks so much better, even than probably last time he was here, maybe what, four or five months ago. His skin looks good. He's got some color back in his face. He's definitely lost some weight, slimmed down a little bit, but in a good way. His energy is back. His hair looks better. He just looks better. I don't know all the science behind the carnivore diet of whether you can do it forever and not eat vegetables and truly survive. I don't know where you're getting the rest of the nutrition that you need and the rest of the vitamins and all that. But when I've gone out to dinner with him over these things, guy gets a freaking, the biggest steak you can imagine at
Starting point is 02:28:42 every place, chops it up, eats meat. That's it. So anyway, so we were talking the other day in the green room before the show that it's interesting that he had this health problem as his success was growing. And it's like you don't really think about that in life because we all like to think like as we're growing and getting better and doing what we're supposed to do, that our health is kind of in line with that. So I've actually never talked about this before, but about two and a half years ago, right when my show was really taking off, I think probably about the first time we did our first sit down. So not the one last year, but about two and a half years ago. And as I was also first getting hate online at the same time, I started losing tons of chunks of hair, tons. Like I'd be in the shower. Yeah. And tons of hair would be everywhere after, you know, I'd shower hair in my towels and
Starting point is 02:29:32 everything and lost like huge patches back of my head, up top, like all over the place. So I had, or I have, I guess I technically still have it, alopecia areata, where it's an autoimmune thing. They don't know why your white blood cells start attacking your hair follicles. So I went about two years ago. And again, this is just as I'm like starting to really succeed. Like I'm really just like breaking through for the first time. And I went on this like crazy experimental drug. So usually when you have this, they just shoot corticosteroids into your head and they hope that that basically reverses it or stops it or whatever.
Starting point is 02:30:09 Reduces the inflammation that's causing it to fall out. Something like that. But my case was so severe that I found this doctor who's doing this really experimental thing where, in effect, they're putting something like poison ivy on your head so that your white blood cells will attack that instead of attacking your hair follicles. And the hope is if you do just the slight amount that's necessary that you won't have like crazy reactions and you'll be, and your hair eventually grow back. Anyway, I did it for about a year. And first off, when I was on camera, I mean, there were points where like, I was like, oh my God, like, I don't, I can't be on camera anymore i was doing like not spray hair but like powdered shit and like grew out my hair to like hide so that later i can show you like i still actually do have some spots here um but anyway i went under this
Starting point is 02:30:53 experimental stuff and literally for two years virtually my entire body was broken out like red itchy gross disgusting my head was like, like dripping. Yeah. For like a year bad. And then, and then a year not as bad, but like, like oozing my head, like as if you had poison ivy. I was literally basically putting poison ivy on my head.
Starting point is 02:31:17 And like, I was extremely sensitive to heat and light. And like, it was, it was a truly miserable, I had like a real, oh, I gained weight because of it. Cause it like screws up your, like my, my neck actually looked thicker. Like I look at videos where I did not look good for a year. Like I look kind of bloated because my body was basically having like an allergic reaction at all times. I was putting something on my head to cause my body to have an allergic reaction. Like for whatever reason, I was just very sensitive to it. But anyway, I bring this all up, A, because I've never talked about it. And I thought it might just be something to like throw out there. But B, what I've discussed
Starting point is 02:31:53 with Jordan is just this interesting idea of sort of as you're succeeding and as you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, that life just throws you weird things. And I'm pretty much over it now. I'll show you later. Like I definitely have stuff still that um now i'm just taking the injections and we'll see what happens um but don't you think it's stress related yeah so i really jordan i'm doing the float tanks now i'm doing the saunas i get massages every couple weeks now um i'm definitely trying that's why i did the month off jordan was not famous his whole life and then in his 50s became famous. Yeah. That is not, it's not a normal state that people are accustomed to. He was a clinical psychologist. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:32:31 Yeah. And a professor. Yeah. And a professor. And, you know, there's, I mean, how many stories do we have to read about people who go famous and lose their fucking marbles? Yeah. It's not an easy road.
Starting point is 02:32:43 It's not, it's not easy to handle. People ask him about that. So when we do the Q and a at the end, there's an app that people submit questions and then I just kind of moderate it. So I pick some funny ones and then I pick some serious ones. But a lot of the questions are asked him directly about that, about what it, what pressure do you feel now that you're famous? What if you screw up? What if a lot, you know, they also ask him a lot, which I think is a great question. And I don't want to paraphrase his answer cause I won't do it justice, but they ask him, you know, they also ask him a lot, which I think is a great question. And I don't want to paraphrase his answer because I won't do it justice. But they ask him, you know, you talk about religion and archetypes and all that.
Starting point is 02:33:09 Are you a prophet? They will ask him now, not because they're saying he's a prophet, but like if you believe in all of this stuff, if you believe that. How do you factor in? Right. And he goes out of his way to say he doesn't believe that. And he's not trying to make anyone drink Kool-Aid. He's trying to help have them live the best life for themselves not a life that he's laying out for them um but but watching him go through all this it's just been it's been truly fascinating like
Starting point is 02:33:35 it really it's like and then i think i said it before but like the whole thing is like this love fest it's not what they want it to be it's not who's that the people that are writing all these pieces who often i invite a lot of the writers sometimes that write things, I'll be like, you want to come to the show tonight? And any of them are welcome to come as my guest. They can sit right up front. I'll do the exact same thing. Jordan will do the exact same.
Starting point is 02:33:54 You know what's good about those people? What's good about is the same thing that I try to do with all my material. I look at, and I learned this from Doug Stanhope. Doug Stanhope actually said it to me and I realized I kind of do it, but from him saying it, I did it more. He said, you should write your bits as if you're a defense attorney, like you're defending your bit, like write your bit like as if you, and so I think that one of the things about having haters out there or critics out there is that they're examining your material, finding holes in it.
Starting point is 02:34:27 And I think if you go over all of your material and all of your ideas from the perspective of someone is watching them right now trying to find fault in everything that you do. You will find it. Just be undeniable. Just be undeniable. Find those holes. Patch them up. And, you know, there's going to be disagreements. It's not like you're always going to be able to state your point and it's going to be undeniable to someone who completely disagrees ideologically with your stance on whatever the fuck it is.
Starting point is 02:34:57 But no, as long as you – it's undeniable to you. You've rationally made your case. You've objectively stated the facts. This is your position. This is why. And you can back it up. There's too much sloppy work going on where people think they can – and you see this a lot. There's a lot on the progressive left or the regressive left or whatever you want to call it where they just expect that other people are just going to agree with their stance on things.
Starting point is 02:35:20 So they have this sort of real – this very rigid ideology that they're trying to put out there. Yeah. Well, they often think that they're morally right. So then you don't have to do the legwork of the argument. It's a lot harder to take a position that says you should be who you are and you have to fit that into society rather than saying, this is what the moral imperative is. This is why we need those laws. And if you deviate from that, you're the bad guy. So unfortunately, they've just embraced that, I think, too much. how you want to live, right? Like that's the basics of it. But they'll often say, you know, I talk about low taxes in a college class and people say I'm racist. And it's like, well, how does race get into that? But what they will say is that what they'll say is, well, wait a minute. If you want low taxes, that means you don't want money going to people who need it more.
Starting point is 02:36:18 And often it is people of color who need it more. So you inherently are racist. You have to think on how to make the counter argument to that. I think there's a very valid counter argument that I buy into, but you have to think it's very easy to just take somebody who thinks the reverse of you and go, you're racist, right? You're racist. It's such a lazy way to approach an idea. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:36:39 Yeah. It's so lazy. The only thing I have a problem with what Jordan has been saying lately is this idea of enforced monogamy being the solution to incels. These involuntary celibates. Yeah. That's not going to help. So what do you think? They have to become men.
Starting point is 02:36:54 Well, what do you think his definition of enforced monogamy is just to be clear? Well, culturally enforced monogamy where people, you know, the culture encourages and supports the idea of monogamy. Yeah. Yeah. Marriage. In effect, he's just talking about marriage. Yeah, but that's not going to clear the way to people that no one wants to fuck. It's just not going to.
Starting point is 02:37:12 The idea is that there's a bunch of men out there that are taking up all the viable females because no one's getting married and there's no room for these incels. No, they are not attractive to women, whether they're not physically attractive. You tell me Harvey Weinstein was physically attractive? That fucking disgusting pig?
Starting point is 02:37:29 Forget about what he did to those women, the rapes or the sexual assaults. He had a gorgeous wife. Yeah. His wife was gorgeous. That was a voluntary relationship. Okay. So how did that happen? It happened through success.
Starting point is 02:37:41 It happened through success and confidence and whatever the fuck else he's got, you know, intellect. I don't know what his mind's like. These incels, they have to become men. Okay. And there's a lot. Well, Jordan's all about that. I mean, his whole message is that. Right.
Starting point is 02:37:55 I just don't think that enforced monogamy has any factor whatsoever in that. So he, I think he would say this, but I'm not his lawyer, but I think he used the phrase, all he meant was marriage, that generally societies that more people are married and people remain. Right. So I think it's not going to help. I think perhaps if he was being interviewed again by, by her,
Starting point is 02:38:15 he would use a different phrase. But even if they, even if he says marriage, marriage is not going to help incels. These guys that are involuntary celibates, they have to become attractive. So they have to become men. Well, the rest of his message is about that but they they have to do difficult things yeah that's what they have to do they have to they have to get your shit together
Starting point is 02:38:32 get your shit together and martial arts i think is one of the best ways to do that i've seen so many men that were like insecure and dorky and they become fucking nerd assassins through martial arts. And I think it's a great way to build confidence. And I think there's an extreme lack of adversity, like physical adversity in a lot of people's lives and overcoming physical adversity is what leads to a lot of confidence in men. And I just think that there's a lot of men that are just have no idea whether they can or can't do anything difficult and they have massive insecurity because of it yeah i think he would agree with every word
Starting point is 02:39:09 i think he would too everywhere that you just said there yeah yeah i just think that marriage is not fixing it you know culturally enforced monogamy is not going to fix it they have to become men and they have the woman has to have a reason to want to have sex with you yeah yeah so i think he would agree with that i think he would say that once you accomplish that, that that's when you will find more women and that the next step, the next natural progression in life is that you will find someone that you want to be partnered with and that that then has the best value for a society. But I don't want to completely state his case. It's an interesting case. Yeah. But, but he completely, I mean, look, why is it that for the little bit that these articles get right about him, it's that he's helping men. He is, he is
Starting point is 02:39:50 also helping women, but yes, he is helping men get their shit together. They need framework for sure. I mean, people need this, this thing about discipline and you know, you're, you, you're aware of, you know, you're aware of Jocko, right? Jocko Willink. Yeah. Discipline equals freedom. It's like one of the best catchphrases. It's so accurate. It's empowering. It's so empowering. Get your shit together, and then the time that you have for recreation, you'll appreciate it so much more.
Starting point is 02:40:16 You don't appreciate rest when you're fucking off all day. Yeah. You appreciate rest when you've worked hard. That's when it means something to you. When you've accomplished goals, that's when this celebration is, is something that you, you get a good feeling from it. Do you have a part in your life that you feel like is lacking in that
Starting point is 02:40:33 department? In what department? In just like getting your shit together, like not slacking on something. No, I'm pretty good at that. Yeah. That's what I do.
Starting point is 02:40:40 Yeah. I mean, I do a lot of shit. The only way I could ever do as many different things as I do is if I just get after it. Yeah. I get after it pretty fucking good. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:40:50 And I'm not insecure in that. I mean, whether it's through martial arts or any kind of exercise or work, I just, I take pride in getting things done. I take pride in working. Yeah. You know, especially working towards things that are important to me, whether it's working on my set,
Starting point is 02:41:08 working on my standup, whether it's working on a podcast, whether it's working on my martial arts or my fitness or yoga or whatever. I get after it, man. Just got to. Yeah. And for me, it's not a matter of whether or not
Starting point is 02:41:21 it's an option. It's like brushing my teeth. I don't decide one day, I don't want to brush's an option. It's like brushing my teeth. I don't decide one day, I don't want to brush my teeth today. I just fucking brush my teeth. And when there's days where I'm doing fasted cardio, when that alarm goes off, it's not a matter of whether or not I shut the alarm off.
Starting point is 02:41:37 That's not an option. You get up, you put your fucking shoes on, you get the dog and you go running. Cause that's what you do. And if you just decide that's what you do, then you get things done. And then a month later, you're like, Oh, look, we did this all month. And then six months later, it's like, Oh, I did this half a year. And then if you're doing jujitsu, you're like, Oh shit, look, I got a blue belt.
Starting point is 02:42:01 Oh shit. Now I'm a purple belt. And that's how you become a black belt. Yeah. You just, you know, and I got- This is the good type of progressive because it gets progressively easier too. I told you I'm doing that. It doesn't though. It doesn't get easy. You don't think so? It's fucking hard every time that alarm goes off.
Starting point is 02:42:15 Like, fuck. But you don't think it's easier for you now than right when you started? I don't know, man. Because you know the reward of it. You know that that reward is there. There's some enforcement. There's some enforcement in the success that I've had in completing these tasks.
Starting point is 02:42:28 But every fucking time I go to yoga class, I'm like, oh, Jesus, 90 minutes in a 104 degree temperature with all these women that are going to humiliate me. They can definitely do things that you can't do. They're just – well, they're tough, man. There's a lot of these older ladies that are fucking tough. Yeah. They just gut it out i was just one lady that goes there she's like 60 years old she doesn't even bring water and this lady's in there for 90 fucking minutes sweating out she's there every time i go i'm like she's not bringing water you sure she's 60 she could be like 20 and just dehydrated no she's gray haired and tough as shit she drinks water before she drinks it after but when she's in that class, she's just tough.
Starting point is 02:43:07 It's just, you know, it's never easy to do. It gets a little bit easier when you get better at it, but then you just try harder and it makes it more difficult. If you're always giving 100% effort, it's always going to be hard. You take some pride in the fact that now I can go two miles through the hills and reach the point of exhaustion where before it was one or whatever, whatever your little, little progress markers are.
Starting point is 02:43:30 You get some satisfaction that, but it's always difficult to get going. The, the hardest step is the first step. It's not the 30th step or the hundredth step. It's the fucking first one. It's getting on the trail, getting going.
Starting point is 02:43:42 It's the hardest thing. The hardest way to lift is the first one. Because once you get going, like okay, I'm a half hour into my workout, I'm writing things down that I'm supposed to be doing, now I got 20 chin-ups, and then burpees, and then all these, you have to do it. You just have to do it.
Starting point is 02:43:56 And so many people have a hard time doing it. Just getting moving. If you would have ever thought when you started stand-up that you'd be sort of like a, because you're kind of like a lifestyle guru in a way. You know what I mean? Like every time I've done the sensory deprivation stuff or the float stuff, every time I've gone into the place, when I just talk to the girl when she's like setting it up or something,
Starting point is 02:44:14 I'll be like, oh, Joe Rogan got me into this. And they're always like, oh, Joe Rogan, he got everybody into this. Like you literally like created float places. I went to one in Nashville. Like the woman was like, oh, Joe Rogan, I love Joe Rogan but like that and the mma stuff and all that like how what a bizarre adventure you know what i mean like you probably would have never thought never that well the only reason why it happened because i had no intention of doing it it's like i'm zero and i've never written a book on lifestyle or fucking what to do i just say what what I do. And I do it by example.
Starting point is 02:44:45 Like, obviously, I do all these things. I mean, that gym's not there for looks. I fucking do all these things. I think this is just a natural thing that's happened. But the float thing is the most bizarre one because I can't believe I'm the one to tell everybody about this. You told everybody, man.
Starting point is 02:45:03 But how the fuck doesn't everybody already know? They do now. More people know man. But how the fuck doesn't everybody already know? They do now. More people know now. But how the fuck didn't they know? When I first got my tank in 2002, and I had been talking about it for a couple years before because I had done one where you go to a place and you rent it for an hour. Yeah. That's how we regular people do it.
Starting point is 02:45:20 I get it. You've got one here. It's pretty sweet. I need one, man. I fucking need one. How often are you doing it? As much as I can. I mean, it's right there. It's nice. Yeah. It's nice. I fucking need one. How often are you doing it? As much as I can. I mean, it's right there.
Starting point is 02:45:26 It's nice. Yeah. But like, you're doing this more than like once a week or? Oh, more than that. Oh, really? For sure. And I like to come in here, you know, different. I'll come in here sometimes even after the comedy store, you know, come in here weird
Starting point is 02:45:37 times. I'll come in here during the day. But the whole idea is that this is something that somehow or another was created in the 60s by John Lilly. And nobody talked about it. It was like kind of a weirdo popular thing with hippies for a while. And then it fucking went away. But they were barely around. And then I started talking about it.
Starting point is 02:46:00 And now they're everywhere all over the planet. And that is the strangest thing to me. It's one of the strangest things about my entire career is that the float tank business has sort of started up because of me. And that they're everywhere in the world now. There's hundreds of them everywhere in every country and they didn't exist before.
Starting point is 02:46:16 And that somehow or another, you could directly connect them, a lot of them to me. That's very strange. So what does that say about ideas? I mean, what does that say about saying what you think and explaining what your life is to people? That's what they want. I mean, I think when I, when I'm with Jordan, the thing I realized more than anything else is he's giving them a little room to be who they are. He's taken some of the bullets, you know, the hit pieces and all that stuff that we've talked about. He takes a little bit of that
Starting point is 02:46:41 to take these positions that are not wrong, but are just politically incorrect or somewhat unpopular or controversial. And by taking those positions, he gives other people just a little bit of a force field to think a little bit. So, so for you in this, it's like you started doing something that gave you a little peace of mind, a little something that made you feel good and feel healthy and clean and mentally sound and all that. And then you started talking about it and then, holy shit, somebody in Nebraska was like, I'm going to try that. And the next thing you know, she opened a clinic for it and is doing it. You know what I mean? And then that, that spurs. And so that's the beauty of saying what you think. Well, it also works the same reason why this podcast works. I've never promoted this podcast.
Starting point is 02:47:24 I just did it. And through word of mouth, it got bigger and bigger. The thing about float tanks is I'm telling you how amazing it is. You try it and it doesn't suck. You know what I mean? It's not like he's lying. If you don't enjoy that, I don't know what. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:47:37 It's not like all these people went and tried it out. Like, he fucking lied to me. God damn it. No, they went there. Oh, my God. It's so relaxing. It's amazing. I got out of there with a fresh perspective. My body feels loose and relaxed. God damn it. No, they went there. Oh my God. It's so relaxing. It's amazing. I got
Starting point is 02:47:45 out of there with a fresh perspective. My body feels loose and relaxed. This is crazy. It's like, there's a real positive benefit. I'm telling the truth. How quick can you snap into the zone that you want to get into when you're in there? Because that's when I was just did it a couple of days ago. I've done it a couple of times now and I've usually been, it takes me about 20 minutes to kind of clear the clutter, but you know, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less. This last time, just because I think we've been traveling so much, I've been planes every day and everything else. It wasn't until the last, that's what happens. The last five minutes, I finally got to that place where I was kind of disconnected.
Starting point is 02:48:17 But do you have a trick for that when you get in there? I've done it so many times that my body knows what it's doing. I lay in the tank and my body's like, oh, here we go. I just sink in. But I've done it, I don't know so many times that my body knows what it's doing. Yeah. I lay in the tank and my body's like, oh, here we go. I just sink in. But I've done it, I don't know how many times. I've had a tank since 2002. You're more tank than man now. So 16 years of tank.
Starting point is 02:48:34 Yeah. Tank time. And then I've been in there on mushrooms and weed and weed edibles especially. That's the weird one. Marijuana edibles are some of the most underrated psychedelics in terms of introspective thinking and self-examination. It's one of those things that just forces you to really go over every single aspect of your subconscious that you're trying to hide from. You got a good strain of indica that's not going to completely destroy me. Like my weed situation at this point, and I used to be a big pothead.
Starting point is 02:49:07 My weed thing is like end of the night, puff from my vape pen, like watch the same Simpsons episode that I loved in 1989. Like that's good enough for me. Like I don't need, like I know a lot of my comic friends, like they want to smoke a sativa and right, right, right. And I'm like, I've opened up enough doors in my brain. If anything, I'd tighten a couple of hinges. You know know what i mean i don't need to go the other way again like for me it's much more about relaxation yeah well there's a lot of great sativas all you or indicas rather all you have to do is just go to any store and then just take a little hit and then try it out just the whole thing is just don't go too deep like people try three four five hits and
Starting point is 02:49:42 they never smoked pot before and then they're in a k-hole in the corner Crying and screaming and you know, it's like Jesus your body doesn't know what the fuck to do with all that THC Yeah, it's like this. I just like That's it. You're good. Blow it out. Relax. Give it an hour find out what the fuck the effect is Don't just keep hitting it. You know, I've seen people that don't smoke pot fuck the effect is don't just keep hitting it you know i've seen people that don't smoke pot i'll try it i'll try it and then an hour later i'm like are you gonna die and they're like you think you're gonna die like you look you're freaked out man yeah yeah um so i back in the day like college and a little bit after college i had did mushrooms i don't know maybe 20 times in my
Starting point is 02:50:22 life something something around there and then i haven't done it in about 15 years. And then about six months ago, some mushrooms appeared. Doesn't matter how. They were in my house. And I was like, all right, here's what we're going to do. I had some friends over and David was there. And we were like, all right, we're all going to take one cap. We're not going to like have a full-
Starting point is 02:50:39 Oh, you fucking pussies. It's been a while, man. Come on. So I was like, you know, we're just going to take one cap. Okay. See what happens. How did that do? So we take a cap and we had smoked a little and we had drank.
Starting point is 02:50:49 It was after dinner and we were just all hanging out. It was a couple of us. And we were like, all right, we're going to go play some video games. So we're playing like NBA Jam kind of thing, you know. And we're playing and playing, playing, playing. And I'm going, guys, guys, my controller is not working. My controller is not working. I can't control this.
Starting point is 02:51:05 Nothing's working. David looks at me. He's like, you're not holding a controller. I was playing on my leg. I was actually, I had the controller on my leg. Yeah, I had no controller. I was actually, I thought I was. So I'm telling you, one cap.
Starting point is 02:51:18 So you mocked me, but one cap can do the trick. That's the story. I think you need to go to a doctor and find out what's wrong with your brain. One cap should make you like this. Hmm. Wow wow the world's more interesting than i thought it was video games rogan playstation 4 people yeah i jumped connected i jumped right into like playstation 4 you know video games are good when you're with a little bit of i would recommend once you get into the two or three caps, you put the fucking video games down, just lay down and think about your life.
Starting point is 02:51:48 Yeah. But I, for video games, like, again, I just don't have enough time. So like, I like old school,
Starting point is 02:51:53 eight bit run one way. I want to run one. I don't want, I want to run that way. Yeah. I want that. I want to run that way. I don't even want to run backwards.
Starting point is 02:52:00 And I definitely don't want to run this way. I just want to run that way. So Mario, Metroid, that kind of thing. I played that new silly shit silly shit yeah like i want to blow some stuff up for a few minutes you know i don't have to murder a family and rape people and steal cars auto type yeah i mean i've you know i've raped a couple prostitutes and you know all that it's fun when you're doing it someone's gonna take those fucking sound bites there we go against you
Starting point is 02:52:23 see subconsciously you give it to them. You know? You think so? I just gave it to those people. Who are they? Who are they? Who are they? They all need a hug.
Starting point is 02:52:32 Everybody needs a hug. I'm less combative with every year, less defiant and combative with every year with this stuff. I'm more shrugging than ever. I'm like, just try to be a nice person. Try to be nice. Try to be nice. Try to be nice to each other. Do your best at whatever you're doing. Keep moving.
Starting point is 02:52:50 And when things pop up and people write things, just go, okay, what am I going to do? Yeah. You think that could be a connection, though, to eventually killing the drive? To want to keep doing things? Like to want to keep being funny? To want to keep getting out there? No. My drive is for the people that enjoy my work yeah my drop when i'm when i'm doing stand-up my drive
Starting point is 02:53:08 is because i know there's a bunch of people that are getting babysitters and they they're they're they bought tickets in advance and then like next friday joe's coming to town and i'm i'm working hard for that yeah i don't want them to have a bad experience. I want to do the best fucking show I can do. I'm dead serious about that. That's very important to me. I understand there's a massive responsibility and I'm doing the Chicago theater like I did last weekend, two shows, 3,700 people a show. That's a lot of fucking people. I don't want anybody to be disappointed. I want to do my best job, the best I can do. And that's where my drive is. My drive is to, want to do my best job, the best I can do. And that's where my drive is. My drive is to, I'm dissecting material. I'm rewriting it. I'm practicing. I'm going, I went up three times last night. I'll probably go up. I'm going up at least two times tonight. I'm doing the improv and I'm
Starting point is 02:53:53 doing the comedy store. I do that all the time, man. I do that all the time. And my drive is to, there's a great reward in making people laugh. And there's a great reward in and we made an exchange you know they came to see me i made them laugh everybody's happy look we had a deal you know that's the deal and i work it's not an easy deal it's like you got to work hard to to fill your end of the bargain but if you do work hard and you do work at it and you do examine it you do put in the hours on stage and you do go over the rewrites and listen to the recordings and do your best it's rewarding yeah the reward is that i i i can say that those people have a good time like when i put a video up on instagram a bunch of people cheering after the show my feeling when i'm doing i this is like we shared
Starting point is 02:54:41 this time you guys had a good time i had a good time i'm super happy there's nothing like thank you yeah yeah because i told you i'm just getting back in so i just booked my last couple hours so on the nights off that i'm with peterson so we sold out the dc improv sold out tempe improv sold out irvine improv here irvine improv yeah yeah irvine improv and yeah i feel that now because it's weird because you don't know me from comedy. So it's like I did it. I lived all those New York City years as a comic. Never hit into – I was a good comic, but I never hit into TV in that way. And that's why I started doing all these other things that led me to this. But it's like they can put my name up and now it sells out.
Starting point is 02:55:18 Yeah, whereas it wasn't before. Right. So now it's like I feel this extra pressure of like, wow, these people, like they're really coming for me. It is extra pressure. There's extra pressure. But there's a reward to it, too. It's been awesome.
Starting point is 02:55:33 I mean, it's like I'm getting back to this thing that people don't know me from. And it's like, I'm good. I sent you the hour. I haven't sent it to anybody. I'm not putting up publicly. But I wanted you to see it because even if you could only watch a minute, because I wanted you to know that I'm a real comic. You know what I mean? Because otherwise it's like we can all sit here and be like, yeah, I'm a comic. Right.
Starting point is 02:55:48 Blah, blah, blah. But it's, it's incredibly powerful. Like when you're in that room with those people and you make it real for that. And I know my style, like I'm never going to be the best joke writer on the planet. It's not where my passions lie, but I like being in that room with these people doing what we did here and, and getting everybody playing and being in that room with these people doing what we did here and and getting everybody playing and being in the moment and I get people kind of yelling at each other and screaming and announcing their political differences and like all this crazy shit
Starting point is 02:56:14 and I don't know anyone that's doing it the way that I'm doing it and it's not like I'm doing a set the way Seinfeld would lay out you know every word you know for you know, for the hour. But I love it again. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter. The beautiful thing about comedy is any way you want to do it. You do it your way. Yeah, you do it your way. Dave, we just did three hours. Shit, man.
Starting point is 02:56:33 Now I got Sam Harris. I got to run home. I came here from the airport. It's 3.20 already. It's already 3.20. That's crazy. I got Harris at four, I think. I got to get the hell out of here.
Starting point is 02:56:42 Well, thank you, man. It's always a pleasure. Wait, hold on. Now I'm getting you official. You went to Shapiro before me. It happened. I was free that day.
Starting point is 02:56:51 We'll do your show. All right. I have so many other things to say to you. Ladies and gentlemen, Dave Rubin. Thanks, brother. Thank you.
Starting point is 02:56:57 Thank you.

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