The Joe Rogan Experience - #2406 - Russell Crowe
Episode Date: November 5, 2025Russell Crowe is an Academy Award–winning actor, director, and vocalist of the band Indoor Garden Party. His latest film role is that of Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring in the historical drama “...Nuremberg,” which premieres in theaters on November 7. https://www.sonyclassics.com/film/nuremberg/www.indoorgardenparty.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE at https://ziprecruiter.com/rogan Get Gameday Deals all season long only on Uber Eats. Order Now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Joe Rogan podcast checking out
The Joe Rogan Experience
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night
All day
How are you, sir?
Good to see you.
Yeah, good to see you.
Nice to see you, man.
Your movie's great.
Thank you very much.
When does it come out?
In the United States,
it comes out November 7th.
And then various dates
over the next month.
and a half or so around the rest of the world it's a fucking heavy movie man yeah it's a heavy
movie yeah the um the trial that footage was that all real footage the holocaust footage
real footage of the that was one of the one of the reasons that that inspired jamie to go ahead
that he was given access to that footage some of which has never been seen since 1996 oh it's a
very interesting way that he makes the subject matter accessible
because it's such a dry topic from the outside, right?
Here's a court case.
Right.
You know, he's yet another courtroom drama procedural or whatever.
So I can imagine that people would see that and go, well, it's, you know, might not be an exciting watch or something.
But he sort of puts the audience in this position where he allows them to start to be amused by some of the things that are going on and the interpersonal relationships.
And, you know, when the commandant of the prison has to call up his two top mental health experts and dress them down for getting into a fistfight, you know, things like that, kind of, it's, there's a charm to it.
And then he gets you into the courtroom and he locks the door.
And he goes, now you're going to see what we're talking about.
So I think it's a very interesting film device to disqualify to disson.
disarm people before he starts giving them the real juice, you know?
Yeah, it's also a fascinating psychological tape from the psychiatrist,
from Kelly's perspective, you know, because the way he's describing all human beings,
that all human beings are capable of these horrific acts.
And that's the thing that was a very unpopular take at the time actually led to his removal
from the process because he wasn't fulfilling what the war department wanted him to say,
which is, you know, all Nazis are crazy, you know, ruled by a madman.
And this is a unique experience.
But that's not what he found.
And sitting down talking to the 22 major Nazi sort of names that he was assigned to post-war,
he realized that every single one of these people was, you know, it was normal.
Well, there was a couple that were pretty out there.
But, you know, for the most part, he was dealing with rational men.
Yeah, that's what's scary.
How the hell did they end up making this series of decisions if they're rational men?
Well, it just seems like things just get pushed slowly but surely into this unbelievable.
unbelievably horrific place.
Right.
Like it starts off, it's just a war, it starts off Hitler's in power, and then slowly
but surely things get pushed.
Yes.
And that's the thing that's, you know, difficult because gigantic jumps, we can all read.
Right.
But little incremental changes.
Right.
The boiling of the frog.
Just how, you know, you take away this person's rights, that person's personal power.
You know, and slowly, you know, you get to a point where the average person then turns around and goes, how did we get to here?
Right.
You know, I thought it was about something else.
You know, there's a smoke screen going up, and I thought we were doing that.
And as it turns out, it's very different.
Yeah, that's the, one of the scariest aspects of human beings is our ability to dehumanize others, to turn others into something less than us.
Right.
non-human and other humans with families with mothers and fathers and children it's one of the
most dangerous things i see it going on everywhere at the moment that we're trying to say that
you're either you know and for one or of a better teen name that you're either red or that you're
blue right and humans are far more nuanced than that they're not we're not that extreme you know
and the idea that you can split all of us into two camps is kind of nuts.
It's nuts.
You know?
Yeah, it's nuts.
And it takes out all the room for subtlety in a discussion.
And therefore, it makes communicating with each other less and less available.
Well, it's just in this country in particular, I don't know about Australian politics, but we only have two parties.
and they're both
essentially financed
by enormous corporations
so it's a ruse
the whole thing's a ruse
and you have different social issues
on each side that come up
and then it becomes this year
with us or against us
right versus left
but it's going nowhere good
nowhere good
yeah we have the same sort of
you know two principal party system
in Australia as well
but we have a slight advantage
in that we're kind of
on the edge of
world in a lot of ways, you know. So what I've always said is when you're growing up in
Australia and New Zealand, you grow up looking out. Yes, you understand your own culture and
all that, but you grow up looking at what else is happening in the rest of the world, what's
happening in Europe, what's happening in America, you know. But by and large, Americans grow up
looking in. Right. The principal sports are only played by American teams, American football,
in some instances baseball, but they're not the types of sports that we play
where the pinnacle of that sport is international competition.
Right.
Rugby union, rugby league, cricket, football, soccer, you know.
So we grow up with that as being the pinnacle of any particular sport
if you get to represent your country.
And that's only really relevant in an American sense in an Olympic period, you know.
Right.
That's it. Yeah. We never think about other sports. We mock them. We think about, you know, like, what are you doing playing cricket?
it. And it's a fascinating game. And anybody who loves baseball, generally I've found baseball lovers
are all about the minutiae. They're all about the stats. And what those stats mean, you know,
there might be a certain score on the board, but, you know, their team might be getting beaten,
but they see in the stats that there's, you know, a certain dominance in an area. And so they,
you know, they still have a hope that the outcome of the game may come their way. And cricket fans are the same
as that.
So the fact that the two
never seem to meet
is odd to meet
because it's the same type of game.
Cricket is larger worldwide, right?
Much larger.
Yeah, well you have India.
India and Pakistan and Sri Lanka
and countries like that
with huge populations playing the game.
Do you guys have home runs in cricket
like where someone really cracks the ball
and smashes it out of the park?
It's called a six.
If you hit the ball over the
fence without a bouncing, you get six runs.
And that's the version of a home run.
In, see, there's different forms of the game.
You have T20, then you have one day.
So this is going to be, this is going to be difficult.
T20 means that each team gets to bowl 20 overs.
An over is six balls.
So you have 26 ball overs that you're bowling to the batting team and they've got to try
and get as many runs as they can.
Okay.
And then you will have a go at batting, right?
So you have that version of the game, which is very short.
It can happen in an evening.
Then you have a one-day game, which maybe, you know, starts in the afternoon,
finishes by eight or nine at night.
But then you have the test match.
And this is what I grew up with.
It's sort of been dialed down a little bit now because they've brought in shorter forms
of the game.
But the test match is between two countries and it's played over five days.
And the idea is that.
that both teams have to bat and bowl twice.
And the result will be whatever it is at the end of five days.
Five days, man.
Five full days.
And they start and then they have morning tea and then they have another break.
They have lunch.
And then they have afternoon tea.
And if it's really hot every now and then somebody will walk out and give them drinks, you know.
It's very civilized.
My cousin Martin was a great cricket player.
He was the captain of New Zealand.
My other cousin, Jeffrey, was also a captain of New Zealand.
So I kind of grew up in a cricketing family, and it was one of the pathways for me that was, you know, potentially play cricket, you know.
But when you've got two of your cousins who are as good as they were, it's a very crowded room.
You know, so how am I going to make any kind of statement here when one of the, Martin, at his peak, he was called by Sports Illustrated, I believe, the Michael Jordan of World Cricket.
Wow.
He was a very dominant player in his day.
And he used to call, we used to discuss test matches as the gentleman's war because you have a defined space.
You have X amount of players and you've got to stop that little ball in this gigantic 180 meter by 120 meter oval.
You've got to stop that little red ball from going between the players and therefore, you know, preventing the bats from scoring runs.
But that five-day game, the way that it ebbs and flows, once you're into it, it's the only way you want to watch cricket.
Because it's like, you know, at one moment, your team can be just so far ahead.
You're like, eh, just, you know, and then it'll turn on a dime.
And day two, things get really dark for your team, you know.
Day three, you've got an edge back again.
Day four, it's fantastic, man.
And as a kid, I used to go and attend every day of a five-day game.
Wow.
Yeah, it was crazy.
Yeah, there's nothing like that here.
No, no.
I mean, it really requires, I mean, just,
Look at the, you know, five-day game.
It's like five news cycles, right?
Yeah.
We're not really set up for that sort of patience and assistance.
How is it broadcast? Is it street?
Television.
Television.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, there's cables and companies and stuff have got involved now,
but it used to be national network and when cricket season was on.
I mean, you know, back in the day, people would come from overseas and into Australia
this summer and then ask the question, is there anything else on television?
except sport is it so when when you play this do they take commercial breaks yep okay
they do so that's the problem with soccer right soccer in America the reason why it's very
hard to sell is not just that a lot of people don't play it right but it says there's no
commercial breaks right they just keep going huge number of people who play association football
soccer in this country oh for sure listen they have a professional team here I've been to the game
but it's nowhere near the involvement that football has
American football
in this country
Yeah
Not even close
Yeah
Well see all of our sports
That we like in Australia
Apart from cricket
Tend to be quite compact
You know
80 minute game
90 minute game
10 minute half time
And it's part of your day
It's not your whole day
It's like we'll go to a football game
And then we'll go and have dinner
Or go and do something else
So we have that same thing
Where the action
Is so continuous
That the idea of stopping for a commercial break
gets quite tricky. Yeah, that makes sense. It's always been fascinating to me that rugby
never took off in America. Yeah. Because it seems like kind of a more savage version of football.
Yeah. Well, the way I think it sort of plays out is you've got rugby union, right, which is 15 men
aside. Every time a player is tackled, you recompete for the ball. You have rocks, malls,
you have lineouts. It's a very different game. But,
There's another version of rugby called Rugby League, which was played in the north of England,
and that has a defined period of offence and defence, and I think that's where American football comes from.
I actually own a team in Australia in the NRL, the National Rugby League, the South Sydney Rabbitos,
the oldest team in the game, 1908 we were formed, bought the team in 2006.
And it's very easy to explain to Americans, have American friends come down.
I spend maybe 20 minutes talking to them, and they get the game.
And they start to dig it.
My girlfriend, at the moment, actually, Brittany,
was one of the reasons why I really started being attracted to her
because she understood the game straight away.
You know, and then I find out when she was younger,
she was a cheerleader for the New Orleans Saints
while she was studying electrical engineering.
So, yeah, it's a...
Very similar.
Rugby League is a very easy game for Americans to follow.
Now, how it's refereed,
becomes frustrating we're an American audience
because there's so much room for interpretation,
referee to referee, game to game, situation to situation.
So it can get frustrating.
I think one of the greatest things about American football
from the outside of from an objective point of view,
it seems that every single thing that the NFL try to do
is based on an across-the-board fairness for everyone.
You know, so those, you know, the conversations
between the referees and what have you
seem to be everybody's on the same page
and sometimes when you're watching rugby league
something that you saw somebody else
get sent from the field for the week before
and now nothing happens this week
but it's the same kind of hit or whatever
I was like what you know so I've had a few Americans
get very frustrated no I think that's
yeah I think the game moves very fast
right and you know
referees don't have
eyes on all sides of their head, you know?
But do you have referee corruption over there?
Because you have gambling.
We definitely have gambling.
Yeah, I know you have gambling because I read ads for them.
Yeah, it's absolutely crazy the way gambling has become such a significant player.
I also read the other day that now turns out that 50% of ownership of all the major gambling
things are in the hands of sports teams.
Oh, boy.
So what's going on?
Yeah, I think what we have, as opposed to.
to corruption is natural bias
because guys come
out of the game. So there's
17 clubs in the
NRL at the moment. And guys
who are in positions like referees or video
refs or whatever, they have a club.
They grew up associated
to one particular geographic area
and that's their club. So
it's very difficult for anyone
to truly
objectively see their own natural
bias.
But also, there's got to be some corruption
if there's gambling.
If it's so subjective that you could make calls that you would, that didn't, that someone got in
trouble a week before and then this week nothing, like that kind of subjectivity where it's
up to the referee to make a decision.
If I was a corrupt person, a gambler, especially if I was a mobster, I would reach out to
that referee and say, you know, it's within our best interest to work together on this.
Yes, let's, let's make something happen.
I would hope we're in all innocence.
Yeah, well, you have to say that.
You own a team.
Yeah, and you've got to sort of remain a little impartial in these things.
What was that scandal in America, Jamie, the most recent one, the basketball one?
It had to do...
It's still ongoing.
It's still ongoing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What are they accusing these guys of, though?
I know they rigged poker games, but there's also accusations about the basketball games itself.
Most of it would have been, like, based off of player props.
So, like, they know that they're not going to take themselves out of the game.
So, like, just take the under on, I'm not going to score 20 points.
I'm only going to be there for 10 minutes.
Wink, wink, or, like, you know, these players aren't going to play in this game.
That's sort of what I was.
This is players gambling, is it?
One of the coaches was doing it, too, or, like, giving information.
And he was, the thing is, is, they were tied to the poker game, too.
Oh.
And.
So it was just a full-on criminal enterprise.
Yeah, one of them, I just saw on the news today that the one player who's been tossed around
he had a big IRS debt
and all of this sort of started around the same time too
oh he's trying to pay off his debt
so he got corrupt who knows
who knows but they weren't they ripping off their friends
in the poker games that I don't know because I've
allegedly yeah I've seen clips of this
people knew about this a year or two ago
on Instagram they're like I was at a fucking
rigged game and I know the people involved
and know that I should not have like I'm not
going there and losing my money
how did they know it was rigged
the people involved, he said.
He's like, someone else told me this, it's all
in the up and up, and then he's like, I know
everybody in the game, it's definitely not.
What are you talking about?
How that guy knew, he didn't really get.
Well, they had crazy shit.
Like, they could read the cards.
They had like an x-ray machine.
They had cameras and their chip holders.
They had all sort of, I don't know who they were
communicating to, though.
There's a lot going on, but it was happening in L.A.,
Vegas, New York, all over the place.
God.
This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.
Have you ever lost your keys and ended up tearing your house apart trying to find them?
What makes it even worse is when it's the most conspicuous, obvious place you could have sworn you checked already.
It'd be nice we had the ability to find whatever we're looking for right away.
And at least for hiring managers on the hunt for talented people, that's possible.
Thanks to ZipRecruiter.
Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan.
Using ZipRecruiter almost feels like having superpowers.
It works quickly and efficiently at finding qualified candidates for your role largely
because they have incredible matching technology and an advanced resume database that can help you connect with people instantly.
No more wasting time and energy.
ZipRecruiter can help you find exactly what you want.
Want to know right away how many qualified candidates are in your area?
Look no further than ZipRecruiter.
four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
And right now, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan.
Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan.
ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.
A lot of money.
Gambling.
I stay away from it.
I know how you feel about it.
About gambling?
Yeah.
I had an experience when I was a young fellow.
It was the first time I was in America.
America, actually. And I'd had all these intense meetings and what have you. And it was, I had a decision to make. I had 10 different people wanting to be my agent. So I ran a car and I went for a drive. And I went up to San Francisco on the coast. And then I turned inland thinking, you know, well, I've heard of Reno, so I'll go there, right? So I went to Reno, Nevada. And I had X amount of money, right? I was a very, um,
I wasn't, you know, I was doing well in my career, but I didn't have a lot of cash.
So I had a couple hundred dollars in my pocket, that's all, you know.
So I went and had a beer, and I started playing blackjack on a $5 table, and it's a single deck.
This is how long ago this was, 92 or something, right?
So I'm playing, and I did pretty well, you know, amassed a few hundred dollars,
feeling very cocky and confident about myself, and I probably just then had one beer too many.
And I went for a walk down the street, and I saw a row.
roulette table and I think,
that'll be me,
right?
Sucker.
And so everything I won,
I lost.
And by the time
I sort of got my
shit back together,
I had $25 in my pocket.
I'm in Reno.
I got a quarter of a tank of gas
and I got to get back to L.A.
I don't have a credit card.
Oh, boy.
So, as it was,
I'd paid for my hotel in advance,
so that's all cool.
But I was like, okay,
I got to sober up here.
So I go back to the place I started.
back to that same $5 table.
And I just very carefully, when I got to like $190, which I knew was going to be
enough to get me back with petrol and food and all that, so I stopped.
I go out into the car park of this hotel.
It's like 11 midnight, something like that.
And I just started vibrating, man.
My whole body was like shaking, like I was having some kind of fit, you know.
And it was just really weird.
I got back to the hotel room and I called my mum collect in New Zealand.
and I just said I just did this I went through this she goes oh no darling something I've never told you
but your great-grandfather was a professional gambler and at one point in time he gambled his
house away he had to go and get his daughters wake him up get his wife and tell him this is where
they no longer live and that one act kept that family in
you know relative terms poor for another two generations that one impulsive act to gamble his
house yeah so I know it's in me so I don't go anywhere near it that's fascinating
once a year there's a horse race in Australia called the Melbourne Cup and I will focus on that
and if I happen to be at home and I have the day off kind of thing I'll put a bit of
money on that. But that's it. You know, everything else that I do in my life is gambling.
Becoming an actor, massive gamble. What are you talking about? It's ridiculous, you know, buying a
football team. It's all a version of gambling. But the idea that you're just giving money away to a system
that has the way, it's not fair. It's not going to benefit you. And at the end of the day,
in the longer term, you're simply not going to win. It sort of, that drives me a little crazy.
I don't want to get involved in that.
Yeah, the vibration thing, do you think, do you think gambling's genetic?
Like, there's a thought that a lot of, there's certain behaviors that are in people that are
passed down from their parents.
There's certain thought processes.
There's certain inclinations.
Right.
That it's some genetic proponent that we haven't not clearly identified yet.
That it's, you know, they used to think that people are a blank slate.
You're born, you're a blank slate.
You learn everything from your environment.
But we know that's not real.
It's not real.
No, there's a shit ton that you get from your genes.
It's very weird.
And I wonder if you got that from your grandfather.
It really feels like it's in me and I have to work against it.
So I think God, you have discipline that you could go back to the table in one area.
Well, that's a good area to have it.
But that's how desperate the situation was.
It's like I'm standing there in Reno realizing I can't even get back to L.A.
I've got a rental car
So I just took it really, really slowly
And I do this thing
If I'm playing in a situation like that
Because occasionally I will
Go and play blackjack
At a casino
If I'm in a group of people
Because if you're all disciplined
And if you hold every seat on a table
You can turn the tide against the house
Very easily
They hate you doing it
And they try to break it up and put somebody in the middle of you or whatever.
But if you, actually, funnily enough, it was Tom Cruise taught me this.
If you have it, so the first chair and the last chair make the calls and the decisions
and everybody else just sits on 12 and above.
And you watch the mathematics come your way.
Now, way, way back in the day, right?
It would have been, hmm, 95, 95, 96, 97, something like that, right?
Tom calls me he's married to Nicole Kidman at the time
calls me and he goes
Hey bud we've got this thing set up
Steve Wynn has put on a jet
He's going to fly us to Vegas right
We're allowed to play at Shadow Creek
We're allowed to play golf at Shadow Creek
So I'm not really a golfer but sounded good to me
jumped on the plane went there
We're playing Shadow Creek lightning storm comes up
Tom's like in the middle of the fairway
Still trying to play we're going to dude
put the iron down it's this lightning you know so we you know we enjoyed ourselves at the golf course
then we go back to the winds hotel and they've given us michael jackson's lanai to change clothes in or
whatever we go and get some chinese food the you know the jets comp the golf's comp the lanai's comp the
food's comp and then we go and play uh blackjack together tom explains what the team's going to do
and we take twenty five thousand dollars or more off the table
Go back to the airport, get on the comp jet, fly back to L.A., but we finished as a group,
we then attacked the New York Times crossword, and we did the last word as we were landing in Los Angeles.
So to me, it was like, that, I believe, was a perfect day.
That's a team effort.
That sounds like a lot of fun.
It was a great day.
But that sort of like, that was one of the early experiences where, okay, so you can have fun with these sort of,
of games, as long as you don't take them too serious.
My current girlfriend is a massive poker player.
She loves it, and she's really quite good at it.
She's played in a couple of female-only tournaments and things like that, you know.
So I've watched them play, but I don't get involved.
I don't want to get involved.
I don't want to activate that, yeah, because I am kind of, you know, I do have a reckless
streak, you know, I can imagine in the wrong moment if I'm, you know.
tipsy
well it wouldn't be tipsy
it would be more like
drunk on some kind of
ego power kind of thing
where yeah I can
I can turn the universe
I can make it come my way
I'll bet my house
so I just got to stay away from that
did you see uncut gems
no
it's probably the best gambling movie ever
Adam Sandler
plays a degenerate gambling junkie
okay it's not a comedy at all
amazing mill
amazing movie
I love how he's
getting, it just seems like he's getting
some jurispect these days out.
People are really starting to see
how big his effect was
and what he can do.
Also, those movies are fun.
All those happy Gilmore
and they're fun movies.
I love those movies.
They're innocent, enjoyable entertainment
and he's really good at them.
Jack and Jill, they're hilarious movies.
And that, right these days,
because I've got a project at the moment,
which on the surface you would have
to call a comedy. Nobody wants to discuss it. Nobody wants to talk about adult comedies.
So where does that mean? Where does that mean we're going to? If we're sort of reducing
comedy as a genre. It's only in the film world. In the stand-up world, it's like everybody's
completely pushed back against it and they're going the other direction. They're going back to
like 1990-style comedy. Right. Which is just say whatever the fuck you think is funny.
Confrontational stuff. It's not, no one means these things. You're saying things because they're
funny. That's it.
You know, we're, it's just like Bob Marley didn't really shoot the sheriff.
You get it?
Right.
You know?
It's like, we're just talking shit.
I heard a funny story about that, actually.
Yeah?
It's just in passing.
I can't remember who told me maybe, I won't even guess, but I think Clapton was living in New York or London or somewhere, and he had a, he had a party at his house.
And because he just had that record come out and it was gone number one.
And he had it stuck.
on his fridge with a magnet, you know, like the charts,
with a circle around it, you know.
I shot the sheriff, number one, Eric Clapton.
And Bob Marley was at the party.
And apparently he found a pen, and he wrote onto Clapton's fridge,
no, Eric, I shot the sheriff of Bob Marley.
I shot him first, bitch.
That's hilarious.
But that uncut-Gem's film is, it is a perfect movie
in regards to, like, the way.
treats a degenerate gambler
he's a jewelry broker
jewelry salesman
and he's just out of
his fucking mind it's always sports
it's always this so there's always
a game that's going on
and he's betting this and you get so much anxiety
watching the movie like oh god don't do that
don't do that don't oh Jesus
what are you doing it's like the whole movie my palms are sweating
I'm moving around in my chair because
I as a kid
grew up in pool
halls like from the time not grew up in pool halls but i spent so much time between age 23 and
you know into my 30s i was in pool halls all the time right and uh i played a lot of pool and i was around
a lot of addicted gamblers and i never got it it never hit me but i was always just fascinated
by the grip that it had on people it was like they would their eyes would be going back and
fourth their fucking skin would be pale it gripped them like a drug it gripped them like crystal meth i
i really dislike the way in australia we have normalized it you know they're doing a sports report
on the news the national news and they'll tell you the odds the odds well we do that with the ufc
with the ufc we give the odds they even i don't know if they announce round by round odds but
the, I think they do, but the, I don't, I try to pay attention to it because I don't vote, excuse me, I don't gamble on the UFC, but I used to. So I used to gamble on the UFC when I first started working for them. And then I was like, I don't think I should do this anymore. This is a long time ago, though. So what I started doing is giving my friend Aubrey, who's my business partner at On it, I started giving him tips. And he was like 84%. Right. Because I know the sport. And a lot of these guys would be coming from Japan or
coming from Russia, and I'd be like, oh, this guy from Brazil, Anderson Silva, bet the fucking house.
I go, bet the fucking house.
Because people do.
Not my house, though.
Not my house.
But there's people that were coming across from other organizations that I was a giant fan of.
And the bookmakers were woefully uneducated about, especially foreign fighters.
And there's a thing, like, if you are gambling on MMA and you don't know how to fight, you're just guessing.
You don't really, we're all just guessing when two guys get into the cage together,
but you're really guessing.
Like, you really don't, you can't recognize, like, how fast a person is.
You can't recognize how good they are at countering.
You just know stats, and you know, but you don't know how to do it.
And if you don't know how to do it, you can't really see it.
You don't really know.
So at a certain point in time, I stopped just on my own gambling.
So, like, I don't, because people were accusing me of being biased one way or the,
other anyway, which maybe I was, you know, I got better at that. But I wanted to make sure that no one thought that. So I was like, I'm only gambling. I'm a couple hundred bucks or something like that. I wasn't doing anything crazy. Right. But the fucking people that I have friends, like good friends that are just hooked. And when they start talking about like fights that they're gambling on or they put so much money on this and money on that, I'm like, oh my God. I know guys, they put millions of dollars on a fight. I'm like, oh,
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
You're freaking me out.
You're fucking freaking me out, man.
I don't care how wealthy you are.
If you put a $3 million bet on a fight and you lose, like, you're not going to sleep for a week.
Man, I just wouldn't be able to wake up with myself the next day.
And then if you win...
I would feel so foolish.
If you win, it might be even worse because now you're going to keep doing it.
Now you get the sting.
Yeah.
The thing is, with what we do in Australia, like the newspapers, like, you know, network
news services we allow betting ads it is so all prevailing you know i had an experience probably
a year or two ago and i see my two boys are talking to a mate of theirs and they've all got their
phones out and i realized they were checking up on their bets you know so i had to have a big
conversation with my boys and say look every single dollar you have come
out of my pocket. And if I give you a dollar, that's not a dollar to gamble with. And to have a very
serious conversation with them about it. It's like, I don't care if you think it's fun, you know,
I don't care you've got to actually see it for what it is. Because what's $5 or $10 now is easily
going to turn into $400, $500 in a minute, $1,000, you know, sooner or later, you will allow yourself
to think that this thing is, you know, beyond fun. And it's a way for you to earn back your losses or
whatever. Right. So I just had to have a chat with them. And they were probably looking at me
going, how old is our father that he doesn't understand that everybody does this? Yeah, but I just
had to let him know from my point of view. I didn't appreciate them taking my hard-earned
dollars and wasting them. I get it. But I also like that it exists because I want the ability,
if I wasn't working for the UFC and I could go to the fights and gamble on the fights, I would
definitely do it because it's a knowledge
thing. Right. This episode is
brought to you by Uber Eats. Every
football season, the same thing happens. The
game somehow makes everyone really
hungry. Quarterback scrambles, clearly
assigned. It's time for breakfast burritos.
Turnovers, suddenly, dessert
at 2 p.m. doesn't sound so
crazy. And wing formations,
well, those can only mean
buffalo wings, as if they're ever
not in play. Even the
goalposts start looking suspiciously
like French fries. It's almost like football
is sending the message to eat more food.
The good news, Uber Eats makes those cravings easy to satisfy
with game day deals all season long,
from wings and pizza to chips and drinks,
even last-minute grocery runs.
You'll find savings on all your favorites delivered straight to your door.
Order now on Uber Eats.
I don't need it.
If I'm into the sport, I want to see the game, you know?
I care about what happens in the game.
I get it
Possibly because from the owner point of view
I wouldn't want any extra pressure
Of course
So I don't understand
Why here's this game
It's like two teams
Of pristine athletes
Who have busted their nuts
To get in this situation
And the competition
The physical competition
Between these two teams isn't enough
You've got to put something else on the light
You know
It just adds
It adds for some people
For some people yeah
Yeah they get that extra
juice out of the knowing that the thing is also um as a commentator i am as unbiased as humanly possible
and it's a hard thing when friends fight because there's some guys that fight that are my good
friends and i'm like i just hope they don't get hurt i want them to win but i have to be excited
about the other guy winning which is kind of crazy the other guy's beating up your friend
right right and you have to be excited about it so it's good that i don't have any money riding
on fights because i don't have i'm not happy if one person wins or loses right my my my
idea is we're going to see who's the better athlete who's the better fighter and I can handle
gambling I've never had a gambling problem because I'm not a risk averse person obviously I like
risks but I'm also I'm safe like I know what I'm doing even though I do dangerous things
you've had a look at it first yeah but you do have you have that ability and inclination
for examination so you have to have that and I feel like that's the case with alcohol
the case with cigarettes. I'm in favor of all those things being legal. But I know so many people
that have a problem with alcohol, like cannot live without alcohol. I know so many people that can't
quit smoking cigarettes. I feel like you should be able to do whatever you want to do. And I want
freedom. And that comes with gambling. And I think gambling freedom, like the ability to decide
that you want to take a risk or something, that should be available. But we should educate people
as to like what is actually going on in your mind
that's allowing you to get captured by this thing
and now you're chasing bad money
and you're in a downward spiral management
like understanding
okay this is a thrill
but this thrill could take over your whole life
if you are maybe genetically susceptible
psychologically susceptible
like understand what it is
but I don't think we should take away
cars that can go over 60 miles an hour
because some people crash their cars and die
You know what I mean?
I feel like I like that gambling exists, and I always wish that it exists back in the day.
I was like, it would be fun, bet a hundred bucks on this or a hundred bucks on that.
But I don't have the problem.
Like, I could see if I came from a family that was torn apart by gambling, you'd go, you know, you don't understand.
My dad lost our house.
I'm like, okay.
But that was a bad decision.
You know, your dad could have died drinking and driving and smashed into a tree.
These are bad decisions
You don't have to make bad decisions
Just because something is tempting you
It's an interesting
It's an interesting debate
Because do you nanny state the whole world
Do you think gambling should be illegal
You think you should have to go to Vegas for it?
That seems kind of crazy
I mean
It's certainly not a black or white issue to me
There's a lot of gray area involved in it
And I know there's a lot of people that push back on the idea
Of whether these gambling apps
And all these different things should be legal
and like it's the normalization process that bothers me the most that it's part of the new service
with the apps that it's but it's just put in front of you whether you're interested in it or not
you know this team is playing that team and here's the odds and i just don't i don't think it's
healthy to have that as much of you know those stats as much a part of the actual
news report as who's playing and what's on the line.
The thing about it, though, is it does lead you to have debate about, like, here's a
perfect example, Canelo Alvarez versus Terence Crawford.
Terrence Crawford was going up two weight classes.
In my mind, though, he's so skillful, I gave him a chance.
I was like, I favor him to win, but I believe he was the underdog.
Find out what the odds were for the Canello.
Alvarez, Terrence Crawford fight.
I believe he was the underdog, even though he was an undefeated, multi-division world
champion, like one of the greatest of all time for sure.
But he was jumping up from the 154-pound weight class where he had just won the belt.
He was the 147-pound weight class all the way up to 168.
That's a big leap.
14 pounds.
And everybody thought, Cannell is going to have too much power.
He's going to be too big.
I'm like, I don't think so.
I don't think that's correct.
It was the odds.
Is it the same?
Crawford was the underdog.
So not a huge underdog, plus 135 versus plus 140, somewhere around there.
So it's not huge, not even two to one, not even one and a half to one.
But enough where I was like, I think they're wrong.
You know, so it's like it fosters debate.
You know, even if you're not gambling, and I didn't gamble on that fight.
But I did, I was telling my friends, I got a long discussion with a good buddy mine who's a real boxing connoisseur.
It's like, Canello's too big, he hits too hard.
like, that guy doesn't get hit much.
Like, I don't think that's as big of a factor as we're thinking.
I think it's a skill thing.
They're not that different in size.
I'm like, I don't think so.
And so that odds thing is, to me, exciting.
Like, it fosters debate.
Like, you start talking about, you know, and if it's a game, you start talking about players,
like he chokes in the outfield, he does this, he does that, this guy, he's always stealing bases.
I'm factoring that in.
And, you know, the odds become a.
a part of the discussion.
But yeah, it is ultimately, the problem is, first of all, kids are addicted to apps as it is.
They use them.
They're always on their damn phone.
And they'll go from TikTok to Instagram to X to, you know, they'll check this and then
they'll check that and they check their Snapchat and then they check the gambling app.
And then it's like you're just addicted to this goddamn phone.
So something on your phone that's also addicting.
It's like addiction on top of addiction because you're already getting your little dopamine.
mean rush just by looking at your phone.
But then if you're also getting a gambling rush on top of that, yeah, we got to educate
people.
Yeah.
But I think we've got to educate people on social media addiction, which I think a giant
percentage of our population is completely addicted to social media.
Totally including me.
I spend a large amount of every day scrolling through TikTok for some reason.
And what's your algorithm like?
What kind of stuff are you getting?
I'm getting a lot of dating apps at the moment,
which is really embarrassing because I'm not looking on any dating apps.
So I'm not sure that the algorithm is fully truthful.
I think there's a certain amount of things you just get fed.
Right.
Especially like a dating app, because that's a promotion.
They're promoting that.
Yeah, there's a lot, it seems to be a lot coming up.
But that's the problem, isn't it?
because the way the algorithm shapes it, you know, pretty much everything that comes up on your phone, you have some form of interest in.
Right.
So that keeps you looking at what you're looking at.
I've got to probably got to dial it down a little bit, but I'll be in the bush in a minute.
This has been such a crazy year, man, you know?
So, you know, we finished Nuremberg last year and then I went on that big tour, which is when I was here when I came to see you the first time.
but this year since between December and August I made five movies
wow and I was on the set of the sixth
and so weary and I had no juice I still feel it a little bit actually man
I've had a little bit of time off but I've still had so many responsibilities
I kind of feel like I broke my brain or something in August
and I'm still trying to recover and I won't really recover
till I get home the next time as I was saying to you before
is when I land at home now I won't know
when I'm flying out again and that is such a relief because when you do know when you're flying
out again every day is just counting down counting down you might have three weeks but doesn't
feel like three weeks because you 100% know when you're leaving again but this time I'll get
home and I'll have three months and I'll be in the bush and I'll be waking up with the birds
and you know hopefully all those things that I emptied out through the earlier part of the year
we'll fill up again.
Because I was on that set
and that was the set
for the remake of Highlander
with Henry Cavill.
So I'm playing Ramirez,
which was the Sean Connery character.
Oh, wow.
So I'm excited by it
and really looking forward to it.
But there I was,
turning up to the gym
to do my katana sword
and going to these meetings
and everything.
But I was empty.
I was absolutely empty.
And it was just to the point
where I texted my agent
and I'd said,
you know what,
I maybe need to talk
for these guys because I'm not sure if I've, I don't have any juice here. I don't know what I'm
going to be bringing, you know, I'm sitting in these meetings and everybody's talking,
but it's all just bouncing off my face, you know. I'm not really taking anything in. And
that same night, I get a phone call around 10.30 and it's so unusual because I have everything
turned off on my phone. It never rings. But for whatever reason it did ring, it was the director
saying, look, I'm so sorry to tell you that Henry's injured himself. He's ruptured his Achilles.
so we're going to have to push the film.
Now, I love Henry.
I've known him for a long time.
I've known him since he was a schoolboy.
Oh, wow.
And I met him at a place called Stowe School in England.
I was doing a scene in a movie called Proof of Life,
talking to my son in the movie,
and in the background at rugby games going on.
And, you know, we're doing the scene and everything,
but I've got my eye on the field,
and there's one guy on the field
who is just displaying he's got a great,
brain for the game. And as it happens, we finish the scene and they break up the,
what's going on behind us. And that one kid is walking towards me and he's the kid that I've
been watching. And he wants to have a chat. He introduces himself and, you know, he just asked
me, how do you get into acting? And so we had this very, very brief conversation. Then we got
swamped by these other kids. A couple of days later, I was doing a present for the kid from that school
who'd played my son, who's a boy called Merlin Hanbury Tennyson, his name's. And so I was doing
a thing for him. And then I had some other things left over. And I was, what was that other kid's name?
Oh, Henry. So I wrote on a photo of Gladiator of Maximus, which was a movie that had not
actually been released yet, to Henry, Journey of a Thousand Miles begins with a single step, Russell.
Wow. He kept that photograph with him, for wherever he lived or a place to place, and he
kept his dream alive and burning. The next time I see Henry Cavill is in a gym in Illinois,
the outskirts of Chicago. And I'm working on one side of the gym. He's working on the other.
And I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm a Superman's dad. I reckon that must be Superman over there.
Kind of looks like it, you know. So we've worked in the gym a week or some more together before we talk,
you know and finally one day he comes over puts his hand out and we start talking and i just at one point
i went do i know you he goes yes sir you do and he reminded and i went henry that henry is this
henry it was crazy that's wild absolutely wild right and so now we have this other situation where
you know he's kind of in the position of being
the Highlander, and they asked him who he wanted to be Ramirez, and he said, I've only got
one option, and you've got to get him. And so, you know, that's fantastic. It's a lot of fun
when we do eventually get around to make it. How cool must that be for him to have been a kid
and met you and got you to sign that, and then working with you when he's Superman?
Superman.
Oh, my God, that's amazing. What a great story.
And so now we've got, you know, we've got the third stage of our connection.
And when we get to do it, it's going to be great.
But I know this sounds really weird because I love Henry.
And the last thing I'd want is for him to be under any pressure or injured or whatever.
But it wasn't a prayer answered.
I'm talking to the director expressing that I'm so, that's terrible.
But I'm also shaking my girlfriend going, we get to go home.
Yeah, as I said, it's been a big year.
I have never done that many individual films in that space of time.
What caused you to say yes to that kind of a schedule?
Well, but that's not what you do because most of these are independent films.
So, for example, I agreed to do Nuremberg in 2019, but we don't shoot it until 2024.
Oh, wow.
Set up and collapsed three different times before we actually made it because it's a, you know, there's a lot of variables in independent film.
So a bunch of these things that I did, you know, I agreed to do two years ago and that never got together.
And then suddenly they all just started landing one after the other.
So everybody's got to start working like it's air traffic control.
And I'm like literally having a few days between sets flying from one place to the other.
And now it's, you know, what I always describe it as is like going to a new school.
Now you're going to meet, you know, hundreds of new people and, you know, all of the different things that you've got to.
answer in terms of your costume and your makeup and blah blah, blah. Am I wearing a fake nose?
Am I got if I got scars? What am I doing this time? All of those things you've got to do
very, very rapidly and get onto the set. And they're not, that sort of string of movies
was not, they're not easy. You know, the first one was called The Beast in Me, which is an
MMA movie. I think we talked about that briefly. It was going to be a UFC thing, but we ended up
doing a deal with one championship.
So it's set in Australia and Thailand.
And it's doing some like little private screenings in Los Angeles at the moment and getting
a lot of really positive reactions.
The kid that's the, he's not a kid, but the lead role in that Daniel McPherson has done
an extremely good job by the sounds of things.
I'm also attached to that.
I only play a very small role.
But I rewrote it for them just before we started.
And I've done a lot of writing in my career, but it always goes uncredited.
But in this particular occasion, I think, I believe I'm going to get my first actual writing credit.
Oh, wow.
That's cool.
But I wrote the character that I play specifically to not be the character you think it's going to be, to not be Burgess Meredith.
You think this guy is going to be, you know, the old coach who sort of like, you know, comes back out of retirement and everything.
But I know enough people in the boxing world or, you know, to know.
know that once an old bloke makes a decision about you being a shithead he's not going to
change his mind so i wanted to play that guy so um so i went from that set to then i think called
bear country where i play an albanian money laundra and that's got a great cast teresa palmer
luke evans uh nina d'obrev Aaron paul Danny zavado and it's funny it's really fun
That's with the same director that I did unhinged with, a guy called Derek Port.
And it's, I mean, it's goofy and dramatic, but it's just funny.
When does that come out?
I'm not sure when that comes out.
That's also, I think they've got like six or seven different offers at the moment from different
distribution companies, because everybody's digging it and they're looking at it going.
That would be an hilarious movie to follow up, Nuremberg.
Well, that would be.
Yeah, because Nuremberg's dark.
So then after that, I go back to.
Budapest and I make a thing with a young British director Amosante called Billion Dollar Spy
with a young English actor called Harry Laughty who is the he's the future of British cinema
he's a very intelligent classy actor so and that one I play a Russian selling state secrets to
the Americans, a Russian scientist and then after I did billion dollar spy oh I did I went to
Montreal and made a thing called Unabom, where I play a Harvard professor, the man who taught
Ted Kaczynski at Harvard, who put him into this series of tests and things that he was doing.
And some people say that he very, very much affected Kaczynski's brain.
You know, he was a part of the Harvard LSD studies.
The guy I play was.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that was...
Well, Kaczynski was sort of associate.
He was there at the time that Leary also started working at Harvard.
But the study that my character was doing is more based on sort of like intellectual
confrontation and like stripping people of their self-belief and stuff.
So there are people who think that it was the character I plays intellectual aggression
towards Kaczynski, that turned Kaczynski the way he turns.
So there's that.
And then I just did a movie in Germany.
It's set in Portland, but we shot it in Munich.
Okay.
How weird.
With a guy called Patrick McKinley, who I've done other projects with before,
but he doesn't always get the credit he should get.
But he's the guy that cut the loudest voice, which made it.
as dynamic as it was.
And he also cut a movie called Pokerface for me.
And we're working together on a music doco.
But usually I work when I work with him as an editor.
But this is him as a director.
And that's with Ethan Hawke.
Again, that's a smaller role in that one as well.
But there was a very strong vibe on that set.
And Patrick's a great filmmaker.
So I imagine that's going to be a good movie too.
So if you're a film fan...
That sounds like you're killing it.
There's a few things to come out.
That's very exciting.
The comedy is very exciting, because there's just not a lot of comedies anymore.
It's hard to find a really good comedy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is one of those ones where it's not like a series of jokes.
It's just certain types of characters put in certain situation, and then you see how that plays out.
And Aaron Paul and Nina Dobrev, just hilarious.
I can't even begin to explain what.
they do in the thorn because you'll just go what the fuck you're talking about that's just
sounds so stupid and it is stupid but it's also very funny to experience I can't wait to say it
so it just sounds like all those things just sort of came together coincidentally at the same
time and so you just do them all things that you might have agreed to years before or whatever
and it just so happened that they got their financing and that just went one after the other
do you take do you do anything like iv vitamin drips or anything when you're on set
I haven't really done that.
It'll probably help you.
Well, potentially, but the other thing is, man, you just stay disciplined and you get to bed.
Yeah, that too.
I've actually going through a really weird time at the moment.
For the last month, it doesn't matter where I am in the world, if I'm in Spain, if I'm
in Australia, if I'm in America, I cannot sleep between midnight and 5 a.m.
It's just very odd.
And I think it's related to the feeling that I was expressing before that somewhere in August
I broke my head.
I'd just done too much.
Too much.
And I need to go home and I need to be in that rhythm.
Because, you know, I call the place I have in the bush, you know, it's not its official name, but I call it the panacea.
It will fix all ills, but you have to give over to its rhythm.
You have to wake before the birds.
You have to sort of put yourself in a situation where you're going deep into the bush.
So you're getting that kind of oxygen.
You just have to really give yourself over to it, you know.
and spend your days just, you know, checking if the cows are okay,
having a look, you know, if the new trough system is working.
It's just getting your sort of hands a little bit dirty
and forgetting all the other stuff.
Yeah.
And, you know, but we'll hopefully see me come charging back out next year.
You'll be charging, but that sounds like a perfect balance
to offset the charging.
Yeah, well, that's the recharge.
I always, like, I look back at.
my 30-year-old self who made the decision to take the little bit of money that I'd earned at that
point, 31, 32 I was, and buy 100 acres in the bush because somehow I knew I would need that
place. So it's like, you know, I could have bought, you know, an apartment in the city, you know,
but I didn't. I bought 100 acres of basically blank bush, no fences, no, and the fact that
It's been in my life, it's in January 20th, 1996, I paid for that first time to Bakers.
Wow.
So that's before L.A. Confidential, it was before I even shoot L.A. Confidential.
Wow.
So it was, I don't know where it came from, but I look at that 32-year-old and go, mate, well done.
You gave yourself a battery.
No, I gave myself an island.
Yeah.
You know, I go through that gate.
And because, you know what it's like, people don't.
just call you Joe. They call you Joe Rogan.
They call me Rossocrow, Rossegroot, Roscoe, Roscoe.
You know, so this brand name, this sort of stamp, and that's all you hear, you know,
Rosl Grove, Roscoe, and then I go beyond that gate, and I'm no longer that.
I'm a son, I'm a brother, I'm an uncle, I'm a dad, you know, all of those things.
You know, I'm the boss of the operation of the farms and stuff and all that as well,
but all of those things come into play, and the whole brand thing drops away.
And you've got to prove yourself on a way different level when you're at home.
You've got to exist in a natural world, as opposed to in a world where you're the center of attention constantly, people at your beck and call.
People are, Mr. Crow, Mr. Crow.
Yeah, it's not good for you.
But it's also the amount of attention that you, time you have to spend when you're on that many sets in a row, five movies in a row.
Like, I thought a lot of people are probably like, oh, boo-hoo, you had to be in front.
five movies, boo.
But that's, and that's the brilliant thing.
Poor famous Russell Crow.
The big gap between people who are not in the business is understanding of what it really
takes and, you know, the realities that you deal with.
And look, you know, I'm the last person.
I'm not whinging about the job at all.
But I am just pointing out that I went a little bit too hard and I burnt my brain.
I need a bit of a break, you know.
Well, if Nuremberg is an indication.
or if it's an example of what you did,
if it's on par with the rest of them,
it's going to be an awesome run.
Because Nuremberg is great.
It really is.
It's very disturbing.
Just to see that footage,
the footage in the trial was just,
people should see that.
And the fact that it's never been released before,
you know, just to cement into our heads.
You know, that's the thing.
It's like that war,
was one of the first wars where we got regular footage.
You know, I mean, if you think about people going into World War I, they're going blind.
They have no idea what they expect, what they're going to see.
And then by the time Vietnam comes, and now it's on television, and that, seeing horrific things,
at least cements into your head, like, this is where this all could go.
This is where this all can go.
Yeah, well, just think about that because, you know,
In my lifetime, you know, when I was a little boy and I'm watching the news at night with my parents, there's Vietnam footage.
You know, I see the Anzac Day, which is Australia, Australia, New Zealand version of Memorial Day.
I see those marches every year, the old soldiers getting together.
That history is so fresh.
I'm surrounded by older people who fought in the war in World War I.
You know, and then there's another generation of guys who still appear to be young, and they fought in World War II.
And now I'm watching Australia at war, because we've been through career, and now Australia is at war in Vietnam, and I'm seeing that on the nightly news.
So at the age of six, seven, eight, I believe I'm going to be a soldier.
Really?
And everybody at school believes they're going to be a soldier, because that's what we do, you know?
Because our parents' generation are connected to the Second World War, our grandparents' generation is connected to.
to the first World War
and here it is
we've now got this new war
right
so
it was very definitely
part of the
cultural upbringing
I mean I was in Army cadets
in high school
so you know
that was a couple of days a week
he'd dress up in an army uniform
and you go to school
instead of in your school uniform
in jungle greens
you know
just get you ready
just get you ready man
they're putting SLRs in the hands
which is like it's
Not an unusual thing for this country, but definitely is for Australia.
Put a self-loading rifle at the hands of a 13-year-old and teach him how to use it.
Wow.
Jesus.
That was one of the things about the Iraq War, too, where they stopped showing people coffins.
They were preventing photographers from taking photographs of coffins, flag-trap coffins.
Like, that's crazy.
that should not be legal.
You shouldn't be able to prevent someone from documenting history
because that's what that is
and that's the consequences of what's going on.
You're seeing American people coming home in boxes
and you're not even allowed to take photographs of it.
Kind of crazy.
Yeah.
Well, this is the thing where, you know, Anzac Day that I talked about,
it's April 25th,
Anzac stands for Australian-New Zealand Army Corps
because both the First World War and the Second World War,
and the World War Australian and New Zealand combined their armed forces.
and in a lot of places fought alongside each other.
But, you know, we have that day as a memorial day, as, you know, you have in this culture as well.
But we tend to forget that we have that day as a reminder that we should never do this again.
That's what it's there for.
You know, to respect the passing of these, you know, young people who died in battle.
But to also remind ourselves of how pointless that whole thing was,
how pointless the First World War was, how pointless the Second World War, ultimately.
It's just death.
And the people that started the war, the people who benefit from the war,
are not the ones generally standing at the graveside mourning they're dead
because they will protect themselves.
Their children don't have to go to war.
Their children are not going to get conscripted.
So it's like, you know, every time this stuff comes up
and we now have almost constantly the words of war being spoken
as if it's just sort of an offhand thing
that we should attack these people and invade these people.
It's like this goes absolutely nowhere good.
We were talking earlier about the technology we can hold in our hands.
We get out our phones.
We can explore the entire world.
There's no piece of knowledge which is held back from us.
We can get it through this device.
so we carry on our hands. So here we are all of these, you know, millennia later as a species.
We have that level of technology available to us, but we still think that war is some form
of solution. It just blows my mind. It's hard to imagine if you were living in the past,
if you could come up with the circumstances that we live under today, like you just described,
a device in your pocket that provides you with all the information you could ever want,
we would say, oh, well, that will be the solution to most of what ails us.
You think once we have that available, it'll all sort itself out.
We'll see each other clearly and understand, you know, celebrate our differences,
that there's more that connects us than divides us, all of those things.
I don't think they ever anticipated social media and the divisive nature of that because I think it accelerates.
But it's only divisive.
because we let people pervert it.
Right, with an algorithm.
We just let people actually take something.
I remember when I started on Twitter,
I thought it was the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
But when I started, which was about 2009, 2010,
and suddenly, from a couple of decades
of having who I was described by others
and pushed across to people,
this breath of fresh air,
what I could just express myself
and people would know exactly
what my real opinion on something was
and how I felt about something.
It was fantastic.
It didn't last very long, though.
People were like, oh, we've got a whole lot of truth going on here.
We've got to shut that shit down.
As soon as individuals started using their power
to say, you know what, I had an experience
with this company or that company
and it wasn't very good.
And those companies were like,
man, we didn't spend millions of dollars a year
on advertising just for this asshole
to tell the truth about how shit we are.
Yeah.
So they had to turn it around somehow.
So that's when you start, you know,
look, quite frankly, if you run boss and stuff like that,
you should be put in prison.
Forget about it, man.
That's not the way it should be.
No, it shouldn't be that way.
You shouldn't be perverting people's understanding of something.
Yes.
Because it benefits you.
Yes.
That's a great way to put it.
Yeah, that should be illegal.
It's kind of amazing that there's no laws because it's essentially,
I mean, you could propagate through bots a complete and total lie, and it catches traction, makes its way through, and there's zero consequences.
And then people get upset about it, and they're fighting over the family dinner table based on pure misinformation.
And I think a lot of it, you know, we can't trace who's doing it.
That's where it gets really weird.
Yeah, but why?
Well, because it's complicated, right?
Like, you can hide your IP.
You can do it through a virtual private network so they don't know what country you're in.
And you do it with AI.
Like, they busted China was using ChatGPT to run a bunch of accounts.
I don't know how many accounts, but a huge amount of accounts.
And they were all sorts of stuff that are, that people are fighting about in America, like immigration,
closing down USAID, those kind of things.
And they were just involved with these chat bots that they were running and these things would argue specific points and get everybody inflamed and just start wars and call everybody fucking retards.
There was a moment, you know, a little while ago where that just seemed to be all social media was just flooded with violent images, flooded with people fighting, you know, people getting, you know, knocked out of a king hit in a bar or whatever.
And it was like, where is this coming from?
It's just Instagram is loaded with it.
I see more violence on Instagram, more accidents, more people falling off balconies, more people climbing trees and falling.
It's like all over Instagram.
And I don't know if they can stop it.
I don't know if they can even recognize what these things are until somebody reports.
I know it sort of speaks to sort of a low level of intellect, but, you know, I do like,
the occasional falling down a hole kind of...
I have to admit.
Well, there's a reason why it's out there.
It's because a lot of people agree with you.
It's, I mean, I've watched a lot of horrific accidents.
I don't know why.
You know, I don't want to watch anybody get run over by a truck.
Yeah, for me, that's not a thing.
It's like the innocent sort of like pie in the face kind of thing is what amuses me.
But if somebody really gets hurt, it's like, it doesn't.
Well, it also, I think very much desensitizes people.
Yeah.
Which is a problem already.
Yeah.
You know, we're already desensitized from violent video games and violent films.
And then now you're seeing, like, real violence and real, like, horrific dismembering accidents all day long.
Right.
And you're 13, you know?
Yeah.
That's the thing.
That is the thing, is we can discuss it as adults and what sort of, like, what we can deal with and what we can rationalize.
But that's the same thing I was talking about the gambling.
My kids don't know or didn't know that there was a negative to that.
They see it, you know, all the time.
Right.
So they think it's normal.
Yeah.
No, that makes sense.
That makes sense.
And, you know, think, like, how old do you have to be to sign up for those sites?
And is it possible to spoof that?
Of course.
It seems like you could probably, if you were a wizard at 14.
What's the security?
Yeah.
Are you over 18?
Press here.
Like, what is it?
That doesn't take a lot.
It makes it.
Do you enter in your driver's license?
What do they do?
Now, do you see that thing from TikTok that I sent you with Jimmy?
I don't have TikTok.
Oh, you don't?
No.
So I sent it to you and you can't watch it.
Yeah, I can't watch it.
What was it about?
It was just him on stage talking about a company that he and I and Ed Sheeran got involved in.
I was shooting the Pope's exorcist in Ireland, right?
And I got told this story about.
this lady, Laura Bonner, whose grandfather was an Irish potato farmer, right? And wondering what
he should do with his leftover potatoes, you know, the unsightly shaped ones that nobody wants
in a supermarket. And he came up with the idea of making this Irish sort of moonshine
called Porcine. So every Friday, there's relatives and his friends and everything would
rock around to Phil's house and they'd bring their old medicine bottles and whatever.
fill up from the still so they had a weekend and when she was a little girl she would see this
party being created every Friday and you know island and so they're singing songs and they're
enjoying each other's company and laughing uproariously and all that and she said one day I'm going
to legitimize what granddad does for fun and make it into a business so about a mid-20s or something
she was a lawyer she got involved in this big deal it went well for her so she was sort of
like faced with a crossroads.
Okay, now I've got money to finance my idea
or I can continue in the job that I'm in.
And so she decided to back herself.
She comes from a little town in the north of Ireland
that is called Muff.
It's actual town.
It's across the river from Derry.
And she formed a company called the Muff Liquor Company
and that a museum.
me. I called Jimmy Carr and said, does this amuse you? It actually does. So then I called
Ed Shear and I said, does this amuse you? And he goes, it does. So we formed a company called
the muff liquor meant. And we bought a big slice of the company. It's now, I think it's in about
40 states here in America now. Oh, that's awesome. Pretty sure you can get it in Texas.
We're a sucker for a good name. Yeah. So I bought you a dozen whiskey. Oh, boy.
dozen potato-based gin, and a dozen potato-based vodka.
Oh, boy.
But there it is.
I might have to start drinking it in.
With the bottle sort of shape like an old medicine bottle.
It looks great.
That's an awesome bottle.
Yeah, it's great to hold, actually.
And that whiskey is what I call like a cowboy whiskey.
It's a peat smoked.
Yeah, but it's very light.
I like that.
It's very light.
You'll see when you have it.
It's like, that's not the sort of whiskey where everybody ends up crying in a corner,
remembering the things that they did wrong in their lives.
It's the sort of whiskey that will keep you laughing all night, you know.
So that's why I call it a cowboy whiskey, because you can sit with it with your mates all
night and have a laugh.
What do you think is more addictive, alcohol or gambling?
Hmm.
Well, the problem that we have with alcohol is what's, you know, becoming the burgeoning problem
with gambling is that we just accept it.
It's everywhere.
Accept it completely as the thing that you do, and as long as you're a certain age, you can
do it. We'd never look at the damage that it causes. Now, I'm a big proponent for having a drink,
you know, it's my cultural heritage. And as a working class man, it's my goddamn right,
Joe. And you enjoy it. And I do. I do. But as you get older, you know, there's certain things
that you start to learn about your capacities and stuff when you're a younger fellow. And now that I'm
an older guy, and I know that, you know, one night a week, if I'm having fun, is plenty. That's
plenty, you know. And I try to cut out the interstitial stuff, you know. I might, if I decide I'm
going to have a glass of wine with dinner, then it's going to be a really nice wine. And it's
going to be an occasion. And I just, I try not to have the casual drinks now, just have a, you know,
a drink for the sake of it, you know. Those add up. Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's definitely a great
social quality to drinking.
There's a thing to it that I enjoy.
I always enjoyed.
And bonding.
You know, you never really find out about your mates until you've had them on the
piss and you see who they really are.
Some people, yeah.
Yeah.
Alcohol is weird because it's the only drug that they offer you when you sit down for dinner.
Right.
It's the, we've agreed that this drug goes really well with a good steak.
That everybody can have that this drug is fully available.
And like I said, we never can.
count the social costs we don't count you know i mean this is this would be true for pretty much
you know a lot of countries that have a focus on sport but uh you know three to five of the
worst nights of any given year in australia in terms of domestic violence so 100% connected
to a sporting event really yeah so sporting event connected to alcohol and then that drives the
thing that, you know, brings terror to wives and children. So it's, you know, it's the same thing
with all of this stuff. You know, like, you know, we always talk about that, you know,
everything in moderation kind of thing. Yeah. But, you know, we always have to remember that we
got to move at the pace of the slowest member of our community. That's a great way to put it,
because that's the real issue, right? It's not, well, I can handle it. So everybody else can
too. That's not it. It's like, why can some people handle it? And what could,
have been done like if you just in school you're going to have to accept that some kids are
going to try marijuana some kids are going to try acid some kids are going to try alcohol they're
going to most kids are going to try alcohol like why don't we have education on the proper way
to use these things where you don't get in trouble you know like at least most people I would
imagine most kids are not going to listen anyway but if more will than would if you didn't
talk about it at all.
Right.
If you don't talk about it at all, there's no information out there.
At least they can talk.
Listen, it should be an ongoing process of education.
Yeah.
And not just education through failure, you know.
Right.
And not just let me talk to you about it now that you've crashed your car into a tree.
Or now that one of your friends has done that.
You know, there's a lot of that.
You see your friends doing something horrible.
So I'm like you.
I'm open to all of this sort of stuff being available and freedom of choice being
a paramount.
But the responsibility to educate.
it's got to start at a young age
Yeah, I think so
Especially if you're using things that are on apps
You know, apps are just
Young people are so accustomed to using apps
And most apps are giving you that same jolt
That same dopamine brush
You know, it's just
I think you should be able to do whatever you want to do
But you should know what you're doing
And that's where the problem is
You kind of have to figure out what you're doing
From your knucklehead friends
Yeah, you know
I was going to suggest that we had a whiskey, but I know that's going to ruin my day if I do.
Because I'll get nothing else done.
Some people have such a great time drinking during the day.
It just doesn't suit me, man.
Yeah.
You know?
If I have a drink at lunch, either I'm asleep by 5 o'clock, right?
Or I'm raging at 5 a.m.
So it's like I've learned over time, don't drink, drink.
day yeah yeah i stopped drinking entirely for about seven months something like that and then i decided
to occasionally have a drink so i'll have like a glass of wine at dinner or a margarita i'm out my
out with my wife but that's it i stopped there i don't drink drink anymore like let's go get
drinks i haven't done that in a long time right and the reason why is because i just felt like shit
because i was just doing it too many nights a week and then my workouts would suffer in the morning
and I'm like, why am I doing this?
I do everything so healthy
and this one stupid thing that I do
that let me just try not doing it
and see if I miss it.
But did you also notice
as you got a little older
that the hangovers,
they don't go away after a couple of hours?
Sure.
It's also one of the most important things
in my life is energy.
And how much energy do I have to do things?
Like, it's not just about doing things,
it's about doing them with focus and enthusiasm.
And when you don't have energy,
it's very difficult to muster up that enthusiasm.
Well, I hate that feeling that the follow, you know, I've had a great time the night before.
Yeah.
But the following day, nothing gets done.
Right.
Because I had fun the night before.
You're foggy.
I just, yeah, I just feel that, you know, such a waste.
It is.
We've only got X amount of days, right?
But just managing the human mind and managing, like, what to do and what not to do and when to do it.
It's such an important part of being an adult.
And it's one of the things that's just,
not explain to kids that's weird i love that old uh bill hicks routine where he asked the question
you know the last time you're in a social situation uh it where be a private party uh a concert
sporting event and people started fighting were they stoned or were they drunk right yeah it's like
yeah i don't get why people can be so aggressively negative to war
marijuana, yet, you know, half a dozen, dozen drinks for them socially is, of course.
You know, it's easy.
It's like these two things, you know, are very different outcomes.
Yeah.
You're not going to have the, you know, people aren't going to be attacking the base camp when
they're all stoned.
Yeah.
They may well have a go at it when they're on the piss.
Well, all that's because of propaganda from the 1930.
That's all that is down to Harry Anslinger and William Randolph Hearst.
But you know, it also connects to the formation of the United Nations.
Does it?
Take Thailand, for example.
The country that's had hundreds of years of cultural marijuana use.
But in order to join the United Nations, they had to accept an American attitude towards drug laws.
Just recently, they've taken those drug laws away.
and now they're in a bit of panic
because they didn't plan it very well
because like you know
reality break is
I think you know California did it
through Arnold Schwarzenegger properly
knowing exactly how you're going to tax
and where the money's going to
when you do tax for the consumption
and so I think you know
140 or something were more shops
sprung up overnight in Bangkok
and they're like oh gee that was
that went quicker than we thought it was going to go
But I think it's actually great for Thailand.
It's a, you know, a drug that particularly suits the groove of that country, you know.
Yeah, for sure.
The food is so incredibly tasty and the beaches and the sunshine and the heat and, you know.
So, yeah, it's sort of, but that's what I was told.
I was told that it comes down to a decision that they had to make in order to join a global community.
That makes sense. That makes sense the United States has pushed that on everybody else. In Texas, there's a lot of push from the alcohol lobby to try to make marijuana even more illegal.
Yeah, because people don't necessarily have to drink that much. Yeah, that's what they're worried about. They're worried about people talking about alcohol. It's a stupid, I mean, the fact that it works is crazy, that people are still with like zero deaths ever, that they're still pushing.
Right.
You know, to take this one drug away when you've got one drug that everybody uses.
It's very strange.
But it all really goes back to the 1930s.
Right.
You know, and it was really just about the commodity of hemp more than it really was even about the drug.
Right.
You know the history of that?
Yeah, well, I know a bit about the making of rope from hemp.
Yeah.
Because of master and commander and spending a lot of time on tall sailing ships.
The whole thing was about an invention.
And there was a new invention called a decorticator.
And it allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber with a machine.
Because before that, it was very time intensive, very labor intensive to break it down because it's a very, very strong fiber.
So then Popular Science Magazine has it on the cover, hemp, the new billion dollar crop because of this machine.
Right.
And so then William Randolph Hearst, who also owned Hurst publications, he also owned paper mills.
Right.
So paper mills and he owned forests where he'd make paper out of the forest.
All of a sudden, there's this competing commodity where they're going to use hemp for paper.
It's a far superior paper.
Hemp is going to, it's way quicker to grow.
You can grow entire fields of it in a year.
You've got a whole new crop.
Like, it's not like trees that take years and years to grow before you can chop them down and make paper out of them.
And so then they started printing these stories about Mexicans and blacks that are raping white women because they're on this new drug called marijuana.
Right, the jazz cigarette.
Yeah.
And so marijuana.
was really the term for a wild Mexican tobacco.
It didn't even apply to cannabis.
So they made a new name for it, and they attached this new name.
And they got Congress to ban it.
And they didn't even understand it was hemp.
Like, most people didn't know what was going on.
They thought there was this new drug that was, like, running through the world.
And they just pulled the wool over everybody's eyes.
And they did it because of a commodity.
And then they made Reef for Madness and all those crazy movies.
And everybody's like, oh, my goodness, if you smoke Reefer, you're going to die.
You're going to jump out of buildings.
And meanwhile, people had been smoking it for thousands of years.
It was like pretty amazing way of manipulating public perception and using propaganda.
And, you know, William Randolph Hearst, obviously the subject of the movie Rosebud, he was a real piece of shit.
Citizen Kane, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, excuse me, because Citizen Kane.
It was a real piece of shit.
It's a real bad guy.
You know, according to folkloric tales, he did everything he could to prevent Orson Wells from becoming the filmmaker
that he should have become.
Right, after he made that film.
Yeah, and it seems like he was effective with it
because, you know, Citizen Kane was so good.
And then years later, he's doing wine commercials
for money.
Yeah.
There's a funny thing.
It's like a recording where he's trying to do a voiceover
for Norwegian salmon or something.
He's getting more and more pissed off
with the young producer who's trying to get him to read it
in a certain way.
Yeah, it's kind of fucked, man,
because the guy was so brilliant.
little footage bits of the um who's the tilting at windmill's fellow um don quixote
yeah he went went to mexico or somewhere um and he sort of started shooting little bits
and pieces for potentially a don quixote movie but it's just madness it's like there's nothing
there's nothing in that that could actually be in a film he just gone had gone crazy but yeah
he's a bloke we'll get a bloke with a donkey we'll have him walking over there we'll shoot
that you know it's like but it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's
Like, there's nothing cohesive in it that you could make a movie from.
I wonder if that's just from the pressure of essentially being, like, one of the first guys to ever get canceled.
He just probably lost his mind.
Potentially, right?
Absolutely.
Because you would think that Citizen Kane is your passport to a lifetime of being financed for whatever idea you want to put onto film.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's to this day a classic film that people talk about.
And then also, you're the same guy that did the war.
of worlds you read that on the radio and freaked half the country out right the same guy and so
i mean he was a wonderkind right he was a this guy that like everybody thought was like a
once in a lifetime talent and he snuffed out yeah and back then you have to consider if you're
william randolph hurst you're you have Hearst publications you're essentially in control of whatever
narrative you want to push forth and no one's going to get in your way so all we'd have to do is make some
phone calls and that guy, fuck him.
He doesn't work again.
Right.
Crazy.
A little bit.
A little bit.
We've got way too much power in the hands of media moguls.
Yeah.
And as we go on, that reduction of opinion just keeps happening, you know.
One company swallows another, swallows another.
I think we're in a situation now in America, right?
We're in, you know, 20 years ago there was two dozen major media companies or 30 years ago.
And now it's three.
I know.
And just like with the share market and the biggest companies in the world, they end up owning each other.
Yeah.
So it's not three big companies.
It's really just one with three different names.
Yeah.
And they decide what the news is.
It's nuts.
But that's the one beautiful thing about today is that independent media takes up the slack
and often gets more views than main.
you know, air quote, mainstream corporate media.
And so now corporate media is forced to report on things eventually.
Like the New York Times is forced to report on certain things that are inconvenient eventually,
where they would have just liked to have ignored it.
But it gets so big in the zeitgeist that it has to become something that's discussed.
And that's fascinating because it's like dragging them into the reality that the Internet lives in,
which is a reality of a free exchange of information.
The whole horizon of television, just so dramatically different now.
So different.
You know, I get to a hotel, and I'll scroll through 160 available channels.
There's nothing I'm interested in watching.
It's like, how is that even possible?
It's also watching something that's already going.
Like it starts at seven?
Why?
Why doesn't I start, whatever I sit down?
Right.
This is stupid.
You have an old model.
This model's dumb.
Right.
It's like radio versus podcast, the same kind of thing.
It's like no one wants to have to be listening, sitting in their car, waiting for you to finish a sentence.
They want to hit pause, go do whatever the fuck they're doing, come back and play again.
Right.
This is a dumb way.
You're doing things.
You're doing things on 8 p.m.
It's Mikey and the boys.
See, I never had that life.
You know, the last time I remember that being a thing is maybe in high school, right, where my mom and
Dad, well, my mom particularly, would like to watch Dallas.
Right.
So we would all get together and watch Dallas at 8 o'clock or whatever on a Tuesday or whatever.
And that just doesn't happen in my life at all anymore.
The last time it happened, I think for me, was the Sopranos on HBO.
Right.
Because it was on, I believe it was on Sunday nights.
Right.
And everybody knew what time it was on and you'd go home and I had a TiVo back then.
You remember those?
Right.
Well, he could record shows and go back and watch them later and pause them and stuff like that.
And it was like revolutionary before streaming.
Oh, my God.
You could record shows and watch them whenever you want.
Embarrassingly, I've only ever seen maybe four or five Sopranos episodes.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And every time I watch it, I go to, I cannot believe that I didn't get overtaken by this at the time.
Because Gandafini was a mate.
I met him like early 90s.
Yeah, early 90s in New York.
Him and a friend of mine called Lenny Lofton used to ran a place together on 44th and 9th in Hell's Kitchen.
And, you know, this is like an apartment on maybe the fourth floor of a building.
And there were a couple of windows that didn't even have glass in.
They had plastic sheets and a blanket nailed up against the window.
And that's what, you know, the situation that Gandafini was in when I first met him.
Wow.
And a few years later, he was obviously very successful.
successful. But my youngest son, Tennyson, is like a sopranos expert. You can say a line to him
and he'll know what episode, what season, and who said that. Wow. It's like he's so into it. And
you know, when I have started watching, very recently actually, some ducks landed on a pool
on the farm. So I took a photo and there was like thousands of comments or whatever it was straight
to where you go, ah, it's like Tony Soprano.
I had no idea what people were talking about.
I had to discuss it with my son.
He goes, oh, yeah, this sequence.
So I watched that sequence with the ducks.
Yeah.
But Ganderfini, man, what a great actor he was.
Oh, he was so good on that show.
He was so, he was, it was the first guy who was, essentially the hero of the show, who was a
murderer.
A murderer, a terrible person, a mob boss.
And you liked him.
Right.
It was insane.
Like, the fact that he could pull, that he had the depth to pull off that,
where he's doing horrible things to people and you're rooting for him.
Right.
You're rooting for him.
You're not hoping he gets shot.
You want Tony to live.
Who's that guy that you have it on here every now and then Joey Diaz?
Yeah.
Yeah, he's a funny guy.
Oh, he's the funniest guy that's ever lived.
I heard him tell that story one time about the same week that Cinderella man came out,
I went to the premiere of Longish Yard.
Because, you know, Chris Rock was in that and stuff.
And there's a few people in that cast who I really like.
And so I went to the movie.
And I just remember him telling a story about the lights come up
and he didn't realize he was sitting next to me or whatever.
I think it would be a very dangerous room for me and Joey Diaz to be in.
I think we'd be having a good time.
A little bit.
Joey brings the party.
He's the funniest guy I've ever met.
Oh, man, he's got some stories.
Oh, my God.
They never end.
I've known him for fucking...
30 years. He's always got a new story. He's just a maniac. And, you know, he went to jail
for armed kidnapping, kidnapped a drug dealer with a machine gun. Yeah, he was out of his mind
on Coke. Yeah, he was a wild fella. He was a wild fellow when he was young. When I met him,
he was like right out of jail. How did you meet Jimmy Carr? I think I met Jimmy at the
comedy store, believe. Pretty sure. You know, I'd already known about him. Yeah. Yeah, I'd already known
about him. I thought a fucking great guy.
Yeah, man. It's so funny.
Oh, my God. He performed at the mothership
last time he was in town. We were all in the balcony
watching. He's so good.
So crisp.
The punchlines are so, oh, he's so good.
It's such a pleasure.
And he just keeps educating
himself. Yeah.
You know, he's got this voracious mind.
Well, he's a brilliant guy, you know.
And to see that brilliance
applied to an art form, you know, to
accommodate. It's like you're seeing it.
He's just as funny and casual conversation.
Oh, yeah.
You sit down and we have a chat because we spend a little bit of time together.
And it's funny because he's, you know, significantly younger than me.
But he's teaching me stuff.
You know, I've never been a vacation person, for example.
You know, there's work and home.
But home isn't often fully restful because, you know, I've got a football team.
I've got other businesses.
I've got the farm to run, you know.
cows to look after and all that sort of stuff.
So, but a couple of years ago, he just put it in my mind, like, let's just say, we'll take
these dates and I'll meet you somewhere, you know?
So the first time we did it, we met up in Puglia in southern Italy.
And earlier this year, we met up in Marbeia.
But I've already booked a vacation for next year.
I don't do that.
But it's like that thing of going somewhere, which isn't home.
and isn't work, having no agenda, sort of hanging out by the pool, reading a book, right, from
beginning to end, you know, without having to sort of put it aside and come back to it a week
later and go, oh, what was the protagonist doing again?
It's like, yeah, it's very interesting.
It's very interesting that I should be, you know, I'm getting this late life education
from a British comedian.
That is funny that he's teaching you out.
No wife taught you how to do that.
Um, it's a, I think there's a reason why people go on vacations. They're not all stupid. You know, there's a benefit to it. Yeah. I think, but see, I didn't grow up in that sort of family. We didn't have the money for that sort of thing. Right. You know, we went on one big family holiday in 1970 where we all piled into my dad's station wagon and we drove from Sydney up to northern Queensland. But a cyclone came through on the way. So we had like four days of sunshine and 26 days of rain. So living in a caravan playing minority.
monopoly. So it's not like I look back, oh, I remember the great vacations of my childhood.
So it was like, you know, my dad used to run pubs. So you don't get holiday.
You have to learn it. Based on the licensing laws, you have to be the first person there in the
morning. You have to be the last person there at night. So we kind of lived that sort of life
where everything was based on running the pub. You know, so. But it's cool. It's good time
for me to learn about it now.
Well, don't you think, like, as a person who does anything creative, you have to have
a bunch of different kinds of experiences to draw from.
And if you just stay in the same environment all the time, it's probably generally not good
for you.
Like, you need to go see other people.
You need to go different places, not just to refresh and relax, but also to take in.
Yeah.
But you see, I do so much traveling.
For work.
You know, for work.
Oh, that's what I was going to ask you.
Why are they doing a Portland film in Munich?
Is it that cheap to go?
Like, how bad do they fuck up Portland?
That it's cheaper to go to Munich to film?
Is that what it is?
You have tax incentives that are being offered in various places.
And that happens a lot here.
There'll be, you know, X amount of movies pretty much in every state who can apply for a tax incentive.
And some states are more competitive than others, Louisiana.
for example, Georgia, California basically gives you nothing.
Isn't that crazy?
It's very hard to shoot in California.
Those silly fucks?
Well, the thing is, it's such a busy place in the studios there.
The studios would rather have a television show that's going to be there for a decade
than a movie that's in and out in four months.
It's better for them, right?
So, but it's, you know, the world has,
opened up hugely in the last 30 years in terms of film production.
And, you know, you're taking advantage of homegrown film talent
and then building on that with international investment.
Well, that's great.
That's a great aspect.
You know, Australia has a big history, for example, of making films.
Technically, arguably, the first full-length feature film,
the true history of the Ned Kelly gang might have been called that.
It was like 1906, 9,008, something like that.
was made in Australia.
Really?
Yeah.
And, you know, all the way through, but, you know, it takes until about the 70s or whatever,
then you have this sort of new generation of Australian filmmakers who are actually making stories
that reflect the current culture.
And I think that's sort of happening worldwide as well.
Have you seen Talk to Me?
No.
Talk to Me is a fantastic horror movie that these two young guys from, I'm saying the right
name, right? They were on the podcast. I'm pretty sure it's talked to me. It's about this
dead hand that someone found. What are the gentleman's names? Danny and Michael Philippoo. I think
that's he said it. Philippoo? Philippoo, yeah. Hilarious guys, just bundles of energy. They're
fucking nuts. But this was like their first real film that they made. They put together this,
they did it all themselves, and it's a horror movie, and it's really good. It's like... Where are they from?
They're from Australia.
I don't know what part.
Jamie will find out.
There they are.
These two fellows.
And they, you know, they finish each other's sentences.
They're just nuts.
And they're just, like, they're on 10 all the time.
Oh, cool.
Does it say Adelaide?
There you go.
Right.
So they're 32.
But that's a completely Australian-made movie that was a hit worldwide recently.
Yeah, obviously Mad Max.
It was a giant world.
When you start going through it, you sort of do realize there's been, you know, probably a much larger percentage than you would expect, given the population of the country in terms of people in film.
Whether it's directors of photography or directors themselves.
Or actors?
You know, editors and the actors.
Think about how many famous actors have come from there.
It's crazy, man.
It's really kind of nuts.
When I was a young fellow making my first movies, you had, you had.
Mel Gibson and Judy Davis.
But Mel was born in America, so it didn't really count.
There was other guys around, like Brian Brown had done cocktail and guerrillas in the mist.
Prior to that, you have guys like Jack Thompson.
But when you really look into it, you know, then you have these other guys.
It goes all the way back to Errol Flynn.
There is a connection all the way through that, you know, there are certain people working in the business.
Errol Flynn was Australia?
What's that?
Errol Flynn was Australia?
Yeah, he was born in Tasmania.
Wow.
And either born in Tasmania or born in Papua New Guinea and grew up in either place.
But I think he was born in Tasmania.
But if you think about it since the early 90s, you know, Nicole Kidman, Kate Blanchett, Hugh Jackman, Chris Hemsworth, Margot, Robby.
It's just outrageous.
Yeah.
Jeffrey Rush, you know, there's like name after name after name of people who've made a, you know, significant contribution in cinema.
Yeah, I mean, you consider the population size, which is essentially, the population of the entire country is basically L.A., right?
It's 25 mil, yeah. It's basically Southern California.
And it's gigantic, you know, but it's hard to explain to people, you know. You show them where the major cities are and they go, oh, you know, what happens?
happens in the middle. You go, not a lot. Yeah. You don't want to be there. It's mainly desert.
It's like, you know, if you like wide open spaces, you're welcome. And a lot of things can kill
you. A lot of things. A lot of things. Yeah. Just had a little sort of thing on the farm, actually.
My girlfriend's got a Papillon dog, which is a beautiful dog, sort of long head. And it got a
paralysis tick and they realized she realized that between her and this other girl that looks after
the puppy woman not there they'd got their dates mixed up and so it wasn't actually covered
for flea and tick you know stuff in its bloodstream so very dangerous so they had to shave the
dog completely and everything they they pulled off another couple of ticks but there was only just
the one paralysis tick so it's okay but if you leave that and if you don't deal with it the dog's
going to be dead in a minute. Paralysis tick. Yeah. Yeah, it gets into their, into their body and it is,
it affects them the way the name says on the box. There's one that's going on in America now
called the, well, what it gives you, it's a lone star tick is what gives you this bite and
produces something called alpha gal and it makes you allergic to red meat. What? Yeah, it's
My friend, my good friend, Evan Hafer, got it.
And he was allergic to red meat for a good solid year.
And then eventually it went away.
And then it came back again recently.
It's a huge pain in the ass.
So we have ticks in Australia, but we've never had to deal with Lyme disease like you have here.
But in the last, you know, four or five decades, people started raising deer in Australia for meat and what have you.
And a few of them get away.
You know, there's no deer farms around where I am, which is north of Sydney by 600Ks.
But recently, a couple of the guys who worked for me on the farm said they've seen deer going through the bush at the back of my block, you know.
So that means that there's some just animals that have escaped, and they're most likely to have been in the southern highlands, which is south of Sydney.
Somehow they've got themselves all the way up to where I am.
How many miles is that?
Or kilometers?
Well, we're probably talking about 700-something kilometers.
They just wandered?
Yeah.
Wow.
And didn't get run over or didn't get, you know?
That's crazy.
Absolutely great.
And they're probably bringing ticks.
Probably.
And the wrong kind of ticks.
In America, they have a problem with that, too, deer farms and this disease called chronic
wasting disease.
It's spread throughout large swaths of America have a giant issue with this.
where deer herds get infected.
My friend Doug Duren, he has a farm out in Wisconsin,
and they've had a significant problem with it
to the point where they've started issuing more tags
and thinning the herd.
They're trying to kill more deer
to try to lessen this spread of this stuff
because chronic wasting disease,
it's a pre-on disease,
so it gets on plants, it stays on them for a long time.
So they start drooling when they have it,
and in that drool is more chronic wasting disease.
So another deer will come along and graze on the ground where they drooled,
and then they get it horrible, horrible disease.
And a lot of it emanated from these deer farms.
When I first bought the farm, which was 100 acres to start with,
but it's now like 1,700, and it's attached to a state forest as well.
So I can get up behind my place and go for days.
Oh, wow.
Which is just sort of like, you know, which is cool.
But back in the day, we used to have platypus in the creeks.
We had wombats.
And now I see more foxes than I see native animals.
Or I see an equivalent amount of foxes as I see wallabies.
Are foxes invasive?
Yeah.
Okay, there you go.
And they're absolute, you know, because they eat anything and everything.
I used to have a big family of what we call bush turkeys.
living behind the house
and they're still there
but they used to just proudly walk around
you know and it was fun
you're going through the bush
and then suddenly there's a road full of bush turkeys
is great you know
but now the population is right down
and they're totally ninja now
you know you don't see them very often
when you do they're like very suspicious
they're checking you out you know
just being hunted 24 seven it's foxes man
yeah you also have a large feral cat problem right
gigantic yeah gigantic
The one and only cat that I let my mother have at the farm.
This is way back, man.
I was training for Cinderella, man.
And, you know, they sent me this group of boxes, Olympic guys and stuff like that.
And every single one of them can smash the piss out of me in the ring.
So I've got to smash the piss out of them in other areas.
So I've trained them until they drop, you know, getting them on bicycles and take them into the bush, you know, and things like that.
Just to sort of, like, keep the balance, you know.
And this one particular day, and I had it in my mind that I was just going to absolutely.
smashed them. I was going to get into this situation because
there's one road, you know, and I was
just going to get so far in front of them
psychologically damage them, you know?
Right. So, and I
just had, devious.
Just had a conversation with my
mum, and she was like, oh, darling,
you know, I'd really love to have a cat.
And I'm like, Mom, we lived in this
privileged situation. We've got
sulfur-crested cockatoos, Rosellas,
king parrots, all these beautiful
birds. And the
worst thing that we could do for them.
is put a cat into that, so you can't have a cat, you know?
I'm riding through the bush.
25, 30Ks in at this point, right?
I'm getting to the top of this hill.
I'm looking down.
I'm seeing these boys struggling quite some distance,
probably about a kilometer and a half away from it, you know.
And I'm going, good, I'll just have a little rest here.
And I just hear this little noise, and I'm like, what the hell is that?
So I just take three or four steps off the road.
You know, probably about seven or eight minutes ago,
I was coming around this corn and a car was there on the road,
which was kind of unusual for the state forest in that particular area, right?
So I take these three or four steps in,
and there's a little kitten sitting in the bush.
Like, what the hell?
So I pick it up, it's warm.
You know, I can't leave it here, so I put it in my backpack, right?
And I complete the ride to get to the top of this hill
where this trig station is
and everybody's standing around
and I go, oh, I've found a cat.
So I bring it out.
Everyone's all these big boxes go,
oh, you know, a cute little kitten.
So I took it home to my mom.
I said, okay, here's your cat.
And the way that I reasoned it
is like, this is me saying to my mother,
you cannot have something that will make you happy.
And then the universe goes,
listen to your mother.
So, you know, that cat hated human beings.
for the rest of its life, you know?
The only person it got on with was my mom.
And we used to have like four bells around its neck
to get the birds enough warning.
So it didn't cause too much damage.
So was a feral cat then?
I think.
Or was it tossed out of that car?
I think so.
Yeah.
It was too clean and too warm for it to have been living.
But that's what people do.
They have a problem.
They have a cat.
They have a litter.
They don't know how to solve it.
Pet stores don't want it.
Their friends don't want to.
So they come up with the concept of just chucking them into the bush.
Well, didn't it start out what they brought.
They introduced cats to try to eliminate some other animal?
We have such a history of stupidity in that regard.
Have you heard of the cane turd?
Yes.
It's just so fantastic, right?
Yeah.
So, you know, they're growing sugar cane in Queensland.
And there's a particular flying creature that they want to control.
So they start looking around.
We always blame the British for this because it's usually a naturalist, a British naturalist or scientist that comes up with the concept.
And so they look through all the ions.
I can't remember where they found it from.
But they found this toad who seemed to have this appetite for this particular insect and they would feed it.
It ate it.
They were great.
So we'll introduce the cane toad to get amongst the sugar cane and lessen that creature.
When they were checking if the cane toad would eat the creature,
they were feeding it dead ones right
it's a flying creature
Toad doesn't have a tongue like a frog
Can't catch this thing if it's flying
So it was of no use at all
In trying to listen to that population
However it became like a dominant species
And it was in Queensland
But now it's starting to come in New South Wales
So they're basically marching south
And it's a problem man
It's like a serious problem
They secrete poison
So if a dog gets interested
And the toe gets afraid
The dog can sort of like
sniff or lick its head
Then get poison
And that's the end of your dog
You know
But there was a period of time there
Where there's actually a documentary
From the 90s
Call cane toads
And it sort of just points out
How crazy people were getting
With it
You know people in a small country towns
Walking from their house to the pub
Taking a cricket bat
And just smacking the cane to
off the road as they went, you know, it's like all these people becoming, like, you know, crazed
with the idea of getting rid of the cane toad population, but it hasn't affected them.
They just keep growing.
How much is the population now?
How big is it?
So big.
And these things, Jamie, can you do me a favor?
Look up the weight of the largest cane toad that they found because it's always a surprise.
I mean, these things grow.
And if they're in the right environment and things that they can eat and feed on,
I just get bigger and bigger.
That's not the biggest.
Look at this thing.
Look at this thing, mate.
Whoa.
That's like an English bulldog.
Howdy-duty.
It's bigger than my dog.
Oh, my God.
Look at his head.
What is the weight on that fucker?
What does it say?
That's crazy.
I got a weight there
does it say how big
oh fat that fucker is
2.7 kilograms 5.8 pounds
wow that looks bigger than 5.8 pounds
it does but it might be a perspective thing
either way I said that was the current one
oh show the video scroll up so you can see that video
or make it larger like when she's holding it
yeah it looks like about 5 pounds
boy have you ever seen when they um there's
There's a lot of horrible videos online where they take toads and they put them in a box with mice.
You ever see what toads do to mice?
No.
You would never think that toads are ferocious.
You know, you'd never think that toads are basically monsters, these just giant-mouthed monsters that swallow mice whole.
But they do.
They're super aggressive.
It's crazy to watch.
Jamie, I know you're going to get one.
I just had to make sure it was worth pulling up.
Is this a good one?
But there's ones where there's a bunch of them in boxes.
See, this one is kind of weird because he's not freaking out yet.
It's being sneaky.
Oh, what's that?
Look at that head.
Look at his head.
I mean, if that thing was giant, like that was hippopotamus-shaped chasing after you.
Look how quite that is.
How did you get it?
It must be closer than it looks like that.
He just swallowed him whole.
Watch how quick he does it.
Yeah, this bit here.
Oh, it's just one step forward and bang, yeah.
Just snap.
See if you can find one of them video.
Oh, he just inhales him.
Like, he literally inhaled him.
Oh, he grabbed him with the tongue first.
He yanked him in.
Oh, God.
See if you can find those videos where there's a ton of them in a box.
either way
it's a giant African bullfrog it's not a game to
slightly different giant African bullfrog
either way point is they eat mice
they eat them whole
and and how many of them are now in Australia
how many million oh here we go
this guy's just going to go ham
so it starts
he's going to eat all of them
look how gross those things are
They look so dumb, just so mindless and gross.
I don't think he's going to get all of them, but he hasn't gotten any of them.
What's going on here?
Just gathering them in a corner.
It's a creepy animal.
And so, like, what are the numbers?
Like, put that into perplexity?
Cain toads.
Yeah.
How many cane toads?
ask our sponsor how many cane toads are in Australia
what was the initial deposit like how many they drop off
it was only a couple hundred and then they bred like 60,000 in 1937
and the answer for now is estimated at 200 million
man and that little fly that eats the sugar cane
it's still there oh my god
200 million.
But see, look, if you see where those, see that cluster of light blue balls, right?
They basically, in there, in the middle of that cluster is where they dropped them to start with.
And look at how they've.
Well, they're going to make their way across the whole country.
Well, there you go.
49.
So the white one is actually where they put them to start.
Wow.
Everything else has migration.
And by 2000, look how far they've gone.
Wow.
What's the plan to get rid of those things?
I'm not sure that they have a cohesive plan.
There's no plan.
Well, that's the problem.
If they have a plan, they're going to bring in some lizard or something,
frogs.
That's going to end up doing something else.
Yeah, it's going to kill everything else.
Every single time they've done that.
You know, like in New Zealand, for example, they introduced the gorse bush as a way to have hedging instead of fences.
But New Zealand's got a way higher rainfall and sunshine hours than England where it came from.
So now it's just everywhere.
You know, so beautiful arable farmlands just taken over by gorse.
And when it grows in New Zealand, it grows thicker and more prickly and much harder to deal with.
We have the same thing in Australia with plants like Lantana, just everywhere, all through the bush.
You know, in my lifetime.
So in 96, I used to be able to walk through certain areas of my property, just under tall trees
with, you know, subtropical ferns and vines on the ground.
Now there's many areas of my property that are just impossible.
You cannot get through it anymore because it's choked out with introduced weeds.
What is that crazy plant down south that we talked about once that is overrun some of these forests?
It's pretty beautiful, but it's also very creepy to see what it's done, just like taking over all the trees.
All the trees, anything on the ground is covered witheria.
It's called kudzu.
Kudzu.
Yeah.
I'll make sure.
I'll make sure this is the right stuff.
That's right.
Yeah, that's it.
Look at that.
Right.
Isn't that nuts?
Yeah.
Like, that image is creepy.
Yeah.
I mean, that's like a Stephen King movie.
I used to have waterfalls and creeks.
Look at that.
It's taking over that whole building.
That's crazy.
Everything.
Yeah.
Just where did they come from?
So that's in Fiji, yeah?
Yeah, it's in the United States, though.
So how was it brought in?
Oh, did people bring in it on purpose?
That's where it's originated from, sorry.
Right.
History of U.S. introduction introduced from Japan in 1876.
New Orleans exposition.
Oh, that's where I heard.
There's a lot of it.
Vine was widely marketed to the southeast as an ornamental plant.
And then it just took over.
Wow.
It's funny when people try to do that because they never learn.
and yet they still try the same thing.
Over and over, yeah.
There's so many times
they've been introduced invasive species.
I have a buddy of mine,
it's not necessarily an invasion species,
but I have a buddy of mine who lives in Colorado,
and they just reintroduced wolves
into this area where they have farms.
And so they took wolves from Washington State
where they had been killing cows,
and so they had to relocate them.
So where did they relocate them to them?
They relocated them to a place with cows.
Right.
And of course these wolves start killing cows again.
Haven't they shown, though, in one of the national parks here that by supporting the Apex Predator, a whole bunch of other problems get solved.
That's the Yellowstone reintroduction.
And so that's called how wolves changed rivers, right, that documentary.
There's a lot of people that push back against that.
I think you definitely need predators because there was at one point in time an overpopulation of
elk in Montana to the point where they were having winter seasons, winter rifle seasons,
where they would issue a lot of tags.
So in the winter, they're stuck in deep snow and you just go pick them off.
Right.
You know, and it was because they had so many that it was actually detrimental to the herd itself,
to the health of the herd itself.
Right.
So they reintroduced wolves.
The population dropped by, I think, more than 40%.
It might have been more than that.
It might have been, I don't know.
See how much elk's population.
has dropped since the introduction of wolves into Montana in the Yellowstone introduction.
So there's definitely a balance that needs to be achieved.
The problem is that area where they're doing that, then the elk are going to eat,
the wolves rather are going to eat the elk, and occasionally they'll stray onto cattle
and then they're allowed to issue depredation tags and you can get a problem wolf killed.
but what they did in Colorado is they brought them right to where the cows are
they took wolves that had a history of they know how to kill cows that's what they do
they know how to kill calves they've been doing it for their whole lives and they took them
and they introduced him to a place where there's no no protection no one's ready for it
no one has guard set up they don't have dog set up they don't have anything set up to stop wolves
So let's see, when the reintroduction was in 1995, the winter count was approximately 17,000 elk when Wolf reintroduction began, fell to 10,000 by 2003, by 2013, only 3,915 elk represents a drop of roughly 75% from pre-reintroduction numbers.
That's kind of crazy.
But 19,000 is too many.
That's kind of nuts.
That's an overpopulation.
That can lead to disease and famine and all kinds of things.
And you don't have a good, stable ecosystem with both predators and prey.
You get a situation like you have in New Zealand where they have to gun down stag sometimes.
They have to helicopter stags because they just get overpopulated.
Right.
You know, New Zealand is one of those places where all these game animals from Europe were introduced specifically.
to set up New Zealand as a beautiful hunting refuge.
They would go there and hunt stag.
But, you know, the problem is you have to have balance.
Like this whole set, you can't just enter into like human ideas.
You know, like, oh, well, one plus one is two.
So we'll just add one.
Now we got, no, it's not how it works.
Like you have to maintain the population of these creatures that you've now dropped off with no natural balance.
We have a big problem in certain areas of Australia with wild horses.
Yeah, they have that in America's role.
We call them Mustangs.
We call them Brumbies.
You know, obviously a horse was really important in Australia when it was being opened up and first colonized and populated and what have you.
And then, you know, first of all, war, we still had light horse cavalry and what have you.
So in certain areas, but mainly in the area where the mountains are in Australia, which crosses between New South Wales.
Wales into the state of Victoria.
And, you know, we, we name things pretty simply in Australia, you know, the black snake
with red on its stomach is the red belly black snake.
You know, we keep it pretty simple for the tourists.
And what's that brown snake called?
It's called a brown snake, mate.
So that area of the country is called the Snowy Mountains.
And, you know, we have this sort of cultural connection to the Brumbies, which is things
like, you know, the man from Snowy River.
It's based on guys going out to capture wild horses.
But the population of wild horses has got to a point where it's destroying the ecosystem of that area.
So now they have to go and find a way of bringing that population down.
Yeah, they hunt wild horses in Australia.
And it's very difficult for people, particularly like somebody like me who I love horses.
But I have to put that love for horses aside to what it's doing to the rest of the native animals.
And in Australia, we like blessed.
with so many unusual and fantastic creatures.
But we haven't really been good husbands of the land.
And we haven't really focused on what's good for them.
Yeah, I have a good buddy mine, Adam Green Tree, who lives in Australia.
And he tells me that people actually hunt the wild horses.
I was like, oh, yeah.
I don't think I could do that.
It sounds rough, but, you know, we've got to do something
because the, quite frankly, the wombats and the platypus and the quakers and the kangaroos
and the wallabies are a little bit more important than the wild horses.
Yeah.
It's a strange thing.
You know, the balance of nature is a very strange thing.
It's very complex.
There's so many elements to it.
That's what they were trying to highlight in that Wolves Change River documentary.
The problem with that Wolf Change River documentary is the guy,
who created that is a proponent of rewilding to the point where I think he wants to reintroduce
like dangerous predators to Europe like he's he's got some crazy ideas about rewilding
like going way back I mean I don't know how much that I was talking to you about Merlin
Hanbury Tennyson um came out of school went in the army did two or three tours um but now has
found himself in a situation where he's taken over a block of land that his father bought
in the 50s or 60s or something. And he's turning that block of land back into temperate
rainforest and seeing all of these benefits because of it. So instead of trying to, you know,
run sheep or run some other commercial herd, he's just letting the country go back to what it should
beat and seeing incredible results because of it.
Like what kind of results?
Well, what he's shifted now and is using it for now is like PTSD recovery.
So former soldiers are what have just go to this place and, you know, find a new balance
because they're, you know, in that sort of natural environment.
But just the, without certain creatures eating types of trees as shoots and fresh shoots,
those trees are actually getting a hold.
So it should be, you know, oak trees, for example, you know,
and there's only like, you know, was only just a few there.
But by taking out the non-native animals who's seeing those trees increase.
I mean, there's a book, I forget it.
If you could look it up for me, Jamie, Merlin-Hanbury-Tennis,
and the book just came out, it's a great book.
It really is, it's such unusual read.
You're sort of reading it and you think, okay, it's like,
the reestablishment of a temperate rainforest, how can this be good?
But then when he ties it in to the life journey of his father and his father's, like,
health problems and stuff, it gets really emotional.
And it's quite a beautiful read.
I highly recommend it.
Could you find it?
Our oaken bones?
Our oaken bones.
Yeah.
It's a really good read.
Yeah.
Nature in that form and its pure form is like a vitamin, I think.
it really is
I think it's an actual good
You know like you go out in the sun
The sun produces vitamin D
I think there's something
that we haven't quantified yet
That you're producing
That you get
Yeah they're getting around to
And things like what he's doing
Where you can actually read
The physical benefits
For people going in the bush
But that's what I get
When I go home
I get out into the bush
And sometimes I might
drive a machine to a certain point
And I just get off
And I walk
And I just listen
and I go and visit trees that I like or areas that I like.
I'm actually going through a long time ago I planted like 38,000 trees as a kind of an offset, a carbon offset, right?
Now some of those trees are 25 plus years old.
So I'm going through the process in that 44 acres where I planted that plantation of taking out all the non-native undergrowth.
And then the next stage is going to be putting back into that area the trees that are ripped out of their,
prior to the First World War, red cedar and white mahogany
and all these things, so beautiful trees.
And with the hope that I put enough in the ground
that over time, red steedars starts popping up
all through the valley, you know.
But this is gonna be stuff that happens way after I'm dead.
But that process of stripping out the non-native stuff,
I'm starting to look at that go, okay, well, I'm doing that 44 acres there.
I got another 200 acres over here.
I know there's waterfalls, I know there's creeks,
I want to take all of that Lantana and stuff out and revive all that.
So you can walk through the bush, you know.
So, but these are processes that I hope that will excite my kids to carry on with.
We'll see.
Well, that's exciting.
It's exciting to know that you have this long-term thing that you're doing that's actually beneficial to the land and brings it back to the way it used to be.
Yeah, not like in a sort of overbearing way, but like just that little 44 acres, hopefully over time.
And we're already seeing it now with sort of like, because we're clearing things out,
we're finding lots of little tiny red cedars that are already there.
Because I put in 450 to start with, but my aim is to have, you know,
within about the next probably two to three years,
have 5,000 red cedars in the ground in that area.
It's just amazing when you think about the kind of impact
that human beings can have on landscape.
It's just humans, whatever we've done,
wherever we go, we inevitably alter everything forever.
And if you could just take a little bit of it, put it back to the way it was,
and then start contributing to these plants regrowing again,
there's a balance to that.
It's very cool that you can achieve that.
It's also exciting.
It seems like a cool project.
It thrills me.
For a guy that has the kind of pressures that you have and the work that you have to do
and the intensity and the long hours on sets,
like having something like that is a godset.
Yeah.
You're 32-year-old self, whoever it was.
It was crazy.
You nailed it.
You know, I look back and it's just, how did I know?
Because at 32, you know, I had a little bit of fame in Australia, but it was nothing compared to what I would have to deal with after that.
So having that sort of forethought is just interesting.
Is there anything that you ever always wanted to do, like a type of film that you've always wanted to do that you never got a chance to?
well see I'm there are definitely guys in my business that covet you know they go I want to do this
kind of role I want to be perceived like that you know but for me that's not what I pursue I pursue
I pursue character and I only you know it's very practical I don't get to choose from everything
I only get to choose from what's sent to me so from what within what is sent to me I always try to
look for fresh ground you know people will ask me why would you play that kind of character
it's like the bottom line is because i didn't do it before you know why you want to play
herman guring right nobody's offered it to me in the past and it's a fascinating character yet
it's a dangerous character and there's you know a lot of stuff that goes into being able to play a
character like that but that danger is part of the excitement of the job yeah and it's not always
going to be that way. Sometimes you're playing a character that doesn't really require a lot from you,
but you've got to play the weight of the character. You know, you can't just sort of suddenly
make your New York detective act like a superhero because you feel like being a superhero.
Right. So it's sort of like, you know, you just play the weight of what's required. And then
every now and then, you know, you play a character that sort of has a principal
sort of role in the narrative or is the focus of the narrative.
But the decision to take on the weight of playing a character that's a Nazi,
the second in charge, that's what was that?
That's heavy, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But that thrill comes from that thing of saying this challenge is so big,
I don't know if I can do this.
And then part of you goes,
I should leave that aside.
And then the other voice goes,
let's just have a go.
Let's have a go, see what we can do.
And see, someone like ghering,
you know, that word nuance is coming up a lot today.
Because we can look at him in the stark sort of caricature version
that a lot of people have in their minds of who he was.
But that against the reality.
of his life and how he grew up, how he was educated, what his experiences were, who he really
was as a man. There's a lot more to Goering than just looking at this going, oh, bad man,
Nazi, you know. One thing I find fascinating, when he was a kid at school, he was like one of the
dumbest students in his class at a normal school. And because of his sort of continuous failure,
as a punishment, he got sent to military school.
In military school, he was a top student
because it was stuff that interested him.
It comes out of school pretty much on the dawn of the First World War,
has his first military experience in the infantry,
as a young officer, gets wounded
and realizes that standing on the ground on a battlefield
is not really the right place for him.
What's interesting him is what keeps,
going on overhead. So he manufactures a way to get himself assigned to a fighter squadron.
It's supposed to turn back up for duty with his infantry squadron, but sort of, you know,
manufactures a way to keep him associated with the fighter squadron, learns how to become a pilot
while he's doing that. And at a certain point in the war, they're losing more pilots than they
train. So they go, he knows how to fly. He can be a pilot.
Finishes the First World War with 22 kills, air-to-air kills. That's three times a firefighter.
fighting ace. And he's also, because he recently passed in battle, at the end of the First World War,
he's in charge of the Baron von Richthofen, the Red Baron's Squadron, which is the pinnacle
of the German Air Force. So here he is as a young man. He's finishing that first war experience.
And he is a fair dinkum, which means true. He is an actual war hero. And so through the 20s,
He's on cigarette cards in Germany.
You buy a packet of cigarettes, and there's a picture of Herman Guring.
Wow.
So, and he goes into that political environment, that post-Vasai environment,
with a very definite belief in his country as being something special,
and he wants to make a contribution to bring lifting his country out of the admire
that it's currently in.
So he starts looking for a political connection
and ends up going upstairs in a coffee.
house in Munich, I think it was, and hearing a fellow called Adolf Hitler talk and realizes
that he has a lot in common with this guy where he sees things and knows that Hitler was a
soldier.
You know, it's a funny thing we put into the movie at one point because there's a speech about
Rami that Rami Malik makes about Hitler being a failed painter and a not very good soldier.
And I think the response I gave Gering at the time, which is not in the film,
But he talked through Hitler's actual military record.
And, yeah, he didn't rise above Lance Corporal,
but he turned down promotion three different times.
He won an Iron Cross in 1914,
and then he won a second one in 1918,
and doing things that were showing such extreme courage
that he was awarded the Iron Cross.
And he delivered messages on the battlefield.
He would take the messages from headquarters
and take it to the frontline troops.
and then bring their response back, things like that.
You know, so, you know, one point in time I had Gering say, you know,
you could call him a failed painter,
but maybe he got to a certain point in his life
where there were more important things to address than painting.
So, you know, nuance.
I thought it was also fascinating that you guys delved into the fact
that he was an addict.
Yeah, we only touch on a little bit.
But that's, that is crazy.
There's a really good book.
Blitz.
Norman Oller.
Yes, which gave me a lot of information.
Brilliant.
When Goering was arrested, he had something like 40,000 pills on him.
40,000.
In his car, right?
He had a habit of 40 to 50 a day.
So you look at him and you can see it.
When you know that fact and you start looking at photographs,
you can see him kind of leave the planet at a certain point
where he's just off his tits all the time.
You know, from about 42 onwards,
he doesn't really have Adolf's ear anymore.
Goebbels, Himmler, Hydrick, they've all taken those positions.
The things that he promised he could do with the Luftwaffe didn't actually come off, you know, as strongly.
They didn't know it at the time, but that's the enigma machine, everything, the code's being broken.
So no matter what they did, they're always being second-guessed.
So, you know, Hitler's trust of him was adjusted a little bit.
And I also sort of liken it to him.
knowing he's going to get stabbed.
So he just doesn't bother going to the place where he would get stabbed.
You know, so he does a whole bunch of other stuff and he keeps his authority,
but he's not at in the center of things anymore.
Because of the pills, a big part of it.
Big part of it.
It's personal safety because he thinks he's no longer has the definitive ear and trust of his leader.
The pills overtake his lifestyle.
and he decides to, you know, interest himself in other things for the greater good of Germany,
like the collection of great works of art and things like that, you know.
But there's a lot of things in this story that are just bigger once you start looking at it
and examining. They're way bigger than what we know or what we commonly understand.
And that's what I was looking for to try and find a way to, you know,
understand his base motivations.
And at the end of the day, he, you know, in his own way, he's a pure patriot.
Just so happens to be a sort of a set of beliefs or whatever that most of us in a Western world would call a barrenter.
Wow.
And you've got to take into consideration the drug aspect of the entire Nazi movement.
All the troops were on meth.
Hitler was on opiate.
I mean, Norman Oler, that book, just, I can't recommend it enough.
It's so eye-opening because you're like, well, that makes sense.
That's why they were so fucking psychotic.
That's why they could march through the night.
Poland, three nights and a row, yeah.
Through the Belgian forest.
But it's very rarely taught.
This is not like when we grew up, we didn't grow up thinking that they were just drug, psychotic, you know, animals that were on meth, you know, in tanks.
and the most
that gave the people
the front line
the most meth
so they had different
dosages for different
people
depending on
what they were required
to do
and the tank guy
has got the most
and if you think
about
Gerring's position
he's the one
ordering the drugs
right
how many pilots
have we got
how many planes
how many missions
are we doing
how many sorties
right
do that multiplication
add 10% for me
it's a drug
fueled war
like probably
the most
drug fueled war
ever
I mean the
kamikazis were using
meth and then the Hitler thing was I always thought that Hitler was meth as well but Norman
was saying that he was opiates as well right so just like Guring right they maybe it was how they
dealt with what they were doing they all just stayed blasted out of their fucking head all day
long well I mean look you're surrounded by guys that have a sort of a fanatical mindset you know
you're gonna want to be awake yeah you don't want to
fall asleep at the wrong time, if that's the group of people that you've surrounded
yourself with.
And that's the thing that I keep saying.
It's an old cliche, but I think it's something that he really learned.
You know, if you lie down with dogs, you're going to get fleas, Herman.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think him cleaning up by being forced, by being in a prison environment, being forced by the
allies to go cold turkey, nearly killed him.
He had sort of heart problems because he went from 40 or 50 a day to nothing.
So, but that clarity of thought that he had, after being clean for six or nine months
when the trial starts, that became dangerous because now he's sort of got his faculties back
and he's intent on breaking down this whole idea of international law as being ridiculous
that, you know, he's a man who served his country.
He's still in a uniform.
He's still like a military guy.
So he's, quote, unquote, following orders.
Yeah.
And, you know, they were a democratically elected government
who then step by step dismantled democracy
once they were in power.
And the fascinating thing about this character
and the way you play him is in the beginning,
he seems like a guy on opiates
because he's, like, so relaxed about everything, you know.
It's like he doesn't seem to be carrying the weight of what's happened to him.
Right.
And for you to, and then there's dark moments, particularly, like, during the trial, where you're like, whoa.
There's a lot of range to this guy.
And that's got to be a weird place to be, for you to try to put yourself in the mind
what ultimately became one of the most horrific figures in modern history.
Yeah, it's not comfortable.
It's not comfortable.
But that pain's part of the gig, you know?
Yeah.
It really is.
And there's, you sort of learn to accept it.
I say this to people quite a lot.
Because, you know, the big question is how do you turn off, you know, when you've been a Nazi for a day, what do you do to relax?
Definitely don't do method.
Yeah.
But, you know, you ask anybody and you would be the same.
Just because in a little while, the podcast is over for the day doesn't mean that that's
the end of your job.
It doesn't mean you're just going to turn off and never think about it again.
You're going to obviously, you know, anybody has a passion for the thing that they do is going
to continue the process.
Five o'clock might be when the office closes, but you're going to go home.
You're going to have dinner.
You're going to think about the deal that you're currently doing, the presentation that's
ahead of you or whatever it happens to be.
You're going to keep processing.
And that's what happens when you're playing a character
because you might have delivered X amount of dialogue today,
but you've got X amount tomorrow too,
so you've got to keep that process going.
So you're just thinking about a Nazi?
All the time, 24-7, all the time.
There's no, it's relentless.
One description of making a movie is that it's a train journey.
It's not like a car, you know,
where you can pull over and have a wee on the side of the road.
It's a train journey.
And once you get on that train,
you're staying there until it gets to its destination and you've just got to accept that i mean and
there's you know good and bad and that there's a um a saying that goes with this you know the
the best thing and the worst thing about the job that i do is that one day it's going to finish
always finishes you can be having the worst time of your life but it's going to finish but you can be
having the greatest time you know the incredible relationship with the crew and the cast and the director
but it's going to finish
and you have to get used to that
you have to understand that
when how much time
did you prepare
and how much time did you film for
so like how much time were you actually
in the head of this Nazi
well I signed on in
2019 so you started thinking about it
I thought I was going straight from loudest voice
which finished shooting around April
or something like that
and I thought by the end of that year
we'd be doing you know we would have shot that film
so that's when you started researching it
yeah and then
And then as it turns out, we got set up and collapsed three different times.
And so I had five years, five years of, you know, scratching around, trying to find little bits of information to humanize him in my mind, but also for me to try and understand him and understand the, you know, what he got into.
Because it doesn't make a lot of sense.
When you read about his history and stuff, where he gets to doesn't make a lot of sense.
he was a mountain climber
when he was a young man
there are traverses
in the Austrian Alps
that Herman Goering was the first person
to do that traverse of that peak
you think about the mentality
required of a mountaineer
to stand at the base of a
big ass rock and look up
and say I'm going to keep going
until I reach that summit
that says a lot
about who Herman Goering really was.
And, you know, who's Bavarian, right?
So from southern Germany.
And once I, because I didn't know who was a mountain climber,
once I knew that, then I started looking around for,
well, what does that mean to be a mountain climber, you know,
prior to the First World War?
What kind of equipment would you have?
And it's very basic, man.
It's nothing, you know, you're relying on your wits and your strength just completely.
Yeah, they didn't even have nylon ropes.
Probably not.
No, but not then.
Just all stretchy hemp.
Oh, Jesus.
It's going to behave completely differently once it gets wet.
But it gave me some real insight to him.
And it also ended up giving me this great way of connecting to the other German guys
who are playing the other Nazis, you know.
Because I just knew from the first day when they all arrived and I was sitting together in a group,
I could see that they're already feeling the punishment of playing that kind of character.
So I just brought them together and I asked them because now, you know,
these guys, some of them are Germans, some of them are Hungarian.
And I said, look, you know, there's this song that I found and I'd like to learn the song together.
And they all, you know, most of them knew the song.
But that's what we would do every day as a group.
We'd get together, we'd sing that song and then we'd walk into court together.
feeling connected as a unit you know what kind of song was it it's called musi den is it a german
song it's a german song and but i didn't realize when i first came across it's a barvarian
mountain song right so he definitely knew that song it's actually the melody that elvis presley
uses for the song wooden heart in the movie chi i blues
You know, Musi den, Musi den, Zoom, stay de-leit-in-house,
stay-de-leit-in-house.
You know, that's, but I don't have a wooden heart.
That's what we're busy singing together.
So you guys would sing this to get into the character.
Yeah, so there's just a little thing just to remind that particular group of guys that we're just actors, we're just playing roles.
And, you know, this will finish.
There's a lot of people that don't want to show a human side of a monster.
And which I think is very dangerous and quite stupid, you know, because it gives you a complete misunderstanding of what a monster is.
You know, yes, okay, here's somebody with, you know, horrific experts.
joke used to be even Hitler you know he used to love dogs so that's the joke right you know and and that
but there's some real truth in understanding the human process in that that's somebody who makes the
absolute worst decision in the world can still be a loving father you know can still have a group of
friends but on you know in a particular in a particular moment that is the
the same person who's made this horrific decision that will have terrible effect on a generation
of people.
Yeah, I mean, it's really the same kind of thing we were talking about with Tony Soprano.
Right.
Like, that this person is a terrible person, but yet loves his kids, loves his friends.
Yeah, well, Charm is one of the greatest weapons of evil.
Yeah.
It's a really, you know, it's a fun thing for us.
We see somebody, you know, who can tell a story, tell a joke.
hold attention in a room.
You go, it's cool.
But when that process of charm goes to this other place,
which becomes about life and death,
or they're taking away of people's rights,
the dehumanizing people, as we were discussing earlier.
You know, and I don't want to get into politics
because I have this, my boys have this rule.
If you're going to talk to Joe,
you're not allowed to discuss politics.
Because they know once I start.
Your boys?
My two sons, yeah.
Because my youngest boy, I think I told you,
He became obsessed with you and listening to your stuff for a while.
And you became one of his sort of points of education.
And, you know, so that's why I started listening to you because I wanted to know what he was hearing, you know.
And I got, after listening a few times, I was like, you know what, man, it's cool.
Because, again, we'll use that word.
You do actually have the allowance for nuance.
And that's the greatest thing about this situation where you sit down to talk.
We're going to be talking for a couple of hours.
Yeah.
So I don't have to reduce everything I want to talk to you about to make it.
up in three minutes. Right. And worry about things being taken out of context in a sound
bite. Right. Yeah. This is the issue with discussing any positive attribute to a Nazi.
You know what I mean? Like you open up that door. Oh my God, Russell Crow's a Nazi sympathizer.
But the people that don't like you are just going to take that. And here's what Joe Rogan's
discussing. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, I think what you're saying is absolutely true that it is stupid to think
that way because that's a human being and a very fucked up evil human being that did horrific
things but know that that is a path that people can go down even if they think they're doing
the right thing so we are taught for example to regard Gaddafi in a certain way okay but if you look
into what happened in his country while he was the leader you look into the fact that every
person is given a house at a certain age.
You look at the fact that everybody's education and health care is free.
You look at if somebody showed a particular talent for something that required further education
overseas, all of the costs of that were paid for by the government.
Now, these are all things put in place by the same country's leader that we're told
is evil and corrupt.
Yeah.
So it doesn't quite balance.
Well, there's also U.S. government interference.
That is one that we definitely monkeyed with.
I mean, he ran a foul of the United States government.
Well, what he was trying to do, as far as I understand the situation, is he was trying to unite Africa.
and a united africa is going to be um well either it's going to be fantastic right it's going to be
amazing a problem for the people that want to run things yeah yeah if all of a sudden there's a
new super you've got a whole bunch of countries that that you know have a connection with a certain
african nation or whatever they suck their you know minerals out of the ground or whatever
don't pay them properly for it you know and and greatly benefit financially and that's
Pretty much every European country has got some kind of African connection in that regard.
Including China?
Well, China is now coming in.
Yeah.
Because it's able to offer a slightly better deal than they've been used to.
But people have to understand.
The population of Africa is enormous.
Yeah.
Enormous.
You've got multiple countries that hundreds of millions of people.
Well, when you see the continent of Africa and you see all these other countries, you see all these other countries,
how many would fit inside of it.
You're like, oh, boy.
Because that's the weird thing about maps and globes
is you get a distortion of the actual true size.
Well, there is a distortion, right?
Yeah.
Whatever that's called, which shows America at the center
and being physically a larger landmass
than it actually is in relative terms.
Oh, it's a little little bit.
It's the size of Australia.
100,000 square miles.
Continental USA is 100,000 square miles larger
than the island of Australia.
That's not much.
Not much.
That's not much, especially when you think that you guys have 20, what, 25, 25?
And we have probably 325 plus.
Right.
I don't think we know really how many people we have, but we have at least 320.
Million.
That's a lot of folks.
A lot of people, man.
Yeah.
It's a hell of a lot of people.
So we'd like to think we're a lot bigger than we are.
But then you look at where we fit in Africa, you're like, oh, it's like, it's a little tiny thing.
I think there's something like 55 countries or something in Africa?
I don't know
it's probably
I mean it's also Egypt
that's the other thing
you know it's also like
the most advanced civilization
possibly that ever existed before today
and they were there too
it's like it's a wild place
like from top to bottom
it's a very and it's the origin
possibly of humankind
and a lot more desert I think
than people realize you know you had the Sahara
and stuff we all know that
but then there's these other gigantic areas
like that
What would that be the West Coast?
Have you seen those roads in like Namibia or whatever?
It's just, it's like a sand dune.
It's 40, 50 meters high, drops down to the ocean.
There's one little flat bit that there's a road.
And that's passable, you know, at certain times or whatever,
if the tides are not doing this and that.
But that's the road.
Jeez.
It's like a mountain of sand and an ocean and a one little ribbon.
Jeez.
It's, you know, United States is one of the weird things about us is that we're a country that thinks mostly of ourselves and hardly ever leaves.
You know, some people leave, but I bet there's a solid percentage of people that never leave the United States and maybe never even leave their city.
Right.
And your version of the world, you're relying on other people to give you the story of what the world is until you go somewhere, until you go to Thailand, until you go somewhere.
do you go somewhere
where you're like
wow there's a totally different way of living out here
yeah I've even had people
you know come down to help me
with movies or whatever like guys that are coming
down to train me in
some weapon or other or whatever
and they do a lot of traveling but it's all
within the continental USA
yeah and they come to Australia
and they didn't realize that other people
have opinions
you're not
going to find a heck of a lot
of agreement to you know
some very basic tenets, if you're sitting in an Australian bar, you'll find a whole bunch
of people go, that's fucking stupid, mate.
Yeah.
You know, but like, it's still, to me, it's the greatest country in the world is the United
States of America.
Absolutely.
Greatest potentials are all here.
But how it's founded on balance and fairness and opportunity, that's how it remains great, not
because you start taking opportunity.
away from people right because you're affording them opportunity and you know just just keep that
in mind ladies and gentlemen yes because it uh nothing's finished nothing's done we're just in the
process and it can all get better for sure yeah and it's the rare country that is almost entirely
founded by people moving here over time yeah it's all immigration yeah yeah yeah
Which is the strength and also, you know, the problem with the last four years was that they were just letting anybody in.
And they weren't vetting people and they were inviting people in.
And the problem now is they're grabbing people that are productive citizens and they're grabbing them and taking them out because they don't have the right paperwork.
So neither one is a good solution.
And both of them cause huge problems.
Yeah.
And one of the scary things...
But you do have to be aware, too, a lot of the information that we know about that
is coming to us from a motivation that we don't necessarily read.
Right.
They want us to think of things in negative terms.
Sure.
Both sides.
On both sides of the issue.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah, we're constantly being manipulated.
I had Representative Luna on the podcast.
And one of the things that she said that...
that I kind of knew was probably true, but I didn't want to believe it.
She was like, there's a lot of problems they never solve on purpose so that they could
campaign against them.
That's why they keep these things in play, that resolutions could have been reached,
problems could have been solved.
But these politicians are so self-serving that they don't ever want that to take place.
These people that run these two individual parties want to keep that banter back and forth.
They want to keep the argument going.
You see how absolute they are if, you know, somebody with that color hat is trying to promote something, you know, the person with the other color hats are absolutely ridiculous.
Then it changes, an election happens.
Now the person with a different colored hat they're in charge and they're going to put in place exactly what they said the other person was doing that was wrong is now part of their policy platform.
What is wrong with the way Australia's run?
Well, we're a little bit lucky at the moment.
We have a prime minister who's very much motivated by trying to help everybody,
which should be the job of a politician, right, to improve the lives of the people that they represent.
And he's kind of inherited, you know, a conga line of stupidity that was going on, you know,
and he's trying to fix things.
But of course, just the way things are reported or whatever,
you know, there's haters on every corner.
But he's a good man and he's doing his very best
and he's, you know, working extremely hard.
But, you know, like he arrives off a plane the other day.
He's just come back home from some very successful international meetings
where he's established various trade things and opportunities and situations
for Australia, gets off the plane wearing a Joy Division T-shirt.
Big ban from his youth, and he's just a relaxed character, you know.
He's been wearing a suit and tie for weeks on the road,
just walking off Australia's version of Air Force One in a Joy Division t-shirt.
So the member of the opposition wanted to point out, and did so in Parliament,
that Joy Division is a Nazi term and comes from a section of a particular camp,
where the women were prostituted
and that's why it was called
the Joy Division and it's like
okay
what's the point of that
we all know it's a band name
we know it's a band name
right and just because you like the rolling stones
doesn't mean that you want rocks to be falling on people
what are you fucking talking about you know
this whole stupidity and that's what you're facing
all the time picking up some
pointless piece of minutiae
and you know lighting it on five
and making a smokescreen to cover up the reality of the fact that that prime minister
just worked his ass off on behalf of the country and successfully achieved a bunch of things
and should be patted on the back, you know, not pushed down the stairs.
Yeah.
Well, we have a lot of that here too.
That's a...
But there is a timidity, I think, is probably the thing in terms of how Australia has run.
Things like the gambling ads and stuff like that.
Common sense would tell you this is not a good thing to allow.
You know, put the timing of these ads back so kids are asleep or whatever.
Don't let them read out the odds on the news.
You could fix that pretty quick.
But that gambling section of the community is worth a lot of money and people in positions of power.
Because it's not necessarily, you know, it's not the guy that's going to spend his whole wages gambling through an app that gets to have,
a say in this, you know. It's the guy whose family money allows him to run a string of 18,
you know, racehorses. And he enjoys going to the races on the weekend. And, you know,
gambling for him is not such a big deal because he's got, you know, an income from other things,
blah, blah, blah, you know. So it's the wrong perspective on a problem sometimes is the actual
problem. And the fact that this is a fairly new thing and that young people,
growing up with this. There's not a history of people abusing gambling apps, right? It's not something
their parents had to deal with. Right. Generationally, it's not something that I can, oh,
you know, from my experience, I can tell you this. So I had to have a, you know, when I had that
conversation with my boys, it was a broader conversation about gambling and about, you know,
what it takes to earn a dollar. Yeah, I think the accessibility issue is something that people have
problem with. The fact that it's on a phone versus going to a place. Like, you
choose to you're going to get your buddies together you're going to go play poker in a casino that's a
different decision right they're just sitting at home yeah and just constantly frittering away your
money well this is the thing it's just we're there's always some sort of point of attack there's
always an attack vector for people getting your attention or getting your money and trying to
and then we have to decide as a society like do we is this good to just allow like we want freedom
but do we want to, like, you can't advertise cigarettes on TV anymore, right?
They decided at one point in time, this is crazy, cigarettes are bad for you.
You can advertise alcohol.
You still can, yeah, which is a weird.
Yeah, it's weird.
Yeah, it's weird.
Because alcohol probably kills more people than cigarettes.
That funny thing that we have that was fed to us that, you know, cigarettes are this
incredible burden on our health care system.
in reality if you look at it it's a burden but you know there's a lot of people dying of lung
cancer who never had a cigarette so we haven't really solved that we don't really know where that's
coming from but in reality the burden on our health care system is obesity and all the problems
that come from obesity that's the biggest yeah we allow food production systems that we know
to be extremely unhealthy and very bad we just allow them to continue on you know we've got
items of quote unquote food that have been tested and it turns out there's no actual food in this
it's just you know a manufactured product i think the famous one here was the the twinkie thing right
when they actually got around to looking at what was in a twinkie they realized every single part of
it was completely unhealthy yeah it's just mostly sugar yeah yeah but twinkies are delicious
and i think you should be able to buy twinkies you know what i mean so i'm
on both sides of it. I'm a healthy person. I eat 99% of my food is very healthy. But I think
you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want. It's just education is the most important
thing. And letting people know what they're, and then teaching people some discipline and how
to be able to exercise some control over yourself. So I was 126 kilos when I finished
Nuremberg. I'm 100.9 right now. That's amazing. Congratulations. Well, a lot of that. You look
Great, by the way.
You really do.
A lot of that is because you introduced me to your mate Brigham.
From Wastewell.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so I've probably connected with them about five times since that first time we went.
And the real benefit that I'm getting that I think, right, because I'm not completely over the science.
But it seems to be with these injections that I've been getting into my shepherds.
shoulders into my knees, but also IVs, that it's calmed down my body's inflammation.
You know, I think we talked before about just how many old injuries I carry, you know,
and how my injuries in my shoulders, I'm deeply arthritic.
But we can now see in an ultrasound over time how what was messy a year ago and like big,
thick bands of arthritis, now is just lessened, you know, probably by about 70%.
And on one area in my right shoulder, probably about 90%.
So my range of motion, if we'd done this last year, it would have been about there, right?
But now is fucking rock and roll something.
Isn't that great?
It's all going good.
I know.
It's amazing.
Just feeling like the musculature starting to build and everything.
I'm taking it really slowly.
And that was one of the things I was worried about with Highlander because jumping into that role with the shooting date coming, it was like, man, I'm going to
do I got to do three workouts a day.
I got to, you know, and that for me is a bad recipe because, yeah, I can I can do that
for X amount of time, but once I stop, I'm going to stop completely, you know, and what I want
to do is I want to make all these changes and make it a long-term situation.
So I think the ways to well was a great call for me because it's calmed down a bunch of stuff.
It's taking a bunch of pain away, you know, so I can go and work out and not have to suffer for two or three hours afterwards, you know.
You know, I'm still picking up injuries because I've got to face the fact I'm 61.
Yeah.
Like the other day I'm doing my catanasaur trying to get this freaking move going on.
I freaking tore the tendon here on the ulnar.
So that's going to be bad for sword fighting.
But I'm trying to fix that without having to have a surgical.
How bad is it torn?
It's only a little bit, really, you know.
Okay.
You just got to make sure you don't overuse it while it's healing.
Can you brace it?
The problem I've got is I've got X amount of time to claim the skill.
And either way, right, if I do the rehab exercises without doing surgery, if it fails, I'm now falling right on production and, you know, of a retorn or something, right?
But I can help you with that.
Just do the skill slowly.
Yeah.
Here's the thing about skills.
skills that you learn slowly, you can translate into high speed quickly because you develop a neural
pathway. So instead of using an actual sword, use a foam sword. Use like one of those little
fucking noodle things that people put in the pool. Use that. So you just develop them. When I was
teaching martial arts, one of the things that I always tell people is don't try to do it quickly.
When I show you something, I want you to do it slowly. It's exactly what I did. I'm in a car park
and we were talking about the speed of something
and I went oh yeah so you get
and I went oh fuck
but I just put my sword away
and I kept the conversation going
didn't mention it but I got home and I was like
oh fuck
you rushed you didn't warm up
yeah well the thing is we were warm
but it was the thing that I just
just in that split second
I thought I wonder what it's like to go full speed
and I did it
and I just like no way too early
but you're absolutely right
pace is deceptive
If you learn something
That's like that old-fashioned
Sort of stuff with the karate
I first did when I was a kid
You know
They aim for you to do 10,000 of something
Before you have to use it
In an actual
Competitive fight
You know
Yeah people who train people with guns
Have a saying
Slow is smooth
Smooth as fast
Right
Yeah
Yeah
You don't want herky jerky movements
And with martial arts
And specifically sword fighting
It's there's very specific
movements that you're learning and if you learn those movements slow as you speed up you'll be
going along the right pathway and when I would teach people kicks in particular because it's a
weird thing to learn how to kick something like you've got to do it slowly because if you try to
muscle it you're going to develop a bad habit that's going to keep you from achieving full power
because you want a proper technique yeah and you have to process where your balance is
yeah you know what you how you're pushing your force about how you retain yeah
You know, the ability to reset.
Yeah.
Jiu-Jitsu as well.
People that learn by drilling, they get way better, way quicker.
By doing it flowing and doing it more easy and play.
Like the graces always say, keep it playful.
Yeah.
Well, the thing is, I know all this stuff, but I was in such a point of weariness
that I was just trying to please people.
And so I mucked myself up.
And, you know, but I've got a bit of time now for it to heal.
and for me to start and actually do like I like to do.
Have you visited Brigham while you're here?
Yeah, I just saw I missed it.
Okay, great.
Yeah, he's looking great.
Yeah, he looks great, right?
He's looking good.
He'll look you up.
The new place.
Now, here's the thing.
We talk about this, and your listeners are probably, you know, it's expensive.
No two ways about it.
So it's possibly not at everybody's grasp what the sort of things that I'm doing.
But I think, I'm not sure if this is absolutely right, but I think, you know, one,
of his sort of fervent ambitions, Brigham, is to make it more available.
Yes.
You know, because this should be, this is cutting edge medicine.
Yes.
You know, if we can sort of write things in our bodies with an injection as opposed to an operation.
You know, the problem I had in my left shoulder, I go and see my shoulder surgeon who
fixed it while I was doing Cinderella Man.
And so I did two operations with this guy, one in 2001 and the second one in 2000 and
four. But it's always had a sort of problem. And he did say at the time after the second
operation that he had to cut a few corners and it would probably cause me problems later on in
life. So I probably went to see him about five or six years ago. And he said, okay, so this
shoulder is at a point of arthritis now. What we have to do is we have to cut through the muscle
bar. We have to pop out the humal head of your arm bow. We have to shave off the top of the
Humulhead and then we have to put a carbon fiber cap and then we have to put it back in
sew everything back up you got about 12 months of rehab right just sounds wrong you know
it just sounds wrong it's like you know so this process that I've been going through with
brigham basically having the effect of layering so I can now see that if the arthritis was that
deep it's now this deep you know it's still there
I haven't solved it yet, but I'm giving my body what it needs to make it better.
Also, there's new breakthroughs almost every week.
Right.
And these new breakthroughs, they're able to achieve the, they're growing actual cartilage on people that were bone on bone.
Right.
So they're developing new methods to regenerate tissue.
That's the cushioning in between your knees and your elbows and all these things that were,
And shoulders that were requiring people to get those horrific things,
putting an artificial joint in place because everything is so arthritic.
That's one of the things that does trouble me greatly for this country.
Health and medical systems to benefit everybody.
Something has perverted here where, you know, the drug,
that I might need that I can buy for $50 for a month supply in Australia is two and a half
thousand dollars for a month here.
Yeah.
Come on, man.
I know.
What's going on?
It's crazy.
You know, and where's, see, you've got all these elected representatives here and this
country's got, you know, a lot, you know.
That's what you should be working on, man.
Yeah, but they can't.
Because everybody's got their hands tied by their back.
Yeah, they're all got, including the media.
That's the crazy things, the amount of money they spend on.
advertising for the media that really just serves the purpose of now the media can't
criticize the pharmaceutical drug companies yeah so interesting because you know I get back here
as you know my girlfriend's from New Orleans and you know we're sitting and watching TV
here and she's now seeing America from the outside because she spends most of the time
traveling with me and we don't spend that much time in within America you know we live
in Australia but we've been I've been working mainly in in in Europe the last
few years. So she's now coming back to her country, but she's got fresh eyes. And she's sitting there
the other night. She was watching something. She came out and she said, I've just watched like 12 ads
for drugs. Just one after the other, after the other, after the other, you know. What's this tiny little
problem that you might have? Or if I can say it in a certain way to make you think that you've got
it, bang, I've got a drug for it. Bang, bang, bang, you know. And yeah, I mean, 600,000 plus
people in this country in the next 12 months will go bankrupt because of their medical bills.
You know how many people will go bankrupt in Australia because of their medical bills in the next
12 months?
Zero.
Zero.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's one of the biggest problems we have.
You know, and the idea that you would let that happen and not do anything about it because
you're bought and paid for by these enormous companies is kind of insane.
It's insane.
and they're trying they're trying to do something about that you know and rfk juniors fighting an uphill battle
trying to uh do something about that but it's a captured industry yeah yeah and you know
know the fact that the largest western economy is punishing its citizens in that way yeah
just beggars belief that's crazy that health care isn't a
principal thing. Because if we're not
looking after ourselves and aiming for the
longest life, what's the point of
the human existence kind of thing?
So that should be a
principle. Everybody's health should be
a principal focus of our
elected representative. Well said.
Russell Crow, you're the fucking man.
Thank you for being here.
Joseph, Joseph. Always great to see you, sir.
It's always great to talk to you.
Continued success and enjoy your vacation.
Cheers, mate. All right, brother.
Bye everybody. And see Nure.
It's amazing and all the other films when they come out.
Bye, everybody.
