The Joe Rogan Experience - #396 - Stefan Molyneux

Episode Date: September 23, 2013

Stefan Molyneux is a Canadian philosopher. He runs the #1 philosophy show on the internet, Freedomain Radio, and also runs a very popular YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot

And Stefan Molyneux, if I'm correct, that's your name, right? That is pretty damn good. I mean, you would not believe the deviations. I think some people just cough it up as a Klingon hairball. I don't know what the hell they're doing with my name. Stefan Molyneux! It's French, correct? Yeah, but it's like French French, not like Quebec French.

Oh, okay. What is the difference between Quebec French and French French? Well, you know, like the Queen and Cockney. That's sort of the difference, right? So Quebec French is like the gutter, at least by the French, they're considered to be the gutter French. How rude. I know. They're very nice people.

How rude. Yeah, they're very nice people indeed. And for the French to look down on people after the Second World War takes a lot. Anyway. For folks listening to this, we're in Toronto right now. This is the first time I've met Stephan. I met him just a few moments ago down in the lobby, but I've seen a lot of your Internet videos. And I was particularly impressed with several of them, but really the Trayvon Martin one.

I think you covered that better than anyone I saw online, on TV, in the media. You gave a real, you know, the quote, the Fox fair and balanced, you give a real fair and balanced approach to that subject. And to me personally, as a human being, that was one of the most frustrating events of our day, not just because a young man lost his life, not just because of the race baiting that went on with it, but the cloudy, muddy thinking that I felt was perpetrated by the media and by politicians and by all these people that were looking to capitalize on that event. The thinking was so disingenuous and they were showing these photos of him when he was like a fucking baby.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it was really confusing stuff to me. And actually, if you looked at George Zimmerman, over time, the pictures got whiter and whiter. Like, they actually applied photo retouching to make him look whiter. Really? Oh, yeah. I mean, it was like Gestapo-style propaganda. It was just wretched.

Wow. I didn't know that they did that. And, you know, they edited his 911 call, right? Really? Yeah. So Zimmerman called, and he said, there's some suspicious guy rolling around the neighborhood. Right. And then the dispatcher said, what is his race? And he said, well, I think he's black. And NBC edited out the question. So it sounded like there's this suspicious guy

rolling around the neighborhood. I think he's black. Like he just saw... Wow. But he was actually responding to a question. They edited that out. The woman lost her job, and he's now suing NBC for defamation

because they edited it to make him sound like a racist. Well, you know, I don't know if it's really bright for him to be involved any further in the legal system, but I think, you know, what they did was, it was horrendous. It was very strange. It was very strange to watch. You know what my approach, and, you know,

you always say we want to live in a colorblind society, and I think that would be great. So for me, I always try to, try and look at it like, well, what if he wasn't black? What if he was just

some other white guy? What if they were both black? Or what if they were both rainbow-colored with dolphin heads? I don't know, right? But what if it had nothing to do with the sort of black energy around race, the negative energy around race? And so for me, I really just wanted to look at it like, you know, that Joe Friday thing, you know, what are the facts? What are the facts? What are the facts? Because I really

have striped, striven, and it's hard to do in this culture, to just treat people like color doesn't matter. And that means you don't get to play the race card. Yeah. And I think it really would be great if we could achieve that. Yeah. But it seems so hard for people to get to. Well, it's too common. It's like it's almost it's just a natural part of our culture.

That pattern has been so firmly established. That path has been so deeply carved that people just slide right into it yeah well I wonder to you know this this horrible shooting that just happened in the Navy yeah in Washington Alexis I wonder I there's no proof of this yet so all bullshit hypotheticals but I wonder if this guy was a black guy and apparently he had a real chip on his shoulder about you know I'm not gonna get ahead because they hate me the white he hates me and all that he had real chip on his shoulder about, you know, I'm not going to get ahead because they hate me, the whitey hates me and all that. He had a real chip on his shoulder about being black and trying to get ahead in a white world or whatever. I wonder if the degree to which they did not intervene in his obviously escalating mental health problems was because they were afraid that he was going to launch some complaint about racism or something like that.

I wonder if that actually scares people off from dealing with people just like they're human beings because they're afraid of that card getting pulled and then getting dragged into something god-awful. Yeah, well, it's almost like we're still responding to the echoes of the imbalance of the past, the slavery era echoes and the civil rights era echoes of the 50s and 60s. It's almost like we're still not even, the ship hasn't, we haven't made it level yet, you know. It's almost like that's why this stuff is still tolerated. It's very confusing to me, though, when it's so obvious and so blatant like it was in this case. It's also very frustrating to me because as a person who deals with a lot of martial artists and a lot of people with anger issues who have become you know really incredible members of society and

really admirable human beings people who've learned to harness this this frustrated energy that a lot of young men have if they grow up in confused households or whether they're absentee parents or bad neighborhoods or whatever the factors are that lead them to be these angry people that can be channeled and it can be channeled into a way that develops character and it doesn't happen so when i see a guy like trayvon martin do what he does and and get shot and die and all this i see a massive loss of potential just as a human being, a young human being. You know, a young human being that commits crimes and does bad things when they're 18 is not even necessarily a bad person. What they are more than anything

is just misused potential and misguided. A human being is so incredibly complex. There's so many facets and aspects to being a person and developing as a productive member of society that it needs guidance. And most people don't get that guidance. And it's up to them to kind of find it. I mean, you see an unbelievable tragedy like that. and the steps and the other possibilities that might have happened, early intervention, some teacher somewhere, some relative or someone who would have just seen something going off the rails and really stepped in and made a difference. I think that tidal wave can be stopped early. I think once it gains real momentum, it's tough later on.

We can turn it around. But early intervention, really seeing people who are going off the rails and then really working to intervene, if we could get that down as a society, oh man, I think we'd live in a different world. We would. I absolutely agree with you. We would live in a different world. But it is very, very, very difficult to do. Incredibly difficult to pull someone out of that momentum,

the momentum of being a bad person and almost reveling in it, which is a big aspect of gangster rap and art culture. Well, you know, they've done some really interesting studies because just over the last 10 or 15 years, they can really see inside the brain. Like for the first time ever, these fMRIs, they can really see inside the brain. And they found people who've been identified as sadists and they show them pictures of people being hurt intentionally and their happy joy centers light up. Their little braingasms light up. That's so messed

up because it's like opposite planet. We've got this thing from religion. Everyone has a soul and we're all kind of equal, all made in the image of God and this and that and the other. But according to the people I've talked to and the research that I've done, there's some real predators among us who really are not kind of like us at all. If somebody sees some cat being driven over and he giggles and finds that really quite thrilling, I don't even know what species that is. But I think there are enough people out there that they make life kind of difficult for the rest of us. Yeah, it's a real issue. It's very scary.

And how are these people becoming that? Is it because of nature or nurture? Is it because of, you know, abuse that they've personally suffered? Sort of stimulating? Seems to be. Yeah. Yeah, well, so, I mean, this is the fascinating thing about epigenetics, right? So, I mean, when I was a kid growing up, there was this nature versus nurture, like, you got your

genes, that's what you're born with, right? And then maybe you can influence it a bit with nature. But what they're finding out now is that genes turn on and off depending on experience. So they found, like, if you have a particular gene and you're a boy and you are physically abused as a child, almost for certain you're going to end up, you know, on the bad side of things. Like, you're going to end up violent, aggressive, criminal, in jail, whatever, right? Now, if you don't have that gene you're abused, likelihood, but it's less. And so certain genes for aggression get turned on and strengthened based upon your experiences.

You can end up like twins who grew up in different households can end up with different genetics based on their environment. So that's what's so important about, you know, something I focus a lot on is the parenting, parenting, parenting. It seems to me so many people are out there and they're just so messed up. Like you just you can't rewind and you can't send them down a different path. But if you kind of look at the next generation, the next generation, what if we could get the percentage of people spanking their children down from 90%? I mean,

it seems so weird in the 21st century that that's how parents are really focused. Is it still 90%? Depending on where you count it, 80-90%. It's less so in Europe. Like in Sweden, I think it's been banned since like 1973. And you all know what a hellhole Sweden is. They're, yeah, they're doing fine. But yeah, it's still 80 to 90 percent in, well, it's legal here. It's legal in America. From 2 to 12, you can hit a child in Canada

legally just not in the face and not with an implement. So it's just, and of course these are the most vulnerable, tender, helpless, dependent, you know, lack of freedom members of society. And, but it's, you know, it's hard to see how our weird society that we have. You had this great bit last night, go see the show, if anyone has listened to this is my show. We did this great bit, like what if space aliens come down and try and understand, you had Kim Kardashian, which of course is tough enough. But what if they tried to understand our culture? It wouldn't make much sense. But you realize that the hierarchies and everything that we have, the wars, the prisons, for prisons you need prison guards.

For wars you need soldiers. You can't get healthy, happy, well-adjusted people to go out and do that kind of stuff. So I think our whole society relies upon the maltreatment of children. And if we didn't have that, a lot of people who've got a lot of money and power right now would kind of find themselves out in the cold. Yeah, I don't necessarily think that it's engineered that way, but I certainly think it takes advantage of the situation at hand. Yeah, I don't think there's a secret cabal, you know, it's a secret handshake, but, you know, lions get together to hunt gazelles. They don't

have to plot it out in some smoky room ahead of time. It's just their instincts to go get the gazelle. That does get sort of hypothesized though, right? That that is what's happening, that they're trying to keep people down with a lack of education. That's why there's such little funding for schools, and they're trying to keep people poor, because poor people don't raise their kids correctly, and so on and so forth, and then it continues. I think we have an instinct for domination as human beings, and I think animals do, too. They don't have secret cabals of Rockefellers in smoky rooms organizing everything. I think we just have an instinct for domination and it plays itself out.

But I don't think it's something written down and handed out in secret Braille scrolls or something like that. I agree with you. I think we also have an instinct for escalation. And no matter what, we always want more. If we make $500 a week, we want seven. You know, if we control the Middle East, we want to control Africa. It's just a natural thing that if we do a certain thing, we will continue to do it and try to push the envelope further and further until we hit some sort of a wall or resistance. And I think in America, we are starting to see that wall build up and gain momentum. We are starting to see that wall build up and gain momentum.

The wall of resistance against the Syria invasion was bigger than anything that I had ever seen in my entire life. I'd never seen a university across the board, the entire country go, fuck this. This is crazy. This might be the first war that popular resentment and resistance has actually stopped against all the financial, military-industrial complex momentum that is in these states, which is huge. I don't know if you know the fact that the people who voted yes for the war in Syria get 86% more funding for the military-industrial complex than the people who voted no. They're just voting to send money and blood to the donors, right? I mean, it's horrible. But the fact that it might actually be pushed back, and the fact that

the Russian guy, Putin, is telling the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize to not have a war is, I mean, what kind of upside-down universe are we living in, you know? Not only that, but Putin said a really interesting thing about claiming that citizens of the United States are exceptional and how dangerous that is.

And about how we are all just human beings. And to have anybody established as being the exceptional people is a very dangerous idea. And for the United States to sort of promote this idea that we as Americans are different. Like, that's, he's absolutely right. If an individual displays that characteristic, they're called entitled or narcissistic, which means that just good things should come to me no matter what. And if they're not brought to me, I'm just going to go take them. And that's a really dangerous personality trait,

but somehow it's elevated through the magic of patriotism into, like, wonderful stuff. I find it fascinating. I mean, and as I get older, I find it even more fascinating because a guy like Obama, I'm 46, a guy like Obama is just a couple of years older than me. So it's not like this thing where when I was a boy and I would look at the president, yeah, they were way up there, they were different. They were always a part of this system already, political system, educational system, skull and bones. But this Obama guy was the first guy that doesn't fit that mold to me. And it's close to my age.

And, you know, the concept of me being a president is just the most ridiculous thing of all time to me. But this guy is essentially my obviously more educated than me, but essentially my age. to me, but this guy is essentially my, obviously more educated than me, but essentially my age. And I find it amazing how he has gone from being this political outsider, this rebel, this guy who's going to change this and close Guantanamo Bay, and then all of a sudden he gets in and he's exactly the same thing that we've seen time and time again over the last eight years. He's the same person as Bush.

And more. And more. More drones, more detainees. And the only reason he ended the war in Iraq was quite fascinating and tragic, if you have hope for the guy. The reason that they had to pull their troops out of Iraq was that Iraq was going to start holding the troops criminally responsible for what they were doing, because they were facing such resistance from the population for the occupation. They finally said, OK okay you guys don't get to get out of jail free card anymore we're going to start applying international military or military law to your

troops and obama's like okay fire up the airplanes we're going to pull those buggers out because they're going to be subject to the rule of law and they had to get them out that way well how about what he wrote on his own website the changeorg website, about whistleblowers and then removed it. He was called out on it after the Edward Snowden case. They said, what did you say about whistleblowers? What did you say about whistleblowers who were exposing illegal activities when you were running for president? And now here you are, the most, as far as presidents go, there's never been a president that has been harder on whistleblowers than Obama. Never. Nor have there been more revelations and more important revelations as

far as the direction of society and privacy in the United States that was exposed by these whistleblowers that has a massive impact on our culture, massive impact on who has the right. Do I have a right to send a naked photo to a friend as a joke, or is that going to be held against me if I don't pay my taxes or if I have a dispute with the government over a certain issue? Are you going to pull things out of emails because someone writes bomb in an email as a joke? Does that get flagged? And as a comedian, that's a word you may well use.

Are you going to flag? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, not now. I defragged. I don't know what you're going to call it now. You can't use that word anymore. Yeah, I mean, but there's a lot of hot words. And to me, that's a dangerous thing.

I think what we're in right now as far as the whole privacy thing is this strange transitionary period to a point where I think ultimately there will be no privacy. And I think – I don't think that's bad because, look, if we were all really cool and everyone was really nice to each other, privacy wouldn't be as important. It becomes important when people violate privacy and there's stalkers and there's people that fuck with people and people that have agendas to mess with people's lives. But ultimately, privacy, we're dealing with information. And the trend in society and technology seems to be the dissolving of boundaries between people and information. And I think it's been amazing as far as education. When you look at your phone, you can Google something,

you can have answers to any question. I mean, we live in an amazing time when it comes to that. But that trend, you know, we always talked about escalation. It's just what we do. That trend will escalate further and further, and I think ultimately it'll escalate to the point where there'll be no more secrets. Yeah, I mean, the technology that we're having this conversation, we can broadcast it to like millions of people. I got like 50 million downloads of my show, which for a philosophy show is

incredible, right? But there's this huge race. It's like these two bullet trains going across the landscape, right? And the technology of control versus the technology of illumination, I think are really, really battling. And we've got to keep pushing the gas to stay ahead because we've got this incredible thing. You mentioned it in a show recently, like the gatekeepers are down. We can have this conversation, broadcast it directly to people. Nobody has to tell us what we can talk about. Nobody tells us what words we can use or what concepts we can explore,

anything like that, which is unprecedented, except maybe for the Gutenberg Press in the 15th century when they printed the Bible and started handing it out to peasants in a language they could actually understand, because before that you had to know Latin and all that kind of crap. So they got to read the Bible for the first time, and they're like, holy shit, are you kidding me? This is in here, this is in here. They started to develop their own thoughts about it, and that broke down the monopoly of the Catholic Christendom, which had been around since the Dark Ages.

So when you get information to people, you fragment the central narrative of a society, which is great. You know, that's what you want. Central narratives are incredibly dangerous. You know who had a great central narratives? The Nazis. They had wonderful central narratives about the role of the white race to dominate all the other races and Germany's manifest destiny in Europe.

Communists had a great story about the rise of the proletariat, destruction of the middle classes, and the end of the bourgeoisie. Narratives that are really well inflicted and universal are incredibly dangerous. All the lemmings run the same way. So we've got this massive air strike on a central narrative which comes directly out of this technology, which is where you can get exposed to viewpoints that you never would have been exposed to before.

Do you think before the internet, American media would be playing anything that Vladimir Putin said about Syria? You'd never even know the guy said anything about it. Do you think before the internet, American media would be playing anything that Vladimir Putin said about Syria? You'd never even know the guy said anything about it. Totally right. Now you can get it all, and you can connect with people. I want to talk about the comedy stuff, where I think the connection stuff

is really a good theme in the show last night. But there's a race, because the degree to which we can shatter the central narrative and individuate what we're doing in the world is they're racing with us to try and control and make us afraid to communicate with each other and afraid to get to the truth. I really view that as a pretty important race over the next ten years.

Yeah, I agree. I think the real issue in this world is information and then, of course, the big one is the monopolization of resources. And the monopolization of resources, which I believe, I think resources should be a global asset for human beings. I don't think anybody should be able to control the amount of oil. I don't think people should be able to control water. I think it's ridiculous. The idea that a group of human beings decide to control water, I feel like that's an act almost of terrorism, of social terrorism.

The idea of keeping water from people that need water. the idea of keeping water from people that need water you know the idea of keeping oil from people i mean if we all agree that we're going to use oil the idea that one person can decide you know who owns this shit that has been in the ground for millions and millions of years just because you planted a flag on a patch of dirt it's fucking craziness but that's where all the influence comes from. The influence comes from this massive amount of money that you can gain by controlling, monopolizing natural resources. And it's just like when they used to be able to monopolize the information that was received. of what information got out to people when we ran newspapers. That's a dangerous aspect of our world that is eventually, I think, going to crumble under the weight of its own bullshit.

I just don't see how it can continue. I don't see how people can continue to live the way we're living right now in the face of the information that we're being presented with. The great thing is, once you go outside and narrate it, for me, I feel pretty retarded most of the time.

Like, I'm not a dumb guy, but I see so much information out there. So many things, so many stories. I could do all this research for my shows and stuff like that. I feel like I barely scratched the surface because there's so much information out there. And with a central narrative,

you feel like, you know, well, you know, we're Catholics or we're Jews or we're Jesuits, so we got it down. We got the whole thing down, right? But the great thing is once you shatter that central narrative, you realize there's such a vast amount of conflicting information and opinions and perspectives. And I don't know what the hell is true half the time. I'm lucky to get 10% of it. So I think that it breeds a kind of humility in us that is the opposite of the desire to dominate.

The desire to dominate is, well, I know what the hell people should do. And by God, I'm going to make them do it. I know they shouldn't smoke marijuana. And if they fucking smoke marijuana, I'm going to round them up with cats in blue uniforms and throw them in a prison cell, you know, where 200,000 times a year they get raped. I mean, in America, more men get raped than women. You know, it's all prison stuff, right? So when you feel like you just know how the hell everyone else should live. The way we should help the poor is take money from these guys by force, give it to a giant bureaucracy and have little drops of it drip down to the poor to keep them in independent states so they'll keep voting for

more and more government. If you really feel like you know exactly how people should live and what they should do, then you've no problem bringing out the airstrikes of the military and the police and the prison system. But if you're humble and you realize that we're pretty much retarded about everything, there's a few things that I'm good at, but most of it, you know, I'm not going to drill my own teeth. I'm not going to do my own appendix. I barely even clean my own house, right?

But once you get exposed to a vast amount of contradictory information, you realize just like we're all kind of stupid. And that's why we should be humble and not order each other around at the point of a gun which was so addictive to doing these days chance we can add a great quote about that about the bonfire of enlightenment and the uh what the as the bonfire of enlightenment grows brighter the surface area of ignorance becomes more illuminated and just you realize the more you learn the the more there is to learn, and then it becomes impossible. Human knowledge doubles every 18 months these days. There's just no possibility that anyone can be anywhere close to mastering any significant portion of it. It's great, though.

I think that's great because I think there's a real danger in claiming the kind of arrogance that comes from especially very highly educated people in specific areas. If you're very highly educated in a specific area, they oftentimes are arrogant about things that they're ignorant about. And it's interesting to watch that become an impossibility. You're faced with such a massive amount of data that's just online, on my Twitter, every

day I'm exposed to dozens and dozens of fascinating stories. We should spend a week or two in each one. We don't because we've got to live. We've got to go make a buck or whatever, right? But I just love to dig into all this stuff and I'd love to learn every language there is and I'd love to know every song that was, you know, but you can't. I would like to get at least a small grasp of what the fuck they're talking about when

they're talking about quantum physics. I would really just... That's never going to happen. I think once you understand quantum physics, it changes on you. It's one of those things. Yeah. Grab fog. Feynman's quote was it,

if you think you understand quantum physics, then you definitely understand quantum physics. I've read so many articles on it. I don't know what... Well, I'll explain it to someone and they'll say,

this is an amazing thing that just came out today, but I don't know what it means. Some geometric object that explains the interactions of particles. As long as my shoes don't turn into sharks that. Some geometric object that explains the interactions of particles. As long as my shoes don't turn into sharks that eat my feet because of some quantum flux, I'm okay with it.

I know it does some creepy shit deep down. I know that also, right, like by the time it comes to the level of your sense, like it all cancels out and you, you know, this is still going to be a table tomorrow. But deep down in the roots of matter, some really crazy shit is going on. Yeah, subatomic particles blinking in and out of existence, existing simultaneously in two different places, in motion and still at the same time.

Like, what are you talking about? Basically what they're saying is that the heart of matter itself, the smallest measurable portion of reality is magic. I mean, that's really what they're saying. You know you're going to get emails from physicists saying, don't call it magic. It's not magic. It's just a little confusing. Thank you for correcting me.

It's magic to us, but then these microphones are kind of magic to me. Look, these little magic penises that record everything we say. It's amazing. I had Dr. Amit Goswami on my podcast, who's one of the great quantum physicists of our age, who is just impossible to understand i mean it just he would just go he's gone so far into the bushes that he's talking magic and i mean it's just it's so strange but that is the accepted smallest measurable part of the universe

and it's amazing when you really start to think about what we know about nature, nature being fractal in so many different ways, the universe itself being fractal, and then when you get down to the smallest measurable components of reality itself, being this strange fiction almost world, it's so bizarre. It's impossible to know everything. fiction almost world. It's so bizarre. It's impossible to know everything. So I think this age of enlightenment that we're in right now is really unprecedented. I don't think there's ever been a time like this. Yeah. And once you break down the narrative, right? So my boring education is all in history of philosophy and science. And, you know, in

the Renaissance and the Enlightenment is when people said, well, God doesn't answer anything. You know, God is a barrier to an answer. Because the moment you say God did it, it's like, oh, we got an answer. God did it. And then it becomes something that's blasphemous to question. And so when people began to doubt the God thing, then they began to be able to explore, right? They began to say, okay, well, if God didn't do it, what the hell, how did we get here? You know, what is the world?

What is the sun? How does it work? And all that. I think we're kind of getting there in a really painful, difficult way. I think we're kind of getting there because we've got this narrative. And in the future, I guarantee you, it's going to be completely insane to look back and say, people ever believed this shit? I mean, you know, the guys who cut their own balls off to go join that comet, you know, you look back and you say, wasn't there someone who said, when you're bringing out the pink and shears and taking off your tighty-whities,

there's got to be someone who's saying, we're kind of going in the wrong direction here. But I think in the future they can look back at us like that and say, what were they thinking? We have these geographical areas called countries, and in those countries we have a tiny group of people with all the guns in the world, and they tell everyone else what to do.

And somehow we think, this is going to work out fine. I can't believe I wasn't recording. I wasn't recording up until just now. Oh, I have. Luckily. Yeah, I have. I have to get the first, whatever, minutes of it. 27 minutes. We got it there. Folks who are listening to this, we'll normalize this. Here's where the voice quality

goes up considerably. Yeah, I suck at technology. I'm sorry. I can't believe that this wasn't recording. Well, we just saw it again. We're warmed up. Trayvon Martin, blah, blah, blah, quantum physics. You know, that's where we solved everything. We solved a lot.

27 minutes. That was it. We had the whole fucking thing down. Well, I'll make sure it gets normalized. But the, you know But I think the enormity of the times we live in, it's really easy for us to not notice it. It's so normal to just be able to call someone on your cell phone. It's so normal to be able to get on the internet and just get information. I think the enormity of this as far as what that's like in comparison to having to go to the library and to getting your education from a school, which you're getting, you know, if you're taking science, you're getting it from this professor,

and this professor is going to recommend these books. And there may be a completely opposing point of view that you're never going to be exposed to. Whereas if you Google something, you know, and then Google that phrase and then debunked. Yeah. You know, man, I can't tell you how many fucking times I've had someone send me something and then I'll say, Google what you just sent me and then debunked. And then let's talk. And if you haven't read that stuff, then don't talk to me because if you only get one

slide, it's not any side at all. Yeah, you're not. You're getting this weird sort of confirmation bias-y thing that exists. I've heard that argument as to why the internet is bad, that one of the bad things about the internet is you seek out like-minded people and you sort of confirm each other's biases and get together and pat each other on the back. Sort of, yes, but I feel like those are just little camps outside of the wilderness of information, which is New York City. You might have a tent where all you assholes get together and say that the Earth is 6,000 years old.

But you're an hour's walk from Manhattan. You're not going to survive. Well, I don't remember all those people talking about a unity of narrative and seeking out like-minded people really complaining about, say, the church that I grew up in. Or the public school that I grew up in where I was taught that governments are necessary, beneficial, wonderful. And we fought the Second World War to defend against national socialism and we won. We already had that narrative. Now people are fragmenting it into their own narratives. But that's still way better than one monolithic nonsense pile that we're all supposed to imbibe, right? Yes. Yeah. And it's also like, as a human being, what we have been given is this

insane amount of potential in the mind and in the body's ability to manipulate matter and nature, but yet we don't have a real direction book. And we're sort of figuring out the abilities of this mind and the possibilities of society and our interactions with each other and the accumulation of information that we can all rely on each different aspect of our culture to contribute, whether it's history or science or mathematics, and all this stuff comes together, and the potential of it is almost unfathomable. It's almost impossible to really, truly wrap our heads around, and we only figure out how to do things right by trial and error. We have to fuck up and then go, well, we can't do that again. And we have to drop a nuclear bomb and go, well, that's a disaster. And we have to, you know, we have this incredible device, the human mind, and we have very little idea of how to utilize it properly, or even less control or engineer thought into how to develop people properly and to try to enforce that as a culture or

to recommend that or try to just... I mean, when you see the president on television, what do they always deal with, the leader of the free world? Well, they deal with conflict. They're constantly dealing with conflict and loss and finances, and they're dealing with all these things that are important to people that are developed. But how much thought is actually given to developing people? How much thought, I mean, when was the last time you heard the President of the United States talk about, what we really need to do is focus on the lowest rung of our ladder, with the weakest link in our chain of human

beings, and strengthen that. Wouldn't we be a better country if we had less losers? Wouldn't we? I mean, isn't that something we should concentrate on? But it never gets brought up. There's never talk about enriching poor neighborhoods or setting up community centers, finding ways to help young children that don't have guidance, bring in people. And have fucking companies like Halliburton fund it. You want to make a lot of money? Rebuild Detroit. You know? Fuck Iraq. Rebuild Detroit. people and have fucking companies like halbert and fund it you want to make a lot of money rebuild detroit you know fuck iraq rebuild detroit fuck going to countries and blowing them up and rebuilding them right concentrate on what's already fucked up right here right and it's

never done and it's it's we we we look at it in terms of you know it's almost like going from presidential run to presidential run. It's like these four-year terms that they do. In a way, it's almost like the idea of having a president and having these small four-year terms. It's like you're always going to concentrate on just problems as far as conflict and money. You're always going to concentrate on what's on the tip of people's tongues all the time, but not on the engineering of society. Yeah, it's all here and no prevention. Yes.

It's all just plain whack-a-mole with whatever fucking crisis is coming up at the moment, and it's not how are we going to make it so that society can be sane in 40 years. We don't care about any of that stuff. I mean, that's why there's a national debt. That's why there's war, because it's just about getting elected. Like the Federal Reserve just said, well, we're going to keep buying $85 billion worth of U.S. Treasuries, even though we said we were going to stop, because there's going to be an election coming up. And why do they care if they pass the bill to the unborn? I mean, they're going

to be long gone. So we have this weird society that does these really narrow time slices, which is just all about whack-a-mole and satisfying the noisiest people and keeping those people. But the actual work of preventing in the long run, which is so easy. The science is so easy. It's so simple. You know, reason with your children. Don't hit your children.

Treat them like they're reasonable human beings. I mean, I'm a dad. I've been a stay-at-home dad for like four and a half years. Never had to raise my voice at my daughter. Never had to yell at her. Never had to hit her. Never had to have a time out. We just reason things through.

They can start doing that at about 18 months of age, the studies show. They can start to reason. They can start to negotiate. And if we had that, if we had that as a society, I can virtually guarantee you there would be almost no criminality. I agree, but don't you think

that there's an economic aspect to that that really can't be ignored? You have the ability to do that, and very few people do. That's a real issue is that so many people, you have a working mom and a working dad, and the kids, by the time they see their parents, they're ready to go to bed. I mean, it's 4 or 5 o'clock at night. If they're lucky, most of the time they see their parents after work, so it's 6, 7. And they've been in there since 8 o'clock in the morning and they're exhausted and everyone they got to feed them

bathe them they don't really have time for quality interaction it's very difficult the idea that people have been sold that you can raise a child and have a full career i think it's madness you can't do it you can't do it yeah and and this idea that daycare just kind of you put them in daycare and that's fine um it's just not true i mean statistically factually scientifically kids who are in daycare for more than 20 hours a week experience exactly the same symptoms as those who've been abandoned by their mothers like it's it's they experience maternal abandonment at a very fundamental level it changes their neurological system it changes their stress responses changes their cortisol levels permanently you measure it

10 20 years later it's still the same so this idea that you can just march people off to work, hey, it's great for the government. I mean, the government loves it when both parents work because then they've got two taxes, two tax bases, two tax cattle out there spitting money into the treasury. Plus, then they've got to put the kid in daycare, so then there's somebody else who they can tax who's taking care of the kids. So the government loves it.

It really ups the GDP because everyone's working. They get much more taxes. And the problems of having kids in daycare, well, they get shuttled down to the next generation and who the hell cares about that? Kids don't vote, right? Yeah, but what's the solution to that? I mean, it's going to be so difficult. Sacrifice. Sacrifice. You know, I mean, people go to war. You know, I mean, millions and millions of people went to war in the Second World War and the First World War. I mean, marching into hailstorms of bullets and typhus and all that kind of horrible stuff that went on. You know, when we say to people, I say to people all the time, you know, if you went to college, you know, you lived like a dog. Most people live like dogs when they go to college

for four years because it was a good investment. Well, take that same approach. If you want to have kids, you don't both have to work. Just downsize. Get rid of the second car. We're not asking you to go fight Japanese in some godforsaken island in the Pacific. Just maybe move to a smaller house. Move to an apartment. Just a couple of years for the kids. Kids' personality is 90% done by the time they're four. So all you've got to do the first couple of years is just sacrifice. Have someone at home. Bre home breastfeed your child for God's sakes That's what nature intended and and sacrifice, you know So maybe you don't get the big-screen TV, but you will know what you get

It's like a happy child throughout your life and you get to develop a human being in the correct way Yeah, it's so easy for us to say, you know, my wife is a stay-at-home wife Stay-at-home mom and you know, we have we have three children, and we're very fortunate, and everything works out great. But in a unique financial situation, that can happen, whereas I have a lot of friends that are not in that situation. They're trying to raise children, and they're also trying to put them in daycare during the day, and the wife just went back to work because we have bills, and this and that,

and you see it, and it's not the way a child wants to develop. And it doesn't seem healthy. No. I mean, historically, you know, you put your kid in a backpack, you went out and whooped in the fields. You go hunting, you bring your kid with you. I mean, that's supposed to be, it's so weird in the 21st century to say children are supposed to be with their parents. You know, how did we ever drift away that that even needs to be said? What do you think that is? Do you think that's just a desire for materialism and some sort of a rationalization that you can go after both, that you can acquire all these things and keep up with the Joneses

and just have someone else take care of the busy work of taking care of your child while you do that? Is that what it is? Yeah. I think what happened was, and this sort of happened in the 60s and 70s, right? So in the 50s, this whole amazing series of labor-saving devices came out, which freed women from the endless drudgery of, you know, your dishwashers came out and laundry machines and vacuum cleaners and all that kind of stuff, right? So basically, a huge amount of work was done by machines now, which freed up women.

And of course, a lot of them were like, oh, okay, great. I'm going to go workforce whatever. But I think what's really been downgraded is the skills required to be a good parent. I mean, I've done some tough stuff in my life. I've built businesses. I started this crazy show and all that kind of stuff. Nothing to me is more exciting and challenging than being a dad. I mean, I know it's a cliche.

Everyone says it's a wonderful thing. But it really is an incredible thing to I know it's a cliche, and everyone's always, it's the most wonderful thing, but it really is an incredible thing to do, especially if you don't do any of the aggression stuff, because then you've got to come up with other stuff, right? Other ways of dealing with conflicts, other ways of dealing with, quote, bad behavior. It's really challenging. Now, if you're just spanking your kids and yelling at them,

I guess it's not that challenging, and a hell of a lot not fun, right? Because all you're doing is spending your whole day trying to control someone who doesn't want to be controlled. That's no fun. So I think that because we've got this hit them and put them in timeouts and send them to bed without dinner and yell at them or whatever, I mean, that's retarded. Anyone could do that.

You know, you can get an angry robot to do that, right? But if you don't do that stuff, then you have a really unique challenge of negotiating with someone who's three. I mean, how exciting is that? What an incredible challenge that is. But because we've still got the hitting and the yelling and all of that, it's retarded. And so people say, well, this is stupid and not fun, so I'm going to go to work. But it's only stupid and not fun because you're yelling and hitting.

If you didn't do that, it would be really engaging. And it's the most important aspect of our society, the most important aspect of our families, the most important aspect of our communities is developing good human beings. And it's one that we leave to everybody. We just go, look, I know you fucked your whole life up, but take care of this person. And that person will in turn transfer everything that you've taught them and any way that you've fucked them up or made them better. And they're going to go out into the world and spread that energy and it literally changes the tone of our entire society and culture.

And it's fascinating when you see different cultures all throughout the world, if you study the different ways they interact with their children, how vastly different the culture itself becomes because of these styles of interaction. And our culture, which is thought to be universally one of the most materialistic, selfish, childlike cultures, is one of the cultures that embraces this idea of the two parents working, the child care, this idea of how we've decided to promote becoming a human being is one of the most awkward, weird examples of it on earth. Could you imagine, Joe, could you imagine it's your anniversary? I know you got married a couple of years ago.

You've been with your wife a long time, right? Imagine it's your anniversary, and she calls you up and she says, Joe, it's our anniversary. We got out for a nice dinner. I got babysitter and you say, oh man, I can't believe what a cliche. I completely forgot. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh my God. That's so embarrassing. But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll call up someone we don't know and I'm going to pay the minimum wage to go out for dinner with you. Now they may not speak great English. You know, they may not speak great English. I mean, they've never met you before, but I'm sure it's going to be pretty much the same

as going out for dinner with me, your ever-loving husband. So let me just make that call to the agency to send out some half-broken English-speaking guy to go out for dinner with you, and it's going to be exactly the same. She'd be like, no, it's not the same, because you're my husband, and he's the same guy I don't even know. But why the hell would we think parenting is any different? I mean, how the hell do you replace the bond of you grew the child in your belly

and you breastfeed the child and you know that child? But I'm sure some minimum wage stranger who's rotating in and out of that job every four months is going to be exactly the same as a parent. It's not the same. And the consequences to society are significant. And it's very frustrating to me when I communicate with people that are, especially women that are single, that are thinking about having a child of their own. I've had so many... That's a good idea.

Yeah, it's... And I get it. I get that they want a child and I get that they want a child and that they can't find a man. I understand that it's hard to find someone that you're compatible with. But God damn, is that a terrible idea. It works sometimes. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you get lucky and you meet someone and somewhere along the line, you know, Some people fall 10 stories out of a building and walk away. That doesn't mean that that should be your next step.

Yeah. Engineered, to engineer it that way, though, is God, such a disaster. Statistically, right? I mean, statistically and factually, there's no single worse predictor for a kid's outcome than being from a single mom household. Wow. And I hate to say it because, again, there's lots of single moms out there really trying to do the right thing. Some single moms, like, husband got hit by a truck. Terrible.

And all the support, all the, you know. But the vast majority of it is didn't find the man or just ditched the man or whatever and it is catastrophic for kids. The statistics are horrendous. 80% of rapists come from a single parent household. 85% are murderers.

Again, not that they all turn out that way, but when you see these significantly negative elements, a lot of it gets traced back. There's this theory that says, economists kind of work this out fairly well. They say that if marriage rates had stayed at the 1970 levels, because marriage rates are really low these days, and marriage is not necessarily the same as two people committing to stay together while they raise a kid, but we would have almost no deficit

in government spending if marriage rates had stayed as they did in 1970, you know, when the vast majority of people got married, stayed married, and so on. Because marital disintegration, I mean, some people say it's all engineer and idea. I don't credit the ruling class with that much deviousness. I don't think it would be. No, but it is something that really has to be talked about, and particularly for boys. I mean, boys these days are having it real rough. You know, like the schools are really focused on girls and how girls learn. Really?

Oh, yeah. Well, the huge change has been boys like to learn hands-on. schools are really focused on girls and how girls learn. Really? Oh, yeah. How so? Well, the huge change has been boys like to learn hands-on. They like to learn viscerally. They don't like to just sit there and read about stuff or see the teacher do stuff on blackboards. And about 30 years ago, a bunch of feminists said, well, girls get shortchanged in school, and it's all designed for boys.

And they sort of really shifted the curriculum. And since then, boys have been just falling behind catastrophically. So 60% of people in universities and now girls and you know i think it's like nine times the number of boys are on these psychotropic brain killing meds really yeah because they just boys don't want to sit still all day but the society views girls as great and boys is like broken girls you know if we could just get them to be like the girls and sit quietly and you know with their legs crossed and all that. But boys are just getting it real rough in school these days.

And again, because they're growing up without dads, they don't have that role model of how to channel that aggression. And so, you know, it's real rough. And this is why they just get medicated so badly. And then it escalates. We talked about escalation. Escalates from there. You get one drug for ADHD and then you can't sleep.

So you get another drug for that. And then you start developing bipolar symptoms. You get another drug for that. And then you can't sleep so you get another drug for that and then you start developing bipolar symptoms you get another drug for that and then oh my god i think he's getting psychotic you get another drug for that next thing you know living in facility for the rest of your life it's monstrous and that's a huge issue in society the amount of money and the amount of influence that pharmaceutical drug companies have on our society the fact that this money is something that they count on. This is money that has been coming in and once you have a corporation that's used to acquiring

wealth, well, we have a bottom line. This is what we make and why are we making less now? They're not going to step in and say, listen, I think we need better for society. We enter into society so that we earn less money and sell less drugs. You can see a smoking crater where that CEO is and someone else has to be moved out and is going to do that.

And you talked about this in the show yesterday. What the fuck is a gator roll? Oh, a gator roll? When a gator grabs a hold of its prey, they roll. I'm not going to spoil the joke because you've got to see this. And I've got to tell you, I was haunted by that when I tried to sleep. I liked the idea of you spinning around in spite of it in your own making. It was like, oh my God, burn in my brain. There's not enough pot in the world.

Have you ever seen an alligator bite onto its brain? Yeah, they spin. They do a spin. They try and rip it out of the joint out of its socket or something. Okay, good. That has not helped my mental image to think of your mental image with an alligator. Now, Ty, that's just all kinds of people. People who don't know my joke are like, what the fuck are they talking about? But go see it, because it's worth breaking it. But you had this great bit where you're talking about pharmaceutical companies, well,

try masturbating with pot and stay awake. But I think there's something else too, which is that, why is tobacco legal and pot is not? Why is it never discussed? Why does it kill 500,000 people a year? And because tobacco is a factory found product, pot you can grow at home. Right?

So if you enable people to self-medicate, you know, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but self-medicate, right? Like, hey, I'm having trouble sleeping now. Smoke a bit of pot and you fall asleep, right? You can grow that shit at home, in your basement, in your backyard or whatever. There's no profit to anyone. So that stuff, like the stuff you can grow, tobacco, you can't grow tobacco in your backyard. Well, even if you did grow tobacco, you would have to have a license to do so.

Right, right, right. It's not like you can grow tomatoes. You can grow your own tomatoes, but when you deal with anything that affects your consciousness, you have to have a, you know, the government has to step in and allow you to do so. Which is, you can't just make your own booze. You can't make your own

moonshine. I mean, isn't it illegal? I mean, own booze. Oh, right, right. You can't make your own moonshine. Isn't it illegal? I mean, there's got to be some sort of regulations. It's like you craft beer making, right? But how does that work? Do you have to? Well, I think as long as you don't sell it, I mean, I think you can make your own stuff at home or whatever. But I think with tobacco, you need like a big, you know, there's going to be certain

places and a big crop and stuff like that in the process that you're just really hard to work. Pot you just grow it smoking. So I think it would be really tough because we measure economic productivity in this weird way. If someone gets sick, the GDP goes up. How is that sane? I mean, surely

sickness is a bad thing and the GDP should reflect a negative result, but they go spend a lot of money on treatments and suddenly it's like, woo, we're richer. And it's the same thing. If you then have people smoking pot that they've grown themselves your tdp is going to take a huge crater and then all these people are going to be out of work who supply all this horrible stuff to people and so on and i mean the way we measure

stuff now i mean it's just completely insane it forces everyone into these really really bad decisions yeah one of the one of the things you said that i really agree with about how boys are so much different than girls when it comes to learning. I just recently started volunteering at my daughter's school and she's in kindergarten and I watch boys do, you know, you volunteer like these tables set up and you have to, everyone has to put together this little book and cut these pieces out and put it in order. And you watch boys do it as opposed to girls. They're a different animal.

I mean, it's a completely different thing. They're almost like, they're so challenged. Like, the girls can just do, do, do, do, do. And they're doing it nicely and humming to themselves. The boys aren't cutting in the lines, and they're barely paying attention to what's going on. They want to run. They want to go do something. And it's like, that's how I felt growing up. I always felt like, I can't wait for this fucking

bell to ring so I can run out of here. And I thought at the time, well, obviously I'm not very smart and I'm not going to be good at school. And it wasn't that at all. But what it was, was I'm not designed for this. Like there is a society and this society is a broad spectrum of human beings and we have various tasks that we will do and we will be really good at and we'll have different occupations that we can choose and different ones suit different personalities, but

this fucking cookie cutter shit that they do in school, they want everyone to be the same way because that's all they have money for. That's all we have resources for. We have the ability to stick you in this class from 9 a.m. to whatever, 2 p.m., and do this stuff. And then we need you to listen, and then you go. And then you leave, and we give you a grade on it.

It's madness. The idea of that as an educational backbone, as an educational foundation for a human being, it's madness. No, it's nothing to do with our history. You know, there's two things that are the best predictors of empathy, right? Empathy is what we really, really need as a species. Like, we're fucked without empathy because we've got these weapons of mass destruction, we've got nuclear weapons, we've got... Like, if we don't really work on empathy as the most important resource. So the question is, how do you grow it? Two things seem to come up on the top of the list

for how to grow empathy. I would never have guessed them, so I'm asking you to try. The two things that rise to the top when it comes to developing empathy. Number one, the presence of a father. Isn't that interesting? Because men are considered to be less empathetic and women more empathetic. Presence of the father is the number one predictor for the development of empathy. Number two is free play in nature. Free play in nature.

My daughter is really into this right now. Like we have toads that live by our house, and we have a froggy pond not far away, and she's learning a lot about how to handle things delicately, how to play with them and all of that. She's great, great with animals. And free play in nature in the presence of a father. Now what's happened over the past 40 years in our society?

Kids don't get free play in nature anymore. Most of it's scheduled shit in the gym, you know, with the dance classes and all that. There's nothing wrong with those, but give them free play in nature, the glorious anarchy of childhood where it's just like, here's an afternoon, go do something, right? That's number one. And number two, of course, is that dads have vanished from

so many households. And this is why in the last 15 years, sociopathy, one of the most malignant forms of destructive personality traits, sociopathy has doubled in the last 15 years. I'm one of the most malignant forms of destructive personality traits sociopathy is done in the last 15 years I'm not sure what that term means what's so the people who grandiose zero conscience they use other people they're superficially charming but never keep their promises associate yeah so see if they have no they have no conscience at all and then no measurable conscience like you can show them the most horrifying stuff,

where you and I, our brains would light up like Christmas trees, right? And they just don't care. They just don't have any particular... And this has doubled in our society to the point where now between 1 in 25 and 1 in 20 people are sociopaths. I mean, it's terrifying. And it's a direct correlation between not growing up with a father and not being... Well, those are two significant risk factors.

There's other stuff, you know, physical, physical emotional abuse how do they calculate all this do they just find sociopaths and work backwards back well they do big you know they do big studies and they ask people all of the questions and sociopaths will reliably get stuff wrong because they just don't have empathy they can fake it you know they kind of know well that's what's expected right but they don't actually feel empathy for other people. And you can find that with a series of questions. You can also measure their brains

and find out how they react to certain stimuli and how it's different from the rest of the population. And they do big studies on that and then they extrapolate that to the population as a whole. We were talking about fMRIs

before this recording started. It was dripping shit. We got it on the crappy code. We can audio engineer and put it all together. But the fascinating thing about fMRIs, being able to measure various aspects of the brain and reactions to certain things. On my television show, I don't know if you've ever seen it,

it's called Joe Rogan Questions Everything. Well, one of the things we did was we talked. You gave me a new word, brother. It's a beautiful thing. It's actually from that Finding Bigfoot show. They had been talking about it long before my show. But I spoke to a woman who is, she was an expert on use of EEG and fMRI. And she said that there was actually a court case where a woman was convicted because she

had functional knowledge of a crime scene. And it's based on fMRI. Wow. That she had functional knowledge of a murder scene. And the woman who was a neurologist felt that it was very dangerous because she said there can be functional knowledge of something based on how much have they talked to you about this crime scene. Have you formulated imageries in your head? Have they shown you photographs of this scene? Have they, like, what places and how do we know, what aspect of it relies on personal

creativity or the imagination to sort of conceive and play it out in your head and then that this is registered on the fMRI? Fascinating, fascinating stuff where we're getting to really understand the various components of what makes us a human being what memory is really tricky do you have these things i have these things joe we're like i have stories about my childhood and i swear to god i could not tell you if they're true or not yeah like i couldn't i don't know if i heard that story so many times i That's very honest. I've told it so many times. I don't know if I am in fact a lizard reptile from the planet Aldebaran. I mean, I'm not sure.

Right. Like I don't know. Like the story is like, oh, I remember when you did this. And I mean, I don't know if it got extrapolated or it got, I don't honestly know. Like, you know, pictures of it didn't happen. I don't know if someone, and I think that's true for a lot of people. Like you talk yourself in and out of stuff. They did a study recently that blew my mind about people's ethical integrity.

They did a study where they got people to agree with a particular ethical statement. I agree with this ethical statement. Abortion is bad or whatever. They get ethical statement. Then they had them close the book and then the book stuck a new word that made exactly the opposite statement. I now agree with this thing that made exactly the opposite statement. I now agree with this thing that I formerly condemned as evil.

They opened it up and they asked them, can you just read that again and tell us what you think? About 70 to 80% of the people would read it again and completely agree with the exact opposite statement that they'd made not three minutes before and had great reasons for it. Wow. I mean, this is the level of fluid unreality that people live in. And it's really dangerous. That we all live in. Yeah, we all have to fight this tendency for sure. Well, I've had real issues with people when you talk to them about past events

and they start giving an incredibly distorted self-serving version of it. And I wonder whether or not they really believe this or not. And then I'm really, I'm a big proponent of if I criticize something, I criticize myself first. Because I think that if I criticize a various aspect of human nature like memory, my memory is fantastic and yet fucking terrible. I can go like, when I do the Ultimate Fighting Championship, when I do the broadcast for the fights, I, you know, I can rattle off statistics. You are great with names. Thank you. You know, you are, because for me, people might as well just introduce themselves to me with like, hello, I'm Bill. Because that's all I get three minutes later, and that's like constant, but you're just like, names just trip off your tongue. That's incredible. Well, especially when it comes to like mixed martial arts or

something I'm passionate about, I can remember details of fights and very important things but like last night last night's show was amazing I've been looking forward to it for the longest time I love coming to Toronto to be part of like that was a killer show oh it was a lot of fun so it's 3,000 people I'm on stage for an hour and 20 minutes and if you had access to my memory of that night, it would be blurry snapshots, barely remember half of it. Oh, yeah, did I do that joke? I don't remember if I did that joke. I have notes. I mean, I have a recording.

But that's called being in the moment, right? Yes. Because you're in the moment. Yes. If you can remember it too well, you were watching yourself. You weren't in it, right? Yes. But it's a huge event for me, an important once a year thing when I come to Toronto

and yet my memory of it is this incredibly cloudy thing and it's like that is the case I think with most human beings when it comes to memory and we look at memory and we try to pretend as if my memory is lock solid. It's in there, I bolt it in, it's screwed in place, it's not going anywhere. And that's nonsense. The mind doesn't work that way. There's various things you can remember. I remember how to use this espresso machine.

I've done it. I know I pushed a little carton in there and I press that button and the junk comes out. But you know, the reality of my day, like what went on today, is just snapshots, like what went on today, it's just snapshots, like weird flashbacks of food I ate and the jokes that we tell. And it's very strange, the human mind. I think one of the emerging aspects of technology that I'm incredibly fascinated with is the symbiotic relationship that we're starting to have with computers, machines, Google Glass. I think we're going to develop an artificial way of recording things,

an artificial way of recording life that's going to be like, I'm going to be able to, you know, Stefan, please check out my day. I'm going to drop off my day, and you're going to roll with like, holy shit, weren't you fucking terrified in this? Well, this is a crazy moment. We'll be able to call each other up. We'll be able to fast forward each other's lives and share. Well, do you know that a whole bunch of lawyers are trying to get in touch with the NSA these days?

Really? Because the NSA records everything. Right. And so they're saying, look, I mean, for my court case, you guys know his cell phone was here when he was talking on it. And they say he was here. But the cell company doesn't have records. Go back two years. You guys can get this guy out of jail, and they

approve Freedom of Information Act. They're just hammering these guys, trying to get facts out to get people out of jail or put people in jail. I think they don't want to really completely admit that they are recording everything. I mean, when Obama addressed that situation... It's easier to record everything than some things, right? Oh, yeah.

We had to turn this on and off when we said something important. We're just recording metadata. It's not a concern. We're not spying on Americans. The fuck you're not, man. They're spying on everyone, and they're putting it all in these gigantic hard drives. And they'll access it.

I mean, Hydrax race is so cheap now, but I've always lived like it's always being recorded ever since I went online. Smart. Oh, yeah. Come on. It's a smart way to do it. And it's showing now at this point in time that that is. If you send something, if you transmit something, someone can receive it. Someone can pick it up. Someone can intercept it.

It's a very strange aspect. But, again, as we were talking about before, I think we are in an adolescent stage of this relationship that we have to technology and this relationship that we have to technology and this relationship that we have to information. I think ultimately it's going to get to a point where there is no boundary between your information or my information. And I think where that really gets weird is with money. Because money essentially right now is just ones and zeros.

And when you get down to this finite point of this finite barrier and that barrier breaks, and there is no boundary between anyone and information. Money is just information. It can start getting really fucking weird. Yeah, money is a greed bullshit. It is. It's like, let's both believe in this bullshit, and it's real,

right? That's how churches get built. But money is just this complete fiction, as you pointed out. I mean, you know, it used to be gold. It used to be some stuff you had to dig out of the ground. You couldn is just as complete fiction as you pointed out. I mean, you know, it used to be gold. It used to be some stuff you had to dig out of the ground. You couldn't just make it up like that, right? But I mean, the Fed buying this, as we mentioned, $85 billion worth of treasuries, they don't have that money.

I mean, it's not like they went out and made it. Oh, man, that was a long shift at the pizza hut to get those tips, man. They type whatever they want into their bank account and we don't think that's going to corrupt human beings. I mean, give me a break. It's so strange. It's so strange. I mean, we live in the weirdest time when it comes to money as well because of the whole collapsing of the banks and the bailouts and the president getting on television and saying that he's going to limit the guys who we bailed out.

He's going to limit their fucking bonuses to half a million dollars. And we're like, what? Where's that money coming from? Is that our money? Wait a minute. You're going to take our money and you're going to give it to these guys? It's a bonus for failing? Yeah.

Like, the banks failed and so they get a bonus. Like, what are you saying? Like, what is this madness we're living in? Well, Obama, of course, you know, there's some theories that one of the main reasons he got elected was he took the most money of all the candidates from Wall Street, from the financial companies. What's he going to do? Throw them in jail?

They just did this fine. I think it was yesterday. J.P. Morgan got hit with a fine of $920 million. First of all, that's just bailout money they're handing back. It's boomerang money. Here, you owe. It's back. But secondly, let's say that they seem to Here, you owe, it's back, right? But secondly, I mean, let's say that they did, they seem to have embedded to some illegal stuff, right?

So they did illegal stuff which cost their clients a lot of money. Are the clients getting the money back? No, government gets it. It's like phoning the cops and saying, somebody stole my car. The cop said, oh, we found it. Well, we're going to keep it, but we found it. I mean, why would the government get the money

for what J.P. Morgan did to rip off its customers? Plus, the J.P. Morgan employees aren't going to get raises because, I mean, but the J.P. Morgan executives, they don't pay anything. It's a corporation. I mean, they can't pay. I mean, the corporation is just this abstract fiction that people make up to shield themselves from legal consequences. So everyone's like, oh, well, they got fined. So they're, you know, somehow the J.P. Morgan executives are out that money. And it's like, no, they're not. I mean, they're never going to get thrown in jail for anything. Never. Never going to get thrown in jail for things that the average person would be locked up for the rest of their life if they were involved in fraud at that level if they were involved i mean just

think about just think about what when people go to jail for just for what they do with the stock market for manipulation of the stock market. I mean, that is essentially, how much different is that really than what goes on with the banking crisis? I mean, you're talking about moving money around. You're talking about manipulating things and figuring out a way to profit from these manipulations. How is insider trading any different from what these guys have done? Well, it's not. And I mean, if you want to talk about manipulating the stock market, I mean, the Federal Reserve buying the Treasury bonds is because nobody else wants those pieces of shit, frankly, right?

I mean, the Chinese are sick of them. The Indians are sick of them. The Japanese are sick of them because they know that they can't possibly be redeemed without hyperinflation or some other default, right? That's either a soft or a hard default. They know that that stuff is junk. So the Fed is buying them just to prop up the prices. And they're doing that so all the other governments don't have to admit that they're basically toilet paper,

Zimbabwe, you know, dollar bill toilet paper. And it's all just this crazy thing that they can't possibly sustain. You know, I did this show once. There have been about 240, like, just paper-only, coffee accounts, right, paper-only money in the history of the world. 240 different ones, right? Like just different, you know, some government gets in power,

they issue some bullshit currency and then it blows up and then they issue some new currency or whatever. And there's only one of them that's still in circulation from a couple of hundred years ago. It's the British pound, though it's lost like 97% of its value.

And the dollar's lost like 98% of its value since the Fed came in in 1913. And people say gas is expensive. It's not. Gas is cheaper now than it was in 1960 if you pay for it in silver. If you pay for it in this paper shit that they hand around pretending it's money,

it's really expensive because it's been devalued so much. When I first came to Canada in 1977, I was like 11 years old. I could get a candy bar for a dime. You know, now. And within like in 1977, I was like 11 years old. I could get a candy bar for a dime. You know, now, and within like 10 years, it was like a buck because they're just printing all this crazy money. Printing money is a great gig because you get to hand it out to all the people who are voting for you. And then the inflation hits like two years later and nobody can connect the dots. It's beautiful. And plus everyone

blames the local supermarket for raising the prices as if they want to. Right. But it's all the central printing money stuff is just really, really dangerous and it brought down the Roman Empire was exactly the same way. They just kept putting more and more crap into their money until what was silver denarius which originally 100% silver ended up being like 1.5% silver with basically like zombie teeth and hair and shit thrown into it, right? And it just destroys the entire the entire economy and this is going to have to be this huge reset in the global economy soon what's how is that going to happen i mean what's what's fascinating is that now that we have this incredible access to

information and now that you know people like you are putting this stuff out there and and it's it's become part of the narrative people understand what wrong. It's not just a matter of it goes wrong and it takes years for people to put the pieces together and then you have to go to school and learn what's wrong. It's really right in front of your face what's wrong. What happens now? Do you think that there's an adjustment period? Do you think that because of this incredible groundswell of information,

do you think that it can be re-engineered? Can it be redesigned? Can we somehow another Bitcoin our way out of this? Well, there's a long-term solution, which I think is multi-generational, which has to do with treating kids better and raising them rationally and not using aggression on them and all that.

So there's a long-term solution. I mean, the short-term solution, I think, is just, you know, try and invest in human capital, try and convert paper currency into something tangible like real estate or gold or something like that. I think those are sensible strategies that lots of people who have been on my show and all the economists all talk about. I think that's all good stuff. I think what's going to happen in the short run is obviously the government is going to run out of money. I mean, no matter how much they print, they're just going to run out of money.

And then what happens is there's going to be talk of sacrifice. Now, not the kind of sacrifice like forget the second car, stay home with your kids that we were talking about before, but like real hard-nosed sacrifice. And they're going to say, well, we spent beyond our means for so long. You've seen this happen before in history. And they just basically turn on the dependent classes. They expect the welfare recipients to live on less,

social security recipients to live on less, and they'll just start squeezing the dependent classes because that's the biggest single bill. And also, you will see, which of course is the goal of a lot of overseas terrorists, you will see the U.S. begin to withdraw the imperial presence in the world. They've got over 700 military bases all over the world.

That's some expensive stuff. Is that really the number now, 700? Over 700. I think 720 now. That's incredible. Oh, it's crazy. When we talk about the Roman Empire, when people talk about Genghis Khan conquering the world, that was nothing. Genghis Khan was basically just a fuck machine.

A third of people in that section of the world can trace their lineage back to that guy. He was working overtime. He never did a gator roll. I think that's what I'm trying to say. It's pretty amazing when you think about how much damage they did, though. You ever read or listen to Dan Carlin's show, Hardcore History? Yeah, he's been on my show, actually.

He's got a great show. Great guy. His piece on the Khan, The Wrath of the Khans, the five-part piece on the incredible accomplishments of Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes, they're responsible for the death of at least 20 million, perhaps 70 million people,

depending on who you ask, over the course of his lifetime and the lifetime of his sons. It's madness. That's some bad shit, man. With horses. Bad stuff. Horses. Horses with arrows. They killed at least 20 million people.

Wouldn't you armhook? That's a lot of... Have you ever tried pulling a bow? Those are real bows, too. That's not like a compound bow. Those bows would require 160 pounds of pressure to pull. Yeah. I mean, wouldn't you?

Like, at one point, you just, like, get my fucking arm flies off. You know, they don't even, like, it doesn't even shoot an arrow anymore. Your just arm goes across like a boomerang. I don't know what you do at that point. And they had women that could pull those bows. Yeah. And shoot from a horse, like, in a bullseye while your horse is thundering along. I mean, that's crazy. And also shoot sideways, tucked, like in a bullseye, while your horse is thundering along.

And also shoot sideways, tucked under the horse. Oh, right, right. So they couldn't get hit from arrows from the side. Right, right. They were like shielding themselves from the horse. Now that, I mean,

if that was still going on, would you take narrating that job over UFC? That's my question. No, no. That would be pretty exciting stuff. It would be. I don't think it's conceptual.

Right, right. It's a completely different game. Violation of the non-aggression principle. It would be, but I don't think it's conceptual. Right, right. It's a completely different game. Violation of the non-aggression principle. Oops. Sorry, sorry. The beautiful thing about the UFC is it's a mutually agreed upon competition. Absolutely. And a character contest, a contest of will and planning and discipline.

To me, it's, you know, ultimate fighting championship is, to me, literally the ultimate in competition for a human being as far as like i don't think it's for everybody it's it's certainly not but i think as far as like the amount of time and energy and focus and then the maintenance and the control of your emotions during a contest because you're literally putting your health on the line and your consciousness you can get incredibly badly hurt. I think it's one of the reasons why it's so incredibly exciting.

And the discipline, I can't remember the name of the fighter, but you're saying it's one guy who keeps a list of everything he wants to accomplish by his bed and reads it first thing that he gets up in the morning and just really focuses on that stuff. Uriah Faber does the same thing. They both hate each other, coincidentally. Let me spin you a theory because we're talking about the fighting stuff.

And I was watching the show last night, and I was thinking about, like, why is this occurring? Like, why? You know, people could be doing anything with their time and money that come in here to see some, like, really funny stuff. And I was thinking about a lot of the stuff that you and the other two comics talked about is pretty visceral, right? I mean, you've got this great phrase that you use, the monkey energy. You know, like you've got this crazy monkey energy when you can't pay your mortgage and you know, you've got to go out and do something physical because your body thinks there's like a tiger jumping at you and stuff like that.

And I was really struck by, you know, dick fart jokes and stuff like that. I mean, cum jokes and stuff like that. They're funny. But I think it's really interesting the degree to jokes and stuff like that. I mean cum jokes and stuff like that. They're funny. But I think it's really interesting the degree to which people respond to that because it's not polite conversation. I've never seen a sign outside the box office relative to yours that says, the most extreme possible language will be used. If you like Jane Austen, your head is going to explode in here. I have had that same sign since the 1990s. Oh, really?

Actually, that sign I put up, it's on my first CD, which is called I'm Going to Be Dead Someday, which I released in 1999. And that sign was something that I started putting up in comedy clubs because I got tired of people complaining. And I said, this show will contain the most extreme content imaginable. Yeah, and it really did. Like, I have a pretty good imagination. Didn't come close. Didn't come close. No, and that's good. That was good. So I was thinking, okay, but why are people so drawn to this? Because it is a very common component of comedy and all that. And let me give you a tiny theory and then you can tell me that as an outside non-comedian I'm completely

full of shit, which is fine. But I had this sort of idea like we're supposed to be united in what to me is just a lot of crap. You know, like countries, patriotism, nationalism, our god, our saints, our whatever, our clan, like it's all nonsense. And it doesn't actually connect people because it's kind of fantastical, right? I mean, nobody, I mean, countries, they don't even really exist. They're literally colors on a map. I call them tax farms, but they don't really exist like a real thing. But where we can connect, and I think where this comedy show last night really did help people connect was we are all mammals, you know, and we have these bodily functions and we have these impulses and these urges and these fantasies. Like the first guy talking about his fantasy of being, uh,

El Gato. Yeah. Brian Callen. Yeah. Brilliant stuff. Brilliant stuff. Uh, and anything again, and I'm English enough to know that anything that marks the French gets on my, anyway, but, um, so I think that there's this like monkey meetup club that goes on in comedy clubs where we do connect to that really visceral level of, you know,itting of fucking of farting of of of sex drives of of you know the guy took a guy in the elevator is talking that one of the funniest things to me that night was the noise he made when he stopped forgot to breathe when he's eating so much that's hilarious yeah because we've all been there. Like, this food is so good.

Why can't I see out of my left eye? I need to breathe, too. Like, that is it. We've all been there. And these are all such really common experiences that we really can't talk about because we live in these refined abstracts of countries and religions and clubs and all that.

But here at this level, we really do, I think, connect in a very visceral way. And there was so much talked about in terms of connection. And I think the audience is laughing because we never get to talk about how we connect at an animal level. And I was thinking about the UFC as well, that a lot of your life, I think, is around getting people to connect at a very visceral animal level. And animal level sounds bad. I don't mean it that way at all. I think it's really, this is where we do connect at the beginning. You know, we connect in sex, we connect in fighting, we connect in...

Primally. Primally. And I think a lot of your work has to do with that. And fear factor is also involved. That's really primal stuff. Primal fears that people have confronting them and overcoming them. People watching that, I think, can really connect with that fear, with that desire for the money and the fear of the circumstances and all that.

Well, the primal fear of competition itself, the fear of failing, the fear of overcoming adversity or not being able to, that's a real part of being a person is the challenges of life itself. And with Fear Factor, it was a stupid show. You know, don't get me wrong. I don't have any grandiose ideas of what that show was. You didn't come up with any taglines for that, right? No, Fear Factor. It's a stupid show. It's a silly show.

It was entertaining. And I know people enjoyed it. But what was fascinating to me was I have a background in martial arts and in competition, more importantly. I fought most of my life from age 15 to age 22. It's basically all I did with my time. And so I understand what it's like to be confronted with a daunting task. I understand what it's like to be standing there when the referee looks at you and goes, are you ready? And then looks at the other guy and goes, are you ready? Go.

And that moment, that like, here it is. Like you're stepping off a cliff, right? It's a very strange thing for us to just say, ready, go, and then go do something. It's really hard to do, to anticipate. And also, as human beings, we can calculate all these different variables and one of the things about being an intelligent person and facing a difficult competition whether it's fighting or anything incredibly hard is like you are aware of the variables you're aware of the failure of the aware of the humiliation your will aware of the embarrassment of failure you

weren't aware of the personal dissatisfaction with your own performance and depression that's going to come with that and all those You're aware of the embarrassment of failure. You're aware of the personal dissatisfaction with your own performance. The depression that's going to come with that. And all those variables, they can combine to create like a constriction effect where you just almost can't perform. You're overwhelmed by the possibilities. And you just freak the fuck out. It's called being dwarfed by the moment. The moment comes and it's – and one of the things that I was good

at on Fear Factor is to talk people through that and just to let them know, like, look, you can fucking do this. You just go out and don't think about anything else but doing it. All those other things are a trap. Those other things are demons. You've got to keep those demons at bay. Don't entertain them. Don't feed them. Don't give them water.

Push them away. They don't exist. What you're going to concentrate on is repeating the mantra that you can do this and this is how you're going to do it. Be in the moment and go do this. And I helped a lot of people get through that show because of that. And that is a primal thing. That's the difference between someone who survives an encounter with a jaguar and someone who doesn't. You know, there's someone who panics and freezes up and gets killed and someone who runs away, someone who figures out how to climb a tree, someone who figures out how to pick a rock and smash it in the head. The difference between someone who encounters an incredibly difficult situation and learns from it or dies because of it. That's a primal

thing, man. I mean, that is one of the reasons why we're here, is because people did confront predators. And the reason why children are afraid at one of the reasons why we're here, is because people did confront predators. And the reason why children are afraid at night of monsters is because we have genetics that are never above jaguars. Jaguars and leopards eating us. I remember reading this story about a guy who got bitten by a great red shark. And not like it bit and went off, like it took his whole torso in his mouth, and it swam underwater with him. And he was so dazed. He said he remembered it all very vividly because he wasn't a head injury, right?

You forget stuff then, right? But he was under the water and he was just basically pulled along into the deep water by the shark, which had him in his jaws. And he was just dazed. And he was like, I'm fucked. You know, okay, well, what am I going to do here, right? And then the image of his kids came up and his wife and he's like no fucking way and he just reached up and he jammed his hand into the eye of the shark wow and it shook him free it let go because you know i guess that hurts i can imagine right and he swam to the surface and he lived and he made it back to shore because there's that moment where you just go like no fucking way i'm not going out like this wow and that i think is that i think that's the primal and visceral

response whereas before it was just like i'm going to surrender to this god-awful thing and then it's just like no no way no way i'm fighting back this well that's what's fascinating about martial arts competition is that everyone has that sort of no way thing but the reality of no way is if you're in the octagon with john jones and you say no way it doesn't matter what you think you of no way thing. But the reality of no way is if you're in the octagon with John Jones and you say no way, it doesn't matter what you think. He's going to kill you. He's going to kill you. I walk into that, I'm like a fine red mist of nothingness in about 10 seconds. A person has been, they've prepared their entire life for this moment. And it's not just the no way that you get when you're getting bit by a

shark but it's also knowing that that no way is coming every fucking day, getting up at 5 AM when the alarm clock goes off and eating healthy and running and making sure you get the right amount of rest and take the right amount of vitamins and all that knowing that you have that instinct to say no way but so does he he. And that's not going to be good enough. Right, right. You're going to have to control your body, control your mind, develop your skills, and have an intelligent approach to this very difficult task in front of you. And you've talked about when you were a kid that you saw violence in your home, which

I'm incredibly sorry. Is it true that for a lot of these guys, they come from some rough backgrounds, some aggressive or violent backgrounds? Yes, a lot of them. Almost all of them. And what do you think the connection is there? Because in some ways, you'd sort of think, well, if you saw that kind of stuff,

wouldn't you want to get away from it? You would, but sometimes you can't, and so you want to learn to protect yourself. And that's what a lot of it is. And a lot of it is. And a lot of it is a lot of guys were bullied. I was bullied not too badly. Nobody really hurt me, but I was intimidated by a lot of guys, you know, like scared.

And it gets in your head, the bullying, right? It just circles around your head. It's humiliating. It's humiliating. It can, you know, it causes people to jump off buildings. It's a huge, huge problem with human beings, this natural inclination to pick on the weak to satisfy our own insecurities. For me, I was a small kid. I wasn't big, and there were just too many moments where I was scared.

And I was like, okay, this is not how I want to live my life. So I started taking martial arts. I was like, I don't know how to fight it because this is just too scary. The environment isn't going to end it. You get a sense of eternity. Like this is going to be the rest of my life and the environment is not going to change it. The teachers aren't going to stop it. There's no way for my parents to stop it. Like if I don't act, this is going to be the same fucking day for the rest of my life. It was clear to me. It was clear to me that no one was going to help me. And as a boy,

it was one of the core issues of being a boy growing up was dealing with the other boys and this balance of power, which was so against me. I was like... Everyone thinks Lord of the Flies, you know that story with the kids in the jungle? They think it's like some island somewhere where the plane goes down. I mean... It's high school.

I went to boarding school. I mean, it's not some island out there. It's like walking into the, into the school building. It's human nature. And there's the dance, like who's the alpha, like what's, what's going to go on here? Like, who's going to be the one that controls the situation? Who's going to get the first pick of the girls? Who's going to get, you know, what, who, who gets to pick on people and get away with it. And that is a part of being a human being. And it's also a part of being a human being that, as you said, is developing in a society where children are not being raised correctly. So you're not, if a child grows up with martial arts as a young boy, you would be incredibly embarrassed to be a bully. Because that is

the worst thing you could ever be in a martial arts class. I am a black belt in jiu-jitsu, and I roll on a regular basis, roll meaning spar, with people who are complete novices. And I don't hurt them ever. I've never hurt one. And I coach them along the way. I'm like, you've got to turn your head like this. You're like me pinning my daughter because we're play wrestling. It's like she's four. What have I been doing that for? Well, I mean, sometimes it's big, strong men that are novices as well. Yeah, but they're still untrained. What are they doing that for?

Well, I mean, sometimes it's big, strong men. Yeah, but they're still untrained. Well, they're untrained. But the point is, like, if I, like, humiliated them or beat them up or something like that, it would be a massive embarrassment for my school, a massive embarrassment for me as a martial artist. Like, everyone in class would hate me because of it. There are people like that that do, like, bully and try to hurt, to hurt like lesser ranks or novices those people are kicked out of class like they there's no place for them in martial arts it's it's about developing character and then about representing that development in character like

having honor and having respect and if kids learned that at an early age there would be no bullying in class there would be none of that there's always gonna be people picking on people and people make making fun of people but bullying is specific like ganging up on people and getting them that's that is one of the scariest aspects of growing up and it motivates a lot of martial artists to learn and that's what motivated me so So ultimately, it's like this terribly negative force channels itself into an incredibly positive thing that really became a developing factor for every aspect of my life. And it became a real vehicle. I love to use the

phrase, a vehicle for developing human potential. So you find out, because it's so difficult, you find out what you can do. And then other things become easier. Well, yeah. I think the mastery of anything is really challenging. Often great things for self-esteem. Now, when you started taking the martial arts, what happened with the bullying? I mean, did you end up beating people up or did you end up having the confidence that they then found weak or brave?

I had very few physical altercations outside of competitions. You know, I have like one or two small ones in high school that were really no big deal. Um, the nothing like crazy, but the fights that I had in tournaments were so extreme, you know, like so many knockouts and just so, so crazy the violence of physical competition is so much more intense than anything you would ever experience in in a your average street fight you know like you're dealing with train killers yeah like you and another train killer do so like there was no motivation for me to prove to anybody that i knew how to fight and then somewhere along the line other kids knew like oh that's uh he's a black belt he's this

he's that and they just left me alone right it became just become scary enough so that they leave you alone and then you don't you know you avoid the fight yeah you avoid it prevention is always better than cure right and you have very little aggression because you're always training so like when you train all the time you're always tired like you don't have you have no yeah people think oh my god you gotta be so fit think of all the energy you'd have it tired. You have no... People think, oh my God, he's got to be so fit. Think of all the energy you'd have. It's like, oh my God, I'm just going to get from the futon to the couch. Somebody give me a wheelbarrow. There was a famous karate master

who once said that the karatekas are not nicer. They're just tired from training. They avoid these things because it's too hard to just get up for it. Right, right. But I think that human beings have a massive amount of what I call chimp DNA, the monkey instincts.

There's a massive amount of those that are not being represented by the way we live our lives. The bodies that we have are essentially the same bodies as the humanoids that lived lived a hundred thousand years ago or fifty thousand years ago there's very little variation yeah and the the the need for physical movement and the need for just activity and all these different these different hormones and chemicals that your body just naturally produces they have to be satisfied they have to be they have to be moved around and I think it's a huge part of balancing your perspective in life, balancing your view of the world, just to exercise these things out of your system. And for boys, especially, huge, huge part of being sane.

Yeah, certainly learning how to manage aggression is really important. I think one of the, yeah, I'm a strong atheist, and I think one of the things that was really harmful about religion was this idea that we are antibody, that we are souls trapped in this prison of the flesh, and we're, you know, aimed to be these rockets that rise up to meet the glory above and so on, because I think that gave us this feeling that the body is somehow, and it's very explicit in some forms of Christianity and other religions too, that the body is Satan's device to draw you away from God, the lusts and all that. All the stuff that the comedians make fun of and then celebrate, I think. It's very pro-body, right?

Because it's funny and it's an enjoyable place to be. And I think that this hostility towards, it's called in philosophy, the mind-body dichotomy, that we're this glorious mind trapped in this horrible fleshly corpse kind of thing. I think it's really, really unhealthy. And I didn't really get that when I was young. Like when I was 20, I went to the National Theater School. I was going to be an actor and a playwright. I did some of that for a bit. But what they did there, which I thought was amazing,

was real body work, which I'd never been exposed to before. I grew up in England. You know, England's relationship to the body is, you know, it's crazy. I haven't even cleaned their teeth. I love the taste of gingivitis in the morning. It smells like empire. But when I did this body work, which was like, I don't know if you know, the Alexandra technique, which is a body repositioning technique.

We did gymnastics. We did sword fighting. We did, you know, stage fighting and all that kind of stuff, which is like in some ways more challenging. And we did stretching and I got that kind of stuff, which is in some ways more challenging. We did stretching and I got into yoga and stuff like that. I was encouraging this in my show because I deal with a pretty hyper-intellectual audience and I keep trying to remind people, drive your brain back into the body. Drive your brain back into the body.

That is the seed of everything that you are. If that doesn't do well, you're not going to do well in the long run. Don't split yourself off from the body, but there's this weird thing in society where we are somehow not our bodies. And it has to do with the soul idea. We're going to continue afterwards. And I don't think I'm going to have any more reality after I'm dead than I did before I was born, which is to say not at all. And this is where we are. And I really try to encourage people to really root themselves in that. You know, we have a second brain called the gut, which is almost as complex as the one we've got up here.

People say I've got a gut instinct. That's real. That's not an imaginary thing. There's this great book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink. You should pick it up if you haven't read it. Yeah, I have. Yeah, okay. So where he says, you know, people get stuff.

Yeah. Like so incredibly quickly. And that's not an intellectual process. That is a full body process. And I think the people, you know, in terms of you say, how do we heal the world? I think our bodies detect immorality a lot quicker than our brains do. Like, yeah, I have those people, they come around, you're like, oh man, there's something not right about this guy. I don't know if body language, they may look perfectly normal or whatever, but there's a slight vacancy in the eyes or

something like that, or an overly stiff body posture or something like that. I think that if we could see, you call them, I think, exquisite douchebags, like you're talking about, was it Doug Stanhope's party in the desert? Yeah. Yeah, that he could have these parties but there'd be a thousand cool guys and then one unbelievable douchebag who would just ruin it for everyone. I think we can see those people but I think we can mostly see them with the body, not with the brain.

Because the brain we can talk us up in and out of stuff but the body think, really connects at a very visceral level with the people around us. And I think if we could train people to be more in the body, I think they'd be better at detecting bullshit and better at detecting bad people and shunning them. And then we'd kind of isolate them and quarantine them, not breathe with them, not have them over fucking up our kids. And I think then we'd be able to pass that gene out of the pool, so to speak. Sorry, that's a hell of a long rant. No, I think you're absolutely on.

And I think that the idea that the body is separate from the mind is really kind of silly. They work together. And if the mind is working overtime and the body is falling apart, the mind's not going to be at its optimum. Even if you have an incredibly advanced mind and beautiful knowledge and information, it would be better if your body was in shape. It would be better if you were limber. It would be better if you weren't stressed out.

We experience a physical stress of a deteriorating body. It's legitimate. It's 100% real. It's not just a vain thing. You want to keep your body in shape to look good. It's an ego thing. It's not not just a um a vain thing you want to keep your body in shape to look good you know it's an ego thing it's not it's it's you you are some weird symbiotic thing you it's the mind and the body and then also the intestinal flora it gets really freaky when you start realizing that you're actually an ecosystem yeah yeah yeah you're not one thing and the ecosystem

is even within the mind there's this great therapy called internal family systems therapy, which basically says that we don't have like a single self, like we are a competing ecosystem of our parents and those who want stuff from us and some of our own needs, which is also to please those who want stuff from us. And it's all competing. And if you think that you've got like one ego, you end up being a kind of tyrant because all these other voices in your head that they're telling you to do stuff or encouraging you to do stuff, you kind of clamp them down because we need unity.

But I think that the idea that we are always in a state of negotiation with ourselves is really positive. I spent years in therapy and I think it's just fantastic to work for that kind of approach that we have. I call it the Miko system, like me as an ecosystem. And it really is a lot of give and take and a lot of negotiation with yourself. And of course, if you can negotiate with yourself, I think you'll end up with a society

where people negotiate with each other. I think that the people who are tyrannical with their own identity end up being tyrannical with others. I think that the way the world is out there is very much a mirror of the way we live internally. And if we can be more at peace in negotiating with ourselves and recognize that we should

not have a single dominant authority within ourselves, but everything is a negotiation. You know, do I want to work out or do I want to have a nap? I mean, I have those negotiations with myself all the time. And that way I can negotiate with my wife and my daughter and my listeners and all that. And I don't have a tyrannical part of myself that says, well, you just got to do this, God damn it, no matter what. Because I'm always afraid that if that's the way it is for me in here, that's how it's going to translate to the world out there. I always feel that the most massive structures in the world, the governments, states, armies, and all that,

just a reflection of how we deal with ourselves internally. And I think trying to get people to relax about how they deal with themselves internally and negotiate more than dictate, I think is really important. I'm completely rambling, but I hope that makes sense. No, it makes total sense. And the rigidity, being rigid and not being able to be flexible about things is also a huge issue. The ability to alter your ideas about things and not feel like you're a loser because you changed your mind. changed your mind. You know, like the ability to admit mistakes and to be able to express where the mistake went wrong and what you believe now. I think that's very important. I think one of the things that I see in people that I admire is, one of the things I admire

most, is the ability to admit you're wrong. The ability to admit mistakes, the ability to admit personal failures, and then the ability to grow from learning about that mistake. And one of the things that I find to be one of the most incredibly weak and intolerable things is someone who cannot admit they're wrong. I can't communicate with people like that. I can't. I can't. I make mistakes all the time.

If you don't, maybe you're the perfect person, but if you do and you don't admit it, we can't talk. We can't. Well, isn't most of life not working out? I mean, isn't most of life failure? I mean, you know, one of my favorite writers is Charles Dickens or you take Shakespeare. Charles Dickens wrote like 35 novels of which like four or five are famous. So he's the best novelist that we've ever produced as a species. And he's got a success rate of 20%. Shakespeare wrote 54 plays, hundreds of sonnets, and of his plays, maybe 10 are regularly produced. The Hamlets, Othellos, Motion Eventists, and all that.

So he had a success rate of about 20%. So the greatest conceivable geniuses in human history have a success rate of about 20%. I've had some of my biggest breakthroughs from failures, from my disgust in the failure or my discontent and my recognizing where I went wrong and then my re-energizing and refocusing. Like my stand-up comedy failures, I can literally point to the moments on stage, like the worst bombings in the history of my career, and then the giant leaps that I made in progress after that. It's always been the case.

And now, to this day, if I have a set that's not so good, I recognize that I hate that, so I will now refocus and that this is a good thing. Because this taught me, well, you got a little sloppy there, or you got overwhelmed by responsibilities, or you didn't put enough focus in it, whatever it was. or you got overwhelmed by responsibilities or you didn't put enough focus in it, whatever it was. Now is the time to recognize that just like every other time in the past, you are now going to grow. And you'll be better than you ever were before. I did one show, and I thought I did the right research, but I didn't at all. I did a show on health care, and then this woman who was a doctor who was pretty high up in the profession, she wrote me this long email detailing every single thing that I got wrong in my show.

And so what I did was, you know what, I'll just read this whole email. It's great. I'm completely sorry. I just, you know, I thought I knew what I was talking about. It turns out I had come so far at my ass I was seeing back out of my own eyeballs. Good on you, though. Yeah, and just read the whole thing because if you're not correcting yourself, how are you going to have any credibility?

Because nobody believes that you're right all the time. That's just impossible to believe. It's impossible. I correct myself all the time on the podcast because a lot of times during the podcast, we're completely talking out of our ass. I remember something, and then I'll – and now I go, hold on, let me Google that. I'll constantly Google things. In the middle, I'll go, okay, I'm full of shit because actually they proved it in 1972 that this is, you know, and I think that's really, really, really important, especially when you have this weird responsibility,

like as I know that you do, you have a massive following online, and a lot of people very much respect your opinions and your thoughts on things and consider them very highly. So when, you know, you say something or you go over something something and then it turns out that it was incorrect or your original assumption was based on some bad information, it's so important to be flexible like that. It's so important to be honest like that so that people recognize you're a human being and everyone who's listening is a human being and we're all essentially in the same boat together. who's listening as a human being and we're all essentially in the same boat together. One of us may have focused more on a particular topic or one of us may have more talent in a particular area, but we're the same goddamn thing. Yeah. No, I think it is important.

And yeah, especially when you put out a lot of shows, you're just going to get stuff wrong and you can't be an expert in everything. And that's no question that you have to read. And you also want to model that behavior for people, right? I mean, because if you're the defensive guy who can't admit that he's wrong, I mean, the kind of people who are going to end up being comfortable with you are not the kind of people you want to have around. Oh, this guy never admits he's wrong.

He's an okay guy for me. You want to have that force field that repels the people who want that, because that's not a good place to be. I have a very critical forum, and sometimes critical in a bad way. There's a lot of cunty behavior, lot of people and just some really just negative people but a lot of really intelligent people too that I really rely on and sometimes if I have a show that doesn't go well or if I something happens there's a dispute about something I like the criticism I think that's hugely important especially if

it's honest and it's intelligent because that wasn't available before and one of the resources of the internet that's so fantastic to me is that you can get opinions and you can get intelligent ideas from people that you would never be able to contact with uh 10 20 30 years ago you just wouldn't be able to and now you can get them and you can interact with them in real time and it's it's a beautiful thing it's so enriching and it's so important for your personal growth and for the growth of anything you're trying to do to have these intelligent people giving their point of view. You may or may not agree. And that's one of the things I find along the way. I'll read a really intelligent review of why something that I did was not right. And I'm like, I see where

you're coming from, but I disagree entirely. I can respect that, but I don't like that. I don't like this that you're saying is good. I don't like Smashing Pumpkins. I don't like Grateful Dead. There's a lot of things that a lot of people like that I don't like. Actually, I do like Smashing Pumpkins. I shouldn't say that. Bullet in the Blue Sky, is that what the song is? Bullet in the Blue Sky is U2. What is that one song? 1979, I think it's the only song that I know. What's that, World is a Vampire? Do you know that one? You are the person who's more into that kind of music, I think, than I am. I love that song, so I shouldn't say smash it. My temptation, though, I've got to tell you, my weakness is, oh, Joe, you've got to stop me if I do this. I want to nitpick back, nitpick back. So I talk to a lot of libertarians, and libertarians, God love them.

Greatest people in the world, but if you make one factual slip, like six million guys are going to come down with you, like WikiReit references coming out of their eyeballs. So the other day, I was like, I said something about tigers in Africa, right? You know, and like six million people emailed me, Dear God, how can you believe that there are tigers in Africa? Tigers are native to India. There's no tigers in Africa. No tigers in Africa.

Completely true. Except, oh, I was so tempted. No, no. Yeah, zoos. I'm like, you've never heard of zoos? I bet you there's one tiger in Africa. So, ha! You know, like, I'm like, oh, no, no, don't do that. When you're wrong, you're wrong. No tigers in Africa. I'm with that. Yeah. Well, you know, people love that sport of calling

people out on mistakes. There's a certain, like, scorecard that you keep. You you know we can bust someone on a lie or bust someone on a misquote or a mistake it's uh that's it's a big part of the debunking movement I had a guy on recently a guy named Mick West who's a who runs contrailscience.org oh the contrail stuff yeah and it's all about his website, he runs metabunk.org, which is a message board. It's all about debunking conspiracies and ideas and incorrect thoughts.

One of the things that these guys love doing is debunking things for like a score. For them it's like, you know, incorrect, this is what's right. They like calling people out on mistakes. It gives them a charge. God, they must be fun to live with. Oh, my God. Sorry, that's the wrong number of grains of coffee for my coffee. I've explicitly told you the right number, and that's just off by three.

But if they're right, they're right. You know, I mean, I don't think they should revel in it. Right, happy. And also the level of importance of stuff, too. I've done great speeches about really important stuff and made one little error and people are like, ah! It's like, you know, big picture people, you know? The sun has spots.

That doesn't mean it's not light there, right? Right, right, right. Yeah. Oh, I also wanted to add to your penis knowledge. Penis knowledge? Yeah, absolutely. I really felt that this was essential to add to. And I don't know if you ever figured this one out, but I watched the stuff you did on

circumcision. Because we did, it was Mike's idea, actually, we did a video on circumcision as well. Which started off with a video of someone getting circumcised, a baby. And it's like, if you can watch that and still go ahead with it, I mean, Lordy, check yourself in and get some meds, right? But you had a question about, because I think in the show, you got the opinion that women said that the sex with uncircumcised penises was better. And I think you were looking that up in the show you got the opinion that women said that the sex with uncircumcised penises was better. And I think you were looking that up in the show and I don't know if you ever got the

answer. But I think we found the answer through various experimentation with fruits and vegetables. I'm kidding. But what it is is because the foreskin makes less friction for the woman. Because when you thrust, the foreskin has some give. So it's less frictiony for the woman. Because when you thrust, the foreskin has some give. So it's less frictiony for the woman, and because it's less frictiony, it's more comfortable. It's just rubbing, rubbing, rubbing.

So you thrust, and the foreskin has give back and forth, and so it doesn't stress the woman's vagina as much through that friction. That's apparently, which is why I think guys who are circumcised need more lubricants and stuff like that. You know, like a good spray of WD-40 before you go in or whatever it is. But I'm no expert. I just wanted to mention that. And this, it prevents AIDS kind of stuff. What the fuck is that about? Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, those studies are heavily suspect. They rely on self-reporting

and stuff like that. And secondly, it actually, let's say it does reduce AIDS a certain amount, which has not actually been proven to do, it's actually kind of dangerous because then the guys think, well, I'm circumcised, I don't need a condom. But even if you are circumcised, they still say, well, for God's sake, wear a condom if you want to. So it can actually be kind of dangerous and increase the spread of AIDS if people believe that. There was a recent study that said 60% decrease in AIDS infections for people with a certain extent. So 60%, are you still going to roll those dice?

I don't need a condom because 40% likely, it ain't shit. And not only that, how do you justify those numbers? I would love to see how they figure that out. Do you have a guy and you have a lot of sex with a guy with AIDS? He doesn't have AIDS. And then you circumcise

him and well, now he's even less AIDS-y. How are you doing it? This is not known for an excess of soap. I mean, this is a really rough economy down there, right? So there's that problem. The penile cancer thing, I mean, even the American Society of Pediatrics, because they say, you know, you put penile and cancer together, you usually will get a man's attention.

You know, these are like, hey, like hey what okay i wasn't listening before i pricked up my ears at penile when you added cancer to it i really really began to listen but the the numbers that go down are so infinitesimally small and the chances of getting it are so teeny tiny i mean it's like saying well but remove the baby's breasts because she might get breast cancer what do you think the support is about then? The support for circumcision, the almost universal support that we find. It's in America. I mean, in Europe, it's hard to find any non-Muslim kids who are circumcised. What is it in America? I mean, it's a barbaric mutilation of a baby's genitals as far as

I'm concerned. I think it's some ancient bullshit. You're removing half the skin of the penis. I mean, it's not just the tip. I mean, sorry to put it bluntly, and you have to put shit in to wedge it because the baby's born with the foreskin adhered, physically adhered to the penis. You've got to go and, anyway, we don't have to go into the details of deaths or mutilations, which are numerous, but the idea that it still exists is troubling to me. There's no rational it's no rational sense to it there's there's things that i get i see a cause and

effect and i see i see why people do it i don't see that one i don't understand it the only thing that i see is perhaps a justification of the old ways and the fact that it's been done for so long that's been established people say i want the son to look like the dad. And I mean, how often are your son and your husband comparing penises? Is that a big family hobby? I mean, are you whipping it out at dinner saying, well, you know, it's longer and bigger. So I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, why does trauma repeat? Why does trauma, it's a big question, right? Why does trauma repeat?

And I think partly why trauma repeats is it gets normalized, right? I mean, so you obviously made the great decision after seeing your dad to denormalize what your dad did in terms of hitting your mom. I mean, you said, like, this is not how men are. This is not how I'm going to be. Right? So you denormalized it. But if you totally worshipped him and you thought he was the best guy ever and this is what men do, you would be most likely to reenact it. Well, I actually did until I saw that.

It was one of the most. Did what? likely to be enacted well i actually did until i saw that it was one of the most it was when i saw my dad hit my mom when i was about five it was the first time i'd ever seen him striker and i never forgot the fee i mean it's really difficult to remember exactly what i remember but i do remember very a very clear feeling and that very feel clear feeling was oh he's fucked up too like oh i thought that my dad was my hero and i remember being massively disappointed i'll never forget that feeling of disappointment like this is not what i thought i thought my dad was this awesome perfect guy and he's not at all right you know he's a bad person right and this is a bad scene. But why do you think you had that response?

Because some kids wouldn't. Some kids would be like, oh, I can't wait to grow up and hit my own woman. I mean, why do you think you had that response? I guess because I love my mom. My mom was not a bad person. She was not an angry person. And she got you out of that. She was a strong

woman. She still is. But she realized at that moment, this is not happening. She packed up our stuff and we were gone. But I'll never forget the feeling of disappointment. When you're a child, you hope that your father is a hero and to know that he's not. So I think for me, it was this very young introduction to close violence. Violence within the household was sort of a defining factor why I was terrified of violence and why I wanted to learn to defend myself really early on.

The idea that someone could just do that to you or that someone could do that to their wife or someone could do that to my mother. Yeah, it is. I think that kind of recoiling from it. So you denormalize it. It was a bad thing. Do you as a dad, I mean, I know me as a dad, I mean, the idea that I would ever see that look on my daughter's face where I would fall from grace, doesn't that terrify you? It terrifies me.

I mean, I'm not like, you know, constantly trying to be like some statue of perfect fatherhood or whatever, but the idea that I would disappoint my daughter in that fundamental way where she'd have that crossroads with me and no longer look at me in that same look-up-to kind of way, I really think about that every day. I never want to see that look. I think the love that people have for their children often motivates them to be a better person.

I know it does for me. I couldn't imagine. You know, I mean, if I even raised my voice to my daughter, it's like, come on, seriously, you can't do that. You can't hit each other. You can't throw things through a window. You can't, you know, the idea of hitting my daughter is insane. It's alien.

It's impossible. And the idea of hitting my wife is so completely out of the idea of what's possible. I wonder what my feelings would be if I didn't grow up in a house of violence. I wonder if it wouldn't be so repulsive to me, having actually physically experienced it in person up close. But I did. So I was inexorably, that's that's a part of my psyche you know that's that that being a negative thing that being a

horrific crime and there's also just a weakness like I'll never forgive a man that's willing to do that to hit a woman my man it's just so weak it's so incredibly weak just sort of such a such a failure of character and such a negative, selfish impulse to hit someone like that. It's one of the major things that's wrong in human interaction is the ability to hurt each other, to wantonly to just reach out and injure each other and hate and express our ignorance in such a violent and selfish way. Yeah, and I feel that, I'm sure you do too, but I feel that even more strongly with parents to kids.

Yeah. We're so much bigger. Yeah, yeah. You know, your wife can, my wife can leave me, your wife can leave you anytime if you're a jerk, right? Your kids can't, they got nowhere to go. They can't just say, well, that's it. You know, I'm getting a divorce from you, dad, and I'm going to go find a better dad. But they have nowhere to go. They have no choice. They're so tiny. And I think violence always makes you smaller than your

victim. You know, and I hit a four-year-old. I mean, are you really so far out of options as an adult with all the choice in the world that you actually have to end up hitting someone so tiny and dependent? I mean, that makes you way smaller than that. I was reading some account of a guy who was losing custody of his child. Him and the wife had gotten divorced. And I was reading this articulate, well-written account of the horrors of the legal system until I came upon this thing where he said that his daughter went back, the daughter was three, went back to the wife and told of a mild spanking that he gave her. And I'm like, oh, you're a douchebag. You're a lying douchebag. You're a piece of shit. You spank your baby. And what you're doing here is manipulating reality with

your blog to try to paint yourself out to be a victim, you beat your fucking kid, man. I don't care if it's a mild spanking. You don't mildly spank a fucking three-year-old when you're a grown man. It's nonsense. It's crazy. You don't have to do that. They throw a temper tantrum, hover over them,

communicate with them until it's over, and then give them a hug and say, I love you no matter what. But this is when I know it gets frustrating. I've had frustrations. That's the number one thing that I always do when I communicate with my kids. I always tell them, when I was your age, I was even worse at that. When I was your age, I used to lie all the time.

When I was your age, I used to do this all the time. I always wanted to be first. I always was selfish. I wanted to have all the toys. But then I realized that when you share toys, it makes it better. It's hard to realize that as a four-year-old. But one day you're going to figure it out. And that's why I'm telling it to you.

But I have a lot of time. I'm a relaxed person. I'm not constantly under the pressure to perform in life and to do better. I'm in a good financial position. I'm in a good financial position. I'm in a good relationship position. When I see people that are stressed out by life and then life is overwhelming and they're like, shut the fuck up in there. It's like, it's almost like they're, they're overwhelmed by their plate and it's terrible on the child. Yeah. I always wanted my daughter to remember that I was a kid too. And that's what you're

talking about. I don't want her to think that I'm some giant authority figure that's just in her life. In fact, I've told her so much about my childhood. She likes to play with me as a kid. She calls it, okay, I want to play with little Steph. And then she wants me to come into the room as little Steph and play that way. And I think that's great because I want her to remember that.

And I think, oh God, if we could just fix language. If we could fix language, I think we'd fix so much in the world. There's an old Confucian saying, it says, the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. I hate the word spank. Just say hit. Just say hit. I hate a mild spanking. Come on. Don't call it war. Call it murder. That's what it is. Mild spanking. Yeah. Don't call it arrest. Call it kidnapping. Don't call it taxation. Call it theft. Just use the proper words for things and we'd solve so many problems.

Euphemisms are, you know, they're just the plaque in the arteries of the brain that confuse so many people. You hit your child. It's not a spanking. You say, well, it's mild. It's just a little swat on the butt. No, no, no, no. If you're spanking, it's to deter behavior. It's to change behavior, which means the child has to hate and fear it.

And I wish people would just be honest about it, but they can't even be honest with themselves, and then they get mad at their kids for lying I agree, the categorization and this thing that we do where we make one thing better than another thing even though it's exactly the same like spanking is better than beating but they're the same god damn thing

like how about this sort of unrelated but not really this thing that's going on with this deploring of chemical weapons, that somehow or another murdering people with chemicals in that fashion is way worse than using drones, these robots that shoot hellfire missiles into buildings and kill 98% innocent.

98% women and children. Is that the actual statistic? 98% innocent. 98% women and children. Is that the actual statistic? 98%. Jesus. They're so bad at killing only the targets. Like the idea that these are pinpoint, precise. I mean, it's fucking terrifying shit. But yet, Obama will be on TV talking about how these chemical weapons,

we have to deplore the actions of a father holding his children, begging for them to get up. What about the fucking kids you blew up from the sky? What about rockets launched from robots like some Orwellian nightmare flying around cities with night vision where someone's got a remote controller in Nevada and they're pressing the fire button and launching these missiles. The, you know, this idea that we need to take military action. We need

to kill because people have killed. You know, we need to go murder innocents because innocents have been murdered. Syrians are killing Syrians, so to solve that, we're going to kill some Syrians to show the Syrians not to kill the Syrians. And we're going to do it with pinpoint strikes. Meanwhile, they know for a fact they're going to move innocents and civilians

into those areas that are high-risk military targets. They're going to move prisoners into those areas. They're going to up the body count. They're going to do it on purpose. And you know, I mean, the terrifying thing about it's not just American weapons, it's modern weapons in general, is the fact that they will fuck with entire populations'

genetics. Like, this is something, I just did this study, this sort of review of the Syrian stuff and America's outrage at chemical weapons, without even getting into Vietnam, where millions of people were destroyed by these unbelievably horrendous weapons. The only thing America didn't use was mustard gas and nuclear weapons. Everything else they just threw from bombers down on this population. In Fallujah in 2007, they used this white phosphorus, which is basically just exploding glue that melts human beings.

And they just fired it indiscriminately into the city. And they used these depleted uranium shells because they're good at piercing armor, of which there really wasn't much of in Iraq anyway. But this stuff has a half-life longer than the planet itself. And it so screws with the genetics of the population because it goes into the dust. It goes into the lungs. which there really wasn't much of in Iraq anyway, but this stuff has a half-life longer than the planet itself, and it so screws with the genetics of the population because it goes into the dust, it goes into the lungs. There's been a 600% increase in leukemia, and in the years after this Fallujah attack,

run by America, by the special forces, by the army, 50% of the children were born with birth defects. And a guy, a geneticist who's gone to study the city, says that he's never seen a more compromised, it's a nice way of putting it, basically a more fucked up genetic population. This is going to go on for generations. These genes have been completely destroyed by these weapons.

And then they're saying, well, you know, this guy in Syria, he used these chemical weapons, and so on. But at least that stuff is not going to completely rewrite the genetic code of the population for generations to come. Well, haven't they denied the use of depleted uranium, even though there's a lot of evidence that shows that they did? They used it in Serbia, too. And I had to apologize to people because I was talking about where they used all these depleted uranium and all these guys from Serbia, right, and say, well, we don't count?

I mean, come on. I mean, they used it with us, too, with the same effects. And then that's also the cost of this this this Gulf War syndrome that all these people have come back with horrible illnesses that mirror radiation sickness and then the government has denied them medical treatment and so there's nothing wrong here there's nothing going on here it's it's a sad sad statement that that's how we are today most of the people that I meet are really nice.

Don't you find that to be... I mean, you meet a lot more people than I do. They say the average famous person meets like 10,000 people a year or some crazy number, right? Yeah. But don't you find that most of the people that you... This is the weird thing. The world is insane and so full of like the most soul-destroying evil, but yet most of the people that I meet are unbelievably nice.

Yeah. Isn't that weird? Who are these reptiles who run everything? Because I meet these really nice people and there's all the horrible stuff in the news. Well, in all fairness, you live here. Yes, that's true. You live in Toronto, right? That's true. It's a beautiful place.

Yeah, it's a lovely place. And people are pretty nice in Toronto. Very nice. Overall, I say 20% less douchebags in Canada than America. Well, you've got the BMW factor, which we ran into a couple of times on the drive down. The BMW factor? Yeah, you know, that old joke about BMWs, what's the difference? I'm going to tell the joke to a comedian, so I'm going to go to a porcupine and a BMW

and a BMW and a porcupine and the bricks are on the outside. So other than the BMW factor, very, very nice people. I must bring them in from Costco or something. the bricks from the outside. So other than the BMW factor, very, very nice people. I must bring them in from Costco or something. That's also always going to be the case when people are privileged or when they have more money or when they feel like they've worked harder and the other people are weak and lazy, get the fuck out of my way, I've got the Mercedes. Oh, don't people love to think that the accidents at birth are personal virtues? I

mean, they're just, oh, you know, because a lot of people who make it big, it big, like Gwyneth Paltrow, isn't her godfather like Steven Spielberg or something like that? She's a talented actress, a lovely lady, but she got a bit of a leg up in the business, right? But a lot of people are like, oh, I happen to be born to this great family. I happen to be born in the West. When you and I are born in Kenya, I mean, what the hell are we going to do with our lives?

Tying the rubber tires to our feet to run around in? I mean, so much of the good stuff in our life is kind of accidental. 100%. And to mistake that for personal virtue is a really great failing because it really kills your empathy. And on the flip side, it's also an incredible weakness that people have when they point to successful people going, oh, they got lucky. No, I just get lucky. If I got lucky. It's funny how you work for 10 years, you end up with a lot of luck, right?

Yeah, you bust your ass and then you get luck all the time. It's weird. Because in your life, of course, you need five years of stand-up before you got anywhere near TV or anything like that, right? I got it. In that sense, I got super lucky because that's really rare. It's really rare to get on a hit sitcom when you're five years in a stand-up. Well, yes, but I bet you when you got that sitcom, you worked pretty hard at it, right? I did. You took coaching from the people who were more experienced on the set and you learned

Not really. Oh, really? Just think about it. Did they as fast as want you to fail? No, it's not hard. It's not a difficult process. Of all the things that I've ever done in my life, acting is without a doubt the easiest. Is that because it's like other people's words and you just have to be credible and hit your mark? Certainly, that's a part of it.

But it's also, it's just not that difficult to just pretend. I mean, we all know what happens when someone gets upset about something. We all know what happens when someone's confused. We can pretend and it's your it's also when you're you're acting you're it's you you have a chance to do it over again if you fuck it up oh right it's like it's not hard it's coming from martial arts and then coming from stand-up comedy those two things which are incredible yeah you don't get to walk back and say i'm gonna do that joke again maybe once you know but after that people are like well he's not he's just screw, I've got to wake up from being knocked out.

We're going to fight again in a couple of months. Put some ice in my head. Mulligan. Redo. Right. Not only that, it's one of those things that when you see someone on a camera, you see them on a screen, you see them, and this weird alpha male primate thing that we have where we think that the person who gets to talk is special.

The person that's on camera is special because that would be like the leader of the tribe or something. There's this weird, they've hijacked our human reward system with media. And so because of that, when you see someone who's on film and someone's crying, you give them incredible accolades. You were amazing in that film. It changed my life. It was amazing. All they did was pretend. They pretended to be a murderer.

They pretended to be a killer. It's not hard, man. Anything a four-year-old can do. I think it was Marlon Brando who said that. Anything a four-year-old, Shirley Temple, he was talking about. Anything a four-year-old can do, I'm not sure we should give big prizes for. Watch Ricky Schroeder in The Champ.

He was like six years old. He was fucking incredible that job that guy in the sixth sense Jill Haley on yes I mean that kid just gives you amazing it's not hard to do and it's not something that requires like like learning to play the piano or learning to speak French it requires a lot of brain surgery or stuff which is really significant you know it's our Stand-up comedy is infinitely harder than acting. And granted, I was acting in a very limited way. I was doing a sitcom. It's one of the more limited forms of acting.

But we also created a lot of the dialogue. In fact, Dave Foley was probably responsible for maybe 50% of everything that got made on that show. Is that right? He was like a secret producer because he was such a brilliant guy and so good at ad-libbing that what he would do is we had an amazing executive producer, Paul Sims, brilliant, brilliant guy who created the show, the head writer and executive producer, and a great

writing staff as well. But Paul was really open to us experimenting. So they would give us a framework, they would give us a script, but Dave would rewrite entire scenes. And so, so much of what we did on that show was ad-lib, almost maybe 50%. So it wasn't just about reading people's lines being easier. It's just an easier gig. It's easy. So my stumbling into a sitcom, it was because of a bunch of lucky factors.

my stumbling into a sitcom, it was because of a bunch of lucky factors. Luck number one, that they saw me on MTV, that they saw my comedy special, or MTV half-hour comedy hour, when I was on this television show where I did like 10 minutes. They saw that, and it went well, and then I got these opportunities

that just opened up from that. And then this show came about, and then I got on it. It was a show that was already created. So it was all luck. That was all luck. And the idea that you get that successful after five years of doing stand-up is really, really rare. So I can't

take any credit for that. But then from there, you know, months of work. And even that, I mean, to do the Half-Hour MTV special, I bet you it was a hell of a lot of work. And that comes out of years on the road and knowing how to work an audience, the timing and what works and what doesn't and all that. So that, to do the Half-Hour MTV special, I bet you it was a hell of a lot of work, and that comes out of years on the road, and knowing how to work an audience, the timing, and what works and what doesn't, and all that. So, that's all work. Yeah. Stan, anybody who's good at stand-up, that shit does not

come easy. No. There's no one who gets up there and can kill an audience of strangers. That's all work. You just can't do it from the beginning. Yeah, and anybody who doubts that, you know, lots of amateur hours, just go give it a shot. I wouldn't, you know.

Maybe you can do it once. Maybe you'll have a couple of good lines that you've accumulated or you've developed over the course of your life, some observations that you think are really funny, you wrote them down. They might be valid. They might be good. And that might work a couple of times. But not when people are paying. You know, people pay $30 for a ticket and they say, wait.

They want, you know, one after another. I mean, I was just amazed because the hour and 20 that you were on stage last night, it flew by for me. You know, and I mean, are you saying it caught your memory? It kind of flew by to you. But I'm thinking the amount of work, I mean, the amount of material that's written and discarded and tested and discarded, the amount of concentrated work that does an hour and 20 of making people laugh.

Well, that's a, I mean, man, tip of the iceberg last night. Huge amount of work underneath. When I'm not working on other things, if I'm not doing the UFC or if I'm not working on my podcast, I am always thinking of stuff. Like, is this funny? Is this interesting? But it's also, I've kind of designed my life

in that the creation of material outside of the actual sitting down in front of the computer and writing, which is critical, that has to be done. That's one of the things that a lot of material outside of the actual sitting down in front of the computer and writing, which is critical, that has to be done. That's one of the things that a lot of lazy comedians don't do. They just write little notes on post-its and stuff like that? You can't just do that. You have to do both. You have to do the writing down notes and stuff is important too,

but the actual sitting down and crafting the bits and putting them in order and figuring out a way. You freeball when you're on stage and let it come when it's on stage because when you're on stage you never know what the hell can happen but that's what you have to be in the moment like when the guy came up to me at the beginning of the show and handed me the hockey puck oh what the fuck are you doing and then it became like five minutes of me goofing on this guy yeah but it was you had to do it that's it was this is this is the thing that happened you know this is well it's also it's stitching everything together it's the edges between the thing that happened. Well, it's also stitching everything together.

It's the bridges between the stories that I was watching for last night. How do you get from one bit to another? And I hate the word bit because it just sounds like such an insignificant thing. But that's what we call them. Yeah, but I mean, so getting logically from one bit to another is real. How do you order them? How do you build them? But you have to do that because if you don't, people don't want to follow your train of thought.

What you're doing when you're doing a stand-up performance is not just telling a bunch of jokes, but you're borrowing someone's consciousness. You're borrowing someone's mind. And the only way it really works is if someone trusts you enough, your thoughts are as developed as they can be. They're unique. They're surprising. They're stimulating to the point where someone's saying,

okay, take me on this rod through your mind. Take me on this rod. Because if you're talking, like I've seen a million comedians, and there's so many that I've seen that they start talking and go, I've got to get the fuck out of here. I can't listen to this guy's mind. Because what he's doing is he's got a one-stop, his premises are short, they're obvious conclusions. They don't build nicely, which is a challenge to you, right? There's no depth to the thought. There's no unique point of view.

There's nothing there. They haven't done the work or they're not capable of doing the work. Whatever one it is, I've got to get out of here because I can't give them my mind. Now, do you want, because you talk about being a positive force in people's lives and bringing happiness, and you certainly did that last night. Do you want, I'm going to leave the witness, right? Do you want people to come out of your show better,

wiser? No. How do you want them to come out of the show? It's not just empty calorie entertainment. That's all it is. I would argue that you actually do put some, you do put some, you're intelligent enough to put some real wisdom I think into what you do. And I think that people can come out of your shows with some interesting connections that they hadn't thought of before.

I'm not saying you're an educator, obviously, but I think that there's stuff that comes. It's not just a burger. Yeah. You know, it's not empty calories, right? Because there's a lot of thought in what you do. Well, last night's set was particularly rich in ideas because some of the new things that I've been working on are, there's a lot of stuff that I'm working on about this sort of weirdness of progressive thought lately, like this really aggressive progressiveness that's going on where people are denying reality and they're doing it so because they feel

like people have been marginalized in the past, which is true. But it doesn't mean you spring it back the other way and you say a bunch of stupid shit that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, or you judge people harshly for judging people harshly. It's like, how does that work, right? That's like hitting people for hitting. Exactly, exactly. Some of the most aggressive people I know are liberals. It's really strange. I mean, there's an amazing video of the University of Toronto of this guy who is speaking about men's rights.

Warren Farrell? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. These feminists are protesting these students and screaming in their face. These students that want to go see this man talk about men's rights and about that you hate women and all this. And they're incredibly aggressive. The only hate I see is in the protesters. The only hate.

And by the way, incredibly ignorant to what this guy's actual words are. And they weren't even aware. They didn't even bother doing the research. They didn't even bother formulating a true opinion on this guy's ideas. They just decided that this guy hates women. And that's a weird thing. I've made some posts about feminism online

before. One of the things that I found incredibly strange is that I got called an MRA asshole. So I go, what does that mean? What's an MRA? So then I had to Google MRA. I didn't know what it meant at all. It's men's rights

advocate. I was like, wait I didn't know what it meant at all. It's men's rights advocate. Or activist. And I was like, wait a minute. A feminist, a person who wants equal rights for women, is saying that being a man who wants equal rights for men is an idiot? Or I could call it a dodo, an MRA dodo. And I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. Dodo, well, that's a compressed Socratic argument all right I could call it an MRA asshole

or a dodo I know I didn't even know what an MRA I mean I'm not a men's rights advocate and by any stretch of the imagination I don't visit any blogs I don't visit any forums but I'm a believer in equality as far as like the laws and regulations as they apply to human beings and I do not believe that the laws and regulations as they apply to human beings and I do not believe that the laws and regulations as they apply to human beings this country aren't even for men as they are and women I don't think they're even for women and I don't think they're even for men yeah I think they're worse what laws are fucking horrendous for men and some of them are

atrocious some of them in Canada are god-awful yeah Dave Foley, for the longest time, I don't know if he's resolved it. Horrible. Horrible. Anybody who's listening to this, just Google Dave Foley, Joe Rogan experience, divorce. And there's a YouTube video that someone compiled of just him talking about his divorce. It will make your head spin. And I know Dave. Well, Robin Williams, going back to TV.

Yes. Because, what, he lost $10 million in his last divorce? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As he said, it's not alimony, it's all your money. Yeah. I mean, that's, it is, it's insane. It's insane, and that's not fair. It's not fair.

I don't care what anybody says. I think that absolutely, if a man and woman get divorced, the man should pay child support, absolutely. And if the woman was not working during the time of the marriage, I think there should be some sort of compensation, something fair and something reasonable. Yeah. Some of the assets that he developed by focusing on whatever. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. But this internal payments, that's just not right. No, it's not. It's not right. And I have a friend who has to pay his ex-wife.

They were married for 12 years. He has to pay her for the rest of her life until she gets married. So she plays this game. She has a boyfriend, and the boyfriend lives with her, and he sends the investigators over to figure it out, and the boyfriend's not there, and then he leaves, and the investigators leave, and the boyfriend moves back in, and so he has to continue paying, like, she's cohabitating with a man, and he still has to continue to send her money, and it's just a manipulation of the legal system. And this guy has paid her millions and millions and millions of dollars. She's in his $4 million Pacific Palisades home. I mean, it crippled him financially.

And on top of that, he had to pay for her lawyer while they went through divorce. And here's where it gets really crazy. She went to every lawyer in town and consulted with them, every good lawyer in town that she knew of, so that he could never use them as counsel. Oh, because they had a conflict of interest?

Exactly. Oh, man. It's madness. I mean, she planned it out. She planned this divorce out for a long time. It was incredibly calculating. And the idea that men don't deserve rights, and because of the fact that women have been marginalized, which is true, they have been,

but that doesn't mean that men haven't been either. I mean, human beings deserve to be treated fairly. That's true. Everyone deserves to be treated humanely. I don't believe men are. I don't believe women are. I don't believe humans are. But the idea that you could separate and be a feminist but be anti-men's rights, well, you're a fucking crazy person then. You're not a humanist. You're not a person who's looking at all human beings as your brothers and sisters. You're a person with an agenda. You're a person with an ideology, and that ideology is that you're on a team.

You're on team vagina, and everything that's on team penis can go fuck itself. And that was the feedback, the blowback that I got for a joke about male feminists. Yeah, no, I mean, I've stepped on that landmine a couple of times, and I'll keep going back to it, because it is an important one. You know, men in the legal system, I mean, not just with divorce, but I mean, the sentencing disparities between men and women, what they call the pussy pass, you know, I mean, it's horrendous. Didn't you call feminism Marxist with panties?

Socialism. The original quote was socialism with tits. But that was a bad character in one of my novels. I just called it socialism with panties. And it's very true because, I mean, and then people call, oh, my God, that's so terrible. I just went through all the founding matriarchs of the feminist system. They're all Marxists, all leftists, and so on. And also, if feminists are so pro-woman, then where are they with Margaret Thatcher?

Margaret Thatcher was like the first leader of a Western country. She struggled up from nothing. I mean, an incredibly powerful woman. But she was on the right, you see, so they hate her. What about Ayn Rand? Ayn Rand wrote the most influential book outside the Bible, and the second most influential book, according to the New York Times review of books,

after the Bible, reshaped Western philosophy in many ways and Western politics, and the feminists hate her. Why? Because she was on the right. At least that's what they think. She was not actually on the right. But so I mean, I have these sort of suspicions when they're sort of, is it the leftist ideology or the pro-woman?

Now, if it's the pro-woman, then they should be incredibly positive. Where are the feminists when people insult people like Ann Coulter? Where are the feminists when people insult Sarah Palin? You know, like Bill Maher called her a cunt. I mean, that's really pretty vicious, like publicly, openly, right? I mean, where are the feminists? Because they're on the right, Ann Coulter, and they're considered to be on the right,

so they get a pass when people go, you know, but you then say something bad about a woman on the left. So I think that it is more left than it is pro-woman, because when they choose between their politics and the gender, they always seem to choose the politics over the gender. And that's why I say it's leftist rather than pro-woman. I agree, and I think there's a lot of really emotional and non-objective thinking attached to feminism. And there's a lot of really strange... One of the more recent ones that I find incredibly strange is there's this new trend of accusing men of rape if they have sex with a woman who's had something to drink. This is a broad, sweeping thing that's going through the internet.

And a lot of these it's really weird because it seems to be, there's a lot of it in what they call a skeptical community. The skeptical community seems to be integrated with a lot of male feminists and feminists and this is something that they've adopted.

This idea that somehow or another skepticism and this idea that they combine. And I don't know if you're aware of the case, the Michael Shermer thing. Do you know about all that? He was accused of some significant sexual impropriety, right? Yeah. With no evidence.

With no evidence other than a person who doesn't want to reveal their name. Yeah. The guy who wrote the piece heard about secondhand. Yeah. He didn't even hear about it directly from the person. And this is the person who's supposed to be skeptical. How are they not sued? Like, I don't understand.

He is being sued. Oh, he is being sued. Yeah, he is being sued now. But it's the idea of that being the skeptic community. I mean, one of the things you learn as a skeptic when you're breaking down any idea, whether it's a religious idea or whether it's an idea about an event that took place, or whether it's an idea about an event that took place is that a person's eyewitness account of any individual event is suspect and that it's one of the worst forms of evidence. And it doesn't mean that a terrible thing didn't happen to this person.

But it does mean that if you look in the context of the way it was explained in this guy's blog is that she was put in a position where she couldn't consent. Like, what kind of weirdo language is that? And then the corroborating evidence that he uses in this blog is that a woman went to a party with this guy, and he kept getting her drinks, and he was flirty. And then she got drunker than she usually does, and that's it. That's the corroborating piece of evidence,

that the man and a woman who are both adults were drinking together, and she got drunk. I mean, you talk about removing yourself from personal responsibility. This guy was responsible for you getting drunker? Like, that's insane. Like, that's insane for a person to say this. Well, he bought me drinks what choice did i have and if you're a feminist like why would you how is it possible that a person

who believes in in the power of being a woman could think that a woman is so much weaker than a man that she can't control how much liquor she consumes when she's around a man yeah but the man somehow or another by being with her and drinking with her, forces her to consume more than she normally would. That's madness. And there's no excuse called, I was drunk. I mean, try that with drunk driving. Right, exactly. The whole point is that, okay, yes, you had diminished capacity while you were driving,

but you were responsible for drinking and getting in the car. It's the one time where we're willing to alleviate someone of their own personal responsibility, and only women. A man is more responsible. A man who, responsibility and only women a man is more a man who if a man a man is more responsible if a man and woman are drunk together but the woman uh feels bad about the encounter in the morning the man raped her we mean all the man was drunk as well but the men are always the aggressors and always therefore guilty i mean that's not humanism. breathing. I mean, if you look at the role models on TV, how men are portrayed, you know, the Homer Simpsons and the American dads. The Bundy.

Yeah, the Bundy. We're all just idiots and sex craze and irresponsible and stupid. Yeah. And the amazing thing is that it's true that if you look at the bell curve of intelligence, for women, it kind of spikes in the middle. So many more women are of average intelligence than men. Now, you still have your brilliant women, you still have your dumb women. But if you look at the bell curve of male intelligence, much flatter, which means that we have a lot more geniuses and a lot more complete idiots. And what's happened is everybody's focused on the idiots among men

and have completely begun to ignore all the brilliance that men bring to the world, all of the amazing, incredible inventions that men bring to the world. And it's just we're focusing on this low cluster, which is incredibly biased. It's like saying, okay, well, blacks in America, they commit a lot more crimes, and we're just going to focus on that and say that's all the blacks are, and that's all we're going to portray as blacks as criminals and blah, blah, blah. That would be incredibly racist. But the sexism of portraying men as idiots because we happen to have more cluster as

a gender on that side and completely ignoring all of the incredible stuff that brilliant men bring to the world is incredibly sexist and it's really hard for people to see. I mean, like the idea that you were talking earlier, the idea that a woman can competently raise children without a man around is just taken for granted now. It's absolutely not true. Men are essential to the healthy raising of children, but the idea that we would recognize that as a society is just, we're just, they're disposable.

It's also a very unfortunate situation in regards to feminism that a lot of people are dealing with their own personal experiences that they've had with a few asshole men in their lives in regards to them not being sexually attractive or not fitting into a certain social group or not. And then they have somehow or another extrapolated that, that all men are pieces of shit and rapists or a massive amount of them need to be curbed and laws need to be changed. And if you get drunk with a girl and you have sex with her, you're a rapist. Right. I mean, and a lot of this is based on their own negative interactions with men.

And the stereotype of feminism, unfortunately unfortunately is like there's a meme online this is feminism and it's a woman who uh has a um a uh a like a holding up a sign saying i'm a feminist and she's fucking 300 pounds and you know and everyone's like yeah that's feminism you know like this is yeah you're right it's a big fat ugly girl that no one's a fuck that's feminism. You know, like this is, yeah, you're right. It's a big fat ugly girl that no one wants to fuck. That's really unfortunate. But the person, the type of person that is a large, unattractive woman

is going to deal with an, immeasurably, it's going to be so much harder for, for her to find people who are sexually

attracted to her, for her to find healthy relationships, for her to, if you, it's an unfortunate reality in this world is that if you are not sexually attractive, you are not going to have as easy a ride when it comes to the opposite sex. It's just a fact. Well, I mean, but sexually attractive and 300 pounds,

I mean, somebody who's 300 pounds is for most people going to be sexually unattractive, but if they try to lose weight and exercise, that's sort of a different matter. That just comes down to a basic human competence. But one of the things that I've thought of, like I grew up with a single mom and we lived, because single moms are usually broke, right? I mean, because it's a tough life. And so when I grew up with a single mom, everyone around me had single moms as well. You know, what's interesting is that the kind of men who float through single mom world, they're not always the best kind of men, right? They're kind of trashy, right? Because like the really competent and successful and intelligent men aren't trolling the girlfriend farms at the single mom, you know, low rent

housing ghettos, right? Right. And so I think what happens is a lot of these women have grown up in single mom households or in this sort of environment. And so who are the men who are floating through that? They tend to kind of be losers. They tend to be pretty unstable. They tend to be kind of parasitical. They don't tend to be the very best specimens of masculinity. And so I think the breakdown of the family has created an environment where a lot of girls growing up don't have a positive male role model in their life.

And the kind of men that they see floating through their mom's beds tend to be kind of trashy. So they're like, well, this is masculinity. It's also very unfortunate that in the criticism of masculinity, you've removed a lot of allies by blanket generalizations of men. You removed a lot of people like myself. I can't support you on that, even though I'm an entirely pro-human being and pro-equality. Entirely pro human being and pro equality But when you make these mass generalizations and call someone a men's right advocate asshole like that These these are nonsense statements, and it's unfortunate that I guarantee you these and it's not saying that all feminism

Feminists are unattractive or all feminists or you know not not not sexually viable But I guarantee you almost all of them have had a lot of negative experiences with men. And it doesn't mean that all men are negative. And it doesn't mean that there's not people out there that you would assume would be assholes that are actually very nice people. But you've got this idea that it's easier to define the world by these rigid dimensions that you've sort of set up for yourself. define the world by these rigid dimensions that you've sort of set up for yourself and when i when i when i read things that are from this feminist point of view they're so often aggressive and it's

so often and i get that there's a blowback i do get that i get that they've experienced marginalization they believe that you know society is set up to support rape culture and all these strange ideas and that there's a blowback to it. But I don't think that the way it's being handled is, I don't think it's objective, I don't think it's rational, and I don't think it's balanced. And I find it really weird when really intelligent people attach themselves to these feminist ideas. Yeah, but the problem is, in Canada here, I had a guy on my show,

a great guy, Bill Gairdner, who wrote The End of the Family. And he pointed out that there's a revolution that occurs, I think that initially is necessary. And I think this is also with blacks in America too. There's a revolution that occurs that is initially necessary.

But the whole point of a revolution is to defund itself, to end. So, yeah, I mean, there was stuff that needed to be done. Obviously, we talked about this earlier with blacks in the 60s and some stuff with women is kind of different. Because women, there's always been this women and children first. The vast majority of the people who died at the Titanic were men offering up their lifeboats to women.

Because there has been a sort of women and children first and women have been kind of elevated. There was no black people first in the South, right? So it's a little bit different. But there was, I think, some push for equality that needed to happen. But then what happens is you get a lot of people who get heavily invested in this cause, and it becomes their ego, their identity, right? Like, I fight for black rights, I fight for women's rights, and so on. But then what happens is society will often listen and respond in a positive way. And then what happens is that cause begins to diminish.

And people are like, you know, supporting, like, I'm not going to support the abolitionist cause because slavery's ended. Like, I'm just not going to do it. It's over, right? I mean, there may be other problems, but that's not the problem, right? Like, I don't support a lot of, you know, let's deal with polio victims because we've got this vaccine and we don't really have polio victims anymore, right? So the whole point of a revolution is to defund itself, to end, for people to move on with their lives. But what happens is when you have a government, you get these voting blocs and you get, like, in Canada over the last 10 or 15 years, the Canadian government's given $300 million to feminist groups. That's not coming from Canadian women or Canadian men for that matter because, you know, a lot of it's kind of been dealt with. But these groups continue by poking these scabs and by

continuing these grievances and by finding the Trayvon Martin situation and blowing it up into a race war and all this kind of stuff. A lot of the stuff has been dealt with, but because the government's still giving them money, they still need to whip up these kinds of hysterias just to justify their own existence. I mean, the whole point of revolution is to end. The whole point of I want to deal with measles is get a vaccine and end measles. You don't keep taking the same amount of money year after year. But if you have a government funding it, then you have to manufacture these grievances, which just keeps things going and getting worse.

The point of revolution is a resolution. Yeah. And this resolution never seems to come. It's never going to take place if your approach is imbalanced. never seems to come it's never going to take place if your approach is imbalanced

and there's just some things that are being some proponents of feminism that are endorsing one of them being

the ability to withdraw consent equals rape the ability you mean after the fact yeah after the fact yeah that's insane you consented

that's like me giving you my coffee and then charging you with theft when you walk out the room here take my coffee oh officer he stole my coffee and then charging you with theft when you walk out the room. Here, take my coffee. Oh, officer, he stole my coffee because I changed my mind after the fact when he left. Well, the idea is that a man can lie to a woman in order to get in bed with her,

and then if she can prove that he did that, then he's a rapist because he tricked her with his words. Yeah, because, of course, women never lie. I mean, they don't use makeup. They don't puff up their tits. They don't ever falsify any of their opinions or anything like that. They don't pretend to like a man because he's wealthy and hope to get pregnant with him either. I mean, I don't see any feminists that are decrying that. And that's a horrible affront to womanhood to think that the only way that you can make a living is to lie to a man and make him get you pregnant so that you can get money from him from then on.

I mean, feminists, true feminists should be horrified by that. Yeah, well, focus on the false rape accusations. The false rape accusations, which in some studies are 20, 30, or 40 percent. There's a study in the Air Force where they actually, even women who've withdrawn their accusations, 20, 30, or 40 percent of rape accusations in some studies, who knows what it is universally, are false. I mean, how horrendous is that? And women should be coming down so hard on women who make false rape accusations because they make it so much harder for the women who actually have been raped because then there's that problem or false paternity.

And the problem with false rape accusations is that very few women face repercussions for them. No, in my book, if you accuse someone of a crime and you lied, you get the punishment they would have gotten. You should. That's how it should work. I agree. That's the it should work. I know this football player who's recently been released, he got on tape, this girl admitting that she lied about him being,

him raping her, and her family received a million dollars, or $850,000, and now they have to pay the money back. But that's the extent of her punishment. This guy went to jail for five fucking years, and now he's trying to re-pursue and what if you didn't have that recording he'd still be there well not only that he's just one of many i have three friends that were falsely accused of rape i also have friends that were raped i know that there's i know rape is real you know i have friends that have been roofied and you know got out of danger because

someone recognized they had been drugged. It's very common. Rape is a disgusting, horrible, anti-human crime. And I think rapists should be treated the same way as murderers. You're denying someone their humanity. You're taking away something, some part of them. You're removing a part of who they are as a person. It's kind of permanent. Yeah. You can get a new car, but there's something about sexual violation that it's kind of permanent yeah somebody's going to try you can get a new car but there's something about sexual violation that

it's kind of a permanent it's horrible but so is lying about it that's horrible to lying about a rape is just as horrible other people often get a man raped yes yes and this idea of this idea of withdrawing consent you know and that somehow or another you can do that and turn a guy into a rapist, that's a hating thing. That's a, you don't, what you're doing is you're hating someone who's manipulative. You're hating someone who can con you into bed. But that's been what men have been trying to do since the beginning of time. Like you're hating the game of courting a woman.

And there have been men that wear shoes that they would never wear and watches they would never buy and cars they don't give a shit about, an apartment that they decorate just to get the woman to believe that they're like this. It's all a lie. My friend Brian, who you saw earlier tonight, last night, first show, Brian Callen is a hilarious guy. The first time I came over his house back when he was single, he had Jack Kerouac on the road sitting on his night table opened up. He felt tentative. I'm a predator, so I came over his house.

I'm like, bitch, you ain't reading that. I find weakness in people very quickly, so I saw that. I go, you're not fucking reading that. I go, you're hoping a chick comes over and she sees that, and she's like, oh, you read so much. He's like a poet. You're amazing. He's there. And he started laughing.

He goes, it's true. It's so true. I decorate my house to pretend I'm smarter than I am. I did that. There was a Stephen Hawking book, A Brief History of Time or whatever, right? And I had that on my desk. And this woman, I loved her to death. We went out for a while.

This woman came over and she's like, I call bullshit on it. That's the first thing. I call bullshit on stuff later. And I'm like, no, no, no, I've read it. And what she did was she went over and she opened it. And it creaked like an old boat, you know, because it had never been opened before. So it didn't go. The spine was completely like, you know what, you got me. That's hilarious.

That's hilarious. Yeah, we lie. We pretend. You know, I have this what? You got me. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. Yeah, we lie. We pretend. You know, I have this thing when I say people, and I think a lot of times we lie and pretend, a big part of this, because we're not happy with who we are. We're not really, and we like to be, we like to wish that we were someone better. I always tell people, be the person that you pretend to be when you're trying to get laid.

You want to really live your life optimally. You want to really be your life optimally. You want to really be an admirable person, be the hero of your own story, and be the guy that you pretend to be when you're trying to get laid. And if you can find people who love you for who you are, I mean, my God, isn't that easier? The problem with the pretense is, you know, it's fine in the moment, but man, you got to keep that shit up. That's a lot of work. And you have to love yourself in order to be loved.

If you have all sorts of flaws that you don't fix and you don't like various aspects of yourself that you don't correct, what normal person in their sensible mind would want to engage in a long-term relationship with someone who's incredibly flawed, knows it, and does nothing about it? That sounds like a nightmare. That sounds like taking out a dog that shits all over the house. You're just taking out a giant problem you gotta fix this person and some people do do that they take on projects yeah you know i mean i have a friend who every fucking girlfriend he dates is always broken and he can never see that you what your problem is your own life is a mess and you don't want to deal with that so you bring people into your life that are more fucked

up and you can fix that on their problems focus on their problems rather than dealing with them. And you constantly give them advice. Yeah. You constantly give them advice and you're going to fix them. But fix yourself, bitch. And if you did fix yourself, you wouldn't want these people in your life. It's like if I date a 300-pound woman, the fact that I'm 280 looks better. Yes. So I don't have to diet, right?

Yes. I look smaller right next to her. Yeah. I mean, I think that is a huge part of what's wrong with people in relationships. What's wrong with a lot of people in relationships is internal. It's what's wrong with you. What are you bringing into a relationship? Until you're happy with who you are, until you're just a reasonable person who's objective about your own actions

and objective about your own path in life and enjoying your own path in life you're not worthy of a healthy happy relationship you haven't gotten your own shit together yet well and this is terrible i think dichotomy where you know women get married to guys hoping that they'll change and guys get married to women hoping that they won't you're not going to cut that long hair are you like when you have kids right i mean you're going to keep exercising right you're still going to look great and all that. The idea that you're with someone in the hopes that they'll change is just completely insane. It's like buying a Buick and hoping it's going to be a boat.

It's not. You bought a Buick. It's a Buick. One time thinking about a boat. It's ridiculous. Well, there are a lot of women who like to do that, though. Who like to fix and change a guy. I'm going to redeterate him and he's going to be just great.

They throw things out. Like, where's that book? You shouldn't read that. What? Or, you know, there's still three Adams holding my underwear together. How dare you put them in the garbage? I have a friend, and his girlfriend, he went to the bathroom, and his girlfriend was confronted by my other friend's girlfriend

about the kind of car he drives. Because he drove a sports car, and he had a Ferrari, he's a wealthy guy. And the girlfriend was like, why do you let him drive that car? You let him drive that car? You let him drive that car? Yes, that was her words. Like a guy driving a car like that is like, you know, he's like, he's a player. He's a player.

Like why do you let him have that car? She was correcting him because she was concerned that her boyfriend might get ideas like hmm i can get a car like that too because my friend has a car so she wanted to what she was worried about her and she did it in front of her man like to check him she went to this girl and was correcting her situation over a car i mean it was like decisive you've got time don't you have to do with your life rather than control the manipulate and if she was incredibly manipulative this woman and you know those those people are not in my life anymore but this woman was incredibly manipulative and she she was the guy was a like a wealthy strong guy but for whatever reason this attractive woman came into his life and just started dominating him she She didn't work. He paid for everything. And she wouldn't let him do shit.

She chose everything that he did. She dressed him. She bought clothes for him. And he was not allowed to buy a sports car. Not to say anything great about having a sports car, but I don't understand. If you're going to be a capitalist, you've got to be a materialist,

which they clearly were in this big, giant house. You should be able to buy whatever fucking car you want. If you're really going to bust your ass and work to be a capitalist, if you're going to be a materialist, which they clearly were in this big, giant house, you should be able to buy whatever fucking car you want. If you're really going to bust your ass and work 12 hours a day, I'm not saying there's any great honor or nobility in buying a Ferrari. But if you really want a Ferrari and you've got a lot of money, buy a fucking Ferrari. Who gives a shit? That reminds me. Best moment in your Peter Joseph interview because I'm doing a debate with him on Monday because we have some slightly different ideas about how the future should go. And we have a debate and so I listened to your

show with him, which is really enjoyable. And I love the bit where he said, you know, they could make better cars. Like the Ferrari, they could make that better. You're like, no, they absolutely could not make that car any better than it is. That was like, I mean, that's the pinnacle of human engineering.

You better shut the fuck up. Yeah, like, I mean, unless you're going to have like an angel's wings and wheels, you cannot improve that car. That's about as good as you can get. You know, that's that sort of silly socialist ideology where you don't vet your facts out before you start blabbing. You know, you can't say they can make a better Porsche. No, they fucking race the 24 hours of Le Mans.

They compete against the best cars in the world. They brilliantly engineer these vehicles. Smartest guys in the world. The upgrade from the Porsche is the fucking teleporter in Star Trek. There's no better way to get around than that, right? When people talk to me like that, like they can make a better car, no, they cannot. Stop. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know the history of what you're saying. What you're

doing is saying something that goes along with your ideology. You would like it to be true because it would make you more brilliant. It would make your points better. But if you have to bend facts to meet your theories, that ain't so brilliant, right? You've got to be a slave to the facts, right? He's got a great thing going on. He's got a really interesting thing going on, but it's very culty. There's a lot of cultiness to that. It's also, it all falls out the window when you realize that he's a stockbroker. He was for quite some time.

Still does. He still does that. Still does. That's how he makes his money. Really? Yes. He's a day trader. Doesn't he get people to rip out their kidneys and email them to him or something?

Isn't that what the leaders have been doing? I like the guy. He is a nice guy. He's not trying to run a cult. He's a very smart guy. Doesn't he get people to rip out their kidneys and email them to him or something? Isn't that what cult leaders are supposed to do? I like the guy. He is a nice guy. He's not trying to run a cult. He's a very smart guy. Yeah, and I don't think he's trying to do any of that. But he's a musician.

He's sort of a frustrated musician and a day trader. Wow. Yeah. Very bright guy though. Mark's doing that too. Mark's playing the stock market. Mark's bank is made and then kicked her out when she had a baby. Because, you know, exploiting the working classes is really bad, right? Yeah, exactly.

I just can't do it as well as the capitalist. That's my problem. There's a lot of those guys out there that become intoxicated with the attention that you get from having good ideas. And that's a real common occurrence in human nature. Whenever someone gets to talk and people listen and go, you're amazing, you just, oh, I'm amazing. You don't go, hmm, is that person just dumb? Is your class mom not amazing? I need more of you. Let's get all the smart people out the room. I need you and your second cousins, especially if you've bred together, bring me your children. They'll just fit right in. I'm always the first to point out that every single thing that ever

comes out of my mouth is essentially just some things that I've read. And you're very humble about that. Like you openly say, like, I'm not smart enough to understand this. I don't really get that, but these are my thoughts. It's important. And that is important, yeah, because, I mean, nobody has the answers. The best, I mean, what Socrates did, the best you can do is provoke thought. I mean, how many answers have we given to people in this conversation?

Yeah. Not really many. I would say don't hit your kids. Yeah. That's a good one. Reason with your kids. Maybe stay home with them if you can. your kids. That's a good one. Reason with your kids. Maybe stay home with them if you can. Be kind to each other. That's a huge one.

But those are sort of... I mean, that's such common sense. That's a fortune for me. But big answers, you know, man, I think we're always really wary about that. The moral instructors of mankind are usually complete control freaks and assholes. I 100% agree. I think it's almost impossible.

I think we all together can work things out by talking and exchanging ideas and exchanging opinions and agreeing and seeing each other's points of view. I think we could help that way. We can all help each other. But the idea that one person is going to be the moral authority or the voice of wisdom,

it's a very dangerous position. It really is. I mean, there's a few things that I'm comfortable saying people shouldn't do. But outside of that, I have no idea what is going to make you the happiest in life. I mean, yeah, don't steal, don't kill, don't rape. Yeah, fine, fine, fine. But even how many people really do that? Not many, right? But actually how people should live? I mean, man, if we can start pointing guns at each other, we can start having these crazy laws, start throwing people in jail for the wrong bits of vegetation I think that would be a great step forward you know let's just stop pointing guns at each other the guests I've done outside of that I have no idea

what people should do to make themselves happy and it does because you're legitimately intelligent half the time I'm not even sure myself right I mean yes if they're saying what should I do with my day that's gonna make me the happiest well it's nice to have the choice or whatever, right? But as to what other people should do, you know, who they should be with and what careers they should follow. I mean, that's really, it's impossible. It's hard to know. It's a very important point that you bring up that especially because God, there's so many things that people like that I don't. There's so many things that I like that people don't. Like I've had really, really intelligent friends that go, why do you like this mixed martial arts stuff?

I don't know. I just do. I like it. I understand that it's, it's a controlled violence. I understand that it's a, it's disturbing for some people to watch, but to me, it's been a part of my life since I was a boy. And, uh, I, I, you know, I find it incredibly fascinating. Sorry, you don't. It's okay. You know, you know, and by the way, the people that I've met that are mixed martial artists or fighters are some of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. And one of the reasons is that they've conquered their ego to a certain extent and that they have a much better control over it because they're being checked over and over again on a daily basis in the gym.

Oh, discipline is a highly underrated virtue. I think it used to be more highly rated. The discipline to say when you're wrong that you're wrong. What bothers me so much about people is these lazy edges of their permission slips. When people do really stupid shit, part of me is just like, how do you give yourself permission to do that? How is that on your list of possible things to do? And still be happy about yourself. Or even like how is that, you know, I hit my kid.

How is that like, how is that even on your list of possibilities? How do you have to, like why wouldn't you say no, I'm not going to do that? Like and have the discipline to not do it. That seems to be pretty obvious. It's a very underrated aspect of being a man, of being a human, is having a code that you live by. Yeah, some self-discipline. I mean, the guys who get up at 5 and work out and stuff like that.

The other day, I was like, like most people, like, oh, I'm kind of tired. Should I work out or have a nap? You know, and part of you is like, oh, a nap would be really nice right now. Oh, yeah. Get up and actually go and do that thing. Yeah, go do a workout, you'll feel better. And you'll sleep better that night because you didn't have a nap and screw up your cycle. So just that kind of discipline is really lacking.

I think we used to have a lot more of it when we were really confronted with nature a lot more. And now we live in this fuzzy city where you can get everything 24-7 and it's all easy to come by and so on. And we've got kind of, and the materialism to me comes with the laziness. And the laziness comes with the debt. Because we talk about national debts and so on. I mean, in America, and to some degree, it's almost as bad in Canada too. People like have debts way bigger than their income and that's the kind of laziness too. Like what's with the defer, like why not defer some gratification? You know, they've done a study on kids. It's

called the marshmallow study. They take four-year-olds and they sit them down and they say, you can have two marshmallows now. Sorry, you can have one, you can, you can have two marshmallows now or you can have four marshmallows if you have two, if you have one now and wait. They always take two now, right? Well, no, there's some of them that, that will defer. Really? And there's some of them that won't.

And they, they track these kids through life. And they find that consistently those who are able to defer gratification just do a hell of a lot better. I bet you there were times when you got up to do Fear Factor and you're like, if there's one thing I don't want to do today, it's Fear Factor. It was 90% of the time we did Fear Factor. No, you weren't. But, I mean, the discipline to just get up and do it.

I mean, it's important. Woody Allen says, you know, 90% of success is just showing up. That's kind of true. Just have the discipline to do it. When you don't feel like doing it, the deferral of gratification, I'm sure with the training, there's times when you get your ass kicked or you pull the muscle and you're just like, well, I've got to go back and do it. Or there's times where that cheesecake looks like I'm drooling like a tsunami here.

But you just don't do it. And I think that kind of discipline, so you say that the fighters are like really great guys. I think it's because they probably really work that muscle of discipline to the point where they have a coach, they have a set of personal responsibilities, and they don't let themselves step outside of that. And so there's a kind of security in people who have a lot of discipline in whatever field it is that they're working in. I really like being around people who've got a lot of discipline because you know they're not just going to do some random shit. It's also inspiring to me. Yeah.

I like being around people that work hard. It makes me feel like I should get things done too. being around people that work hard. It makes me feel like I should get things done too. When people accomplish things around you and they experience joy and success and they experience this feeling of like, wow, I did it. I pulled it off. That's inspiring. It makes you want to do the same. It makes you want to, and the more things I accomplish and the more things I do well, the happier I am as a person. I find this a direct correlation. Do you have a plan? I know you said yours is a little bit, you know, grab what you can as far as your career goes and a little bit on the less than plan side, but

do you have a sort of an idea of where you want to go? Five years, you know, 10 years kind of thing? No, no. Good. No, I, I'm here. Lists are overrated, right? Yeah. Well, I'm here. You know what I'm doing right now, I love. I really, I like to keep doing it. My plan is to continue to do it. But if everything maintained exactly where it is right now, I don't think I would do anything differently. I think I would continue to work on my stand-up.

I would continue to do the commentary for the fights. I would continue to do podcasting. And I enjoy all those very much. I continue to try to be the best. I continue to do podcasting and I enjoy all those very much. I continue to try to be the best father I can, continue to try to be the best husband I can, all that good stuff. But other than that, no, I don't have any plans. My plans are just to enjoy life and I enjoy life very much. My plans are to maintain that enthusiasm and that happiness, the joy of life, and spread as much of that as I can. Inspire people if I can, and just inspire people by enjoying myself, as other people

have inspired me by enjoying their lives. I'm inspired constantly by people who love their craft, by people who love their profession, by people who love what they do. It's very infectious, you know? So that's the only goals that I have. That's the definition of a happy life, that if it continues the way it is, that's pretty damn good. Yeah. It maybe grows. I would like to get better at everything that I'm doing that

I enjoy. You have to. In jujitsu, you don't maintain, you get better. In comedy, you don't maintain, you get better. If you continue to focus on it and you learn from your past experiences, you're going to improve. If you apply intelligence and focus to anything, you're going to get better at it. It's not like you can become a master at comedy. Even if you are a master, you know, you call yourself a black belt in comedy, there's room. There's always room. There's room in jiu-jitsu, there's room in martial arts, There's room in everything. I love the disciplines with no limit where you can't ever say this is the end. There's no end. It never ends. There's no, like, you're never a total master. It's not possible.

I mean, you can teach and you have a certain amount of, like, there's certain moves that I can teach someone in jiu-jitsu. Like there's certain moves that I can teach someone in jiu-jitsu. But could I teach you jiu-jitsu mastery? No. Yeah. Something you have to like sort of pursue on your own and most likely you'll never achieve. You might have a master. You might be masterful over one particular skill level. But then someone else come along that is much more skillful than you and master you.

You know, it's a constant series of levels and it's fairly infinite and then there's also you know the physical challenges and you know athletic ability and all sorts of intangibles that different people bring to the equation but i think that in pursuit of those things is where you find yourself and that the really uh the interesting aspects of it is the the growth that you achieve in those things, whether it's through the growth in writing or comedy or anything difficult, those things manifest themselves in the rest of your life as well. You get better at everything. Yeah. I just wanted to ask you, is there a dream guest for your podcast that...

Terence McKenna, he wasenna things alive his brother on he was a fascinating guy um mother dream guests I think I've already had I know I'm I I'd like more of the same you know right Neil deGrasse Tyson was great he is one charismatic guy yeah and you know it's great to have someone front and center rational thinker putting it out to the masses that beautiful Maynard Keene from Tool was great. Graham Hancock. There's so many great guests.

I enjoy doing it. I enjoy just talking to people. And I think it's broadened my perspective immensely to be able to have these kind of conversations. Like you and I sitting down here for hours just chatting. I think it's really difficult to pull off in the real world. Unless we're agreeing to have a podcast, it's really hard to just set aside three hours where we're

just going to talk. It's hard. Oh, it's an incredible privilege. I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to have conversations like this with other people I do on my show. When it's going to be a dad, I've got all the parenting experts of the known universe to come on my show. And it's like, ooh. So I get to learn and other people get to learn. I mean, it's an incredible privilege. And this technology that makes it possible. It's amazing.

It's fantastic. Yeah. Look how little we're using here. You have a camera set up. And thank goodness you have a backup recorder. Yeah, yeah. For the first 27 minutes, we didn't even get this. And that was the gold stuff, baby.

But this is just a little piece of electronics. And it's plugged into the wall, and that's it. And maybe a million people would hear this. And it goes out to the world forever. More than a million, really, because each one of my downloads is over half a million. Right. At the minimum. Should it be a million? Can we start again, then?

I feel like a little rusty. Yeah, yeah. It's not coffee. How many times have you been to a stand-up comedy show before? Oh, I used to do a lot. I mean, I used to go to a lot. When I was in the business world, we'd have clients come up, and I'd always want to take them to a comedy club because it sure beats a movie, right? Yeah.

And so I used to go see a lot of comedy. I did a little bit, you know, just some amateur shit when I was in school. Oh, you did stand-up? Yeah, yeah. Open mics and stuff? And, know, just some amateur shit when I was in school. Oh, you did stand-up? Yeah, yeah. Open mics and stuff. And, yeah, just open mic stuff. And it wasn't really my thing, but it was fun to go up and try. I always liked doing that sort of stand-up, the cliff edge thing.

Yeah. But I love stand-up. I think what you guys do is, like, fantastic. I think it's just a real ray of sunshine in human life. And what you give is you give permission for people to be funny themselves, to have fun, and the joy that you guys have. The one of the things

I love most about stand-up, you know, the breaking bit, and you did it a couple of times last night where you did something that's so funny that you yourself found it funny because maybe it was unrehearsed

or something spontaneous or you had a thought because that's seeing somebody have joy in the moment is really, really enjoyable. I only do that if it's real. No, I know it wasn't real every time. There's some people that do like fake breaks where they laugh at their jokes a fucking billion times in a row.

And every time you see them, they're laughing at it the same way. It's kind of gross. But last night I was working on a bunch of new stuff. So that was one of the reasons why I thought it was so funny. Yeah, and I mean, you know, going back and forth with the crowd. So that's one of the reasons why I thought it was so funny. Yeah, and I mean, going back and forth with the crowd, I mean, it's really amazing to see the energy that you have.

I think people don't see the kind of energy that a really energized stand-up comedian has. They may see it at a rock show, whether it's the lead singer or some Freddie Mercury stuff or whatever, but when you go to see stand-up, you see somebody who's really putting out a lot of energy. And I think it reminds people that they can be incandescent. They don't have to be like these dull embers, which most people trudge through their days in their cubicles and whatever, right? Just dragging themselves around. But I think seeing people really energized, it reminds you that it's

inspiring. It reminds you that you can be energetic, that you can be powerful, that you can be commanding, that you can be generous. Because stand-up comedy is very generous, in my opinion, because it's so vulnerable. I mean, you're out there. Like, I'm either going to get a laugh or not. You know, like I did the acting, and I didn't do much comedy. I did some, but I mostly did, like, the serious stuff. And if the theater's quiet, you can just pretend that they're really moved and, you know, crying and all this sort of stuff.

But if you're going for laughter, I mean, it's there. It's not. It's hanging out there, right? And so I think, I'm not going to tell you your job because of course you know it a million times better than I do, but what I really love about the standup is just that openness, the honesty, the vulnerability, and the energy. It's funny that you call it generous because a lot of people think of it as selfish because what you're trying to do, the only reason why you're being vulnerable is because you're hoping that you're going to get a laugh. Yeah, but you can't

make that laugh. The laugh has to come honestly. If you bomb, nobody laughs out of generosity. That's true. Then the hecklers come out of the woodwork. Then you're fighting a losing battle and all that. No, I do. I view anybody who provides a service as a vulnerability. You're out there

selling your CDs at the street corner as a vulnerability. I view it as a very generous thing to stand-up comedians do. Of course you get paid, and of course it's not self-sacrifice. You enjoy what you do. But the audience has to know that you really care about them having a good time in order for it

to work. I stay around after the show and take pictures with everybody. You do. You don't have to do that. You can helicopter to your lair and meet too, right? Yeah, you can take the underground tunnels or whatever you do. That to me is part of the generosity idea. I think it's

important. It reinforces the relationship that I appreciate them very much. I'd be happy to take pictures with them. And if it takes an hour and a half out of my day after the show's over, that's great. Fine. You're approaching a real work day at that point yeah I need to lie down get me some cold condoms show I actually put in work that's uh where's the prep if you don't

I get yeah well right now I'm working on a lot of new material so right now there's a lot of writing involved during the day the day of a show I like to sit down in front of my computer for at least three or four hours and write. Because it really fires up all my synapses and coalesces all these ideas together. And then before the show, I write things down physically in longhand form. But like the day of the show, all the stuff that I wrote about the Toronto mayor, that was all I wrote that day of. That was all new material that I wrote specifically because of this silly guy. That's crazy.

Yeah. That's amazing. It was good stuff too. It was good stuff. I'd forgotten about him because I try to blank out on politics as much as possible because I know it's like dandelion fluff in the wind that will sting your eyes. But that's my prep. I feel like I can definitely do shows without that.

I mean I can just go and do a show. I have enough material, I can just go and do a show right now. Like, you know, open that door, there's a comedy club, and I get on stage, and it'll work out. But to do it best, I have to prepare. I have to write, especially when the material's new. There's, like, a lot of stuff that I have to make sure there's certain taglines I have to remember, and it's like there's so much memory involved

and so many paths that have to... And then there's also experiments. I have to figure out what's the right path. Like sometimes I'll, I'll open up with this and then I'll close with that. Like, you know, like last night I closed with all this stuff on being a vegan. I won't give the last line away, but that last line was like a brand in my head. I like thought about that all the way home. I went, yeah, go see the show if you're listening to this, but that last line was like a brand in my head. I thought about that all the way home. I went, go see the show if you're listening to this. But that last line was like, that was the perfect choice for me. Oh, thank you.

Well, that's how you want to end it. Boom, thanks, good night. Yeah, leave them wanting more. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, because this is something that I ask of pretty much anybody who I think is a thinker, is looking at this crazy life that we live.

Do you have a positive outlook for humans, for culture? Do you think that we're going to work this out? Are you a voice of doom guy? Or do you think like, you know what, I think this is actually moving in the right direction ultimately? Yes. No. I'm a long way guy.

After so many words and the most important question, I'll give you one more. I think that the world will go how the most important and energetic people will make it go. Right? So I don't believe that I'm along for the ride. I am not a big movement in history kind of guy, you know, like Hegelians or Marxists, sorry to get all bullshit and technical, but they all believe that there are these big historical movements and, you know, the zeitgeist and this and that and the other, and we're all just kind of along

for the ride like, you know, egrets on the back of a hippo. I don't believe that. I believe in the single great willpower individual theory of history. That when people who have ability and intelligence and passion and commitment,

they're the ones who make the world go in a particular direction, right? Founding fathers did it one way and it went, I think, in a pretty positive direction,

you know, once the slaves and women got caught up with the all men are equal kind of thing, it went in a pretty positive direction. You look slaves and women got caught up with the all men are equal kind of thing, it went in a pretty positive direction. You look at Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, it went in a very bad direction.

If you look at the Soviets, the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin and company, it went in a seriously bad direction. It killed like 70 million people in the Soviet Empire. But these are all individuals. They're all individuals with particular abilities making choices. So I don't believe that the world is going to get better unless people who can make it get better. I think in entropy, as things get worse, right? I mean, the lowest common denominator and the worst demagogues tend to take over, but you can really fight against that. I'm a single hero of history. You take a stand as best you can, and you shine that light as bright as possible,

and then most people will simply go one way or another based upon the willpower of the individuals that they listen to and the clarity and the focus and humility of the people they listen to. So I think that it goes the way we want it to go, but it's not going to go there unless we make it go to a better place So I think that it goes the way we want it to go, but it's not going to go there unless we make it go to a better place. I think you're right. I think that's a brilliant way of putting it too. I think we do get energized from others and the people that do have power and influence do have almost an obligation to energize people with ideas. Yeah. Look, if you know how to do the Heimlich and someone's choking on a fishbone, go help that

person. Yeah. You know, if you can swim and someone's drowning, go help that person. You have ideas to make the world better, you think you're legit. Go do it. Express them. Yeah. I mean, I don't believe in unchosen positive obligations.

Like, if you choose a contract, then you're bound by that contract. I don't think you have to, but you're kind of a dick if you don't. You know, like if you're like, oh, I don't want to give that guy tracheotomy because this ravioli is really good, even though you could and save the guy's life. It's not like you should be thrown in jail for that, but it's really douchey. You know, and I think if you have verbal abilities and you have skills and you have energy and you have education and you have some capacity, and given now how easy it is to broadcast to the world, by God, you kind of owe it to the future.

You know, because all the great stuff that we have was people putting themselves on the line in the past. You know, all the great, like the freedoms we have, the political freedoms, all people fighting hard, and a hell of a lot harder than we have to fight. You know, the guys, the founding fathers, they faced down the British Army, for God's sakes. They could have gotten muskets through the head, right?

Musket balls through the head. What have we got? Oh, maybe some people might say bad things about me online. It's not exactly Joan of Arc stuff, right? So we have an incredible platform. We have so little downside to bringing light to the world. That's what drives me every day. It's just, I want, and especially when you become a dad, you really, your whole time frame extent is not about your life. It's about, you know, my daughter's going to outlive me for like 40 years, I hope, right? 50 years.

And it really is about, I just can't let the assholes take over. Because assholes love to do, to be in charge, right? And the problem is good people aren't that bossy. Because good people like live and let live. And, you know, I don't want to be in your face and in your business and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But assholes love to be in charge. And they keep congregating at the top of power. And I don't want to be at the top of power. I assholes love to be in charge. And they keep congregating at the top of power. And I don't want to be at the top of power.

I don't want to be a politician. I don't want to have power over others. I think that's the ring has to go in the fire. There's no way to use it. Yeah, I agree. And so the problem is that bad people are just anal and motivated and douchey and power hungry. And they just work like assholes to get power over others. And good people are like, well, I don't really want that power because I'm happy and I'm in love and

you know I've got a great life and so I really don't want to boss everyone else around but we have through this technology we don't have to have political power to have an effect and we don't have to be a professor and teach maybe 5,000 people in a whole career or write some book that maybe 10,000 people read a million people can listen to this for what you and I spending a couple hours having a great fucking conversation. I mean, ooh, what martyrs are we? And we can do that now. First time in history. It's incredible. There's no burning at the stake. We're not getting burned alive as witches. We're not being thrown into Russian gulags like Solzhenitsyn.

I mean, we have this. It's win-win. We have a great conversation. The world hopefully gets some nuggets of wisdom. And we turn the ship a little bit more towards the light. I agree. I think that's a great way to end this. All right. Thank you so much. Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, your website for my listeners? JoeRogan.net.

JoeRogan.net. Freedomainradio.com. All books are free. All podcasts are free. No advertising because I have the business sense of a box of cheese drink. And your YouTube channel. Oh, yes. YouTube.com forward slash free domain radio.

Well, you know, I think you have a great business sense because you've accumulated this massive following. So if you wanted to sell something, now would be the time. I'll think about it. You've built up the awesome core audience. That's right, and I've held off from selling something, so the first thing I sell is going to be great, baby. Yeah, just selling gold.

Actually, well, I mean mean it's not for sale but a documentary is coming out pretty soon I've had a good fortune to work with Sean Lennon and some other great musicians to work on a documentary what's the documentary?

it's called Truth because I'm very modest it's basically it's a documentary about what's wrong with the world and how we should fix it beautiful from a philosophical standpoint

well let me know when it comes out I will I'll be happy to promote it thank you very much thank you Joe good time thank you very much thank you. Have a real fun. Thank you very much.

Thank you. It was a lot of fun. Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова