The Joe Rogan Experience - #2014 - Jim Gaffigan

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Jim Gaffigan is a stand-up comic, author, and actor. Catch him in his new stand-up special, "Dark Pale," on Amazon Prime.  www.jimgaffigan.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Yeah, I know. I just saw that clip of Jordan. I don't miss it either. Yeah, he's got weird autoimmune issues. So for him, there was like an elimination diet. And he found out there was just a bunch of things that his body was reacting to in a very negative way and one of them apparently was vegetables a lot of it is like just complex carbohydrates you know a lot of it is a

bread and pasta and stuff like that a lot of people get really inflamed eating that and it caused a host of issues isn't that great i's, well, eventually it isn't there, you know, like even the problem with chemo, you know, I'm a guy who tells diarrhea jokes, so I know a lot about this. Isn't it, isn't the expectation that if they could kind of concierge your cancer treatment to your specific type of cancer for your type of body or your type of cells, that that's why people are going to be able to live to 100, rich people are going to be able to live to 100? I think there's definitely a lot of research that's done in that way. But I also think that there's so many factors when it comes to cancer

there's environmental factors there's lifestyle factors like what you're eating like how much stress you're under there's a lot of genetic issues there's a lot going on when it comes to cancer yeah i mean there is like i mean you just hear about you from the Philippines, like an entire family, everyone died of cancer at 40. And you're like, eh. Yeah. What's going on there? Yeah. You know?

Unfortunately, some of it is genetic. Some people just have a shit roll of the dice genetically. Are you saying that because I have all recessive genes? Do you? I mean, I am literally, I'm like, everything's recessive. I literally went into the dermatologist and he's like, you know what, we're just going to, like, you know, because I don't know if you ever get the cancer stuff, the basal cells. He's like, we should probably just chop off your arms because they're just all basal cells. just chop off your arms because they're just all basal cells so it's like i am uh you know i i'm

all recessive genes blonde hair blue eyes white people really white people deal with the sun i don't know day before sunscreen well i think i think some of it is uh you know if they're in You know, if they're in Northern Ireland or Scotland, I think it's all right. Yeah. And they're also not living past 40, right? Right? I mean, they're kind of. Yeah. They're like, look at this thing called alcohol.

And then they're like, let's do this for the rest of our time. We're on Earth. Well, back then, like in the early, early days, they drank it because a lot of water was tainted. Right. Oh, yeah, during Jesus' time. Everyone drank wine and beer. Yeah, that's why the apostles fell asleep is because they weren't drinking water.

It was cheaper to drink wine. Yeah. And it was more of a party atmosphere. And probably better for you than getting horrible toxins in your water. You know, viruses and bacteria and whatever the fuck is in still water that's sitting around for a while. Yeah. Is there any difference between any of these waters? Because, you know, like there's, oh, this water.

I mean, I like Fiji water. Hopefully they'll send me a case now. That's supposed to be pretty good. But is there – and that's got to be very good for the environment to have water shipped from an island in the North Atlantic. Sure, as long as they're using fossil fuels to get it here. I mean, there's water 10 feet from me, but I'd like to get mine from this Nordic country that's

really far away. No, but is there any difference between these waters? Except for that Poland spring. There's a guy that Tom Segura and Christina Pazitsky have had on their show. What's his name? Martin Rintz? I forget his name. He's an actual water connoisseur, like a water expert.

Oh, wow. And he rates the different mineral content in waters. So he's like a sommelier for water? Yeah, a sommelier of water. Yeah, he is. Oh, that's so interesting. What is his name? Martin Reese.

Martin Reese, yeah. Interesting guy. And he talks to them about water. It's all, he brought a bunch of different kinds of water and tells them what's good and what's bad. You really ideally want water in a glass bottle. You don't really want it in plastic. There's a lot of issues with plastic, with leaching. If the water gets, you know, you don't know what's happening between the time it gets bottled and how it gets shipped to you.

Between the time it gets bottled and how it gets shipped to you, it could be sitting in the sun. It could be sitting in a hot warehouse. And plastic bottles leach these chemicals into the water, which are endocrine disruptors. Oh, yeah. Not good. Yeah. No, that's scary. Even water.

Even water. Well, I remember I watched this thing about, I don't know, all the plastic that's in the ocean and then the fish eat the plastic. And I just was like, I'm so relieved I don't like fish. Because you're always like, oh, fish is so good for you. And I'm like, yeah, well, now I'm going to stick to burgers. There's mercury too. Mercury is a big one. Yeah, but there's a lot of plastics in there that some of these fish, they can't mate or whatever.

I don't know. I know I sound scientific. Jim is so specific. Did you do a lot of research? They can't do things? They can't mate or something? They can't mate? They're not interested?

They're not interested. They're not interested. Yeah. Not good. Yeah. And it's a lot of people think that when you recycle plastic bottles that they get recycled, but they don't. Yeah. I think it's something around the neighborhood of 90% of all plastic single-use bottles get

put into landfills, or they get shipped to other countries, and the other countries wind up polluting with them. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the solution? Well, really, there are biodegradable plastics, and biodegradable plastics that are made out of hemp fiber. That's a real thing. They can make plastic made out of things other than petrochemical products. Yeah, but isn't it a little bit like the fake sugar? Like there's always, I had a joke about it. Like there's, you know, when we were growing up, there was saccharin. And they're like, oh, no, it causes cancer.

And they're like, oh, here's a new fake sugar. And then two years later, that one causes cancer. It's like everything causes cancer. They're just coming out now about aspartame. They're talking about aspartame, which everyone's been saying, that's the one that's okay. Yeah. I'm like, no, that's not good for you either. It's just sugar is the great Satan, right?

Yeah, it's just not good in the form that we have it mostly. Mostly it's added sugar to things. form that we have it mostly you know mostly it's added sugar to things and sugar from fruit is fine because it comes in a in a digestible way it's connected to fiber it's connected to the the material of the fruit it's good for you it's actually it's okay i mean it has sugar but the way your body digests it it processes the fiber it's slower release. What's really bad is drinking sugar. Like when you're drinking like Coca-Cola, like that is alien to your body. Your body is like, how is this here? Yeah.

This is never, there's nothing in nature that gives you sugar in that form. Coca-Cola, like in the 20s or 30s, used to be something that you would go down to the soda shop and you would get a tiny bottle of Coke and you'd kind of have a tiny – and then just the sizes growing over decades. It's just insane. Yeah. Yeah. And then the 7-Eleven slushy is just bananas. It's the – you're main sugar, just right into your blood. All right. So I think that everyone understands that, like, sodas – because I want you to get sued by the Coca-Cola company and the Pepsi company.

But that is something that is obviously – but I think most – even people that do drink Diet Cokes are like, I know this is bad. You know what I mean? as a society have embraced the fact that social media is one of the worst things that has happened to human beings ever. For sure for health, for like mental health. Mental health. Yeah, for sure. It's terrible. There's documentation. There's a great book called the, what is it? The American Mind, the Jonathan Haidt book, what is it called? Coddling of the American Mind. Coddling of the American Mind.

And it documents the self-harm and suicide rates of young kids, particularly girls. Yeah. It's real bad. Yeah. It's a lot of online bullying between each other, like hate and vitriol and just the comparing themselves to other people unfavorably. And now with filters and like you're essentially comparing yourself to fiction. You know, it's interesting when you consider for generation upon generation, people would look at their parents and their parents would say, you know, I had to walk five miles to school.

I had to walk uphill both ways and all that. And I look at my teenagers and I'm like, oh, they have it harder. They definitely have it harder. Like, you know, like in high school dealing with, you know, you were compared to people in your high school. Now these kids are compared to everyone on the internet it's like the just the you know the the uh the acts you know like the you know like we used to when we were kids you're like hey tommy's dad who's divorced has a playboy

we're gonna go over there and we're gonna look at it in a field like we did that when we were like 13 yep and now it's like the porn is thrown at you and so like i look at you know i think kids got a much harder they definitely have it much harder psychologically yeah no doubt and just just the online bullying and the the way way they tweet to each other and leave Instagram messages and Snapchat. It's just – it's evil. Yeah. And they do it to each other on a daily basis and it's a normal thing for kids to just be real shitty to each other online. And they don't have to see the reaction. Yeah, yeah. each other online and and they don't have to see the yeah the reaction yeah yeah and it is strange

because among you know it's there is this kind of the banter of the you know the greatest form of affection you can give another comedian is to give them shit yeah right but that's also you you also can get a temperature of how they're truly responding to it you know what I mean like you you know you guys pick on Bert and everything but like if you got a sense that it was truly hurting his feelings you would be more constructive

about it yes for sure for a little bit then go right back to it then you go back to it and then he would be like excuse me I have to go sit on my pile of Jimmy Buffett-like money. Margaritaville. He's going to have the machine restaurants.

It's just inevitable. Yeah, he has to have them. They'll be in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. But they will be, and there will be, it's just inevitable. There's worse food for you, for sure. Yeah.

It'll be great. And by the way, he's going to outlive everyone. That's the great irony. He's going to be crying at your funeral. He's having so much fun, and yet he's so unhealthy. But yet he's always laughing and having fun. There's got to be a balance in there that's being achieved. He's so unhealthy, but there is – like you see him like snowboarding.

Yeah. He's not like somebody – like there is – He's not ambulatory. Yeah. And, you know, like when I think of how my dad used to drink, like my dad would come home, he would have a vodka. And then at one point he would switch to scotch. I thought that was normal.

I'm like, you know, when your dad has two vodkas and then he switches. And so like there, but he would wake up the next morning and be fine. And I kind of look at Bert the same way. It's like he has a stamina. I mean, some of it's for show, obviously. But like he has a stamina that is unusual. He really is the machine. Yeah, he's got a very unusual tolerance for alcohol.

Yeah. And he's accustomed to feeling like shit and recovering. He does a lot of stuff, like saunas and cold plunges, and he gets IVs. And he does a lot of stuff to try to mitigate the effects.es and he gets IVs and he does a lot of stuff to try to mitigate the effects. But yeah, he's going hard. Yeah. It's crazy.

I'm jealous. I'm jealous. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I have like, yesterday was our anniversary and I had a glass of champagne with my wife and halfway through dinner, I was starting to get the headache i'm like what the hell's happening to me i just can't my body's like whoa whoa yeah when i take time off of drinking like we do sober october every year and then i'll have a day when we go

back we get fucked up and the next day i'm like i'm not doing this anymore. This is over. And so how is your drinking? Like, all right. So on an average week, how often do you know? Like, because alcohol is different from like consuming, like getting high in other ways, because alcohol seems kind of counter to the Joe Rogan lifestyle thing of like, or are you sitting there going, oh, this special cumin-enlaced vodka has zero calories. You know, is there, but is, so how often during the week do you get wasted?

Well, because I own a club. Yeah. Because I'm in my club all the time. Yeah. I very rarely drink, drink. I'll have a drink. Right, right. Before a show, like last last night i had a half of a drink we were ron white was there and he had his tequila and he was pouring drinks for everybody so i had i had a sip of his tequila i had a little bit but when i smoke pot or you

know or anything else it's just no big deal like the next day i feel fine it's not yeah there's total recovery yeah it's not wrecking me but all right day i feel fine it's not yeah there's total recovery yeah it's not wrecking me but all right so but you're inhaling and now i sound like the puritan you're inhaling your lungs yeah but you're doing it in a way where it's not damaging the lungs um well it's probably not good for your lungs to just inhale burnt plant fiber. Yeah. You know, it's probably not good. But it doesn't show cancer on the levels that, like, you see from people that are cigarette smokers. You also don't smoke as much.

Like, you take a couple of hits before a show. It's not like you're sitting there with a pack of cigarettes and you're doing it every day. Right, right. It's different. Right. Or you're not living next to a chemical plant. You know, environmental fact, you're, like, working in It's different. Right. Or you're not living next to a chemical plant. You know, environmental fact, you're like working in a chemical plant.

Like people that have to work with chemicals, like that's fucking horrible. People paint cars and shit like that. Like that's rough. Like do you ever look at the Europeans like the, you know, the way that like some of our foods have genetic modified thing. And then the Europeans are like, no, we're not going to do that. I'm like, are we doing it wrong? We're definitely doing it wrong. And so like, why isn't there this groundswell?

I mean, outside of the obvious thing of financial interests of major corporations corrupting our political system. But like why is there not kind of people saying this is insane? Because of the financial issue. It's 100% because of that because they've co-opted the media and the media doesn't report on all these things. You know, the media doesn't report on so many things that are bad for you because it's bad for their interests. Well, let me ask you this, and we'll be right back to the Jim Gaffigan show in a minute. I'm here with Joseph Reagan, Rogan.

No, let me ask you this. So, all right. So Sam Bankman Freed. Just got off of all charges. Off of all charges. That's totally not corrupt. By the way, he deserves to be free. You think he deserves to be free?

Yeah, go back to doing meth and hanging out with that little floozy in that house that you had with 40 other people and banging each other. Occasionally, when he would be in court in a suit, I would be like, oh, that's so cute. He's got a suit on. It's kind of like a boy at a bar mitzvah is confirmation. Right. It's just like, aw, look at him in a suit. Like a real man.

But, all right, let me ask you this. Feds drop campaign contributions charged against Sam Bankman Freed. But is that all his charges? About everything? Are there other charges that are still available? Or is he a free man now? I think they said he had to get a haircut, which is really weird. Okay.

Federal prosecutors are dropping campaign finance violation charges against alleged crypto crook Sam Bankman Freed over a legal snafu in his extradition from the Bahamas to the U.S. Still faces 12 other charges in the case. Five more of those counts are still in question because they were added after he was extradited. It seems to me like the fix is in. Well, let me ask you this. All right. So a logical any comedian would look at that and go, all right. So somebody in the Justice Department was like, he donated a lot to our people.

Let's make this go away. But here's here's a question I have. So there is that level of corruption. But do you look at that level of corruption and see it as equal to what Trump has been repeatedly busted as? Do you see those as equal or do you see like that as because, you know, like I wonder if like to me, it's like, you more things. Whereas like this is vague corruption. I'm not justifying it, but like I feel like some people see this as totally equal. You think both sides are equally bad. You would have to go over the case, right? Because the way it's been described to me and the way the CEO was looking at it, he was saying that this is fraud.

This is like straight out fraud. It's financial fraud. And they were taking a client's money and using it in a way that they were not supposed to. They were funneling it off to Almeida. He was not being honest about his connections to that. I don't know all the absolute specifics of the case, but the way it's been described to me is that there is not enough regulation in cryptocurrency and that these people are allowed to do some really shady shit

and that these people took it to the far end of this. Right. And, you know, they were making insane amounts of money and they were doing amphetamines and they were hanging out and having this polyamorous lifestyle with these bunch of super nerds banging each other. But you shouldn't go to jail for that. Not yet. Not for banging each other.

No, I think that's fun. I'm happy that they get to live like that. Like these socially awkward weirdos, all of a sudden they're super rich. If they were doing it above ground, rather, everything was cool, I would be them i'd be like yay look at these they won but a lot of people lost a lot of money and you know there was also they were they were being exposed by competitors by binance and then it turns out that binance is fucked too and they're up their ass with a microscope and they might have all sorts of problems with fraud and all sorts of other things that are being lobbied against them or leveled against them. I don't know.

It's a lot of complicated financial stuff that's outside of my realm of understanding. Yeah, it is interesting because the basic premise, again, I know nothing about crypto, but isn't the basic premise of crypto is like there's no regulations. That's, you know, this currency is outside of, it's not tied to the dollar. It's, you know, it's, you know, it's, there's an independence there. Whereas, so you can't compare that to Martha Stewart going to jail for insider trading. Well, yeah. I mean, the Martha Stewart thing is interesting because Congress does what she did all the time. I mean, they get access to information.

Oh, yeah. That happened during the pandemic? Yeah. Tons of times. I mean, and it's not just a Democrat thing. Everybody points to Nancy Pelosi. It's Republican. It's like literally 100% black and white. I mean, excuse me, red and blue. It's like across the board. Yeah. there, they understand bills that are going to be passed, and then they immediately start buying stocks. And they've always done that.

And it's one of the reasons why they want to be congressmen in the first place. They have access to that information. It's one of the reasons why they go in with a certain income and leave millionaires. Not just millionaires. Insanely rich. Hundreds of millions of dollars for six-figure salaries. Wow. Yeah, look, Nancy Pelosi is a better stock trader than both Warren Buffett and George Soros.

Her husband is an investment guy, right? Or he was an investment guy. Well, he is when he works with her. Right. Like she knows things. He bets. He places the stock options and whee. Right.

And then he gets hit in the head with a hammer. I remember all the senators that pulled out, like Richard Byrd and Kelly Loeffler and all these guys, right when the pandemic. And they sold their stocks and then they said everything's fine. Right? So it's like some of it is selling stocks. It's not necessarily even buying. Sure. Yeah.

But, yeah. It's having information that would allow you to make not just an educated guess, but you know what's going to happen. You know what's going to happen. And you know that because of these decisions that are being passed that these companies are going to become far more valuable because they've got certain deals

and then you bet on that and that's what it is. And it's insider trading. We all know it is. Yeah. It's, you know, there's the corruption but it's also like that

because I have a 19-year-old daughter and she's amazing. And she is not like if I brought up the idea of her pursuing a career based on financial security, she would be offended. And I say that with a little bit of a joke because I also remember like the comedians, people that go into comedy are not like, you know, we didn't know it was going to be this type of business. We went into it because it was, you know, creatively fulfilling to get on stage and make strangers laugh. And but like there is something, at least for me, having five kids, it's like I really didn't care about money. at least for me, having five kids, it's like, I really didn't care about money. You know, in my 30s, I remember my parents died and people were, you know, like, all my siblings came around, we were getting stuff. And I was like, I'll take the immigration papers, you guys

can have the rest. And so like, I was the youngest, but like, the point I'm getting to as you get older, once you get a taste for comfort, it's, you know, because I've tried to as you get older once you get a taste for comfort it's you know because I've tried to articulate to my children you know money is about freedom you know it's like the freedom to like afford to go on a date you know yeah the freedom of independence like I don't have to ask mom and dad for my help for help and so but there is a you know the perspective that changes and i'm not saying all people but like when you're 20 all right do i have enough money to get beer you know what i mean as opposed to like when you're 40 you're like all right i might need knee replacement surgery do you know what i'm saying yeah and like there is some you know

comforts you like comforts right you don't want to struggle right you don't want to be scared as to where your next paycheck's coming from yeah i mean i i fly you know commercial and i fly uh you know business class and it's amazing and i don you know, like if I have a gig and they're like, you know, I'd, you know, I would have to, uh, fly and coach. I'm like, I don't know if I want to do it. Do you know what I mean? Like I'm kind of a, you know, it's like, is it worth being really uncomfortable for a bunch of hours? Like, I have, like, I live in New York and I work at, Wynn has, Wynn's a great casino, right? And they have this theater and it's a great thing.

And so there used to be all these direct flights from New York that, I mean, there's tons, but there were some live flat things and they were like live flat. Yeah. So like where you, you know, it's like the seat turns into a bed Oh, live flat. And so from New York, it's like a five hour flight. And so they essentially started getting rid of those things. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to perform in Vegas anymore. It's like, I'm such a baby. I'm like, LA? Yeah, no, there's LifeLat. I'll do that.

Anyway, I'm just trying to impress everyone with my toughness, my mental grit. A baby can't be uncomfortable for a couple hours. You can definitely get used to comfort. Yeah. Yeah. But it's probably not good for kids to grow up that comfortable. No. It's interesting. You know, it's like we all, everyone that I know that's interesting had a pretty shitty

childhood and rough and difficult and a lot of problems. And, but none of those people want that for their children, even though it made them the most interesting people that I know because they got through some hard times and difficult childhoods and struggle, and they developed discipline and character and the ability to overcome adversity. I mean, parenting is terrifying. It is. It's terrifying. It's terrifying.

It's a complicated world. Because you know you're going to suck at it, but it's like, how much damage can you do? Yeah. And how much damage does the world do? Yeah. Yeah. It's not just you. It's like, what are your children getting exposed to at school?

What are your children getting exposed to on the streets? Yeah, because when they reach certain age where like you can hear them actively not listening to you and you're like oh i hope your peer group is communicating some of this stuff because i've said it six times and you're obviously not hearing it you know i mean yeah it's really and it's when you know when you have young kids you think oh because i think our society we kind of portray you know babies oh i couldn't sleep last night my baby was crying i had to change poopy diapers and that's the easy part that's the easy yeah that's just lack of sleep yeah but like when it's saturday night and they're out and you're like what where are they right going to Going to parties. It's terrifying. Yeah. And who knows what's happening at these parties.

Yeah. And again, it's also, I mean, there is, you know, there has been, you know,

again, going back to like these, these teenage kids, I would say like 13 to 19. I mean, you know, up, you know,

some of them missed graduation from high school. Some, you know, some of it was just a year. Some people it was two years, but it is social media. It's like also, you know, you know, the generation of our comedians, you know, we were, I mean, how many benefits did you do about legalizing pot, decriminalizing pot? Let's get rid of all these rules. And then so what happens in Manhattan is it's decriminalized, right? So like every bodega is selling weed. But since it's decriminalized, the police are like, we got enough on our hands.

So we're not – and it's decriminalized. I think it's legal in New York now. Well, but here's what happens is that like my barber opens a weed shop. Everyone has a weed shop. But unlike L.A. where it feels organized, in New York it's a little bit of the wild, wild west. And so there's these two stores. And again, there's no supervision. So one store starts selling mushrooms, you know, kind of like discreetly.

Some of them starts, you know, they'll sell it to a kid that's 13. Whereas in LA and Colorado, I don't think that happens. And so as a result, what's happening in New York is that there's kids that like are getting stuff that since it's not regulated, they're getting stuff that's laced with stuff. And so instead of smoking, you know, spending your 16, your age of 16 years old smoking oregano for three months these kids are smoking some of the most powerful stuff that's laced with shit and then there's kids that are like you know there's kids jumping off buildings you know i mean and the thing is is like it's not talked about because it's it's you know some of these wealthy parents there's so much shame about i mean i have no idea i can't even contemplate what it would be like but like it's not in the news it's not like you know where i grew up in indiana it's like oh that town there's meth there you know i mean it's not like that it's like there's a cover

up like this kid was going to go to this great college and he got stoned off of a vape pen that was laced with, you know, whatever that stuff that they get from China. Fentanyl? Yeah. And he jumped off a building. And the kid wasn't suicidal. The kid wasn't a total fuck up. And so instead of that being in the news, the family's like, you know, it's brutal. And again, it's very similar to, you know, just the mental health crisis.

It's a tsunami what these kids are seeing. Yeah, there's a lot going on. The fentanyl thing is a giant issue. It's killing 100,000 people every year in this country. Fentanyl overdoses. Young people. thousand people every year in this country fentanyl overdoses young people and why is i mean you know that's a lot of people it's a lot of people and is is there all right so we now you ever heard of how this is like in response to the opium wars did you ever hear about that

that it's in response to the opium wars yeah Yeah. How so? So, you know, I've performed in China a couple times. Now I'm never going to be able to perform there after saying this. But, like, essentially during the Opium Wars is like the British were trying to take over China. And they were trying to trade. And essentially nothing was working. So what they essentially did is they got an entire generation of chinese addicted to opium and they destabilized and then they could take it over and so and the british did a lot of nice things in india and all over the world but this is like one of the things that you know among the

expats in that were performing stand-up in China would tell me about is that like, oh, yeah, this fentanyl is all kind of like revenge for that. And that so they make it, they sell it to the cartels in Mexico, and it's just going to get in. the cartels of Mexico, and it's just going to get in. But like, so what is the, because the question is, what is the motivation behind them doing this? It's kind of like you hold a grudge. You know, it's like you literally, you know, this great nation that has, you know,

thousands a year more history than most Western countries was essentially the British came in and they drugged them. And I can just see my comments right now. You know nothing. You know nothing. You know nothing. And by the way, I do know nothing. But this is what it's it's an interesting explanation. Right.

Well, the Opium War is a historical fact. Yes. Yeah, that's real. But that's the reasoning behind fentanyl being kind of sold to the cartels and why it's being funneled up. I think it probably has a factor. And I think another factor is just financial interest. It's just so cheap, right? It's so cheap. They make the precursors.

They bring them over to Mexico. They sell them to the cartels, and they produce fentanyl. And the United States has a massive appetite for illegal drugs, and it's also part of the war on drugs because of the fact that it's illegal, it's very difficult to get, and you have to get it from criminals. So it pumps up the criminals. So the cartels make insane amounts of money and they have a business in bringing stuff across the border into America. There's also a financial interest in the fact that fentanyl is very cheap and it's very potent.

So you don't need a lot of it and you can lace things with fentanyl. So when people are buying like street Xanax or street MDMA, a lot of it is laced. A lot of it is laced to provide additional effects so that it's effective even though it's watered down and cut down like the cocaine. They cut it and they add fentanyl to it. And a lot of people are dying from the fentanyl. That's insane. It's insane. I mean –

And we lived through the the crack era yeah like crack was like crack is like there's the devastating effects of it and so it's nothing compared to fentanyl and meth we lived through meth yeah you know meth's really got to pick up their game well adderall took their fucking throne. Now everyone's on Adderall. You can get it from a doctor. Oh, here's something I wanted to ask. So like energy, and I could just ask Sigur and Bertha this, but are they on like testosterone?

Bert? Yeah, definitely. But, you know, like how is that how is that how can i get that you can you go to a doctor and is it like you want it well i don't know i get you hooked up i mean is it gonna i'm not gonna feel like my family are you no no no no no no all right no no no all right then i don't want it no but like energy wise yeah stamina i've never been an energetic person i know people are listening like no jim you he's being humble uh but yes so that would be you would have more energy for sure i'd have more energy sure your immune system would work better everything would work better so why isn't everyone just on it well a lot of people are there's a lot more people You would have more energy, for sure. I'd have more energy. Sure. Your immune system would work better. Everything would work better.

So why isn't everyone just on it? Well, a lot of people are. There's a lot more people on testosterone replacement. I mean, besides Sylvester Stallone. Who else is on it? Robert Kennedy Jr. Oh, really? Yeah, he's on it.

So, yeah, he does seem like he's... He's really fit. He's impressively fit. He's 69? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, he works out every day. Goes to Gold's Gym in Venice. Works out with jeans on. Is that why he talks's 69? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, he works out every day. Goes to Gold's Gym in Venice.

Works out with jeans on. Is that why he talks like this? No. He talks like that because of an illness. Oh, yeah. So I shouldn't make light of it. Yeah, look at him. Yeah.

He's buff. That's crazy. He's, oh my God. 69 out there doing push-ups and shit with jeans on. I don't know why the jeans on. That seems calculated. Seems like they would get in the way. I think it's a youth thing.

Yeah? Where the jeans? I would never look at him and think he's 69. He's in great shape. Right? But he also takes very good care of himself. Eats right. How important is the plunge pool?

Or is that just a trend? Is that Zumba for today? No. It's real. It has, without a doubt, it has great physiological and mental benefits. I do it every day. It sucks. Today was hard.

I was up late last night, hanging out at the club, got home, the alarm clock went off. I'm like, fuck. And it's like in a room. No, it's outside, which is nice because it's hot out. So at least I got some sun on room. No, it's outside. Which is nice because it's hot out. So at least I got some sun on my face while my body's freezing. And it is just. It's hard. And how long are you in there?

Three minutes. But you get out and you're like, this is amazing. You get out and immediately you get this rush of endorphins, this rush of norepinephrine and dopamine, and it lasts for hours. They say it's a 200% increase in dopamine that lasts for four to six hours. And it's not just like your body saying, thank you for getting her out of there. That probably has something to do with it. Yeah.

It's cold shock proteins. It's your body responding to this imminent threat of death. So it produces these anti-inflammatory proteins. Oh, wow. It's really good for you. And not just in, it's great for your endocrine system. It increases your testosterone when you do that and then work out. Right.

There's studies that show that, but it's great for your mental health. Your, your mental, like a lot of people that have anxiety and suffer from depression, they've gotten off from depression, they've gotten off meds because they've started doing daily cold plunges. Yeah. Yeah. I would totally be open as long as it wasn't cold. Yeah.

It's a fucking struggle, man. But you know what? But it's only three minutes. The thing is, it's like three minutes passes in normal time so easy. When you're comfortable right now, like we can go through three minutes and it's nothing. You just got to just go through it. Just just go through the three minutes it's only three minutes it sucks but while it sucks you just deal with it you just breathe and deal with it and then after three minutes you get out and immediately you feel amazing like wow like if there was a

drug that you could take that gives you the feeling that you get right out of the cold plunge it would be insanely popular if there was like a mint that you could pop in your mouth You get you know fucking gas station Everybody would be taking it You know all these kids are on vape pens cuz they get a little whoo They get a little lightheaded and get a little high you would take that pill the the post cold plunge pill every day You'd feel great. It would be great for everybody, but it it's not a pill it's a fucking arduous difficult routine it sucks but it's only three minutes it's not that big a deal just get in there

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck say fuck you know 360 times right take a bunch of breaths and it's and so yeah yeah but then you know then you've got to get an ice maker. Sauna is great for you, too. Well, you don't have to get an ice maker. You get one of these machines that just keeps it cold all the time. Oh, wow. Yeah, they have these cold plunge machines. Like we have one here.

It's called a Blue Cube. We have one at home. It's called a Morosco Forge. And it's 34 degrees. The water is just above freezing. You get in there, and you just fucking suffer for three minutes and you feel great. Wow. All aches and pains and everything.

It sort of feels better. And so some of it is physical and some of it is, you know, the physical that leads to mental, you know, so you feel, you know, because I'm sure that I speak for you also. It's like I feel mentally balanced after I do stand-up like the it's not just a high it's not a low it's like if I'm really high before I do a set I'm kind of even keel if I'm kind of exhausted it gives me a boost there's and so when I you know think about like uh things that are like for mental health. And, you know, for me, it sounds kind of corny, but I have, during the pandemic, I started gardening and it is amazing. It sounds, and I know I'm, you know, people are like, my grandma gardens.

But it is, I mean, some of it is I wanted to be a farmer i you know when i was in eighth grade but like the farmers are happy like there's something about their about the meditative nature there's also you plant something and you come out and there's you sometimes there's a huge amount of peppers it's like christmas morning and sometimes it's a disaster but it's it's amazing it's a huge amount of peppers. It's like Christmas morning and sometimes it's a disaster. But it's amazing. It's a complicated task. Yeah. It's interesting.

Yeah. It engages you. And there is something about – because I see that the happiest people are farmers and I'm like, that makes perfect sense. Is that real? I think so. The happiest people are farmers? I would imagine that providing people with food also feels good being a provider and just the the whole i think there's probably like a genetic component to it there's a long history of human beings farming and so i think there's also like built-in human reward systems based on certain

behavior that you know leads to success and survival. And I would imagine that farming is on that list. Yeah. I think it's very – it's just amazing. It's just cool anyway. It is. You plant some seeds. You see the sprouts grow up.

It's cool. It's amazing. And all the different plants and what you do to help the plant and i mean it's just insane how it's a great way to get food and it and it encourages you to eat healthier yeah because if you grow something you're like we're gonna eat this celery right it's like besides that time i've never eaten celery jeremy it's also you know there's no pesticides on it. There's no herbicides.

You're just getting organic vegetables. And then it's like this math puzzle where you sit there and you go, all right, so you do the companion plants and, you know, this deters this pest. And so all the answers are there. It's like we just kind of, like like i think even like celery as an example like there's no reason why someone like if you you can grow your own celery you should never have to buy celery like if you chop it off and and come back it'll grow back so like the fact that like we go and buy a huge thing of celery is so foreign to our great-grandparents. Right.

You would never buy celery. You could just easily grow it. My grandparents in New Jersey, my grandfather had a big garden in his backyard. Most of his backyard was fenced in, and he was growing tomato plants and squash and zucchini and all these different things. And my grandmother always made tomato sauce from the tomatoes from my grandfather's garden, and it was amazing. Yeah. Just the tomatoes themselves, those New Jersey beefsteak tomatoes,

they were all organic, and they were like a fruit. Yeah. It was so much different than the pale supermarket tomatoes that last for months on the shelf. Those things are bastardized. It's crazy like heirloom tomatoes that's what a tomato is supposed to be like those delicious sweet succulent tomatoes yeah and you're like this is actually good yeah i could see eating it's like even kale you know

i have material on kale and i've i've grown kale and i'm like, all right, you know, this is better than the, you know, because of course the time I had kale 10 or 15 years ago, it was just bitter. It was probably old kale, you know what I mean, that had bolted or whatever. Well, kale has a lot of oxalates in it. So I used to drink kale smoothies every morning. So I used to drink kale smoothies every morning. And then I started reading up on kidney stones and problems with oxalates when you eat raw vegetables in high quantities. There's a lot of people that drink a lot of those veggie shakes in the morning, ground-up vegetables that wind up getting problems with oxalates. Really?

Yeah, they say it's actually, for some vegetables, it's actually better to cook them. Really? Yeah. Isn't celery supposed to decrease inflammation? Celery's supposed to clean you out. There's properties in celery that are supposed to be really good for digestive issues and to clean you out. Celery juice is great. It's a good thing in the morning, too.

It kind of gets your whole fucking bowel system moving and so do you have one cheat day because you know we've talked about Italian food that's my fucking Italian food and Mexican food those are my vices and is it once a week or is it

yeah once a week I'll have something every now and again like we were in the Bronx. I was in New York a couple weeks ago, and we went to this sandwich shop in the Bronx, G&R Deli. We had these massive Italian subs. It was fucking incredible. And I'm like, when I'm eating that, I'm not thinking at all about health. It's manja.

It's hanging out with these wild Italians eating their fucking incredible food. And do you feel the consequences of eating bread when you don't normally? Come on. Look at that. That's the spot. What I felt like afterwards? Yeah. I felt like I ate a brick.

Yeah. But it was so good. I just think there's also pleasure in food that I really enjoy. And that's one of the things that I really enjoy about Italian food. I really enjoy about Mexican food. I just love the pleasure of eating these delicious meals. And I know they're not good for you. You know, if I'm eating linguine with clams, I'm under no illusion that I'm eating health food. It is fascinating how different cultures excel at cooking. Mm-hmm.

Right? So, like, the Italians, amazing. But, like, right above Italy is Austria. I'm not saying Austria has horrible food. But, like, you know, I've been to Vienna. I did a show there. It's like you get deep fried, you know uh whatever that dish is but like some of it is like the the you know you go to mexico it's like that's the home of you know

the the people of the sun and all those fruits and peppers and there's a pepper for every kind of state in mexico and some of it is geography but some of it is just like they really care. Yeah. Right? And they've taken the time to figure out how to eat good stuff. Eating good stuff and being together with the family when you all sit around and enjoy a great meal together. There's a lot to that. I mean, eating like boring, healthy food and just sitting around not enjoying it there's no

benefit to that other than health but the benefit when you're eating delicious food you're having a glass of wine and yeah you know a great lasagna it's like oh yeah oh this is an enjoyment this is like a celebration of life and of pleasure yeah Yeah. There's something to that for sure. It is. I mean, why is like, so Thailand, the food's amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing.

Like, you never hear someone go, you know what, we got to get this Lao Asian food. I mean, it's right there. Do you know what I mean? It's like, but some of that's the influence of, you know, the spices that are probably in Thailand, you know. But I don't know. Yeah, it's history. It's a history of great chefs and great cuisine, you know. And there's pride in that history.

And it's passed down from generation to generation. There's that, too. There's a lot, you know. But the celebration of food and of eating, it's, you know, it's an art form. Food is an art form and chefs are artists. And when you have a great meal, you're not just consuming nutrients. You're also like taking in this flavor art. Yeah.

Yeah. So I eat mostly healthy. But if I'm going to go to Los Angeles and I'm only there for one night and I have a chance to go to a great Italian restaurant, I'm going to eat. You'll treat yourself. I'm going to eat. But wait a minute. So if you have some drinks during the week or whatever, but you have the willpower because isn't that the problem is that you make the bad decisions it's also when you eat and then you keep going then you go out for burgers at two o'clock in the morning yeah yeah you definitely can do that it's the most important thing is like

what is the majority of your diet and the majority of your time is the majority of your time spent doing healthy activities and being physically fit and eating right and taking vitamins and doing the sauna a cold plunge and all this other stuff or is the Majority of your time spent eating burgers and cheese and fucking drinking beer and fucking off Then you're gonna have negative consequences I think as long as the absolute majority of your time is spent doing healthy things, then you just enjoy yourself on these ones. Like The Rock has like this cheat day he does every day.

It's legendary. He takes photos and videos of it, giant stacks of pancakes. Yeah, it's like he's employed like four chefs. Huge trays of sushi. Yeah. But, you know, obviously you look at at him he's doing something right he's very lean he's very healthy and he just has one day where he goes off the rails and that is like for him it's like a mental health break from the rigor of just sheer discipline that he exhibits

every day you know getting up in the morning hours of cardio and weight lifting and all this stuff that he does. So then the one day he just goes ham. I think there's nothing wrong with that. And I think your body can absolutely recover from that. Your body knows what to do with that. It just burns through all that shit. And then you're back on the grind the next day.

And so when you consider, so you enjoy being busy, right? You enjoy, you know, you're, you know, I mean, you've got a lot of hats, right? And some of that is, you know, I feel like in some ways I'm very similar. I love stand-up. I love acting. I love doing different things. Obviously my family is kind of important, you know what I mean? But, like, do you ever have a moment where like you look at the mania and that's kind of unfair to characterize it as mania, but the pacing. So like even last night I was telling my wife, I'm like, yeah, I got to get up at four so I can get on this flight to go to Austin.

She's like, why do you why do you why do you need to do that? Why do you need to like and I'm like, because it's a terrific opportunity. And, you know, some of it is like, you know, I have this new special. And it's like, you know, when we started stand-up, you know, it was a different world. But, like, this process of stand-up is so rewarding, but do you ever have a perspective where you're like, what am I doing? Do you know what I'm saying?

Maybe I'm not making sense. I know what you're saying. But it's just like, why 10 specials? Why? Because it's fulfilling. The work is gratifying in itself. The journey is the thing that's important. But is there something of, you know, also, you know, you don't want to not take advantage of an opportunity.

Right. You know what I mean? And I also know that, like, coming up with a new line or a new topic even for jokes is so rewarding. And it feeds itself. But do you ever look at the pace of your life and think, why am I going so hard? Occasionally. Yeah, but not most of the time. Most of the time I'm enjoying it.

It is fun. It's way better to be busy doing something you love than to wish you were busy doing something that you love. Yeah. And also having gone through decades of not having the opportunity to do what you love. Yeah. Or doing it under certain parameters. Yeah. And, you know, really struggling.

Yeah. And not being financially secure. Not knowing when you will be, not knowing if you ever will be. And then getting recognition for it, becoming famous for it, having a great fan base like you have. And now you get to tour, you go, ladies and gentlemen, Jim Gaffigan.

Yeah. And then you get to provide these people with an amazing experience of fun and joy and laughter and they walk out of there and they're driving home laughing about it it's amazing it's an amazing job it's amazing job it's incredible it's the best yeah it's the best and you know and having a club now and being able to do it in town like I

could do six hours of stand-up a week two shows on tuesday two shows on wednesday two shows on thursday i do it all the time but for me it's a balance because then like on the weekend i can work if i want to or i can just hang out with my family i can be at home i get stuff done i can just relax i i get all the work that i need to do in but i also you know and like podcasting for me is, I want to say it's easy, but it's the easiest. It's the, it's fun. You're having conversations with people. You're having conversations, so you're getting the fulfillment because you're talking to friends.

You're talking to peers. You're talking to people that you're seeing develop their careers in MMA. And then you're also talking to fascinating people that you're curious about yes i mean that's what was that's how brilliant you've curated this too it's not like i gotta talk to someone i'm not interested in right that would never that's the key i think to to podcast success only talk to people that you want to talk to. Like I book it all myself. I don't have anyone who tells me who has to be on. That never happens.

I'm even reluctant when people are like, you should get this person on. I'm like, now I don't really want to. Well, by the way, that's very common. There's like movies like that I've wanted. I'm like, I want to meet that director. And they'll be like, well, you should find a way because if an agent proposes someone, that director is not interested in that person. Oh, yeah. I'm like, oh, wow.

When they feel like they're being pushed. Yeah. Yeah, especially artists. When they have like vision, they have an idea of a thing and they're trying to put it together in their head and trying to plan it all out and then someone's like you should do this you should be like that's the last thing i want to do now now you fucked with my vision and i think that you know that's some of you know not getting caught up in other people's expectations is that's that's like the lesson that I personally have to keep relearning. Not like from scratch, but it's like I guess I would call it like a relapse where I'm like, oh, wait a minute.

I only did this because they told me to do it. And I didn't even want to do this. Do you know what I mean? Whereas, you know, when I was in my late 20s, I'd be like, what do I do? You know what I mean? Should I do that? Okay, I'll do that, you know. And, you know, often when you follow your own path, you know,

and you're doing things you really care about, then it's not work. It's not work. It's enjoyment. Yeah. It's just difficult. Like, you have to work. You then it's not work. It's not work. It's enjoyment. Yeah, it's just difficult. Like, you have to work. You have to do some work. Like with stand-up, you have to write, you have to perform, you have to really think about it, you have to edit your act and put it together.

But it's still enjoyable. It's fun. Yeah. I mean, there's a giant percentage of our population that does things they don't want to do all day, every day. And that's one of the reasons why people drink so much. They come home and they just want a break. Like they just don't want to be there anymore. They want to change their state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're escaping. Brutal. Yeah. I mean, that is the life that a lot of people choose when they choose security. They choose something like, oh, if I do this, I can make that. And I do this, then I can buy a house.

And if I do that, I can buy a boat. I do this, then I can get that. And they're all day long watching that clock wanting to get the fuck out of there.

And then they get out of there, they go home, they're just, oh, give me a drink. And their family's complaining and the wife is pissed because the gardener fucked something up

and she's like, give me a fucking drink. Yeah. Oh. And then you just sit there watching tv and yelling at fox news yeah and then and i and there is something about i mean i don't think we even there's probably people that understand this but like this outrage machine is it serves such a purpose. And I'm talking about both sides.

Like, you know, fucking Trump, fucking Biden. There is like this, there is this thing that like it serves something in us that is probably not healthy. Definitely not healthy. Right. And it's certainly not constructive. Do you know what I mean? Like, I feel as though, you know, with comedians, we are so used to being around people of different points of view

and different sensibilities that we grow to love that it's not completely foreign to like, I remember at 4th of July, I had a friend that was like at Occupy Wall Street. And then I had a friend who works at Fox News and they were there and they've known each other for 30 years and it was nothing. It was not an issue issue it was interesting i mean i was asking them questions you know i'm like all right so what's going on here yeah and uh but there is something maybe it's because comedians are misfits because i say that also and i sometimes think like sometimes people in the entertainment industry are like, you know, my business is so weird when the reality is, you know, in a bank, in a, you know, in a construction site, there's

people have dramatically different opinions too, and they got to go along to get along. Right. Yeah. But I don't know. Well, people like being in opposition of other people and they, they like thinking that those people on that other side are keeping them from living the dream or keeping this country from being great or keeping people from prospering and keeping democracy alive. And if we don't defeat them, we're fucked. And they like having this wild cause. And there's some validity to it. I mean, there's a lot of real challenging issues in this country, like real dangerous,

scary issues. And there's a lot of financial interests that are tied up in these dangerous, scary issues. And they will avoid solutions because they're profiting off of the problem itself. Wow. There's a lot of that going on. Yeah.

That's a lot of the homeless problem. That's a lot of, there's a lot of issues in this country that you could pick one side or another and just decide the other those people are the problem it's insanely complicated it's insanely interwoven and complex and you know to just to you know reduce it down to the right versus the left and we're the good guys and they're the bad guys it's like it's that's such a stupid perspective and you're being played you're being played by the media you're being played by politicians you know it's like manufactured outrage recreational outrage and it's just a giant distraction it's constantly going on and then there's ufos yeah what's why is

it that the ufo thing comes up every couple months where they're like there's ufos and then uh like a half hour later people like did you see the new colt uniform you're like we're so easily distracted by really unimportant things from like stuff that, you know, is, is the theme of every sci-fi movie, right? Is we're so, you know, like the, you know, the aliens thing in the pandemic, they're like, well, here's the aliens info. And people were like, that's unbelievable. Did you see what Trump said to that female reporter? You know what I mean? Like we are so easily distracted by, but I mean I don't think it's a conspiracy necessarily. I think it's just that human beings are just like goldfish. I think we forget.

For sure. Oh, yeah. That's right. Oh, that's right. We definitely are. But then there's also people news releases and leaks that they put out to distract us from other complicated things that are also going on simultaneously the fascinating thing about the ufo thing is because if this had happened in like the 1980s

it would be front page of every newspaper everyone would be talking about it at work everyone would be talking about on the street like oh my god they had congressional hearings where they said we've recovered multiple crashed vehicles from other planets we have alien biological entities that are in freezers that they have right now the government has been doing this for 80 years and keeping it secret there's a crash retrieval program there's a back engineering program this is all in the congressional hearings yesterday. And everybody's like, eh, whatever. But Elon Musk changed it to an ex. Why is it an ex?

He's a Nazi. Here's what I don't understand. Because you talked to him. You're probably friendly with him. But he reminds me of a comedian. He reminds me of the comedian that He reminds me of the comedian that... Because there's the comedians where they'll be like, hey, do us a favor.

Whatever you do, don't bring up that person with the blue shirt. And the comedian's like, I'm bringing up that person with the blue shirt. He is that... The X thing, and I haven't done a deep dive. I know people are upset about it. But I'm sitting there, and I know know people are upset about it and and but i'm sitting there and i know that people are like but my takeaway is like oh he's that that's he's just doing that for fun right yeah that's just him like all right the russians did a z on their trucks what could i do on Twitter that would freak people out? And that's kind of – or is it a distraction?

What he's doing? Like here – all right. Here's my conspiracy. My conspiracy is Twitter threads is – it's still in development. But like Twitter is really struggling, right? Let's say it's struggling. Financially, yeah. How do you distract from that?

You either, how do you make a new, you introduce a new conversation piece? So like if you're going to be likely, which comedians, you know, point of view, you know, wouldn't you sit there and go, maybe? What is the reason for the X? Well, he has an affinity. Except for us talking about it. He loves the letter X. Okay. SpaceX, his kid's name X.

I think the original company that he developed with PayPal was X. Like, he's got an affinity for that letter for whatever reason. You know, he's a super nerd he he likes like like he made the shape of the rocket different because he likes the movie space balls right yeah i mean that's why he called he put a tesla and a satellite there's that but then there's also the the knowledge i mean i have a 17 yearold son who I know says things to push buttons. Oh, yeah. And so he's a little bit like,

you know, I'm going to do this, and it's going to make some people upset. Yeah. In a way, it's part of the outrage machine. Sure. He's like, I got to feed the outrage machine. Well, it's a fun thing for a kid, too, to fuck with you. Say something to your dad.

Feel some power. Yeah. Right? Just put a little push. Hey, dad, do you ever think that maybe you're wrong? Hey, dad. Yeah. Do you ever think that maybe the other side is on the right path and you're the enemy of history?

Yes. Yes. And, you know, I've got five kids with five different opinions and it's just crazy how different their opinions are isn't it there is out of the box same house there is no i mean just once a social justice warrior one's like all right i gotta make sure he doesn't turn into a troll. One who's a terrific athlete. One who's like either going to be a fashion designer or a serial killer. It's just bananas. But, you know, there is part of me as a comedian.

I'm like, you know what? You don't want the easy life because the easy life, it's hard to come up with material. You want to live in chaos. Right? Well, you know, you want a life with problems that are solvable. Yeah. You don't want problems that are insurmountable, like you live in a war-torn country and there's no food. Those are horrible problems.

But you want problems like, I'm in a difficult occupation. There's a lot of competition. It's fascinating, intellectually challenging, but I have to be on my fucking game. And I have to get up and I have to put in the work. And the more work I put in, the better the results will be. That's what you want. And you want that feeling of satisfaction. I think human beings, we require complex problem solving.

We require things that we have to accomplish and do in order to feel good. Like we've got some, we've made some headway, made some ground, we made some progress. We're doing the right thing. There's like a built in thing that I think that it's from our evolution and our development that we had to develop the proper tools and figure out how to hunt and gather and all those different things. There's a lot to that. There's a lot to that, that it's like, it's wired into the psychology of being a human being. The most miserable people I know have nothing to do. They're bored and lazy and they're sedentary and they distract themselves with drugs and alcohol and whatever and pharmaceuticals. And those are the people that are struggling the most because they don't struggle with the thing that they do, where there's this thing that they have to be on top of.

They have to be focused and really dedicated to it. And then you see the results of those, whether you're working in a team, an office that's trying to accomplish a goal, and you get it. You're like, yeah, and then everybody can go out and celebrate. There's a real feeling of accomplishment when you do something. When you don't do anything, anything at all, I just think people get really depressed. I think it's really bad for you to not do anything. Yeah

It's well, that's also like, you know, the success can kind of cripple people, right? Right you get soft All right. Let me ask you this. Okay what are the chances of Biden and Trump being the nominees. I think the chance of Trump is very high. I think the chance of Biden is entirely dependent on whether or not they can do something to turn his health around. Because it seems like his mental health is deteriorating so rapidly and so publicly that it's a narrative now. And it's an inescapable narrative. He just said they cured cancer the other day. Did you see that?

Yeah. I mean, I didn't see it. I mean, he just says things and he the other day. Did you see that? Yeah, I mean I didn't I mean He just says things and he doesn't know what he's saying. He clearly is compromised mentally was something wrong There is something about the age of everyone. Yeah, you probably saw the Mitch McConnell thing amazing I am Feinstein, you know, he just rebooted everybody Like the Chuck Grassley. There is, and I tried to write about this,

but it's also like our perception of it because part of you is like, okay, Mick Jagger is 80. He's killing it. He's probably, you know, he's probably got two more wives in him. You know what I mean? And then you got Harrison Ford. did Raiders of the Lost Ark. I saw the movie.

I brought it with my kids. It's an action movie. He's still an action star, age of 80. Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, kicking ass. They're in their 80s. Yeah. And then you sit there and you look at Nancy you know, Nancy Pelosi was 84. Yeah. You know, Diane Feinstein. You know, it's like, well, Feinstein's compromised. They actually hid that she's compromised. It's like all this. Yeah. And then also like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, should have should have left. Yeah. Right. Earlier. Yeah. But like could have left during the administration, and they would have gotten a liberal judge. Yeah, but here's the thing.

He gets confused in Senate appropriations hearings and has to be prodded to vote. Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah, it's not fair. It's not fair to the constituents. It's not fair to her. But when I was a kid, I didn't, you know, the understanding, you know, I'm in my 50s. I know I look like I'm 60.

You look great. Oh, thanks. No, but like when I was growing up, people turned 65. They retired and they either went to Florida or Arizona and they retired or they got a different kind of job. But like they kind of disappeared. But they kind of disappeared. Then they went to the blue plates. They dyed their hair blue. And then they started sending their kids two bucks in a birthday card.

I didn't even know 80-year-olds existed. I mean, now there's so many 80-year-olds. There used to be people that were 65 that moved to Florida. And then there was like Willard Scott would announce one or two hundred-year-olds. Right, right. But there was no 80-year-olds. There was not a – I mean the 80-year-olds are everywhere. I think the 80-year-olds are multiplying.

Well, there's better medicine and health now. People are way better at nutrition and taking care of themselves. They have good doctors and they're getting the right supplements and, you know, they can live longer. People are going to live a lot longer. I think within our lifetime, we're going to see people that live to be 150 years old. Yeah. I think that's a fact.

I mean, when we were kids, Reagan was president. Yeah. He was probably 72 or something like that. And people were like, he's, you know. Yeah. You know, it's like he's. Now he would be a spring chicken. Now, yeah. Are you kidding?

He would be like lifting weights with RFK Jr. Yeah. That's three years older than RFK Jr. Yeah. Right. Look at him at 69. That's nuts. It's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Look at him at 69. That's nuts. It's amazing. Yeah. When you see guys like, well, Biden is a particularly bad example because he's also had two brain surgeries. He had a serious brain surgery where they literally remove the top of your skull and deal with aneurysms. He's got real problems and they know it. But they also know that he's the president of the United States and they can't address that or they'll lose power. And they also know that he's stated that he wants to run again, whether they can talk him out of that or whether he decides not to do that or whether some – the health complications get more severe. Like you don't get better when you get 80 and you're in the most insane high-pressure job.

Do you see the movie cocoon i mean they but here's the thing that you know i think that there you know the the the biden thing is uh you know i'm probably on the other side of this but like i view biden as like you know his foot and mouth disease has disappeared so in other words he used to say stuff like even when he was with obama yeah there would be like we got to get obama biden out of here right and i don't think he does that and some of it is what do you mean you don't think he does he does it all the time well i mean you know but but now they're calling them senior moments. But, like, before he used to be, like, he would say things and people were like,

ixnay on the talking Biden. Well, when you're a liar and an idiot as a young man. So you're pro-Biden. I'm joking. Well, he's clearly a liar. I mean, there's videos of him lying when he was younger about his education record. And, you know, he lifted the coal miner speech from the guy. Yeah.

Well, we used to do Joe Biden night at Stitches in Boston in the 80s. Because when he was running for president in 1988, he got caught plagiarizing. Yeah. A whole speech. So when, not just one, I think it was more than one. Oh, really? And then, and also I think there was some other evidence of plagiarism in his past. was more than one. Oh, really? And then, and also I think there was some other evidence of plagiarism in his past. So we used to do a night at Stitches where like you would do my act, I would do your

act. We would do, we would go up and do our friend's acts. Oh wow. Yeah. It was Joe Biden night. No way. Yeah. And this is in 1988. But I don't know, maybe this, all right, This is what I think. I think that if Trump I think that I think that if Trump goes away, I think Biden's going to go. See, you guys take over. That's what I naively. Trump's not going to go away. I mean, they would have to put him in jail and it doesn't seem like they're able to do that. What are the charges now? What are the most egregious, most difficult to defend charges? Because there's the top secret document stuff. But the problem with that is Biden has multiple instances of these top secret documents.

Yeah. Had him in his fucking Corvette in his garage. There's a couple cases according to the Politico website. Criminal cases. Definitive guide to the key players and legal risks in the four criminal probes of Donald Trump. So over 234 years of the nation's history, no American president, former president was indicted. That changed in March of 2023. Charged with 34 felony counts in connection with hush money payments to a porn star.

See, that one's a weird one. Because it's like, that's not a big deal. Well, that's, you know. Hush money payments? I mean, I don't know if our wives would agree. No, definitely it's not like morally. No, but it is. But yeah, that's like, you know, in the era of JFK, that would be like, how dare you bring that up?

Yeah. So 37 felony counts for mishandling classified documents and impending investigations. Now, what I've heard about this is these counts are inflated. So there's a bunch of counts, but they multiply those accounts based on the amount of documents. So it becomes all these different counts. I'm talking on my ass here. No, I know. But some of it is like, but that's...

So two other ongoing criminal probes, both related to 2020 election interference, those are serious. Yeah, I think the January 6th thing is pretty bad. Well, the January 6th thing is bad, but also the intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people to go into the Capitol building. That's a fact. So wait a minute.

You're saying that that guy, what's his name? Ray Epps. Yeah, you really think that he was- I don't know. I don't know, but I do know that every other- I think that's pretty apparent. I think he's going to sue Fox. I think every other person who was involved in January 6th, who was involved in coordinating a break-in into the Capitol and instigating people break-in, they were all

arrested. This guy wasn't. Not only that, they were defending him in the New York Times, the Washington Post, all those different things, because saying that Fox News has unjustly accused him of instigating. Well, he clearly instigated. He did it on camera. I don't know if he was a Fed. I know a lot of people think he was a Fed. The people that were there were calling him a Fed. What I do know is when they asked the FBI,

the FBI said, we can't tell you whether or not there were people that were there that were doing that. Now, there's been reports that there was hundreds of agents that were there that were doing that. I don't's been reports that there's hundreds of agents that were there that were doing that. I don't know if that's true either. But I do know that they do use agent provocateurs to

disrupt peaceful protests. It's a common tactic. What they do is, say if there's a, like the World Trade Organization is a great example. And that was in, I think, the 90s in Seattle. And so what they did was they were protesting the World Trade Organization. They were doing it peacefully. It was a big problem. So what they did is they sent in, allegedly, agent provocateurs. They started smashing buildings and lighting things on fire. Now it's not a peaceful protest. Now they can bring in the police.

Now they can start arresting people. And then they created a no-protest zone where literally if you had a pin on your jacket That was the WTO with a red line through it. They would not let you cross You could not cross with a pin that was against the WTO and and go to work There was a no protest zone. So they they silenced protest which is a part of our freedom of speech So this is a tactic that some government agencies use to stop peaceful protests. All right. So what you're saying is on January 6th that this event that obviously Trump organized,

forget about the Giuliani stuff and whether they thought that it was stolen. He definitely encouraged people to protest. Yes. But all right. So you're saying that like the FBI and Nancy Pelosi and I'm not saying Nancy Pelosi. No, but like you're saying that like they're like, you know, we'll make this instead of an awkward protest. instead of an awkward protest, will encourage it so that it'll backfire on Trump rather than being this rising of people that believe that there was election corruption. I think it's certainly possible. I think that would be hard. You think it's possible? I think it's possible. You don't think it's – wait a minute. You think it's hard to do?

I think that the FBI or the CIA saying, hey, Trump lost this – because here's what you're kind of implying. Trump lost the election. He is such an amazing communicator and he's convinced this loyal base that there was election interference. We don't want them to protest. How we can end this is if we encourage people to go beyond protesting to essentially go into the Capitol and take a shit in the hallway. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit. But like, I don't see why that would be of use. Like, I'm more suspicious why Trump didn't call for backup when, you know, for the Capitol police. You know what I mean? you know for uh the for the capitol police you know i mean it's like there was and that like michael flynn's brother was you know i mean like there's there's way more conspiracy stuff

against trump and you know then i think the the slim likelihood that people were like, oh, Trump's a problem. Let's just get these people that are loyal to Trump to run into the Capitol so that we can arrest 300 people. Does that make sense? No. No, it doesn't make sense. No, I think it's a standard tactic, especially when someone is the enemy of the intelligence agencies. With Trump, that's absolutely the case. Trump set himself up against the intelligence agencies. With Trump, that's absolutely the case. Trump set himself up against the intelligence agencies.

He did it openly and he did it brazenly. And a lot of people think it's very dangerous. Like the intelligence agencies are very important. You know, you want to find out what's going on in other countries. You want to find out what the threats to America are. You want to find out what terrorist activities are going to be taking place and stop them before.

And, you know, JFK had his problem with the intelligence agencies. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, look, it's unchecked power, right? That's the deep state. It's unchecked power. And I think Trump was very open about his disdain for the intelligence agencies. He created enemies in the intelligence agencies. It's standard for intelligence agencies in this country to encourage agent provocateurs or to employ agent provocateurs. And so you're saying when he was in Helsinki and he was saying, I believe Putin more than my intelligence community, that was something the intelligence community was like, we're going to get him. Well, I think they were going to get him in any way that they could because he's an enemy of the intelligence agencies.

And he was openly talking about them being incompetent and being corrupt. And, you know, he fired Comey and, you know, he was against the FBI. And, you know, look, it's a very dangerous thing. You talk to people that are intelligence agencies like it's a very dangerous thing for a president to be at war with the intelligence agencies and to do it so publicly. And I think it's outside the realm of possibility that they would encourage people to do things that were unlawful. Instead of peacefully protesting, which is what everybody was doing on the outside, which is totally legal, to take that and escalate it to entering into the Capitol. Now you can lock things down and now you have real clear evidence that this president is responsible for this insurrection attempt. And this is dangerous.

This is a threat to our democracy. And he's never going to be president again. We're going to indict him. We're going to go after him. We're going to do all these different things. I think it's not like there's a lot of shenanigans going on on both sides. It's not like a clear cut, like he shouldn't have done that and they should have done this it's like there's a lot of fuckery and there's a lot that's been going on throughout

history whenever people have unchecked power and unchecked influence and they have and they have enemies and trump was their enemy yeah but i just and i'm not saying that there isn't – it's kind of like – Did you see the hearings when they were grilling the FBI as to whether or not they had intelligence agencies there? I probably saw some of it. Yeah. It's crazy. Because instead of saying, no, we don't do that, that's illegal, they said we can't answer that. Yeah, but I think even – and again, I'm not saying that there isn't corruption on both sides.

But like in the end, for me personally, it's like when people complain about Biden's, you know, age or his cognitive decline or whatever. I'm like the alternative to me is not acceptable. The alternative being Donald Trump. Yes. And what's least acceptable about that as opposed to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and all the corruption that we know for sure happened with them? Well, I think, look, you know, Joe Biden's relationship with his son or, you know, who obviously struggles with addiction. I mean, look, half of our friends struggle with addiction. It's like, you know, he's a compassionate father. Is there some of that, like, some, you know, let's make some money with our influence after we left office?

Or during office, when he was vice president. Or even when we were senators, stuff like that. Is there some of that? Yeah. senators stuff like that is there some of that yeah it seems like there's a lot of that but compared to trump compared to like jared getting a two billion dollar contract compared to like um you know like even the documents that like Biden had or Pence had versus like Trump literally showing the documents, some of them being of – I think we're going to find out being really inconsequential. I'm not saying he was selling them. I'm not saying – I don't know if he was, you know, it was like a big swinging dick move. I think that's different than, you know, Pence having some documents in his house that he shouldn't have.

But. You mean Pence or Biden? Pence had documents. Yeah, but I don't think anybody's really concentrating on Pence. But like I, by the way, I do want to make clear that I do have the approach of like I could find something out and be like, all right. most corrupt and, you know, was, you know, like just the, you know, it's not, you know, like Andrew Jackson was like, you know, did horrible things. But like, I don't begrudge someone having kind of like kick ass and take no prisoners kind of attitude.

It's, you know, it's not the style. It's just, i think that there's repeated corruption i mean like i there's repeated corruption with the biden administration the the the corruption with his son first of all this son struggling with addiction that's not my concern i mean i i it sucks it sucks when if you have a kid that's a that's hooked on crack and a fucking complete disaster and he pulls himself out of it congratulations for him and that's hooked on crack and is a fucking complete disaster and he pulls himself out of it, congratulations for him. That's not what I...

It's the corruption. It's the clear influence by foreign agents. You don't think Trump has more corruption? I don't think there's evidence the same way there's evidence right now because of the laptop and because of the recorded conversations. There's real evidence that they were getting money from other countries what about trump university what about oh yeah no no no no no no no i'm not saying that he's clean i'm not saying that he's clean but i'm saying to dismiss the body you think that biden's way

more guilty of corruption not saying trump i'm not saying that you're saying they're equal i'm saying they're both corrupt and i'm saying that to say that biden like the good, that was like what everybody thought when he got into office. Finally, the adults are in the room now. But that's not really true. And nothing really changed that much once they got in there. It's not what, it's not like what everybody would like. There's a good guy and a bad guy. I think there's two bad guys.

bad guys. And I think there's corruption that exists in big business and in government that is on a scale that we probably would get violently ill if we found out the actual numbers and what really is going on in terms of influence and how decisions get made and about how certain people become immune to prosecution and certain people become... Jeffrey Epstein. There's a lot. Yeah. There's a lot. There's a lot. The Epstein thing is fucking nuts.

It's nuts that they put that woman in jail for sex trafficking to no one. Who are the people? There's no list. You have no idea. There's no disclosure. Well, they have that list, right? But the fact that no one's asking for that and the people that were involved in these crimes have never been brought to justice or even discussed. And it's just something that just gets swept under the table.

There's no outcry. There's no people demanding an investigation to find out what the fuck happened. There's real clear evidence that he was murdered. And everyone's trying to say, oh, it was just suicide. No big deal. And they're like, oh, the cameras didn't work. No big deal. Whatever.

It's over. Let's not talk about it anymore. That's nuts. That's crazy. There's clear evidence that they did that in front of everybody's face. They killed that guy. He knew too much. And now.

Who do you think killed him? As you step right into a life. Who fucking knows? Who fucking knows? I mean, the cameras were off. Who knows? They probably sent in an life who fucking knows who fucking knows i mean the cameras were off who knows they probably sent in an assassin who fucking strangled him and then made it look like it was some kind of a suicide attempt yeah wow i mean it's pretty obvious that that's what they did yeah michael badden the autopsy doctor from the HBO series, he investigated the autopsy.

And he said the contusions, the ligature marks on his neck were indicative of someone being strangled. He also said the break of the bones or the type of break that happens when someone's being strangled, not when someone's being hung. When you're hung, it's your body weight that is hanging you, right? So it's usually on the upper side of your neck because you're like look your weight Is hanging you down? But this was down on the bottom of his neck or he's getting fucking strangled by somebody and the bones in his neck were broken Which is what happens when you get strangled in doesn't happen when you get hung Yeah, it's just like physical evidence that shows that he was murdered there's also like all

the circumstantial evidence like the cameras being off is fucking ridiculous yeah and he was left with uh he was on suicide watch and he his he didn't have a roommate and stuff like that there's a lot there's a lot going on with that why do you suppose that you, because there's some situations that can lead to conspiracy. But like that one's pretty flat footed. Yeah. Right. Where it's, you know, it's obviously dirty. Why do you think that we do not have as a society an appetite for wanting to see clarity around that.

I think it's the same thing why no one's paying attention to the UFO thing. I think we're inundated with so much information. There's so much going on. There's the Ukraine war. There's climate change. There's this, there's that. There's wildfires.

There's fucking pollution in the ocean. It's like it's constant. There's always something to be freaked out about. Oh, people are dropping like flies and myocarditis. And how much of it is climate change? And how much of it is vaccine injury? And how much of it is this? And then there's new medications that are coming out to deal with this and that.

And what are the side effects of those? And there's new corruption here and new there and crypto and financial and Sam Bankman Freed's release. And we're just overwhelmed with information. And I think we're just like, news cycle is like three seconds. It's in and out, and then there's a new football player. And then, yeah, occasionally there's an interesting take on it. Yeah. And then people are like, wow, that was a great article.

So Epstein didn't kill himself. Anyway, what else? Yeah. Well, there's so much debate about the lab leak theory, and that keeps people occupied. There's so much debate about funding gain-of-function research, whether or not Fauci lied to Congress, which it appears he did. There's so much. There's so much to freak out about. Unless you're one of those people, like you only concentrate on one, you're a climate

change guy and you concentrate on one specific thing and that's all you focus on all the time, you're overwhelmed. You're overwhelmed by constant new threats, constant new distractions and dangers and things to freak out about. And you're overwhelmed with anxiety and existential angst. It's hard. We're not designed to deal with the information that comes from eight billion people. We're designed to deal with local stuff. Like what's going on in my town? What's happening in the country?

That's the big local. The big community is the country. And then the rest of the world is like, what's happening in Argentina? Like what's going on in Nicaragua? Like what is, ugh. But when it's just fucking thrown at you all day long, constantly, the cartels, the borders porous, fentanyls coming in.

It's title 42. Jesus Christ. You can't get a break unless you disconnect and unless you're off of social media and unless you're not reading the news and just trying to exist with the minimum amount of information coming at you possible, you're overwhelmed. Yeah. You're overwhelmed. I'm totally a news junkie.

Me too. And there is – and it was one of the – because I used to just watch ESPN every night and then my wife was like, I hate ESPN. So I'm like, all right. So then we'll watch news. You have to watch stuff together. one of the because i used to just watch espn every night and then my wife was like i hate espn so i'm like all right so then we'll watch news you have to watch stuff together and now she she's like she's like full dateline right you know like uh which is like the history channel for women right and uh and so but like the news and I also know that like consuming too much news is not healthy. Right. Because that's some of my outrage machine. Right. And it's it's understanding different kind of things that don't line up. Right.

And but I do feel like we almost you and I both have this same suspicion, but like we're coming from two different sides, which is fascinating. What side do you think I'm coming from? I think you are more likely to think that Biden is Satan and I'm more likely to think that Trump is Satan. I think Biden is a product of a very corrupt business that has been corrupt for a long time. And he's just not that good at being discreet about it, not that good at covering it. I also think, you know, when he bragged about getting the prosecutor fired in Ukraine, I think he's just a guy that has a lot of like, I'll fucking show them. I'll show them.

And it's dumb. And I think that's why a lot of his stuff gets exposed. I don't think he's evil incarnate. I think he's one of those people that is in charge of government and has been in that business, entrenched in that business forever. And I think it's a deeply corrupting business because it's so overwhelmingly corrupted by financial interests and by business and contracts and military industrial and and you know contracts and military industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industrial complex and there's so much influence yeah and there's so many lobbyists there's so much going on there's so many deals being brokered

i think he's a product of that i think trump is a businessman who for sure has been involved in some shady shit you know the trump University thing is a good one. But he's also a guy that was a Democrat most of his life. And he's also a guy that knows how gross that system is. You know, and he was, you know, he was a part of it until he became a president. And then he's an outsider. And I don't think that he's a master entertainer. Yeah.

I mean, it's hilarious, dude. A master at it. Like that debate where he brought in Paula Jones and after the, you know, him on the bus for Access Hollywood. There's very few people that have walked this earth that would be able to navigate that situation the way he did. And some of it's having ice in your blood. Yeah. And being this larger than life character. It's just like, wow. Just everyone who watched that, we're like, what did we just see? What, he's winning now? Yeah.

He was just down by 20 points two seconds ago. Right. And so there is. Because I think I think that Trump and Biden will not be the nominees. I think it's a long way off. I think that I do think that, you know, what do I know? I do think that, you know, what do I know? But some of it is just kind of like, you know, it's the sport of politics. But I don't think that it's – I think if Trump goes down, I think Biden's like, I'm out.

And so who takes his place? Well, I mean, I don't think he quits, but I think he goes, I'm not. I think then someone's like, we don't need you to run. I think that's why he's running is because he's the only one that could beat Trump. Man, I wonder. On the Democratic side. Well, by the way, it's like, or the Republican side. None of these Republicans is as well liked as they are or how well they kind of work the outrage machine.

They can't compete with him. Well, I think Ron DeSantis is finding that out, that he can't compete with him. You know, that, you know, I think he was so successful and so loved as the governor of Florida that pulled everybody through the COVID crisis that he was going to take this no-nonsense conservative approach and then run the country in a good way. And everyone's going to get back to the way America used to be. He's going to be the strict dad. Yeah, right. But it doesn't seem like he can compete against the Trump machine. And people are angry at him now. Republicans are angry at him now for going against Trump.

Yeah. And so that's not a good spot to be in. You don't want to be on the opposite side of that Trump machine if you're a Republican. Oh, that poor fuck. What did you see that interview that he did with Tucker Carlson? He was talking about the demise of the cities in America and all the problems that we have in America. And he said, that's not my concern. And they're like, you're done.

You just fucked up. That's it. No one cares about you now now like he literally killed his campaign with that one conversation with tucker carlson well it would have been a miracle for him to i mean i just think as someone you know like in the entertainment industry you eat a lot of shit you you know you you know comedy clubs getting on stage you know the owner just being a dick to you but like mike pence seeing those gallows his kids were visiting he was like running he was life was in danger he knew like i can't get in that car and he's What are you talking about?

Mike Pence. When they were taking him away from the Capitol, they were like, he refused to get in the car because there was an expectation that the Secret Service was going to take him away from the Capitol so that they couldn't complete what he was supervising on January 6th. Well, there was people that were looking for him. Yeah. No.

They wanted to attack him. There was tons of those. So essentially, Nancy Pelosi and the head of Congress and the Senate, they were taken away from the Capitol. And Mike Pence, there was a car downstairs and they're like, we're going to take you away. And he's like, I'm not getting in that car. Because if he got in that car and they took him to, I don't know, Pennsylvania, then they couldn't complete the –

one of the tactics was not certifying the votes. That was the tactic. So if he could have – so that's where he had the self-discipline to go. I'm not getting in that car. I need to certify the votes. But the fact that he was almost killed and that people were sicked on him and then he's like, you know, I don't know if Trump should be indicted. him and then he's like you know i don't know if trump should be indicted you know like that's where i'm kind of like i've eaten so much shit and i've kissed so much ass but i am not i've not come close to what mike pence is you know that's where ambition was more important than

uh certain self-dignity yeah i'm not aware of that i that. I'm not aware of the facts behind that at all. But I do don't think that anyone's going to vote for him for president. No. He's just not a presidential guy. He's not a guy that you think of as a leader. He just seemed very weird. Well, it's just he was – they put him on the ticket because he was going to get the evangelicals. Yes.

Right? Yeah. I mean, I think he is a man of faith, but he's also, I mean, they're all politicians. It's like, you know, when you talk about any politician, Barack, you know, Clinton, it's like, people are like, yeah, they're politicians. I'm like, yeah. That's what they do. That's what they do.

Do you know what I mean? It's like. It's not, it's what they do. That's what they do. Do you know what I mean? It's like... It's not encouraging. It's like saying an agent takes 10%. I'm like, yeah, they're an agent. They help you get jobs and they get 10%. That's why they do it. Yeah.

You know what I mean? That's their job. They want their cut. Yeah, it helps you. Yeah. It's a business. Yeah, that's how it works. All those things work together.

Yeah. If you have a bad agent, you think your agent's taking money not doing any work. Well, then you got an argument Yeah, but yeah, I think that There's no one that that stands out other than RFK. He stands out to me as being very unique But and who's that gentleman Vivek? How do you say his last name? But, and who's that gentleman, Vivek, how do you say his last name? The Indian guy who's running as a Republican. Yeah. Young guy.

Very smart. Very interesting. Have you had him on the show? No, I haven't. I haven't talked to him. But I'm impressed with his ability to talk about complex situations. Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy.

Ramaswamy. Vivek Ramaswamy. Very, very smart guy. He's young. He's a very young guy. I mean, how old is he? 37. Yeah, very young. Like only two years older than you, like the cutoff, like it's 35, right? You can't be younger than 35. I don't know if I want a 37 year old guy running the country. Seems a little young, but he's super intelligent and very interesting. And he could perhaps be a guy that would bring hope to rational conservatives in the future. Yeah.

It's interesting because we are in this age where there is – he's kind of rising above some of that cultural stuff, right? Or he's intending to. Yeah. Yeah. The cultural stuff is fucking crazy. And it's also, you know, that's exacerbated by social media, too. And it's also exacerbated by trolls like people that are hired to stir up shit and hired to get people at each other's throats. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's where I'll be manipulated. All ofats. Yeah. Yeah, and we're all being manipulated, all of us, everyone, constantly, all day long. There's so many pieces of evidence of interference, where it's not just discourse where people are just discussing things online. There's people that are hired to take egregious, ridiculous positions and fight against other people and say horrible things and attack people. They're doing it on a purpose and they're doing it to try to disrupt rational conversation and rational disagreements where people could possibly

come to some sort of a reasonable conclusion. All right. How is the uh russian ukraine conflict gonna end since we are unqualified to talk about all this but like talk about more things we're unqualified what what is gonna happen besides the end of the world the end of the world is the scary one right it's uh like when um when the wagner group was marching towards russia i was like holy i know well by the way they they're that guy was the whatever his name is uh whatever he is he's in russia and he's like like i thought he'd be dead by now yeah he's he's like in russia there was like a photograph of him uh and so like he's got his own army i know but like wild i don't know i just there he is yeah he was uh progosion progosion yeah he was there was a photograph of him yeah right there

wow appears on the sidelines of russia africa summer in saint petersburg wow paramilitary group's founder has continued being seen at events in Russia despite supposedly agreeing exile in Belarus. Yeah, I mean, there's a power struggle going on there. And that guy is a billionaire with his own private army, which is wild. That is, you couldn't, you know, he seems like a Simpsons storyline. Right. Do you know what I mean? Like, I work for the president, I cater his meals, then I pitch, I run my own army. And then, because I think the Wagner Group, essentially in all of Africa, it's the Wagner

Group. It's not even the Russian army. Really? You know that. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, because they did all the stuff in Syria and stuff like that. So it's, you know, it's this mercenary army, which is, by the way, not that unique.

So, like, you know, when I worked on Peter Pan, you know, you get into the pirate thing and the the british navy was the reason they were they ended up with this great navy is because they hired a bunch of pirates too like they were like hey we're fighting the french you want to work for us and they're like yeah all right all right you can have some of jamaica hey we're uh fighting spain do you want to and they're like yeah all right they're like all right you can have some of uh you know we'll make you a lord you know i mean it's like it's just it's a very american thing too it's like these you know the the you know the criminals or or you see this with billionaires and i'm not applying this to Musk, but like all these billionaires, like they achieve incredible success, right? And you know that they're kind of like squashing other companies. And then they're kind of like, all right, now I've got to redeem myself.

You know, like Carnegie did it. Getty did it. You know. Philanthropy. You know, it's like, let's scrub up that perception yeah hey how about a terrific acting school how about the most beautiful building on 50th street in manhattan you know how about a museum and you know it's just it cleans up yeah some tactics that were uh you know probably questionable there's definitely a lot of that.

Right? Yeah. Yeah, so there's a lot of shitty things going on, all simultaneously happening. And we're supposed to be the beacon of democracy for the world. We're supposed to be the greatest example of the experiment of self-government the world has ever known. And we're being influenced and and manipulated left and

right constantly i mean there's there's can you there's there's this one group that is pretty jennifer lawrence does this thing it's like some uh kind of uh i worked with uh uhms, and there's this – it's this nonpartisan group that is all about, you know, like, for instance, getting rid of gerrymandering, you know, rank choice voting. You know, it's some's happening now is that 70 percent of the American public will want one thing to happen. And our government officials will not do it because they are so beholden to special interests. And so it's like we really don't have a representative democracy. Right. It's pretty scary. It is scary.

Yeah. It's money. You have to take money out of politics. And how do you do that? Like, imagine trying to go in there and untangle that bag of wires. Right. Or saying, you know, next presidential election is only going to be six weeks. And then the TV places are going to be like, there's commercials.

We make all our money. You know, it's, so it's kind of two sides of it. It's like, it's also like the pharmaceutical commercials, you know, they're, I think they're only legal in the U.S. and New Zealand. Yeah. New Zealand's far more restrictive than the U.S. too. But if they got rid of them, all right, I guess we've got to get rid of half our channels. Well, they probably would, and that probably would be good. Probably would, and that probably would be good.

And then it would be the rise of independent news sources and real journalism, which you're seeing more on the internet now than you're seeing in mainstream media. Independent news sources on the internet are far more reliable, in my opinion, than what you're seeing on Fox News or on MSNBC. What you get on those is sanctioned propaganda. And what you get on independent channels is people that don't have a vested interest. They're not being controlled by corporate interest. And they have the ability to, whether it's guys like Jimmy Dore or whether it's Breaking Points, they have the ability to talk about things in a complex way and look at them on both sides and find out what the influence is and where the corruption is and talk about it publicly and openly. And because of that, because these are the only sources that are available now,

is independent sources where people are individuals that you can trust because you know they don't lie. They might have their biases, but they're not being influenced by corporations. Yeah, but I do sit there and I think the lesson of Fox News is I remember when Fox News kind of rose and they were, you know, like they started with the mainstream media kind of language. being whether it be Walter Cronkite or Jesse waters to deliver a sentence of news information without kind of having their personality there it's impossible for it to be completely objective I mean even the most boring newscaster it's like well now they're downplaying this riot you know I mean there was a riot you know cuz CNN used to be like that it used to be very talky head right and um but i don't know it's weird because i think it's hard to

for something to be completely objective it's very hard it's almost impossible well one of the things about uh breaking points with crystal and Sagar is that Sagar is conservative and Crystal is liberal. And the two of them have differing opinions, but respectfully and educated. And they talk about things from a fact-based perspective. You know, and that, when has that existed on mainstream news? You don't have, you just have crossing points. You know, there's a few of those shows. The McLaughlin group.

Yeah, there was a few of those shows where they'd have like one dorky conservative or one dorky liberal. But also then they'd have to do the quips, right? Oh, yeah. And also there's the problem with those shows, too, seven minutes to discuss the complications of NATO encroaching on Russia and how much of an influence that had on Putin invading Ukraine. It's complicated. You'd have to go into the coup, the organized coup that was probably funded by the United States in 2014.

You'd have to go into the fact that we've been delivering arms to that. There's a lot of shit that you would have to unwrap. The influence and the amount of time that you would have to unwrap the influence and the, the amount of time that you would need to do that is hours and hours and probably multiple episodes. Instead they have to jam it all into five minutes and then we'll be right back with cute cats. We'll,

we'll be right back with, you know, here, here's a, a new thing that you should take. Here's a new study that shows that, you know, obesity could be conquered by this.

And it's like, are carrots bad for you? It's always something like, you're like, I got to find it. that you should take. Here's a new study that shows that obesity can be conquered by this. Are carrots bad for you? No. You're like, I've got to find out if carrots are bad for me. I always had a feeling carrots were bad. Carrot juice is supposed

to be not that great for you. Really? Yeah, it's supposed to be juice. That's the problem. Carrot juice is very high in sugar. Juice is bad. It's delicious, but carrot juice is fucking delicious. Oh, it's amazing. problem with carrot juice is very high in sugar juice is delicious but carrot juice is fucking delicious oh it's like organic carrot juice like right out of the thing

yeah what is so like why given that like we know that juice is like orange juice i like grapefruit juice it's so funny i do material on something and then I end up liking it. Like I like hiking now and now I like grapefruit juice. It's like so annoying. But like orange juice and grapefruit juice, tomato juice, it's all – you're just drinking sugar, right? So it's like why is there – when you go to a breakfast, it's still there? Do you know what I mean? And by the way, I like a glass of orange juice. Well, it's the same reason why pancakes are there.

Pancakes are there because people like them. And the fact that cereal still exists when we know that's the worst thing to feed a child. Right? It's fucking just sugar and shitty carbohydrates. Right? Yeah. right fucking just sugar and shitty carbohydrates right yeah it's like i'm such a uh i always feel like such a hero when i like get my kids to eat eggs and bacon and there's no bread or anything i'm like i did it yeah they just had protein they had healthy fats and then they go and they just

probably eat candy yeah orange juice like a big 16-ounce glass of orange juice. That's so alien. Like there's no other time when you're eating food naturally that you get that kind of a dose of sugar. Like how much sugar is in it? Let's Google this. How much sugar is in a 16-ounce glass of fresh squeezed orange juice? I bet it's extraordinary. I bet the amount of oranges you would have to eat to get that sugar. extraordinary about the amount of oranges you would have to eat to get that sugar and again when you're eating an orange you're eating it with the pulp

and the fiber and it's it digests more slowly it's more natural it's normal it's the way your your body likes fruit because fruit is delicious because it tricks your body into eating it and you eat the seeds you shit them out and then the seeds grow and then plants grow that's the whole nature hustle yeah that's that's why's so good for you. It's filled with vitamins. I got two answers, unfortunately. First answer says 16-ounce glasses, 37 grams.

But then right below it, I see 24 grams per 8 ounces. So that would be 48. It's a lot. That's a shit ton of sugar. So if you saw that on the back of a can of SpaghettiOs, you'd be like, well, I'm not. Right. That's not good. It's all sugar.

But you would never be that much sugar in a can of SpaghettiOs. That's a shit ton of sugar. That's like more. What is, okay. What is it in a Coke? How much sugar is in a Coke? Yeah. A 16 ounce.

That's about what it is. It's the same as orange juice. So your body, other than getting vitamin C, is getting the same kind of sugar dose that you get from a glass of soda. Wow. Yeah. It's not good. It's not good. It's delicious.

Not bad every now and again. There's a can of SpaghettiOs. 11 grams in a can of SpaghettiOs. Wow, that's a lot. But that's not 48. Also not 12 ounces. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, it's only 4 ounces? Oh, 15 ounces. Okay. So yeah, so 11 ounces in the same basic volume. So it's healthier to eat SpaghettiOs than to drink a glass of orange juice. Isn't that wild? Well, then you're also getting the sugar

from the wheat that's getting processed. the pasta in your body. Yeah. What about gluten-free pasta? Because during the pandemic, you were like, all right, get rid of bread and sugar and see what you do. And so when I would cheat and I would have gluten-free pizza. And by the way, you bring that up to an Italian. They're like, we don't do gluten-free pizza

yeah but like if you have gluten-free pizza or gluten-free pasta is that better or am i just kidding myself it really depends on what it's made out of now if you have a gluten sensitivity like uh two of my kids have gluten sensitivities one of them is like really has a problem with gluten she just gets swollen so it just feels like shit, like bad stomach aches. If you do that, yeah, gluten-free pasta is better because they can eat gluten-free pasta and they don't have any problems. But it's also, which is interesting is, and many people talk about this, when you go to Italy and you eat pasta over there, you don't have the same reaction because they don't

have the same bread. They don't have the same wheat because they don't have the same bread. They don't have the same wheat. They have heirloom wheat. So their wheat has never been genetically modified. They have the same wheat they've had for hundreds of years. So when you eat bread and pasta, it's not the best thing in the world for you, but it does not have the same effect on your body. I don't have this overwhelming feeling of inflammation and grossness that I have when I eat American pasta.

Because American pasta, what they've done is modified the wheat for higher yield with smaller. So you're saying you don't love your country. That's what I'm saying. No, but it's like why. But we could go around so many different things. And I'm not talking about, you know, in World War Two, you know, they they had talking about you know in world war ii you know they they had to you know they had to make cheese slices in a large quantity so that they give them to all the soldiers that's why we have sliced american cheese and stuff like that but like why does it seem with every food item

that america is kind of you you know. The worst. By the way, if Americans care about money, it's like you're going to pay at the end. But not the same people pay. The same people don't pay at the end. So it's all money. It's all money. There's higher yield. There's more money.

But we're going to have to pay for medical costs. Right, but they're not paying. Other people are paying. Okay. So the people that are involved in the industry that makes wheat, makes corn, makes these different things, all they're thinking about is maximizing profits. So in the pursuit of maximizing profits, they create an item that's worse for your health and they don't care. So it's up to you. So as long as there's other options, as long as other options are readily available, it's up to you to decide

to only eat things that aren't modified and aren't bad for you and aren't filled with pesticides, eating organic, eating healthier stuff. But if it's a corporation, a corporation's obligation is to their shareholders. Yeah. So they have to continue to make more money and they make decisions that would maximize profit. And in doing so, a lot of times they're making a product that's worse for your health than the original product.

But it lasts on the shelf longer. You get higher yield for acreage. And that's what they do. It's all money. Now, there's certain people that have recognized that and have changed their farms. Like I had Will Harris from White Oaks pastures on the podcast a fascinating guy and he had an industrial farm that his family was running forever and over the course of 20

years converted it to a regenerative farm and a natural farm where it's all organic and no pesticides no herbicides when they have a problem with like some sort of an invasive insect they bring in another insect that kills that's not the guy who did biggest little farm documentary that's an amazing is that Joe Salatin is Joel Salatin the biggest little farm that's a guy from poly face farms who's also a regenerative agricultural expert who have also had on the podcast this guy who did this I think he was like a DP and his wife they lived in LA and but it's by the way it's really fascinating because that's that's the whole thing of like okay you've got a snail problem uh

buy some ducks and let the ducks in there yes you've got okay you've got uh you've got a wolf problem well don't kill the wolves because if you don't if you don't kill the wolves then you're gonna have all these gophers. You know what I mean? So it's like it's full circle life thing on the farm. Yeah. Well, the way Will Harris describes it, he's like essentially you're reproducing nature in a controlled environment. So instead of applying pesticides and herbicides and chemicals and toxins, which leads to horrific runoff. toxins, which leads to horrific runoff. One of the things that we've showed on this podcast multiple times is they documented how their farm is connected to industrialized farms,

an industrialized farm right next to it. And the river runs through both properties. But there is a clear line where the runoff from this industrial farm is just this brown pollutants that's going into the river because it's industrial fertilizer and on his side the water's clear because on his side he doesn't use any of that stuff and they have fertile topsoil because during the regenerative farming practices of using manure the cows only eat grass and that this all like creates its own natural fertilizer. And then you have the pigs which are roaming and foraging and you have the chickens that are roaming and foraging. And then you grow the vegetables with that manure as fertilizer. And then everything sort of has this place and it, it, it recreates what a natural environment would be. It's just contained. It's just fenced in and many, many, many acres.

And it's all like this recreation of nature, a natural method. That's how people should eat. The soil is living. Yeah, that's what we're supposed to be eating. And, you know, Russia has banned GMO foods. Well, I feel like Europe has done that too. They should. And we should probably do it here.

And then, by the way, genetically modified doesn't necessarily mean bad. There's been genetic modifications that have led to superior nutrition. And I think that's the case with, I believe it's golden rice, or it's a more nutritious, more protein-rich rice. And it led to many more people not dying of famine and starvation. There's different things that can be done to foods that make them superior. You know, it's not all negative, but pesticides and herbicides like on whole, like pretty much are terrible. And they're terrible because they're poison.

They kill weeds. They kill bugs. They're also, you know, and I just know this just from my limited experience in gardening, it's just the quick fix. It's not even the fix. So it's like if you have aphids, you should just get ladybugs.

Right. But that brings us back. It brings us back to money. Because what is the cheapest way to do this is going to get the highest yield. Well, the highest yield well the highest yield is genetically modified organisms pesticides and herbicides yeah and then you just get massive amounts of crops monocrop agriculture which is totally unnatural it's totally unnatural to have a thousand acres of just corn growing in a place it doesn't happen in the wild well i think it was

also the sapiens there was something also about farming that, you know, all right, so you could feed a lot of people where we had the corn and we had the potatoes, but all they ate was the potatoes. They didn't eat anything else. Whereas, like, before that, before farming, people would forage, and there was a variety to the diet. If you had food. You also had a lot of starvation because sometimes you weren't successful.

And then they would have climate issues or issues with crops dying and then you're fucked. Well, by the way, so like you're only supposed to have one meal a day, right? Well, only supposed to. Isn't like breakfast the most important meal? That's all BS. That's all BS. The food pyramid, that's all kind of how do we sell some milk.

The food pyramid is definitely horseshit. Well, the food pyramid is horseshit because the bottom of it is all green. That's just horseshit. But that's what they thought at one point in time, that that was like the staple of a good diet. It's not a conspiracy. They thought that that was the way to do it. And they were taught that in school, that that was the way to do it you know and they were taught that in school that that was the way to do it you know they just they got bad

information and now we understand that's probably not the way to do it and the right way to do it is to eat real food to eat real organic vegetables real organic meat and fish and then you know the fish thing it's like how much mercury poisoning is in the fish? How much heavy metal toxins are in the fish? Like what kind of environment were these fish growing up in? You know, there's like if you eat a lot of fish, you can get sick. Like there's people that have gotten sick from eating too much sushi. Yeah. It's crazy.

It's crazy. It's just, and there's just also just so much, there used to be so many fish. And I don't know if you've seen that map of like just the Gulf of Mexico. It's like brutal. Oh, it's devastated. We've, I don't know what the numbers are. Let's find out. What percentage of fish have been removed from the ocean over the last 50 years?

Let's find that out. Well, by the way. I bet it's nuts. When I wrote this book about, I had all these jokes on oysters and how they were, because you know that Long Island, Oyster Bay, it was called Oyster Bay because there were oysters everywhere. And so when people would come to New York City, when people would go to Boston, they'd get lobster. When they come to New York City, they get clams and oysters. And now it's like, but we just gobbled through all the oysters on Long Island. And I think that worldwide, we've eaten through 90% of the clams and oysters that existed. Isn't that unbelievable? It's insane because it happened so quickly.

We think humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. And over the last few decades, we ate all the clams. Yeah. Just like all of them. All the lobster. And also all the fish. You know, I played this character that worked at a fish refinery. I didn't realize it. All the streams, all the lakes, they're just farmed fish because we destroyed

the ecosystems in these things where we gobbled up all the fish. So then we have to put like bass into these lakes that I don't even know if they were there. 2048, no more fish. Oh my God. The current state of overfishing continues. The world's oceans will be emptied for fish by 2048. What?

Wow. Is that real? Oceans are massively overfished. Only 15% of the world's fisheries are in a relatively good condition. The remaining 85% are fully or over-exploited, depleted, or in a fragile state

of recovery from exploitation. There are no signs of things improving. The planet's fishing fleet is two to three times larger than what oceans can support. Wow, 97.4% of Pacific bluefin tuna gone. Holy shit. Right? The bluefin tuna are at just 2.6% of its historic population. Holy fuck.

By 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the world's ocean measured by weight. Wow. Yeah, I mean, it's the fish eating the plastic. Yeah. That is the... Well, it's also the pollution. I mean, we've had Boyan Slat on the podcast. He's a young man who created an invention to siphon the plastic out of the water,

to filter the plastic out of the water, and then they take that plastic and make things out of it. They make, like, eyeglasses and stuff like that out of it. It's pretty interesting because he's got this machine that goes over the Pacific garbage patch, that giant fucking enormous size of the state of Texas. And they just scoop up this plastic and then they carry it out and then they take that plastic and convert it into usable goods. I mean, that's where I don't understand the American. There it is.

There's this ocean cleanup thing. So he has this machine that they, he's a really young guy. I mean, I think he made this invention when he was 19 years old. Brilliant, brilliant guy. We've had him on twice, right? Yeah. But salute to him. So this machine, and they've refined it over the years.

They've employed multiple ones of it now, and they're using them to clean up oceans and rivers, and they just scoop up the plastic, and they take that plastic and recycle it. There is a certain cynicism because somebody is like, and then we're going to find out. What they're doing is they're creating – accidentally creating a monster. Because they're – but like there is so much human ingenuity. I can't figure – I can't understand why – because there's also a water shortage. Why we can't – you know, the three-fourths of the planet is – or maybe, I don't know, five-eighths or whatever, is water, but it's salt water, right? And the water rights thing, it's like we can't figure out how to get the salt out of the water?

Well, we certainly can. But it's too expensive, right? I don't know. I don't know why they haven't done that. I know that California was working on desalination plants, and that was something that was discussed. I mean, if anybody needs water, it's fucking California. Right. Yeah.

I mean, what about Phoenix? Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, if they could figure that out, we'd probably drain the water out of the ocean within 50 years, and they'd be like, there's no more water left in the ocean. And there'd be, like, giant fucking water parks in Kansas. Interior oceans, or we want to see whales in Nebraska.

And they'd have a fucking whale park. Well, no, some of it is if we could, you know, like fresh water is so key. Yeah. But I guess, do you think that there is something of the environmental crisis that people have an attitude of like, yeah, we'll figure it out. Yeah, we'll figure it out at the end. I think it's like what we were talking about earlier with so many things to think about. There's so much going on.

And there's a few people that concentrate on one issue in particular. And then for the vast majority of us there's just this fucking menu of things to freak out about right and you just get overwhelmed and you have your own problems and you have your own life and you have you know a husband or a wife and kids and a mortgage and a job and this and that and family problems and fucking you like to play bingo on friday night whatever the fuck it is yeah you got a lot going on like how much can you really pay attention to it's just boy we're a real debbie downer on this show aren't we no well it's today it's like i think it's fascinating somebody's like

cleaning their garage they're listening it's definitely fascinating it's it's fascinating that we find ourselves in this very unusual time in human history. It's a very unusual time where we're overwhelmed by information. We're overwhelmed by problems, but also overwhelmed by innovation and things seem to be changing at this insanely rapid pace. We have more access to information than it's ever been available for. People know more about more things than they ever have before. And if you choose to really concentrate on things to enrich your intelligence and your acquiring of information, you could really have a pretty fascinating life today. But we're also overwhelmed by fear and anxiety and social media and health problems

and this and that and poor diet and environmental concerns. And are we leaving behind a world for our kids? And there's so much much there's so much to freak out about but there's also so much beauty and joy there's more art and music and comedy than ever before you know the the music uh the rather the movie industry is fucked there seem to be in a a bad situation now and now that there's a strike going on with the the the uh the actors and the writers it's like fuck like there's oh that's that's a strike going on with the actors and the writers, it's like, fuck.

That's a bad situation. But in terms of content, in terms of the amount of things that people produce, the amount of art that people produce, it's unprecedented. Right. The variety compared to what we consumed as a child. There were Happy Days episodes that didn't make sense. They didn't make sense. And you're like, oh, I guess that's good enough, right? Yeah.

The jump the shark. Yeah. That's where the... Yeah. There was tons that was just absolute garbage. And you're like, but you know what? I love that Henry Winkler. Well, the standards were far lower.

You ever go back and watch an old television television show today they seem so preposterous go watch leave it to beaver you're like what the fuck is this well that was fantasy stuff right that was fantasy stuff yeah or just like gosh mom my three sons yeah stuff like that. That was crazy. Crazy. Just no one lived like that. And to set that standard that people should aspire to that ridiculous fake life. That's also a problem with media depictions of reality is that people start comparing themselves. Just like kids are getting fucked up by social media, comparing themselves to filters and fake people. I mean, 15-year-old boys are looking at porn.

Yeah. You know what I mean? There's that. Yeah, it's a completely confusing reality. But media depictions of reality, whether it's through television or movies or songs, it gives people an idea of how their life is supposed to go based on these heroic adventures of these people, based on all these people that are doing the right thing. When you have a movie that's a realistic movie.

A movie that realistically explains people in a way that you know to be true. Like that movie's gritty. That's a crazy, dark movie. Yeah. gritty that's a that's a crazy like dark movie yeah i you know you feel like there's indie movies like uh nomadland it's like where she lived in a van like that's rich people they're like what would it be like to live in a van where it's like where it's like everyone else who who would like, whereas like everyone else who, who would, who might live in a van, they want to know what it would be like if they could turn into an ant. You know what I mean?

They want to watch Ant-Man. You know what I mean? So it's just like, but like, there's also, you know, and you touched a little bit on this, Drake, but like, there is this ongoing thing for decades. We've been hearing about the wealth disparity you know i mean it's like you know uh it goes beyond bernie sanders bringing it up every four years it's it's one of those things and by the way you and i have done well and we donate all our money but like the whole thing, is like there is something about like what a CEO made in 1983

versus what a CEO makes in 2023 is pretty ridiculously different. It is pretty ridiculously different. But again, it goes back to what a corporation is. If you want someone that's going to run a corporation and that corporation is going to ruthlessly try to acquire wealth for their shareholders, you want someone who's willing to do a lot of shit to do that. So you want someone who's going to get they're going to benefit from that. They're going to financially benefit from that in an

extraordinary way. So they're going to be the most driven, the most psychotic about it. And in turn, they're going to generate the most wealth for their shareholders. And because of the way structures are created, these corporate structures, they have an obligation to make more money every year, more money every quarter. If they don't do that, they'll get out, they'll get kicked out, and they'll find someone new. And by the way, there's no one who's running those giant corporations that's over 65. They get to a certain age, they get rid of them. All those Fortune 500 companies, you don't see people running CEOs of those companies that are 80 years old. No, they fucking funnel them out and get some new guys on Adderall.

And that guy goes fucking ham and funds some fucking Fagazi studies and shows that this product is totally safe and effective. And now the money's flowing in. And then the politicians are paid off and they're using the money for advertising for corporate media. And they've got this kind of nice balance going on where they're just racking up numbers. Ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching. And that's what they do. Yeah, but it's just some of the there used to be the board of directors that would be like hey can you not pay yourself 50 million

dollars and i think that now the board of directors is like so i get 250 for coming to three meetings you're like there isn't a certain amount of responsibility. I think it would have been considered icky for a CEO to pay themselves that. Do you know what I mean? Was it? I'm not aware. Was it? I don't know.

I don't know. You're just guessing? By the way, I'm also saying mean i have friends that are like anyone who's made a billion dollars is stolen from something yeah yeah yeah i'm not saying that but like those people are conveniently always poor yeah you know what i mean but i'm saying that like there is something about you know and that's something that's you know there's just that's you know there's just you know it's also how much does someone need right and i'm not saying that look i'm a capitalist i totally am but i'm just like i don't know maybe yeah you're a capitalist but you're a capitalist artist that's the difference you're providing something that's

greatly beneficial to the people that consume it. There's a great exchange. It's a great exchange. You're creating art. You're creating comedy. You're thinking about things. You're coming up with unique perspectives. You're crafting it and editing it to the point where it gets into someone's head, like surprise, sneak punchlines and pops and yeah, laughter.

It's a beautiful exchange. The money that you get is well earned and deserved and you're creating joy. It's a net benefit. But if you were creating pesticides, if you were creating something that might be killing some kids, but for the most part, it's just killing bugs.

Yeah. Yeah, that's when things get sketchy. And then when you've been making $15, $20 million a year doing that, you're going to keep doing that. Especially if you can shield yourself with politicians and laws and regulation. And surround yourself with people that are saying, you know what? You made $20 last year. You should make $20 this year.

Not only that, you're funding studies. So you're controlling these scientists that are the ones that are supposed to be coming up with these peer-reviewed studies that show whether something is effective or good or bad. And that's how fucking glyphosate gets into all of our food supply. That's how 94% of the population in America tests positive for glyphosate, which is dangerous. It's a dangerous chemical. Yeah. And 94% of us have it in our body from food because it's sprayed on everything and you know they'll say oh it's just a minimal amount a small amount

wait a minute was that on the rfk episode that well we might have discussed it on that but that's something that i read before that it's dangerous stuff man atrazine was what he was talking about which is another pesticide which is an endocrine disruptor. That's the one that Alex Jones said turns the frogs gay. It really does. It turns the frogs into hermaphrodites. It causes some frogs to switch genders. They turn female. They actually produce viable eggs. Yeah, it's a weird, creepy chemical. And then there's also phthalates, which exist in microplastics that all of us have in our body. There's a direct correlation. There's a woman named Dr. Shanna Swan from Harvard. She wrote a book called Countdown. She's from Harvard, right? She wrote a book called Countdown,

and she shows that from the introduction of petrochemical products, plastics in society, introduction of petrochemical products, plastics in society, there's been a direct correlation between that introduction and a decrease in sperm count, an increase in miscarriages, a decrease in penis and testicle sizes based in Mount Sinai. Okay. So this woman's amazing, and she's really fun too. She published more than two, stop, she published more than 200 scientific papers and featured in extensive media coverage around the world. Her appearance is, she's an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist. about how these microplastics are affecting children and they're affecting the affecting the development of kids in the womb so in mammals when they do studies with mammals they introduce phthalates into the mammals when the mammals are pregnant the babies of the mammals become affected by this and the reproductive systems are affected and we're seeing the direct results of that

with human populations as well and she's showing through all these studies that there are micro people are eating so much microplastic you eat like what is it a credit card sized piece of plastic every week everyone does that's what it was right was a week remember I found out that they'd start to find that they they studied some penguin or something like that and found the penguin had them out and then they were like, well, that's probably close. They did some math equation to figure out that's how

much humans had. Also, that penguin worked at MasterCard, which is weird. Penguins out there eating guards. I'm trying to get rich. It is just like there's a lot of bad news. But I also think that like that is one of those things where you can swim in this chaos.

And it can be like, all right, let me just stuff a bunch of fries in my mouth to numb this. To numb myself. Yeah. Or you can isolate yourself from that kind of news and meditate and concentrate on positive things and just go take yoga classes and go for hikes and be around all the positive things in the world because there's still a lot of that. Like if you go for a hike in Wyoming and you go through the mountains, it's a beautiful experience and you are removed from all the bullshit. It's like you get to see nature. You get to see deer and eagles and like this is nice this is beautiful do you ever feel like so there's the greatest generation right and uh

there's the boomers but like uh and i'm not bagging on the boomers and i'm barely gen x but like do you sit there and go shit our generation are we the ones fucking this up well some of us are yeah i mean humans are because there's some of the leadership right because like even you know when we use the ceo example like there was i just you know i'm sure there was corruption back then but like there was this greater sense of civics and like helping – like just the drive during World War II. People were sacrificing things and now it's like there's a little poison. People are eating a credit card a week. Anyway, what's going on?

Do you know what I mean? Like there is – is there – and I don't want credit card a week. Anyway, what's going on? Do you know what I mean? Like there is, is there, and I don't want to blame a certain generation, but like, do you sit there and you go, people our age, it's like, we should be stepping up. And some of it is like, why are these 80 year olds in charge? You know, Vivek is, he's 37.

It's like, where's our generation? That, well, yeah, our generation. Yeah. Where are they? Well, they're hiding. First of all, they don't want to run for president because they have skeletons in their closet. They don't want their life to be picked apart and they don't want lies printed about them, which is also part of the dirty thing of politics. It's not just things you actually did. It's like gross distortions of things you did to have the least charitable view of you so that the world, oh, that guy's a monster. We got to cut him out. We got to put this good guy in.

You know, and there's – it's just we don't have a lot of like shining choices, right? Like when it comes to politicians, I mean Obama was a shining choice for a lot of people. I mean, Obama was a shining choice for a lot of people. But then when he got into power, like a lot of the policies were very similar to George Bush's policies, particularly with drone bombings and the protection of whistleblowers. And, you know, there's so much that you could point to and say, well, this is not what we wanted. This is not what we thought we were getting. And there's no one that really stands out other than the outsiders, other than the RFKs and the Viveks and these people that are just different from the established politicians. And those people are, they're fighting against those people with fucking tooth and claw because they don't want them to get

into power and they don't want that kind of change because that change disrupts this business that they're running but is there's part of me that feels like when you talk about uh rfk jr or vivic i'm like they're human there there's there's uh there's there are skeletons you know maybe i don't know about vivic but there there are like human failures there he was addicted to heroin yeah no but there are like you know like you know some of it is not i think it's easy for us to characterize oh it's the it's the quality of the people that go into politics but some of it is the occupation yeah like you know and the inability for them to even embrace a sense of compromise. So like I think that like, you know, with Obama, there was like, you know, a lot of people on left and right would say that he compromised too much on things when he had this kind of, you know, particularly the first time he had like 60 senators, you know.

But like, you know, it's I'm not saying Vivek or any politician you're gonna be corrupted eventually you're gonna be you know like Bill Clinton I think you know I'm gonna lose everyone but like I think he wasn't a well-intended guy as a thing so yes all right so it's hard to know right first of all because the media back then was very different than the media today. You know, I mean, the only thing that caught him on was getting his dick sucked in the White House, which is like outrageous. Well, he also, like, we knew when he was like, I feel your pain. I mean, I smelled only bullshit.

Yeah. But that's not to say that I didn't think – I mean Reagan was bullshitting us. Sure. You know what I mean? Obviously Nixon was. Obviously – Read my lips. Do you know what I mean?

No new taxes. That was bullshit. And as sincere as Carter was, you're like, you know what? Maybe we need someone with a little edge. You know what I mean? He seemed to be the last of the like really sincere guys that ran for president and was president. Did you ever read Hunter S. Thompson's work on being on the campaign trail with Carter? No.

Hunter went to see Carter speak, and I remember reading about it that he was just not impressed, not interested in going. He thought he was one more fucking bullshit politician. And in the middle of the speech, it was so good that he went out and got a tape recorder and brought a tape recorder back to record the rest of it and remembered thinking, like, this guy's quoting Bob Dylan, and he's talking about the future of this country in a way that he hadn't heard any politician talk about in a long time. I mean, he's like somebody that walks the walk and talks the talk of these Christian values. Yes, and still does.

Which is like America loves that stuff. But after that, we were like, all right, we need a little dirtier than this. Well, there was the thing with the iranian hostage crisis right where they actively made sure that the crisis that the hostages weren't released until reagan got into office like they they did that on purpose to show that reagan was in you know that was a better choice power he's going to get it taken care of you know it's a dirty fucking business and when you have that much money involved it's a dirty fucking business. And when you have that much money involved, it's going to stay dirty. There's going to be a,

it's, you're never going to get a completely pure, like ethical, moral, enlightened structure that's running a capitalist society that is so overwhelmingly influenced by money and special interest groups. It's a matter of mitigating all those things to the maximum amount possible while exposing fraud as much as possible

and then putting checks and balances in place to make sure that fraud and that corruption can't get to the place where it's at now in the future. How do you do that? Well, you have to take money out of politics. Good fucking luck. You have to take money out of advertisements in terms of pharmaceutical drug companies being advertised on television people are vastly

over medicated and not giving not being given the information that a lot of their medical issues could be mitigated by exercise and diet a lot of them a large percentage of them with diet and nutrition and vitamin supplementation and healthy lifestyle and medic meditation and the mitigation of stress. You can do something to make your life far better and you won't need as much medication, but there's no profit in that. So they don't say that. They don't tell you, but is it, I agree with you, but is there also something of every generation of humans looks at the previous generation and says, those idiots. Of course. They were putting leeches on people?

Yeah. Come on. We've got to figure it out. Just take these bag of pills. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? But in some cases, those bag of pills are good for you. Yeah, I know. But we don't have the humility, I think, to admit, you know, even even the, you know, the, you know, the the COVID coming from, we have our narrative and people defend the narrative.

It's not like even one side or the other side. It's like, look. What do you mean? Meaning like, it's a human trait to sit there and go, okay, well, all right, so we don't want World War III. So it wasn't China. It's just like, look, it's a- I don't think that's the case with the lab leak theory. I think there's real clear evidence that they knew it was responsible. And you think that Fauci covered it up because he had given money. Well, there's emails.

There's emails where they're talking about. And they definitely were. Did China leak it on purpose? No, I don't think so. Well, that lab had safety violations. The people in the lab got sick. It's a beautiful lab. Is it?

Have you seen the photos? Yeah, they built it on like an island. Yeah, they spent a lot of money trying to invest in their infrastructure. Yeah. Well, whatever they were doing, we were partly funding it. Wow. Yeah. And they were doing gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.

And I think people in that lab got sick, and I think they spread it out to the world. And I think Fauci covered it up. And I think there's real clear evidence. There's real clear evidence in terms of email chain, where the original doctors who had the scientists that examined it said it appears to have leaked from a lab. These appear to be manipulated viruses. And then they get emails from Fauci. And then within days, they change their tune. And then they get funded. But I'm not even disagreeing with that approach. What I'm saying is that like the general resist.

It doesn't exist right now, the lab leak theory resistance. But the general resistance to that is a very human kind of reaction to something where it's like, well, obviously, it's kind of like America's hesitation to looking at some of its hard facts about this experiment that we've undertaken, which is, you know, understanding, like being able to look yourself in the mirror. Like the lab leak theory is, in a way, the most logical solution, right? But also like the, you know, and I'm drawing this comparison.

So like America lived after World War II under this belief system that, hey, we're a country of immigrants. We all these immigrants came over. We're a melting pot. Isn't it great anyway? And a story. Of course, that's not the reality. The reality is that the wealth of this nation was built off of slavery and about, you know, many, you know, stealing land from Native Americans. And so, like, there is a general tendency to not want to look at a hard fact that might not be comfortable. Definitely for people that were involved. Definitely for people that were responsible of it, for it. And, you know, it also makes you feel

like you're on the right side of things. If you can come with, even if you don't believe in them, if you can say some facts and some statistics that seem to point to the fact that it probably was some sort of a natural spillover. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it also, it eliminates this fucking horrible fear that this could happen again. You know, that this is a product of this monkeying around with viruses and fucking around with things and making them more contagious for human beings, which is just a dangerous practice that Obama had stopped.

And that was, some of it was, it was to weaponize it or to kind of... Who knows? I think there's a lot going on. There's also just pure financial interests, right? There's a lot of funding involved. If you get billions of dollars from organizations to fund this research, and then you have a business involved in funding this research. Look, if their way of doing that was to come up with some sort of a cure for coronaviruses when they came around, well, they failed fucking miserably at that

because the mitigation efforts were very unsuccessful they weren't prepared they didn't know what to do and they they likely did create something that was way more contagious and wound up killing a shitload of people because it got out wow yeah that's hard for people to think about and deal with the fact that the the scientific community that was involved in that is responsible for the direct deaths of who knows how many fucking people worldwide. That's a terrifying thought. Yeah, I mean, that's probably worse than bombing in a comedy club. Yeah.

Imagine if you're one of the guys that was involved in that research and you realize that now. Oh, my God. Like, holy shit, maybe your mom died of it. And directly because of stuff that you were working on. Yeah. It's terrifying. And people just kind of, well, I think, you know, people kind of sit there and go, well, this is my job. This is research.

I don't necessarily understand it, but I'm doing this. Yeah. And there's also money in the cure. There's money in the treatment and an insane amount of money that that gets pushed around that's when people get real crazy and think that it was leaked on purpose so that they can make money off the treatment which is the most evil way to look at it and that that scares the shit out of me well it is just amazing that i mean but like the advancements we've made the fact that we're sitting there complaining about all these 80-year-olds running the world is because we've advanced to a point.

You know what I mean? Because hygiene and nutrition and science and medicine has got us to a point where people can live. Eisenhower, you know how old, you know he was bald? Yeah. He was 21 years old. He was a general when he was 20. He was a general when he was 20. He was a general when he was 12. And he was 21 when he was bald.

But he was probably like, if you found out that Eisenhower was president, he looks like he's 80. How old was Eisenhower when he was president? I'm going to guess 59. Yeah, that's probably about right. But he looked like he was 70. He looked older. He looked like Khrushchev. He was 63.

He was 63. Close enough. All right, so that was... He also had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Right? Yeah. I mean, that's the thing about being a president, that when you see a guy like Biden who's already struggling and old,

yeah, that guy looks like he's seen some shit. He also planned movements in World War II that he knew would kill 200,000 men. 200,000 Americans are going to die. Just imagine that. But we got to get in there. You know what I mean? It's like you look at the Korean War. It's like when they invaded in Pusan.

It's like it was – if you look, I don't know if you can – like the invasion where they landed in the Korean War where the North Koreans had taken over and like there was like down here and then they came in in Pusan. It was this wild gamble where like it was just sheer death but like D-Day was insane insane yeah insane storming the beach in Normandy imagine you're one of those guys in that boat and you gotta get on that beach and just live rounds are like firing straight towards you and you gotta rush the beach

I mean Saving Private Ryan fuck that movie's wild think about like how that educated an entire generation. That's one of 50 brilliant things Spielberg's done. Yeah. Saving Private Ryan, independent of the movie, he educated the sacrifice of D-Day to an entire generation or two. Yeah. And then people will go after him because he's got a $250 million yacht.

Well, I thought you were about climate change. You're flying around in a private jet on a giant yacht. He's worth a couple billion. Fucking piece of shit. Yeah. That movie has a rough movie, man. Yeah, we don't have to see this. We got it.

Anybody who hasn't seen it should see it. It's probably one of the most realistic depictions of war. By the way, the sacrifice. I mean, there's World War I guys. Yeah. If you haven't seen Alkright on the Western front. I haven't, but everybody tells me I have to see it. It's amazing.

I just get depressed. When I'm watching TV, I want to be entertained. I want to be taken away. I want to watch Stranger Things or something silly. I know. I know. My wife's like that. A lot of women like to escape.

I'm like a woman? No, I'm joking. I am like a woman. No, it is like one of those things where you're like, a baby just needs to escape. Yeah. I need my story. Most of the time when I get home from the club or when I'm, I watch professional pool. You do?

Yeah. I watch professional pool matches because there's no weight on the world. There's no nothing. There's just skillful manipulation of the ball and moving it around the table. That's what I like to watch. There's some attractive female pool players, right? Yeah. There's quite a few. Yeah. Yeah. But that's not why I watch it. I watch the men. They's what I like to watch. There's some attractive female pool players. Yeah, there's quite a few. But that's not why I watch it. I watch

the men. They play better. Sorry. Sorry, ladies. Some ladies, they play a lot better than me, but the best players, for some reason, are male. That's so interesting. So your kids are like, Dad's watching pool. Yeah, they think I'm an idiot. He's watching billiards. Yeah, I watch pool and

I watch funny things. Are there commentaries? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think an idiot. He's watching billiards. Yeah, I watch pool and I watch funny things. Are there commentaries? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he's going to go for the eight ball. Shout out to Jeremy Jones. The best. Yeah, they comment on what's the correct approach, like what path the player should take, what kind of English he has to put on this ball, what are the problem balls that he has to knock out, how he has to maneuver around the table.

And so you consume that. Do you watch the NFL or no? No. Not at all? No. I mean, so you're in the MMA thing is that you're like, I got to keep track of that. That's my passion. Do you look at other sports like baseball or basketball or do you like I mean you appreciate

the event if you went to a game but like is is there a certain thing that like what what's holding you back from that time time I'm sure I would love football if I really got into it it's an amazing game I'm sure I'd love basketball I'm sure I'd love hockey I I'm sure I'd love hockey. I don't have time. Yeah. And I don't play those games. I'm not that interested, and I've always been interested in martial arts. And I think martial arts is the most challenging and dangerous of all the sports, and I like it the most. And, you know, there's so much to watch that I have more than enough to consume. Too much, really.

Yeah. Like there's a big event this weekend in salt lake city that i'm going to a big ufc so and are you working at that one yeah i'm working so and if you're not working at it you wouldn't go no i would i would if i could if i have time off yeah i'd love to go and watch but uh i would watch it at home most likely but i have there's certain matches that i'm gonna have to watch over the next few days and just get prepped up. And also, you know, as an analyst, I have to think about, like, what could possibly happen in these fights and what I think the likely scenarios are. And, like, I always call martial arts high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences.

with dire physical consequences. And it's a very complex, dangerous game that requires intense dedication and focus and discipline. And it's so hard to do, and you can only do it for so long. The elite athletes have like a nine-year period where they can perform at their very best until their body starts to fail. Wow. Yeah, so when I watch it, I'm just uh overwhelmed by that and i just don't have the time

to be watching golf or you know baseball and is there a certain country that is rising out of mma where you're like wow i didn't know that i mean i know jujitsu in brazil but like is there a certain country where you're like you know russia's kicking ass russia is kicking ass a lot of the guys from dagestan are fucking incredible but it's it's a function of like what do they start out training they they start out training in sambo which is a russian martial art and and jiu-jitsu and boxing and wrestling at a very early age and they're also encouraged to do it there's a lot of competition there and it's also a hard life. It's a hard part of the world, like dangerous part of the world. Is it parts of Russia that is a minority group within the Russian Federation?

Because it wasn't the – I think there was a Muslim guy that – Well, there's quite a few Muslim guys. I think you're – From Russia. Yeah, there's quite a few Muslim guys. I think you're. Yeah, there's quite a few. Yeah. Khabib Nurmagomedov. Yeah. He was one of the greatest of all times. He's a guy from Dagestan who's a Muslim.

A very devout religious guy. And I think that discipline from being. Because that's in that chaotic area of Armenia, right? Isn't Dagestan? Dagestan? It's in Russia. Is it Dagestan? It's in Russia.

Or is it near where they had the Winter Olympics and where the caucus is? See, there's Armenia. Dagestan is right there. Yeah. So I think that's a war-torn area. I think that's debated. Is it Georgia or is it Azerbaijan, right? Now, is that technically Russia, or is it

its own? It used to be part of the Soviet Union. I think Azerbaijan, I think that, like, well, it's... I think that, like... Dagestan is officially, the Republic of Dagestan is a Republic of Russia situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea.

Hard people. Hard people. Some of the greatest come out of Dagestan. And some of the most interesting and exciting prospects come out of that part of the world. So fast. I mean, Armenia is fast. Armenia has a ton of great fighters. Well, Armenia, you go to like jerusalem right there's like the jewish

quarter the muslim quarter uh and then there's the armenian quarter like the armenians are so fascinating like they were like the first to embrace uh christianity and uh just like they were like all in. It's really, I mean, it's just fascinating because like they, and then the history of like them dealing with the Turks and it's just amazing. Yeah. And there's a lot of great Armenian fighters that have fought in MMA and in kickboxing as well. They're voracious readers too. They're big readers. Yeah. Anyway, I'm pro-Ar armenian i am too i love armenians yeah i just love armenians in la they were refreshingly masculine

yeah you know there's just like open about it i loved it it's because la is so you know for lack of better term i don't want to say feminized because i don't think feminine is negative but you know there's so many men that are just bitches. No, I remember going to LA during pilot season with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, and we had a thing. Is that guy gay or from LA?

And you know, obviously, we have tons of friends that are gay, but I was like, I don't know if he's gay or if he's just from LA. You know what I mean? Yeah. Metro. But that was probably like in the 2000s so I don't know if that's it takes all kinds of people to run this crazy world Jim Gaffigan you know I do too we should probably wrap this up um your special yeah look at that dark pale how many have you done now this is my 10th fuck yeah right and where'd you film this one in tampa nice and uh amazon prime prime you've done more than one on amazon prime you like doing it over there i you know some of it is just where the you know the offer

some of it was the timing that netflix wanted to do and then honestly you know prime offered me more money but like i also think it's good to mix it up i think so too i mean i totally learned that out of necessity but you know the landscape is changing so much i don't know and you know i was talking to marin and he loves you you know, he did one on Max or HBO Max at the time. And so it is good to mix it up. I mean, I love Netflix, but I think it's good for a guy like you to go wherever you want. Yeah. So for a guy like you, it's kind of a standard setter. You can just do whatever you want. And if you go there, I think it's good for comedy in general. Yeah. And I think it's fascinating to see how big these platforms are. Well, Amazon, everyone has Amazon on their phone.

Anyone who gets a box delivered, they can watch it. You can watch it. Yeah. It's just a matter of letting people know. And then when you have great shows like Mrs. Maisel, where people start watching it because of that, and then The Terminal List. Amazon has a lot of great shows now. Yeah. Again, you were talking about this.

There's so much content. Yeah. And sometimes you find out about it later on, and you're like, oh, I didn't even realize. Yeah. And then sometimes the first season's amazing, and the second season's garbage. Yep. Because it's hard. It's hard.

It's really hard. Yeah, it is. Listen, we're going to have some fun tonight. Thanks, buddy. I'm excited that you're going to come to the mothership. I'm very excited. Yeehaw. I'm excited.

Good to see you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. Always appreciate you. My pleasure. All right. Bye, everybody.