The Joe Rogan Experience - #1455 - Lex Fridman

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

Lex Fridman is a research scientist at MIT working on human-centered artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. Check out is podcast “Artificial Intelligence Podcast” available on Spotify.

hello lex you might be wondering why what i'm wearing on my face i'm not wondering no no it's coronavirus time everybody out there is wearing a mask so i'm assuming that's what you're wearing on your face yeah so this is a homemade mask takes 30 seconds to make 30 seconds did you time yourself i don't know if you have a bra can you like cut a cup and like strap, tie it on? That would work, right? But there's no, yes, probably. But as far as I'm aware, there's no scientific study of how effective bras are at filtering. How effective is that thing? So I'm glad you asked, Joe.

So I'm part of this, and I'll take this off in a few minutes. I just want to, one, I want to talk about some of the science, and two, I want to remove some of the stigma that's around masks. So I'm part of this group of scientists that have put together a survey paper showing that masks work. And it started as a movement called Masks for All, hashtag, in the Czech Republic. That essentially one of the critical components of stopping the spread of coronavirus is everybody has to wear masks. And the science is twofold. So, I mean, I need to break this apart. You're going to take the mask off eventually, right? Yeah.

So let's just take it off now so I can hear you. Because. There's an audio. You can't hear that? It's so much better. Oh, yeah. Nice. It's like taking a condom off.

The before and after. So you probably shouldn't be wearing a mask when you're doing podcasts. Definitely not. But everywhere else, yes. So when you're going out to the grocery store you should wear a mask everywhere everywhere and that's okay so some some questions do homemade masks work so there's a currently a shortage of n95 respirator masks which should be exclusively used as ppe personal protective equipment by health care workers okay there's also a shortage of

surgical masks, which are these non-volan fabric masks that work very well for the thing I'm talking about, but because there's a shortage of them, we should not be buying them. It should be saving them for healthcare workers. And then the open question was whether homemade masks, like the one I just described, work to stop as a filtration mechanism. This is the confusing thing for the individual-centric society that we live in. Masks are the most – what are they actually effective for? What they're effective for is to prevent me, if I'm infected, asymptomatic, from spreading the infection to you. So that's where the movement of Masks for All started, which is your mask protects me,

my mask protects you. And the idea there is I'm not creating a wall from the rest of society. I am contributing to the bigger aggregate picture of it by not allowing the infection to spread. So masks allow you to reduce that transmission rate to one to below one. So allowing you to decrease the transmission rate while also allowing people to be in public. How much have you been studying this disease and the potential remedies and all the different things around it?

A lot. A lot, yeah. What is your thoughts on hydroxychloroquine and zinc and Z-packs? This is something that's been thought of as a potential remedy. Yeah, as a potential remedy. So on that side, I haven't studied the actual, so there's nothing clearly published yet. That's the biggest problem. So when I say I know a lot, what I and others have been doing is reading a lot of papers that are coming out in the hundreds every single day. So people doing really strong studies across the board. This is pretty unprecedented, right?

Where something, a new disease comes out and everyone's scrambling to try to figure out what, if anything, can help it. Yeah, there's a lot of aspects here that are unprecedented. The scientific community has stepped up in a way that I've never seen. I couldn't imagine it was possible to do. Like everybody stop what they're doing. And from whatever walks of life. So artificial intelligence community is really working on a lot of aspects of this, which I can talk about. Every, the virologists, bioinformatics folks. So everybody's working on this, looking at different angles.

And obviously people who are developing vaccines and antiviral drugs are working on this. The thing is, to your question, we're all waiting for actual studies. So you can't really answer it. You can't say something is promising or not. So what's happening now is there's incredible candidates for vaccines, for antiviral drugs. But in order to say anything at all, there has to be at just the protein structure of a corona COVID-19 virus, there's a lot of elements to it that are different from even its other family member of SARS within the coronavirus family. So it's a totally open question whether things that from masks, what

kind of things work for coronavirus versus SARS versus influenza versus rhinovirus, which is behind the common flu, and then what works on the coronavirus. So that's true for masks. That's true for drugs. That's true for epidemiological study models and so on. So there's a lot of uncertainty here, and you have to actually do the test. On the mask side, I'm really paying attention. side, I'm really paying attention. There's a guy named Jeremy Howard who brought a lot of us together from all kinds of expertise and we're putting together this giant paper showing that

masks are effective. And the same thing is happening in other domains. But masks, the powerful thing about masks is it's something we can do that us individuals right now, a lot of our us individuals are stuck, trapped in our homes, unable to do anything. Your only task is to remain to practice physical distancing, social distancing, to maintain a healthy immune system to maintain a health immune system seems to me to be the most important thing because there's so many people that are asymptomatic. We don't know why, whether it's genetic. We don't know what is causing some people to have virtually no symptoms whatsoever.

But I would think that maintaining a healthy immune system, eating healthy foods in particular, supplementing with vitamins. For me particularly, I've ramped up my vitamin C in a big way, vitamin D, 4,000 IUs a day. Exercise. Exercise. Sleep. And sauna.

If you have access to a sauna, and I know most people don't, but if you don't have access to a sauna and you do have a bathtub, take yourself a hot bath. What you're looking for is heat shock proteins. One of the things that happens when you have a flu or when you have a fever, right, Your body is, your body, when your body has a fever, one of the things it's trying to do is trying to kill that virus. It's trying to overheat it. And that production of those heat shock proteins is very important. There was a study written on flus and viruses and regular sauna use, and it showed a significant decrease in infection with regular sauna use. So it might not help you if you have it now, but it will help you to keep a strong and healthy immune system.

Heat and cold, those two things, shocking yourself with cold baths and shocking yourself with hot baths if you don't have access to a sauna. If you do have access to a sauna, I would recommend ice baths and sauna. It's very, very important for your immune system. It's a way that you're giving yourself a drug that your body makes, really. Yeah, I read a couple of studies actually on the use of, I don't know about sauna, but heat, like you said, hot water, then switching to cold for increasing the... Cytokines? No, the efficacy of natural killer, I think they're called NK, the natural killer immune cells

that are essential for when... So there's this moment when you get the disease and you progress the coronavirus, you progress from just being, having mild symptoms to having to go to the hospital to having to then go into a critical condition. So that transition, the natural killer cells are essential for that. And the variation from heat to cold and water helps. So how strange is that? That's one of the strangest aspects of this disease that

people seem to have mild symptoms and then almost overnight it turns on them. Yeah. It's so strange. And then it depends on the, you know, and we don't understand. For some people that doesn't happen. For some people it does. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be a long time before they sort this out. And the real problem with that is in the meantime, all these fucking nut jobs that want to blame this on 5G or, you know, or whatever. Fill in the blank with whatever crazy conspiracy theory people have. fill in the blank with whatever crazy conspiracy theory people have one that is interesting is that wuhan apparently had some sort of bioweapons lab there that's interesting to me because if

that's the case it's not outside of the realm of possibility that something could be accidentally released or purposefully released like if they do have a weapons lab there i mean what why do they make weapons labs if they if you why is anyone making bioweapons you're making bioweapons to the idea is you're making a disease you can inflict on the enemy right well if you have a disease that can be inflicted on the enemy, that's just human beings. If that stuff gets out, it would be the biggest shock of all time if it turns out that this was actually a man-made disease that was leaked from a lab. I'm not saying it was. Again, I'm a moron. I'm not the guy to come to when it comes to bioweapons or viruses or any of these things. But I'm just speculating as a human being that if there is a bioweapons lab in Wuhan, Google that.

What does it say? No. I mean, I've heard that a few times, too. When I Googled bioweapon lab in Wuhan. Crenshaw was talking about it yesterday. It comes up. It says experts know it is not a bioweapon. No, coronavirus is not bioengineered.

How did the outbreak start? It did not come from that. How do they know? Right. So, first of all, bioengineering, let's break that apart because it's a fascinating topic. I mean, one of the things that coronavirus is making us realize is, holy crap, there's things out there that can kill us. Yes. on a scale that we've never before imagined. And nothing like that, hopefully, will be happening here.

But this is the dress rehearsal, right? Right. If it was something that has Spanish flu or that kind of potential for death. Yeah. So Spanish flu is influenza. I don't think we've seen the worst of influenza yet. No, I don't think so either. That was the scariest thing about talking to the guys at the CDC when Duncan Trussell and I did a show down there. They were saying, we're not worried about man-made stuff. We're worried about natural stuff, natural viruses that mutate

and jump from animals to humans like they believe this COVID-19 is. They're like, that's the scariest thing, and you can't stop it, and it happens all the time. Yeah, if viruses weren't so terrifying, that would almost be beautiful. So what is a virus? It's some genetic code, RNA, DNA wrapped in some protein. So it's a piece of computer code that goes into a human body or any kind of living organism and has them run that code in order to print stuff. And it's able to mutate. So there's millions of viruses out there, most of them infecting living organisms that are not human. And they're able to spread in these insane ways, infecting billions of organisms.

I mean, that, in terms of a weapon, in terms of a natural pandemic, is terrifying. Yeah. Because they can, you know, a lot of people are worried about what's happening now with the coronavirus. The deadliest part of the Spanish flu was the second wave. Danish flu was the second wave. Was the second wave connected to the First World War II. The First World War. There was a mutation which made it a lot deadlier.

So a single mutation that then begins to propagate through society can completely change the way we experience this virus. And it was particularly deadly because it was really devastating to young, healthy people with strong immune systems. It was devastating to everybody, which is surprising. Usually it's a compromised immune system is what the virus is devastating to. Well, this one's weird in that it's so rare that it affects children. It's very strange that this virus has such a small impact on children. It's very strange that this virus has such a small impact on children. But God damn it, there was a story that I saw a video about this article that was written that was talking about

a one-day-old baby that died from coronavirus. But when you go into the actual story itself, the doctor who was furious about this, who was reading this paper, was saying that the article rather, he was saying the baby was 22 weeks premature. So like, that's probably what killed the baby. And that is so premature. And he was like, the idea that someone is using clickbait and fear mongering at that scale, during this crazy time, when people are starving for information and terrified, and running around trying to find out, especially people with newborns, to read that, oh, my God, I killed a newborn. And then you go and realize, no, it's a complication. And the baby tested positive for coronavirus, but it's also 22 weeks early.

I mean, if that's the first baby that's dying from this, we're very, very fortunate that it doesn't attack young people. It doesn't attack babies. Yeah. And that's a source of terror for people. So I've interacted with folks who have families. I mean, that seems to be one of the biggest things that people are afraid of. What's bad for the flu?

Well, what's bad for the flu? Children. Yes. It's devastating for children. Yeah. And to think, so both sides of it. One, children getting sick. And two, parents getting sick and thereby not being able to take care of their children. Yeah, that's a good point.

And that can spread. We're so sensitive now in terms of just on the verge of giving in to the fear on a mass scale. of giving in to the fear on a mass scale. And that's where information and sort of inspiring words and the silly old word love is important, like community and compassion

and so on, to sort of fight that fear. The silly old word love? Silly old word? Is it a silly old word? You're so Russian. Old is silly. Russian John Wick says silly old word? You're so Russian. It's both old and silly. Russian John Wick says, silly old word, love.

Yeah, there you go. It's a good big title for the Jorog experience. No, I just mean that there is a danger here of people beginning to panic when the economic impact hits. So there's 13% unemployment, I believe, in the United States. So the Great Depression was 23%. So we have something like that. We're starting to creep towards that number. So that's 16 million people out of a job currently.

Well, I don't think we have any idea. In the economics right now, we're in limbo. We really are in limbo because how many businesses are going to close because of this how many people don't know that they're unemployed but are how many businesses are barely hanging on and they might not make it to the end of the year and if the economy takes a downturn because of all these people out of job how many businesses that were barely hanging on before and they're still open now we're going to be gone in a couple of weeks? We really don't know.

I mean, how long do you think it's going to take before businesses are up and running again? I know Wuhan is back up in business again, but there's a lot of criticism about that. And they're also saying they're seeing new cases. I think the question, I think it can be sooner than we think if we do the following things so one i'd hate to linger on this and love to talk to you you're gonna talk about masks again yeah well it's funny but you're i know for a fact you're gonna make fun of me just like i'll make fun of you right back for uh loving fanny packs but just like fanny packs are exceptionally functional to carry on the things you need masks will be masks are required yes slow the spread of this infection

listen i'm not an anti-mask person and like one of the things you have to do is you have to start getting governors so politicians to wear them uh our president trump to wear them well Well, this is the Boris Johnson question, right? Because that guy, not only was he not wearing masks, but he was shaking hands. And he was talking about it pretty openly, and now he's in intensive care. If he dies, that will be the biggest wake-up call for everyone. Yeah. I mean, I hope he doesn't die, but goddamn, people are so mean over there. I don't know his policies.

I don't know his policies. I don't know. I haven't been to England in a long time. I don't know how they feel about him, but fuck people. Some people hate him. Oh, like saying things like they would. They're hoping he dies. They hope he suffers and dies. I've read Twitter.

Andrew Doyle, Andrew Boyle rather, the guy who wrote Woke. Titiana McGrath. Yeah, but it was actually his own personal account. He published some of the tweets that people have written about. We don't have to put it up there. I don't want to up these people's signal, but it's just so heartless. So, yeah, that's masks, but testing, really, the big one is. There's three things. Heartless. So, yeah, that's masks. But testing, really, the big one is – Testing, yeah.

There's three things. Masks, besides like washing hands and social distancing, all that stuff. Masks, testing, and contact tracing. Contact tracing. So this is great. Let's talk about this. First of all, I'm going to keep – We get it, masks. We don't get it. We don't get it.

We don't get it. Have you been wearing masks? You know how weird it is? Like societally for us, it's a weird step to take. I don't know what – it's like an open question. What does it take to do that? Yeah. No, it's weird. It's really weird. So you can't see the emotional expression of the people.

You can't – like there's a strange effect to it and then the other effect is as a as an individualistic society you're wearing the mask not to protect yourself but to protect others and that's a weird thing for us to do we don't think people are thinking that i think they think they're protecting themselves well you can sort of delude them or you can tell them the truth that the, that this, I mean, there's a nice positive aspect to this is me wearing a mask says I care about not getting you sick. That's a really powerful social signal for when you're hanging, hanging out with people. I think there's so much ignorance going on though.

I don't think people wear, there's a large percentage of people, this is my assumption, that are wearing that mask that are not wearing it because they think they're going to protect other people. They're worried about getting it yeah and i don't think i mean this is what the who and the cdc this is where i i hate what they're doing which is sort of there's truth and that there is ideas of how the truth will be misinterpreted by the public and so you shouldn't tell people the truth. So there's a kind of sense like the WHO and CDC have said that masks don't work, for example, or they said that we shouldn't be wearing masks.

We should save them for the health care workers. Well, we have to be honest about what the timeline, the WHO, what they've said. They're wrong about so much of it. They were initially saying that you couldn't transfer it from person to person. I mean, this was just in the beginning of the year. I mean, Dan Crenshaw went over the timeline of all the things that were wrong about what the World Health Organization said on the podcast yesterday. It's terrifying stuff. And, you know, and obviously newspapers were going off of that information and they were printing misleading stuff as well.

And the president didn't know. No one knew. The whole thing is very weird. If you're going based on what they were saying, it didn't look like it was going to be nearly as bad as it is. And then everyone has had to make adjustments. I'm actually – the one – I'm so freaked out about the loss of life and the loss of jobs and how people are getting – it's really weird. Everything about it is weird. It's weird in our lifetime to be a part of something that's just affecting the entire world like this.

But I've gotten a lot of messages from friends that are quarantined with their families and like we've never been closer. that are quarantined with their families, and, like, we've never been closer, and that we realize that we're in this together because we realize that, you know, during these crazy times, you realize what is important. Love, that silly little word you were talking about. Love and community and friendship. Like, my neighbors, everyone's so nice.

Everyone's waving now, and everyone's, like, saying hi and, you know, talking from over the side of the yard, and how's everything? You guys all right? Need anything? We're right here. There's a lot of this, like, yard and how's everything you guys all right need anything we're right here there's a lot of this like comfort and warmth that you know i think i experienced a little bit of that post 9-11 where people get shocked they get shook up and then they realize what matters you know yeah that's one of the things i don't like about masks is uh it feels like you're protecting yourself from like you're removing yourself from the community.

There's that look. Like, get away from me, dirty people. Yeah, get away from me. So the germaphobe kind of idea. That's not what they are supposed to represent, but I'm sitting here on the science that says we have to all wear them, and then thinking, like, how is that going to change interactions? I don't know what to do with that.

No, you're a, an MMA fan. Yeah. What do you think about the UFC's decision to have fights next weekend? On an Island? I don't know. We don't know where it is.

I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing, if I'm going to it or not. I don't know where it is. Yeah. I don't know where it is. I don't even know if it's in America. I literally right now, as of right now,

I don't know shit. I have no't even know if it's in america i literally right now as of right now i don't know shit i have no information okay so first off it's an island like i saw like it's it's fight island it's literally the storyline of enter the i mean this is enter the dragon this is like i don't know who the bruce lee is or the chuck norris should i get a chinese kung fu outfit and do commentary with a Kung Fu outfit on? 100%. Would that be culturally appropriating? No, you know what I'll do? I'll wear one of them Bruce Lee tracksuits. That wouldn't be culturally appropriating. That'd just be fandom.

In a time of coronavirus, you get a cultural appropriation pass, I heard. Yeah, to me, i think that's great because um if it's messaged correctly to show that we are while maintaining sort of social distancing all those kinds of things we're trying to fight to bring our society back okay let me pause it right there there's no social distancing in a fucking cage fight. Yeah. Okay, they're on top of each other, sweating each other's mouths. There's not going to be, there's going to be, if Tony Ferguson's fighting, there's going

to be blood for sure. Everybody who fights Tony Ferguson looks like they fell off a train. So there's going to be blood. The physical distancing you want to avoid is large crowds. Right. But one-on-one. One-on-one. One-on-one.

So what if everybody gets tested? Yeah, exactly. Do you think that's accessible? How accessible are tests right now? So in America, it's 0.7% of the population have been tested. In terms of testing everybody that's not accessible, but in terms of testing special events, yeah. So that's possible. Totally accessible.

What do you think they would do if like, there's a lot of good fights in this card, by the way. Jairzino Rosenstreich is fighting Ngannou. Yeah. I mean, come on. Ngannou and Rosenstreich, that is a fucking crazy fight. What if one of those guys tests positive? What if Justin G those guys tests positive? What if, you know, what if Justin Gagey tests positive?

The guy's supposed to be fighting Ferguson. Do you go ahead or not? Like, obviously you have to ask the opponent if they want to. Yeah. I'm a little bit Russian. I would go ahead. I'll go ahead. I'll go ahead. So my main concern is how will the general public interpret it?

Because you want to do everything you do now should be done in a way that, one, is positive, like inspires us towards the community, and two, gets us to do the right thing scientifically. I don't know if a COVID-infected person fighting would inspire others to say, oh, well, if they're doing it, it's okay for me. Well, I don't think they would allow it. I have a feeling that if someone did test positive, they would kick them off the card. Yeah, probably. I shouldn't say kick them off the card. I should say remove them from the card. I take it back. That's probably the right thing to do. I would imagine it kick them off the card. I should say remove them from the card. I take it back.

That's probably the right thing to do. I would imagine it has to be the right thing to do. And then you would also have to quarantine the people that worked with him in training camp, and you'd have to test everybody. Yeah, that's, by the way, what contact tracing is. Once you find somebody who's— And there's a technology for it. I mean, that's a really interesting infrastructure there. But I still love the idea that they're pushing forward and doing the fights.

There's a lot of people that are very upset with it. It's very controversial. The whole thing's controversial. Why do you think they're upset? Because they don't want anybody to do anything out of the norm of social distancing and of quarantining and of, you know, what we're on lockdown right now. And for them, look, even Nevada, which relies almost entirely on casino money. I mean, Vegas, at least. Vegas relies almost entirely on casino money, right? All the other businesses are so supported by the casinos. Those casinos are shut the fuck down. Cannot have the fights in Vegas. But those are large crowds and physical spaces.

I think... No, I understand that. We're going to be... This is going to be a long... This is not going to be a month. This is not going to be two months. How many months do you think this is going to be? I think before we're back to normal,

I think it will be a year. And in terms of when it's going to reopen the economy, I think it's summer. Summer. Possibly late summer. Unless there's some sort of an effective remedy that we know for sure. Oh, yeah, definitely, definitely. Any viral drugs or vaccine. Well, vaccine is going to take a long time.

There is some really impressive work on vaccines. They're accelerating the crap. It's supposed to take 10, 15 years for a vaccine. And then they're saying 18 months, obviously. But that's still a long time. That's a really long time. But, I mean, they're doing some impressive fast testing on vaccines. Obviously, mass scale vaccines is something you want to be exceptionally careful.

I wonder what they're going to do with the U.S. election. Mail-in. Oh, no, no, no. I have an idea. We'll just postpone it until – I'm just kidding. Postpone it is not a bad idea. No, it's a terrible idea. Oh, one thing I do have to say because I can't believe this is still going on, because there was a big dust up recently because I said that I wouldn't vote for Biden, that I'd vote for Trump before I voted for Biden.

I just want people to know, first of all, folks, I'm barely paying attention. OK, if you're getting your political advice from me, I'm a moron. OK, I am a comedian slash cage-fighting commentator. You know how you have friends that don't know much about fighting, and they'll say something like, I think Bruce Lee could kick Jon Jones' ass. Yeah, that's me with politics, okay? Don't listen to me for political advice.

You want to listen to people for political advice? Listen to people that are actually paying attention. Listen to guys who, that's their living. Guys like Kyle Kalinske. Listen to Jimmy for political advice. Listen to people that are actually paying attention. Listen to guys who, that's their living. Guys like Kyle Kalinsky. Listen to Jimmy Dore. He does a fantastic job breaking down politics. He understands it, right? Listen to the people that, The Hill.

Watch that show. It's fantastic. It's on YouTube. There's a lot of people. David Pakman. He understands politics. I'm not that guy, okay? David Pakman, he understands politics.

I'm not that guy, okay? But what I am saying is I don't want to vote for someone that has a mental problem. He's got dementia. That's all I'm saying. My parents called me. My mom's like, I heard you're a Trump supporter now. I'm like, I would never vote for a person who obviously has dementia. I said I would vote for Trump before I'd vote for Biden. That's what that means.

You know, and there's been fucking dozens of articles written about this. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Trump tweeted. He tweeted that? He tweeted a clip of you saying that you're a Trump supporter. No, he didn't. Yeah. When did this happen?

Like shortly after. Get the fuck out of here. I'm pretty sure. Retweeter tweeted. I'm pretty sure. Retweet or tweeted. I'm not sure. That's hilarious. Yeah. Sure.

It could have been one of those fakey Donald Trump accounts. No, I'm pretty sure. Maybe it was Trump Jr.? Was it Donald Jr.? I have a programmatic way of following Twitter and I follow Trump.

Okay, either way. I just want everybody to know this is all I'm saying is I think the Democrats are making a horrible mistake by putting in a – he just had another huge stumble yesterday. The man is ill. I wish him no ill will. I'm not a Biden hater.

What do you think – I just think it's wrong to take a guy that you clearly can tell is struggling. He's an older guy who's got some sort of a mental breakdown issue. He's got what appears to be, according to some experts who have analyzed what he's doing, it's some form of dementia. He has a problem maintaining conversations. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying, folks. And also, I'm a fucking comedian slash cage fighting commentator. You don't need to come to me for that. What is this?

Donald J. Trump retweeted. With an American flag in the background. Beautiful hair of Eric Weinstein. This is what, again, this is what i said this is what i said you shouldn't have that guy i would vote for any of the other ones any of them bring them back amy klobuchar bring her back i'd vote for her before i'd vote for for biden i'd vote for buddha i'd for sure vote for tulsi i love tulsi gabbard i would for sure vote for bernie that's all i'm saying folks is you shouldn't have someone who's clearly got something really wrong

and just prop him up and weekend it Bernie style and fucking bring him up to the podium. It's crazy. Bring back Andrew Yang. Fuck yeah. Do you actually know? I love Andrew Yang. I was trying to figure out if it's possible to bring back people at this stage. I don't know.

So much has changed. COVID changed everything, right? Yes. You should be able to run stuff back. Well, what they should be able to do is someone should, I don't know, I think they're just hoping and praying that Biden can hang in there long enough

and people's hatred for Trump will get it to the finish line and that they could win and they can keep him from having these conversations where he stumbles a lot. But it's not fair to him as a human being. It's not fair to us that this is the only choice they're giving us.

I mean, there are so many people that were involved in those debates. Kamala Harris, bring her back. Bring them all back. Bring any of them back. They would be a way better spokesperson for the democratic party this is just a terrible idea that's all that's all i'm saying that's all i did say but it's like i just can't believe that someone like me has any impact at all in people's political choices it doesn't make any sense don't do that rely rely on people that are paying

attention rely on people where that's their job. Let me hear the new one. Let's hear the new one. We cannot let this. We've never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17 all the way around 16. We have never, never let our democracy second fiddle. We can both have a democracy and elections and at the same time correct the public health the case where we can't well that's not too bad he's just kind of

stumbling for his words there's been some real bad ones but you know you got to think he's probably medicated they're probably juicing them up to to get them to that state of health anyway like these people are not stupid these people that are involved in running his campaign they're probably giving them iv vitamin drips and doing everything they can to try to get them as healthy as possible to bring them to that state it's just not good it's not fair it's not fair for us it's not fair for him so to try to play because i kind of agree with you it's so i cringe every time it's sad but i was uh i think uh what was it 2016 when hillary clinton ran i was i like biden until i hear him talk there's something there that he's just not good at it we keep seeing things like this that just a

little bit off and to me the question is so i i'm obviously i'm awkward at speaking and yeah but you also speak russian no i think that there's a brain thing there like i well you might be too smart for us well yeah for regular conversation that's a very nice way of putting it but the and he used to stutter so one do we need our presidential candidates to be eloquent? Is, to me, an open question. That's a good point. Because he might just be, like, I would vote for Biden if he just never talked. So back in the, you know, especially in 2016 and so on, just every time, because he's like, he's kind of like a blue collar.

He has a story with his son, a vet dying. I mean, there is so much depth to him as a human being, to his story. He obviously, as you've mentioned, he's done quite a few shady things like lying and plagiarizing speeches. That was back in 88 when he was running for president. Yeah. I mean, but in terms of his long track record of just being as part of the system, whatever you think about the system, he just knows at a time like this, when you need government to work well, no matter who you are yeah government needs to work well now so you have to ask yourself who is the person who will make government work well right i don't know if it's him you know i don't know i don't know who it is i don't think it's

a good idea to have one person have the kind of power that a president has i mean just imagine you're donald trump? You're not just responsible for dealing with international relations with North Korea. You're also responsible for the environment. You're also responsible for this COVID-19 outbreak. You're also responsible. I mean, you can keep going. It's crazy to think that one person should have responsibility for all the things that happened to the United States of America. It's nuts. just to be a sort of talking head that inspires the world and the United States, and two, hires the best people to take care of each of those things. Yeah.

So attract, so inspire the best in the world to come work for him, whether that's military, whether that's the environment on the science side. And that's how, to me, that's how you should elect a president, who inspires the best people in the world. I think you're right. Yeah. I just think that it's an impossible task for an individual and I don't think I think we should rethink it But good luck with that. I mean the crazy thing about the United States is really I mean I had a bit about it that the United States was founded in 1776 people live to be a hundred that's three people ago

Three people. Yeah, I'm like this is how recently this is and this is a bit about president trump about him being elected about how crazy and the bit was about we went from obama i went from this really intelligent very articulate person and it's like we were involved in a relationship with a really and now we're dating a whore. And this was just this crazy bit that I had about, it's like we're on the rebound and we're just in a nutty relationship now. But I just, I don't think anybody should be president. I just, I don't think it's a good position for human beings.

I think it was a great idea when we're tribes, when we're a tribe of a few hundred people or a mayor of a you know, a town. That's great. Yeah. Mayors make sense. It makes sense that one person, it's a very stressful job, very difficult, but it seems tenable. It seems like a mayor can be, you know, a mayor can really control a city and do a good job. I just think when you get to the scale of the United States of America, it just seems nuts. It just seems nuts to have one person run the whole show. And then also clearly not because

you know you have this gigantic organization behind it that requires all the money from the donors and special interest groups and lobbyists and all these moving pieces are involved to make sure that the people that get in place are gonna suit your interests and and fulfill your needs and oh and it's all going on right now while a fucking pandemic virus is sweeping the entire globe. It's really weird. It's a really weird time.

Yeah, and I mean, I wish we could just rerun the whole thing because some of the ideas, like Andrew Yang's ideas with universal basic income. Yes. Obviously, he's right. You know, look,

what he said about automation now applies to this virus like there's people that need money yeah and this is this is where it's really weird and i wish i'd brought this up with dan crenshaw yesterday but um a lot of republicans want smaller government right they want less government but this is a time where big government is necessary where you're dealing with something like a pandemic virus. We're dealing with the situation where you have to look out for the welfare of all these people. You have to re-stimulate the economy. The government has to pour money into it. This is a time where big government is necessary. And this is a great

argument for balance, right? This is a great argument for big government. Well, the goal, I think, for both Republicans and Democrats is effective government. And then Republicans would say that big government is actually you increasing the bureaucracy, not the effectiveness. So this is the question now with testing. How do you get at a large scale? We're at 0.7%. We need to test half the population. Yeah, I don't know.

Obviously, I don't know. But I would imagine if tests exist, right, we have a test. So what we need to do is figure out a way to ramp that up. And I'm sure that's being done right now. We're just not aware of it. I'm sure that they're trying to figure out a way to get it to everybody. I mean, some of that is just mass production of testing kits. So the main test they're using now is a molecular-based test.

There's other ideas. Like in the artificial intelligence side, there's ideas of how to use CT scans, chest scans, and try to detect the early onset of COVID versus just regular pneumonia. Because there's a lot of sort of neighboring conditions here too. Yeah. We're still suffering from flu, right? versus just regular pneumonia? Because there's a lot of neighboring conditions here, too. Yeah. We're still suffering from flu, right? Yeah, that's the thing I was going to say,

that some enormous percentage, like 85% of people that come in that are sick are not infected with this, because this is flu season. And the flu so far has killed an extraordinary number of people, which is really weird. While this is going on, and this is not to diminish the deaths

of the people that have died from COVID, because it's all horrible, right? Anyone that loses a loved one, I, you know, my heart reaches my, I ache for all of you. I feel terrible for anybody who loses someone that they care for, whether it's an old person or a young person to a disease, it's horrible. But why is it that we're so terrified of COVID, clearly because it's new, but when the flu is killing more people right now than COVID is, and we're not worried about that at all. I mean, we should clearly be worried about both things. And this is, again, it's a great advertisement for strengthening your immune system.

This is a great wake-up call for a lot of people that are unhealthy, that are eating unhealthy and living unhealthy. Please, like, if you value life. It's so easy to just assume you're always going to be okay if you're okay now. This is the sort of mentality that a lot of us go through life with, that everything's fine now, it'll be fine. And this is where preppers go off the rail the other way right they're like fuck the sky's falling it's all gonna fall apart and those people i'm fascinated to see how they're gonna freak out

like now that this is real and that like it's probably a good idea to have stored food it's probably a good idea to have a small supply of water that's going to last you a few weeks this is all a good idea like how are small supply of water that's going to last you a few weeks. This is all a good idea. Like, how are those motherfuckers going to react to this? Well, they're ready. What do you mean? Well, they're going to ramp it up even further because now they're going to be justified. Like, they were right.

So what you might very well see, especially in the South, a lot of people have guns, right? And with coronavirus, there's's um like you don't want infected people in your town so you could very easily see people barricading roads and saying you're not allowed to enter the town yeah well you're seeing that in some places where people have vacation homes and they're leaving the big city and going to the vacation homes and the people that live in these small communities are freaking out because they don't want these infected people coming into their communities and infecting them and they're trying to keep them out of their homes out of their second homes which is like look you can't keep someone out of a fucking house that they own okay

you can't just decide that you're going to throw the constitution out the window and these people don't own their own property anymore but it gets to this weird state where everybody's in a panic. So this, to me, is where the president is essential, is to, when people are in a panic, there's so much uncertainty, is to inspire the world and sort of take us back to reminding Americans, reminding the world what everyone did in World War II. Sort of the huge things we've overcome as a civilization, that this is one of those cases. And sort of as opposed to trying to defend your little corner of this land, seeing us as all together as a community and sort of inspire that.

I think in trying to remove, I think in terms of winning elections, like if Donald Trump wants to win the election, it's just do that. Because in these times, difficult difficult times presidents are popular and if you just forget the stupid red blue divide yeah and just inspire the whole country he'll run away with it it's true but you know it's hard right now to even have that you know he's kind of he's a guy that when someone comes at him he comes at at them harder. You know, he describes himself as a counter puncher, right?

Someone hits him, he hits him back even harder. And the media just can't let him go. There's a lot of currency in attacking him and coming up with a great gotcha moment that gets captured in video and then gets released online. And so you get all these reporters that have this rare opportunity to talk to him and we talked about this one lady who just kept being upset that someone in the

administration apparently she said it referred to it as the Kung flu and He's like what did you say and and she said Kung flu he said say that again Kung flu so she said that and he goes who said that she didn't She didn't know who. He goes, someone said it? You heard someone said it? Is this really your question? Is this really what we're worried about? Is a joke someone might have made in the middle of a horrendous crisis that they call it the Kung flu?

Oh, Jesus, let's stop the presses. First of all, Kung fu is awesome. There's nothing wrong with Kung flu. Is there anything wrong with saying that? I mean, look, the flu, it's not a flu. It's a virus. It's horrible that it's devastating all these people. But is it more horrible if you call it Kung Flu?

Is it so much more horrible that we have to, I mean, is it that racist? Well, to me, that's a beautiful moment to say, let's put our shallow. Let's put this bullshit aside. Let's put this bullshit aside. Let's put this bullshit aside. Unfortunately, he was almost there. Yeah. And instead, he made it more like about himself and just didn't – Well, with that conversation with that lady, I don't think he did.

I think that conversation with that lady, he was like, who said this? You know, and then – But that lady represents a large percent of the population full of ridiculous ideas such as that. Yeah. And he gets a chance to speak to the – like, inspire that part of the population and say, let's put this social justice warrior stuff aside for a brief moment as we fight a thing that threatens the economic well-being of our nation. Well, you hear very little about transgender people using restrooms right now. You know, there's a lot of things that you don't hear about you know you don't hear about gender pronouns and a lot of stuff that was so supposedly important just a small amount of time ago and it's not to diminish the rights and the the values of transgender people it's just to say i think a lot

of what people were complaining about and the the reasons why people were up in arms about things. It's not just because we have real issues with discrimination, but more so that we don't have real problems. So we look to amplify problems that might not be nearly as big as we as they are, or as we would like to think they are. You know, I mean, when we're dealing with something that's a real life threatening, a real huge issue. No one gives a fuck about your gender pronouns. You know, no one gives a fuck if you're a they them person. Are you they them? Okay, congratulations. I don't know what to tell you. But we're in the middle of something that is a new disease. It's killing people and some people it's not killing them at

all. And they're spreading it around. And it's weird. So we don't have time for nonsense. And we're in a lot of ways because society is so... I want to say this in the best way possible. This is the greatest time ever to be alive. Even now. Even now with all this craziness. If you compare the world today with the way we're connected to each other, yeah, there's problems. There's always going to be problems. We're a bunch of fucking weird territorial monkeys living on a planet. You know, there's going to be problems. We're a bunch of fucking weird territorial monkeys living on a

planet. There's going to be problems. We're sorting through all these different things out, and there's varying levels of economic disparity, physical disparity, mental disparity. There's so much difference between all of us. There's no chance for complete total harmony. It's not going to exist with these territorial apes with thermon total harmony. It's not going to exist with these territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons. It's not going to exist. You know? What's one of the first things that people did when all this happened? They went out and

hoarded toilet paper and bought guns. Okay? That should let you know. This is what people are all about. When the shit hits the fan, they want guns and they want to be able to wipe their ass. And this is what people panicked about. This is still one of the best times ever to be alive and the the thing that gives me hope is the way i feel in my community and the way i feel with my friends i've had so many friends reach out and just say are you okay how's everything if you need anything i'm here that's

beautiful i love that i love this feeling of community that we have real community it's this like especially in the stand-up comedy world there's an incredible sense of community right now people are reaching out to help people people are donating to people people are sending people money people are really they're they're checking in on each other and it's like we're appreciating each other. We're appreciating each other in a way that I think is beautiful. And it makes me sad that it kind of has to coincide with a tragedy sometimes. But we're humans. Sometimes we need a wake-up call.

We need a little something that lets us know, hey, you know, this is a temporary situation. This life in general, Everything about it is temporary. We are finite life forms on a finite planet that's heated by a finite star. None of this is going to last. It's going to last for a long time, but it's not going to last. Enjoy this. Enjoy this, and let's enforce and let's encourage good values, healthy values, community values. We can get through this and be a better country.

I really believe this. I really believe this. I think the survivors of this can get through this as long as we can retain these lessons. It's so easy. Once something happens and then that thing normalizes and we get back to, air quotes, regular life, it's so easy to forget the lessons. But if we can reinforce those, we can remind ourselves of this and we can have these moments, you know, like so many cultures do where they have these

religious ceremonies. You know, I was talking to Eric Weinstein, we was talking about Jews and they were talking, what was the fucking, was it Passover? Yes, Passover. And he was talking about how they tell the story every year. And the reason why they tell the story every year is to remind everybody, to remind people that you're here because others went through some horrendous shit. And let's thank them. Let's praise them. And let's remind ourselves we're very, very fortunate. And remind ourselves that we're a community. And the scale of World War II did that from where I came from in Russia.

That's where I have my guitar here. You want to play a song? Well, maybe. Come on right now. Okay. I'll spark up a joint. I want to hear this. But the reason I actually messaged Jamie and asked,

do you think it's okay if I play a song on Jerry? Come on, man. Your poem that you read last time was the shit. Well, but I messaged him without having a song. You didn't have a song? No, no. I was just, I was thinking about, so I've been reading a lot about World War II recently before the coronavirus.

And then I found out, I learned about my grandfather who was at age 17, which actually tells you a lot. You have to be 18 to be in the army. And he sort of faked his doctorate. That was what everybody did. Young kids wanted to fight for their country. It's an interesting kind of story. They weren't dodging the draft. Everybody wanted to fight for their country.

Everybody wanted to fight for their country and die for it. At that stage in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the order from Stalin was that if you get captured, you have to kill yourself. So there's no surrender. So you have to – I mean that's the spirit that you're fighting with. And so the only way out is, if you're a soldier, is death or severe injury. And in terms of being lucky, I've been thinking about my grandfather a lot who was severely injured. He was on a machine gun. He fought, actually, alongside Mikhail Kalashnikov, AK-47 event. Really?

Yeah. So that's AK-47 came from World War II. That's a design from there. And so your job is – so Germany in the fall of 1941 is marching towards Moscow. And your job is basically to be a human, just a thing that slows them down long enough to where they don't reach Moscow until winter, which would give an advantage, which allow Moscow to defend easier.

So winter is very difficult to fight, even in World War II in Russia. So your basic job is to slow down the troops. So you're sitting difficult to fight, even in World War II in Russia. So your basic job is to slow down the troops. So you're sitting there with a machine gun, which is exceptionally difficult to carry, and you're just emptying all your bullets. And so most people are dead. How heavy is that machine gun? That was one of the huge criticisms. There's a particular model, I forget, but most machine guns at the start of, they were using basically World War I weapons

in World War II. And that, the machine guns that they were using had this giant metal shield that, you know, that you hide behind as you're shooting.

And that shield would turn out to be exceptionally heavy. So it's not something you can carry easily. So it's, I would venture to say it's probably like 200 pounds, that kind of thing. Fuck. Yeah, so you're dragging it through the mud, through all of that,

and while bullets are flying. That's it right there? I don't know the exact. Pretty close probably. Yeah, probably. Wow. But you have to look at Soviet Union where the equipment was not great. So you're basically throwing human bodies.

And, I mean, so I was thinking about how lucky, because I'm alive because the bullets, like he got hurt, his leg. He got hurt in his leg. And I'm alive because he got hurt. Because severely where he couldn't continue because that's the only way out. his leg he got hurt in his leg and I'm alive because he got hurt because severely where he couldn't continue because that's the only way out and sort of most of his

most of his brothers are dead right and that's you're talking about 75 million people died in World War II Jesus Christ

most of them in Europe and 50 million of them 50 million is civilians so people without a gun 50 million 50 million died and it's different than the virus i mean it's different there's something particularly ruthless it's something ruthless about war but the stories they tell us of brotherhood as you've known from jocko and everybody is that the the kind of friendship the kind of connection that it's incredible there and this is our little a little bit a

world war ii moment because we're it's a global have you ever read uh sebastian younger's book uh tribe yeah it's a great book on that i highly recommend it to people to try to understand why that tribal connection why the the community connection of people that have gone through war is is so strong they actually prefer war in a lot of ways some of them do at least to being home they prefer prefer that that camaraderie what when you're tuning this up how are you you doing this? I never understood this. Jimmy thinks it's funny? Well, I think that's funny. So you can do it by ear, but I'm actually kind of scared of churros. Guitar tuning.

Yeah, but I don't know what's going on. So this is a low E. E. Okay, that was out of tune. A, D, and there's a little mechanism. You just attach the guitar. I think it actually doesn't go by audio, but by vibration. Oh, that thing's telling you if it's correct?

Yes. What is it doing? What does it look like? Are you seeing a reading on it or something? Yeah. Oh, whoa. E, C, E. Oh, that's electronic.

That looks like a little Galaxy watch. And when it hits blue, that's on tune. A, D, G, B, E. Perfect tune. that's on tune A D G B E Perfect tune. Oh, that's dope. Do you know how terrifying this is?

Okay. Come on, bro. Come on, bro. You're a bad motherfucker. Here's the lyrics. Is this the lyrics? Yeah. Should I sing along?

No, don't. Please. It's bad enough for me to sing. Although I do want to play a silly song later on. Okay. Is it a weird Al Yankovic song? No, it has to do with... He had the best tweet about this.

Did you read that? He goes, we're all Howie Mandel now. Imagine how Howie Mandel is, right? He's probably completely freaked out. We should probably get him in right after it's over. What's this song about? About my grandfather, about the time we're in, about love. Did you write this song?

Yeah. Okay. Oh, the other thing is, I'm a huge Hendrix fan. So I wanted to play, like last time I chickened out, I wanted to play Hendrix. You know, Hey Joe or Voodoo Child or, you know. But your videos get taken down, as I've learned now. They don't get taken down. It's revenue sharing.

Well, someone tries to steal your money with that, with the music part. Yeah, we did that when Gary Clark Jr. sang that Allman Brothers song with Suzanne Santo, which was crazy. They sang Midnight Rider. They did a version of it that's so different than the original, but they're like, fuck you, pay me. Yeah. Crazy. So you can't even do your own. Mechanical licensing. Yeah. of it that's so different than the original but they're like fuck you pay me crazy mechanical licensing and a lot of it

is automated actually well I don't know I've said this before one of the things I love about music is I have zero talent I have none I don't know how to play anything that's why Jamie thinks it's funny I don't know what tuning is I love things that I don't know nothing about and I know that there's a rabbit hole of learning music.

Did you ever see the movie Groundhog Day? Yeah. Great movie. Great. Saw it last night. We have family night. We're watching movies. You're going like old school movies.

I saw you watching Adam Sandler or something. I'm an Adam Sandler junkie right now. I've watched them all. Dude, his fucking movies are so overrated. It's insane. Underrated. Is that over? Yeah, I'm saying that a lot. Underrated. I got the names right of the movies. Yeah overrated. It's insane. Underrated. Is that over? Yeah, I'm saying that a lot.

Underrated. You should get the names right of the movies. Yeah, I got the names right. I saw the Burt Kreischer thing. Excuse me. His movies are so fucking underrated. They're amazing. Look, the fucking Zohan, Don't Mess With the Zohan, is one of the funniest movies I've

ever seen. Yeah. I was crying laughing in that movie. He just goes for it. These movies are so silly. They're so good. But his serious movies are really good. His latest one is really good, too. He just goes for it. These movies are so silly. They're so good. But his serious movies are really good. His latest one is really good too. I heard it's amazing.

I haven't had a chance to see it. Uncut Gems. But anyway, in Groundhog Day, which is a Bill Murray movie, different thing, but another old school movie from like 90-something, Bill Murray lives the same life over and over again. No matter what he does, kills himself,

keeps waking up, same guy over and over again. But he learns he does kills himself keeps waking up same guy over and over again but he learns how to play the piano because he's like fuck it i should just learn a bunch of things and so by the end of the movie spoiler alert he i mean it's fucking 30 year old movie but he knows how to play the piano he knows how to do a million different things and uh i remember thinking like that that is really almost what it takes to be an adult and learn how to play the piano you must you must have an unlimited amount of time because to delve into music, to really learn how to play. If you're a Hendrix fan, I'm a huge Hendrix fan.

That's the reason why this podcast is named The Joe Rogan Experience. I stole the name from Hendrix. But the idea of me learning how to play guitar, being a Hendrix fan, trying to be as good as Hendrix or trying to mimic like what he did. That's too much. There's too. That's too far. I'm like, you're walking to the sun.

Like, that's too far. You're never going to get there. There's not. That's too much time. That's how I look at it. I look at it like it's an impossible time hog. Well, let's see if you can comment on this, because for me, people ask me about guitar. Like, how the hell do you?

I do like, you know, I'm a scientist at doing stuff. Like, how do you have time for the guitar? And the way I've learned guitar, and I won't show off the things I could do today. I'll just show off my terrible voice, is to practice every day for, I would say, about five years to practice for like 30 minutes a day. So you just have to you you

shouldn't look i mean you know this yeah you shouldn't look how far to go to learn hendrix right because hendrix particularly is exceptionally easy scales and chords you can learn in a day everything he uses and then just slowly practice yeah he uses the basic blues scale. He's a basic blues musician. How dare you? Well, it's like a lot of comedians are basic comedians, but they master the timing. Yeah, I think fundamentals is a word that doesn't offend people that means the same thing. In jiu-jitsu, you're a jiu-jitsu black belt. You understand.

people that means the same thing yeah in jiu-jitsu you're a jiu-jitsu black belt you understand um that's a thing that for whatever reason is it's bothered so many people that vinnie magalhaes was talking about um minotauro they were on the the ultimate fighter together when um minotauro was one of the coaches and vinnie magalhaes was working with someone else and he was saying that nogara who's minotauro nogara who's a legend I mean just a fucking legend when he was in his prime man he's one of my all-time favorite fighters ever his fight with Bob Sapp was probably one of the most legendary fights in all of mixed martial arts and one of the best examples of technique over brawn I mean he and he's an unbelievably tough guy Minotauro was just an all-time great but Magalhaes who's a legit world champion Vinny Magalhaes was talking about Minotaur was just an all-time great but Magalhaes

who's a legit world champion Vinny Magalhaes was talking about Minotaur's Jiu Jitsu game and he said it's very basic but Minotaur got offended by that and was really upset at him but he tried to say like I didn't and I've talked to him about it personally he's like I didn't mean it in a bad way

he took it in a bad way but I was just saying it's the basics it's like he does arm bars, triangles, rear naked chokes guillotines but it's like razor sharp hodger gracie is a great example of that um crone crone gracie is a great example of that fundamentals just sharpened to a fucking razor's edge where they just have the perfect guard pass, but standard guard passes, right? The perfect rear naked choke, the perfect triangle choke. They just know those fundamentals that you get taught when you're a blue belt, but they have them down to just the most refined way possible. So that's basics in jujitsu. It gets discussed like that. And some people,

for whatever reason, they get sensitive about it. And even the modern guys, even Gordon Ryan and all the Donaher Death Squad people, they have actually very fundamental jiu-jitsu. Oh, unquestionably. They have those techniques for sure. The difference between the Donaher people is there's two differences. One, they have a phenomenally dedicated group of people that have come out of Henzo's because Henzo is an amazing guy and he fostered an incredible sense of community. Also, his legacy. I mean, Henzo is Henzo Gracie. He's a legend, right? right and he comes from the most famous family in the history of martial arts and he is easily one

of the nicest and friendliest ones of those that that incredible family so he's got this gym that's just filled with all these people that are first of all honored to be there to train with a legend in a legend school and two they all have this incredible sense of community because of henzo and because of the people that Henzo has taught there. And then you have Donaher, who's this wizard, this New Zealand fucking psychopathic genius character. Where's the rash guard? He's awesome. He finds the system behind everything, which is amazing.

I mean, listening to him talk, he's a modern day philosopher warrior. He's a different thing, man. He's a different thing. Donaher's a different thing. And he's a different thing, man. He's a different thing. Donaher's a different thing. And he's a mean genius, you know, and he breaks jujitsu down. And I say mean genius, only compliments. Only compliments, I'm saying. I mean, he's like, he knows how to teach you how to fuck people up, man.

And he does it in like an incredibly scientific, systematic way. And he does it in an incredibly scientific, systematic way. The way he makes his system and how these guys can progress from being a beginner to just a few years later being able to tap really high-level black belts is sensational. And that's what people – the reason I brought them up is people often don't think of foot locks or the lower half of the body as a part of the basics, quote unquote. But I think Donahue is one of the people who, with Dean Lister and so on, who helped discover the basics of foot locks. Yeah.

There's a famous quote from Lister. Why would you ignore 50% of the body? Yeah. And Donahue talked about it on my podcast. And he's like, why would you? You see that fucking genius brain spinning? That was the greatest podcast ever. I enjoyed the shit out of it was correcting your uh flawed breakdown of different fights it was great

i love his breakdown also of uh gordon ryan versus cyborg that was very very interesting very very interesting because that was a big moment when gordon ryan tapped cyborg everybody was like whoa holy shit like people knew he was for real it wasn't like people were doubting he was an amazing grappler but when he pretty easily tapped cyborg it was a real wake-up call for a lot of folks yes and but on the point of basics it's interesting when compared to music the this is what's mysterious to me about watching jiu-jitsu, watching Haja Gracie, is you watch him do basics and destroy some of the greatest black belts ever.

But I can't see what he's doing, actually. So when you roll, I rolled with Salah Ibero and Shanji Ibero. Both guys, another example of that style. Crushing pressure passes, too. Their top game is just fucking horrendous. But they're doing the same stuff I do, but it feels different. And only by feeling it do I discover it.

The cool thing about music is I can actually, it's more, it reveals itself clearer. You can hear the difference between Hendrix, like Stevie Ray Vaughan playing a bend. Like I played Comfortably Numb, a cover of Comfortably Numb, and I put up a video. And a bunch of people were like, your bends are not quite like David Gilmour. The way you bend this, you know. Yeah, that sound, that special sound, the Gary Clark Jr. sound, the Stevie Ray Vaughan sound, the Jimi Hendrix sound. They sound the Gary Clark Jr. sound

the Stevie Ray Vaughan sound the Jimi Hendrix sound they're playing some basic shit I know how to play all of it I know one of the first things I learned is Texas Flood by Stevie Ray Vaughan I know how to play it

but there's gotta be a soul in there that requires like decades of playing the same stupid bends and then also dating a few questionable women having an alcohol problem drugs, so on, all of that's in there

isn't that interesting that it is in there? yeah, so that and the same with Jiu Jitsu in order to do that X joke from Mount that Hajir does there's something in there he's been through some wars in order to do that X joke from Mount that Hodger does, there's something in there. He's been through some wars in order to achieve that brilliant simplicity. No doubt. Yeah.

There's a thing about music, too, that it seems that there's a big difference between doing it and figuring it. Like trying to keep track of what the chords are and what the notes are and someone who knows knows they know know they get they're deep in it so there's no wondering whether or not they can play it it's just simply an expression of mood in the midst of playing it that you get from like some of stevie ray vaughn's shit is a good example of that. He had a very bluesy, moody version of guitar playing. Some of his stuff, you could feel pain in it. You could feel pain in some of his, of course, along with his voice too. He had that live hard voice.

Yeah, but it was a more of aggressive kind of pain if you look at like a bb king that's more blues there's this like soulful like mellow pain and the thrill is gone yes yes and all of it's the same stupid bends it's all the same music but they yeah achieving that i mean but the whole point of guitar is to discover music is to discover your own sound did you um see that uh the i mean when you say your own song i'm just going to show you something do when you say your own sound like is it a combination of a bunch of other people's sounds that you've kind of put together and adopted as your own sound is it the classic sounds that you've reworked to become your own like what is your own sound as a musician i i think it's uh your own sound i think it's probably similar to comedy.

Your own sound is discovered only once you get technically just good enough to mimic others. And then you can just put all the technical bullshit aside and be good enough to try to hear your own voice. be good enough to try to hear your own voice. Like what, so when I played the David Gilmour solo for Comfortably Numb, it doesn't feel like me to me. Does it not feel like you to you because you feel like you're imitating somebody or you're just trying to do the music, you're not feeling it?

Like what do you? No, no, I'm feeling it, I'm feeling it, but I feel like I'm visiting a good friend like i feel like it's not home and that's something you develop over time like that like there is a home there is a something that's a great way of putting it visiting a good friend and right and but i think the early days i really want to make clear, because this is embarrassing. I don't, I'm not playing guitar enough these days to be impressive. So I'm going to.

Don't, get out of your own head. Okay. Get out of your own head. Dude, I love acoustic music. Did you, I posted when Bill Withers died. I posted Ain't No Sunshine, the acoustic version. There you go. God damn.

God damn, that was was good that fucking acoustic version you know I started it's so sad when someone dies you um that's when you really get into them I've been on this crazy Bill Withers kick for the past couple days since he died

that Use Me song god damn is that a good song I don't know that one oh i wish we could play it yeah i wish we could play it god after the show i'll play it for you fuck there's so much of his stuff you know it just like it just makes you want to close your eyes and rock your head back and forth you know it's just and when when a guy dies you you go, oh, yeah. Oh, grandma's hands. Oh, yeah. Yeah, grandma's hands.

Oh, lean on me. Oh, shit. That's one of the things I did, self-isolation now, is for the first time in a long time, this will sound weird, is I actually laid in bed and listened to music. Just listen. Maybe a lot of people do this. I don't usually do it.

Usually I'm doing something else. I actually laid there for the explicit purpose of just listening. Yeah. It's amazing. It's an amazing experience. Yeah, there's some real value in that. And we just put music on while we do other shit. Yeah, like working out and stuff

you know who's really into that just listening to music is henry rollins when i did the podcast with him he really improved did we do two we did two right was rollins on twice anyway maybe i think he was i love him. It's like giant speakers or something Yes, he has these crazy fucking yes. He was thank you He's he's got speakers that are worth like a quarter of a million dollars or something preposterous He's dumped all of his money into speakers. You know, he said I fucking love him. He's so unique and He he just picks out a record and he treats these records and the creation

of these records with reverence. And it's really interesting to me because he's a guy who became famous as a musician and doesn't even do music anymore. He basically does spoken word. He does his version of kind of stand-up and he's

always writing. He's very inspirational in terms of his workup and he's always writing he's very inspirational in terms of his work ethic he's always writing he writes constantly for a bunch of different publications weekly and then he also puts together a radio show every week so he puts together a playlist and he puts it on the radio and he narrates it and talks through it and and guides people through his musical selections but he'll just sit there and was like, listening to him talk about that was one of the first times I've ever actually considered like, oh, yeah, there's like real value in just sitting down and just listening to music.

And one of the things that worries me about Henry is, so he's not, I don't think, married and doesn't have family. So while that life seems appealing, because I'm in danger of going that direction how old are you uh 36 come on man you're fine no but i'm so loved so many things about this world just like henry right right that um it's easy to let life slip away i mean it's um it's a funny thing it's uh because if taken in one way family and kids and wife is a kind of distraction it's just one of just yet another passion in a sea of passions right that it can often just be a distraction but at the same, the ability to share that over a long life, to share your passions, seems to be – like everything I've seen, I don't have the experience, right? But everything I've seen, it is a profound and additive – it's a profound thing to be able to share your passions with others close to you.

I guess that doesn't have to be family. It is that. But there's something different on top of that. That's my friend Ray Ray who goes by what is he gonna rag enough? How do you say it? Right his name is Ray capo He said something to me once when he was really when we were both really young I'm about like more than more than 10 years ago or and

Probably like when I was training with him probably 2013 like 15 16 years ago some more than 10 years ago more than probably like when i was training with him probably 2013 like 15 16 years ago somewhere maybe even 17 years ago somewhere around that range but we were younger and he was talking about uh children and having children and that for him it was there was part of it that was from his own personal edification like he thought of children as being important for his own like growth as a human and you know ray's a deeply spiritual guy as a yoga teacher and he's like and i never thought of it that way i was like you look at it like for your own and i'm like i'm okay and i think as a man and and raising these little girls and seeing these daughters grow up, for sure I've learned a lot about human beings.

But also I learned a lot myself about my perception of humans, of babies to people. And I've talked about this on stage briefly, but it's too weird to sort of articulate in a joke. I used to always think of people as being a static thing. Like I'd see a guy and he's a 55 year old, you know, truck driver. And I would think that guy has always been that guy. And now I go, Oh, you used to be a baby like i knew like if you asked me hey was this guy ever a baby i would say well of course he was a baby but i had never intellectualized it i never looked at it and it instantly gave me so much more compassion and so much more like acceptance of people like a relaxed acceptance like a forgiveness of a lot of stupid shit that

people do and have done i i i almost immediately in raising kids shifted that and thought oh you guys just got fucked over you meet an asshole you're like oh your dad was probably a piece of shit and you probably grew up in a terrible neighborhood and you're probably you know ruined by your older brothers who are assholes. And maybe you lived in a neighborhood where kids were stealing from you and beating you up. Fuck. Like, that's how you get to be this guy. You don't get to be this guy because you just choose to be a piece of shit.

You know, that's not what happens to people. You become something from your circumstances, your genetics. there's so much involved in who you are. And we, I don't think there's any, there's not much value in being mad at someone for who they are. You know, you could kind of be mad at the impact that it has on your life, their stupidity, and, and we're all, you know, justified in doing that. But i think one of the things about having children of your own is you realize when you see someone who's a mess like okay i kind of i kind of see i understand how that can happen now was before i would just be mad that it's there it's kind of amazing though that um a lot of us i mean at least for me you remain from the from the self from the ego

perspective you remain the same person like there's a lot of parts of me that it's still like sometimes i feel like i'm the same 12 year old kid yeah yeah for sure yeah and some especially when there's trauma then that stuff stuff gets stuck right like uh you had eric weinstein right, a couple days ago. He just released this Unplugging Theoretical Physics, right, his Geometric Unity lecture. Yeah. And that's something he's been holding on for more than 30 years. And there's been a lot of, you know, that's something that's been occupying his mind space. He's just a 20-year-old kid releasing this now.

That's why it's such a liberating step. And for a lot of us, I'm the same. Probably this guitar is the same 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid who fell in love with music, and the same just goes to everything else. How old do you feel? When I'm talking to my mom, I feel like I'm like 15. 15?

Yeah, for real. You sound different? No, I sound the same because I always sound like a 15-year-old. Well played. Yeah, true. I feel like my mom's kid. You know? I talk to her now.

It's like they're real worried about this stuff they're really worried about uh coronavirus how is she society-wide or just individual she's like literally she's worried about it physically you know she's a woman in her 70s it's just you know my stepdad too it's like his their feelings are justified. It's dangerous. It's dangerous for them. It's different than it is for us, you know? And, uh, even for us, it's not universally going to be okay. There's, there's people that are very young that have had serious complications and even have died. Guys in their early thirties, dead. So, you know, everybody's a little weirded out, but when I talk to my mom, it's, um, I always feel like I felt when I lived in the house, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm, you, you, if, I don't know if you ever experienced this, but one of the things that I experienced is when I went back home, when I went back to Newton, I grew up in Newton Upper Falls. back to Newton. I grew up in Newton, Upper Falls. When I went back, when I was a grown man with a television show, I was on TV. I felt like a loser. Still felt like a loser. I'd go back to that town

and I feel like I felt when I was in high school there. I felt like an outcast and I felt like a weirdo and I felt like a loser. And so I'd go back there and all of a sudden I'm like, I'm a loser. I've got to get out of here. There's like a part of you. I mean, I went back again with my family a few years back and I didn't have that feeling anymore. But then you were the father. That helped too. But it's also a lot of thinking,

years and years and years of thinking and years of trying to appreciate all the things you've learned and process them correctly. Do your best to have the best, most balanced perspective on what this all is. So then when I was going back, I was just really what I was tripping out more than anything is about the concept of memories. Because I have this weird database where I can go to this strange part of the planet Earth, to this weird patch of land known as Newton Upper Falls, and I can go. And it was surprisingly rural. That was what was really weird.

I kind of remembered it, but then I didn't. My wife grew up in a terrible neighborhood. And when we went together, she grew up in this really just crime-ridden, when she was really young. And so when I took her to where I grew up, she's like, you grew up easy. This is nothing. We were laughing about it. But it was a lot of fields. The Charles River was right behind my house.

I could go right across the street and hang out in the Charles River. A lot of woods. There was a lot of rural shit there that I kind of forgot about. But it's a kind of time travel just going back there. It is. It's also like you're accessing files. Like I stood in front of my old house and I'm accessing these files. I'm like, whoa.

And I remember there's stairs that I always, there's these stairs that lead up. I lived next to a place called Echo Bridge. Echo Bridge is kind of a famous landmark because you can go under Echo Bridge and yell, and Echo Bridge echoes and has this crazy thing. So we'd get drunk and go into there and sing Billy Squire songs like, Lonely is the night when you find yourself alone. That was my 1980s-style high school experience. But going back there as a grown man you know and and and

and a grown man who's at least gained some grasp of perspective you know i was in my 40s at the time and wandering around this town i it just was very interesting to – the concept of memory was very stunning to me. The concept of accessing all these different moments where I'm thinking about different times in my life. I was in these different areas and different things happened and interacted with people. And I can kind of pull those up. And so memory is such a strange thing, man. It's so strange because we all know it's flawed. We all know it's filled with holes.

It's like a terrible representation of reality. Like if you bought memory, like if you said, you know, hey, I'm going to get a memory. This guy, he fucking won the Heisman in college, and I'm going to download his memories. It should be awesome. You get that guy's memories. Like, this is nothing. You barely remember anything. You have a slideshow and a narrative.

You have a weird, blurry slideshow that you can kind of play in the back of your head, and then you have a narrative of how it all went down. But that narrative, I mean mean it's uh it's terrible in terms of accuracy but in terms of its power and influence on your life yeah is is oh undeniable undeniable but you know pro and con right um physical things that is about is rewriting narratives that uh that cons. Yeah, exactly. Sure. And perspectives about that, too.

That's where psychedelic drugs come into play, too. Well, psychedelic, too, yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, I still feel like a loser when I go back to my parents. I become a 13. It's so weird. I find myself, like, defending, like, basically saying, you know, Mom and Dad, I'm not a loser.

Like in my head, like I'm trying to justify. Well, how about all these poor people that have to move back in with their parents because they lose their house because of this fucking crisis. And maybe lose their dream if they're doing a small business. Yeah. How many restaurants are going under right now? I mean, it might be more than 50% of small businesses. God damn. And I don't think we've felt the pain.

Like, there's people suffering right now quietly. And we haven't seen... It's so weird. It's such a crazy subject because I could feel the opportunities for people to get outraged at us even talking about it yeah in this sort of speculative way that we're doing like now like how many people are gonna like it's almost like people could think that it's not it doesn't give enough respect to the enormity of the moment because it's so so scary for all of us when we're all in the middle of this shit right now, man. It's fucking crazy. This is the craziest time I've ever experienced being alive. Driving down the streets in LA and there's no one on the road.

Drive to a grocery store. There's fucking no one out there. There's people headed to hardware stores and grocery stores. Or gun stores. It just feels... One of the unfortunate things is it feels like we don't know what's happening out there. Yeah, it's new. But here's the good thing.

This is one thing that I want to crack home to people. It is not good that all these people are out of work. But look at how much compliance we have when we know we have to work together to save lives. Think about how many people are. Yeah, that's amazing. Yes. It's not like all these bars are like, fuck you, we're open.

It's not like people are just flooding the streets. You had a bunch of young people that are having spring break that got in trouble and people were mad at them, but you've got to realize these are 18-year-old people. Their fucking brains aren't even formed. Their brains are mush. You know?

You can't fault them. You would be doing the exact same thing. We would all be doing the exact same thing. Those are children. But for the adults, it's kind of incredible. They shut everything down. They really did. It's shut down. Everybody shut down. You do a few

things. You go home and everybody settles. There's not this mass traveling and constant interaction with people, this swarm of interactions that could lead to the spread of a virus. Instead, there's pretty fucking incredible levels of compliance. If you look at the United States overall, you look at this human race that's stuck on this continent together. Overall, there is a stunning level of compliance that i think is beautiful i think it's beautiful i think it's people realizing okay it's time to realize that some shit has actually happened and we got a band together and we got to figure this out and you

got the usual suspects conspiracy theories and 5g and fucking they just pulled the david eich interview david eich did a interview with london real yeah i don't know what he said i didn't watch it. I watched a small clip of it. It's something to put up. I wanted to see what kind of wackiness he was saying. You know, he's the guy who thinks that all the elites are lizard people. Do you know that?

No, no. I never fully investigated that. He's a conspiracy guy. Like a heavy duty conspiracy. I don't know if he goes into lizard people shit anymore. But he used to think they were literally like transformers. Like they were transforming the lizard people behind closed doors. Well, YouTube took his video down, which I found very interesting.

The London Real conversation? Yes, they deleted it. Yeah, YouTube pulled it. So the question is, when it comes to these kind of – there's so many wacky theories that are online about everything. It's craziness, right? About virtually everything. At what point in time do these media companies have a responsibility to pull that stuff down? And how do they decide?

How do they know who's right and who's wrong? I'm not saying he's right and who's wrong? I'm not saying he's right. I don't even know what he said. But how do they make the distinction that what he's saying is incorrect? And there's so much incorrect shit that's online. Are you going to pull all that too? Is it just because it's COVID-19? Is it because it's a global pandemic and we need to make sure that the right information gets out there yeah so having talked to YouTube engineers and execs they kind of have uh there's

policies there's these quote-unquote policies right so you want to remain science-based fact-based you want to avoid conspiracy theories and so on which to me always feels um the policy okay a lot of people agree with that policy even conspiracy theorists agree with agree with it in the sense that let's remove lies and keep only the truth on our platform yeah but the point is how do you how open-minded are you to what the truth is right and let's go let's get to something that's like a universally accepted story well not universally accepted but universally recognized story the kennedy assassination universally understood is that university i mean what i mean is it's it's a story that everybody knows right and it's the story is questioned, almost universal. Here's a better one.

Epstein. Epstein's killer. That's one. Nobody thinks that that guy hung himself. No one. How about that guy? So if you have various theories or various stories that people come out and talk about with that one. Yeah, and I just actually yesterday listened to Eric Weinstein's solo podcast on Jeffrey Epstein.

Yeah. I don't know if you've listened to it, caught it. He talks about his kind of conspiracy view of it. I wish I was there when he met him. That would have been fascinating to see because Eric is too smart. He's almost like too smart. He's one of those guys you talk to him like, oh, you poor bastard. You're burdened.

You're burdened trying to make sense of the world around apes. And all the trauma of, like we were talking about, he's still also the 13, the 20-year-old kid. So he's seeing he had a few run-ins with authority, which makes him suspicious of authority. And I think our life experience defines that. So you can see Epstein in a lot of different ways depending on how you've experienced yeah for sure life if you were there

I can tell you very nice a little CBD kill cliff on your I like it I know actually quite a lot of people that have met Epstein. Do you really? Yeah, because you're in the scientific community, right? Yeah, and especially at MIT.

He was a big donor. He tainted a lot of people's reputations by knowing him in a weird way. Basically, if you took a picture with him, your reputation is tainted. Yeah. Yeah, whether you knew him or not. Reputation is tainted. Yeah. Yeah, whether you knew him or not.

But I think, I do think that outside of conspiracy theories, that he was an exceptionally charming person. So he was good, you know. At charming people, you mean? At charming people. Yeah. I don't mean to make it sound positive or negative. It is what it is. The devil is going to be charming so right right and the other thing is he genuinely showed curiosity

towards scientific ideas even out there big scientific especially what do you think that was though have you ever thought about that do you think that it's possible that – look, I mean, if you just look at it from a perspective of – the big theory, the big theory, right, is that he's some sort of an intelligence operative, right? Yes. So if he's an intelligence operative, don't you think it's part of his job to try to infiltrate the scientific communities? I mean, there must have been a directive. If he really is an intelligence operative, it's not like they're like, hey, go pursue your interest. Hey, I hear you have a really big love of science.

Just feel free to do that on the side. No, well, what the fuck was he doing? If he's an intelligence operative, what is the intelligence having sex with underage girls? It can't be well the idea of eric that eric pushes forward by the way i'm talking to him on the podcast i do tomorrow which is why i'm talking about him a lot so i've been preparing for like a three-hour conversation with eric weinstein which will kill have you met him before yeah yeah i did already did a podcast okay and i've met him and i hung out with him and you and at the Comedy Story.

That's right. That's right. But it's always an overwhelmingly intense experience intellectually. And in a podcast forum, you have to call people out on their bullshit, which is very hard to do with Eric Weinstein. Yeah, that theory, boy, I checked out 10 minutes into that theory. Oh, the geometric theory. And I tried to go back to it and listen to it again.

I'm like, while he was talking, I'm like, okay, I'm so far behind here. I'm just going to like try to keep up but recognize that I'm not going to and then go back and then listen to it again. Well, he hates putting stuff into words simply. Yeah. He's like allergic to saying simple stuff because it's not beautiful and witty. He's like allergic to saying simple stuff because it's not beautiful and witty. So he always like drenches everything in humor and wit and this like beautiful language. Well, he talks to the initiated.

When he's describing complex things, he describes them to people that understand complex things. No, but it's also, I mean, this is the criticism I have. This is what I'm going to nail tomorrow and always tell him, is he almost, he hates explaining the basics of something. He just skips ahead, right? Even for the initiated, it's nice to go to the basics to explain like what are the ground we're standing on. He skips right into the depth of things, which is beautiful, but sometimes requires you to listen. Again, he's too smart. He's hanging out with apes like me. But he – on Epstein, he thinks that – yeah, his arm – it's possible that Epstein is – sorry, what was the term you used of the intelligence? Intelligence community.

Is it operative? Operative of the intelligence community. But the pedophile thing is a mess up on the part of the intelligent. So they didn't know. They didn't know. They didn't know. Well, it could also be that he felt like he – I mean, remember when this was all started out, when he started out doing that, it was all before social media, right? before social media right so he probably thought that he had this incredible amount of power because of the fact that he was connected by the intelligence community if he was

he probably thought he could get away with it makes you wonder of all the horrible things that happened in this world before social media before the spread of information was possible craziness great just just sheer craziness you know know? And it's like, look, how about the Catholic Church? And they just... Still might be going on, right? It's 100% going on. It's not like, hey, guys, the fucking heat's too hot. Let's stop fucking kids.

No, they're still getting away with it somehow or another. You know, the Vatican is still its own country. You know that, right? It's like it's sort of recognized as a country. They have their own laws. They don't extradite people. So there's a bunch of sex criminals that live in the Vatican. And there was a recent thing with Australia where they acquitted some, I believe it was a cardinal, that was accused of sex crimes with children.

It's awful, man. The idea that that one church is so connected to that. Like, there's not another church you go, oh, kid fuckers. Catholic Church, kid fuckers. They're like that. They go hand in hand. There's nothing like that with Mormons. There's nothing like that with Presbyterians.

But the Catholic Church is like inexorably connected to child molesters. That is fucking crazy. And that we all know that they have shielded these people and moved these people around. There's been horrendous documentaries. So if you watch them, your jaw drops. You can't believe. Did you ever hear No Evil? Did you ever watch that documentary?

That's not the one where the Boston Globe. I don't know. The one that won the Oscar. I don't know if that was the documentary. It was a documentary. It was all about this. Well, there's a bunch of them. I don't even want to get into depth about it because I get disgusted.

There's quite a few documentaries about sex crimes in the Catholic Church. One of the more horrendous crimes involved that guy Ratzinger that they had to kick out as a pope. You know, that guy was personally responsible for moving a priest who was molesting kids, moved him to a new place where he molested 100 deaf kids. Yeah. Just imagine, just imagine that you could be,

that that person can exist inside the structure of the Catholic religion or the Catholic church. And that doesn't mean they're all like that. I mean, I'm sure there's a large amount of beautiful people that are involved in the Catholic church. You know, there's probably a large amount of people that really only want to do the work of God and become a better person. And that's why they're in it. But you also can't deny that this is a thing that exists. And even in 2020, this is still an issue. It's crazy, man.

And one of those issues, just like influenza, that we kind of, we've accepted as a thing that, because it's not new. Yes. Yes. What is that? That's so weird. That's so true. true what you just said you just nailed it yeah it's just and there's all kinds of other types of suffering that we that's just in the background malaria yeah yep all the problems that only bill gates worries well everybody apparently um people that were at his uh were you at his 2015 speech

when he's talking about it um have you listened to that speech no i have not he's he's like spot on predicting everything really yeah i mean and he's still right forget coronavirus i mean basically the thing the thing in this century that's likely to kill 500 million people is natural pandemics. What we're going through now is nothing. So like World War II, for example, the stories, just learning more about my grandfather, what was going through Russia and Europe. We take for granted now that we can go to the grocery store. We still have food. We're kind of talking about it,

but like, imagine there's no food. That's it. No food. That's it. Yeah. That you're starving. So millions of people are going to die from star.

Imagine what you're going to do for your family. If there's no food especially so world war ii had the nice the horrible but the nice property that there was an enemy but when with the coronavirus the enemy is other people yeah yeah and that when things get really bad not coronavirus i shouldn't say that because that's not going to get bad. But a natural pandemic, it can destroy societies in ways we can't imagine. Bill Gates was basically, in his very polite nerd way, saying that we should really be worried about it. We should really be investing in a huge infrastructure for vaccine development, for testing, all those kinds of things. huge infrastructure for vaccine development for testing all those kinds of things yeah i think because of his charities you know he's sort of looked into it a lot deeper than a lot of other folks have and because he has an infinite amount of time and money he's probably sitting around thinking like what is how come people aren't looking at that hey do you think he's ever done psychedelics? If I had to guess, yes.

I mean, so many people of his era did. It was a big part of Steve Jobs and his revelations, although I think he probably should have done more of it. Steve Jobs? Yeah. Relax him. Oh, he was intense? Make him a little bit nicer.

That intensity, that passion is what fuels great engineers. It does. That's the problem, right? It's like to get something that great, you almost have to have that maniacal vision behind it. What do you want, a nice guy or an iPhone? I think you want the iPhone. That's a great meme.

That's a great meme. Steve Jobs looking angry. It just says, what do you want, a nice guy or an iPhone? Bill Gates once coyly defended LSD use by saying, I never missed a day of work. Oh, there you go. Yeah, of course he did it. Yeah, of course he did it. They all tried it back then.

Why wouldn't they? You know? Yeah. I think he got into a little beef with Elon. About? About, I think he said that Tesla, he said something bad about Tesla. Oh, no, no, no. He was actually defending, he was talking good about Taycans.

Yeah. About Porsche Taycans. And Elon said he was very unimpressed with him. Because he reminded me with memes. Somebody replied with a meme of, not a meme, a real video of Bill Gates jumping over a chair. They said, I don't know, I find him impressive. And Elon said, yeah, that's pretty impressive. I love when tech CEOs of major companies have the – I can be silly like that.

Elon's very silly. I love it. He responds to people on Twitter. He gets silly. He's having fun. He's having a good time. This is Bill Gates jumping over a chair. That's a pretty good jump for a nerd.

Not bad. What do you mean for a nerd? I hate that word, by the way. I love nerd. Yeah. It's a good word. No, but you don't use it um you don't mean um i don't mean in a positive way yeah yes i do okay let me let me i do often

you do often yeah yeah i mean a guy who like is wearing glasses with a fucking uh sweater with a collared shirt underneath it he looks like a nerd so you use it positively in that i mean a silly kind of way but you don't think of a nerd as somebody as an ideal of a man or an idea like um oh there's nothing wrong with nerds no i disagree my my perspective is never like that look i'm a nerd about a lot of things i mean you see now you're saying that i'm a nerd about for sure no i i totally i guess what i'm speaking to and that's relevant for our time is that science is not admired in ways because i've seen the alternative especially in the soviet union the way people admire scientists is the way they admire great athletes,

great creators of all kinds. And nerd sometimes diminishes that in ways that it seems like a peculiar quirk of a human being. It connects it to going to comic-con conventions kind of nerd versus that's a different that's a dork the dork yeah so when you're a comic-con dork we've i think we've gone over this recently dork is rarely positive dorph is good if it's self-deprecating call yourself a dork god i'm such a fucking dork. But it's very rare that dork is positive, whereas nerd is often positive. Nerd is like, yeah, he's a science nerd.

Heavy, heavy science nerd. Like that's just a fun way of saying someone's really smart about a certain thing. I know what you're saying. Yeah. I know what you're saying but I don't think the way around that is to eliminate words or even stop using certain words I think the way around that is just to appreciate people

that are really great at science that's the way around that the words don't really matter, it's perceptions that matter I don't think necessarily that science has a bad perception it just doesn't have a glamorous enough perception how many people can name Oscar winners that are just really good at lying they're just really good pretenders and we can name them but how many people can name Nobel Prize winners and science is very few

right exactly and I guess the thing I was also speaking to and definitely keep using the word and it doesn't know I'm gonna preventing words is uh i don't let nerds tell me what to do see there you go no the the thing so that's actually the point i was trying to make it wasn't the is nerd is synonymous with weak that i always hated as a person who loves fighting like i, I like the fact that people are complimenting sort of the pursuit of your scientific curiosity. That is great, but I just never liked... It's a thing I've experienced in this country, is nerd as an image is seen as weakness,

as a kid that gets picked on. And it always annoyed me because, to me, intelligence – and nerds annoyed me. Nerds annoyed me because they lean into it. Like most people I know are kind of like don't work out much who are nerds. And they kind of lean into that idea. Do you think they lean into that because they were bullied by people who work out a lot, so they think those people who work out is like, I don't want to get into their thing.

Those people suck. They were always mean to me. Yeah, something like that. And you kind of create a narrative where like jiu-jitsu or fighting is like a brute thing, just like you talked about with uh greek statues having small penises you say all those barbarians with their big penises yeah that's what he's telling me that's what the professor was giving us the tour was telling me but i think you can be a noble person and have a big penis whoa you're trying is it a humble brag it was an analogy to let people

know it's all right. No, I agree with you, man. Anybody know. My mom listens to this. That's what people don't want, right? You don't want a guy with a bigger dick than you that's smart. That's the same thing you don't want a woman or a guy. You don't want a woman who's hot and smart. When people think of really beautiful women, they automatically assume that woman's dumb.

And oftentimes that is not the case. Sometimes people just have awesome bone structure. And if they, you know, stimulated themselves mentally, if they pursued things, if they had an interest in certain scientific or, you know, esoteric ideas and you underestimated them, would be you'd feel really humiliated if a super smart but super hot girl put you in your place and let you know not only am i hot but i'm fucking smarter than you stupid like that too men don't ever want to think that they almost always love to assume that someone who is pretty is dumb yeah i love it i I love it. I love seeing women who dress up pretty sexually. They're not trying to, and are also brilliant. Yeah.

It's like an FU to society that I can be both things. Listen, man, women like dressing like that. We're different. For us to try to imagine why they like doing it well they're trying to look sexually attractive yes for sure but why are they trying to do that they actually like it too they like dressing like that if we if i often wonder like if uh if women were into us dressing like women like how many how many people would do it if that became a new thing like girls really want to fuck guys who wear skirts isn't that a big deal in scotland that's a kilt it's a different

thing different you mean like a mini skirt i'm like like fucking the hot little latex jammy like you know hugs your curves i think you see some dudes in these legs to do that that would be like this maybe not a lot of people wouldn't. Maybe they wouldn't have to shave their legs. No, if you had to. If they're like in, you have to shave your legs to show off those. Maybe that would be the end. But it depends.

Why do girls do it? They don't all do it. By the way, how many people find out what their woman really looks like now? They can't do their eyelashes. They can't do their eyebrows. They can't do their hair. They can't do their nails. Woo!

Well, your haircut is the right haircut. Oh, this is what everybody should get. Yeah. I wish I did it when I was younger. It's liberating. Yes. From the moment I did it, I was like, of course. God damn it.

Especially for someone that's losing their hair. I'm like, please, just shave your fucking head and just accept it. Even if you've got a weird-shaped head, that's you, okay? Accept it. You're not going to do any better with some weird hair hanging off the back of it. I'm growing it out. You should. Yeah.

You've got a beautiful head of hair. Look at it. It's so thick. It's like a brush. Yeah. You could use your hair to brush other people's hair. Thanks for the idea. Yeah, the fact that the barbers are all closed.

I mean, all of these little aspects of society just kind of, it's kicking in fact that the barbers are all closed i mean all of these little aspects of society just kind of yep it's kicking in it's like i'm hoping things restart and normalize you know i'm hoping the economists can figure out some sort of a stimulus package to get things rolling again i hope we have the resources it's i'm hopeful and i'm also hopeful that the positive aspects of it will stick this is my perspective the keto diet is pretty good for this is i've been enjoying it why is that well i don't know i feel like i cannot eat for long periods of time oh yeah like fasting i guess yeah and uh but it does i mean i like it you You're not so. You lack the discipline to stay on keto. I just saw your Instagram post today.

Well, I was very rarely keto. I did carnivore, though. That was my favorite diet. Yeah, that's why I'm still doing carnivore, just eating burger patties. I decided while this is all going on, if we might have an issue with food, I'm not going to be picky. I'm just going to eat. For sure. That was just my perspective during this thing.

Once everything normalizes, if and when that happens, I'm going to go back to carnivore, I think. But like right now, I'm like, I'm just going to eat. I'm not going to worry about that. I'm just going to be thankful that I have food. Yeah, carnivore is amazing. It's great for, I've been running longer and longer distances. I did, you know, David Goggins.

Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that. Tell everybody what you did because it's crazy. You ran four miles every day or every hour. Every four hours. It's not that crazy. It's crazy for me. I'm not a runner. So it's 48 miles over a period of 48 hours to two days.

The mileage is not that crazy because I was doing like a 9 or 10 minute mile so it's not, you know, I'm just running old lady pace. It's a lot of time. The time is in the mind. The thing that really pushed me to

and okay, I decided to do after each time to record myself saying something that I'm grateful for, which is a stupid fucking idea. Why? No, it's a beautiful idea. But the recording part, because I hated life and I hated everything, like halfway through.

So I had to be positive when I'm recording myself. So you could only sleep for a couple hours at a time? A couple hours at a time. Were you tired all the time? How did that work? I wasn't tired. I was like high. I was like high i was

like unsure what's happening i was delirious because your body is exhausted in a way that's like like after a good workout but it continues going farther and farther into that direction that runner's high right it was yeah it's a high but there's an exhaustion too. And I was a carnivore. I was hungry but also overeating. Like for some reason really wanted a full oven-roasted chicken. So on one of the runs I ran by the grocery store, picked up an oven-roasted chicken and just ate the whole thing. And then just the whole experience is a mind test.

Don't you think you're burning off an insane amount of calories running four miles every four hours? It's not that insane. I would say it's probably the whole thing is probably, I don't know, 10,000 calories over two days. It's not too crazy. Yeah, but you're basically running a marathon a day. Yeah. That's crazy. For two days. Yeah, not too crazy. Yeah, but you're basically running a marathon a day. Yeah. That's crazy. For two days.

Yeah, that's crazy, dude. Why are you trying to downplay it? No, it was great. I mean, the whole thing was crazy. What do you think, Jamie? I'm not wrong here, right? It's in the middle. I understand what he's saying, though, also, because you get a little break. Four miles isn't the longest run. It's like a 5K. You can get it done

in less than an hour. It's 45 minutes. That's even long long if you're going at his pace is that what you're doing about 45 minutes 45 yeah yeah sometimes i would stop like it's cool you get pretty far through an audiobook but the sleep thing was uh was crazy i think the only reason I did it, which is a good lesson, is I saw Goggins post this on Instagram, and I announced on social media that I'm going to do it, which is the only reason I did it. I mean, it's a good thing to – it's nice. It's nice to just announce that you're going to do it because then you feel like such a –

You're accountable. Yeah. So, I mean, I thought maybe I could just delete the tweet. Just to walk back. That was great about our Sober October challenges. You have to do it, you know. The first one was so easy, the yoga one. It was just 15 hot yogas in a month.

So it was yoga every other day. Not that big a deal, but it seemed like it. It's hanging over your head. But that's nothing compared to what you did. it it's hanging over your head but that's nothing compared to what you did well the the nice thing also uh david goggins on his instagram went live every four hours so every four hours beforehand i'm just like sitting here watching this crazy shirtless man like screaming stay hard yes of course he was making it seem like it's gonna to be easy. And let me kind of walk it back. The gratitude thing was the filming was hard, but it was actually a really cool experience.

So before the run, I wrote down 12 things I'm really grateful for, like family, friends, my childhood. And as I ran, I thought about about it like what i'm gonna say and that thinking it's weird it was all for doing like recording myself right but the result was like pretty profound for myself as an experience it's kind of similar with podcasts like you and i wouldn't have this conversation without microphones right right especially would wouldn't have it this long. This long. Sitting across from each other.

Yeah. But recording yourself was like, I really have to now think that I'm thankful for my family and think of like, really put that into mind. That was big. And also just, by the way,

if people are thinking about that for you, because I had so many people message me about the challenge. If you're thinking of doing it, please don't. Do it, bitch. Don't listen to him. I think just running 48 miles is a better challenge because this was torture. So if you, okay, just, okay, if people are thinking of doing it, realize that you're not doing a test of run.

It's not a running test. it's not a running test it's not a marathon test it's a test of it's it's a mental test of how much you want to do something really stupid i guess it's a marathon test but like the you have so much more time to think about how stupid the thing you're doing is that makes it a really big mental challenge. Would you, if you had the option halfway into it to just finish the run, just keep going until it's over? 100%, yeah. Really? I would just do it.

Interesting. So you think it might have been more torture to do it with those breaks and the rest and the food and relaxing for a little bit? Yeah. Because it hangs over your head the torch hangs over your head it hangs over your head the fact that you have to wake up in three hours and like so i never slept in my bed i just laid face down on the on the carpeted floor did you substitute any of those runs for jujitsu i was i i substituted one of them for jujitsu but at the end i ran eight miles because I thought it was... Like a cop-out?

Yeah, a cop-out. But I did jiu-jitsu. So jiu-jitsu I did. Shout-out to Broadway Jiu-Jitsu. They're all closed now. Yeah. Jiu-jitsu gym is going to be a while before they open up again, right? Yeah, and I hope they don't close.

I know, man. It's just so many people are going to be freaked out by germs. Yeah, but it feels weird to talk about. But, yeah, I felt really, really good. When did you do this? Pretty close to this whole outbreak. Maybe a month ago, a month and a half ago. Yeah, it was like February then?

Yeah, February. End of February-ish? Yeah. month and a half ago yeah it was like february then yeah february end of february yeah and i actually gave a big talk to a large audience in philadelphia like on march 8th or something like that like i was in uh vegas for the ufc that weekend that was uh the last weekend i traveled so i guess it was march 7th that might be the last time isn't that weird like what was the last time. Isn't that weird? What was the last time you did a stand-up? That week. I did some shows at the Improv, and then I was supposed to do some shows at the Comedy Store,

and we were talking about it, and they said the room's too big because they were limiting the crowds down to 200 people. That was the first thing they did. So they were going to move the crowd. They were going to move my show to another date and then open up the original room, which is a smaller room of 150 people. And they were asking me if I wanted to go in there or if I wanted to just cancel and reschedule. We were working all that out.

And then they contacted us and they were asking me and a bunch of other comics, like, what do you think we should do here? You know, because there's part of us that thinks we should just shut down. And they shut down before the order was given to shut down. They decided this is, you know, the comedy store doesn't want anybody to get sick. And they were worried about people losing income, shut down they decided this is you know the comedy store doesn't want anybody to get sick and they were worried about people losing income but they were also saying like it's probably the right idea to just shut down and then the improv shut down shortly after but they all shut down before they

were required to they just shut down because it just seemed like the walls are closing in but did you realize at that time this might be the last time? No way, man. Because it might be, I don't want to say anything, but it might be a long time before you do stand-up comedy. What do you think? Another six months? I think it's, okay, here's what I think. I think it would be longer than six months for sure. Really? Yeah.

Why do you think that? Because gatherings of large groups, I'm hoping there will be a lot of interesting innovations of what gatherings of large groups will look like. Like I can see you doing stand-up to a small audience that's tuned in. Like people remotely tune in at a larger scale. What? Something like that. Online? You can't do it.

No, not online only because you have to have something. You can't do it online, period. Because people record it. Record it. Yeah. Also, there's – have to have something. You can't do it online, period. Because people record it. Record it. Yeah, you're working on your new stuff. So you're always... Stand-up comedy is like... People are assholes.

No, they're not. They're very good, which is one of the reasons why most sets don't get leaked. You know, when they leaked the Louis C.K. set, it's like almost understandable. His special just went live. Yeah. You see it? You can get it. I haven't watched all of it. It's like almost understandable. His special just went live. Yeah. Yeah. You can get it. I haven't watched all of it.

I watched half of it. Um, weird to, sorry to interrupt. No, it's okay. It was weird to watch cause it's good. It's intense.

Like his other specials, right? He talked about pedophilia and everything, but it feels weird to see a crowd, to listen to it. Yeah. To see a crowd and to listen to a comedian in this time not mention coronavirus, right? So it made me realize that I have a hunger, as probably a lot of people, to hear a comedian talk about.

We want to see stand-up comedy about the virus. I guess a podcast is a kind of replacement. We want some normalcy, right? stand-up comedy about the virus. Yeah. I guess a podcast is a kind of replacement, but like, cause we're, we want some normalcy, right? And we're all alone with our thoughts and our paranoia and then news media, which in many cases is accelerating our anxiety because there's value in

developing stories and writing stories that get people outraged or clickbait you know so there's that and we need people just talking just talking just just people that are just like you yeah talking about stuff various walks of life that's uh that helps us this is certain e-community that we're all a part of you know, and I feel very connected to that now, you know, because this podcast is, it's kind of taken on a different form over the last few years, which is one of the reasons why I actually have to address people talking about politics and me. I'm like, you guys are out of your fucking mind if you're listening to me, but I have

to accept that, that, that this is part of the new form this thing is taken and another form this taken this this thing is taken is that it's sort of like an electronic campfire in a lot of ways you know there's um there's a great value to people just sitting around shooting this shit and i know there's a lot of people at home that can't you're not chiming in you wish you would you probably have some things to say it's one of the things one of the reasons why comments get so aggressive sometimes because people are listening they have something to say and they can't you just keep talking and they're like fuck and they're like but maybe you should fucking listen to your guest or maybe you should maybe you should

it's really they they have a thing in them that they want to express to like you're talking. They have some interesting shit to say too. And a lot of them do. Yeah. By the way, on that point, I know you don't check comments, but I'm actually,

um, I kind of enjoy checking, especially yours. Like I'm a fan. There's one, one, I'm a fan of yours. I like being a fan of cool people.

And I'll just go on your Instagram and just comment. And there'll be some – there's always some percentage of people who are so shitty. But most of them – that's why I disagree with you. I think most of them are really cool. Yes, I think so too. No, I think so too. But also there's this – I think most people – not most, but there's a big percentage of the population who just enjoy being shitty, but they also enjoy being nice. Sometimes, yeah, because they're not being shitty for real.

They're just shitposting. Yeah, so as long as you're able to inspire them to be nice or at least more – because shitposting done well has a humor behind it and actually a love and respect behind it that's kind of obvious. Yes. Look, one person has to take the hit, whether it's you or me or whoever it is that they're shitting on. If they're saying something funny and one person takes the hit, but a thousand people reading those comments go, ah, that's so true.

Hey, man, I get it. I'm not trying to stop anybody from commenting. You know, there was a time where the comments were blocked off because the streaming didn't allow comments because we didn't have a chat in the streaming. Because you have a chat in the streaming, it devolves into racial slurs and ethnic slurs and anti-Semitic slurs. It's fucking chaos sometimes because people just want to see if you're reading that while you're talking, they want you to react. So they'll write some horrible shit just so that you react sometimes. So we can't have that. I'm not going to read that.

So I'm like, just shut off the chat. Let's just, we'll stream the show live. But then we were uploading it. Comments were shut off because of some sort of a flaw in the way it was processed. So you had to have the chat on for comments to be on or something like that. But they fixed that but i was i really wanted people to know like if you want to talk about what we're talking about i want you to be able to i can't read it because i don't have the time and it's i don't think it's healthy like it's not it's like it does something bad to your mind but i feel

like that's a technology problem because my dream would be for somebody like you to be able to read comments every once in a while in a way that is healthy no i could i could that's not the problem the problem is for me personally there is so little time to just process life that any time that i spend trying to rationalize or trying to accept or trying to process someone's comments, there's not enough time for that. I would love to do – I try very hard to do my best. That's what I try to do with everything. And with this podcast, I try to do my best. And I know sometimes I talk too much or I talk too much or I stumble through my words or i'm overbearing or this or

that or yeah there's it's a balancing act like sometimes you stumble it's weird it's all live you know everything i'm doing is live with no script that millions of people get to see and listen to how do you get that signal though so one of the things i enjoy before i block them is uh people who criticize like who are truly rude. Do you enjoy that? No, I don't enjoy it. But I think it's constructive in the sense that within the rudeness, there's often like opportunity to improve.

Often not. Often they're just like- Oh, so you're saying they're rude, but they have a valid point. Because I find that rude people are more likely, like I'm so fortunate to be part of a community who are really nice to me and just in general nice. I find that they're unable to tell me sort of constructive criticisms in the following – like if I mumble or if I'm not articulate with my ideas or if I'm if I use a certain word too much or if I'm too stuck in a certain kind of perspective you need the asshole to come along to call you like a liberal douchebag or something yes well that's what friends are for you know friends are for busting balls I mean that's one of the things about comedians that a lot of people had a hard

time when we started doing podcasts one of the things that a lot of people had a hard time. When we started doing podcasts, one of the things that a lot of people had a hard time with was how mean we are to each other. Like me and Brian Callen and Eddie Bravo and Brennan Schaub when we start goofing on each other. Or other comics that come in here and goof on each other. When we goof on each other, we goof on each other hard. But there's fun in that. Like, we all enjoy it. Like, comedians to each other some of the fucking meanest people ever like when no one's around we say some of the fucking group chats i'm

in where people shitting on each other it is hilarious it's so mean but really fucking funny and we also do that as an exercise because it calluses you to other people's insults and to that like there's it's a thing that men do to each other they shit on each other first of all to keep each other in check and they expect you to do that to them but also to kind of toughen you to people that don't love you they're going to talk shit you're used to it you know look if you grow up in a place that is filled with people that are always drunk and it's cold out, like Boston, people talk a lot of shit. They talk a lot of shit to each other. That's one of the reasons why so many great comics came out of Boston.

It's because it's fucking cold. And people don't have time for your bullshit. And because of that, because of that lack of attention span or short attention span, like you learn how to come out of the gate fast and you learn how to appreciate people's time. And it's a way to show love. Isn't that weird? But it's funny because people like I love most and I'm closest with, you know, talk a lot of shit. But like you have to earn that right.

Yes. It's funny like people some people walk into my life talking like like busting my ball and it's like well we're not there yet we're not right it's an interesting kind of uh well you have to know that they love you you know that has to be underlying it all by the way i do think you guys are too rough on calendar i'm just the i'm just a fan who showed up to comment in person. Listen, he loves it. He loves it. He gets such a kick out of it. He brings it on himself.

But by the way, he has the thickest skin of any fucking human I've ever met in my life. Never in all my years of knowing that guy, and I've Cal for 25 years 25 fucking years never have I seen him get upset at someone mocking him or insulting him getting legitimately insulted by it I've never seen him never it just goes like this boing bounces off like rhino skin like he did like literally loses zero enthusiasm I mean and it's not that he's not an introspective guy it's not that he's not an objective guy he has a unique ability to handle insults

and he'll even rebroadcast those like if his friends are shitting on him he'll be like can you believe these guys openly disrespecting my age and my looks he it doesn't bother him he's got a great perspective he's a very unique guy, Brian Callen. Very, very unique.

I don't know anyone like him. So the silly song I have is written by him, actually. It is? Yeah. Well, not kind of. I texted him back and forth, but he uses words. Whatever, I'll tell you later. Do you want to do the silly song first?

No, let me do the serious song first. All right, here we go. Should we calm ourselves? Should we light some sage? And I also have a question for you. A big one? You want to go

to the question first? No, no, no. Come on. You leave me in anticipation. No, I've got to ask you something about Trump. Oh, really?

Yeah. Demons be gone. See, Duncan Trussell was a speaker of Demons Be Gone With the mask thing, he wore a mask Oh yeah He was early on in that Well, he also wore a ghillie suit

So let's not get carried away Okay So my voice is terrible So this is more like a poem Don't get in your own head, man Let it go. My granddad was a soldier on the front in

41. The bullets took his brothers, but his stubborn luck held on. The sky was filled with fire, millions lost in flames. Hate and love were all there, and the world never the same. And the world never the same Some days will sink in sadness And the way of them to talk Don't lose yourself to madness

The way out is love When the New York towers crumble We were all New Yorkers too For a moment all just human Not the same old red or blue And the wicked go on scheming For the power in the pain But the heart that longs for freedom

Is a fire they'll never tame Some days will sink in sadness The weight of them too tough Don't lose yourself to madness The way out is long the virus took our comfort that was never ours to own when the

enemies inside us were together but alone this life is so damn fragile a leaf caught by the wind but every breath that's tragic ignites a hope within some days will sink in sadness the weight of them too tough don't lose yourself to madness

the way out is love Lex Friedman ladies and gentlemen when's the album coming out no album ever what made you decide to want to come in front of millions of people and sing a song?

I don't know. You just had a thought in your head? I just had a thought. I'm thinking about my... Mix it up? Mix it up. A challenge like that? Four miles every...

Well, it's... Okay, I'll tell you what. Four hours? It's kind of a challenge. It scares the shit out of me. It's the scariest thing ever. But I also wanted to be a... Because I kept thinking about...

Last time I came on, I really wanted to play hendrix and um i actually had my guitar and i chickened out so i thought okay because it's actually technically really difficult to play in front of a lot of you know because you're not going to let me like try a few times right right i have it, like, without any mistakes. And what happens if you try to play Hendrix, Hendrix on acoustic guitar is really tough to play because it doesn't have, like, it's easier to play Voodoo Child with distortion because you can mess up and you can, it's also a nice blue scale so you can let it ring, you can just, like, jam out. You can go Gary Clark Jr. mode.

ring you can just jam out you can go gary clark jr mode but with acoustic every mess up has a like it has like it's silence after so acoustic doesn't ring for a long time when you play individual notes it dies quickly so you can hear mess ups really easily so i so i knew if i mess up it's going to just sound bad and i knew i would freak out and so on so i just went i just thought to do i thought to uh uh to do something where you can't where i just strum chords where i can't screw it up at all so and then uh the the virus thing just made me think like i was talking to my dad a lot about about my grandfather and just brought it it made it so real to me because i studied world war i II a lot, especially the Holocaust and all that.

But the fact that just learning about my grandfather just made it so real to me. It kind of connected everything together. Plus there's a book I recommend people read. It's by Albert Camus called The Plague that he wrote right after World War II. I don't know if you know who he is. He's like an existentialist philosopher. Existentialists believe that you have to live,

like life is absurd, life is suffering, and there's no meaning to it all. You just have to live the moment and take each moment as it comes and live it to the fullest kind of idea. So he described this town that got overtaken by the plague in the book The Plague, and that kind of similar to bubonic plague, basically similar characteristics,

and writes about how everybody reacts in different ways. The main character is a doctor who basically sees the absurdity of the suffering around him, that there's no meaning to it all. That's the thing about the virus. Like with the Nazis and with wars, there's an enemy. You can kind of trace back and understand what was happening. With the virus, it just seems like it comes out of nowhere. And it breaks the spine of the way we think of regular life. Like some people try to cling on to regular life as if nothing is happening.

Which, by the way, it's kind of like what a lot of our society is doing right now. We're not yet – we haven't really felt the pain yet and hopefully won't. But there's this kind of calm before the storm kind of period. And then some people become more religious. They start to search for the bigger meaning of life outside of the material possessions. And then the doctor represents the idea that no matter what, he gives himself fully to his craft of helping other human beings.

And overall, there's this story that, this idea that suffering is just part of life and the only way, there's a natural temptation when there's cruelty and suffering all around you to isolate yourself and to withdraw from life because anything you do in life

is going to lead to suffering. You know, dating, like if you get married, it's going to lead to suffering because eventually you're going to lose the people you love. So there's a natural desire to withdraw. But in fact, what he found, the doctrine, what he saw around him is that love and compassion, like giving yourself fully to the love of other human beings and to his community is the only way to deal with that kind of suffering. To me, it's a really profound story about love being the right response in a time of crisis. And a crisis that hits everybody. You want to kind of hide from it, but it's actually where more suffering happens.

So it's a kind of profound book that I recommend people read. Most people have read like him in high school for this book called The Stranger. But that one in particular seems so connected to us. Oh, sorry. He wrote it as an allegory for World War II. So the plague in that case is the Nazis, that it just hits out of nowhere. His book was really popular. I think in 1947 he wrote it as a kind of allegory of World War II,

a way to talk about the virus that first infects the rats and then infects the weaker humans and then infects everybody. It was a connection and an allegory analogy to the the nazis and so i saw the connection between now and and the nazis of course the scale there with world war ii was much more intense and and and finally just how like fragile this whole damn thing is like that my grandfather had probably single digit percentage chance of living you know like most people died most soldiers died in the especially in those early years of 1941 when the nazis i think basically stalin was using russian soldiers and just human beings as human shields

uh but yeah just threw bodies at the problem so the fact that my dad my uh grandfather survived seems crazy like and i do all these things i'm here talking to you wearing a stupid tie like all of that is connected to like he somehow survived like all those look ripple effects me doing research uh you know i i hope to impact like billions of people one day. You know, those like little ripple effects, like how fortunate I am to be part of that. I mean, it just all seemed to be connected to me. So I wrote this. Well, you have to go back before him, right?

I mean, he is here because someone won a fight with a rock. You know, some time in history, there was probably one of his ancestors that clubbed someone to death with a rock who was breaking into his house. And not that many humans ago, as you put it. Not that many humans ago. Yeah. Not that many. You know, if you go, like, let's think. I mean, they're constantly pushing back the age of the oldest human. They recently pushed it back even further.

See what that study said. The age of the oldest human, they bumped back another half a million years or so. I think they're talking about Australopithecus and another ancient human all live together at the same time there's quite a few

quite a few different styles of human that live together at that same time by the way at that time sorry to interrupt but at that time

along with humans lived millions of viruses oh yeah of course yeah so they they too not to give any shout outs to viruses but they they too survived because their grandparents have uh clubbed somebody over the

head well bill hicks called people a virus with shoes you know he was joking around obviously but there's truth to that there's something to that in that what is what is if you stopped and think if you were a cow or a carrot or tomato plant or avocados or chickens or think of the things we fucking consume and think of the living things that we pull out of the ground and shove into our bodies and consume. Now think of that with something else. Think of that as if there was a population of animals like tuna that just got wiped out by something the way we wipe them out. You would go, whoa, like, oh, yeah, there's a tuna virus.

And it's literally killed 80% of all the tuna in the ocean. We're down to like 20% capacity in tuna. Like, fuck, man, what happened? Yeah, it's called sushi. It's called people. literally goes hundreds of miles out into sea with these giant fucking fiber nets that it's created. And it sucks these things into the nets and pulls them out with giant cranes and dumped them into a refrigerated hull. And then brings them back to shore to get cut up and sold. Like, fuck, man.

But at the same time, it's... Tuna's delicious. Not that, but also if you zoom out, it's kind's tuna's delicious well not that but also if you zoom out it's kind of beautiful the the the way that life propagates is just beautiful so i've been reading a lot on viruses and the way they work is incredible like it's uh i would say viruses there's obviously debate on whether they're living or not it's just definitional but they're like the simplest example of the beauty and power of the evolutionary process it's because like we humans are kind of complicated in terms of killing tuna there's it's like there's a lot of things going on in our

bodies like viruses are the simplest possible i think they're living i think it's the simplest possible, I think they're living, I think it's the simplest possible life form that just shows that anything is possible. Like all the damage that's being caused now with the coronavirus, that was like one, there's like one guy that mutated. It jumped from a certain speed. We can trace the evolutionary path back. There was a recent CNN article that was wondering how long it's been around. They were saying, see if you can find this. Was COVID-19 around in humans longer than is currently believed?

They think it might have existed for months, if not years, before it broke loose and became a pandemic. Oh, did it mutate? I don't know. I didn't read the article. It's a video, not an article. Oh, did it mutate? Because it... I don't know. I didn't read the article. It's a video, not an article. Oh, it's not? Yeah. Oh.

Did you say CNN? CNN. Fake news. Yeah, fake news. You heard me, bitch. Yeah. Where'd you learn that? CNN?

There's still just... Library. It's the news, folks. It's the news. Leading scientists tell CNN that it's... Listen, CNN's trying to do their best, but they have perceptions that other people don't agree with just like everybody else. Leading scientists tell CNN that it's possible the virus didn't just come from bats in the past months but it may have existed in humans many months, even years before it grew into a deadly pandemic.

CNN's Nick Paltenwalsh reports. By the way, CNN is not doing a good job. I think the entire— What are they doing bad? The incentive. Like, they're choking out the investigative, deep investigative journalism. It's exactly what you said there, the clickbait. Like, look at the title.

Look at the— I think they're trying to stay alive. Well, yeah, but that's a problem. I think it is a problem. But I think in the defense of particularly online journalism, I think they're trying to stay alive. I don't think it's a good time for journalism now. From what I understand, the only thing that keeps New York Times functional is the podcast. The podcast, yeah.

Their podcast is huge and that that that podcast earns a lot of money but that's not that means they need to innovate they need to be they need to become the podcast does it well we need the fucking new york times though the problem they need to figure out a way to make money off of it but we need we need the top of the food chain journalism right and that's what the times has always represented. We need them. So when someone is, someone's done something for the Times, it's not so good or flawed. Yeah, okay. But it's still not, that one person, that one article, whatever it is, is not the Times. The Times stands for something, right?

What the New York Times is supposed to stand for, what it always did when I was a kid, and it does now to a lot of people still, it's the cream of the crop. It's the very best journalism. It's the very best journalism. It's the very best. It's the ones that have the deepest insight, the ones that nail it. And we'd like it free of bias, but it's run by humans. You know, this is the problem with CNN. It's the problem with any news source, but we still need news sources.

But it's run by humans. They need news sources. But it's run by humans that need high salaries, and there's a huge amount of people involved in making that system that is a CNN. So there's several mechanisms of innovation required. First, like this podcast here, podcast in general, require very few people to run. Now that there's an infrastructure to communicate with a lot of people. And then there's the Wikipedia model. So Wikipedia is thousands of contributors that create extremely strong factual information. Yeah.

And that's not – there's very little money required to run Wikipedia, incredibly so. Incredibly so. There are some journalists out there that are online, though, that are thriving because of the problems with legacy media. It's an opportunity. It represents, for God's sake, Tim Pool, my friend Tim Pool. YouTube. Tim Pool's a fantastic journalist. He's really objective. You might disagree with him or you might not find his perspective to be in the line with yours. But that guy is,

he holds those journalistic ethics at the highest level. I mean, to the highest standard with him, it's everything. And when you read his take on or see him make a take on things, he is giving you the most honest, objective take on it possible. And it's really hard to get that from a network. First of all, it's really hard to get what he does for a network because you're going to get these giant chunks where he can talk about something for as long as it takes to describe what the issue is. Whereas CNN has a segment, man. That segment is fucking seven minutes long. You better be done by seven minutes. We're going to commercial. And then we're coming back with Don Lemon. And he's got a sassy take on things.

And then Andrew Cooper's got new glasses. Look at that handsome bastard. And then they're all going to talk about shit. And you've got to listen. And it's Trump is bad. Coronavirus deadly. And holy shit. Chris Cuomo's got it.

Let's go to Chris. He's in his basement. And then you see Chris in his basement with Sanjay Gupta. And they're holding up chest x-rays. There's segments, man. Segments are bullshit. It's dumb. You have these standards that you've created a long fucking time ago. And this is the biggest handicap that legacy media has other than their inability to be free like a guy like Tim Pool is.

He's an independent. They can't be free like a guy like Tim Pool is. He's an independent. They can't be free like he is. You have too many working pieces, too many producers, too many people that are telling you what direction to set. There's people that bring you the segments. You're a talking head. There's a lot of shit going on there, man. A lot of shit going on there.

But you have to innovate, and you have to make more. I actually disagree with you about Tim Pool. I think it's impossible to be perfectly objective or whatever. He's just one voice. He tries to be perfectly objective. He tries to be as objective as he can be. No, I know. You need to aspire to it

and not be polluted by other influences. But I can see people, like I think I'm objective, but I have very different views than Tim Pool on some things and not others. Well, there's subjective objectivity, isn't there? I don't know. Only one of us is just smoked.

Is it possible that people can look at things like you have an idea, a subjective idea of what something means when you're looking at it objectively? So you're looking at a thing objectively. You're being honest about what it says. But you also have preconceived notions of what each individual aspect of that certain thing means and what's good and what's bad. That's where the subjective aspect of objectivity comes in. When you look at certain things that happen, there's certain ways you can look at something and not have a bias but look at something and you have a preconceived idea of what aspects of it should or should not be tolerated and maybe

sometimes it takes someone else to come along and say okay well why do you hold these beliefs so yeah you're absolutely right but the problem is that based on your skill set and your momentum in history, you might look at a very particular aspect objectively and not see the bigger picture. So like Tim Pool has revealed and has focused on certain aspects of problems in the system and he continues to focus on them, maybe not seeing the bigger picture. That's impossible for any one person to see the bigger picture, I think. Like, I tend to see in a lot of things the beauty of

things, and focus on the positive. You talk about that even with viruses. Even with viruses. But is that not objective? Like, if I... Beauty is not an objective word, but I just mean that there's –

Well, it kind of is what we're just saying. There's a subjective aspect to your objective view of a virus. Right. But it's choosing on which parts I focus in on. And also the other thing is choosing the ways you talk about it, so the ways you reveal that objectivity. Right. You can be positive. You can be negative.

You can be very cold and fact based you can be uh very flamboyant and very kind of excited uh use a lot of visuals all those kinds of things and all of that changes the way the message is carried yeah which is why we should have thousands of tin pools uh as opposed to sort of well i think they're gonna spring up out of the void that's been created by this distrust in legacy media. Especially now, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but like YouTube, there's so many people, like my brother has now like put the camera on themselves, right? And say their opinions.

Yeah. You know, say like he's doing like a bunch of reviews of scientific papers. They're all like, they started a show. There's so many just, there's thousands of shows springing up. Dude, there's 900,000 podcasts. Yeah, it's crazy. It's over a million now, I think. It's hit a million.

When did it hit a million? Probably last week. I'm for sure people start podcasts right now. It's a crazy number. Well, especially now, right? While they're on lockdown. People are doing, like, like the lockdown chronicles. I think it's a symbol of where we're going, right?

It's you're becoming, look, when I do this thing, I'm doing this thing four or five days a week and I'm becoming more connected with people in some weird way that no one ever thought it was ever going to happen before. Where there's people that are listening to my voice right now in their ear while they're running right a lot not a small amount if you could see the actual number of people right now with earbuds in running listening to this podcast you'd be like whoa that's kind of crazy stay hard you're running stay hard motherfucker

but run faster right now this kind of connection is is a it's a dip into the next dimension that's what this is and it seemed like it wasn't it seemed like it was just a radio show you're doing on the internet but then somewhere along the line it became this weird thing and that's what it is now podcasts are a weird thing especially one that reaches the the numbers of people that this one reaches and for that to be in my hands is a weird position. And I'm, you know, while it's happening, I'm like, oh, look how fucking strange this is. Huh. I didn't anticipate this.

I always anticipated this being some weirdo fringe thing that very few people would connect with, which is why I never tried to censor it at all. which is why I never tried to censor it at all. I tried to do a vast majority of it completely high out of my mind and hang out with fun people and just talk shit and have a good time and not have a different perspective. Some people have a public voice and a private voice. I try to have the same voice. Just be me.

Just do that. Yeah, that's what I tell people when they say, what's Joe like behind the scenes? That'd be awesome if you were totally different. But I just tell them it's the same guy. It's just awesome. Wouldn't it be a bummer if someone was like a super dick behind the scenes? Yeah, that'd be a bummer. Or like you don't have to be a super dick, but just a totally different person.

Like you put on an act. Yeah, like you put on that mini skirt. off the tattoos hug those curves baby but the point is i what i think this is is a step into the way humans are going and this is just one step that we didn't think was a step it's a podcast i thought it was just like a radio show that you do on the internet but it's it's not for some reason it's more involved and more entangled and more intense and then and then also it has an impact right i can get guys like osterholm on to talk about stuff we can get an understanding of these things by the way he was wrong about masks but he didn't know at that time yeah that was not that long ago isn't that

interesting that they didn't know about masks and they weren't sure he was incorrect about a few things but it doesn't i'm not going to point him out. It doesn't matter because he was stating the best available knowledge at the time. Well, he was also incorrect about CWD, chronic wasting disease, not being an elk and some other ungulates. He was wrong about that. My friend Doug Duren corrected that to me. He sent a text to me about it that he listened to a few of the aspects of that podcast. And he was like, he's incorrect about several things.

He was correct in the dangers of CWD, which is chronic wasting disease, which is a disease that they are absolutely terrified is going to make the jump from animals to people. It's very similar to like a mad cow disease, but it has its own prions. And then he also sent me a text explaining that prions are not actually alive. They're not a living thing. It's like a protein or a type of protein. Is that what it is? Prions? I'm not sure.

Whatever the fuck it is, you can't kill it. It's almost impossible to kill. They can sterilize it for three cycles of like medical sterilization techniques and for three cycles of like insane temperatures. And there's still trace elements of prions on the medical equipment. It's a crazy thing. If that gets into people, we have a real huge problem. So this is a real dress rehearsal.

If you've seen all these people that are recovering from this, there's nobody recovering from chronic wasting disease. No one. Every deer that gets it dies. They all die, and they die in a horrible way. Their body rots away, and they're walking around like a skeleton, and they're vomiting all this goo and slime that comes out of them that's infected with CWD. And then these animals come along and eat those leaves that they were eating and that they threw up on and then they get it too.

It's crazy. The stuff even can get apparently into the DNA of some plants. One of the really interesting things that's amazing on a positive note is that it seems like we haven't seen a virus that's both or any kind of thing that jumps to humans that's both deadly and spreads easily so like there's viruses that like ebola like ebola like that's that kills like crazy but doesn't spread too easily right and there's viruses that spread easily but don't kill there's no in terms of virology, in terms of biology, there's no good reason why that should be the fact.

But isn't that just how the world works in general and systems? I mean, look at humans. We have a spectacular ability to control our environment. We have the ability to use materials from the outside world and construct them into weapons that lets you kill at distance but we're made out of jelly donuts we're like this soft bag of shit like even a really hard person a knife goes right through them you know we're really mushy whereas like a water buffalo is dumb as fuck but god damn are they tough you know there's a balance. There is, but that's a kind of romantic notion. I don't know if it applies.

Like the biology and the physics of it doesn't make sense. It doesn't. But when would it change? When would it become something that does tip that scale and become something more catastrophic? Well, if you were looking at it objectively outside the system, you would say, well, when one part of the system becomes overbearingly powerful, that's us. That's humans.

Yeah, we're that virus. Well, we are on everything. We are rats on a sinking ship. We're on every little patch of land. You find spots in Antarctica, you find people taking shits, digging holes in the ground to bury it. And hopefully soon on Mars and the rest of the solar system. If you want to do that, yeah. The numbers that we have right now are fucking incredible.

We've propagated the whole globe. Well, ants are still- Biomass-wise, yeah. Far ahead of us. Yeah, but they don't do shit. Viruses are really ahead of us. Most viruses are running the show. We're just like a little fun.

Right, but in terms of the impact on the planet, I don't think you can make it, like ants might have the same, they have the same biomass as us, right? In terms of total volume, yeah. Yeah. So there's the weight of ants is the same as the weight of all the people.

That's how many ants there are, which is pretty crazy when you stop and think about it. But they don't have the same impact in terms of their impact on other creatures, like the tuna that we're pulling out of the sea, their impact on the pollution. But viruses, on the other hand. Viruses, they can ruin a whole species. A whole, certain like microorganisms they can just kill everything yeah and well plagues what is the the most devastating historical plague black death and how many plague how many did that kill a million 200 million mostly in europe in Europe. Wow. That number's crazy.

Well, Spanish flu is 50 million. 200 million makes you just step and go, whoa. No social media, though, so we don't... I mean, it's death that's forgotten. Well, not only that, death that was probably left to rot out in the streets and horrendous smells and people didn't understand viruses and diseases back then.

Smallpox, I would say, like when I talk to virologists, they say smallpox is the scariest of them all until we develop the vaccine. But smallpox, you Native Americans, I mean, they decimated, smallpox decimated. Probably, I don't know what the number is, but more than 50 million. Yeah, the number is supposed to be stunning. In some places, as many as 90% were killed by European diseases, smallpox and the like. Yeah. 90%.

That's, I mean, imagine something that just comes to America and wipes out 90% of us. And then you understand what it must have been like for the Native Americans when they encountered the European diseases that the Europeans had already developed antibodies for. Just everyone around you is dying. Imagine that, 90%. You know? I mean, we're looking at something that's, right, what is the global death rate? I mean, it's kind of thrown off because of Italy, because Italy has a very high death rate in terms of people that get infected. Well, you often confuse death rate i mean it's kind of thrown off because of italy because italy has a very high death rate in terms of people that get infected well you often confuse death rate uh so if you look at the deaths divided by the population that number is okay i want to be careful saying small ever

but it's a very small percentage no i understand what saying, though, is overall the number of people, the percentage of people that have died from this and then compare that to the impact that smallpox had on Native Americans. You'd be like, whoa. Yeah. The difference between 90 percent of the population gets killed and the high in Italy is what is what is the percentage of death? I think it's 10% of people who get it are dying. Right? No. It's definitely lower than that. In Italy, I thought it was 10%. I mean, it's possible.

I haven't been too close to following. I think Italy is an outlier, and it's really high. The way they get that number is dividing by the number of cases okay italy corona no this listen look it's right there man coronavirus cases 135 000 deaths 17 000 the problem is those cases were the reported cases so you don't know right uh and right you're saying there's a lot of people that just weren't tested and they weren't tested. They weren't tested. Right. But isn't that kind of like the Nielsens?

You kind of look at it. You have to divide by and then. No, no, no. Because I don't know how the Nielsens works, but this is not randomly sampled. So if they randomly sample the population and then look at the deaths per, that would be more statistically accurate. This is just people who have reported. But don't you think that a bunch of people could have died from the coronavirus and they didn't attribute it to them?

Yes. So it could be higher than that. It could be higher. Yeah. Okay, that's what I'm thinking too. That's what they're saying in America as well, by the way. Yeah. They're saying there's a bunch of people that die and they don't know what to do

and they don't have the tests. Yeah. You're saying there's a bunch of people that die and they don't know what to do and they don't have the tests. So they don't. Currently, given the tests, it's much more likely that the number is lower, meaning that it's just we're not testing. We're not testing nearly enough. So if we randomly. So Iceland did this random. The test is lower.

I'm sorry, for deaths or for infections. For deaths. So. For infections as well, right? Yeah, for infections. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah, for deaths or for infections? For deaths. For infections as well, right? Yeah, for infections, yeah. Oh, sorry, yeah, for infections. But you need the infection number to calculate the percentage of the deaths correctly. So you have to test.

I don't know what the percentage is, but it's a very large percentage of the population, probably 20%, 30% of the population. You have to sample randomly, not people who are showing symptoms, not people who are like, no, just sample randomly. You know. Get that number accurately. There's something about every apocalyptic movie. There's something that happens where you realize that these people have accepted a new normal.

You know? Yeah. Whether it's Mad Max or A Quiet Place. You ever see that scary movie? Is that what it's Mad Max or A Quiet Place. You ever see that scary movie? Is that what it's called, Jamie? A Quiet Place is a movie about aliens that come here, and you've got to be real quiet around them to fuck you up. So what do you think is the new normal here?

Well, how about social distancing? I've been watching a lot of movies because we have movie night at home every night, and watching movies where people are hugging and shaking hands it feels weird it's weird like that that's the new normal like if that was in a movie or a dystopian version of the future on a hulu show like the um handmade tails that's not a handmaid's tale handmaid's tale i had to quit that one i was like this is too i'm not to get anything good out of this. This is going to bum me out.

Too much touching, you mean? No, no. It's just too, the dystopian version of the future is too depressing. It was too awful. I'm like, great, great show, but I'm like, oh. You don't think we'll come back to hugging and. I don't know, man. I don't know.

But I'm saying if there was a movie or a television show where people behaved with social distancing and everyone was afraid of everyone's viruses, like the reality that we're experiencing right now. If there was a television show like that, you'd be like, what? What kind of weird fucking show is this? You would think it's so strange that there's a virus that makes New York City quiet. Like drive down New York City, you see a car. There's a second car. There's a third car. It's deserted.

It's surreal. My friend John Joseph sent me some videos of him ride his bike around New York. And he's like, look how fucking crazy this is. There's no one out here. There's no one out here. And he's turning his phone and showing all these empty streets. It's weird. It's weird to see.

Real weird. Yeah. Like airports, all that. So you flew here by yourself on a plane i'm by myself there was no one else on the plane with you in the plane but they still fly yeah and nobody behaved like that's nobody treated me special wow yes uh what was surreal is um that the airport's empty but they're fully staffed because you still want to give i think uh i think part of the stimulus package is giving money to the airline so you want to make sure people stay

employed yeah make sure the planes are still running that's so crazy they're flying with one guy you had a private flight private flight across the country did you lay back take up all the seats and switch seats in the middle of the flight like No, I just try not to get freaked out. I watched, what is it, Tiger King? Yes. Yeah. Do you get any booze? Are they serving booze on the plane?

No, no, no liquids, nothing. They don't serve anything? No. Because they don't want to touch you, right? Yeah, I don't think they've interacted with me at all. No interaction with you? No. You, the one guy on the plane, they't even ask how you doing you all right no they were all wearing masks i was wearing a mask we're all it was but they're friendly i i would say the least friendly and that

was weird going to the airport is there's nobody everybody's working and it's just me and my stupid mask. It was definitely surreal. But it seemed okay. The thing that I don't like is how people behave at grocery stores. It's the thing you've said, actually, is they don't want to get close to you. It's strange. It's so strange. They're almost afraid of this.

And that really worries me because it has a potential of just separating us, damaging the sense of community. There's long-term ramifications if we keep this and not hugging each other shit up. And we'll have to all be aware of that fact. Like this has to be temporary. Well, once they come up with a remedy, a cure. If you just know that all you have to do is go to the doctor and the doctor is going to give you a thing and you're going to be fine. Oh, phew.

Like staph infections. Have you gotten staph from GGSV yet? No. Well, it can fucking kill you. You have to take care of it. Staph can kill you. And there's a lot of people that don't even know what it is. And you get infected and then it gets systemic gets in your blood and you know there's a lot of people that just don't know any better and they're not good at going to the doctor and they develop

some sort of infection by the time they go somewhere and take care of it it's really bad and they're in trouble like they could die you know but thank god they have fucking medicine for that at least they can give you a a fighting chance so people aren't afraid of jiu-jitsu. You still do jiu-jitsu even though people get staff. I know a bunch of people that have gotten staff from training, a lot. They could all be dead if it wasn't for remedies, right? If it wasn't for antibiotics, if it wasn't for taking the proper care and treating it. Apparently some people have treated staph organically.

And Rhonda Patrick was actually talking about, I think she had MRSA at one point. And as part of the treatment, along with antibiotics, she introduced garlic into the actual wound itself. And apparently, that had a pretty profound effect. Oh, man. I'd love to see the studies on that. I wish I remember what she said about that. She usually comes with studies. Oh, she's got a fuckload.

She's got studies about everything. She's one of the smartest people I've ever talked to. I actually haven't followed what she's saying now on the virus. I'd be curious to see. She's talking about different nutrients that support your immune system, particularly vitamin D. She takes a lot of vitamin D. But she's just talked about all the

various forms, whether it's through sauna or cold plunges. She's the one who turned me on to that, all that stuff, heat shock proteins, cold shock proteins, and the impact of it. And there's some videos that you could find online of her talking about it. She's uh written some articles about it and she's she's just a huge fan of that hormetic response and how important that is to your system keeps your system healthy dude i've been doing it seven days a week which i wasn't doing before sorry yeah seven days a week i do it now and you just do salt you jump in do you do the cold like no i haven't been doing cold i want to get a cold plunge thing here i I think I'm going to get something and replace one of my, not in this room, bathroom out there. What's a cold plunge?

You mean like a tub full of ice water? Yeah, like one of them big steel tubs, and you throw bags of ice in there, and I'm going to get an ice machine and just turn that room into a freeze-your-dick-off room. That's my next move. I've done it a few times it's awesome it's it's uh it's really good for you right it's good for you yeah well i think that that those making your body deal with those responses makes it stronger i'll tell you what man i've been working out a lot because of this um lockdown i've been um doing a lot of Muay Thai too, a lot of hitting, punching, and kicking shit.

And that always makes me really sore. It makes my joints sore. And that fucking sauna every day has kind of knocked all that out. I feel great. And I've been throwing a lot of power kicks and punches and all this shit, and everything feels good. Everything feels real good. and punches and all this shit, and everything feels good.

Everything feels real good. I just think there's a giant benefit to doing that on a regular basis. You can buy one and put it in your backyard. If you have that kind of scratch, I say do it. I'm telling you. What's the temperature of the water? Well, sauna is dry. Oh, is the sauna a dry sauna? Oh, you mean like a dry sauna.

Yeah, not a jacuzzi, bro. Those are probably good for you, too. No, man, I thought it was like a wet one. It was a steam room. Yeah, the problem with that is you can't get as hot because you'll cook. You know? Okay. Like if you have 190 degree air, you're okay.

If you get in 190 degree water, you're going to die. Oh, with the steam room, you're essentially, I mean, you're in a liquid. Exactly. You're going to die. You're going to get cooked. So heat going high up on the heat. Dry heat you can tolerate. I mean, I throw a little water on it.

There's actually a little scale in the sauna. It's like the top of it is the degrees and the bottom of it is the humidity and you're supposed to calculate those and find out exactly how hot it feels. But either way, you throw a little bit of water. I throw three scoops, three little spoonfuls of water on that bit.

And just sit there and fucking suffer. And when you get out of there, everything just feels looser and more relaxed. As soon as your body comes back to a normal temperature, you just feel so much better. It's so valuable, man. Well, exercise right now, I highly recommend. What are you doing? Because you can't go to jujitsu and you were doing a lot of that. So what are you doing for your exercise? So body weight, I do have a cowbell, but I kind of avoid it because it's like hell it's too intense for me how much does

it weigh uh the 30 30 30 pounds yeah so it's hell um i'm trying to remember if it's kilograms or pounds it's probably 35 pounds it's if it's 30 kilograms that's heavy as fuck yeah no it's not 30 never mind 30 kilograms what 65 pounds yeah so what that is so it's 30 kilograms, that's heavy as fuck. Yeah, no, it's not 30. Never mind. 30 kilograms is what, 65 pounds? Yeah. Is that what that is? So it's something that kills me if I do swings and basic stuff for 30 minutes. Okay, like probably 35 pounds. Yeah.

But I don't like- Keith Webber, have you ever done his series? He's been on the podcast before. It's his extreme kettlebell cardio workout that we sell it on it. But I found out about it. We sell it because I found out about it. I found out about it, I believe, through – I think I just found it on the internet. I got a DVD, and it's brutal, man.

And I was like, one little 35-pound kettlebell. I'm like, what's a bitch-ass little weight? What the fuck is that going to do? Dude, four minutes in, I'm like, how long is this? 40 minutes? There's no fucking way. And the sorest that I had been in a long time was just one 35-pound kettlebell doing this extreme kettlebell cardio routine that he put together.

He's got two of them. I think he might have three. He definitely has two of them. They're fucking brutal. Mostly swing bait, like you're mostly on your feet? Oh, no, bro. You're doing everything, bitch. Okay.

You're doing windmills. You're doing hot potatoes. You're doing renegade rows. You're doing everything, man. You're doing cleans, overhead presses, and squats. And it's just a nonstop. And he gives you these little breaks they're like last like 10 or 15 seconds and then boom you're moving to the next exercise and you're like

holy shit and you realize how much work you can get in with just a kettlebell just a little bit yeah like people like oh i got no room for a gym if you can afford a kettlebell please just buy a cat you don't have to buy a kettlebell. You don't have to buy an on it kettlebell. By the way, they're out of stock probably. On it? They're probably out of stock. We're out of stock on it. Yeah, we sold out quick. Because there's no, gyms are all closed.

So you don't know what to do. You know who else makes great shit? Rogue. Maybe Rogue has them. They make awesome kettlebells. They make awesome everything. Here it is. This is Keith Webber.

My man. So this fucking workout goes on and he's shredded. Look at my boy Keith. Look at him showing you how to get your fuck muscles going. But this is him explaining the correct way to do kettlebell swings. But I mean you can get a lot of his workouts online. There's a lot of workouts online from people. If you've got a YouTube account or a computer that gets online, go to YouTube and find these kettlebell workouts that people put online for free.

Because they put a great workout up there for free just so that you subscribe to their page. They'll give you some value, and what you're giving them is a large audience. There's some fucking great workouts, body weight workouts as well that are free. Free videos online. Follow along and you can do everything from your living room and you can get blasted.

I mean, you can have a crazy workout from a lot of videos. There's so many of them. I do more chill kind of workouts. I run for longer distances. So what I recommend

if you're not as intense as uh as run like i run about six to eight miles every day and uh push-ups and bodyweight squats i love bodyweight squats bodyweight squats surprise are always surprising to me how little how how much they can kill you. Like everyone who thinks they're badass even can squat a lot, right? Even if you can squat, like, I don't know, 400, 500, 600 pounds, try to do 50 bodyweight squats. Like something happens.

What's the most you've ever done in a row? I know I usually start suffering at 20, and maybe I've done 40 before. I don't know. But I have a, yeah. Why? You can get up to really high numbers, and it's a glorious form of torture, and it's crazy how much it develops your legs, particularly the quads, like right above the knee. You know, these little muscles that are on the side,

like that hurts from Hindu squats more than fucking anything I've done ever. It targets those so uniquely because when you're at the bottom, when your heel is up and you're on the ball of your foot and you rise up, it's like all that muscle for the whole beginning of the rise. It's all that part of the quad right by the knee. It's a really unique way to target that muscle. And guys who do it a lot, like a lot of those dudes are really into catch wrestling. They would do like 500 a day every day.

They all have these like preposterous legs. And that was like a big part of the development of their strength was just doing ridiculous numbers of hindu squats and you could also do like i usually uh i used to do them a lot like especially when i competed in the jiu-jitsu and wrestling i would do a lot of them and i'd also like jump so like you you explode into the squats as opposed to sort of slow but that you know do you ever hear of Carl Gotch? Yeah, the catch wrestling guy. Yeah, Carl Gotch was famous for his body weight conditioning programs. He was just a stickler for having his wrestlers be in insane physical condition.

It was a prerequisite for training with him. That's awesome. Yeah. No, he had a preposterous workout. I think he was really into clubs too was he like i think he was really into those uh club bells and a bunch of other but those other kinds of workouts too but i actually uh competed in a couple of catch wrestling tournaments did you really that's cool what are the rules you can get pinned right yeah you can get it felt so weird because um because i i won a couple matches by pin and it felt like this is so stupid this is so stupid like i didn't even submit the guy

it it felt oh and i did a lot of interesting things so i i would um i pulled butterfly guard a few times so meaning you can get pinned but you don't get points for an almost pin. Okay. So you can play guard as long as you don't get your back. You have to elevate. You have to elevate

regularly. So you I don't think you can get pinned if you didn't get past the legs. Oh, okay. So as long as you're in the butterfly guard even if you're flat on your back

if you have him in your butterfly guard, he's not pinning you. Yeah. Of course, it was confusing the refs and stuff. But it was cool because the guys that did it, it felt more like UFC back in the Tank Abbott days. It was more ghetto. It was people wearing wrestling shoes. And you could kind of see them.

They just got off their, like... Wrestling shoes? Yeah. Can you heel hook them? Yeah, I think so. I'm trying to remember. I think, yeah, full on. Everything's legal.

That is a weird choice to wear wrestling shoes. Someone can heel hook you. Unless you're a heel hook Dean Lister master, one of those Gary Tonin type dudes that knows how to do it from every angle. For them, actually, I would say if pride was still around, pride let you wear wrestling shoes, there is a significant advantage

from being able to wear wrestling shoes. Significant, not just for your wrestling, but also for your striking. And Crow Cop wore wrestling shoes for a little bit bit crow cop head kicked someone with wrestling shoes on i remember i don't remember who it was might have been mark hunt and i remember thinking fuck man he could kick people with shoes on that almost seems nuts because the the amount of traction that you can get from a rubber sole with texture on the bottom of it versus just your foot, your slippery-ass bullshit foot that's slipping around on the canvas.

With your wrestling shoes on, you get traction when it's wet. You get traction everywhere. Even if there's a puddle on the floor, you get traction with a wrestling shoe where you wouldn't get it with a bare foot. But at the same time, it's kind of weird that it or bare feet it is kind of weird but it's not i think you should be bare well i should be naked i used to think yes you should have a hard-on or you can't fight i used to think i used to think that you should have to have uh no gloves but then i've been watching this bare knuckle boxing and people's faces get fucked up so bad.

You see Chris Lieben? He fought Dakota Cochran, and his face looked like someone hit him with a machete. It was crazy. The most enormous scar I've ever seen on a man's face in a fight. So now I'm starting to rethink that. Like, maybe those knuckles are just... Yeah, something about blood.

No, it's not that. It's about damage to your tissue. I'm not worried about the blood. I'm worried about scarring people up for life. What about Joanna? Her injury. Crazy, right? Yeah, it was crazy.

Joanna and Waylee. I didn't check in. Is she okay? Yeah, she's fine now. Her swelling has all gone down, but she had black eyes for a couple weeks. All that fluid she had on her forehead. She's so tough, man. She's so tough.

She's such a savage. That was a great fight. She's so admirable. Like, watching the way she fought that fight, both of them are. But it was such a back-and-forth brawl of a fight. It was so perfectly matched. There was a draw or, I mean,

you can make the argument Ioana won. You can make the argument Whaley won. You can make the argument there was a draw or i mean you can make the argument you want to one you could make the argument whaley one you can make the argument it was a draw you can make any of those arguments because that's how close the fight was it's all like what you think about this one there's a lot of people that thought you want to want it but the most important thing is joanna fought like a champion i mean they both fought like a champ like I mean, they both fought like champions. Whaley fought like a champion. It was about as good of a fight as you're ever going to get.

So evenly matched. So perfect. So much heart and conditioning and skill. They had everything. Everything. Spectacular fight. I actually forgot

the other fight on the card. That's how good that fight was. The other fight was Stylebender versus Yoel Romero. That's right. It was forgetful. It was a fight that was forgettable. It seemed like huge, huge beforehand.

By the way, who you got in terms of, do you think Ferguson and Khabib will go down? Who knows, man? Not if fucking, not if something happens this weekend. Justin Gaethje's a monster. Justin Gaethje is a monster. Justin Gaethje is a monster. He's a monster. He's a terrifying individual. He is, I mean, in a sport that's violent, it's an inherently violent sport, he stands out as the most violent.

You know how crazy that is? I mean, you watch his knockout of Edson Barboza. You watch how that that is? I mean, you watch his knockout of Edson Barboza. You watch how that motherfucker attacks people. There's a reckless abandon to his calculated wildness. That is terrifying. He's something special, and he's better all the time. The question is, how much has he been training? He's taking a fight on very short notice he's taking the fight

on essentially two weeks notice also it might be kind of weird to train now in these coronavirus times sure training partners i don't know well ray longo who i respect very much said that fighters uh shouldn't be fighting because i don't know if he said they shouldn't be fighting but he said he definitely felt like it wasn't fair to the fighters because they don't have a full camp. They're not going to be able to show who they really are. That's a really good point. It's a really good point, man. It's a really good point.

This is a wild situation where there's a guy who's going to fight for the interim title. He gets the call. Look, that's also how Nate Diaz beat Conor McGregor in their first fight. Remember that? That was 11 days out. They call Nate Diaz. He's eating tacos, fucking drinking tequila in Mexico. And probably doing triathlons.

Well, on the side, for sure. Well, he's never out of shape, really. Like, at a normal person, out of shape, like you or I would get. But for Justin Gagey it really depends entirely on how much time he's been spending in the gym now he's a man with a plan right he's trying to be the ufc lightweight champion so he's probably not getting too out of shape and he probably knew that in this case there is a potential that one of those guys could drop out because they've already made that fight four fucking times

and it fell apart. So this is the fifth time it's fallen apart, which is nuts. That's crazy. So it might be that Justin Gagey knew that this was a possibility that he could be called in as a replacement. He might be in full camp mode. We really don't know. We'd have to talk to him.

Conor McGregor knew all along. Conor McGregor knew. He called it. He knew he called it knew i called it um he's uh he was another one that i'm sure was probably getting ready but um i'd love to see him fight in 2020 conor mcgregor versus tony ferguson would be fire why didn't that happen people have to be on standby for last minute fill-ins or is that i think there are some people that they ask to be on standby they have definitely done that before and they've asked guys to make weight and there's a lot of guys that have been

through a full camp and they're paid for a full camp and they're paid to make weight this is something that's happened several times in the ufc's history where guys show up because they're there to to fight and step in if something falls apart, especially if you have a guy who maybe struggles with weight cutting and he might fall apart and get pulled from a fight, or someone who's maybe injured or sick and they're a little nervous with this fight. We're getting super fights every week, do you think?

I don't know, man. On the island? If they build Enter the Dragon Island. You're going to commentate, right? Yeah, Enter the Dragon Island. I don't know. I don't know how we're going to do it.

I don't know how it's going to be done. Please wear the tracksuit. Please. I want to dress like Bruce Lee. Yeah, I did want to really quick ask you. Did you consider interviewing Trump on this? this well he's never

asked to do it and i've never asked him would you do it um i don't know because uh well so what makes you why do you ask i'm trying to stay out of politics bro it's too sketchy you think it's politics interviewing somebody like trump uh no it's not politics at all. What? No, meaning, well. It's a political thing. I mean, just even having him on. Oh, it's a statement. Well, it's, no, it's, he's a politician.

He's a professional president. I mean, it is politics. But the nature of long-form conversation is such that you're not doing talking points. Why do you ask? Okay. So I'd love to see him on the show, first of all. And I actually was in the works of interviewing him a year ago. For what? For the AI podcast that I do.

Really? But it was more of supposed to be about the AI initiative. That would be a short, I mean, I imagine it would be a short thing about saying how. Were you going to be in person? In person, yeah. That would be an interesting conversation. But very different. Like, I would like this kind of conversation.

I just wanted to talk, not wanted, but I think what they wanted is to talk with the NSF and certain heads of the administrations and just saying this is a really, it's important for us as a country to stay ahead on innovation in terms of artificial intelligence. So that kind of conversation. It's a little bit less about getting into the human story of a human being, which I think Trump is one of the most interesting people to have been in office. Yeah, if you're studying humans, he's definitely one of the most interesting people have been in office but yeah as if you're studying humans he's definitely one of the most interesting the reason i bring that up is as um i was thinking i had this kind of question of if there if there's a person that talked because i because i thought trump would be incredible for there's a bunch of people in this world which are incredible for this podcast like only you can have that

conversation. So I started asking myself what is the conversation I could have that only I can do? Not only, but I'm especially well equipped for. Yeah, I would say it's well equipped better. I don't think there's anybody that only I can talk to. Right. I misspoke.

I know what you're saying though. And for that that's why, and now I think there's agreement now is I'll interview Vladimir Putin. Holy shit. I think he has not been interviewed well. I have all the connections. And you speak Russian. Yeah, so it would be a mix of Russian and English, yeah. Well, that would be the big thing, though, is to talk to him in Russian and then relay it in a way that makes us understand it. That's actually an interesting question.

I would probably talk in English with a translator. Why would you do that? Because the ultimate result has to be in English. Not has to be, but we have to translate on the fly. Because the, how do I put it? Translators won't do a good job of translating. So I'll understand everything he's saying in Russian, and he'll actually understand everything I'm saying in English.

He speaks pretty good English. Okay. But he's not allowed – I mean, not allowed. So you think that would be better than subtitles? Yes. I think it's more human. It's more real. It like uh you with joey diaz and um you're well you're well yeah you didn't do subtitles for that no that was but he

also speaks pretty good joey's perfect and he's perfectly bilingual so that was a great situation you know and also joey's from cuba so together that was amazing so the the translator that putin has is actually really good translators they're not some generic folks i'm sure they're friends like they're not not friends but they know each other they know each other well so that's it's almost it's a very similar situation except that person's not a joey diaz at all right but it's that creates that kind of atmosphere where you can when there's some uncertainty about the statements

that you're making, you can play with that. But it's an interesting thing. Do you think he would do that? The interview? Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's two parts.

I know I have all the right connections for it. I think he would do it because he will understand who I am. And the second part is I have a little bit of a Conor McGregor situation

going on where anything everything i've done in my life that i decided i'm going to do always happens everything yeah everything i think that is do you got some mystic shit going on there i don't mystic lex should we call you mixed mystic lex like mystic mac no that's wrong is that yeah that's his thing mystic mac dude we're three hours and 20 minutes in if you believe it or not uh that's wrong yeah that's his thing Mystic Mac dude we're 3 hours and 20 minutes in if you believe it or not that's a good place

to end on Putin but can I do this silly song yeah we'll end on a silly song no pressure it's been an amazing podcast so far

this song doesn't if it doesn't hold up we're just gonna cut the power just cut it off well blame it on Brian Callen yeah we're just going to cut the power. Just cut it off.

Blame it on Brian Callen. Yeah, we'll blame it on Callen. Good call. So I did this video where I played the Joe Rogan Experience theme. Okay. So what many people think... Can you hear the guitar, by the way? All right. What many people think is Brian Redband.

Shout out to Redband. It was the one who came up with that from GarageBand. But it turns out there's actually words to this song. Oh. Brian Callen wrote? Brian Callen, he sang it in a few episodes. Oh, okay. I know this stupid song.

Yeah. We'll end with this. Lex, okay. I know this stupid song. Yeah. We'll end with this. Lex Friedman, thank you for being here. I appreciate the fuck out of you. Tell everybody your Instagram. Friedman spelled weird, like Fridman. Yeah, F-R-I-D-M-A-N. Lex Friedman, Instagram.

Do you use the Twitter as well? The Twitter is, yeah. Same thing on Twitter? Same thing on Twitter. Listen to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. Yeah. It's been fun, yeah. Same thing on Twitter? Same thing on Twitter. Listen to the Artificial Intelligence podcast. Yeah. It's been fun, buddy. If anyone wants to do any weddings or bar mitzvahs from Musician Wise.

He'll sing his ass off. Come get some. Okay. Thanks for being here, man. I appreciate it. Thank you, brother. Let's go. This is the stupidest thing I've ever done.

So this is a story. Okay. In the desert I met a man With an eagle perching on his hand And he asked me, son, what can I do for you? Definitely the stupidest. Father, I said, I'm looking for the meaning I should be living for. He put a finger to my lip, said, shh, let the old man speak. They call me Brian Callahan.

In this cruel world, there is a man you should listen to as you journey on through life. His name is Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan. Shoulders for days and a really wide back. Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan. Barrel of snakes for a back. Then he mounted his horse and he looked to the sky.

And he rode to the sunset with a tear in his eye. And the legend goes the old man rides on. Singing the words to this terrible song Joe Rogan Joe Rogan showed this for days and I really went back I really regret this

Joe Rogan Joe Rogan a barrel of snakes for a bag you fucked up you should have never done that song it was terrible A barrel of snakes for a bag. You fucked up. You should have never done that song. It was terrible.

People are going to never forgive you for that. Thank you, buddy. I regret nothing. Thank you, brother. Thank you, brother. Bye, everybody. Stay safe.