The Joe Rogan Experience - #1383 - Malcolm Gladwell

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist, author, and public speaker. He is the host of the popular podcast "Revisionist History" and his new book "Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" is available now.

Thank you. frustrating when someone who's a great speaker does not narrate their books so thanks for doing that no i actually uh i kind of enjoy i used to hate that process with my first one and then i've grown to enjoy it because you when you say your book out loud you see it in a different way like oh you know you get a little bit of a different perspective on it well i'm a giant fan of your work man particularly Outliers. Oh, thank you. I really love that book. It's very illuminating and sort of peels away the mystery of talent.

And so tell me what you're doing. What is this Talking to Strangers I'm into about? I'm in the second chapter right now. Oh, I see. the second chapter right now. Oh, I see. Well, that was a book about, I was struck by how many of the kind of high-profile cases

that we got obsessed with were at their root about the same thing, which is that individuals were, two people who didn't know each other well had an exchange, and they got each other wrong. So, you know, everything from Amanda Knox to Bernie Madoff to Larry Nassar at Michigan State to Jerry Sandusky at Penn State

and then to the signature case which the book is organized around, which is the Sandra Bland case. Remember the young woman in Texas who gets pulled over by the side of the road? They're all at root fundamentally the same problem, which is there's an exchange between – and the exchange just goes wrong. And the question is why. That's what I began to get really fascinated by is you'd think at this point in human evolution we would have got this thing about talking to strangers down, and we clearly don't. And we're being pushed to talk more and more to strangers, right, in a kind of globalized world. And if we're bad at it, that doesn't bode well, does it?

Well, I think there's also an issue today with people not learning the necessary skills and how to talk to people because so much communication is done digitally yeah that's it seems to be a giant issue with young kids they're they're more awkward initially talking to people than i think i remember yeah yeah no i think that's probably you forget how much i mean adolescent adolescence used to be this one long rehearsal in how to be a normal human being in conversation. And now the rehearsal, it's like the rehearsal got cut in half. And, you know, instead of getting to the point where we play basketball with basketballs, we're still just doing wind sprints or something, you know. Right. You never get to actually playing a game. You're not playing a game. I'm butchering theints or something you know right you never get to

actually playing a game you're not playing the game i'm butchering the metaphor i know what you're saying though the sandra bland case um how does that one fit in because that one that that girl was pulled over the the cop was she it was failure to signal right yeah i mean it's a bullshit thing it's a bullshit thing yeah and's a bullshit thing. Yeah. And she started lighting a cigarette. He told her to put the cigarette out, and it all escalated from that. She said she doesn't have to put the cigarette out. Yeah. And then he says he's going to light her up.

He's screaming at her. He pulls her out of the car. He arrests her. And then is there controversy about whether or not she committed suicide in jail? There is. I don't get into that. Okay. Because it seemed, that seemed unlikely.

That she was killed as opposed to committing suicide. Yes. It seemed likely that she was killed versus that she committed suicide. I didn't think that someone would commit suicide being in jail for three days. Especially one of the things that you highlighted in the book and you actually played in the audio version of it her little sort of affirmations you know and she was she sounded very positive and upbeat and calling everybody kings and queens and it was thanking god and being very thankful and being aware of life and humility and just graciousness and gratitude. It didn't seem, I mean, obviously you don't know.

I mean, what kind of dark things can happen to a person when they're incarcerated for three days for a bullshit reason? Maybe that's the straw that broke the camel's back. She did have, you know, she had a complicated emotional history. She had previously tried to commit suicide. And she had she was emerging from a quite a difficult period in her life and went to Texas to start a new leaf. And so there is an interpretation. Like I said, I don't really have strong feelings on this particular part of the story but there's an interpretation

that says here's a woman who's emerged from a very difficult period in her life goes, leaves, she was in Illinois, she drives halfway across the country to start over and on the first day that she arrives in Texas to start over

she gets pulled over by a cop and by the way day that she arrives in Texas to start over, she gets pulled over by a cop. And by the way, she had thousands of dollars in outstanding tickets. So she had a history of this bullshit stuff with cops where, you know, the same trap that many poor people in this country get into, which is they get the police use people as an ATM, right? They like set them up for untrivial things. And when they can't pay the fine, they get another fine. And when you know how that goes, she was part of in that trap.

So here she is trying to start over after a difficult time. First day she gets to Texas, she gets pulled over again. And she, in her mind, it's the same. She's like, oh my God, I tried to start over and I can't. And then she's in jail and she can't make bail. And there's a scenario where you can see that she just began to despair. Don't they take away your shoelaces and do- Small town Texas.

Yeah. Are they doing things by the book? Right. Small town Texas. Yeah. Are they doing things by the book? Right. I mean, I find the whole thing about – I went to that town when I was reporting the book.

And, you know, the – it's kind of hard to be – to kill someone and get away with it requires a level of expertise and forethought that struck me was not present in that little town in Texas. I mean, it's just not, I don't, they're not like, they're not thinking, these are not people playing chess, right? I think they, it's this encounter with this cop and he's not very good at his job and he gets way over his head and he completely misreads her and he pulls her off to jail, probably deeply regrets the whole incident

and they're all embarrassed and sitting around and hoping it'll just all go away. And meanwhile, she's all alone in a prison cell spiraling deeper and deeper into depression. I mean, I think it's almost more tragic. That she committed suicide. that she committed suicide it's insane that you can keep someone in jail for three days for failure to signal it seems like there should have been an initial review of the circumstances that led to her getting pulled out of the car in the first place and the cop should have been fired immediately they just like you're

screaming at her because she lit a cigarette? Yeah. In her own car? Meanwhile, this is fascinating, and I feel like, I don't know, you and I are probably the same age. There's this, so the cop's 29. If you grew up with cigarettes, you have a different understanding of the meaning of lighting a cigarette. So what's happening in the encounter is he pulls her over. What he does is he sees her coming out of this university campus.

And while she's still on campus property, she rolls through a stop sign. And then he notices that she's got out-of-state plates and she's a young black woman. And she's driving a Hyundai, like not a Mercedes-Benz. And he thinks, huh, I'm going to check this out. So she pulls onto the road, and he drives up behind her aggressively. He speeds up behind her. So what does she do? Well, what any of us would do, she gets out of the way, thinking, oh, he's going to, you know, the scene of an accident or something.

I better get out of his way. She pulls over to get out of his way, and he goes, oh, you didn't use your turning signal. And he pulls her over and pulls him behind her. Now, by the way, whenever I hear a fire department truck or a police car coming, and I pull over to get out of the way, I do not use my turning signal. You just get out of the way. It's reflexive. So her immediate thought is, when he does this is like oh this is bullshit

and he tricked me and he knows what he's doing that's exactly what he wanted he wanted to get her in a situation because it's all a pretext he just wants he thinks oh maybe there's something weird with her so then he

we have this all on tape of course because this is this is one of those instances that was captured entirely on the dash cam the officer's dash cam he goes up to the window and he says he looks at her This is one of the instances that was captured entirely on the dash cam, the officer's dash cam. He goes up to the window and he says, he looks at her and he realizes she's agitated. Why? Because she's pissed off.

And he goes, ma'am, is there something wrong? And she's like, well, you know, I want to know why I'm pulled over, blah, blah, blah. And then he goes back to his car and he comes back to her. And he later says in the deposition that when he goes back to his vehicle to check on her license and registration, he begins to develop suspicions that she's up to no good, she's got drugs or guns. And so she comes back and they commence to have this increasingly heated conversation. And she lights the cigarette because she's trying to calm herself down. And this is my point. You and I, who grew up in an era where people smoked all the time, know that one of the principal functions of lighting a cigarette was to calm your nerves. And in her mind, I think, in her mind, she's trying to signal to the cop, let's de-escalate this. And one of the ways I'm going to show you that I want to de-escalate this. And one of the ways I'm going to show you that I want to

de-escalate this is I'm going to take a moment and light a cigarette and just take it down a notch and let's have a real conversation. He doesn't understand the meaning of that gesture. And he thinks, oh, he thinks several things. He thinks, one, she's messing with me. She's defying my authority by lighting a cigarette. She's going to blow smoke in my face or something nefarious. Or she's going to take the lighted cigarette and put it out of my – he has all these kind of weird, crazy fantasies. This is what he said? In the deposition. Oh, yeah.

So even on the level – I try and identify in the book all of the different ways. And when I come back to the case at the end of the book, I go through this in more detail. All the different ways in which he completely misunderstands her. And one of them is he doesn't understand the meaning of lighting a cigarette in a moment of tension. And that's still more evidence why you need, if you're a cop or anyone dealing with a stranger, you need to slow down and not jump to any conclusions because there's so much you can miss. What it seemed to me when I listened to it initially and then I listened to it again in your audio book, there's a thing that happens with police officers. I've never been a police officer, but I was a security guard for a brief period of time, and I recognized it in myself, and I recognized it in a lot of people that I work with, is that you start treating the other people like the other. Like it's us and them.

It was us. I worked at Great Woods. It's a performance center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. And we would catch a lot of people smuggling booze in, things like that. And there was an attitude that you got, and I was only there for one summer, but there was an attitude of they were the bad people

and you were the good guys. It was us and them, and we stuck together, and they weren't us. And cops get that a hundred times worse because there's guns involved and they can get shot at we've all seen videos of god cops pulling people over and he says can i see your hands please the guy pulls out a gun and shoots at him we've all seen those videos those are this is all always in the back of the mind of cops yeah and i think that was just a guy who as you said 29 years old is a young guy he's not that bright not good at communication and he is this attitude that he's a

cop and that you have to listen to the cops because he's them and you're you yeah and that that's like when he's telling her to put the cigarette out and she's saying i don't have to do that and he's saying get out of your vehicle she's saying, I don't have to do that. And he's saying, get out of your vehicle. And she's saying, I don't have to do that. And then he's screaming at her. I mean, that's all right there. I mean, that's what it seems like to me.

He wants compliance. He wants her to listen. He does. Yeah, he does want. He gets, it's funny, what's remarkable about that tape, which I must have seen 50 times, and which has been viewed on YouTube, you know, even a couple million times, is how quickly it escalates. The whole thing is – it's insanely short.

Yeah. You would think if I was telling you the story of this, you would think, oh, this unfolds over 10 minutes. And it doesn't. It unfolds over a minute and a half. And that, I remember years ago, I wrote my second book, Blink. And I have in that book, a chapter about a very famous, infamous police shooting in New York, a case of Amadou Diallo. I remember that one. Remember that one, where he was shot like 40 times by cops. Yeah.

And one of the big things I was interested in talking about in that case was how long does it take, how long did it take for that whole terrible sequence to go down? So from the moment the police develop suspicions about Amadou Diallo to the moment that Amadou Diallo is lying dead on his front porch, how long, how much time elapsed? And the answer is like two seconds. It's boom, boom, boom. It's like, and I had a conversation with, actually here in the Valley with Gavin DeBecker.

Has he ever been on your show? No. Fascinating guy. He's a security expert, right? Yeah, security expert. Incredibly interesting guy. He's friends with Sam Harris.? Yeah, security expert. Incredibly interesting guy. He's friends with Sam Harris. I know that.

He is. Yeah, yeah. And he was talking about this question of time, that when you're a security guard guarding someone famous, a lot of what you're trying to do is to inject time into the scenario. Instead of, you don't want something to unfold in a second and a half, where you have almost no time to react properly. What you want to do is to unfold in five seconds. If you can add, oh, I'm making this up. I can't remember his exact term. But basically, what your

job is, is to add seconds into the encounter so that you have a chance to intelligently counter so that you have a chance to intelligently respond to what's going on. And so he hit this great riff about how good Israeli Secret Service guys are. And one of the things they do is they're either not armed or they don't, they're trained not to go for their weapons in these situations. Because his point is, so say you're guarding the president. You're a body man for the president. You're walking through a crowd. Somebody comes up to you, like pulls a gun, wants to shoot the president.

His point is, if you're the secret security guy, and your first instinct in response to someone pulling a gun is to go for your own gun, you've lost a second and a half, right? Your hand's got to go down to your, your whole focus is on getting to your own gun. And in the meantime, the other guy whose gun's already out has already shot, you've lost. You need to be someone who forgets about your own gun and just focuses on the man in front of you, right, and protecting the president. But it was all in the context of time is this really crucial variable in these kind of encounters. And everything as a police officer you should be doing is slowing it down,

wait, you know, analyze what's happening. And that's what he doesn't do. The competence instance speeds it up, right? He goes to DEFCON. You know, she lights a cigarette, and within seconds, he's screaming at her. This is a, you know, a parent shouldn't do that. I mean, let a little police officer by the side of the highway. Right.

But the difference is he knows she's not a criminal. I mean, he must know. It's bullshit. He's pulling her over because he's trying to write a ticket. He must know. It's bullshit. He's pulling her over because he's trying to write a ticket. And the way he's communicating with her when she lights a cigarette, it's like she's inferior.

This is not someone who's scared. He's not scared of a perpetrator. He's not scared that there's a criminal in the car about to shoot him. He's not scared of that at all. He wants utter, total, complete compliance. And he's talking to her like he's a drill sergeant. But can't both those things be true? How so?

Well, so in the deposition he gives, which I get to at the end of the book, and I got the tape of the deposition. It's totally fascinating. It's like he's sitting down with the investigating officer looking into the death of Sandra Bland, and he's got, I don't know how long it is, two hours, and he's walking them through what he was thinking that day. And he makes the case that he was terrified, that he was convinced. He says he goes back to his squad car. He comes up, and there's some evidence to support this.

So he pulls her over and he goes to the passenger side window and leans in and says, ma'am, you realize why I pulled you over? Blah, blah, blah. And he says, are you okay?

Because she doesn't seem right to him. She gives him her license. He goes back to his squad car and he says, while he's in the squad car, he looks ahead and he sees her making what he calls furtive movements.

So he's like – Furtive movements. He thinks she's being all kind of jumpy and – you don't know. He just says, I saw her moving around in ways that didn't make me happy. And then when he returns to the car, he returns driver's side, which is crucial because if you're a cop, you go driver's side only if you think that you might be in danger, right? He doesn't – if you go driver's side, you're exposing yourself to the road. The only reason you do that is that when you're driver's side, you can see the – it's very, very difficult if someone has a gun to shoot the police officer who's pulled them over

if the police officer is on the driver's side, right? You have an angle if they're on the passenger side. So why does he go – if he thinks she's harmless, there's no reason for him to go back driver's side. I think this guy, I think these two things are linked. I actually believe him. He constructs this ridiculous fantasy about how she's dangerous. But I think that's just what he was trained to do. He's a paranoid cop. And then why is he so insistent that she be compliant for the same reason because he's terrified he's like do exactly what i say because i don't know what the what's going to happen here right and she's you know i i don't know i i i don't think those two uh those two strains of uh

of interpretation are mutually exclusive. That's interesting. It didn't sound like he was scared at all. It sounded like he was pissed that she wasn't listening to him. Yeah. I didn't think he sounded even remotely scared. I felt like he had, I mean, we're reading into it, right? I have no idea. But my interpretation was he had decided that she wasn't listening to him and he was going to make her listen to him.

That's what I got out of it. I didn't get any fear. And I thought that version of it that he described just sounds like horseshit. It sounds like what you would say after the fact to strengthen your case. Well, so there's another element here that I get into, which is I got his record as a police officer. So he'd been on the force for, I forgot, nine, ten months. And we have a record of every traffic stop he ever made. And when you look at his list of traffic stops, you realize that what happened that day with Sandra Bland was not an anomaly.

That he's one of those guys who pulls over everyone for bullshit reasons all day long. So I think I forgot an exact number. But in the hour before he pulled over Sandra Bland, he pulled over four people, four other people for equally ridiculous reasons. He's that cop. And he's that cop because he's been trained that way. They have quotas. Strain of modern policing, which says, go beyond the ticket. Pull someone over if anything looks a little bit weird, because you might find something else.

Now, if you look at his history as a cop, he almost never found anything else. His history as a cop, in fact, I went through this, I forget how many hundreds of traffic stops he had in nine months. If you go through them, he has like, once he found some marijuana on a kid, and by the way, the town in which he was working is a college town, so I mean, how hard is that? I think he found a gun once, misdemeanor gun. But everything else was like pulling over people

for the light above their license plate was out. That's the level of stuff he was using. He did this all day long, every day. So he's like, to him, it's second nature. Yeah, pull her over. Like, who knows what's going on? She's out of state. She's a young black woman.

Was this comparable to the way the rest of the cops in the force in his division did it? Well, I looked at, I didn't look at the rest of the cops on his force. What I looked at were state numbers. Wherever they're – several American states give us, like North Carolina, for example, will give us precise, complete statistics on the number of traffic stops done by their police officers and the reasons for those stops. So when you look at that, so I have the, I look at the North Carolina numbers, for example, and the North Carolina Highway Patrol, it's the same thing. They're pulling over unbelievable numbers of people and finding nothing. Like, you know, 1%, less than 1% hit rates in some cases of being hit rate being finding something of interest.

So, like, they're pulling over 99 people for no reason in order to find one person who's got, you know, a bag of dope or something in the car. You cannot conduct policing in a civil society like that and expect to have decent relationships between law enforcement and the civilian population. Yeah, no question. But doesn't that sort of support the idea that he's full of shit, that he was really concerned that she had something? He had never encountered anything.

Well, or... This was the one. The fantasy in his head is so... So the question is, why does he keep doing it? This is a guy who day in, day out pulls over people for no reason and finds nothing and continues to do it. Now, there's two explanations. One is he's totally cynical and thinks this is the way to be an effective police officer.

Explanation number two is this is a guy who has a powerful fantasy in his head that one day I'm going to hit the jackpot. I'm going to open the trunk and there's going to be 15 pounds of heroin and I'm going to be the biggest star who ever lived. I think there's also a rush of just being able to get people to pull over. The compliance thing, which is another reason why he was so furious that she wasn't listening to him. And she kept the cigarette lit. Or she was listening but not complying. Yes. What are the laws?

I mean, are you allowed to smoke a cigarette in your car when a cop pulls you over? How does it work like that? Yeah. I mean, of course. Yeah, they can't stop you from engaging in illegal activity. They can't tell you to put out your cigarette. There's no law. No, he could have said.

I mean, no, there's no law. I mean, the cop – So, two things. Although, two things. The courts historically give enormous leeway to the police officers in a traffic stop as opposed to a person-to-person stop. But no, I mean, this is about what he should have said is he could have said, ma'am, do you mind? I would prefer if you put out the cigarette while we're talking or I'm allergic to smoke or whatever. I mean, there's a million ways for him to do it nicely. The point is he's a jackass about it.

But he's basically doing the job like a jackass. He's doing a jackass version of being a cop. Well, so this is one of a really, really crucial point in the argument of the book, which is I think the real lesson of that case is not that he's a bad cop. He's, in fact, doing precisely as he was trained and instructed to do. He's the ideal cop. What a philosophy of law enforcement that has emerged over the last 10 years in this country, which has incentivized and encouraged police officers to engage in these incredibly low reward activities, like pulling over 100 people in order to find one person who's got something wrong. That has become enshrined in the strategy of many police forces around the country. They tell them to do this.

of many police forces around the country. They tell them to do this. I have a whole section of the book where I go through in detail one of the most important police training manuals, which is required reading for somebody coming up, in which they just walk you through this. It is your job to pull over lots and lots and lots and lots of people, even if you only find something in a small percentage of cases.

Why? That's what being a proactive police officer is all about, right? So they are trained to, that phrase, go beyond the ticket, is a term of art in police training. Like, you gotta be thinking, sure you pull them over for having a taillight that's out,

but you're thinking beyond that. Is there something else in the car that's problematic? That's what you're trying to find. Is there something else in the car that's problematic? That's what you're trying to find. So there, he was being a dutiful police officer. And the answer is to re-examine our philosophies of law enforcement, not to, I mean, you can't dismiss this thing by saying, oh, that's just a particularly bad cop. It's not great, but I don't know if he's any worse than, you know, he's just doing what he was. It's not great, but I don't know if he's any worse than, you know, he's just doing what he was trained to do.

That's the issue. He should be trained to do something different. Right, that is the issue, right? The issue is there, this is standard practice to treat citizens that are doing nothing wrong as if they're criminals and pull them over and give them extreme paranoia and freak them out. Yeah.

I hope you find something. I was home, I'm you find something i was home i'm canadian and i was home in canada small town canada uh a couple weeks ago and i saw on the back you know how these cars always have their often have their slogan on the side of the car the back of the car so in my little hometown in southwest ontario you know, farm country, the slogan on the back of the police cars is people helping people. It's so Canadian. It is so Canadian. It's so awesome.

Now, understand that this is a country with very, very low levels of gun ownership, which means that a police officer does not enter into an encounter with a civilian with the same degree of fear or paranoia that the civilian has a handgun, right? Which is a big part of this. Regardless of how one feels about gun laws in this country, the fact that there are lots of guns makes the job of a police officer a lot harder. And every police officer will tell you that. In Canada, you don't have that fear. But it's also Canada, and it's small town Canada. And so when you encounter a police officer in my little town, he's like – he's people helping people. He's like driving like a Camry and he's, you know, he's like this genial person who – Was it really a Camry?

I mean, I've forgotten exactly what they're driving. They're not driving – Cop cars. Yeah, Explorers painted black with like big bull bars at the front. Right. Yeah, Explorers painted black with like big bull bars at the front. Right. And then you go, you know, I was, you go, I mean, even in L.A., you're in L.A., like the cars are painted black and white.

They look, they look ferocious. I mean, the whole thing is. Is that what it is? They look ferocious? Do they? They just look, they identify as police. To a Canadian, it looks, to me, it it looks a little why do they have to paint them black for God's sake? It's not the Oakland Raiders. I mean, it's like. What do you think

they should paint them? Something mild and like bright yellow. Something lovely. Something warm. Lovely. Like a nice can you imagine like a teal or a lime green? Well, that would be, yeah, because there's a lot of black cars and a lot of white cars and a lot of teal cars. Let's go with teal. So it would stand out like, oh, it's a of black cars and a lot of white cars, not a lot of teal cars. Let's go with teal.

So it would stand out like, oh, it's a cop in his pink car. But, you know, this kind of symbolism matters. Right. Right? You're projecting an image. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who makes all of his prisoners wear pink. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of thing.

Well, I mean, against his point, though, how many women shoot cops? Isn't that an insanely low number? Yeah. I mean, insanely low. What are the numbers? I mean, it's probably almost nonexistent. Yeah. When guys pull over women, I don't think they're worried about being shot.

I really don't. I think it's horseshit. I think it's all after the fact. Yeah. He was trying to concoct some sort of an excuse. Some sort of excuse for – Is he still in the force? No.

He's either – he's kicked off for – I've forgotten the precise language they use, but for basically being impolite to a civilian. But, yeah, I don't think there's a lot of um uh but i don't know whether i mean i i still think we're saying the same thing which is the thing that's driving him his motivation is not rational right and if you were a rational actor you would never engage in an activity where 99.9 of your police stops resulted in nothing right you he's he is often some weird kind of fantasy land for a reason which is that's what in certain jurisdictions in this country that's what law enforcement has come to look at look like um and that's that's problematic it's a huge problem yeah the power

trip aspect of it i mean you know i've only often said, what would they do? You know, because there's certain areas where police officers do have quotas, where they have to write a certain amount of tickets. What would they do if no one broke the law for six months? Welcome to... That's what small town candidates... Yeah, right? That's right. What would they do? I mean, I would really be curious, like, what would happen to the numbers? Like, because what you're saying that they use people as an ATM, they really do.

I mean, people are – they're glorified revenue collectors. They're pulling people over, trying to write huge tickets. And I believe it's North Carolina where you're talking about that's got this creepy law that they've recently – I think they've recently changed it where you're allowed to just confiscate people's money. Because if you see, like, I pull you over, hey, Malcolm, why do you have $3,000 on you? Yeah. think they've recently changed it where you're allowed to just confiscate people's money because if you see like i pull you over hey malcolm why do you have three thousand dollars on you yeah you have three thousand dollars in cash what are you doing with three thousand dollars give me that money and they take it and you have to prove that you weren't going to buy heroin or buy illegal guns or whatever and then most of that money wound up going to the police department yeah so

they used it to like build a fucking gym for the cops or whatever i mean it's literally they had an incentive to keep the money and is that north carolina that they did that there's a number of states it is north carolina that have those confiscation laws civil forfeiture laws yeah yeah and they're really gross do they still have that or is i mean i know it's check extremely controversial and people are up in arms and furious that you know their money has been stolen people on their way to buy a car for instance you know and they get pulled over and the cop will just take all the money this is what um uh i talk a little bit about the ferguson case in my book later on. And this is what Ferguson was ultimately about. The focus in the Ferguson case was whether the officer in that case, Darren Wilson, what he did and didn't do to Michael Brown. But the real story, when the

Department of Justice investigated, the real story is not the encounter between those two. It is that the police department in Ferguson was being run as a revenue-generating arm of the city government. And people in city government were directing the activities of law enforcement to maximize revenue. And there's these incredible stories of – there's one story where there's a guy who's just been playing basketball. And he's sitting in his car, parked by the basketball court, like cooling off after playing basketball. Cop rolls in, pulls up behind him and ends up writing eight tickets,

including, he accuses the guy of being a pedophile, gets him for, one of the things he gets him is putting a false name on his driver's license. When his driver's license, his real name was like Michael, and his driver's license said Mike. Like that's the level of eight tickets, right? That was routine practice. So there's a reason why a kid like Michael Brown in Ferguson gets really angry at law enforcement,

because law enforcement was a completely discredited institution in that city. For years and years and years and years and years, they had been basically preying. They had been preying on the lower income community of that town. So, of course, relationships between the population and the cops had reached a low ebb. That's a real, you know, there's a, it's funny. One of the reasons I wanted to write this book was the kind of conversations we have around these things. Ferguson's a great example. 95% of the conversation about Ferguson was just about trying to break down what happened between the cop and Michael Brown. And the issue, when we finally look at it in a systematic manner, we realize, oh, no, no, no.

It's not about that. It is about a system that had been in place for years and years and years and years in which the African-American population of that town had been preyed upon by the police department. That is the broader, and you cannot come to an understanding of what happened with Michael Brown until you're willing to engage that case on that much more broader systemic level. When you make the title of this book, Talking to Strangers, do you have a goal that you're trying to achieve? Are you trying to illuminate a certain aspect of communication? Are you trying to highlight issues that people have had with these stories, like the Michael Brown story? Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to...

I wanted to sort of start with the premise of why are we so bad at... You know, like, I tell the story in a book of the Larry Nassar case at Michigan State. Which one's that? That's the guy. Remember the doctor for the gymnastics team? Oh, yes.

Who turns out to have been sexually molesting. Huge pedophile. Yeah, huge pedophile. So there you have a case where everyone thinks they know this guy. He's their friend. He's this gifted doctor. The parents are willingly bringing their kids to be treated by him. The parents are in the room while he is abusing their kids and they don't see it.

The kids are saying something weird happened and the parents are dismissing it. So I wanted to, that's a good example of a phenomenon that I wanted to try and explain, which is how is that possible? How can we think we know someone and be so completely wrong? How can you take your kid to a doctor and think the doctor is the greatest possible doctor and, in fact, what he's doing is abusing your child in front of you, right? And that's a very similar kind of problem to Bernie Madoff. People invested their life savings with this guy. Not little old ladies in Dubuque, their life savings with this guy. Not little old ladies in Dubuque,

sophisticated, savvy, incredibly intelligent investors handed over millions of dollars to this guy who was not even, I mean, the Madoff fraud was so outrageous, he didn't even bother to, he didn't even put it in T-bills. I mean, he just spent it. It was just like crazy. it in T-bills. I mean he just spent it.

It was just like crazy. What's T-bills? Treasury bills. Oh. I mean he wasn't even – he was 100% sociopath fraud. Yes. And people over the course of 20 years wrote check after check after check after check to him, thinking he was this brilliant investor. You know, it's like, that's a puzzle.

That's what I wanted to get at. But people did recognize that something was wrong, right? There were financial analysts that were saying that this doesn't make sense. A few of them. But it's funny. My favorite story in the Madoff chapter is the greatest hedge fund in the world is Renaissance Technologies. These are the guys out in Long Island who have had like 30% returns for 25 years. They're like all PhD, you know, AI geniuses, literally geniuses.

And they found themselves, years before Madoff was busted, they found themselves with, I think, $30 million in a Madoff fund because of some complicated transaction. And they're all geniuses. So they look at what Madoff's doing and they're like, hmm, that doesn't look good. Like, that doesn't make any sense to me. And so, like, what should we do? We have $30 million stake in a fund and we don't understand what the guy's doing. And you would think, logically, they would sell their stake. They don't.

Because it's returning. No. In fact, it's not even returning that. Their own legit returns are twice his illegitimate returns. They actually make the point that his returns are really low for us. There's no reason for us to keep their money, but they don't sell. So that's what I was trying to understand. They can't even, you know, there's this notion I talk about, it's called default to truth, which is this idea from a researcher called Tim Levine, which is as human beings, we're trusting engines. We are evolved to give people the benefit of the doubt. And once you understand that, and why do we do that?

Because it's the right move 99% of the time. Most people are being truthful. And if you have as your strategy, I'm going to believe what people say. It makes you a fantastic friend, a wonderful person to work with. It means that you can, you know, escape through the world with a minimum of fuss. If you're – the paranoid person is a person whose life is a nightmare, right, because they are suspicious of everything that moves. So we evolved to be trusting engines because that makes your life easier that's the best part of human people want to mate with you

like if you want to talk in evolutionary terms about who passes on their genes nice people pass on their genes given the choice between having a child with a crazy suspicious paranoid person or a loving trusting person you choose a loving, trusting person. You choose the loving, trusting person 100% of the time. So multiply that out times a million years of human history, you realize trusting genes beat paranoid genes

every day of the week, right? So that's what we are. We're credulous by evolutionary choice. So those guys at Renaissance, they're no different. They may be smarter than the rest of us, but they're not constructed differently. Their inclination is to believe people.

They're like, well, I don't know. Guy says he's a good investor. Why not? Let's hang on to it. See what happens, right? That's their motive. You don't get to run an organization as successful

as renaissance technologies if you're some crazy paranoid person right how would you even invest in anything if you were crazy and paranoid there was a lot of people that were really intelligent that invested in bernie madoff's hedge fund too steven spielberg was one of them he lost a shit ton of money oh yeah i mean look at the roster list. There isn't a, you cannot point to an unsophisticated investor on the list of people who lost the most money from. Every one of them is smart.

That's strange. It's so great. It is great. Like, think about it. Like, and by the way, getting a decent return

in the market is super easy. You go to, you know, Vanguard and they, you know, they'll give you the market return

year in, year out. It's not that hard. But these people are like, they wanted to do something fancier and they'll give you the market return, you're in your ass, not that hard. But these people are like they wanted to do something fancier and that's what happened. Well, when you realize what a sociopath he actually was is in the interviews after he's caught where he's demanding certain things and complaining about certain things, he doesn't seem to have any remorse.

He wants better treatment. He wants better food. He doesn't seem to have any remorse that he's literally robbed people of their retirement, ruined the last part of their lives where they thought they were going to have a considerable sum of money to sit back and just enjoy their grandchildren. No, now they're broke. Now they're poor. Now they have to figure out a way to get by and eat.

He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't. In fact, what's weird, there's so many things weird about the Madoff case. One of them is we forget that he doesn't get caught. He turns himself in. Right. And he turns himself in because, not because he's screwing up, but because he's quote unquote so good. Because remember the financial crisis hits in 2008

and his clients are losing so much money on their legit investments that they go to Madoff and say, can I have some of my money back from you? I got to pay off all the stuff I've done that has gone sour. So like in effect, no one ever caught him. He gets caught by a once in a, you know,

one in a million circumstance where he's the only one making any money for his clients. So they come after him. My point is, if you if you're totally rational, and you look at this, you say, here's a guy who managed to bamboozle the most sophisticated people in the world to the tune of billions of dollars for 25 years, and he only gets caught because we had a once-in-a-lifetime financial meltdown. Isn't the rational lesson of that that we should all be Bernie Madoffs? Right? It's like super easy. It's like not that hard. All I have to do is, you know, he dressed really nicely. I get really nice office space on the east side of Manhattan. What did he actually do?

Nothing. Really didn't invest in anything. He just moved other people's money around and he ran a Ponzi scheme. Spent a lot of it. And how did his sons not catch on to this? That's a good question. Because they're not being... Well, one of them committed suicide, remember? Right. That's right.

And then... So it's an open question of how much they do how much anyone else knew um i you know the older i get the more i believe in the powers of particularly within within family denial is something now i don't find hard to believe. So your ability, I've now heard so many stories of, you know, a parent is some kind of monster and family members just won't see it. They just can't bring themselves to go there. So did they know something? Everyone knew there was something slightly fishy in what Bernie was doing,

but they never went so far as to think that he was just making it up. So they knew something was up, but they didn't know it was 100% horseshit. They thought that he was – so there were some – people thought that he actually had investments, but he was – there was a suspicion, for example, that he was front-running, that because he had a larger business sort of managing the deal flow in the NASDAQ, that he would get advance word of where money was flowing, and he would jump ahead of the queue, buy stocks before other people did,

and profit off when the stock would rise. He would just sell and profit off that difference. So there was a feeling that he had a dubious kind of illegitimate strategy that nonetheless legitimately made him a lot of money. So people were like, well, as long as he can get away with it and I can profit off it, I'm fine. But the truth is he wasn't doing that at all. And truth is he was just – he had some confederate in the attic of his company essentially making up trade orders from scratch. I mean they were just making shit up. How many people got arrested?

I forget. I think they took, I can't remember the exact number. I think they got, he had two Confederates, I think, who went down with him. That's it? I think that's what it was. In retrospect, it's a really, it's one of these crazy, it's one of these crazy, you'd think, you you know that whole institutions would have fallen yes no did you ever hear the conversation that he had i believe it was

recorded somehow on a phone or something or maybe it was after he was in jail where he was talking about trying to get money back from one of his biggest investors the guy had gotten like a billion dollars from him over the years. That's right. That's right. He's like, you got to give the money back. He's like, fuck you. I'm not giving you shit.

And, you know, there's this crazy conversation where he's basically telling this guy, look, you knew this was bullshit. And you were making money off this. And now, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So this is like the clever. So if you think about this, that guy, you know. Yeah, yeah. So this is like the clever.

So if you think about this, that guy, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. So game this through. Let's do a hypothetical scenario. You have a friend who is an incredible salesman and has gone around Europe and to Saudi Arabia and whatever and raised a $20 million raised a $20 billion fund. And they're promising a 20% return a year on your investment, right? So you give them a million, you're getting $200,000 a year back from this thing. You know it's all bullshit, but no one else does. What is the rational thing for you to do? The rational thing for you to do on to take your, on your million-dollar investment, is to take the $200,000 that is made in quotation marks every year out of the fund.

So you say most people, you know, when you invest in stocks, normally what you do is you check the box. I want my, I want any dividends or earnings reinvested in the fund. Don't check the box. Take the real cash. So if you're investing with this phony friend of yours for 20 years, you're going to get $200,000 a year for 20 years. That's $4 million. You will make $4 million clear out of your $1 million initial investment

in 20 years, right? That's smart if you know what's going on. So that's what some people did with madoff they're like yeah i don't know what he's doing these returns are pretty fantastic i'm just going to take all my earnings off the table every single year so they are the ones who the real winners of this whole thing with those people because this money's not real that money's coming from other investors nothing's's being made, actually. What happens with them? Like if a guy does make all these millions of dollars, like that one guy, he had to give some of it back?

Yeah. So what happens is they appoint, remember they appoint after the scandal breaks and made up is invested. invested, they bring in a kind of supervisor, financial supervisor, who has the power to claw back winnings from money from the people who took cash off the table. But not everyone had to claw back. And the question was, how far back do we go? So if you were investing with Madoff 25 years ago, and you took $10 million off the table between 1990 and 1993, do you have to give that up too? It gets complicated.

Also, how can you prove that he was doing the same activity back then? Exactly. Exactly. Oh. It's gone. The conversation – I really wish I could remember where I was hearing this conversation. But somebody had recorded Madoff talking to this guy, telling him, look, you got to give that money back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My Schwab fund looks better and better all the time. It's just so scary to me that, I mean, finances and the stock market and all that stuff has always looked like magic. Like, what is going on there? What are they doing? They're moving these numbers around. Like, when you see the ticker tape roll by, like, what is all that?

If you don't have any understanding of it, it's like a foreign language. And so you're hoping that all these geniuses can't be duped. All these people throwing their tickets up in the air and everybody that's like, buy, sell, they all know what's going on. You don't know what's going on, but hey, there's a lot of things you know that they don't know

and this is just how the world works. Turns out, no. Turns out the people that were involved in this crazy, very difficult to understand thing didn't know it either. Like they barely can understand it. And this guy was just stealing money in some weird way. And if the stock market didn't crash, if we didn't have some sort of a depression, who knows how long – He might still be in operation today. He would still. Without the crash of 2008, there's a very, very strong possibility that Bernie Madoff would still be going gangbusters. All he has to do to keep surviving is to take in enough money to cover withdrawals.

Yes. So there's some, like we said, there's some portion of people who are withdrawing their winnings. He just needs to make enough to get enough new money to cover the withdrawal. So he's got a $50 billion hedge fund. And let's imagine there's a billion in withdrawals coming out every year. He's got to raise a billion. Now, if you're Bernie and you already have 50, it's not that hard to raise another. And particularly because he had people all around the world and he was giving them these huge fees to raise money for them. So that's the other way.

The people who really made money from him were the people who had, I've forgotten what it was, but you would be, say, you're Joe, the financial guy in Zurich. You have a whole bunch of wealthy European clients. For every million you raise for clients. Bernie would let, for every million you raise for Bernie, Bernie would let you keep, I've forgotten what it was,

100 grand. That's a nice business. That's real money. So you just kick back 900 to Bernie and keep 100 grand, and you're free and clear. No one's clawing that back, right? Those guys got very, very, very wealthy.

Oof, that's weird money. You're sitting in your house that's stealing built. God, that's got to be strange. So what can be learned in terms of communication from the Bernie Madoff story? Well, the Bernie Madoff story and all of these stories, but this one in particular, goes to this question of we really think we're good at spotting liars and we're not. So virtually every profession that is invested in investigation of human beings has some belief that we know how to figure out who's lying. Yes. And the truth is nobody does.

that we know how to figure out who's lying. Yes. And the truth is, nobody does. And if someone tells you they are good at spotting liars, there's a 99% chance that they're lying. So the evidence, so you could think, if we did an experiment here where I had 100 people parade through this office right now,

the studio right now, and every one of them made a statement in front of you, and some were lying and some were telling the truth, and I asked you, Joe, tell me who's lying and who's not. Your accuracy rate, your success rate would be 52 to 54%. In other words, slightly better than chance. You might as well flip a coin, slightly better if you don't and that's not about you anyone in that chair watching these people parade in front of us is going to do a slightly bit better than chance and the reason we're slightly better than chance is there are a small fraction of people who are such epically bad liars that there's just we're not going to lose those people like we those are obvious one thing that

you can tell those if it's an area of your own personal expertise right like if someone tried to talk to you about what it takes to write a book and get a book published and get a book on the new york times bestseller list and they were just making things up you would you would okay so that so this is oh so now we're talking about a separate thing here specialist that's content-based so if i pretend to be a ufc fighter you're going to spot my liar my lies in five minutes because you know more about the content than i do but let's remove but there you're not catching me because i look like i'm lying you're catching me because i'm saying something that's bullshit i have a good story about that oh really i have a good story i used to think that i was really good at spotting liars and then i met this guy i met him through a

friend and that's i'd given myself a pass and then i met him through this friend he was a friend of a friend so i just assumed he was okay because my friend is a very good friend um and this guy was claiming to be this brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and he was writing for uh this online um magazine that was like a well-read magazine in the martial arts world. And it was the Abu Dhabi Combat Club. They were responsible for this big, the Abu Dhabi Submission World Championships. This is the biggest championships in the world. It's very highly regarded, high prestige.

This guy was talking about these fights that he had had, and people bullshit a little bit, so you give people a little bit of room for that. But then he was talking about this particular move that he had pulled off in a fight that he had just learned from my friend. And it's a very difficult move. It's called the twister.

It's basically a guillotine from wrestling, and it's set up from a position called side control it's really complicated you have to wrap someone's leg around you have to roll onto your left shoulder you have to get behind them you have to grab their arm put it over your shoulder grab a hold of their spine and it's essentially like a spine lock it's a very difficult move to pull off and it takes a long time to master the steps it takes a long time to understand the position. So this guy learned it, and then a couple days later claimed to have pulled it off in Thailand. And it was like one of those scenes in a movie where the record scratches, and everybody just goes, what?

And I remember we were like, what's going on? So then my friend winds up rolling with him. Rolling is sparring it's uh you do jujitsu rolling and he comes back to me and he goes there's no fucking way that guy's a black belt it doesn't even make sense he goes he's like he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing like this is really weird so um he winds up having this confrontational conversation with him on the phone while i'm in the car. He's talking to him. And he goes, I want to know what you are because you're not a fucking black belt. So tell me what's going on. And he says, no, no, no, I'm a black belt in Japanese jujitsu.

It's different. Time goes on. He tells this guy to go fuck himself. Time goes on. The guy winds up killing someone. He winds up murdering this girl that he's having sex with murdering her husband and he gets caught driving around her his car the guy's car after he's killed the guy and then he winds up trying to recruit a friend to kill someone it's like this whole big thing

and he winds up going to jail and he's in jail now but i remember thinking okay you don't know shit about catching and spotting liars because you didn't you didn't spot that guy as being completely full of shit like i thought he was a little full of shit but i didn't know he was a like a complete sociopath and a murderer yeah yeah so this is an interesting question using Using that scenario, would you have done a better job if all I gave you was the transcript of this guy's speech? So there's a lot of interest in this question in the community of people who study deception. So there's many different, I can, suppose I'm trying to improve my ability to spot lies, we can do three things. I can listen to you face to face as you're

telling me something is either true or false. We could do this entirely on the telephone. So I don't see you, I just hear you. Or I can just read the transcript of what you say and try to decide whether it's true or false. And it seems to be the case that we're better when we just

when we remove sight and sound and all we have are just the plain words on the page. In other words, what being present does is it introduces all kinds of noisy information that just distracts us from the core question of whether the truth is being told. So maybe it was, maybe if all you had was a transcript, and as this guy is describing this particular, what was the name of the move? It's a twister. The twister. Maybe as you're looking at the way he, and all you're doing is focusing on the precise way in which he describes this very, very intricate move, and you would realize, oh, he actually doesn't understand what he's talking about. And you would have seen it clearly in that moment if you, but maybe there was something about his presentation that threw you off the scent.

It was the move itself. See, because if he just said, oh, I got the guy in an arm bar. Well, a lot of people catch people in arm bars. It's a very common move. You learn it first day of jujitsu. Yeah. You can catch someone. Someone makes a mistake and you're a white belt and they reach up and you grab their arm you can catch an arm bar yeah twisters very difficult to pull off very difficult yeah it's only been done in the ufc

maybe once i think chan sung jung the Korean zombie, pulled it off once. He may be the only guy, maybe one other guy ever. Yeah. This guy was delusional. Oh, it was horse shit. And the only thing that we were taking into consideration, like he was supposedly fighting in Thailand,

which turns out there was no fight at all. He was a complete liar. Yeah. The only thing that we were taking into consideration was maybe this guy fought a scrub. Like he could have fought someone who really didn't know anything and he said let me try the twister on him but then that's like you'd have to be beating the guy so badly you just would end the fight you wouldn't do a twister on him the only time you do a twister is if you're a highly skilled grappler and you think you could put someone in a position that they don't understand because it's a confusing position it's a position that there's a common position called

back mount where you would choke someone or you would transition to other moves from there and he was almost there but not quite there because you're you're kind of on the side so even seasoned grapplers occasionally make mistakes and get caught in the twister but you have to be a fucking wizard to pull that off on somebody yeah it's not something you have to be really good it's not something that you can just do so when he said he did it we were all like what he was if he said he head kicked the guy and knocked him out oh well that well that happens all the time he said he punched the guy hit him with an elbow and cut him the The referee stopped the fight. All that stuff is real. That happens all the time. He chose this one signature move of my friend Eddie,

and we were both like, there's something wrong here, man. There's something wrong here. There's a hilarious version of this on – I'm a runner, and on all the running message boards is one called Let's Run, which is this – and they're constantly catching people who lie about their marathon times. It's a hilarious little- How do they catch them?

Well, there's all kinds of reasons. But a lot of it is it starts with the eyeball test. So there'll be a, you know, because a lot of marathons have to take pictures of the participants at various points during the race. And someone will claim to run like a 240 marathon. Now, 240, you do really good to run. It's not world-class running but it's very good to be serious to run 240 so they'll eyeball someone who claims to run 240 and say no

but i mean just looking at them 10 you know 10 15 extra pounds right there they should be they should look like they've been running they look totally fresh as a daisy right now they're what are they doing wearing those shoes no 240 marathon you know it's like it's that kind of process and then goes the second order where they do complicated analysis of splits and they do all this kind of thing but it often begins with the same thing it's like this guy's trying to claim to be this and it's like no no no that's right that's not working that's like a um i love those insidery, I have this thought about how much culture shifted through the Internet and how much culture will shift again in even more astronomical way once we can read minds. And I don't think we're far away from that.

I think we're a few decades away from some technology that allows people to establish intent and to see thoughts and i think they're very there's some sort of theoretical work they're doing on this right now and there's there's different models that they're trying to achieve i think that's going to eliminate a lot of the bullshit of communication and i think it's going to happen really quickly just like google sort of eliminates a lot of the bullshit of communication and i think it's going to happen really quickly just like google sort of eliminates a lot of the bullshit of people telling stories about something and someone goes what what happened wait a minute what year and they google it that didn't happen and they can find out like almost instantaneously i think we're going to be able to figure that out with people i think there's going to be a way where you can where we can see intent and we can read minds.

I don't think we're far away from that. I mean, I know this Neuralink thing that Elon Musk is very, Elon's very hush-hush about. There's these different sort of electronic brain interfaces that they're trying to experiment with. Yeah. But wouldn't your worry be that if we read we're able to read someone's thoughts intentions what we would in fact discover is uh even more confusing than what

we know now in other words maybe what's inside my head right now are 35 different thoughts and intentions warring at with each other murder scenarios yes then malcolm just sort of keeps everything everything on the surface super normal i think it's totally true think about it most of us there's any number of things think about the yes the list of the list of possible things that could come out of my mouth at this very moment is infinite infinite. Right? It is infinite. There are, at this very moment, God knows how many scenarios swirling around my head about what should I say next. Right.

And why is my intention to try and make you laugh, to impress you, to piss you off, to disagree with you, to agree with you? I mean, we can go on and on and on. All those are in play. So you really want to look inside my head and get, you're not going to get clarity. It's going to be a mess. Or we're going to realize we're no, no. Yeah. All those are in play. So you really want to look inside my head and get, you're not going to get clarity. It's going to be a mess.

Or we're going to realize we're all a mess. Yes. Like it'll make us feel a little bit better. Like, oh, everybody's out of their fucking mind. But would you want that? Yes. You would? Yes.

I don't want that. I'm endlessly curious about, I know my mind is such a mess and there's so much chaos going on there. I want to know what's going on in other people's. I want to know how fucked up am I or am I normal? Is it standard? Here's my fear. I have many fears about this kind of thing. But my fear would be as follows, that I cannot count the number of times when I have had reactions to things that people have said in the moment

that turn out to be wrong, deeply and badly wrong. And one of the things that I have learned as an adult is to deeply distrust those kinds of reactions and to wait. And very often what will happen in my case, sometimes the waiting takes a long time. I'm the kind of person who sometimes a month will pass and I will think back on a situation and I'll think, oh, my God, I totally misunderstood that. This person who I thought was a jackass is actually someone, you know, a lovely person who I should give a second chance to or whatever. That comment that someone made that I thought was stupid is, in fact, extremely thoughtful and insightful. This will happen weeks, months later, whatever. extremely thoughtful and insightful this will happen weeks months later whatever if you were able to read my mind in the moment you would judge me for my mistake and not give me an easy way to

correct it in other words you would trap me in like what if this would have had a reaction to something you said in this conversation in which i said jesus i can't believe that that's dumb and then i'm driving back to la tonight and i tonight, and I think, oh, actually, oh, that's really interesting. I hadn't thought about it at the time. I don't want you to short-circuit my learning process about you. I want to give me the privacy of my six hours of thinking about what you said and allow me, give me that kind of time to come to a reasoned and insightful conclusion about how I feel.

That's interesting, but we're talking then about only one person having the technology. Because if you both have the technology, then there wouldn't be any issue. There wouldn't be confusion as to why someone was saying something. You have a much clearer path to understanding their thought process and their intent behind it. Really? Yeah.

I mean, if one person has it, right, then yeah, I get it. If I can read your mind, oh, I said something and Malcolm thinks I'm a retard. Like, you know, there's that. But there's another possibility that both people have it. And this is also one of the things that would be fascinating about this is one of the things about forbidden words is forbidden words carry with them intent they have automatic intent right but you can say the exact same word and have different intent behind it. If we could understand clearly what your intent is, then taboo words would automatically become meaningless. It wouldn't mean, it's not about sound you make.

It's not about forbidden sounds. What it's about is thoughts and what you're trying to convey and what's happening to you as a human being. Who are you? What is your process for the way you communicate? What is your process for the way you're trying to develop these thoughts in your mind and express them to people? Well, part of the problem with that is language, right? And part of the problem with making certain aspects of our language forbidden is you limit people's ability to colorfully communicate and express themselves in certain ways. I think that alone, just eliminating that alone, eliminating confusion and also highlighting,

you know, you could highlight real problems with people's thoughts and the way people communicate, but also eliminate many problems. So, you'd say, oh, he doesn't mean that. Like you could see what he means. Like this is where his mind is. You could see, you could literally see the thoughts. Yeah, yeah, I guess. I would also, let me throw out another complicating factor.

It still leaves the question of cultural context. Yes, of course. One of the things I got really interested when I was writing my book was how our kind of cultural frames of reference profoundly complicate our attempts to understand other people. And so in your scenario where I have some kind of window into your thinking and intention, I still need to know, in order to make sense of you, I still need to have a very clear idea of the cultural kind of rules of the road that you're using. And they're likely to be different from mine. Particularly if – I mean I'm a Canadian and you're not. But imagine if the difference between us was more profound.

Right. Then you're still like – there's a really cool thing I've been obsessed with, with memory. I'm doing all these things on memory in my, in revisionist history this coming season. And I was reading about this really fascinating experiment, which is done with Korean and American college students, adults, essentially. And what I do is I give you three circles, paper circles, and one is past, one is present, one is future. And I say those are three concepts. Represent those three concepts with these three circles.

So the American kid has past here, present in the middle, future over on the right, right? Three three circles. So the American kid has past here, present in the middle, future over on the right, right? Three independent circles. The Korean kid piles all three circles on top of each other. Now, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. It means something interesting, right?

It means that they're not separating these three modes the way that we are. They're certainly coming at experience with a very different set of assumptions. So maybe, so I think of the Civil War as a long time ago, but if I'm Korean, maybe the Civil War is as present in my kind of consciousness as something that happened last week. Maybe that's what that means. I'm not exactly sure. I'm sort of guessing because i don't know the i haven't fully investigated but

the point is there are i've just given you one random example there are way incredibly different rules that different cultures use to organize experience so if i'm looking at you and reading your thoughts i have to know those rules because those rules are sorting out how people – so this is only – I'm not dissing this notion that you're talking about. I'm saying that it needs to have another layer as well. A cultural layer. A cultural layer, which kind of alerts me to how you're organizing experience. That certainly makes sense. No, that certainly makes sense. It's interesting when you think about like the Tower of Babel, right? Like this idea that at one point in time, everyone spoke the same language and God sort of set it up so that it was, we're never going to be able to really communicate with each other because everybody has a bunch of different languages and we'll never'll never figure it out that's the sort of crunched up version of it if there was a way to change the way like all languages are essentially little symbols that are written down on paper typed out and then

sounds you make with your mouth and they convey intent if there was a way to do another version of language a universal version of language that's eventually adopted like i'm reading this book about these people that were kidnapped um uh by native americans and they were assimilated into the tribes they learned the the language and this happened over a course of a couple years and i was thinking like what would that be like if you you know that's how you learn a language you're kidnapped by you know what i mean yeah like you got but if there was a new language how long would it take for adults to learn a new language if someone came up with a new language of completely universal characters and this language is

conveyed through this technology rather than through your mouth. So it's your thoughts. Your thoughts interface with some sort of technology. It creates whatever, hieroglyphs, some sort of visual language that we all agree upon. And then this is universal. This is universal throughout all cultures. Yeah. And the only thing that we we'd

be confused is about assumptions and rules as far as like what's okay well you could do that can't can't we kind of do that already in a sense that we could have a universal language and then we have a device you know sitting on our phone or something yeah that when we i'm in you know i'm in some for i'm in bulgaria and I'm ordering coffee, I speak into the device and it simply translates, either translates me directly into Bulgarian, that's actually not that hard, or it translates this into this common language

that the Bulgarian translator service is. And if you think of the technology at a slightly more advanced level than it is now it could be done in a very seamless um uh way like it doesn't have to be some bulky box it could literally be that um i am speaking in english and what you're hearing is there's a filter and what you're what you're hearing is this other language i mean well don't don't google buds or whatever they are there's the air you know the airpod version of those google things i think there's something some technology that actually enables you to instantaneously translate that yeah google will

do it for you yeah although you hate for google to have one more thing over us right it's like not enough that they should control nine-tenths of our life we're also going to let them control our communication I remember as a kid reading I used to love Doonesbury did you read Doonesbury yes and there's a hilarious thing in Doonesbury where I forgot who Uncle Duke or somebody is going to China and was Uncle Duke

Hunter S. Thompson yeah he was and he was appointed ambassador I think he was appointed American ambassador to China and that was a joke and he would go and he was appointed ambassador. I think he was appointed American ambassador to China, and that was a joke. And he would go and he would meet with, like, the head of, you know, the president of China, and he would say the most incredibly incendiary, outrageous things, and the translator never translated what he said. He would say this outrageous, offensive thing, and the translator would say, you know,

the flowers are blooming today, which is kind of like that. I just thought that was hilarious. Jamie had a thought once that hieroglyphs for 2019 are essentially emojis. It's kind of... I mean, what you're

sort of saying is, yeah, like the internet, you have to translate English into bits in order for the computer to translate it into an emoji it's almost i feel like that's almost what you're saying although it's not exactly it's a being it's a beginning step yeah it's like step one to yeah it just seems like this is not the best we can do north noises with your mouth and then you know learning english is incredibly complicated for someone who speaks Mandarin and vice versa. It's all very – what if we all said, hey, look, this is some new version of a language.

Like whenever there's a – whether it's Contact or whenever there's some movie about extraterrestrials, there's always a team of scientists and linguists and geniuses to get together and they go, look, we're going to establish a universal language to communicate with these people. In Closing Encounters of the Third Kind, it was music. Do, do, do, do, do. That they would figure out some way.

We're going to figure out a way to talk. If we had some enormous financial incentive or some enormous crisis was in play and we had to all communicate with the same language and so remember when they were trying to push them well you're from canada the the metric system was actually real over there it was real you know when i was in uh high school they were trying to push the metric system yeah and i remember there was like a concerted effort they're like we're gonna have to learn the metric system because it's a universal system that the whole world uses and they gave up the united states gave up why The United States gave up.

Why was this possible in Canada and not possible in the United States? Because we're assholes. You guys are 20% less assholes, at least 20%. I don't know how is that possible. I've always thought, because I grew up in Boston, which is also cold. I always thought cold weather made assholes, because it's like you're just like, fuck, it's cold, fuck thisholes because it's like you just like fuck it's cold fuck this fuck you fuck you because boston is filled with people that want to get drunk and fight and then

a lot of them are really mean which is a great place to grow up you develop a thick skin and particularly like as a comedian it's a great place to start out and do comedy you learn how to do it right i don't think boston is mean because of the cold. I think it is. Yeah, I think it is as well. The coldest parts of Canada, like, you know, I know lots of people, lots of members of my family are from Winnipeg, which is seriously cold. Nicest people. Nicest people. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't.

That's what I said. It doesn't. My theory sucks. I think it's the children of very rough immigrants. And they stayed in these communities. Irish and Italians. Yes. Exactly.

That's what I am. And so the immigrants of these people that were willing to take a risk and get on a boat when there wasn't even YouTube videos to watch. These are savage people that made it over here. And they're really rough. And they had rough childhoods, and they raised rough children, and the echoes of that persist on the East Coast of the United States. The amount of drinking that went on in Irish immigrant communities is – it's funny because I stumbled across – years ago, I was – I've always been obsessed with drinking and alcohol.

In fact, I have a chapter on it in this book. But so years ago, it turns out that the place in America where alcohol studies, as they're called, were really birthed was New Haven, which makes perfect sense. Connecticut, yeah. Makes perfect sense. So in the 50s, a bunch of people get really, really interested in understanding how drinking works. And in New Haven, of course, you have the perfect model because you have two very large groups of immigrants. You have Irish and Italians, right? In all of New England, you've got those two to work with. And of course, they could not be more different in the way they drink. So even in immigrant Italian communities

in the 50s, these are people who are, in terms of volume of alcohol consumed, way up at the top. They're drinking with every meal. They're making wine in their backyards. But the levels of alcoholism are infinitesimal. The amount of social dysfunction associated with drinking can't – I mean it's just not – it's negligible. These are the healthiest drinkers you can imagine. Side by side are the Irish. And I don't need to tell you that the story is very different in the Irish.

Why is that? It's a super interesting question. You've got – so they're not – one group's not richer than the other. They come to America not at the same time, but they're 19th century, early 20th century, come to America in large numbers. There are some, you know, Irish culture looks a lot, but it was Catholic, right? Now, there may be Catholic in different ways, but on the surface, these are, you'd think that they would use the bottle in the same way. No. The Irish are, the Irish, the men are slinking off to the pub. And in Italy, everyone's gathered around steaming bowls of pasta and drinking like one and a half glasses of wine, mild homemade wine with their dinner.

It's like night and day. It's unbelievable. Is it because one is a whiskey culture? Because whiskey is rough stuff. I mean you really can't have much before you're off the rails. Yeah. There's some of that. Yeah, the attachment to wine in the Italian community probably saves them a good deal of their alcohol-related heartbreak.

I don't know too much about the actual – is there a difference between the way different alcohol affects you? Does the wine alcohol actually affect you by volume, by the actual percentage of alcohol? Does it affect you differently than beer or differently than whiskey or differently than tequila? Because that's what people always say. Oh, if I drink tequila, I get crazy. Like people always have these stories. But is that true?

Have you had a certain percentage of alcohol, is it just – We equalize the alcohol concentration. Is it all the same in here? Yes, because for me, wine makes me warm and friendly and it makes me sleepy. I mean it doesn't make me energetic. Whiskey makes me crazy. i think it's a crazy drug i think when people drink shots of jack daniels they just want to go whoa they they want to get crazy they want to do dumb shit it makes them want to do dumb things shots in particular

makes people want to do dumb things makes people get crazy makes people loud that makes people get crazy. It makes people loud. It makes people Irish. Right? Yeah. It's better you saying this than me. Well, I'm quarter Irish. I can get away with it for a little while. Only a quarter? That's it. Yeah, mostly Italian.

Oh, I see. You're at the cusp of these two drinking traditions. Yes, yes. Oh, I see. But Rogan, you're fooling us. It's an Irish. You're fooling us with Rogan now. Yes. Yeah, it's an Irish name.

Because we would think that you were majority Irish with that. Yes. Yeah, and I could be dark Irish if you looked at me. If you would. Well, I'm reserved English and Jamaican. Jamaican's not big drinkers in the same kind of – the difference actually fascinatingly of the many weird alcohol facts, if you look at young people, it's like a college-age young people in America and look at their drinking habits. students drink and get drunk markedly less than white kids. Real differences in drinking behavior by race at that age. Asian students don't drink much either.

Drinking is like a white thing. It's like a crazy white thing increasingly or problematic drinking. I thought that was fascinating. It is fascinating. I don't know why that's so. It's revered in our culture more it's uh yeah i mean getting fucked up is celebrated in white culture well this you know in the alcohol chapter of my book the i talk about all the strange things that have happened with drinking patterns on campus and i was struck in

doing that chapter i was interested in the connection between drinking and drunkenness and sexual assault on campus. Because all of those, the overwhelming majority, if you talk to people who study sexual assault on campus, they will tell you that you almost never see one of these cases where both parties aren't drunk, right? Right. Which doesn't explain them entirely, but it's a huge factor in making sense of what happens. And when you dig into that, you see these really weird patterns.

First off, when I was in college, I did not know, and I went to college in Canada, not a teetotaling population. I did not know a single person who had ever been blackout drunk. And then now, if you talk to a 20-year-old

college student in America, they will name friends of theirs who get blackout drunk on a weekly basis. What is the drinking age in Canada and what was it when you were in college? When I was in college, I was 18. Yeah, I think that might be a big factor.

I've been talking to friends about this about europe about how in europe uh particularly in italy and france you're allowed to drink wine at a very young age yeah and the taboo aspect of it the forbidden fruit all that goes away it's a just it's a i don't think young kids should be drinking because i think it's terrible for your brain development but i think It's a, just, it's a, I don't think young kids should be drinking because I think it's terrible for your brain development, but I think there's a thing in keeping them from drinking or making it illegal where it becomes so taboo

and so intoxicating that they can't wait until they can legally do it or they try to get a hold of it before it's legal and it has a certain excitement to it that just doesn't, it doesn't have in parts of Europe. Yeah. You've given get a hold of it before it's legal and it has a certain excitement to it that it just doesn't have in parts of Europe. Yeah. You've given it a kind of – so there's all kinds of – the things that are new are way less beer and way more hard liquor.

So hard liquor, when I was in school in Canada in the 80s, 95% of what we drank was beer. It's just not – there wasn't any whiskey or even – or tequila or a vodka at our parties. It's just beer. Beer, kegs, keg parties. Yeah. Really hard to get blackout drunk on beer. I mean blackout – to get to blackout, you've got to be – you've got to get to like – I've forgotten what the exact number is. Ten drinks or something.

Well, it's point – you've got to blow like 0.18 or something. I've forgotten what there's a sort of magic number where people... Is that for everybody? Because some people, they just get gerbil eyes. Like there's some dudes, they'll have a couple of drinks and they get shark eyes. You know those dark, like expressionless eyes like, hey, man, are you still here? Yeah. Like they're just wandering around like a person with doll eyes.

There's nothing there. Well, the issue with blackout is just at what point does your hippocampus shut down and you cease to have the ability to make memories? So that's a very narrow clinical explanation. So there may be a whole different set of manifestations of drunkenness that have to do with alcohol's effect on other parts of your brain. But blackout is just about your hippocampus. of drunkenness that have to do with alcohol's effect on other parts of your brain. But blackout is just about your hippocampus.

And past a certain blood alcohol concentration, your hippocampus just goes offline. Essentially, you just pull the plug on the hippocampus. And then so nothing that's coming in is being stored. Wow. So you can continue to communicate. I could be blackout drunk right now. But does it vary with people? Does it – the number of percentage of alcohol? It would vary depending, I think, on drinking history.

Yeah. But, I mean, there's a kind of a – there's a consensus figure where most people – I wish I – it's in my book. I wish I could remember. I think it's something like 0.16 or something like that. If you think of the level, legal level for drinking, for driving is 0.08. I think it's roughly 2x that level. And most people at that level will be at risk, will have at least the beginnings of memory impairment. risk, will have at least the beginnings of memory impairment.

So that feeling when you get really drunk at a party and the next morning you can only remember little bits and pieces of what happened that night, that's because your hippocampus was, at your moment of peak intoxication, your hippocampus was starting to shut down and just wasn't taking in new memories. It's really interesting too because some of our most interesting minds and some of the best communicators relied on alcohol heavily.

And it made that, like Hitchens, it made him a more interesting communicator when he was drunk, when he would have a drink. You know, I mean, right? Like he would be on Bill Maher. You could tell he was lit. And he was so eloquent and so articulate. Beautiful phrasing. So remember, though, this is an interesting point and a crucial point about Blackout, which is your hippocampus doesn't necessarily control how articulate you are or how fluid your speech is.

It's just about memory. So Hitchens could have been the most articulate person in the world, but the next morning he would not have remembered a single thing he said on Bill Maher. I mean, I'm assuming if he was drunk to the point. I don't think he was blackout. No, he wasn't blackout. But you don't know.

There's fascinating stories in the literature about when people were discovering blackout in the 50s, and there would be these stories like some guy would come in, he would wake up in Las Vegas, and they would there would be these stories like they would some guy would come in he would wake up in las vegas and he would say what am i doing in las vegas like and he would go and he would see his clothes hanging in the closet and he would say what what's going on and then he would like go down to the desk and say what and they said oh you checked in last night and he would look in his wallet and he would see he had a plane ticket from Cleveland.

And they would reconstruct. And in fact, this very story was told in one of the big medical journals in the 50s. The guy reconstructs. He's a salesman living in like St. Louis who gets really, really drunk. And then his hippocampus shuts down. And he continues to function. So he goes, gets in his car, drives to the airport,

buys a plane ticket, goes to Vegas. He doesn't know what he does in Vegas. Does whatever he does to function. So he goes, gets in his car, drives to the airport, buys a plane ticket, goes to Vegas. He doesn't know what he does in Vegas. Does whatever he does in Vegas. And then wakes up like two days later. Oh, my God. Hippocampus is suddenly back online. He's like, what am I doing in Vegas? That is-

Two days. Two days. Oh, my God. The point is that you can- That was my point. I could be blackout right now. And still communicate. You wouldn't know it.

I don't, it's not like you can tell. I can't tell whether you have a headache, can I? Right. No clue. So you don't know what's going, I mean, until we come up with that machine that you were talking about. You can't tell that my hippocampus isn't working. Except if you answer, if you ask me the same question. This is how you, the only way you can do it. You're at a party. You think someone's blackout. Ask them the same question. This is the only way you can do it.

You're at a party. You think someone's blackout. Ask them the same question over and over again and see if they respond. Like, say, why are you asking me? So literally, I would say, wait, did you say you're a quarter Irish? And then I would just have to wait,

like, say five seconds, and say, Joe, did you say you're a quarter Irish? And at a certain point, to wait, like, say five seconds, and say, Joe, did you say you were a quarter Irish? And at a certain point, you're going to say, Malcolm, why? Stop it. If you don't say that, you're blackout drunk. But if you do, could you be blackout drunk and still have, like, a tiny memory? No.

Okay, man, you just asked me that. Okay, so the hippocampus doesn't shut down all at once. So what it does is it shuts down slowly. So let's imagine we're both doing shots. So after, I mean, I'm quite sure your capacity, I'm, I mean, you're like, I'm half your weight. Am I? I don't know what you are. You're like 200 pounds.

I'm 126. Okay. So we're going to deal with alcohol very differently. But let's assume we're doing shots of tequila. There's a point at where things start to get hazy. So you might remember that I asked you that question, or you might not. And then as we keep drinking and our blood alcohol levels get higher and higher, at a certain point, your hippocampus will completely, like the off switch, has been thrown. So it goes from being sluggish and impaired to just being down. And what brings it back? Well, your blood alcohol level has to fall to the point where it can work again.

So you fall asleep, and over the course of eight hours of sleep, your alcohol is processed by your liver, blood alcohol falls, hippocampus snaps back into action. Wow. What a ridiculous drug to be our most socially acceptable drug. Yeah. Totally. And then the Vegas thing where they give it to you for free in a place where you can gamble, which is really sneaky. That's one of the weirder laws ever,

that a person could literally lose their house while they're blackout drunk. Crazy. I mean, in retrospect, imagine you were, let's do a little ranking thing here. We have three vices, and I know exactly where you're going to be going with this, but we have three things we want to prioritize.

Dope, alcohol, smoking, right? Cigarettes. Cigarettes. You can ban one. Actually, rank them in order. We can start from scratch. I'm saying, Joe, we're starting over. Okay.

What you say goes. So right now, the way we have dealt with these is um smoking is is becoming the most taboo of those three cigarettes uh uh marijuana second and alcohol is the one that we have the least inhibitions about right my argument would be that that list is exactly backwards that it should be alcohol should be the most taboo uh marijuana should be actually not exactly backwards it should be alcohol the most taboo cigarettes the second most marijuana the third that's how i would do yeah i would agree with that yeah yeah so we're but basically we have it completely upside down. But I think for some people, like, look, there's obviously terrible things that happen to you when you smoke cigarettes.

But every time? Yeah. See, I've smoked a cigarette or two before shows. Like I've smoked a cigarette, I mean, or two. I've never smoked two in a row, but I've smoked a cigarette before two before shows like i've smoked a i mean i mean or two i've never smoked two in a row but i've smoked a cigarette before i've done shows like dave chappelle gave me one of his cigarettes recently uh tony hinchcliffe's giving me a cigarette i'm not a cigarette smoker but there's something cool about the head rush that you get when you smoke a cigarette i hesitate to say that and this is a person who's done a lot of drugs i've done a lot i've smoked a lot of pot

and i've done psychedelics and i talk about them openly i have hesitation about telling people that i've enjoyed a cigarette well because because it's because i think it's so bad for you it's it's it's i think when i talk about doing mushrooms i think mushrooms are good for you i think it makes you freak out i think think it illuminates parts of your consciousness that I think a lot of people guard and protect and shield. And I think sometimes doing something that breaks down those walls is good for you ultimately overall. There's a little bit of an adjustment period, but I think you learn something about the normal state of consciousness. I don't think you learn much when you smoke cigarettes. I just think there's just a little bit of a head rush that you get out of it. But I know so many people that are sick from cigarettes,

so many people that can't quit them, so many people that have died from cancer. I mean, I personally have known several people that have died from cancer from smoking cigarettes. So I hesitate in saying it, but I don't want to be dishonest. I've had them. I don't smoke cigarettes, though. I've never bought a pack. That's a cigar. I've smoked cigars.

I like them sometimes. I just think it's a terrible thing to get hooked on. And I would say the same thing with alcohol i know people that have had real problems with alcohol that have been alcoholics and they have to go to meetings and you know they're on 12-step programs and you know i would never offer them a drink but if you said hey let's do a shot right now let's celebrate this is a wonderful conversation let's have a glass of whiskey i can have a glass of whiskey and not drink again it doesn't bother me okay i don't i don't have that whatever that is yeah but some people do yeah i hesitate

i hesitate in glorifying that too yeah and for young people it scares the shit out of me if i see i i probably drank for the first time when i was probably like i was in high school i think it was probably 14 or 15, first time I ever got drunk with my friends. You know, we got a hold of some Jack Daniels or something and it made me throw up every time I smelled it. It's the Irish legal drinking age. Yes.

Well, you know, it's just friends, you know, listening to classic rock and getting drunk in Boston. But it's something I occasionally enjoy. I enjoy alcohol I like having a drink of wine With a glass of wine with a meal I like having a drink with friends Occasionally

But I don't have a problem with it And I know people who do And so I feel weird talking about it Knowing those people that do have a problem with it With pot though The people that have a problem with pot it's rare and it's usually people that have some sort of an and i do believe there there is an issue with people having some sort of an underlying schizophrenic issue that could come from

especially high doses if they smoke a lot of pot in one night they can have a schizophrenic episode i've actually seen it um particularly from edibles i've seen it um but that's to me that's absolutely the least taboo and i think there's a lot of benefits to pot i think pot makes you more sociable i think it makes you friendlier i mean some people get paranoid from it but i think that's what that really is is marijuana illuminating how vulnerable you actually are. Yeah. We sort of protect ourselves from this overwhelming existential angst that you get when you get high on pot. Yeah. And people say, I don't like it. It makes me paranoid.

Well, the reality is you're vulnerable. We're all very, very, very vulnerable. And we just somehow or another make it to like, how old are you? 56. I'm 52. We made it. We made it to this age somehow or another make it How old are you? 56 I'm 52 We made it We made it to this age Somehow or another

Despite all the paranoia We got here But we don't have to I mean it's like Really You know Life is crazy We're in these metal boxes

With combustion engines You know Like trusting the people next to us Going 60 miles an hour Paying attention Not looking at their phone You know It's like It's very And then we get in planes and who knows what the fuck's going on with the engine this guy's flying it over the sky it's we're very vulnerable all the time there's

diseases and you know not to mention you know war and all sorts of other things it could well we're in la not to mention mention... Everything. Earthquakes. Fire, yeah. Yeah, fires. Yes. No, my thing on this is simply the collateral damage. Yeah. So leave the individual out of it and ask how much social damage is caused

by any of those things. Okay. And alcohol and that. Number one. Just buy a fire. Buy a bullet. Yeah, you don't get... You know what's amazing to me

is how the people who make alcohol get a free ride. It's incredible to me that like if I said to you that I was on the board of Philip Morris, you would say, Malcolm, that's pretty screwed up. Yeah. And you would be – you'd have a problem with it if i said that oh i'm you know i'm on the board of anheuser-busch you probably would hit me up for tickets to the super bowl right it's just not the same whereas there's no in terms of the amount of social damage what what anheuser-busch has created has produced a hundred times the social damage than what philip morris has produced yeah right like you know so it's so it's like, I've always puzzled about it.

I don't know how we got it in our heads like to treat one like it's completely taboo and the other we kind of shrug. You know, there are a bunch, I was reading about this recently, how many colleges accept, not just accept alcohol advertising and sponsorship,

but you go to a college football game and Bud Light will be an active sponsor of the event, will have some huge relationship with the school. This is crazy. I mean, it's crazy, right? This is the drug that is causing so many problems for young people particularly on campuses and the schools are hand in glove with the manufacturers of it because it's socially acceptable because they don't have to worry about repercussions because we give it up

we give it a like and in a way that they would never have marlboro marlboro yeah that would be oh my god people would pick it yeah whereas it's not you know i don't know it's true it's a strange kind of uh we were so messy people are so messy and that is that's a very good example of how messy we are do you i'm i'm now um excuse me uh i didn't realize for some reason i hadn't realized you were from boston why are so many comics from Boston? It's a hard place. Is that what it is? Mean women, drunk guys.

First of all, am I right? Am I right in thinking, there does seem to be like, why is it every time I turn around and I listen to some comic and they say, well, when I was growing up in Boston, I'm like, of course you're from Boston.

Oh, there's a lot. There's a lot. There's a lot. And there are a specific kind of, it's like the audiences there have a very short attention span. They're not going to coddle you. If you suck, they will boo you off the stage. It's terrible for your self-esteem when you're young.

Yeah. It builds character. But it doesn't just build character. It builds the correct approach towards an audience that you have to realize these people do not. Look, these people do not look these people got babysitters they they spent money they're here they could have been in a movie they could have done a lot of the recreational activities they've chosen to come to the comedy club stop fucking around get to work like like treat this like this is and the consequences of bombing

are horrific right the feeling is it's one of the worst feelings a person can have yeah so wait when was the last time you bombed it's been a while since i bomb bombed but i've had jokes that ate shit yeah well that's this is there's a process that i go through every two years i put out a special and then i write a new one and you're in the process of writing a new one you don't write it in a vacuum you write it and then i bring that stuff to the comedy store and fortunately with the comedy store you're doing 15 minute sets with you know 15 other talented people so you you don't have to be up there for a long time and you get it in the comp the the comedy store also the audience is very unique in that a lot of them understand that they're going to see these guys like

Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock and work out comedy. Oh, I see. They know it's a work in progress. Yes. They understand it. And like, you could joke around about it. Like, that bit sucks. I swear to God, that's going to be good in about four months.

That bit's in the oven right now. Because there's concepts that you have that you go, there's got to be a way to make this work. But that way that I just did is not the way. Fuck. And you always trust the reaction you get. In other words, you don't tell a joke, it bombs, and you say, actually, I think it was their problem and not mine. Never.

Never. It's never their problem. There's not a chance in hell. You can have a bad audience where a good joke doesn't go over because they're drunk and they're not paying attention or they're heckling. That's possible. Yeah. But that's the anomaly. If you have a bit and you think it's a great

bit and the audience doesn't laugh they're right you know maybe another audience would laugh maybe you're doing it in the wrong demographic or what have you but most likely that joke sucks yeah and most likely you have these ideas and you need to figure out how to rework them. Like Chris Rock told me that he's that famous bit that I love black people, I hate the N-word, right? That bit he said took him a year to work out, a full year. He said it was bombing. He couldn't get it to work right. It would fuck up his act, but he knew there was a way to do it and

then it became one of the greatest bits of all time it became this incredible classic bit but that was from him grinding just chipping away at it reworking it bringing it on stage it eats shit you bring it back you go over it you ponder it you ask questions of other great writers like what do you think you know and they're like well maybe this maybe that and then you try it again and he keeps doing it he does does it a hundred times or 200 times and then eventually it becomes bulletproof and then he gets it down to that form that you see it on his comedy special where it's just boom punch line bam punch line boom punch line bam and people like because it's so good but there's a process to

doing that and sometimes you have this idea in your head and you're like i think there's something there i don't i just gotta figure out how to get into their head yeah and then i gotta figure out how to make it in a way like what's the most palatable way for people to digest this idea because comedy is essentially a mass hypnosis right you're getting the audience to allow you to think for them for a brief period of time and so if you're at your best the punch lines are sneaky they come where you don't expect them you take people on this ride they're assuming because they're letting you think for them that you're a thoughtful person you're not going to make them feel bad for liking you and that's one of the things that people really hate. You say something mean or something thoughtless.

You betrayed. Yeah, you betrayed their trust because they've trusted you to think for them. So you have to be considerate about people's sensibilities and feelings. Especially when you're breaching a sensitive issue. You have to dance. You have to figure out a way to make this thing compatible to people's thought patterns it's funny i you know i don't i'm not a stand-up comedian but i give a lot of speeches like in in conferences and corporate settings which is a very

in some ways a very different animal in some ways quite a similar animal. I've been doing it for 20-odd years now. And the thing I'm always – that blows me away is how different audiences are. And one thing that you – after doing it for about 10 years, you start to get a little bit smarter about reading the room at the beginning to know who they are and what. And it makes a difference. Some audiences are generous, and if they see the, in my case, the punchline is not necessarily a joke, but it's the payoff to whatever story I'm telling. Some people, when they see it coming, if punchline is not necessarily a joke, but it's the payoff to whatever story I'm telling. Some people, when they see it coming, if you think about it as a line,

they'll reward you the minute they see it. They see it off in the horizon. Yes. And they'll be like, oh, it's coming, and they encourage you. Yes, yes. Some people will wait until the last possible moment, and then some people will wait a beat after the punchline is over and then think

about it and reward you those three audiences make that makes a world of difference in how you tell the story in your expectation going in in you know because if you if you think it's an early rewarding audience and it's a late rewarding audience you can get you'll be 10 minutes in and you're totally bummed out because you think it's a disaster. But in fact, it's not. And then I develop all of these shorthands about audiences. I don't know if they're true or not, but in my experience,

I remember once giving a talk to a group of engineers early on a Monday morning in Minneapolis in February. So it's freezing. It's 8 o'clock in the morning. They're engineers and they're all white guys. They're like Norwegians, right? An incredibly thoughtful, interesting audience. Listen to every word, but they are not going to reward you until they have thought about what you said and they'll wait like, you know, there's a five second lag between whatever payoff you give and their response. If you go, I've also given a talk to like a group of teachers in New Orleans. So there you have a room that is largely female that will be much more diverse. So maybe 50% black, for example, 20% Hispanic, 30% white, just way more.

They're going to reward you the minute they see it coming. They're teachers, first of all. So their whole thing is about listening, rewarding, seeing the best in something and celebrating it. I mean, completely different. And if you go into the engineers in Minneapolis and the teachers in New Orleans with the same expectation you're gonna

it's gonna be a disaster yeah right yeah teachers just wanna find a way to love you right right

and also there are women women I think my experience are far more generous than men as audience I don't know if you've had the same yeah probably yeah

but so that like and I took a long time to figure that out because you, for the longest time I would walk away from someone I would think from some talks and would think I just did committed the worst possible offense. You're doing a different thing though. It's your dance is very different, right? You're first of all, you're giving these speeches and you're doing it in these corporate environments. you're giving these speeches and you're doing it in these corporate environments you're doing it

in conference rooms i would imagine and a different kind of halls and yeah uh bright lights yeah i'm doing it at comedy clubs theaters and arenas so comedy clubs they know what they're getting into they're in and it's set up like if you go to the comedy store or the improv right it's a low ceiling it's a great hot mic there's great sound system there's opening acts that warm everybody up before i get there the stage is set and it's uh an environment that it's been established for decades this is a place to go to hear people tell jokes yeah you're doing it you're so you're you don't have an opening act you're doing it they don't even know if you're going to be funny they don't know what you're going to do you're going to talk yeah you're

going to talk about things they've been sitting in the same air-conditioned arena for six hours with one small break i mean it's like they – and listening to really – doing work. Yes. So it's – yeah, it is very, very different. Yeah. It's a super interesting – I find it incredibly rewarding. And I also find it sort of – it reaffirms my kind of faith in humanity for some reason. Interesting. I really – I'm very, very happy that I started doing it. I started doing it years and years ago.

Just to communicate with large groups of people, that reaffirms your faith. In what way? Because I'm always struck by how open – I think a lot of the rhetoric in our society now about how divided we are and blah, blah, blah, I just think it's bullshit. I think we're divided online. Online, yeah. I think if you talk to people person to person, we find a way to find common ground. Yeah.

And you go to these meetings and you know that half of the room voted one way and the other half voted the other way and that it doesn't come up. Right. It doesn't block half of you from appreciating – half of them from appreciating what you're saying. As long as you are respectful and take the time to explain what you think and why and how it matters to them, then people will listen and engage and ask really good questions. And I don't see – it's so funny. Washington is divided and online is divided. I just don't see it elsewhere. Maybe I'm not getting an accurate picture of the whole country. But in these, you know, give a talk with a group of whatever, educators in New Orleans.

You don't see this. Well, I think when it comes to political discussions, that's when people get really divided because I think they feel like they're supposed to be divided. There's a really interesting video that I watched yesterday where Donald Trump Jr. was getting heckled by these alt-right characters for not being right-wing enough i was like holy shit like this this but i i took a lot of pleasure in watching that play out not because i want donald jr to get heckled but because i this is what i've always said there's people that are just extreme and it doesn't matter if they're in Antifa or if they're in the Proud Boys if they're far left or far right it's the same thing

they're just finding an ideology and they're taking it to the extremist level and they're angry at the people who aren't woke enough or they're finding an ideology and they take it to the furthest level and they're angry at people that aren't separatists that aren't white supremacists they're angry at people that aren't separatists, that aren't white supremacists. They're angry at people that like Mexicans at all, any Mexicans.

I mean, there's people that are that racist, that are mad at subtle racism. They're mad at people that – there's just people that are extreme and you can't make everyone happy. It is impossible. And some people don't want to be happy they want to find ways in which you're not woke enough their their concern is not the overwhelming good of the world harmony peace love compatibility communication and community that's not what their concern is their concern is finding ways you're wrong so finding ways that they're right and ways that you're wrong.

So they'll find some reason why you're not woke enough. So it – My response to that was slightly different, although I think a lot of what you're saying is accurate. The reason they got upset with him was that he wouldn't do a Q&A. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay.

Now, as someone who's on his book tour and has been doing this for 20 years, let me just say, you have to do the Q&A. You have to. The Q&A is symbolically crucial. It's like everyone says, okay, everyone sees, you get up there and you do your prepared bit. And everyone's like, okay, fine. I know you can do your prepared bit, but you're asking me to spend $28 on a book. And what I want to know is, are you someone who is meaningfully engaged in the ideas that you're talking about in your book?

Right? So Q&A is where you prove that to me. Yes. Prove that you're thoughtful. Prove you care about this stuff. Prove that you wrote this and someone else didn't. Prove all those things. Yes.

He wouldn't do it. I'm sorry. I find it weird because he just did the view, which is like the worst way to have a q a i had fun on the view but but i'm saying in that situation there's everyone's talking everybody over everybody yeah you you really don't get a chance to express full thoughts yes yeah if he could do if he could do the view he can certainly do q&A at – where was he? UCLA. I've forgotten where he was.

Was it? Was it really? Where was it? But what was interesting too is that what he was using as an excuse was that the left-wing media is going to take his quotes and take them out of context. Dude, I have no sympathy for him. Well, in that case, no. It didn't make any sense.. Didn't make any sense. Doesn't make any sense.

Any sense. Just say something intelligent and meaningful, and you'll be taken seriously. That's the way the world works. Well, there's a whole video. I mean, if someone takes it out of context, you could always show the entire video. Hey, that's out of context. Why is he playing the helpless crowd? He's probably exhausted.

Well, I mean, as someone who's in, you know, like I said, in the middle of a book tour, I got no sympathy for that either. That's what you do. who's in you know like I said in the middle of a book I got no sympathy for that either that's what you that's what you do that's what you do listen I have no sympathy for him either

in this case I do not I think it's but I found it very amusing his wife or girlfriend I've forgotten what she is

which of those things she is she then disses the crowd about how the only way they could get dates is online because nobody would did you see that it's like rule number two after rule number one is do the q a rule number two is don't diss the audience by by telling them they're all losers like it's

just not what do you well there's people you know that's a thing where people want to just get get you you got them so they want to get you. People are booing, fuck you, you're a loser. No, no, no, no. You're a loser. It's just noises instead of going, love, love you, have a good one, guys. Take care. But instead, you're right. Do the Q&A.

It's not that hard to answer questions. I think there's a real problem with answering questions in front of a crowd though where people screaming out things i think real thoughtful conversation should be had one-on-one and it's if like we you and i are having this conversation it's great but if there was a third person there talking to we would have to work that guy in or that girl in we'd have to figure out when she's talking when we're talking and if you get another person okay now you got a real problem now you have four people and it's it's very

difficult if you watch those panel shows some for some reason the network news shows post-election pre-election their election cover they've still haven't figured that out they'll get seven people on they think it's like more than merrier. Like the pregame shows on NFL on Sunday. They've got so many guys. Each one of them says one sentence. Yes, and they're talking over each other and everybody's trying to get a soundbite off. Everyone has this prepared thing, this zinger. I'm going to get that

Trump guy with this one, and they're ready for it, and they're trying to interject it, and someone's talking over them. Excuse me, I'm talking, and then it degrades. I want to use the opportunity of being on the show to issue a challenge to double jump junior oh like just call me up don uh and uh i will accompany you on your book tour and interview on you on stage respectfully we'll do let's let's do a q a you and me i'll ask you questions I'll do it do you want to do that

with him yes that's something you want to do why do you want to do that I think it'll be fun what do you think would be fun about it well I think it would be

interesting without saying anything that's going to get him to not do it no no no so let's be clear about a couple things okay

this would not be a stunt I'm not doing it to do gotcha I would like to read his book thoughtfully and engage with him in the ideas in it and see for myself exactly the thing I was talking about before.

Does he want to meaningfully engage with those ideas, with someone who doesn't necessarily share them, right? Right. And that would be, I would ask for an hour, and we can do it in lieu of audience Q&A if he likes I'll just have a conversation

with him on stage so just a conversation in front of an audience that would be interesting me and Don Jr. I'd pay to see that would you pay to see that? yeah I would

let's do it his book title is the same as my 2016 Netflix title it's triggered I got there first, though, Don. You did? I beat you by three years, fella.

That's question number one. I'll say, Don, I noticed that the title of your book is the same as Joe. Why are you biting Joe Rogan's stuff? What's going on over there? He probably didn't know it existed. Bill Maher almost released his HBO specials, Triggered 2. Really? Yeah, he was going to call it Triggered 2.

But at least he sent me an email apologizing. You want to get there early. Well, you know, it's not my term. I wouldn't really care if Bill used it or if Donald Trump Jr. used it. I mean, he did, obviously. Is he Donald or Don? He's Don. Do people call him Don?

That's a good question. Isn't he Donald Trump Jr. online? But I think they distinguish the dad as Donald. Oh. So they call him, I don't know. That's one of the things I could ask him, presumably in our face-off. Maybe we should do, why am I limiting it to an hour? Oh, yeah.

Let's go Rogan rules. Let's go like two hours. Yes. Me and Don Jr. And in the second hour, we really get into it. Yeah, because that's what happens. You could keep it together. People can keep it together for 45 minutes.

You can't keep it together for three hours. In three you know who a person is you know i once gave a talk in columbia and the colombians are uh take themselves in the best way very seriously right they consider themselves the most cultured people in america yeah and they and they're they can they think they speak the most beautiful Spanish, and I'm told they may well do. So I was talking with the – I was going to go to this little kind of lecture tour of major Colombian cities. And I was talking to the organizer. And the standard question he asked was, well, how long – I should talk for some period of time and then we'll do Q&A. Well, how long do you think I should talk? And the guy goes, I don't know.

How long is three hours. He was dead serious. And you realize, like, this is the same. So when Fidel Castro would give those six-hour speeches, you realize it's not just, I mean, Castro a little bit crazy, but there's also, there are cultures that have an expectation that if you're going to go and hear somebody speak, it's not going to be over in 40 minutes, right? You have to commit to the experience. And they literally wanted me to start at nine and end at noon. Weren't the early campaign speeches for people running for president in the early days of this country, weren't they like that as well? I believe they were long affairs. Yeah.

And then you get the Gettysburg Address, which is, what is it, six minutes or something? Hmm. Or is it the inaugural? I've forgotten. One of Lincoln's most famous speeches. Very brief. Is incredibly brief. And you realize in that context where people are used to hours and hours and hours, what

an extraordinary. context where people are used to hours and hours and hours, what an extraordinary, I mean, it is, think about Lincoln as a kind of badass entertainer, not entertainer, performer. So he walks into a world where everyone's thinking they're going to be there for two hours. He sits up there and he's done in five minutes. Do you realize what a, just a power move that is? It's fantastic. It is a good move. Imagine him, imagine him. So he realize what a, just a power move that is? It's fantastic. It is a good move. Imagine him, imagine him,

so he comes in to his like aides and says this, holds it up and it's, you know, you've seen it in the Lincoln Monument on the mall.

It's two paragraphs. You know, four, what is it? I'm not, I'm Canadian. Four score, seven years ago.

Yes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Two paragraphs. They must have been like, what? These people traveled by horse and cart four hours to hear you speak. Yeah, right? Yeah, that's it. Such a great move.

It is a good move, right? We're still talking about it today. I know, yeah. It's unbelievably beautiful. Every time I go to the Lincoln Monument and read that, I am moved to tears. It is insanely gorgeous prose. As a writer, you must appreciate like economy of words, using the right words in the right place and having the right impact. And, you know, my friend Ari, he has a piece of paper that he has glued to the top of his laptop from Hemingway.

It's a quote, says the first draft of everything is shit. It's true. And there's something about someone nailing writing, someone just writing something that you go, God damn, he just fucking nailed that. Yeah, yeah. You have to mean, the trick is always, even though it's false,

you have to hold in your heart the conviction that there is a way to say this perfectly and beautifully yeah right you you so even when you're in draft one or two or five and it's not there yet you have to believe it's possible and the minute you lose that belief that it's possible it it's over. When you write, do you write on paper first and then start typing? How do you... The opposite. Type and then print it out because there's

certain things, structural things, you can only see, I think, when it's on the page and you've kind of put all the pages in front of you. Print it out, though. You don't write longhand at all, do you? No, no, no. Print it out. Then I will annotate that draft with a pen. So I

will do longhand. Absolutely. There's a... I think that our thinking is actually quite sensitive to the mode that we're using. Yes. You think differently when you're typing on a keyboard than when you have a pen in your hand. And I think it's... Not one is better than the other they're both good they're

just different and yes makes sense to use both yeah i agree it's particularly for me um my notes before i go on stage i always write out long long hand i mean right out um i write my comedy though all my thoughts essays i write them all out on a keyboard. I write typing. And then when I'm about to go on stage, like the hour or so before a show, I'll write out index cards and sometimes I'll write out entire bits. If there's a bit I'm working on and it's kind of new, I'll write it all out. And it helps tremendously with my memory.

Yeah. Something about writing things out. But writing to me on paper is so slow. It's so slow for me to actually write the words, for me to get the thoughts out. I want to get the thoughts out with a keyboard because I can just type. I can do it quickly. I can get it done. What I don't do, what a lot of people do do, is voice to text.

I don't do that. No, I don't do that. Never done that? No. Yeah. But wait, I don't do that. Never done that? No. No. But wait, I have a question that occurred to me when you were saying, you were talking about that schedule that you're on, that you do a special. Every two years.

Every two years. So are you starting, when you have to sit down and write new material, are you starting cold or do you have, in the previous year, were you kind of building up little bits and pieces that you're now putting together? Yeah, I always have little stuff that I lay aside. Like I have just pages and pages of shit that never went anywhere.

So I'll go back over that and go, man, this may be this and take that out there. And then I'll introduce all. So usually there's a window of time. Like say if my special, I film it in July, it might not air until October. So in that window, I have those four months to try to create material. So what I'll be able to do in that window, say I have a bit that I know works because it's on the special. I'll do that bit because the people haven't seen it yet.

And then after that bit, I will sandwich in some new stuff. And I'll try to make that new stuff come alive. And then I'll add a bit after that that I know is good. And then I'll sandwich in some new stuff. Make like a club sandwich of shitty jokes. It's sandwiched in between like legit bits. And then one of them will catch fire and i'm like all right this one's alive now good when you go back can you see a trajectory in your comedy like when you go

back and look at something you were you were a joke that you may have done i don't know eight years ago do you how do you react to it does it i don't work i don't but if i did i probably somewhat i would i would definitely see flaws i would go that's too wordy or that's that's clunky or that's forced or uh i don't like how i acted that out or i don't like maybe that wasn't done yet you know there's a there's a cooking period and uh everybody has a different take on it i've been my friend anthony jeselnik has a three-year cycle and he might be right he he takes the first year he just does clubs in la and develops material the second year he goes on the road and he goes to comedy clubs in the road the third year he takes that to theaters

and then he's ready to film at the end of the third year yeah and you know his last special was excellent but he's just a very good comic Very good writer But his process Might be right There's some guys That were doing it On a one year cycle They were doing A new special every year

And I don't think that's right That's gotta be Yeah It's too hard It's not just too hard The material suffers It's half cooked A lot of it is gooey

On the inside It's just not ready Yeah It's just not done. I mean, some of the bits are really good, then some of the bits aren't. And you have to fill the whole hour. And the problem is also when you're doing a special every year, you have your own audience. So those people love you.

So they're laughing at stuff that's not even that good. Like you have to be doing that in front of a bunch of people that didn't expect to see you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's hard to do so a lot of a lot of weird tricks you could play on yourself as a comic you know you could think you're better than you are or that the bits are better than they are or that you you don't have to worry about things anymore you don't have to grind you don't have to throw yourself into the gladiator pit that is the comedy store on a tuesday night but you do

you do there You do. There's no other way. If you want to be top-notch, you have to do the things that top-notch people do. I mean, there's no books written on this. There's no university course. But all the best people will tell you there's a process. This is the process. It's one of the weird art forms in that no one teaches it there's literally anybody who does teach it is terrible there's no one who can there's i've

never seen like a real world-class headliner who sells out theaters who teaches a course on comedy i've never seen it you know and i couldn't teach you how to do it anyway because your way of doing it would be very different than jamie's way of doing it would be very different than Jamie's way of doing it, which would be very different than Stephen Wright, which is very different than Sam Kinison. It's like everybody's got their own weird little thing that makes them funny. It's a matter of what is the process. How do you get it out? Who is your candidate for? I always love in any particular field, there's the insider's choice and then there's the popular choice like the most

hilarious one is if you ask an architect who their favorite architect is 99 times out of 100 you will never have heard of that it's always some obscure german guy from like the 30 you know or it's some like you know experimental dutch guy who did he's on one building and it's like amazing if you go you know it's like some he did a church outside of Antwerp and it was, it blew everyone's mind. So who's the, who's, who's your insiders? I would say the insider a pick is David Tell because David Tell is probably one of the greatest comics of all time.

It doesn't get enough love because he has no social media presence he wears the same hat and the same shirt and the same jacket and the same pants every day he has no thought whatsoever about his look all he does is just write new and better jokes constantly he's one of the most prolific comics but, but he'll still have a hard time selling places out, and it doesn't make any sense. Although, lately, he and Jeff Ross have done this thing called Bumping Mics, where they go on stage, and they sort of work together, and they talk shit. And, like, Jeff will say something funny, and then Dave will say something funny, and Dave will do his bits, and Jeff will make fun of them, and they'll go.

And it's really entertaining, and they do a series of shows doing that, and that has elevated his profile. And for that, I'm i'm very very thankful how long was he sort of in the wilderness he's been out there forever he used to have a show on comedy central way back in the day um called uh what was it called insomniac yeah insomniac thank you yeah and it was like he would go out after shows and they would you know go do weird things in these towns and he would get blackout drunk and he was an alcoholic at towns, and he would get blackout drunk. And he was an alcoholic at the time, and he was getting hammered drunk. And then he quit.

He got sober. And rare in comedy that someone gets sober and becomes much better. But that's what happened with Dave. He's a much better comic now than he even was then and what so and what's your when you see someone like that perform and you're you know someone who's extraordinarily talented and good what is your emotional reaction to it do you run home and re-examine all the stuff you're doing do you i mean what's it certainly inspiring yeah when someone's really good i always want to write that that is the feeling i always like god i gotta go to work i gotta get to work but also i've cherished and held on to like a like a sacred ember that i'm trying to keep keep alive

my fan my my um my my love of being a fan of stand-up comedy like i like watching it i'm a fan i love it like i like going to see it like to this day. I'm working with my friend Joey Diaz tonight, who I think is the funniest guy alive. I'm happy. I'm going to go see comedy. I'm going to see him. I'd still like watching. I'd still enjoy it. I didn't for a while.

In the early days, I was too ambitious, and I was judging myself versus them. And if someone had a really great joke i wish i thought of it instead of enjoying it i go god why didn't i think of that and that's a it's poison and then i realized luckily i got very lucky that i figured this out early on like you know a couple two or three years and i was like i used to love comedy like why am i not loving comedy because i'm doing comedy that's the dumbest fucking thing in the world. The reason why I got into stand-up comedy was because I loved watching it. Now, all of a sudden, I don't like it because I'm jealous or it makes me compare myself to them and I don't like the feeling or it makes me – what is that?

That's so dumb. And then I realized it, thankfully. And I had a shift. And I caught myself. And I have managed to cherish and nurture that being a fan, that feeling of being an actual fan, the enjoyment of stand-up comedy. I nurture that. So that to me is critical. So when a guy like David Tells on stage, I can enjoy it. I enjoy it.

I can sit there like an audience member and just laugh. But are you – and this is the last question is when you sit in an audience of – you're sitting in an audience watching David Tell. Okay. Are you experiencing him differently than the audience is because you're a professional like him? I'm sure somewhat, but i try to shut down the analysis part of my brain as much as possible i try to shut down like why did he write it like that why doesn't he do it this way i try to just be a fan i try to just watch you know but i'm sure i know some things are coming or i know the way i would do it or i know dave very well so i know

how he would do it. I'm sure there's some sort of difference between, but that's like the same as a musician, right? If you're a musician, if you're a guitarist and you're watching an amazing guitarist,

even though they're really good, you're probably like, hmm, okay, I see what he's doing. He's doing this thing. You understand technically. You can't turn. My worry as I get older

is that increasingly my reactions are simply versions of I would have done it. That's not how I would have done it. Right, right. As opposed to – so if, say, Pamun comes to me for advice, my first – and I think about, oh, that's – here's the advice I'd like to give on this piece of writing. My first – someone – actually, I was talking – a friend of mine yesterday brought to me an essay she's working on, incredibly interesting essay about the role of women in cinema. And I give out.

So we're walking around, and I'm telling her my response to it. And after I give it, my first thought was, wait, did I just say if I was doing it, I would have done it this way? In other words, did I just simply impose my own standards and preferences on her, which is not advice. That's actually the worst thing. What you have to do is inhabit her mind and fix it according to her own intentions. I'm constantly paranoid about the notion that i am not being truly empathetic at the moment of giving advice i'm just projecting my own

um and i think that's that's something that happens when you get so when you become so sure of your own methods and professional personality. That's the kind of, I wouldn't have done that when I was 25 because I didn't know what it meant to write a Malcolm Gladwell thing. I was just kind of reacting as a human being. But now I kind of have this thing burned into my skull.

Yeah, you have a method. I have a method. I mean, I try to mix it up, but I probably still don't. Right, and everybody's method is up, but I probably still... see the punchline coming too far out, it loses impact with the more words you use. But if you can get the punchline to the people before they see the punchline coming, it has a gigantic impact. That's what my friend Joey Diaz does better than anybody. He does it better than anybody. He sneaks things in on you. Yeah, yeah. This reminds me, along these very lines, I've often thought this was one of the greatest jokes. You probably know this joke. In terms of economy, this was the one of the greatest jokes you probably know this joke

in terms of economy this is the most economical great joke I've ever heard in my life and it's from oh my god I've forgotten his name this is appalling I've forgotten his name I didn't know him what does he look like

he was he was in a Lake bell movie um lake bell yeah uh he's an incredible he had his own show on oh it'll come to me the joke was um uh you know those signs in bathrooms in restaurants uh you know all staff should wash their hands after using the bathroom. Right. Especially Earl. It's so crazy. It's two words that transform.

Is that Ricky Gervais? No. No? Especially Earl. Especially Earl. So it's like I cannot go into a bathroom anymore without thinking of that joke. It's so fantastic. It's like, you know, like it takes this, you know, I don't need to explain the joke to you.

It's just two words have created this lasting image of Earl. It's subverted the whole bathroom thing. I can't go to the bathroom. It's burned into your head. It's burned into my head. Who is it, Jamie? I'm looking at a guy. I cannot believe. It's so humiliating. I can't go to the bathroom. It's burning in your head. It's burning in my head. Who is it, Jamie? I cannot believe I can... It's so humiliating. I can't remember his name.

It was a New York kind of indie comic. Oh, okay. But I just... Greg Rogel? No, but we're getting close. We're getting close. It'll come to me. But that's like... I am amazed by the two words part like it's just that you can

do it with two words just strikes me it's the same reason why i'm obsessed i've always had an incredible love of television commercials really yes because the good ones the idea that you can communicate something emotionally powerful or funny or meaningful in 30 seconds is so badass. Like 30 seconds is nothing. And there are people whose job it is to communicate. And some of the, like, not the run of the mill, like 80% of them are relatively straightforward. They don't. But there are, there's a handful that are just magnificent.

There was one, I mean, there's a million examples of great ones, but there was one really beautiful one, which was a Heineken ad. Oh God, now I've forgotten again. The song they used where a bunch of kids jump in the back of a cab and they start singing a Belle de Deveaux song.

And the cab driver, they're all young, cool hipsters. They're all crammed in the back and they're all like a little bit tipsy. And the cab driver is this like crusty old school guy and it comes to the chorus and he chimes in. And it's just this moment. It's 30 seconds. And it's fantastic

because you're not expecting that. You're thinking, you see the crusty old, it's like a Boston cab driver, right? Like some grizzled Irish guy who's like 70 years old. And you think, oh, you must hate these kids

because they're young and beautiful and they're tipsy and it's a Friday night and he's driving a cab. And then the song comes on the radio and they all start singing along in their kind of drunken way. And then he just joins in. He's right there with them.

He's right there with them. And it's fantastic. And it's 30 seconds. Well, some of them are really great and funny. Remember the Wendy's lady? Where's the beef? Oh, yeah. You'll never forget that one.

You'll never forget that. Three words. Where's the beef? And an image. An old lady screaming, opening up a Three words. Where's the beef? And an image. An old lady screaming, opening up a cheeseburger, looking for the beef. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how could you not take off your hat to the person who came up with that?

Yeah. Right? If I gave you, if your set was 30 seconds, it's hard. Yeah, hard. It's suddenly really, really hard. Right? And you have to make a point. You're trying to sell something. Yeah. You're trying to sell something. it's like hard yeah it's suddenly really really hard right and you have to make a point you're

trying to sell something yeah jerry seinfeld was going to open up an advertising agency for a while he he had thoughts about i know he had done a couple of commercials and apparently he had written some of the commercials and he decided that he was going to write commercials yeah he was going to do that i think he's got so much seinfeld money he's like fuck that why am i working what am i doing i've got a billion dollars in the bank i'll just go buy a couple more porsches yeah i mean his his he doesn't just have a billion dollars in the bank he has more coming in coming in yeah it's like constantly coming in yeah there's no it's like a yeah and it just seems to to does he did he get does larry david have the same deal that he does

i do not know yeah i would love to know that fact. I would like to know that too. I don't think he does. I would imagine he doesn't. But I think he's probably extremely wealthy. But he has, in my opinion, the most underrated sitcom of all time in Curb Your Enthusiasm. There's times that I've watched that show where I've been literally weeping laughing, like holding my sides laughing.

And it's so odd the way he does it. Do you know how he writes things? Yeah. They have like a place where they like, okay, you're trying to sell me a toaster and Jamie's trying to stop me from buying that toaster, but you're mad at Jamie and you're trying to be persuasive at me at the same time.

That's how they write. So they just do multiple takes with really talented people, and they find magic. I mean, it's crazy how open-ended it is. I've talked to different guys that have been on the show about how they do it. It's amazing. You have to love the amount of trust you have to have in your fellow actors. Yes, yeah. But it's kind have in your fellow actors. Yes. Yeah. But it's kind of, that's lovely.

Yes. Particularly contrasted with this incredibly tightly controlled anal writing process. Right. That's in place in so many of those shows. Yes. Yes. Yeah. But it's also why that show seems so organic.

Yeah. You know, I mean, there's talking over. It sounds real. It's like, you know. I had trouble watching it because it was too real to me. I was just cringing with all of the social awkwardness. He's just constructing one socially awkward situation after another, right? And I couldn't, because I couldn't distinguish it from real life.

Yes. I just couldn't bear it. It's too much. It was too much. That's what's so good about it. Did you ever see the one where he has, he's over the rapper's house, crazy-eyed killer? You see the... The rapper has Scarface playing 24-7.

I mean, it's Larry David with this rapper. It is fucking magic, man. It's magic. It's so good. He's a genius. Yeah, he's a legitimate genius. There's no doubt about that. He's also a real legit oddball like he drives a prius you know like he is that schlubby guy he's probably worth 500 million dollars or something crazy but you know he's

that kind of schlubby guy that's the way he that's who he is yeah those guys were in am i right they were in new york like barely scraping by forever. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was a standup and he and Jerry knew each other from back then. And, you know, he was a weird standup. Like it just was an acquired taste. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't burning down comedy clubs. Which comics are not to your taste?

I'm not saying that you don't like. I mean, that are not to your taste. That is not saying that you don't like. I mean that are not to your taste. That is whose humor just doesn't kind of work for you. I don't know of any. I mean, not that I could think of offhand. I wouldn't pay attention. One of the things I've gotten really good at as I've gotten older is not paying any attention to things I don't like. Yeah. Just letting it just slide right out of my brain and

onto the floor i'm not interested it's just i i spent so much time when i was younger and stupider worrying about things i don't like being upset at things i don't like well that sucks why do people like that what the fuck's wrong with them and then realize like what a gigantic waste of resources that is and just a huge waste of energy yeah that uh i don't care anymore you know as long as they're not stealing material as long as they're not make you know doing something terrible to other comics victimizing as long as they're not doing that i really don't care it's like they're doing well good luck the zen yeah i try i mean it's not i'm just not i mean it's not 100 it's uh it's constantly a work in process but my philosophy is rooted in some sort of a pragmatic understanding of how

my own brain works yeah like you don't you only have so much time and you only have so much energy and if you're wasting your time on things that you don't like, that have nothing to do with you. If people like something, like that's how I feel about music and movies and so many things. There's so many things that I just don't like them at all. But some people do. I mean, you know, some people will, I think their music is dog shit, but they'll have a full staple center of people rocking out. Well, I must be wrong. It's not me me it's not them

it's just like everyone's different people have different tastes some people like really cheesy rom-coms they like it they really enjoy it they seek comfort in this movie where you know it's going to work out in the end it's going to it's not like in the end a fucking meteor is going to land on the building and kill everybody and the the screen is going to splatter with blood because you know their bodies explode you're not going to see that in this movie in this movie everything's going to work out great it's just like by that i have that feeling about law and order in fact what am i i have no idea why anyone would ever watch that show and one of my secret goals in life is at some point i would like to be appointed executive

producer of Law & Order. And then I want to do ones that completely subvert the franchise. So we get you through you're all, everyone knows exactly how every one of those shows is always going to turn out. And I want to get to minute 47 and then just go on some savage U-turn that just

appalls and outrages absolutely everyone. And then I'll be done i'm just i'm quitting and i'm walking shut to black yeah what the fuck and don't tell anybody that malcolm gladwell's taken over no yeah it'd be totally i would push just gently push dick wolf aside and say let me have this one and we're gonna like completely and we'll have it you know the the villain the will actually be one of the prosecutors. That's what we'll do or something along those lines. And every episode ends like No Country for Old Men style where it's over. You're like, what the fuck?

But there's something – there's a drug in those where they're comforting and that people know that the bad guy is going to get caught and the good guy – I don't know. This is a random thought, but I don't know any men who watch them. And I've come to the belief that they are – there's something – they're actually for women and they're a very comforting kind of reassuring fantasy about how the world works. That the system is – so I had – can I tell you my – this is an incredibly complicated theory that I developed once about these kinds of things. So there's – we all know what a Western is. A Western is where is conceptually a world in which there is no law and order and a man

shows up and imposes personally law and order on the territory, the community, right? So there is also a Eastern. What is an Eastern? An Eastern is a place where, by contrast, is a story where there are, let me get this straight, there's four types. The Eastern is where there is law and order. So there are institutions of justice, but they have been subverted by people from within.

So an Eastern would be the Serpico is an Eastern. It's a crooked cop who is – it's the bad apple who has screwed up the – there are tons and tons of Hollywood movies are Easterns. screwed up. There are tons and tons of Hollywood movies are Easterns. The Northern is the case where Law & Order exists and Law & Order is morally righteous. System works. The show Law & Order

is a Northern. It's a functioning apparatus of justice which reliably and accurately produces the correct result in confronting criminality every single day when it's on TV. The Southern is where the entire – wait. The Southern is all John Grisham novels are Southerns. They are where the entire apparatus is corrupt and where the reformer is not an insider but an outsider.

is corrupt and where the reformer is not an insider but an outsider so in in every john grisham novel the same they all proceed i love john grisham just to be clear but they all proceed from the same premise which is the system is rotten to the core and only this white knight who comes in from the outside can save us so in Western, there is no system. In the Northern, there's a system, and it's fantastic. In the Eastern, the system is reformed from within. But in the Southern, the system has to be reformed from without. That's my complicated. So I feel like anything, you can place all art about law and order, about the criminal world, criminal justice, into one of these four categories. And so the Brits love the Northern. So what is, you know, all of the famous British detective stories are always Northern.

Sherlock Holmes. He's a Northern. It's like the system is like, and, you – and there's no corruption in the police department. They may be bumbling and Sherlock's got to help them out. But no one's off on some – there's never a case where there's a rotten cop who's selling out every – Is there a modern version of the Western? Because Westerns all seem to take place between the time of like 15, 1600 and 1880. Yeah, there is.

So Lee Child, do you read the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child? No, but I watched one of the movies. Yeah, those are Westerns. Those are Westerns. You'll never, the whole thing about a Western is can you find the police officer? I challenge you to find a police officer in a leach odd novel they're not nowhere to be found reacher is a retired the hero is a retired army investigator he's not even in the army anymore and he's just roaming around the country solving crimes on his own and he'll

confront some massive criminal conspiracy and he never calls the cops right that's the whole premise that's so western you can't call the cops in right? That's the whole premise. That's so Western. You can't call the cops in the classic Western because there's no cops to be found, right? You're in Montana on the border. But Reacher, it's a 21st century Western. So he doesn't call the cops

because he doesn't feel like it. It's just like they never appear. And he just murders everyone on his own and then he gets on the train and goes to the next place. They're amazing. I love them so much. Do you write fiction?

No. Never? I mean, I read so many thrillers. I read like, I mean, I probably read, how many do I read a year? 50, 60, 70. Really? I read, you know when you go in the airport? That's a lot.

Into the Hudson News and you see all those, there's a whole like wall of those thrillers. I have read every single one of them. That means you're reading more than one a week. Yeah, easy, yeah. Wow. And then I read on top of that, I read my serious stuff. But I devour, people send me, publishers send me these things in the mail. Just because I don't have to buy them anyway.

They know that I'm obsessed. Like Lee Child's, although he didn't with his most recent. Lee Child's publisher, for years you'd send me galleys. They didn't send you one. Not recently. What happened? I think they've forgotten me. They fucked up.

They fucked up. Are you consuming all of it reading or is any of it book on tape? No, I'm reading it all. Yeah? I mean, I'm reading them in breakneck speed. And I'm – but I do – there's a guy I love. I love – one of my favorites is Stephen Hunter who writes the – you know, they made some movies of his stuff. Bob Lee Swagger, these sniper movies.

They're fantastically well written. And those – the minute he comes out with a new one, I read it the instant. I mean, I have to. It's just like, there's just such delights. I've never heard. Oh, he's so good.

Really? Yeah, so good. Anything with the word sniper in it is generally one of his books. Oh. Movie Shooter with Mark Wahlberg was one. Yeah. I didn't see that. Was it good?

Yeah, it was pretty good. But the books are fantastic. I would recommend them wholeheartedly. How do you have the time to read all these books? Well, that's my job. Not reading thrillers, but my job is reading books. Literature, yeah. You know, I read very quickly, I suppose, but I don't watch a lot of TV.

I just watch a little bit of sports. I don't really watch much. So there I just watch a little bit of sports. I don't really watch much. So there's not a lot competing for my attention. But I know the book that I will read tonight at dinner. So when you set out to write a book, do you have a premise stewing in your head where it's just like throbbing, where you're like, that's it, that's the one?

Or do you- Halfway in, I'll get it. I'll start. Oh, so you start a book. With a little kernel. There'll be a story I'm interested in. I'll write it up, and then I'll see where can I go from there. Like, there'll be...

Every one of my books began as a very, very simple one chapter. I didn't know what surrounded the chapter, but there was something in talking to strangers. I got interested in these spy stories, that story of Ana Montes, the Cuban spy who rises to the top of the American intelligence establishment. I began with that, and I went and talked to the guy who caught her, and I had such a fantastic interview with him. to the guy who caught her.

And I had such a fantastic interview with him. And that just got me incredibly excited. And that got me in this whole thing about, here's a woman spying in plain sight for Castro at the top of the American intelligence establishment for 10 years. No one catches her, even though she's not some master spy. She has the codes that she's using in her purse

and the radio she's using in a shoebox in her closet like we're not talking about james bond right and like she does it and no one even comes close to her they're all like really really smart people and that was such a fascinating notion that even in the most sophisticated and by definition paranoid agency in the american government they're spies they get away with all the stuff. Do you think anybody ever gets away with it to retirement and then is never ousted? Oh, absolutely.

In fact, so I go and I interview the guy who caught this woman, Nana Montes, and I'm leaving to go back to drive back. He's in a small town in Wisconsin. And as one does, I turned off my tape recorder and put it in my bag, and I'm walking back to my car. He says, I'll walk you to your car. I was like, okay. And we're walking down the street, and he begins to tell me another story.

Even better than the one I went there to talk to him about. Which, of course, my tape recorder's no longer running, so I don't have the story anymore. What the fuck? And the story was basically, oh, there's another bigger spy out there i now know i now realize there is there's one out there right now well this was three years ago there was one three years ago that's out there was actually just retired the implication was

they're still there they're bigger and i really it was one of those things where when he put together all the pieces to catch this one woman an Anna Montes, he realized, oh, there's someone else. And then he retired. Whoa. He's like, the implication was he couldn't get anyone else interested in finding the other bigger one. But he knew there was someone out there, but he didn't know specifically who they were? No, he knew there was someone.

I forgot, of course, because it was this tragic thing where I turned off my tape recorder. Go find him. How didn't you not? Hold on. Stop, stop, stop. Let me put this back on. Do you think he would have told you the turned off my tape recorder. Go find him. How didn't you not stop? Hold on. Stop, stop, stop. Let me put this back on. Do you think he would have told you the story if your tape recorder was running? Don't think so.

Ooh, fuck. It's kind of great. It's a great. He was incredibly interesting. That's where Siri comes in. Hey, Siri, record this. That's right. He was.

But I think, you know, if you're in that world you just assume yeah they all assume they're spies like we have them we have them in there so it's like they're not as maybe they're not as worked up about it as we are i don't know yeah there's there was a story recently where uh iran um assassinated uh some people that they suspected were CIA spies. And I always wondered, like, how many people are spies? And like, you know, homeland style, living in some other country, assimilating into their culture, getting jobs in organizations, even in terrorist groups, infiltrating.

What a crazy way to live your life. Well, there was a story I told in one of my podcast episodes, Revisionist History, season two, I think, that I ran across. I love reading these memoirs of mid-level retired intelligence officers, and there's tons of them. And people don't really read them, but I love... Because invariably, in the middle of the book, they'll tell you some, they'll just drop some crazy story. And this guy, it was the former general counsel of the CIA, wrote his memoirs, really interesting memoirs. In the middle, he tells a story about how the CIA, a guy who was a really big deal terrorist in the 70s and 80s, really big deal, has a change of heart and comes to the CIA and says, I no longer believe in what I'm doing. I'd like to work for you. And proceeds to work for the CIA for some period of time, unknown period of time.

And he's way up high in Middle Eastern terrorist organization. And that fact leaks to the New York Times. And a reporter for the New York Times basically writes a story outing him. Oh, Jesus. And the CIA frantically tries to get in touch with him to warn him. Oh, Jesus. And he vanishes. They think he was killed.

Fuck that reporter. Because it was a very interesting... What do you do if you're a reporter and you have something like that, though? That's what the episode's all about. Because your whole job is to release information. Your whole job is to report on things. So here you have this bombshell of a story

that'll make you look like a hero, but it could get someone killed. What do you do? Yeah. Fuck. What I didn't realize is that there's an established pattern of people at the intelligence services and editors of newspapers talk all the time about things like this. So they have arrangements.

Yeah. But in this case, the arrangement didn't work. Malcolm, you're awesome. Let's wrap this up. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. I really appreciate your work. Like I said, I've been a gigantic fan for a long time,

so this is a real treat for me. And would you do this again? I would be delighted to. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Joe. Bye, everybody.

That was great, man. That was fun. That was really fun. Thank you.