The Joe Rogan Experience - #413 - Dan Carlin, Daniele Bolelli

Episode Date: November 8, 2013

Dan Carlin is an amateur historian and former radio talk show host. He now hosts two popular podcasts available on Spotify: "Common Sense" and "Hardcore History". Daniele Bolelli is an Italian author, professor, and martial artist. His books include "Create Your Own Religion" and "On the Warrior's Path". His podcast called "The Drunken Taoist" is available on Spotify.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! If I had to think of the two guys that have freaked me out the most with stories of the past, it's you two gentlemen. It's what we do. Always a pleasure. Out of all the years of listening to podcasts and talking to you guys on the podcast,

you are, without a doubt, the two men who have freaked me out the most. You with that crazy story about the bodies on the stakes. Was it in Persia or Rome? What was the story? I think I told you two. One about of course impaling and all the fun stuff that goes with it and the other one was about

the end of Spartacus Rebellion where they crucify some 5,000 people on the road between Naples and Rome. That was it. Yeah. That's dark. That would be a trip that you probably remember if you take the road on those days. Could you even imagine?

I mean, just the idea. I mean, how many miles is that? What is 5,000 people? How far did they space them out? Is it about 100 miles? Something like that? Jesus fucking Christ. Something like that.

100 miles of crucified bodies. Every Jesus fucking Christ. Something like that. 100 miles of crucified bodies. Every so many steps, one more. And that's, you know, what is that, a blink? In terms of actual time on this planet? Just a blink ago. Like these same things that we go to school with and go to the supermarket with, these same humans are capable of that in their darkest of dark days. From your podcast and from Daniele's, I think the understanding of how easy we got it is really

cemented home. Your stories, some of the stories, especially one of the ones that I really enjoyed recently is the Martin Luther tale, the tale of Lutheranism and the Anabaptists. And the city of Munster and all that. Fascinating. It's Waco on a huge scale. Fascinating, fascinating stuff. And again, not that long ago, man. 1500 something, what was it?

Oh, a guy like that could arise today, too. I mean, they still make those kind of people. Yeah, they do. What is it about people that fall for that shit? I mean, it's just... There's a sucker born every minute, right? But why? What is the flaw in humans that we're willing to believe people that are that fucking nutso? My take is the appeal of authority. That's why the eaters of the word gain an audience is because most people are insecure. Most people like a father figure

to tell them, I got it under control. I'm the strong man in charge. I can take care of business. Look at me. And I think there's an appeal of people who have that, the issues, they like dictators, you know, they, and that's probably slightly oversimplified, but I think there's a part of it. There's also a thing where I think people really terribly want to be a part of a group oh yeah like very very much so and the more extreme their devotion to that group is sometimes the more rewarding the actual experience of being in the group is it means something special to be a part of this wacky group of crazy fucks that's willing to murder people like it's almost like this extra charge of being alive that's missing from a lot of people's lives.

I think that being involved in a cult or, you know, any sort of crazy, wild, rebellious group that's doing dangerous things, it's like, it's almost to fill a void that's left in human beings that we've sort of, like, there's these echoes of our primal days that are still just lingering around in our dna looking to be played upon with the right harp note you know i think there's almost too when you think about like a hitler there's some wonderful film you can see of hitler with crowds on the street and you can see the look in the people's eyes and they look like they're seeing a movie star and they just want to get a little touch. Maybe my hand will touch his fingers.

And you think to yourself, Hitler is a celebrity-type figure, but there's that same thing about because you're famous, because I've never understood the celebrity thing where people just get dumb around, but it's the same sort of the look in the eyes. It's like seeing Elvis, and instead it's Hitler. Yeah, I think you're onto something there for sure, It's the same sort of the look in the eyes. It's like seeing Elvis, and instead it's Hitler. Yeah. I think you're onto something there for sure because there's something about the ultimate celebrity experience, like meeting a guy like Obama or meeting a guy, you know, any world leader type character.

It would be so overwhelming just the presence of that person. Now think about this all happening at a time when, you time when it's fucking really hard to get a book. Really hard to be properly educated in no alternative media sources that we face today. Goof on alternative media all you want online and some of it is much deserved but the one thing these

guys do is they'll cover all kinds of fringe shit and that'll be their headline news. I'll go to salon and people excuse accuse salon of being like too left wing and too you know but there's some smart people that are pushing it that way i what i like what they're doing is that their front news is like it's not like the front news that you're going to get on cnn it's front news about you know like uh gay and lesbian rights and and things in the workplace and you know what what what politicians said about you know what race

that was deplorable and all that stuff's like front row shit yeah yeah it's really really lefty very real very lefty but that's important too like it's that's important to have a balance out of super ultra-sensitive, to balance out the fucking savages of the 1500s that are still rolling around in our DNA. You need someone out there on the fringes of super-sensitive progressive behavior just to try to give us a better medium, give us a better baseline.

Let me bring it back to that Munster podcast we talked about. One of the sub-themes in that was whether or not, you remember the whole question of whether or not regular people should be able to read the Bible for themselves. This goes to what you said about Salon or all these alternative media sites, because the prime minister in Great Britain over all these Snowden leaks and what The Guardian has done was talking about, you know, maybe we should dial this back. Maybe it's time for some press restrictions. In other words, maybe this is too darn dangerous that you're getting to read all this stuff and we don't have a choke point to shut it down because in the regular media whether it was abc cbs nbc the washington post there are choke points where you know these people literally just pick up the red phone to the editor of the washington post and say let's talk about this story you're thinking about running. That's a great choke point.

When you have the media as diversified as it is now, all those choke points go away, and the David Camerons and all these people miss the choke points. And there's people like Glenn Greenwald or Edward Snowden, to a lesser extent because he's on the run and hiding, that become huge celebrities because of information that they release to people. Like Greenwald, even though I know they harass him and they've harassed his boyfriend, they detained his boyfriend in England.

But the bottom line is that guy became super famous because of this. So it's a positive thing. Well, think of how he changed the world. I mean, I had a lot of people write when the story broke, say, this is no big deal, nothing we haven't heard, all this kind of stuff. They're not saying that now. Even John Kerry, the president, all these people have come out and said things that, oh, maybe we shouldn't be doing this, maybe we should be having this discussion. It's really changed the world. All this stuff we're talking about now with the NSA, that's all Edward Snowden stuff. Yeah, it's amazing that one guy can have that kind of impact.

And in the future, when they look back on today, and I think historically, he's getting swept under the rug and what he's done and the impact of it is just sort of getting ignored by the media. And more and more, they paint him as this controversial figure. You know, more and more more they paint him as this guy on the run from the NSA. But there's no support of him in anything mainstream. There's no support of what he did or who he is. There's no call to action for the government to release this guy that he's actually a patriot, that he's actually looking out for the true American way and is exposing people to people, not America, but people in America that are making a huge mistake and they're doing it for the name of America

and whether or not they think it's right or wrong, ultimately we don't think it's right. And ultimately finding out about it pissed the entire world off. That's the facts. So if the government was really representing the people, they would look at it in terms of like, what do all the intelligent people who've reviewed this think? Yeah, it's a travesty. It's a fuck-up.

It's anti-American. The idea of it is ridiculous. And the idea this is the only way you can control security is by spying on every fucking person? Well, then the terrorists have won. I mean, that's a victory because that's terror for everybody. That's no privacy. That's weirdness. That's employees like Snowden who they kept going on and on about how he failed high school.

High school dropout. High school dropout that could read my email, man. High school dropout. That just makes you look worse. You gave the passcode to that high school dropout. What the fuck? Why are you goofing on him? You hired him.

It's ridiculous. You fucking hired that guy to watch everybody but think of how you know you were talking about one person just one guy but think about how much that same attitude scares the government one of their many many many thousands of workers was able to do that yeah that's scary on the whole opposite side you know what it is too i think we're dealing with a bit of a and this is kind of gets them a little off the hook. I think you have a bubble mentality. I mean, in life, you have them in professions. I mean, scientists get it.

Unions get it. Bureaucracies get it. The army gets it. The police gets it. Where people get promoted, these guys all get promoted to the top NSA positions because they're better at spying. They figure out better ways to get around defenses and all that. at spying they figure out better ways to get around defenses and all that they don't get promoted to that special room where there's five or six of them making policy because they did a better job of finding a fourth amendment that doesn't let them spy so when they're in the room they all see the world the same way so you tend and this happens like i said in every profession

they tend to push each other forward because there's no devil's advocate they're saying wait a minute maybe we shouldn't use every power we have to spy as much as we can to those people you see these nsa guys testifying in front of congress and they don't even hide how mad they are at us how mad they are that this is even known how mad that they have to be there how mad you're questioning them and it's because there's nobody in the room saying guys we shouldn't do this and And really, to be honest, there's no obvious line where you should call the dogs off,

where you should say, hey, maybe this is okay, but that's not okay. That does not happen. They talk about the Fourth Amendment, but then the other guy goes, well, we're not really violating the Fourth Amendment. If we just take everybody's trash at cans and we keep it in a storage locker with their name on it, we're only violating it if we actually search through their trash, which we'll do later. If we have to, and then everything's on the kosher up and up. If J. Edgar Hoover wants to search Joe Rogan's trash for evidence of illegal activity,

you're going to have to send a physical agent out there to do that. Now we just collect the trash on trash day, bring it to the NSA headquarters, dump it in there, and we'll sift through it later if we have to. Yeah, they could essentially tune in on anybody anywhere in the world now. With a flip of a switch. Yeah, and that kind of power is awesome if you guys are like super enlightened monks that are designed to save the world. The U.S. government.

Right, exactly. But if you're a regular person, you can't have that kind of juice. Regular person just can't have autonomy over all these people's information. What if Richard Nixon had it? That's what I want to say. Oh, God. And you think you're not going to get another one of those? Dude, what if Dick Cheney had it?

He did have it. Did he have it? Yeah. You think so? Absolutely. He put it into place, man. So they were accessing everybody's emails as far back as... Yeah, this all goes...

Yeah, there's a book called The 1% Doctrine where they talk about how after the 9-11 attacks, the rule that they decided, and mainly because of Dick Cheney to operate under, was if there's even a 1% chance of another 9-11 happening, anything is fair. You can do anything to justify it. anything is fair. You can do anything to justify it. And I think what their attitude was is on 9-12-2002 everybody would have said

oh yeah, okay, whatever it takes man, don't let that happen again. When it was still fresh in our minds. Yeah, there was a weird moment after 9-11 where I remember driving to school or to work rather and as I was driving as I was driving to work

it was early in the morning and all the commuters were going and everybody had a flag on the car. Everybody had it. And it was weird. It was a weird feeling. It wasn't just a it was like everybody was reminding everybody. How long did that last

too? Because I'm thinking, I just said 2002 and everybody's going to go, Dan, don't you know the 9-11 attacks happened in 2001? But a year later, that was still an open wound. And so how long, when do you think, if you had to guess, when did it start to wear off, and we started to normalize? I mean, New York City

is exempt, because I don't think they ever renormalized, but for the rest of the country, how long do you think it took to get over that PTSD? I think it took a few years. or three years something like that i give even more yeah like bush sack because i mean bush being re-elected made no fucking sense under any point of view other than part of the 9-11 boost that he got for a while well it was also the real problem with the voting machines right the real openly reported problem with those Diebold machines. How about the candidate he ran against? That's always the first thing I look at.

That's also a good point. I mean, if you're running against John F. Kennedy, you lose that election, but you're not. You're running against a guy, you just go, oh, really? That's my option? That's what kills you. Yeah. Well, and a lot of people felt like the Al Gore election that got Bush into office in the first place was tainted. That was a weird one. Yeah. That was a weird one. There's so much fuckery involved in voting, man, like real open fuckery that should be like, really it's treason. It's treasonous

behavior and these people openly do it in order to help their candidates win. I mean it's one of the most un-American things of all time, manipulating the vote like that. I think somebody who was a political operative would say to you that it's one of the most american because it's been going on i mean you know george washington's giving hard cider to people you know when they come to his little parties to get i mean if this is right the problem is is that i i and we talked about this before i think there's a certain amount of this that a healthy society the healthy political system

can suck up and still be ok there's a certain tipping point where you're not that healthy anymore and a healthy political system can suck up and still be okay. There's a certain tipping point where you're not that healthy anymore, and what was okay before is not suck-up-able anymore. Suck-up-able, I love that. Well, it also begs the question, all this stuff begs the question. Like, first of all, everyone's favorite argument is, if you have nothing to hide, then what are you worried about? And it's not that.

Right. What it is is, first of all, why do you need so much information? And what have you done that has made so many people so angry that you have to check everyone's email? Like, what is the actual cause of all this that never gets addressed? Like, whenever we're talking about how this group hates us or that group hates us or this group is playing, why? Why? What did we do? Well, I want to take what we do.

I want to go with what you said, the if you have nothing to hide, because I was just trying to get a show out before I came here and I failed miserably. But one of the things I was going to talk about, did you see that story? The lawsuit filed from that incident in New Mexico with the driver who didn't do the full stop leaving Walmart. You saw it, right? Right. So the police pull him over for California stopping the stop sign, decide that he looks like he's clenching his buttocks in a weird way. And this is the part I love. Goes to a judge and says to the judge while this guy

sitting on the side of the road he's clenching his buttocks in a weird way i think we have somebody trying to hide drugs in there and the judge goes i guess judging from the story yeah that would be probable cause so they take this guy to a doctor who refuses to do with the police officers rest is they gotta go to another doctor four teen hours of anal cavity searches anima's they sedated him and did a colonoscopy they examined his

stuff right in front of him fourteen hours found nothing x-rayed in multiple time found nothing apparently send him a six thousand dollar bill for the procedure so when you say what have you got to hide if you do you know if you're right that's what can happen to you if and and and and not just that what i love is the police department spokesman said we didn't do anything wrong this is policy and we had a judge sign off on it so when you say if if you have nothing to hide what do

you care this guy had nothing to hide and that happened to him he clearly be because he was clenching his butt in a weird way. I know, but now if that story is true and the lawsuit claims witnesses and all this kind of stuff and the police officers think nothing was wrong there, that's what happens to you when you get rid of these protections that keep you from being searched willy-nilly or anything like that. After a story like that, everyone in the world

who's going to be stopped by the police is going to clench his butt in a weird way because just the fear of this story is like, oh shit, it's not the colonosc by the police is going to clench his butt in a weird way because just the fear of this story is like, oh shit, not the colonoscopy. Or you're going to get people that are butt freaks

and that's what they're into. They're into cops checking them out. They hide treasures up there, put secrets up there. I didn't mean to take the conversation in that direction.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's a great direction. It's hilarious. Well, it's fucked up that if you search someone's ass for 14 hours and there's hilarious. Well, it's fucked up that if you search someone's ass for 14 hours and there's nothing up there, that guy should be able to

search yours for 28. That should be the rule. He should be able to throw firecrackers in there. Come on, man. You checked his ass for no reason. You owe him something. What bothers me about that is that there's no penalty that actually affects the people who did this. In other words, if this guy wins his big lawsuit against him, that's the

taxpayers who are going to pay that. The people who did it don't suffer at all. Yeah, like someone falsely accusing someone of murder or theft or any crime like that, it almost should be worth just as much. If you set a guy up for murder and you know he didn't really do it, it should be worth almost as much as murdering somebody. They're talking about that with these podcast troll lawsuits and everything to change the law that they're working on in D.C. would do some of that, would put some of the onus on these people who say these things. And if you lose your case, all of a sudden you're the one responsible for the day. In other words, something to dissuade them.

For folks who don't know that story. Yeah, tell that story. I don't know the full extent of it. From what I understand, someone out there has a patent. Says they have a patent. Says they have a patent on... I'm going to very, very broadly paraphrase this. I think it was putting something up in serial form on the internet.

So essentially it would be like every podcast, every YouTube channel, everything. We invented that. Yeah. You owe us money. The idea is ridiculous. Like, if you have the Bolelli blog and you decide to number them, you're violating a patent. Obviously, I might be way off with this.

But he sent some, or the company had already won. They had beaten Apple. On a different thing, though. A different thing, yeah. On Apple, on another patent-style lawsuit, which may or may not have been more worthy. But this one is strange because he's targeting podcasters. And so it's a big to-do in the podcast community. The whole goal is to get you to do the old shakedown, though, where they essentially say,

We're not going to get you. You stole our technology, but it's fine. Just give us $1,000 a month, and nobody gets hurt. Is it really that much? Oh, I'm sure it's more. Talk to your friend Adam Carolla. He got a letter. Yeah.

Well, that's ridiculous. The idea that you could patent putting things up in serialized form on the Internet. In 1994 or something, or whenever they claim to have it done. It's what people have always done. I mean, we put everything up in serialized form. Can you imagine if someone allowed them to do that with television shows? You could never number episodes anymore. It's the stupidest idea of all time.

The idea that you could control that. But see, it's not stupid if you're them and the lawyers and everything because that thing that they're working on in D.C. isn't there yet. You take a shot. Right. You know, you take a shot and you see what happens. There's no downside. Yeah, I could see that.

I could see it from their point of view, from strictly business sense. They'd be like, look, we're playing within the rules. These are the rules and this is how you get paid. But I think that ultimately, we're going to have to agree on something that makes a lot more sense because you can't get money for nothing from people and that's money

for nothing. You're not contributing anything. I think you can get money for nothing for people. I's money for nothing you're not contributing anything if you really i think you can get money for nothing for people i'm of the totally i think we do that all the time well we shouldn't that's the american way i can't get money for nothing i'm talking about the ideal scenario okay let's make that clear yeah we let's make that clear obviously people get something for nothing right i mean i think we're gonna have a real problem in this country no matter what as long as our financial systems remain so vague and it fluctuates, goes up and down. Today the Dow crashed. Tomorrow the Dow rises.

As long as that's a possibility, how could you ever have anything stable ever when the entire foundation of your economy is by nature fluctuating daily? By nature, up and down, so much so that you have to close business at a certain time. Stop fucking trading! You have to blow a whistle off and say, no more decisions! No more decisions. No, you've got to stop. We have to control this economy. We have to allow chaos only in eight-hour bursts.

And when those bursts are over, we have to literally shut it down. Can you imagine how many trades there would be the second the market opens, when they've had a whole night to digest stuff? Okay, first thing in the morning, it's billions of dollars. We've got to get this trade in before, because everybody will beat us to it. Can you imagine what the market would do on opening? Now, in the old days, that's how it was. But now, with the digital trading all in one second,

there'd be 10 bazillion trades in a second and a half. What's a strange idea? The idea that you could only make transactions during a very specific time. Yeah, especially in a global economy when the people in Japan are going, so we can only trade on American things when we're asleep at night? I don't understand. Yeah, it's stupid. It's stupid.

But if they went 24 hours, people would just take fucking Adderall and just hit it hard. People would be dying of lack of sleep. That's right. Way more than StarCraft. All those people that are dying from playing StarCraft, that's not even for real money. Right. You play the economy. You're playing it for real money.

But what do you do? Can you day trade in the middle of the night, or do you have to do it during stock market hours? I think it just doesn't. I think you can set up trades to be enacted at the market open or whatnot. But you can't just ride the wave and go up and down, sell and buy. I don't think so. Unless you're doing it maybe on Tokyo time. Maybe you could do the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

That's when you're a real addict. When you go, oh, man, the U.S. market closed. Where can I play? Tokyo's just coming alive. Yeah. It is like an addiction. I really truly believe it. I don't think it's possible that it couldn't be when you're gambling.

Essentially, the stock market is a lot of gambling. Especially the way some of these people play. It's one thing to say, I'm going to buy Coca-Cola and sell it in 25 years. It's another thing when you go, I'm going to buy Coca-Cola and sell it in 20 seconds. And even if you're right, like if you say, no, look,

it seems like a gamble to you because you're uneducated, but I, in fact, am very educated on this and it's more of a calculated risk, but the reward to risk ratio is very high. A lot of variables. That's what every gambler always says. But they can show you on paper,

we've profited X amount of years in a row. This is not nearly as unstable as you like to think it is. But part of the charge is the fact that it is a little. So 2008 happens every now and then where fucking everybody's scrambling and no one's got a chair and the music just shut off. What I love about that is when they show you, you go to the financial advisor's office, and they always show you the historical, the way these things are performed historically. And it's always, the graph starts right after the last terrible crash. And you just go, well, what about the depression? Well, the depression was an unusual situation.

That'll never happen again. I think today they must start it from like last week, don't you think? Like, here's your historical performance in the last seven-day period. Yeah, we don't you think? Like, here's your historical performance in the last seven-day period. Yeah, we don't know. I think the idea of trying to control an entire global economy like that is preposterous. It just doesn't make any sense. I don't understand it at all. And the people that understand it have tried to comfort me and assure me that it does, in fact, make good sense. Right. And if that's not scary enough, then you get the collusion of government and the weird economy. I mean, when you think about the fact that there are no laws against the fact that if you have worked for some companies, you can pick up a government job overseeing the workings of those very companies or vice versa.

You are in government first and the second you are done, you can pick up your vice president position in one of the companies that you just finished benefiting. Yeah. That's beyond perverted it's so transparent it's you know one of the ways that they've said our society could go down though and other societies have throughout history is that sometimes they just get too complex to manage and you can ride that wave sometimes until something bad happens but a perfect example is i mean a lot of people said that the great depression happened because the what was going on in the financial system overwhelmed people's ability to understand and react and compensate for things. And I remember

people saying, well, we'll never have another Great Depression because we're so on top of things now. Yeah, but we have new variables that we don't understand that somebody in the future is going to say they were such idiots way back there in the early 21st century. Well, me as a barely educated fool, when I look at exactly how everything has fluctuated in the crash in 2008, it makes zero sense.

Because as a fool, I look at it and I go, look at this. There's the same amount of people. There's the same amount of metal. There's the same amount of concrete, the same amount of plastic, same amount of material things. No one has produced or taken away anything from the pile of humanity's creations. And yet, all of a sudden, everyone's broke. Like, all of a sudden, everything fell apart. And people who were prospering just a week ago are no longer prospering.

When I look at something like that, I have to feel like, okay, these guys are obviously far smarter than I, and they're running the system. So either it's rigged as fuck and someone just extracted a shitload of money out of the system and did it under the guise of a crash, or people are way fucking dumber than I give them credit. It's one of those two things. And I feel like when a guy like that cat from New York that ripped everybody off in the Ponzi scheme, the old dude, what is his name? Madoff. Bernie Madoff. When a cat like Bernie Madoff comes along and robs so many people, I have to go, wait a minute,

wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. So no one knows how this thing works? It's not that hard to understand when people are playing with things that aren't real, but selling it for real money, and then you're counting that as something that you own. For example, we take these toxic assets, right? It's not as hard to understand as people suggest because let's say I put you in a house you can't afford,

and all the evidence shows you can't afford it, and I wouldn't have given it to you 20 years ago, and then I take a bunch of people like you, and I take all of your bad things that you're never going to be paying back, and I bundle it into something, and then I sell that to someone else based on the value that isn't really there because none of you can really pay it back. And then you say, well, I'm worth this much money. I own these assets, and they're worth this much money. And then those assets collapse, and all of a sudden, you look like you had $50 million in your asset tree of stuff, and all of a sudden, you don't. You bought something that was worth nothing, and so all that money that you had on paper just disappeared overnight because it wasn't real to begin with.

And weren't there banks during this crisis that were actually banking on things falling apart? Yes, hedging. Hedging, exactly. So profiting off of it falling apart. It's supposed to be a risk management diversification tool. Jesus Christ, that's a great way of saying what the fuck you mean. I'm just using the proper terminology there. I gotta write that down because that's a brilliant way of fucking someone in the ass. This is a risk management... Not a risk management for you, a risk management for them.

Right. How do they describe risk management diversification tool? That is goddamn hilarious. I think that's what the cops in New Mexico said that to the guy. That is goddamn hilarious. It's the greatest way to describe. The cops in New Mexico said that to the guy. That's right. Searching your cavity is a risk management diversification tool. I'm actually writing that down because it's so beautiful. I think you should use that for all kinds. Use it in the MMA color commentary. Him throwing that punch that way is a risk management diversification tool.

If anybody hears that, though, if I pretended that I actually came up with that on my own, I would get shit to the wall. All the financial advisors who watch the MMA would be going, now he's talking. If I'm saying it now, I have to say it as an inside joke. Yeah. Wink, wink. Risk management diversification tool.

That's how we're fucking you. That's hilarious. That's a brilliant way of putting it. I'm out. Then I'm out. But just the idea that that could be legal, that you could be loaning people money, setting up loans, and also gambling on the fact that you'll profit if they default on those loans. Look, we know you can't afford this mortgage, but don't worry.

If you can't pay it, you'll be taken out of your house, and we'll win on this other side over here. That's my point as like an uneducated fool. When I look at that system, I go, well, obviously, they set it up so they can extract money. That's the only way it makes sense. If you have the same amount of people, you have the same amount of knowledge, you have the same amount of items, and yet

all of a sudden, everything fell apart. Somebody fucked you, okay? They just did it in a way that's legal. But I mean, banks, I have to tell you a story because this is too crazy. I remember when I went from two incomes to one after my wife died and everything. And so I applied for the, I forgot how they call it,

loan modification, right? It's like, oh, conditions have changed. You can modify the loan to help somebody stay in the house, all that, right? So I get two letters from the bank in the same day. One I open and they say, we can't give you the loan modification because you make too much money. You're doing too well.

You don't need it. I open the next letter and say, we can't give you a loan modification because there's no hope you can keep the house. You make too little money. There's just no way. And I'm like, what the fuck? Did you talk to each other at least? It's like, you're the same department.

You're sending me, really? This is what it's about? They just have, I bet, probably like patent excuses, especially when they feel like you're probably going to lose the house. They're like, good, we'll just snatch up his house. This is where it gets better. I knew somebody who was hooked up with the people who own the loan. So through somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody,

we got to the president of the company like, hey, man, can you do something? Is it something that we can work with and stuff? I kid you not, the guy sent back the word. Give me $20,000 under the table and I can make it happen. Oh, my God. He asked for a bribe? Yeah. That opened.

Holy shit. And if he's doing that with me, I'm imagining that's probably regular business, right? That's amazing. But, you know, there's no paper trail, so, you know, you can't prove it. So you'd have to come up with 20 cash? Yep. 20,000 in cash. Holy shit, that's a lot of money.

But he's like, look how much you're going to save over the next 30 years. It's worth it, you know. That's hilarious. I always think to me it's like when you talk about, you know, them betting both sides of the fence, essentially. How is that different, though, from a lot of us probably know some pretty darn serious gamblers, and a lot of them set their sports bets up that way, where, listen, if this happens, I win, and if that happens, I win, too,

and either way, I'm covered. And that's definitely how the house handles things. So essentially, when we talk about the financial insiders in the economic realm, that's the house. So the house usually wins. Yeah, and it's not a fair game. I mean, I always say I love casinos. I love going to Vegas.

I love doing fights there. But if you're smart, you look around and you realize, how do you think they built this giant fucking thing? That's right. They didn't build it on you cracking blackjack every week. They built it on people losing money here, man. They don't offer you those free trips and the free hotel rooms to come gamble

because they're losing money on that deal. Yeah, they're so slick that if you win a ton of money, they'll give you free tickets. If you bet a ton of money and win a ton of money, they'll fly you back. They're like, it's just a matter of time, bitch. We got you here. Just a matter of time. It's like having a fight with Cain Velasquez.

If you don't knock him out You're gonna run out of gas before he does There's no doubt It's just a matter of time He's gonna get ya If there was 25 round fights Cain Velasquez would never fucking lose It's impossible for him to lose

He just doesn't have a His gas tank is like 3 times larger than a normal human being That's the fucking house The house can't lose bitch They got billions But they do like my friend dana white is a he's a crazy degenerative gambler and uh he gambles millions he's lost a million in a night he's made as much as six million a night i think he said on the podcast

yeah he's crazy he's crazy but he's a very wealthy man he was at uh the palms and he whacked him hard and they cut his credit line in half. And he was like, what? Like, dude, we do shows there. We put on UFC fight nights there. And, you know, he's gambling a lot of fucking money. He's getting crazy. But he won.

He won a lot. And so they cut his ability to gamble in half. So he left the Palms. So he pulled the UFC fights out and said, no, okay, we'll go to the hard rock now. What are you guys retarded?

Like, why would you do that? Like, you're going to get me eventually. Don't you know, you're going to get me, you chicken shits. It's like they pulled his fucking credit.

They're like too much. It's the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do. If you are in the casinos, you want them back. You don't want them to send them away. But you know what? You get numbers crunchers who don't understand human nature. And they just look at it as

like a management tool thing. Well, to get back to our risk management I think there's a little bit of them going, I don't know how he's gaming the system, but I can judge from the results. He's up to something. Cut this guy. He's counting cards. He's this or that. Just get him out. Just get him out.

Just get him out. I don't think he can count cards. I mean, I guess he can, but in blackjack? But my point is, they don't know what the next scam is, and they can sometimes deduce that something's going on when those odds and averages that they've worked out to the nth degree don't seem to be working with you. Right. Well, if you're a smart player, that definitely has an impact on Blackjack. Like, Blackjack is absolutely a skill game, right?

And I know they use a gang of decks now. They don't just use one deck. So I bet you can most certainly count those cards, but I think you have to be like a super genius. Yeah. You have to be somebody like way smarter than Dana. That's what I'm trying to say. He ain't counting cards. He's just getting lucky.

He just knows how to play. You know, he'll tell you. He's not a fucking math say. He ain't counting cards. He's just getting lucky. He just knows how to play. You know, he'll tell you. He's not a fucking math genius. He's a business genius. He knows how to promote fights. Maybe that's because he brings Cain Velasquez with him and puts him right next to the other dude. He's like, he won, right?

Yeah. I'm 100% in favor of gambling. I'm 100% in favor of liquor, too. I'm 100% in favor of all options on the table. It doesn't mean you're going to indulge in all of them, nor does it mean that you should. And a lot of the indulgences that are available right now are very unhealthy. Like we talked about the gambling one. I could go to Vegas.

You could go to Vegas. We all could, any weekend, and gamble everything we own. I know a dude who worked with a guy. He worked with this guy for 10 years. For 10 years, this guy saved up all his money to go to Vegas. And his idea was he's going to go to Vegas and gamble and win. He felt like that was his destiny. So he saved up X amount of thousands of dollars for 10 years.

Lost it in the first 24 hours in Vegas. Came back home to Oklahoma and was just freaked out. Just literally like shell-shocked. Like he had been attacked and raped by a hundred ghosts. He just had this look on his face that he would never recover from. This poor prick. That's natural selection. He's going to go follow a preacher in Munster now.

I firmly believe that you should know that that's possible. I think we all should know. Big sign on the door. Walk in these doors and you can lose everything. Welcome. Yeah, but I think that all should know. Big sign on the door. You can lose every... Walk in these doors and you can lose everything. Welcome. Yeah, but I think that exists for everything. I mean, I think ultimately we have to learn from all these horrible examples that we see on TV and in the news. But every time some guy gets in a street fight and beats some guy to death and they're pulling him away, we should all learn from that.

We should all learn from that and go, hey, you know what? The human body is a lot more fragile than we like to pretend it is. Who's that boxer that just fell into a coma? Did you hear about that? No, I didn't see that. Who was it? Fighting on HBO the other night. Really?

Yeah. They put him in a coma. Brain swelling? Yeah, he had some swelling. And then when they put him in a coma, he had a stroke. His name is, it's really sad, man. Oh, I just heard him interviewed. Yeah, Magomed Abdullas...

Abdullas Salamon. Who was he fighting? I heard a pregame. Eric Perez. Mike Perez, excuse me. Mike Perez is this badass Cuban boxer. It was a great fight. And that guy is, I mean, this is a perfect example of a guy being too tough for his own good. Magomed took a tremendous amount of punishment in that fight but kept trying.

He just kept trying to get to that guy. Did he make it through the bout? He made it through the bout. I think it was a decision, I believe. It was a 10-round decision, yeah. And he took just a furious amount of damage in that fight. And afterwards, they found out that he had broke his hand and broke his nose. He was taken to the hospital where a small blood clot was discovered on his brain.

And so they induced him in a medically induced coma. And then while he was in the coma, he had a stroke. So it's pretty bad. That's what's made boxing hard for me. I've always been a huge boxing fan. It's just football's getting a little like this, where you start to wince. You know, you can't. I never.

It's funny. I know this is stupid to say, but I would watch boxing, and I never connected it with pain. You know, you're watching tactics, and you're watching different strategies working with you, and you're watching foot movement and head movement. And it never even occurred to me that you're watching the pain and the suffering, and then someone dies, and you go, okay, how much enjoyment did I get out of this sport? And I still watch it, but this is the kind of thing that just reminds you

of what's going on in there. Well, for me, it has an even deeper connection because I've competed, because I've fought a few kickboxing bouts, and probably, I don't know how many taekwondo bouts but it was over a period of like six six or seven years it was all I did with my life it was my 100% waking life so I competed a lot in full contact tournaments and I got away with it I got lucky but I've seen some guys get really but I've seen some guys get really hurt. I've seen some guys get kicked in the head where they were just really never the same person again.

Doesn't this go to what you were saying, though, about you kind of have a right? It's like if you talk to these boxers who are, like you said, every day they're training, you're going to tell this person they can't do that as long as they know the risks? To this day, that was one of the most important things that I ever did as far as developing me as a human being because it was terrifying it was terrifying and i got really good at it and i got really good at competing in a really dangerous high high risk quick happening situation like the striking especially like the weight class that I was kickboxing at 160. These light guys, everyone moves really fast. They all hit hard.

It's a scary weight class. A lot of knockouts. And when you're competing in that sort of an environment, you're training in that sort of environment on a regular basis, regular shit just doesn't scare you the same way. Regular people and they flare up and yell or someone gets douchey with you.

It doesn't have this overwhelming sense of fear that it has on a lot of people. And I've seen people in confrontations where a guy and another guy are in a confrontation. And something happens mostly because one guy like loses his ability to stay calm. Like he's so confused and nervous that he can't react properly. When I see that, I see that's a human with a deficit in the development of their character. I don't think unless you have been there, I don't think that

physical violence is something that you're just born knowing how to deal with. You know, it's like either you are used to it because you got beat up at home as a kid or you're used to it because you fought a lot or you're used to it because of something. But you're not going to, you know, the first time it happens, it's fucking scary.

That's why the scariest kids to fight are kids who got beat by their dad. Yeah, exactly. Those kids, I remember competing against kids that I knew had like really violent relationships with their fathers. Those kids were like really used to getting hit. It was a different thing.

Like, and it was a part of normal everyday life, getting smacked around. Fucked up. You know, though, and this gets me back to not thinking about the pain in boxing. I remember there was a, Ryan O'Neill, I think it was, he was doing the remake of the Champ movie. And they had on site one of these actual boxers who was going to kind to kind of you know teach him a little bit about how to do this or that and he said he tells the stories is at one point he goes the boxers who was working with him said i want you to hit me and he said okay i'm not gonna hit you in a long time hit me gotta hit me so

so finally hit me does no i mean really hit me you know he he says i i squared up and i hit him as hard as i could he goes no i mean really hit me and and you start to realize the guys who take lots of punches all the time in training and everything, it doesn't do to them what it would do to you. Well, not you, me. But to them, the punches can do just as much damage to their brain.

But in terms of shaking them or hurting them, it's not the same thing when you're used to it. Well, one of the big things is the shock of being hit. The shock of being hit is how a lot of people, they literally go into a freeze mode and they can't move correctly and they get knocked out. Like their body shuts off. And it's being overwhelmed by the moment, by the fact that you're actually engaged in hand-to-hand combat with somebody. That's a weird feeling.

I've seen it happen. I've seen guys fall apart in street fights and stuff. I've seen street fights that happened just because a guy was scared. That's a possibility, too. Yeah, because then the more scared you are, the more you call for it. Because then you're encouraging the other. Because if you're not scared, it's like, then it makes the other person think twice.

It's like, do I really want to get into with this crazy motherfucker who's not scared of getting hurt? It also doesn't progress the correct way. You know, the way that, like, the natural way in an idiot's mind is I yell at you, you either back down

and get scared and I kick your ass, or you yell back at me and we fucking puff chests until somebody fucks up and makes the wrong move. But if a guy backs down, you know that you can press forward. And the instinct, the natural instinct of the bully is to press forward. Yep, big time. It's almost unavoidable. I think people do themselves a huge disservice by not understanding at least some form of martial arts, at least having some experience in it.

Hopefully so that we won't need it, though. That book that we were talking about right before we come on. Xenophon. Xenophon, the Persian expedition. One of his speeches when there are these 10,000 Greek guys like way behind enemy lines in Persian territory. They have to make their way back home. It looks desperate. They have no chance. And one of in his sort of in these like speech that he's trying to give them to rally them

up. One of the things he says is exactly what you were saying about the psychology is if you guys are scared now, you're all going to die. There's just no way. Because if you're afraid of dying, that's exactly what's going to happen. If you guys are willing to die because you know that your odds are desperate, but you're willing to just go for it because A, you don't have any other chance. B, you go for it with honor. The odds are not only you're going to behave honorably, but your chances of surviving improve dramatically. That makes sense. The universe favors bravery.

It doesn't want weak bitches out there spreading their seeds. Sorry. Sorry. That's a fact. It's a fact. Right. You know, there's a weird trend today to almost encourage weakness. You know, I think encouraging kindness is always very important,

but it gets really confused with encouraging weakness. There's a lot of bitch-ass men out there that it would help them, it would benefit them. Take a fucking boot clamp class. Just do something with your body other than sitting. That shit drives me insane because the fact that we have moved beyond the stupid stereotype of the tough macho man and the prissy woman who stay back, that's nice. But at the same time, softness come at the price of people

giving up the good sides of the stereotype. You know, if the stereotype of the man was you are strong and tough, but you're also, you know, emotionally deficient and not very sensitive. Rather than working on the kindness aspect, as you put it, the idea has been, well, then strength is bad. We should get rid of that. That's ridiculous. So stupid is not even funny. People associate prejudicially anything male, masculine, anything unapologetically masculine with suppression of the feminine with suppression like with anti-feminist ideas like i i have on more than one occasion gotten into it with uh people that call themselves feminists and their idea was that something that

i'd said like doesn't promote femininity or doesn't or is anti-feminine, the furthest couldn't be true. I just expect a balance. I expect people to just be people. Exactly. When you start looking at feminist or masculinist, that doesn't mean shit to me. What means shit to me is leave me alone, I'll leave you alone.

I'll give you the right to do anything you want to do, but you can't say I'm an ape because I like working out, okay? You can't say I'm an asshole because I've got some fucking guns. Alright? That's nonsense. If you're a man and you don't work out because it's not enjoyable for you, I totally understand.

But the idea that someone who does or someone who does participate in manly type shit is an asshole because of that like i i watched this one thing it was this horrible piece that someone wrote about the uh the rape in ohio with those uh those high school kids one of the most disgusting aspects of male culture yep this ability to get someone fucked up and do that to them and treat them as a subhuman. I mean, it is without a doubt one of the scariest, darkest aspects of men. Yep.

That they can do that. But in this article, they were talking about how, let's just face the facts, all high school athletes are assholes. Yeah, that's the logical conclusion that flowed from that. It's like, what the fuck? It hurt my head. Where was that? It was a blog. It was a blog that somebody wrote.

But it was just, I was like, oh, come on. I mean, it was a very progressive, very left-wing blog that I visit sometimes. And they were actually saying that supporting the ideas of competition actually encourages people to treat people as subhumans. Yeah, and that's an old, old idea. What do you think about that? Listen, I think we exist in a realm where it's going to be competitive no matter what you do. So I think to pretend we're going to de deemphasize these things doesn't do anybody any any good down the road because then once you drop them in life they're not prepared well it is a

little bit like what you were saying about the about the fighting but but like with my kids you don't you don't want to over you don't want to crush anybody early on you want to nurture them so that they can handle the competition but if you don't teach them about competition they're you're not preparing them for life. And that's when you're going to release them into a world where, I mean, if those people really don't want a competitive world, think about how much you would have to do to turn off the competitive world, how much intrusion there would have to be on all of our lives. There goes your stock market right away, right?

I mean, the economy. Isn't that a little like what some of the really hardcore communist ideas were about? Yes. Where different people have different capabilities, so forcing them to compete is inherently unequal because you and I are born different, so we'll compensate for that and blend it out. Sounds great in theory, but the amount of work it takes to recreate a whole system where you don't have competition, you don't have differences, is worse than the disease.

Yeah. Yeah, even because you are treating people like they are sick as opposed to treating somebody like you are going to teach everyone. Man, woman, doesn't matter. Gender doesn't come into play. Everybody should be strong. Everybody should be kind. Everybody should have both of the qualities that are normally attributed to only one gender or the other. They are human qualities.

They are good qualities. They are what you need to be a complete human being. You encourage that stuff and you make the most complete human being there can possibly be, and they will deal with whatever shit life throws at them, competitive or otherwise, because there are always going to be challenges. And as you say, if there are no preparation for the challenges that are going to come your way, whether you like it or not, no matter how safe you make the word, then you're dead meat already. Then you're going to get squashed the first time the universe goes boo at you. You're going to freak out

and crash. For me, the big question in a competitively-based system is not the competition part and not the winning part. It's what do you do with the people who come out on the short end of the stick? Because I think in a sink or swim system, you're going to find that the people who are sinking are going to decide that the system sucks and we're going to change it because there's too many losers. I've always said that one of the things that you do when, you know, I said in a recent

show that, you know, poverty is going to come back to bite us all in the ass one day if we don't do something about it not because you should care about poor people but because eventually they're hurting enough they will make you care about them they will do they will turn the system around i mean you can out compete in all you want to come and burn down your nice house at a certain point so so to me when you talk about a competitive system the winners are at the issue it's what you do with the people cuz you're, when you talk about a competitive system, the winners aren't the issue.

It's what you do with the people because you're going to have some losers in a competitive system. How do you mitigate the downsides of that? And that's what I always try to think about. That's a very good point. That's a very, very good point. You're always going to have good and bad in the world.

You're always going to have conflict. You're always going to... And the ability to recognize that and deal with whatever comes in front of you is very important. Well, like you said, you're going to have kids who get raised by parents who beat the hell out of them and who don't raise them the right way and who don't give them those qualities, Daniele, that you were talking about. And then you're going to unleash those people in the world and say, go compete with this guy who went to Harvard and had a great education and was born with a lot of money.

The world's an unequal place. You can't fix that, but you can build that into your thinking, I think. It's also, there's such a broad spectrum of human beings and what the human being, where they fit into society, where their place is. Like, I have a lot of friends that have, like, zero willpower, but they make amazing stand-up comedians, you know, and that's where they, like... The two might go together. They very well might.

Like, Joey Diaz is my favorite example. I mean mean joey has willpower he gets up in the morning everything i put he's you know 300 and whatever pounds he doesn't give a fuck and he's an animal he's a savage right but he's also the funniest human being i've ever met in my life it's like you can't and you can't make a joey diaz if you get some guy who's doing fucking sit-ups every morning a thousand sit-ups and chin-ups and jogging around the block and only eating kale it's not going to be that guy you need a guy went to jail did a lot of coke you know he kidnapped a guy you need all that you know like in order to get a guy who's that wild and crazy and funny and i feel like the real problem that we have in raising children is all they teach in school is to try to filter you into

a standard position in in in the in the economy standard job whether it's the filter you towards a career and one one or more very definable things right there's a lot of people out there with talents that never get nurtured they just can't figure out their way in that system because what's taught them is so small such a small chunk of the spectrum is taught. Because schools are designed to make you average. That's what schools are about, which if you are considerably below average because of your opportunities in life, great, that's a step up. But if you are not, and that goes for the other 50% of humanity, then it's just designed to make you not nurture your talents, not do all those things, and try to make you fit in that little box.

And part of the reality is that not because the people who create schools are evil and they just want to fuck with your life, it's because they need to go with something that knowledge is something that can be objectively tested. What is that you can objectively test? Can you test somebody's wisdom, how smart they are, how cool of a human being they are objectively? Not really. What you can do is you can test how well they spit back information at you, which is a skill in itself that it's better than not knowing how. You need to have the discipline. You need to know some things. It's

cool. It gives you those average qualities, but it says nothing about what you're going to do with them, whether you're going to be brilliant, whether you're going to be able to use these ideas in an amazing way. And the reality is that gets to most people in charge of schools feel that's too subjective. When you start talking about wisdom, what the fuck is wisdom? Your wisdom is not my definition, so we can't really test it. What we can test is. And so you go back to the they don't want to get sued by the people who don't do well like if i come into class and i say i'll give you

an a because you're really fucking smart and i can see it no you really are not that good so sorry you gotta see the person who gotta see is gonna be fuck you you know why why are you giving me show me why you know where is in the exactly that i deserve this? And part of the game is the stuff that you can prove in that fashion is not the kind of knowledge that make a complete human being. It's the kind of knowledge that's… But the application of that knowledge in a capitalist society is what we try to define as proof that you've actually got some intelligence. Basically. That's why people who, you know, you might not even think they're that smart, but if they're very successful financially, you go, well, he's smart at that. Right.

You know, there's that thing. I think what you're trying to do theoretically in an education system is to prepare people to succeed in life. And the problem that I think the education system has is that it's stuck in a design for an era where succeeding in life is very different than succeeding in life today you're not going to go on to the factory assembly line you're not going to do those kind of things but the way our system has evolved is to create people who can succeed at that the problem is is that what we have now is a creativity based economy that we're moving towards and teaching creativity one would be is tremendously hard and we haven't worked to create that on a mass system where you've got schools that are I mean obviously schools work with creativity

but it's a different thing entirely to sit there and go we're gonna start in the first grade and by the time you graduate high school we are going to maximize your creative abilities that are unique to you you know Danielle you were saying this part of the problem is you could talk about creativity, but Joe's creative gifts are going to be different than yours and mine, and you can't have a standard course. Well, I haven't thought of one anyway, that can take your gifts and your gifts and bring them to maturity

unless we all share those gifts because, you know, your gifts are in one area, your gifts are in another. The problem is that in our system there are no assembly lines or few. You can't educate the mass of people to take a bunch of jobs that don't exist anymore. So I think the system has to redesign itself to push creativity. There's also some utopian ideals in raising kids that are contrary to human nature, like this new thing that they're doing where they're not having kids win. When they're playing ball games and no one wins you know

when they're little this is back to your competition yeah yeah seriously i would have been so pleased as a kid have you ever heard of this before it's a joke i mean it's i mean oh it's pretty wide it's been going on for quite a while yeah trophies for everyone that kind of thing yeah um i don't know how i would google that but uh they're not giving out first and second place anymore they're not they out first and second place anymore. They're not, you know. Well, it's not broad brush. I was going to say, yeah, some places.

You play, you don't keep score. Well, there's another idea. They don't do that. A lot of kids at the younger ages, they don't do that anymore. We kept scoring tee ball when I was a kid. And you rubbed someone's nose in it if they lost. There was no coach pitch. I had five-year-old boys who couldn't do anything but hit me with the ball, pitching to me all day.

There are no losers. You're just the last winner. I'm sorry. I have to go throw up. I'll be right back. I mean, I think that competition, we all hate losing. And therefore, we connect competition with being a negative thing. I don't think it being a negative thing.

I don't think it's a negative thing at all. I think competition is important. I think it's important in art. I think it's important in everything. And you might say, oh, well, that's not the real spirit of art. It's not competition. You're right. It's not. But that competition can motivate the accomplishment of work,

and the accomplishment of work sometimes, procrastination or what have you, can delay someone releasing their art. So in that way, competition inspires the creation of art. It's not always, and most of the time you're better off with that competition being internal or not even being a competition, but rather an embracement of the complexities of figuring out whatever thing you're working on. But that's still, there's something going on. There's a game going on.

Whether it's going on with you in your head, whether it's going on with the audience that's going to review whatever you're creating, like a podcast, or whether it's going on with you competing directly against your peers. But there's something, to me, I love something about competition because I love the media feedback it gives you. You know, it's like you go out there, you do what you can to do, and at the end of the day, you see the results. You either pull it off or you didn't. Losing to me, as horrible as that feels, as it fucking sucks and you feel like, you know, you're so mad, it's the best thing that can happen to you because that's, you know, winning, you're going to keep doing the same thing you've always done.

You have no motivation to push harder because, look, I'm already doing great. Motivation might be fear of losing. Yeah, exactly. And then when you do lose, then it forces you to go back to the drawing board and figure out, okay, how can I, I ran into this stumbling block. How can I go around it. And the fact is, you know, this bullshit about, you know, no losers, no winner, no, no letting somebody experience what it is to do your best and still lose. You're not doing them any favor because the fact is in life a million times, just because that's the design of life. Shit is going to happen, whether you like it or not, whether it's fair or not, whether you deserve it or not. And how you respond to that, if you feel that, why did this happen to me?

You know, it's unfair. It's, I shouldn't be in this place. I shouldn't feel like shit. Well, you do. Now what? You know, and that's that experience of losing. In that case is you're losing at the game of life, not necessarily because of your fault.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Now, how the fuck are you going to respond to this? If you have been there a million times, maybe you have developed the muscle to grow out of it. If you have never been there, the first time that lies lappy around, you freak out. And isn't that sort of one of the reasons why our economy and society itself is so fucked up? It's because we're so goddamn competitive and it's because it's so natural to do that when you start controlling some of the money, you want to control more of the money. You know, when you start controlling some of the money, you want to control more of the money. You know?

When you start making some of the laws bend to help and benefit your business. Right. Dude, I watched a really disturbing documentary this past couple of days. It was Gasland. Have you seen that? I've heard of it. I haven't seen it. Holy shit.

You want to talk about a must-see. Hydraulic fracturing. What they call fracking yeah wow it's interesting wow it's scary shit what they're doing this guy breaks it down the amount of wells that they have i had no idea it's a lot and how many people's drinking water is forever poisoned i mean you're talking about giant chunks of America that are rendered poisonous. Well, understand something. This is the wonderful example now of, you know, if somebody came to you and said, how much money would we have to give you to poison your country?

What is that worth? Because look at the other side of this. Fracking, as it's called, has taken the United States from an energy really insufficient position where we were in the middle east read all these places because of the energy question i mean in in a geologic sense overnight turned us into an energy uh... exporter again and we haven't been that way since i mean we've always exported energy but i mean the nineteen sixties were like the last

really high watermark were we had lots of oil we didn't have to worry for all of a sudden we're the natural gas kings and everything again and there's a ton of money that amount of money the amount we're talking about here not just money for now money for 10 years from now 20 this is like long-term lots of money you that money will buy anything will buy poisoning your water supply it will buy earthquakes that destroy small ok towns. It's an interesting thing to see what we're willing to sell for a ton of money.

Go to Joe Rogan or Dan Carlin, by the way. The problem is the word we. It's not what we're willing. Most people had no idea this was even happening until it was already too late. And during the Bush administration, this documentary, Gasland, highlights how this all came to be and how Dick Cheney signed over these new exemptions that you didn't have to follow the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act.

All those were exempt. Fracturing was exempt. So you could just fuck everything up in order to get to what's essentially like a small ocean of natural gas. The amount that's under New York and big chunks of the country, in Texas, it's huge. It's gigantic. It's changed the entire energy situation on the planet. But these people have water that comes out of their faucet

that you can light on fire. You can light it on fire. There's more than 500 different chemicals that they have to pump into the ground in order to break up this natural gas and then extract it. And when they do that, they basically, everything gets mixed up together. The well water

gets mixed up with the chemicals, gets mixed up with the natural gas, and it's just toxic as fuck. It's coming out of holes in the ground. You can come up to it and light it on fire. It's madness. Do you know what the best chance, and it's a sad thing, the best chance you have of combating that amount of money over something

is when we have screwed up so much of the fresh water supply that the fresh water actually becomes worth more. And you're already seeing this happening in some places where they're talking about, do we sell water rights to California from the Colorado River or this or that? And the amounts of money that they're talking about. I mean, they're already talking about, you know, why should water be considered a feature that's owned by everybody? Can I buy the water in the Colorado River and then can I sell it back to you? So, I mean, the old joke is that if you buy the bottled water, it's worth more than gasoline.

You know, at that amount, if you go to the store. Well, what happens when it really is worth more than gasoline in large quantities? Then all of a sudden fracking sounds like you're destroying an even more important supply. I can get more money for that water than I can get for that natural gas. That's the only chance we have in a system driven by money, I think, to keep the water fresh. It's incredibly short-sighted. and the amount of deception that's gone on to cover the amount of damage that's been done is staggering. I mean, when these people tell their stories,

it's incredibly hard to watch and listen to because people get sick because they were drinking the water. Their kids get sick. The water, like, for the longest time, they wouldn't admit that there was anything wrong with the water, and then they started giving people water. They set up these giant tanks and pump in water to them every week so that they get their water from that instead of their wells that they've had for 100 plus years. It's crazy shit, man.

It's crazy shit to watch. But this is where you see the corruption of our political system, which is what's destroying. You would think that people who live in places where they can light their water on fire would have their representatives in Washington working to stop that. But that's where your free speech rights and my free speech rights are not equal to the free speech rights of these other people. And this is where I always argue with the courts that say that money is free speech, which I don't mind, except who said you get 50 or 100 times my free speech rights? Well, the internet, I think, ultimately is going to be a place where people vote on things. And it's also ultimately going to be a place where people can donate to campaigns that promote values they believe in.

And I think that is going to be a special interest along with all the other special interests in the world competing for influence. But what about that line of voting really changed things? They'd make it illegal. Well, I think it's about money. I think it's about money, and I think ultimately if people invest money in a party and a lobbyist and an idea that supports the things that they believe in, that money can influence people just as easily as the money that supports fracking or the money support. The idea is that it's just trading of commodities here. So let's buy a legislator. Should we get a group together? I'm taking up a cause.

We're going to buy Senator Ron White was center on one is probably a real this guy has been working for the fracking industry how much do you need to you know you know that it is a how much is it going to take to bring you over to our side i have powerful backers the guy was you cut off in vegas he can't gamble anymore he's got a lot of money what what's it gonna take to buy this particular maybe we should just do that the part maybe that's unfair about this

is that you're never offered the chance to buy a legislator that's kept to a small group of people in a smoke filled back room maybe what we need is look if you're going to be sold give us the option of buying too we collectively have a fuck load of money we're dealing with 300 million people

it's a write off isn't it can you buy a legislator isn Isn't that a business expense? Yes. It is if it helps my business. You can't call it buying off, though. We have to call it something creative. Risk management diversification tool. That's right. You know, you got that podcast troll lawsuit.

I'm going to buy a few legislators and get them in my corner, and then I'm going to write that off, and U.S. taxpayers can pick up my buying of the... Because that's how it's done at the best levels. Well, I think that ultimately that would be a smart thing for them to pursue just by virtue of the fact that there's more money there than there is in all the corporations combined. I know, but it's a lot harder to please all of us than just that one guy. You're right, but the potential for extracting money off of a giant group like $300 million, even if you get 1%, that's still a huge amount

of human beings that are donating money. Well, the audience is going to say that already exists. I mean, look at all the small contribution. But it's not the same as walking up to somebody and saying, listen, I went to all my friends and here's $5 million. Right. Yeah, because the guy, you know, the corporation was going to, they are going to invest the money to buy off a vote to get what they want.

They are going to make that amount of money 50 times over in the next year. The person who's going to donate to a campaign, they are doing that in order to avoid something to be taken from them, whether it's clean water or something. They're not going to see that money back. They're not going to make more money on it. So there is a little bit of hesitance in a lot of people. Like, fuck, really? Do I have to pay for something that i still had until yesterday and oh man you know there's not that payoff of like you're gonna win big is you're playing a defensive game where it's like you're just it's a risk avoidance yeah

yeah it's sort of like you have that money and you have to invest it in making sure they don't rob you in the future yeah exactly rather than investing it to rob everybody else. Yeah, one or the others. Either get your agenda across. But the idea that these companies that have enforced fracking or encouraged fracking or spent money to make it happen, and this guy goes really clearly into detail about how it all took place, they're ruining a huge chunk of the country. And they're doing it right in front of everybody's face and no one can stop it. And the worst part is they won't be around when the bill comes due for cleaning it up either.

You can't clean it up. That's what's really crazy. These people, one of the people that got incredibly sick, this woman got sick because it turned out that these filters that they had set up don't work with the chemicals that they use for fracking. The chemicals actually eat the membranes of the filter. So some of the chemicals were getting through to her, and she was getting incredibly sick.

Neurological damage, all sorts of like, everyone's sick. It's an incredible documentary. It's very hard to protect the water supply. You remember here in California with that gasoline additive that sunk into the ground and made it into the water? And it was a weird situation because the additive had been put in there to take some of the lead from the air pollution, and then it was seeping into the groundwater. And so you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. But that's the problem is it doesn't take a whole lot to seep into the water supply, and then you're screwed.

What was that that you just put up that said gas lamp producers? Put it up. We'll put it up. What does it say? I don't know how they could mislead anybody. There's a few debunking things about both documentaries on gas land. There's one and two, and they're both saying there's some. Well, but just put up the thing that I asked.

The gas lamp producer misled viewers on what does it say? Joe Rogan is spreading false information. Spread it out so we can see it. It said that it's been happening since the 1930s. This isn't necessarily just from what they're talking about. The water was flammable before fracking. You know what's funny, though, is every time you expose anything, you're going to have the next day 15 sites saying,

no, you made it up. It's not real. It's not da-da-da-da. That's what public relations firms are for. Exactly. Yep. Exactly. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, I think that it's hard to know who the fuck is right in that situation, but somewhere in the country you can fucking, without a doubt,

guarantee that these people have been poisoned. Whether the lighting the water on fire, it always existed, that doesn't make any sense to me. And poisoning the citizens is an age-old thing. I mean, we do it at nuclear plants. We do it, I mean, there's been lots of situations where you're living near something that might be bad for you. And that's nothing new. That's what's crazy is that that's always taken a back seat to somebody's profit somewhere.

And that's a bit sad that we can't, as an entire population being poisoned, balance out the interests of those people who decide poisoning is okay because they can go to Hawaii. Yes. Because, I mean, from their point of view, you know, you're a corporation. You're in the business of making money. You're not in the business of being nice.

You're not in the business of being mean. It's whatever it takes to make money, you'll do it. If it takes screwing people over, oh, well, tough luck. Well, and even if you didn't want to make money, you may have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders to maximize that. Wouldn't that be funny? I don't really

want to frack, but the shareholders will take me out if I don't. But that's the problem is, I'll go to jail. That's the corporation, right? The role of government in a beautiful, abstract world would be that they actually enforce laws to stop the stuff that's damaging to the public. That's only good for those well joe brought up loopholes you brought up a loophole and to me that's the biggest thing that i think people don't understand is that you can make all the laws in the world if you let the loopholes happen they don't mean it's like people say to me dan why do you keep saying the fourth amendment's going away the fourth amendment's their courts rule yeah but you swiss cheese that enough and it doesn't matter anymore right this stuff is meaningless unless it acts as a barrier i gotta

research this now because a bunch of people on my message board are putting up all these websites that say that they're debunking gas land first of all a i would without a doubt i would imagine that if i was working for the fracking industry and someone put out a hit piece on fracking, that I would debunk the fucking shit out of it. Even if it doesn't make any sense, the debunking doesn't make any sense. And if you're a legislator who voted to allow it, you'd have the same interest. Yeah, but that

said, I haven't read any of the debunking, so I'll read that and I'll get back to it. But even if you don't focus on the specific example, you look at the general picture, it's fucking undeniable that we're poisoning our environment. That, I don't think you can debunk, you look at the general picture, it's fucking undeniable that we're poisoning our environment. I don't think you can debunk that. It's like, no, that's just facts. So you pick one specific example that may not be exactly 100% true.

Who the fuck cares? The general picture remains the same. That's not going to change. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, man. I think that we do really for, without a doubt, have an issue with the fact that people are super competitive and that people are progressive in nature. I mean, but I mean, by progressive, they, they move forward. If they have $2, they want three. If they have three, they want four. That's a natural weird thing that we do.

I always like, I was trying to explain anal sex to somebody and I was in a girl. Cause it's a natural sex. Why do guys want to do that? I go, because they have regular sex with you. And then they go, can I put it in your mouth? And they go, yeah. And I go, okay, what about that? And that's just, it's a natural, weird progression. I mean, all that stuff happens.

When you hear about crazy How were you not a philosophy major, Joe? That's all I want to know. When you hear about crazy super freaks that have gigantic orgies, how did that happen? Did they just start off having orgies? No. They started out with regular sex, and they got a lot of regular sex. They started getting bored, so they brought in extra girls.

And before you know it, they're having these freaky sex parties. It's a natural thing of progression. People, if they can run five miles, they want to run ten. If they got their brown belt, they want to get their black belt. So it's competition, which you guys were talking about how great it was all the time, and now you're slamming it. No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. I say it's the ideas gone wild.

The idea of what makes a human exceptional, what makes a human create everything that exists, really. I think from electronics to the wheel to houses and everything, there's this natural desire for humans to improve upon what they've already done and I think that extends to control, I think it extends to evil as well, it's one of my

arguments when everyone would talk about like problems with government and whether or not there's still corruption in government, all you have to do is look back on the corruption that you can document for a fact that happened in the 1960s. And know that there's no bodies. There's no slew of people, lives ruined, careers destroyed, parties brought down.

No, there's actually very little. If you think about exactly what they're absolutely positively guilty of doing, there's very little damage. And you know that everything progresses. So the amount of utter and complete total corruption that exists today and the sophistication of it would naturally be above and beyond what existed documentable from the 1960s. Let me take it to a different level, because I think it's a different thing. I think that we are incentivized as human beings, going back to to primate times to look at things through a short-term lens there did the carrots and sticks are all set up for the short-term approach in a you

brought up wisdom a while ago daniel wisdom is being able to look at things from a long-term perspective now um... it's a a perfect example is investing uh... in the old days you know Cobb would buy Coca-Cola shares, and when he died, he had all these Coca-Cola shares on his chest at the hospital that he'd had forever. His chest? Oh, yeah, he was so afraid someone would take his. So he's got all these shares he's owned forever

because to him, he wasn't going to sell them in five minutes. He was in it for the long term. Our society is set up for the short term. our society is set up for the short term making money is set up for the short term there's no interest in saying something like well let's protect clean water who you protecting it for i won't be around to enjoy that clean water by the time that happens i'm dead now what can i make in the short term politics the same way it's like when pre people were talking about president obama lying about the health care plan but keeping your own doctor right now that stuff

he's incentivize to do that all he cared about was winning that next election you will worry about the fall out later none of this matters if you lose right deal with the fall out of the lie later there's no incentive to not lie the incentives are all on the you know it in this is if you're an intelligent human being weighing the pros and cons you are not incentivized to think long term, and yet that may be the only solution for the planet. You talk about long term. If we can't somehow contradict where the incentives are and go against our natural primate instincts, we might not be able to make it work.

I think it's going to take a greater level of awareness culturally than exists today. I think the great level of awareness, the really truly objective view of humanity and the potential possibilities of the future is something that's contemplated by few groups, small groups of people, people sitting in conversation, dinner parties and stuff. But if you think of the greater whole of humanity, the amount of damage we're doing to the world on a daily basis,

the amount of really ridiculous behavior that operates our financial and justice system and our political systems, it's all like complete and total chaos, and yet it still continues in the exact same way it always has before. There's only small groups of people that speak out against it. I think once the sphere of understanding of what a complete disaster this world is

because of our actions and because of our inability to correct those actions, once that understanding is in place, then hopefully it's not too late. There'll be some sort of way to turn back the tide. But I feel like it's an ebb and a flow thing, much like everything in life. I think it's almost like we have to fucking poison the ocean before we realize it's ridiculous and then stop doing it. I think it's going to be money.

I think someone down the road, when clean water, for example, is worth a bazillion dollars to haliburton and they buy the water then the rules will be you can you can't piss in water anywhere because you know you might be that then all of the money going to washington will be to preserve water but preserve haliburton's water supply otherwise a profit will be impacted when they sell it back to the public i don't like you know joe you always need you know you're weak

you want human nature to improve and you think it's going to happen and i don't disagree with the problem is is that so many people like dick cheney have to be improved to before this works that i don't see that happening i see is going the other way their incentives have to become the they're still gonna want money they're still gonna think short term but the incentives have to change so that protecting the environment becomes

the the way to keep your millions intact, as opposed to, you know, polluting the environment becomes the way to keep your millions intact. Maybe, but if you look at the dissolving of boundaries between people and information and how that trend is going to continue, I think that our idea of looking at the possibilities of the future based on how humans were able to run the world just 10 years ago are kind of ridiculous. When you think about it from 100 years from now, the options won't be available because the amount of transparency that will be required to communicate with people is going to be completely different. It's going to be very hard to hold back reality. You're assuming that there's not going to be some David Cameron crackdown between now and then.

I don't think they can do it. And I think even if they did, the young people that are coming up that are more in line with the ideas of an anonymous or the ideas of open source internet, the ideas of spreading information and what a massively important thing that is for society and human culture as a whole, I think they're overwhelming. And I think they're going to continue that trend. The people that know that the idea of anybody being able to control information, they're literally controlling, if they do that, they're controlling educational evolution.

They're controlling the ability for the populace to... Are you suggesting they wouldn't want to? Can't. You can't do it. I don't think you could do it. Is that a challenge? It's like trying to pull all the sand off the beaches. I don't see it happening. Some of the stuff that you guys are saying, I actually think it goes hand in hand because what you're saying, Joe, about the fact that a certain level of transformation in terms of consciousness, in terms of priorities that

happen at a mass level when enough people with sort of a critical mass, that feeds into Dan's argument that at that point, corporations are going to respond to it because there's money attached to it. So I don't think it's just purely from an economic standpoint, and it's clearly not purely from a consciousness standpoint. It's going to go hand... I mean, it's happening now, right? It's like more and more people care about environmental issues.

So companies that market themselves as we're nice to the environment can hike their prices a little bit because they know that they are going to have some people who buy them their products because of those values. Yeah. Could you imagine if you were buying some gas that cost 10 cents less per gallon but it's guaranteed comes from like child labor. Right. And some shitty part of the world. The dolphin-saved tuna label thing. Yeah, exactly. I think that it's going to be impossible in the future to hide any evil behavior. I think right now it's still too muddy.

It's still too muddy. I think as technology advances and improves, this connection with people and ideas and information is going to be cleaner and quicker. I don't know what form that's going to take in, but all I'm doing is sort of objectively extrapolating what's happened in the past to what's happened recently to where I feel like it's going. I just don't think you can hold this waterfall back. I feel like there's too much going on. There's too many people communicating too freely all over the world and improving upon the methods of communication.

And they're going to get to a point where you're not going to be able to hide a goddamn thing. And you're not going to be able to make money off of, you're not going to be able to profit off doing something that directly damages the earth because everyone's going to see it. It's going to be, it's going to be something that your neighbors know about. It's going to be something that I, we're going to know what each other are getting away with. But don't you think you end up with a Gasland kind of story where you can push a story and maybe you twist 15% of the data to make your point a little harder.

And somebody else, based on that 15% or 20% that you're much of it that for every single thing you hear that seems to prove things going one way, you have people who seem pretty credible, who give you good evidence to argue the exact opposite things. And it leaves a ton of human beings feeling like, what the fuck? I don't know which one of them to believe. These ones sound good. These ones also make sense. Well, I feel like we're either going to go one way or the other. sound good this one also makes sense well i feel like we're either going to go one way or the other we're either going to go slide into complete total dictatorship brought out by a series of terrorist events or we're going to slide into the next level of evolution and i think it's a battle right now

was that quote from orson welles that history uh history is god damn it i forget the quote amazing quote by orson welles essentially, to paraphrase it, what he was saying is that there's a race going on between people who are looking to improve the human race and people that are stuck in the old paradigm that are constantly battling between education and fuck. God damn it, I hate when I don't remember a great quote that I think I have at my fingertips.

You need a quote board here up on the walls. History, Orson Welles. Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. There it is. And that's exactly what it is. I mean, that's exactly what we're talking about. I feel like the way things are going, when you hear people like the NSA folks say that, you know, they're angry that a guy like Edward Snowden released all the data and he's a

traitor and you know all this did craziness we're trying to convince us that this guy is bad because he told us that your bath see why can i always see the dark side i want to come with you guys into the light i really do but see all i see happening is another 9-11 attack and then the people in the nsa going guess what allowed that one that was the stuff edward stowden told

you now see now don't you learn trust us next time and you won't have another one of these i just you know i mean i think things could break in the right way but i think history shows that they're stacked up against us and so i think if you take this attitude that, hey, things could break the right way, you are not girding yourself up for the fight that you're facing. And this gets back to what we talked about when you talked about fights. If you think, oh, that George Foreman I'm about to fight, he's got openings. I watched him in tape. His left is slow. I'll get in on that.

And then you don't account for the right. And you get in there and you go, oh, damn, I forgot about that. I think you need to gird yourself and say history shows that there's always a small group of people who have a little bit of the ear of the powerful or who have a little bit more money or what have you. And they're extremely formidable. There's never going to be like we all get this consciousness expansion and dick cheney's never getting anywhere near government again the truth is we're playing black hawk down and dick cheney's busy you know buying up corporations and i just i think this is a monumental struggle that's going to require you know what's missing and i've always said this is we don't have any leaders i mean in other generations you can name people you, you can Wikipedia and search people,

that were out in the forefront bringing groups of people into directions. I feel like we're a very directionless group. Except for Putin. Don't call him for president. And that's what you want. That's when you really see how limited a person I am. I'm already at the height of my game. I don't get any better than this.

So you put me up to president and it's all over. Then the reviews on iTunes will be horrible. at the height of my game. I don't get any better than this. So you put me up to president and it's all over. Then the reviews on iTunes will be horrible. A guy like Putin is like one of the last real leaders. A leader in a very gangsterish sort of a way. But still.

He's old school. As old school as it gets. Yeah, I mean, the guy was president and they say he can't be president anymore. He goes, alright, I'll be prime minister. This guy's the president now.

Fuck heads. Oh, look, I'm the president again. He is. He is kind of showing a blueprint for how you take a new democracy and just kind of, and the people wanted a democracy, and you just kind of convince them that the way you're doing it is better. And you interview these people in the street, and they go, oh, Russia really needs a strong man.

Really? When did you get convinced of that? Where's your awareness raising level and everything? Just to play devil's advocate for what you said earlier, when you were talking earlier about you see it going in a bad direction, we were just talking at the beginning of this conversation

about how fucked up things were just a few hundred years ago. How much worse things were 500 years ago. How much... Is that really correct? Were they really that much worse? And if that's true, then isn't there some sort of a marked improvement in society and the safety in society that we can demonstrate today?

Well, the fracking situation was better back then. Yeah, the water was all clean. No, it wasn't. It was converted with different things were messing up the water back then. People shit in their water, right? That's right. And bodies, they toss bodies in there. Yeah, I mean, there's always been people doing stupid shit to the ground.

Because they had short-term interest at stake. Exactly. That's a very good point, that point that you had about people looking at it. And also, back in the day, up until recently, you didn't really live long enough to see the hustle. Right. If you were lucky, you lived to be 30-ish. A good 50% of your friends were probably dead by then. And then, you know, the guys that would live to be 60, those rare birds that would be hanging around philosophizing in the square, they were so rare.

We really didn't get that many of them. So when you got a guy like Socrates that dropped all this crazy knowledge, like, yeah, that guy had been around a long time. He made it through, wrote some shit down, he figured it out. Most people, not going to get there. Most 25-year-olds today are half retarded. Try having a conversation with the average 25-year-old. Don't worry, their awareness is going to

compensate for that. And believe you me, I know that a lot of you out there that are 25 are way fucking smarter than me. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's you, but you know those other dudes. Joe, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. That's the proverb that applies to this whole short-term thing. If you think I might not even be alive to profit off this stuff later, but I can profit off it today, what are you going to do?

But I mean, back then, you're dealing with a whole society that was sort of structured on people that never got old enough or never had exposure to enough data to sort of go, uh, I don't think we should have a Caesar. I don't think we should have this Colosseum. Hey, this whole lions versus Christians thing, this is kind of fucked, man. Let's not do that. But that's why Dorsenwell's quote was so cool, because that's exactly what it is.

The ugly side is insanely strong and in some way getting stronger. The potential for optimism, that's also happening. And it's one of those races where you're like, hmm, that's an interesting one. You can put the accent on either one. The reality is that they are both real. Isn't that sort of what we were also talking about competition earlier? That the yin and the yang, it's almost like you need opposing forces. You need a pull and a push.

You need something in order to motivate change. It's almost the idea is that in order for society to get great or get better, it has to go through stupid shit. And if it doesn't go through stupid shit, it never gets anywhere. That's why I'm curious for, I had a question for Dan on that, because I don't disagree with your view. I mean, there's a lot. You're allowed to. don't worry. I'm okay with that. Everybody else does. No, but no, I actually, most days, that's exactly how I feel. And even the days that I don't,

I still feel that there's a lot of it that's true. So the point to me is, how do you turn that awareness that you're stuck up against something, you know, you're an ant trying to attack a tank, you know, you're an ant trying to attack a tank, you know, the odds, what you can do, not even as a single individual, but even at mass level, feel sometimes so limited. And how do you wake up in the morning?

You know, how do you deal with the fact that you have kids, you're optimistic? Drinks whiskey, powers down double espresso shots. Some of that is true. I actually talk about this on our political show because when you feel the most upset about things and the most powerless, you start to wonder about the wisdom of caring about this stuff,

and you look at people who don't. I mean, I think we all know people who don't pay any attention to politics, who don't watch the news, whose life is a very, you know, it's my kids, it's my wife, it's my job. And there are times when I question the wisdom of caring about things you cannot change. Then someone else will say, well, with that kind of attitude, you can be guaranteed you won't change it. Yes, but there are some forces at work that if you alone have to do it, it is an ant against a tank.

are some forces at work that if you alone have to do it, it is an ant against a tank. And at some point you look and you go, okay, it's me and Rogan and Daniele, and that's not enough. I might as well do what I can. In the 1960s they used to say, you know, look at the man in the mirror, take care of yourself first. Sometimes that's all you can control. But if that's the way you look at it, you're letting the Dick Cheney's, I'm using him as my Darth Vader figure

For everything today But I mean then you let them win Could you imagine if you got Dick Cheney high on mushrooms I'm not sure that he wasn't the whole time I mean it might explain some things He would never have that sort of Mushrooms You thought he shot that friend of his just totally sober and straight

Oh he's drunk Well he was clearly Not only was he drunk, clearly drinking, but he avoided the police for like 13 or 14 hours. You think there weren't Secret Service guys there, too?

How do you not tell them to put the gun down, pointed toward the ground? Well, that's how you know what a real gangster is. He shot his friend in the face and his friend apologized. Yeah.

That is actually very good. That is a good... His friend was like, I'm really sorry. Dick's a great guy. I didn't mean to cause you all this trouble with the media, Mr. Chaney.

I shouldn't have my face in the path of your bullet. I'll try to make out. I'm very bird-like in my movements. I'm tricky. I think like a bird sometimes when I'm hunting birds

and he probably tuned into that vibe. Just shot me in my fucking face. There have been times that I've been, you know, just carrying the weapon quite wrong. Where's the Secret Service to take credit for that? Why didn't they say they accidentally shot the dude?

Why the fuck did you tell the truth? If they're willing to take a bullet for somebody. How did the guy not say he accidentally shot himself? But nothing happened, right? So it doesn't matter. You could say... A little bit of birdshot in the face. Birdshot is very small, people.

I'm not saying try a wad in the face. You've got a few mannequins here that we could conduct some experiments on. How does that alien thing handle the birdshot? Well, there's a reason why it's so small. When you're shooting something like a pheasant, you can't really shoot it with a fucking 12-gauge. It'll blow a hole through the bird. It screws the meal up, too, later. Yeah, it's useless.

It's filled with little pellets. The fucking half the thing is blown apart. So you got to have like a little... So that's what the old guy got hit with. Just a little baby bird shot in the face. No biggie. Tough it out. Now Dick's got a new heart.

Isn't that hilarious? Imagine if he had a new heart and then they put it in and he just started fucking feeling really regretful for everything. He started writing books. Did you hear the line he said and I didn't read the story, sometimes

I just read headlines so you just have to ignore me on this but do you remember that story about Dick Cheney where he said he feared having his heart hacked or whatever? Yeah, of course he did because he knew what he would have done in the same situation. Absolutely. I'm hacking Joe Rogan's heart right now. Which leads me to believe you and I had

exchanged a couple tweets and emails regarding this Michael Hastings thing. Yes. How fascinating that whole story was. Michael Hastings, the journalist who was very aggressive towards members of the military. He was aggressive toward everybody, I think. Yes, very aggressive. And aggressive towards these guys who are fucking killers on a global scale.

When you get to be a four-star general or what have you, you're fucking real good at killing people. There's no other way around it. No other way to get there. And this guy was being aggressive towards them. Have you changed your mind? Have you altered your view on that at all? I have zero opinion. I don't have an opinion one way or the other.

I looked at it, watched the video of the car slamming into the tree, and I thought, wow, that was most likely some sort of a remote-controlled device that caused him to slam. That's when I started reading that people said that. But I've also read that a lot of people believe that he was unstable, and a lot of people believe that he might have been doing drugs. That's possible too. I mean, the kind of guy who is so risk-taking

that he's willing to go after generals, that kind of guy might do a lot of wild shit. I think it's possible, though, that they can do that to a car. I think that's what I've gained from this. What I've gained from this is by reading the experts, the technology experts, the people that have no vested interest in this politically one way or the other, weren't a Hastings fan or denier, the people that

looked at the possibilities for what you can do with a remote controlled system in a car now, and they can do it. They can make your car do things. And the people that were formerly in the CIA have come out about it and said that they believe that the technology exists. And it makes sense. And even before it existed, remember the guy who had done all the exposing of the CIA crack cocaine epidemic, like basically accusing the CIA of having helped Latin American drug lords who happened to be their friends.

Which guy is this? Barry Seale? You know, I can't fucking remember the name. I just remember that he was, he owns the record for having quote-unquote killed himself by shooting himself with a shotgun so far nothing strange twice which seems a bit complicated to pull off the most interesting thing about the hastings thing to me now because i can't i'm with you i don't know what you could figure out from hastings based on what we know i was fascinated and this gets to your new media thing all the information out there and also

gets to yours uh... danielle about about false information or money in the waters do you realize how much of what circulated the glow about this hastings thing came from that one source that part-time contributor to that local news station in san diego that kim devore act uh... woman

she's the one who said things like well there was no body in the coffin and everyone was upset with that will that turned out to be totally false but all my lord did we all share that and did everybody hear that most people not ever hear the retracted one person saying something that was not true created that so much of the foundation for where we all started because that's when i freaked out i said wait a minute you know the coroner didn't give the body back and cremated it without permission that is if you've ever dealt

with coroners and that's just not kosher and that turned out to be not true and i don't think she ever retracted it but but that one you know the old days, they used to make us confirm sources twice. She's in the position where she's supposed to be confirming sources twice. She says that. The San Diego news station runs it multiple times, and then we all retweet it and share it, and it becomes part of the urban legend almost. But that a single strand, one person was able to do that with the global sharing and everything, that to me is as fascinating as the Hastings thing. I agree. I think it's just as fascinating.

And the real desire to know one way or another is just a natural part of human curiosity. We want to know, did someone assassinate this guy or did he go wacky and drive 100 miles an hour into a tree? Both are possible. The reality is I don't know and so you know i say when you say did i change my opinion i don't have an opinion when i first looked at it and i said wow that looks like that but i wouldn't be betting on it right you know a lot of weird shit happens just naturally i've heard of there's another element joey and the element is is in us versus them kind of thing right i mean we felt people like yours truly and we felt like hastings was on our side of the fence right he's reporting on stuff that we're going thank goodness finally

somebody's doing this right and then all of a sudden he's gone and in a weird situation i mean that i think the tendency is to say one of our guys got it in the neck and he got it in the neck for doing something that we've been waiting for somebody to and what does this say to the other people out there we would hope would with so i mean i don't i want to see teams but there's a part of me this is to me i don't know if i would like to go on a personal level but he was on my side yet and i feel like

got the powers that be have everybody on their side i mean so so i mean there was a feeling like please tell me that somebody working for the good of all of us didn't get knocked off i don't think he did but i there's certainly that feeling where you just go what sort of a message does this send to other would-be michael hastings you don't think he did but would you be surprised if you found out he did if he did get not you found out he got knocked out i wouldn't be surprised there's a book called poisoning the press um concerning a reporter who was the michael hastings of his day but a thousand times bigger named jack anderson from the early seventies and anderson actually had the nixon administration officials hold them in

early command those guys talking about potentially killing him uh... uh... a guy who show i was on several times g gordon lydia lady was volunteering to kill and they were going to run him over with a car now i always think to myself okay so the so the plot never happened but they were discussing it at the highest levels of government and that's what makes you go maybe this hastings thing isn't that far off the wall i mean i don't think it's far off the wall at all i just don't know what happened yeah no me either not at all and i tend

to go with the safer answer when in doubt you know sure i mean that's the nice way of not looking stupid too which is of course my goal in life, right? It's too late for me. Too late. Exactly. Me, too. So I just dive right into the stupid side all the time and go, hmm, what if? Because the what if is always there. Let's hope they're grading us on a curve.

Well, that's the unfortunate reality of history, isn't it? That if you really do pay attention, you go, wow, they've done it before. Well, there's been, you know, people have conspired. They've gotten away with it. They did. They did false flags. They lied to get us into wars.

They lied about certain actions that were going on. They assassinated people and lied about that and then got caught. They had a short-term incentive, same thing? Yes, always has been. The thing that's weird is, though, when people are doing the exact opposite of what we're doing right now, which is, you know, it could have gone this way. It could have also realistically gone this way. I don't have the evidence either way. Uh, and people bet their lives one way or another. They're like, I know that this is what happened. And there's this

conspiracy or no, you're totally full of shit. It could never happen. And it's like, how the fuck do you know? I got out of an argument online the other day on my message board about the JFK assassination. I get to that when I just go, okay, I'm good. I got to step away. I know too much about the JFK assassination.

I've studied it for far too long. And it drives me absolutely fucking bonkers when I see people that are 100% convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I'm like, I don't know if Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but guess what, fuckface, you don't either. Right. And the reality of the evidence is not that cut and dry.

Yeah. The Warren Commission itself was a mass of contradictions. It was clearly designed to achieve a predetermined conclusion, and they ignored all evidence that went contrary to that predetermined conclusion. And that conclusion was there was a single shooter. Are we going to go into this? Are you opening this topic for discussion? I'm not. I'm not.

Your message board will love this. My point is that when I see people argue, I don't know if he acted alone. He might have acted alone. I leave that open. But when you see that stupid bullet that supposedly went through both of their bodies and shattered bone and came out looking all pretty and beautiful, you're like, get the fuck out of here. Well, that just showed up on Governor Connolly's gurney at the hospital. It just magically was there in perfect shape and just happened to be from the same rifle that you're attributing to the guy who's dead now, who got shot by a fucking mob man. Right.

Come on. Now I have to jump in. It stinks. I changed my mind on this subject. Look at that bullet. Look at that bullet, Dan Carlin. I've seen the magic bullet. Show your pile.

And you know what's funny is that I don't dispute any of those things. What if the government had a really good reason that you would have approved of to cover it up? And we're doing a podcast on the First World War right now. And Kennedy was famous for having given The Guns of August, the book that's about the lead into World War I and how nations were kind of sucked into something they didn't want to do based on an assassination of a world leader sitting in an open car next to his wife, by the way. And if you're Lyndon Johnson and you're the people around kennedy

and it's a year after the cuban missile crisis right you almost have world war three a year ago and a guy kills a young popular president in front of his wife who's you know in there in in the chanel clothes with the blood and brains all honor and his children are orphaned in your mad as hell and the guys tied to communism like nothing i mean he's fair play for cuba committee he's one of the few people who defected the soviet union he's one of the very few that came back would you maybe be worried that the american people would be so angry and so ready to somehow punish the communists who may have even been

behind this attack i mean there's there you can create a scenario where it might have been a national security interest to as much as you can disassociate Cuba, communism, and the Soviet Union from the assassination of the president, because even if it didn't happen, can you see the Republicans and the administration back then going, we need to do it, you can't let them get away with potentially shooting our president, let's invade Cuba, I mean... I'm a little confused. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Are you implying that you think that they made it look like Lee Harvey Oswald didn't do it?

Because if he did do it, then that's communism killing the president, right? No, I think what most of us, when I was on the side saying that I think there was a conspiracy, is you point to all the obvious things the government hid. And that, to me, is always a red herring, right? You say, well, they hid this. The magic bullet couldn't have been hit and that's that to me is always a red herring right you with a hit that the magic bullet could have been this that and then you start to think will would there have been a good reason for a government cover-up with the first

good reason is because they did right to go out of bastards could there be a reason where you would sit there and go on all i understand why you did that you did that to prevent a greater evil and i'm not saying that that's the case but once you sit back and let you go it could be multiple reasons so you're saying they would blame it on lee harvey oswald instead of blaming on the cubans no i think they might try to obscure the idea that this was something involving communist cubans and i think i think can you imagine if oswald had actually had to take the stand someday and testify about this and talk i mean this may have been the thing

where the government said listen this is just one guy who did this but it's going to open up a whole can of worms with the political opposition i mean remember there were there were um posters of john f kennedy saying wanted for treason in dallas the day he was killed that the right wingers down there had pushed what do you think they would say if Lee Harvey Oswald is tied to communism so closely a year after we just avoided World War III? That's a really stoned idea. I think you must have been hitting the bong hardcore, and you decided that the real conspiracy... I look at things from multiple angles, baby.

Hey, you may be right. I mean, look, I... I'm not asserting that. I'm saying it's a possibility. No, it's... You've got to throw it into the mix. You do.

There's probably a lot of weirdness in the mix. You're going to play the game where you throw all the other stuff into the mix, the grassy knoll. Jack Ruby had a direct connection to the mob.

The mob had a direct connection to Cuba. Those three things are, that's a fact. Those are facts. And so Jack Ruby was assigned to go kill Lee Harvey Oswald in front of the police,

thus sacrificing his own freedom to do so. He knew he was doing it while he was doing it. It was a total suicide bombing. That alone is a direct connection to Cuba. Yeah, I'm all for, you know. What is that noise? I'm hearing it too.

Car alarm or something. Someone's car alarm. I'm just glad your studio's not a whole lot better than mine at stopping noise. There has to be something like a car alarm for us to hear it, but how fucking dumb are car alarms? Nobody goes out and looks. When they were first made, people were like, this is it, there's going to be no more theft. They're going to hear this alarm, and everyone's going to run out with a gun.

Nobody fucking pays any attention to car alarms anymore. They yell out, shut it off! Like if you're in an apartment building and it's going out, people open up their window and yell out, shut it off. That's all. They don't yell out, someone's breaking into your car. They don't believe in it. Yeah.

They've cried wolf too many fucking times. That doesn't work. I agree with what you're saying, though, because I'm all for thinking from multiple directions, but I stick with Joe's theory about the bong on that day. No, I agree. from multiple directions but i stick with just theory about the bond on that day because now i agree with what i don't know that it is the what joseph's in as an objection the idea that if uh... you're trying to avoid the communist connection to avoid war war

three why in the war then would you want everybody to know that the guy responsible is a guy was communist connection you know what i think i'm stuck with that i mean you know if they capture oswald and they arrest him you're stuck the trial right if there's going to be a trial is going to bring all this out and imagine that trial would have taken a year would have been on tv the people are just going to fume you know the communist thing is going to be brought up by the prosecution i you know i guess what i'm trying to say is i try to figure out, we always assume that

when government covers up, it's to hide something from us we'll be angry about. Are there ever occasions where they cover something up because we would want to if we were in the same position for the good of things? Are there ever times when government covers stuff up for a good reason? I don't think they're smart enough

to do that. I really don't. Well, you might be right. I think that this Lee Harvey Oswald case, what it may very well be, is one of the best examples possible that we're living in a simulation. Yes. Because it's so theatrical.

Nick Bostrom's idea, yeah. It's so theatrical. I don't know how many people have had that idea, but a lot of really legit guys. Oh, physicists. Oh, yeah. They actually have a mathematical formula that says it's more possible than not that we are.

Well, if you just look at the progression of technology and you think, like, where is it eventually going to go a thousand years from now, ten thousand years from now, it's inevitable. If we don't blow ourselves up, we're going to be able to recreate reality and it will be completely... It's an ant farm we live in it but here's the way you know it we already play games on our computers that are really really primitive versions of that already yeah if somebody came out you said hey we've got the brand new version of civ and this time you'll have real people yeah i mean you'd be like how much is that i'm on that right now that's why it leaves that opening like if that was real, where would it be? And if it was here already, would we know?

If you're going to make it indiscernible, how do you not know it's not already there? And then there's things that are just so dramatic and so ridiculous, like the Kennedy assassination. It's such a perfect piece of theater, the way it ties up so loosely and leaves you with a bunch of confusing facts. The way it ties up so loosely and leaves you with a bunch of confusing facts. And how about the fact that within the decade after the assassination, more than 100 witnesses to the crime are dead. Some of them died. They were murdered. People died in car accidents and strange diseases.

And they were poisoned. I mean, the odds are staggering that that would happen, that 100 people who saw the assassination would die in strange causes. Okay, but you just said you don't think the government's smart enough to do this. They're smart enough to murder people. That's pretty easy to do. I think if you're going to defend government competency, you've got to go one way or the other. Either they're really competent or they're really incompetent. I could go with either one of those. Well, that's just tying up loose ends.

I don't think that requires an extreme amount of intelligence. I think the average person knows that if someone out there knows something that they shouldn't know, or they can contribute to some sort of a case that you believe might be coming down and eventually put people that you know in jail, the people that are hiring you in jail, if there's some way to stop that data from being shared, that's how you cut it off. You cut it off by killing the people that were witnesses. There are a lot of people they should have still killed then that they didn't get. Is that true? Because they killed a hundred. They killed a hundred people? Let's assume that they

actually did it. More than a hundred witnesses were dead within a decade. Well, you should have gotten some of those guys writing those books that sold so many copies. Get them early. Yeah, I mean, and by the way, just in the sense of the interest of fairness, there have been arguments against this. Gerald Posner and Bojose both wrote good books on the other side of that. Yeah, but not that good. Those books were not that good. You didn't like them?

No. I thought they were both pretty good. I thought they did not leave open the possibility. First of all, they did not leave open the possibility for conspiracy. And the reality is you do not know. To call it case closed is nonsense. If you weren't there, if you didn't see it happen, if you weren't a part of it, I think you're guessing. I think you're doing a lot of guessing.

But that's always the case. Yeah, but if you're guessing, you can't say case closed. You're full of shit. Okay, I see that point. I can see them calling it case closed. I can see them calling it case by case. The way those books were directed were very clearly directed in a presupposed idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted along with. Well, they were written, and this is the thing I always try to tell people, is that don't read those books. If you don't know about the Kennedy session, don't, because they're not directed at you.

They're directed at people who already know a ton about. I love, it was one of the few books I'd ever read where they didn't footnote stuff. They said, you know, you remember this book, and they addressed other people's books without telling you about them. So you had to just, they figured you read all that stuff already. They could address. Bolyosi is such a good prosecutor, though. He told me on the phone, he said, it would have been a slam dunk convicting Oswald.

That doesn't mean anything. No, it doesn't. If you're saying, does that mean he could, absolutely not. See, he's thinking about it as a person trying to win a game. He's not thinking about it as a person trying to find the truth. The reality of the truth is he doesn't know. I don't know, you don't know. That's true. The only people that know are the people

that were there that played a part in that murder or didn't. Whether it's Lee Harvey Oswald and other conspirators or the other conspirators and Lee Harvey Oswald being the patsy that he claims he was. Whatever the combination of things were, whatever number was correct, those are the people that know. Everyone else, there's a giant amount of guessing. And to pretend there's not a giant amount of guessing means you're an asshole. If you're pretending that you've got it nailed,

you're an asshole. It's just a fact. And so the people that are arguing it online, I mean, I'll argue it online as well, but the people that actually believe that they know for a fact one way or the other, it's not true. And the magic bullet theory, there's a lot of problems with the way people describe it. A lot of the trajectory, the angles of the bodies, wasn't nearly as magical, the path they were attributing

to, if you look at the fact that Kennedy was above him, that the seat was actually raised, and that Connolly was actually leaning and turning around, and the idea of their... What's much more damning is Connolly's fucking testimony himself that he was not hit first and that when Kennedy was hit, he turned around and he heard the gunshots and then he was hit afterwards. His own testimony refutes the idea of the magic bullet far better than anything else. When you see Connolly talk about the series of events and how it played out inside the limousine,

he throws the magic bullet out the window. The reason why they came up with the magic bullet theory in the first place is because they had to attribute there was a bullet that hit a curbstone underneath the overpass. They had to attribute a bullet that Lee Harvey Oswald shot, or someone from that direction that Lee Harvey Oswald shot to that bullet, because that ricocheted

and hit a man, and the guy went to the hospital. So because of that, then they had to come up with one bullet doing all this damage. But it doesn't mean it's logical. Ballistics are weird, though, Joe. Bullets do weird things. They do do weird things. And when you talk about witnesses in a car,

remember, this is faster than the speed of sound. The sound hits at a different... 100%. It's a little weird. You're absolutely right. However, if you look at the possibilities, is it possible that a bullet hit these two bodies and smashed bone, did very little damage, actually left more fragments inside the bullet

than were missing from the bullet? Is that possible? I don't know. I mean, you could have a freak bullet that had extra shit on it, and maybe they're attributing certain things. Maybe it's poor science, and they're attributing certain things to being pieces of the bullet that weren't actually pieces of the bullet

but the odds are that that was not a bullet that smashed bone if you've ever seen what a bullet looks like when it hits bone it doesn't look like that can it look like that man it may be under some really freaky circumstance but that's the aber aberration. That's not the norm. The norm is a bullet distorts wildly when it hits bone. That's part of what they're designed to do. They're designed to break up inside the body and do more damage. They're designed to hit things and spread out. You know what Bugliosi's and Posner's book, though, did that I thought was fantastic? And it goes back to that Kim Dvorak-Michael Hastings thing we talked about a minute ago.

They showed what a lot of the conspiracy writers deliberately left out of their work because it messed up their theories. I mean, one of the big pieces of evidence that really kind of changes a lot of minds is the idea that Oswald took a shot at the general in the weeks before he shot President, or maybe allegedly shot president and when you realize he's he's out there trying to kill people already makes him look a lot less like a patsy and a lot more like a guy who was god i missed the general hey guess what president kennedy's coming in a motorcade and i work in a building along the route i don't i i guess i remember myself being upset with some of these conspiracy authors whose work i liked because they left this out. And I remember thinking, well, that bastard left this out. He knew that this was there, but it makes his theory look bad, and he left it out. That's where I started to get real angry at people whose work you're reading because you want to believe it and trust it.

That's a very good point, and it is certainly possible. But you know what? It's also not an either-or. I agree with that. It's also possible that Lee Harvey Oswald acted in conjunction with some other people. Absolutely. There's a lot of variables. Maybe many people wanted the president dead that day.

That's the real issue. The real issue is, did the president at the time create enough enemies where there were a gang of people that wanted him dead? And that is uncontroversial. Do you think so? Wait, now I'm even going to say it. Incontroversial. uncontroversial right do you think so wait now i'm going to say in controversial well because here's the thing that that i think oliver stone did a great job of distorting

was this idea that somehow president kennedy upset the military industrial complex and all the set when in reality the guy had just indeed done the biggest peacetime military buildup in american history he just read remember he campaigned on something called the missile gap so we got the job he increased military spending by a time but he still want to get out of the

area he didn't really want to get out of the in on the move assets to laos and cambodia I'll I guess my point is is that he was not an enemy love those very forces that Oliver Stone had him being the enemy of I see we say yeah he he so was a hawk but was it that black and white was a hawk. But was it that black and white? No, no. It was not that black and white. And you don't know what other things they may have wanted that he was pushing back on.

We just don't know. Well, you do know that he said he wanted to get rid of the Federal Reserve. I don't know enough about that. I can't comment intelligently on that. I mean, I can't comment intelligently on almost everything I say. But it doesn't stop me. Some of us stop at the membrane. Some of us are more

competitive. JFK, Federal Bank. But I mean, that's the thing, though, that when you... What's funny about these arguments is when you see people who are really good at pushing forward with all the evidence supporting their conclusion, and the stuff that doesn't fit

with their conclusion, it's not there. It's like, poop, I just forgot about it. They do just the same thing that doesn't fit with their conclusion, it's not there. It's like, poop, I just forgot about it. They do just the same thing that they accuse the government of doing, right? Exactly. Hiding and omissions and all that stuff. And that's why you read one book and you're like, it looks really convincing

and all the points they are making looks really good. And then you're like, wait, why the hell did you leave this stuff out? And when you find out they leave it out, you start to distrust them too. Absolutely. I don't trust the government or some of those conspiracy writers.

The idea, the conspiracy theorist cite, is this Executive Order 11110. And this was issued by Kennedy on June 4th of 1963. And this executive order delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury, the President's authority, to issue silver certificates under the Thomas Amendment of the Agricultural Adjustment Act as amended by the Gold Reserve Act, and the order allowed the Secretary to issue silver certificates, if any were needed, during the transition period under President Kennedy's plan to eliminate silver certificates.

So the idea was that he was moving in on the institution known as the Federal Reserve. Because the Federal Reserve, as most people realize, isn't really a federal kind of a thing at all. It's not a part of the government. Oh, look, it's the horn again. Hopefully the police are on their way to stop this dastardly person from stealing someone's pens and change. You don't even have car radios you can steal anymore. They're all integrated into the system.

If you're not going to steal a car, and if you do steal a car, good luck trying to fucking hide it. Everybody's got a goddamn GPS in their car now. You stupid fuck. So the idea that they espouse is that this is the executive order that started the beginning of the end. I've also seen a lot of people say that they think Lyndon Johnson had something to do with having Kennedy killed. Somebody just sent me that book.

I haven't looked at it yet, but the Lyndon Johnson killed Kennedy book or something. Is it a new one that's out? I had Jesse Ventura on my show a couple times, and-11. And now I get all those books without even asking. Oh, you poor bastard. Yeah, it's bad. I did a show with the people that did his show. And there was a couple of times where we had these sort of discussions about conspiracies. And I'm like, they're all juicy and salacious.

And I'm like, you know, they're all juicy and salacious, but the idea that if you look at too many things as being a conspiracy, you do a huge disservice to what might actually be a conspiracy. Yeah, you're playing into the hands of the people. Exactly. Whether you realize it or not, I mean, to be like a crazy right-wing radical, like the fire and brimstone sort of a guy, you play directly into the hands of the government. Well, people slam me. I'm getting this slam like I'm an anti-conspiracy person, and they're all saying, oh, Dan Carlin, somebody even wrote a review on iTunes and said something like,

he doesn't understand how the world works and he's just giving you the pablum line. Yeah, but there are conspiracies out there, but like you said, you do yourself a disservice when you buy all of them. Dan Carlin, you've got to stop listening to critics. I do. You've got to stop listening to those internet comments.

Joe was telling me that before the show. He goes, to heck with it, I'm got to stop listening to critics. I do. You've got to stop listening to those internet comments. Joe was telling me that before the show. He goes, to heck with it. I don't listen to anybody. Listen, you can learn things from people's criticism. Feedback is good. Yes, I've learned a lot from people's criticism. But you also have to understand human nature. And there's a lot of people out there that are sad as fuck.

And they want you to feel sad, too. They want you to hurt. And instead, I mean, it's... Because their water is lightable on fire and flammable, and yours isn't. It could be that. It could be that no one wants to fuck them. I'm going with the latter. Most of the time, it's no one wants to fuck them.

And you have a deficit. You have a desire for attention. Well, I wish they'd put that in the review, then. I'm probably only saying this because... I'm 496 pounds. I shit my pants on a daily basis. No one's touched me in a decade. Carlin's wrong about those conspiracies.

Dan Carlin doesn't know shit about how the world works. He's out there confusing us. Yeah, I don't know, man. I think that you can get a lot out of it in terms of you can get other people's eyes. I think it's helped me a lot with my stand-up. It's helped me a lot. Even negative criticism, like, okay, I can see how you see that. I think it's good. It fires you up, makes you want to perform better, makes you want to analyze things under a more critical eye, under a non-indoctrinated eye. I think it's good. But I also think you've got to know when to listen to them and when

not to. When someone says, Dan Carlin doesn't know how to work, you've got to go, all right, dude. Well, and I do think it shuts people down. We were talking about why more people don't get ahead in the competition thing. I think that kind of criticism does shut some people down, where they're not, they can't. I mean, obviously, we all can handle it, because

we all do something where we're criticized on a daily basis. But I mean, I think there's some people that just they don't want it. It's okay if my boss does it, but I don't want it in public. I was reading a thing the other day. I've been railing on about this lately, about the idea of people are going on about what they're calling fat shaming. And fat shaming is making people feel bad for being overweight. And I read this one article where this woman was talking about how she was being fat shamed because she went to a family function and everyone was gushing about her cousin, how her cousin lost 20 pounds.

And that they were making such a big deal out of it that it was clear to her that they were judging her for not losing the 20 pounds. So it made her feel awful. And she didn't understand how they couldn't understand that what they were doing was fat shaming her got a fucking life by complimenting someone on losing weight you're fat shaming the person who hasn't lost the weight wow and that it made her feel awful and that it was incredibly insensitive of them and that you know i'm fascinated by that kind of thinking i really am i'm fascinated by that sort of thinking. I really am. I'm fascinated by that sort of like reverse victimology sort of a thing where instead of you being the victim of your own handiwork,

you become like a persecuted person because they don't accept you for the flaws that you have or even mention the possibility of those flaws existing by virtue of complimenting someone for having gotten over the same flaws that you possess. Hilarious! I think without even knowing the specifics on

particular issues, anytime somebody's so willing to embrace the victim role, I smell trouble right away. Yeah. I'm like... You know, there's a reality to losing weight that we have this Dave Asprey guy who's an expert in a lot of aspects of nutrition. He's a fascinating guy. And one of the things he was talking about was he was giving overweight people a pass because he was saying the level of addiction that these people actually have for food, to say that they don't have willpower is really unfair

because they're so overweight, like a lot of these folks are so far gone, that they used up all of their willpower just to get up in the morning, just to walk to the bus stop, just to go to work, just to get their chores done during the day. They don't have the same level of energy that a healthy person has. So to tribute them to having this backlog of energy they're not tapping into because they're weak-willed, it's not that.

They're already so far in the hole, it's almost impossible for them to get motivation. They have to get something incredibly extreme has to happen to them. And I thought that was really unique in looking at it that way. You can see that in depressed people, too. Yes. People out of shape, people who are depressed. You can see it with people that are ruining their life, too, whether it's through addictions. You see that as well.

It's like, why can't they see it the way other people see it? Well, it's almost like they can't. They're so trapped up in the momentum of whatever it is, whether it's gambling or food. I mean, I've seen people with food addictions that you can watch the gears spinning in their mind when food is nearby. They know they're supposed to lose weight. They know they're not supposed to be eating it. But the gears start spinning in their mind, and it becomes the primary focus of their existence. Get that fucking donut.

I need that donut. That donut is huge. It's critical for fueling whatever trouble is going on in their mind. And it's a weird aspect of human beings. And you don't do that any favors by pretending that encouraging someone who lost weight is a bad thing. The idea that socially that's irresponsible because you're fat and you're near them, no, it's actually responsible because that terrible feeling that you have, it's supposed to be the bump that pushes you towards eating a salad instead of a cheeseburger. It should be the bump that makes you write down everything you're going to eat that day and state some goals. This is what I'm going to do.

I'm going to use my willpower to overcome this horrible obsession that I have with shitty food. That's also possible. It's also possible by you going home and blaming everybody in the blog that you've projected yourself away from any potential benefit

from having these bad feelings. Again, it's the same as about a competition. It's somebody who never learned how to lose. And the same in avoiding criticism. Yeah. Like, you gotta look at it. It feels like shit, but that feel like shit, correct it so it doesn't feel like shit anymore. I thought this show was very disorganized until you guys just tied it into a beautiful

bow like that. It's all of a sudden got a theme that's running through it. We meant it. We planned it this way, everyone. I have a finger in CR butters. There's a way to bring this bitch around always. It's an art form. It is.

Oh, it most certainly is, right? For sure, actually. Podcasting is an art form. It is an art form. Look, I tell everybody, and I'll say it even though you're here, your fucking podcast is one of my favorite things that I listen to. One of my absolute favorite things. It is a national treasure.

It's so interesting. It educates people on aspects of history that were completely ignored, and it does in a really entertaining and dynamic way. It's so important, dude. Dude, can I just tell you, I don't get it. I've never gotten it. I've never, ever gotten it.

That's why you can do it. That's why it's good. I mean, I'm grateful. Don't get me wrong. But I've never quite seen it as others see it. Oh, that's good. You just like Mongols. That's what I think.

You know I do, man. It's all about the Mongols, baby. That's where you got me. I know. That's how you got me. Because I've been a fan of chaos. He's a Mongol guy. I've been a fan of chaos since I was young.

It's not a fucking coincidence that I'm a stand-up comedian and I'm also a cage-fighting commentator. That's true. That's not a coincidence. I'm a massive fan of chaotic events. I'm a massive fan of these explosive things that throw the norm into question and completely change the paradigm of the existing reality

that we operate under. And when you listen to something like a podcast on the Mongols, it's like, Jesus, that was only the 1200s. I forgot to bring this shirt. I got this badass Genghis Khan world tour shirt. That's great. It has all the fucking towns that he sacked

and all the people that were murdered. Now you've got to send me a photo. I'll buy you one and I'll send it to you. You owe me for all these appearances I've done for you. I do, you son of a bitch. I do. Listen, we all owe each other, man, but I definitely owe you for many, many, many hours. I have to stop you.

I have to say, I hope this doesn't embarrass you. Did you read what that one comic said about being on Joe Rogan's podcast or having Joe Rogan endorse him? Was it Bill Burr or someone like that said, you are the Oprah of podcasting. If we come on your show, all of a sudden everything is rainbows and unicorns for us once we're on Joe's show, which is true, by the way. But otherwise, the favor you've done to all the rest of us, not to kiss anybody's ass here, but it really is. I mean, you've made a lot of people aware of what we do.

Well, I'm honored that I could do that. But from my perspective, all I've done is let people know things that I found that are awesome. That's not that difficult to do. The Joe Rogan book club. Well, if you're honest. If you're an honest person, and I pride myself in being insanely honest to the point where I'm like – one of the reasons why I'm really good at accepting criticism is because I'm insanely self-critical. I mean I'm good at avoiding going nuts.

I think we all are. I think that's kind of what makes – you can't do what we do without being that way i agree yeah i agree but um but my my recognition of the role i'm i'm aware of it um i'm also uh i'm honored and i i feel like it without a doubt i have an obligation but i also feel like all i'm doing is letting people know about amazing shit that already exists it's beautiful to be that sort of a condu, to be sort of a funnel point where people can know they can, a portal, where they can go here and they can learn about all sorts of cool shit. But if the cool shit didn't exist, I would have run out of things to talk about a long time ago. No, that's true. But it's also true, the fact that what you have done for so many people is unreal.

That's right. Because, I mean, when I think about you and Duncan, for me, in my life, the impact that it has had coming onto your show and Duncan's show in particular, it's fucking unreal, you know? So it's like, that's why I always say as a joke, but maybe not as a joke, but like, you guys ever need help moving a body somewhere?

Call me up in the middle of the night. But again, you know, I mean, it's important that you guys are out there. You guys are out there providing us with information in entertainment form that expands my view of the world. You're personally responsible for expanding my view of history above and beyond where it would have ever been without you. That's a fact. And when I looked down on iTunes and I saw your show rising through the ranks, I mean, I was so happy for you. You were the Oprah Book Club pick of the month.

Yeah, what was the highest you got on iTunes? Fourth. That's insane. That's from all of iTunes. And that's your help, baby. And your listeners, too, by the way. Before you ever came on the show, what was the highest you'd ever been? We got up to like eighth a long, long time ago before we had any of this competition we have now.

And I don't know if folks understand that. It is so competitive now. There are so many things out there with so much promotion that to reach 20th now is a bigger deal than reaching seventh or eighth five or six years ago. I mean, it's much more competitive. But, you know, I mean, we hover around 12th, 14th, 15th, something like that. The numbers of people making podcasts right now are staggering. It's crazy. But I think that's a great thing.

Absolutely. And I've become an evangelist, and I tell people all the time, if you've ever thought about doing it, you ought to try it. Right. Yeah, why not? Fuck it. Yeah, try it out. You never know. I mean, I would have never known if that would be something. How did you start, Joe? I don't mean to bring up a subject maybe your whole audience already knows.

How did you get the idea to do this? Well, we started just putting it on Ustream. We got an idea. So that was first. Yeah, well, actually before even Ustream, there was a thing called Justin.TV, and we were on that. We would broadcast from the green room and take questions from the green room, and people enjoyed it. It was fun. But what made you think of even – because the idea of deciding to do it is such a – especially back then, it was such a weird step to take.

Well, there was a lot of people that had already done it. Adam Carolla had done it. No, Carolla didn't do it, did he? Yeah, he had done it before me. He had went straight from radio to doing it. That was the first episode. We had snowflakes on in the background. And we just did it on Ustream. We didn't know what we were doing, and I done it before me. He had went straight from radio to doing it. That was the first episode. We had snowflakes on in the background. And we just did it on Ustream.

We didn't know what we were doing. And I did it with Brian. We went from that to also Opie and Anthony. Opie and Anthony have a great radio show on Sirius. And their radio show is so similar to the way that I started doing podcasts, where it's just a hang. It's just a conversation. Right.

I mean, sometimes I have questions for the guests. Sometimes it's kind of structured in that way, where there's some things that I started doing podcasts, where it's just a hang. It's just a conversation. Sometimes I have questions for the guests. Sometimes it's kind of structured in that way where there's some things that I want to get to because I know that you have an expertise in that area. But a lot of it is just a bunch of people shooting the shit and just talking honestly about life. I've always found that incredibly entertaining. Anthony started doing this thing out of his basement.

He set up this thing called Live from the Compound. He's a nut. He's a gun nut. He has like.50 caliber machine guns and shit. And he put a green screen behind him and he was doing karaoke while he was singing with a gun in his hand. He's fucking crazy. But I was like, this guy's got like a professional studio set up in his basement.

And I'm like, god damn it, we should start doing something. So we started doing it just on Ustream and then started putting it on iTunes and now in the end of next month it'll be four years. Wow. And we're 400-plus episodes in. Look what iTunes has done for the whole...

You know what I thought the greatest thing they ever did for people like us was? Was not separating the ESPNs and the professional content from the stuff that we do. Because it allows us an equal playing field in a way that if they said okay here's your professional stuff now here's your amateur stuff in this pile over here in this in this grab bag of singles nobody wants i i i feel feel like in the same way that we just said you know i mean i owe you i owe itunes there's a lot of people that made something possible here i don't know what i'd be doing anymore without a podcast i'm no longer a news reporter kind of guy i'm no longer radio talk shows i'd be like jan'm no longer a radio talk show host. I'd be like Janitor

and I would be really bad at that too. So I mean, there's a lot of people we owe for where we are today. No doubt. Yeah, and if there wasn't some sort of a form

like iTunes, we could just upload it to there and then people could download it from the RSS feed. And the hosting services and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're number six right now in the world, son. Oh. Jeez. You're six on iTunes. I ought to be making more money. Don't you think? Number six in the world. You're getting fucked right now in the world, son. Oh. Jeez. You're six on iTunes. I ought to be making more money, don't you think? Number six in the world. You're getting fucked.

Do you see what I drive here sometimes? I wonder if this is America. I wonder if it's the U.S. It's got some BBC stuff on there. I don't know. I don't know if it is, whether or not it's actually the country or the world. But whatever it is, you're number six on all podcasts. And I owe your audience.

And you know, your audience is awesome, by the way. I mean, I hear from them. And they always say the same thing. I found out about you from Joe Rogan, just so you know. Find cool shit, don't lie to them. That's it. Yeah. Find cool shit, be honest.

Be honest about how you feel about things. Don't be transparent in the way... I mean, even when I talk, like if I talk about something like the Magic Bullet Theater, somewhere along the way I'll argue something, the bottom line always is, I will tell you exactly what I actually do know. And I don't know. I don't know what happened.

You can't know. And I think finding out about cool things and being honest about the cool, and encouraging that sort of really objective discussion about things, that's a thing that we're missing. That's a thing we're missing in our social circles. It's a thing we're missing in life.

People get attached to ideologies. You were saying people will say one way or another and then just fucking argue it to death. I know Michael Hastings was killed by the CIA. And then your credibility is on the line and everything. Yeah, whether it's Bigfoot or fucking UFOs or being a Republican. There's people that get on a

fucking team and those people are a problem. They're a problem to themselves. They're a huge problem politically because because as i said you know it it doesn't hurt us that one party does something but then when we forgive it when our party whatever party that might be gets in power there are democrats who who if if george w bush was doing what president obama is doing would be out in the streets of signs but because it's their guy

they don't and and vice versa. That's such a good point, and one that I really get on progressives and left-wing people about. I'm like, your acceptance of war crimes done under a Democratic administration, the idea of the same exact things being done under a Republican administration would be horrific war crimes. And the acceptance of them is so gross and so telling and codifies the whole thing you were so against when the other guy was doing it because now you don't have a leg to stand on when the republicans go back in office and do this what

are you going to say you're going to complain about it again then it reinforces the idea of this being a fucking simulation and that's all design i'm liking that idea more and more it's the yin and yang it's the. It's the two-party system. So it's like they brought in a fourth party, but it was too confusing. People didn't know what to follow anymore. They started tuning into different channels. As soon as that Perot character came along, they fucking threw a big monkey wrench into the whole situation.

It's too much. Let's go back to two and a fringy. That's why we haven't had a third person at those presidential debates since. Yeah. Well, the Commission for Presidential Debates, a privately funded institution. With half Democrats and half Republicans on their staff. It's hilarious. And they try so hard to make sure that weirdos don't get in. The Gary Johnsons of the world, the people that are going to throw... Can I ask this, though? Why are they all weirdos? Because I keep feeling like that's almost like part of the rigged thing, that if you have somebody who has some ideas, you go, finally, somebody's saying the right thing about this.

And they go, yes, but I'm also a secret Klan member. Just so you know. And you go, why do they always have to come with some baggage like that? That's because you're not doing it. That's right. That's why. Again, calling for precedence. My Nazi newsletters from the past will all come back to haunt me, right?

I think that the only type of people that have the balls to step out like that are socially a little wacky. For everybody else, it's a big risk. Didn't we talk about that? Like if you're Anthony Weiner and you know there's more pictures out there, but you run anyway knowing they're going to catch you again and you do it anyway? Right. Yeah.

That guy, obviously, he's got a few fucking screws loose. He's running for president next time. Just be ready for the publicity. He's going to turn it all around. Yeah. I wonder what a guy like that eventually winds up doing. That is an interesting point. He can have a podcast, of course.

He could probably be good at that. Think about what you could tweet right there. That's a good promotional piece. Share it with your friends. Before they caught him the first time being a freak, there was a great video of him speaking on the floor and just really passionate and screaming and yelling and very eloquent and very articulate

and like, wow, this guy's fighting for the people. Same thing. KKK letters in your past. Why do you get one with the... I mean, it's crazy. Well, I think that most people, when they get to be a certain age, they have a family and they have obligations, mortgages, and they have certain risks they're not willing to take. And one of the big risks is you don't want to go against the entire

government and say everyone's corrupt. Like, Jesus Christ, they'll come after you. They'll take your house. You know, your kid's got to go to college. So, like, for the guys, like, the Ron Pauls of the world, you know, it's like they get to be a certain age where they're just, they don't give a fuck. Like, what are you going to do? Are you going to shoot him? He's fucking 85 years old or whatever he is.

You know, his last run for president is done. Now it's up to his son. And his son apparently has been using cheat sheets. What's up with that? Plagiarizing. I gave the guy a lot of credit for that wonderful filibuster he did for the Fourth Amendment. Got the best publicity the Fourth Amendment's gotten in so long. And then you go pull that on me.

Make me look like an idiot. People don't know what you're talking about. That's okay. Apparently he had used some words from some various speeches. That were exactly the same. Exactly. Is it possible that he has writers and he doesn't know? That's what his father said the newsletters were that got his father in so much trouble.

But remember Rand Paul, who I've said nice things about, also has as one of his main advisors that guy who did the Southern Avenger. Oh yeah, one of his advisors was the Southern Avenger. And he wore a mask and had a Confederate flag behind him and so it's like a YouTube show or something

and then when they said are you going to fire this guy he goes something like well that's all in his past and you just go what's up with this? Why are these people all crazy? If you talk about freedom

in our Constitution you're crazy. That's adorable. Yeah. Maybe it's the Southern Avenger. Look at his photo. Is that him? Oh my God. Come on, sit, wait, if that guy's on your staff and somebody, you could honestly say Yeah. Maybe it's the Southern Avenger. Look at his photo. The Southern? Is that him?

Oh my god. Come on. Wait. If that guy's on your staff and somebody... You could honestly say, God, I didn't know he was a Southern Avenger. Once they tell you, don't you fire him five seconds later? I think it's probably a good move. He didn't.

So that to me right there, you go, great. Thanks for taking my pet issue of the Fourth Amendment and trashing it with your Southern Avenger guy. What is the Southern Avenger stance? Maybe I'm on his team. I don't know. I have never watched the Southern Avenger. I saw clips.

Paint him with a broad brush. The Confederate flag does that for you. He seems so sobbed, though. I don't know. What could he possibly stand for? He's confusing the shit out of me already. Conservative, libertarian, independent. See, look what he's done.

He's destroyed conservative, independent, and libertarian in one tagline. He's probably working for a group who's trying to discredit all those things. I'm surprised he doesn't have a TM at the end of it. Look at the logo. It's a better logo than a lot of people have. Yeah, I mean, what is he trying to do? He looks like a wrestler, doesn't he? He does. Does he still have a show? No, he works for Rand Paul now.

Still? They didn't fire him yet? Where's Brian? He's supposed to look all that stuff up for us. He's not going to look it up. He's just going to interrupt. Oh, has he been banished? Is this a temporary banishment?

But Rand Paul still has this guy working for him. I can't comment on that intelligently. Do we know if the Southern Avengers said anything bad? He's to speak at the same conference as Rand Paul. Hmm. After neoconservative alter ego was revealed, Hunter left a post as the Kentucky Senator's

social media... That's the guy? That's the Southern Avenger? He looks like a guy with a Southern Avenger. Look at that photo over his right shoulder. Or the left shoulder. That's disturbing. Is that guy with a southern Avenger. Look at that photo over his right shoulder. Or the left shoulder. That's disturbing. Is that guy with no shirt on? There's like a bunch of people and one guy has no shirt on.

That's a gay orgy about to happen. A southern gay orgy. We just had some chicken. We're fixing to fuck. Look at him. The guy has no shirt on and a big chest tattoo. What if that chest tattoo was like some fucking conservative statement? You don't know what's on his back

statement yeah a big confederate flag that's right I think so too the cover of the fucking the roof of the general duke but to get back to the point

is how come whenever you get someone who's saying some important things in a halfway in a decent way they have to come you know people say to me all the time well we vote all the time Dan

of course the country's on is based on voters voting for people how come when we get somebody who would like to change course in a direction most of us would like to see, half of them is really fantastic and the other half of them is so crazy you'd never elect a person like that in a million years? Why can't we have somebody who has some common sense and doesn't sound like that? Two words, my friend. Simulation theory. It all goes back. And risk management diversification.

Tool. Yeah. I wonder. He's hedging his bets in case white people take over the world again in a very dominant sort of way. We'll have the Southern Avenger on staff. He can advise us. Do you ever watch those extreme preppers shows? Those shows where dudes are preparing for the end of the world? Oh, the bunker people.

Stockpiling water and creating escape routes and battering rams. They're welding to the front of their pickup trucks. They're like the opposite of the hoarders, because they're the hoarders that are doing it for a good cause, right? Yeah, they believe that it's all going to come crumbling down. And I think that there's a mentality, and the same kind of mentality that is the type of person that wants to get in this rebellious position of power,

rebellious position of railing out against the government. They're very similar to these people that are prepping. It's very similar. They're extreme folks. Those are the only people that make it to the front of that crazy line. They have to be a bit nutty. It's not that the ideas aren't interesting to you or I when you look at a guy like Rand Paul, the things that he says that you agree with, or his dad, the things that he says that you agree with, but it's to get there. He's facing so much opposition. There's so

much bullshit along the way, so much pressure, so much back and forth debate, so much frustration, so much suppression of information. By the time he gets to a position where the world is listening to him, he's already broken. He broke every bone in his fucking soul just to get to the front of the line. You know what's funny, though? People say to me all the time, can you get a staff together to do what you do so you can do better? I want more history shows. Can we help you do this?

And I always say the same thing. I say, you can't help me because I can't watch y'all and I can't keep track of it. That's what all these people do. You know, what was it Paul said, Ron Paul said, well, this guy who wrote, he was doing my newsletter for me. I was in Congress. I didn't have time to do newsletters, so he did it and he wrote all this stuff and I didn't know what was happening.

That's my fear, is that you're going to hire a bunch of people and then you're going to turn around and go, what did you do for me? We started the Southern Avengers show for you. We thought it would be a good promotional vehicle for your show, Dan. No doubt.

Yeah, no doubt. I think that there's... It's a catch-22. Do you give away some of your control or do you keep it where you know everything's cool?

But the minute you give it away, you've got rogue people with your name running around graffitiing the side. Banksy and Carlin were here. Somebody isolated the photograph. This is the photograph.

It's all a bunch of wrestlers. Well, I said Southern Avenger looked like a wrestler. Yeah, these are like old school Southern wrestlers. I was probably right. They probably butt-fucked each other as soon as this was over. This guy's got this in the... He's got it framed on his wall in the background of his fucking study. So, yay, Southern Avenger.

Yay, simulation theory. Wait, does it say he parted ways? So there, so he got rid of him finally. Yeah. I guess the hue and cry was a little too much for a sitting senator from Kentucky to have somebody named the Southern Avenger on his staff. Well, he was a co-author of the 2011 book with Rand Paul, The Tea Party Goes to Washington. Oh, God. I maybe forgot that.

I blanked it out. But you're right. It is funny that these people, they have to be wacky. Yeah, we can't have a Fourth Amendment person who's not wacky. I mean, I guess you do. You've got guys like Wyden and Udall and some of these people, but when you get somebody who's a real lightning rod for this stuff, and you think, finally, we've been waiting for a guy like this forever, they come with these poison pills that you just can't swallow.

Yeah, it's an unfortunate reality of the control that has been exerted on the political climate. I mean, the fact that the two-party system exists just shows you how much power the people that are running things, how much they've actually been able to exert on our system. They've locked it down to two parties that are both often supported by the exact same corporation. George Carlin said you know exactly how many people you have to bribe. Yeah, Bill Hicks had the best bit. He goes, well, I like the puppet on the left. He's more to my liking. Well, the puppet on the right supports my beliefs.

Hey, wait a minute. There's one guy holding both puppets. I mean, that was like his description of america that's a really good one how come we don't get it then show that this is what i don't understand if we're going to work toward this awareness and if we're going to get better and and and more involved in enlightening how do we not see through that scam that would be like first can you have to see

through to get to anywhere we don't see through that will smart people that are on the democratic side are partially to blame just as much as people on the conservative side. But on the Democratic side, I've heard so many people use the term we, like we need to get into office or we need to get more of this or we control the House. I'm like, we? We? Like Hollywood people. I have had maddening conversations with people in Hollywood that use the term we to describe the Democratic Party. And I'm like, they're not you, dude. They're not you by a long stretch.

And you perpetrating this stupidity. I understand that you work 12 hours a day and you don't have the time to investigate this thoroughly, but you pretending to be a smart guy and going with this team, we need to do that. How much of what they're doing are you really fucking paying attention to? Because this Democratic Party

that's in charge right now is as Republican as it gets when it comes to whistleblowers, as Republican as it gets when it comes to giving rights to corporations that are the same rights that used to be attributed to individuals. All the things that we were afraid of during the Bush administration are all being done to a much larger, the attacks on whistleblowers, to a much larger degree.

The attacks on secrecy and privacy, much larger than has ever been exhibited before. Those are all Republican ideas. So when do they become Democratic ideas? I had a famous political reporter here in l.a. when i was learning about news explain it to me this way she goes i'm going to give you the secret to what the difference between the two parties are and she kept it from me she kept it from me and then one day when we were going to interview dan quayle of all people believe it or not when he was the vice president she says okay the time has come to let you in on the big secret between the two parties

so i lean forward i say what is it she goes at the republican fundraisers you get your wine in a glass of the democratic fundraisers it comes in a plastic cup that was it that was this big piece of knowledge i was waiting for the difference between the two parties is what they serve the wine in when you go to their get together so deeply entrenched in money and and what i'm what i'm saying that the those are democratic ideas are those republican ideas i don't mean it as in they are actually a public ideas i mean it as in the in money. And when I'm saying that those are Democratic ideas or those are Republican ideas, I don't mean it as in they are actually Republican ideas. I mean it as in the people that are on the

Democratic side that believe in equality and freedom and left-wing values, they think that those ideas are only things that the Republicans support. So when they're clearly being supported by the Democratic Party, who's who? What's going on? Is up- up down is down up is there is everybody getting paid here like what exactly is going on i think we assume these people have ideas when really they're taking money 20 of them do but i think 80 of them have the ideas you pay them to have and also it's a giant group of people in order to play politics right you have to appease certain groups and you have to be very good socially at this sort of give and take system that they've put into place.

The cronyism system. I mean, when you look at all these people that are lobbyists live in Virginia, that's right outside of DC and they come in and there's all this money concentrated on making things happen there. It's totally against the concept of we the people. It's totally against the concept of the interests of the individual, the interests of the greater good of the society as a whole. It's totally against that. It's against it and it's transparent and it's right in everybody's face.

But I think a lot of people do get it. Like, I don't think it's an issue of lacking awareness, at least now, you know, if you talk 30 years ago, you had maybe a different story. But post Nixon, ever since, you know, confidence in government has been collapsing sharply, confidence in the political system, you know, everybody to some degree or another hates it, feel like, ah, it's corrupt. I think there is a level of awareness of that. What there isn't is the, okay, then what do we do about it? You know, that part is the, we have the knowledge that this thing sucks,

but what can I or my neighbor or the next guy do to change this? What steps could be taken? And that's when people go. Don't you think more people know it sucks now than have ever before? Yeah. And more people know why it sucks now.

Well, and you know what the real, and this ties something else up in a boat we talked about earlier with the fracking and the environmental damage and everything else. Part of the problem we have too is we have a system here in the United States that is designed to be moderate and not radical, which sounds fine most of the time. But if you put off problems long enough, the solutions that are moderate to fix

them are no longer useful. I mean, if your house is slipping on its foundation and you get to it early, maybe a little bit of money and a little bit of work and you can fix that if you put that off ten fifteen years the solution to that problem is a lot more radical we have put off a lot of huge problems in this country in solving it for so long that the solutions are so radical that we have a system that is just geared to to tampen down that sort of

radicalism but what does that mean if that's what it takes to fix some of the problems that's a very interesting point. And then there's the idea that we're going to come up with some way in the future to clean up all the mess that we've created in the past.

We'll fix it later. Something will be invented. Technology will take care of it. All we need to do is get our backs against the wall because that's when America's at its best. That's right.

We got our back against the wall. Tell you what, we come out swinging. The better mousetrap will emerge. Don't worry. We come out swinging and we're going to make some GMO fish that eat plastic and send them bitches out there

and then we've got all our problems solved. We're going to have the greatest population of fish in the history of the fucking ocean because we're going to have plastic-eating fish that we've made in the lab.

They've got a steel lining to their stomach and they run on fossil fuels. Forced consciousness expansion. Maybe they will prompt the awareness by putting the hallucinogenics in the water, and there you go. Well, a lot of people believe that they came in asteroids, Dan Carlin.

They came from other planets. It's a simulation. There are no other planets. There's a chemical, the chemical composition of mushrooms, the four phosphoroloxy-NN-dimethyltryptamine, or however you say it. Wow. The things being in the phosphorus in the four positions, the only group of them in the entire world. So there's no immediate ancestors to psilocybin.

You are talking way over my head. I'm talking over my head too. Way over my head. I'm repeating some shit that I heard Terrence McKenna say. Okay. But the idea is that... As long as we're clear on that, right? Spores can survive in a vacuum.

The idea of pansperia, panspermiamia is a well-accepted idea in astronomy, and that idea is that life, the building blocks from life, water even, came from other planets. Asteroid impacts on other planets sent large bodies into space. They landed on Earth, many of them perhaps billions and billions of years ago, and actually created the oceans, actually created a lot of life itself, the building blocks for life. So in a sense, we are all of alien composition, period. But other things are continuing to come this way, including spores, which can survive in a vacuum.

And when you have large doses of psilocybin mushrooms, one of the weird things is you feel like you're communicating with something. You feel like you're, and the whimsical amongst us believe that what you're actually doing is communicating with an alien life form that has come here and wants you to eat it in order to tune into it. You know, I actually have some thoughts that I agree with some of that, and this is coming from someone who doesn't talk about this very much, but I've always been fascinated with how things like that have been used by humankind throughout history as a means to open up other you know what to use hoxley's term doors of

perception it's fascinating to me when you think if you think that none of this stuff is you know if you think about evolutionary things right is so this is all stuff that evolves why the hell were hallucinogenic mushrooms what's the evolutionary benefit to the mushroom itself to have that is it supposed to ward off birds from eating it because they get a bad trip if they do i find it fascinating how much of a role you know we did a a podcast once about the the the hidden side of intoxication in history well i think you could make a very good case that hallucinogenics

of all kinds have probably played huge roles in history that we don't even know about, especially with tribal peoples who have played huge roles. I mean, why did the Germans decide to migrate into Roman territory at just this time? Well, they have sorcerers and witch doctors as part of their culture who use hallucinogenics. Who knows that they didn't go to the chieftain there and say, you remember that thing I told you we have to do? I was just told now is the right time move into that roman territory in all histories different i mean that's the

side of history would never going to get the issue to find out how much of history's been determined by things like that that is a little bit away with you larry is my remember you like that what it was for you to the problem is is that you can't know so the whole thing is speculative but you think well napoleon had opium the night before water looney slept late in the sluggish how much did that impact history and so you gotta go you gotta use the little teeny pieces of the jigsaw puzzle you know about to construct a totally fictional narrative that might be true well there's one thing that's undeniable people love altering

their consciousness yes yes that's true they love it so much that in this day and age we have partnership for a drug-free america and Who are bucking against the trend, right? Who, not only that, are funded initially by alcohol and tobacco companies, now mostly by pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceuticals, of course. Which is so rich and so delicious. The way I describe it, I go that having pharmaceutical companies and allowing them to do literally commercials against marijuana is like hookers making commercials against strippers. Right. That's, it's like the most ridiculous things.

It is. The idea behind it is, you know, it's so preposterous. But we have, we still have a method. And as long as you give people a method, they'll accept a certain amount of restrictions. As long as the method is good, and the method is very good. The alcohol method is great. And think about if prohibition hadn't been repealed. I mean think about how

interesting a world we might live in today had that stayed the law of the land. I don't think it can. I don't think you can have no options for people to... Well the one thing that's interesting is during Prohibition, marijuana was legal. Marijuana wasn't legal until after Prohibition. Henry Anslinger and all those people. Yeah, Henry Anslinger and William Randolph Hearst. They originally

did it to try to suppress hemp as a commodity. Right, because you got so much more out of hemp than you got out of trees. And if you're in the business of making paper, you're in the business of the logging industry. I mean, that's also a perfect example of the difference between controlling information back then and today. They were able to sell this idea that there's a new drug that was forcing Mexicans and blacks to rape white women.

And they even named this drug marijuana, which is a name for a Mexican slang term for a wild tobacco. It had nothing to do with cannabis. You know what does blow me away, though? What blows me away, I can understand you making the case that this has to be illegal, whatever we're talking. This has to be illegal because it's so dangerous and we know it's so dangerous. What I don't understand is that we basically have a policy in this country that there will be no new intoxicants. If something is invented in a bathtub tomorrow that doesn't hurt anybody, that has no hangovers, that nobody gets in car, we're going to ban it the day after tomorrow on general principles.

And that's what I don't understand. Not only that, there are beneficial drugs that they have to attribute to diseases in order to get them passed through. Like there's a thing called Provigil. And Provigil is this smart drug that all of these Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are on this shit all day. You know a lot about this stuff, Joe. I'm impressed. It's impressive stuff. Provigil is pretty wild. And it gives you this buzz, but it doesn't give you a caffeine-y buzz. It's not like a heart rate thing. It gives you this clarity thing. It's a very strange sort of intoxicant or sort of pharmaceutical drug, rather. But they couldn't just sell it as a performance-enhancing drug.

So they had to sell it as some sort of a response to a disease. So they came up with narcolepsy. It's like, yeah, narcolepsy. Okay, I've heard about this. But it was originally created in order to, like, it was created to benefit consciousness. But you can't do that. You can't have a drug that,

just a drug that makes you smarter. You literally can't. There has to be something wrong with your fucking brain. So they have to come up with something. That's a weird rule. But here's the weird thing. If that's how it has to be why don't they all go back and then find things you know couldn't you sell the old drugs

that way yeah i guess they are kind of i mean if you think about it that's what the whole medical marijuana kind of thing could be construed as if you wanted to well we found a new way to market this thing it's a solution to a problem yeah well medical marijuana is the reason why they're that's the back door that yeah i think. Yeah, I think we all understand that. Even if we think that there are, and I do think there are, medical uses for this stuff, there's no question that it has been used as a back door to sort of open the door

to what would not have been possible without it. Also, ingeniously getting people... I'm just throwing it out there. Getting people in government addicted to the money and the revenue that it brings them legally, which you don't get at all if it's illegal. The money still goes into the economy, and that's been really documented in British Columbia, that the economy is very dependent even though it's illegal. But the taxes that you would get from selling it, the government actually is what loses out on marijuana being illegal.

The government loses out because they're not getting any of the tax money from it being sold. It's still one of the things we create and do well in this country, too. You'd think they'd be sort of safeguarding the few things we do well in producing in this country. Well, they're just starting to now pass laws, and on it we sell hemp protein powder.

But we have to buy our hemp protein powder in Canada. It's legal to possess. It's legal to sell. It's not legal to grow. It's legal to sell. It's not legal to grow. That is so asinine because you're not even talking about a psychoactive plant. You're talking about the male version of the cannabis plant. It's roped.

Yeah, the different variations, the cousins of the cannabis plant. There's more than one different type of hemp. But all of them, what they all have in common is the amount of THC in them is insanely small. So what you're getting out of it is just a textile. You're getting clothes, you're getting oil, you're getting food that you can eat, and we can't even grow it in America. We're buying it in bulk from Canada, and then we sell it. We try to buy the best stuff that we could possibly find, and it's really difficult.

Because unless you can grow it yourself like it's hard to quality control you have to you have to like really search out these farms that are in another country that are growing this shit and it's so stupid so they're just starting to pass laws that are allowing farmers to grow it in america california has recently passed it they're trying to pass it in other states i believe they passed it in colorado and i believe they passed it in Washington State, because those are the two places where they've made it legal to consume for adults. I saw one of the best documentaries I've seen on this. There's this documentary called Standing Silent Nation, which is what happened a few years ago on the Pine Ridge Reservation

in South Dakota. For those who are Italian accent impaired, he said, standing silent nature. Nation. Nation. See? I understood him. I don't know what you're talking about standing silent nation the that was really cool it showed what happened on pine ridge which was you know one of the poorest reservations in the united states where prospects for economic growth are really dim and so what these guys did they figure you know we are somewhat of a sovereign

entity because that's how reservations are right they? They are in this weird limbo. And they figure, okay, we can plant industrial hemp. We'll cultivate it. We'll do this whole thing. And you see the progression through the documentary of the viciousness with which the DEA goes after them to just stamp it out. And you see the facts that you are listing right now, you know, the THC aspect, the fact that this is not a drug.

You know, we're not talking about a drug. You're not talking about marijuana as... Even marijuana is ridiculous, but that's a whole different story. There are none of the THC that you find in the... It's the same plant, but it's like marijuana without the stuff that gets you high. And you use it for a million things that, as you say, it's legal to own the products in the United States, but it's not legal to grow it where we can actually make the product in the United States. And there's no argument for it. It just makes no sense. It's a commodity.

It's a commodity that's being banned because of a close association with an intoxicant. An intoxicant, by the way, it's the safest known to man. Exactly. One that has massive amounts of medical benefits, documented for sure, for real, non-controversial medical benefits, and it's illegal. I've never understood why we don't have, you know, because I always thought one of the arguments that screwed up kids the most was to put marijuana on this list of terrible drugs, because then when they try the marijuana, they think you're lying about the heroin. Right. I always thought that there ought to be a a checklist that the government used to

decide if something should be legal or illegal you know a hundred questions how addictive is it likely to be you know how dangerous how many blah blah blah and then if you pass or fail you know you pass it's legal if you fit that that also would be used if you invent some new bathtub drug tomorrow okay well let's run it down the checklist right and then you could say to the people well look i mean here's how it's going to check this i think the damage to that would be because alcohol might not score very highly on that six ac but but certainly i don't think that there's any way

marijuana doesn't score better than most of the intoxicants that are out there today right and i think i guess what i'm saying is i think it would help me in raising my own children and keeping them off these harder drugs to be able to have a decent argument there's a good reason this heroin isn't in general use kids it'll really hurt you trust me it wouldn't be illegal if it wouldn't really hurt you well what's mind-boggling is that that's not even schedule one i know because medical uses that's right heroin is scheduled schedule two 1, the most dangerous of all drugs, marijuana is in that. I remember.

That's an insult. Ronald Reagan in the 80s, marijuana is the most dangerous drug in America. Yeah. Oh, that was a great speech. How the fuck can you even say that with a straight face? It's hilarious. You know, they found that cone snail venom, they can make a drug out of cone snail venom that is 100 times more potent than any existing pain medication and is completely non-addictive.

So it works 100 times better than all of the Oxycontins and all that other shit, and it's not addictive. Listen to this. The message this evening is not my message, but ours. Despite our best efforts, shortages of marijuana are now being reported. From the early days of our... This is a parody. This is a parody. Sorry.

Fail. Fail hard, dude. That's what I have to say to my mythical producer all the time. Fail. How dare you. Yeah, it becomes an insult, and it becomes one more piece of evidence That we're getting fucked And it's bad to have that out there

If you want to run a government Because it fuels the resistance It fuels people's It turns the citizens into the enemy That's what it does There's millions and millions of fucking Schedule 1 criminals in this country It turns the buttocks clenching guy

Who run the stop sign at Walmart into the bad guy. Well, he didn't even have any marijuana on him. That's the part I like. But marijuana was the—do you know that that's what they suspected him of having? So here's the thing. So I'm walking—I'm in my car, and I've got some marijuana I want to smoke later, but I'm afraid if it's in my car, you'll find it. So I shove it up my rear end so that I can smoke it later.

The whole thing is so insane. Yeah, it's in my car, you'll find it. So I shove it up my rear end so that I can smoke it later. The whole thing is so insane. Yeah, it's beautiful. We're living in a simulation. It's not real. Wiener, he's not real. Wiener showing his wiener. Come on, none of it's real. It's not real.

We're all mad. We're mad as a hatter. And we're just alone by ourselves somewhere, linked up to some computer, trying to to pretend that this fucking simulated society we've pieced together makes very interested to hear what they're writing on rogan's message board about this wide variety of interesting topics no what do you mean it's all scripted i'll get right back to it let me see what it says here savages well we're a new world order mouthpiece here at the joe rogan experience podcast i don't know if

you know that i became a new world order mouthpiece here at the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. I don't know if you know that. I became a new world order mouthpiece once I started doing that Joe Rogan questions everything. Oh, of course. And I wasn't really willing to question everything. I thought the eye rolls that you did were absolutely artistic in some of those scenes. Thank you very much. Well, it got to a certain point where I was like, you know what? I can't do this anymore.

I can't keep talking to liars and pretending that we're putting together a TV show. When I was talking to a guy who told me he saw a bulletproof wolf that popped out of a vortex of mist. Somebody told you that? Yeah. By the way, he also told me he saw a UFO, sees them on a regular basis, and went and found Bigfoot the very first time he went looking for it. I was like, oh, criminy. Like, what am I doing with my life? We're so far off of the reality road that I'm never going to find my way back.

It is hard to maintain the straight-faced thing. It's not worth it. At a certain point in time, you're like, oh, this is just a broken idea. This is a person with a – they're chasing down thoughts that are bad, and they don't stop chasing them down. And they're reasonably intelligent, so they can argue their way around these things when confronted. And Michael Shermer had a quote about that,

about really smart people who believe in really dumb things because they're smart enough to argue it. And I think that's the case with a lot of these folks. And the flaw in the thinking is so obvious. So when I didn't believe in chemtrails, that every fucking airplane that you see a contrail that's persistent

is the government spraying us with evil chemicals, all of a sudden people are like, you're a fucking mouthpiece for the new world. I told you,

I got that too though for questioning the Hastings thing. Yeah. But you know, you're going to get that. That's the problem when you have a worldview

that's nuanced, when you have something that's... Wonderful word, yes. Thank you, by the way, for putting it in a way that now the public understands. No, no, no. When I first said it, you got it. Everybody got it.

But yeah, because the fact is, like the reviews you get or the feedback that Joe is getting about this stuff, to me is not surprising because anytime you have a position that's not stereotypical, where you're not clearly in one camp, 150%, where is the, Oswald did it, or no, that's total bullshit. How can you believe that? Or, you know, about anything, right? When you start asking questions that poke holes in one line of thinking, but then at the same time, when people start feeling reassured that, oh, then you are on this side, then you start saying, well, kind of, but wait a second, because also there's something here that's problematic here.

And you're just keeping an open mind, right? It doesn't mean that you can't commit to an idea. It doesn't mean that you are flip-flopping. You're just considering the pros and cons, and sometimes it's not that black and white. It drives people crazy. Well, and the media doesn't want you to do that either, because they used to tell me on the radio, a listener has to know where you stand on every issue within three minutes of turning you on.

And I said, that's a cartoon character. That's not a real person. And it's the same thing where I had just done a show recently where we were talking about... Go ahead, wrap this up. The point is that whole idea that nuance is a bad thing. Somebody called me... I'm being called a moderate and a realist more and more today,

which is coming from like tinfoil hat, crazy radical territory, and I haven't changed my views at all in 20 years. Well, a couple things, but basically,

it means that society, like you said, has started to pick up on things and has moved in a direction. I used to say to people, the NSA is spying on everyone, and they said, no, they're not.

You're crazy. Get your tinfoil hat out. Now I say, the NSA is spying on everyone, and they go, I know. You know, so society has justfoil hat out. Now I say the NSA is spying on everyone. And they go, I know. So society has just sort of moved in a different direction. And nuance, that's what society is missing today, gray areas.

Yeah, I've been called a conspiracy theorist with good reason, theorist for a long time about a lot of different subjects. But I've always found it really odd that the idea that people haven't conspired on things is is so attractive to people right like people want to be able to debunk things just as willingly as other people want to find conspiracy and things and there's some things that are not debunkable there's some realities debunkable yeah there's some realities like the reality of the fucking central bank the reality of the realities of the influence of the Bilderberg group, the

realities of the influence of corporations and special interest groups and lobbyists. Those are real. Those are real things. So if those exist, those are probably some of the biggest conspiracies the entire world has ever known. And they're right in front of your fat fucking face. Okay, look at the reality of money today and what money is controlling. Whether or not this Gasland documentary is 100% correct, even if it's 50% correct, that 50% is fucking terrifying.

And every one of those examples that they showed, if those were the only examples, and I don't think they are, we're doing something crazy. And it's all being done because of money. We're ruining something crazy, and it's all being done because of money. We're ruining this world forever, whether it's the ocean patch that's bigger than Texas, it's all plastic that's floating out there and choking birds and whales. A beached whale just died. His stomach was filled with plastic. I mean, what we are doing for real that we're doing bad is fucking insane. So anybody who's

not willing to look at the other possibilities like, man, your rigid view of the world is fucking your head up. There's some weirdness afoot. Simulation theory, god damn it. Short term gain, baby. That whale wasn't doing any good for me. Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Case closed, I say.

Done. Case closed. Listen, I think we could do this at the end of time, the end of today, but we're not going to. This is it. We're going to wrap this up. But we could fucking do this again. God damn it. Dan Carlin, Daniel Bilelli. Thank you for coming up with this idea. This is Mr. Bilelli's

idea. I came up with it without telling either of you. I felt both of you. It was a mind meld. And if anybody wants to listen to Daniele Bolelli's podcast, it is The Drunken Taoist. It's available on everything, right? iTunes. Is it on Stitcher as well? Yeah, Stitcher.

Dan Carlin is not one, but two fucking podcasts. Jesus Christ, as if you had enough free time to absorb them all. One is Hardcore History, which is absolutely sensational. The other one is DC Common Sense. A little mediocre. No, I'm just kidding. Lies! They're both awesome. Lies. And you can catch them on

iTunes. He gives away the first 50 for free, just to get you hooked. And then the rest of them you get by prescription. Prescription? I should say prescription. Because you can learn. It's good for your brain. Subscription. But they're fucking worth it. They're goddamn books.

They're audio books. They're lessons on life and the history of this wacky-ass country. Thanks, Oprah. Get them, bitches. Go get them. Go after it. And I want to thank our sponsors

for sponsoring this podcast, specifically Carbonite. Carbonite, the awesome backup program. Use the code word JRE for a free trial. No credit card required. Thanks also to Stamps.com. Use the promo code JRE and get a $110 bonus offer. Thanks also to Onnit.com.

That's O-N-N-I-T. Use the code name ROGAN. Save 10% off any and all supplements. All right, we love the fuck out of you guys. We have a great week next week, including, I got an astronaut coming in, fuckers. I got that guy, Commander, what is it? Hold on.

He was the dude who, let me find this email before we wrap this up, because I have to be... Hold on a second. Oh, boy, isn't this a fucking great way to end an awesome podcast? Me searching through my fucking email like a moron. Colonel Chris Hatfield.

Chris Hatfield, he was up in the space station until recently, the Canadian astronaut that was in the news. He'll be here on Monday. And we also have next week we have Graham Hancock is coming in on Wednesday. Should be fantastic. And Anna Kasparian from the Young Turks, she will be here on Tuesday. So it's a fun-filled week, you freaks. And I will see you guys Saturday night in Edmonton at the River Creek Casino with the lovely

and talented Sam Tripoli and thank you thank you to Dan Carlin thank you to Daniele Bolelli it was a beautiful time had by all and we love the fuck out of you people

see you soon