The Joe Rogan Experience - #1824 - Lex Fridman

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Lex Fridman is a scientist and researcher in the fields of artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, as well as the host of "The Lex Fridman Podcast." https://lexfridman.com/

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Hey, fella. Hey, buddy. What's going on? Good to see you. It's been a while. It has been a while.

You've been nose to the grindstone. Yeah, I disappeared for a bit. I've been hiding from the world. Is this because of Ukraineraine is it personal it's like well no actually it's because i proposed to tim dillon and he said yes nice this happened in february and you want to get in shape for the wedding i want to get in shape for the wedding i've been focusing on that also i'm having second thoughts because when you sign the paper, you realize this is a real commitment

and you're going to have to live with this man for the rest of your life. Not only that, they're going to write fake stories about you like they do about him. The New York Post wrote a fake story about him today. About his real estate holdings. They're inaccurate about the amount

and also even about the locations in which he owns homes. In cyberspace, right? No, no real homes. Actual homes. Yeah, they're like ratting him out about his real house. Community Slaps Down, $4 million for Hampton Spread. Fake news, kids. Sorry.

But the thing is, it's like real estate people, there's a lot of dirty business in real estate when a famous person buys a house. They sell the data. Someone does it, whether it's someone who works in the office or what have you, they'll be weaselly with it. Yeah. Is that data public? Like all the houses you get? Depends. A lot of times famous folks will put a house in under an LLC so that they hide it. But then when it gets leaked, you know someone from, generally speaking, it's someone from the real estate office leaked it. Because they can get paid. Like, there's websites that will pay you. So, say if, you know, Elon buys a house and he tries to keep it all hush-hush and under the table. and he tries to keep it all hush-hush and under the table like there was a time where they were trying to say that he's living in someone's house and he's

lying about living in this tiny house it's not true right you and I know it's not true yeah but they were trying to pretend that he was staying in this opulent house on Lake Austin just because he had been there before yeah he actually lives at my house now with Tim, congratulations. With Tim Dillon? With Tim Dillon. Nice, that's a great odd couple show. I probably shouldn't mention this. That would be a wonderful sitcom.

You, Tim Dillon, and Elon Musk in the house. Guys, what are we doing? We're getting eggs and pancakes. Uh, what did he say? He said he was comparing like a Saudi prince with Elon Musk and like there's tradeoffs between the positives and the negatives. He was saying something positive about Elon that he's working on rockets, but the negative is that he likes Austin.

And then comparing to the Saudi prince, I think like jet skis or something like that, that's a positive, but then this corrupt, that's the negative. Tim Dillon is one of my favorite people. I'm so happy he's around. I'm so happy. He's just like, that guy makes me laugh so hard. It's just his take on stuff. He just rants with Ben when they're just sitting there

next to each other, and he's just talking shit. And I love it when he wears the cop glasses, like the aviators. It's almost like he's on a drug when he has those on. Like he's in a fog. He's like, I don't even see you. Yeah. He's channeling something else. Yeah. It's a Conor S. Thompson type thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But in reality, the Tim Dillon thing was real. It was April 1st. But yeah, I think my world, my family's world, and I think the world in general was somehow fundamentally changed on February 24th this year when Russia invaded Ukraine. I think, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts about it.

I've been talking to a lot of people about it. I have family in both countries. I come from both countries. I come from both countries. And first and foremost, it made me realize that a global hot war is within a possibility for this century. That we're not so far from a World War III outbreaking. No. And the reason I realized this is because of the behavior of the United States in response to this humanitarian crisis, this invasion, and the response of China that's currently quietly watching, but for the most part supporting Putin and Russia. Putin and Russia. India, for the most part, is supporting Putin and Russia. And so you have this division in the world. You just look at the population, the large economies, large military

forces, nuclear powers are just watching this conflict, watching this humanitarian crisis, and nobody seems to be shy about escalation. Nobody seems to be shy about escalation nobody seems to be shy about mentioning uh you know the word nuclear and it just feels like what i've been i've reread recently as a kind of therapy the rise and fall of the third reich by william shire he's a journalist that was there for um for the the rise of the nazi party and the world war ii and everything like that and you just have to put yourself let's say 100 years back 1922 nobody would predict world war ii in fact everybody would be sure that world war ii would never happen surely there will never be another world war when you're sitting there in 1920s and at the same time you you have Hitler, young Hitler.

What is it? 1919, maybe? He is employing number seven of the Nazi party. So he's the seventh person to join the National Socialist German Workers Party that ended up being one of the most consequential parties ever, political parties ever. So from a party of seven people 20 years later, you have a party that's threatening the existence of human civilization. If they had nuclear weapons, that would be the case. So in a span of 20 years, that can happen.

So now we're sitting here in 2022. The possibility of nuclear war seems to be not as distant as at least I, with my innocence, had imagined. And the possibility of hot war is not that distant. And there's escalation. There's warmongering going on. And at the same time, just the humanitarian crisis. I mean, on a personal level, it's the biggest humanitarian crisis. Six, seven million people, refugees, eight million people inside Ukraine displaced.

The biggest one since, in Europe at least, since World War II. So that's one perspective that there's this authoritarian who invaded a sovereign land and laid claim on it. I recently talked to two folks that have this different perspective. One is Stephen Kotkin, who's a historian of Stalin. I highly recommend people read his biography of Stalin. And then the other is Oliver Stone, who you talked to mostly about JFK. But he also interviewed Putin. So Oliver Stone's perspective is, look, first of all, America

throughout its history has blood in its hands. NATO is pressuring through its expansion, pressuring Putin, pressuring the other non-NATO regimes. And so they bear some responsibility for this. And you look at post 9-11 wars, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the number of refugees there, the number of people displaced from their homes is close to 40 million people. 40 million people. And the number of dead is over a million people.

And those are wars either started or catalyzed or propped up by the United States. That's the Oliver Stone perspective. This idea that the United States is the good guys is a complicated one. And so he has been, starting from the Vietnam War, a critic of the military-industrial complex and this kind of imperial imperative of the United States. That's that perspective. Then you have Stephen Kotkin. You have just the Western perspective is like, no.

you have just the western perspective is like no yeah america has blood on its hands but you can't do this moral um there's no moral equivalence here there is good guys and bad guys in the world the good guys are flawed yes but the reality is uh putin's russia is an authoritarian regime no respect for freedoms of all kinds, including freedom of the press and freedom of speech. There's a lot of basic violation of human rights, and there's just a straight-up invasion of a sovereign land, and that's a war crime, and Putin is a war criminal. And I'm much closer to that perspective, but it's not factual it's more emotional because i just see how much pain there is in that place um i you know i've been listening to a lot of people crying angry afraid yeah it for me there's been just so much personal emotion because this idea that we're all one people we're all one humanity has been

challenged for me personally i know there's a lot of suffering in the world i know there's a lot of atrocities in the world but for me it's just because i know directly the people um it's like you know there's been recently a couple of shootings there's been a shooting yesterday in the united states it's different when you have nothing to do with the people when then you you directly know the people yeah the shooting is an hour and a half away yeah yeah and that's but that's 20 children or something like that yeah it's it's it's an atrocity but it's closer to us and that's why we as Americans we feel it yeah intimately just imagine that on another side of the

world where you can feel it intimately because you know the people. Well, I mean, I guess we think of it as differently because what Putin is trying to do is command resources and control a country that used to be a part of the Soviet Union. And what happened yesterday is just beyond explanation. Right. It's just a completely fucked up situation where a sick person got a hold of a bunch of guns and decided to go kill kids. And it happens in this country, like every, you know, every now and then.

It's like, how do you stop that? No one knows how to stop that. What is the answer? Does the answer take everyone's guns? Well, they're not going to give their guns up. So it's going to, you're going to have, only criminals are going to have guns. So it's not going to be a good situation.

And is the answer make schools these armored compounds where you have armed guards outside of every school dressed like it's a military? Boy, that's not something we want either. But what do you do to protect the children? And how many dollars is that going to cost like is do we even have the money to do that like but the the Oliver Stone perspective when you're talking about um the difference between the way we look at the rest of the world

versus the way we look at our own actions when you start bringing up Yemen Yemen is one that uh I've had Dave Smith on the podcast multiple times where he talks about it. Dave is very, very well read about Yemen. And it's a horrific scenario because no one cares. And it seems to me like, not only no one cares, I mean, in the United States, this is not something that gets mainstream media attention on a daily basis, but the bombings are ongoing. Like we put up a chart once where they talked about the bombings are ongoing. Like we, we put up a chart once where they talked about the bombings that are happening in Ukraine versus the bombings that are currently happening in Yemen and bombings that the United States is, it's wild because it's like

swept under the rug and we don't think about it. And we don't even understand why we're doing it. Like if you, I guarantee you, if you just polled a random 1000 people and say, what are we doing in Yemen? No one would have any idea. You'd have to have someone who really gets into the sort of esoteric, the details, the like, what is going on politically? What is going on economically? Someone like Dave Smith even might struggle with the full explanation of what our motivation, not our, the military's motivation is to do this. But it's happening. And because it's not getting any attention, it's allowed to happen without scrutiny. It's allowed to happen without real mainstream criticism.

If you comb the television news sources, cable, left and right, you're not going to find discussions of Yemen on a daily basis. But that is the one, if there's an area where we can't have that moral high ground, where we say, well, what about you? Why do we have those? Wouldn't it be better if the United States didn't have any of those that are unjustifiable, where you could say, oh, the United States did this in Vietnam this in Vietnam yes we did but it was in the 1970s well that would be ideal in terms of like an example of learning and growing well so that's the Oliver Stone perspective yeah the thing is there is if you look at the details a

fundamental difference between what Vladimir Putin is doing and what the United States is doing. Now, everybody's a victim of somebody's propaganda. Now, I talked to Russians, which is a very interesting thing. Both Russians and Ukrainians say that they are not at all under the influence of propaganda. Russians believe there's no propaganda in Russia. And Ukrainians believe there's no propaganda in Ukraine. That from Russians think the West is influenced by their propaganda, by the CNNs and the Foxes, and Ukraine is influenced by their propaganda by the limited number of news channels they have that are state controlled. Okay. From our Western perspective, that seems ridiculous because it's obvious that

Russia is under influence of propaganda. So it's hard to know what is true or not. But the reality seems to be that Russia is currently an authoritarian regime that tries to appear as much as possible as a democracy. Because there is an election, and there's an extra hard truth on top of that. I don't know what to do with it, but Putin is still and even more so popular in Russia. He's very popular in India, in China, and in Russia, and some small countries around former

Soviet Union what do you do with that that's real objective well as far as we can tell data from outside of taking from outside of polls taken from outside of Russia do you give any credence to the rumors that he has cancer? I'm not an investigative, you know, because there's a lot of sort of rumors of this nature. Oliver Stone even discussed it. He said it was the case while he was there. Yes, he said it very nonchalantly,

and I thought that was a known fact, and then later I looked, and it was, you know, I'm not sure that was objectively publicly known, but if Oliver said it, then perhaps there's some truth to it. He stayed there for quite a while when he was interviewing Putin. Yeah, two years. No, he visited multiple times, and he spent time with him. Yeah, but according to Oliver, he beat it. He beat the cancer.

But, you know, he's 69 years old. He's going to be 70. Yeah, but beating the cancer when Oliver was there versus what he has now. Oh, what he has now? Yeah, because he looks like puffy, you know, which is oftentimes, you know. We were talking about this with the Chris DiStefano podcast. I had a friend who had gout, and they gave him prednisone. Now, he had something else too

sarcoidosis and they gave him prednisone and his like his face got big yeah it's just like you look puffy well said it's just a side effect of the steroids yeah his face is puffy you know know. Yeah, Oliver Stone says, Vladimir Putin has struggled with cancer during his time in which the filmmaker focused on his work on the Russian president, pictured above Putin waves during the Victory Day parade, Red Square, May 9th. Yeah. Well, I'm much less concerned about the puffiness of his face

and more concerned about what's going on with his mind. It seems like he's a different man now than he was even a year ago in what way um so from this is what oliver stone commented on and i agree he's formed a much stricter information bubble around him that there is uh that isolation that a lot of us have experienced the covid i honestly think it might have to do with just the isolation due to COVID. You know, the basic distance you have to keep and all that kind of stuff. As a political leader, you have to have extra precautions. Especially a political leader that assassinates his enemies. Yes.

Well, that was always the case that has less to do with covid but don't you think that increases his paranoia so yes like paranoia the paranoia is the thing that's what gets dictators that's what gets you start mistrusting everybody not just on the outside of the circle but the inner circle and so you don't know who to trust even though the closest advisors you don't know who to trust so your flow of information is really flawed yeah it's very limited yeah and so you start you start making really poor decisions uh even more so than before and there that that's where i mean if you and i hate thinking of it that way because to me uh the war in ukraine is a humanitarian thing not a geopolitics thing but if you think geopolitically invading ukraine was just a giant miscalculation on putin's part on

every level geopolitical social militarily um unless there's there's very few scenarios in which this was calculated all along. The only scenarios of Putin thought through, first of all, maybe he thought that Zelensky would just back down, would just crumble under the pressure of even a minor invasion. And obviously, you have to give credit. This is really important. So Ukraine got its independence for the first time in many centuries in 1991, 30 years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed. So they're dealing with independence, with sovereignty, which is a difficult process. As the United States knows, we had a civil war about it. And the same thing in Ukraine. There's factions.

There's a lot of corruption. It's the second most corrupt country in Europe next to Russia. Did you see when the New York Times was questioning Candace Owen on where is she getting her information that, because the New York Times was trying to push this while the Ukraine invasion was happening. They were trying to push this thing that Ukraine was good and Russia is bad and she was saying well this is one of the most corrupt countries on earth so they said to her like where are you getting this information they sent her an email and she sent them back links to the New York Times and all these articles about how badly corrupt Ukraine was which just

makes me go god damn if I can't trust a fucking New York Times to get it right, like you're supposed to be the paper of note. But a lot has changed though. So Zelensky, the president, he got into office with 70% approval. And before the war, he had less than 30% approval. There's factions, there's divisions. The West side of ukraine is pro let's say ukrainian and then the right side is pro russia so he got into office and he had a high approval rating and then before the war it dropped very low yeah they've been dropping gradually over because of the division because of the factions he wasn't able to bring the country together and the war able to bring the country together. And the war, turns out his great leadership

was catalyzed, was made possible. Like he was, sometimes sort of a catastrophe brings out the best in us and that was the case with him. W, George W. Bush. Yeah, that's exactly what happened post 9-11. Yes, yeah, exactly. But in his case, he wasn't able to hold that for a long time let's see what zelensky does but at the moment he was zelensky united a previously divided country

which is very difficult to do so that that um i mean that's a historic event for Ukraine in its sovereign history. And so in terms of corruption, that might be a really big blow to corruption, that kind of unification. So I think there's a fundamental difference between the corruption in Ukraine and the corruption in Russia. What is the conflict in Ukraine? Beside Russia, what is the internal conflict ukraine the the beside russia what is the internal conflict like the the factions what what what do they want what is uh what the dispute well no there's there's it's it's just factions that are uh vying for power that's just at the basic level so it's basically like right versus left in america yeah but okay so there's a bunch of differences, what they stand for, what they're looking for.

A lot of it in the recent years has been centered around the war with Russia starting with 2014. And so some parts are Ukrainian-speaking, pro-Ukraine. Some parts are Russian-speaking or primarily Russian-speaking and pro-Russia. So in the east, you have the Donbass region, but around that as well, they want to be closer to Russia. And the west part wants to be closer to Europe, closer to NATO, closer to the European Union. That's one of the divisions.

You want to be pro-democracy or you want to be pro-whatever-the-heck Russia is. So it's like, are you pulling towards the West, the Western civilization, or are you pulling towards the East, the way of Russia, the way of China, the way of those superpowers? I'm sure they're influenced and the ones who are pro-Russia,

they're getting some signals from Putin or meeting with him, and he's giving them indications that they would best be served to be aligned with him and be better for them. Yeah, but he is still popular. I mean, I don't know exactly why he's popular, but there's a longing, as there is in a lot of nations, to be the greatest nation on earth. Isn't there always just a longing as it there isn't a lot of nations to be the greatest nation on earth isn't there always a longing for a strong man like this

strongman leader I would say a strong vision and that sometimes can coincide or often does with a strong man like I just named like a natural inclination that people have to be led by a strong man? Like Putin, like him or hate him, think he's evil. That's all good. But there's no doubt that he's strong. He's a strong leader. I mean, he's been running Russia for a long time.

And the way he's been doing that, sort of unopposed in a ruthless manner, is very impressive. It's evil. But in terms of its efficacy, it's impressive what he's been able to do i think strength is one of the things we admire in leaders but it's not the entirety of it no so that's why zelensky is extremely popular he stepped up you know the the famous thing he was uh biden offered him a ride and he said fuck, fuck that. I'm staying put. Give me more bullets. And he stayed in Kiev and held his ground where most leaders would have fled. This is the failure we had in Afghanistan where we fled.

Here's a leader that stepped up and held his ground, and that's rare in this world, and we admire that kind of strength, yes. leader that stepped up and held his ground and that's rare in this world and we admire that kind of strength yes and the same could be said by the russian people the indian people the chinese people that admire strength and putin but we also admire other values that make this country great the united states of america is this kind of respect for human freedom, human rights. And, I mean, sort of the embodiment of this ideal of, like, all men are created equal. That's not exactly communicated very clearly by Vladimir Putin. Right.

You know, that's, you know, but there's also a difference between and this again the oliver stone perspective is uh between the messaging and the actual execution you know hitler's messaging was also a very sort of uh beautiful sounding right what is he talking about sort of uh socialism, respect for workers. Right. Like the downtrodden workers that were, Germany is a great nation that deserves to be respected among other nations, and it was not respected because of World War I. Okay, but are you also going to mention that you're going to murder and imprison

and torture millions of people. You're not. And the same things with America, not moral equivalence at all, obviously, but we talk a lot about freedom. What does freedom actually look like? When we fight terrorism and evil in the world, what does that actually look like? It turns out that it looks like you're bombing civilians, children, lose their fathers and mothers.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians die when you're spreading freedom all over the world. So we have to be very careful sort of separating the messaging from the actions. And we have to, as Americans, make sure we live up to the ideal and we don't always and I think when you just paint the whole world is black and white it's easy for us to say America good China Russia bad yeah and instead of the the full complexity of that and that there's warmongers like that watch Ukraine now with the money that we're sending there and you get excited because it can escalate and if they escalate they can get more and more money For manufacturing weapons to both sides to all sides and what if China enters with Taiwan? That tension that military conflict and there's nukes on the ready

everywhere And not only that there's hypersonic nukes. You know, this whole mutually assured destruction, Mike Baker explained this to me from the CIA. Yeah. Mutually assured destruction is not on the table anymore. He goes, because with hypersonic weapons, they can attack so quickly we can't retaliate. So it's a matter of who pulls the trigger first.

Well, there's so much secret stuff if you're standing apart from a guy yeah and you have a gun and he has a gun and you have your finger on the trigger and he has his finger on the trigger and you're like you know what i don't trust this guy boom you pull that trigger that guy's dead there's no retaliating yeah he's not going to retaliate that's what he's saying he's saying it's not like you have a gun and he has a gun and you are 700 yards away and you have a pistol and he's 700 yards away. So you're out of the effective range. And you say, you know what? I'm going to move in on this guy and I'm going to shoot him. But then he's going to shoot me. He's going to see me coming. He's going to shoot me.

We're both going to die. That's mutual short destruction. What he's saying is no, you can launch this thing and it looks like it's going to hit Seattle and it takes a hard left turn it goes right into chicago and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop it and you can't predict where it's going to go i think the the american military industrial complex is listening to this and is saying hold my beer no i'm sure they are but if they do the defense but the thing is russia does have that but i i am pretty sure yeah we do too but it doesn't matter once someone launches it no no no American defense systems you think that they can stop that yes they say they can't who says that military experts I would I want to see their credentials and how much access they actually have because you have people

that comment on stuff I've okay with, so just even with the limited access I've had, I've spoken with a lot of people in Lockheed Martin and all over, I realize how much secrecy there is in terms of how many incredible weapon systems there are. Given how much money is poured into these... Black ops. Just ridiculous. And they think of them almost as toys.

The way you love cars, they love incredible weapons. And it's almost, they take pride in making sure that America's high-tech military systems are better than anybody else in the world. You know, that's what I think more and more that these UFOs are. I don't think that those things are from another world anymore.

I've been watching these videos of these things where these fighter jets are getting scrambled to intercept these objects that are flying in insane speeds over the ocean. And I'm like, why would we assume that those aren't just super fucking capable drones that we don't know exist yet we can have both yeah we definitely have both we definitely can have both i think both is on the table yeah but i think a lot of this shit they're watching like here's

one i've been thinking about this commander david fravor thing this tic-tac thing off of the coast of uh why would it go... Why would it go there? Why would it go there? Well, that's where all the fucking military is. Why would it go there and be completely undetected and be operating in the middle of the ocean and be operating over what looks like something that's some sort of a submerged base or some sort of a submerged vehicle that interacts with this drone that operates at insane rates of speed?

Like, wouldn't you and it has active radar jamming so it actively jams you why wouldn't we assume that that's ours yeah given how much secrecy there is in yeah in american government not just that government but how much fake transparency there is from the pentagon and from congress where they're having meetings about UFOs. We need to inform the general public like they give a fuck about what we think, about anything. What benefit is there to inform the general public

other than none? Yeah, and I'm not sure how much politicians know. I feel like politicians is like the surface wave of an ocean. I feel like most of the work is done by people that are employed for their whole life and working in a DOD Department of Defense and deep state yeah I mean that's that term is beat up but it's a real term yeah you know I

mean whatever that is the state what is the state was the government and what is the government that is not elected and doesn't get removed from office every four years what I think doesn't the deep state imply there's a deep corruption and manipulation of the populace to sort of like a conspiratorial, like controlling the populace? The goal is to like, for the people that are really in control to get richer and more powerful and that kind of stuff. But doesn't that just come with the territory? I don't think it does necessarily. Have you checked Nancy Pelosi's bank account? I did.

Me and her are very close. I like older women. She was hot when she was young. Was she? Yeah. I just found this. Can you pull that up? What is this?

This is different. We'll get to that in a moment. I'll just start drinking before we start talking about how hot Nancy Pelosi was. Googling underwater drone stuff, you know? Uh-huh. And I found this sales. This looks like a sales video from 2016. Uh-huh.

Showing a drone that could be launched and controlled from a submarine that's underwater. This was, you know, around the time of that Tic Tac thing, wasn't it? The Tic Tac was 2004. Oh, okay. But sure, close enough. I mean, if this is something that they're talking about in 2016, they're probably on the 18th generation of it. It launched out of there and is being controlled by it.

I mean, what? How many? That's crazy. Yeah. So this is, but this is all CGI, right? Well, this is, but i mean like that i believe that means they have it they're just showing i watched one drone this super fast drone that was hovering and this was like something that they were just showing the capabilities of

it was hovering and it goes it just took off and it was propeller-driven, some sort of electrical propeller-driven thing. It wasn't like any sort of combustion engine, but it was fucking insanely fast. Yeah. I've been working with drones recently too, like robotics, just small experiments. I know. I try to pretend that you're normal.

I try to pretend that you're not actually working on artificial intelligence i stopped so much of that i i've been yeah i mean like i said i've been a really low point like really low point i'm sure up and up and down but these drones uh but the drones there i mean you're talking about i mean i don't want to exaggerate but you're very high speeds it's like 40 miles an hour and those are just like 40 miles an hour 30 40 not 40 miles an hour is slow 40 miles an hour tiny drone. That's very no no no these these fucking things are way faster than that This is one agility. So just to be clear. This is you can navigate at that speed inside inside a building. Oh Whoa, so small drones yeah yeah like small

okay this thing that i was looking at it was so fast it was hovering and it just went and took off and i was watching this video this thing i mean it took off really fast like hundreds of miles an hour and i'm watching this and i'm like how do we know that that's not what these ufos are yeah like why why wouldn't we assume that one of these things would be considered a UFO? Because here it is hovering, right? So it's at a dead stop and then it just fucking bolts off at insane rates of speed. Well, of course, you're talking about pilots observing this and they say that this was beyond the realms of physics. So, right.

But there could be like, I mean, I don't understand why they couldn't be just manipulation of the human eye, sort of hologram type of stuff. Because it was detected on these machines. Right. And they recalibrated their machines to make sure that these things were accurate. What is this one? Let's see this. See? That's what I'm talking about.

That's different. That's different. Come on, son. That is wild. Watch that. That's what I'm talking about. That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's not the video.

Yeah, but watch this again. What? Zero to 120 miles an hour in one second. And then it comes back. All right. Is that fake? No. It looks fake. Zero to 120. I've got multiple videos. I just found a good one to, and then it comes back. All right. Is that fake? No. It looks fake.

I've made this stuff on multiple videos. I just found a good one to show you. Watch this again. I feel emasculated with my 30 miles an hour. Yeah, when you were going 40 miles an hour, I thought he was going to say 40,000 miles an hour. You mean 40,000? No, it just feels really fast.

It looks really fast. Because when it's small, I don't know what that when it's small it that speed is yeah it's felt much more intensely sure because it's difficult to follow with the eye yeah where it's a large object going 120 miles an hour like a plane planes going 500 miles an hour it doesn't look like it's going fast at all yeah and then goes 316 miles an hour yeah see that's what i'm talking about man these fucking things are fast as shit so if you're looking at a small thing if they make something that's the size of a frisbee and it's going 300 miles an

hour it's going to look preposterously fast it's going to look like it's from another world and more and more they're being controlled by ai. Yeah. Which is great. Yeah, great times. But it brings me back to when Bob Lazar, and I know he's a super controversial character that people immediately roll their eyes. I like him too. His discussions of that fusion engine, that whatever the, I don't know if you'd call it fusion,

what is it with the Element 115? I mean, whatever it is, the gravity-defying or gravity-manipulating drive that he said that sport craft had, which is this thing right here. That's the thing? Yeah. That's the model of it. Yeah. Yeah, what about...

He didn't say anything about his capabilities. He was just saying that's something he observed. Yeah, he didn't know the physical speed of it because they never figured out how to do it. All they figured out how to do it was to get it to move around a little bit. They never figured out how to get it to just like completely manipulate gravity. But he said the function, the way it does it, it manipulates gravity around it.

The way he described it, he said, would be like putting an insanely heavy bowling ball in the middle of a mattress so it pulls everything around it like that and and bends space and time through its manipulation of gravity and by doing that it can go from one point to another point insanely fast so like when commander Commander David Fravor described this vehicle that was more than 50,000 feet above sea level and went to 50 feet above

sea level in less than a second. Like that kind of capability. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I asked I tried to ask around MIT and there's no record of Bob Lazar ever being there. No. I'll tell you why. I can't tell you why.

We're going to edit this out. Okay, and we're back. See, that's why. But doesn't it make sense now? Yeah, it makes sense. Well, there wasn't a record of him being at Los Alamos. They lied about that. I mean, he was on the employee register.

Not only that, when they took him to Los Alamos, he navigated his way through the entire building. He knew the security guards. He talked to people that had worked there when he worked there. Some of them went on the record. Some of them were unwilling to go on the record. He knew the very machine that they'd used to detect the length of the digits in your fingers through some sort of a, I don't know what kind of scan it is, but you put your hand on this and you described it and someone took a photo of it that had existed in Los Alamos.

He's like, yeah, that's it. He went from there. I mean, it was clear that he has a very high level of scientific sophistication, right? He developed this rocket engine that he put in his Honda. So he put a fucking jet engine in a Honda. He developed a hydrogen engine to put in his Corvette. Like, this is all, like, working, functional stuff,

and he talked about it, like, how incredible it was. I mean, there's a video of him describing his Corvette. The guy's fucking brilliant. Yeah, but he also seems to have some demons. We all have demons. He also seems to have some demons. We all have demons. I don't know if I should comment on that part or not. I'm tempted to.

But all of this started since we started using nukes. Right. Which brings us back to the reality that the nukes aren't off the table. Right. Well, all this started because we were using nukes, and that's when the wave of UFO appearances happened. Yeah. See, I'm inclined to believe that we are being visited.

And if we are being visited, the level of sophistication of any civilization that's able to send, whether it's a drone, you know, piloted by AI or by some sort of robot creatures, like I would measure us. I would watch us. I would keep a fucking very close eye on our capabilities and the stories of them hovering over nuclear facilities and shutting down all of their facilities, shutting down all the weapon systems. That would make sense.

Like if I was monitoring from another world, I would say, look, these are territorial apes with nuclear weapons, and we need to figure out a way to stop them in their transition. They're making a transition from extremely primitive to using tools to engines, the industrial age to the technological age in which we're at now, where things are accelerating far beyond our capacity to understand the implications of what happens if, like your field of study, AI. If AI gets implemented on a large scale and becomes sentient and then countries that have I don't even know what our morals are but but if we had

That capability in a brutal military dictatorship, and they decided to use it to control the entire world That's and they probably have information about how other Civilizations have failed the great filter that stopped them from existing, and they realize when you start to get something like nuclear weapons, that's when, within like 100 years, it all goes to shit. So if you want to preserve a particular civilization, like a tribe, you would want to start helping them out. That's the positive spin of it I do

think that their capability I think I think the universe is just full of alien civilizations but I think their capabilities are far far superior to human capabilities but maybe not maybe we're the best I just don't I I can't imagine that why not someone has to be the best. Yeah. Why isn't America? Imagine we're the best in the universe. This is as good as it gets.

This is the best. Most things are evil. I could see that argument. Evil. Oh, boy. I've been listening to a lot of people tell me how they feel about America. A country, by the way, I love. And I should say,

this is, you know, I joke around about this, but I am American. I'm now, I believe in the ideals of this country. I will die an American. I love this country. And also, my heart is, the only thing I care about is with the people in terms of the war in ukraine is with the people of ukraine and i do think that the invasion of ukraine is a war crime and i think putin in this act is a war criminal i just want to put that on the table because we're talking about oliver stone a lot yeah um so evil you know feels weird word is a weird word because they'll look at what we're doing with cows and they'd be like uh you all you humans seem to be torturing your food a lot okay how about what we're doing with plants yeah we now know that plants have

some sort of innate intelligence some sort of ability to communication some sort of a community that they share with the mycelium with neighboring plants they they allocate resources to plants that are in jeopardy. They release defense chemicals when they know they're being eaten. Your salad is screaming in pain. It might be. It might be. And, you know, aliens obviously would be able to know this kind of information much better

if you have a deep understanding of what is life, of what is a life form, how you go from non-life to life. You're able to of what is life yeah what what is a life form how you go from non-life to life you're able to understand what is the nature of consciousness what is the nature of suffering and then you could see maybe plants do suffer maybe to a lesser degrees than humans but at scale we're basically uh parasites and torturers of all life on earth we meaning humans so they could have that perspective but i i just i just think the most advanced alien civilization would be the one that reaches us first and so they would be just orders and magnitude more advanced so anything we see visibly in terms of stuff that uh commander favor saw that's them trying to sort of talk down to us,

like dumb down their stuff to be able to communicate in some kind of way with us. Otherwise, if they wanted to be invisible, I think they could be invisible to us. Well, I think they probably are for the most part. I think that's why there's these unique experiences where people have these interactions with them and then they don't know what to do or what to say

because it seems so bizarre and no one wants to believe it because we have an inability to really think rationally about something that we have no evidence of. Like if someone has an experience, it's a completely unique experience. So like if you walk outside of the studio and you get in your car and then all of a sudden something hovers over your car, all traffic stops around you. Time stands still.

Your car stops. You get outside the car and this thing hovers and these creatures come out and they communicate with you and they communicate with you telepathically and tell you that this civilization, that life itself on Earth is in grave danger and that you have to do your best to try to implement artificial intelligence in a way that's going to subvert that, that's going to save people. And this is imperative.

And if you don't do that, there's a real possibility with the capabilities of weapons now that they're going to miss something and something's going to detonate. It's going to start a domino chain of events that's going to be unstoppable and it's going to wipe out life on earth and then they go away and then you're standing there in front of your car and then traffic starts moving again and you're just standing there and you go and what the

fuck happened was that real and then you call me and you hate you i not gonna believe shit. I believe you. All right. I'm fucking crazy. I believe a lot of shit. See, but that's like a, so that's a possibility, but that's like a physical manifestation. I just think there's so many other ways to influence humans. Like what about, where do ideas come from?

What about the seeding of ideas? What about consciousness itself? Oh yeah, I think ideas are aliens. Yeah, they're like, tell me one scientist or artist that can tell you where their good ideas came from. Right. They're all like, oh, just, I mean, it's never systematic. It's always like you're like channeling your receiver, an antenna for something.

Yeah. Where's that coming from? What is creativity, right? Yeah, where is that coming from? Where's it coming from? The muse. The muse. I mean, Pressfield always talks openly about the muse and he treats it that way when he sits down to write he treats it like it's a real object that's giving him information and that he treats it with respect because that's how the muse rewards him for his hard work yeah but also not just ideas consciousness itself. Like we take this for granted.

It feels like something to be this. Yeah. Like, what is that? Because like, do other animals have this? Maybe this kind of consciousness that we have ability to richly experience the world in a really interesting, complicated way, maybe that's a gift from elsewhere for us to be able to understand ourselves and to create something that will save this place. Or maybe it's a function of the universe that constantly encourages innovation. If you look, I mean, I've said this ad nauseum, but I'll say it again because it fits into this conversation. If you were observing the earth from afar, if you had no context,

if you didn't understand the human species at all, if you were completely alien from it, you were being made of light and you're observing what these creatures do. Well, what's the predominant change-oriented creature on this planet? It's humans. And what do humans do? Well, it seems like they make better and better stuff. That's what they're always doing. And maybe that's what materialism is all about. Maybe our obsession with materialism is an insurance policy

that fuels constant innovation. I have a phone, an iPhone, one of my other phones, that's three years old maybe. When I use it, I can't fucking tell. But when the new one comes out, I'm going to be one of the first dorks to get it. Why am I going to get it? Because I'm a fucking idiot. Because I want the newest, latest, greatest shit. And I want to fuel this innovation. Well, why is that?

What are we doing? Well, we're eventually moving towards more and more capable things, more and more capable machines. We are the electronic caterpillar. We're giving birth to the butterfly, and we're making a cocoon, and we don't even know why. We're just fucking constantly trying to buy the newest. Oh, this one goes zero to 16 1.9

second gotta get it gotta get it you know and we're constantly involved in this pursuit of technological innovation now if you think of ideas every single thing that exists on this planet whether it's a mug or a house or a fucking windmill that creates electricity. All of those came out of the human imagination. All of them. You had an idea, a guy collaborates with this woman, and she has an idea, and her idea fits with your idea, and it makes your idea better and more capable. And then you get together with a group of people,

you form a startup, and your ideas all gel together. And you're working 16 hours a day around the clock to make the world a better place with this new idea, and this new product, and this new, and everything gets better over time nobody goes you know what these phones we got here right now we're good let's just stop innovating let's tell samsung and apple let's just leave it the way it is and we're good with phones and let's channel this into cancer research let's channel all this creativity into uh fertility work let's channel this into cancer research. Let's channel all this creativity into fertility work. Let's try to take the phthalates out of the fucking bloodstreams and the microplastics out of people's water supply. No, no, no, no.

More, better, crazier stuff. But by the way, to push back, you said nobody says we had enough of the communist regimes did. Authoritarian regimes often do. They actually suffocate innovation which is interesting if you look at earth as a whole it seems like that's why they fail it's like the the capitalist imperative the the innovative societies flourish and they push out true throughout history they they get the rid of the tyrants and the authoritarians and so on because yeah because there's something about

innovation that like wins yeah it's like almost yeah it is almost like at least earth wants us to be innovative well the human race wants to innovate it seems like the whole universe wants constant states of complexity just from the time the big bang exists to multi-celled organisms to conscious things to conscious things that manipulate their environment like human beings it's this constant state of ever-increasing complexity yeah yeah in all different forms which makes me wonder what that looks like because there's probably life here in the solar system on probably if it might be dead but maybe living on mars and titan different moons

throughout and what the fucking thing looks like because there's like there's moons that are volcanoes there's moons that are ice oceans and that's going to be all weird kinds of life it could be it could be microscopic it could be gigantic things that span, like, I don't know, kilometers. Yeah. I don't know why I say kilometers. Well, how about the fucking mushroom growth that's in the Pacific Northwest? Yeah. The mycelium growth that's literally the largest physical organism that's on Earth.

That counts as one organism? Yeah. They think of it as one organism. And it's conscious. It has a consciousness. It's communicating with plants. I mean, you know, fungus breathes air.

Oh boy. Yeah, it breathes air and not only that, it might have come here from panspermia. It might have hitched a ride. Spores exist. They can exist in a vacuum of space.

They can exist in insane temperatures they could have come here like psilocybin and all these like psychoactive compounds that you know terence mckinnon believed were responsible for the development of the human brain the doubling of the human brain over a period of two million years that's his stoned ape theory that might have come from outer space you know there's this idea uh i don't know where i read this i think robin hansen um doesn't matter but this idea that a super advanced alien civilization planted life somewhere in our galaxy in this in this local pocket around our solar system and then the aliens we're seeing now are just our local neighbors they're like similarly

advanced as us because they started out at the same similar time but there's a much there's like there's daddy the king somewhere from somewhere this giant thing that just planted life and walked away yeah and is watching from a much larger distance which would better explain that the technological advancements of the aliens that visit us are similar to ours like yeah there may be 10 times better but not millions times better yeah so that's an interesting that we have a bunch of neighbors and then in that case elon and the rockets will help us find those neighbors that there's hope well look at it this way. If you had neighbors,

and your neighbors were a bunch of 18-year-old kids with guns that maybe even admired you if they met you, like, Lex Friedman, what are you doing around here? Well, I'm trying to get you guys to stop fucking blowing up refrigerators in your backyard. Yeah. You know, like... You guys are doing stupid shit, and it's causing real fucking problems

in the world i would i would have to watch how i present that case but what if they knew you whether they respected you i think that could turn quickly right depends on who they are i feel like if there was a bunch of 18 year old dudes that were ufc fans i could probably knock on their door and talk to them. And talk them out of the refrigerator activities? I could probably explain what you're doing by putting thermite in these gigantic – have you ever seen these guys that do this? Okay. Thermite is – it is called thermite, right?

I believe it's called thermite. It's – oh, tannerite. Tannerite? Yeah, that's it. So there's this shit you can buy. Thermite is something else. Thermite is some shit they think cuts. I mean, I typed in thermite, and it's coming up as both.

Yeah. I think thermite is that thing that they believe cuts. Like, you can pour it on metal and light it on fire, and it'll slice right through the metal. It's like some kind of incendiary compound. By the way, do you have whiskey? Yes, now you're ready. Yay.

Just for science. Tannerite's an explosive. Yes, Tannerite is what I'm talking about. Thermite is the stuff that cuts metal. So Tannerite, what they do is, let's get some icing glasses and whiskey. Thanks, Jamie. Tannerite, what they do is they fill up refrigerators, and then they'll shoot it from a distance,

and on impact it explodes, and so many people have died fucking with this stuff. Like, man almost killed. Watch this. Okay, watch this guy. He shoots his refrigerator. Watch this. It's to aim.

Yeah. Holy shit! That's Texas. Welcome to Texas. That's where you live. Welcome to Texas. So you're saying you could talk that guy out of doing that particular activity? Well, that particular activity is not the worst thing in the world. That's dangerous, and you're probably going to die.

A lot of times people don't understand the physical force that that stuff generates that you think this refrigerator. Like, they've done it with safes where they've detonated safes and these enormous vault doors, like bank vault doors going 150 miles an hour through a fucking tree. Like it's immense amounts of power and minuscule compared to nuclear explosions. So if you take me visiting the neighbors and say, hey, let me just explain what's gonna happen if you blow that thing up You guys can't be anywhere near here. You're gonna have to be like a mile away What no a mile away like a miles only five thousand feet kids and you go do you know how five thousand feet is?

It's not that far you can run it in four minutes if you're fast Dallas County explosion caused by teens using tetherite while target shootings. Yeah, see? This is fucking normal shit. Texas, once again. Yeah, you can get it. But tannerite is very dangerous stuff and readily available. I know guys who have it. Yeah.

This sounds like a perfect metaphor for nuclear weapons because I also know guys that have nuclear weapons. You've seen those uh videos of when they first detonated nuclear bombs in the ocean those tests yeah they had no idea they just took a chance they're like we have a rough understanding of like how much energy is going to be dispersed and how far it was way bigger than they thought yeah way bigger well eric weinstein is actually a big proponent of above ground, return to above ground nuclear testing so that humans can see.

What it looks like. What it looks like. Because this is real. Yeah. Yeah, grab some of that. Thank you. Thank you, brother. Yeah, above ground nuclear testing is fucking really dangerous, though.

Don't you think we know? No, we don't. He's saying like with, you know, Will Smith slapping somebody and we get distracted. We need to be reminded what are the actual catastrophic possibilities of the weapons that we have. Many of those,

I think that's wine, buddy. Isn't it? Is it really? Oh, cool. Maybe it's good. I bet that's really good. Oh, it's 12 years old. Okay.

I only drink anything above 30 years old, but that's fine. Well, you're going to have to slum it, buddy. 30-year-old stuff is great. God, it's so smooth. Can you actually tell the difference that you age over the whiskey? Unfortunately. That means you've been drinking a good amount. Well, I really love, this is my favorite.

My favorite is Buffalo Trace for a couple reasons. One, because it's the oldest continually operating distillery in America. It's literally older than America itself. This is from 1773. Nice. But it's also just really good, and the people that make it are awesome. Cheers, my friend. So maybe you could be An expert witness

For the Johnny Depp trial On alcohol And drugs No I can't be on drugs Because there's too many drugs I'm uninitiated in Like no cocaine experience Whatsoever

None Yeah Do you wish There's a part of your life Where you've experienced that No Because I'm one of the Greatest comedians ever

Listen It's good I'm one of the greatest comedians ever. Listen. It's good. I'm talking to you. It's good to get crazy. Yeah. Getting crazy is good for comedians. Like, it's good to get drunk. It's good to get...

I have a very specific kind of mind where my ego should not be encouraged, but in fact be squashed as much as possible. Humility should be encouraged at every turn. And what does that to me is marijuana. Marijuana is the perfect drug for me because marijuana calms me down, makes me sweeter, much more friendly, much more affectionate, much more kind, much more generous, and more creative. I think about things more. I have a ape mind. My mind is, you know, I don't want to encourage confidence. I think about things more. I have a, I have a ape mind. My mind is, uh, you know, you don't, I don't want to encourage confidence. I have plenty of that. Yeah. I'm not looking to

do that. I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking for the opposite. Just a little bit of anxiety and paranoia. I like a little of that. Just a little bit. I like it. And you're saying alcohol. Alcohol is just like a social lubricant for me. It makes me silly. Like I'm not a mean drunk. I'm a happy drunk. I get happy. I talk a lot of shit. I laugh a lot.

I want people to know I love them. It's like I think that's good for me. In moderation, like the drunkest I ever get is really on the podcast because you're sitting here for hours and hours just drinking and talking. Yeah, drinking disappears. By the way, I regret the Vegas thing where I got really drunk and an empty stomach. I don't remember anything, and I feel like I embarrassed myself deeply. No, you didn't. I've recently spoken a few times with David Goggins just on the phone and stuff.

And I just, you know, when you're like a- Should we tell the whole story? Oh, God. Yeah. So we go to Schultz's wedding. Great fucking time. And we're having a good old time at our boy Schultz's wedding. It's beautiful.

I cried. Can I take a tangent on that? Yes, please. And I think- Look at the video from the airport. Do you have- I have to mention, I mentioned to you before, I'm a huge fan of Bobby Lee. He should be on this podcast.

I love Bobby Lee. I saw to you before, I'm a huge fan of Bobby Lee. He should be on this podcast. I love Bobby Lee. I saw he was on your show too. By the way, Bobby Lee's been invited to do my podcast multiple times. Okay. Multiple times. But you should get him on. I'm going to have to reach out to him.

I feel like he is so. I might have to fly to LA and hold his hand and drag him on a flight. I think he just needs a real invitation. He knows I love him. I cry. Because there's been a lot of drama lately. And one of the things that happened was somehow or another my name got entered into this thing. And I don't want to get into it in too much detail. But I'm like, okay, I must call Bobby.

And I called him and I said, listen, I don't know what kind of – I'm just hearing about this nonsense now. But I love you. I would never let anybody talk bad about you. I would never let anybody come on my show and talk bad about you. I think you're an awesome guy. I think you're incredibly talented. And I know that you have fear of performing and putting on a special and stuff like that. But I really think you should because I think you're one of the best comedians alive.

And I've said that to him many, many times. I always give him shit like, when are you going to do a special? What are you doing? Because Bobby Lee, first of all, his special is so tight because he's been doing the same material for so long. He's a fucking amazing comedian. He really is. But there's also a natural uniqueness to his comedy.

Like, I can think of, like, Duncan Trussell. There's certain comedians that just, like, occupy their own space. There's just, like, it's not just just that they're funny but this is like you haven't seen one of those right yes duncan's 100 like that he's 100 duncan trussell like whatever influences he has his influences are like you know fucking gurus and and weird lsd pioneers and that you know that's those are the the type of people that are influenced in his comedy. But Bobby Lee, he's a unique case. Yeah, definitely.

It would be an amazing podcast to have with him to be on your show. He was great on yours. Yeah. I was also starstruck, which is weird. Certain people you meet because you've seen them so many times, it hits you like, oh, wow, that's a real person too. But especially what's – I was like that when I met you for the first time, but actually many times since also.

Because the podcast thing is when you listen to a person, you get to know them really well one way. Yeah. So he has a really good Tiger Belly podcast. Anyway. I was like that. And still, he wasn't invited to Andrew Schultz's wedding. Why was that?

What happened there? No, because what Andrew told me is it was between me and Bobby, and he chose, no, I'm just kidding. Okay, okay, okay. No, I don't know. I don't know. I think they joke back and forth about it. They're talking shit. Because Bobby says he wants to get, I think they joke back and forth about it they're talking shit

because Bobby says he wants to get I think he wants to get married just so he can not invite Andrew Johnson back to his wedding I think that's the joke yeah anyway so yeah the wedding and then we drank

we started drinking we started drinking yeah and then Whitney had a gig in Vegas and she was gonna fly out of Santa Barbara to Vegas. So I talked to my wife, and I talked to you, and I said, let's go with Whitney to Vegas,

and we'll fly back tonight. It'll be fun. So Lex keeps drinking, and you have it in your head. But you're... Well, there's the push-up contest. I get that first. Oh, yeah, yeah. The push-up contest was in there. But this is the end of the night.

Let me just lay this out. Let me lay this out, too. Because at the end of the night, we're supposed to fly back and there's no jet. So Whitney, they had charted a private jet for Whitney to do a private show with Dana Carvey in this woman's house. This opulent house in this beautiful community in Vegas.

But the whole thing is wild. It's crazy. You're flying in. It's Whitney Cummings, ladies and gentlemen. Dana Carvey's here. And you keep drinking. So at the end of the night. You're making it sound like you're not also drinking heavily. Yeah, but look at the end of the night. You're making it sound like you're not also drinking heavily.

Yeah, but look at the end of the night. You can tell I got a little slurred in my words. I'm not driving. Oh, hello. I've been out here in Vegas. You sound quite drunk, sir. Yeah, I'm a little drunk. I went to Andrew Schultz's wedding.

But it's also 3 in the morning. I'm really tired, too. Whitney Cummings and my wife and Rex Friedman. And then we went to Vegas. And Rex got a little drunk. Now, I'm not drunk. I'm not drunk I'm wide awake and I'm drinking coffee my favorite part is the end

Lex a little drunk not where Whitney realizes what the fuck she's like Joe she's yelling in the background. She's like, what? Did she realize that you're just fucking with me? No, she's trying to figure out how to get out of there, too.

Because they were trying to make a decision. We wound up actually getting a car service to drive us all the way back to L.A. It's a four-hour drive all the way back to L.A. I was fucking out of it. And you're out. Out of it. Yeah, and so Whitney's like fucking doing her taxes next to me she's wide awake my wife fell asleep in the very back seat yeah she's an interesting person because like

i missed all that she's on top of shit oh she's got she's got a lot of energy and like uh yeah being able to manage everything like yeah like all these different like career things, personal things, all of it. Yeah. You would think comedians are like a little bit disorganized, not her.

No, her brain is very different. Very different than any other comedians that I know and she's a beautiful person. Like not just pretty, but like her brain. Like she's,

she's so nice. She really is. She like, she gets caught in conflicts and stuff like that and like everyone does, you're dealing with social dynamics and shit, but she's a really

sweet person. I love her to death. Yeah. You got a little fucked up, buddy. That's what happens in Vegas. You gotta eat. That's the thing. This whole idea of fasting, that's out the window as soon as you start boozing. You gotta let that go, because booze is calories, so you're definitely definitely eating something but you're eating something that says zero

nutrition but you don't realize it because you think eventually i'm sure i'll get some food but then what alcohol does is it becomes a slippery slope to where you no longer remember food or any of that you just enjoy enjoy the fuck the full experience yeah. Just like the conversations with different people along the way. Plus it's Vegas. Yeah, we were having a good time. We did a little gambling. The wife and I lost some money playing blackjack. We're not good at that.

I don't know why you thought it was. Is anyone really good in the end? Dana White. He's so good they kick him out of casinos. Blackjack? Yeah, listen to this story. This was back when it was the Palms. It's not the it's something else the sands now um he won so much money i think the most he's ever won in a night is seven million dollars and uh yeah exactly most

he ever lost in a night is a million so he he's really wealthy. So for him to feel it, to get that charge, he's got to be betting big money. So he won so much money, they told him he's banned from the casino. And he said, oh, really? Well, guess what else is banned? And he pulled the UFC out of the palms. So the UFC, we used to do the Ultimate Fighter and some of the smaller shows we do at the palms. And he pulled it from the Palms. And then it became like a fucking big to-do.

Because they told him he can't gamble there. And he's like, oh, guess what else I can't do here. I can't have fights here, you fucking idiots. I didn't know a casino could do that. They are allowed to do that. Yeah, for no reason other than you're too good at gambling. So you win money. And he's not counting cards.

Dana White is not a mathematical genius. He's just a wild fucking dude who likes to gamble. He basically probably just keeps increasing the amount of money he's staking. I don't know. And just walks away when it's a big, big win. I know so little about that kind of gambling, like Vegas gambling. I've been to Vegas so many times. I've gambled.

Like I said, I gambled with my wife when you were hammered doing push-ups with David Goggins yeah she and I were playing a little why'd you go why'd you call dude cuz I love him I want to see him he's in town all right I didn't call him to embarrass you okay it's just not oh I call him when I'm around him so I say what are you doing you know come meet us because he was in town and you know I love that guy. Every time I get a chance to be around Goggins, I'm around him. And his wife?

She's great, too. I mean, the thing I remember about that night is like wives or the significant others are like, I don't know, a healthy relationship is awesome. A healthy relationship. It brings out the best in you. Yes. Yes. That's possible. This is the push-up contest you guys had.

And this guy just joined in. This guy joined in. This guy next to us. There was a lot of people. And you're saying, get your full fucking body down. You're cheating. You're never going to tell me you're cheating. Oh, boy.

So I called Goggins just to say hi just cause I always tell him I always call him when I'm in town yeah I went back to

you go for UFC right yeah yeah and shows and stuff like that but yeah they're so I love the darkness of that place

I went there recently just walked around the strip just the characters that are there it's's wild place I got the hangout you know imagine dragons the band yeah lead singer Dan Reynolds I got hung out with him he's a he grew up Mormon and I think there's a

lot of that kind of community around Vegas mmm and it's so interesting that Vegas with the darkness that's in the middle like in the strip around there's there's like a normal city yeah well if you go to like henderson super normal yeah yeah it's like there's a lot of places outside of vegas that like kind of rely on the tourism and all the jazz but they're really normal yeah and, and Dan, I don't know. You talked to Black Keys recently. I don't get a chance to interact with many musicians, but that super famous person, obviously, but super normal.

It's so exciting and refreshing to see when people are like, I don't know, at the top of the world and they're just normal. There's a lot of them out there. They're kind, they're sweet. And he's suffered. He's been open about it with depression and stuff like that. So I think psychological struggle is something, struggle of any kind,

but deep psychological struggle really humbles you, no matter what. You get to appreciate every single day. Yeah. And that fame doesn't matter. It's just being alive, being close to the people you love and all that kind of stuff you start to realize that's what matters well me and my wife have been having these conversations recently

about people that we know now because there's like a level of fame you get where other famous people reach out to you and you go hang out with them why is it funny? it's just it's a funny, almost like a blue checkmark, but for fame. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's real. Like, I get people reach out to me. You're famous too now. We should talk. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they know that I'm going to just be a person around them.

Right. And also, if they're fans of the podcast, they know that I am just a person. You can't hide three hours a day for thousands of episodes. I think everybody listening to this podcast knows me as well as probably anybody in my life other than my wife. So it's you get to get an understanding of that person. And then you go, you know what? I think I can hang out with them and it would be normal. Whereas like a regular person would be like, oh, my God, Matthew McConaughey.

I loved you in Interstellar. You're so amazing. Can I get a selfie? Could you? Like, I become friends with Matthew McConaughey. And had dinner with his family. And we went to the soccer game the other day. He's a beautiful person.

Sweetheart of a guy. Super normal. Like, movie star. Oscar winner. Greatest guy. So normal. Like, normal. Like, you hang out with him.

He and I just chill. We talk. Like, it's just a guy. You know, like you hang out with him. He and I just chill. We talk. Like, it's just a guy, you know, but he's a movie star. But he needs someone around him who can also just be normal. And I think most people are just so, like you were with Bobby Lee or you were with me when you first met me, or I was with Anthony Bourdain when I first met Anthony Bourdain. I was such a fucking dork because I was, I couldn't believe it was him.

Like I'm hanging out with him. He knows who I am and he likes me. You know, and then he came to see my show and I, and he told me how funny I was. I'm like, ah, this is crazy. This can't be real. Yeah. But how long did it take you for, to lose that with Anthony Bourdain? It took a few, a few hangs.

We had a hang a few times. It's just, it was odd. I deeply admired him while he was alive. I love his thought process and the way he, you know, he wrote all of the narration of No Reservations and then of Parts Unknown. He wrote all that. And he's a brilliant writer

on top of being like this amazing just thinker. Like he's capable of he was capable of putting that down in a way where the way he flavored these conversations was like the way a great chef would flavor a great meal it's like there was something to it that was i I really admired his appreciation of creativity and of rebellion and of art. And someone who's really good. He was, like, he wrote in his Twitter bio, it just said enthusiast. That's who Woody was, you know. He was just like, so it took a while for me to hang with him, you know.

But fortunately, I got to hang with him quite often, you know. And maybe not often enough. There was like Yeah, you know I just get fucking sad about that one that one's a hard one that was a hard one for me because that's a Waste they're just so unnecessary. It's like you you you hit a low point and you pulled the chute and The world suffered because of that and his family suffered and his daughter suffered. And it's like, fuck, man, I know that those feelings are there. But you can fight those off and there will be a better day. This too will pass.

And there will be a better day. And the thing that helps you in those better days are friends. And I don't think I was quite close enough to him for him to reach out. But if he did, I think I could have helped. Because I've had a lot of experience with crazy women in my life I've had a lot of experience with what he was going through and sometimes you need a guy to go hey man I'll tell you fucking exactly what's going on and there's a lot of these people out there in the world and they'll get close to

you and then they'll try to damage you and they try to hurt you because they're hurt because they're they're fucked, because they're fucked up. And they're fucked up because someone fucked them up. And it's a fucking endless cycle. It's almost like a cycle of, you know, you hear about people that were molested, and then they go on to molest other people. It's like that kind of a thing. But I think it's probably often difficult to reach out when you're in that state. It's almost impossible.

You don't, first of all, you don't think that when you're struggling and you're all fucked up you feel pathetic and you feel weak and you don't want to be a burden to others exactly that's how you think about it well that's him anyway he was very very independent anyway but have you ever uh have you ever been to a dark place like that yourself no you know not about suicide no no not even like in the distance not even no no I mean not not in my adult life I mean maybe I thought about it fake when I was kid you know I was like faking it like oh that's fake yeah but as an adult no I'm I'm I've had dark moments obviously I've had dark public moments right but I've had dark public moments, right?

But I'm very aware what it is. And I'm very aware that things pass. This too shall pass. You can just wait. And not only that, but there's value in those experiences. And this is something that really needs to be addressed. And you need to understand it is that you will become stronger through your overcoming of these terrible moments. These terrible moments in them is an opportunity for growth. And, you know, and also perspective wise, like these terrible, whatever these terrible

moments are, relatively speaking to like, we're talking about Yemen or talking about people that live in the Congo, people that are in the middle of a civil war these are nothing you know and there's that old expression the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you whether it's you're a spoiled kid who doesn't get the toy that they think they deserve or whether you're an adult whose relationship with this woman like Bourdain turned out to be insanely toxic, and you're deeply embarrassed,

and you're going to be exposed because you paid off a child that she was having sex with, and you know it's gonna come out because you were a vocal proponent of the Me Too movement because you thought it was a good and just thing, and you're trying to be a good person, and you know, and then, it's a lot, man.

The whole thing was a lot. But it was just when you lose a great one, and in my opinion, I mean, you've seen the giant artwork I have of him around here. I think he was a great soul, like a great, creative, innovative, fascinating person, the way he thought, the way he thought the way expressed himself yeah there's certain people that are and they're rare it seems like it's almost like connor s thompson or somebody like that they are able to reveal a culture of a place like the spirit of a place when they show up yeah and that means i mean he was i guess talking about food but it's much bigger than that it's

really culture that he talked about the food was like a vehicle to get into the culture, you know, and he was really interested in exploring these cultures and talking to these people, and he just loved it. Like Vietnam was like one of his favorite places. He always talked about Vietnam. It made me want to go. There were so many places that he would, I mean, he was always visiting, but one of the things that really bonded us was while we we were friends he became addicted to Jiu Jitsu and

Then then we became like closer because then we were hanging out He would ask me questions, and I would fucking we were on a pheasant hunt in Montana, and we're rolling around the ground I'm showing the Japanese necktie to him because I'm explaining like if you can't sink a darts up I'm like you got long arms. I'm like you got to showing the japanese necktie to him because i'm explaining like if you can't sink a darts up i'm like you got long arms i'm like you gotta learn the japanese necktie so we're like rolling around on the fucking ground and i'm explaining the japanese necktie to him so i'll never forget that it was fun yeah discovering the human chest so yeah yeah well it's also the vulnerability that you are acutely aware of it It's so honest. It's unlike anything else in terms of honesty. It's like being smacked in the face over and over,

just like the embarrassment of it, the brutality of it somehow connects you to your animal origins because the closest for most of us we'll ever get to death is being choked out. Yeah, or heel hooked or you know anything like you're going to be crippled then someone could do whatever they want to you it's it's a it's a it's a spiritual game just being you're playing a game that doesn't just test your body it tests your spirit i remember some of my favorite people are very good at jujitsu it's because I think they've learned something from that

you know who just started doing Jiu Jitsu Mark Zuckerberg get the fuck out of here I told him you should come down to Austin and roll I told him that you're a bit injured I'll roll with him white belts are dangerous are they really

white belts in general they get very excited especially you roll with Joe Rogan or somebody white belts in general, they get very excited. Yeah. Especially you roll with Joe Rogan or somebody like that or with me. Yeah. You get very excited. Well, he went on a period of time for like a whole year where he killed his food. Everything he ate, he killed.

Did you know about that? No, I didn't know that. Yeah. Mike, he had chickens and I think he did a little bit of hunting. He went for a period of, I believe he made a goal of for one year, all the meat that he ate was something that he killed. Yeah, actually, I mean, he did extreme sports and so on. I got a chance to meet him and talk with him and hang out with him and talk with him a lot after.

He seemed like a normal person. Well, you know, you can only be so normal if you're running Facebook. Right. But as far as being a normal person in that context, I bet. Well, no, I've interacted with a lot of tech leaders, and a lot of them are not quite normal. That's a political way of phrasing it. I just felt that the human being is compassionate.

It's the small things that the details now the way he's presented is robotic but the way he pays attention to people and people that work with him for him just small details the kindness he has it's interesting I mean I was I didn't expect that because the public paints him as a kind of maybe Not necessarily a monster, but somebody who's almost like a sociopath or something like that. Yeah able to feel Other beings and he did not that's not how he came off now what that shows to me is you know Facebook is a machine and Perhaps the leaders of the machine don't necessarily have power to control the machine always.

Right. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what that shows to me. How much power do you have? How much can you have? You have how many hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide? Well, I think it actually has to do with how much power you want to take,

I think it actually has to do with how much power you want to take, which is like there are certain leaders like Elon or Steve Jobs that I think like to be in control, and they like to make big decisions and revolutionary decisions, saying, no, no, no, the way we've been doing things, let's change completely. Let's change the direction of the company completely. His bid for Twitter, you know, having the sort of, the character and the guts to go in and say, we're going to change the way things are done completely.

That's a very, that's a current, that's a certain kind of personality. I think those are the kind of personalities that lead to the creation of great businesses, that lead to the pivoting of businesses that are becoming stale into becoming great businesses again so I I think that we admire those people but they have also sort of downsides of you know yelling and being passionate and being you know anger issues all those kinds of things if you're polite that's a difficult thing you know how how much politeness

kindness and compassion do you want in a leader of a company because if you're too polite you're going to have corporate structure that's going to just become stale there's going to be a momentum you know you see that in silicon valley with a bit too much wokeism taking over well have you seen some of those project veritas videos of the people that work at twitter that were secretly filmed discussing what it's like there Yeah, I mean obviously they It's yeah. Yes. I know but that's what you just did is yeah this is that's the problem I have with all of it Well with all of it on all sides though. Yeah, but I mean with all of it like these people being interviewed like

Without their knowledge. Yeah, they think mean with all of it, like these people being interviewed, like without their knowledge, they think they're on dates. Right. They're drinking, stupid shit gets said, and then he confronts them at a restaurant. I think that's unfair and it's click bait and so on, but it's also representative of a culture. And it's also an expose of a culture

that has immense power. And so if you can get these rare windows into how it actually functions, that might be the only way to do it, is to get these people in these intimate moments where they're candid, where they don't know that they're being recorded. And they say things, and you get an understanding of the fact that you could just take time off whenever you don't feel well mentally you could take a week off you take a month off no one cares and that the entire operation is essentially they they think that they're communists and that they think that you know capitalism is inherently bad and that these are the people that are running the discourse of the biggest social media site in terms of the ability to disseminate information the world's ever known. And it's not necessarily what they believe. What bothers me the most is the arrogance that they

can know the truth, where they can know what is and isn't misinformation. I think it's okay to be whatever, a capitalist or a communist, as long as you have a deep humility about your understanding of the world and you're not trying to enforce those ideals on other people you might bring them up as part of a conversation yeah but like you know you have a sense that you might be very wrong and that's the kind of humility you have to bring to the table and then that's where you have to have actual diversity of ideas at the table that's why i think elon is a really good pushback at Twitter against the sort of woke culture corporate culture

that emerges in Silicon Valley that's why it's I admire the man for doing that I think he brought onto himself a lot of political division and hate that comes with the political division saying he's not going to vote Democrat anymore

you just entered the political division, saying he's not going to vote Democrat anymore. Yeah. You just entered the political domain. Well, he's openly stated he's going to vote Republican, too. It's not like he said, I'm a libertarian from here on out, so I'm throwing my vote away, essentially. Not really, but kind of. He used to vote, and now you're pissing off Dave Smith. Yeah. I think he's running for office, actually, under the Libertarian...

Dave is? Where? No, for, like, for president. Dave? Yeah. When? The comedian. 2024?

Yeah, yeah. Is he for sure? I didn't know he announced. No, I don't know if he's announced, but he's flirting with the announcement. I mean... He knows a lot. Very, very intelligent.

I think, self-admittedly, he says he doesn't care about winning, which is exactly the kind of people that should probably run or actually win. But uh. You need very unique human beings to take on any of those jobs and do it in a compassionate, humanitarian, beneficial way for the society at large. Because it's gonna be at a detriment to you.

And I think part of the problem with politicians as we know them is that they do things for the benefit of themselves that are ultimately at a detriment for their constituents because they're doing things and they get corrupted by money like money comes in and you know they start you know um moving in this way or that way depending upon their relationships and this sort of... And money is delicious, power is delicious, and then there's assholes that start criticizing the press and you want to suppress them. And then you get Navalny, I think, yesterday,

just got nine years in prison. Navalny, you know, in Russia. Probably the second most popular political figure in russia what did he do what was uh his uh so i mean obviously there's several narratives here yeah the so navalny is a critic outspoken extremely popular critic of putin and of Putin and the Putin regime. I think what he's in prison for is some kind of fraud, some kind of... Even fact-checking me on this is very difficult

to figure out who's... But I think the official thing is there's some kind of movement of money that did not follow law. I don't know the exact details. Navalny was already serving a jail term. He addressed the court. The point is they're not going to tell you here.

You're not going to get clear articles on either side. Most of the Western press are going to tell you it's all bullshit. But there might be some truth of the fraud, but it doesn't matter. Obviously, he does not deserve any of this. Most people believed he would actually die be murdered you know suicided yeah like our good friend Jeffrey Epstein you're good friends right I had an opportunity to meet that guy once he did yeah yes how many invited me to go to lunch with him so what the fuck are you

talking about? Oh, you didn't actually go? No. Okay. This was after he'd been arrested. Before he'd been arrested the second time, but after he'd been arrested the first time. Yeah.

A lot of people did. Yeah. He had parties at his house where celebrities went and scientists went. This is post being arrested. Post, you know, he had some sort of a weird jail sentence where he was house arrest. I've gotten a bunch of invites to parties over the past few months. And I've gotten a chance to meet rich people.

I'm very suspicious of all these people. You should be you should be i'm i don't know if the weird people become rich or does wealth make you weird i don't know if there's a there's a weirdness there's a there's something there's like your basic calculus of morals seems to become corrupted over time and not necessarily in an evil direction in a weird direction all kinds of weird eyes wide shut type shit yeah like why don't we all wear masks and go naked what's you know it's like that kind of stuff and it makes me it make i mean it makes me feel like i'm not on sturdy ground in terms of what is good and what is evil.

I mean, the same thing with Ukraine and Russia. I've been getting so much information from so many people that is so heartfelt, both actual journalistic information and spoken information from people. The same thing like racism in America, right? You have the BLM movement, you have African-American people on Clubhouse or wherever I get a chance to speak with them. There's a particular message,

like there's significant institutional racism in America. And then you listen to like Douglas Murray or whoever and saying, no, let's look at the data. Like you have to be very rigorous and analytical about this and there's not institutional racism or something like that and you listen to both these like groups that are very passionate about this um and you don't know exactly what the truth is you have to kind of think you have to keep an open mind have a humility read try to control your emotions all

that kind of stuff i'm trying to do that with uh ukraine and russia and china and india and and western press and i'm trying to do that with these weird elites who are like uh you know that that i'm not exactly sure like i'm i'm really afraid of becoming corrupted either by fame or money all that kind of stuff like yeah that does that naturally happen to people do you become weird because i still hang out with comedians man yeah I think comedians are well with comedians and fighters I mean that's most of my friends I've a few bowhunter friends yeah comedians martial artists this just I find them to be of the most most inquisitive people the people of the best character I like them they're real i wouldn't trust tim dylan with power or fame i'm trying to make him president yeah you do realize once you do he'll turn on you

and destroy everything you stand for it's okay good luck but i know what you're saying about the elites and i think it's uh part of it is there's a thrill about being able to do things that other people can't do like there's a thrill about being able to do things that other people can't do. Like there's a thrill about – one of the things you hear about like elites is that like sometimes they'll have these parties and then the help will be the ones who talk about it. Like the people that are the caterers or the people that are the maids. the ones who talk about it, like the people that are the caterers or the people that are the maids. And it's like the arrogance to be naked with a crow mask on, wandering around the maid. Like, what is that? Well, it's like part of what they want is they want someone who's not them to observe how much freedom they have

and how the rules don't apply to them. It's like something they want. I think that's like why people like to take photos in front of private jets. It's like, I'm not doing what you're doing. I'm doing something different. Look at me. Look at me here with my Gucci bag and my fur coat about to step on a fucking giant jet. And if you cross, if you break like moral rules, that's exciting because look at you

all suckers following your morality. We can break that. And then when you break legal rules, I mean, that's what probably Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell got off on. It's like, we don't have to follow society's rules. Fuck them. Or they were intelligent and they subverted, they attracted that aspect of these people. You know, Eric said something to me once, Weinstein. He said, I think there are people that try to curate experiences for other people that are too high profile.

And so the way they do that is to get comfortable with them, get them comfortable to relax their guard and then of course with heterosexual men bring them around women with homosexual bring them around men that are there to please them like there are scenarios where people have hired people to go like like for instance I know of influencer parties they had in LA whereA. where they would hire hot models. They would hire them to just be friendly to everybody. You didn't have to have sex with the guests, but the idea was you would have like a hundred gorgeous women at this party of 500 people. And these gorgeous women were literally hired to walk around and be friendly to people, you know know and just make it so it's a

thrilling experience to dorks it's so weird that's so weird that's why I don't talk to women I assume they're CIA or all of them but I mean that's what Epstein did he had a fucking island and he would fly these beautiful I want to sell women because some of them weren't women, some of them were girls, and fly them there. And he curated these experiences, and by all accounts, there was at least some connection to intelligence, whether it was foreign or domestic,

there was some sort of a connection to intelligence agencies, and there was some sort of a connection to intelligence agencies. And they used this sort of very relaxed social climate. I don't know if drugs were involved. I'm assuming alcohol was involved. And then sex was involved. So do you lean towards believing that intelligence seeks that kind of influence?

100%. They always have. If you go to Operation Mockingbird? 100%, they always have. If you go to Operation Mockingbird. They haven't always have, they've had examples throughout history, but the question is the scale. The scale of their operation is the question I have. Well, wouldn't you want, if you had someone who had ultimate power,

like a president, right? Someone that like, wouldn't you want to get a little something on him? Get a little something on him? Kind of influence him one way or another? Me personally, no. No, I don't mean you. I mean, if you were in this sort of geopolitical game of,

look, a lot of it is about relationships and influence, right? There's decisions that can be made one way or another. And sometimes you make these decisions based on the relationships that you have, based on the influence, right? There's decisions that can be made one way or another. And sometimes you make these decisions based on the relationships that you have, based on the influence, based on what the other people around you are also being influenced by these groups. And you go in one way or another.

And you can shift things so that one group of people make enormous amounts of money, or one group of people, their business dies. This is a weird game of 4d chess but how many people that's what I ask of myself how many people are willing to cross the line of compromising others installing shit on the plenty of people secret CIA files say staffers committed sex crimes involving children. What the fuck is this? Declassified CIA inspector general reports show a pattern of abuse

and a repeated decision by federal prosecutors not to hold agency personnel accountable. What is this about? I heard about this recently. This article came out December, so it's not new. I feel like it's 10 different employees or contractors. Committed sexual crimes involving children. Though most of these cases referred to U.S. attorneys for prosecution, only one of the individuals was ever charged with a crime.

Prosecutors sent the rest of the cases back to the CIA to handle internally, meaning few faced any consequences beyond the possible loss of their jobs and security clearances. That marks a striking deviation from how sex crimes involving children have been handled at other federal agencies such as Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration, CIA, and so to say, the agency resists prosecutions of its staff for fear the cases will reveal state secrets. Does that make sense?

That said, the Catholic Church is doing a much larger scale operation. Well, that seems to be just a function of how they operate. It seems so prevalent that, I mean, you know, when Pope Benedict was removed, he was being wanted by other countries for crimes against humanity. I mean, from what I understand, he's trapped in the Vatican, which is essentially its own country. It doesn't have extradition, which is very weird because it's a small country. That's like a few city blocks inside of Italy. Yeah, but there's probably a definitive power hierarchy mm-hmm and you can control people it's basically like a nice version of the mob but it's also there's something we were

talking about like no disrespect no disrespect to the mom was to the Catholic Church we were talking about people who will get molested like boys who get molested when they're young by men often time will molest other boys yeah this is a horrible it's almost like I've always thought about it so I go I wonder if it's where the concept of being a vampire comes from like you're stealing life and that you by biting someone you turn them into that, you know, that's almost like An analogy of that or a metaphor of that Oh, it's it's a crazy thing that it happens so often One of the things you hear about when men are molested when their children that they'll go on like a lot of these guys who?

Molest children they're molested when they were children on like a lot of these guys who molest children they're molested when they were children yeah a lot of these men who go to rape boys they like these catholic priests were molested by other catholic priests and it's almost a thing that carries on abuse and trauma propaganda the generations it's strange yeah yes. It's hard to change, stop the cycle. And there's also probably an insane amount of power psychologically that's involved in doing something to someone that was done to you when you were a boy. It's fucking dark shit.

But when you find out the prevalence of it in the Catholic Church, it's like, holy shit. Holy shit. There was one guy that Pope Benedict had moved from one place to another place because that's what they would do they would catch these guys molesting children they move them somewhere else and this one priest went on to molest a hundred deaf kids they brought him to a place where the kids were deaf so he could apparently do it and there'd be less likelihood of them.

I mean, if you went over the history of the Catholic Church from whatever, as far back as you could find, what are the numbers, man? I mean, is there another organization that's so inexorably tied to child molesting like the Catholic Church? I mean, they there another organization that's so inexorably tied to child molesting like the Catholic Church? I mean, they're pretty open. I've actually spoken to a priest recently.

They're pretty open sort of acknowledging the fact that if you're somebody who's a pedophile, what better way to get access to children than to become a priest? Yeah. So it's not that necessarily, I mean, that's their defense about saying, like, taking the vow of celibacy is not the thing that creates pedophiles. What creates pedophiles is that oftentimes pedophiles will become priests just so they can get access to children. Well, not just access to children, but access to children where they are the representatives of God. So they have power over the parents.

They have power over the church. It's dark. It's dark, man. And another one is daycare. Most daycare places are run by caring people who love children. But occasionally someone will get involved in daycare that wants to be around children to sexually abuse them. That's what happened with Cain Velasquez with his son. I mean, this is just, it's not a blanket statement you could say about people who run daycares.

It's not. But, man, when it comes to Catholic church, it's so prevalent and so hidden. I mean, when I was living in New Jersey, when I was in first grade, I was in a Catholic school and we had heard stuff. You would hear things. You would hear something that happened to your uncle or something that happened to this boy and so you would hear things like you stay away from this priest don't be alone with this guy a friend of mine literally had to run away he would he had some sort of a thing like a sporting event where he had he was in catholic school where the priest made him stay with him in the same room And he was literally running away from him in the room. I think he was like preteen. I forget how old he was.

But I remember him saying how terrified he was. He was running from this fucking priest that he couldn't believe it was real. And then the same thing with coaches and athletes. Yes. There's a lot of stories of that. Again, you have the power over an athlete, a young athlete, a teenage athlete. How about that doctor that molested all the children that were— The gymnast.

The gymnast, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't mean that all doctors who take care of children do that. Of course not. But if you wanted access, if you had that horrible thing and you wanted access to children what better way and we don't often or don't talk about it enough there's certain atrocities we don't talk about as much as others yeah well that's one that people tell I know people who are molested by Catholic priests where their parents told them not to tell anybody yeah there's a lot of that man there's a lot of that that has to do

like with the shooting we had yesterday that's what I was wondering so there's a lot of that man there's a lot of that that has to do like with the shooting we had yesterday that's what i was wondering so there's all this political debate about you know gun control and all that kind of stuff i i wonder how much role there is how much responsibility there is on the press not to cover it like in terms of like making the person famous yeah or even that like the location or anything. Maybe the fact that it happened is important to talk about, but I wonder what it would look like, what the world would look like if it was illegal to report on it or something like that,

or there was a culture of not reporting on it. How could that be possible? I don't know. Because it's an atrocity, and that needs to be taken into consideration when people talk about gun control and they talk about psychological problems that people have. You know, all sorts of psychological disorders that people have, medicines that people are on. You know, a lot, like there's a question of correlation versus causation, right? A lot of these people are on disassociatives or they're on psychotropic medicine. Like, is that causing them to be able to do that?

Is it just because they're fucked up already and that's why they're on this medication? You know, there's a, if you look at the number of school shooters and mass shooters that are on psychiatric medication, it's astounding. But that's usually not talked about in those terms, right? Right. It's talked not talked about in those terms right right it's

talked about sort of uh in buffalo it's talked about the racial aspect of it so it's a hate crime right and then here in texas it's talked about i mean they politicized it immediately about gun control yeah and so it seems like there's an over-the-top artificial drama conjured up by the press to get more attention versus sort of properly putting this thing in its context. And I think any one event deserves the press it gets, but it's worthwhile thinking about the fact that, not the fact, but I think every coverage increases the chance of it happening again. Yeah, it does. Because it plants that idea into the minds of young people that this is, you know, it sucks being young.

It sucks being human, first of all. You go, especially drugs, depression, life can be a struggle, and nobody gives a fuck. You can feel like nobody gives a fuck about you. You can feel angry. You can feel lost and hopeless and all those kinds of things. And that can manifest itself in wanting to be heard by the world. Yeah.

So you can understand that sort of imperative and if the press tells you that this is one way to be heard it just I think that different message is better first of all a message that all of us struggle that that life can be hard and then a message of health of sort of of this too shall pass of challenging yourself of being optimistic about the future of trying to grow trying to survive whatever the hell you're feeling going through trying to survive that and growing from that all of those things as opposed to sort of like nobody cares about you nobody cares about you if you're struggling nobody cares about you if there's um if you're on medication all those kinds of things and you get in side effects that are resulting in um all kinds of sort of mental or physical struggles because i just feel like

the press wants the drama of the shooting they're hungry for that drama. I see that with Ukraine. And what worries me about Ukraine as well is that the press will move on from the war in Ukraine. And then the war will still be going on. And they will no longer care. And there was just a temporary moment of time where it could be used between the Johnny Depp trial and the Will Smith slap

to get the world's attention. And the suffering, the humanitarian crisis will continue as it does in Yemen and Syria. There's something seems to be broken about that kind of mechanism of jumping from point to point to point and nobody's talking about the nuclear war. What is the, like when you're dealing with a school shooter type situation, like what is the alternative, like how else would you address it? You know, we want to find out what's wrong with this kid, right? He's dead, so you can't interview him. It's like what caused it?

Will we get an understanding of it? Do you hold the parents responsible? Like what if you find out the parents were horribly abusive? Or what if you find out this is the product of schizophrenia, bullying in school? Like what do you, like how does one address it?

I wrote this thing once that said this country has a mental health problem disguised as a gun problem. And that's what it is. There's so many guns. There's more guns than there are people. I don't think it's a gun situation. And I don't think you can change the fact that there's... And I don't think it's wise to take the guns away from the people and leave all the power

to the government. We see how they are even with an armed populace. They still have a tendency towards totalitarianism. And the more increased power and control you have over people, the easier it is for them to do what they do. And there's a natural inclination when you're a person in power to try to hold more power and acquire more power. And it's never, there's never an inclination to give more power back to the people, to give more freedoms back to the people. Freedom's laws are rarely regained. And so the situation is, should you be able to own a gun to defend yourself if you're a law abiding citizen and you know that the police are horribly understaffed and you know that crime and violence are real things? And I, you know,

I personally know people have been robbed. I know people who have had home invasions. I know people that have been in gunfights. What should we do? Should you leave these people unarmed and to be at the mercy of a criminal? Or should, what should we do? Should we red flag any kid who writes an awful poem or draw something fucked up on his notebook?

And that discussion comes up in terms of like basically NSA style surveillance. Anybody that posts a gun, should you be allowed to post pictures of guns? Because the kid, this particular gentleman, I think on his 18th birthday, got two ARs, two rifles. From his family? No, he bought it. He bought them. Which is a lot of people are asking.

I was vaguely paying attention to the details, but you're talking about, so for ammunition it's pretty expensive. And so he somehow was able to afford two rifles and ammunition, which there's complexities around that. But like, there's a lot of people saying, well, you should red flag it if it's,

if you post pictures of guns or have any kind of the symptoms of somebody that might be able to commit this kind of crime. But that's that's pushing surveillance. Well, what about people that are just gun enthusiasts? Right. People that love handguns the way some people have watches. You know, there's there's people that are enthusiasts of you know gun engineering yeah and that's most of them yeah that's most gun vast majority so it's much more mental health problem and it's also in the full context of things and this is a tragedy but it's there's also an element

to this that it's a tragedy the way a hurricane is a tragedy that there is cruel things happen in this world there's this tragic unexpected dark things happen this world and it's dangerous to generalize from those problems into something like what i hear about there's a race war or there's a gun control problem. As people sort of leverage these tragedies to make some kind of political statement, some kind of societal statement versus dark, evil shit happens in this world. I think also people try to formulate solutions to problems as if these problems have a limited amount of variables. These problems have a limited amount of variables. Like if you have 100 people and you have a gun violence problem versus 330 million people that have all sorts of problems, all sorts of issues with their past, psychology and fucking abuse and trauma,

medicine and psychoactive drugs and psychiatric disorders and i think you just described johnny depp and amber heard no because i didn't leave in lying lying yeah what do you think is lying she's lying for sure she's lying up a storm if you can't tell that you've never been around a liar yeah no she's she's a manipulative liar who's beautiful. She has a beautiful face, and that's a real problem. She's not very good at lying, though. Terrible at it. It's amazing she made a career as an actress.

She's awful at it. But I also think that she realizes the jig is up. I mean, she's on the world stage looking like a fucking buffoon. And I don't think a person like that has the discipline to not read the comments. Like in that case, I tell people never read the comments. In her case, you might want to read the fucking comments.

Well, what do you do? You got to stick with the story. You can't. It's over. It's over. She's in the middle of chaos right now and she knows it. It's all over.

It's never going to be the same again. No one's going to ever look at her the same way again. If she had never taken that stand, if she had publicly apologized, if she had done something to get out of it, if she had not pursued it, if she had not written that op-ed, which by the way she didn't even write

for the Washington Post, she had the ACLU ghost write it for her, it was part of the deal where she was gonna give them 3.5 million dollars which she never gave them. That, if she had just done that, she would have been like so many other actresses and actors in Hollywood. They're fucking sociopaths. There's a lot of them.

They're broken, narcissistic weirdos that pretend for a living. And in her case, she happens to also have this spectacularly beautiful face and she's uh irresistible to a lot of men and so there's a power in that you know it's like there's that expression beauty is a short-lived tyranny you know there's the amount of it's a good line it's a great line i wish who wrote that let's find out who wrote that beauty is a short-lived tyranny um but that's what it is on man. On the self and on others. Yeah, and she's a famous actress, and she is wealthy. I mean, she has a lot of power,

and the power that she has over men, and just her ability to manipulate. Like, you listen to those conversations that she had with Johnny. First of all, how bad is that relationship? They're both secretly recording each other? What the fuck? And they've convinced each other it's a good idea.

No, it wasn't secret. I think it was Socrates that said this. Oh, did he really? Yeah. Oh, Socrates is a bad motherfucker. You think about how long ago that guy lived and how many- He's an ugly dude too, so that's what it takes to come up with that kind of quote. All they had of him was drawings.

Maybe they weren't accurate. I think they were recording each other uh to help the relationship to understand because the claim was that he was too drunk or drugged out all the time so he wouldn't remember the different things so but it just shows you how in a relationship crazy can become normal and it can drift that's that's the dark side of love. It's also, you're doing mason jars filled with Coke. Mega pint of wine. One of my favorite. Mega pint.

Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot to that relationship. But it's also, it's an insight into fame, you know, and actors in a way that we never really had before. Well, Johnny Depp is the really, really famous one. Yeah. It makes you wonder, and Depp is the really, really famous one. Yeah. It makes you wonder, and he was famous for many, many years, but he said the Pirates of the Caribbean was when he really got famous. Oh, yeah.

And I wonder, can you be a normal person through that? Johnny is a very nice guy. I know him, and I communicate with him i text message him i've called him he's good friends with doug stanhope i had a long conversation with him on the phone seems like a really nice guy and doug is a very good judge of character and doug loves him um i think you could be as normal as you can but you're not it's like i always liken it to when you there's a if you're going to create concrete, you need a lot of ingredients and they have to be in a very specific quantity.

Like you have a specific amount of water, specific amount of sand and gravel and all that shit that's involved in concrete. But if one of those is off, what if you don't have enough water Lex? It still looks like concrete, doesn't it? Kind of does, but it doesn't have the structure.

It doesn't have the rigidity. It doesn't last. This is such a, a boston metaphor for the human mind listen the human mind is not concrete yeah for sure it's not a human mind i mean i'm just talking about the development of a life of a life you need the human mind is fundamental to the because there's so many listen clearly johnny depp is not a normal human. No. Just the wit, the darkness. Also, I think he can hold his liquor better than anybody I've ever... I mean, it just seems like he consumes a very large amounts of alcohol and drugs and is able to behave normally.

I mean, there is a Hunter S. Thompson quality from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, like the character the fictional character not the real character yeah it's so you know it's like i mean there is like fiction imitates life there is an element to where i wonder to what degree he started becoming that i bet a lot of it was hanging around with hunter i mean he was really good friends with hunter for a long time planted a You know, he spent millions of dollars to fulfill Hunter's dying wish of being launched into space,

or launched into the air, have his ashes blown out of a cannon that had the gonzo fist, the two-thumbed fist, holding a masculine tab in the center of it. It's the only way to go. Do you think he wins this? Yes. I think unquestionably.

He's already won. No public opinion. Yeah, the court of public opinion, he wins. He wins like Mike Tyson in the 80s. I like how I'm asking you like you're a legal expert. You think- I am basically. I've watched a lot of this.

I've watched so many episodes of Judge Judy. I listen to it like, oh, okay. I listen to it like it's a podcast and I get annoyed. Like I get annoyed at lot of this. I've watched so many episodes of Judge Judy. I listen to it like, oh, okay. I listen to it like it's a podcast, and I get annoyed. Like, I get annoyed at ads during podcasts. Yes. I get annoyed when they get, like, interrupt, you know, they have to address the judge or whatever, so I just, like, skip. All right.

I have never seen, I'm not the kind of person that likes, like, celebrity drama or something like that the reason I really enjoy this is because it's raw presentation of of two humans I realize we don't get to see that

it's that but it's also someone's lying and they're being cross examined they get busted all the time you can only

do that so I mean she's created a fake narrative you know the whole I pledged the money Yeah, I mean there's a lot of problems that's one of them the other thing I realized because I'm a fan of psychiatry It's just competence of two Two professional positions one is lawyers. It seems like Johnny Depp's lawyers are really good

Yes, and I wonder if they cost a lot more. Do you have to pay a lot more for that kind of quality? I don't know. That Camille Vasquez, the main woman who was interrogated, that lady's a gangster. She's amazing. I hope Johnny and her fall in love. That's what I hope.

I hope after this trial's over, they go out to dinner, and he thanks her, and then they fall in love, and he gets sober. Look at you. You're such a sweetheart romantic. I think she loves him. I think she loves him, and I think she hates Amber because Amber hurt him. Maybe she's married.

Maybe she's married. Someone asked her that, and she laughed. She's dating someone from Britain or something like that. Oh, well, fuck that guy. He doesn't have a chance against Johnny Depp. Jesus Christ. Step aside, sir. Whoever you are.

That guy's got a real accent. Fuck him and his accent. There's other fish in the sea, sir. Move along. This is greater than you. This is bigger than you, sir. Yeah. And then the psychiatrist, too.

There's that, I don't remember his name. The crazy guy? The crazy guy. They said he analyzed him based on his character, Jack Sparrow. Yeah. And then they said, well, what about the Willy Wonka character? And he's like, do I have to answer that he seems so crazy I and then I hope that Johnny Depp like plays him in a movie because he feels like he was uh somebody wrote in the comments that he feels

like uh like somebody who like a patient who escaped from an insane asylum and is pretending to be a psychiatrist that's probably all she could afford that's true you know money does matter fuck yeah her fucking lawyers are terrible she probably found them on Craigslist they don't make any sense their questions are terrible they're so ill prepared but also what are they dealing with like what are they dealing with they're dealing with someone who's a clear sociopath, a clear liar. The way she turns, she answers the question, looks at the jury, and answers them. She's doing a little show for them.

She's nuts. Well, also, to be fair to this whole trial, I don't know how much they're aware about public opinion, but this being televised it's almost unfair to to the to the judicial process because i feel like the lawyers aren't as terrible as they look they're probably just following the game of how like trials usually are but they just sound disingenuous she sounds disingenuous she sounds like's lying. Maybe to the jury it doesn't, but to us observing from the outside, it just looks terrible.

I think it does to anybody who pays attention. The jury too, you think? Yes. Unless they're, first of all, here's the problem with the jury. They're too dumb to get out of jury duty. Spoken like a true American. I'm kidding.

But here's the problem. You don't know who they are. You don't know what they're doing. You could be anybody. You might get a jury filled with brilliant, sensitive, compassionate, kind, caring, intelligent, objective people who really want justice to be served. Or you might have nutty people. You know, you might, who knows? Who knows how they chose the jury? You know, I mean, look at the jury that convicted or that exonerated OJ Simpson. That's wild. The fact that

that, that they, they looked at that case and said, not guilty. Like, that is wild, right? So that's real. That's a jury. That's the problem with a jury. It's like you're getting judged by people, and, like, how much do those 12 people actually know about what the fuck is going on? Yeah, it's like judges for a UFC fight.

Duh. But actually, that's not true at all. They're more competent, hopefully. At least they've gone through some sort of regulatory process. Here it's supposed to be a sampling of the regular population in the United States. So you don't know if there's bias against a woman or against a man. And these are famous people, so what if you don't like their movies? What if you love their movies?

Right. Yeah. This is what actually somebody talking to Douglas Murray thinks. love their movies. Right. Yeah. This would actually, somebody talked to Douglas Murray thinks, he thinks that there's no way, like Johnny Depp is winning for sure because famous people always get away with shit. The more famous you are, the more you get away with shit.

Do you think Alec Baldwin would get away with that? Do you think if Alec Baldwin got tried for the accidental shooting of those two people on set that he would get exonerated by a jury? I don't think so. I think Douglas Murray's theory is wrong. I don't think that theory is good at all. Yeah.

I think the O.J. Simpson case is an unusual case because it was right after that extremely high-profile case. What the fuck's his name? The guy who got beat up by the cops when they exonerated the cops. Do you know the Los Angeles case that started the riots? Rodney King, thank you. When the Rodney King video got released and those cops were beating Rodney King with batons and everybody saw it. And then those cops got released.

There was riots. Everybody was furious. The O.J. Simpson trial happened right after that. There was riots. Everybody was furious. The O.J. Simpson trial happened right after that. And a lot of people felt like that was some sort of a payback. Like, you know, here's an African-American representative. And if we make him not guilty, somehow or another, we get that back. And I actually saw people say that. There was a friend of mine who went on stage. And he was talking during the whole thing. And he was saying that he didn't believe that OJ Simpson was guilty because he's black. Right. And he's black.

He said, I'm black. I don't believe he's guilty because I'm black. Right. And he was saying that openly. And some people were clapping. I was like, whoa, this is heavy. Yeah. Yeah. So slavery, Joe Rogan. clapping. I was like, whoa, this is heavy. Yeah. Yeah.

So slavery, Joe Rogan. So there's a balance to this. Well, that's a different time, but yes. Yeah. Not like a guy who killed a waiter and his wife with a fucking butcher knife. Allegedly. And then was like, I don't know what happened. I went to Vancouver and then I heard the news and I was shocked.

Yeah. Hello, Twitter world. It's yours truly. I still think you should be on this very podcast. OJ? Yeah. Really? Should I have him on?

Yeah, you should have him on for sure. Yeah, should get him a little liquored up? Yeah. Get loose talk? You know, I have a copy of his book. If I did it, that one? If I did it? Yeah, I have a copy of that. You should do the podcast saying, okay, let's pretend you did it. Now tell me all the details, if you did it, i did it yeah i have a copy of that you should do the podcast saying okay let's pretend you did it now tell me all the details if you did it how you would have done it what's in

the book it's an that's how it actually does i never read the book somebody gave it to me as a goof and i was like what the fuck are you giving me man yeah i don't know if anyone read the book but that's how you should do the conversation they wrote it somebody had to like somebody had to go over it right yeah i mean how do you talk to somebody who committed a crime that's a good question how do you talk to someone who committed have you ever had a horrific murder type of person like a master you have never done that in the podcast right I interviewed someone who is in jail now this guy war machine right he beat his girlfriend almost to death and then i think he was like going to get a knife or something like that and she escaped

and he's in jail for the rest of his life and i interviewed him and she was actually in the green room waiting this is before this happened, obviously. Yeah. So that was the most, in terms of like meeting someone and talking to them and them committing a horrific crime afterwards. But I feel like it's not your style, like just put it on the table, Putin. No.

Dude, I didn't even want to interview Trump. Right. So if there's any kind of dark shit that you know you won't be able to really get to the core of with the person you're not interested in talking to them I wouldn't be interested in talking to him

regular so I wouldn't be interested in talking to him and broadcasting it I don't want to be around that you don't want to talk to dark like would you talk like hers yeah murderers have had opportunities to talk to people no but like privately just to understand like what the fuck is wrong like what is up with your mind who are you as a human being how much you're gonna get in to that and how much you're gonna get out

of that and how much are you gonna carry that with you as you how much are you going to carry that with you as you walk away? The last question is the important one. How much is that going to change you? How much of a burden is that? I feel like you'll learn a lot about yourself, about people, about what's possible. I feel like it's really powerful to learn that there's murderers that have

certain normal human characteristics. Oh, they're humans. They're humans. And realizing that they're humans, they're capable of this, maybe they're sociopaths or psychopaths, you'll detect those things. Maybe not. Not all murderers are going to be psychopaths.

Well, you wanted to interview Putin, and you were going to be able to do it in Russian, which was much different than any way I would be able to interview him. Like the richness of the Russian language and your understanding of the Russian language, you'd be able to interview him in a way that a person like myself would never really be able to talk to. Yeah, which is the reason I was interested in it because I would be able to bring the full perspective of the intelligence, the nuance of that human being, no matter what

evils they have done i mean i think it's important to i mean i would interview hitler in 1941 and 42 yeah i would in 45 i would interview hitler that's really important to understand and people like to paint those people as as bad in a way how that is somehow distinct from anything we are. Like it's another creature. No, it's a human being, and you too are capable of that. If you're given power, a lot of us will become corrupted, especially over time. And our angers, our resentment builds over time.

And if you get away with a certain amount of things like killing your political enemies, you're doing it over a period of time, and you exist in a world where that's commonplace, right? Yeah. And then propaganda. Yeah. So the interesting thing about propaganda,

it's not only a tool to convince the populace of something, you start to believe it yourself. Yeah. I mean, most of the propaganda machine of Hitler, he started to believe. There's no evidence he didn't believe everything about Jews,

everything about the German superiority over the Slavic people. Just, you know, the thing we think of as hateful and idiotic, he truly believed that he is actually spreading the pure pure the strong people across the world that's going to make a better world in his view yes I'd take into consideration he was on heavy amphetamines which severely distort your

ability to make rational decisions yeah I'm sure you've seen that video of him at the Munich Olympics in 1936 yes just rocking back and forth, cracked out of his mind. Yeah, there's actually, yes. There's a book called Blitz, I think. Sorry, there's a book called Blitz on this topic. Most history books on Hitler, Third Reich, and Nazi Germany actually

did not know this about the drugs at all. Because that wasn't known at the time it was assumed because it was how did they find out i don't know actually i need to that'll be that's i think a bunch of documents started getting released a bunch of confessions all the doctors and all that kind of stuff because the the propaganda was saying the drugs are evil the nazi regime was very much about purification and in all forms healthy diet uh hitler was a vegan

or vegetarian or vegan vegetarian yeah yeah so one of the reasons why he had chronic flatulence do you know that no i did yeah yeah i think that probably was at the source of the of everything evil that happened in that regime Yeah, he was a known abuser of amphetamines. That was his thing. And, you know, a lot of the opera echelons and the soldiers of the Third Reich used drugs. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that was also a part of the kamikazes.

The kamikazes would, they would get cracked out on meth and then fly their fucking planes into ships. It kind of makes you want to try meth. If I'm being honest. I've thought that before. I've thought that before. But there's no,

it's a door you open. There's no, there's no closing that door. I don't believe that. Well, if you're well off, if you believe, what is it called?

Heart. That if you're well off in your life, you can try heroin. You can try cocaine. You can try crack. If you're well off if you believe look what does it call heart that if you're well off in your life you can try heroin you can try cocaine you can try crack and if you're well off so if you're not using it as an escape you're just using it to find out what the effects are like yeah i'm afraid i'm i'm fine with coffee and weed um the people that i know that try adderall get fucking terrified by it and adderall is a type of amphetamine that's closely related to methamphetamines it's not that far off and then the other side is pain pain medication oh yeah oh yeah that's a dark road to walk it's a dark

road and then that that one is prescribed by doctors well Steven Tyler just had a foot operation and they put him on pain medication, and he's been sober for years, and he just had to check himself back into a rehab because he was getting whacked out on the pain meds. So they canceled the residency in Las Vegas for Aerosmith. Yeah, you're never sober. You're never out. Well, the people that get really addicted man

That's like a part of your life that just it just always in the background always in the shadows Well, you can you're you can be fine with a little drink you poo. Okay, my legs What's a big deal little bump a mouth bump just a little bump for pick-me-up you gotta clean the garage Remember how good you were good at cleaning when you were on the meth just give, a little bump of meth. A little bump. Just a little bump for pick-me-up. You got to clean the garage. Remember how good you were good at cleaning when you were on the meth? Just give yourself a little bump. Yeah. Woo.

Yeah. I'm that way. I've never had meth. I'm that way with food, so I'll be fucked with meth. You're that way with, like, spaghetti? Well, like, healthy carbs. See, I don't do unhealthy carbs. I'll do healthy carbs.

Like, what's a healthy carb? like fruit oh you get crazy with fruit? apples and cherries and shit yeah like I've actually I've gained weight

since Ukraine because of stress and the way that I take that out is I just hide from the world listen to Rise and Fall

of the Third Reich or different books about the dark periods of history and eat excessive amounts of fruit. And then call relatives and listen to them cry and then go back to eating fruit. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's great. But I do want to, I don't want to, I'm going there. I'm traveling to Ukraine and to...

When are you doing that? I shouldn't say... Soon. Soon. I'm going there. I'm traveling to Ukraine and to... When are you doing that? Next year. I shouldn't say... Soon. Soon. Soon. I don't want to do travel logistics and all that kind of stuff. Are you apprehensive about your own physical safety?

Are you worried about... Yeah. The thing I don't... So I'm talking to a lot of people. I know what the risks are involved It's not insane But it's It's dangerous

But it's not insane Pelosi was just there Just walked out I'm going to save my girl Show her when she was young Yeah Show me a young photo It's a callback

Nancy Pelosi Yeah I forgot For the record Jamie just rolled his eyes She was back They have photos of her with Kennedy Kennedy Yeah You know what I think I remember her being hot No That's Jamie just rolled his eyes. She was back. They have photos of her with Kennedy. Kennedy. Yeah.

You know what? I think I remember her being hot. No, that is the picture I remember, and it's not. Kind of hot back then. Kind of milfy. Well, yeah. If you find, I mean, especially if you find power attractive. No, you like a lady in a suit.

Yeah, but it's not. I like a more tight-fitting suit. Look at that one in the blue, down there, with the blue background, Jamie. Yeah, click on that. That's her. Even as a freshman,

Pelosi was a political insider. There's a little, like, AOC energy. Well, the amount of energy, the amount of energy that must be involved in that life, the amount of power and influence. She has some big old mama

jammers. Look at that one. I think that's fake. Is that real? That's 100%. Stop it. They're real. Don't be an asshole. Look at those giant titties. Does Nancy Pelosi have some giant big old fakies? Yeah.

Are those real? This could be a series of Photoshopps we stumbled into, but I don't know. Or maybe not. This is a rabbit hole. Maybe go back to those photos. Those are real, bro. Those are real cans. Go back.

The cleavage. Those are real. Shut the fuck up. They're real. I want to believe. I want to believe. Look at believe look at them giant they're massive yeah yeah I'm pretty sure that's fake the other ones what would she's got the big ol fakies think so yeah no the cleavage what we got there's way more perfect that's real it's 100% real your mouth. Perfect. That's real.

It's 100% real. I think that's real, buddy. I think that's real. You know what, guys? Pelosi cleavage. 100%. Dude, that's real. Yeah. It's tough.

I think it's real. What are you guys talking about? Of course it's fake. Shut your mouth. Shut your damn whore mouth. Shut your mouth. Shut your damn whore mouth. It was like watching a porn with Pelosi's head on it.

I'm pretty sure that's real. That's real. But that's a weird thing about deep fakes, man. Yeah. They're doing that with deep fakes. Like you see porn with Scarlett Johansson. There's probably porn with your head on it. I'm sure there is.

There is now. Like gay porn. Yeah, you've just started it. If there isn't, please make it. That's always the rule of Photoshop. And DM me. And I will post it everywhere. Send it to Tim Dillon. If there's a photo of you, someone somewhere has Photoshopped a dick in your mouth.

That's the golden rule of the internet. And if you haven't, please. We're going to get to a point where you're not going to have any idea whether or not it's real or not. That's what Elon is really, the bots problem. He thinks it's really important. I think it's almost an unsolvable problem. I love the ambition of trying to solve that problem, but it's extremely difficult to know what's real or not. ambition of trying to solve that problem but it's extremely difficult to know what's real or not well what he's doing at the very least is he's forcing twitter's hand to address it and expose

it and it's very likely that they've been lying first of all something's weird happening over at twitter when he said that he was going to start when he's going to when he started to this process and then uh announced that he was making an offer for Twitter and then Twitter accepted his offer. Since then, I've gained 800,000 followers. It's not that long. It's very quick to gain that many. And it makes me wonder, like, was I in Twitter jail before that?

Probably. I was probably in some sort of shadow ban type situation. And why am I released? Am I released because they realize that these algorithms that they're using are really fucking creepy and that they're going to be exposed and these people are going to get in trouble?

So are they just like killing all this code? Yeah. This is great. This is great. That pressure was really, really necessary. I don't know if his ideas are, his off-the-top-of-his-head ideas are good, but the point is innovation is really needed.

Because that's in Instagram too, for sure. Instagram, all of the, they, listen, I've talked to a lot of those people and they actually mean well and they're great engineers, but they've become stale in terms of the amount of innovation they're doing and they've become stale in terms of the amount of innovation they're doing and they become arrogant and dismissive like they become arrogant

and thinking they know what is information what is misinformation they've become arrogant and knowing in thinking they can know what is good and not so they can and also they become dismissive of these other conspiracy theories or theorists or these other humans that are trying to manipulate our platform to do bad to the world and like that starts to fuck with your head and if you just hire everybody that believes the same thing as you in a room that you can start to believe that there is this particular thing that is true about COVID and everybody else is lying. And not only are they lying,

but their lives are going to have mass damage on society. They're going to hurt a lot of people. And that kind of arrogance can build and build and build until you're actually just, until the algorithm that you use for your platform, for both the search and discovering, for the recommendation and for the feed is no longer actually a great product. It's no longer serving the people. It's not just like it's violating freedom of speech and all those kinds of things, which is very important.

But it's just a shitty product. Like the timeline is shitty. Some people might feed some kind of echo chamber thing. But it's not like a lot of people are not going to enjoy it. A lot of us enjoy being challenged and a lot of us enjoy being like seeing multiple opinions and growing from it and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but you say a lot of us, is it the majority? I think so.

I don't know about that. And I don't, I also like, I don't know, the whole idea of the algorithm was to give you things that you're interested in. And unfortunately, a lot of people are interested in things that upset them. In the short term. Yeah. Like that was, that's some, that's like a false narrative that I think gets tossed around about a lot where they say that these algorithms exist to encourage engagement and encourage people to get angry. People get angry and people engage with things that they get upset by. All the algorithm does is find out what you like. If you look on my YouTube algorithm in general, it's mostly professional pool, Muay Thai matches, muscle cars, and food. That's the vast majority. I like watching people cook. I like watching billiards matches and kickboxing. That's most MMA fights. That's most of my algorithm. There's not

a lot I'm getting upset about. Well, here's the thing. Everybody criticizes Twitter and YouTube and so on try to do better because the algorithm is pretty dumb but it's pretty effective it's a it's a great innovation i would say we need to have further innovative steps but it's basically engagement as a primary signal what are the things you lingered on the longest you you kept returning to, and also clustering, which is what are other people that like the same stuff as you also staying on, which is that's the kind of video I might recommend to you if you haven't seen it yet because other people like you

also liked that video. So it's a very simple, it's a pretty cool algorithm because it's like, hey, you've liked all of these hunting videos or these animals fighting each other videos. You might like some more of them. That's a really amazing thing. I think that's a beautiful thing. And then everything we're focused on now is the small slice of that that's unintended consequences, negative consequences. Yes.

And they do suck and we need to make them better and improve them because they have mental health consequences because the drama seems to be maximized and there's journalists that feed this algorithm that use the ads for income so they're going to feed the most engagement uh maximizing thing which turns out to be drama really journalists are the biggest problem here's not the social media it's it's it's. It's not the social media. It's not the social media algorithm, which is a platform. It's the people that feed the drama, which is often journalists, I think. But in their defense, journalism is dying in the sense of people paying for newspapers. So they're starving, and they're trying to figure out how to maximize engagement in this very valuable... Now you sound like Oliver Stone.

In Putin's defense, NATO was pressuring them so he had to invade Ukraine. I think Oliver Stone is just being objective. Look at the whole thing. Yes, but... I'm not defending. Yeah. I'm just saying that journalists are in a precarious position where without clickbait, it's very difficult for people to click on links.

And the only way they make any money is if someone clicks on links. They get advertiser revenue or they can get people to subscribe. They'll trick you with a very salacious headline and then say, this is only available to members. I'm here. But just because you're broke and desperate doesn't mean you get to be a shitty person. True, true. But I mean, you know, I think that the institutions themselves are shitty and they're trying desperately to try to maintain relevance in this day and age where people don't want to buy print anymore. They don't want to pay for it.

And there's so much available that's free. And they're sort of playing catch up now. And a lot of the free stuff, the model that is most successful is clickbait, unfortunately. And I think what we're talking about with YouTube and Twitter and all that stuff is one of the problems is managing its scale. Imagine the sheer volume of tweets you have to go through or the sheer volumes of YouTube videos get uploaded every day. The problem is censorship. It's not the problem of the algorithm. If the algorithm existed

independently of censorship, I don't think people would have as much of a problem with it. It's that the algorithm exists and then on top of that they censor things you know they remove things where it's like youtube will remove a video if it is a discussion of a peer-reviewed paper scientific paper that doesn't fit in with whatever ideology they're pushing it's that's like the most blatant and ridiculous censorship that exists. People have had videos removed for discussing trials of ivermectin on yellow fever because they're doing things about ivermectin and they've decided that ivermectin is negative because of the political consequences. Or they also do something, I would say, worse, which is I think they call deceleration, which they don't, you know, I guess people call that shadow banning. They don't recommend it or recommend it much less in the search and discovery process, which is very difficult to detect. So like when your video gets removed, at least there's a definitive like, okay, that happened.

That act of censorship, usually automated censorship, happened. You can protest or you can at least go to another social platform and say, what the hell, this happened. You have some power. When you're being shadow banned, you have no power because you just sound like a whiny person that says they're shadow banned. There's no evidence. And that to me is really concerning. I think there should be like transparency about being decelerated and all those kinds of things. Yeah, and it's just like it's mostly going in one direction you know it's mostly

going against conservatives elon is a good kind of balance to all this yes and why i mean he got even i got some shit for um the idea of bringing trump back to social media, to Twitter. Well, look what he did the other day. Trump on his truth social re-truthed someone talking about civil war. The person just said civil war, talking about something that upset them. And then Trump re-truthed it, which is like their version of re-tweeting it. Like, what the fuck, man? Civil war, yes. Civil war, no. No no comment civil war is bad

very bad very bad hopefully we don't use it hopefully don't want to don't want to use civil war do you think it does seem that removing it from twitter solved some of this problem but aren't you afraid of the slippery slope of it there's a slippery slope for sure and it's also he's like a lot of fun to follow. He's kind of a hilarious guy to follow. I mean, I like stupid shit. The problem is like with stupid shit, it's like if someone makes a video about the world being hollow and aliens live underneath it and they're using marionette strings to control our dictators, that's funny. It doesn't – I don't believe in it, but somebody might.

And the problem is we're protecting dumb people from bad ideas. There's a lot of people out there that think that they are smarter than other people, and so they're worried about people being influenced by ideas that they think are invalid, whether it's ideas about the Illuminati or ideas about whatever the fuck it is. It's like you're protecting people because if there's flat earth videos and you're banning them, who are you saving?

Who are you saving? Is that affecting you? Are you buying into the flat earth video? Well, you get that because I've had this discussion with YouTube a bunch. I talk to their engineers a lot, and they bring up flat earth as an example of something that's been debunked. And just the confidence and arrogance they have about that concerns me.

It's just the fact that they say it's been debunked? Yeah, like they give it as a clear example as like, as we know that there's no scientific basis for this i'm not exactly sure why that bothers me so much but i sense behind that that first of all a lot of them probably for sat down wouldn't be able to prove to me that the earth is round right they probably wouldn't understand how they have proved it in the past no that no other people but i'm saying them directly. So you're now trusting.

There's a kind of universal trust in science. Fine. That's good because there's so much science is done that we can't possibly understand all of it. But you can't just have a blank check for trusting all of authority, all of scientific institutions, especially on new things.

Right. And that arrogance, I mean, the biggest thing I have a problem with is the arrogance because you should have a humility. Like why is there a community of people that believe the earth is flat? You can say it's because they're all stupid, but I just feel like that's a slippery slope too. Believing that there's just a bunch of dumb people.

Like give them, like that's an opportunity to educate them or hear them out. Like what is at the core of this belief? like give them like that's an opportunity to educate them or hear them out like what what is at the core of this belief probably it's a distrust of the scientific institutions which which to me seems to be the problem you need to solve not like censoring this community of people that believe the earth is uh flat i think the correct ways have a video responding to that proving that they're wrong and that way you can watch both and without like rolling your eyes during the video right which is

what they often do there's a kind of um sure mocking of the other side it's an opportunity to educate most most of us even the people that believe the earth is round don't know 99.999 percent of like cannot explain how this universe works 99.999 percent of it science is the very early stages of understanding we don't understand most of anything about the human mind most of anything about the universe about biology it's a giant mystery and we congratulate ourselves because we made a lot of progress in the past century or two centuries, depending on the discipline. But we're mostly, the world is shrouded in mystery. And I think humility should be the driver for the recommender systems on YouTube, on Twitter, on Facebook, and so on. And always err on the side of free speech, I think.

I think so, too. And I think it's also an interesting opportunity to explore why people believe stupid shit, why people believe the Earth is flat, why people believe space is fake. There's a thriving community of people that think space is fake, and a lot of it has to do with religious beliefs. They believe that there's like a dome over the earth,

and the earth is like a flat disk. Well, I also, I mean, I can empathize because there's something, I mean, I'm sure there's something genetically, biologically wrong with me or right with me, but I find those things fun to think about. They're fun. Why is that fun? There's nothing wrong with you because it's so silly.

Yeah, but then maybe it's a slippery slope. You have a little bit of fun. You get into a room. You have some beers with your friends. And then you're like, the fun turns and you get T-shirts and mugs. And all of a sudden you have a Facebook group. But isn't Scientology fun too? When you find out that there's like, they think there's Thetans inside of you and they were frozen.

They threw them in a volcano. That's fucking fun. But then they start threatening you that if you ever leave will reveal some shit about you well that's criminal that's not cool but the actual beliefs themselves like the mormons believe when you die you get your own planet hilarious each person gets their own planet oh yeah oh shit did you know that the osman brothers had an album that was dedicated to that belief? And that inside the album is like all these worlds? It's like in the jacket of the album.

When you open up the album cover, there's like these worlds. And this is all based on this Mormon principle written by a fucking 14-year-old con artist. Allegedly. In 1820. Maybe he was onto something. Maybe not. Do you know what not. I mean, do you know what happens? Uh, no. How do you know you don't get your own planet?

Imagine if this one guy was onto something he really knew, and everybody's like, he lied about everything else, but he was right about this. What if the planet is just a metaphor for a simulation? You get to enter, you get transported to another world. Or, your entire life and your existence.

I mean, you don't know how the world sees you when you're not around. Maybe you literally do live in your own planet. Maybe as you go through life thinking that you're going to go visit your friend and that he's there when you're not there, maybe he doesn't even exist until you show up. Yeah. Maybe all that social media stuff, maybe that's all an illusion. This podcast, I created you.

I manifested you. You and Jamie and this microphone, this is all for me. Thank you. This whole world. You're fake, Joe. I'm honored to be at least alive. Can I shoot you now? Not yet.

Okay. Wait for this podcast. It's almost over. We're at about three hours. It's almost over. We're at about three hours. But if you just waited until, you know, I mean, imagine if you found out that your life was really a simulation. And that all of your interactions with people were pro and con, were all these little lessons that you learned. And you're just going through this thing to experience enough different scenarios to have a better, more comprehensive

understanding of who you are as an individual. Yeah. It's like a meditative journey exploring your own mind. If you think of what VR would be in the future, it'd create a whole world. That's what video games are, right? You create a whole world just to be able to understand yourself better.'s what a therapy session will be of the future is you create an entire planet see the mormons are onto something you create an entire planet entire civilization and places you into a particular aspect that gets helps you to work out your ancestral issues like

your your your relationship with your dad your relationship with your mom your like uh former girlfriends or whatever you have to figure all that out and it creates just the kind of crazy people around you or healthy people to to to help you figure that out and then at the end of your life you come to that realization and then you return back to the eternal self with the deep realization of what uh um like resolving some of the deep psychological issues that you had before well you know in a way alio gracie felt his belief was that you lived this same life over and over and over again until you got it right until you made all the correct choices made all the right decisions at every single stage of your life and that this life is like this constant process of improving upon your existence so Nietzsche had the

eternal recurrence thing where unlike earlier Gracie i guess you don't get to change you just keep doing it you keep doing the exact same thing which focuses your mind saying the decisions you make at any one moment will be repeated for all eternity therefore there is um there's a lot of pressure to get it right there's a lot of importance to getting it right like imagine every single thing you do today will be repeated for eternity, over and over and over and over and over. Is that terrible?

Here's my thought. Why are people afraid of that? Because they are. If you tell people that, they feel trapped. They feel, like, locked into this existence over and over and over again, having to live your life over and over and over again. But don't you like it now?

It's just now. It's always now. It's always this. It's always this moment. The moment. Forever. Yeah. So I like this.

So why am I scared of doing it over and over again forever? So you might not like the day. Right. Most of us, if we're conscious of the moment, we like the moment. If you treat it with care and understanding and humility and compassion and intelligence, it's possible to enjoy a lot of the moment. Obviously, there's horrific accidents and terrible tragedies, and there's things you can't enjoy. But overall, if you're alive, especially if you're you or me, and you're very privileged and you're very fortunate and you live in America and you have a job that's rewarding and fascinating and great and all these good things, why wouldn't you want to keep doing it forever? Like, what are you scared of?

Are you scared of living today? No. Then why are you scared of living today forever? Yeah. Yeah. Why does that feel like it's trapped? It feels like a trap. Yeah, because I think we want to transcend.

I think we feel trapped by our monkey bodies. We want to transcend this existence and be something more spiritual, be something more complete. I think we find these little moments of that when you do show kindness and compassion and love and camaraderie and all these different things that elevate us beyond the base existence and give us this new, even if it's only a temporary, fresh perspective,

fresh enjoyment of life. And then we hope that one day we'll be free of all the things that hold us down to this very primal-based, survival-based existence. Yeah. Can I read a poem? Yeah. Let's end with your poem. It's a tradition, right? It's kind of a tradition. Do you want Robert Frost or Bukowski? Oh, always Bukowski.

All right. This is about the moment. It's a little bit of a long one. It's perfect, though. The moment? I mean, it's literally right there. It's in line with what we were talking about. It's called Nirvana by Charles Bukowski.

Cheers, sir. Cheers. Thank you. I enjoyed this very much. It's good to see you. it's good to see you it's good to see you always Nirvana by Charles Bukowski not much chance

completely cut loose from purpose he was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere and it began to snow and the bus stopped at a little cafe in the hills and the passengers entered. He sat at the corner with the others. He ordered and the food arrived. The meal was particularly good in the

coffee. The waitress was unlike the women he had known. She was unaffected. There was a nature, there was a natural humor which came from her. The fry cooks had crazy things. The dishwasher in the back laughed a good clean pleasant laugh. The young man watched the snow through the windows. He wanted to stay in that cafe forever. The curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there. That it would always be beautiful there. Then the bus driver told the passengers that it was time to board. The young man thought, I'll just sit here. I'll just stay here. But then he rose and followed the others into the bus. He found his seat and looked at the cafe through the bus window. Then the bus moved off down a curve downward out of the hills.

Then the bus moved off, down a curve, downward, out of the hills. The young man looked straight forward. He heard the other passengers speaking of other things, or they were reading or attempting to sleep. They had not noticed the magic. The young man put his head to one side, closed his eyes, pretended to sleep. There was nothing else to do, just to listen to the sound of the engine the sound of the tires

in the snow so the magic is the moment here's to the magic Joe Rogan here's to the magic my brother

thank you brother love you man love you too it's always great always great to see you bye everybody Always great to see you. Bye, everybody.