The Joe Rogan Experience - #1697 - Zuby

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Zuby is an independent rapper, public speaker, author, and host of the "Real Talk with Zuby" podcast.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Hello, Zuby. Joe. Good to see you, man. Good to see you again, bro. How are you? How difficult was it to travel across the pond, as it were? I had to spend 15 days in Istanbul before I flew over to Houston.

Really? Yeah, you have to get outside the Schengen zone. I had to spend 15 days in Istanbul before I flew over to Houston. Really? Yeah, you have to get outside the Schengen zone. You can't fly from anywhere. You can't fly from the UK direct to the US or from any of the Schengen zone European countries. What is the Schengen zone? Schengen zone is the majority of the EU with exclusions. It excludes places like Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania.

What does the word mean, Schengen? Schengen. I think it's a trading. Is it a trading zone? Oh. It's called the Schengen area. So it's most of the EU, but there's a couple exceptions. So since March 2020, you remember when Trump put in that travel ban? Yeah.

That was never lifted. A lot of people don't realize that was never lifted. So up until now, you still can't fly direct from the UK or most European countries to the US. But you can, there it is, the Schengen. I've never heard of it either. There you go. Yeah. The Schengen zone. That sounds like China. So I flew from the- Doesn't that sound like way too much like China owns it? Yeah. So I mean, maybe it's not, but it sounds like it. Yeah. So I was in Turkey for two weeks and then I went from Turkey to Texas. So do you have to quarantine in Istanbul? Is that the idea? Or were you just there to hang out?

Not a quarantine. I was just on vacation there. I was hanging out. I had a great time. Istanbul was amazing. What is that place like? Istanbul is amazing. Yeah? Yeah, great place. It was really cool. So you know I grew up in the Middle East. Right. And it's a real interesting combination between the Middle East and Europe. So you're walking down the street and you're seeing women fully

covered up in burkas right next to girls and like hot pants and mini skirts and stuff in the same place. I'm used to seeing both of those, but not usually in the same place. Do they get harassed? No, everyone, everyone's cool. It was like super duper tolerant. Some people wearing masks, some people weren't, no one was mine. Everyone was minding their own business. It was just like, yeah, I'd never been there before, but I'll definitely go back. So you can't fly from the UK to the US, but you can fly from the US to the UK? Yeah, but I think the US is on the UK's red list, which means that if you come in, you have to spend 10 days in a quarantine hotel and you have to pay for the privilege of that.

Do you think this is ever going to go back to normal travel? Honestly, I think it really depends on the people. I think all the way through this, everything's dependent on the people. It depends on how people respond and how much they're willing to take. And I think people have been willing to take far too much, which is why it's gone this far. And I think that's really what it's dependent on. Same thing goes with these new mandates they're bringing in. I thought the same thing with the masking policies, the lockdown policies,

et cetera. I think it ends when people end it. That's what I think. The people that I feel sorry for genuinely are the people that have to be in consistent contact with new people in close quarters, like airline attendants. Like airline attendants, like they have no idea what's on that plane. You know what I mean? Like they're taking a chance. They have no idea how many people are infected. They have no idea how badly they're infected or what they're infected with.

That's only domestically, though, because internationally you already know everyone on the plane has tested negative. Right. Yeah. Internationally you have to have a negative test. Internationally. But within how long? How many hours? 48 hours for most places. See, here's the deal with that.

Someone I know was negative on a day and then was coughing later on that day and infected everybody. And then turned out to be positive that night. Yeah. But the day during the day he was negative, he was tested negative. So 48 hours is stupid. It's the best they can do, I think. Unless they test you at the airport and then you'd be like, mom, where are you going? But this is the thing because people make travel plans as well. You pay all this money, people have accommodation, accommodation whatever if someone were to test positive at that point i mean even with the 48 hours window traveling with that it's very very tight but still 48 hours is a fucking roll of the dice

yeah a lot of shit can change in 48 hours it's true it's true but you know i think this goes across everything right human everything has risk yeah risk. You know, we were not immortal prior to 2020. What? Who is this man? Viruses had been around and no one was there thinking, oh my gosh, this person could have a flu or could have tuberculosis or could have this or could have that. So I think globally we've created a pandemic of people who are hypochondriacs and people who have Munchausen by proxy etc it used to always be healthy until proven sick now it's like assumed everybody is sick until they're proven healthy or you know i wonder how much of an effect that is happening on people

having on people the uh just the stress and the anxiety like when people get sick normally like two years ago three years ago if you got a cold you'd be like oh i feel like shit i'm just gonna like watch tv now people are freaking the fuck out and their anxiety is off the charts and if they have covid even if they have mild symptoms and they have covid a lot of times they're under like heavy anxiety, which can absolutely exacerbate anything you have going on with your body. Yeah. If you're under extreme anxiety, you know, your body's stressed, your immune system's compromised, you're going to freak the fuck out. And if you freak out, you're probably not going to sleep well because you're going to be freaking out, which is going to fuck your immune system up even more.

Just that mental toll, how long is it going to take for people to relax? I don't know. The truth is that there are a lot of people out there, especially in politics and the media, who are very specifically pushing for people to be afraid and to stay afraid. And they've been doing this now for over 18 months. So essentially, we've got two different realities now, where, you know, there are people who think that the hospitalization rate of COVID across the general population is as high as 50%. There's people who think this thing has a 10% death rate, right? People don't actually know. I've heard people say that. Yeah. There's people who don't know.

What the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. There's people who don't know the facts and don't know the data. And so the level of the proportionality of the response to the actual threat itself from the beginning, and especially at this stage, is so out of whack. Like we've known from the beginning that children, thank God, are hardly affected by this. I'm not aware of a single child worldwide, single healthy child worldwide, who has died. Children have died from it, but it's primarily children with comorbidities. Okay. In the UK, under the age of 20, according to, sorry, in England, according to official NHS data, there have been nine COVID related deaths of people under 20 with no comorbidities. With comorbidities, I think it's 47. This is over the whole 18-month period. That's kind of crazy. And that's people under 20.

We're not even specifically talking about children. And the way they count deaths in the UK is deaths within 28 days of a positive test. So we don't even know what the numbers are. It's crazy. There's so much stuff we don't know. We don't actually know how many people have died directly of this particular virus because the way they count the numbers in all the different places, you know, leaves a lot of room and a lot of margin for error and interpretation. Sure. It's a strange time.

It's a very strange time. Yes. Adjusting to this new strange time. One thing that I do think it's doing that's good is it's massively changing the way people trust media. Massively. Because we're seeing the narratives that they play out. And we're seeing the way these reporters are describing things. And we're seeing that there's a there's a real benefit to getting people terrified there's a real financial benefit from the media because that's how they make their money yes if they can scare the shit out of you and keep you scared they're going to keep you tuned in if they keep you tuned in they're going to make a lot of money and they realized that when

trump left office the numbers on cnn are through the floor i mean's wild to watch, man. Like they literally were making massive amounts of money just getting people angry about Trump. Yeah. And I think people also need to understand that a part of the hysteria that's been going on over the past 18 months, this has been building up for several years. Right. And I've noticed that the same people who freaked out about Trump and or Brexit tend to be the same people who freaked out about Trump and or Brexit tend to be the same people who freak out about the climate change narrative, who tend to be the same people who are freaking out about this particular pandemic situation. And so the media is preying upon people's fears for profit. And I don't think that's something that's brand new, but I think at this sort of level, it's to me, it's very clearly unethical and they keep shifting the narrative and moving

the goalposts to constantly keep people scared. It's like, okay, that narrative is not scaring people enough. We need to switch to that one. We need to switch to, you know, this, the death numbers, the death numbers are so low in so many countries and have been for months now that now they talk about cases, right? Cases don't matter. Cases have never mattered. What matters is hospitalizations and deaths. But now it's like, oh, well, the case numbers are going up.

I've got people like, oh, my gosh, Zuby, you're in Texas. You're in Florida. I've heard that the case numbers there are going crazy and it's skyrocketing. I'm like, dude, it's totally normal here. This is the most normal place I've been to in this whole period. But a lot of people catching COVID here. That's a fact.

That's fine. But the thing is, look, if people are catching COVID, this is the thing. If case numbers are going up, but deaths and hospitalizations are not, that's good. Yeah, that means they know how to treat it now.

Yeah, and it means more people are getting immunity. A virus is going to be a virus. Viruses do what they do. There's very little you can do within reason and within ethical boundaries that's going to stop any sort of coronavirus in its tracks. What's the difference between the way people approach it or feel about it in the UK versus over here? So in the UK, the mentality I think is maybe closer to the blue state mentality here, I guess I could say, because in the US, there's been a big split, really, both in response and for, in some cases, over a year. And then you've got places like California, New York, and other places which are still locked down, still having mask mandates, got people wearing masks outside, so on and so forth. For most of the UK, I think it's

been closer to the latter. I think one of the fundamental differences between the UK and the US is the whole concept of rights and the relationship between the people and the government. So in the US, traditionally, things are largely based off the concept of negative rights. This is how everything works from the First Amendment to the Second Amendment, etc. As an American... What do you mean by negative rights? by negative rights? So as an American, it's believed that your rights come from God. You have inalienable rights. They come from God or natural law. And you, as an American, are born with these rights. And the job of the government is to protect your rights and not infringe upon them. Right. The Second Amendment isn't the government giving you the right to own a gun. It's saying you have the right to bear arms and the government shall not infringe upon that. You have the right to freedom of speech, the government shall not infringe upon that.

Whereas in the UK and lots of other European countries, the mentality is different. And I think this permeates the entire culture and society, whereas there's the notion that your rights come from the government. And if your rights come from the government, then the government can also take away those rights and people don't put up the same level of fight because the relationship is very different. And so that's like a real core difference between the USA and other Anglosphere countries and also Europe in general. Now, there are people in Europe who have more of that American mentality towards rights, but it's certainly not a majority. Interesting. So do you think, so essentially like England has an attitude that's similar

to California. Have you been to California while you've been out here? Not yet. End of September, I'll be there. It's weird. I just went back. I was like, Jesus Christ. You're seeing people wearing masks outside, and they just look weirded out. Yeah. Weirdest place I've been to during this is Portugal. Portugal? Yeah, I was in Portugal two months ago. I thought I'd go there, and it would be more relaxed and chilled out than the U.K.

because I was getting tired of how things were in the U.K., and good grief, it was worse. Really? Yeah, it was worse. My first day there, I had three people outside yell at me for not wearing a mask. Outside? Outside. And about 95% of people outdoors were wearing masks. Literally about 95%.

Well, Portugal is very liberal. I mean, Portugal decriminalized all drugs quite a long time ago. They did, yeah. And they had a great result with it. Yeah. Here's another thing that's really interesting is this inversion with what the word liberal means, right? There's nothing liberal about lockdowns. There's nothing liberal about forcing masks on people, let alone trying to force vaccines on people.

There's nothing liberal about censorship and trying to restrict freedom of speech, et cetera. And so we're at this weird time period where, you know, firstly, this, I think it's a shame that this thing has been so politicized to begin with. But I think it's fascinating that from country to country, people who call themselves liberals have actually had what to me is an extraordinarily conservative, like hyper conservative approach to this whole thing. Very authoritarian. Very, very authoritarian. If you think of what the word liberal is supposed to mean, I'm here like, man, the conservatives are being more liberal than liberals for the most part. Well, Republicans in this country, the people on the right have always been, at least allegedly, been for smaller government.

And the liberals have been for big government. They've been for more bureaucracy, more government programs and mandates that are going to fix all of our problems. That clearly doesn't work. We were finding this. One of the things we're finding out during the pandemic is it's very important who your fucking governor

and your mayor are. I didn't think it was important. I didn't give a shit before. Whoever the mayor of Los Angeles was or the governor of California was, I didn't think about it before whoever the mayor of Los Angeles was or the governor of California was. I didn't think about it until they were shutting things down. And then, you know, the hypocrisy, right? You'd see them dining maskless and pretending they're outdoors and there's a fucking chandelier over the table.

Like Newsom was particularly egregious. but it's just that sort of this will take care of you notion is from people that there's no fucking way I would ever listen to that guy for anything, any advice. If I was talking to him, I mean, he's a buffoon. Yeah. The same as the governor or the mayor of New York. Oh, gosh, terrible. The mayor of New York city is a fucking buffoon, a goofy, soft, jello, New York City is a fucking buffoon, a goofy, soft, jello fucking role of a man. He's just goofy. They voted for him. Oh, my God.

People voted for him. Well, I think they voted for him because he stands for a lot of progressive ideas, which really kind, sensitive, warm-hearted people who are compassionate. They would like those ideas of inclusiveness and of open-mindedness. They'd like that to sort of exemplify how they would like their society to behave, that they would love for people to be compassionate and open-minded and enable free thinking and people to do whatever they want and cultures from all over the world to mix together in the biggest melting pot in all of the United States, which is New York City. And this guy sort of represented that to them. But what they didn't get is he's a dummy. And what he's doing is dumb. What he's doing is the opposite.

You know, what's clear is that more than any left-right thing, the authoritarian libertarian axis is far more important, is far more important. And I think that's what you're seeing. I think that's why you're seeing sane conservatives, sane centrists, sane liberals, just sane libertarians sort of in this growing center and sort of looking around like, you know, I think there are a lot of people who maybe thought they didn't have much in common with other people within that group now who were just like, whoa, okay, this is like the group of sane people who are even willing to have conversations. Like just being willing to sit and listen to us having this conversation. Like there's people who wouldn't even come and sit down here because they're so, I don't know, afraid of conversation or having their ideas challenged or whatever it is.

They don't truly believe in free is. They don't truly believe in free thinking. They don't truly believe in free speech. That's why they're trying to shut everybody down, de-platform people, kick people off of platforms, so on and so forth. And that's very concerning. It's very illiberal, as I said. And it's concerning because then you can't solve problems and you just create more animosity. My biggest concern with this whole thing that's been going on and everything that's ramping up is this pitting of neighbor against neighbor. Family member against family member. Friends against friends.

So many relationships have fallen out over these past few months because this person doesn't want to get a vaccine or this person has a different view on lockdowns or this. And I'm just like, it was bad enough when people were losing friends over Trump and Brexit, et cetera. And now I'm just like, guys, what is going on? And you're being manipulated, you're being played. And maybe there's a right to be angry and anxious, but people are angry and anxious at the wrong things and at the wrong people. There's been a lot of stuff that's happened over the past 18 months that people should be pretty outraged about, but it's not their neighbor, not wanting to wear a mask in the grocery store. It's not another person not wanting to take a shot, despite the fact that

this person here has already taken the shot and has therefore got the protection that they're going to get from it um and people just are not thinking and i think when people are fearful anxious and angry it shuts down their ability to just think calmly and rationally and to take in facts and to listen to different arguments it just becomes this thing and then you've got the tribalism it's become a team sport and it's, it's not healthy. And I think it could lead to a very dark place. And that's what I'm concerned about more than any, um, more than any virus or anything like that. It's almost like it's all designed to show you that it's pointless. I mean, it's not, I'm not claiming some grand conspiracy, but there's something about the buffoonery of the government and the way

they've handled this like again with the new york city thing when de blasio was on tv talking about how you can get a free burger when you get vaccines eating this burger more this is delicious that shit's terrible for you you fuck terrible like you're telling people to eat the very thing that has ruined their health and made them more susceptible to diseases and responsible for a host of other diseases not just covid but all sorts of other horrible problems that people have with their bodies because of that and there's many more of those examples they're offering free donuts they're offering free lottery tickets. You can get in the lottery.

Hey, get a gambling addiction while you're getting shot with this jab. It's fucking crazy. It's very weird. I have a friend who works on the COVID commission in Los Angeles, and they were closing down outdoor dining. And when they were closing down outdoor dining, he had an objection. He said there is no evidence that there's a spread from outdoor dining. And when they were closing down outdoor dining, he had an objection. He said, there is no evidence that there's a spread from outdoor dining. Why are we doing this? And the woman said, it's all about the optics. Oh, wow. At least she was honest. But imagine, well, she's only honest with him and it's not a public discussion.

But imagine saying that when you're going to close down thousands and thousands of businesses that are barely hanging on because they've been mostly closed for the entire pandemic. Meanwhile, you'll make phone calls to your friends in Texas and like you, you can eat indoors. Like I've had people come here to visit me and like we're eating indoors. Like, yeah, we're eating indoors. This is normal. This is how people normally are. Take care of yourself. Be healthy.

Yep. It's nutty. It's nutty. It's nutty. And places like Texas and Florida have fared just as well, if not better, than what are the two states with the highest death rates?

New York and New Jersey, right? Yeah, but see- Like per person. The problem with the New York thing is like the fucking nursing home thing. That nursing home thing, which is crazy. Yeah.

Which seems like he's not even going to get in trouble for, which is wild no wild no they totally ignored that and you know now they've got him on something else which again says a lot about our society yeah right it says a lot that that was the thing that people cared about you know well that thing is not good either no it's not but if I were to if I would say that you know creating a policy that directly leads to the death of thousands of elderly people in nursing homes I would objectively say that you know creating a policy that directly leads to the death of thousands of elderly people in nursing homes i would objectively say that that is worse than groping a woman that is not saying

groping a woman is a good thing but i think the former is a much greater sin there's also this um complete distrust in the accounting of the cases the accounting of the cases, the accounting of the deaths, there's people that think that there's more deaths from COVID than were reported. Because a lot of people just died and they were never tested. And there's people that think there's way more deaths attributed to COVID than were actually COVID deaths. And it's like this fog. It's like the fog of war. This is like the fog of pandemic. It's interesting.

I mean, in the UK, it's clear because the NHS has been putting out the numbers weekly. Most people don't even bother looking at this because they don't really care about the facts and the data, but I've been keeping an eye on this. And in England, let me say England specifically, the numbers, it all speaks for itself. So firstly, like I said, what is classified as a COVID death is a death within 28 days of a positive test in an NHS hospital. So that in itself is a nutty way to describe a COVID death. It's ridiculous. Right?

So you already know when they have that number. I think the official count is something like 140,000 COVID-related deaths. That number is I think the official count is something like 140,000 COVID-related deaths. That number is already wrong. Out of that, we don't know what percentage of that is people who actually died directly from COVID. Right. They could have got infections cut. Exactly. They could have got staff.

They could have got, yeah. And of that, over 90% of those deaths are people over 60 with comorbidities. Yeah. Right. So, again, when people are talking about these numbers on a local or global scale, you have to look at the other factors. You're like, what's the average age?

In the UK, the average age of death with COVID is around 82. The average life expectancy in the UK is 82. Why is the life expectancy so much higher there? You guys have like, what is the life expectancy here? I think here maybe about 78 or so. What are you guys doing different that allows those old people to squeak out a few extra years? I don't know. Slightly lower obesity rates, I guess, is a factor.

I think it's 78 here. Yeah, 81. Look at you guys. Yeah, 81. India's fucked. 69. Wow. They're dying early in India.

Yeah. I think it's probably food and lifestyle related largely. And perhaps. Obesity. So with us, I think the majority of COVID deaths were actually people older than the average death lifespan. In the US? Yeah.

What is the average age of COVID death in the US? I think there's more people that died older than the average age of death. Yeah. And that matters. Yeah, it does. That really, really matters. If we're talking about a disease where the average age of people dying is like 30 or

even 40, that's really, really different to a disease where the average age of death is 80. Is the average age of death. Yeah, exactly. It's totally different. Here it goes. So 85 years and older is predominant. That's more deaths, 179,000. Okay. 75 years and older is 165,000. 65 years and older is 135,000. 50 years and older is 96,000.

And then it gets really low when you get before that. And of that, what percentage of those have comorbidities? Probably 80 to 90%. Yeah. Most people, the average is four. Average is four comorbidities, which is wild. Yeah. So this matters. And this is the thing. So when people are just saying, oh my gosh, you know, 600,000 people in the USA died, or oh my gosh, 140,000 people in the UK or 4 million worldwide. It's like, okay, firstly, that's likely to be a maximum because of the way that numbers are actually counted. It starts with the emotional blackmail. Oh, you don't care about old people. I'm like, bro, people die.

People die. I think our society has maybe, I think we have a really uncomfortable relationship with death. I think people have a really uncomfortable relationship with it. Well, we certainly have a distorted relationship with death. What are the numbers of people that die from heart disease every year? Let's look at that. Because I guarantee you it's pretty fucking high in America. I think globally. So here's some interesting info. Cause I guarantee you it's pretty fucking high. I think globally,

so here's some interesting info. See what it is for America. So globally in an average year, about 60 to 65 million people die globally every year. Right? So firstly that frames it. Cause when people are saying, Oh my gosh, 2 million people died of this disease last year. It's like, okay, but 58 to 60 million died of everything else. Number one, heart disease, right? Number two, cancer, boom. Here we go. As of 2018, 30.3 million adults are diagnosed with heart disease. Each year, about 647,000 Americans die from heart disease. So even with the exaggerated count of COVID, there's more people die of heart disease in this country than die of COVID. And no one is doing anything to stop people from eating burgers. In fact, you're encouraging it.

Or donuts. They're encouraging it. And no one's telling you to exercise. No. And, of course, people will say, oh, well, it's different because one is transmissible. But if the goal is to save lives, then there's more diseases. People have been acting as if there's one disease in the world now. Well, not only that, if you fix this one, it helps fix the other one.

Of course. This is the big one, the heart disease one. If you can get people healthier, I mean, you will radically increase their ability to withstand all sorts of things. Everything. Yeah. And, you know, various types of cancers, heart disease itself, this particular virus, COVID, etc. And I'm COVIDed out, man. Yeah. I hear you. I hear you. It is tiring. It hurts my brain. Like I say, I just want, it's the division that is really concerning me at this point.

Because I think the genuine threat that existed, say, 14, 15, 16 months ago is, you know, we're in a very different situation to we are when you did that podcast with it. Was it Robert Osterholm? Is that his name? Michael. Sorry, Michael Osterholm. That freaked everybody the fuck out, didn't it? Yeah, but that was a very, when was that? Like March or April? I believe it was April of last year.

Exactly. March. March. It was literally like the marker. Like right before the lockdown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like two days before or something like that. Yeah, about a year and a half.

So we're in a totally, when you did that, there was no vaccines. Right. We didn't have all this global data of who's getting affected, et cetera. That's a dirty trick they're doing. There's a statistic that they keep throwing around about the number of deaths, and Fauci's done this himself, about the number of deaths of the unvaccinated people, that the vast number of deaths were unvaccinated. But what they're not telling you is when you're counting this up up the vast majority of those people are from the time where there was no vaccine yes exactly it's a dirty little thing they're doing so they're making it seem like all these people are dying because they're unvaccinated and if you get

vaccinated you're not going to die that's a fucking dirty trick they're doing a lot of dirty tricks i also saw another thing i don't know if it was a particular state, but they may be doing this around where when they are now, right now, when they're counting the deaths and hospitalizations now, you're considered unvaccinated until after two weeks. Two weeks after your second dose, right? So someone could have been, you know, had two shots, but they're still in the unvaccinated category until that two weeks passes, which is really shady. But it's not that shady, really, in that case. No, because the vaccine takes time to work.

It does. Your body has to build the antibodies and you're a little bit vulnerable during that period. But to define that as someone who, but to call that person unvaccinated. Because it's not effective yet. I get that. But if you're looking at the top level thing or the headlines. Right. And they're saying that 80 percent of the people in

hospital are unvaccinated. Right. Of course, everyone thinks they think, yeah, they literally haven't read the vaccine. Right. But there's not a huge chunk of them are saying, OK, they had it, but it hasn't kicked in yet. There's certainly a number that have had adverse vaccine reactions that are in that group. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a little bit of that. Yeah. It's just a slight of hand.

You know, it's like. I don't know anybody who doesn't know someone who's had a bad reaction. There we go. But you're not supposed to talk about that. You're not supposed to. And I know people that are hesitant to talk about it because they're afraid of blowback. Yeah. And this is the crazy thing.

You're in the hospital for a vaccine. You're afraid to talk about it. Yeah. But they're afraid to talk about it amongst their liberal friends because they don't want to be thought of as an anti-vaxxer. We were talking about Eric Clapton. The LA Times wrote a story that Clapton is not God. He's just another vile anti-vaxxer. Who got the vaccine?

Who's been vaccinated and had a horrific reaction to the vaccine. And they started blaming his horrific reaction on autoimmune diseases that he may or may not have had or something that he may or may not have had and then plus his years of alcoholism which I don't think he's drank in a long

fucking time. But it's just like this sort of reaction is why people are terrified of talking and discussing it. the fact that a newspaper like the LA Times can call him a vile anti-vaxxer when he's been vaccinated it's it's really crazy it's just like it's such a gross take that you know it's designed to speak to the people that already have that same mindset. This, this, this, they're, they're, you know, they're preaching to the choir. Yep.

It's become insanely tribalistic. Yeah. Insanely tribalistic to the point where, you know, it's hardly about a virus anymore or trying to do this. It's just a team sport. And you see this when you're trying to, when they're trying to push, I mean, hundreds of millions of people at this point have acquired antibodies naturally. That's the weird thing is those antibodies don't count. They want you to get a vaccine, even though you have the natural antibodies.

That shows that it's not about logic and sense and, you know, actually helping people's health. Otherwise that would be obviously accounted for. people's health. Otherwise, that would be obviously accounted for. Not only does Jamie have antibodies, but Jamie, somewhere along the line, must have encountered COVID again for a second time, fought it off and developed more antibodies. So they, look at that, he's flexing over there. So they did a test on Jamie recently. Like your antibodies were so strong, there is no way they were from a year ago, right? I mean, I don't know how that works. Yeah, maybe.

But yeah, it was showing up maybe faint before, and the line just got more visible or more obvious. It got way more visible. Or however that works. It's super thick. But do you know of a time where you were exposed? Not necessarily. I've been around people that have gotten tested positive since then. But the time period, I don't know about the incubation time period. There was a day or two I felt like, hmm, am I sick?

And then a couple hours or a day goes by, I'm like, nope, I'm all good. That's probably what it was. It burned through so many people we know. It did. It did. I just want people to relax. The temperature just needs to come down, man. Like they're really, really, you know, and with this whole vaccine passport, COVID pass, green pass thing that they're trying to roll out in certain cities and countries. I'm just like that is not going to end well. And it's so obvious to me. It's so obvious.

It's obvious to you because you pay attention to these authoritarian ideas and how they get implemented but for a lot of people like yeah i got the vaccine i should be able to get a better position and i should be treated better because i'm vaxxed yeah they're so fucking they're so excited about the fact they're vaxxed meanwhile they're catching it yeah the the look on people's faces when they found out that you can get vaccinated, like I've talked to people and they go, you know, you can still get sick even though you've been vaccinated. They're like, what? Most people did not know that. And that literally four months later, you're getting sick. To be fair, from the beginning, they never said that it was going to

stop people from getting it or transmitting it. I thought they were saying like 90, 95%. Maybe the messaging was different here. In the UK, if you actually looked at the information, they never said that it was going to stop you from getting it or spreading it, but that it would have a therapeutic effect. So massively reduced the chances of hospitalization. I think they're a little bit more honest about the numbers over there as well. Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. What they're saying here is now they're trying to push a third shot around September. It's just weird, man. It's so odd to me. I feel like society

is running towards this cliff and those of us who are trying to make sense and to stop people running off this cliff are being denigrated and being called names and everything's been polarized, either your pro-vax or your anti-vax, as if those are the only two positions. Suddenly, I've never been called anti-vax in my entire lifetime up until a few months ago. Now, suddenly- Not really a vaccine in the regular sense. It's a genetic therapy. Sure. Right? I mean, isn't that what it is? I mean, isn't that exactly how it was described? Yeah. I think with the exception of the, I think the Johnson and Johnson one is more of a traditional style vaccine, but the Pfizer and Moderna, from what I understand, those are the mRNA ones. So that's the new technology.

But don't they refer to them as gene therapies? On the website, I think they might. I think that's how they refer to them. Yeah. I mean, it's more of a treatment than anything. It's a treatment, yeah. Because if you have to get a shot again six months later, which is what they're saying now. Which is fine.

It's like, look, if you need slash want it, then go get it. I think it should be available to anyone who wants it. Shouldn't there be some long-term studies on what happens if you do get a third or a fourth shot? There absolutely should be, but the trials for these don't end until 2023, I believe. And so by definition, people get very mad when you use the term experimental, but they are still in trial. Right. This is an emergency use authorization. They get mad because of their personal attachment to the idea of being vaccinated.

Sure. Their personal celebration of the vaccine. Yeah. I mean, how many people out there got Pfizer tattoos? Too many. One is too many. A lot.

I bet a lot. One is too many. I saw people singing. So many people like proudly put, they showed their bandaid like, wow. Yeah. It's odd.

Or I've seen people get the, you know, the vaccination card tattooed on them. It's all weird because one thing that always makes me notice something is when people are suddenly behaving in a way they never, ever, ever did before. Right. So prior to 2020, any of this behavior would have been absolutely nuts. Everyone would have thought it was nuts, right? Everyone would have thought it's insane, right? What behavior specifically? All of it. Everything from the bizarre mask behavior to running around asking people about like,

oh, did you, has anyone, you know, did you get the, did you get your flu shot this year? Did you get, you know, did you do this? If you don't get your flu shot, you're killing kids. But no one spoke like that. No one did that. No one did that. No one was getting- But the flu shot did kill kids.

That's what's fucked. This is what's fucked. And no one checked anybody for the flu at school. No. And it was never socially acceptable to ask somebody about their medical procedures or what medicines they're taking, et cetera. Now, suddenly, this is being normalized, right? If I went back to January,

2020, and I suggested that, um, okay, I've, I've gotten an idea. Like you shouldn't be allowed to fully participate in society unless you get like a flu shot or a chicken pox shot or what people got. What are you rational? People are saying this on Twitter, which is really strange. Like previously considered rational people, they're saying, you know, you should be denied medical care. You should. It's so vindictive. It's very, very vindictive. I think also, you know, there's this thing with human beings where people like to have their ideas and their actions validated. Right. So if someone is smoking, they want other people to smoke because then they feel like, you know, their idea is socially validated, whatever.

So I think this is also going on with this whole vaccine situation where someone has, you know, someone takes the shot and they don't really feel 100% confident in their decision unless everybody else does. I mean, there's no logical reason why if you're protected, I've used the metaphor of an umbrella, right? If I have an umbrella and it's protected, I've used the metaphor of an umbrella, right? If I have an umbrella and it's raining, I'm protected from the rain. Well, there's the thought that the unvaccinated are causing variants and the variants are eventually going to come get them. That's just, that's like a hypothesis. In fact, I've heard it the other way around, even from

virologists who have said that actually mass vaccination during a pandemic situation is going to drive the creation of new variants. What is correct? I do not know. I think what they think is it drives selection. It drives selection of more aggressive variants. The thing about vaccination is it has to kind of happen simultaneously if you're really going to kill it. I think they would have to vaccinate everybody at the exact same time. I don't think you can kill it though. Like I've just accepted a long time ago. Hey, this disease is here to stay. It's a Corona virus. Corona viruses aren't going anywhere. They have animal vectors as well. Like they're not going anywhere. You can reduce how bad it

gets, but just like we have, we've never eliminated the flu. People always forget that how people also have forgotten that the flu is actually bad, right? You know, when you compare this disease to the flu, people get angry and I'm like, the flu is not pleasant, right? The flu is not just more dangerous to children. It is, it is fact. And the flu kills dozens of thousands of people a year, right? I think globally, hundreds of thousands of people. But I think because it's not new, it's not novel, and maybe even the name, you know, the word COVID sounds more scary than flu, right? Flu sounds kind of like, oh, you know, whatever. And people conflate flus with colds.

And I'm like, no, the flu is nasty. The flu can be pretty bad. And when are people going to get upset if you don't take the flu shot now? The flu can be pretty bad. And I wonder if people are going to get upset if you don't take the flu shot now. I don't know. I'm not in favor of this medical bullying and medical apartheid, which people are pushing for. I don't think there's ever been a time in society where you have a two tier society where some people have certain rights and privileges and others don't. Well, people are tribal about what cell phone they use. Sure, but no one... That's just how people are.

I've never had someone try to say I shouldn't be allowed to eat in a restaurant because I have an Android, man. Right. But it is that same sort of division. It's the same mentality. There's the same sort of thing that people do with everything. They get mad if you drive a Chevy and they love Ford. They get mad.

People are weird, man. People are weird. They get, and especially under duress. Yes. I think in a crisis, whether it's real, manufactured, or imaginary, one thing that happens is it forces people to play their hand. imaginary one thing that happens is it forces people to play their play their hand forces people forces people to show what their character looks like when they're tested by adversity exactly and some people just do not know how to handle it and they want to they're on twitter all day just screaming yep and it's it's a wild shit show of a fucking mental health institute

that's what it's like down there you know know, and I often say like, you know, the true judgment of character and kindness and compassion to me is really, really revealed in the face of people who disagree with you. Yeah. Right. True. So it's very easy to be tolerant and, you know, kind and compassionate and whatever towards people who are on your team, whatever that might be politically, religiously, supporting the same football team, whatever it is, whether it's big or it's small. But actually, I think what really reveals people's kindness and humanity or lack of is, okay, how do you respond

when someone doesn't make the exact same decisions as you or believe in the exact same things, et cetera. And I think this situation has, honestly, it's given people an excuse to be a-holes and to act as if they're doing it for some greater good or whatever. And it's like, no, you're just being a jerk. Yeah, that's the mask thing where people yell at you from across the street. That's what that is. It's just people- That has nothing to do with the virus. It can't. It doesn't even make sense logically. They just, they can now get away.

It doesn't make zero sense. Yeah. You can now get away with that kind of behavior and still pretend you're the good guy. And you can't react to that. You know, you're supposed to just put a mask on or you have to deal with it. Whereas you would in normal situations, if someone yelled at you like that, you'd be like, fuck you. Yeah.

Or you'd yell back or you'd walk across the street and smack them. Yeah. Now they can get away with it for some reason. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I was a big fan of how things used to be. I think the old ways of society was the way better. In the old ways, I think we could do better. Yeah.

I hope we get through this and people realize how important it is to take care of your body. Yes. And I know you're a very physically fit guy and you exercise all the time. And I've been trying to promote that as much as I can just for, just not just for physical health, but just for mental health. It's so important, so important to exercise. Changes everything. Changes the way you feel about things, changes the way your body works. I mean, you literally have the ability to put more horsepower in your physical race car just by effort, just by effort, just by getting to the gym and forcing your body to do things that are uncomfortable

and doing it over a long period of time, you see a massive change in what your body can do. And these fucking people that have never done that are now giving advice on health and wellness. And to me, that's offensive. I get crazy with it. And I try not to lash out. I don't want to lash out at them, but I just wish they would understand how ridiculous it is when I see

a doughy, sloppy person who doesn't work out or who does work out, but fucking barely. And they're giving health advice. And their advice is to now trust a pharmaceutical company that is a habitual line stepper yep it's moral grandstanding that's what it is you know it's now trendy to pretend to care about health right so there's now millions of people who literally never ever cared about health for all the years and decades before right and now that health is as simple as throwing on a mask and taking a shot, right? Not actually doing any work or changing your diet or exercising or anything, right? Then these people now feel like they can morally grandstand and scream and shout at other people. And I think this conflation between health and medicine is also an interesting thing, right?

So I've seen from some of your previous podcasts, you know, you've had people, I know you don't follow all this so much, which is a wise idea. But, you know, when people start, you're like, oh, Joe Rogan is not a doctor. Joe Rogan is not a virologist, whatever. I'm like, bro, Joe Rogan knows more about health than 99% of the people, right? Health and medicine are not the same thing. Not every medical expert is a health expert. And that might sound weird to somebody, but there's a lot of fat doctors. Yeah. Just by someone being a doctor, it doesn't mean that holistically they truly understand a let alone practice good health in terms of nutrition,

exercise, lifestyle choices, et cetera. So when it comes to the ins and outs of how the human body works, or a surgeon will know all this stuff about anatomy, a virologist knows all this about viruses, et cetera, then sure, they're the experts in that regard. But in terms of general holistic health, this assumption that Dr. Fauci is like a general health expert or lots of these other approved governmental doctors, et cetera. To me, that's just nonsense. It's nonsense. And I generally am a fan of people practicing what they preach. It doesn't matter what it is in the world, but I'm not going to sit here and take, you know, general health advice from someone who clearly is not in good shape themselves and has never been like, to me, that's just, that's just a

mockery. I don't care if they're wearing a lab coat. Well, it just requires a lot of time and a lot of effort and most people are lazy. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard to do. Yeah. And, you know, I, and I think this is one of the biggest problems in modern Western society is It's hard. It's hard to do. how effective it is. Right. So you get a lot more virtue and moral points for throwing a mask. You can even put a mask on in your, your profile picture on social media and put hash. Yeah. But hashtag wear a mask hashtag. Uh, what, what's the vaccine one now they put, you know, get hashtag, get vaccinated, hashtag fully vaxxed, whatever. And now you feel like you're this moral authority because you can just go and just be tweeting all day about this and yelling at people and calling people anti-vaxxers and whatever.

Meanwhile, this person has never stepped foot in a gym and they're 70 pounds overweight and they're smoking and they're drinking and whatever. And I'm just like, dude, um, you know, there's more to health is holistic. Health is holistic. It's not as simple as, OK, just take a shot, take a shot and you're done, man. I mean, there's so many people that they take a shot. Their immune system is still compromised. Of course. I mean, you're you're not going to fix this entire broken system with one pharmaceutical intervention. It's not the way it works. No. And it it's even more intriguing given that with this particular virus again the hospitalization rate if you are obese is You know something like 70 to 80 percent of people who get hospitalized

Have been I'm not sure if it's overweight or obese or the combination of the two What if that's still true because someone told me that's changed. It's possible it's changed. What percentage of the people, because I had read that it was 78% of the people that were in the ICU for COVID were obese. Maybe it's changed recently. Someone told me now it's dropped, which is

interesting. Age and obesity and other comorbidities have been the big predictive factors. So to totally ignore that, especially when we've had 18 months now. Let's see what the number is. Take a guess. Think it's still 80? What do you guess? More than half, certainly. Yeah, I think more than half. I think more than half, if we can find that data. By the way, I want to give a big shout out to everybody who has taken the time over this past 18 months to actually improve

their diet and their lifestyle and to lose weight, et cetera. Um, yeah, those people should be congratulated. Yeah, absolutely. That's a giant move. And there's a lot of people that, you know, my friend Laura bites who, uh, I take with me on the road sometimes she's, uh, lost, I think she's lost 50 pounds. Fantastic. Yeah. And she just realized like, she's pretty, you know, blunt about it. She's like, well, I'm fat. And if I'm fat, I got a more of a chance of dying. Well, fuck that. I gotta lose weight. That should have been a message. That should have been a message put out there. Both of my parents have lost, I think over 30 pounds each. My mom, in fact, my mom had been diabetic for five years.

She reversed her diabetes last year. Whoa, that's amazing. Yeah. Fear. It's a motivator, right? Yeah, and I also think with all the lockdowns, they're like, you know what, now's the time to do this. Get something done.

Yeah, I wish more people took that approach. I found the study that said 78%, but that's from March. I'm trying to find something. Is that March this year? Yeah, so there was a study that said 78%, but that's from March. I'm trying to find something. Is that March this year? Yeah. So there was a study that said 78%, but here we are in August. This was published March 9th, but it says- 78% of COVID-19 patients, hospice in the US, overweight or obese, CDC finds. Says of people from last year that though it wasn't-

But this is March of 2021. Right. But it was a study from people from last year. It wasn't people from this year. Got it. Is there a particular reason why it would have drastically changed? More data? I don't know. That's the problem. I'm trying to find something updated.

Well, if anything, the Delta variant, which here's the thing. All my friends who have tested COVID, I have 13 friends that tested positive for COVID recently. None of them, they found out what variant it was. Yeah, they don't normally test. They keep saying the Delta variant. They didn't ask. They didn't run tests. They just swabbed their nose. They found out they have COVID and they treated them accordingly. Some

vaccinated, some unvaccinated. I have had unvaccinated friends who got hit hard and then unvaccinated friends who breezed through it. And vaccinated friends that got hit hard and vaccinated friends that breezed through it. And the thing that is a factor in all these is how healthy they are. That's the big deal.

The fat ones that were unvaccinated and vaccinated got hit hard. Interesting. The healthy ones that were unvaccinated or vaccinated breezed through it. You know, if anything, this, again, if we lived in a society that was more serious and really valued personal responsibility, then this would have been the biggest wake-up call to deal with a much wider pandemic that we're dealing with, which is obesity. Not just obesity, but just poor health in general, poor diet in general. And I think it would have been wonderful if someone in the media or someone in the government rather devised some sort of a program to encourage people. If the government had a YouTube channel

where imagine if the president, like obviously Biden can't do this, he dropped dead, but Obama could have done it. If someone of that, like Obama's always been fit and healthy. Someone like him decided to put out like a daily workout routine, just a simple body weight workout routine. Someone in government, hire someone, say, look, just a simple body weight workout routine. Someone in government, hire someone, say, look, this is the government's YouTube channel. We're going to have a free daily workout routine. Basically everybody in the country at least has some sort of access to internet. If you're not homeless, even a lot of homeless guys have phones. It's a wild time, right? But if you just had something where, you something where you can tune in at a particular time and you can do it live with us or it'll be archived, just follow along.

And you follow along. Do it at your own pace. Simple stuff. Push-ups, jumping jacks, sit-ups. Simple shit. The government's not going to do that, man. And honestly, I don't expect them to. Wouldn't it not going to do that, man. And honestly, I don't expect them to. Wouldn't it be nice? It would be nice. A lot of things would be nice. I

mean, part of why I'm, I don't like to label myself politically, but a big reason why I'm largely libertarian is because I've just come to the conclusion that besides aiming guns at people, dropping bombs and taking and blowing money, the government is not good at most things and here's the problem with the government the government is run by people so dumb they're in the government why would you want to do that job right this is the problem unless you're called unless you're like you realize like god damn it someone's got to fix this yeah but then even when but then even when you get those people, they tend to be too honest and genuine to go as far as they could. Speaking of honest and genuine, have you been paying attention to this fucking QAnon documentary series on HBO? I haven't, no.

Oh, my God. What's this? I'm on episode four now, Jamie. I changed my tune. I changed my tune. I was saying yesterday I had uh Lex Friedman on I was saying that I don't think that kid what's his name Robert I don't think I didn't think he was QAnon now I think he is now I'm in episode four I'm like yeah he's guilty the little fuck

I never followed the QAnon thing I had a lot of people try to get me into it and I was just like nah that's one rabbit hole too many you should watch the HBO series it's amazing it's called Into the Fire Into the Storm Into the Storm Into the Storm it's like like, nah, that's one rabbit hole too many. You should watch the HBO series. It's called Into the Fire. Into the Storm? Into the Storm. Into the Storm. It's like Q, Into the Storm. A lot of it relates to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, and a lot of it just relates

to the internet culture of these outcasts and misfits, and that this person purporting to be a governmental insider who provides all this secret information about what's going down what they know this is the the gentleman a possible q anon slip-up suggests the truth of q's identity was right there all along what is that what are they saying there click on that is that that dude that's but i mean is that what they're saying

isn't it funny that you're allowed to talk about QAnon now? Yeah, you're allowed to. But it's Ron Watkins, a longtime administrator of the message board. In a final scene after Watkins talked about how he had shared voter fraud conspiracy theories after Trump's loss in the 2020 elections, he told Hoback, it was basically three years of intelligence training teaching normies how to do intelligence work it was basically what I was doing anonymously before but never as Q oh so he kind of admitted it so who's that guy in the photo that's the guy that everybody thinks is Q and I didn't think he was until episode three.

Episode three. I only watched two episodes when Lex and I were talking, and Lex was like, yeah, he's definitely it. I go, really? I didn't think so. And then I watched episode three. I was like, oh, this motherfucker, he got me. He got me.

Him and his dad. His dad's slimy too. His dad was the guy who was the the guy who was running 8chan and the founder of 8chan that guy fred it's he's he's an interesting character the whole thing is very interesting okay you should watch it it's fascinating yeah i i never followed the q thing like how could you not i didn't i i just i did couldn't deal with it i mean i I had a lot I definitely had a lot of followers who were like really Into it and where it would send me these weird links and whatever and I was just like you know That one Congress lady who looks like she's drunk all the time. What's her name?

Marjorie Taylor Greene Yeah, she always looks like she's out of it like that lady is in the documentary. She's a giant Q supporter Yeah, and she's a supporter. what does that mean like what does that mean well here's the thing what it is this person was making these like very cryptic posts on this internet message board 8chan okay and 8chan is like response to 4chan being monitored. When 4chan was monitored and while they were using people that... Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I only believe some of what QAnon says about Dems being satanic pedophile cannibals. Okay? That lady always looks like she's had like two Chardonnays too many and she's just talking shit. Doesn't she? She always looks a little lit to me. The politicians, you guys have some wild politicians over here, just in general. Just in general. That lady, she's, you know, the Democrats.

In the UK, they're all boring. Are they? Most of them. The guy Boris Johnson, your Trump guy. Boris Johnson's not Trump. His fucking hair. Yeah, he's got the hair. He's like a British Trump. He's not like a British Trump he's not he's not what is not I think that's what people hope for but um he's a disappointment that's what he is how's he disappointment I mean

all of this nonsense that's happened has happened under his government you know you know you know the UK was gonna take the Swedish approach really yeah why did they not um he basically got pressured in by the you know he kind of capitulated to certain loudmouths in the media who were seeing that but he caught and he also yes i think he was very sick yes he got hospitalized and i think that also freaked him out a little and made him totally change he lost but he allowed the emotion to take over rather than his initial plan was a lot more rational. Right. And it wouldn't have led to all the job losses and the closures of businesses, et cetera.

And I don't think any more people would have died. But he then saw that, got the pressure from the media, had his own personal anecdotal experience. And then other countries. Well, you're saying anecdotal experience, but he almost fucking died. Yeah, but it's still- That's a big, that's a shift in like- It is, it is. If you have this idea that it's not that big of a deal,

and then you almost die, and you're like, oh shit, this is legit. But that doesn't mean shut the whole country down. No, no, it doesn't. It shouldn't mean shut the whole country down, right? It's still an emotional response, right? I know people who have, you know, if you've almost been in a car accident, it wouldn't make sense to then say.

No one should drive cars. Exactly. It would be irrational. Or we need to lower the speed limit to 30 miles per hour. And it's like, that would save lives. That would absolutely save lives. But we understand in society, you know, we're constantly doing risk analysis with absolutely everything. Absolutely everything.

And that's why it was really silly when people started doing that. If it saves one life, it's worth it. It's like if we thought about that with everything, then we just have to nerf the entire planet. Yeah. Because you can die from a lot of things. And you shouldn't eat because you could choke on your food. Exactly. Yeah.

You shouldn't do much. You really shouldn't do much you really shouldn't do much if you're and this is the thing you know people have been so scared of scared of death that they've stopped living you know there's a difference between living and existing and i think a lot of people are just now existing and that's a shame i'm just resentful that this one thing has become such a primary focus of all of our lives for so long. And for a lot of people, it's become their entire identity. It's because it's unavoidable.

It's unavoidable and it impacts people, right? So I would love to, like, I don't enjoy talking about it or I don't really enjoy tweeting about it or whatever. It's just that I can't really stop as long as it's infringing upon so many other people. And again, I'm not even talking about the virus. I'm talking about the response, right? The response. It's like you've had millions of people lose their jobs, millions of businesses shut down.

You've got effects on children, people's mental health, people's physical, all of this stuff. And they keep they're still not they're still going and going and going. And I'm just like, look, guys, like we can draw that line. Like the battle has been fought and it's won. We should actually really be in celebration mode right now. We should really be in celebration mode. People should be like, awesome. Like the numbers are, look at, this thing has been crushed.

The curve has been absolutely flattened, right? This thing was over, you know, hospitals were, you know, i know in in the uk like it peaked you know december january well i think you're right about that i think the hospitals are they got hit pretty hard here recently okay yeah there's been a big uptick in cases and a lot of the people that i know that actually work in hospitals said there's quite a few people in the icu now quite a few what is that well a lot more than they had just a few months ago. There was a big uptick, but again, a lot of them with comorbidities, a lot of them are obese. This is anecdotal, but from my friend who's a nurse, they were saying that so many of these people are just,

they're just super unhealthy people. This is the thing. I don't know man i don't know i just want later i just want people to be able to just my thing from the beginning is just like look people should be free to make their choices yes assume their own risk if you want to take a specific medicine or a vaccine or whatever you should have access to it you should be able to get it if you don't want to take it you should be free to assume whatever risk you need everyone has a different situation different demographics demographics, different history. It would be a different case if the vaccine stopped people from getting and transmitting it, which it doesn't. No.

It doesn't. And it would be different if they would leave people alone that have already especially recovered from the disease. That's the big one. They want them to get vaccinated too, which is like. Yeah. That's not even scientific. It's not even scientific it's not scientific it's not it's not based on what we know about viruses and immunity and no antibodies and the thing is here's something really interesting because i've had people say um man if they can do all this with a disease with you know a 99

plus survival rate yeah what if it was something with a, you know, a- 10% mortality rate. Yeah, 10%. Yeah. Do you know what's interesting is I think it would be far less divisive. Why do you say that? For a lot of reasons. Number one, you wouldn't need to mandate stuff.

How so? Because people are self-preserving, right? If you knew, okay, if I go out and I kind of live my life normally, like if I can track this disease at 10% or 20% chance I'm going to die, you will naturally take every precaution necessary. You don't need lockdowns. You don't need mask mandates. I think you're wrong. And I think it would be worse. I think people would be crying out for more authoritarian restrictions. Interesting. They would be asking big government to take care of them. I think it would be far more united. I think it would be far more united.

If everybody, oh my gosh, like everyone knows somebody who's died, kids are dying, everyone, like there's people who don't even. There would still be people that would be anti-maskers. There would still be people that would like say it's a hoax. I don't know. If you need to watch this QAnon documentary, you realize how fucking stupid some people are i don't know i don't know i i think it would be less i think it would be far more united like if it were a true because at the moment it's like it like it's not at the moment everything is still debatable right

everything is debate like to this day we don't we don't know. There's still no real world evidence that masks help. There's no real world evidence that masks make a difference. How much do they help? Like if you have one on and someone doesn't have one on, why would you be upset that they don't have one on if it worked for you? Is it supposed to be you need to have one and I need to have one and then we're fully protected? But the thing is as well is you can't transmit a virus you don't have. So if unless somebody wearing a mask if you're not sick is asinine. Right?

Yeah. Like if you don't have the virus. But the idea is you could be asymptomatically spreading it. Which we have known forever is not really a major driver. It's not a major driver, but even if it's a minor driver and people get sick from asymptomatic spread. That's always existed. We've never worn masks prior to 2020. Right, but we haven't been in a pandemic before. Yeah, we have. But not like this. We haven't been in a pandemic in the last 100 years like this.

Why was a mask? But we've had coronavirus pandemics in our lifetime and they never recommended masks. Even on The Who, they never recommended masks before. When have we had a coronavirus pandemic during our lifetime? SARS, bird flu? Yeah, but that never made its way to America. And that was isolated. Swine flu. Swine flu killed tens of thousands of people in America.

In America. Yeah. That was in 2009, right? Yeah. There was never. There wasn't even lockdowns, mask mandates. They were not even suggested. In fact, the WHO itself was always against them. Yeah. There was a, it was a flu. That's what it was. People looked at it like something that they had already heard of.

Yeah. You know, but it's, it's. I think people are, but, but with the mask thing, I mean, there's no evidence that mask mandates have helped. There's no evidence. We are 18 months in. How do you get those though? How would you get – if you have everyone masking up, the entire country, the only evidence that we have is about the lower numbers of the flu, right? We have a lowered incidence of – at least recorded incidence of flu in the last year. I think that's catchable, yeah. That's what? I'm not sold on that.

You're not sold on it? How so? In what way? I think they've rebranded. I think they're they're classifying a lot of flu cases as covid personally that's what i think it doesn't make sense what they're saying with that well they do know that they fucked up with the piece they did have an issue with the pcr tests then the cdc didn't they pull the uh pulling it at the end of the year at

the end of the year yeah they're pulling the PCR test because too many of them have tested positive for COVID, but it was actually the flu or other things. Nobody's been testing for the flu over the past 18 months. Well, they have tested. That's why they have a lot of cases. There's recorded cases of the flu. Very little. What is the number? Very little.

Everyone's getting tested for COVID. They're not being tested for flu. It's not nearly as much as it normally is. Yeah. For sure. But they did get tested enough that there are recorded cases. Yeah. I don't know anyone who's ever had a flu test throughout this whole thing.

I don't either, but I don't know anybody who ever gets a flu test unless they get sick. This is the thing. I don't know. This is the problem, though. There's so much that we don't know. Like, this is the problem, though. There's so much that we don't know. And the thing is, as well, is, you know, people, these conversations are necessary. Like, these conversations and questions we're asking and numbers we're looking at, I'm like, man, all throughout, this should have been happening.

They're exhausting. I don't want to have these conversations anymore. No, okay. We can switch topics, man. I'm happy to talk about other things. Very happy to talk about other things. I can't fucking do it anymore. We talk about it every day. Yeah. Let's switch it up, man. Because it every day yeah let's switch it keeps coming up let's switch it up let's switch it up

okay what do you want to talk about man what else is going on in the world i want you to watch that stupid documentary and i will check it out it's not stupid it's actually good yeah what else is going on the tal Taliban have taken over Afghanistan. That's a creepy one. That looks weird. You see the people falling from the plane? I did. That's wild. It's weird.

People rushing the plane, trying to get on board and trying to get rescued and taken out of the country. It's like, fuck. It's so odd. You know, I was having a conversation with friends just yesterday and I was saying, I literally had forgotten, like, I was like, why was the U.S. in Afghanistan again? It had been so long. I was literally trying to remember what the initial reason for going in there was. It seems very obvious that the way they withdrew was crazy. And leaving all the weapons and ammunition and vehicles and stuff like that for the Taliban to just come and scoop up. If one was a legit conspiracy theorist, like a real tinfoil hatter, you would look at this and go, this is probably the best way to ensure the support of a reinvasion like leave a bunch of weapons behind make the whole thing disastrous have the taliban take over the entire country in a short period of time start executing women mayors do all the

crazy shit that they're probably going to do and then, you know, have some real public outcry. So weird. People are, I still get people who are confused as to why I do not generally trust the government. And I don't know how many examples I need to pull out from recent times and from further history to just be like, look, whether, whether this is malice or it's incompetence or with some things it doesn't matter. Whether it's malice or incompetence. Incompetence in anything. But how can – with certain things I'm like how can it be? Like it's so obvious, right?

It's so obvious what is going to happen in a certain situation and then you do it anyway. And I don't understand that. One person can be incompetent, but it's like, it's not just one person who makes all these ideas. They've got actual people who are supposed to be experts and advisors, et cetera. I mean, you even had people in the media last month, and the media is pretty friendly towards Joe Biden here for the most part. And people in the media are saying, hey, if you do this, aren't the Taliban going to just take over everything? He's like, no. And he's like, no. No, there's 3,000 Afghanistan armed soldiers, only 75,000 Taliban. Meanwhile, they took it over in a day. And they just did it. Yeah.

Taliban. Meanwhile, they took it over in a day. And they just did it. Yeah. Yeah. And there was no gunshots fired. No. I just think the whole thing's a disaster. This nation building idea is a disaster. And Afghanistan itself has never been a traditional country in the sense of a central leadership. It's basically, for most of history, has been run by warlords. It's basically, for most of history, it's been run by warlords. It's like warlords that controlled regions. Here's a question, Joe. This is something I wonder about a lot. Both on an individual level and on a nation level, how much and at what point should, say, a country get involved with the affairs of another one? It's a good question.

Well, it should be probably at a – we should have levels of atrocity that are intolerable, right? Where it's like Nazi Germany type levels. But if that's the case, why are we not invading North Korea? levels but if that's the case why are we not invading north korea because north korea if you talk to winomi park or any of the people that have escaped from from north korea it's essentially a form of holocaust there's people that are in concentration camps they've lived their whole lives there their children will be born there there's people that are starving to death there's people that are cannibalizing people it's a weird fucked up horrific situation over there yeah and uh there's no there's no plan to do anything about it yeah but yet we keep talking about doing things in the middle east and there's

a lot of resources in the middle east that may or may not be a motive to being there. One of them is drugs. It's up until the invasion of Afghanistan. I mean, I'm not sure what the number is now. But Afghanistan, once we invaded, I think they were the supplier of 94% of the world's opium. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that.

Well, the fucking United States troops were guarding poppy fields because these people that were there, that was their main way of making a living. And the US troops were guarding the poppy fields. It's fucking crazy. Let's find out what the actual number is as of today. I believe that I think that was the number at one point on that ninety four percent of the world's opium supply was from Afghanistan specifically

Wow there's also a massive supply of minerals of conflict minerals ironically in 2014 the estimated opium production was 6,400. What is an MT? I don't know. Yet in 2017, production climbed to a new record of 9,000 MT. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, result of a drought. These levels of production are enough to supply most of the world's opiate markets. Wow.

That's a study from the Brookings. Brookings.edu. Oh, metric tons. That's what it is. Okay, there you go. Okay. 2007 Afghan opium production climbed to what was then seen as a staggering 8,200 metric tons. Interesting. In 2018, climbed to a new record of 9,000 metric tons,

then falling in 2018 to 6,400 metric tons. Massive amounts of opium. Wow. Yeah. This is what's crazy. The trafficking, okay, here it is. Estimated the gross value of the Afghan opium economy, including the cultivation of poppy, processing into heroin, and trafficking

up to Afghan borders to be between US $4.1 billion and $6.6 billion in 2017. Wow. It's so funny seeing those numbers there compared to like these trillions and trillions that they just keep printing. Sounds like nothing. I don't even know how these numbers are just get to a stage where you can't fathom. What does that mean? It's just like too many zeros.

Yeah. It's also like where's that money going? Like if they're making that much money selling heroin, where's it going? Who's getting it? Who's selling it? I don't know. Where's it going? How's it getting out of the country?

Are you guys watching it? Watch the fields. Yeah, keep an eye on it I have no idea man The world is such a weird place and always has been I did listen to the that podcast you did with them yummy park Which was amazing amazing by the way now and wild North Korea is It blows my mind that here in 2021 with everything, you know, we're doing and whatever, that there's just one country out there that we know, like, almost nothing about. It's just blacked out, totally disconnected from the world.

Virtually everyone, no one's met anyone from there. Virtually no one's been there. Even if you've been there, you can only go on like a guided tour to like one small part of it. It amazes me that that's a thing. I always just think like, how is that possible? Given how interconnected we all are. And she was saying that if it wasn't for China's support, they wouldn't be able to survive a week. Yeah.

They need China's support. And China props them up. It's so weird. How do you think that that will come to an end? It might not. It might go on for hundreds of years. I think it will. I think evil always falls eventually.

It does eventually, but what is eventually? If a human lifetime is 100 years if you're lucky, there's been many evil regimes that have lasted longer than that. So, I mean, many, many, many generations of people are going to suffer. Yeah. It's so odd. I don't know. They can't do anything about it.

The thing is, like, they're starving. They have no access to weapons. The government has full, complete control over them. And when you pass the borders, they have landmines set up. So if you're making a run for it, you're going to fucking blow up. control over them and when you pass the borders they have landmines set up so if you're you're making a run for it you're gonna fucking blow up and what's do you know what what's China's interest with keeping or allowing it to stay that way is there some benefits in them it's a good question because I know that I know

that they're propped up by China but what why would China want, you know, why would they want it to stay like that? I don't really understand that. Well, they probably enjoy the fact that there's a conflict between North and South Korea as they're both close to each other. And South Korea's allies with the United States. You know, China has their fucking tentacles in so many different things, man. It's wild. I got some more numbers here for you to help with the Afghan thing. This is from Wiki, but they're from the Afghan papers, I think,

is where a lot of this information came from. As of 2017, opium production provides about 400,000 jobs in Afghanistan, more than the Afghan National Security Forces. The opium trade spiked in 2006 after the Taliban lost control of the local warlords. Right here, 93%. 93% of the non-pharmaceutical grade opiates of the world market

originated in Afghanistan. More land is used in Afghanistan to grow for opium than cocoa cultivation in all of Latin America. Wow. I did not know this. I never linked Afghanistan with huge amounts of opium.

Yeah, man. It's in a Sturgill Simpson song. I mean, we are repeating what happened in the Vietnam War. In the Vietnam War, that was a big part of what the Vietnam War was all about, was the heroin trade. This is what's going on here, man. Yeah.

It's like, it's got to be a factor. This idea that it's not a factor of why we're there and that some fucking scumbag is not profiting off of this, for sure it is. There's no way they're not. I mean, if these are the same people that paid Barry Seals to run Coke over from South America and drop it into MENA, Arkansas, you don't think that they would be making money over in Afghanistan? No, I do, man. I believe that every government is corrupt. They're going to make a documentary about the poppies.

They're going to have to. The poppies. They're going to have to. Someone, now that we're out of Afghanistan, someone is going to make a documentary about the heroin trade. And people are going to fucking blow their wig off. They're going to be like, what? That's wild, man. But how has it been in the USA for the past?

Because obviously you were in California before. You were in LA. Yeah. Now you're here in Austin, Texas. I haven't been able to get out to the US for the past two years. So how's it been? The U.S. has been through some transitions. Obviously, you had the whole election fiasco and all of that. And now you've had the whole situation we were talking about before. But how's it been here? In what way? Just the way that I'm always intrigued by where society is and where it's going. Well, the pandemic obviously has tested people.

Yeah. And it's tested people in a way that they're just not prepared for. It's almost like forcing people to run when they've never run before. And you're trying to get them over the hill. And they're panting and falling down and flailing and screaming and getting emotional. That's a lot of, it's a great analogy to what's happened here in this country. People have been tested by adversity in a large scale for the first time in their lives where, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of uncertainty in the economy as well as

uncertainty with people's health. And when the two things combined, the health uncertainty and there's a lot of uncertainty in the economy as well as uncertainty with people's health. And when the two things combined, the health uncertainty and the economy uncertainty, and one of the things that the lockdown did that's really scary is it labeled people essential workers or non-essential workers. It closed jobs arbitrarily, but you could still go to Target and Walmart. For people that own small businesses, it was horrific. And it's made people a little bit more concerned about politics, though, which I think is probably good, because it'll be harder for them to pull the wool over people's eyes, because they're going to be paying attention to it. When they see what a disaster the new york city mayor has been you know then the next mayor

is going to be someone who hopefully understands the folly of the past and the mistakes that were made and and you know sort of re-establishes law and order and does something to uh stem the wave of crime and does something to try to re-establish trust with businesses and give people a reason to move to New York City because they're fucking fleeing New York City like rats on a sinking ship. And then there's the tax situation. They have massive taxes there that are hard to justify if the crime is not being taken care of and it's just such a fucking wacky place now.

It's weird. It's very strange to me in places like New York City, San Francisco, LA, in terms of the way they're governed, where there just seems to be this disconnect between the policies and what they lead to. Right. Right. Like it, and some of them seem very obvious. So for example, in San Francisco, they have that thing where enforcing crime yeah well if you shoplift less than is it nine hundred dollars yeah then uh it's not it's not a felony or they won't stop it's like obviously that's going to lead to tons of shoplifting that's you're rational how but how you're saying that as a person who's like a rational person. These politicians, especially the like really progressive ones, they're looking at these things through rose-colored glasses like you're dealing with non-humans.

It's so odd though. Like what do you think is going to happen there? Or last year they had the whole defund the police thing. What do you think is going to happen? Like what do you think? And then all of a sudden, you know, murders skyrocket, assault skyrocket assault sky i'm just like this is it's so obvious that that's that's why i'm always confused with i like to assume i'd rather assume idiocy and incompetence than malice but it gets to a level where i'm just like how can someone i don't know second third fourth order

consequences sometimes with some things can be difficult to predict. Well, you know, the conspiracy theory, right, is that George Soros keeps funding more and more progressive liberal politicians. And then once he gets a liberal politician in office, he'll fund someone. I had some person who's a very wise person explain this to me. Okay. someone I had some person who's a very wise person explain this to me okay and a non-controversial person who was trying to explain the George Soros thing and I'm like you so you really believe that George Soros like trying to engineer the collapse of the government in the United States and he said yes I

do I believe that what he does this guy was saying that what he does is he'll he'll fund a very progressive very liberal campaign that's very soft on crime and that wants to release people from prison, wants to decriminalize a lot of criminal activities and all sorts of different things. Then once they get in office, they will then push the envelope even further and fund a even more progressive person who has even more ridiculous ideas and say, the reason why this person failed to implement their policies is because we need to be even more progressive and even more liberal and let more people out of jail and decriminalize more things. So you believe that? Oh, George Soros funds some shady stuff. I know that for sure. But why do you think he, George Soros funds some shady stuff. I know that for sure. Why do you think he does that? That's a good question. I think that there are,

firstly, I, evil exists. Evil is a very, very real thing. And it can be very hard for decent and kind people to understand and to accept that there are people with malicious intentions and evil intentions. I think people need to know that that's a very real thing and that not everything comes from a good place. Not everybody operates from a good place. I think with most things that don't seem to make sense on a surface level, if a lot of stuff comes down to money and power, money, power, and control, especially when you're dealing with that kind of person and you're trying to understand what is their motive. It normally comes down to one or all of those things. So for him specifically, this would be an assumption, but I would assume it is something to do with those.

Something to do with profit and or power. Money, money, control and power. Hasn't he been kicked out of a bunch of different countries? Like, he's not allowed to go to certain... Like, find out what countries George Soros is not allowed in. He's a weird dude. I mean, wasn't he... You know, there was that video where he was talking about how he helped the Nazi soldiers.

Well, he was a child. Yeah, but he said... His uncle was taking him with him as they were confiscating things from Jewish families. Yes, and he was saying that he enjoyed it and it was- I think he said he felt nothing, that he didn't feel responsible for it. He said something about looking back on- I can't remember the exact words, but he said something about looking back on it fondly. And I'm like, that is pretty weird. I don't know if he said that.

about looking back on it fondly. And I'm like, that is pretty weird. I don't know if he said that. I didn't see that. But I did see him talking about how he didn't feel anything for those people because he was young and he was just doing what he was told to do. I mean, even the stuff, the way he's made so much of his money, I mean, it's unethical.

Like with his market manipulation, which crashing economies, et cetera, that's not like an ethical way to become a billionaire. There's ethical ways to make a lot of money, but to do it by collapsing financial systems and screwing people over. But if you look at Afghanistan and the opium trade, and we obviously don't know who the nefarious people behind the scenes are that do that. George Soros isn't banned from six countries. How many has he banned from? I don't know.

None. Has he banned from four? It says his company is, like they show a tweet where this may have came from, like his company is banned in Russia or something. Yeah. So that might be like sort of. I was actually supposed to go to Russia a couple months ago. Let's be clear about this.

Let's find out what the case is. Let's see if he's banned from anywhere. He isn't banned from entering the countries mentioned, while Google search results do mention his organization being banned in certain countries. Nothing mentions Soros himself.

So his foundation... His foundation is banned in certain places yeah to close in okay so Turkey looks like one of them yeah

I was actually supposed to go to Russia a couple months ago but with all the shifts and changes with the restrictions and stuff unfortunately I wasn't able to go out there I got booked for a speaking engagement

really yeah in St. Petersburg which would have been would have been a big one that's wild yeah that would be weird you think yeah yeah interesting yeah in a weird way like to see what it's like yeah I want to go I want to go to Russia I'm not for it I've traveled to a lot like 20-something European countries but I haven't I've been to a lot of the former Soviet Union countries I actually wrote my new album

in Romania yeah yeah I went out to Romania. I was there in October and November. Um, I've been there before, so yeah, I went out there, but I've also been to, I don't know, like Estonia and then like former Yugoslavia, places like Serbia, Croatia, et cetera. Um, that's one cool thing in Europe though, is like everything is nearby. You can, you can just fly a couple hours and be in a whole different place. It's bizarre though, right? That you fly a couple hours in a totally different language. Yeah. I guess it's kind of normal if you're based in Europe.

In the US, I think it's kind of weird because here you've got such a... People always forget how big the USA is. Big as fuck. It's such a massive country. Yeah, I mean Texas is bigger than the whole UK. Yeah. Which is pretty wild. Yeah, I mean, Texas is bigger than the whole UK. Yeah. Right? Which is pretty wild. Yeah, people forget that.

So oftentimes when I talk with people in the US about the UK, they sort of put them on a similar sort of scale. And I'm just like, no, we're talking a whole different. US is just a whole different scale of everything. And I think that's why people give the USA a lot of stick for. A stick lot of stick oh is that is that a british term yeah what does that mean like give you a lot of crap like shit yeah yeah um for some of the i don't know some of the stuff here being like a little bit chaotic in some ways or stuff just being very i don't know like all over the place, social stuff, political stuff, cultural stuff, whatever. But chaotic.

Yeah. Part of it is just, you've just got this gigantic country of 330 million people, bigger than way bigger than any other country in the West. I think it's fascinating how different the cities are than the rural areas. Yes. That's, that's fascinating to me. Like you could accurately predict the difference in the way people think about politics, the the cities are than the rural areas. Yes. That's fascinating to me. It is. You could accurately predict the difference in the way people think about politics, the

way people think about life, environment, all sorts of different things. And that's quite a global phenomenon, that urban-rural difference. If you go to pretty much any big urban center in any country is going to be more liberal. Yeah. That's what's weird to me. It's like, why? Why is that? Why are there no conservative big cities? It's really interesting, right? Yeah. It is interesting. I think some of it is migration. I think the type of people who are more likely to... So cities like even Austin, but certainly Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, they have a huge amount of people who aren't native to there, but they move there. And I think that the personality type that makes people, let's say, liberal, makes them more likely to move to one of those big city centers.

I think someone who's liberal is more likely to want to move to L.A likely to want to move to New York City, et cetera. But why? I think because of the personality trait, because the biggest predictor of liberalism from a personality perspective is openness. So someone who is open, that includes wanting to travel and wanting to go to different places, whereas someone who's more traditionally conservative, lower in openness, is more likely to be happy to stay in the countryside or kind of stick to where, stay where they grew up, where they were born, et cetera. But what's interesting about New York City is New York City is filled with financial people. It is. There's a lot of bankers, a lot of hedge fund people, a lot of stock market people. And they tend to be more conservative.

I think with their money. Yeah. Socially, I don't know. I think certainly fiscally conservative. From a social aspect, I don't know how much correlation there is there. I don't know. It's just odd that there's not a single city that I can think of that's a very conservative city. What's the biggest Republican city in the U.S.? Do you know? I don't know if there is one. Fort Worth?

Okay. Fort Worth, maybe? Well, actually, I guess San Diego is Republican. Well, it's run by a Republican mayor. No, it's not. Not anymore. Is it not? No, I don't think so. I think the new mayor is a gay guy who's like super democratic. Oh, really? Yeah, they were really mad because he was locking down, like he was like really enforcing lockdowns.

That's, I don't know. Isn't he? The mayor of San Francisco, or the mayor of San Diego is liberal, correct? Pretty sure he's a democrat. I think the former mayor, but there's a lot of military folks in San Diego. And for a long time it was associated with Republican values. Yeah. I always love it down there. It's a great fucking place to be. I haven't been there yet. Actually, I want to, I'll probably check it out. San Diego is great. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good size city. It's like, it's not too big. You know, it's a, it's a bitch to get down there. If you like live in LA, you got like, if I had a gig in San, in in San Diego and say the gig was 8 o'clock, I'd leave at

like 11 a.m. Oh, wow. Yeah. Just traffic? Yeah. Oh, okay. Fucked traffic. It's supposed to be 90 minutes to get there.

It never is. Wow. It might be 90 minutes if you leave at like 5 a.m. You might be able to get there in 90 minutes. That might be the move and just sleep. Just get to your hotel room and take a nap. Wow. Because if you leave at like 2 in the afternoon,

you are fucked. I mean, fuckity fuck fucked. Yeah, because you're going to hit that Orange County traffic, which is just like a ridiculous coagulation of human beings just stuck on these highways together going, what the fuck? Looking around with all the red lights. There's so many people down there. That drive is just bananas. There's so many fucking people. It's why when people talk about traffic here in Austin,

I'm like, you guys don't even know what the fuck traffic is. This is hilarious traffic. Your traffic is a joke. You're never stopped dead. And if you are, it's for a couple of seconds. It's nothing down here. That's interesting stopped dead. And if you are, it's for a couple of seconds. It's nothing down here. That's interesting. Yeah. How are you finding Austin compared to LA? It's way better. Yeah.

In almost every way. Like there's a ton of great restaurants. The people are extremely friendly. Very nice. Comedy here is fantastic. It's a great place to do standup. There's a lot of jujitsu gyms, a lot of places to work out. Everything that I do that I did in L.A. I can do here, but easier and more friendly.

There's less anxiety in general as a population here. People were way more relaxed when it came to the whole COVID thing. When we came here for the first time, I came here with my family in May of last year. And when we got here, my kids couldn't believe we could eat indoors. We can eat indoors? I mean, it had only been a couple of months in L.A., but I had already saw the writing on the wall. I was like, these motherfuckers like telling people what to do. They enjoy it, especially Newsom.

He enjoys it. You could tell he likes it. He likes enforcing these laws and these rules to keep everybody safe, and we're going to get back some of your freedoms. If you do this, you can get back your freedoms. Get back your freedoms. This is the language they were using. I'm like, I got to get the fuck out of here.

Dude, bro, it's what drove me out of the UK. I'm done. You're not going back. What are you going to do? I'll go back and see family. What are you going to do now? Where are you going to live? I'm not living there anymore. You're going to live here?

I might. You might live in Texas? I have applied for a visa. Oh, my goodness. What do you have to do to get a visa? Well, the majority of my business already comes from the US. Yeah? Yeah, about 70%.

Music business? Everything I do, my music, my book, public speaking, coaching, everything I do, majority of it already comes from the USA. So I've applied for a trade visa. So fingers crossed. Where do you plan on going? Texas, Florida, or Tennessee. Yeah, definitely a red state. Texas, Florida, or Tennessee. Have you been to any of our many numerous gun ranges here in Texas? I went to one in Dallas in 2019. Last time I was here, I went to one in Dallas. One of my friends took me.

Did you go with Coleon Noir? No, but I'd be down to meet up with him. You should go with him. Is he based around here? He's a Dallas guy. He's in Dallas? Okay. That's your guy. When it comes to guns, there's not a fucking human

that knows more about guns than Coleon. I mean, he reviews them online. I mean, when he reviews them, like it's, he's clear expert. You know, the way he's breaking down various aspects of guns in a way that I can't. I don't know. Okay. Maybe I'll try to link up with him. He's a great guy, too.

My friend Eric July's up there as well. So, like, I've been, all three of us have been mistaken for each other as well, because we're all like black guys who wear hats and have beards. So, we don't actually look the same. I don't know how to feel about that. Yeah, we don't actually look the same. But I've had people like we've all been mistaken for each other online, which is hilarious. Nashville's great too if you're thinking about that.

Yeah, Nashville's cool. I have buddies that have moved to Nashville. Nashville's awesome. And, you know, Florida's cool except for the whole hurricane thing. Yeah, and it's humid there's a well the amount of dummies in florida is off the chart it's like there's like all these different websites dedicated to people in florida doing ridiculous shit like i'm sure you've seen florida man oh yeah you know like the the various uh twitter pages and social media pages yeah dedicated to people in Florida.

That's where all the fucking people that were trying to escape the East Coast went, like the Northeast. All the people that were running from the law in New York and New Jersey and Boston, they all went to Florida. Yeah, so I think it'll most likely be one of those three states if I move to the US. But for the time being,

I'm happy to just be a little bit of a nomad. Oh, if I moved to the US. But for the time being, I'm happy to just be a little bit of a nomad. You're going to wander around. Yeah, I'm going to wander around a little. And you're doing shows down here at all. I need the visa first. I did two big public speaking engagements. So when I flew in, I flew into Houston and I spoke for the Young America's Foundation. They had their 43rd annual student conference. So I spoke at that, which was incredible. Absolute love fest. Like, yeah, like I didn't know how many people knew me in that city. And then I spoke for Young Americans for Liberty on in Orlando the same week as well. And that was also really big, really great event. And first live events I did since I did one. I haven't done a live music show since 2019.

Wow. Haven't been able to. And that was the first public speaking engagement I'd done since February 2020. How does it work when it comes to visas? How does that work? How do you get one? So there's a whole bunch of different types. Like visa things quite complicated.

Why don't you marry someone? Find yourself a nice gal. Settle down here in America. Hey, it's on the cards certainly in the next couple of years, man. I'm announcing now I wouldn't. How old are you? I'll be 35 in two days. Oh, time to start knocking someone up.

Let's go, Zoobie. Let's go. Time to make some babies. Everyone knows I want at least five. You want at least five kids? At least five, yeah. Well, you got to get five different women. Oh, all from one woman.

That way they don't get blown out. Just kidding. When you apply for a visa, though, like realistically, all joking aside, like, do you have to have a special skills? Do you have to have a reason? And could what you do, could that be described as that? Yeah. Yeah. Cause I know comedians that have tried to come here and they've had a real hard time. Yeah. So there's different types. So the one people typically know for performers is called the O-1 visa. So that's the one typically for musicians. It could be, I think also athletes, I guess, comedians, actors would fit in that as well. The thing with that one typically for musicians. It could be, I think also athletes, I guess,

comedians, actors would fit in that as well. The thing with that one though, is it's kind of narrow in that it's specifically for work just in that area. So with me, I am a musician, but I'm also an author, a podcaster, a coach. I do consulting. I do a whole bunch of different things. So for me, I do consulting. I do a whole bunch of different things. So for me, the E1 visa is for UK businesses. So I run a UK business, and I'm already doing substantial trade with the USA. In fact, I get more business from the USA than I get from my home country. So based off of that, it's a visa to go out there and expand operations within the U S essentially.

So that's the one I opted for. What kind of coaching do you do? I do life coaching. I do social media coaching. How does one get into the life coaching business? Honestly, I got into it because someone asked me to be their life coach. How does that work? He, he was just been following me online, saw all the stuff I was putting out there, really like my attitude and whatever, and was like,

hey, can I hire you to be my life coach? And initially, the term life coach is weird because it sounds – Yeah, it sounds like one step away from a cult. Yeah, yeah. Cult Zuby. Look, you got Team Zuby. You got a hat and a t-shirt, which is a little much. You know me.

I would say one or the other. You know me. I don't know about both. I was like, Joe commented on it last time, so I'm going to do it again. Yeah. So there's a whole bunch of different visas. Then, of course, there's the one for- But go back to his life coach thing.

Oh, sorry, life coach thing. Yeah. Yeah. So he asked me to be his life coach, and I was like- You didn't know this guy personally? I did. I did. He'd been a big fan of mine, big fan follower of my music

And so you'd been going back and forth, communicating with him online? Yeah, and so I was like, okay, let me get back to you on this and I went online I actually did like an online life coaching course because I was like, alright, if I'm going to do this let me at least get some basic training. So you were actually, were you motivated

to do it because of his request or were you interested in it already? You know, I'm very big on maximizing my potential, right? Everything that I have a capability to do and to put out there that could help and inspire people or motivate people, I want to do it. All right. I've been given. So just like with you, you don't limit yourself to I am just a comedian and that's all. I can only operate as a comedian or I am just a podcast. You do things you're good at and which you enjoy and which people want you to do and which, you know, offer value to the world.

And so with me, I started out just as a rapper, right? Like I'm a rapper, I'm an artist, I'm a musician. This is what I do. Stay in my lane. That's it. And then it was like, oh, actually, I'm good at other things too. So why am I leaving this all on the table?

So that's how I got into coaching. That's how I got into podcasting. That's how and why I wrote my book. Cause I was like, well, hey, a lot of people need fitness and nutrition advice. And I've been through this whole grind myself of learning how to do all of this. Why don't I write it down? Yeah. Why don't I write a book which will help people? And so I was like, Oh, okay. Like I can do that. I don't need to just stay in this one lane. And so that's the way I view everything that I do now.

I'm just like, look, I'm going to put different things out there. And if it can help or benefit your life in some way, shape, or form, awesome. That's in line with my goal. Whether that you, you know, some people are fans of different things that I do. Some people like my podcasts and interviews, and that's the main thing they're interested in. Some people are more interested in the fitness stuff. Some people are really just fans of my music. Some people like a combination of them and it's like, cool, you know, that that's fine. That's cool. Um, I used to always want the focus to just be on the music, but I was like, look, if there's other things I can offer, which help people then good. So when you say this life coaching thing, what like this guy, does he, how many, first of all, how many people are you doing it for?

At the most I've coached about eight people. Most clients I've had at a time is about eight. At the moment I've scaled it down because I'm focusing on so many other things and I've just put out my new album. focusing on so many other things and I've just put out my new album. But really what it is, is it's largely helping people to, it's largely helping people to help themselves and to organize their thoughts and set their goals and create a plan and a timeline on how they can achieve that. So they essentially contact you and they say, this is what I want to do. I want to start a business or I want to get out of the job that I'm at or that kind of shit. Yeah.

Or, you know, some people, sometimes people just hit a slump. You know, sometimes people just hit a slump in life. They don't really know what's the next move I should do. And you provide inspiration. You provide guidance. Talk to them, you know, just speak to them. Like a lot of times people don't have someone they can bounce those ideas off openly or maybe they're having some issues in their relationship and you know how do you do it uh yeah normally like just

video call it can be zoom um but yeah i mean with him i i did it worked in person because he was in the same city i was in at the time oh so you met in person yeah yeah did you start crying at all no no no. But with him, he hadn't been on a plane for 11 years because he had a fear of flying. I helped him overcome his fear of flying

after we finished working together. And that's just the plane crashed. Yeah, that would have been... Wouldn't it be ironic? Isn't that like a Landis Warren song? It didn't.

Don't you think? It's like, wait, on your wedding day. That would have not been my fault. But that was big, so that kind of sparked like, oh, wow, okay, cool.

Like that's a big win there. That seems like a lot of time though. Yeah. It's like an hour a week, hour, two hours a week. And it's very intense working with someone one-on-one. If you have eight people though,

eight people an hour or two hours a week. It is a lot. That's why when stuff gets busy with everything else, I scale it down. So right now I'm not working with a whole bunch of clients. But if I have a time where it's like, okay, cool. I got some downtime. I can do it. But even off that, I think that I'm going to write more books. I think the next book I write is possibly going to be about mindset. Mindset. Yeah. I think I want to write a mindset book. What about mindset? possibly going to be about mindset. Mindset. Yeah. I think I want to write a mindset book.

What about mindset? I think mindset is the fundamental layer of like everything we've been talking about, man. All this stuff with society and how it leads into politics and this and that. I think everything starts, everything starts with the mind, whether it's positive or negative. And I think if you know somebody's mindset, you can really see what trajectory they're on. You could have someone, you could have two guys who are both 20 years old and they haven't yet, they haven't yet had the time to accomplish much in life. But if you talk to them and you see their mindset and how they're approaching things, you know, this one is optimistic and truly believes in himself and doesn't have a lot of limiting beliefs and is willing to overcome hurdles, takes responsibility, isn't just blaming everybody else for all their problems, et cetera.

That person, you know, if they work hard at the right thing, they're virtually guaranteed to be successful as long as they're in a location which has opportunities. There's that, but there's also, you got to recognize when you're doing things correct and whether or not you're being stubborn and whether or not you can reassess and start over. Some people are afraid to admit that they've made errors and that they're on a bad path or that this business that they're trying to open or trying to establish has failed. It's doomed to fail. Yep.

And they have to start from scratch. People don't like to start from scratch. They don't like the feeling of being a beginner. But coming back to mindset, I think even with that, I think starting from scratch is a bit of a misnomer. I think you don't really start from scratch because you learn. Right. Right.

You learn. So if you, if you launch a podcast and it doesn't go as well as you want it to, or you think, okay, this isn't, this isn't quite right. Like you take all those lessons. And then when you're like, okay, I'm going to start launch another podcast or I'm going to launch another YouTube channel. I know tons of successful podcasters, YouTubers, authors, musicians, et cetera. And their first thing, their first thing isn't what, you know, blew them up. Right. They did something before they tried a YouTube channel and okay, that wasn't really, they didn't nail it that time, but then they take that and they're like, okay, cool. I'm going to launch it again and do it a little bit differently. And boom, that's the one that takes off. So I think that I don't think starting from scratch really, I don't think it really exists unless you maybe you're going into a totally,

absolutely new field that has no correlation with what you were doing before. I think you can always build off what you've learned previously. Yeah, we certainly can. You certainly take with you all the lessons you learn from any adversity that you've encountered your whole life. So in that sense, you really don't start from scratch. But what I mean is like sometimes people are on a path and they, you know, this is how they started and this is where they're going. And they don't realize like this is not working. You got to either reassess the entire thing or bail and go to something else. Yeah. And that's fine. And I think if you have the right mindset, I think one person's mindset

will be like, oh, I failed. That's it. I tried. It didn't work. There's a lot of those people out there. Yeah. They'll bail. And then another person is like, okay, that one didn't work. Cool. Put that to the side and I'm going to go for another thing. I mean, you only have to be, you only have to be successful once, like really successful once to be really, really successful. You could have, you could launch eight businesses and they crash and burn or they, you know, barely break even or whatever.

And then, you know, your ninth one, boom. And then from then on, like you are are now you're now successful right then that and that's very common with a lot of entrepreneurs business people even musicians etc like not every musician blows up off their first album right it's not rare for an artist to put out you know they put out oh their seventh release that's the one that launches them to the general public. And now they're really well known or authors. They write books, they write a book, they write a book. And then, you know, look at, look at, uh, I mean, it happens with a lot of, with a lot of people, with a lot of people. And I think with what's going on now, oftentimes a lot of people hit their stride on a huge level actually later in life than people may expect to, right?

Someone could literally, you know, in their 40s, their 50s, sometimes even in their 60s, that's when everything they've been building up and accumulating suddenly, you know, I don't know, Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson, like he, when did he reach this level of, you know, he's, he'd had his success in his psychological practice as a university lecturer, et cetera. And then was it like 2016, 2017? He appears on this podcast several times. He does this, he does that next thing. His book is selling millions of copies. And so, and I mean, that's,

that's in, you know, your what, fifth, fifth decade of life or is that right? Fifth decade. And, and that happens. And I think as long as you keep, I think a lot of stuff is you, you, you keep going and what level of success or, or whatever, whatever level people want to reach very much differs. Some people have no interest in fame or like some hyper crazy level of success. But I think as long as you keep going and moving forward and learning and taking on feedback, et cetera, and adjusting, then I think success is virtually guaranteed. Well, Jordan's an interesting case in that he was already successful. I mean, he was a university professor and a professor at Harvard, in fact. Yes.

But he reached this moment in his life where his expertise collided with the cultural war. Agreed. And that is what made him, air quotes, successful. But that also put him under an insane amount of pressure. Yeah. And his life kind of really took some crazy turns. And you could argue maybe like emotionally became less successful. I don't know. I mean, he went through some rough times.

Oh, absolutely. And I think also the pressure of becoming famous at a late age where you didn't anticipate it at all. And then all of a sudden you're criticized worldwide. Not just that, but misrepresented. He's misrepresented more than any person I've ever encountered in my life. And willfully misrepresented in a way where people are just deciding to pretend he's something that he's not and just working off that narrative. Yeah. I mean, you're up there as well. Misrepresented?

Yeah. You're up there, right? Yeah, but I have this opportunity to represent myself. Yeah. So does Jordan. Yeah, but I have it on a pretty big scale where it's difficult for anybody. Anybody who listens to me on a regular basis, it's difficult to change their perception of me because their perception of me is based on me. Yes. It's not based on some asshole who writes some article, takes some things out of context and tries to pretend that I'm something different than I am.

It's based on the actual me. that I'm something different than I am. It's based on the actual me. And the problem with anytime you're putting out a lot of shit online, a lot of content, is that people can always take little snippets out of context here or there and paint a narrative of who you are. And Jordan didn't get to experience that until he was older in life. And then also his expertise was clinical psychology, which is even more interesting because he understood the motivations for people to misrepresent and to change and distort. And he also understood that this narrative that was being pushed forth ultimately had authoritarian consequences.

And the one that terrifies him the most, and we all should be terrified of this, is the idea of equality of outcome. And the equality of opportunity is a wonderful concept. And I think that'd be the best hope for all of humanity is to give people the opportunity to succeed, but you're going to have fails. You're going to. And as soon as you want those people who fail to get the same amount of resources as the people who succeed, you have a real problem because the only way to enforce that is violence. Yep. And you also have a problem in that you don't have an equality of effort. No.

And some people are just going to be more driven and they're going to succeed more. And there's real motivation for them to succeed because they're going to get more resources. They're going to have more financial success, more attention, and you don't necessarily want that or need it, right? But you make your choice. If you decide that you want to be in incredible cardiovascular shape and you run every day, all day, you're doing something to acquire this result. And whether or not you want that result or not, I don't want that result.

I don't want to be a guy who runs all day. But I have friends that run all day. Those people do that because they want that thing. And it's very difficult to get that thing. And they've gotten it. And they've gotten it through extreme effort. You could apply the same idea towards money. The problem is there's a narrative, particularly in this country, that rich people are bad,

that they've done something wrong in order to acquire this wealth, that they're shitty because they have something that seems impossible to achieve for the average person. Like Jeff Bezos is a great example. If you look at Jeff Bezos, he's worth like $180 and, what is it worth? $180 billion or something crazy. Close to 200 billion, I think. You look at that and you go, why does he have so much money? He doesn't need that much money. He shouldn't be able to get that much money. I mean, there's people that literally say billionaire shouldn't exist, but you're going to stop innovation. If you put a cap on the amount

of people or the amount of money that people make, if you put a cap on the amount of people or the amount of money that people make, if you put a cap on the amount of success that someone has in finance, are you going to apply that to other things as well? Are you going to apply that to the amount of art they produce? Are you going to apply that to the amount of weights they lift? I mean, what are we doing? Because you're going to have outliers in everything, in everything we do. You're going to have ridiculous-sized bodybuilders, and you're going to have super wealthy people. You're going to have those.

But that's just a product of society. And the real problem is that people are comparing themselves to other people. Now, there's an argument, and a good argument, that those people should fucking pay taxes. And that's a problem when you see people that are super billionaires and they've managed to manipulate the system in a way where they don't pay any federal income tax. I don't know how the fuck that happens. I don't understand it. I don't get it. What tax shelters they're using or what fucking legal shenanigans they're involved in yeah that bothers

me yeah i'll be real that's the one that's the one inverted commas crime where like if somebody gets caught i feel bad for the person who got caught because i i think tax is generally theft anyway so but do you know yeah so how do you think they should pay for infrastructure how do you think they should pay for um i think that, look, if any entity outside the government does what is called taxation, then it's called extortion. Well, but the government, the idea is that you willingly pay this because you want the world to be a better place. You want firefighters, if you want police. If you don't pay it, what happens? That's a problem. Yeah. Enforcement. So it's enforced. But if you're a good person, you should be paid anyway.

Why? Well, I want this street to be paved. I would like the bridges to be fixed. I would like my children to be educated. I would like police officers to get paid well. I agree. I would like firefighters to get paid well. How do you propose that those things happen without taxes?

I don't think that the government needs to necessarily do every single aspect of those things. Okay. Do you think that those should be privately sponsored? Like how do you think that we should fix the roads? I think it should largely be privatized. Okay. So then how do they get their money back? How do people get their money back? Yeah. Toll roads. Fuck that. No. Fuck that. Fuck toll roads. Do you know how bad toll roads are? Do you know how bad they fuck things up? They fuck up traffic. It's a nightmare. And how do you enforce those tolls? How do you keep people from running through those gates? Well, guess what? You're going to use force. technological ways to do it. Look, I'm not a full-blown anarchist. I think your friend Michael Malice would probably be the best person to have this conversation with. But I think that the government certainly- Yeah, he doesn't even believe in police, that crazy little fuck. I know. No, I think that the scope of what the government does is way beyond what it should be.

And it's way beyond what it initially ever was. It's something that's grown and grown and grown to the point where people think the government should be controlling. I mean, right. Look at where we are right now. They think the government should be controlling literally every aspect of people's lives. Well, I disagree with that. I definitely don't think they should expand their control over people's lives. But I think we need to understand that there are some aspects of our society where we accept some socialist ideas. The fire department is one of them. The police department is another one.

I think that we should all contribute to make the society and the culture a better place. We all use the resources of these cities and we should pay. We should pay into the resources of these cities because we benefit from them and because we would like the place we live to be a better place. We would like it to be safer. We would like it to be protected from fires. Sure. We would like to have good streets. I agree. I agree. I think that how far, how, I mean, this is a large, This is really what a large thing that determines people's politics is how much they believe how far, you know, you've got anarchists on one end. Right. When you think literally the who think the state should own absolutely everything. Someone who's conservative will be somewhere there. Someone who's a liberal would be a bit bigger. So these are really interesting conversations.

For me personally, I mean, I think the concept of taxation itself by definition is robbery. Why is it robbery? Because it's confiscation of wealth under the threat of violence. It's just that it's happening. The threat of violence to be enforced. It's either the threat of violence or the threat of incarceration. It's not voluntary. There are taxes which are less obviously.

I think income tax is absolutely theft. I think sales taxes, et cetera, those are more debatable because you can- You cannot buy things. Yeah. I mean, if someone is just like, look, okay, Joe Rogan's got a lot of money, let's tax him at 90%, right? I mean, that's just- I've seen that. I've seen people say that about people that make a certain amount, they should be taxed at 90%. I'm like, guess what? You're never going to have people successful, and that's what they like because they're not successful. The people that say that are never successful people.

It's based in resentment. They're usually doughy, sloppy, lazy fucks. It's based in resentment and greed, right? I've never understood why is it greedy and selfish to want to keep the money that you've worked hard for, yet it's not greedy and selfish to want to jack and redistribute someone else's wealth under the threat of a government government. I don't know if it's greedy, but it's definitely selfish. The reason why I don't think it's greedy is because I don't think you personally get any of that money. I think

the idea is that money goes in the system. Some people think it should be redistributed. Evenly distributed to everybody. Yeah, they're sloppy, sloppy, lazy people. There's a lot of people out there that if they're running up the hill they'll fucking quit i know they will quit and they'll lay down and cry and they'll blame genetics or their blame whatever fucking you know privilege you have that allowed you to exercise and gain the ability to run up that hill better than them and they'll they'll say it's some some ism a racism sexism this is why i was saying you know stuff comes back to mindset because someone with that type

of mindset they're guaranteed as long as they maintain that mindset they are they're guaranteed to failure but don't you think that like i think people need to do difficult things and i think sports is the best vector for that like sport sports are one of the best avenues where people can figure out that it's hard to do things but if you do things and accomplish them there's a great reward there's an amazing feeling that's a comp that's a part of that and the physical aspect of sports they're so uh unless you're dealing with like boxing decisions they're so straightforward. It's either you win or you lose.

Either the basketball goes in the net or it does not. Either the puck goes in the net or it does not. You know, either you submit the person or you do not. Like it's very definitive, you know. It's like those things where there's no room for fuckery and bullshit are so important for people because if you first start out playing a game like soccer, for instance, you're going to suck. Everybody sucks in the beginning. And then you learn how to do it better. And then one day you're playing someone who is like you were three years ago or four years ago, but now you have advanced.

And then you can dominate that person like, wow, look at this. I have developed these skills and I've shown that hard work and discipline and focus when applied is incredibly rewarding because now I know the fruits of the labor. And then I can apply that to everything else in life. It becomes a vehicle for that mindset and the discipline that you develop through this, whatever sport you are pursuing that you achieve excellence in, you could acquire that. And then you could use that mentality and that experience in doing difficult things and overcoming obstacles and apply it to anything. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, that's why you see a correlation, right? Between,

I mean, I don't know. I don't know any jacked socialists. I'm sure they exist. But there is a- They're probably just trying to fuck socialist girls. I haven't come across them. You haven't come across jacked socialists? Have you? There's a lot of jacked vegans. I bet a lot of them would be like socialists.

I think some of them might. People find these little tribes, you know, and they become like their identity gets connected to those tribes. Yeah. But I think like if you understand that, you know, you get in. Nothing is more. It's one reason why I love like lifting weights. I guess the same could be applied to running, et cetera. It's like it's just you against the iron. Right. Right. There's an it's objective. It doesn't care about your race, your gender, your whatever. There's no team to fall back on. The weights strength, as you said, that then ends up being applied to other areas of your life. You understand, OK, I can't just sit back and expect everybody else to work and I reap the benefits.

It's like, no, if I want the benefits, I've got to put in the work. And something I've said before is, you know, it's impossible. I've never seen someone naturally improve their body without also improving their mind. It's not possible. See someone who's lost 50 pounds, lost a hundred pounds, gained muscle, whatever, their mindset has to shift for that to happen. It's a good point. Yeah, it has to, it has to. If someone loses a hundred pounds, they are a better person after that 100 pound loss, not simply because they've lost 100 pounds, but the mindset shift that happens that's necessary for that to even take place is significant. Have you ever read Henry Rollins, his piece on lifting weights?

I haven't actually read it. Henry was really big on power lifting for a while. His joints have kind of failed him as he's gotten older. He's still into heavy-duty exercise, but now he does a lot of body weight stuff. He's a really interesting guy. Okay. But he wrote a piece many, many years ago about his love of power lifting, of lifting weights.

And it was essentially the same thing. I think his quote was, the iron always kicks you the real deal. Iron and the soul by Henry Rollins. And I think this is like 1994 from Details Magazine. Henry writes a lot. He's constantly writing articles. Fascinating guy. One of the more interesting guys that I've ever interviewed. But it's a great lot. Okay. Like he's constantly writing articles. Fascinating guy. Like one of the more interesting guys that I've ever interviewed.

But it's a great piece. Okay, I'll read that. It's really good. And it's all just about iron, just the weights. Basically what you kind of said. Yeah. The weights are always the same. Yep.

Yeah. Here it is. When I used to think that it was my adversary that I was trying to lift, that which does not want to be lifted, I was wrong. When the iron doesn't want to come off the mat, it's the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn't teach you anything. That's the way iron talks to you.

It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you. It's a great bit. It's a really great piece. I'm going to read that. The piece is all just about his experience and lifting weights and that they don't lift themselves. It's a lot of effort. You know, the miles don't run themselves. Exactly. It's anything that you want to do that's hard to do is worth doing. And the progressive overload. I mean, it's amazing when you've been training at anything for a while and what used to be extraordinarily difficult or even impossible for you, you reach a certain level and you look back and you're like, man, I remember when, you know, you can do 10 reps of this weight now. And you remember back to when you couldn't even

lift it. Um, like something with me, a lot of people don't know. Like I used to, you know, I weigh less now than I weighed 20 years ago. Really? Yes. Why is it in what you were overweight? Yeah, I was overweight. How fat were you? Uh, I was never set up for a joke. My wife is so fat. That sounds like you're set up for a joke. My wife is so fat. How fat is she? I was never super massive. I think when I was like 14, 15, I probably weighed about, okay, in pounds, I think maybe I got up to like- Don't do it in stone, whatever you do.

210, 215. Oh, okay. Yeah. Whereas now I'm like 193, 194, something like that. Oh, okay. Yeah. Whereas now I'm like 193, 194, something like that. So, and obviously I'm infinitely stronger and fitter, et cetera. Sure.

Totally different body composition. And a lot of people don't realize that now. They're like, oh, you've got great genetics or whatever. And it's like, you know, you have to reach your, in absolutely everything, we've all got potential, right? We all have potential. You have physical potential, mental potential, et cetera. And I think that the ethical thing to do is to maximize that as much as you can, because by you doing so, number one, you know, it's good for you and people around you directly.

It also sets an example. But if you yourself are not optimized or at least pushing to optimize yourself, then you limit what you can give back to the world and to other people. So the reason why I'm like, you know, obsessed or really into lifting weights and having these conversations and, you know, writing books and doing it's because I'm like, look, I'm trying to maximize my own capacity. I'm trying to optimize. Right.. I'm trying to optimize, right? I'm 34 years old now, almost 35. It's like, look, when I'm 55, when I'm 65, I want to be like, you know, I want to be looking back now. Just like I can look back now at when I was 20 and be like, whoa, awesome. I've come.

I've really, really progressed in all these different ways. I want that to be the same. And by me doing that, it's like, okay, the better I get, the more I can help other people to get better. You know, you can't pour water from an empty jug. So let me fill up my jug and then cool. I can help people with this. I can help people with that. Every new skill I learned, I couldn't have written my fitness book if I myself didn't go through that journey, but it's like, okay, cool. I've done this now. How many people are out there in the world who want to learn how to get stronger, lose weight, burn fat? Billions, probably billions, right? Everybody wants to improve their body in some

way. So it's like, okay, cool. Look, I've done this and here's what I learned. I made a lot of mistakes. I did some stuff right, but here's what I know now. I would like to know what percentage of fitness books are actually applied by the people who buy them it's a good question i bet it's like one percent you know what that's part of why my you know the the one of the biggest compliments in my book is the same as the biggest criticism which is that it's short right i intentionally made it short and concise and simple because i didn't want to create this fat thick book which someone will buy and they'll put it on their table but they they won't read no I was I want you to be able to read this like I want you to be able to get through this in a couple hours read it

multiple times be able to reference back to it rather than and I wrote it as an ebook I didn't actually plan to print it out um so that's why I did it like that I didn't want it to just be full of all this. You don't need to know the name of every single muscle in the body and all the details of, you know, pro different amino acids and this, and that's like, all right, what do you actually need to know? Right. So that's the book that I wanted to read, to write. I wanted to write the book. I could give to my 15 year old self and be like, look, this is what you need. Do this. It'll work for you. It's like self-help books are bet are very similar yeah

in that i think probably a small number of people who buy them actually apply the principles it's it's it's likely it's probably always going to be a minority but of those who do then this is the thing you know with everything you can only help people who want to help themselves well it's it's like everything else, right? I mean, how many people start a thing and then how few people master that thing? How few people become very successful at that thing? It's very small. It doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means it's hard.

It's hard to become a PhD. It's hard to become a black belt in jujitsu. It's hard to become a fucking airline pilot. All these things are difficult and it's hard to do difficult things but there's a deeper reward in accomplishing difficult things. It feels great. It's fun.

It's exciting. The human mind has a desire to solve puzzles. Yes. Which is the problem with this whole QAnon thing. These motherfuckers,

they're solving nonsense that have been hustled by that kid in China or in Japan rather. I'm going to have to watch this. Oh, do you solving nonsense. They're being hustled by that kid in China, or in Japan, rather. I'm going to have to watch this. Oh, do you? Is there going to be another one, do you think? I hope so.

There's got to be another grand. Oh, another QAnon thing coming up? Or it moves, it shifts. Now that they know it works, yeah, some suckers will fall into something. Someone else will come up with another one, and they'll do something along those lines, I guarantee. People have a deep desire for hidden information. They love hidden information. They love mysteries. They really do. That's why people are into UFOs and that's why people are into ancient civilizations. They want to find something that people haven't solved yet. And I

think it's part of the reason why human beings are so obsessed with innovation, right? Innovation, at a certain point in time, like how much is a new phone going to change your life? It doesn't matter. It's like we're obsessed with these new great things that are better than the thing before. And we're obsessed with secrets. The mind seeks improvement and the mind seeks new information and new paradigm shifting moments and there's just we don't like things to be stagnant even though there's like probably

some great benefit to living in a very simple way yes most people don't enjoy that. Most people want their life to become more complicated and more, at least on paper, more successful. Have you ever seen Werner Herzog's documentary, Happy People, Life in the Taiga? I have not, no. It's a very interesting documentary because it's about these people that live in Siberia. And they're trappers and hunters and fishermen, and that's all they do. They have snowmobiles they get around with, and they have dogs,

and they use dogs for hunting to let them know when bears are too close, and these people are extremely happy. They don't have high instances of mental illness like we do here in the United States, and they basically live like a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. But it's an extremely difficult climate. I mean, they're in Siberia.

And they only have like a few months of warmth in the year. And during that time, they're smothered by mosquitoes. It's wild. Oh, wow. Okay. Oh, my't know i didn't know mosquitoes were bad in siberia have you ever been to alaska no not yet bro you ain't never seen mosquitoes really do you see the aggressive motherfuckers in alaska because they know they only have a couple of months oh wow yeah me and my buddy ari we went out to alaska we did a couple of comedy gigs and we did a few days of um fishing and we went salmon fishing we had a great time but one of the things that was wild about it was you get out of the car and I mean within seconds you are covered in mosquitoes and not little ones

either man they're like fucking birds yeah like we closed the door of the car because our plan was we brought some mosquito repellent. We're going to get out of the car. We'll apply the mosquito repellent. We're good. Suckers. As soon as we opened up the car door, they were flying in like they knew we were there. I don't know how the fuck they know where you are immediately, but they breathe You know read your carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide

Do they is there um this might be a silly question because it might just be localized But do is there malaria there or is that not a thing? I don't think that's a thing I think that's tropical climate. It's generally there. I think it has to do with There has to be like a vector, right? I think they don't live all year round, right? So they die off. And I think that's probably why they don't care. I'm just guessing there.

But I've heard like malaria, essentially you hear a lot about it in the Congo. Africa in general. But it was the southern states of the United States for a long time, but they eradicated that by getting rid of standing puddles and stagnant bodies of water. Type 2 mosquitoes, Alaska mosquito season. This is the size of them. Yeah, look at that lady's foot or that guy's foot.

Those are big mosquitoes. Yeah, but, bro, that's what they're like. That's not a joke. They swarm you, man. It's crazy. That's Alaska? You've never seen are big mosquitoes. Yeah. But bro, that's what they're like. That's not a joke. They swarm you, man. It's crazy. You've never seen anything like, yeah, bro. You never seen anything like it. Wow. I'm telling you, we were freaking the fuck out. I couldn't believe it. That's not out of the car. I was like, this is the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life. Also Alberta and Alberta, Canada. There's we, we get these things called thermocels. When you hunt in Alberta, you put these things with you. There's like a belt holster that you can carry them around with.

In a thermocel, you have like these little – they look like large squares of gum. It's like a blue pad, and you slide it into this contraption, contraption and uh you light it you ignite it and there's like a little heating element and it forces this mist to rise up off this blue pad as it heats up and that mist keeps mosquitoes the fuck away okay but i'm like what is this mist doing to me why how is it okay if i breathe this shit if mosquitoes are smart enough to get the fuck away from yeah but um in this happy people life in the taiga they made like a concoction of i think it was like tree sap and i think it was like pitch and a bunch of other things they would smear it all over themselves to keep the mosquitoes off but it was bad it was really bad that's interesting i've never seen

that type of swarm i've only seen one super crazy insect swarm. And this was, uh, when I, I lived in, when I was living in Saudi Arabia, there was one year, I don't know what happened, but there was a nuts, though. You're just driving. It's crunching. Like you're flying into the windscreen. You're on a bike. Like you're just getting battered by all these locusts. I was a kid, you know, in the playground, like just everywhere, absolutely everywhere. That was very, very weird. I'm pretty sure locusts are just grasshoppers.

Same family. I think there's some sort of a shift that happens, whether it's a climate thing or there's something that happens to them. Find out what creates locusts. Here it is. Locusts are the swarming phase of certain species of short horn grasshoppers in the family of short horn grasshoppers in the family Acrididae. These insects are usually solitary, but under certain circumstances, they become more abundant and change their behavior and habits, becoming gregarious. But yeah, when they had swarms of locusts across the country in America. It was connected to some sort of climate change or something that happened.

Yeah, something happens with the climate and they go bonkers. Yeah, they shift and then they get a whole fuckload of them. Siberian mosquitoes. Yeah. Or worse, apparently, than even in Alaska. Watch this. They put it down and immediately they get swarmed by mosquitoes. Those are all just on the side of a building. Those are all mosquitoes. Yeah. Or worse, apparently, than even in Alaska. Watch this. They put it down, and immediately they get swarmed by mosquitoes. Wow. Those are all just on the side of a building.

Those are all mosquitoes. Wow. That's wild. That's so weird. I totally associate mosquitoes with hot, tropical climates, not with cold places. Those are all mosquitoes. Well, they are very, very, very aggressive in these

cold places, because they only exist for a certain amount of time. Yeah. And they bite a lot. Oh, yeah. They fucking swarm you. You know, have you ever seen people in Africa where they take mosquitoes and they make food out of them? From mosquitoes? Yes.

No, I don't. They take a pot, like a pan, and then they swing it through the air and collect by smacking these mosquitoes in the air into a pot. And they'll compress it, and they eventually get enough of them, and they pound it into a patty, and then they'll cook it. I have not seen that. Yeah. No. I feel like I've missed out. I don't remember at all.

Do you ever wonder how much random knowledge you have in your head? I have way too much. Way too much. So they take this pot, and they're swinging. And obviously, these people, this is a horrific example of swarmed mosquitoes. I mean, they're all over the place. And so they do this, and then they smash these things down into these patties, and then they cook these patties.

Whoa, it looks like black pudding. Yeah, like blood pudding, right? Yeah. And they turn these patties into mosquito burgers. Wow, it would be high protein. Yes. Yeah, it would be, right? Like a lot of bugs are very high in protein Very good for you

That was like in that movie Where they're on the train And they're eating all the like cricket burgers What movie is that? Sorry it was on the tip of my tongue As I started saying it Chris Evans is in it Society has gone down to everybody stuck on a train

It's now a TV show Oh right right right Like a right, right, right. Like a science fiction movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When they're on that... Fuck. Sorry. It was an interesting movie.

Like, real weird. Snowpiercer. Snowpiercer. I'm really bad with movies. I'm really bad with movies. Another thing that people have been eating a lot... I was listening to this podcast. You know, there's a recent cicada uh hatch you know those things cicadas apparently if you cook them correctly

are delicious so uh like i was listening to my friend uh ryan callahan his podcast he was giving out cicada recipes yeah i count to like they they take them and they're like drizzle them with olive oil and yeah, and they they cook them Yeah, spicy popcorn cicadas. Apparently they taste good man be and you would say like well, that's disgusting Why would you eat a bug? Well, that's what lobsters are lobsters are just bugs. They're underwater bugs. Yeah, in fact people that have Allergies to shellfish the enzymes in the shellfish are the exact same enzymes in roaches. And we found that out from Fear Factor. Because people that were allergic rather to shellfish, we fed them roaches and they would fucking seize up.

And we were like, shit, we gotta get them. Yeah, we gotta get them with an EpiPen. That's nuts. Yeah. Man, no, I mean, I feel like I've worked too hard in life to- Eat a bug? Eat bugs. Why?

I eat bugs. I work hard. I'm not sold on eating bugs. No, it's not for me. Are you squeamish? Look at that. Those look good. I am squeamish, yeah.

Look at this. I am squeamish. Brooklyn Bugs. Is that a fucking real website? I'm not eating that. This is the guy who just eats a lot of bugs. Is this cicadas too? Yeah, there's a whole article about the brood X cicadas this year. Yeah, I'm not eating that. Is this cicadas too? There's a whole article about the brood X cicadas this year.

Dude, I'll eat the fuck out of that. That looks delicious. People should be... I think it should be legal, but I will not be participating. Well, a lot of people don't want to eat animals, but they need animal protein and B vitamins, but they have no problem

eating bugs. Now, I don't understand that. That doesn't make sense to me. Or is it like unless they have an issue with the farming practices maybe? Well, that makes sense. Okay. I have an issue with that too.

I think they just feel like they're connected to animals in some way and they're not connected to bugs or animals. What they should eat is mollusks because there's's a real argument that clams and oysters and things along those lines, scallops, are more primitive than plants. And that plants have incredible abilities that we're just now finding out in terms of their ability to communicate, share resources, the mycorrhizal relationship that they have with fungus. They're fascinating. Plants are bizarre. They can hear something eating them and change their flavor profile to make them undesirable to predation.

Is this specific plants or plants in general? I don't know. That's a good question. I know that multiple different kinds of plants are capable of doing that. So much so that there's some plants that they can play a recording of caterpillars eating plants and they will make this shift and produce these chemicals that make them taste disgusting. Wow. Wow. I've learned some new stuff. The world is, man, nature is. Nature is wild.

Nature is nuts. It's crazy. When I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time just like learning, just reading and learning about animals and just all the weird. It's a war out there, bro. It's a war for survival in a strange way. It's a different planet than what you're talking about, but it's. Based on observation of evening primroses, the team behind the new study discovered that within minutes of sensing the sound waves of nearby bee wings through flower petals, the concentration of the sugar in the plant's nectar was increased by an average of 20%.

Wow. So they hear the bees and they're like, come get some pussy. Come get that sugar. Wow. Yeah. That's so interesting. It's such a wild battle of resources and just, you know, the strategies of survival.

But this documentary about the taiga, the happy people, life in the taiga, is really interesting because these people have an incredibly difficult life. It's so hard to survive. They're fishing for pike, and they're catching as many as they can, and they're storing them through the winter, and they're storing bread at these cabins that they have set up for trapping,

and then they're hunting as much as they can and getting as much meat as they can. And the idea is just to make it through the winter, to survive. That's how human beings have largely existed. I mean, it's so new that we can just sit on our butts and survive and thrive. But we don't like it. No. The thing is, like, what comes with that life of sitting on your butt and just ordering Postmates

is depression. Yes. And that's what's fucked up. It's so strange. I was gonna say, yeah. It's like this easy way of life is actually hard because it makes life harder.

Yep. The harder way of life makes life easier because these people are happy. This is the weird contradiction. We're not designed for this easy access to everything. In fact, we're designed to require a certain amount of struggle in order to achieve homeostasis. Yep. I think that that's what happens. I have no idea if this is

like accurate scientifically, but I have a sort of hypothesis that when it comes to things like anxiety, shall we call it, right? There's almost like a baseline level that you have or that is sort of created. you're battling against the elements and you're struggling for food or whatever, that anxiety and fear and whatever it is, it kind of, it dissipates to the right places because you're actually dealing with real existential struggles. And in the absence of that, that it mounts up and it doesn't have anywhere to go. And I think that's part of why you're getting people being triggered by everything and overreacting to everything and everything is an existential threat. Even it's a very minor threat, but it's perceived as an existential threat. I think even, you know, again, you know, if you look at the past year and a half, if you even look at the response of this thing between, you know, the Western world and parts of Africa, I mean, I've spoken to people. western world and parts of africa i mean i've spoken to people uh i've got tons of followers in various african countries and a lot of them are like hey like we've got malaria right like this this whole this whole disease whatever you guys are all freaking out about like it's it's way it's way less severe than malaria and we've been dealing with malaria for decades

malaria has killed half the people who've ever died ever wow yeah so they're like we're not do we look that up is that accurate that up, so they're like, we're not freaking out. Did we look that up? Is that accurate? Did I fuck that up before? So they're like, look, we're not. Something crazy like that, right? Yeah, so they're like, we're not freaking out about this. I think that half ever is hard. I feel like when I looked it up, it was hard to prove.

Yeah, it's hard to prove. It's a lot of people. It's an insane number of people who died from malaria. Yeah. Do you know anybody who's ever gotten it? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, my family is originally from Nigeria, and malaria in Nigeria is not as bad as it used to be. And there's more preventions and et cetera.

But, yeah, I remember when my dad had malaria even. And it was, you know, he was bedridden for, he was not in a great state. But, yeah, malaria is, it's common out there. Yeah, it's a terrifying disease. Before you travel, you take the tablets, you take them once a week. So you start taking it like two to three weeks before you fly out and then you carry on. And then after you come back, you still take it for another two or three weeks. They can make you loony too, apparently.

Especially if you mix them with alcohol. Depends on what stuff, but some of the malaria medication preventative medication when mixed with alcohol can make someone lose their fucking minds i think i just found the source of this quote it's from a 2002 article on nature that they published it and it talks about the portrait of a serial killer and like the second paragraph it says malaria may have killed off half the people that ever lived wow but i just read another article that says they couldn't really find proof of that. It definitely kills tons and tons.

Two million deaths a year. Jesus Christ. Two million deaths a year every year. Half of those are children in sub-Saharan Africa. Holy fuck. So it kills a million children every year in sub-Saharan Africa. What a creepy fucking disease.

And it's been around for, and that's been happening for- Forever. Ever. Forever. Forever. And that's the reason why people have sickle cell anemia, right? It's like a variation or rather a mutation where your body's trying to fight off malaria. I believe that's the origin.

I know it's hereditary. I don't know if that's how it initially started going way, way back. Tiffany Haddish actually told me that. Yeah. I know that. See if that's true. So sickle cell anemia is hereditary. So if both parents are a carrier, then there's a 25% chance that any child that's born will get it. If both parents have it, all their children will get it. If one's a carrier, one has neither, then... Yeah. Carriers of the sickle cell trait are particularly resistant to severe malarial episodes. They are less resistant to mild cases.

The mechanism by which carriers are protected from malaria, is different than the acquired immunity from both AA and AS individuals achieved from following repeated exposure to the disease. Interesting. So different immunity than you achieve from repeated exposure to the disease. Imagine repeated exposure to malaria. Yeah, you don't want that. And sickle cell kills a lot of people. My friend Walter died from it.

Sickle cell kills a lot of people. A guy that I knew when I was a kid, he was one of the best taekwondo athletes I'd ever met. He was always in the hospital. And when he was out, he was amazing. And then he would get healthy again. Then he would get sick again. I have a lot of family members who had sickle cell and have now passed from it. It's funny that it doesn't give anybody any comfort when you tell them about diseases that are worse.

No. If you tell them about malaria, you tell them about sickle cell, even heart disease. If you say, hey, even though the numbers are probably inflated from people that died from COVID because it's actually people died with COVID because they have an average of four comorbidities,

the average number of people who have died from heart disease is actually higher. And they go, well, that doesn't help me. And I understand that. It's not contagious. People don't really like statistics when anecdotes kind of trump statistics on an individual level, right? It's also they don't like anything that challenges their preconceived notions. They have this idea that they have in their head

about what something is, and anything that challenges that, they don't like. Yeah. I think also, again, like I said before, I really do think our modern society has a very weird relationship with death, and I think that part of what's been happening is that I think for the i think

for the first time it shouldn't really be for the first time but it seems like for the first time a lot of people have like been forced maybe to to contemplate to contemplate it and i think that a lot of the reaction and the overreaction given the you know the level of the threat is based on, you know, we've been so comfortable for so many decades, which is great, which is great. But I think that so much of what we see and what we talk about on our podcasts, et cetera, actually stems from the fact that as a society, we've had such little adversity for such a long period of time, right? No, you know, it's not like all these young men are being drafted out to war, dying on the battlefields, or there's like a true plague or famine or, you know, natural disasters, just taking people out

or wild animals coming and jacking people. So I think that people have become so comfortable and, you know, you have that as the default that sort of the most minor thing suddenly the reaction and response to it is very it's overblown right it's very overblown it's not proportional to the threat that's something I've really been seeing a lot of people that are you know for lack of a better term they're soft yeah exactly you know and for lack of a better term, they're soft. Yeah, exactly. You know, and there's all that's the people that I know that have freaked out the most are the people that have taken the least amount of time to prepare themselves physically for any adversity. Yeah.

And there are a lot of doughy people. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, if you, if you see that, and even just in your own life, if you dealt with, you know, directly or indirectly, like, you know, suffering or death or whatever it is, then it forces you to think about that. Yeah. It forces you to think about that. Like, I'm hyper, I'm hyper conscious of my own mortality. And I have been for many, many years. And I've seen, I'm from a very large family. And one of the, you know, that's an amazing thing. But one thing that comes with that, which again, people don't talk about is you witness a lot of death, you know, a lot of people pass away and, you know, you've had friends die. And so it makes you think it makes you realize, okay, I'm here for a limited amount of time. I'm not immortal. Um, you know, life is precious. It's worth living. I got to go out there and do it. So to me, it's like, it's a positive thing. I don't view it as like a sad, morbid thing.

I just think it's like, OK, well, that's what it is. We're not getting out of here alive. And so let's make the most of it. Let's treat people well. Let's drive. Yeah. There's a balance to everything. And the one thing that comes out of loss is you do appreciate when you've especially when you lose friends and you lose family members,

you appreciate the ones around you more. Cause you know, you know that feeling of when they're gone, you know what that's like. Yeah. And I think it makes you, I know with me for sure, it's like part of why I don't,

uh, you know, I got to, I don't hold grudges and stuff like that. Right. Or anytime. Like I always want anyone who I love and appreciate to know that I love and appreciate them. Yes. You know, and to me, that's so important because things happen. And I've witnessed that enough times to be

like, you know what, it's not worth like having animosity towards people or holding grudges or whatever, because, you know, number one, you don't want to do that anyway, but also, you know, you wouldn't want to have a situation where, oh, like something bad happens to someone who you actually care about or whatever. And you're like angry at at them or like they don't think you love them or whatever it is and i'm just like no like you know god forbid that's the worst for me personally i'm like that would just be horrible it's just worthless grudges are worthless they are and they just they just give you something new to think about what they say it's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Yes.

That's, I think that's about jealousy. Oh, is it jealousy? Yeah. I don't know. I've heard it used for holding a grudge. Maybe it applies to both, I guess. Yeah. It's the only thing that poisons the vessel that contains it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's just a foolish way to look at life, especially when you recognize that this is really a temporary situation. Grudges are useless. It's a weakness, really. Because to dwell on things like that, why?

By the way, man, I wanted to tell you on air with that said, man, I freaking love what you're doing, man. Thank you. I don't know if you understand how global your impact is. I know most of the people you talk I don't know if you understand how global your impact is. I know most of the people you talk to are based here in the U.S., but your global impact is crazy.

I've met people who learned English by listening to your podcast. What? Really? There's people who use your podcast to learn the English language. Well, they're going to learn it all fucked up. Tell them to go to a real school. There are people who have, like, they literally, yeah, I've met people in multiple countries who are like, oh yeah, like I learned my English from listening to, not just that, but listening to these long form conversations. Right. If you want to learn like conversational English, there's actually a few things that are.

My friend Felipe learned English from watching American TV when he was in Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's common. And with a podcast, it's two people talking for a long period of time uninterrupted. It's actually a great way to learn. Okay. Because the way if you watch TV or even movies, they don't necessarily speak in the real world way.

Right. But in a podcast, it's very real. It's very real. But yeah, man, like every country I've gone to, like there's, you're reaching. You're reaching. It's so bizarre that this thing didn't really exist until a decade or so ago that there was never this place where people could just talk and then millions of people could listen.

You know, you had to go through all these channels and you had to be approved and you had to follow restrictions because there was guidelines on speech and language. There were so many different things that were hurdles that would stop a person from having these kind of conversations. Plus, financially, who the fuck is going to bankroll someone just sitting and talking about whatever you want? Like if I had a producer, not just like a Jamie producer, but like an executive, who's like, okay, so you and Zuby, here's the things that we'd like you to cover.

Like you talk about the things, you should probably talk about his music. You should probably talk about the, hey, get the fuck away from me. We're going to talk about whatever comes up. Like they'd be like, you can't just do that. But no, that's the only way it's going to appear like an actual conversation. When someone starts reading off of a list of things, like some of my friends come on here and they have like a list of things.

And I'll entertain that, which is great. But I would prefer they didn't. I prefer we just talk. But some people are just like they want to be more organized, you know, it's just fine. But there's something magical about just conversations. There is, there is. And it really introduces in firstly, it's introduces people to all of these minds and people and ideas. And also it, it shows people's personalities. It really shows people's personalities. Um, one thing I find so hard to do now, cause I've gotten so used to podcasting

that when I do television appearances, it's actually quite, it's like a real challenge cause it's so short. I was on, I was on Fox news a week ago and it was like, it was like two minutes, like a two minute segment. So i was like i'm there i have all these thoughts in my brain yeah and i'm trying to condense it down to like three like i got three opportunities to speak basically for like 10 to 15 seconds each and i'm just like yo i've got more to say you know what's even worse the people that get accustomed to speaking on those shows and then they try to do that on podcasts they don't even listen to you they just talk like like when i first started interviewing

peter schiff that was like an issue because he's used to just talking over all these other people on the sides the left and the right of him on these panel shows and they just they just blurred out these prepared things like hey hey i'm right here man like take your time yeah we're talking like if you're at dinner with someone and they talk like that like they talk on a panel show you'd be like the fuck who is this guy yeah he's not even listening to us let's get out of here and they're trying to talk and they're trying to get that sound bite they're trying to get that one sentence which is like okay that one's gonna or the one zinger yeah yeah those are the worst.

Those shows... But here's the problem. You know what's worse than those shows? The fact that they don't even do that anymore. If you watch CNN now, they very rarely have opposition. It's usually like a person and then the person reinforcing that person's ideas. Yes. And that's all you get. You don't get any real debate.

And if you do get real debate it's like it's insulting and it's just it's not talking about ideas as much as it's trying to paint a very narrow narrative and trying to dismiss anyone that disagrees with that as a trump supporter or disagrees as a communist, whichever side you got. It's just silly. It's a silly time. People really need to come out of these binaries, man. Like false dichotomies are going to – it's already fragmenting society, but it's really going to tear people apart if they're not careful. I think podcasts are helping that.

Yeah. Because I think it's illuminating that – like I have people on this podcast all the time that I disagree with. And you can have a respectful, interesting conversation with somebody you disagree with and you can say, okay, well, why do you think that? Like, what's your thought process behind that? Like, why do you think that's going to achieve this certain result that you want? And that's the only way you learn. Yeah. It's also the only way you truly can think. Yes. Right. Like you can only do so much thinking by yourself right right so but when you're having a conversation it forces you to think because you have a you know a foil you have someone who okay that idea makes sense or okay i need to think of

that i want to or it just as i'm as i'm talking to you it's kind of kind of the same thing i do on social media and people like it like yeah on twitter i'm often just thinking thinking out loud. I'm just thinking out loud. And here's a thought comes in my brain or question. And I'm like, Oh, what about this? What about that? What about that? Sometimes it might be, you know, half baked. Sometimes it's like, okay, I've really, really thought about this one. What do you guys think? Um, and you need other people to think. And that's part of the problem with, uh, you know, when we talked before about the censorship and deplatforming and silencing or whatever. And it's like, man, you're, you're stopping, you're literally reducing people's ability to think by limiting the ability to speak. You're limiting the ability to think it's also more conversation. It's a considerate way to

treat human beings. And that's the only way you ever realize that you are not your ideas. Yes. And your ideas, if you attach them to your personality and you attach your ideas to your identity, you're fucked because then there's no way for you to change your mind. Because if you change your mind, well, then he's a flip-flopper. No, I don't think that anymore. I used to think that. Here's why I thought that. Here's why I think differently. And that's very important for growth because if you are attached to your idea and you can never abandon them, like, my God, imagine being inexorably connected to your earliest ideas. That's crazy. That's so dumb. It's like the mark of a human being who's intelligent should be your ability to change your opinion based on new facts that have presented themselves or your new understanding of these facts.

And also just having a level of humility to understand, okay, look, this is what I think. This is my opinion, even if it's strong. But I accept that I could be wrong and I'm open to challenge and I'm open to question, et cetera. Right. Because look, none of us are right about everything, but we all think we all think we are right by definition, every book by definition, everybody thinks that they're right about what they think they're right about. Exactly. Everybody thinks that they're right. Otherwise you wouldn't hold that view if you thought it was wrong. And so given there's like over 7 billion people in the

world i we need to talk and converse and even if people disagree at least then you you gain that empathy right right you can at least understand even if you disagree with a certain position you can at least understand why some people think that way or why they believe that yeah rather than it just being this this straw man of oh it straw man of, oh, it's because they're racist or it's because they're X or it's just this, it must be a bad thing, right? Oh, if someone is,

you voted for Trump, it's because you're racist. You did this, it's because you're- That's one thing is really not serve people well. It's the clickbait headlines. No, it's tiring. It's happening right now. You know, if you have any questions,

comms, whatever, you know, with this vaccine, you're now an anti-vaccine. Yeah. Right. You know, even if you're just like, hey, man, like, you know, I think it makes sense for old people like children. No, like, you know, they don't need. No. Boom, you're an anti-vaxxer. Oh, you know what? Like, I think if someone's already got antibodies, you know, or even if it's just, you know what what i think it should just be people's choice if they want to have it or they don't want to have it that should be up to them give them the information let them do the math in their head they're adults it's up to them suddenly that is now anti-vax like since since when it's a dumb narrative yeah it's a dumb narrative and it's a it's a dumb pejorative that that term anti-vax, like to apply it to something that's technically a gene therapy. And not only that, it's just like you could have every other vaccine and agree with all of them.

All the traditional ideas of a dead virus that you put into your system in the form of a vaccine. So your body develops the antibodies to fight off this disease if it ever comes down the pipe. I don't need chemotherapy. I'm not anti-chemo. Right. I just, I've done the math in my head and it doesn't make sense for me to get chemotherapy. So, you know, I think other people should be allowed to get it if they need it. Of course.

Um, you know, I'm the same, any medicine, any medical procedure. I don't think people should be forced to take aspirin if they don't want to. You shouldn't be forced to. It's, and the thing is, everyone agreed with me prior to this right prior to 2020 everybody agreed with me they get mad at you if you've beaten it too that's the other it's weird do you know the darkest thing that I'm seeing and it's starting to poke up its ugly head is this thing of people wishing death upon people yeah wishing harm up like to me that that's really, really dark.

And wishing that they are denied medical assistance. Yeah, that's very, very dark to me. That's when I'm like, guys, that's not... Well, it's a part of the tribalist thing. It is. It's the same people that thought that, like, Trump supporters should be round up and shot. You know, I've seen people say that, you know?

Yeah, that's wild. I've seen that kind of thought process about people on the right and people on the left. And it's fucking horrible. Whenever it comes to, you know, wishing harm or wishing death upon someone. Or misfortune. Yeah, yeah. You're in a dark place there. It's awful.

Yeah. You can disagree with someone very, very strongly, think they're wrong, whatever. But once you're wishing harm or death upon them, then you're not the good guy in the situation. I couldn't agree more. And Zuby, you're a very rational, intelligent person. I really, I enjoy your tweets. I always enjoy talking to you. I think you're a very important voice out there because that thing that we played when we had the Adam Curry podcast, when we reread those tweets of the things that you've learned during the pandemic, it's incredibly insightful and very valuable for people to read too, because there's something to learn there.

Even if maybe some of those things hurt because they make you think about your own folly and the, you know, some of the bad ways that people have thought during this very trying and difficult time for folks, but you're very balanced and very rational, and I appreciate you very much, man. And welcome to America. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Fuck the rest of the world. Move here.

I'm just kidding about that part. All right. Thanks, brother. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. See you.