The Joe Rogan Experience - #1639 - Dave Smith

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

Dave Smith is a stand-up comedian and political commentator. He is also the host of the "Part of the Problem" podcast, and co-host of the "Legion of Skanks" podcast.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Hello, Mr. Joe Rogan. What's cracking, brother? Not much. Glad to be back. Thanks for coming out. Thank you.

Thanks for making the trip, man. Sorry you lost your wallet. We're going to find out how libertarian you are when you get to the airport. Oh, my God. I'm really such an idiot. Sorry, you lost your wallet. We're gonna find out how libertarian you are when you get to the airport. Oh my god I'm really such an idiot Lost my wallet on a plane buying the stupid internet I went into my bag to get my wallet so I could buy the dumb internet which doesn't even work Right and fell asleep and left my wallet. Yeah, if you think you're gonna watch YouTube on that good luck

Yeah, yeah, you can kind of tweet You can kind of check your email. Yeah. Yeah, it's like pointless Yeah, and I did great when I got to the hotel I realized I lost my wallet and I was like, all right, there's a Starbucks here in the hotel I'm gonna go grab a coffee and just relax and I go up and order a coffee and then it just hit me I was like, oh, I don't have a wallet I was like wait, hold on let me figure out that is do I have the app and I had to go set up the have a wallet. And then I was over there and I was like, wait, hold on. Let me figure out, do I have the app?

And I had to go set up the whole app and everything. And then I, luckily these days you can buy it with an app. Yeah, you can do Apple Pay too and a lot of those. I had none of that set up, but now I have it all set up. It really makes you realize how we still need this little piece of plastic, this laminated thing with your face on it. You don't have that. You can't go anywhere.

It was pretty funny trying to check into the hotel and I had to get in touch with your guy to tell the hotel that I'm in. I really went up there and I was like, look, I'd like to check into my room. I do not have an ID. I do not have a credit card. I understand where this is probably going to be a little bit weird from your perspective.

Probably you can't run a business where you just go, sure, go on in. You want to be here and i'm like look i have a name it is david smith now i know that comes off like i'm just guessing a name um probably top five names you would just guess uh but do you have a reservation for a mr smith and can i have that please wasn't mr smith the guy in the matrix that was always following him around trying to kill him? Wait, was that the? Was it? Agent Smith. Agent Smith.

Yes. No, that's me. Well, I identify with Neo more than Agent Smith. Of course, Agent Smith was an asshole. Yeah, he was a real dick. Yeah. He made a few solid points. Did he?

That whole thing about humans being parasites. Yes. Remember that? You were like, hmm. If we weren't humans, we would not like humans. Yeah, that's for sure. For sure. If you were building a case against humans, like you were a neutral party talking to God,

building a case against humans, you could build a pretty strong one. Very solid. This woman that we had on yesterday, Shanna, how do you say her last name? What's that? Swan, sorry. Shanna Swan how do you say her last name? What's that? Swan, sorry. Shanna Swan.

Yeah, it's a mess in my head. Oh. Her book, she wrote this book about how chemicals, mostly leached from plastic, are getting into human bodies. One of the big ones is phthalates. Other ones are glyphosate, that Roundup chemical that Monsanto uses on crops. And they're affecting the way children develop in a radical and very measurable way. From the advent of petrochemicals from the 1950s, the advent of plastics, that we started really using plastics a lot, the size of men's taints has shrunk.

This is so crazy. This is one of the big ways that you could recognize males versus females in animals. One of the things that is so remarkably different between them is the size of the taint. The male's taints are always much larger. What did she say, like 50% larger? 50 to 100%.

50 to 100% larger. That's the problem in America? No, no, no. in America no it's way worse these tiny tainted men are ruining everything it's plastics it's making them have lower sperm counts significantly lower sperm counts like 50% lower sperm counts than they did 50 years ago and on a straight downward trajectory along with miscarriages miscarriages are on the rise sperm counts are on the way down. It is crazy when you just see what we've done to us. Yeah. And weren't even aware of it until like the early 2000s, like the first studies that she did.

She's an environmental endocrinologist. So she studies, she's a researcher that studies the effects of environmental toxins on human reproductive systems. And isn't it crazy, right, that it's almost like just what we are as organisms, we could get this information and you're still kind of like, yeah, it's nuts. We're not going to stop. Yeah, I need to unwrap, bro. It's like how many of these geniuses have to come out and be like, listen, AI is really dangerous and we should stop building toward it. And then half the time even they go back to building toward it. They're just like, well, but at the same time, this is what we're doing.

Have you met Lex? Lex Friedman? I have not met him, but I'm a fan. Yeah, I want to get you guys together. I would love to get you guys together. I wish you were in town more than a day. He'd probably have you on his show. He's an AI researcher.

He works in AI and he has a different view of it. He thinks AI is going to work with people. Like him and Elon are on the opposite side of things. But I'm in Camp Elon. I think we're fucked. I am just for strategic reasons going to be in Camp Lex because it's happening either way. So I might as well. I'm going to try to believe Lex.

That guy's super smart. If he thinks that, I'm going to go with him. He's definitely super smart. For sure, he understands there's room for a catastrophe there's room for a massive error that lets these things become sentient and just start gunning people down on the streets yeah starts using us as human batteries yeah look man think how fragile shit is like just that we got all these countries with H bombs and shit look at what's going on right now with Ukraine and yeah look man think how fragile shit is like just that we got all these countries with h-bombs and shit look at what's going on right now with ukraine and russia where they're they're moving

planes and and and troops to the border it's like that's real that's real shit and putin was on the news yesterday giving a speech and you know warning the united states and then you'll just have like uh you know uh biden and and and all people in the media just like talking shit, just kind of like pushing you to talk shit. Like Joe Biden just gets in that interview and he's like, I think Putin's a killer. Well, Stephanopoulos said, do you think he's a killer? Yeah, but he also could have he could have handled it in a diplomatic way. You don't have to be like, what are we doing between the two of us? We have 90 percent of the nukes in the world.

Let's just slow down. It's like, yeah, Putin is a killer. So is Joe Biden. We've all killed a lot of people between our two respective governments. So let's just not talk shit because we could kill the whole world. One of the funniest things about Trump talking about Russia, and then, like, you know, Russia has killed people. It's like, well, we've killed a lot of people, too.

That was, look, Donald Trump, feel however you feel about him. I'm not a fan. But one of the amazing things about Trump is that he had no control over the things he said. It all just spilled out. And every now and then he would say something where it was like, yeah, he's right about that. And he said it right to Bill O'Reilly's face.

To Bill O'Reilly's face, Mr. George W. Bush, Republican, you know news guy and he goes he goes yeah we're killers too we killed a lot of people and watching o'reilly have to go yeah but it's it's different when we kill all these people i mean we're killing people to liberate iraq you know he's killing people and you're like all right well a lot of those people didn't want to be killed and it didn't really liberate them to murder them. So how many people have U.S.-led wars killed in the Middle East? I think millions. Just in Iraq alone, we're indirectly or directly responsible for over a million people dead.

So in Iraq, it's got to be well over a million because that million number was from a while ago. A long time ago. So it's well over a million people that have died as a result of the war. God knows how many in Libya just by destroying the country. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 in Syria. The country is gone. Like Libya is a failed state, right? Yep. Completely failed state. One of the better countries in Africa, if not the best one to live in before, completely failed state, slavery, just awful. Slavery on YouTube. Yeah.

You've seen the YouTube, the slave auctions on YouTube, which is, wow, which is heavy. All because Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton decided they were going to overthrow Gaddafi for their own reasons. What was the reason? What was the officially stated? Well, the officially stated reason was that he was about to go genocidal on his own reasons. What was the reason? What was the officially stated? Well, the officially stated reason was that he was about to go genocidal on his own people. But all of this has been,

there was actually an investigation that the British parliament held and they basically determined there was no grounds to think that this guy who had been in control for decades was all of a sudden about to go genocidal on his people. So I don't know what the number in Libya is. The number in Yemen is probably going to be somewhere between 500,000 and a million.

I mean, so all in all, there's, I mean, it's millions. It's in the millions of people that we've killed in Muslim countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East. And I'm just talking 21st century, post 9-11. the millions of uh of people that we've killed in muslim countries in northern africa in the middle east uh just and i'm just talking 21st century post 9-11 not even adding up the numbers before that there's no argument that qaddafi wasn't a piece of shit i mean everybody everybody agrees which is why it makes the whole thing so weird because like you know he's a bad person. He's a bad leader. He's a dangerous man. But yet removing him was more harmful than it was good. Yeah.

Which is so crazy. The idea that because someone's a bad man now it's OK to start dropping bombs on innocent people or overthrow a government. I mean like I don't know. I think a lot of our presidents are bad men. I don't want people to start bombing my family. I don't think that's justified, you know because of that and yeah as we you know in um This is something with a lesson We never learned in history that we really should have but in World War one

Woodrow Wilson said he was gonna make the world safe for democracy That was the American mission in World War one and at the time the world certainly was not safe for democracy I mean Europe was all monarchs pretty much. And we overthrew the monarchs. The monarchy is pretty much lost. And the ones that are still there are like monarchies in name only, you know, England and stuff like that. And then in the next decades, you had the rise of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and then Stalin. And you're like, oh, man, those monarchs don't seem so bad all of a sudden now. You know, like, oh, shit. It turns out you could get rid of something and something much worse can come after it.

You need a full length plan. But for Obama, who even goes, you know, I think he acknowledged at one point that Libya was his biggest mistake. And he said not having a plan for the day after Gad qaddafi was overthrown was a big mistake and it's like yeah i sure wish we had just lived through iraq like how could you not see that coming right how could i how could you not be like oh yeah and then after that still tried to overthrow assad in syria right and you're like wait so you don't see this oh yeah do you remember when they gave that speech when he gave a speech on television and everybody was like, fuck this. And then they kind of just went away.

It was one of the most beautiful moments in modern American history. People really actually stood up and stopped a war from happening. Yeah. So instead, they just covertly funded the Al Qaeda side of it. Jimmy Dore broke this down when he was on your show perfectly. Yes. the Al-Qaeda side of it. Jimmy Dore broke this down when he was on your show perfectly.

Those guys who go like, they tell the story of Syria and it's like, Mike Baker, who I love, but his version of the story in Syria is like, well, Assad started killing all of his own people and so what are we going to do?

That's the story that they want to tell you, right? It's like, well, these guys are so bad, he's killing all these people. Is that really what Mike Baker's version of it was? It wasn't that. It's a caricature of it, but that's more or less it killing all these people. You go, so why? Is that really what Mike Baker's version of it was? It wasn't that. It's a caricature of it. But that's more or less it, right? I love Mike Baker, by the way.

I do, too. But the real story is that you go, okay, so if we're there, if the narrative is that we're there because Assad's killing his own people, and, oh, my God, I think he used a gas attack, or, oh, my God, I think he did this, and this is really dangerous. I think he used a gas attack or, oh, my God, I think he did this and this is really dangerous. Well, then why is it that General Wesley Clark is telling us on video that he saw plans to have regime change in Syria in 2003? Yeah, that was a dark video. Why are there articles in 2007 about regime change? Because he certainly wasn't killing his own people then. And then as Jimmy Dore broke down perfectly, you realize that actually what happened was that the CIA and the Saudis launched this Operation Timber Sycamore and they said that we are

going to arm all of the anti-Assad rebels, largely consisting of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, in an attempt to take him out, to have the next regime change that this plan had been in the works for years. And when confronted with that threat, Assad launched a brutal war against them, certainly killed a whole lot of people. I mean, like, if there was ISIS in a town, he'd just kill everybody in the town. Like, he didn't care.

But the story's not as simple as, like, oh, he started killing his own people, and so now we have to overthrow him. The story is we tried to overthrow him, and in response, this war broke out where something like 500,000 people died. Was Wesley Clark, was he running for president when that happened? If I'm not mistaken, I believe he ran before. I could be wrong about that.

I think, was he one of the Democratic candidates in 2000, I believe? So I believe this was after, after all that. 2000 I believe so I believe this was after mmm after all that That was a dark video when you saw him laying out the foundation that they had and the fact that he was willing to do That and say it all in an interview on television Yeah, no is really really creepy and it's very hard to not look back at that and go like okay. Well Not all of it came true exactly well, not all of it came true exactly, but certainly there has been an agenda since 9-11 to have one regime change after the next in the Middle East. It wasn't just, oh, we have to go to Afghanistan and oh, we also have to go to Iraq because we think they have WMDs or something.

It's like, well, why then have there been these five subsequent countries that we also have to go and overthrow? And no one ever, with the exception of Wesley Clark, no politician ever told the American people, hey, here's what our plan is. This is what we want to do. Do you guys agree with this or do you not agree with this? You have no say in this. We're doing this. And each time we're going to claim that it's completely just like, oh, the humanitarian impulse, the people there yeah the uh the difference between what's happening now and in the past is first of all there's so much video right where you could see a guy like wesley clark talk about that but also that you can see video of the events actually happening like we have video of saddam hussein being hung we have video of qaddafi being captured

by those rebels where they stick a knife up his ass. That video is one of the most bizarre videos. Qaddafi in shock, not even responding to the fact that someone just stuck a knife up his ass. Like just completely gripped with terror knowing that this is the end and that the rebels have captured him. They're all screaming and yelling and fucking going crazy well uh that's right and and what's happened is that the the corporate press has lost their monopoly on information that they had for all of our lives right like now it's like well you can get it from all these places and that there's good and bad that comes with that but they're also now flipping out and and you can see it like

they're losing their grip on power and becoming more and more insane about it well they've lost the ethics of journalism like this james o'keefe thing on cnn where that guy who were was he the chief whatever he is i forget his position but a big he was a pretty big cnn guy and the crazy thing is they catch him on Tinder dates. So they, she must have been hot. Hot girls get you to talk. So he's got this hot girl and he's telling her how they do propaganda,

how they basically would accentuate anything that was wrong with Trump. They would talk about the completely underplay anything that's wrong with Biden. Which is, to be fair, pretty obvious to anyone who just has an open mind and watches cnn but to hear him say it still was it was powerful and the fact that he said they're going to do it now for climate change yeah wow and and there that push is already starting yeah um can you imagine just like if you were like the head of cnn and you have to give a meeting in the morning and you're like all right so one more time guys

if a hot chick takes you out to a bar and starts asking you to tell her about how we're propaganda, that's James O'Keefe, all right? So please don't just start babbling about how we do propaganda. It's so crazy. It's so weird to see it laid out like that where he's explaining how they do it. But what a blabbermouth. The fact that this guy like, you know, hey, explaining how they do it. But what a blabbermouth. The fact that this guy, like, you know, hey, man, this is kind of important.

Like, imagine if someone heard you say this. Yeah. Imagine what kind of repercussions it would have on the business. Yeah, and the fact that it's funny because you almost want to envision it in like there's this grand plan or this conspiracy, but then you realize he's just a dude, just being a dude, a dude just trying to like wag his dick in front of this girl like yeah let me tell you what we do over at cnn yeah you want another drink yeah we got that trump guy

out of there yeah it's pretty much all us like but just bragging about it it reminds me of the brian williams thing where he told that lie about being under fire. Right, right. And you're like, it was purely just to look cool. Right. It wasn't even like he was trying to sell something. He was just like, I'm pretty awesome. He was in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever it was. Was it Iraq or Afghanistan? I think it was Iraq.

He was in a helicopter. He was there. He could have just said that. But Hillary Clinton did the same thing. Remember she said that she was under fire? Yep. And then the people that were there disputed it you remember I think Sinbad came out I'm pretty sure Sinbad broke her down because he was like

performing there and he was like we weren't under fire I might be wrong about that but I think Sinbad blew the whistle on Hillary Clinton I hope it's Sinbad but it was a similar situation where she exaggerated the threat that was there. When did you become so interested in international politics? Ron Paul. Ron Paul, 2008 campaign is what changed my life and sent me on this trajectory. I guess I was a little bit interested just in the Bush years

because it was like, you know, like with with the wars, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I was in New York during 9-11. And so that kind of affected me. And I was kind of interested in that stuff. And then when the economy crashed in 2008, I was kind of like, wait, what the hell is going on here? And I got and then there was Ron Paul, who was his whole campaign was centered around, well, here's what's going on in the wars and here's what's going on with the economy. And the first time I saw him, I just happened to be watching the Fox News debate with him and Giuliani. And it was just this little unknown baby doctor Republican congressman from Texas, like our Texas, who just got up there and just said, listen, they don't hate us because we're free. They hate us because we've been bombing the

crap out of them for like decades. And here's why. And then Giuliani was like, that's offensive that you would say that. See, this is what the woke shit used to be in the George W. Bush years. It wasn't like, oh, that was a microaggression or you're a racist. It was the right wing version of that. It, you said something that doesn't support the troops, and I'd like you to publicly apologize for that. And Ron Paul went, mm-hmm, no. So here's what happens, okay? You know how the CIA coined the term blowback?

This is what they meant by blowback. They mean that our covert operations have unintended consequences. And if we think that we can just overthrow governments that we don't like like we did in 1953 with Iran and when we installed a dictator and then when they overthrew that dictator guess who they hate America right so that's what's and he just explained it perfectly it was irrefutable it was like the best and I was like who the fuck is that guy I want to learn more about him and then I just started down this journey and now here I am it's such a weird path for a stand-up comic because like out of all the comics that I know you are for sure the

Most knowledgeable in this shit so much so that if I didn't know you're a comic I'll go this guy probably teaches at some college somewhere like these or writes books on this He's a researcher like you've got a really deep, deep understanding of the inner workings of this shit. Well, you know what, it came, when I started getting into this stuff, I was doing standup and I was just managing to not have a day job.

I was just at the level where I could be broke but get by off comedy. Jay was taking me out on the road with him and stuff and like so I was doing like enough gigs that I could like just make my bills out and so I had a lot of free time you know what I mean I was like okay I got like maybe an hour of work today and then that you know I'll write a little bit or something and I just got obsessed with this shit and I had the internet and so I I had that and and you know like I so I just got obsessed with this shit. And I had the internet. And so I had that. And, you know, like I, so I just got obsessed with it.

And I found all these different thinkers, Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, Tom Woods, Scott Horton, like all these really, really smart guys who were breaking all this shit down. And I just, I don't know, I just got completely obsessed with it. Yeah. And I found out about you because of Ari because you were on Ari's show you would do this yearly State of the year what was it of the Union we still do it every year. Yeah, when do you do it? What what month we well we usually do it around the summer time like early summer June or something like that But sometimes it varies to bank because you know Ari will be out and you know like el salvador for six months or something and then you're like he just got back yeah from ecuador yeah well he wasn't even telling anybody where he was i'm like they're gonna find you in ecuador like what are you fucking top secret squirrel about over there buddy he's got

some like elaborate andy kaufman-esque like mission in his mind he's free yeah he's one of the most free people i've ever met you know that's for sure like he's the only guy that i've ever met that legitimately put his phone down put his laptop down and vanished for months and then when he came back and contacted me i was like what have you been doing man like and he was fucking backpacking through asia and he was just not famous enough where he could get away with staying in hostels and living like a 20-year-old hiker. It's unbelievable, but he seems to be enjoying it. Oh, he loves freedom, man.

Out of all the people that I know. I mean, I don't know what happened to him when he was a child where too many people told him what to do, but he doesn't want to hear that shit. He has no desire to be told what to do sometimes it gets him in trouble occasionally occasionally he tries to slay a few too many sacred cows dude he sent did he send you the video i won't mention anything about the contents of it but he sent me this video that was like the funniest most wildly offensive shit and i was like wait dude you're not putting that i told you delete that now and i go you sent it to me no no no and i'm gonna send it to other people because just for the world ends i was like, wait, dude, you're not putting that out, right? I told him, delete that now. I go, you send it to me, and I'm going to send it to other people,

and I go, and the world ends. I was like, dude, please don't put this out. Just don't. Just skip this one. It's really funny, but just not this one. He had dental surgery in Ecuador, and he had two black eyes. I'm like, bro, what did they do to you? Did they put you under?

Did they punch you in the face while you were under? Where did you get the black eyes? I know. And his nose is messed up. I just saw him the other night. His nose is messed up. His eyes are messed up. And his mouth's all...

I'm like, none of... You know, I'm no expert, but I don't think that's how it's supposed to look after you get a little work on your gums done. Can you get like an Airbnb in Ecuador? Can you just go get a place? Is that what he did? We both know who to ask, and it's all right. Yeah. There he is.

This is what happens when he does pass it upon the left hand side. That's quite a fucked up looking set of black eyes. Aside from that, he looks good though. Oh yeah, he looks healthy.

He's healthy. He got shot up with the moderna as soon as he got back i'm like that's the one that's supposed to give you the worst side effects buddy allegedly well hey gotta follow the science it's a weird time because everything's so politicized there's a great video that a doctor put up it's really funny a doctor on uh instagram it's it's funny uh excuse me on youtube it's funny because jamie remember we were talking about vapors the other day where the guy does the vape tricks well this doctor shows how how masks don't work at all

and he take like these a lot of masks that people wear particularly like bandanas he's like fucking totally useless and so he takes a vape he takes a hit of vape and then he puts these masks on and then blows and the vape literally comes right out of the mask and he's like this is exactly what's happening to your breath and he said in covid particles the particles of the virus the viral particles are much smaller than the particles of this vape he goes they're going right through these masks and like he goes unless you have like a sealed mask over your face. It's been something, man, over this last year to watch. It's like, I don't know how else you could describe it other than just mass hysteria. You're not even allowed to just have any reasonable, nuanced perspective.

Where people are flipping out about Tom Brady at the Super Bowl when he got out of his limo and walked outside without a mask. Because he didn't have a mask, yeah. He's like 100 feet away from the nearest person outside, and they're mad he doesn't have a mask on. Dude, it's hilarious. It has nothing to do with whether or not he's putting people in danger. It has to do with compliance. Yes.

It has to do with people saying, he's not doing what you're supposed to. That's right. Do what you're supposed to do What you're supposed to Tom. I don't care me fucking Super Bowls. You win. You killed my grandma, right? Yeah, it's this has been this year has been an incredible gift to would-be authoritarian regular people who now have been given public license to Kind of like crack down on somebody for not following these rules. Anyone who's ever lived in an apartment building, you know, in a city, you know, there's

always one person in there who's just like, oh, like trying to enforce the rules on everybody else. Oh, you put recycling in the wrong thing or the, you know, and it's like every one of those people in our society has been um granted free reign yeah yeah it's uh it's been weird to watch it's been weird to watch people adopt and because it's one of those things like put a mask on is one of those things where when people tell you there's no real right way to respond if you're walking on the streets put a mask on you can't go have you read the studies because the studies show that If you're walking down the street and someone says, put a mask on, you gotta go, have you read the studies? Because the studies show that when you're outside, the sunlight kills COVID almost instantly. No.

It's like you're an asshole. You're instantly an asshole. If you're playing a game, they scored 75 points. Put a mask on. And you're like, oh, I'm going to try to relay some scientific information about COVID and UV light. But at most most you're going to get like 10 points.

Do you remember the, I think you shared this video recently, but it was an old Noam Chomsky video where he was just talking about the effectiveness of calling someone a racist or a sexist or a Nazi or something like that. And you go, as soon as you start defending yourself, you're now the guy saying, I'm not a racist. You've already lost yes like so this is why this this shit persists so much because it's so effective it puts you in in like this binary position like well you can either agree that you are a racist or be the guy who's

like i'm not a racist i have black friends and i have this and you're like you already sound like an asshole you've so it's the same with the covid thing like as soon as you start going down this line you're like well you're not taking the harsh stance of caring about people that i am yeah but it's bullshit and it's one of my favorite things uh my favorite joe rogan moments ever uh was when the first ufc back when you it was such a joe rogan moment it was the first ufc back and everyone's like oh we're doing this so there's this kind of energy of like, oh my God, there's an event. And you just at one point go, I think it was about how distant you distanced you guys were. And you were like, but this is stupid because we were all just together backstage. Say it on air. Such a Rogan moment.

Cause you're just not, you're just like, no, I, no one else is like saying this, but I'm just going to say this is stupid. Well, not only that, we were all tested. Everybody was tested. We were in a COVID bubble. Everybody had been tested in advance. Everybody had been tested the day of the event. They were super strict about it. And then there were some people that knew people that were positive,

and those people got kicked out of the event. Like a corner man, if a corner man tested positive, even if the athlete didn't test positive, they still kicked him out. Like it was pretty well done. I mean the UFC, hats off to them. They did a fantastic job. Yeah. Oh, it's incredible.

It's incredible what they did. But I just like there were so many things right away that you're just like, this doesn't make sense. And they're all around us, all over the place today. And I just hate this idea that like, okay, so we just completely overhauled our societal norms over this last year. And I'm not allowed to just point out when they make absolutely no sense. Last time I was here in November when I came out and did the show, I was at my hotel. And we're in the hotel lobby

and there's like a bar in the hotel lobby and then, you know, like chairs out in the lobby. And this older guy sits down in the chair and he takes his mask off. And the woman behind the desk was like, sir, sir, you have to keep your mask on. And then you look at this and then you just pan over this way

and there's people at the bar sitting down with their masks off drinking whiskey. And you're just like sitting here and you're like, how am I supposed to look at this and not go, this is insane. Like either that doesn't make sense or that doesn't make sense. But the two of them together do not make sense. Me and my kid went to dinner the other day, me and one of my daughters. And while we were walking through the restaurant, we were laughing about how silly it is. I go, okay, now finally we sit down.

We're in our protected bubble. We can take our mask off. But when we're standing up three feet away, got to wear that mask. Super important. Like we're all in a room together. We're all in a room together. We're breathing the same air

and no one has a mask on while we're sitting down. But when you get up to go to the bathroom, better put that mask on. It's very important. So we've developed these sort of patterns that we expect people to follow. And if you comply with those patterns, we know you're a good person. And if you don't, like the worst case scenarios was happening in Canada where, I mean, I'm sure you saw that one pastor who's screaming and yelling, get you nazis get out of my church it was on

passover and this guy was freaking out because they were telling him you can't have a service because there's too many people there and then i'm not sure if it was the same church or if it was another church but there was a church video not long after that where there was 200 cops showed up militarized bulletproof vests gas masks the whole thing and you're like what in the fuck you guys are going to people that are at church like they've taken the most authoritarian approach and for people that don't understand the difference between the united states and our politics and the freedoms that are provided to us by the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, by our Bill of Rights, by the Constitution, Canada is very different.

First of all, they do not have a First Amendment. They don't have a freedom of assembly. They don't have the same rights that are bestowed upon them by their Constitution. We think of them as the same as us, but they're not. Justin Trudeau and the government over there and the local governments, whether it's in Ontario or wherever it is, they have way more power over the people. They enforce human rights laws. And this is all the stuff that Jordan Peterson was freaking out about a long time ago. He's like, you got to understand. And he did understand from a

perspective of being Canadian. It's like, this stuff goes badly. And it's very easy when you're dealing with Jordan Peterson when he's speaking out about the Bill C-16 or one of these things. You're like, all right, well, they're just kind of making you call a trans person their preferred pronouns. It's just kind of this small thing. But you have these legal precedents that are set. And then when the big thing comes, they already have the precedent to say, well, we don't have to respect your freedom to gather or your freedom of speech or any of this. It's a very dangerous road to go down. And even look, even here in America, we, the constitution and the bill of rights and all of this is still just kind of an idea like that, you know, governor Murphy, the governor of New Jersey,

I don't know if you saw this. It was last April or May. It was pretty early into the lockdown stuff when he was on Tucker Carlson's show. Did you see that? No. So Tucker Carlson, again, feel however you feel about him. He's good on some things. He's bad on some things. But he gave one of the lockdown governors a really tough interview at the height of it.

And very few people were doing that. And he said to Governor Murphy straight up, he goes, OK, so he he talked about this thing that had just happened where I think like 15 Jewish people were arrested for going to synagogue. And he goes, OK, so you just arrested these people for going to synagogue. Where do you get that authority? I mean, this is a clearly constitutionally protected right. Like you can read the First Amendment and no, you don't have the right to do this. And Murphy just responds without, you know, without any hesitation. He responds, we weren't thinking about the Bill of Rights. He goes, that's above my pay grade. He goes, what we're thinking about is the health issue.

So he just told you straight up that like, well, we repealed the Bill of Rights, at least for this moment. And basically that's what happened all around the country. The United States of America went totalitarian in 2020. Now, you can believe it's justified because of the virus. I'm not even arguing that. But the fact is, I mean, like the word totalitarian gets overused. But how would you describe 2020 other than totalitarian? When you have people watching their television to find out what they're allowed to do today from their governor. Oh, my governor said I

can have a funeral for my father or my governor said we can go to work or we can go to church or we can. Now he said we can't do that. I mean, that is blatant totalitarianism. And you could be really concerned about covid. Fine. But are you telling me you could be really concerned about covid fine but are you telling me you're not also concerned about totalitarianism like take a look at the 20th century so hundreds of millions of people were killed by totalitarian governments that's scary scary shit but people that are on they think they're on the right side don't ever think that's going to happen with their ideology. Like woke totalitarians never connect themselves to people like Stalin. They never connect themselves to Marx. They don't think of the fact that they want people to be completely compelled to follow their ideology

with all the horrible examples in history of people being compelled to follow an ideology. Forced into following it. Because it's one of those things that like when the Patriot Act was put in place, some of the people that were sounding the alarms were saying, look, Obama is probably not going to do horrible things with this. But what if the next person who gets elected president does? These powers stay. You don't get to take them back. Well, hey,

this president is kind of wacky. We're going to pull some of these acts back. We're going to rescind the Patriot Act, the Patriot Act 2, because we don't trust this new president. So we're going to change the laws. We're going to take away power from the government. Well, they never do that. Yeah. I was really hopeful, and foolishly so, but I was really hopeful that when it was Trump, maybe some people on the left would have woken up to that and been like, oh, yeah. You know, all that hypothetical. It could be somebody who you really hate. Well, guess what? Now it is.

So maybe we should make the presidency not so powerful. So just in case the guy you hate so much gets in there, you know, he doesn't have all of this power. But that just wasn't the conversation at all. It was just racist and Russia and that's it. have all of this power, but that just wasn't the conversation at all. It was just racist and Russia and that's it. The problem, I mean, I just don't see how we're ever going to get past the fact that most of these people who become politicians are not the people that you would want to be in charge. Most of them, most of them. Like if you're looking at Nancy Pelosi and you're like, yeah, I want her running everything. Like, I don't know what to say. If that's your perspective.

But for me, I go, oh, this is not ideal. This is not this person who's very enlightened and calm and peaceful and really wants the world to be better. No, this is like some strange creature that exists out of politics that wears African garb and gets on her knees. You remember that thing with her and Schumer where they put the fucking the robes on and the hat on like this is theater. This is like crazy people theater.

But that's the point, right? That this is theater. This is all and so much of it is that and so much of the corporate woke shit, all of that. This is theater. You are power brokers and you're really counting on people being stupid. And unfortunately, I guess too many of them are to really buy into the fact that this is some real display. You are just using this in order to consolidate more power

because that's what drives these people. And it's, you know, that's like the thing that's really, that I really try to drive home, especially to left wing people about all the woke shit is that you're like, just look, take a step back and look at what's happening here. This is all being used to fool you. Like, do you think it's a coincidence that like J.P. Morgan Chase, they're like building floats in the gay pride parade? And the fact that Raytheon is putting out these press releases about how we have, you know, we're a very inclusive place for transgender people to work and all this. It's like they're buying you off. They're just trying to say like, hey, if we throw you this token, then can we continue doing all the horrible shit that a good leftist should have a problem with?

Like, you know what I mean? That's, you know, I think like uh james lindsey you had him on right james lindsey and these guys they do a great job of breaking down the academic roots of wokeism you know like all this stuff about critical theory in the frankfurt school and the post-modernists and and they're right i think about just about all of it um but to me like the real interesting thing about what's actually going on now is not just that there's some crazy theories going through college campuses. It's like, why do all the biggest corporations, all, this is the perfect tactic for them, that they can. This is their way to buy off the left wing resistance to them, placate them with nonsense that doesn't actually require them giving up any power and pit the left wingers and the right wingers against each other to be fighting this culture war. And what what is the actual agenda here? Well, it's like, well, we have to stay in Afghanistan because of feminism.

It's like, so it's the same thing. It's the same thing it was during the Bush years. It's the same thing now. It's the same corporate interest pushing it. It's the same big government in bed with them. And all this shit is just a distraction. Yeah, they've handed them out some wonderful sheep costumes that they can wear. And the wolves put the costumes on and zip it up.

Yep. Yep. We're with you. Totally. You know, it's like you had, you know, was it 10 years ago, the left-wingers are outside the big banks and they're chanting, we are the 99%. And what did they really mean by that? They didn't even mean 99%. They meant 99.9%.

They were talking about people who own banks. It's the rest of us versus the people who own banks. The people who own a hedge fund versus everybody else. Right. That's their their populist message. Right. And then you have the big banks going like, well, how about this? We will send all of our white execs to diversity training. Is that a good deal? Good deal now? We're all in? And it's kind of like, oh, okay. And now instead of the 99%, what is the message? It's like, well, we are the 5% and we're the 13% and we're the 7% and everyone's fighting everyone. All this woke messaging is the exact opposite of

99%. They did a very good job of tearing that whole movement apart, tearing that whole impulse apart, that it's like everyone versus the really powerful people. But you know what happened when Occupy Wall Street was going down? One of the first things the government did is infiltrate Occupy, fill it up with government agents that started doing crazy shit. Yep. So they start, you know, agent provocateurs. So agent provocateurs will always enter into any, whenever there's something that's a problem

for the government that is essentially peaceful, so there's no real way that they can break it up, what they'll do is they'll infiltrate and either they'll have these agent provocateurs start smashing windows and lighting things on fire, or they'll have them start making plans to do violence and then they'll recruit other people to do it and then they arrest everybody. Yep. Or then they, you know, they- And they sow division within the movement.

Yeah, yeah. So while these people are turning against each other, then they co-op it. Yeah. It's wild. What we do with other countries, we also do with things that happen domestically. Yeah. It's, you know, the same kind of like like, intel ops that they do in other countries. Well, I mean, if you're trusting the people who we know do this shit in other countries to govern us here, why would you expect any better than that?

You know, it's like, it's so funny, like, when they expect the people who will just slaughter hundreds of thousands in third world countries to then run, like, our welfare programs here. Yeah. You're like, what? So you think all of a sudden they want to take care of you. It's like, if it, would you let someone who's like killed kids babysit your kid? Cause they go,

well, he killed kids over there. Right. I mean, I'm sure he'll take care of my kids. I wouldn't want those people anywhere around anyone's kids. You know, you know,

the weird thing about all this shit, Dave, is that I don't see any solution. I don't, I don't see like a path out of this. And I also think that even when I talk to shit, Dave, is that I don't see any solution. I don't see a path out of this. And I also think that even when I talk to you, I know so little about this stuff in comparison to you. And when I talk to you about it and I think of catching up to your knowledge, I'm like, oh my God, how much time would that take? And then I think of the average person and how much time

the average person actually has to pay attention to the way the world works, and how much time they have to dedicate to making things better. So someone who comes along with platitudes, and someone who comes along with the right slogans, and someone comes along with the right vibe, whether it's someone who looks the part like an AOC, or someone along those lines, people just will blindly follow them, hoping that this is the right thing, A. blindly follow them, hoping that this is the right thing, A, and B, they know that by pledging allegiance to this person who other people have kind of agreed is the right choice, then they'll be included in the group of people that's doing the right thing, good people, whereas everybody else will be on the other tribe.

And so then it becomes this weird tribal divide, which is a constant state in this country where we have these ideologies. And we were talking before about how it's never been more clear than ever that people on the far left and people on the far right are basically the same person. They're these real maniacs who have completely ignored nuance and adopted their ideology so wholly and are fighting against the other side so completely that they can't see the forest for the trees. They're just committed to one side, this one thing they've committed to. Right. And I think that it's becoming obvious in the country that things are spinning out.

Things are spinning out of control. And I think pretty much everybody has to see at this point that this country's in real trouble. We're on a suicide mission here. This is a whole new place of unsustainability than we've been in the past. And it's easy to see, right? So you're absolutely right. It's like the left wing and the right wing are like spinning out of control and getting crazier and crazier. But to me, I think the real story of the 21st century in America, how we went from the Clinton 90s to where we are today, you know, in such a good place as a country. I mean, there were lots of problems, but not we weren't on a national suicide like we are now. But to me, the real story is that the center became

the radicals. And then there was nothing to glue the radicals back together. They lost any leg to stand on to be like, okay, that's a little bit too radical. That's a little bit too radical. Come back in the middle. So, which was basically the message of CNN through the entire Trump years was like, look, look, look, we don't want to go crazy socialist

and we definitely don't want to go crazy nationalist right wing. Let's just meet in the middle with Hillary Clinton and Lindsey Graham and the adults in the room who have destroyed the entire country. And I look at it like this, right? Like, let's say hypothetically, if you, let's say we lived in a society that you, Joe Rogan, would consider a pretty decent society. Like, you know, I'd say what you want, you know, I don't even know exactly what that would be, but what you would be like, oh, this is a pretty normal society. You know, we don't fight stupid wars. We're not all at each other's throats. There's good healthcare,

good education. Like it's a reasonably what Joe Rogan wants society. And so now you're the centrist who supports the status quo because you like the country. You like what the government's doing. You think this is all good. And then some radicals came to you and made proposals. Like, this is what I think we should do instead of this society that you have. And let's say one was the most radical left-winger that you know today. And one was the most radical right-winger that you know today. Saying all of their crazy shit. And you have the left-wingers like, we should have the woke police and hate speech laws and all of this.

And the right-wingers like, we should be nationalist and we should build a wall and whatever it is. And then there was someone else who represents the neoliberal, neoconservative establishment order. And they came to you and they said, well, here's what I think we should do. I think we should attack seven countries in the Middle East and slaughter millions of innocent people. I think we should spend ourselves $20 trillion into debt that we'll pass on to our children. I think we should build up a huge prison industrial complex and put people in there for nonviolent victimless crimes. I think we should tax people and then bail out big banks and big corporations with the money. And you're just looking at these three people. Would it be obvious who the radical is? Would you look at the left winger and the right winger and say,

well, that's really crazy, but this guy really has something to say. I think there's an argument that that's the most radical shit you could propose. So now those guys became the extremists and now they have no leg to stand on to tell a radical leftist

or a radical right-winger, well, you're being a little bit too radical. It's like, fuck you, you're too radical. Look at this whole goddamn system. You inherited America and destroyed it. So who are you? And then truthfully, Donald Trump, I think, signified the, yeah, fuck the whole establishment. And then he did such a bad job with it that he handed them back one last out,

where Joe Biden could go, eh, isn't normal a little bit better than this? Let's come back to normal. But the problem is that normal is all of that extremist radical shit that destroyed the country. So that's where we are now. Isn't that crazy? Like I saw so many people on Twitter saying it's so wonderful to have normalcy restored at the White House. It's like you know he's going to bed at night at a normal time, and he's probably being loving to his wife. And you're like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, but what are we doing as a country overseas?

Like what is happening with the country? And there's always like some – it's crazy how there's always some new social event, some new thing that happens, whether it's George Floyd's death or the Capitol Hill attack, or there's always something where they can use that and invade more and more into people's lives and use the power of these ideologies and force them against each other. It's like there's so many people now that are on edge. And right, like, after the Capitol Hill attack, like, rightly so. Like, Jesus Christ, the fact that we got that close to these fucking maniacs

literally almost killing representatives. Yeah. I mean, like, as crazy as it gets, right, a guy with war paint on and a fucking buffalo helmet is shirtless standing on the floor of the Senate. This is a pretty wild scene. Wild fucking scene. But is that our biggest problem? What is our biggest problem?

First of all, how the fuck did we get there? What is getting us there? Is it social media? What's accentuating this divide between us? And how come we can't see the argument laid out the way you just laid it out? How come we can't see like, hey, look at what has gone on in the world by following this path that we think is like the standard path. We think is like normalcy. We think is like back to basics.

Well, it's because we're so like zoomed in. We're so like living in the 24-hour, of like what just happened or what just happened. I mean, like stories like like the accusation that Donald Trump was colluding with a hostile foreign power is like, what? That's years ago. You know what I mean? Like, that's not even like we're talking about what happened on the 6th of January when they, you know, but if you just zoom out a little bit more and you're like, OK, but what really happened here and why were the right wingers willing to go with Donald Trump and why are they willing to storm the Capitol? And even if it's just a few hundred storming, the rest of them at least protesting and tens of millions don't believe the election was legitimate at all. And why do they have such little faith in all of these institutions? And I think, again, you could zoom back very far, but just keeping it in the last 20 years, it's like, well, look at everything. Look at what everything was. They fought all of these wars that everyone knows are bullshit. They've robbed the American people and just given all the money to

huge corporations, the big banks. We have just incredible levels of corruption. I mean just like baked into the cake now where we have the society where there's like crazy low interest rates and crazy high government spending. So all of the new wealth – I mean Bernie Sanders nails it when he talks about this, although I don't think he looks at those as the reasons. But it's like all of the new wealth coming in disproportionately goes to the top. The whole system is completely skewed toward the already powerful because you have low interest rates. So now you have a whole speculating economy where everyone's got to get in investments and stocks and bonds and try to make money that way.

And so, of course, the Wall Street speculators make crazy profits. And then if they fail, they get bailed out. And you have record high government spending so the politically connected are getting all of this fucking money. So regular people are just more and more starting to realize like, hey, this whole system is bullshit and fuck it, I don't believe it anymore. And I think it bubbled over to a point on both sides, on the left and the right. But then there's like, okay, well I understand what you're saying and you're making a lot of sense but what's the solution?

Like, how do we stop something like the Capitol Hill riot from ever happening again? How do we, you know, here's another one. How do you clean up the police? Like, how do you fix this thing? I don't think defunding the police is right. I think you probably need to train them and make it much more difficult to become a cop, make it much more respectable, but how do you do that?

How do you do that at this stage of the game? Because this is crazy. The solution is libertarianism. And I know that a lot of people, it's easy to just kind of laugh that off or whatever, but this really is, I'm not saying it has to be like my exact perfect, you know, like you have to agree with me on everything. But the clear solution to all of this is liberty. It is all of this shit is a deviation from what America was really supposed to be, which is basically the Declaration and the Bill of Rights, which are still pretty damn good.

And if we just followed them, we'd be in a much better place. I'll tell you, with the police stuff, look, you're never going to have a perfect system and there's 300 million people and there'll be incidents and problems and police brutality things will happen but what justin amash put forward in congress what ran paul's put forward in the senate is basically pretty damn good uh end the war on drugs and qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture and the uh the no knock raids and particularly raids over bullshit like there should never be a swat raid unless someone is in imminent danger i mean okay there's a hostage situation or something like that but my god a swat raid over a suspicion of drug possession right this shit is insane which is what brianna taylor right died from right um just? Just end all of this shit. Those five policies right there would take care of at least 80 to 90 percent of the problems.

What's the immunity one? Qualified immunity basically means that police officers in certain situations, not all situations, but basically are immune from being sued the way other people could be sued. are immune from being sued the way other people could be sued. So if you are a police officer and you do something that anybody else could, would have a lawsuit against you for, they're protected under qualified immunity. They did something about that in New York City, right? I'm not sure. I know there was a proposal for that. I'm not sure what ended up coming from it.

I think it passed. You might be right about that. You're allowed to have civil lawsuits against New York City Police Department. I think that would do a lot to help, a lot to help. And I got to say, honestly, I think that perhaps that the guilty verdict in this case against Derek Chauvin will make another cop think twice if they're in a situation like that, which I think that is certainly a good thing. like that, which I think that is certainly a good thing. But just to your other question about the bigger stuff with just the government in general, like what's the answer to not making people want to storm the Capitol? I really think that, and I just mean this from almost like a medical perspective, like this is why the country's going to die, and this is the only thing that could solve the problem, is some type of decentralization, like limiting of the power

of the federal government. The reason why people are so worked up about every presidential election is just because the federal government has too much damn power. And whoever is the president is now like half the country has to live under Biden's rule right now. And they hate that. And the other half of the country would have had to live under another four years of Donald Trump, and they hate that. And so I think the answer is just to reduce the size and power of the federal government, make it not that consequential who the president is, make more decisions on local levels, on community levels, on state levels, everything before you get to the federal government. And just on a practical level, the federal government doesn't do a good job at any of it. So to me, this is the thing.

But I would say that the big issues, and this is why I'm real all in on the Libertarian Party. I know people laugh off the Libertarian Party sometimes. And not all of the candidates they've put out have been great. And not all of the messaging has been that great either. But the Democrats and the Republicans are like rotten to their core. They're just completely corrupt parties that do nothing but rape the American people and are in complete agreement over all the things that I just laid out that are the worst things that our government does. And what we need is basically a movement in America to say, hey, look, we're going to end the COVID regime. That's, to me, first and foremost. COVID regime. What do you mean by that? The lockdown regime, the restrictions, all of this stuff. This is over. The vaccines are here.

President Joe Biden says they'll be available for everyone. Whoever wants to get the vaccine can get it. Whoever doesn't is comfortable with the risk. And that's that. We're done with it. We're going back to normal life, like the old normal, not some new normal. Like, we're going back there. That's got to be step one, ending all of the wars, ending every last one of them. We don't need to be fighting in third world countries over how they run their government. It just has nothing to do

with America. We're bankrupt. We can't afford it. And none of these countries are a legitimate threat to us anyway. So we end all the wars. And then after that, it's like ending corporate welfare, like once and fucking for all. Not one more dime of hard-earned taxpayer money is going to billionaires. Feel however you feel about welfare for the poor. We can have that conversation later. But no more fucking welfare for the rich. Like fuck that.

They don't need it. And the middle class can't afford it anymore. Explain corporate welfare to people. Like when does this come up? Well, if you look at – so, I mean, there's many different forms. But if you just look at over the last year, the COVID stimulus bills, right? You know how you'd always be like, oh, you know, the money they're giving you doesn't really add up to the whole bill. You'd be like, okay, so it's a $2 trillion bill.

And like $130 billion of it is checks to people. What else is all the other shit in that bill? How come the bill was two thousand pages long and basically all of it is all it is is giveaways to cook you know politically connected big business as all over the place knows bailouts for the airline industries for communication industries

the banks that the federal reserve you know easy money that they give to the banks that's just always going to lose money for foreign governments to right oh yeah there's also a bunch of foreign aid that was talked into into one of them i think you know, easy money that they give to the banks. That's just always going on. There was money for foreign governments too, right? Oh yeah. There was also a bunch of foreign aid that was tucked into one of them. I think, you know, I forget exactly how much, but Israel got a few billion dollars last year. Saudi Arabia got money and like all these countries just, you're just giving out money while our middle classes broke. It's had the roughest year in modern American history. And we're giving money out to all of these interests. So you end that, end the lockdowns, end the wars, end all victimless, nonviolent crimes.

Like we're just not putting people in jail who didn't hurt other people. So all of this shit is not, it's not some like, oh, you have to become an anarchist libertarian or something like that tomorrow. It's just like, let's take the worst things that we do and get enough people on board to stop doing that Like that would be enough to save the country from its impending death

I think you're making some really good points And I think a really good one is ending the war on drugs ending the war on drugs and not Incarcerating people for the rest of their life for nonviolent drug offenses would change a lot in this country. First of all, the whole prison industrial complex, this system that's put in place where there's money to be made by putting people in jail. And whether it's private, these are private prisons, or whether they're the state-run prisons or the federally run prisons, it's still the same thing.

There's a business involved. You could split hairs about that. We incarcerate more people than anyone by a long shot. Well, China probably kills more people, but we – Yeah. Yeah. They just make people disappear. But we incarcerate an insane amount of people, an insane amount of people who aren't hurting

anybody. And that does need to end because then that changes the relationship that people have to the government. It changes the relationship people have to the police. If you're doing something and there's a law that's in place that is supposed to protect you from putting something into your body and protect you from someone selling you something that you want to put into your body, regardless of whether you should or shouldn't, we can make a clear argument that there's already enough stuff that you could buy at any store right now that'll kill you. Enough. Like, we got right here.

We got some whiskey right here. I like whiskey. Love it. Drink a lot of it, it'll kill you. You know, drink a lot of it, you'll have liver failure, you'll get cancer, or you'll literally drink yourself to death. Yeah. Pills, everywhere you go, every fucking pharmacy has enough pills to kill you.

It's silly to put these laws in the hands of people where they can decide to lock you in a cage because you do something that you want to do and they don't want you to do it. That's insane. Yeah, absolutely. That would change the relationship that we have with law enforcement. Well, look, there's so much. I mean, you're absolutely right about all of that. And to me, like, and this is the essence of, like, why I'm a libertarian and why I believe in this shit.

It's not, like, to me it's just as simple as are we slaves or are we free men? Like, which one are we? Because if I can't choose what I can put in my own body Then I'm a slave to somebody else and I don't mean like child slavery or in the same sense But like you are not a free person But if you can't make a decision about what you put in your body and so obviously Directly like you just said the most immoral thing about it is the idea of throwing a human being in a cage like an animal

For the crime of putting something in their body. But then on top of that, when you talk about the relationship between people and cops, the effect of the war on drugs has, I mean, look, just like under prohibition, when the gang culture rose up and the murder rate skyrocketed, and then when we repealed prohibition, the murder rate went back down. And then the gang members moved into, you know, prostitution and gambling, you know, the other prohibitions. This is where violent gangs flourish is like in the dark corners of prohibited activities that there is going away. And so now you're going to have gang violence in all the inner cities. Now you're going to have gangs shipping drugs through the border and stuff like that. You get all of this violence comes in that doesn't need to be there. And there would be nothing that America could do to turn around the crime problem in the inner cities throughout this country than to just end all of the prohibitions.

Just be like, there's no more money to be made here for you guys. And now let what happens in California and in other places, let legitimate businesses come in and do it. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a lot better than having high murder rates and high incarceration rates. Well, it'd be really fascinating to see how they would manage trying to legitimize things like heroin and cocaine and things that have been sold by the cartels forever. What we're doing right now is the same thing, again, as you're saying during alcohol prohibition that propped up the mob,

we propped up the cartels. And it's a really dangerous scenario because it's like, oh, it's out of sight, out of sight, out of mind. It's right over there, but it's right over there, but there's this fucking gigantic industry in providing us with stuff that we've decided is illegal. And so the people that are providing it to us are some of the most dangerous fucking well-funded people on the planet Earth, and they can drive here. Like, we're in Austin, Texas.

They can drive here from Mexico. It's not far. Yeah. And it's wild, man. I have friends that are in the military that have worked the border recently. And they go, dude, it's crazy down there now. Like because Biden is in office, there's a lot of messaging going on that it's like it's okay. Yeah.

Trump's been defeated. Now they're more including of immigrants. You can get in now. And also and there's it's really tragic and very complicated. But even when you do these things that do sound kind of humanitarian and nice. So Biden will do a thing where he's like, hey, well, look, we're not going to you know, if you're on the other side of the border, if you have like a young kid with you, we're going to we're going to bring you in. We're not going to leave you there on the other side. It's like, OK, that sounds nice. But now what?

What did you just incentivize? Everyone got to bring a young kid with you. If you're making this journey, make sure you bring a young kid. And there's something truly fucked up about incentivizing more young kids to make this horrible journey. So there's lots of problems there. And so this is why I say, like, just the cleanest, easiest answer is to end the war on drugs. And look, the American taxpayer right now, you are, you're subsidizing the enforcement

of the war on drugs, right? You got to pay for that with your tax dollars. You got to pay for the DEA and the FBI and all the local police departments and all their fancy gear and all the SWAT raids. Taxpayers got to pay for that. Then the taxpayers got to pay to subsidize immigration with all of the like welfare that immigrants can receive. And not – there's lots of welfare programs they can't receive. But they definitely get like – their kids go to school. They go to hospitals.

They get to this, right? So you've got to subsidize the immigrants, you have to subsidize the war on drugs, then you have to subsidize the war on immigration, like ICE and all of those people, and we're paying for every side of this ridiculous policy when we could just go, make the drugs legal, and that's that. Heroin is never going to be as socially normalized as weed is, because it kills people. Honestly, have you ever talked to Dr. Carl Hart? I think I've heard him on your show.

He's a guy with dreads, right? You should talk to him about heroin. Yeah, he's a guy. He does it like regularly or something like that. Yeah, he does heroin recreationally, and he's a brilliant guy. And what he's essentially saying is like heroin is wonderful he's like he just sniffs it he doesn't do a lot of it but he's like this idea of what heroin is is uh it's been greatly exaggerated because of the fact that it's

illegal because the fact that it's got a stigma attached to it or because people shoot it up and do you remember the guy did you i don't know i can't remember was this on your show um but it was the guy who was talking about the um the test with the rats and so basically there was this one test that they had with a rat um and it was like in the 70s i think and this became like the gold standard so it was basically they had a rat alone in a cage and two water bottles and one of them had cocaine in it and the rat just went to the cocaine one and then took it until he died yes and they were like oh my god it's addictive you have it once you're gonna die and then they started looking at it and they go well you know this is a pretty miserable situation for a rat to be in like his life is miserable he's alone in this cage so what if we give him like

mates and all these toys and lots of food and then put the two water bottles together and he just had a little bit and then goes back to the water. Exactly. And it's fine. And there's something really profound about that, that the real problem there is not the substance. The real problem is all the other conditions around you that would lead to you just being like, fuck it, this high is better than anything else I have in my life and I'm just going to do this until I die. That's a great way of looking at it

because I think that's exactly what's going on with most people when it comes to drug addiction and depression. I think most people, when they're going to a job that they hate and they're stuck in traffic and then they're stuck in a cubicle and then they're suppressed at work, they have bosses that are assholes, they're constantly being watched and under review, they're under these fluorescent lights doing mindless, stupid shit all day, and then they're exhausted. They're filling themselves up with terrible food they get home they're exhausted they're watching television they're falling asleep and they're getting back up in the morning and doing it all over again and when they can they do drugs and the

drugs may be the only thing that makes them feel good they get for the weekend you know they pick up a package do a bump with their friends have a couple of drinks and talk at the bar. Now they feel great. And then on the way home, they get arrested. Cop pulls them over. You got any drugs on you? What? Huh?

Checks his pocket. What the fuck is this? Boom. Slams his head off the car. Handcuffs him. Stuffs him in the back of a squad car. Throws him into a cell with some guy who beats the shit out of him. Now he loses his job because he's got this felony on his record.

His life is all messed up. He loses his job now. His marriage is on the rocks. It's like one thing after another. And these things, like these policies, have these huge ripple effects outward. You know?

I hear people saying the other day, they're like, George Floyd ate his stash and that's why he was flipping out when the cop came. Which I don't know if that's actually factually true or not, but a lot of people were saying that.

That that's what happened is that he ate his stash when the cops were coming. You're I don't know if that's actually factually true or not, but a lot of people were saying that, that that's what happened, is that he ate his stash when the cops were coming. You're like, well, if that is true, that's again, it's because they're fucking illegal. Right. That's why. And they were saying he had fentanyl in the system. You know why? Because fucking heroin's illegal, so he's getting this whack heroin.

Yep. That's exactly right. Yeah. That's one of the problems with kids today, where they're getting, whether it's MDMA or a lot of other, even Coke, they're buying Coke, and it's coming laced with fentanyl because it's cheaper. Yeah. And it gets them really high. It's so, it's so fucked.

It's so fucked in. It's, there's no social, socially acceptable solution, right? Because if someone just came along and they were running for president and said, I'm going to make cocaine legal. What? My children. And everybody would- Did you see when Ron Paul said it? I have heard him make cocaine legal. What? My children. And everybody would- Did you see when Ron Paul said it?

I have heard him talk about it. He said it in South Carolina at the Republican presidential debate. So in a South Carolina Republican primary. And Chris Wallace from Fox News is going, Sir, you would make heroin legal. And it's so great that it was Ron Paul. Because if it's like a left-wing hippie type guy saying that, it's real easy to dismiss.

But it's like Ron Paul, conservative Christian country doctor. And he's just like, yes. And he said at one point, he goes, how many people here in the audience would go do heroin if heroin were legal? Are you all sitting there worried that you need the government to protect you from the urge to go try heroin? And he's like, look, do we believe in liberty or not? And it got an applause. And then Chris Wallace was like, I never thought heroin would get applause in South Carolina.

But you're like, but really they were just applauding for freedom. Like it's not for heroin. It's like, look, man, freedom means you can do a lot of things that others probably think you shouldn't do it's too bad ron's so old you know i mean that was the problem he's deep in his 80s right oh yeah yeah yeah no and he's back then in 2008 he was you know fairly long in the tooth he was uh he was always a little too old for the time of his movement. You know, like if the movement had come with him 20 years younger, I really think he could have changed the world. Yes, at 80, not 2008.

He's also a little too nice, to be frank. Like Ron Paul is just too good of a person to quite have that thing. If he just had like a touch of Trump, like just a little pinch of Donald Trump to like really go at people, I think maybe that would have – the confrontational nature would have gotten him more attention. Yeah, but then he wouldn't have that sort of attitude. Yeah. That's why I said just a pinch. Just a little pinch. I don't want – don't put too much Trump in there.

You ruin the whole thing. Does his son have a pinch? Rand Paul is just different than Ron Paul is. He's not the same guy um and a lot of us libertarians the the hardcore libertarians were really disappointed in his presidential run in 2016 we really hoped he would kind of pick up the mantle and run with it and it just it didn't work out do you think he just didn't like the pressure do you think he just didn't like the the idea behind it because he seems to stand up for things when he finds them to be very important.

Yeah, I don't know. I think that was part of it. I think that Ron Paul was like a happy warrior who was just happy to go and do all this stuff. I don't think Rand Paul enjoyed it as much. I also think that Rand Paul compromised too much on some of the really important issues and just didn't. I don't know. He just did not do what he needed to do in that campaign in order to really keep that movement going. to me like a return to normalcy for America. Like he was really the purest constitutional conservative up there who was just saying, look, this is not what we're supposed to be. We're not supposed to be an empire. We're supposed to be a republic. We're supposed to be a limited government, not an out of control, huge government. Let's go back to normal. We don't need to be like this. And then what Donald Trump, who we ended up getting represented this like middle finger to the whole establishment yeah but then he took us to something else that was even more

abnormal and it just it just the country needed ron paul but we got donald trump well he had so many weird things going on you know he had his family working in the white house and that was bizarre yeah the whole thing was bizarre the whole thing was bizarre. The whole thing was bizarre. And where do you, like when you see us now, here we are in 2021, we have three more years of Biden and Harris. We'll see about three more years of Biden. You don't think he's going to make it? I really don't. I just don't think so.

You don't think they're going to just fill him up with amphetamines and steroids and hope he makes it? They're already doing that, but i don't think they can drag him over the four-year finish line you don't think so no do you think she becomes the president somewhere along the line i think i i think two years i'd be impressed and doesn't that make nancy pelosi the vice president no doesn't she become second in charge no that no i think harris could pick whoever she wants oh really i believe so is that how it works that how it works? I'm not sure, but I think Harris could. She's like third in charge if something happens right now, like one, two, or three.

If the president and the vice president both get assassinated, she becomes the president. Which is fucking hilarious. Yes, maybe not a great system when two people have to die for Nancy Pelosi to be president. That's not the best system. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah, like when there's other vice presidents i've taken over the speaker didn't just become the vice president so you don't think he's gonna

make it so let's let's imagine he does and we get to 2024 or you know 2023 running into 2024 like who do you think would make sense like is there anyone out there that stands out as a reasonable person who could sort of steer us out of this mess? I'm not optimistic. Um, I, this is why I'm, I'm all in on the libertarian party. That's what we need. Maybe I'll do it and I'll just be the libertarian, uh, party, uh, candidate. How old do you know? I'm 38. I could do it. You could legally, but people like you to be in your forties before they take you seriously. Yeah, that's true. But you know what? Look at these clowns. You'll be 41. I'll be 41. There you go. In all seriousness, I'm kind of considering

it. Really? There are a lot of people who want me to run and I just want somebody who will just say what needs to be said and talk that liberty shit the way it should be talked. But what we're looking at out of the Democrats and Republicans, it's going to be Harris running against, I don't know, maybe DeSantis. Yeah, maybe DeSantis. He makes sense. You know who's a bad motherfucker is the mayor of Miami. He was on Andrew Schultz's show today. Oh, really? I've got to check that out.

He makes a lot of sense. He makes a lot of sense. Guy makes a lot of sense. He's doing a great job in Miami. Maybe it's just for Miami. Yeah. Being a mayor is very different than being a governor. Oh, is he the guy who was like real hardcore Trump? I don't know.

Is he? I might be confusing him with someone else. I might be wrong about that. Listen, I watched the guy talk for 30 seconds and I was sold. Don't listen to me. But I just think it's hilarious how it's really fascinating how people have broken off into these camps. Like there's Camp Florida and Camp Texas and people are just abandoning California like it's rats on a sinking ship and abandoning New York. And then whenever you think that like, you know, New York is going to turn around, then you hear they're going to do something crazy like make the taxes even higher or tax rich people even more than they're taxing

them now which um i think there's some nutty statistic about the the amount of taxes in new york city that come from wealthy people that it's a small percentage that plays pays more than 50 percent of the taxes yeah yeah it's it's. It's something crazy because, you know, New York is one of the biggest, it's one of the biggest melting pots in our country where everybody's kind of together, walking around the streets, being on the subway. It's one of the cool things about New York City,

but it's also one of the craziest divisions of wealth when you look at people that are, like, really barely getting by versus people that are buying $40 million apartments. know it's it's wild shit yeah you know like the financial people because i remember i was talking to um who was it it was a comic who was there in the in the late 90s and is there now and it's like man it used to be like artists and he goes now it's all like financial people it's like it's weird how it's changed yeah it became it's like man it used to be like artists and he goes now it's all like financial people it's like it's weird how it's changed yeah it became it's like it everyone else got priced out yeah things just got so expensive but if they keep fucking with those people they're gonna move too

and then what are you gonna do well how do you not look at i mean just like the people voting with their feets flooding out of these areas areas and not look at that as just conclusive. Yeah. Like, well, these policies are bad. Yeah. And these are better. I mean, it's like the commies built the wall in Berlin to stop people from flooding out because it was disproving their whole experiment. I mean, they couldn't sit there and watch everybody flooding out of, you know, communist countries into the democratic countries and sit there and go, no, our system is really way better for the people. So they had to build a wall to stop them from leaving. And right now you're almost watching that.

It's unbelievable. You know, if you read the New York Times, you turn on CNN or something like that, and they'll be sitting there telling you how responsible, you know, Cuomo and newsom are and how reckless you know florida and texas you know have been and then you're watching people flood from those cities into the the other one and you're like well okay but isn't that kind of conclusive proof that just like it's a complete rejection of this lockdown shit like this did not work well the lockdown the theory proved to be inaccurate right the theory was, and it made sense, we have to protect people from the spread of this deadly virus. Here we are in March of last year. We've got to stop this deadly virus from spreading.

How do we do that? Well, step one, we have to keep people from going outside and mingling because that's going to stop the spread. So we keep people inside. So then a couple things happen. One, we find out this virus is not nearly as deadly as we were worried it was going to be. And there was no adjustment made. And then two, we find out when you keep people inside, the virus spreads. And people do have to go outside to get food.

They do have to go outside to work. And then also there's a reality about immune systems. Immune systems are kind of like your cardiovascular system. They get stronger when you exercise them. And when your immune system is, you're shut inside, you don't come into contact with anything. Like you're literally in your house all day just watching television, soaking in fear porn. You're not healthy. You're not exercising because all the gyms are shut down.

You're going to get sicker. And so the places where everybody was locked down, it turned out like that didn't help at all. The only thing that it did is make the economy way worse there. And then they doubled down on it. And then people tried to revolt. People got angry at it and they doubled down further. And then you saw the politicians get busted for doing things that were contrary to what they were telling people to do. And then people got more and more resentful and then people left even more. And then here we are one year later. But what's fascinating about it is that because the way the United States is set up, because we do have different ideologies, different philosophies and different schools of government,

like the way we decide to govern our states is different. You can see, oh, look how they're doing it in Florida. Look at the Florida is actually doing pretty good. And then you go, well, they're going to kill people. Now they're just, Florida's open. This is so irresponsible. But then you look at the result and no one is saying, you don't see anyone on television, on CNN or on any of these shows that are supposed to be objective news saying, you know what? We were wrong. Look at what's happened in Florida. Even though they're wide open, it's actually shown that their levels of COVID are lower, their death rates are lower, and they're doing great. The economy is doing great.

Right. And you would think, if we were being reasonable, if you were advocating for lockdowns, you're advocating for destroying people's businesses, suspending basic human liberty. for like destroying people's businesses, suspending basic human liberty. You know, obviously everyone knows there's going to be all types of disastrous effects of, you know, keeping people at home, ruining jobs, all of this, right? Like we're asking you to give up life.

Like this is a pretty big ask, really a demand. Well, you would think the onus was on you to show, not that this helps a little bit, but there has to be some drastic, like very clear, look, the states that are locked down are doing like 10 times better than the states that are opened up. And as soon as that was obviously not the case, it should have, if we were just dealing in honest debate, destroyed the entire lockdown argument. And all of the predictions that have been completely wrong, like what you were just saying, and they never, you know, I remember people saying Sweden by the summer, by last summer, there'd be hundreds of thousands dead in Sweden.

And then by the time the summer hit, there were like 6,000 COVID deaths. And you're like, anyone going to take that back? Just go, hey, we got it wrong, which is fine. You know, people get things wrong. Just a month ago or whenever was that Texas opened up, Fauci said cases are going to spike now. Yeah. Cases are down. And you hear what Fauci said?

Which one? It's hilarious. What did he say? Jamie and I were talking about it yesterday. They asked Fauci, like, why do you think that the cases haven't spiked in Texas? He said, well, obviously the people in Texas are, how did he phrase it? He said they're behaving themselves? Yeah, behaving better.

They're behaving better. And Jamie's like, have you fucking been to Texas? Yeah. But isn't this also like just completely circular logic? Yes. Where you're like, okay, so if I say this is going to happen and then the opposite happens it's because of what i said that was you know what i mean that's what cuomo was thrown in everybody's face in new york yeah cuomo was saying if you you know we got a lockdown because you

didn't wear your masks you ate the cheesecake you're gonna get fat remember that he was using these fucking down home analogies like oh and i'll tell you what i can't stand which just like makes my blood boil is when they use your basic freedoms as a negotiating tool like they're like well if you do x y and z then maybe we'll let you have restaurants exactly maybe we'll let you do this like yeah the fuck are you get back some of your freedoms. Like, now you're using my freedom as a carrot on a stick to get me to do what I want to do? Like, what type of sick shit is that? Yeah, and this is one of the reasons why I called you, one of the reasons why I wanted you to come here to do the podcast, because I've heard you talking about COVID passports, about vaccine passports.

And I share your deep concern about this idea because this is not something that they're just going to keep with covid vaccines if there's a way that they can get you to show your papers and to show whether you have an app on your phone whether you're you know whatever it is that you have to have in order to be able to freely travel around the United States, they're going to keep that fucking thing. Well, and I said, just like I said before, if you're just looking at the bigger picture of it, you're like, look, this is, and I think objectively the country went totalitarian for about a year. Now, not every single part of it was as totalitarian as the rest,

but according to governors out of their own words, they suspended the Bill of Rights. And we've been in a year living under that. Like, how long do you think we can go in living in a totalitarian society before that's just what our society is? And there's not really a memory of the old normal, or at least that seems like the old times. That's not who we are anymore. We're already dangerously close to that position. And now we have this opportunity where it's like, hey, Joe Biden says that everyone who wants to take the vaccine will be able to take it, I think, by June, he said. Everyone who wants it will be able to take it. And that's a perfect little opportunity point to go, okay, so we break out of it now. Now we break out of it. Now you can make a sound argument that if the vaccine's available for everybody, the people who want it can take it and the people who don't are choosing to take the risk. And now we go back to normal life.

And at the same time, they're proposing this vaccine passport, which really, if you look at the proposals, isn't a passport, it's an app, right? With your medical history, your data can be tracked, your location can be traced, all of these things. But what they're talking about doing now when we have this fork in the road, we could go back to being a free country. Not as free as some of us would like, but at least the way we used to have it, right? we can go to what is being proposed and talked about, which is a national caste system where

there's one group of people who have basic freedoms and rights and one group of people who do not. They don't have the freedom to travel. They don't have the freedom to go to events, maybe not to work. Ideas have been floated out about grocery stores. That's a national caste system. And also just, you also just throwing away the idea that you have any type of medical privacy from the government. It's being done in collusion between big businesses and governments. And this is already happening. It's being done in New York City. It's being done in other countries. And there were reports in the Washington Post, in CNN, about the Biden administration meeting with these big businesses to say, you know what?

It's not really good enough to do a local level or a state level thing. We need to have one national standard. So you're talking about a national caste system. And if we embrace that, man, I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but like I think this whole thing is fucked. Like I really think this whole country, we are not going to come out of this. If we embrace the idea of now, this is an idea straight out of the Chinese social credit system. This is what they're proposing we do. By the way, China already has the COVID passport.

This is what China does. That's it. No sense of like you have a right to do this or you have a right to not do that. And come on, you think they're going to take that power and then this will only ever be used for the COVID vaccine? Why would it be? Also, logically, it doesn't seem to make sense. If the vaccine is available to everybody who wants it and everybody who wants it gets vaccinated, who are we protecting? If these folks are out there that aren't vaccinated, that are supposedly these super spreaders, And that's what we're supposed to stop, right? The idea is that these people who aren't vaccinated, they're dangerous,

and you're not being a good citizen because you have been vaccinated. So what we're going to do is we're going to keep you from doing all the things that you want to do, and we're going to allow those other people that have been vaccinated to have those freedoms. But aren't those people who have been vaccinated and have those freedoms, aren't they – they're not vulnerable right isn't that the idea yeah so so it doesn't matter it logically it makes no sense um morally it makes no sense but it is an unbelievable opportunity for the government to really keep a serious

you know level more of control but i think the biden administration has rejected this so far like there was a there was a discussion where they were asked and i think was what's her name jen saki she was saying that they have no plans whatsoever to do uh vaccine passports and that this is not something that the body administration believes in yeah so what happened was there were these reports that were out that said that the body administration was consulting with these big businesses on how to do it. There was a big uproar about it. And then when she was asked, she was like, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. And ultimately, I think that's quite possibly what ends up happening.

Like, I think oftentimes they put out these feelers to kind of see what the people are willing to take. Like going to war with Syria. Yes. Yeah. It gets a little bit too much pushback. Oh, no, no, no, we're going to back up. Remember when they tried to regulate the internet during the Obama. Yes. The SOPA bill or whatever. They put it out there. Everyone lost their shit. They were not yet. Yeah. Not yet. OK. Not quite ready. But it's so that might be the case. And then there's all these

other arguments, you know, like just the practicality of it. I mean, like, look, if you say you have to show a driver's license before you vote, people will lose their minds about how this is racist because poor people and black people disproportionately tend to not have driver's licenses. So what is an app on a smartphone? I mean, how do you think that's going to work in practice if you're saying you need that to do these basic things? So there's all types of these problems of how you would implement it. But it's still worth noting that they floated this out. Like there are these people in our government who would go Chinese fascist on us. If they could.

If they could. Postal Service reportedly monitoring American social media for inflammatory content. What? Yeah, this was the post office cops got caught. What? Oh my god, what does that mean? What do they mean by inflammatory content? The surveillance effort

known as ICOP. Hilarious. They call it ICOP? Oh my god, Apple fucked everybody up with I. It really did. ICOP. Imagine if there wasn't an iMac and, oh my God. Okay. Known as I cop monitors American social media for inflammatory posts.

A memo obtained by Yahoo includes identifying details and screenshots of users' parlor accounts. Of course. Okay. So the post office is looking for the next capital attack. And it's like the investigators unit so the post office looking for the next uh capital attack and it's like the investigators unit of the post office like it's the the policing part of the post office which most people don't even know we have remember when people used to go postal what happened there yeah yeah i guess they started treating their post offices their postal workers better postman stopped shooting everybody didn't they that was a thing man that's true we're got

that we would literally it would be a verb he went postal yeah right yeah that's right because it happened like a few times yeah we're like mailmen just started killing people or whatever it happened a lot yeah it happened so much that you would you would like there's not another occupation where you you associate them with mass killing. But we did seem to solve that problem. I have no idea how. There was a video game that I used to play called Postal. And you would run around killing people.

This was the answer? This program? They were like, look, if we let you spy on everyone, maybe you don't have to shoot them now? Is that cool? It's kind of crazy if you really think about it. Like, that, if we let you spy on everyone, maybe you don't have to shoot them now? Is that cool? It's kind of crazy if you really think about it. Like, that just stopped happening. Yeah. Yeah, it really did.

Huh. Well, anyway, now they're spying on our social media. Kids today probably don't even know what I'm saying. Like, if I'm saying going postal. It's a very 90s, like, thing. It was 90s, yeah. It's Seinfeld. They had a bit about it.

Did they? Yeah, where Seinfeld asked Newman why they always kill people, and he's like, because the was 90s. Seinfeld, they had a bit about it. Did they? Yeah, where Seinfeld asked Newman why the post office, why they always kill people and he's like, because the mail never stops. It's just hilarious. That's probably what it is too,

right? If you're in a mail room and you don't get enough breaks. Yeah, I think maybe, maybe there is something to that. Like, you know,

like if you have like a job to do, there's like a satisfaction, like even a physical job, there's a satisfaction in finishing it. You're like, okay, I did it now, it's done. If it's mail, it's just always constantly coming in and you do it and there's more and there's like a satisfaction, like even a physical job, there's a satisfaction in finishing it. You're like, okay, I did it, now it's done.

But if it's mail, it's just always constantly coming in. And you do it and there's more and there's more and you never get that like reward. Right, right. I mean, I'm just completely speaking out of my ass, but maybe that's what it is. Well, it does make sense though.

Like imagine if you have a project, like say if you're a construction crew and you're building a mall. When the mall's done, you're like, let's have a beer. We built the fucking mall. You drive by that mall every day. Hey kids, your dad and his company built that mall.

You know, you did something. But if your fucking job is the mail, that's never going to end. There's no we built the mall. And people are just pissed off when it's not there. Yeah. And no one goes, no one has ever just like, I mean, you got like 99.9% of it here. They're like, where the fuck's my letter? You know, like they're just pissed off. You just never get any credit. Never, never got like 99.9% of it here. They're like, where the fuck's my letter? They're just pissed off.

You just never get any credit. Never, never get any credit. Yeah, everybody's mad if it's next day air and it fucking comes two days later. Yeah. Brave men and women. Yeah. And now they got busted spying on everyone. And I guess they could say it's because of like the the capital

riot thing or something like that but this stuff is pretty creepy man and it was if if it was so honest what they were doing then how come it had to be a covert thing that yahoo news was just able to get their hands on the other day like why why is this being done in in secrecy yeah and and there's a lot i will tell you that you know again, it's like I was saying before, like, however you feel about COVID, you could still be really worried about the totalitarianism. Like, you could even think the totalitarianism was justified and still be really worried about it. Like, if you were on a boat and, like, a snake jumped on your boat and someone shot it, you know, and then And then like there's a big hole in your boat now. Like you could be like, no, he had to because there was this venomous snake. But you'd still be like, OK, but we got to worry about that hole now.

Like that's still a problem even if we needed to do it. So it's like you could be against – or you could be for the thing and still recognize that it's a concern. So you could be against like the Capitol riot and all that. that it's a concern. So you could be against like the Capitol riot and all that. But don't you find it a little bit creepy that they're all just openly going like, oh, you know what we really need now is to turn George Bush and Dick Cheney's war on terror inward and focus on the domestic terrorists. Like how'd that work out when we were fighting them in the Middle East? You know, we killed a lot more people than just terrorists, right? Well, what's ironic is that they've created this sort of division with the divide on social media by making social media so censored and left-wing heavy because you know i tried to send

a friend of mine a video the other day on twitter through a direct message and it was blocked really i couldn't send a direct message it's it was i was asking him if this was accurate and it was a doctor who's talking about ivermectin and ivermectin which is a um it's a treatment for covid and this doctor was saying that ivermectin is 99 effective in treating covid but that you don't hear about it because you can't fund vaccines when there's an effective treatment. And this is, I don't know if this guy's right or wrong. So I'm asking questions.

So I go, hey, tell me about this. So I send it. It message not sent. I try to send it again. Message not sent. I'm like, oh my God, what's your email? I had to send it through email. It's blocked.

Well, I know that they did that with that Hunter Biden laptop story from the New York Post. You couldn't send it through direct message. You couldn't send the link through message, anything. Couldn't post it, couldn't do it. So if they've done that, then they do have the ability to do it. That kind of shit is crazy. I wasn't even posting this. And what effect does this have where it's like, okay, so you kick all the right wingers off social media.

Yes. Right? kick all the right wingers off social media. Yes. Right. And then you start kind of like punishing all the not even right wingers, but just not left wingers. Right.

Off of there. He's like, so what's the end of this here now? So now none of us are talking to each other, even in a shitty medium like Twitter is the answer. Just that we, none of us talk to each other. We all only just talk to our own groups.

Yeah. And none of the, and so many of these things and like this is another like big thing i i think a big story of the last year has been how much the the social media censorship has been cranked up and like where it was you know i started noticing um like i had a a private facebook group uh for people who were like paying subscribers to my podcast, to not Legion of Skanks, that part of the problem, which is my like political podcast. And so we had like a little community there. And for years it was just fun. A lot of shit talking. People say crazy things. It's mostly libertarian, but some left wingers, some right wingers, you know? And then

all of a sudden this year, I, cause I was the moderator of the group. I start getting messages over and over again. This has been removed because it's false content. This has been flagged. This has been this and that. It was all COVID stuff. And it was all the stuff that was skeptical of the official COVID narrative. And a lot of it turned out to be right. You know, it was like doctors being like, yeah, no, you don't need to wipe down your groceries.

You can't get this from touching your groceries. Don't worry about that. It was them talking about how the ventilators were killing people. At the time, that was a conspiracy theory. At the time, they were like, no, no, no, Cuomo was saying we need more ventilators. Then there's doctors like the ventilators

are killing people. Now, there were also doctors who got it wrong, but a lot of them got it right, and their videos would be removed, and ultimately they ended up shutting down the group, just shutting it down. So they kicked all of us off. I mean i'm not kicked off facebook but i was only on it for that group at this point so i don't really use it anymore um but you're like okay so now you want to okay

you take down all these videos but you know like five of those were right yeah not all of them were but five of them were and they were right when it was really important to be right and you ended up censoring this whole shit yeah and so like how isn't that dangerous we're gonna pick the one official science and this is the only science that can be spoken well it took until i mean here we are it's april i don't i think it was somewhere around february when when did the cdc have it on their website that vitamin D is important? It was way late in the game. Really late, yeah.

But I had talked to all these nutritionists and endocrinologists and all these scientists who were saying it's a critical aspect of your immune system. You need to supplement with vitamin D and that 84% of the people in the ICU with COVID were insufficient in vitamin D and only 4% had sufficient levels of vitamin D. It's a really significant aspect of the way your body fights COVID. And the best way to get it is actually being outside. It's the best. Like, you supplement vitamin D, it's good,

but getting it outside from sunlight is better. It's the best way. And you never heard any of this. And if you tried to say this, people would try to, they would try to say that you're some sort of a COVID denier. Yeah. Or that you're doing something that endangers people by downplaying the effects of the virus. Like, no, we're talking about ways you can mitigate it. You're talking about ways you can boost your immune system.

People got very weirdly attached to the disaster narrative yes of covid like psychologically attached to it and they took it as like an attack on them if you ever pointed out any good news such a strange thing because you think like oh good this is what we want right a little bit of good news hey if you're a young healthy person you really don't have much to worry about with covid it's like a scientific fact. But people get very upset with you for saying it. And this has been, this year, man, has been really bad for mental health for a lot of people. I know people, I mean, I know people,

I'm sure you do too, have really, you know, like we're stand-up comedians, we're in a world of a lot of like kind of zany people. And a lot of them exist kind of on the edge, you know? And this year pushed a lot of people. Pushed a lot of them. Well, a lot of them couldn't work and a lot of them couldn't get their drug a lot of them their drug was going on stage and making people laugh there's a lot of really depressed people in the world of stand-up comedy and going on stage and making people laugh was their one happy moment of the day or you know

if they lived in new york city and they did multiple sets multiple happy moments in the day more shorter yeah but that was big man it was like for a lot of us like here's a great example i didn't do any stand-up at all until july and then i did this gig in houston and i was uh i was fine we did the gig and i was thinking man you know what i think we're gonna just start doing stand-up again wherever they'll let us do it whether we decide safe um we were testing at the studio every day anyway. And but then I got really fucking high. And I started thinking about like, what if I got it and I gave it to somebody how horrible I would feel. And I was like, all right, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not doing it. And

then I wound up moving to Texas. We move out here and I wasn't doing any stand up. I was just going to wait for, you know, vaccines, treatments, whatever. I'm like, I'll just ride this out. Testing everybody at the studio, working on my health, making sure I'm fit, and taking all my vitamins and all that jazz. And we did one show. We did one show at Vulcan Gas Company. And Ron White hadn't done stand-up at all in eight months. And after he gets off stage, he grabs me.

He grabbed me by both shoulders. He goes, we are gonna fucking do this no matter what we gotta do you're gonna buy a club whatever the fuck we can do we're going back to comedy like he was so all in it was crazy that's amazing he had just been jolted with the lightning he was like he was like first of all he practiced and went over his material and planned it for days like he knew about it for like two days He knew about the set and he was on fire. He was on fire for the moment. He went on stage first of all Everybody cheered like crazy. Well, it's a weird energy because they're dying to hear it too

Like you're like, oh, yes, everyone's letting their like pent-up rage out together kind of yeah But they went crazy when he went on stage and you could tell like you like he was like like he forgot what it was like to be cheered yeah he was just any we'd gone out to dinner and he's like man I think I'm retired fuck it you know I've got some money I'm just gonna hang back and play golf and you know that one moment on stage is like yeah we're back and then he did a bunch of the shows I did at Stubbs withpelle and he quit drinking ron looks fucking amazing well so there are some people who went that way yeah during the whole uh lockdown stuff too where they were like okay i'm gonna work out a lot i'm gonna do this it helps some people but could you

if you were trying to like as a country fuck over people's mental health as much as you could that's could you think of a better recipe then Then be like, okay, well, I'm going to have everybody terrified and not just terrified, but terrified of a floating abstraction. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, a germ that's out there in the world. Then we're going to maybe like, you know, put their financial future, their livelihood in jeopardy. We're going to literally like force them to not interact or go outside.

Don't be around other people and stay inside. I mean, this was like a... I'm not saying that's what they designed it for. I'm saying if they were designing it for that, this would have been an excellent plan. And it's also a great trial run to see how you could fuck up a country. Imagine the amount of financial disaster that has been reaped on this

country just imagine i mean it's we kind of know but if you could see it if you could see it like in each individual business how many restaurants are gone forever how many comedy clubs are crushed how many small businesses went under how many? How many people's marriages and relationships fell apart? Friendships fell apart. Mental health. How many people committed suicide? How many people become drug addicts? How many people – how much – like if you looked at the vitality of the country in January of 19 and then looked at it now in April of 2021, you're like, my God. And it's going to be going for years and years and years

and we'll never be able to completely trace what goes back to that. But, oh, you can't. Well, I say it like this, right? When I go, so what was the cost of the George W. Bush disastrous administration? And you could just look at it in terms of like, okay, well, the war in Iraq cost $2 trillion

and Afghanistan was another trillion dollars. And then there's like, okay, that's a real tangible cost. But then you're also like, all right, well, they had to bring interest rates down and keep them really low in order to finance the wars, to keep them on the credit card, so we wouldn't pay a lot of interest on it, wouldn't have to tax people, just kind of put it on the credit card. And then when interest rates were really down, this sucked a whole lot of people into buying homes that otherwise wouldn't have bought homes, who couldn't really afford them. But at 1% interest rate, maybe they could afford them. So they'd get in there and then the interest rates tick back up and they all got foreclosed on and this brought down the whole economy. And you're like, what is the cost of the George W.

Bush administration? It's like, well, it's Trump. It's Antifa. It's like everything. All of this goes back to being a cost of that. So what is the cost of all of this going to end up being? We don't even know yet. It's going to be decades of seeing what happens to the country before you're like, oh, yeah. I mean, look, you just you ruin just one thing like ruining a marriage. Yeah. What's the cost of that?

Well, you may not know until their kids grow up. You know what I mean? Like what the cost of ruining a family and the cost of ruining a business could be the cost of ruining multiple marriages multiple families you know if you're if you're working in a restaurant and you know you're a chef and then the owners of the restaurant tell you we can't keep afloat and you're like oh my god how am i going to feed my family how am i going to pay my bills how am i going to keep how am? How am I going to keep a roof over my head? Am I going to be homeless?

Where can I work as a chef if I can't work? There's nowhere to work for a whole year. And we thought this was going to be 14 days. And then the rage. My friends that are chefs in Los Angeles, when they would come out here to Texas and see restaurants open, the rage they would feel. They were so angry. They were so angry. They're like, why can't we do this? Why can't we do this? But you could. You're just in the wrong state. And it's interesting to see how different states handled it. And we'd like to think that these irresponsible states are killing people,

but they're not. These states that are more interested in giving people freedom to make decisions and keep their businesses open. I met with the governor, and I talked to him about it. And his position very clearly was, you've got to let people work. He was like, right away. He goes, I know you're a liberal. He said to me. He goes, and I know that's for social issues.

And he goes, but when it comes to business, he goes, you have to let people work. He goes, you have to let people work he goes you have to keep businesses open he goes it is the foundation of our economy it's how everything keeps going there's no but this is like an interesting thing to me throughout the whole um like lockdown is that it's not even something that a liberal there's no reason a liberal shouldn't get that like this is there's something very strange to me and so much of it i think in america today is that everyone's reactionary so everyone's reacting against what so so the whole democrats the whole left half of america was reacting against trump you know like anything trump did

you were going to be they were going to be against that and then the whole right half is like reacting against cnn and the media and all that stuff whatever whatever they say, you're going to be against that. And you almost wonder, like, what if Donald Trump had come out at the beginning of COVID and said, we have to lock down. You got to wear your mask. I'm putting my mask on right now. We got to be every real. You know, then what would the reaction have been? It's quite possible the reaction would have been like, he's an authoritarian.

He's being draconian. Like, we don't need to do any of this. He's an authoritarian. He's being draconian. Like we don't need to do any of this. Because if you just think about it in in an abstract, like. The idea that I'm going to wear a mask and be distant and be cautious and follow the government orders. Is that really more of a left wing thing than a right wing thing to do? In my mind, it almost seems like the right winger would be the conservative. We want to be careful. We don't want to be risky. And the left winger would be the person who's like, hey, there's more to life than just, you know, staying alive. I want to go see a show. I want to hang

with my friends. I'll take a little bit of risk. I'm comfortable with that. The more kind of artistic vision. So why would a liberal or a leftist not be able to understand that like yeah if someone loses their job that has a big effect on their life there are external costs to poverty yeah there's a thing that people do uh that on the left today the what we just consider because i think what what is the left and the right it shifts and it goes back and forth because it's not real a lot of it is just like what's the current ideology what what what is your left and the right, it shifts and it goes back and forth. Because it's not real. A lot of it is just like what's the current ideology? What is your tribe subscribed to? But there's a thing that people do where they say there's things that are more important than the economy.

Well, yeah, there are. But guess what? There's more to the economy than just money. There's a whole lot more. And a lot of it is lives and a lot of it is your future. Like if you're a person who's worked for 30 years and you built a restaurant and you've been showing up and busting your ass and you have, you know, 20, 30 employees and everybody works with you and it's like a family. Yeah. And then all of a sudden that's gone.

It's your identity. It's your purpose. It's your life's work. It's so much more than just, you know. It's not just the economy. Well, I hate people reducing the economy to being some small thing. The economy is human beings acting in cooperative ways to improve the standards of living. Yeah.

Like this is what you invest the time of your life into. Yeah. There's nothing trivial about that. And to your point, it's funny because even like, look, the critical race theory and the woke stuff, that is one strand of left-wing ideology for sure. It comes out of the Frankfurt School and the postmodernists. But that's just one little piece of left. There's other traditions on the left that have nothing to do with that. Noam Chomsky hated the postmodernists. He was like, this is stupid.

It's like this whole thing is ridiculous. And there's lots of other leftists like that who would never say something like, well, it's just the economy. They understand what work means to people, how much that's your purpose, your livelihood. I don't think it's a well-thought-out position. I just think that people say it. No, people do. And I think they say it because it's supposed to support the ideology of like stay home, double mask, social distance, do the right thing. And there's a lot of people that are these kind of like really frantic, hysterical, paranoid

people that are scared of things. And they haven't had to encounter any real real adversity in their life any real scary moments and this is the scariest moment of their life this pandemic a global pandemic but it is you know as a global pandemic i think we got really lucky i mean it could have been the spanish flu It could have been something that really does wipe out. Even that you're not allowed to say, because then they'll be like, oh, so you're lucky? You think all these dead people are lucky?

And you're like, well, no, but I'm just being an adult with some nuance. Yes, relatively speaking. Compared to what we thought it might be. Yeah. Yeah, it's better than that. Sometimes you have to choose between two bad options and saying, even though there's a lot of bad with what we got, it could have been a lot worse. And like, I mean, thank God.

I know Ben Shapiro said this, and I think he got in trouble for it. I ain't in trouble. Like, you know, there's a Twitter mob. He's fine. But he said the thing. He's so right. He goes, man, thank God this thing doesn't kill kids. Yeah.

I mean, can you just imagine like what a stroke of luck that is? Yeah. That this thing just really doesn't kill kids. And I know there's a few exceptions to that rule. But generally speaking, kids are fine for this. You know how much worse this whole thing would be if kids died from it? How much more panicked we would all be over this? Well, that's what's fascinating because the flu does kill kids.

And we've never taken any precautions to shield kids from the flu. We've never tested teachers. We never made anybody wear masks. We never even tested kids. Kids would show up with the flu and get other kids sick at school all the time. And then they got a baby brother at home and they go home and the baby gets the flu and babies die from the flu. All the time. You know, and it's like, but this is the thing is that, and this was one of the things that COVID brought up to the surface that a lot of us don't really think about.

But there are all types of risks that go on with life that we accept. Yeah. That we just accept, well, there's risks to this game. But once those risks get highlighted and once they become a part of the narrative, then it gets weird. It's very hard to argue. But even just that, right? So if you take the position, hey, I think that we should always wear mask social distance

because of the flu of how it, you know, can kill babies and stuff like that. You can make all the same arguments for that. And if you're making the argument against it, you're like, well, what do you fucking want babies to die? This is crazy. But we always just accepted that one. It never really got highlighted. No, we never thought about what we always thought of the flu as being something that we always lived with. Now, here's the real question. What happened to the flu? How many people got the flu as being something that we always lived with. Yeah. Now, here's the real question.

What happened to the flu? How many people got the flu this year? Very few. It's weird. Very weird. Do you think it's the masks? Do you think it's the distancing? You know, I really don't know.

What is it? I don't know. Maybe that is it. Jamie, what do you think? What do you think happened? Where's the flu, Jamie? How many people got the flu this year? I'm looking.

Let's guess. Normally, I think a bad year is like 30,000 people will die from the flu, right? I think bad might be a little worse than that. I think sometimes it's like 50,000, 60,000. That's a real bad year, right? Okay. So how many people do you think, let's just guess, how many people died this year from the flu? I think it's like under 1,000.

How's that possible? I don't know. I might be wrong about that, so get the number from me, but I know it's really low. That doesn't seem to make sense. I don't have an answer on that one. I don't know. Unless the people got COVID and then got the flu, and then they called it COVID. Yeah.

There's some people who have speculated that they're counting flu deaths as COVID deaths. Yeah, but that's a lot of- I don't know if that's right. Put that fucking tinfoil hat on. Yeah, yeah. It a lot of- I don't know if that's right. Put that fucking tinfoil hat on. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to say. I mean, those kind of speculations I don't engage in because I'm like, I don't know.

What is this? What are we doing here? Yeah, I know. Yeah. And there's been a lot of that over the last year. What do we got, Jamie? I just see that flu activity is low at this time and 193.8 million doses of the flu vaccine

have been distributed. Distributed? Yeah. Does that mean injected? Or does that mean sent to Walmart? Yeah, I don't think it does any good if you just send it to Walmart. Someone's got to get a prick.

What does that mean? Decreased activity. This seems kind of new. So it doesn't say how many deaths? It doesn't say how many deaths from the flu? I'll just type that in. Flu deaths. Flu deaths 2020.

2020. I'm going to guess. USA CDC. I'm going to guess 4,000. As of October 6th, CDC estimates 38 million people got sick with it, 18 million people went to a healthcare provider, 400,000 hospitalizations, and 22,000 flu deaths. In America?

In 2020? 2019, 2020 flu season. Oh, okay. Wow. I was way off. I thought it was a lot lower than that. 20,000 is a legit number. That's a lot of people.

Huh. Nobody talked about that at all. All right. So maybe it's not completely gone. Not at all. We got to take care of this flu. It's killing people. We need a flu passport.

There you go. A flu vaccine passport. Do you get flu shots? I've never gotten a flu shot, no. I don't get flu passport. There you go. A flu vaccine passport. Do you get flu shots? I've never gotten a flu shot, no. I don't get flu shots. I was advised to when my daughter was born, and I never ended up doing it. I think by the time I was going to do it, it was already like, yeah, we kind of made it out of flu season. I was like, yeah, I think we're fine.

I tell this to people, and it sounds like I'm bragging because I am. I haven't been sick in 15 years. Yeah? Yeah, but I'm on a shitload of vitamins. I do this on every day. I'm on testosterone. I'm on all these different things. You should brag about it.

I'm not doing what a normal person does. Yeah, well, you should encourage people to do that. Taking care of your immune system is important. Well, it's a lot of work, especially when don't think, especially when it comes to the exercise, some people are just not inclined to do that. And that's their choice. But when they want to compare, you know, the way you feel about something, like your nervousness or your anxiety about something versus other people.

I'm nervous for other people. And I've said this openly that I'm not nervous about it for myself because I know too many people that have gotten it. My family got it. My whole family got COVID and I was with them and I never got it. And I'm assuming based on all of the research that's been done on the immune system and what you could do to boost your immune system and all those things that I've done and actively done for fucking forever for most of my life, that that had an impact. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that this, look, the science is pretty clear that if you don't have major underlying health issues and you have a strong immune system, you have nothing to worry about with COVID. But if you say that, people will go fucking bananas and say, why aren't you vaccinated? I know. It's just, it's really something. It's unbelievable.

And it's, you know, people have, like we were saying before, people have developed an emotional stock in this worldview now. And that's going to have to be broken if we're going to be okay. And dude, I'm not even against being vaccinated. I'm not. Go for it. I'm confused about this narrative, and I'm confused why people can't look at this nuanced. But there was a moment where the UFC had allocated a certain amount of vaccines,

and I said, okay, save one for me. And I went down to the UFC to do the fights, and I thought I'd be able to get it there. And they said, no, there was been a misunderstanding. You're going to have to come back on Monday. I said, shit, I can't come back on Monday. I said, all right, well, we'll figure this out. So I didn't get vaccinated.

And that was a Johnson & Johnson vaccine. And then they pulled it off the market because blood clots. Which also seemed like, to be honest, seemed like a very small number of blood clots. It was something like a few cases in millions of doses. I don't know. That's where I'm putting my fucking tinfoil hat on. Because if it's like really six cases of blood clots over millions of doses, are you sure? But it's also, it's just so crazy.

And this is just like how the government ends up working. Where it's like, you know, you have Dr. Fauci out there for a while like no don't wear a mask that's ridiculous and it's like what you're not wearing a mask you're an insane person now he's wearing two yeah they're wearing two after being vaccinated you know and then so they're literally going there like it's like one day literally one day at noon you're a kook if you question the vaccines and the next day at noon they're like well we're pulling this vaccine because there's been all these health problems. But just yesterday, you weren't even allowed to question whether there were health problems related to the vaccine. I almost took the Johnson & Johnson vaccine days before it got pulled.

And if it did get pulled, I would be sitting here going. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How am I doing? Am I okay? How do you check for blood clots? Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm freaking out about it.

Am I okay? How do you check for blood clots? And I was listening to this doctor discuss what to be worried about and that you really shouldn't be concerned because it's a very small number of people and it's primarily women for some reason. And they think it might have something to do with the birth control pill. And this was all speculation, right? They were just – and he was saying if you have weakness in one side of your body i was like oh jesus christ like they were talking about all these different things you have trouble vision with your vision if you have severe headaches nausea i'm like oh christ oh jesus christ and

i'm just thinking like what would i be feeling right now if i had taken that shot and i'm here driving around listening to this guy talk about all these side effects. And then, you know, Brett Weinstein and Heather Hying have a great podcast. The Dark Horse podcast. And, you know, he's an evolutionary biologist. And so she, they're brilliant people. And they're talking about, she might be just a regular biologist. I don't know what kind of biologist she is. But they're both brilliant.

And they were talking about this, the narrative about the vaccines, about whether or not the vaccines are safe, and that this is not even something that you're allowed to have a discussion about. And that is so strange. There's nothing else where you can have a discussion about whether or not it's okay to get an injection of something into your body. This is a really weird thing where you're supposed to, it's almost like people don't want to think that maybe there could be something

dangerous ever about not just a vaccine, but any kind of a drug that you get injected in your body. So because of this, because this is so critical, they want you to play make-believe with them and say there's no risks. And that we have to have this unbelievable faith in all of these establishment institutions that, well, of course they got it right. I mean, they wouldn't be rolling it out this way unless they got it right, you know? And that's why we're all going to do this thing. Brian Stelter at CNN was criticizing Fox News because their hosts have not been publicly getting the vaccine.

They're not taking pictures on air of them. Which, first of all, if nothing else, can we all acknowledge that that's fucking weird? Yes. It is weird. Like, objectively, it is weird to be putting out pictures of you getting a vaccine in this almost like ceremonial kind of like thing. Like, it's very weird. And then you're going like, OK, well, look, these vaccines were developed very quickly.

There is huge money that's being made here by these big pharmaceutical companies. Right. Are we not allowed to be skeptical of any of this, to ask questions about this? Like who's getting money? Is it really appropriate for, say, CNN to be just shilling for big pharmaceutical companies? Like we're taking pictures of us taking your product and now we're chastising others for not taking pictures of it. How about medical privacy? Right.

You're putting social pressure on people. You're putting social pressure on people and you're also virtue signaling in the most obvious of social media ways. Like you're actually saying it like it's a virtue. You're saying it like it's a good thing that people display the fact that they're being compliant and they're doing this. Yeah. It just gives me the creeps. The whole thing is very creepy to me.

I think you should get vaccinated if you're vulnerable. I think you should get vaccinated if you feel like my parents are vaccinated. I've encouraged a lot of people to give, and people say, do you think it's safe to get vaccinated? I've said, yeah, I think for the most part, it's safe to get vaccinated. I do. I do. But if you're like 21 years old and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I go, no. Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person? Like, look, don't do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself. If you're a healthy person and you're exercising all the time and you're young and you're eating well, I don't think you need to worry about this. Yeah, I tend to agree with you.

But there's a lot of jobs that will tell you you need to have this. Well, that's what's starting to happen now. People are worried about them doing it for their children. And we talked about this earlier. That you might have to have this. Well, that's what's starting to happen now. People are worried about them doing it for their children. And we talked about this earlier, that you might have to have your children vaccinated. And I can tell you as someone who's both my children got the virus, it was nothing. I mean, I hate to say that.

If someone's children died from this, I'm very sorry that that happened. I'm not in any way diminishing that. But I'm saying the personal experience that my children had with COVID was nothing. One of the kids had a headache. The other one didn't feel good for a couple of days. I mean, not feel good, like no big deal, no coughing, no achy, no like an agony. There was none of that. It was very mild. It was akin to them getting a cold. Yeah. And you can have this thing where it's like you were saying this virtue signaling and this kind of like theatrical display of i get the vaccine what a good person i am i care about everyone but you're like look

my daughter's a lot younger than your kids but i'm like yeah i'm not injecting my daughter with something to fucking virtue signal like i'm not doing that. If there's something that she's of no risk, statistically has no risk from, I'm sorry, I'm not taking any experiment on her. And that's my attitude toward it. But it's amazing that that's controversial. That even saying that, I'm not going to inject my child with the vaccine, is controversial.

It's crazy. Because, again, we are not talking about even the flu that we just found out killed 22,000 people last year. we are not talking about even the flu that we just found out killed 22 000 people last year we're not talking about that right we're talking about something that is not statistically dangerous for children but yet people still want you to get your child vaccinated which is crazy to me yeah like you should be vaccinated if you are vulnerable you should ted nugent's got the row. He got, what did he get? He's got the Rona.

Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, he's been talking all this shit. It's kind of hilarious. He said there is no pandemic. He said it's a scam. And he said he's never been sicker in his life. He said he's coughing up chunks of shit.

That's got to just feel really awful. Not only just being sick, but then just being shit. How do you say that term? I don't know how to say it. I sort of know how to spell it. Yeah. Schadenfreude. Shit.

Schadenfreude. Yeah. Whatever it is. That's that. I mean, there's so many videos of him talking shit about the Rona. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there are people laughing at him now.

Everyone felt that when Trump got it. They're like, aha. You downplayed it now, you got it. But then he was fine. I don't think Ted even takes vitamins. I don't think he works out. He just bow hunts and talks shit and plays guitar. Well, turns out that doesn't keep COVID away.

Turns out that's not quite enough. Fairly old. I mean, he's in his 70s, I believe. But people on CNN, CNN were loving it. They were loving the fact that he got it. It's always like, I remember feeling that way when Trump got it too. It's almost like they couldn't even keep it inside. They're trying to pretend that they're not so happy that this happened.

Meanwhile, that fat fuck four days later was fine. That's what's crazy. Bring me a cheeseburger. I'll beat this thing by lunch. Four days later. I know. That was what's crazy. I mean, the guy's an animal.

I mean, love him or hate him, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of the way he ran the country or the way he talks. Especially in press conferences. I mean, just the inflammatory rhetoric that that guy... I think he did more harm than good and

created the division and rather accentuated the division. Well, I think that you more harm than good and created the division and rather accentuated the division. Well, I think that you. OK, there are like a few legitimate silver linings that I think were really good that came out of the Trump administration. And the one that I've noticed the most was that I think Donald Trump gave cover for right wingers to be against the wars. Donald Trump gave cover for right wingers to be against the wars. And I've really noticed this like in life that he said these wars are stupid. We shouldn't be fighting any of them.

Let's end the endless wars. And now I see a lot of right wingers and influential right wingers who are kind of just feel comfortable to be like, yeah, we're against the wars. We want to bring them home. Whereas they were very uncomfortable to do that. But now that Mr. President Donald Trump did it, it's okay for them to do it. He also had the courage to say that the military industrial complex is a real thing. Yeah. You remember that interview? That was crazy.

Yeah. It was unbelievable. He's like, there's people out there that really want to go to war. Oh, he goes, yeah. He goes, look, every time I want to end the war, I'm fought by the Pentagon. Of course, the issue there is you're like, well, I mean, you are the commander in chief. So what are we doing here? Well, what is happening now?

Didn't Biden say that he's going to pull everybody out of Afghanistan by June or something like that? No, he pushed back. Trump had had worked out a deal with the Taliban to leave and he pushed it back to September, but said that we will leave in September on September 11th. So Joe Biden, this is the thing. It's like being celebrated like, oh, it's great. He's ending the war. It's like, well, no, that's not actually what he did. What he's doing is extending the war. And he's extending the war so that he can leave on September 11th for some type of, like, ceremonial, you know, like, victory. I don't know, some symbolism of, like, yeah, this was the great day that the great Joe Biden pulled the troops out. And I've got to be honest, I'm very skeptical that he's going to do that.

But we've had all of these dates where, you know, Joe Biden, when he was vice president, I think he promised we'd be out in 2014. And then Obama said, that's absolutely right. We'll be out in 2014. And they just keep going and keep going. Do you think that without, you know, any tinfoil hat perspective, do you think that they're doing this just for money? Yeah. But I don't I don't think you need a tinfoil hat. It's like, look, the military industrial complex is the biggest honeypot in the history of the world. It's like a trillion dollars a year that

gets spent maintaining this empire. And yeah, there's people making all types of money off of it. And those people have a lot of influence in Washington. And so like, yeah, they want to keep making that money. They want to keep the gravy train, you know, rolling. And so I don't think it's even conspiratorial at all. In fact, I think the more conspiratorial thing is to go into all of these other reasons why they would want to stay there. But I think that the major driving force is that there is, as Dwight Eisenhower, like Mr. Military, Dwight Eisenhower said, we built up a huge industrial complex that makes money off the warfare machine. Isn't it crazy when you look back at him giving that national address at a time when you had to watch it on television, there was no recording devices, right? At a time when you had to watch it on television, there was no recording devices. He did it at a time where the only way Americans could see that was you had to be sitting in front of the television.

And he had a message. And that was what was really important for him to get out there. I want you to beware of the military-industrial complex and its influence. And of all the people, Mr. General, one World War II, you know, Dwight, you know, Ike, you know, that is the guy who's given you this message of all the people, you have to listen to him saying it. Like, this is the guy who really knows. And it was brand new.

I mean, you know, there was always like a military issue, but it was the World War II effort and the post world war two effort that had led to this. It was a whole new world then it's like, Oh shit, now we got nukes and we got this big arms industry and all of this. And there, I mean, look, I think that there, Donald Trump was right when he said that, then he said that he's like, yeah, there are all these interests who want to keep these wars going and they fight you every time you try to end it. Now, to your point, I do think that Donald Trump, in result, was just bad.

I think all he did was he agitated the far left, made them crazier than they've ever been before. He didn't actually accomplish much of anything. I know there's people who will rattle off all of these things that he did. He really didn't. His presidency ended with Americans being locked in their homes and the economy being destroyed and joe biden getting elected i don't know what imagine what would have happened if you i think he would have won again if it wasn't for covid i think he would want on a landslide

no question i i don't see how he but if it wasn't for covid and the voting overhaul um and i'm not claiming like there was a bunch of fraud i'm just saying that the voting by mail let a lot more people vote and it was a whole different way to do elections. If he had his economy from January, 2019 in November, 2020, and they had the same way we were doing voting the same way we always used to, I think he wins in a landslide. So crazy. I just wonder what's going to happen because he's going to run again in 2024. He said, He said that, but he's also, it's like on one hand, he's old and fat. But then on the other hand, he's Donald fucking Trump. So who the hell knows what he might do.

He's different in that. Like, you don't think of him as old the way you think of Joe Biden as old. And they're not much different in age. Do you remember that year on The Ultimate Fighter when George St. Pierre brought that kickboxer in? Yes. He's like a drunk and he smokes and just fucks everyone up at kickboxing. And you're like, yeah, most people can't do that.

But then there's this one guy who he could just get drunk, smoke, and then come fuck up MMA fighters at kickboxing. And most people can't be fat and in their mid-70s and eat McDonald's and still have this much energy. But Trump kind of can. Skarbowski. Was that him?

Yeah. That was a fun episode. Oh, he's a beast. That guy was a French guy. Amazing kickboxer. Yeah. It was really cool to watch him just sparring around. And even George St. Pierre

like prepping them all like he's like Pull the video of that because it's kind of hilarious because first of all he looks like shit. Yeah. If you look at his body

it's not like he's Yoel Romero. No, no, no. But George St. Pierre like warns them like listen don't look him in his eye don't look away from his eyes

like don't like just don't be be very friendly to him because like this guy if this guy wants to like he'll you know he's a little bit crazy. So he gets out. He had been partying all night.

So here they are training in the morning. And he shows up. And George, who is just such a brilliant guy, so open-minded, he had been sparring with this guy in the past. And there he is. There's Skarbowski. So look at him. He's got a belly. He doesn't have muscles.

If you looked at him, you're like, oh, this is the guy that just started training. If you looked at him, if you didn't know, if I saw that guy, if I went to the gym and I saw that guy, I'd be like, oh, okay, this guy is probably trying to get in shape. Right. Probably never really trained before. But then you watch him fuck these guys up. They literally have no idea what to do with him. And he's so efficient that he doesn't have to be sober.

He doesn't have to be in shape. Back it up a little bit. I just missed that one. He just knows. He's playing with these guys. He's playing with them. And also, we should point out that these guys are, like, that guy's not with these guys. He's playing with them. Also, we should point out that that guy is not a striker.

They're not on the same level as him. He smokes cigarettes. He drinks whiskey. He comes in and fucks everybody up. If you watch his fights online, you can watch a bunch of his his kickboxing matches I mean he was amazing it's just super efficient guy just yeah just knows where to be and where not to be yeah it's funny to see now looking back at it I forgot I was literally just thinking of this thing and I forgot that it was like Michael Johnson was in there yeah Alex Caceres.

Like, oh, those guys are like, they went on to be good fighters. Oh, they went on to be great fighters. Yeah. He's, you know, Skarbowski's probably in France somewhere right now drunk. Drunk. Could still probably fuck any of them up at kickboxing. Yeah. You know, I'm worried about this country.

I really am. I'm worried about how we pull ourselves back to some sort of homeostasis. We bring ourselves back to some sort of calm place where we can agree to disagree, where we can have Republicans and Democrats, right-wing and left-wing people sit and discuss ideas and not be at each other's throats. I'm worried that social media has accentuated all this because we've gotten accustomed to silencing people, which I think is very dangerous. It just reinforces these echo chambers that people live in every day and makes them think that they're right because these people do get silenced and deplatformed and so many people call for it. It's really, it's disconcerting to me because it's not smart. It's not sustainable. And a lot of people think it's setting us up for

some sort of a civil war. And when, you know, that sounds like completely hyperbolic, right? But then you see that Capitol Hill attack and you go, Jesus Christ, like these are morons that are doing this, right? These are really stupid people that did that Capitol Hill attack. But like, what if things get worse and then people that are maybe a little smarter think it's a good idea to fight the left or fight the government or fight the powers that be? Or, you know, maybe one too many people sees these attacks on churchgoers in Canada and, you know, and it starts happening up there as well. Like this kind of shit is just hard to pull out of when when everything feels so uh if it feels so volatile it feels so fragile like the just the fabric of society the fabric of civility seems so easy to tear right now yeah well it's like look i mean in the in the 20th century we fought two world wars

and these were like advanced industrial countries that had people made out of the same stuff me and you are made out of that. Let it get to that level. You're like, wouldn't you think, well, at some point, like rational minds have to, you know, have cooler tempers. I'll figure this out. It's like, no, no, no. They just let it get to that point. Tens of millions of people are slaughtered. Then a few years they did it again. Like, you know, and there are genocides. So things can go really, really bad. And we're at a very dangerous point right now. Very, very dangerous.

We're flirting with absolute disaster. But there are also really amazing parts of human history where incredible things were pulled off that, you know, you couldn't have imagined. I mean, a good friend of mine who's like a mentor of mine, Gene Epstein, who's a brilliant economist. And he says this. He used to say, I really love this. He goes, you know, if you were sitting around in 1840 and you were like an abolitionist talking to another abolitionist and you said, hey, you know, I think in 25 years, slavery across the West will be abolished.

You'd be like, that's insane. There's been slavery since the dawn of time and it's like completely the foundational building block of all of these societies. But it was. Slavery was, at least blatant slavery in the West. And incredible things can happen and ideas are really powerful.

And Thomas Paine just wrote pamphlets. They changed the course of history. And like, don't, you know, like what you're doing here, even like putting that message out there, that it's like, hey, we have to stop trying to shut people up. We have to stop like censoring people and banishing people and all of this. We got to be able to have conversations. We got to like be able to let someone, even if they're wrong, let someone try to think out loud. Like this is really important. Otherwise we can't have a functioning society. And I think that if enough people push that message there, there are a lot of people who agree with that. Like what I, one of the things I hate, you know, is like the, um, the demand that

you denounce people. I hate that. I hate that the idea that you have to denounce someone if they have bad views or even if they have you like why can't I just tell you what I think yeah why do I have to like denounce somebody else as a person right for saying something I don't agree silence is violence yeah well right yeah exactly silence is violence but also saying the wrong thing is violence that could be a microaggression it's yeah but that shit has to be defeated and and luckily it's completely hollow like there's not the the whole woke shit is like it's all smoke and mirrors yeah it's like big corporations a few you know crazy 20 year olds and then behind it is just a sea of regular people who don't buy any of this shit. But it is amazing how it does work. Like that these big corporations can adopt woke ideology,

at least on paper, and just say it. And have their diversity training and have their inclusiveness and have these statements that they put out and go, all right, we did our job. Now let's keep polluting rivers. Yeah, well, that's right. And it's intoxicating for a certain group of people who are kind of like would-be authoritarians who are low status and not very bright. Yes.

People like that love wokeism because it's a real excuse where you don't have to know anything. Right. You don't have to know anything. You don't have to know anything to go, I'm offended by Joe Rogan. And I think he is a racist, sexist, transphobe, whatever any of the other words are. That's it. You don't have to know anything. You don't have to add anything. You don't have to have built anything yourself. You don't have to.

I mean, to be outraged at a president for like a war or a policy or something, you might have to crack a book. You might have to actually know something. To just call something racist or sexist is very easy. And then you get to immediately put yourself in this elevated status of moral superiority that other people don't have. When you really have no – you haven't achieved anything. I mean you haven't done anything. You could call some guy a homophobe, but it's like, I don't know, are you, maybe you should go help someone who is like, came out to their parents and got kicked out of their home or something like that. Like, go do something if you want this sense of moral superiority rather than just calling someone out.

But that's, so we got to find a way one way or the other to break that. Well, that's all a product of social media. one way or the other to break that. Well, that's all a product of social media. This ability to express yourself in these quick little sound bites and then see likes come in. It's very intoxicating. It's very addictive. Did you see The Social Dilemma?

Yeah, saw it. It's very interesting. Terrifying. Because their conclusions seem to be, first of all, it's all playing out exactly as they predicted and these guys that were engineers that that figured out these uh algorithms and that put this all together they realized as they were doing our holy shit like where this does not go in a good direction and they're right yeah no i think they are right i also think there's basically nothing we can do

about that aspect of it i just think like this is here with us now and this is the technology and it's going to be very it's probably going to be impossible to put that toothpaste back in the tube but what you almost have to do like in some jujitsu sense is like we got to try to take that energy and turn it into a better yeah you know way i i don't have the answers for that but you're not going to But you're not going to stop the technology from existing. So we have to find a way to try to mitigate some of these bad qualities of people getting addicted to the likes and the feedback and the algorithm playing toward that. But the thing that I didn't like in that movie, if I'm remembering correctly, because it was a while ago that I saw it. I liked the documentary a lot. I thought it was good.

Didn't care for the acting. I thought it was good. Didn't care for the acting. I thought that was unnecessary. I was like, I could just listen to these smart people and not have to see this family falling apart. The guy's down in Antifa now. You're like, alright. I don't know if I needed that. You don't have to spell it out to me like that. The problem is that when they start pushing

the fake news narrative, that I really object to. The idea that, that this is something that the corporate press really pushes to that the big concern about social media is you have all this fake news coming out there and I really think it's like yeah okay you guys have no problem with fake news you just want your monopoly on it I mean I'm sorry over this last year all the COVID stuff there's been a ton of fake news that has come out that's been more consequential than anything alex jones ever said or any of these guys who by the way got more right than you did um not saying he's right about everything but he's been better than cnn there's

a there's a thing i'm gonna put i'll send this to you jamie there's a meme of all the shit that alex got right and uh it's it's kind of crazy it really i'm gonna send it to you here jamie again it's like not to say like he he hasn't some things wrong, too, but how about the war in Iraq? I'm sorry, that's still a bigger deal than anything else. CNN and the New York Times has absolutely no right to look down their nose at Alex Jones. You got the war in Iraq wrong, and he got it right. There's a million dead people over that. Trillions of dollars.

Mothers of soldiers who have committed suicide still crying themselves to sleep at night. So give me a break about fake news. Look at all this stuff. You're TV spying and you check. Elite cabal of sex traffickers. Check. They're turning the frogs gay. Well, that's when we went over yesterday with this woman who was explaining plastics and pesticides.

That it's literally making frogs. It's doing the same thing to frogs as it's doing to people. It's not turning them gay, but it's turning the males more feminine, and it's doing all this weird shit to their genders. So he was on to something. He was right about that. Bohemian Grove. Check. Silver iodide.

I don't know about that. Is that real? I don't know what that is. Is that silver iodide? Is it like kill viruses or something like that? I don't know what it's supposed to do. It just says it. Rich people using baby blood. Check.

Now, you are here. There's an arrow that says human monkey chimeras. That's how you say that, right? Chimera? Is that how you say it? That's real. Do you know that? I don't know what that is.

That's a human monkey embryo that scientists have admitted. I put it on my Instagram the other day. Oh, jeez. This is from NPR. I don't know if I'm ready for that. Next, interdimensional elves. Now, I know about those. DMT?

Yeah, those are real. So he's right about all those things. That's a lot. The human monkey chimeras, you should pull up that article. It's an NPR article. The embryos that the scientists have developed. Alex told me that they developed these a long time ago. They're just admitting it to it now.

And that he had been told about these things by high-level people more than a decade ago. That they had been doing these experiments. Scientists create early embryos that are part human, part monkey. What could go wrong there, Dave Smith? Seems like a lot. What a great idea. How about fucking tiger people? How about real tiger blood?

My first question is why? That is a reasonable first question. Kirsten Matthews, a fellow for science and technology at Rice University Baker Institute. I think the public is going to be concerned, and I am as well, that we're kind of just pushing forward with science without having a proper conversation about what we should or should not do. Still, the scientists who conducted the research and some other bioethics, bioethicists, defended the experiment.

I want to hear this. With a bioethicist? Yeahethicists, defended the experiment. Wait, a bioethicist? Yeah, I want to hear the experiment. This is one of the major problems in medicine. Organ transplantation, said Juan Carlos Espulla Belmonte, a professor at the Gene Expression Laboratory of the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in La Jolla, California, and co-author of the cell study. The demand for that is much higher than the supply. I don't see this type of research being ethically problematic, said Insu Hayun.

Why are the people that have such amazing names, the people that are these scientists, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University at Harvard University. It's aimed at lofty humanitarian goals. All right, so it's about organ transplantation. So they're trying to make part monkey, part human organ. So they're going to make chimps that grow organs. It still feels like this is like the first scene in a really bad movie. Yeah.

You know, like this is the beginning. We were just trying to make organs. This is 28 days later. Yeah. Yeah. This is how it goes. Everything's going to be beginning. We were just trying to make organs. This is 28 days later. Yeah. Yeah. This is how it goes. Everything's going to be fine. It's, uh,

we were just trying to help. Yeah. I mean, can't they do that, though, already? Like, they've figured out how to make some organs with stem cells. Like, they've,

I know they took this woman's skin and they developed stem cells and grew her a new bladder. She had bladder cancer. And they built her a new bladder and put it inside of her which is pretty fucking amazing that's pretty incredible yeah i know the stuff they've done with like prosthetics has gotten like way better yeah like it's i think that's one of the only silver linings of the wars well this is way better at that shit getting out we were talking about social

media and we're talking about this weird place where we're at now where people are you know just calling people racist and sexist and homophobic and whatever. And these low status people that are locking on to this woke ideology and using it as a weapon and emboldening. That's what you see when you see these Antifa kids in the street screaming at people at the taqueria to get the fuck out of New York. Did you see that shit? Who are these people? These are failures. These are these people? These are failures. These are or young people.

But yeah, but if we're and let's be like completely fair to him because it's so easy to just react against that because it's so disgusting and despicable and just you're watching what you know, like a tantrum that a 20 year old is having in a way. And it's just it's it's like reprehensible advantage of a moment. Yeah. Every inch of it is just like, you know, you're like like who the fuck do you think you are get the fuck off this table there are people eating here with their money hard-earned money that they're spending this is a business but you do realize to some degree it's like man how much has to speak like a leftist in a sense how much has our system failed these kids that they find themselves in this position well i think they have power that they're abusing i think but i agree but i'm just saying that it's

like look man these are kids who came up in a culture where um there was not a strong culture of families and values where they're you you know, they were kind of, many of them were drugged from, you know, put on any of these, you know, psychometric drugs, psychotropic, I should say, drugs from a young age. They've been propagandized in their university system, in their universities that they went to and probably spent themselves a hundred grand into debt. They are in no position to get a job. They have no, you know, they probably live in their mom's basement and work at Starbucks and have a hundred grand into debt. They are in no position to get a job. They have no,

you know, they probably live in their mom's basement and work at Starbucks and have a hundred grand in debt. How are you going to own a house? How's they're going for $600,000. They have no prospects of, of getting married and taking care of a family or anything like this. So they want to burn it all down.

And they're fucking pissed and dumb and just not, you know, and it's like, man, we in some ways, in some collective sense all of us have failed these kids and they are taking advantage of this weird moment in time where people are recognizing that police brutality which has existed forever has these horrific effects on our culture and then even though the the fucking verdict was correct right even though

this this guy gets convicted of all charges and everybody's kind of relieved that justice is served, they're still like, fuck you white people, get the fuck out of New York. Because they were ready. So they were all geared up for rioting. And when the right verdict came down, they just took advantage of this weird vulnerability

that these people have because there's this strange moment and they have a megaphone and they're abusing power. you see the power that was bestowed upon them by the moment in time and then they jump on the other cop who which is an example of a clear justified shooting right like a clear like oh and now there's another cop who killed a black girl well actually he saved a black girl they didn't know that though see the problem was the way that message got out they didn't it wasn't they should have released that body cam footage instantly. Yeah. The body cam footage, that girl has a giant knife and she's trying to cut that other black girl.

And she's aiming it at her, like, head and neck area. I mean, it's like this was. You know, this was the one time where it is appropriate for a cop to shoot someone is when they're actually in the act of a violent crime where someone else's life is in danger. And the girl's like right there. I mean, it's like it's seconds away from her cutting her face off. But the problem and like, you know, I certainly understand where certainly from a black person's perspective. I mean, there has been state policies that have just fucked over black people from the beginning and before the beginning of our country. And when things like this happen, even if there were other, you know,

races of cops around this Derek Chauvin guy is a white guy. He's got a black guy on the ground, handcuffed, and he's got his knee on his neck and he keeps it there. I don't know the people arguing with them all this stuff. No, the knee isn't on the neck. It's it's down a little bit. So what on the back of his lungs? Okay, the guy died after this happened. He's sitting there. The guy was probably dead before he was off him. He's certainly unconscious before he gets off of him.

Anybody that doesn't think that that is hard, let me do that to you. Oh, yeah, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're out of your fucking mind. You're out of your fucking mind. That hurts on a mat. When a guy does that to you on a mat in jiu-jitsu, that's like an asshole move. Like, if a guy gets on top of you and rides your neck like that, that's like a guy who's doing a dick move.

Yeah, and people are screaming at the guy. The guy's screaming, I can't breathe. People are screaming, you're killing him. And he does this. I mean, like, I'm sorry. I understand where, and I understand where from a black person's point of view, they'd be like, yeah, there it is. Another fucking example. You know, but the problem is that we get so obsessed with the racial aspect of it that no one's actually focusing on the policy aspect of it. And it's like what, like we were saying before, like what policy could you

actually change that will make less of these happen? But if you really wanted to fuck over the movement for police accountability, here's what you'd do. When you actually get justice for that guy, start fucking jumping on tables and screaming at regular people who had nothing to do with it. That'll make you look like an asshole. Well, like what they did when the riots were going on in New York where they were looting fucking Saks Fifth Avenue and smashing windows

and all that stuff. That had nothing to do with any of it. You were just taking advantage. And if you just want to convince every right winger in the country to jump right back on the police side, go have a riot. And they're going to be right back on the like, well, I'd rather have the police than have the rioters. And they have a point. Or they're going to move out of New York and move to Florida where they don't tolerate that shit. And they actually pass anti-riot legislation. There you go. What I was getting at before was that what I'm worried,

not worried about, but what I'm thinking about is going to happen because communication through Twitter and this virtue signaling that you see and all this weird division, one of the things that's going on is this is a very limited way of interacting. It's very limited. It's through text this is a very limited way of interacting. It's very limited. It's through text. It's a limited amount of text.

It's hard to get context and to understand what a person is really thinking and feeling. What I'm thinking is that we are at an adolescent stage of this kind of technology and the way it's going to interface with our lives. kind of technology and the way it's going to interface with our lives and that like a lot of these things that are being proposed like elon musk's neural link where they're they're like elon musk told me he said you're going to be able to talk without using words that was his words and that's that's pretty hard to to conceive of well that's it's not though well no i just mean it's it's the way that would change the fundamental human experience. I think it's going to change because you're going to understand intent. You're going to be able to—I think we're going to get to a point where we can get past the limitations of text-based language,

like text being written out in a way where you can interpret it any way you want. Because there's one of the things that happens on Twitter where someone will say something and then people will ask them to defend what they said by interpreting what they said in a wildly disproportionate way. Like they'll say what you are doing is disregarding people of color who do this or women or gays or trans. You're putting non-binary people at risk. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're talking about tacos. You know, it could be anything.

I saw this one. I can't even remember exactly what was said, but what the guy said was completely non-offensive, but he said like you people at some point or something like that, or he said these people. And then when he clarified, like what he was talking about, couldn't be offensive at all.

But you just saw this thing where he goes, these people. And then all these tweets start popping up and he's like, who's these people? Please elaborate on these people. And then he these tweets start popping up, and he's like, who's these people? Please elaborate on these people. And then he went, oh, I mean this. And then it just kind of died down. But for that little moment, he said,

you could see people getting excited at the prospect of being offended. It's a game, man. It's such a game. It's a game. They think, check. Yeah. Check. Like, ooh, I got something to do today.

Yeah, I got one. Oh, I'm gonna join this virtual lynch mob today. Oh, this will be funny. You're like, dude, this is sick. do today. Yeah, I got one. Ooh, I'm going to join this virtual lynch mob today. Oh, this will be funny. You're like, dude, this is sick. It's sick. But I do think you're right. I think that in the grand scheme of things, we're still in the infancy of this kind of technological revolution. And I don't think that – I don't believe that anything is predetermined.

So I think that it could go in a really bad way that's bad for humanity or it could go in a really beautiful way that's better than anything we could imagine. And like I was saying with the COVID passport things, there are people who want to turn us into a state, you know, straight up fascist authoritarian Chinese social credit model. And then there are other people who want to do really beautiful shit and, you know, use the technology to fucking educate more people and spread good ideas and all of this other stuff. use the technology to fucking educate more people and spread good ideas and all of this other stuff. It's when you're talking about the stuff you're talking about there that Elon Musk is talking about, it's really, really hard to possibly predict where all of that could go. I'll tell you where it goes. We become a different thing. Well, that's, yeah, that's not a bad guess. I don't think that biological human beings in the sense of the way we are now, I don't think we're long for this world.

I really don't. I think we've got a couple hundred years at most. And I think a couple hundred years from now there will be people in caves hanging out, holding out, still cooking meat over fire, longing for the old days. They're the off the grid people. While these other people are reading each other's minds and tracking them on a fucking graph. We're going to know too much. We're going to know too much. We're going to have too much. We're not going to be biological entities anymore.

We're going to be symbiotic. We're going to be connected to computers. And we're going to have to do that to avoid the horrors of artificial intelligence taking over. We're going to have to become them. I think that's the only way we get out of this without, there's a race going on, right? Like for sure, when you look at like in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a talk of computers beating people at chess. Like that was always the thing. It was like when a computer can beat a chess master, then talk to me. Now, no chess master can beat a computer. Do you know that? None of them win. They all get their asses kicked.

And then computers started winning at Go. And that kind of freaked them out because computers started being creative. Go apparently, I don't understand it. I don't know anything about it. But it's apparently far more complex than chess even. And it has many more moves than chess. And computers kick their ass at that too now. And they started inventing moves.

And one of the ways they did it is by going through literally thousands and thousands of games and then postulating and figuring it out and calculating and putting all this data together and then figuring out how to kick everybody's ass. Well, that's just the beginning. You know, once they start being creative, there's also artificial intelligence. We played this thing the other day with Brian Green. Was it Brian Green that we played the music, or was that Eric Weinstein?

I don't remember, but we got an update on it. I think it was Weinstein. Oh, there's an update? Yeah. Yeah. I got an email from someone who, I mean, I have to look into this more, but he said that he played that for his dad, I think, who was in a Jimi Hendrix cover band. He was like, I got some rough news for you. That was me.

So they might have... His dad said that? He said he got hired to record some stuff and he didn't know what he was recording it for. Is that just some guy's dad talking shit? No, no, no. That was me. He sent me the link of a video of him playing in his cover band and it sounded exactly like what we heard on the recording. They might have used that recording

of his voice to make a computer-generated song. They still might have done that. But that wasn't just like the computer took this Jimi Hendrix thing and made this out of it. That's not what we were hearing. What about the Amy Weinstein? So after now knowing one was a little, the rest of it might be a little. Yeah, but that's just one guy's dad saying that.

I know, so that's just one of's dad I know that's just one of the four we heard I just want to say though there's like that is a little way well it's cool is what we heard yeah we thought we heard something cool the idea was that artificial intelligence had created a virtual like virtual nirvana song a virtual amy weinhaus song and did I say weinstein weinhaus I said weinstein though I think am. Amy Winehouse song and a virtual Hendrix song. And the Hendrix song was pretty fucking good. So when you say created a virtual song, meaning not did one of their actual songs, but created something that they would make with their tendencies of how to play music?

Yes, exactly. That is pretty cool. Also, read an article. It said, like, what we heard was picked out of a bunch of shit that sounded bad. So it didn't just spit out something awesome right away. It was a bunch of garbage. Yeah, but that's true for good bands also. You've got to go through that same process.

Go back to the Rolling Stones catalog. Yeah, right. There's a lot of garbage before you get to those gems. Rolling Stones has some duds. I think also, but if you go back and look at the early days of computers playing people chess, the chess masters would win. And I think this is just an evolution of the ability of these things. And if they can create, the idea was we were saying, can a computer, can artificial intelligence create?

Can it actually be involved in the kind of creativity that we, that we appreciate? Like, can they write jokes? Can they write a screen? Because if they can, then that changes everything. Changes everything. Like if they can write jokes, if they could write philosophy, then you're like, oh shit, there could be a computer program someday that figures out the meaning of life or something in a better way than we could ever figure it out. Well, here's the thing. Now, in particular, if you think about how many, like there's a, there's a program that someone created and they used my voice because there's so many hours of

my voice and they, they show that they can have, they can have me say anything, things I've never said before. That's a great excuse for whenever they find something problematic that you've said. That's robot Joe Rogan. Robot Joe Rogan, that asshole. But they can do that now. They can essentially have you say anything. And it's pretty crazy. And I listened to it. I was like, boy, this is going to be a problem. And I'm sure you've seen that Tom Cruise video, which is insane. Pretty insane. The Tom Cruise face swap thing. What do they call it? What's the name of the technology? I don't remember, but it was impressive.

Amazingly impressive. Amazingly impressive. So you can do that with Tom Cruise's face. You could use Tom Cruise's voice because obviously there's hours and hours of Tom Cruise's voice. And then you wonder what kind of secret classified technology they have. How many levels ahead of us is the pentagon right or it's like some deep state program to the point where you go like could joe biden be dead and they're just like well joe biden's still gonna come give a speech today

and we're gonna have it on video you know what i thought that about pure speculator is pure speculation that jack ma guy when they say oh he emerged in a Zoom call. I'm like, did he? Right. Did he? Yeah. Did he really? Did you shake his hand? Go meet him. He might be a robot.

But my thought was, what I was saying was like, if they can do that with just the hours and hours of conversations that I've had on podcasts, right? And then they can do that with Tom Cruise's face, with all the images they have and all the hours they have of him talking. Tom Cruise's face with all the images they have and all the hours they have of him talking. If they can just analyze the hundreds of years of human conversations, the words that people have written down, the conversations that people have that have been recorded, and get a sense of what it means to be a person, get a real nuanced sense in a way that a human being could never do, because they could literally store and calculate

through terabytes and terabytes of data they can put together an idea of what it means to be an actualized intelligent enlightened human being and literally create some artificial leader like some person some artificial virtual person that is better than anybody that exists because they have all the knowledge and they could find all the logical fallacies what is it like after all of that they just come back with biden they're like yep this is it turns out this is the best we can do guys i'm sorry he said fag the other day accidentally oh did he yeah he said i missed that was it just like a spurt thing no he meant he meant to say flag, and he said fag. All right.

So it wasn't like a Freudian slip type thing. No, maybe it was. But it wasn't bad. Dude, he does these things that he does that there's nothing. You can make fun of a lot of different presidents, but Joe Biden does this thing that I've never seen another president do, where he gets tripped up and then gives up mid thought. Yeah. You know what I mean? You know the thing. Anyway. Yeah. I shouldn't even. Well, that's what grandpas do. Jeez. Yeah. But a grandpa who's really pretending to keep it together. Have you ever seen, there's a, uh,

there's a video of Clarence Thomas talking about Joe Biden back when Clarence Thomas was being interviewed when he was getting on the Supreme Court. Yes. And Joe Biden is talking to him about natural law versus law. And he's like, me and you are lawyers, so we know this. A lot of other people know this. And Clarence Thomas is like, this dude was speaking out of his ass. This meant nothing. None of what he was saying means anything.

It's so crazy. But so that's what Joe Biden essentially was, right? Is that Joe Biden was always a bullshitter who always thought he was a lot brighter than he was and always felt like he could pull this off. But now he's lost like five steps. So he's all of that with a little bit of scene like senile sprinkled in but now he's like tempered that with like we got to be kind we got to be good because that's the flavor of the moment yes that's right the flavor of the day is inclusivity and you know well like i said it's that donald it's donald trump gave the establishment one more hand to play.

Yes. Which is, hey, wasn't everything so crazy with Trump? And there's truth to it. Like everything Trump said was crazy. Everything the media reacted was crazy. The people was crazy. All right. All right.

So that's just unity and nice and moderate and back to the status quo and all of the adults in the room. Yep. And back to the status quo and all of the adults in the room. Yep. The problem is that all of the – Joe Biden really is representative of – he's the architect of all the worst policies, like all the worst stuff. 1994 crime bill. Yeah. Joe Biden partnered with Strom Thurmond, the actual segregationist, to challenge Ronald Reagan from the right to say that he's too soft, that this ramp up of the war on drugs isn't enough. And you've got to be locking more of these criminals up. He bragged at one point that he wanted to lock he wanted to give people life in jail for everything short of jaywalking.

Like that was like a line like that or something he said. He was it wasn't just it was all the way leading up to the 94 crime bill, which he co-authored. He was pushing for the creation of the mass incarceration state like this is him. And then for him to now partner up with a with a prosecutor from from California who was throwing people in jail for pot and for them to be like you know we really need to think about systemic racism like you motherfucker you built this this is your doing and of course on top of that he was also one of the biggest champions of the war in iraq and not only championed and voted for the war in iraq but went out and called out everybody who didn't vote for the war in Iraq as like you're you

know you're allowing another 9-11 to happen because Saddam is weapons of mass destruction and you know all the the neocon talking points of you know the mushroom cloud and in New York City all that stuff he was the he pushed all of the worst policies that everyone was reacting against for the last you know decade but it's amazing that they couldn't find anybody better yeah like that everyone was reacting against for the last decade. But it's amazing that they couldn't find anybody better. Yep. Like that was the guy that seemed to be the person that they could get through the easiest.

The guy who was the guy who was rallying up a whole bunch of people, had a serious fucking plan, and had a whole lot of left-wing populist support was deemed unacceptable. And that was Bernie Sanders. And there's a lot of things I don't like about Bernie Sanders, a lot of things I do like about him. But he was the guy, just undeniably. And he was, look, big business decided, no. They couldn't control him.

Well, he was focusing, look, like I was saying before, all that stuff where JPMorgan Chase is like, oh yeah, let's focus on diversity training and all this. Bernie Sanders had an economic leftist populist message that was like, no, no, no. I want to focus on billionaires. I don't think billionaires should exist. And they were like, no, we're not letting this guy up. And they circled the wagons and they got him. They did it the first time and then they did it again in 2020.

And so it was like, who's left? They tried everyone. They tried to throw everyone at the wall. They pushed Kamala Harris. She got a big push from the corporate press. She got big money donating to her. Hillary Clinton's campaign people all joined her campaign. Yeah, but Tulsi Gabbard sunk her.

Then Tulsi just destroyed her on stage and it was like over. And then they got rid of Tulsi. Well, they did everything they could. She was unacceptable as well. And Tulsi was my favorite in the Democratic field. Yeah, she's amazing. She's great. And just an incredible campaign to run.

I mean, look, there were mistakes made, I think, in the campaign. And I think she could have said things a little bit different at times. But the fact that you had an active duty military member, somebody who actually served and not just like kind of served. No, she deployed twice. Like really deployed to a medical unit in Iraq during the height of the fighting in Iraq. Someone who really saw the costs of war coming back and saying, we cannot fight these wars anymore. That was powerful and then to think right that hillary clinton the the last nominee

for the party would turn around and call her a traitor caller russian house russian asset the hill here's hillary clinton who voted for this disastrous war and here's this young woman who was brave enough to go there and she comes back and says i want to speak out against the war. And this blood-soaked monster, Hillary Clinton, will call her a traitor. Who's the traitor there? It's crazy.

You know? It's crazy. I mean, just unbelievable. I mean, Hillary Clinton should be launched to the moon for that. She should not be allowed to exist in polite society for the nerve of you. I mean, think about it. Just in any moral society. Hillary Clinton, by the way, has admitted it was a mistake to society for the nerve of you. I mean, think about it just in any moral society. Hillary Clinton, by the way, has admitted it was a mistake to vote for the war in

Iraq. So you vote for a war. You send some, you know, brave young woman over there to watch her brothers and sisters die, have to deal with that, like in a medical unit in Iraq, literally holding people as they breathe their last, you know, gasp their last breath. And then she comes back. You should be dropping down to your knees and apologizing to that person. And you call her a traitor? I don't know. I don't know what else to say about that. I couldn't have said it better myself.

No, Tulsi Gabbard is the real deal. But the problem was she was too uncontrollable. She's not going to play the games. She wasn't going to toe the party line. She had ideas in her head that she needed to be expressed. And one big one was the experiences that she had overseas in war that they should never happen again to someone like her or to anyone. Yeah, and that she's a real threat. I mean, she's a threat to the establishment.

Like I said, the military industrial complex is a big honeypot. And she's saying we've got to roll back that honeypot. there's a whole lot of people who make a lot of money off of that and they're also you know comfortable with people dying what's crazy is that this kind of conversation is so rare this kind of conversation where people are openly discussing the problems with the way these things are handled, the problems with the way the media displays the reality of these people that are running for governor, people that are running for government, rather, people that are running for president, and who they really are.

It never gets exposed. And that all you get is the propaganda. All you get is the parties politicizing of particular events that are flattering and ignoring all the aspects like Biden's pass or Kamala's pass. Just push all that stuff aside. It never gets highlighted, never gets discussed. And then when you know that these are the people that you've chosen, then ignore everything negative about them, push everything positive about them. And then you have collusion with all of the media.

Well, particularly this time around. And I thought that Glenn Greenwald, when he was on your show, did a really great job of breaking this all down. But it's that there was a very conscious decision made by pretty much the entire corporate press that they were going to get Donald Trump out. Yes. And so we were just not going to report on anything that hurt who the Democratic candidate was who ended up being Joe Biden. They just weren't going to do that. And they had the social media going with them as well. Yes, they had big tech colluding with them as well. That's why the Hunter Biden stories were all, you know.

And even down to the intercept. I mean, even imagine that. That Glenn Greenwald's own outlet even wouldn't allow this to be done. Crazy. And that dude's a, you know. He's a gangster. He is a gangster. And you know what?

He's the best. I think he's the best journalist in the world. I mean, there's several, but he's probably the best. He is as legit as I get. Yeah. He's probably the best. I think Jeremy Scahill's incredible, too. And Matt Taibbi's great.

Matt Taibbi is amazing. Aaron Matei is great. There's a lot of people out there who do really well. And by the way, all the guys I just named are left-wing guys, and I'm not a left-wing guy. And they have to be so brave. But they still do good, real journalism. Like really shining a light on powerful people's corruption. That's what real journalism is supposed to be.

But look, there's the other thing that's interesting about all the woke stuff. Right. Is decide what stories are ramped up and what aren't. And who gets accused of the woke stuff? It turns out to be every good leftist. Bernie Sanders is a sexist because of something he said to Elizabeth Warren. Why are we even talking about this? Well, because the entire corporate press decided. His supporters are all Bernie bros. They're sexist.

Is there any evidence of this? Well, people say things on Twitter. It's just a narrative. Glenn Greenwald is harassing a young woman. Sure, the young woman happens to be a reporter for USA Today who he's criticizing for her reporting, but harassing young woman. Like, you're just, so everyone who's good on the left all of a sudden conveniently gets the woke mob sent after them. Matt Taibbi on his sub stack wrote an article saying that Rachel Maddow is Bill O'Reilly. And it's a crazy article. And he's talking about how if you looked back at Rachel Maddow back in the day, in the early days of MSNBC, you would have never imagined her to be a propagandist. You thought of her as this really intelligent, whip smart,

you know, gritty leftist who's out there fighting the good fight. You could not have imagined her like just blindly repeating CIA talking points, which is essentially what she's done over the last year. And I, you know, it's interesting that those guys, all of them, right? Like particularly Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Matei and Matt Taibbi too, but all of them, they didn't fall for the Trump-Russia bullshit one bit. And they hated Trump. These are lefties. They don't like Trump. But they just know CIA bullshit when they see it.

And they're like, yeah, okay, the CIA is making this claim with absolutely no evidence to back it up. And all of the evidence that we've been shown completely contradicts this idea. Now, I'm not just deciding that's real. And yet all pretty much all of MSNBC just went, that's our narrative. CNN went, that's our narrative. A pretty big accusation that the sitting president of the United States is colluding with a hostile foreign power to undermine American democracy. And some people still believe it. Yes. Yeah. And some people still believe it.

And some people still believe that COVID has like a 50% death rate. You know, like people, if things are repeated, people believe that. But the truth is that Donald Trump, who, by the way, personally, I think Donald Trump should be prosecuted for war crimes and spend the rest of his life in prison. Like, I don't, I'm not a fan. What do you think he did that's a war crime? Propping up the Saudi war of aggression, war of genocide against the people of Yemen. And it was against the will of the Congress.

Absolutely. Crimes against humanity. He should rot in a prison with Barack Obama and George W. Bush and all of them. As far as I'm concerned, they're all war criminals. Dave Smith going hard, ladies and gentlemen. That's my take. But Donald Trump did not conspire with the Russian government. It's just bullshit.

He was set up by the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI. Let me ask you this, because if you're really considering one day running for president, what do you think it's like? I don't really want to, Joe. But you're thinking you might have to. I might. But you honestly feel like maybe you're called. You want some water?

Yeah. You honestly feel like you're called to it, right? Well, I feel like what the country needs. Look, I mean, here's the truth of the matter, right? Look, I mean, here's the truth of the matter, right? It is exceedingly unlikely that the Libertarian Party candidate for president is going to win the presidency. I don't know about that anymore. Well, that's what I'm betting on, Joe. I don't know about that anymore.

You know, I think that I voted Libertarian last election. I think that people are really disgusted by these party politics. They're really disgusted by the fact that nothing changes, right? Like they're disgusted by the fact that they get all these promises and they have this narrative that gets pushed. Like let's talk about the border, right, the border crisis. The border crisis is exactly the same as it was, if not worse. And it was always pushed that Donald Trump was putting people in cages. Well, what is, you know, what does Joe Biden put him in trailers

where they're stacked on top of each other? You've seen that. You've seen it, right? Not cages, detention facilities. It's the same goddamn thing. It's crazy. I mean, yeah, there are metal bars around them. But it's a detention facility. It kind of looks like a cage. And they have wonderful blankets that are made out of tinfoil. The whole thing is... Yeah, it's horrible. But nothing's changing. It's not any different.

And we need a change. We need something that's a radical shift from where we're at now. Look, Ron Paul, if Ron Paul was an independent, let's go all the way back. When you go back to, what the fuck's his name, the old billionaire guy? Ross Perot. Ross Perot. Ross Perot was the closest we came. The closest we came to an independent guy, and that's one of the reasons why Bill Clinton became president

and George H.W. Bush didn't win a second term. It's because Ross Perot resonated with people. When he went on, I think it was NBC, he got a half an hour of television time and had charts and graphs and shows how you're getting fucked. And people are like, what the hell? That's like someone who's a real charismatic talker, like Dave Smith, and does that on television today. Well, he was a billionaire, which helps. Yeah, well, you got to get somebody behind you that's a billionaire.

Get one of them crazy tech guys. Yeah, maybe. That wants to change the world. Well, I think what, look, what Ross Perot did was he also made them clamp down on the system. Like they really made it harder for third parties to run after Ross Perot because he scared them like this guy could actually win. Yeah, he fucked him out of the debates. I could actually win. Yeah, he fucked him out of the debates.

I think, to me, I think the role of whoever runs for president on the Libertarian Party, what it's about is, it's about not just spreading a message and introducing more people to the ideas of libertarianism and trying to convince people that this is the way to go,

but I think what the Libertarian Party could really do with a presidential nominee is to set the agenda for what the Democrats and Republicans have to talk about now. Like you guys might want to talk about this, but guess what? We're talking about this because we're just going to keep beating this drum and make such a compelling argument that if you're not talking about this, enough of the American people are going to realize like, hey, how come you're not talking about this? But the question is,

even if they're talking about it, once they get into office, like you're seeing with Biden, things don't change. There has to be a – like what you need is a huge movement of people just simply demanding we're not taking this anymore. Because just like we said before, when they poke out about the war in Syria or regulating the internet and there's enough resistance, they don't do it. Right. So what you need is enough people to just be focused. Again, it doesn't have to be everything perfect, but like five issues, like we are not fighting another stupid war, period. No one's going to tolerate it. None.

We're not putting people in jail for nonviolent crimes, period. We won't tolerate one more person going into a cage for a nonviolent victimless crime. And whatever, and corporate bailouts and corporate welfare and, you know, all the COVID lockdowns. Like if you get enough people and it's just overwhelming the consensus, whoever's in there, they're going to have a real tough time. You're just going to have to get that narrative out there in a really clear, concise way that's easily digestible. Yes. And then I think hopefully, you know, you repeal legal tender laws and maybe Bitcoin or some cryptocurrency becomes the fucking currency. Then the Federal Reserve loses its power. You need this whole system to kind of crack up, but it's going to do it on its own. It's not going to be because one hero becomes president and then does all the right things. You know, I think it's got

to be like more of a bottom up kind of movement. movement well it's certainly an exciting time oh yeah like more exciting like more change more weird shit than ever before unbelievable yeah been unbelievable i thought i was uh um in 2019 i felt that way i was like this has been an unbelievable time i mean just like you know trump is president and there's all this crazy shit going on. And then after 2020, you're like, this is, it's like we're living through a movie. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know how this fucking movie ends.

Really? Really hoping for a happy ending. Yeah. Yeah. Not like. Yeah. I know what you're saying. Not getting jerked off.

Sexual happy ending. I mean, that'd be cool if that was there at the end too, but just like a good happy ending. Well, it'd be nice if things turned around, right? You know, you go back to World War II and you see how everything kind of turned around afterwards and the world got to be, you know, got to be a better place. Better than during World War II.

Yeah, yeah. Demonstrably better. Yeah. I don't know, man. It's a strange time. It's a strange time for what we do, too. It's a really strange time for comedy. You know, real strange.

Very, very weird. Because people want to take comedy as like at face value as if you're really mean what you're saying. Half of comedy wants to take comedy at face value. Half of them. Yeah, they're terrible. Yeah, I know.

No, but some of them are great. Some of them used to be really great and now they're terrible yeah some of them you know they got scared yeah that happens people sometimes people just can't keep the pressure that is the pace of it all they want to get off the treadmill they can't take it anymore and uh that this this this moment though one of the good there's very few good things about COVID. But one good thing is a lot of bad comedians quit. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they couldn't take it. But then the bad side of that is that there are probably some could have been really good comedians who also fucking quit.

I mean, if this happened to you five, six years into comedy, that is really tough. True. That's really tough to overcome. One year. Yeah. I mean, you know. Yeah. But even one year may be a little bit easier.

Like if you quit your day job and comedy was your full identity, but you needed to work the road in order to be able to like, you know, pay your rent. Yeah. And all of a sudden that's gone. And then you got to go back to some type of job or something like that. And that's enough to break a lot of people from never coming back in. But for that one person, there's probably like 5,000 who just never should have been doing comedy anyway. There's a lot that should have never been doing comedy anyway. Yeah. But it's like, you know, there's going to be puzzles and problems

and you got to figure out how to solve those. And when you look at your life, if there's, one of the more exciting things about life is when you don't know what's gonna happen next, and you're really in this complete state of possibilities. You're at the launching pad, and it's frustrating, and it's scary, and it's really nerve-wracking for comics, like when you're first starting out. That's 100% true.

But there's also like, you know, there's different points where you're more vulnerable than other points. And to face a huge amount of adversity at your most vulnerable point is, I think, a lot worse than when you're a little bit stronger and ready to deal with it and i am you know i've for the whole last year i'm just i'm very grateful personally that i feel like i was at a point where because i've seen people literally go crazy like people whose really lives have been ruined over this whole last year and i just feel like i was like okay is it hit where like i was making personally like i was making enough money just from doing the podcasting and stuff like that and doing stuff that I could do uninterrupted completely the whole time through COVID. I've also I'm married and I have a kid. So I'm kind of like it was easier than like in my 20s where I would have been more isolated and cut off. And so I'm lucky in a sense that for me personally, it was very easy for me to weather personally, you know, the storm of like, oh, OK, the lockdown.

You also have a podcast. You have other sources of income. Well, that's that's the big one that I could I could uninterruptedly keep making money. But I mean, you imagine like, you know, imagine like somebody who's just like has three kids and just loses your job over this. I mean, I don't know what it's like to be in that situation. And a whole lot of Americans were. And, you know, it is. You're absolutely right. We say overcoming adversity is a big part of like the human experience and all this. But that's a really tough one. It's a tough one.

It's a tough one. It's a big challenge. But somewhere on the other end, some people are going to get through that. They're going to talk about that's what made them. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. And the other thing about it is that and and this is true in general in life, right? With like a kind of a victim ideology or a victim narrative versus the narrative that you're talking about of conquering, you know,

like adversity. There is truth to both of them. Like there are people who are really victims and there is also something to conquering adversity. But in terms of which narrative is more helpful and useful, there's no question that this one is just death and this one can really help you get through something. So no matter what, even if there's truth in both, it is always better to have the outlook that you're going to conquer this thing and no matter what's thrown at you,

you're going to get past this than to have the outlook of I'm a victim. It's hard to cultivate this thing, and no matter what's thrown at you, you're going to get past this. And to have the outlook of, like, I'm a victim. It's hard to cultivate that attitude, though. It's not something you can just do in a vacuum. You have to learn how to do it. You have to learn the tools to do it. You have to force yourself to do it. It's very hard work.

I remember I had a real problem with that for a while when I was younger in comedy. I've been doing comedy for like seven, eight years or something. And I get very jealous of other people who were like getting things that I wasn't getting. And I really drive myself crazy thinking about this. And then I remember having a moment where like a really good friend of mine

got a big thing. And I was like, damn it, he got that. And I almost like caught myself and was like, oh man, I do not want to be this person. I'm like the person now who's like not happy for someone I love for getting something good. And I really had to make such a conscious effort. And it was really, really hard for me to just be like, I am simply not allowing myself to do that. I am just going to be happy and inspired by other people who are getting things.

And I'm going to put all of that energy into trying to get what I want out of this career. It's such an important thing to talk about because every single comic feels that. They all feel that because it's such a competitive thing in that you're trying to get ahead and especially if you're trying to get on television and do other things outside of comedy and get chosen for things or get chosen for specials, things along those lines, it's really common. I experienced it really early on and I caught myself one time because I was only like 21 or 22. I'd only been doing comedy a couple years

but I remember wanting people who went on before me to bomb and I remember feeling that like, oh my God, what a bitch I am. I'm scared that they're going to do well. And it was really I wasn't very good. I was terrible. I was just starting out. So my comedy was very shaky.

So I wanted someone to do badly so I could come in and look like I was good. And then I realized that like while I was in the back of the comedy club waiting to go on, I'm like, oh, my God, you bitch. And I remember being like hugely disappointed with myself and then never letting myself think like that again i remember thinking like you can never think like that again it's really unfortunate that that that feeling i mean not unfortunate but that feeling of being like oh man i'm being such a bitch right now which is literally the same exact feeling i had where i'm like oh i'm that guy i'm disgusted with myself like i'm i'm upset that someone I love got something great. You know, like that's who I am. And that moment, that kind of like shame

and like that fucking disappointment in yourself is really necessary to improve yourself. Oh yeah. And it sucks. It's like you got to feel this burn in order to build out of it. But that is the most important thing. Again, it's like why bombing is really important for comedians.

It's why losing things in life is really important for you. Because sometimes you have to feel this sting and it sucks. But that's what allows you to like be a better person. That's where the growth comes from. The growth comes from failure. And if you don't take any risks, you don't fail and you never grow. And that's just how life goes. That is, there's, it's a, it's not a, it's not an obvious formula. It seems counterintuitive. Like you don't want to feel the pain of it, but you have to, you have to. I remember the early days of the comedy store,

some guys started getting TV shows and things, and you could see the anger and the jealousy of the other people. They literally would hate them. They would hate people who were doing well. And some of them, a lot of them wound up, you know, there's always like potential, but potential is like what does it mean? Like you can get a laugh every now and then. Like the people that can actually formulate an act and figure out how to become a real comic it's like what is the percentage like if you think about the people that you started out with like what are the percentage

of them that actually wound up being professionals it's really small it's small but i will say it was pretty obvious even back then yeah particularly in hindsight like there was just no question like i i started with or around the same time as like a lot of guys and none of these guys were like as good as they are now you know what i mean right but you could tell right away that like andrew schultz was gonna be something right like you just knew like this guy's got a thing i could tell mark norman was gonna be like a fuck like this guy's gonna be great right i was at tim dillon who started later than me but i mean literally as soon as we saw him and he was he was brand new when i first met him so he was still like green in comedy but you were like oh this guy's gonna be a star like

he's just this guy's a force of nature like there's just no and so it's it's weird in hindsight you're like oh yeah for every one of those there were like a thousand yeah by the way tim dillon almost completely demonetized on youtube oh so what i meant to say is tim dillon's clearly going to fail is what i was trying to say all along i go this guy is going to have a rise and fall no so if you love tim dillon and i do support his patreon they they won't let him make any money on youtube it's hilarious that's the problem. It's too controversial.

But that's the next thing that people like that are going to have to deal with. I'm going to face that, I'm sure, in the next few years at some point. Well, it was one of the things that spurred my decision to go to Spotify. Yeah. It's a weird world out there, man. And the world, it's a fucking outrageous thing to say, but I think the world needs comedy. I think we do. I think it's important for mental health.

I think it's important for clarity. I think it's important to make fun of shit. Well, that's why I got to say I love what Louis J. Gomez did with building the Gas Digital Network. And that's where all my stuff is at. Like all my podcasts are there, my special, they put it out. Like I just keep it all there because at the very least, like I'm not going to get kicked out of Cast Digital Network for saying the wrong thing. Unless like I pissed Lewis off, which is possible. There's no wrong thing over there.

Yeah. Listen, Dave, you're a bad motherfucker. I appreciate you very much. And I always love listening to you and I always love talking to you. And I enjoy your podcast. And I just think you're a you're a very clear thinker man and uh you you really you give me hope you really do well dude that means the fucking world to me man because I've been a huge fan of yours like forever dude

and like I've told you this before off podcast but you're like not just your whole podcast but talking monkeys in space literally like had a profound impact on my stand-up career. Like, I was, I had just started when that special came out. And I remember looking at it and being like, wow, so you can really do anything, like, with stand-up. Like, I wanted to talk about all of these more kind of deep ideas and have these longer, like, bits. But I was like, I can't really do that. You got to just, like, I can't really do that. You got to just like tell jokes and stand up. And then I saw you have like all these like long like chunks about like ancient Egypt and all these different things.

And they were still hilarious the whole way through. And I was like, oh, you can just do that. And like your career really inspired me, man. Like the fact that you're just like, like imagine if you had told someone on paper in the 90s what you were going to do. Like you had some agent and they were like, so you're going to act or you're going to write and you'd have been like um i'm going to

kind of be like an mma commentator stand-up comedian who does a tv show but i'm the network and i'll talk to like a physicist and then we'll talk about politics and then we'll talk about hunting and then we'll talk about this and they'd be like yeah well that can't be done and you're just like yeah no it can and you're doing it and so i that that means the world to me and you're an inspiration man thanks brother thank you very much and thank you all out there keep the faith fuckers bye everybody Thank you.