The Joe Rogan Experience - #1345 - Steve Aoki

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

Steve Aoki is a musician, author, DJ, record producer and music executive. His new book called "Blue: The Color of Noise" is available now.

these are pretty cool and we're live hello Steve yeah that's the Kanye one that's the most recent that's those guy plastic cell Fong Tran he creates all these he hand paints each one yeah he sculpts it and then he makes like a mold and yeah he's got a bunch of dope ones it's all on his line and you got a book bro I do color noise blue the color Noise. Blew the Color of Noise, yeah. What's this about? It's my memoir. It talks about the beginnings. It goes through my process.

It goes through a lot of different things. I mean, at the end of the day, it's memoir. So it's more about, it's less about what's happening now and more about like how i i got there you know the story and different piecemeal stories that that are thematic and you know with this overarching idea of blue which is like the different shades of blue of my life it's my favorite color and actually my last name is means blue tree really yeah yeah so it's like there's a lot of synergy with the color so when i was coming up with the idea to name the book you know i had to think of like you know something that relates throughout my whole life

so there's so many different shades emotions feelings that are represented in all these different stories have you always been a writer um i'm like a yeah i guess like a piecemeal writer you know i i needed help finishing this book there's no doubt about it i had so much it's like you know because i'm still like you know of the pen and paper still you know like, like I grew up before, before computers and all that stuff. I was, when I was writing, uh, lyrics for my bands, I was, it's always like a notepad. So I had just so many different stories. I didn't know how to put it all together. Um, I started the inception of writing, you know, the, these different stories of my life six years ago. writing, you know, these different stories of my life six years ago.

And then I shot a documentary for Netflix, and we dropped it. It's called I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. We dropped it three years ago, four years ago, 2015 to 2016, I think. And after I saw the reception and how people responded to the doc, then I knew that, like, you know, this is really going to take shape this is going to be front and center is finishing and and writing a proper memoir so the the idea of writing a memoir is only the idea of writing and writing about yourself is only to write this memoir it's not like you you write on a regular basis no no no I mean you know like I am actually coming up with

some new ideas for the next you know conception of what I would put out there in book form because it's a different process for me that's quite exciting, just the challenge to do something like this. My natural way to express myself is through music, and I love being able to step outside my comfort zones. I think at the end of the day, when you do that enough, you just get better as a human being. Yes. And try, you know, if you always do the same thing over and over again, you're never really learning. So it's been like a great learning process, you know, putting out this memoir and like actually opening up this vulnerable side to who I am that I don't necessarily talk about, really. For people that know me, like my fans or my music fans

or anyone else that knows Steve Aoki, they don't really know what's in this book. They might have a glimpse of it from my documentary, which I did, because I talk really deeply about my relationship with my father and this drive that I have as a kid to make it. And it shows you enough where it's, okay, now I have a little bit more than my live shows and what's already out there. But this goes, you know, obviously a lot deeper because it's a book and we're going through emotions and the vulnerability. And I want to tell stories of the hardships and at the end of day I want to speak to young

kids out there young people out there even older people that are trying to figure that their own thing out and and because the documentary related in so many ways on the personal level that I shared there this is how I wanted to share that through my own words. Do you find that writing these things down and just thinking about your life and trying to express it in a way that's going to resonate with people, that this helps you think about it and helps you sort of categorize it

and put it all in your head? Do you know Eddie Wong? Do you know eddie wong do you know who that is yeah yeah famous chef yeah yeah yeah definitely yeah he's a friend of mine great guy and writes every day and i asked him why i'm like why are you writing because he's written books but he's he writes to sort of collect his own thoughts yes yeah 100 it's like once you that's the trigger for me because even when i read i write right after like what i gain from it almost like it's like my note my uh homework yeah for retention on what i gather it took away from what i'm reading so i'm always like reading and writing

or writing and scribbling in my in my book or or like writing off the side in a notepad or like now like you know i like a tablet or something. But it's like you need to gather your head space so you have retention. Yeah. You write to understand. Right. Yeah. And then you write to express it so that other people can understand.

Yeah. And in that process, you kind of understand yourself better. Right. That's how sort of Eddie described it. And when he said it to me, I was like, God damn it it i don't write enough like that i write more comedy stuff i'm trying to write material and essays on things and pull jokes out of them right but like i think there's probably a great benefit for anybody to just sort of write about your thoughts yeah your diary you know you know i mean there's something to that because in that time i mean you could speak to this because

you've written a book on yourself but in that time of writing about yourself and reflecting upon your life you probably learn a little bit about who you are and why you're the way you are yeah and you know thinking about this i never really thought about it to this point or found the the parallel here but when i started seeing a therapist to go into my past and try to break down why I make the decisions I do or why I spiral out here or do something that I'm not comfortable with or I want to change, a lot of that, after these sessions, I go and start writing. And then a lot of that eventually makes it in the book.

Do you write longhand or do you write on a keyboard? I would do both. Now I do both, but I have scribbles of stuff everywhere. But then at the end of the day, for organizational purposes, it's just got to go in like – I got to put it in a computer. Yeah. But yeah, this is a very – this is my own therapy. As you could say, it's like it is putting all these stories and these memories and the feelings and the emotions and the hardships or whatever it might be.

It's like I think the hardest part is like picking the right ones at the end of the day. the hardest part is like picking the right ones you know at the end of the day when you've put all this stuff together and you spend so much time on this do you find that the process of that in any way enhances your music yes it does because i mean when i think about first of all i think about the process of making music i think about it uh very simple similar to what you're doing when you're when you write for your comedy skits and you're efficient you're like okay this is going to work because i'm going to be able to share it this way you're not just writing your thoughts down right so like when i'm in the studio i'm very efficient you know i'm like i'm going and going i'm going to make a club banger

just for the festival so the crowds go crazy and it's less about the emotional message you know what with this being able to talk about that side that's that adds that other layer that that um i'm seeing now more than ever in the last like three four years when i started making songs with lyrics that actually you know i've you know seen the fans come out and drove saying how much it's gotten them through hard times because the lyrics were able to speak to them a certain way. And that's the essence of collaboration at the end of the day, you know, working with songwriters and singers and being able to be pulled in that direction is incredible as an artist, you know, instead of just having like all right we're making

this record to make everyone go crazy even though essentially electronic dance music is all about the music yeah it's not about you know the touching lyrics they might be like the flavoring on top but the the foundation is all about the beat you know but now it's like about mixing both worlds as much as possible you know because at the end of the day, you know. But now it's like about mixing both worlds as much as possible, you know. Because at the end of the day, when you think about my shows, it's a very full-on experience. Like when I put on a show,

I'm trying to like, I'm trying to compound all the senses, you know. I want it to be entertaining as hell. I want it to be fun, engaging. I want you to leave knowing that you saw steve aoki show so that's why i try to do different unique things like you know i cake people i don't know if you know this but i cake people at my shows take them like you hit them in the head with cakes yeah i would say the head but yeah but this is all consensual by the way so i'll give you

a little story of this so you know i think as you are on the stage all the time, you want to make your skits, you want to make everything that you do unique to Joe Rogan. You know, like you don't want to be like, oh, yeah, he's a copy of this person. No one wants to be that, you know. So I'm thinking like, what am I going to do that's going to be unique and different, engaging? Hey, ho ho you know like everyone's doing that everyone sit down everyone jump so you know i'm like you know your brain's always thinking so i got an idea after a song uh that i released on my label i

have my own label and we we released this artist where the video was cakes exploding in people's faces, super slow motion, high def, really beautiful. And then I was like, you know what? I'm going to go to a bakery. I'm going to buy a cake, scribble like the song on the top of the cake. And let's just see what happens. It'll be funny little thing, you know? And I brought the case is 2011, mind you. So this is seven years or however long ago that was you know a long time ago i didn't do the math anyway so it was a long time ago and i walked around the front of the stage and one of the one of the kids in the front one of

the guys up front was just like why is he walking around the front like am i supposed to like grab it and then he just starts pointing at his face and then all his friends around him are pointing at him and the whole place was just staring and waiting and watching and wondering what the hell is going to happen. So I caked him. We filmed it before. This is pre Instagram, put it up on YouTube.

It's like, I got to do this every show. This is incredible. And then six months later, people started coming out with cake me signs. Six years later. Look at this. Okay, here we cake me signs six years later look at this okay here we go so six years later like i think i've caked over 15 000 people now you know oh my god jeez look at her go crazy you hit it right in the mug too dude perfect shot i'll tell you i mean you

know it's just practice makes perfect you know yeah. Yeah, you've thrown 15,000 cakes. I guess you get a feel for it. Look at her. She's dancing. Yeah. Wiping it up. Let me see one more time. This is like, that was ultra.

Boom! Oh, my goodness. We have a cake rider. We have very specific cakes that are, you know, at our show. It's like a special Aoki cake. What is in it? The strange thing is there's like not as much cake as you would think. It's just a special Aoki cake. What is in it? The strange thing is there's not as much cake as you would think. It's just frosting.

So it just explodes everywhere. So it's less bread. Yes. So less carbs, more sugar. If you're diabetic, just get out of the front row, please. What a crazy thing for people to enjoy, too. Getting caked in the face yeah he was having a good fucking time that's okay that's the most important thing at the end of the day is like my shows

cake me with a bullseye okay this is very normal for me to see you know like in some cases there's like 50 50 people with signs up you know that's so crazy look at that cake face the one of the other well i want cake in my face yeah i mean it's just a it's a signature part of the show it's fun it's exciting um dude i need to go to one of your shows because everybody that i know that's been says it's a wild experience it's not just music it's just there's something like you're doing something transformative you know that people come out of there they're just like whoa they're buzzing yeah yeah flying that's the goal you know and if i if i feel like i'm doing that if i feel like i'm really having this impact then i go that not that's why i end up doing like so many shows because i on average i'm doing about 250 shows around the world every year that is so so crazy. And I do this.

I've done this consistently for over 12 years. So it's not like an artist that just drops an album and then they tour around the world for a year or two. I'm on a worldwide tour every single year. Is that sustainable? How's your body holding up? I know you work out a lot. I know you're really into health and wellness and all that stuff,

but that seems insane, particularly with all the travel. It does. I mean, you have to, you have to like treat yourself like an athlete. That's for sure. The way I think about my regimen is different, you know, and I, and I'm like obsessed with trying out new ideas, using myself as a guinea pig to work with different scientists, sleep doctors, you know, different people in various fields that are testing new ideas to like deal with jet lag or things that i'm dealing with that are on the road that that can wear you down and make it not sustainable do you do ivs uh like stem cell no no like vitamin like vitamin drips or anything like that not as no i don't but i you know like at one point

i was i wasn't down the same road as ray kurzweil doing 250 vitamins a day, but I was probably experimenting with about 50. Have you met him? I have. He's an interesting dude. Yes, he is. He's quite a trip. Behind his eyes, there's a lot going on. Yeah, absolutely.

So I have a whole album series called Neon Future. So I have Neon Future 1, 2, and 3 that just came out, my albums in each album um i actually work with a scientist on a song oh wow so i had ray kurzweil on on one so he's talking on a song about like life expansion life extension i'm big singular not not necessarily singularity not but like i'm a big fan of the idea that we can live indefinitely i'm an enthusiast of that world i might not not definitely not an expert but i'm an enthusiast for sure yeah and i got jj abrams on two i got aubrey degray on two who wrote the book i've had him on as well yeah yeah and like i interviewed

him i went to i went to raise ray kerswell's apartment in in the bay area me too yeah yeah so i mean i know that we have a lot of synergies on the science and tech stuff. And three, I had Bill Nye. Oh, wow.

And four, which is coming out next year, I'm having my favorite author on the album that I've read so far. So I'm very excited. Who's that? I might as well announce it here

if I'm going to announce it anywhere. Okay. I haven't announced it yet, but Yuval Harari. Oh, wow. I love that guy. Yeah. Sapiens is amazing. Yeah.

Sapiens is my favorite book. I'm on the second one right now. Yeah. I just finished Homo Deus. And I mean, he has a very like, see, I think of the future very positively. It's a neon future. Yeah. He doesn't think of it so rosy.

Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't think of it so rosy. Yeah, but I like his analysis and the way he's trying to understand how we've evolved or pushed outwards. And I agree with a lot of what he's saying. Well, a lot of what he's saying is irrefutable, but what's interesting is the way he sort of coalesces it, the way he combines it all. And you really get a sense of, wow that this is what a person is like this is how it all went down you know he's a brilliant guy too i've seen him interviewed really fascinating character yeah you know yeah aubrey degray's a trippy dude too because he drinks so much i know i've hung out with him

and like it's like pint after pint I'm like hey man aren't you supposed to be the fucking wellness longevity guy yeah he's so in entrenched in science that he thinks that the solutions are going to come through the laboratory right he he doesn't seem to exercise if he does I think he just rose a boat have you seen that like he like rose boats around the harbor wherever he lives in england and um he drinks i think it's in his beard though the booze the beard the beard is his his like magical wizardry yeah you know but actually that's against science but but uh yeah he's a very interesting guy he jumped i have a foam pit in my house he jumped in my foam pit watching a 50 year old man with a beard down to his below his guy. I have a foam pit in my house. He jumped in my foam pit. Oh, nice. Watching a 50-year-old man with a beard down to his – below his nipples jump into a foam pit is actually pretty cool.

That is cool. A scientist as well. Just like – It's cool that he's willing to be silly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I have the Aoki Foundation, which I'm wearing. I'm obsessed with the human brain. I have the Aoki Foundation, which I'm wearing.

I'm obsessed with the human brain. So all of our money that we raise goes to brain research organizations, brain science orgs. But also orgs that deal with anti-aging or anything that's interesting that relates to living longer, healthier lives. And one of which is Ascends org, which is Aubrey's org. Have you ever heard you do you know who david sinclair is uh remind me he's a harvard professor he's on the podcast next week uh he's been on before but he is at the front of the line of anti-aging technology and the podcast i did with him was incredible he's a brilliant brilliant guy dealing with things like NMN and NAD and all these different drip infusions and concoctions and molecules that lengthen telomeres, enhance the body's ability to regenerate and age much slower. Really, really interesting stuff.

I mean, I love that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really interesting stuff. I mean, I love that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you get in this?

Because you're thinking about your own mind or is this just something you've always been fascinated by? I think it started after my father passed away. Seeing the death of your father he died of uh um cancer but it started with hepatitis c from a boat accident he had in like the late 70s the boat accident gave him hep c yeah uh blood transfusion oh wow and then he i mean he was surviving with hep c for for decades changed his his um interferon and the things that were keeping him going before there's a vaccine or cure this is all before then um i'm not sure if there is but i'm i'm almost positive there is but um yeah i think there is i think it's a very expensive involved process but that that like hurts you know what i mean? It's like someone dies close to you, and then something like that happens.

Yeah. So this is all happening, right? And I see him die. And I'm also like, I think I know about health. I'm vegetarian, this, that, and the other. I'm sort of healthy. But after I saw him die, I read books on cancer. I started reading and trying to research like what could i've done to

to help my father and i still have people in my life that i absolutely love that i want to learn and share like my mother like you know anyone else that's like close to me that's getting older and um then it just i just i just went on this like bender like you know reading books on anti-aging and then you know I'm really big sci-fi nut so if anything I love living between the world of science fiction and science fact and finding out in that gray area what is going to be science fact in our you know in our as long as I'm alive you know and there's a lot of things happening because I do agree with that curve that we are not moving at a linear rate. We are moving, I don't know if it's exponential,

but it's definitely between linear and exponential with technology, with what we're learning in science and medicine. And as I'm learning more about this stuff, my music career is also raising uh my platform as a personality is is also getting raised so then now i get to go and make a phone call to ray and he'll answer and i could get to meet him and and then i want to have fun too so i'm like let's make a song let's do a video let's do an interview so i created this whole neon future session so i

could meet you know stan lee rest in peace like i got to meet him hang out with him did an interview with him took some photos stan lee uh stan lee marvel who's stan lee marvel stan stan lee the the marvel comics stan lee yeah oh okay i'm just going across the board here marvel i was like who's stan lee marvel okay but you know i'm, I just went across the board of all the people outside of my music space that I can talk to. Science people, science fiction people, J.J. Abrams, whoever it might be. Even authors of books I've read, like Richard Dawkins. I flew to Oxford University and I sat with him. Oh, that's great.

And I talked to him and he was like, I don't know why I'm here with you, but someone told me I should be. I think I'm going to get the same response. He's supposed to be coming on next month. Yeah. I'm really excited to talk to him. Yeah. It's like- Did you talk to him after his stroke?

No. This was, I remember him riding his bike to the interview, which was kind of cool, seeing Richard Dawkins ride his bike. It felt like Albert Einstein was coming at me or something. Right. You know, because he's kind of like that. He has an allure with him. Yeah, he does.

But that was 2015, 16, I think. That sounds like around when he had his stroke. Okay. I mean, I actually wouldn't. Find out when he had his stroke. He's recovered very well, though, apparently. He still has some residual issues oh wow so this is definitely pre-stroke 2016 yeah so this is pre-stroke pre-stroke the the the crazy thing

is i've did all these interviews with all these different people didn't didn't actually post them up online why we did two with wired magazine we did the one with ray kurzweil the one with stan lee and i had like the rest lined up but we wanted to you know like present them the right way and yeah oh wow that's actually you're you're great on the internet jamie's the best um that's cool is that in his office no we got um oxford university gave us this room you know, and I took it over. That's awesome. With him. When you talked to Kurzweil, did you get into his idea of being able to download consciousness?

No, we didn't get that far, but I would love for you to tell me more about that. It's a weird one because we went to this, I think it's called a 2045 conference in New York City. And the idea behind it is that they think that somewhere around 2045, there's going to be some sort of technological singularity. With the exponential growth or perceived exponential growth, whatever it is, the leaping, the new innovation, creating these new possibilities that somewhere around 2045, there's going to be so many changes and so many new innovations that they believe they're going to be able to put your consciousness either into some sort of a hard drive, some sort of a quantum computer, or perhaps even a physical embodiment of a Steve Aoki. Yeah.

Like have an artificial steve aoki like a sleeve yeah and then you're caught your actual brain right inside this thing so as your body dies now you will exist in this whatever the fuck it's made out of right you know and he thinks he's going to be able to do that you know he's got a really bizarre motivation too his father died when he was young and he didn't really get to know him that well and he has all these images and all these two and he thinks that he is going to be able to in some way shape or form recreate his father and have some sort of a reasonable facsimile some sort of

yeah like a way to communicate with his dad. Like actually have his, with all the memories that he has of his father, all the video and images and actually recreate his father to have a communication with him. It's very weird stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think a lot of these, those, those storylines get drawn out in, in sci-fi. Yes. Cause that's essentially where we want, like we want to

go without any issues and problems and and backfire and and no like black mirror episode you know kind of blunder because i i mean it we are we are definitely going in that direction we're going somewhere weird for sure we're 100 going there and there's no stopping it no way yeah everybody's buying new phones and new technology and we're pushing it as far as we can. There was a guy, I think it's from the University of Connecticut. He is the preeminent researcher on time travel and he is right out of a fucking Spider-Man comic book. when he was young, same sort of situation, and he wanted to figure out a way to go back in time and save his dad. So he's literally trying to come up with a workable theory for time travel. That's the gentleman.

What is his name? Dr. Ron Mallett. Yeah, Dr. Ron Mallett. And it's right now, I mean, he's got a working theory, but it becomes a matter of having enough energy to actually pull this off. But the idea behind it was all inspired by his father dying. And he thinks he's going to be able to, or someone may be able to go back in time. But what he believes now. When you hear stories like this, right?

When you hear the story, because I know this is like what you do. You get to talk to all these people. Do you believe them to a certain extent and then you like you go because for me i need the scientific understanding like you know like yes i'm not too much into the paranormal i need to like understand to to see if this actually is conclusive well i think he found out something unfortunate in that the idea, as far as time travel as we know it, will only exist from the time the time machine is invented forward and backward to that moment. The idea, like Terrence McKenna described it, at least in terms of what they understand or what Dr. Mallett believes about time travel right now, and I hope I'm not butchering. I'm sure I'm butchering it, but I hope I'm not butchering it too bad. You can only travel back to the moment the first time machine is invented.

So once that door is open, then time ceases to become linear. Anything from the end of time till the invention of the time machine happens all at once, because anyone can come back to that moment because the time machine exists now. It's made. So of course, they're going to innovate. Anyone in the future is going to innovate. These people that do innovate are going to have a much, much superior version of this time machine. And everyone is going to be able to go back to the moment that the time machine is invented in any point along the way from the end of time to the beginning of time from the moment that time machine is invented. So in that case, if that really is the case, has a time machine been invented? I don't think it has. Why?

Well, I could be wrong. Yeah. But what's your like i think everything is going to be completely fucking gonzo you're going to have people appearing and disappearing and and showing up and and going and it's a normal thing it's like oh yeah he's traveling through time it's just not only that like all events say if like you wouldn't would you know that but if he was a world war five a hundred years from now and you were like fuck this i'm going back in time 100 years before World War V, and I'm just going to live there.

And they decide to do that, or World War III or World War IV. They just keep going back in time and forward in time. You could go, if you had a time machine, and the time machine was, again, I'm butchering this, I'm a moron, I'm not a scientist. Yeah, I'm butchering this. I'm a moron. I'm not a scientist. If you had a time machine and time machines existed from now until the perceivable end of the lifespan of the earth, right? When the sun supernovas and there's no more life left on earth, you could kind of go anywhere you want from now to a million years from now as long as there's a place to go.

Right. As long as there's a time machine available. And the idea is that time as we know it will cease to exist because our time now is dependent on our biological entities waking up, moving forward. What time is it? Oh, it's 3. My meeting's at 5. Better hurry over to downtown.

Traffic's rough this time of day. All that stuff's going to be nonsense if there's time machines because you're just going to be able to move anywhere you want at any point in time sounds ridiculous but so does the internet have you brought the internet up to some guy who lived in victorian you know times right and say look at this this is my phone and you can ask it a question it'll give you all the answers anything you want that would be the most astounding form of witchcraft ever invented and now my 11 year old daughter has one of those yeah you know i mean she she asks that thing questions all the time she gets answers to stuff all the time that we used to have to go to a library for him she could watch videos that just come out of

the air yeah that's magic yeah and but it's we're accustomed to it we adapt very exactly so the idea is that what this would do is change every aspect of reality as we know it in terms of like linear time it would no longer exist but would would only those people that know how to use a machine have access to it well i mean wouldn't it be like cell phones eventually everybody gets one and we're talking about time right so if everybody gets access to it a year from now or three years from now it doesn't matter because the time machine's already been invented so they could travel back to that moment and forward from that moment so the moment they turn that fucker on everything goes haywire wow so let's so let's not turn that thing on oh it's weird it's inevitable people press yeah

well they want to see if they can even make that happen. I used to have a bit that I used to do about the Big Bang because they were – everyone has always tried to figure out like what was the universe like before the Big Bang? Like what happened? How was it created? the progress of technology. My thought was that if you look at where we're going and we're constantly innovating and people are constantly coming up with new and more impressive forms of technology

that one day we're going to create a big bang machine. And that this is what happens. That every five billion years or so things get so intelligent they develop a big bang machine. And they sit around these dudes are on Red bull and xanax and simulation and one guy goes i'll fucking press it and he hits the button and boom the whole

universe starts all over again and if you had a big bang machine and you knew that if you pressed it within five billion years humans would create another big bang machine this is an endless cycle would you press it fucking for sure there's someone that would press that button yeah there's 100 a person out there that would press that button yeah no i i heard more about the simulation idea well that's another that's another idea but that's elon believes that he believes that it's very possible like like one of the things they said if you could ask ai what what would you ask he said what's beyond possible like like one of the things they said if you could ask ai what what would you ask he said what's beyond the simulation like he believes this is a simulation but if you're

elon musk of course you'd believe it's a simulation people are letting you drill tunnels under la and shoot rockets off into space and you're making electric cars fucking solar roof panels i mean he's he's literally living like some character in a movie he's like professor x or something yeah but if you're in the simulation there's nothing you can do about it right so you just might as well just do do it all so it's a great way to think about life right what is a simulation if everything is a simulation it's still life right like your existence is still everything you're accustomed to and everything you experience. And if it is a simulation, at least some aspects of this are comfortably or comfortingly obvious. Like work hard, you can get better at things.

Be nice to people, they're nice to you. Be a good friend, you get good friends. Eat healthy food, you're healthier there's there's like some comfort to the lack of i mean there's there's certainly some variables that are very difficult to account for but there's also there's a surprising amount of life that's pretty straightforward so if it is a simulation it's not the most difficult one to follow. It's pretty crazy and chaotic, but there's a lot of comfort in it. As much as we try to dwell on the horrors of humanity, and there's certainly a lot of them,

because God has a lot of beauty in people, too. And there's a lot of cool shit in people. Yeah, I mean, when you focus on that, then there's real growth. I was at the comedy store last night until like 2 o'clock in the morning in this uh comedians bar just hanging out with all these comedians we're just laughing and talking and there's no no audience just a bunch of people that get paid to make people laugh like john stewart was back there michelle wolf and all these really funny comics we're all just laughing having a great time, and talking, and it was like, wow, this is so nice,

and it's so fun. It's rewarding. It's like, there's cool things in this life. Yeah. If you can find good people, and friends, and communicate,

and spread love, and have interesting, fascinating, thought-provoking conversations, there's a lot of really positive things. Right. So if this is a simulation, it's a pretty badass simulation. Forve aoki yeah definitely and for joe rogan people and shit you know

making a brain foundation i mean what a fucking great simulation you're in absolutely i think yeah it's like you you can make what you want of it i mean it's not it might not be the dream like the elon musk scenario right away but it takes time to get there well you don't want that dream i don't want his dream yeah exactly his dream's crazy well i mean his dream of like i mean like you said he's just like almost a superhero he's bruce wayne you know he's doing whatever you know he's he's iron man you know well you know some some cars have small engines right right? There's Honda Civics out there, and then there's fucking rocket cars. He's got some sort of crazy quantum rocket car engine for a brain.

Have you talked to him? No, I haven't. He's a trip. He's actually on the list of people I would love to be in the studio with and make music with and, you know, just get into his mind a bit. I've been putting that out there to the universe. He's one of those guys when you're talking to him, you have this feeling that he's running code in the background while he's talking to you.

He's like, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. I think he just gets bored with regular mundane conversations. He's got 50 million things going on constantly. He was talking to me about how difficult it is to manage his mind. He's like, you wouldn't want to be me.

I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. He thought he was crazy when he was younger because so much was bouncing around in his head. And he realized that other people weren't like that. And he's like, oh, no. I'm alone. Yeah. I mean, literally, he's probably alone. Who the fuck is like that guy?

Right. In terms of a public intellectual who's responsible for so many groundbreaking technologies you know the number one electric car in the world like spacex tunneling under la with a boring company i'm like fucking he's a crazy man yeah fast thank god he's around though yeah i know you know people like that it's so cool to have like a true outlier you know someone is just really out there and oh man he's constantly attacked and maligned and people are misrepresenting him and you know people like all the crabs in a bucket don't like it they're trying to pull him down like he's too goddamn smart all these people that fancy themselves smart you meet that guy

you're like oh okay there's levels to this game yeah no he's he's like the top of my list just so you know being his presence but i i think it'd be very exciting to try to do a song with elon musk i'll ask him well after the podcast that'd be great my text message yeah so he's probably busy yeah yeah i could i could always make it as easy as possible. Yeah, just go to SpaceX or Tesla or wherever you're at. So what in particular are you doing with this brain foundation? I mean, I think one of the most important things is inspire people more about the brain. I mean, obviously, it's to raise money for brain research orgs. For one, finding cures for degenerative brain diseases.

orgs for one finding cures for degenerative brain diseases and two just understanding the brain more working with orgs that that want to understand the brain more so that we can expand what our limitations are you know in the conversations that we're talking about you know bring some of the science fiction and science fact you know um i love this idea that like you know telekinesis is when you can move things with your mind. You think that's possible? It already is. Really? Not like in the supernatural sense, like Magneto.

It's like, I mean, it's happened like five years ago, people moving wheelchairs with their- Implanted things. Implanted, yeah, exactly. I'm not sure the right terms, but I've seen the videos, like a monkey being able to move an arm to its mouth to eat the apple. Yeah. Those happened in 2013 or 14 or fact check that, but it was not 2019. It was like years ago. So whatever they're doing at DARPA, whatever they're doing at Google,

whoever's got these research orgs and labs, I would love to jump in there and just like put my ear out there and just listen and find out what's going on. And, you know, because I have my own interest and passion on what the breakthroughs are. And I would also love to try some of these things.

Do you think they'd let you? Sometimes, I mean, listen, you got to try. I think Boston Dynamics might be your best bet. The robot people? Yeah. They might let you in. But DARPA, that's a defense agency. DARPA won't let me in, obviously.

They will not let me in. You're going to have to sign some paperwork. But I want to get in to as many doors as I can on any of this kind of stuff and uh that's like my own personal gain but also with the with the brain org it's just the brain foundation it's just to like you know help out the smaller orgs too that are that are one finding the cures because at the end of the day what i've learned is that if you don't die of cancer or heart disease, you're going to have a brain degenerative disease. You're going to go crazy.

You're going to lose your memory. You're going to deteriorate. Yeah, and years down the line, we're going to be able to literally turn our body into a used car and change all the parts. But if you start losing your memory then you start losing who you are did you talk to kurzweil about this uh yes it was years ago so i'm trying to remember even like the interview that we did but i you know i went in deep on

a lot of the anti-aging stuff and you know i think the struggle that he's going to have is if he's going to make it to 2045 because he's 70 or something right yeah that's and he has a heart um he has a genetic defect with his heart yeah so um but i mean he's just like one of those like those heroes of mine that was lucky to to be in his space you know playing on his kurzweil keyboard that he invented yeah the synthesizer uh that was that was a moment we're both on the keys speech to text too didn't he yeah i think i mean he's he's invented like more than a hundred really significant inventions yeah fascinating guy absolutely yeah but can we squeeze 25 more years out of him yeah yeah his biological life to get to 2045 because if he's gonna like he's gonna be the

one that's gonna really push that envelope hard i think he's if there's anyone out there that's why i'm you know it's clearly obvious why google picked him up yeah you know and had him like head the whole i forgot what the department's called but you know well didn't google buy boston dynamics as well they bought a robot company i know that which is like what are you guys planning you can control everybody's email you have the number one search engine on the planet earth you have uh the number one browser like what are you guys doing what are you doing over there yeah you're making robots but you but don't you want to be in the room yeah you want to be in the room but you know some of their choices are a little bit questionable

it's there's so much there's there's science but then there's so much there's social decisions you know that they're making in terms of like what people get to see and talk about in here. And a lot of it is based on the zeitgeist. It's based on, you know, the current state of politically correct ideology, what you can and can't say or can and can't do. And that becomes really dangerous because you're kind of controlling information. You're throttling information like, you know, Tulsi Gabbard is suing google for what is it like 50 million dollars or something crazy like that they say that they purposely stifled her search engine results so that people wouldn't be able to find her as easily and they've she's apparently proven it wow excuse me

um so it's not a pure information-based company there's ideology behind it there's motivations behind it that you know politically leaning motivations right you know so i don't know yeah when it goes into that when it goes into that world i'm yeah i'm like oh i you forget about that sometimes when you're like i want to be in the breakthrough rooms you know well there was a an internal memo that where they were referring to ben shapiro and someone else I think it was Jordan Peterson and maybe Dennis Prager as Nazis which is hilarious because both Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager are both Jewish so it's like their their perception of who a person is this was brought up this is brought up by people

in Congress. Like they had to have hearings on it. I'm trying to figure out like, what is Google doing? Like, what are you allowed to, how are you allowed to define people internally in your memo memos? And then of course,

once you call someone a Nazi, then you can act as if they're a Nazi and, and, you know, stifle any sort of search on them or stifle results or you know yeah point point people in the direction that you think would be better for humanity versus just pure information and it gets gets very weird you know but as a technology company look they're amazing just what they're doing with android and google searching and Google assistant and Google maps is by far the

most, the superior map application on the planet earth. And it's constantly getting better and constantly gathering up new information. I mean, part of me loves the fact that they exist. And part of me is like, that is too much power.

It's too much power for one, one company to be able to influence people one way or the other so what's uh what's your so what's the joe rogan solution or something like that regulations no well i'm too stupid for this this i i need to rely on people that have actually spent real time studying the effects and understand it from a very deep level i don't. I understand that it's problematic. I just don't understand what the solution is, and I don't know if it's even, it's just a free

distribution of information across the board because then what do you do about actual Nazis? Like if you find there's a new Hitler, and he arises, and he really does want to exterminate the Jews. What happens there? Do you just allow that guy to be on Google? Is he in Google Hangouts with a little Nazi hangout?

They're planning on exterminations. And where's the next Auschwitz? No. I don't think that. That shouldn't be the case. Exactly. So what is the case? Do you allow white supremacists on there to organize rallies?

Fuck. Where does freedom of speech end you know right yeah it's very complicated questions yes we're all learning to navigate yeah i think in many ways and this is a weird thought that i have and i repeat it over and over again but i think technology is going to provide us with a new way of communicating that's not dependent upon language, but rather can read actual intent, like an actual mind-reading technology. And when I see Elon's Neuralink, this thing that he's trying to do, where they're opening up the bandwidth to humans and information through use of implants and some sort of a Bluetooth wearable device, Like that, I think, is like a step in that direction.

And I think Elon, you know, in many interviews, he said that he thinks that human beings are the organic biological bootloader for artificial intelligence. So if we're a bootloader for AI, the way to sort of combat that. A bootloader. Bootloader. Yeah. Like a computer bootloading oh okay okay gotcha yeah that what we're doing is we're the biological well the way i've described

it is that we're sort of an electronic cocoon that's about to make the butterfly and that we're we're the caterpillar that's making the cocoon and we're constantly in pursuit of innovation. And the butterfly is the AI? Yes. The butterfly. Like if you see a caterpillar, that caterpillar doesn't know what the fuck's going on. It's just making a cocoon.

That's what it does. Yeah. That's what it knows to do. Yeah. And the idea is that we don't know what the fuck we're doing either. Like why do we need 5G? Is 4G not good enough? Goddamn, I get on the internet pretty goddamn quick what are we doing what seems like 5g is

better and 6g will be better than 5g yeah and if you want to get that mind reading software you got to get 7g and we're we're gonna do this to the point where one day there's going to be a real thing sitting but we will merge with the ai because that I mean, that's the future that I hope for. You don't lose yourself in that. But are you yourself once you've merged with the AI? And then what's holding you back? God, all these emotions are bullshit.

That's getting in the way. Yeah, right. Let's get rid of those. Let's just have pure people. Pure people, now available through Nabisco. It's interesting because my whole point

with Neon Future is the convergence of, I mean, the ultimate goal is the convergence of technology and our humanity to the point where we live,

you know, forever through, you know, this downloading system that we're talking about earlier on or, you know,

whatever seemingly makes sense in the trajectory of where technology is going. You know, so we do live indefinitely you know i mean that's like uh for me as well you know my insurance policy for if i don't make it to this point like my dad didn't make it to that that cure is you know

obviously uh cryogenically freezing the body do that well i'm already signed up jesus so you know because i feel like i mean if we are really this discussion is are we going to make it there in our timeline i'm 41 so i have a better chance of rick kerswell obviously yeah so if i and i really believe that you know i guess it's hopeful you know that that we'll get to this point in our generation that we'll they'll make it but we're it's that close right so either we make it and then i die and then everyone lives forever do i want to be that generation that of people that die or the generation of people that go oh death is is a cure we just uh we just found we found a cure for death just like a cure for cancer just like a cure for death, just like a cure for cancer, just like a cure for whatever. What if after your biological body ceases to function, you move into a new realm of reality that is a completely different dimension, that's filled with love and understanding?

Like the after death. Yeah. Whatever it is that we don't know. There's no biological shortcomings. There's no emotions and there's no fear. None of that. And there's no biological shortcomings there's no emotions and there's no fear none of that and there's there's no bodies you just you're a soul in another dimension and then someone unfreezes you like well steve wanted to be unfrozen and suck back in cake people you're like fuck man i was i was there i was on the other side. Yeah, they're like, you'd be like, click, opt out.

No, I can't believe this. And so then you go, well, I'll just die again. Well, here's, okay, this is what I know, because I don't know, I mean, we both don't know what's really going to happen. That's likely. I mean, anything is likely, okay? I'm not saying that, I'm not like,

I don't believe in God or I do believe in God. I just don't know what's really happening afterwards but I know I know that what I've seen as me what I understand of what's around me and my feelings

is that if I wake up tomorrow or if someone I love wakes up tomorrow with an incurable disease that's going to kill them it would be

the most horrific thing and I think at the end of the day the human race is going out to find cures for those kinds of situations sure so that's going to kill them, it would be the most horrific thing. And I think at the end of the day, the human race is going out to find cures for those kinds of situations. Sure. That's like, yeah, suffering, pain. I mean, that's what we do. We try to stop and elongate our life.

Essentially, we all want to live indefinitely, like through finding cures for all of these issues. And we want to live healthily. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't want to be in a wheelchair for 50 four 50 years just like staring at a tv like hawkins yeah yeah which is but then again like maybe he found a silver lining i'm not sure but you know if you're healthy and moving and then boom night and day you're there of course that's awful but um at the end of the day, you just don't want that.

I mean, you don't want that kind of thing to happen. So for me, it's like I would rather opt out than have someone make that – some disease make that decision for me. The suffering thing is the thing that we all want to avoid. We want to avoid discomfort and pain and also causing discomfort to our loved ones. want to avoid discomfort and pain and also causing discomfort to our loved ones like one of the scariest thing about dying is leaving behind grievers leaving behind people that are sad and miss you terribly yeah it's like when you've seen people where their loved ones have died it's it's you know and we have lost loved ones we all have and it's a weird void it's a yeah it's horrific it's traumatic and it's you know that's where my conquest or my interest and passion led to anti-aging the future you know and then building

on that for the ones that i love that are alive now you know and doing whatever i can to like share the information so that they live as long as they possibly can in the healthiest way possible you know so like i'm like just gathering gathering information as i go you know and it's and it's exciting because as i was saying as i get bigger as a personality you know sometimes i do jump into these rooms and in one case just recently i i uh there's a doctor that that just that i've worked with i've done some stem cell um injections with him in denver and he came to my house and he was with some other doctors and they're like oh yeah there's a doctor convention i live in las vegas those conventions all the time there so they all came over and like hey you know some breakthrough um groundbreaking stuff just happened this year uh you can now find out on a cellular

level of cancer detection uh for at least 16 different cancers you know so like it's like very very preventative you know far along the line so i was like i want in so i got the information and i just like that was a christmas present for everyone what kind of stem cell procedures are you getting i mean the first time was through through dan bilzerian he he's introduced me to uh uh the one in panama so i went down there dr neil reardon exactly but my mom was just down there oh yeah last week yeah i've sent her down there twice that's great she was in the verge of getting a knee replacement and her knee was really bad. And eight months, it took a while, you know, because my mom was 73.

And within eight months, her knee stopped being in pain and she was able to walk and she can, they went to the Grand Canyon. Amazing. Yeah. And now she went back again to just get a second dose and juice it up some more. It's incredible. I just just know when i was there i saw a lot of kids in there with the one in panama because it's it it grows muscle or does something like i don't want to say

the wrong thing regenerates tissue right so kids with muscle dystrophy kids with uh like where they can't walk anymore they get the stem cell injections and they can walk for and then after six months you know the the stem cells do leave your body or or like the it doesn't stay with you right so once again i don't scientific terms i could be off but they have to go back in get the stem cells and they can have you know as you know that kind of life instead of having me in a wheelchair so I went I went in there because I just wanted to try it out my friend also came with me has asthma knocked out his asthma he never had to use an inhaler for way past six months really yeah because the stem cells also really affect the lungs.

The umbilical cord cells, they travel the lungs first from what they're- So this is an IV version. Yeah, an IV. We did IV. I did shoulder, my shoulders because I have- I later got a rotator cuff surgery because I had like a bone spur going into my tendon. But I tried to use the stem cells so I didn't have to goator cuff surgery. Um, cause I had like a bone spur going into my tendon, but I tried to use the stem cells to, so I didn't have to go to the surgery, but you can't erode bone.

Right. So, yeah. So you got it shaved down. Is that what they did? Exactly. Yeah. And,

um, but I just like my performance level went up the, like the general kind of markers of what it's supposed to do actually increase actually right after, um, right after that, I went back to Vegas, met up with Dan, and we did a workout, and it was like, it's just two times more. And it worked. It did what it was scientifically supposed to do for me,

for my stamina, my energy. Yeah. And – You did it for three days? Did you do three days? Yeah, three days. And three days of IV and then injects into different joints. Exactly. And I did that.

And then about a year later, I was with Dr. Grossman. He's the doctor I work with. with uh dr grossman he's the doctor i i work with and um he wrote the book with ray kerswell called uh um i think it's the sub the subtext of the book is staying um alive until we get to till we reach singularity or something like that it's a it's like a a book on being healthy basically anti-aging book so he wrote that in um with uh with with ray kerswell so that's why i heard about him i went to him a few years back to get like the full blood work going for me and my family i want we did like two days of testing all kinds of stuff to learn more about our bodies and see what we're deficient in what we're not what vitamins we need to take to supplement the things that we're deficient in

and i came back just you know maybe a year ago to do um his version of stem cells because in america is a different kind of thing like panama is obviously out of america so they're doing the umbilical cord stem cells or they harvest the stem cells from umbilical cords so they have day zero stem cells he's doing stem cells it's almost like a plasma therapy when they took my blood, spin it, and they're pulling out the stem cells from my own blood. So it's 41-year-old stem cells. But his point that he's saying is that the size of the stem cells, they're much smaller. So they're able to travel past where it ends up clogging, which is like the lungs and like certain areas of the body. So it does travel more.

It's not the day zero stem cells, but it's still effectively doing its work. When you think back to like 20 years ago, there was no discussion of this. So this is a completely, you know, I've had stem cell shots too, and I had a full-length rotator cuff tear in my right arm that's gone. Just it went sealed up, healed. I was having real problems with this arm. I was thinking I was going to need surgery. Now it works great.

No problems at all. I hit the bag, lift weights. And you injected intravenously and into the arm? Yeah, I've done both. Yeah, exosomes. There's a new thing called Wharton's Jelly that had a pretty profound effect. It's a very potent called Wharton's jelly that had a pretty profound effect it's a very potent mixture of stem cells we're getting close to the point where you don't have to go to Panama

but going to Panama right now is the way to go so that's where you went for no I didn't go to Panama I did it all in America where Santa Monica place called medicine yeah I have to try that out it's a place that I originally started going to for Regenikine. Do you know what Regenikine is? Regenikine was originally invented in Germany. And a lot of guys like Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant, they had to fly to Germany back in the day to get this. And what they do is it's a more advanced form of platelet-rich plasma. They're taking your blood out.

They spin it in a centrifuge and heat it through some process and they add things to it. And in the process, it creates this incredibly potent anti-inflammatory agent that's from your own blood. It's like this yellow serum. Then they inject this yellow serum directly into areas where you have injury and or inflammation. It has a radical healing effect. And it's really, really good for bulging discs. People that have disc issues and back issues, and I had a pretty bad one in my neck that was keeping me out of jujitsu. My hands were going numb, you know, because the bulge was pushing against my nerve. Now it's gone. Like I've got it. I got MRI six months later after

the procedure, there's no more bulge. Now, most of the time when you have a bulging disc, sometimes it can go back and heal, but most of the time it does not. And most of the time what happens is you wind up having to get a disectomy where they go into the disc, they remove the offending piece that's sticking into your nerve. But now you have a smaller disc, you have less disc tissue. So your discs start to collapse your your actual spinal column you know the the actual hard bone moves closer to the other hard bone and you know it becomes a real problem arthritis forms scar tissue forms the more disc tissue you have you know the the better off you are and they're able to do that now to the point where they increase the disc tissue well it

would it doesn't decrease it okay so when the disc is bulging it actually gets it to go back in it gets it to retreat the stem cells are the blood plasma therapy regenokine okay but stem cells have been shown to start to do that too they've actually started injecting stem cells directly into disc tissue and i was talking to dr. Roddy McGee out of Las Vegas. He's one of the guys that's really at the cutting edge of all this stuff, working with UFC fighters, and they're doing that with them. And he was the guy I originally went to to treat my shoulder because of Dr. Davidson from the UFC, who's the main doctor for the UFC.

He was telling me he had shoulder surgery. He's a little bit older than me and uh his shoulder surgery took but he was still having issues with it he was trying to figure out um what he what he should do because he was still having pain when he was swimming went and got some stem cell injections all the pain went away so he's telling me about that he's like you know you got some pretty significant tears you might really need surgery but maybe this will help you for now. So I went there, and the amount of help that it – the amount of alleviation of pain and discomfort was stunning.

I was like, I can't believe this is a real thing. You can just shoot this into whatever is bothering you, and then all of a sudden, like four months later, you're like, hey, where's the pain? I don't have any fucking pain anymore. I need to meet – can you introduce me to McGee? Oh, yeah, he oh yeah he's great yeah yeah i'll give you his number that'd be great i send people to him all the time but he's on the cutting edge of everything like anytime he's a young guy and he's really enthusiastic and super brilliant and anytime there's any sort of cutting edge medical practice that guy's he's on it like for instance one of the things they're doing now is when people get acl tears which usually when you get an acl tear usually you

need reconstruction and usually what that reconstruction is is either a cadaver graft where they take the achilles tendon out of a dead person and shove it in your knee and then your body re-proliferates that with its own cells. It takes about six months, and then you have a functional tendon again. It's great. I had it done myself. It works. But now they're able to reattach the actual torn ACL. They have some special technique they do,

and they've had people tear an ACL and then compete in the Olympics four months later. Which is fucking bananas. That's crazy yeah and he showed me this procedure and how they do it then he showed me this guy four months post-op doing all these box jumps and shit and i was like this is nuts it is nuts wow yeah so there's a lot of hope in terms of regenerative medicine absolutely yeah and thank god for people like dr reardon and dr mcgee and um dr ben ruhi who's the guy that i go to in santa monica i mean these guys are just on top of this incredible new

wave of regenerative medicine yeah i'm i'm obsessed with that world so the more you talk about it it's like uh it's very exciting yes yeah well you're in Vegas, you've got to visit Roddy. I would love to meet him. He's a great guy, too. Yeah. You would love him. Yeah. And he's, like, super enthusiastic about it. If he finds out that you're enthusiastic about it, he'll geek out with you. Sounds awesome.

Yeah. What else have you had done? Stem cells, shoulder. I just had vocal surgery Vocal cord surgery Whoa Did you get polyps or something? Yeah I did

Yeah Polyploid on my vocal cord Because I used to sing in a band I used to I used to be Like in a screamo Hardcore band Or a few of them

I mean that's where Like that's my roots of Who Like my Where my music was As far as What led me to DJing Was being in

In these like Hardcore punk bands so that's a lot of screaming lots of screaming yeah and then i carried that through when i finally like when i finally you know retired that hat and i started djing years and years later and i started doing these bigger bigger shows and started doing the festivals i brought out that same energy again and i started you know when i started producing the music uh I brought out that same energy again. And I started, you know, when I started producing the music, electronic music, I was bringing in guitars. I was screaming on some of these songs. So I'm bringing some of my past in with my music, and I'm back again,

but in a different world. And I just, I'm not a trained singer, you know? So I destroyed my vocal cords and I was just like raspy as hell. Like I was just like an old Italian man at some of my shows. Yay! The godfather.

Yeah. And then I saw a doctor and he's like, you don't have a choice. You're going to have to like, you're going to have to take a break. And I'm, you know, I'm doing like 250 shows a year. So I was like, well, I've got to stop for the month and not talk for a month. That was crazy.

No talking for a whole month. Yeah, imagine Joe Rogan not talking for a whole month. Wow. I bet a lot of people would be excited. But I had to do that. That was very hard. I actually saw a life coach before because I'm like, I'm terrified. I don't want my demons or whatever anxiety or whatever things that I have creeping up

where they're like, okay, you're mine now. You can't talk to someone about, you know. I'm like, I don't know. I'm scared, you know. But I got through it. I just, I'm a very busy body kind of person. So, like, I don't know, I'm scared, you know, but I got through it. I just, I'm a very busy body kind of person. So like, I just scheduled, it was like going back to college, but with things that I needed to train and get better at, like get better at piano,

get better at meditation, get better at, you know, twisting the knobs, engineering, whatever it might be that I want to be better at. I just brought more people into my world. Then I finished like an album that month, making music with different people. So I just was just so focused on creation and learning and reading and all that good stuff. So when I left, I was like, okay, now I know how to do TM meditation or transcendental meditation. I know how to do TM meditation or transcendental meditation. And I'm more comfortable doing the things that help me be a better artist. Well, it obviously worked, right?

But what was the first sound that you made after a month? What was the first word? I'll tell you something that's really interesting. I know now to do the most hygienic sneeze that you can possibly do. Tell us. Because now I can sneeze with no visible vapor residue. Because you know when people sneeze, they see those videos, it's like this cloud of trillions of bacteria floating in the air. Yeah. Of course, if you do that to me, you'll probably see some vapor, but you don't feel it on your hand.

If you sneeze and it's all like gunky and, you know, it happens sometimes, right? Yeah. Well, now I can sneeze because I'm not using my vocal cords. So as I sneeze, I blow out really hard because I had no choice. I couldn't cough. I couldn't actually use a vocal cord after the surgery. So what if you had to cough? So I'll be like, whoa. So so when i sneeze i sneeze like that i go

so if you do that if you do that kind of sneeze was that that's how you do it that's how i sneeze i almost want to get some dust see see if you yeah you could if you could make me see i will show you and then yeah basically so you just breathe out. Yeah. It's, it's the cleanest sneeze you could possibly do. Yeah. So that's one very important thing I learned through this whole,

but the first sound, I mean, I don't remember. Scared to say a word. Like when the 30 days was up. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably just,

you know, you know, also whispering is really bad. Whispering is bad. Like so. Yeah, yeah. It's probably just, you know, also whispering is really bad. Whispering is bad? Like that? Yeah, like whispering like this. Yeah. Really? Whispering is not good for your vocal cords.

You think it's like gentler on them, but from what I was told, to not whisper. Don't whisper. So I literally was texting all the time for you know until i had to make that you know you probably developed some fucking lightning fast thumbs because you wanted to get things out but did you that's what you did most of the time just text people text to tie it's called text to talk when i was in my meetings because you know i've run various different uh you know businesses and i have to you know be on call so i'm like texting to talk and i was stephen hawking yeah you know yeah yeah

yeah but if you go back to him yeah uh here is the agenda of her today yes they apparently wanted to give him a better voice and he didn't want it yeah he's like i like that smoother more siri like voice yeah you know sorry i didn't understand that sir you know you can get siri in a nice english voice english voice he was not interested he likes that he liked while he was alive that weird rough computer voice he i mean from what i heard about him he just his sense of humor was was very funny and he's just a very sarcastic guy. He seemed like a really interesting guy who also really likes strip clubs.

Did you know that? No, I did not. Yeah, Eric Weinstein told me about that. Remember? See, there was a really interesting article written about him that he would love to get wheeled into a strip club. He enjoyed it. He liked being there. But I guess that

completely makes sense if you lost control of your body right still were attracted to women you still found them amazing you'd you'd want to see them naked dancing in front of right it's like it makes total sense yeah you know yeah because you want like i I mean, exactly. You can't get it, but you can at least be there. Yeah. What do you got, Jamie? There it is. Acclaimed physicist Hawking, a regular at California Strip Joint. He's a regular.

Wow. It's hilarious. That's pretty awesome. Make it rain. I am proud to say that I saw him speak when I was in college. Oh, wow. No kidding. Yeah. Look at him with all Oh, wow. No kidding. Yeah.

Look at him with all his strippers. Holla. Peter, Stephen Hawking's got his strip clubs. Look at him. That's amazing. Look at his smile. He looks so happy. He looks so happy.

Who are we to hate? Absolutely. Yeah. I would imagine that would be a very trying 30 days so when it came when it was over was your voice normal did it did it come back did it it was different but i was warned that it would sound a little different like you sound different now than you sounded before the operation i'm used to what i sound like now so so I almost forgot what I sound like before, but I think maybe a semitone differently. But it's like you just get used to the new you.

If I was going to be half cyborg, half man, I'd probably just be like, okay, this is me. You just get to that when you're situated in that. The half cyborg thing is going to be really weird when people start replacing legs. Because I think if you could develop a leg, like a cybernetic leg that's better than a normal leg, someone's going to say,

chop my leg off and give me one of those. Someone. Someone somewhere is going to do that. And if that becomes seamless and you know you get some steve austin six million dollar man type shit going on things can get real weird that's uh what um you've all talked about in homo deus you know that whole idea that like first we use the technology to heal the people that need it but at at the end of the day, it's going to be used for advancing humanity. You know, like there's like, you know, you want to save,

you want to help people that need to walk first, right? Yeah. But then it's like, just like you said, if it becomes very normal, then the upgrades will be used as well to advance the people that don't need it yeah and then we get to the point where you're unscrewing your head taking your brain out but and and it's that's also what's interesting is that when you say that you know now it sounds crazy it does but it doesn't yeah well to you it doesn't yeah but to me it doesn't either but that's exactly what you're saying about the phone to you know or like what you're showing someone in the victorian

age yeah it's about the internet right and when we get to that place it's gonna you know it's gonna feel like oh well everyone everyone did it so like. Like when Luke Skywalker got his arm chopped off in Star Wars and they put another arm on and it's really quick. Remember? Yep. Yeah, that shit's going to happen. I believe it. Yeah.

I don't think that's too far away. I think that's probably 25 years away. I hope so. I hope so too. Because we are seeing some pretty advanced um artificial limbs so um there was a guy who got his leg and his arm bit off by a shark and i met him at the comedy store and he has this carbon fiber arm and a carbon fiber leg the guy doesn't walk with a limp he walks completely normal and he shook my hand i was scared because i was like don't crush my hand

because he's got some fucking iron man hand and he's he shook my hand does was scared because i was like don't crush my hand because he's got some fucking iron man hand and he's does it have like the uh does it look like a hand or is it just a metal hand wow yeah like a black carbon fiber hand that articulates it moves because i think they're they're starting to make it where you can feel yes i think they are yeah so that way it's the guy right there wow yeah we've actually i mean that's the so that way it's – That's the guy right there. Wow. Yeah, we've actually talked – I mean, that's the next level, right? It's like when you can make an arm that has nerve joints into this artificially – artificially connecting with your brain. Yeah, he's an interesting character because that arm, I mean, it's – you really get this I am robot kind of feel from seeing his arm and his leg.

Because it's, I mean, I'm sure he would tell you that he's much better off with his arm and his leg back. But when you see the guy walk around, man, he fucking just walks around. He looks normal. I mean, what they used to have in comparison to what they have today, I mean, it is leaps and bounds. And I'm sure the future, so that's his actual arm. Wow.

That's what it looks like. Wow. Shark bit his fucking arm off. I mean, I wouldn't want to put the arm and leg. Yeah. That was a hungry shark. Just an asshole. Yeah.

It's interesting because we're in this new frontier of what's possible i'm sure they're upgrading his stuff all the time as well you know and what's or what's available to someone like him yeah but it's exciting to see like when you when you like you know when you see it firsthand and you see him not lipping and where we're going, like I'm saying, all the sci-fi films that we see, some of them are going to have very real scenarios in our life. For sure. Yeah. Are you a technology geek outside of the sort of thinking about the body? As in – I mean, I am, am of course i would definitely say i'm a

tech geek yeah because you kind of have to yeah right if you're you create electronic music yes i'm a gadget guy too you know i love like gadgets and trying new little things that are out there i'm you know like i just want to try it all i want to like experience things in different ways to enhance my experience overall yeah creating music electronically is it's kind of polarizing to some people though right because i mean i think your music sounds fucking amazing but for some people they want to hear an actual string of a guitar, the rap of a drum, the, you know, like people have this like very narrow idea of what music is. It's true. And, you know, I think that there's two layers to, to like electronic music.

You know, you have to, first of all, make the music. You have to, first of all, make the music. So you are making the music in one form or another. I actually don't use live instrumentation so much, but sometimes I do. And because I come from that world, it's natural for me to bring a guitar in, but it's not necessary.

Everything can be made from a laptop. You don't even actually need very much anymore you can make you can make like a like garage band yeah garage band i guess would be the rudimentary first option do you use windows do you use a mac i use a um apple um ableton live and uh that's the software yeah it's like the da the um that i use to create the music but you know you can literally you don't even need a keyboard you don't even need a mouse if you really you just need a hard drive of samples but you know you can literally you don't even need a keyboard you don't even need a mouse if you really you just need a hard drive of samples or you know having enough that you can build off of and your keyboard becomes you know you know how how you're going to paint your notes

in so you can make it that streamline if you want it to. Now having like this big studios, it's great. And I have a really beautiful studio in my house. But it's more about the energy of the room for me. Like I want to go in there like going, I'm going to work 12 hours and I'm going to be excited to do that all the way until whatever time. It's that Las Vegas effect of being in a club or being in a casino and you don't know what time it is. I want that same effect in my room to be like energized and also energize people that come in. But if I'm on the road,

like, you know, making an idea and just like strip lining it, I don't really need much, you know? And I think that's like, yeah, set up right there.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Dude, what a fucking bad-ass room. So I love your carpet. Yeah. What's going on with that? It's a blue, obviously, my book's called Blue, is my favorite color.

And I want the feeling to feel futuristic. So it's the neon future cave. And if you look up at the ceiling, if you scroll up in that picture or whatever, you'll get to see. Maybe it's not in that picture, but I have, yeah. So you have like these like LED lights coming through the ceiling as if you're in like a cave. Whoa. And. And then you're looking at everything in this enormous projection screen.

Is that what that is? Yeah. And it's, and it seats a ton of people. So, you know, just, I mean, I'm releasing my next singles with the Backstreet Boys. So I can fit all the Backstreet Boys guys in my house, in my studio, and we can, you know, do what we do. Have you always lived in Vegas? I moved to Vegas in 20, I bought my house in 2013.

What made you move to Vegas? I was living in LA And my career broke in Los Angeles So there's no doubt about it Being in LA as a musician As an artist Someone in music That's where you If you want a break

You can have all the connections And build your network here Fastest Than anywhere else in the world New York I feel like Is the media hub Or fashion And then LA is Is a music hub And then Atlanta is like The hip hop hub than anywhere else in the world. New York, I feel like, is the media hub for fashion.

And then LA is a music hub. And then Atlanta is like the hip hop hub, Nashville's country. But I broke in LA. And when I started touring, 2008, 9, 10, 11, I was just gone. I wasn't living in LA the way I lived in LA, going out to all the places that I love to eat, all the culture of what LA has to offer. I was only there 50 days of the year, maybe.

So I was like, well, just signed a residency in Las Vegas. When the nightlife boomed for DJs from 2010, it was a big shift of what nightlife has to offer in Vegas, and DJs were a big part of that. And I signed a big residency deal, and then I was like, I mean, I'm here more than I am in L.A., and it's a good tax situation there. There's no state tax there and um i'd have to leave la my my home turf but i'm not even there right so i just moved ship entirely bought a house

bought the dream situation house that's another like there's so many perks for me because la i had like a 2,000 2,500 square foot maybe 3,000 square foot house, which was nice. Million dollar house in the hills. And that's when I finally made it. Before I lived in an apartment on DeLong Parade in El Centro, East Hollywood, I guess Hollywood and Binary, $900 for 900 square feet. That's where it all started for me. That's when I first moved to LA. I started making money.

It took time to get there. I kind of talk about that in the book, like the hardships to get there. Because one of the best lessons that my father shared with me was this tough love attitude where, you know, he was a very rich, flamboyant restaurateur. Benny Hannes had fancy cars, was very flashy, very American. He's the one that broke through the American dream, the Japanese, one of the few Japanese people that actually did that. So he's just like, yo, look at me with, you know, flying hot air balloons, offshore boat racing.

And then like, you know, I guess the traditional thing is like that he would financially help me, you know, because he has the money to do that. But one of the most powerful things he did was he just financially, he didn't financially help me. And I had to figure though, my issues, my hardships, my business plans, my financial issues that I was going through on my own. So I had to start there. And because of that, I was able to succeed through some of the hard stuff and, and have that drive to want to make money for myself

so during that time in la you know i'm kind of digressing here uh you know i lived in this apartment for about seven years and then um the djing my first priority was my record label that was like why i moved to la sign artists developed them helped them and then i was djing building the brand of the label and we created a really cool scene in la and we were breaking some of the the biggest acts not breaking we were we were the underground hot bed you know like i say like the comedy shop or something where like everyone would hang out so like Lady Gaga was playing for free at our shows Skrillex was there every single week Will.i.am was dancing in the corner and then going back to the studio making Black Eyed Peas hits because 2007 through 2009 Black Eyed Peas

were the biggest artists LMFAO was there every single week this is and then they became the biggest acts so we're like this hotbed of music culture in LA, but it was by parties. Wow. And then that's how I made a name for myself is that I was throwing these parties and I was DJing them, but no one cared that I was DJing them. The only reason why they were going is because these acts would always be there. And then the cele would come in you know that's when i met dj am in 2006 2005 and then we got together and he brought the celebs in so now like there's a spotlight of pre-tmz kind of like oh what's going on over here with this electro sound with we have like daft punk they're unmasked and and like really cool underground like

kate cuddy there and and Kanye West coming through. And then there's Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and all these different people all in this small room. And people wanted to know what the hell was going on in that little space. And this is what's great about this time was that it was pre-Snapchat, pre-social media. It was just MySpace.

So you had to be in that room to experience what was happening. So people would fly in to just be in that room to hear what was the cutting edge sound that was going to be eventually popular. You know, people wanted to play in that little 300, 400 cap room.

Did you film any of that? There was always one guy filming. I mean, that's the thing because back then there was no phones that could film it's like razors and right you know like like blackberries but you know you just can't kicks yeah it's like it's the worst quality so a guy would have to bring a camcorder in right and this one guy glenn jamin he would always film those parties we had cobra snake my he was my best friend who would just run with me to all

the shows and parties uh because back then i would play like five nights a week in la and um and he would photograph and he would document and that's how you would find out about the lifestyle the the the clothes like this the look of you know what it was to be on coanga in hollywood and that whole you know and then you see Kid Cudi there and you see Kanye West there and you see whoever else that was just like hanging out absorbing the culture that we were

that we were like creating there and then eventually that was what got me out of my debt bubble that was you know because I was a pretty bad businessman when i was running dimmock i thought i was doing shit right uh because i was signing acts that actually mattered and were taking off but i just didn't know how to you know i was just spending spending like yo we gotta

keep going with this and then uh you know then i started bringing the right people and i was like okay i need to build a team i need to build some people that have some sensibilities in this world while I'm creative. And then the DJing just took off as I was getting more into production, getting more into remixing, getting more into creating myself as an artist. And then that is what people know about me now. But really, it was people knew about me because of the Denmark. people knew about me because of the dimmock and and it's uh it's interesting how sometimes the evolutions of the errors of who you are you know change over time um and then you know fast forward 2013 is when i was like okay i got la helped grow me to who i am my management, my label, they're still LA, you know? Um,

but Steve Aoki is going to be Las Vegas. So I would love to see a documentary on that, to see that would be an amazing film, like to see how that all was going down. Right. You know, like if you have video footage, if you get somebody to edit that and put together a documentary of that time period,

cause it's a really interesting time period for the creation of electronic music. And what you pointed out that's so interesting was that 2010 was really somewhere around the time Vegas started becoming these electronic music shows started taking precedent. They're the biggest fucking thing i was staying at the win recently and uh the hotel room we were at was overlooking the pool and i forget who it was that was playing there but it was fucking chaos yeah and like you don't and especially when you're up you know we're like above like high above looking down the pool

the hotel room bird's eye view it was so crazy it was so loud and so crazy and there was everybody's in the pool it was fucking madness

and you're going this never existed yeah I mean I've been coming to Vegas for a long time this is a new thing it is it's a new thing

over the last nine years exactly and it's overtaken Vegas everywhere you go there's these gigantic I haven't come to Vegas for a long time. This is a new thing. It is. It's a new thing over the last nine years. Exactly. And it's overtaken Vegas. Everywhere you go, there's these gigantic billboards with either your face on it or whatever other DJs in this place. Who's the guy with the fucking marshmallow head? Is the guy a marshmallow? Yeah.

Well, that's Marshmallow. Yeah. Okay. That's like the unknown comic. He's got a marshmallow on his head. But there's so many. I didn't even know who that was like my kids were explaining to me my 11 year old was explaining to me marshmallow how the fuck do you know who marshmallow is and and we're there and it's just it's everyone that's going out in vegas but it used to be vegas used to be like a cultural weird void. Yeah.

Right? You would have some big acts that would come through there, but it always seemed like they were at the end of their run. Right. Yeah. You had to be at the end of your run. Yeah. Like when Michael Jackson was considering doing Vegas,

it was like, okay, he's like finally saying that this is the end of my run. Even someone who's really talented like Celine Dion, she did a residency in Vegas. You Or, you know, it's like the legacy. Even someone who's really talented, like Celine Dion. You know, she did a residency in Vegas. You're like, oh, she's probably just tired. Donny Marie. Yes. You know, Matalo. Yes.

Barry Matalo, you know, like. Carrot Top does a residency there. I mean, he's doing really well. It's not a knock. Yeah, no, it's not. It's really not. But that's what it was. But then all of a sudden it became electronic music.

And it's like, wow, what is happening? Like, you know, these things are enormous. Like, they're so much bigger than any other kind of event that you have in Vegas other than, like, massive sporting events like the UFC or something. Yeah. Well, definitely it's provoked by energy, too. You know? And that's infectious. Yes. Well, it's, it's provoked by energy too, you know? Like, and it's, that's infectious.

Yes. Well, it's a fucking great time. Like if you go to see Barry Manilow or, you know, whatever, no knock on them, but you know what I'm saying? It's like, I'm sure it's fun. It's mellow. It's like whatever you're into. But when-

Yeah, you're seated, you know, like you're seated for a reason because you're there to like sit and just enjoy. Yes. There's no seats at a Steve Aoki show. I mean, there are. There are the tables and stuff, but no one's sitting down. Right. That'll be strange to see someone,

unless they're just passed out drunk or something. But for the most part, everyone's standing and jumping and being part of the moment, and that's my job. Yeah. I need to make sure everyone's attention is on me and that I'm taking them to this next level. I've always wondered what it's like to live in Vegas, though. Like, I've never lived there.

You know, my good friend Dana White lives there. He loves it there. He raves about it. But I've always like, hmm, like Vegas. Okay. In Vegas. For me, so I'm an L.A. guy, right? Right.

Like, my heart and, like, you know, I love Los Angeles. I know LA so well. And, you know, with LA, you have your limitations. It's Los Angeles. You can't like, if you want to build your dream house, you're going to have to have a lot of money to do that. In Vegas, when I moved there in 2013, I got a sick deal. I bought my house, 16,000 square feet.

Whoa. 2.8 million, I think. That 16 000 square feet whoa 2.8 million i think that's hilarious yeah 2.8 it was a short sale i was total steal i mean like the guts were not good like it was like one of those like prop homes almost so i had a re-gut and like i spent like 5 million into the house and it was more about building my own dream house as I would want to have it. I have a foam pit in there with a trampoline room. The pool in my backyard was too far away from my house. So I filled it in and I built a pool at 16 feet deep right next to my patio. That's 20 feet up. I built the patio out so that way I can jump into the pool from the top.

And I'm like a kid. I'm basically a big kid. And I just think about how I want to make my house fun, interactive. For the artists that come there, for me, I have a fun gym. I've, you know, I got my own like chess station, backgammon station. I have a poker room. You know, it's the most hospitable house, you know, and I have a poker room. It's the most hospitable house. And I have all this space. I have a big shoe room. I'm a big shoe collector. I got a crazy library with books and records.

And I have a Bruce Lee mirror room. A mirror room? It's my closet. But it's just like you walk walk in it's like led strips everywhere with mirrors and you know i'm just having fun i'm having fun with my house there's the mirror room i have some really crazy really beautiful art but i got this amazing banksy piece um and so i've you know i've been starting to collect art there's my shoe room doesn't Banksy get mad if people buy his shit? Well, I bought it from him. Oh, you met him? Tell us what he looks like. He is a girl.

Ooh. Just kidding. I never met him. But, you know, I got in through his, some people to get into. Is he definitely a real person? You know, I don't know.

How weird is that? Yeah. That someone in 2019 has managed to stay that secretive yeah really kind of amazing it's incredible because he's a cultural phenomena yeah i mean he's i mean everybody knows who banksy is yeah right or you know of yeah i should say but no one knows who he is which is crazy who the fuck has ever pulled that off right i mean what a unique human being yeah it's true how does that work how can someone still do that i think you have i mean it's it's like his he's always seeming to find a way to troll people in a social or political critique

um just like he did with uh the um the art sale of of the shredded painting yes how amazing was that yeah that was pretty crazy yeah but watch those people after they paid it and see the the thing dropped out but let me ask you this though i don't want to go too deep into this but because i don't know if i'm like stepping on anyone's toes here but if this is really suffrages or you know what like a real auction house aren't they gonna look at the painting or the piece are they gonna open up the frame and make sure there's not some weird drill going through like i don't think they would ever expect that to be the case i mean but you're but you're and you're antique you should be checking everything making sure everything's authentic no well if it's an authentic piece and it somehow another some reliable source brings it to them as an authentic piece they just accept the fact

they don't check the details of the piece i mean what can they do meanwhile by the way i'll take that and fucking glue that bitch back together again leave it that way no you want it like that that's the whole point it's like what makes the value is that right like actually have it hanging there that's why you want it in your house really you want it just like that yeah look at the people's face sometimes i forget that i'm on the phone oh no oh no thurston we've lost the peace yeah you know i i wish like it's funny that we're talking about this because sometimes i forget like you know we're having a chat and uh i realized oh there's a lot of people listening in on this so maybe i shouldn't give away some of the stuff that i've learned about it but um yeah but anyways i'll leave it there well he's uh

definitely a unique human yeah so let's get back to vegas so you don't feel weird living there because the one thing that i've felt about vegas is i always enjoy going there and enjoy leaving more i'm like give me home give me let me get that's because you go there with that intention like for me i built my compound right so it is home it's 100 home it's it's exciting to be home and the best part about it is like first i built the compound this dream house to invite like all my friends i'm a hospitable guy so i like i want artists to come there my friends to come there stay there with me my family and the next best thing was calling my mom and my sister who lived together and i said will you

move to vegas will you be in my neighborhood and uh they said yes and that was the best money i ever spent was buying my mom a house and they you know like they live around the corner my mom's cooking like by the time i'm home i see my mom all the time and i never had the opportunity we had this 10 plus year gap um where I see her like once every six months because I'm just touring like a beast. Now I just see my family a lot more. You know, like, so in a way I'm trying to bring my family all to Vegas. My cousins moved from the East Coast with his wife and his mom to Vegas,

you know, before even my mom. So I have my cousin there. I have my mom, my sister there with their daughter, my brother, Kevin, who's a restaurateur as well. He's, you know, planning to make the move because we're going to open up some restaurants on the Strip. Damn, dude, you got your fingers in a lot of pies. And on that pie note, I do have pizza yokey.

No! Yes, I do. I have 19 kitchens now. Whoa. Yeah, it's been about a year and two months, and we're growing at a rapid rate. I would imagine 19 in a year? 19 kitchens in a year. That's crazy.

Most of them are in Los Angeles because that's where we kind of broke ground, and we were just opening up kitchens in all the areas that, that Postmates was giving us information like, yo, this is where it makes sense to do that. So we work with all the delivery hubs and. Is it mostly delivery thing or do you have. Yeah, I do have two dine-in locations, but the whole business model is about delivery. Really?

Yeah. It's all about delivery and that way my costs are very low. And then I could be effective. I'm not really spending much money on marketing. And what's funny is that people love to post about pizza. And pizza-oke is a pretty fun concept. Dude, fight companion, pizza-oke, Saturday. Let's make it happen.

I will send as many pizzaiochis you guys need like whenever you want a live fight companion for the ufc this saturday it'll be like 11 a.m in the morning because it's in abu dhabi so uh we'll hit it up we'll make that happen yeah all right what kind of pizza you got man oh we got all kinds of pizzas but most importantly you know the the idea of pizzaiochi might sound like a gimmick and you're like, okay, I'll try it out. But 60% of the people ordering pizzaiochi are returned. So we know that it's quality. I wouldn't imagine that you're doing anything half-assed.

No. I don't think that's you. So you've essentially created your own world in Vegas. So everyone's there that you know. The you can take the thing about Vegas, right? It's like the allure of the strip, but you're kind of removed from that anyway. You don't do drugs. You don't drink, right? You don't fuck around with anything.

No. Yeah. That's like one of the things that we taught, like, you know, when we talked about how I'm sustainable is that you, you have to not do the certain things that, that make it unsustainable. Right. So I never really got into drugs. I do talk about my book, My First Acid Trip, when I was 13, but that scared the living shit out of me to stay away from anything hallucinogenic.

And literally, you're 13, so I just stay away from drugs. That's a bad time to do acid. It's a bad idea. It's a very, very funny story. But it got to the point where i just became this this uh straight edge hardcore kid i became extremely religious because i was in this like i was 13 i was looking up going i'm gonna be fucked for the rest of my life like when you're on acid you're like fucking out there you're just so fucked up and and when you start thinking like this is how i'm

gonna be forever you're clinging on to anything that can get you out right and for me when I grew up as a kid my mom was putting me into like Catholic schools and one of the best things that Catholic schools do is indoctrinate kids on fear and so you know like I remember going up to the drawing board like there's like a

drawing of what hell is like guess who's going there forever? People that don't believe, you know? And, you know, when you're young, you start seeing that. And then when you get into a place of vulnerability where you're like where I was, I was like scared shitless. I was like, I'm going to go to an insane award when I'm 13 because I can't get out of this acid hell trip.

How long did it last? I guess like what, seven, eight hours. But every second is like a minute, you know, because you cannot sleep. You cannot stop thinking about what you're in. I mean, there is like, it's like this exaggerated emotions. Like the first part of my acid trip was like, I was so funny. I was laughing at everything. It was like the best thing I ever did. I was like, oh my God, everything is i was so funny i was laughing at everything it was like the best

thing i ever did i was like oh my god everything is so funny i'm just laughing i'm like in pain because i'm like so just laughing at everything just everything's joyous and then like i went into this upside down world like stranger things when i got dropped off at my friend's house and everyone went dark and my friends were, my friend's 14, he doesn't do drugs. So he was, and his mom was coming down,

you're okay. Everything's okay. They know you're on acid. No, they knew I was on acid, but they were like, you're like, I'm like an 80 pound Japanese kid,

you know, five foot, you know, like a little kid, like what the hell am I doing acid for? You know, I do talk about like where that came out. But, yeah, so like when I got flipped in that world, then everything was like I saw street fighter like fireballs from Ryu coming at me.

Like when I closed my eyes, it was very, very vibrant and vivid. And, I mean, it's a trip for sure. So once you regained sanity you were like enough of any of this nonsense yeah yeah once i was like oh my god i'm back this is this is for real like i i have fuck drugs fuck this shit you know like and then i was like i'm straight edge because that's the music i was starting to get into and then then I was like, I'm all about God and Jesus. It's going to save me, you know, like he saved me. So like as a kid, I was very religious going out and, you know,

start exploring more about the world. And then went more from this faith-based concepts of living through life to, you know, things that needed to make sense for me. I'm very much more scientific on, like, the understanding of how I want to see things. Where did the change take place? When did it take place? That would happen to be college and post.

Where'd you go to school? UC Santa Barbara. So when you went, it was great. I love Santa Barbara. God, it's like the hidden gem of California, right?

Yeah. So sweet out there. Yeah. So you just became educated, started learning more about things. And then, yeah, I don't know if there was like one spark that happened.

It was just kind of like, I just had questions about why things happen. Like, what is religion? Like, what, you know, how things work in the world, how societies are built. Did you study theology? A little. A little, but I don't know if that would be like the philosophy classes I was taking was not really the, the crux of it. Sociology was my major.

I was women's studies and sociology when I was in college. Women's studies. Yeah. Yeah. Women's studies. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

the bottom of this, I have to say like, strangely enough, that's the first thing you think about, right? Why, why is a guy in women's studies? Well,

he's trying to, I mean, the reason why I was in that department is because my favorite teachers uh were the ones teaching those classes so i just was like all right i'll try this one and then i was like wow this is actually pretty interesting i'll try another one and um and then i was like well i'll just i'll finish off the major and uh you know i'd have to say like the stuff that i learned in school it's in large part of how i kind of look through kind of like navigate through my life like sociology i am a sociologist i want to study people like why they do certain things you know like how do i navigate them in

different directions well and then you've become a purveyor of great fun like that's essentially what you do professionally right i mean you give people a great time like your shows are this wild extremely energetic experience for people and they leave there's a certain level of transformance right now i've watched some of your shit online and you do these enormous crowds man and it's so epic and you see all those people going fucking crazy and dancing along to your shit i mean it's got to be a wild wild feeling knowing that you're giving this really positive

experience these right thousands and thousands of people that are just roaring along to your music. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah, no, as you say, I'm like, you know, getting all like. Goosebumps. Yeah, no, because it's exactly what you're saying. And that's why I guess you could say I'm addicted to that. And because I care so much about that, I have to be sustainable.

It goes back to what we're talking about. What do I need to do? The shows you do too. There's no fucking way you could do 250 shows a year and get fucked up. 250 days a year. Oh, yeah. Because there's a lot in that business especially, the business of electronic dance music,

there's a lot of people doing Molly, right? There's a lot of people doing all kinds of amphetamines and all kinds of crazy shit and you gotta think like you do that every night man you're gonna look like an 80 year old man by the time you're 40 years old because you've literally burned the candle with a blowtorch you've used that elon musk not a flamethrower fucking birthday candle you know i mean it's but you know what i always say if whenever i have the opportunity is that for the people in my crowds and i have to say country by country they're very different as far as like what i think if they're doing drugs or not where they do the most drugs um no i don't think so i don't but you know it's hard like it's like

i'm just judging right i don't know like what I don't, but you know, it's hard. It's like, I'm just judging, right? I don't know what people are doing out there. I could judge by how interactive they are. That's the best way I can tell. Right, if they're like. Yeah, if they're, that's the worst, that's the worst like subject to play to. It's like literally playing at a cocktail party

when their backs are turned to you. It's the same kind of thing for me. So if they're already high and they just like lost in their world like it's no fun for me plus i spend so much time making like my set so interactive so engaging and entertaining like it's a bit disrespectful i get it yeah you know but like you know some people are gonna do it you're not gonna be like the debbie downer and be like, yo, everyone on drugs, get the hell out of here. You'd lose 80% of the crowd.

If you said that, everyone on drugs, get the fuck out of here. If they listen to you, what percentage do you think in Vegas would leave? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't even want to know. I don't even want to know, honestly. At least weed. Weed's different though.

Weed's more like chill, to know, honestly. At least weed. Weed's different, though. Weed's more like chill. But if you're so high, zonked off your head, where you don't even know where you are or what's going on, then you just lose the whole experience. I mean, a lot of times people wake up going, oh, what happened?

What's the point of the experience if you're so blitzed out of your head you don't even know what's going on? Allegedly during the experience, you're having a good time. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, that's a really wonderful way to make a living. It's like literally the dream come true, you know, to make people happy, get to be.

I always say, like, I feel like I'm the chef in the kitchen making the food, and I go out and I get to watch people eat my food. And then they're like, oh, this is really good. I'm like, yes. You know, like since I see that feeling, I'm like, let's go back and make more food. But we got to sprinkle more truffle on that. And then let's deliver and I get a C. And then they're like, you're the chef, Mike.

That's me. and then they're like you're the you're the chef mike that's me you know like so like it's like i get that luck lucky position to be able to to make my music and then share it and hope that they have the same feeling that i have sharing it so how many shows do you do in vegas and how many shows do you do abroad uh around 40 in vegas so 210 40 a year 40 a year so how do you when are you there like how do you see do you still have residency i just where at uh hawkison omnia um jewel smaller club of theirs and uh and wet republic so there's four properties that i play which is nice because if i had to play 40 shows in one i, it wouldn't necessarily be that bad because the thing about Vegas, this is a transient crowd, right?

So it's always no matter what, even on one weekend, I might be playing possibly three or four times for one weekend. Right. And every show I do, whether it's a day party and a club, the club is a complete different influx of people coming in because the people that saw me at the day party are going to go see Chainsmokers or Marshmello or whoever else or Calvin Harris or whatever is playing on the strip. The competition is as thick as it gets. Every night, there's the biggest DJs playing alongside each other.

It's really amazing if you stop and think about what a crazy change that is to an entertainment environment like the vegas the transformation to that electronic music around like you said 2010 there's not a thing like that that you can point to anywhere else in the world where like all of a sudden this one dominant form of entertainment has taken over the entire nightlife of a city right like other than a big some sort of big event that's in vegas the fucking rodeo or the ufc or something like that where everybody comes in to see that right you guys are what's up i mean that is what's up in vegas it's the it dominates it what how did that happen that's a crazy thing. It really is.

Yeah, when you say it like that, I'm like... No other place. Like if you go to New York, if you go to LA, if you go to all places all around the world, there's no other thing that has transformed the nightlife of a city the way electronic music has transformed

Vegas. Transformed. Changed everything. Went from non-existent to number one with a bullet. Like, there's not even a close second. It's all electronic music. Anthony Bourdain used to hate it. It was hilarious. He used to, you know, he was like, he was old and crotchety,

beat up these places and all the music, and it just wasn't his thing thing but he still was in awe i love that guy i love that guy yeah i never met him but he was awesome yeah miss him yeah there's a plenty of people that that do go to vegas for like oh this is so annoying just kids running around, not kids, but like young adults running around, especially in the day, like in their bikinis. I mean, I guess it's probably people would like that. But in any case, it's also different for the casino operators because they're dealing with this younger generation of people too. Right.

And they have to think differently about how they're going to get them to do what Vegas is meant to be, know what the economy is serving gambling yeah well they're paying to see you as well and alcohol sales as well i think alcohol sales have become a large large portion of their revenue right i think that like i i could be wrong here but the gambling side is actually a smaller portion than the everything else i think that like – I could be wrong here, but the gambling side is actually a smaller portion than everything else. I think that's true. I think that's shifted. I read something about that recently, that entertainment has become the primary revenue source in Vegas, whereas it used to be gambling.

Right. But it's – there's still gambling, but boy, it's hard to just convince young people to start gambling. Yeah. It's easy to convince them to start dancing. Yep. You know? Yeah. It's like, it seems normal.

It's natural. There's the beat. Also, when you're young, you don't have the money to just risk, but you have the money to go and like experience fun. Yes. Yeah. You know, when you're older, you're like,'re like okay i can i have some of like flexible income streams i can put down on some blackjack or whatnot i would have loved to seen the sinatra

days like vegas when it was run by the mob i would love to see what that was like you know the rat pack and samuel davis jr i just would love to been in the room and watch watch one of those shows and then you know come to today and see how things have changed. I mean, I think that's like the Bourdain thing. He had been there when he was young. And then see it change now. But I am fascinated by change. I don't resist it.

And I don't say, oh, the good old days. That don't mean shit to me. I am absolutely on the same page as you. Yeah. I'm interested. Yeah, I'm always interested in the next thing i want to try the next thing yeah and you know you want to enhance your experience you want to enhance what you're doing to make it serve you better but if you went to someone in like 1985 and said hey man guess what 2019 electronic music is going to be the shit

it's going to be everywhere people go what are going to be everywhere. People would go, what are you talking about? Get this guy out of here, man. There's one guy that did say that, though. Who? Jim Morrison. Did he really? Yeah. So he did a prediction. It's somewhere. I'm sure you can find it.

But he did a prediction where whenever he was alive, I guess probably in the 60s or 70s. So he said the future will be one person with some sort of computer or something that's going to be devised electronically or something like that. And that one person will be making music for people and performing that. Really? Oh, that's right. I remember this. I remember this now.

Yeah, so I forgot what he said, but he said something to that effect. And it's crazy because that was, what, 50 years ago. Here, play this. Take it from the beginning. Some of the most indigenous to this country are the black music, blues, and the kind of folk music that was brought over from Europe, and I guess they call it country music or the kind of West Virginia, high and lonesome sound.

I guess they call it country music or the kind of West Virginia high and lonesome sound. Those are the two main streams of root American music. There might be others, I don't know. But like ten years ago, what they called rock and roll was kind of a blending of those two forms. I guess in four or five years, the new generation's music will be, it'll have a synthesis of those two elements and some third thing that machines, tapes, and electronic setups singing or speaking and using machines. From what his mindset is of what he considers what that would be, it's, you know, he did predict where it is. I think that's what happens when you do acid correctly. You get those sort of visions.

Yeah, because, I mean, also Jim Morrison, like you could tell he's such an artist that, you know, he could, after The Doors, you'd just be himself. Yeah. He would have done a Jim Morrison album where he's made all the music. He's done everything. He would be exactly what he's saying. He's basically predicting what he would have, in my opinion, what he would become.

And he was probably like 25 in that video, which is even crazier. Yeah. And he died at 27. That's crazy. Nuts. Yeah. Nuts. I mean, that whole era of the 1960s fascinates me to no end.

I love the cars. I love the sound. To this day, most of the music I listen to is classic rock. I mean, I listen to a lot of new stuff, but man, I will pull out some fucking classic rock. I love it. I love listening to it. Yeah.

fucking classic rock i love it i love listening to it yeah there's something about it that makes me it just makes me realize what a profound change it was between the 1950s and 1960s that the culture exploded that something happened something happened and the the clothes and the music and the sounds and the fucking muscle cars, like everything went haywire. Like you went from 1950 to 1960 and just a radical shift. Right, right. There's so many great artists, you know, Hendrix and Janet Stockman. Yeah, the whole idea of like, okay, now it's time to experiment

and to free ourselves from the confines of what, like, you know, it's supposed to. Yes, yeah. The door's wide open. I think Buddy Holly was great. I love Buddy Holly. But if you go from Buddy Holly to Hendrix, you're like, what happened? What happened? You know?

That's what acid trip actually goes right, like you're saying. Apparently, they said he used to put acid in his bandana. I don't know if that's true. Yeah. But that it would seep into his skin as he was playing. And then he's just like lighting his guitar on fire and picking with his teeth. Man, how much would you have loved to watch that guy live? Oh, yeah.

That would have been incredible to be in the presence of something completely unique. Yeah. in the presence of something completely unique. You know? This hippie black dude who's the greatest guitarist of all time. Still! Still! Yeah. Like, there's no one. Like, there's some amazing guys today. Gary Clark Jr.

And, of course, you know, Stevie Ray Vaughan was amazing. There's a bunch of great, amazing guitarists. But also the showmanship, though. Yeah. You know, the outfits. Yeah. Like, it's like all of it combined not just his his technical ability yes the fact that he was doing these these things

that you're like you know some of the guitarists won't wouldn't do that that's not part of their like you know protocol but he was just like on another world yeah Yeah. And to be a part of that, you know, to see that, it's incredible. A complete outlier. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And again, like no one was like that before that. Like go to the 1940s.

It's only 20 years. Yeah. 1940s are only, I mean, 20 years ago is, you know, we're dealing with, you know, 1999. That doesn't seem that long ago. Yeah. you know 1999 that's that doesn't seem that long ago yeah but 69 to 49 you might as well be from another world yeah you really might as well be might as well be another planet so what do you think was one of the bigger cultural shifts of why that happened drugs simply 100 yeah 100 yeah i mean obviously when we talk about jim Hendrix And the Beatles And the Beach Boys

Like whoever else Was like Yeah The Doors James Joplin Drugs Drugs The Doors

Drugs Everyone Drugs They were taking Mind expanding Psychedelics And the culture Had shifted

To embrace These mind expanding Psychedelics And there was also The resistance To the Vietnam War There was this Rebellious movement

There was these Young Compassionate People That were trying To figure their way Through life In a way That didn't resonate the vietnam war there's this rebellious movement there's these young compassionate people that were trying to figure their way through life in a way that didn't resonate with the way their parents had set boundaries and standards and they wanted out of all of it that goldwater republican shit they wanted to be free and flower children and hippies and yeah and woodstock and all that craziness you know yeah and what's amazing is how quickly it ended, you know?

Yeah. So many things came along. So many things came along. The deaths. Yeah. The deaths scared people, you know? For sure. You know, at the end of the day, like, when they're dropping at 27, your heroes.

Morrison, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, all 27. And, like, they're the leaders of this experimental revolution yep not good that's gonna end things pretty quick i think there was that there was also the sweeping psychedelic um act of 1970 that made everything schedule one and they were locking people up in jail they were also passing laws directly was there was a civil rights movement was happening at the same time and they were passing laws laws directly was there was a civil rights movement was happening at the same time and they were passing laws that were directly targeting the people in the civil rights movement because they knew that they were smoking grass and they were doing mushrooms right

so they were going after them with these drug laws and then you know they would arrest one person they would turn on everybody else and then you know they would do like mob tactics wow people and you know the whole thing they just poured water on it it took you know it took like 10 or 20 years before shit started popping again yeah you know in terms of like the influence of psychedelic culture again really more like 30 years you know it's like the 2000s where things started happening again or people started becoming more and more aware of the positive benefits of psychedelic drugs and altered states of consciousness not trying to escape reality but trying to get a grip on reality from a different perspective you know but i think that's an interesting like like when i think about psychedelics in that regard of mind expansion or you know if you're at the same time

it's like this uncontrolled situation that like okay we're going to jump in this world but there's no way to really control your lane it's just like this yeah it's like yes we can go there but it might not end up you might get stuck there that's my problem yeah with that you could get stuck you know i mean like you you hear the stories, and that scares the hell out of you. Like, this guy is still on an acid trip for 25 years walking around thinking people are chasing him. Acid in particular. Yeah, like shine on you crazy diamond. And I think there's people that have a predisposition towards psychosis.

There's certain people that have schizophrenia in their their their genes yes and their answer and for those people it's very dangerous you know what else is very dangerous for those people edible marijuana not just like what you think of as hardcore psychedelics but i've known a quite quite a few people that have eaten edible marijuana and blown fuses wow yeah there's something i i i just recently did which is pretty exciting for me was um you know once again the scientific information i'm just gonna wing it but i i tried this brain cap on okay this has all these nodules like that can read the neurotransmitters in my brain and it's connected connected to a computer. And you sit there for about a minute, and you just kind of meditate on it, focus on one thing.

So it can start reading your brain, basically your neurotransmission signals. And it's kind of like neural feedback on steroids, if you know anything about neural feedback. And it gave me a list of of categories of what i want to know about who i am i've i i always thought that i had a slight add i never was diagnosed because i have like if if joe rogan's boring me i might like turn over here you know like the my attention is normal yeah i know right but i was like i don't have that

bad of add where i can't concentrate to get things done because I get things done. But I do have, I do think about a lot more things and I think I should maybe. So anyways, I was, I did this test and it shows like your, your signals coming and, uh, and it has all these different things like anxiety, delusion, schizophrenia, attention, so forth. Absolutely incredible. I was like, okay, I'm scared to press this button. Schizophrenia. I'm really scared, but I want to know. So it gives you the feeling of being schizophrenic? No, no, no, no, no. It shows your brain activity if you have a tendency to be schizophrenic.

I thought you were saying like there's a way for that. Oh, no. Like you want to feel what it feels like to be schizophrenic? No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like in the future. 13 on acid again. But like I want to see if like do I have the neural pathways that a schizophrenic person would, you know, how they would think about the world.

Yeah. So, you know, I clicked on that and I'm like, I'm good. I'm good. Okay, good. So what about delusion? Okay, anxiety, low. Okay, so I got a lot of information out of that. So I guess the reason why I'm sharing that is that you should try this out.

I think it's something that I think you'd be interested in. I am interested in it. Do you know the name of the equipment? Well, they flew to me me just like i'm saying like i love to meet groups and organizations and research uh researchers and scientists and these people knew i was putting out to the world they came they flew all to me like some from colorado some from toronto and uh and and they they did this test on my head on my brain whoa yeah so i'll get you information on that okay try it out and see if it's something that that's like interest you but i'm sure it will i'm in it's very exciting stuff it sounds i hope i'm not crazy

fuck what do you do if you find out you're really insane what do they put the thing on you and they're like dude you're fucked you've never even seen results like this before You need to be locked up Then all of a sudden People come Well you wouldn't even know Right

If you're really crazy You like You think that like You know The five people Are on the corner Chasing after you They're always

They're real Or maybe it's a beautiful Mind kind of situation I used to have a bit About the problem With dumb people Is that they They're too stupid

To know they're dumb So they think Everybody else is dumb Yeah That's a problem Right So if you're crazy You might think Everybody's crazy right even oh yeah like the brain scan is making you crazy it's like you might think that everybody else is crazy right and then you do

the brain scan like no no it's you yeah you're tricking me you're you're doing something to me have you ever met people that blame everyone else in their life for all their problems. Yes. Sure. Yeah. And they can't see what we can see. Yeah. They can say, hey, man, it's you. Yeah. You are causing all of your problems. Yes. Yes.

But yet you never are self-critical. Yeah. You're looking externally for all of your issues. You're criticizing everyone. Right. But you are the architect of your own demise. Right. And you don't even realize i think

that is one of the the biggest problems for like why people are not finding their own success yeah you know because they keep blaming other people for problems when they could use that same time to actually focus on a small success that's realistic in their trajectory or whatever they're doing yeah and i've seen that a lot with my you know some people i know it just it's it they get stuck in that that that framework and then there might be people that enable that same mindset yeah it's patterns as well like sometimes people develop these defensive patterns in order to protect themselves from reality and they put up these psychic shields to sort of protect themselves from self-critical ideas

or externally critical ideas. And they just don't want to deal with change. They want to pretend that they're the fucking man, that they're the coolest, that they get it. Everybody else is dumb. And God, it's such a toxic way to view the world. It really is. And the people that have that view gain no traction they

almost always fall apart yeah it's just it's unsustainable it's not a way to live your life no yeah it's it's fucking hard to see too man it's hard to see if you know someone that's like that you almost kind of gotta go heck man i'm walking walking away. I can't help you anymore. Yeah. Well, I think also for them, they see the success of other people and they're like, like they want to be that, but they're like,

yeah, you know, they obviously can't with, they just blame everyone that they can't be that person, right? Yes. Yes.

Instead of just like going, well, we got to take these small baby steps to get out of this funk and then eventually, you know, stop comparing yourself to other people, but compare yourself to yourself. Yes.

Look at yourself critically. But I think another thing that's really important is to enjoy other people's success. Instead of being jealous, which is a really common, easy to understand, sort of an emotional reaction to other people's success. The best way to look at it my opinion the best way to look at is look at someone else doing amazing things and go fuck this is amazing yeah what they've done right be excited by it and then be inspired exactly you can use it as fuel in a positive way and then also there's no negative feeling like that person doesn't have to feel like you're you're fucking giving them the sour face because you're you're jealous and bitter and weird and you're looking

to be critical of them and find flaws in them look at what they're doing like look at like if you were a guy who's coming up right and you wanted to be a guy who makes electronic music and i'm sure you have haters. Oh my God. They're lined up, lined up. I'm sure. Yeah. Why,

why do you have haters? Because you're fucking awesome. That's why, because what you're doing is fucking awesome. So instead of saying, man, this guy is inexhaustible. He's excited about what he's doing.

He's got a real passion for creating things. People love it. And your attitude about making these shows and giving these people this amazing time and how much focus and energy you put into it what a hater should look at that and go this i gotta do more of that i gotta do more of that i gotta get more investments but instead they try to poke holes yeah right fucking cakes yeah exactly that that is a sore spot for people too. I'm sure it is.

It's awesome. Anything awesome is a sore spot for assholes. Yeah, yeah. There's nothing you can do about that. You just have to – you got to keep on being you. But for them, their hell and their prison is that they're focusing on you. Yeah. They're hating and focusing on you.

Yeah. Yeah. True words. Yeah. you yeah you know they're hating and focusing on you yeah yeah true words yeah it's um it's a weird world being an entertainer isn't it yeah it's a different kind of lifestyle you know it's you know i mean actually the strange thing is when i think about like like fame or whatever celebrity hood uh when i walk through certain areas i get like i have to just go okay i have to accept the photos i have to accept like certain areas i get like i have to just go okay i have to accept the photos i have to accept like people coming up to me i want to be the asshole because i've been that kid going up to someone and they're mean to me and i'll be like

oh that guy's a dick you know and they'll think of you that way for the rest of their life even if you're just in a bad day or some you know you just the one that bothers me the most is people coming up to you while you're eating i had a guy come up to me right now last night in the middle of like literally cutting food and in a crowded restaurant yeah and and he's hovering over the table trying to get me to get up and take a photo i'm like dude what if i did that for everybody like what if i just yeah right this is a ridiculous request yeah like you shouldn't do that like yeah we're eating what did you say did you say okay let's take a picture i said we're in the middle of a meal not only that we're in the middle it was with andrew schultz my buddy and we were in the middle of talking too yeah this guy just

interrupted the conversation wanted a picture i was like there's a time and a place for it right if you want to say hey when you're leaving can i get a picture sure yeah sure but well you got a mouthful of food and you're cutting food and so like come on you can't interrupt meals yeah that is a ridiculous request that happens to me all the time it's what stupid but you know what's really weird in la doesn't happen to me that much well only people are more accustomed to seeing famous people yeah and they're like i don't want to you know they just get it they don't want to bug you as much but everywhere else la new york i'm not really bothered as much everywhere else it's like it just it's just gonna i just have to accept it but you can't interrupt people while they're

eating that is just one of those things don't interrupt me i'm eating don't interrupt me when i'm talking to my kids right like this it's a stupid thing to do You have to have manners You have to have some Sort of An understanding that this is a human being That is living their own life And even though you're a fan of them Your being a fan does not take precedent You can't just

They don't owe you this You can't just interrupt their life And you shouldn't want that You shouldn't want to interrupt someone In the middle of a conversation, in the middle of a meal, in the middle of talking to their children. It's a foolish way to interact with them. I remember one time I was in a deep conversation just like you're talking about with someone outside of a casino about to leave. And this guy is just drunk. And he's just like staring and like wobbling and like

you know doing his thing and i just see him hovering and i'm not gonna engage with him i'm just talking and finally i'm like hey man i'm just in the middle of conversation and you know well i didn't say we'll get a photo later. I'm like, well, I'll talk to you later because I didn't want to be presumptuous. And I got done with the conversation, and he was just very aggressive, and I just ran. And I remember I ran to my car, and I'm like, I just don't want to get into this. And he's chasing me. Oh, my God. Yeah, he's chasing me and just like, I just don't want to get into this. And he's chasing me. Oh, my God. He's chasing me and just like, fuck you.

I was your fan. And you're treating me like shit. This is how you treat your fans. I'm like, oh, my God. This is just too much. And it stays with you. Even though, I don't know. That's part of the problem with Vegas, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that people are at it's that they're at new year's eve level every night you know that's like a thing for new year's eve i stopped doing shows a couple years ago on new year's eve because every time i would do i was like why does everybody think it's okay to be an asshole tonight yeah people want to heckle they want to yell things out i was like on new year's eve i'm just gonna stay home yeah i'm gonna hang out i'm not gonna do shows yeah it just seems too chaotic right never feels never feels like a real show well vegas is like there's a lot of people that are running around like every night like what happens in vegas

they just going crazy it's just it's such a wild place it's a hall pass it's like okay we gotta go big we're here 24 hour drinking right yeah free booze if you're gambling yep it's like what a wacky thing i'm gonna give you a drug that fucks up your decision making and then you're gonna gamble everything you have yeah i mean how is that legal how is that legal you're gambling enormous sums of money and they're giving you alcohol right this is so crazy i know but i love it i love that it exists i love that there's a city where everything is kind of wild where everything is like things are open like i play pool and vegas is one of the rare places where pool halls are 24 hours a day so you can play

pool till five o'clock in the morning six o'clock in the morning you know you and there'll be good players in there yeah and you know people really appreciate pool and you know everything's 24 you can get good meals like really late at night yeah that's that's for sure yeah yeah it's a wild place it really is but you because you're a clean and sober guy you avoid all the pitfalls. Yeah, yeah. I think that's how it works for me because I'm not a strip club guy. I've learned my lesson on gambling. Did you used to gamble? I did.

What did you used to play? Blackjack mainly, and that's just the worst odds for you. What's the most you've ever lost in a night? 50, 50K. Dana White told me he lost a million bucks one night. Yeah, I'm not at that level. But he won seven million. And then when he won seven million.

Okay, time up, baby. He's as far as that kind of losses. Dana's crazy. But they kicked him out of the casino. They said he can't come back. Yeah, that's the problem. You actually win. You do well for yourself when the odds are stacked against you and they kick you out.

That's crazy. Well, the crazy thing is he's just gambling. He just happened to win. What are we doing? Is this really gambling or are you just stealing money from people? What are you doing? The guy won and they're like, you're not allowed to play here anymore. You know he's not stealing.

He's Dana White. You know he's rich. Yeah, exactly. You know he's just a gambler. So this is like real gambling. This is not like some guy with some sort of a scheme and he's cheating. Someone's doing something with their cards. Yeah, exactly.

No, he's actually gambling, and you're mad at him. You're mad because you lost. Yeah. It's so crazy they could just take you out i know following the rules and you can't come back they'll ban you from the casino yeah i i almost wish i was like can i get to that level i was like can i get there where i'm i've just won that much um that man but interested i don't gamble at all i used to gamble on fights yeah um but then i was like maybe I shouldn't be doing this because I'm doing commentary on these fights.

Yeah. Conflict of interest. But that was the early days, like the early 2000s, like 2003 and four and shit like that. Yeah. Because they would have some wacky numbers back then, too. Like guys would come in from other organizations and these odds makers didn't know who they were. And I was a fanatic. Right. So I knew who everybody was. i knew these guys are fighting in japan i was like everything in this motherfucker because there was times where a guy was the favorite and i was like

that guy has no chance like he's gonna get hurt yeah right and i was right like 80 of the time like my friend aubrey and i uh i've given him tips i give him tips now because i don't gamble myself right but we're like at a 86 winning why why stop then because because you're commentating i don't there's no law against it i can't affect the outcome but i don't want to be psychologically i don't want to be subliminally influenced or subconsciously influenced, like wanting someone to win. Like if you've got $10,000 riding in a fight, you're going to want that guy to win. I don't care how much of a professional you are. When someone loses, you're going to be like, fuck.

What are you fucking, man? The whole thing is like you're supposed to be there to do justice to the experience of these two guys going at it and giving their all right that's supposed to be hoping one guy yeah that's true but it's also really hard for me when a friend's fighting you know like daniel cormier fights is very hard for me to see him very hard yeah like the last fight with stipe and i love stipe too but to watch stipe beat the shit out of daniel was rough it was hard yeah. Because Daniel is such a good guy.

I love that guy. And to watch him eat those left hooks to the body and then get beaten down, I was like, oh. Oh, that must be hard. And I'm commentating on it. Like, it's an amazing thing I'm watching, right? Right, yeah.

It is amazing. So it's hard to separate. You know, when Brendan Shaw was fighting, it was the hardest. That was the hardest because I was good friends with him and I knew he really didn't want to fight anymore. And I was like, God damn it.

That must be really hard. It was really hard. When he doesn't want to fight anymore, and he's just getting beaten. He was getting beaten, and he was getting beaten bad, and I didn't see an end to it. Who's the guy with the nose that went crooked like this? Recently, Mike Perry. Oh, that picture's crazy.

Crazy. I can't believe someone can continue fighting when their nose is literally across their face that dude's a savage i mean you have to be a savage he's a 100 bona fide dyed in the wool savage like he literally like imagine what he's fighting through when he has his his nose over here it's his face has to be completely numb well well no no no no, no, no. I don't know. I don't really know.

Massive pain. Okay. Massive pain. The sinuses are one of the most sensitive areas of your face. When you get your nose shattered, first of all, you can't see. Your eyes are watering, and his nose is pouring blood. Oh, my. So he's getting choked, right?

He's in the middle of getting choked. Look at his nose. That is the worst fucking nose I've ever seen in my life. Of all the years of calling fights, the only thing that comes close is Rich Franklin when he fought Anderson Silva. Pull up Rich Franklin's nose versus Anderson Silva, and you'll see similar but not quite as horrific. But the thing is about Rich Franklin was bummed out about his nose, whereas Mike Perry was like, fuck yeah.

He didn't, look at the one, the far left right there, far left, far left, far left, right there, click that one. That's the one where Anderson Silva sort of reconstructed his nose. It's hard to see in that picture,

make it larger. So that's his nose after? Yeah, it's all shifted off to the left. See how it looks all fucked up? Wow. But that ain't shit compared to Mike Perry's. Mike Perry's is the worst nose in the history of the sport. Did they, I mean, what does he look like now?

Who's that guy's nose? Click on that one in the middle. Above, above. Looks like Gronk a little bit. Jesus. Wow. Whose fucking nose is that? Jesus.

It went up into his forehead. Yeah. His worst nose breaks in the UFC. Who is that dude? Yeah. He looks like half his nose is up in his eyelids. Oh my God. That's just swelling, right?

But look how Mara shift. Ryan McGillivray. Woo. That's rough. Wow. Jesus Christivray. Woo. That's rough. Wow. Jesus Christ. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. Not still smiling. Nose. He's still smiling. There's Shogun. Shogun's nose got fucked up too. I think that was against John Jones. Yeah.

Kung Lee. Kung Lee's nose got shattered. Yeah, man. And then you got to get it all reconstructed and they got to sort of stitch the bones back together again and like because if you get this bone shatters i'm like oh man there's not much there you know it's such a time if you feel that bone it's like so gentle right so delicate yeah if you take a knee there like oh that's how they're breaking it right yeah he's all right now wow he looks pretty good.

Damn, they did an amazing job. He's eating pizza. Is that aoki pizza? But the crazy thing is his nose looked like the worst situation that you could possibly get in, and his nose now looks pretty normal, where the other guys' noses are just like, that one guy with the bulge right by his eyebrows,

and his nose is still curved to the right, and he's smiling. You assume perry would have that kind of nose after that that kind of situation that guy's right after the fight uh you know mike perry had to go through extensive surgery overseas where was that where does that fight take place uruguay yes all the way down south america yeah so he had to stay there and get really extensive surgery. He was there for several days just to try to recover before he could fly home. The scary thing is he's going to get back in the ring. Fuck yeah, he is. He loves it.

And then that bone that he's going to have is going to break down again. Is it going to be weaker or is it going to? I wish I could tell you. I don't know. You know, it really depends entirely. Because imagine if it just shatters again. He's got to do it again. Yeah.

Well, Vanderley Silva got his nose reconstructed. What is this? Not a UFC, but it's called EFC? EFC in Africa? Kicked in the face. Oh, my God. Oh, jeez. Oh, my God.

That's the worst nose ever. It's worse than Mike Perry's. Oh, my. That's horrible. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, look at that guy's nose. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. Look at that guy's nose.

That's the one that grew on his head. Oh, the other guy on the bottom is a guy who got his nose damaged somehow or another, and they grew it on his head. Oh. Yeah. It's a hard business, man. What kind of exercise do you do? I like HIIT training. High intensity?

Yeah, high intensity And You know Kind of like Blending two worlds I've you know I stopped gambling in the casino But I love gambling with my friends

And I love making prop bets On You know just My recent one was Body fat challenge Because I was at 19.6 April 14th 19%

Yeah And then I dropped to Well my The bet was if I can drop to 10% in three months. Oh, that's easy. Well, maybe for someone that really understands how to do that. But like, you know, I wanted to get there. And I just like, when I work out, I kind of work out just on being healthy and cardiovascular and just like, you know, just staying in shape. But I didn't, I never thought I'd get below 10%. You must have changed your diet pretty much.

Oh, yeah. Cut out sugar, cut out bread, cut out pasta, all that stuff. Stay below 1800 calories. And you are, you're vegetarian still? No, I eat chicken and fish, but I stopped eating. fish but i stopped eating i don't eat any uh cows or or uh you know uh cows pork pig or um lamb or anything like that but i pretty much stay with the chicken and fish my proteins and are you looking at you mother fucking working out looking pretty shredded way below 10 there what are you there um i think I'm 12. Really?

Right there? Yeah. Where are you keeping your fat? In your brain? That doesn't make any sense. You look shredded. No, it's in my abs. I mean, I'm probably where I am now because the bet ended in July 14th,

but I did win the bet, so I made 15 grand for my friends. Ah, that's funny. But that's how I'm motivated to do things. I like to make bets with people to have these little challenges. And then with that timeline, then I work with my trainer who's holding the towel down. And he trains me every time I'm home. And he gets me on my meal plans.

So I deal with him all the time. Do you do like a meal prep service? I do it through his company. Okay. What's the name of his company? Diced Kitchen, I think. Diced Kitchen. He's your friend.

Huh? Yeah, but like, you know, it just gets like my assistant puts it in the fridge. But it's all like chicken and vegetables. Yeah, pretty much turkey chicken fish and then and then veggies and you drop down to 1800 calories a day drop down to 1800 calories a day and this is the hard part is i'm on the road well like you know more than 60 of the days when i was not touring across europe and when i'm touring across europe all summer long i'm gone so how are you getting like really healthy food every meal when you're doing this?

I round ball, you know, eyeball kind of my calorie count whenever I eat and I have my fitness pal as my judge. Who is that? My fitness pal? Is that an app? It's an app, yeah, Under Armour app that like I just put in all my food. So you just use it to just make sure that i'm eyeballing this 1800 calorie deficit kind of diet and then you know just avoid the over starchy over carby foods and focus more on eating the proteins and the veggies and then take vitamins or supplements uh yeah like i i try to try to switch it on and off like i said like before

after after i met ray i was like okay i need to just find out what i'm deficient and i'm going to just load up on those um and then i went to see dr grossman who kind of gave me my like 22 page pack of of my telomere links to cancer markers if i have them you know uh to like what i'm allergic to to what I'm deficient in. And then I followed that regimen of what vitamins I was taking, some of which I still take. One is called Celogen. It's kind of like the closest thing to a stem cell injection if you can, if you can swallow it. It's got a lot of anti-aging properties in it.

Celogen. Celogen. What's got a lot of anti-aging properties in it. Cellargen. Cellargen. What's in it? Look it up, and you could do your Joe Rogan research on that and give me some more. But I just trusted my doctor on this one. Okay. But it's expensive. It's like $10 a pill.

Really? Pull that up. Cellargen. Jamie has a skeptical hippo face. I'm just looking at it. And I also take Progert. Progert? Yeah, so it's one trillion probiotics.

Oh, wow. It's in a little, like I take that every day. Really? You know, for the bio. Swiss Cell Therapy, Cellogen. Hmm. Hello there. Thank you for visiting Cellogen's online store.

Pop-up window, boink. So, hmm. This is, what is it? $2,000 for six months. Damn, it is expensive. It's very expensive. And what is it backed by? Cellular marine complex peptide e-collagen,

biodna, hydro MN peptide. Sounds like you're going to piss hot, sir. Other ingredients include lutein, grape skin extract, selenium, which is important. Coenzyme Q10.

I take that. That's one thing that Ray Kurzweil really pushes is that, that Q10. Yeah. It's great for cognitive function. You fuck around with mushrooms at all. I mean like healthy mushrooms, like lion's mane or anything like that. No, stuff that's what i've been drinking this is all lion's mane elixir i'll try that i drink this shit all the time it supports brain function

yeah that's like anything that's about the brain i want to know more about yeah this is one of my sponsors this is um four sigmatic i'll have them send you some of this stuff please please and then we we actually have lion's mane that we put in the coffee too. Yeah. And then Laird Hamilton's superfood shit. Have you seen that coffee machine that I have out here? No. Ooh, I'm going to get you some.

Do you drink coffee? Yes. Yes, I do. Okay. We wrap this up. I'll make you a nice cup of turmeric coffee. Oh, I love turmeric coffee. Yeah.

Well, Laird Hamilton has this amazing machine out there that he gave us. We got one of the first machines. And he mixes coconut oil, coconut milk, turmeric, organic coffee, and it's fucking delicious. And it's actually very good for you. Wow. And then he also has like this bag of mushrooms, cordyceps mushrooms in lion's mane. You can scoop that in there. But lion's mane in particular is what I'm really interested in because it supports brain function you know and uh have you seen the work of paul stamets do you know who he is no i'll turn you on to him um and send you a link to the podcast that i did with him

he'll blow your fucking mind when he's talking about the power of functional mushrooms not just mushrooms like psychedelic mushrooms which he's into that as well he thinks that psychedelic mushrooms in low doses are like one of the most powerful nootropics that you could have like micro dosing yeah yeah but instead of getting blitz out of your mind and going into another dimension you take it just a little bit every day just a little tiny bit and it gives you this like overwhelming uh feeling of uh operating at a very high function it's a weird feeling but it's that micro dosing psilocybin thing is swept through the fighter community there's a lot of fighters that are training while they're micro dosing mushrooms wow yeah it's very interesting why are they doing that

why why is it trainers why well donald cerrone is really into it and uh a few other fighters have followed suit and donald i think started doing it because of joe schilling who's a world champion kickboxer and he's fighting for bellator now and um they just find that there's something about the way it interacts the way the psilocybin and particularly in low doses interacts with your brain that it just seems to supercharge your ability to understand what a person is doing, specifically according to Joe when he's sparring with people. Wow.

He says he almost can read their minds. Wow. Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah, very, very interesting. I know a lot of people, a lot of skiers, skiers like to microdose. It's becoming a thing where people try to take like a functional amount so like you're not getting blitzed you just take what is a functional amount that's a good question good question

like a like a stem like a little drop no that's even i mean the best way to find out what it would be would be to grind it up so you know the exact ounces and then put it in a capsule and then figure it out. And I think that's what a lot of these guys are doing. It's just very unfortunate that that is a Schedule I drug. Yeah. Right. Because it's a natural life form that grows on Earth. It's a fungus.

Yeah. It's not a drug. Yeah. And it's got some pretty potent positive qualities to it. Right. But outside of anything that's psychoactive or psychedelic that lion's mane stuff is the shit well let's put it in this water right now then come on son here you go baby it's gonna be uh it's gonna be my elon musk smoking weed moment

right now sort of nobody gets high off lions man i cut that open for you cool thank you um so other than that other than this uh cell stuff what is it again what's it called cellogen um i wish i had like uh my someone from my team kind of give me my whole list because i take something for i take a lot of brain cognitive stuff that i know that um um not some might can be considered that way but it's from my doctor that you know um and you know from what i i do enough research to on the doctors and they they tell me kind of what i should take and and i go okay let's try this out see if and like you know my my uh performance increases and then i stop so i'll do it for like a month and I'll stop and I'll take a different,

like, you know, I have like two different routes of vitamins and I take a different route and see if that changes my patterns or how I'm, you know, what my performance is like. And I kind of like just experiment over and over and again. Have you ever done the isolation tank?

Floating in a, yeah, yeah. I love that. Do you do that? I did did it twice it's very new to me but it's like it's incredible yeah you need one of those in your life yes you should get one of those in your crazy fun house i know i was thinking about that there's one place in henderson where i live that does that so i was going to first do that first there yeah do it man um we

have one here yeah i mean like the the two years, like the ice plunges. Um, I just learned that the Wim Hof method. Uh, love that. Love that. That's amazing. I,

I've been, I've never met him in person, but it's great. Yeah. I, you know, I know he's in your, in your lane friends.

He's a character, man. Yeah. I've seen the documentary. He's like, that's what the, what the vice documentary. That guy doesn't watch diet at all.

He drinks beer and eats spaghetti. Like he's fucking ridiculous. He's like, that's what the Vice documentary. That guy doesn't watch the diet at all. He drinks beer and eats spaghetti. He's fucking ridiculous. He doesn't give a shit. He goes to Everest fucking barefoot. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, he climbs Everest in his shorts. It's like, it's too easy.

Yeah. But he gets other people to do it with him. Yeah. To show that anyone could do that. Yeah. It's incredible. He is a unique human being. Like a really true, truly unique human being like a really true truly unique human being in in the

sense that he's just talking about breathing he's not talking about doing some sort of incredible athletics that you know a rare few people can achieve no he's talking about concentrating on your breathing and understanding how you can inhale like deeper breaths and concentrate on the breath and that in doing so you're changing your physiological state and he's got a whole program that shows you how to do it correctly and it enhances your immune system and enhances your awareness and it's wild shit that's incredible yeah yeah i mean i try to do that breath work uh whenever i possibly can i have there's two people that i've worked with that train underneath WIM.

One of them is in Mallorca, Spain. So whenever I'm in Mallorca, Spain, I meet up with him. We do the breath work, holding breath exercises, and then we do the ice bath. And then I have one that's based in San Diego, this woman, and she comes out to Vegas. And then I like to do the group dynamic ice bath. So I have this pool that's not an ice bath so i have um this like pool that's not an ice bath but it's 50 degrees so it's cold enough to like feel it that's cold yeah exactly so uh i get like whoever wants to join me we do like this group kind of you know

huddle we get get in there we come out we do the breath work hold our breath you know and it's it's a great way to get people together and experience something like that too no that's awesome man the ufc training center the performance institute in vegas has this hot bath right next to a cold plunge and they have people going back and forth between the two have you ever been to that place uh yeah i shot my music video there because i had bruce buffer featuring on a song of mine called it's time it's funny i didn't bring that up earlier because you're so tied in with ufc but I shot my music video there because I had Bruce Buffer featuring on a song of mine called It's Time. Oh, that's hilarious.

It's funny I didn't bring that up earlier because you're so tied in with UFC. But we shot the video there. I was training to fight the other DJ that I made the song with. And Bruce Buffer. You were training to fight a DJ? Well, I mean, the video is like. Oh, the video you're training to fight the DJ. Right. Oh, okay.

At the UFC facility. Yeah. And this legendary UFC fighter, I'm spacing out his name, he was training me. So it was kind of cool to have him there with me. What did he look like? Well, you can pick up the video. Okay, I'll find him. Can I run and use the bathroom real quick?

Yeah, sure, sure. Go ahead. I'm holding this pitch. Here we go. So we're watching it on the video. Aoki versus Luke. There's Bruce Buffer. So who's training him, though?

There's all these people running around. Bruce Buffer. Who is training him? I don't see any UFC guy training him. But you keep jumping ahead. We're not going to see it. They're not focusing on their – it's too quick. But who is that?

Oh, it's Ken Shamrock. Shamrock, I was going to say. I'll show him eventually here. Oh, there you go. Ken Shamrock screaming in his face with sunglasses on. He's a trip, isn't he? He's a very interesting guy. Cake me.

Oh, my God. That's hilarious. Okay. It's so interesting when you see all these different people have these different paths in life, and you go, oh, okay, you could go down that path too. Like the Steve Aoki path is so different than most paths and i think that one of the cooler things about talking to people is you you get this sense that the the way you can live your life is not as rigid as people would

have you believe they'd have you believe that there's only a few different ways to go about this or just there's not that much variability. We're saying nice things about you. You just returned. We watched, it was Ken Shamrock.

He was the legendary fighter. So he was like, you know, when you're, I was hanging like this and he just like slapped my stomach and stuff.

Right. Yeah, we were watching it. Sunglasses screaming at you. Exactly. Do you do any martial arts training? You know, strangely enough, my biggest hero growing up is Bruce Lee.

So in the beginning, I started wanting to learn Jeet Kune Do. Did you see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Not yet. There's a scene in there that's very negative about Bruce Lee. I love the movie. I really enjoyed it. I'm a huge tarantino fan i think it's awesome but i heard this controversy around that i didn't see that

very very controversial because he made bruce lee look like a buffoon oh that sucks really arrogant buffoon wow and i don't think there's any evidence that he was ever really like that yeah but you know tarantino sort of dug his heels in and sort of defended it. But I don't think he knows the culture because he's not a martial artist. I think he looked at Bruce Lee as sort of like this historical figure that's kicking people's asses in movies. And I think to understand Bruce Lee the way you do or the way I do, where he was my childhood hero as well it's like he's the guy that's really responsible for mixing martial arts when you talk about mixed martial

arts like all credit has to go to the gracies because they're the ones who you know helson gracie and horian and hoist and hickson and that family was responsible for really showing people jujitsu. And also, Horian invented the UFC. So without Horian and his contributions, we might not have ever known what we know today. Right. But Bruce Lee was on that path a long time ago. Yeah. He had figured out a long time ago that you got to find what's useful in all different styles of martial arts.

Exactly. He's also deeply entrenched in philosophy. He was a brilliant guy. So they made him look like this buffoon. That sucks. I didn't like it. That's like one of the main things about Bruce Lee that I loved about him was his philosophy. He had a lot of things to say about life.

The martial arts was one thing that's like what made him cool made him such a badass but it's his philosophy the words behind all that and how it it can reflect on everyone be like water and the best part for me is that he's it's an asian face because i mean at the end of the day you think about what's out there in the media and popular culture you don't see an an Asian face that's loved by all different ethnicities. Yeah, he's the number one. He's the, like, every, doesn't matter if you're black, white, brown, purple, yellow, whatever you are, you like, you have to honor, like, one of the greats. Everybody likes Bruce Lee.

And he's Asian. So he represents something very powerful for Asian people. how many chinese dudes got laid because of bruce lee exactly fuck man the numbers probably if you think about the the main like how many chinese people that that got laid with non-chinese women oh yeah yeah that's like because at the end of the day like the women love bruce lee everybody loves Bruce Lee. Yeah, everybody. And there hasn't been someone like that that has that striking feeling that's Asian in popular culture like that. He's also like the first guy that was really shredded in movies. You know, he'd take his shirt off.

Yeah, you definitely got that stance. He was just like, oh. He was fucking shredded. And you would look at him and you'd go, God, that guy's body's ridiculous. Like everybody wanted that body. Everybody wanted to be lean and muscular. That's where I got my room at my house,

that Bruce Lee room. Game of death, right? Is that game of death or End of the Dragon? That's End of the Dragon. At least for me, I got the mirror room or End of the Dragon? That's End of the Dragon. At least for me, I got the mirror room from End of the Dragon, but the mirror room scene is way more mirrors, like kind of in different degrees.

Yeah, it was End of the Dragon, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was End of the Dragon. Fuck, that was a good movie. And for the time, those movies, you know, if people don't like them or do like them, what's interesting about Bruce is the style of fighting in those movies, like jumping, flying, kicks, and all that stuff, that's not what he advocated at all. He did that purely for the cinematic value of it.

He wanted to make it exciting and flashy. Yeah. He was all about kicking people in the knees and punching people in the throat. He was about really effective techniques that you could use to end a fight in seconds. That was what he was all about yeah but what he did do was there was like two big bursts in martial arts and bruce lee was responsible in my opinion for the first he was responsible for getting people excited about training martial arts and seeing this guy that could kick everybody's ass and like this guy was

like he was quiet and humble. But when it came time to throw down and take his shirt off and fuck everybody up. Yeah. And then the next stage was the UFC. Those were like in my lifetime. The two big – and really culturally, the two big leaps in martial arts was people getting into Bruce Lee because of getting into martial arts because of Bruce Lee movies. And then of course chuck norris movies yeah and then the next one was getting into martial arts because of the ufc right so it was a bummer it was a bummer that they made him look

like a dope that sucks i'm was excited to watch that movie because i thought that bruce lee was gonna look like a badass because in the in the in the trailer yeah you're like oh no bruce lee was going to look like about us because in the in the in the trailer yeah you're like oh no bruce lee's in there like it's gonna be cool with yeah with brad pitt leonardo dicaprio quentin tarantino this is gonna be epic you know it's a fucking great movie though don't let it hold you back because the movie's fun as shit i really enjoyed it it's a fun i mean like i like all his movies i loved hateful eight a lot of people don't like hateful you know i loved it i think his movies are if you're into like a tarantino movie like i like his style of making pulp fiction yeah django yeah they're wild yeah they're great films absolutely great films such a fan i'm just glad he's out there because it's like there's there's moments in that movie where i don't want

to i'm not going to give anything away but there there's moments in Hollywood where you go, I can't believe you could still do this in a movie. Like in this day and age, like you're allowed to do that in a movie? He goes hard in the paint. But the Bruce Lee things, you know, whatever. It wasn't real. The real Bruce Lee is what's interesting and exciting to me. Right. you know whatever you're gonna do it wasn't real the real bruce lee is what's interesting and exciting to me right you know i mean that's where like my my record label dimmock it's you know you know what dimmock is yeah i mean it's not necessarily tied to bruce lee but it's my way of of like you know instead of calling it bruce lee records where i love bruce lee records i i was like

well this is this mysterious death touch. And, you know, there's like this mystery around that that's connected sort of to Bruce Lee. There's, yeah. It would be really interesting if there really was a dim mock, like a mysterious death touch, if it was real. But a lot of fucking people believe in it. Have you ever seen those videos on Instagram?

When the old man goes, and people fall down? This is McDojoLife on Instagram. He's got a shitload of them. This guy just collects them all. And there's so many of them. They're so ridiculous. I posted one a couple of days ago of this.

It looks like an Aikido guy. And he's just like doing this. Watch this video. Guy comes at him. He's like, pushes him away. Oh, I make you fall down and he's like pushes him away oh i make you fall down look at it's like so goofy you stand there like oh oh you fall down look at him you wow on the ground wow no power here it's so ridiculous yeah it is it's

playing like he believes it yeah it's It's so, so fucking corny. It's like those evangelical preachers that they touch someone's head and the guy's falling over. Yeah. And they're all practicing it. Look. They're all practicing all this nonsense that will get you killed in a real fight. Yeah. And these guys are leaving their house.

They're putting on their fucking outfit. Right. They really think that this is real, that this is actually happening. Yeah. It's so corny It really is But listen man, I really enjoyed talking to you I appreciate you coming out here Your book Blue, The Color of Noise

Is available right now, right? It is, it's out everywhere Did you do the audio book? Did you read it? I read the, there's drops in there It's called, what I call drops They're like these small little chapters between the chapters so i read those um i try to read the book but i was touring all summer so i could only read the drops that's too bad yeah i'd like to hear you read it yeah especially since it's your life yeah there there is like 10 drops so you can hear

me talk about it in my tone in my voice and if people want to catch your live show where can they get information on where to go uh steve aoki.com everything steve aoki online it's pretty simple all right well thank you brother appreciate it man thank you thank you for having me bye everybody