The Joe Rogan Experience - #509 - Steve Hilton

Episode Date: June 3, 2014

Steve Hilton is a former director of strategy for David Cameron, Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. He is currently a lecturer and visiting scholar at Stanford University.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Steve Hilton, my friend. Politics are a dirty business. Very dirty, but just before we get into that, Joe, I just want to say you've already really offended me. Fantastic! I just want to show you my phone.

Oh, what have you got? Here it is. Oh, a flip phone. So I am, in your words, an old crazy grandma. Well, I have many friends that carry old flip phones. I'm glad that you're actually just carrying a phone. Exactly. This is a very new development for me.

Well, it's a good move. So everyone's been telling me I've got to have a phone. I had not had a phone for many years. Finally, I buckled under the pressure and I got one of these. Yeah. Steve, um, we became friends in Hawaii. Our, our family, uh, we're all friends. It's a, it's a very cool little, uh, development. I really enjoy it, but I think it, I think it's quite hilarious that your wife is involved in Google and you avoid phones at all costs. You avoid technology. You feel that it's too entrenched in our life, this sort of digital web that we've all been connected to.

Yeah, I'm trying to fight it, Joe. It's tough. You just shut them off, though. That's the beautiful thing. When you don't want to use them, you shut them off. Yeah, but they're there. They're kind of nagging away annoying that's discipline yeah you're gonna meditate probably right well i feel that there's benefits and there's certainly negatives to phones but i think the positive aspects outweigh the negative i i like being able to

communicate with friends and family and loved ones and send texts and i i i find it incredibly addictive though and i think it becomes i was out at dinner the other day with a bunch of friends and everyone was on their goddamn phone there was five of us and i was like sitting around the table looking at everybody texting and tweeting and taking photos i'm like we're not even here right now i mean you guys are you're connected to this digital world you talk about how awesome it is to be here but you're not even here. You're barely paying attention. That's right.

And there's new sort of etiquette developing about, you know, how to handle this. When there's, I think I was reading something about where you've got eight people around the table having dinner and it's okay for three of them to be looking at their devices. That's okay. But if it gets to more than three, someone's got to look up because that's the rule. Who says? Says who? Establish what? I don't get it.

It's just like anything else. I mean, if you are at a bar with some friends and one guy is just watching TV only and not engaging in a conversation, that's just as rude. Yeah, I think that's right. I find it fascinating how my children react to devices. That's where I really get a sense of it because they don't have a cultural context. react to devices. That's where I really get a sense of it because they don't have a cultural context. You know, when my four year old watches television or watches devices and I'll stand in front of her watching TV and she just reaches up and tries to move me. She doesn't give a fuck what I'm thinking. She's just trying to watch this program. Yeah. You literally can't get in between

at that point. It's like, I've really noticed that if you just, you know, they're watching something, that's it. It's captivating. You may have been away for a week and you haven't seen them and they're desperate to see you, but if there's something on TV at that point, not interested. Yeah, it trumps everything. It trumps all human interaction. And it's very weird how it does it. It does it in this strange, hypnotic way.

There's nothing else on earth that gets a four-year-old to just sit there. Yeah. Motionless. That's right. And engage. But it literally stimulates parts of the brain. There's a lot of quite interesting brain science about what's going on when kids watch TV and it's generally fine. But when it gets to a point where they're watching, you know, more than two or three hours a day, and a lot of kids these days are in that situation. It literally starts rewiring their brain. Yeah. It's not healthy to, to completely entrench yourself in that world and to be in that world all day, every day. But a lot of people do because it's possible. But I think that's just like everything else. It's like, I like the option to be able to buy a cheeseburger. I don't think you should eat cheeseburgers every day, all day, but I like it if I want one, if I'm driving by in and

out and I'm like, let's do it. You know, it's not the best food for you, but I like the option. I totally agree with that. I like that for television. I like watching Swamp People. You ever watch that? I have not. It's a fucking terrible show about a bunch of people alligator hunting.

And it's the most predictable show of all time because they look for alligators and occasionally they get alligators. But there's nothing unusual happens. They don't run into a giraffe like, who the fuck is a giraffe in the swamp? No, it's just alligators and these people with these strange southern accents in boats. And they have fishing line.

They catch the alligator with fishing line. Sometimes they shoot the alligators. But it's just alligator hunters. But they call it swamp people. Yeah, I haven't seen that. I'm not sure that's going to be top of my list. Sometimes they shoot the alligators, but it's just alligator hunters. But they call it swamp people. Yeah. I haven't seen that. I'm not sure that's going to be top of my list. You should invest.

You should invest your time. But you're right about doing a little bit of everything. I remember when that movie came out about McDonald's, Super Size Me. Yes. And this guy got ill and fat and whatever. It was Morgan Spurlock, wasn't it? Yes. You know, he made a good point.

But my favorite response to that was from McDonald's, when the guy who runs McDonald's in Australia went on, they took commercials and they went on air when there's this big PR storm about the terrible McDonald's food and all this kind of stuff, and he went on air with these commercials.

I'm going to now attempt very badly an Australian accent, although most people here probably couldn't tell the difference between the British and Australian. Yeah, you can just keep talking. We'll think it's an Australian accent. I get it, I get it. And he goes and said,

apparently there's some bloke who's going around saying, if you eat too much of our food and don't take any exercise, you get fat. Well, I could have told you that. That's a really sweet response, which is, yeah, if you just do all of something something that's not good but a little bit it's okay that's a quite australian response too as opposed to the measured american legalese that you would probably hear from some ceo yeah there's no you know i have a real issue with that

documentary and with he did a show also called 30 days because I know what they're doing. They're not necessarily just investigating. They're also trying to achieve a desired result, and that desired result being something bad. They're trying to do something that's going to be titillating and, oh, my goodness, his liver is going bad. Like, he's sick, he's sick, he's toxic. There's a lot of people who have called bullshit on that, especially the liver toxins and all that stuff.

They're like, where's the liver toxin? You're dealing with carbohydrates and proteins and fats. But these things aren't toxic. They're just not good. They're just high in cholesterol, and they're kind of fatty and sugary. Yeah. But I know for a fact that they did some fuckery on his show. He had a show called 30 Days

where he's trying to achieve the same results because they went to a friend of mine who's a doctor and this doctor specializes in hormone replacement therapy for older people and people that are you start getting older, you want to replace your testosterone things along those lines

and they wanted to do it in 30 days and they wanted to do it on this program. Take a man who's getting older and in 30 days inject him with hormones. And the doctor, who's an ethical doctor, said, you don't ever do that. He said, we would never do that. He said, what we would do is we would get you on a proper diet. I would take your blood. It would take a week to get your blood results back.

I'd get your blood results back. I'd want to get a detailed analysis of what you're eating, what you're doing, what kind of a lifestyle do you have. It's not a simple fix. We give you hormones. So what they did is they found a quack doctor who did just shoot the guy up with hormones. And the guy was like all roid ragey and angry afterwards. And his fucking wife wanted to keep him chubby. I mean, the whole thing was a disaster. It's like, this is not an ethical examination of this complex issue. Yeah, I mean, it's not real.

It's like, it's entertainment. It's not a documentary or something. It's deceiving, though. The problem with entertainment is, it's not a puppet show, okay? It's not a cartoon. You're pretending that you're exploring these ideas. And when I was doing that sci-fi show,

I found some similar issues with certain producers and certain people who were used to that world of reality TV. Reality TV has become this very strange mishmash of choreographed scenarios and predetermined scenarios, predetermined results. And they do it sort of in this guise of reality tv but it's it's essentially it's like loosely scripted bullshit yeah and they're pretending that it's like this is what's going on in the doctor's office no you set that

up that's not what goes on in a doctor's office it's not what would go on in a doctor's office you're pretending because that's's gonna get people to freak out They took this an agenda, you know, they're trying to make a point and they set up like that. They edit it like that You know, it's totally right Well, the whole business is completely fucked because the business is started off with a bunch of people that came over from scripted shows So the legacy people that were involved in these dramatic shows where there were no until survivor came along There were no reality shows, quote unquote reality shows. So I have a deep understanding of this because I hosted Fear Factor for six years and because Fear Factor came in in 2002, which was when all the reality shows were being born.

So I got to see where these people had their backgrounds from and almost all of them had their backgrounds from dramas or from sitcoms or from the world of fictional shows. So much so that you were considered to be like a traitor if you were involved in reality show. Like people got mad at me saying that I was taking jobs away from writers because I was involved in reality shows. And I was like, oh, this is a hilarious argument. But these people all came from this world where you manipulate things in order to make drama. So they started doing that to the quote-unquote reality shows. So that's what you're getting.

So this 30 Days show that doesn't exist anymore and Super Size Me show, you're tackling very complex issues and you're doing it in an entertaining form and when you do that there's some integrity that sort of like goes by the wayside well i think that's right and the integrity i think i had a real example of that you in the end you're relying on the people involved to have a bit of integrity and ethics in the way they do their jobs and i just saw a little example this weekend i was out doing stuff and i did a for to do with the election in my company and we did a i did an interview for

the local news for the mbc news and we were doing some demos of stuff with people in santa monica and um they wanted to film one of the people that we're doing it with, you know, interacting with our thing, right, with our website. And at that point, there weren't any people interested in doing that. So one of the teams said, why don't we just pretend to be a member of the public doing it?

And it was really interesting because they said no. The producer and the journalist said, no, no, it's got to be, you know, a real member of the public. And I thought that was really cool. You know, they obviously wanted to go. They were busy. They had to get back to the studio. They were really annoyed that they're having to wait a long time for an actual member of the public.

But they really did say, no, we're not going to fake it. And it would have been so easy and no one would have noticed. And in that moment, it was literally just their personal integrity. And it was really cool to see. And I hope that's really widespread in the news business. But it was just, for me, a really interesting example of you can make rules and you can have stuff. But in the end, it's about people and their choices in the moment. It is interesting that they chose to do that with integrity.

But it's also interesting that someone suggested they not right exactly exactly yeah that's the that's the other side of it but it was I was really pleased that that's what they decided to do I did a show for CBS once called game show in my head and the the premise of the show was you would have this little earpiece in that someone could talk to you in so I would put an earpiece in the contestants and send them out. And when they would be standing somewhere, I'd say, okay, can you hear me? And they'd say, yes. All right, here's what's going on.

And then these two guys came in with cameras. They were holding cameras. You are a reporter on the news. Here's your scenario. Someone called in a UFO sighting. They saw a UFO sighting. We brought in the cameras. Unfortunately, that person went away.

So what you have to do is convince some member of the public that's around there to take that person's place and to say that they were the ones who saw this UFO. And you have to get them to say that they were taken aboard this UFO and that they were examined by aliens. And so the guy, you know, it was, it was kind of funny. They're like, okay, here we go. All right. How do I do this? What was shocking was how many people, when you put that camera on them, immediately said they would do it and immediately started just lying. Just lying. It was a silver craft. I mean, all walks of life. Very few people said no.

That was the most shocking thing. When you had the camera on them, they just started talking. And they started sort of repeating these iconic images that you always hear, the disc-shaped thing, silver, there was no bolts on it. They were going into detail and talking about the, the medical examinations and, and this, this guy who, and I think it was a guy and a girl, um, you know, these contestants who had to do this, we're just talking to these people and we were all the producers in the truck.

We're all looking at each other like, wow, people are fucking full of shit. This is so weird. It's so weird how easy it is for some people to just justify making up a story just in order for them to be on camera. Yeah. Do you think it's because it's the camera they want to be on the camera or is it they want to please the other person? They want to be on TV. Look clever. It could be that as well.

But I think most likely it's they want to be on television so they could go home, set their DVR, and, you know, it's on, it's on, it's on, it's on. That's me. I'm fucking lying. You know, they just wanted to be on television. I think for a lot of people in this day and age, that is just some sort of a weird ultimate goal, just to have that camera on them, and then they go home and see it right whether it makes sense or not and for a lot of folks it doesn't make sense a lot of folks you know they wind up winds up ruining their lives you know they find out how other people feel about them plus you expose yourself to the critique of millions of anonymous people filled with hate filled with hate

and disappointment their own life and just ready to spew venom in your direction they just can't wait to shit all over you steve hilton well this i judge you that's so this we had another thing this weekend we went out and made a little film just to test that out about the elections going on in in la and we literally went up to people and um made up candidates that were running for congress and and asked what they thought about that you know and what do you think of angelina jolie running for congress and they totally this guy yeah i was so excited when i heard that that's great you know i think she's great and it's just you can't believe how people just engage with

these things they just made it just made it up and they just went with it like you were saying with the ufo thing he was like going on about it he wasn't just saying yeah i heard about that that's great he was sort of embellishing it and talking about it it's just ridiculous yeah people are fucking strange man they're strange and that's a it's a real problem when it comes to politics or anything when you're allowing people to make choices that can affect others. People are weird, you know, and a good percentage of them are really dumb and uninformed and not interested. I mean, when you say dumb and uninformed, Here's what I think when I say that. When I'm saying dumb, what I mean is, if the human mind is essentially, say if everyone has the exact same physical structure,

the exact same genetics, the exact same hormonal system, and one person does yoga every day and eats healthy and does chin-ups in the morning when they wake up and drinks a lot of water. The other person sits in front of the TV, likes to smoke cigarettes, eats nothing but sugar. You get to see the results of the one person being very aware of their body and taking care of their body and the other person not. Well, you get that same effect with life. You get that same effect with life. You get that same effect with how you approach the world itself. Some people approach the world through this lazy, disconnected,

you know, like pop culture obsessed, nonsensical, pop culture obsessed Jamie. Talking to you, you fuck. He's a little pop culture obsessed. Not too bad. Jamie's aware of a lot of other shit too. But some people just, they don't enrich their life. They don't enrich their mind.

They're not curious. And those people with all these poor decisions and drug addictions and the life's a mess, they have an equal say to the person who's rational and aware and kind and objective. Equal say. And I think that's one of the weirdest things about communities, about culture. It's about trying to figure out how do you mitigate the effects of the lazy? How do you deal with the effects of the lazy how do you how do you deal with the effects of the morons like when when you have a riot and people start pulling white people out of

cars and throwing rocks at their heads which they've had in los angeles in the past especially after the rodney king beating and things along those lines just random white people, just attack them. How do you allow, when you see these things can happen, and I just used that as an example, it could be a million other things that are really stupid that people do. How could it be that one person gets one vote and another person who is very aware, another person is very educated, another person who's very kind and very sympathetic to all walks of life gets an equal vote. One person could be a total racist. You could go to a voting booth with a T-shirt on that says, fuck black people, and you could vote. And no one could stop you you know as long as especially if you have a shirt sort of like a flannel shirt that's over the t-shirt that says fuck black people so you have to really look hard to see fuck black

people and you think you're getting over no one can stop you you know and it's i think one of the things that they were trying to work around when they developed the concept of a representative democracy they're the concept of amer representative democracy, the concept of America, representative government. So like, okay, let's sort of have some filters in place. You're voting, but you're kind of voting on a representative, and the representative sort of votes for you. And they interpret what you want. I think that's definitely part of the idea.

I think that when you, I mean, that point you just made about, it really reminds me actually of the racist point you just made. There was a really effective commercial um for rock the vote i remember years ago in the uk where um i was back there at the time and they they literally had a some image of it wasn't images like a tv ad of a racist guy like spewing racist stuff and then the the tagline for the ad was you'd better vote because you can be sure that he will it was a really you know good way of making that point but i think that generally you know those kind of people are the extreme i think the idea is that most people are not you know the kind of extreme end of it where they're either totally, you know, where their views are just completely abhorrent or they are just completely off the page in terms of their

knowledge. You've got a majority of people who are basically interested in good things happening. I think the problem is they just don't know enough about it. The information they get is not interesting. It's not presented in a good way. There's other interesting things going on. They're busy with their life. You know, they want to get involved. And so what happens, and I think this is happening more and more, is you end up with a smaller and smaller group of people who basically control the political system

because the mass of people are just not interested. They're turned off. They think that getting involved won't make any difference. And so what you end up with is people with a lot of money, special interests, those who, you know, the kind of professionals of the political game running everything. And that actually makes people even less inclined to get involved because they see what's happening and think, oh, well, why should I bother? It's a really bad cycle, I think. Yeah. And then people start saying things like, oh, the New World Order is in control anyway. The Bilderberg Group is in control anyway. And there was some thing yesterday

that was in the news where one of the members of the Bilderberg Group in, I think he's some Dutch guy, had some impromptu public discussion with all these people. And they start bringing out all these details of 9-11. You know, 9-11, the building was brought down, thermite. And they circle this guy and start talking to him. And it's kind of fascinating, you know, this idea of the Illuminati, this idea of a small group of people controlling everyone through iconic symbolism eyeballs inside of pyramids and all that stuff becomes uh in a lot of ways a vehicle for um for feeling unempowered definitely feeling that's exactly franchised that's what's good i think that's that's how

people feel yeah and i certainly noticed i used to work back in the uk in the government and i noticed that there i've been in politics a long time that's how people feel. And I certainly noticed, I used to work back in the UK in the government, and I noticed that there, I've been in politics a long time, that's how people feel there. It's even more so here. I think, you know, if you just look today, we're speaking on election day in California. It's the primaries. Everyone's saying it's going to be the lowest turnout ever. No one's interested because they don't think it makes any difference.

I think that's the real problem. And they feel, you know, the whole idea of democracy is people power is that you have the power. Everyone, like you're saying, everyone has the same chance to influence things and they have the power, but that is not what it feels like to people. Yeah. And then every now and then something comes along where they're like, how the hell did that pass? And then they freak out. Exactly. Like proposition eight, where they repealed gay marriage and everybody's like, are you fucking kidding me? In California, you repealed gay marriage? The most shocking thing about Proposition 8 to me was that almost the majority of black people voted for it.

They voted to repeal gay marriage. They didn't want gay marriage, which is, you know, quite hilarious. If you start thinking about people that have been persecuted, I mean, who has been a victim of unfair discrimination in this country more than black people? Probably no one. I don't know because, um, I wasn't involved in any way, but, but I've heard when you look at the day exactly to your point that that was one of the reasons. And that was particularly the case because it was in the year when Obama was running and you had a higher turnout amongst those people. Precisely because you had the first black candidate on the ballot for president. So you had more black people voting.

And that was one of the consequences. Yes. 70 percent. I don't know if that's right, but that's certainly what some have argued. Do you know how crazy 70%? That's the exit poll. It said 70% of black people voted for Proposition 8. That's stunning.

And the idea being, for a lot of them, that it was a religious decision. Yeah, I think that was a big part of the story that's told. Someone should challenge that. And what they should do is they should make some sort of a proposition banning shrimp. You know? Like, have these big signs in front of Red Lobster, you know, with Genesis,

like, whatever the quote in the Bible that says... Because there's four times as many references to shellfish as there is to gay people. There's a lot of references to like, you're not supposed to eat shrimp, but you can go to an all-you-need buffet and people right after church step right up. That's really outrageous. I don't know how we allow it. You're right. You know, this needs to be stopped.

It's bad. But they can't, for whatever reason, the gay thing really locked on to people. They really got into it like they really got into it they really got into it for whatever reason you know the gay the gay decision

the decision to stop gay marriage seemed to be like one that Jesus was really serious about that shrimp thing pick and choose pick and choose

you know you're not supposed to get tattooed how many religious people have crosses tattooed on their body I mean that's a fucking that's like directly.

Is that? No, I didn't know that. Oh yeah. Tattoos are not. Yeah. They frowned upon. Yeah. You're not supposed to mark yourself.

Okay. You're not supposed to tattoo yourself. That's, that's against God's wish. But people will tattoo themselves with biblical verses, which is, you know, hilarious. Yeah. Well, people are weird, you know? And my point that I was trying to make kind of clumsily earlier was that it's kind of strange that we are so varied. And it's kind of strange that everyone does get, like, if there's three of us in a room, you know, we have to all decide. Like, if there's three of us in a room, you know, we have to all decide.

And if one of us is retarded, not literally, but are people with Down syndrome, are people that are, anyone that is, like, mentally compromised, are they allowed to vote? I mean, is there some sort of a test? If you imply that. I don't know what the rules are. I think in Britain it was something to do with, I think the only thing was if you're in jail. I can't remember. Well, if you're a felon in America, we don't ever let you recover.

We don't ever let you recover from that. So if you're a felon, you don't get to vote. Like, yeah, you fucked up too much. What, you never can? No. I don't believe so. I'm pretty sure felons don't get to vote. Because Joey Diaz always talks sure felons don't get to vote. Because Joey Diaz always talks about that.

Don't get to vote. I know they can't carry firearms. Yeah, state felon voting laws. I guess it looks like it's different in every state. Two states allow felons to vote from prison, while other states may permanently prevent felons from voting, even after being released. So it's different. It varies from state to state. That's amazing. Permanently prevent. Yeah. They lose, they vote, they cannot vote permanently in 11 states. Alabama, Arizona,

Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee. Coincidentally, all places I would never fucking live. How weird. Yeah, you're worried about the rules. I think that that is amazing to me, that there's literally this assumption that there's no chance. You don't get back. You don't turn it around, ever. That's an amazing point. You could make a felony when you're 18,

like some stupid thing. You go to jail, you come out and become, like, the best person ever, and they're never going to let you return. I mean, that's ridiculous. I mean, the whole point of what you try and do with, you know, the criminal justice system and so on is to try and exactly rehabilitate people so they don't offend again. And try and get people to that point.

Yeah, I think people are just so tired of people just fucking up that they're like, you know what, this is a good way to keep fuck ups from voting. The idea that we were talking about earlier that a person could be a racist, a person could be a complete nutter and still vote along with a person who's really kind and educated. Their vote counts equally. They're in a community. As soon as that nutter robs something, it's a good way to cut them out of the system. All right, fuck that guy. You can't vote anymore.

Yeah. Which I guess kind of makes sense, but maybe it's just a numbers thing. If there was 10 people on an island, we would have to rehabilitate the guy who stole the coconuts. We'd have to say, come on, man. You can't be stealing everybody's coconuts. This is a fucked up way to live your life. You should contribute.

Stop stealing fish. Stop stealing coconuts. Get it together. And then we'd let that guy be a part of the community. By the way, I think it's an incredibly important point about democracy generally. I think the closer it is to a real community where everyone knows each other,

where the decisions are made by people who can look the other person in the eye and all that, I think they're going to be better. I think one of the problems is that you've got these big, big systems and they're kind of really far from the human level where that kind of trust can be established. And that is one of the problems with a lot of things in government and politics.

It's all just too big and removed from that human scale. Well, that's a problem with a lot of things when it comes to human beings, this diffusion of responsibility that comes with being a part of a massive group like war. Yeah. The idea that if there's 300 million of us and a million of us are overseas, you know, fighting for freedom, uh, that's sort of like you,

you could deal with that because it's not happening in Calabasas. You know, you can, you can go to work and you could deal with your life and in your, the scope of your world, it doesn't come up, but you're kind of peripherally aware that this is happening somewhere else.

But if people in Van Nuys were going to war with people in Studio City and it was only a couple miles away and you had to deal with that, then it would be something we would have to try to calm down. We'd have to try to deal with this. Like, what the fuck's going on here? Like, what are we doing here?

It's something you have to deal with. But the sheer number of human beings that are involved in the world today and communities and cultures, it's just, it's almost unmanageable. It's unmanageable for a person who's not designed for that. We're designed essentially to deal with

our immediate atmosphere. We're designed to deal with small tribes of people, friends, family, the people that you know, the people that you keep close. And when you get past that, it's just like, almost like, what do we, I don't know what to do with this. And so we pass the buck off to some representative. I think this is such an important point. I really do believe that. I think that so many things don't work because they get away from the point where you can really know the other person or the group that you're

with. There's some guy in England that I think at Cambridge University, did some research about the maximum number of people that you can really have any kind of human relationship with at any one time. I think he got to a number of 150. Dunbar's number. Is that right? So you know more about it than I do. I thought that was just a really interesting perspective on it, which is that after that, it just gets too diffuse. We're not designed for it. It's like your phone. Your phone only has a certain amount of data,

that old fucking goofy flip phone you carry around with you. If you have an older one, like one of those Motorola StarTACs, remember those from back in the day, big fucking goofy clunky thing? I mean, that probably only carried 100 phone numbers. I mean, I don't know how many they had, but the amount of data that you can store in new devices represents the need that we have. But we have these same biological hard drives that cavemen did. I mean, they're not really much different than people that lived a million years

ago. I mean, how much has it changed? I mean, how much more room do we have for social relationships? How much more room do we have for social relationships? Apparently not much. Like 50,000 years ago and today. If you took a guy who lived 50,000 years ago and a guy who lived today and you compared the brains, how much would they vary? You could take a 50,000-year-old man, dress him up in clothes, and sit him down in a movie theater, and you'd walk right by him. You wouldn't even know when you were sitting in your seat. You wouldn't go, holy shit shit that's a fucking caveman i mean the guy would look very remarkably similar to how you look and i look and how normal folks look today yeah we're not designed

for this world that we've created and it's it's popped up so damn quickly yeah exactly it's really the last kind of well definitely last hundred years but you know and it's just getting faster and faster you know there's kind of everything becoming really kind of, well, definitely the last hundred years, but, you know, and it's just getting faster and faster. You know, there's kind of everything becoming really kind of organized at this sort of inhuman level. And this mad struggle to sort of organize it and to try to control it and just calm it down, get a handle on the effects of it. And I think in a lot of ways,

that's what you're doing with this crowd pack thing. With this crowd pack thing is you are utilizing these tools, these tools of the internet and this instant access to information that we have today to sort of establish a much clear sense of where political candidates are coming from and what are their influences as far as who is financing them? Where is, you know, where's their money coming from? Where are their decisions headed towards? What are they doing right now? Yeah, I think that's a really good summary of it, which is that basically we think that when you talk to people about politics, one of the things they say is that we just don't know enough about it. We don't know enough information generally, but we don't know,

we don't have information we can trust. We have all this spin and ads and all the rest of it from the politicians. We can't really believe them. There's all this stuff around on the internet. I don't know what to believe. So what we're trying to do is give people really objective information that they can rely on to figure out where the politicians are on the issues that they care about and the thing that we found from our research is that it's my um uh one of my co-founders adam who's a professor at stanford has been working on this for many years and basically what he's shown is that the best way to predict what a politician will do if they're elected is to look at where they get their money and to look at also who they give money to, because most politicians also kind of donate to other candidates.

So if you look at all that campaign finance information, the money behind this politician, that is going to give you the best guide to what they're really going to do in office. that is going to give you the best guide to what they're really going to do in office. And it's something that you can actually, and what we're trying to do is like turn that into really simple information that you can, without kind of reading tons of stuff and doing loads of research, you can get a quick snapshot of who these people are. And then in time, the other thing we want to do is make it possible for you to find the politicians that are really good or bad on the issues that you care about and get involved in their campaigns. Because the other thing is that you've got a tiny, tiny number of people who are funding all these campaigns. If you look at the total

number of people who put money into politics, it's a really small number compared to the number of people who vote and then the number of adults in the whole country it's a tiny number that are funding it all and even within that most of the money comes from an even smaller number and they're paying for all of this and they're getting the outcomes that they pay for it's basically a transaction that's what's really crazy and so some people say right you've got to get money out of politics. You've just got to get it out. And obviously that is something that has a lot of appeal. You can see why you'd want to do that. There's a brilliant guy called Larry Lessig.

I don't know if you've come across what he's been doing. And he's been arguing about this for years. And he's been saying, he's at Harvard. He's a brilliant campaigner on this issue of money in politics. And he's been saying, if you think about any problem in America today, whatever the issue is that you care about, if that's gay marriage or the environment,

it doesn't matter what it is, you're not going to get anywhere in terms of solving that problem unless you deal with the first problem, which is the money. Because the money in politics stops the proper solutions from being developed. Because what it means is that you've got these special interests, whether that's left or right, it doesn't matter,

whether it's big businesses or unions, it doesn't matter. They want their particular outcome, and they're buying it through the system. So we've got to get the money out. And he's got a campaign around that, and he wants public funding for elections and so on. And all that is kind of a noble aim, I guess. But my feeling is that that's a really hard sell because you've got a constitution that says it's free speech.

You're allowed to give money to politicians and we can't just kind of stop that. You've got to let people donate to politicians. And so our take on it is to say, well, if you can't take the money out, let's at least dilute the influence of the people there right now by letting more people, making it easier for more people to get involved in politics so that they can really, you know, get these politicians off this hook they're on, which is that their dependence on these donors for their campaign spending, which means that once they're elected, it's kind of inevitable that they pay attention to them rather than the people who elected them. In a lot of ways it mirrors the influence that the internet has had on the news itself because the news used to be distributed only through these proper channels whether it was NBC, CBS and then you know the cable news networks of CNN, Fox and all this jazz but now it's become this thing where websites develop, Huffington Post, all these, the Young Turks,

which is an internet-based news show. And they have no censorship. They have no restrictions. They have no influence other than the ones that they choose to accept or the ideas that they bring. And they have the same amount of distribution that everybody else does. And you can have a website, just, you know, Mike's fuckhead.com and put it up. And if enough people find it valid and interesting, he can have a million hits a day, unique visits a day. And it might be more than CNN gets. And just simply because of the fact that it's a good information and it's- Yeah. Well, you've shown that with this. I mean, you know, you're reaching more people than most of these, I think all of these news sites.

It's 10 and a half million a month now. That's like more than just about anything else. Well, what's crazy is it's exponentially doubling and tripling. And what's happening is it's all being done with no promotion. I mean, the only promotion is like I let people know, hey, Steve Hilton's on today. Yeah. And then just from... So, yeah. I mean, the only promotion is like I let people know, hey, Steve Hilton's on today. Yeah. And then just from...

So, yeah. I mean, that's the central. I'm very excited to hear that. From Twitter and just spreading the word. Yeah. But what I was getting at is that, like the same way the internet has sort of interfered with the distribution of information.

Look at what's going on with this Edward Snowden case. This is a perfect example. This massive change in the way the entire country looks at the NSA and government spying was done by one man leaking information to one guy in one source, which spread through the internet, and then boom, it blossoms blossoms this huge news story that was essentially if he had sent that same story through the proper channel so like the new york times or cnn they would have ignored the fuck out of it they would have figured out a way to cover that thing and throw it under the rug and staple that rug down and light it on fire. I mean, what he did was figure out a way

to distribute things through this new channel. And essentially, that's what the internet is doing with voting. Before something like the internet came along, it was very difficult to find out who the influences of all these different individual candidates were. With something like CrowdPak,

it becomes much more easy, and that also will change the way these people interact with these corporations. Yeah, I think so. And I really hope that that is, you know, we're just at the start of it, to be honest. I think the political world is really late for this kind of change, compared to, like you say, with media and other things. And things that we experience every day in our lives, like travel and booking tickets. There used to be a time when to get an airline ticket, you'd have to physically go to some shop and then have these weird paper tickets.

The whole thing just feels so antiquated. And now it's so simple. It's really like you're saying, you've got the power to do it. You're empowered. Now you get it on your phone. You don't even have to have a ticket. You put your phone over the scanner thing. And that hasn't really happened to politics yet.

But that is what we're trying to do. Because, and others as well. It's not just us. But, you know, I think that we've got something interesting here, which is this way of giving people objective information about the candidates based on who gives them money. But overall, we're part of this movement of trying to really put power in people's hands through technology. And I'm sure it's going to happen. I'm really sure because people want it. You know, they are sick of just feeling that they don't get any response and that these people over here control everything and nothing ever really changes.

And actually, the politicians themselves, in my experience, they, you know, you'd think, well, maybe I would say this because I used to work in politics myself for the prime minister in the UK. So I kind of know them. They kind of used to be my world. That used to be my world. My feeling is that generally the politicians actually hate this just as much as everyone else. They hate the fact that they have to spend so much time raising money. You know, literally there was this document that was leaked to the New much time raising money. You know, literally there was this document that was leaked to the New York Times, I think a while back from the democratic leadership in Congress, where they gave a kind of guide to the newly elected members of Congress about how they should spend their time. And it was a recommendation to the newly elected members

of Congress. And it went through how many hours a day they should spend on different types of activity, you know, thinking about policy, talking to constituents, this kind of thing. Half of the time, it was four hours, was recommended that they spend on fundraising. Wow. Right?

And so the people who go into policy, they don't want to live like that. They actually hate it. They hate, you know, being shoved in a room, which is what happens, and they call it dialing for dollars, like just literally sitting on the phone trying to raise money. That's not why they went into politics. How do they do that? They just call random people up or do they have a list of potential donors?

I don't know because I've never done it, but I think that's literally it. They're given lists of likely people. They just do, do, do, do, do. Hi, I'm running for Congress in the 33rd district. And I'd like to get gay marriage the fuck out of here. What do you think? I think it's pretty much like that.

I don't know. You can talk to some people who know more about it. But, you know, so I think actually the politicians themselves mostly hate the system. And so I think that there's a lot of effort actually in Congress to try and encourage more small donors and make it easier for people to give money because actually that's what they want too. They don't like being beholden to these big donors and these companies. They don't like it any more than we like it.

I think ultimately the idea of leaders whether it's uh presidential leaders or whether it's uh representatives i think ultimately that's going to go away and my my thought about it is that anybody who really wants to lead everyone else is probably an asshole you know i mean anybody really wants to be the king like why do you want to be the king? Like, don't you have things to do? Don't you have hobbies and creative pursuits? And, like, why would you want to just be the guy who gets to control?

Be the one who stands at the podium. Ladies and gentlemen, you know, that's a weird ego thing. I think that in 2014 and the world that we live in today, where we're seeing this much more even distribution of influence, I think that ultimately that's going to be one of those things that gets called into question. Like, why do we have an alpha representative? Why do we have to have this head monkey in charge? I really agree with that. I mean,

a lot of the things that I was trying to do when I was in the government in the UK, and it's kind of part of what we're doing with CrowdPak, is trying to encourage that even distribution, that more even distribution of power, and redistribute power from the kind of traditional sources of power and this kind of central leadership, and putting power in people's hands

so that they can control more and more aspects of their life putting power in people's hands so that they can control more and more aspects of their life because in the end they'll make better decisions overall and it's also just more healthy i think going back to what we're saying earlier about um you know the way people can only know a small number of people and and if you give them power to shape more of the things that happen in their lives, I think that actually they will take more responsibility. They'll be more responsible in a community sense. You'll just see everything get better if you take power out of the hands of sort of leaders and central organizations and put it in the hands of people. Definitely.

I think you're right. Definitely. especially if you're if you have a job that's taxing as it is and you have a family and you know you're thinking about golfing on the weekend god i'd like to go golfing and you're looking all this bullshit and like oh i can't even pay attention to this is everything okay right now yes well fucking let me just get this over with and let's hope everything stays okay and very few people take responsibility for what gets voted in yeah and it is i think you're right though it is really you know it's hard it's easy to say oh the voters are lazy or whatever they should be but honestly like you said they've got real lives to live and they haven't got time for all this stuff and that is a really big part of why we want to make it simple you, we're assuming that people want to spend less time doing this stuff,

not more time. And I think a lot of the kind of, um, organizations and people that have tried to get people, you know, mobilized, you know, civic organization and the kind of, that kind of thing, you know, it's, it's worked to a certain extent with some people, but for the majority of people, they just don't want to do it. They, they it actually they're literally too busy um with things that are higher priorities like their kids and their family and their job or whatever it may be hobbies doesn't matter it's stuff that they choose to do and that's fine that's their life and we shouldn't kind of require that you have to spend ages figuring out this political stuff and that's why we're trying to make it really simple for people.

But based on quite a lot of complex... And that's what technology allows you to do. You can take quite a lot of complex data and information like we're doing with the campaign finance records, where it's literally hundreds of millions of pieces of information, and we're boiling it down into one piece of information, which is a score, like where is this candidate on the scale of liberal to conservative, where do they sit, and where are they on each issue?

That's what we're trying to do to make it really simple. Isn't it sort of analogous in a way to what we were talking about, about the amount of people that you can keep in your brain, the Dunbar's number, is that if you lived in a small tribe, say if we all lived, 50 of us together in some small village somewhere, we really wouldn't have votes about gay marriage and we really wouldn't have votes about... Exactly. There'd be a million different things

that would never be up for vote. And if someone really did start micromanaging everyone's lives, you'd be like, hey, you know, Mike is an asshole. We've got to kick him out of this fucking tribe. This guy's trying to get people to wear purple and, you know, wear certain Nikes during different moon cycles and make tribal rules and rituals

and make all these things standard. And, you know, for whatever reason, he doesn't like men sleeping with men. Like, he's got some weird thing. You know, he believes it's part of... It's so true. I just so agree with that. One of my favorite things that...

One of these experiments that happened was in um holland i think i'll get that right um in in in europe and they did this brilliant experiment with traffic where they um in a town i think it was friesland or something like that probably got that wrong um where they literally took away all the traffic signals, all of them, everything, right? They took away traffic lights. They even took, you know, stop signs, everything, even the markings on the road. So they took away the white line in the middle of the road, everything, all gone. And their theory was that without that kind of external rule making and kind of stuff going on to tell you what to do.

People would have to kind of relate to each other as other people and just figure it out amongst themselves. So they would, um, you know, have to sort of look other people in the eye and, and sort of work it out between them. And they found they had this brilliant effect,

which was that, um, accidents fell to zero. The traffic improved. The traffic speed was fell to zero the traffic improved the traffic speed was lower but the traffic flow was much better it just worked all around all the kind of things that you try and do when all these people thinking about traffic planning and whatever they achieved all those aims by literally taking everything away and just allowing people to relate to each other as humans and make rules.

I thought it was such a great little story. And I think that you could do that in all sorts of areas. If you just leave it to people to figure it out on a small scale where they can relate to each other, you just get a much better result. Isn't that the issue, though, the small scale? Yeah, I think so. We're dealing with, I drove here today. I live about 20 minutes from here.

And in the drive from my house to here, I didn't know anybody. I don't know any of those fucking people. They might not even be real. They might be robots that were sent from the government to pretend to be people. It's the NSA again. Aliens, maybe even.

I don't know them. So there's that issue. Whereas everyone in Friesland or wherever the fuck that place was in Holland, those people probably all know each other. It's a small area. There's not a lot. When you get to some weird number like the 20 million people that live in the greater Los Angeles area, that's just too crazy. It's too nutty.

And there's nothing less human than a light a stoplight red means stop green means go wait look at it it's green go i mean it's so disconnected yeah from human interaction and without it we become crippled there's no better chance that you're going to run into a traffic stop or a traffic jam than if a cop is directing. If there's a cop that's standing there telling you people go forward and you people stop, for sure that guy's fucking that intersection up sideways. Every time I go into one of those situations where a light is down and there's a cop standing there, it's a fucking disaster. Whereas if it was just a light, if it's just red light, green light, everything seems to work because we're sort of programmed to wait for that light and then go. It's like robotic.

You just, yeah. You can follow the rules. But if that cop is there, like, oh, this motherfucker. Look at it. No wonder this thing's a mess. It's a person out there telling us when we can go. Fuck him. Who's he?

This asshole, fat fuck telling me when to go. And, you know, and there's this weirdness involved. And all of a sudden, there's a human element that's been thrown into our robot light thing. And then there's cameras that they were putting on them for a while, which were hilarious. On the actual cops? No, no, no, no, no. On the lights. Because they're doing that too, I think.

On the cops? Yeah. Yeah, they should. They should do that on all cops. They should do that on all cops. They should do that on all cops. Everything a cop does all throughout the day should be recorded and it should be untamperable. I genuinely think that's what they're trying to do. So much abuse.

There's just massive amounts of abuse when it comes to police officers. And I think there's a lot of great cops out there. It's not that I don't believe in law enforcement, but I believe many of them are abusive fucks. And many of them are psychologically unable to deal with the demands of an incredibly stressful life. Yeah, it is really tough. I completely agree with the way you put it,

that there's tons of them that are great, and then there are others that totally abuse their position. And it's another really interesting example of how technology can be really helpful in a way. Because you can have that. I think I saw that they're trying to do it in here, the LAPD, that if you put the cameras on and you can't mess around with them, that's a really powerful incentive to behave right.

Complaints have dropped dramatically. And they've dropped dramatically because cops can't be cunts anymore. I mean, it's really that simple. It really is that simple. What I was talking about was that traffic lights. They were having lights like if you were going through the light as it was yellow and it turned red, they would flash. So if your wheels were not, you know, if they were in front of the line, you hadn't made it across before the light turned red, they would give you a ticket. But it turned out to be a private company that was actually profiting from these tickets.

And so they deemed that unconstitutional and they removed all those lights. But people were just in a goddamn uproar. It was just madness. Everywhere you go, you'd see flashes going off at traffic lights. And all it was was revenue. It wasn't preventing people from running lights or preventing people from gunning it when the light turns yellow. It was just fucking people out of their money. And it was just one more thing where they complicate the system further. They add one more element that makes it one more thing that you have to think about, one more little piece of control, and one more dehumanizing aspect. People like freedom. And one of the reasons why people like

freedom is because freedom isn't just the freedom to do as you wish. It's the freedom to not have to think about a bunch of other shit and be influenced by a bunch of other shit that takes your time away and takes your energy away. and i think that's where we're at when it comes to a lot of these propositions and a lot of these really uber complicated things that are involved in our day-to-day lives it's like we've complicated ourselves to this point of almost of no return and where there's very few very few alternatives yeah and i think that that the thing that happens then is that they've complicated it then it's not working and they say oh we could better try and fix it and then the fixing of it makes it even more

complicated and it just gets and then a new government comes in or a new governor or whoever it may be and and instead of actually just stopping and thinking you know what this whole we just got to rethink the whole thing and start from scratch and um and just not tinker with it anymore and try and improve it because it's just going to make it more complicated that never happens there's never really enough time for that to happen they're not there they're only thinking about the next couple of years in the next election or whatever and so things just get even more complicated and they never they never seem to get to that point where yeah that's really working great now my wife and i went out to this restaurant the other night and the the restaurant was this

we were noticing that there's this theme that's going on in a lot of restaurants where they have like this rustic thing going on where they have old school lights the filaments in them and then they have hardwood tables and wrought iron this and metal that and and i was like i think people are sort of reacting to this fabricated world that we've created and we we long for this simplicity that's why there's these shows like um these alaska shows where people living on the frontier and they're fucking collecting wood and fighting off wolves. It's like we almost long for that simplicity above this world that we've complicated to this almost unmanageable point.

Yeah, it's definitely true. And you see in so many areas that I mean, like food is a great example where it's kind of stuff about organic food and seasonal and local and grow in your garden. And that whole movement, I think, is a reaction. I mean, if you think about food like years ago, like in the 50s, I think, you know, it was all about, you know, let's have all the kind of TV packaged food and all this kind of industrialized food. That was then seen as better because it was, you know, scientific and hygienic and like really kind of industrialized food. That was then seen as better because it was, you know, scientific and hygienic and like really kind of good for you. And then people are now just thinking that is just really horrible.

This is all the chemicals. It's disgusting. Now the movement is all for this kind of local organic food. It made me laugh though because my family are from Hungary. And so when I was a kid, we used to go back to Hungary the whole time it was a communist country. And there were no food stores with loads of choice and everything and you would go in the store and it was just, you know, what you got just a few sort of vegetables and it was it was just very basic. And now, but the other day, walking around in San Francisco, and there's the kind of farmers market thing going on. And they

had that kind of, you know, ugly vegetables and whatever put out there and it just looked exactly like the Hungarian communist food shop. But here in San Francisco, it's the most expensive, fancy, amazing food

that you can get. But it just makes me laugh, really. I think a lot of it is just, you know, a reaction to what's gone before and we're currently,

I think you're totally right in this kind of sense of it's just gone too far, the whole industrialization of so many different aspects of our lives. Well, it's also we're starting to realize where people live in cities and they look around and they see all these buildings and they see this asphalt and they see these telephone poles and they go, there's no food here. We have to bring in the food. Like this is kind

of crazy. Like, and then you get on top of a building and you look around at how far the no food here area is. It's pretty goddamn big. And then you look at all the different people that live in the no food here area that require food. You're like, fuck, we got to feed these fucking people. And then you go, where's this water coming from? And then you go, oh, it comes from Colorado. What? The water comes from fucking what? It comes from the Colorado River. Oh, no.

So the only way we get water in California is we have to take it from thousands away, thousands of miles away. This is a crazy place to be. We're in this unsustainable environment. And new people move here every day new thousand people every day boom boom boom set up a fucking house built this another structure boom and then we slowly push out our no food here area deeper and deeper into the desert and you know no one's thinking about where this goes. And so far, so good.

Sustainable. Go to the farmer's market. You can get plenty of good groceries. But very bizarre. If there's somehow or another some cutoff of our oil supply, some way where we can't travel as easily anymore, we're in a real rut. It's not a good spot. It's not. Ideally, every neighborhood should have like a couple of acres where it's set up where you grow food. Yeah. Like community gardens.

I just totally agree with that. There's a brilliant guy. I don't know if you come across him called Nassim Taleb. He wrote this book called The Black Swan. And he was really, he's a mathematician and he was in the financial markets. And he really kind of predicted the crash and understood all that. And he's just great. And one of his big points is that these big systems that we've ended up with, and the word he uses are they're completely fragile.

They're really, they look kind of big and solid, but actually we're so dependent on them that it makes us really fragile. If they collapse or fall over or whatever, whether that's a company or some government system, we're really screwed because we're so dependent. And that's really a kind of fragile situation. And so that's definitely one of the reasons I sort of love what he writes about and talks about is that he's arguing for exactly that kind of thing, you know, making sure that companies don't get too big to fail not just in the financial sector a lot of people have talked about that with the banks there's too big to fail argument but in every area with the food system and other types of businesses where we're so dependent if something went wrong we you know we couldn't cope with it and when you have small distributed it's just like we were talking earlier about the power being distributed.

It's not just voting power and political power. It's economic power. It's social power. It's every type of power. It's just going to be much better for us if it's distributed more broadly. And we're a long way from that. It's actually going in the other direction. Yeah, it's going in the other direction.

And very few cities are diminishing in population unless there's something horribly wrong, like Detroit. Have you ever been to Detroit? I have not. It's fascinating. While you're over here in America and you're enjoying our fine country, you should go see our biggest disaster. Because Detroit at one point in time was this economic stronghold for America. It's where we built Camaros and Corvettes and Firebirds. And it was this place

where it was where America built what it built best, which is besides buildings, it's cars. America built cars. And it all fucking fell apart. It fell apart when they started moving jobs to Mexico

and other countries. It fell apart when they started producing shittier and shittier cars and when there's all sorts of complications with unions and with Million different problems and then slowly but surely they started diminishing these These factories and there's a really interesting Documentary, I don't know if you watched Michael Moore's first documentary, Roger and Me. Did you ever see that? Roger and Me was all about Flint, Michigan. It was about his hometown where they closed down these plants. And then these people went into immediate, massive poverty. And it was a huge, huge issue. And if you go to Detroit

today, you could buy a house for $500. And I'm not bullshitting. They had houses for sale. I was there, 500 bucks. And it's a mess. It's a real mess. I mean, there's areas where they're trying to gentrify these areas and they're building local businesses and they're trying to, you know, encourage growth. And, you know, I mean, if a company wanted to move there, they have a massive amount of people that are looking for jobs and cheap land, and it's a good idea. It's a good place to start, but very, very difficult to encourage people to do so. So Detroit shows how easy things can fall apart. And there's been a bunch of blogs that have been created, websites where they've shown how these trees and nature are taking over these areas that used to be populated

where trees are growing through buildings. Yeah, it's amazing. I remember that now. Bears. Really interesting. Bears are moving into these areas that used to have towns. And bears are slowly starting moving their way into Detroit. And it's fucking crazy.

Yeah, but that shows you how easily it could all fall apart, whereas, you know, 50, 60 years ago. Here's an image that Jamie just put up. These are trees that are growing inside of this abandoned building. They're just growing through the floor, and eventually they'll make their way through the roof, and the roof will rot, and it just shows you how easy it is for nature

to reclaim areas that human beings feel like well this is a city now no it's a city for now you know it's not a city now it's not permanently a city like this is trees just grow you ever um go to the airport drive down sepalvita there's areas where it's really old roads and these trees have grown up through the sidewalks so bad that the sidewalks are, you know, you can't walk on them. I mean, they're like ramps because the tree has slowly but surely lifted up the concrete of the sidewalk and is trying to reclaim this area that they've put this stupid rock paste over. Yeah. You know, I think that's like one of the best examples of how easy it could all fall apart.

Yeah, and I guess it's that point about being dependent on something. Yeah. But it's interesting because you've got a lot of, I mean, I've loved going around other, and getting to know other American cities. I mean, that's a bad example. You've got some really great cities, you know,

that seem to be thriving and working, and they're just really cool places to live and work. I love Chicago. I thought it was an amazing place. Chicago's fantastic. But then you've got a huge problem with the crime. It's just so interesting how you have a city that is so great in so many ways, and they've got this sort of pocket of real poverty and crime,

and that's been going on for years, and despite all the other advantages, and they've got a lot of great economic growth going on there and so on, and people visiting, and it's great. But they've still got this entrenched problem with crime and gun violence. And it's interesting how long it takes

for some of these problems to be worked out. Yeah, Chicago's a disaster in that sense. It's a great city, but it's just, it's interesting how long it takes for some of these problems to be worked out. Yeah, Chicago is a disaster in that sense. It's a great city, but it's also a disaster in the sense of crime and gang violence. And I was there, I was talking to this guy who was a cop, and he was explaining it to me that a big problem is the drug trade and that certain gang members were incarcerated. And because they were incarcerated, they created a vacuum that was there was a power struggle to try to fill the vacuum that power struggle started this sort of violent war going on between all these different criminal factions and then you know it builds up and you know he was really kind of interesting because he was talking about he goes you know

the best way to fix it he goes legalize drugs he goes nobody wants to hear about it but the reason why they're making all this money is because they're selling something that's illegal and so when sell you're selling something that's illegal the only people that are doing that are the people that are criminals and he goes as soon as you make it legal you deal with a personal choice issue and the guy was like very rational about it he was like you're dealing with a personal choice issue instead of a crime issue. But I think that's exactly right. I think it's one of the more kind of interesting ways into that whole drug legalization argument is to think about the social problems that come from the current rules, not just, you know, a lot of times people talk about the drug use being a

social problem, but actually it's everything that comes from it, the crime and the gangs. And, and that's, I think, you know, the most intelligent argument for legalization. Yeah. And there was a real interesting article recently about Mexico. They were talking about the cartels like hemorrhaging money because they relied on marijuana trade. And now with legal marijuana, just the legal marijuana in Colorado and in Washington State and then all the medical places have massively diminished the amount of influence that these guys have. The amount of wealth that they can get from selling illegal drugs because people don't need it anymore. It's super easy to get. So like the marijuana trade, which is one of the most common drugs, is kind of drying up for them. And so they're scrambling to try to find some other avenues of revenue.

It's pretty interesting stuff because it just shows people this is what you do when you make things illegal. And we should have figured it out in the 1920s with prohibition. I mean, it's amazing that people are so goofy today that they still are dealing with the same issue that they kind of resolved in the 1920s. Almost 100 years ago, they figured this out with alcohol and they have to relearn the same lesson with cannabis. It's nutty. And it's, again, it's another thing where it's a personal issue where you have just too many goddamn laws. You have too many restrictions on personal freedom. That's exactly right. And it's interesting. where you have just too many goddamn laws. You have too many restrictions on personal freedom.

That's exactly right. And it's interesting. I think that the politicians have been put off for a long time from doing anything about it by the kind of reaction that they'll think they'll get from certain parts of the press and so on. But actually, I think that's changing, and it's changing really quickly here in America. Yeah. The fact that you've got these ballot measures

that are winning in different states, and that's just going to accelerate, I think. Not just that, the amount of revenue they pull in with no resistance whatsoever. Colorado has 39% tax revenue on marijuana that's sold recreationally. 39%. And everyone there is like, okay, 39% is cool. No one's arguing over the most preposterous sales rate ever. I didn't know that. That is seriously bad. 39% is cool. No one's arguing over the most preposterous sales rate ever. I didn't know that.

That is seriously bad. 39% is fucking crazy. It's basically the government is a drug dealer. I mean, that's what it is. I mean, you're not just taking taxes. You're fucking a partner. You're a partner in this. 39% is a big partner.

You're at almost 40%, okay? And then they're making over $100 million a year in tax revenue just in the state of Colorado. So when that kind of money starts coming in, then that money has influence. And then they have to respect the pot dollar because the pot dollar is going to be a lobby just like anything else, just like the pharmaceutical lobby, just like the natural resource lobby, just like anything else. like the pharmaceutical lobby, just like the natural resource lobby, just like anything else. The pot lobby is going to be legit now because there's going to be a tremendous amount of revenue available.

And big business. There's big businesses that are moving into Colorado right now and establishing warehouse. Warehouse spaces in Colorado are just evaporating. They're disappearing left and right because people are just picking them up. The way Colorado's laws are set up, in order to sell marijuana, you have to grow marijuana. So if you wanted to open up a shop in Colorado, you'd have to grow your own stuff and then sell it. You can't buy it from someone else and then sell it. everywhere are being scooped up and they're setting up these massive grow-ups and then they're funneling that money because it's being sold legally. They're funneling that money right back into the state at a rate of 39%. It's crazy. And huge companies are slowly but surely creeping

their way towards Colorado because they realize this is a multi-billion dollar industry in just a couple of years. You're looking at three, four, five years from now, a multi-billion dollar industry in just a couple of years. You're looking at three, four, five years from now, a multi-billion dollar industry nationwide, places where they're having serious money issues, serious problems with generating tax revenue. All of a sudden, all the profits that are going to illegal sales of marijuana, now 39% of that money is going to come right to the taxpayers or right to the tax collectors. And have they got any, I guess it's a bit early, but I was just wondering what they're seeing in terms of people's behavior, the usage. Lower crime.

Is that right? Lower crime and lower murder rates. Murder rates have dropped in Denver. Yeah. Of course. They're high. They're going to think twice. Well, they're going to think twice. They're going to think twice. Well, they're going to think twice.

They're going to think, I don't need to cheat that dude. Guy's an asshole, but whatever. That's his problem. You know, look, it's never good to suppress people. And when you have something that's irrational, like marijuana laws, it gives people this feeling of frustration, this disconnect. It gives people this feeling of frustration, this disconnect. It gives them this feeling of being disenfranchised with the people that are supposedly in charge. And it makes them upset.

Like, why should a grown man be able to come? If there was only two of us, we were living on an island. And I was like, Steve, I don't think you should smoke pot. If you smoke pot, I'm going to lock you in a fucking cage. He'd be like, you're an asshole. What do you give a shit what i do it's when there's two million of us that you feel like you can get away with something like that that someone can come along and say i'm the sheriff and if i find someone smoking marijuana in my district i'm gonna put them under lock and key you know i'm gonna make our streets safe for the children all that stupid

shit that they say well what it's just too many numbers, too many people. But what I'm interested in is like just coming to, you know, I've been here two years now, but I do get a feeling that that is a really quite kind of almost mainstream position. A lot of people feel like that in America. Maybe it's a California thing. I don't know. But then I'm interested why the libertarian movement, you know, the political expression of that kind of attitude is the libertarian movement, the political expression of that kind of attitude is the libertarian party, the candidates.

They don't seem to get anywhere. They don't seem to do well, even though that kind of attitude feels to me like it's really very kind of true to the American approach to things and is shared by a lot of people. I kind of hear that a lot. I think it's slowly but surely starting to gain momentum,

but I think the internet's influence is barely two decades, 1994 to 2014, right? That's the realistic take on it. But the real impact as far as like social impact, I would say it's probably a decade. So 10 years is not that much time. And then in that decade, how much of it has been concentrated on social change? And how much of it has been concentrated on porn? You know, how much of it is concentrated on, look, we can see tits anytime we want now. Woo!

And this newfound freedom, this newfound ability to access information, it's going to take a while before... I think people are evolving right now. I really do. Socially, at a rate that's just unheard of. The kind of movements that you're seeing now, whether you agree with them or not, whether it's Operation Wall Street or whether it's... Anytime there's a social change or social movement in this country, whether you agree with it or not, it's fascinating to step back and watch this swarm of activity that takes place because of any issue that comes up now that really couldn't happen before.

You'd have to have a physical meeting. You'd have to have people would get together and someone would have to have a megaphone. What we need to do is take back the streets. What we need to do is make the world safe for our children. And we need to get out of Vietnam. Yeah. You know, and then, you know, the cops come and break it up and hose everybody down and they would shut down the problem. Well, you can't do that anymore.

You can't shut down the problems because the problem exists on Reddit. The problem exists on millions of people's Twitter accounts where they're posting things. The problem exists on Facebook. The problem exists anytime there's dissent. That dissent sort of encapsulates an entire group of people that share these ideas and they can freely communicate. And I think they're just starting to realize that they can freely communicate the way they can freely communicate. And I think they're just starting to realize that they can freely communicate the way they can. And unfortunately, a lot of them are annoying. Unfortunately, a lot of people that have figured this out are annoying.

And you see these really dumb ideas that spread like wildfire and a bunch of idiots are behind it. And that's fascinating to watch too. But I think ultimately when it all balances itself out, we're going to deal with a much more informed, much more educated, much more aware, much more socially conscious society than we have ever had in the past. I think a decade from now, two decades from now, we're going to see the rewards of this. And I'm very optimistic. I like that, that way of thinking about it. And I agree. And I guess what we're, the way we're thinking about it is that we want to kind of...

Now, the next step really is to really take that energy and really direct it into the heart of the political system. Not kind of on the edges of it with kind of protests and sort of social movements, but really getting into the guts of the way laws are made and the way the country is run, the states are run, cities are run, and kind of injecting it into the real heart of power. I think that's got to be the next step. Yes, I agree, and I hope that it can be done. I mean, I wonder if the way technology is advancing and the way technological innovation seems to exponentially increase, if there's some way to manage things in a way that's sort of not discovered yet or sort of hasn't been.

No one's figured out a way to sort of organize this whole thing in a way that's much clearer. And now we're dealing, it's almost like code. Like, do you remember what code used to look like when you used to use DOS? And if you used an old computer, you had to enter everything in command prompts. Yeah. But then someone came along like Xerox figured out this graphic user interface. Just, well, fuck all that. See that thing? Just press twice when you want that to open up and boom. And then you see a graphic representation of what you want that's a much more simplistic element. You don't have to look at all the code behind what you're doing when you're using Microsoft Word.

Cut all that shit out. Let's just see. Let's make it real simple. And if we could get, get it to that in politics, like, okay, what would make, what would, what would we have to do to make more money go towards school and less money go towards war? Like, is that, is that a way, is there a way we could work that out? If you look at how much money is being spent in the Iraq war, how much money is being spent in Afghanistan, is there a way to take 30% of that and put it into our schools? Because, oh, more aware, had more nuanced perspectives would radically change. Our country would radically improve. Like

over the course of a decade, if you could just figure out a way to put that kind of power in people's hands, what they choose to do. Well, I think the way that you do that is, it comes back to what we were saying earlier, is actually literally doing it by getting rid of these kind of big organizations, central government organizations that try and run the whole system from some office somewhere that's completely removed from the parents and the kids that's actually using the schools and and really give responsibility for this for the way the schools operate to local communities so that they can try things out because every kid is different they learn in different ways and whatever and it feels to me like when it comes to education we got this approach which is someone has decided you know this is the theory this is how we're going to get kids to learn

whatever it may be and we're going to get kids to learn whatever it may be. And we're going to try and have a kind of common application of that in every school. And everyone's going to teach the same way. And that's great. And I just think the evidence shows that is not right. It doesn't work for every kid. And you want to have a system where, you know, you've got much more ability to experiment and try things out and adapt things to each, you know, different type of child and the way that they learn. And I think we need to see a lot more kind of smaller schools where they're much more kind of community run, a bit like you're saying with the gardening.

I think sort of a community approach to these things is going to be the way to do it. You definitely need the money, of course, to sort of have high quality as well. So I agree with that. It's just that if you just put more money into the current system of organizing schools, I don't think you'll get the kind of benefit that you could if you actually gave the power over the system and took it away from the people at the center and put it in the hands of people locally. That's how I would do it. And if they did that, you could also see the results, positive and negative, and imitate the positive ones. Exactly.

You could see these people have an approach, and their approach is more sort of Waldorf school-based and less electronics and more wooden toys and interacting with kids. And look at the benefits. Man, all these people are coming out so creative. But then there's another place in San Francisco that's much more tech evolved. Everybody has an iPad and all these kids. Well, there's a benefit there as well. I mean, I think schools are a huge issue. The massive underfunding of education in this country is a huge, huge issue. And it's madness.

And it's almost like sort of ensuring that poverty and that this is going to be. Yeah, I think that's right. You know what I mean? Yeah. And a lot of it is the kind of people that go into teaching. You know, really, you'd want the best people, the smartest, best people going into teaching. It's like the most important job. That get paid $20,000 a year.

Right. And you're not going to get that if you're paying them. Those kind of, you know, it's really kind of obvious. We apply that in every other kind of area. You kind of know that if you pay more, you get something better generally. And I think that that is a huge part of it. It's actually trying to get the best people. And the countries that have done really well,

I think that Finland is a good example from what I know. I spent quite a lot of time on this when I was in the government. Finland is a place where it is the cultural thing. If a really admired and esteemed thing to do and well-rewarded is to go and be a teacher, it's like one of the best things you can do. And that's true, I think, of a lot of the Scandinavian countries, and they have better results thanks to that. So you've got to just get the best people to go into teaching.

That's really important. And in this country, the prohibitive cost of higher education is shocking. When you start thinking about how much money it costs to go to college, how much money it costs to get a degree, and you accumulate student loans that are almost insurmountable. How many people get out of college in this country? It's amazing. The figures are just unbelievable.

They are so in debt. Just stunningly in debt. Like I have a friend who is in his 50s and just paid off his student. In his 50s? Yes. Wow. Just paid off from medical school. Wow.

This is fucking insurmountable debt. Insurmountable debt forever. Yeah. Just slowly but surely chipping away at hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational debt. It's really amazing. I mean, one of the things I'm doing right now is teaching at Stanford a little bit. there's a kind of good point which is that it seems to me that the students are so much more hard working and motivated than the ones that

well certainly than I was when I was at university but you know it was all free when we did it in the UK and here it's not anymore but it was when I was at college and here when they're paying so much or their parents are paying so much they take it really seriously and that's great.

But the amounts of money involved are just staggering, really unbelievable. Especially when you get to law school or medical school or any really expensive school like Stanford. That's a very prestigious school. It must be ridiculous. How much does a kid have to pay a year to go to Stanford? I don't know because they have a lot of, they do a lot of great work to kind of make it possible for kids without the money to go. So they do a lot of grants and scholarships. And I don't know how that all works out. Well, that's nice.

But it's a huge amount. Yeah, that's nice. And it's beautiful to hear that they do something along those lines. And it's also beautiful to hear that I believe it was MIT has released all of its studies online. You can take all of its classes online for free. I mean, you essentially get an MIT education through your home computer, which is very nice. It's very nice that that...

And if you think about the amount of access that people have to higher education today when it comes to online courses, when it comes to just papers that they could read and download, documentaries they can watch, different things that they can read. It's kind of incredible. Yeah, and it's actually really powerful in not just thinking about America, but people in the States who wouldn't have had that access.

But actually all over the world, in Africa, who wouldn't have had that access. But actually all over the world, in Africa, where you're just able to bring instruction and the best people in the world, the best teachers, to the most remote village in Africa is completely staggering. Yeah, it is interesting. And I've always had a fascination with the power that someone has in the position of being a professor,

and especially a professor with tenure, where they have this job that essentially it's very difficult to get fired from. I mean, you have to really do something really fucked up to lose your position. And because of that, some of them, and I've had friends that have had these professors, some of them get these incredibly arrogant attitudes and they push their ideas as if they're doctrine. liberal agenda to the point where it just infuriates certain parents and infuriates people who disagree with these ideas, who get silenced because, you know, it's the professor's word and that is it. In my class, this is how I feel. That is not education. I mean, you know, to me, the whole point is you should be equipping the students to think for themselves and to, and to kind of come to their own point of view, but give them the tools

that they can do that with and, and, and go out and then use that knowledge and ability to do great things in the world, not to kind of tell them your point of view. I mean, that's, well, you can tell them your point of view, but make clear that it is your point of view. And there are other points of view and it's up to them to decide what they think. Yeah. But that lack of, that humility is oftentimes lacking when you have a person that has absolute power. Yeah, that's right. There's no kind of accountability there because it's just, you know, they don't have to deliver anything. That is like one of the common complaints, right?

About professors. Yeah, that was an amazing thing. I love this speech that Mike Bloomberg gave the other, I think it was last week. Did you see this? He went to Harvard and he gave a commencement speech, I think, to Harvard, where he really attacked them on this point and said that they had this kind of liberal bias in the faculty there that was just really bad and the opposite of it.

Yeah, and he had this great piece of data, which was that if you look at... It's going back to campaign finance. If you look at the campaign finance records because that you know everyone's donations are reported and when you when you make a political donation you have to say what your occupation is so you you know it's quite easy to to look at types of professions or whatever and where their money goes and he got this piece of data which was that if you look at the political donations of Ivy League faculty and staff, and you look at where the money went in the last election, the figure for how much went to Obama was 96%. So it's like this total liberal dominance.

And he said that is just not healthy. That is not what a university is supposed to be. The problem is the alternative was far more offensive. If it went to John McCain and Sarah Palin, that 4% is the problem. Believe it or not. In this country, I mean, Obama's – I'm not a fan of what this administration has become, especially when it deals with freedom of the press, when it deals with whistleblowers, when it deals with spying on Americans, like all the revelation

that we found out about the lack of privacy that people have. I'm not a fan of that at all. But God damn, having Sarah Palin as the vice president of the fucking United States would have been disastrous. Having an old man who's playing poker while they're talking about going to war with Syria. He was literally sitting on his phone playing poker. You know, I mean, what the fuck? That was the president? That was the vice president? Those two dummies? I mean, that's a disaster. That's a fucking goddamn disaster. So of course, the most educated amongst them went for the lesser of two evils, being Obama, being a guy who is a very articulate and intelligent guy who's a whore.

I mean, essentially, that's what Obama is. What he is is a guy who's a very intelligent, articulate guy who had these ideas and promoted this ideology, got into office and did essentially exactly what Bush did. I mean, in worse when it comes to whistleblowers. Oh, the security stuff, yeah. Yeah, and all the things that we're going to do, we're going to close down Guantanamo Bay, we're going to get out of Afghanistan. It turns out most of it was bullshit.

Most of it, I mean, when you talk to people that are journalists, this country has a horrible record, and this administration has a horrible record on freedom of the press, a horrible record on punishing whistleblowers. And it's the lack of respect for journalism and freedom of the press is very disturbing to people because what is journalism truly? Well, what it truly is is you're exposing reality what a true journalist is doing is exposing reality when you punish people for doing that when you punish people for blowing the whistle on with essentially unconstitutional activities like the NSA spying on every single fucking person on the planet I mean that's unconstitutional when you record everyone's phone call

That's not what we want and when the government supports things like that I mean, how how is this the same guy that was like hope and change? How is this the same guy? Well, he's the same guy because the people that fucking got him in the office or the same people that got Bush in office the same goddamn influences and Things like crowd pack things that you're trying to do, would expose that for folks. Yeah, I think that, I mean, that's the idea. We're trying to be, and you know, it's really important that we're, you know, we're kind of non-partisan. So while we've got a strong point of view about the system generally and how we can improve it, you know,

we don't really, it's very important, we don't take sides, we don't have a point of view as a company about individual issues. But I think that we do really care about changing the system. And I think that one of the things about the press that sort of happens, and I've seen this on kind of both sides of it, is that there tends to be this kind of coziness that develops with a lot with a lot of the press particularly the traditional press where you know they want to have access to the politicians and the politicians want to get their message out and it just gets quite kind of cozy and so that whole role of investigation and exposing things kind of sometimes takes a back seat to having a good relationship so that you can get your message out and they get access.

And I think that that's one of the things, again, that's really helpfully being changed by technology, like you were saying, which is that you've got people who are able to do that job of investigation without having to be part of some cozy group around the politician. Yeah, that's going to lob softballs at every politician they interview. If you see it from the politician's point of view, their point of view, and there's a lot of truth to it, is that they're trying to do stuff. It's really, really hard. Trying to deal with some of these problems is difficult. There's incredible expectations.

You get shit for just trying. You're totally under scrutiny, your life is under scrutiny, it's a really, really hard job. And they feel that increasingly the media and the press are just interested in the trivial aspects of it and who's up and who's down

and they're not really interested in kind of exposing the complexity of some of these issues, blah, blah, blah. So that's how the politicians see it. And then on the other side, and that's why they end up trying to, you know, have a relationship that enables them in their way, they see it to explain what they're trying to do a bit better

so people kind of give them a fairer hearing. So that's why that all happens. And, you know, there's a lot of truth to that, to be honest. It is difficult what they're trying to do. Whatever, whatever your liberal Democrat or conservative party does makes no difference. It's difficult. Governing is difficult. It's complicated. The problems are complicated. Everyone's got their point of view. You're kind of being screamed at and yelled at the whole time. And it's hard. Now, look, they choose to go into it. So we cannot feel sorry for them.

You know, they made that choice. Like you said, they have that kind of, I'm going to be the leader and I'm going to go there and sort things out. So it's the choice that they made. But it is difficult. And that's why they want to, you know, try and control the message, I think, because they feel that a lot of the time they don't get a fair hearing. Well, that makes sense in some ways, but it doesn't make sense from the point of view of the people that are in the position of being a journalist. If you're in the position of being a journalist, your whole position is to expose inequality, expose violations

of the constitution. And when you're in one of those places where you, whether it's for CNN or Fox News or whoever you're working for, if you get to sit down with Dick Cheney or you get to sit down with Obama, you're already muted. You're already neutered. You're already silenced. You don't get that chance to... They're never going to have Glenn Greenwald sit down with Obama in an open internet forum that airs in real time live. They would never agree to that. They would never agree to that. It's weird, actually, because it's a really different tradition in England.

When you look at the way that interview- If anyone watches a TV interview of a politician in England, it's so different to what you get here. They're really aggressive with them. Really? Really, really, really aggressive. And the kind of softball stuff is actually kind of embarrassing for a journalist to do that. And there's a different tradition. Well, we used to have that.

I've really noticed the difference. They shot a few people and parked some cars on railroad tracks with families in them, and then people kind of stopped doing that. road tracks with families in them and then people kind of stop doing that um i think that guys like glenn greenwald who lives in brazil and gets to sort of attack america from a distance you know at least until they find him i i think uh what what guys like him are doing with you know he was the one who helped uh edward snowden release all of his documents. And these new players in this whole game, these outsiders that don't have to cozy up, don't have to be a part of this nepotism that we're seeing with the big ones. I mean, anybody that's in any sort of a large group, Fox and CBS and NBC,

you're a part of this wacky system. You're a part of this system that's not going to expose these things. It's going to let these people get their message out because if you don't, you're not going to get the big names. If you don't get the big names, you're not going to get the ratings. And then those big names are going to go to Fox. Those big names are going to go over to CNN. They're going to go somewhere else and you're going to lose this campaign. Yeah, that's exactly how it seems to work here.

That's what I've noticed. Yeah is it it is it and it i i believe it's getting exposed and i believe it's getting exposed in a way today that just wasn't happening 20 years ago 20 years ago you would just be frustrated and you would just go off and you'd write a book and everybody would go oh he's a nutter look at the fucking crazy book that guy wrote and you know write a book and everybody would go, oh, he's a nutter, look at the fucking crazy book that guy wrote. And, you know, some people would read the book and say it was amazing and other people would just ignore it. And new revelations would take place along the way and whatever had happened would be forgotten. And then the politician would get out of office.

And I think George Bush is the last guy to sort of skate away like that. And, you know, now he sits around and paints weird pictures and slowly goes insane. Have you seen the things he sits around and paints weird pictures and slowly goes insane. Have you seen the things he's doing? He's slowly going insane. I mean, he's, he's painting pictures and he's locked in this world of, uh, he's in essentially in a prison on a ranch. I mean, that's what he is. He's constantly circled by secret service agents. He's hated all over the world. He's at least indirectly responsible for over a million deaths. This one guy, they're pinning it on him and Dick Cheney and his administration and this sort of pyramid

of events. And this guy feels that shit. And he's just sort of wandering around on his fucking ranch, painting himself, staring at himself in a bathroom mirror. I mean, it's really, really weird stuff. And I think he's probably going to be the last guy that ever skates off into the sunset with this knowledge. I think Obama's going to be held accountable for a lot more than Bush ever was. And I think whoever's next is truly fucked.

Whether it's Jeb Bush or whether it's whatever new Democrat they try to sneak into, I don't know, Hillary into. I don't know. Hillary Clinton. I don't know what they're trying in 2016. And we won't know for a while because they have to vet out everyone's fucked up vices and skeletons in their closets. And in this day and age, it's almost impossible.

Which is terrible, I think, by the way, because that's one of the reasons that so many people get put off. Yes. You know, because a lot of the complaints you hear about politics as well we just get the same kind of people they're all kind of you know very um kind of similar to each other and there's a particular type of person that goes into it and actually a lot of people who i think could make a really good contribution don't do it exactly for that reason they just don't want to live under that kind of spotlight because well and can't they're just normal human beings and they've got stuff that you know they had fun right they had fun in their life i mean people that have had fun you know i mean you can't you have one gay affair when you're 20 years old with a guy for a

couple of weeks and you're fucked for the rest of that guy's out there waiting to talk shit about you if you run for president you know there's one time you did a little bit of heroin when you were on the road with a bunch of your buddies you You know, you're in college, you tried heroin. Oh, those fucking college buddies are ready to write a book about you doing heroin. I mean, it's a weird time when it comes to exposing people's past. And this idea of this perfect person from the cradle to the grave running for president is preposterous. You don't want that person. That person, if they've never made any mistakes, that means they've never taken any chances. If they haven't taken any chances, they haven't lived. And I'm not talking about mistakes

like victimizing people, horrible things that are completely unconscionable, that you wouldn't do, and I wouldn't do, murder and robbery and kidnapping, all sorts of terrible things that are just massive, you know, ethical errors that just shouldn't be ever tolerated from a person's character. Just little things. Like, here's a perfect example. There's a woman who's running for mayor right now in Mississippi. And apparently when she was younger, she was a prostitute. And this is a, it's a big story that you know folks are trying to figure out like what is is that okay like how do we how do we handle this like what what do you do about a person who had made mistakes

when they were younger like what is what is the answer to this and no one really knows they don't really have the answer to that they're trying to figure out like when what is happening in that in that is it is it um playing against her or what's the yes for sure she's in mississippi and she revealed it herself um she revealed she was a former prostitute and she was a prostitute like i believe it was 30 years ago and she met her husband while he was a john and uh he was one of her clients and uh she married him and she hasn't been a prostitute since and now she's running for mayor and it's it's uh it's it's quite fascinating i think it's interesting and i think in a lot of ways um you could see that and think this person is actually really well qualified to be in office because obviously, you know, going through those sorts of experiences will give you a sense of empathy for, you know, the tough lives that some people have and the circumstances that end up putting them in that situation.

And it probably makes you better, not worse. Well, not only that, what she did was totally legal as well. She was in a legal brothel in Nevada. And it was over 30 years ago and she hasn't been there since. And the idea that this person is not allowed to make errors and that she wouldn't have developed like a lot of empathy and character and she wouldn't have, I think that's right. Yeah. A more balanced perspective than a person who's grown up in a very privileged household with very rich, wealthy, connected people. And then they got him to an Ivy League school and then he became a member of Skull and Crossbones and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Instead of that, well, you have a person who's who was 14 and was pregnant with a child and had to take care of her child. And her parents died. Yeah. And she was forced into a situation child and had to take care of her child and her parents died. Yeah. And she had, was forced into a situation where she had to earn a living and she didn't have a lot of options. And this was one of her options that she chose. And how could you judge someone who's a teenager that makes those choices? I mean, I don't think you can. And I think this person, I mean, good for her that she stepped up and I think it's great and again, it's kind of interesting that some types of early childhood of adversity are kind of okay for your

Political resume. Yeah, I came from a poor family and the broken home where a Bill Clinton had a you know, and and it's okay that kind of Difficulty is acceptable. But then there's this other category, which is just as character-forming, sex and drugs and whatever, they're just as character-forming potentially, but are not acceptable. Yeah, the sex one's the wackiest one ever

because it's totally legal. Like, say if this woman had, you know, X amount of clients per month, if she just fucked a bunch of guys, you know, everybody would be like, ah, she was young. She was young. She was getting wacky. But fucking a bunch of guys for money is a problem. But if she just massaged guys, no problem.

I mean, if she gave them pleasure by rubbing their bodies, by rubbing their shoulders and backs, no one would have an issue with it. But by doing something to their penis, it becomes preposterous. Well, by the way, if it was one of the guys, one of the clients running for office, and it's okay to be a client, that's fine. Sure. You're not something you'd be proud of,

but if that was kind of exposed or whatever, that wouldn't be a barrier. Sure, even 10 years ago. Forget about 30 years ago. If 10 years ago the guy went to a prostitute and said, listen, I was horny, I didn't have any options. I had a few bucks. I paid someone to touch my penis. People would go. Yeah, exactly. It's totally kind of sexist kind of way of thinking about it. Sex should, sex should be legal to sell.

That's what I think. I absolutely 100% believe that prostitution should be legal. I wouldn't want my daughters to do it. I wouldn't want my daughters to do it. I wouldn't want my friends to do it. I wouldn't want loved ones to do it. But I wouldn't want them to work at Wendy's either. I wouldn't want them to work on the people that you see on the highway picking up dirt or picking up garbage by the side of the road. I wouldn't want them to be pouring asphalt in the hot summer. I wouldn't want anybody to work a difficult job.

I think emotionally it's got to be incredibly difficult to have sex with someone that you don't want to have sex with, but I don't think it should be illegal. If it's legal to have sex with people, how the fuck can it be legal or illegal to pay to have sex with people or have someone pay you to have sex with you? It seems ridiculous. It seems just as ridiculous as making massage illegal. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I honestly haven't thought about it enough. One of the things that I definitely feel strongly about is that if we're going to make that kind of decision, the sex trafficking trade needs to be one of the ways you think about it. Because that is just so evil and disgusting. Completely evil. Completely disgusting.

And whatever decision you make has to make that better, not worse. Right. And I don't know, I haven't really thought it through enough. That's a very good point. That's a very good point. I think there would probably be far less demand for sex trafficking, for illegal sex trafficking. If prostitution was legal, if adults could make that decision, if some woman, you know, was in a situation which was like, you know, I'm reasonably sexually attractive and I make X amount of money per month doing this, I can make that same amount in a day having sex with people. Okay, I'll just do that.

You know, if it's a woman's choice to do so, and some women would have no problem with that choice. The real problem, of course, is victimization. The real problem is exploiting young is victimization. The real problem is exploiting young people, victimization, and objectifying women. But doesn't that already take place? And isn't part of what objectifying women, part of this issue is it's very difficult for some people to find sexual partners. So there's like this thing with this Elliot, So there's like this thing with this Elliot

Whatever Elliot Rogers this crazy kid that shot up everybody in Santa Barbara Santa Barbara The the nuttiest response that I've seen to this the craziest most infuriating response is by these people that believe that If women weren't so stuck up this guy wouldn't have gone on a rampage because he would have been able to have sex with more people But it would have been able to get people to have sex with him who's that's pickup artists and the women these women hating fuckheads there's there's a bunch of guys that they're they operate under this um this guise of being for men's rights and you know it's kind of funny because i didn't even know there was like there's a a thing called an mra it's a men's rights advocate or activist and it's kind of funny because I didn't even know there was like, there's a thing called an MRA. It's a men's rights advocate or activist. And it's an insult from feminists. I got called an MRA once.

And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? So I had a Google MRA, men's rights. And I thought it was ridiculous that, wow, how could you be a feminist but be making fun of someone who's into men's rights? Like, shouldn't we all have rights? I mean, shouldn't there... But then I started looking into these men's rights guys, and I go, okay, I see what's going on here. They're more ridiculous than radical feminists.

This is not the kind of father's stuff. Because there's some campaigns that make some good points about dads. Child support, yes, and child custody. And the rights of a father after divorce exactly yes i agree with that 100 but there's they go way further than that and they they go into relationships and they go into the way men are treated versus the way women are treated people are treated in in bad ways by bad people and in good ways by good people. But if you're a shithead, people are not going to like you.

And just because you're a shithead and people don't like you doesn't mean women are assholes. It means you're undesirable. And one of the reasons why you're probably undesirable is because you have a terrible attitude about things.

And this terrible attitude about things is not going to change. It's not going to change because women have sex with you. Your attitude sucks. You're not a pleasant person there's a lot of people have shit personalities and they get involved in this men versus women but it has nothing to do with men versus women what kind of things do they are I mean the men's right what is that well they say calling for is there a you know

well there's so much nonsense that's i don't even really want to get into it because some of it some of it is so fucking stupid and i've been reading these things over the last couple of days and i'm trying to erase them from my memory because some of these poorly written articles by these men are so stunningly stupid like one of them was this guy was talking about how he was around this 60 year old man and this 25-year-old woman, who is his incredibly hot wife, and that this 25-year-old woman was insulting this man, and, you know, that this is the anguish that this guy had to deal with, and how horrible it is, and this is what men have to deal with. And I was like, that might be one of the dumbest fucking arguments I've ever heard in my life first of all what if it was a 25 year old man and a 60 year old woman that was this old wretched creature that this guy was forced to

fuck for money like would you be on the man's side of the woman's side then which which position would you take there of course this woman is going to say shitty things this old man she's not supposed to be fucking him she's supposed to be having sex with a 25-year-old man or a 35-year-old man or someone reasonably close to her age where they would be naturally sexually

attracted to each other. What you're dealing with is a bizarre situation where someone has sort of circumvented the system by acquiring money. Yeah, it's a power thing.

Yeah. Exactly. And by acquiring money, this guy's figured out a way to get some 20-year-old hottie to marry him. And yeah, she doesn't like it, so she complains. And I'm reading this, and I'm like, who the fuck is this guy writing this article talking to?

Who are his friends? How is that an argument? Yeah, that is nuts. I don't even want to pull the article up. I don't want to reference it. Fair enough. But it's just what you're dealing with with these men is a bunch of nitpicky shitheads with terrible personalities that are complaining about men getting a bad rap in this world. If you do well in this life, you have an amazing chance as a man of being sexually successful,

of having a great life, of not being persecuted, of not a great life of not being persecuting of not being raped of not being beat up by your spouse i mean the the idea that men don't have the better end of the deal is unbelievably ridiculous when you look at this donald sterling guy this fucking shithead that owns the clippers he's. His girlfriend was in her 20s. And this possibility only exists for men. It doesn't exist for women. There's very few 82-year-old women who have attractive 20-year-old boyfriends. It just doesn't exist.

There's very few 82-year-old women. Watch what Madonna does a few years down the line. Do you know what kind of a monster a lot of young men would feel like Madonna was if Madonna was trying to fuck them? It's repulsive to men. And an idea of a powerful, attractive man who's in his 50s dating a 20-year-old woman is not alien at all. But the idea of a powerful woman in her, what is Madonna, in her 60s? How old is she? I think she's 50s, but I think that that's what's really, to be honest, really cool about what she's doing there,

which is like she's just really constantly challenging those kind of stereotypes. But is she? Well, I think so. To who? I don't know. I think that she's certainly, I think she's got a pretty intelligent point of view on some of these, these sort of gender issues because she, she really, you know, I mean, and I think the fact that people find it uncomfortable is kind of making the point that we're agreeing about, which is that this is not how it's supposed to be.

Yeah. Well, she's, she doesn't even consider herself a feminist. She considers herself a humanist, which I agree with wholeheartedly. And this idea of, uh, men's rights, what's really offensive about it is that, you know, they're concentrating entirely on the ideas and the problems that men face. When I think the only ideas and promises problems men face, the only ones, are child custody and getting robbed in divorces. Other than that, shut the fuck up. I really do believe that. I think those are the only two issues.

Other than that, please shut the fuck up. Because when I hear about a guy complaining that a 20-year-old wife is mean to a 60-year-old rich man, oh, poor baby. This is what you do. Go out and get more 20-year-old wife is mean to a 60-year-old rich man. Oh, poor baby. This is what you do. Go out and get more 20-year-old wives, okay? You're fucking rich as shit, and you're old. What, are you going to live forever, dummy? Go get some prostitutes.

Be nice to them. Give them cars. Do what Donald Sterling did. He got that girl, like, five Rolls Royces and Bentleys and Ferraris and shit, and it still didn't work out. You know why it didn't work out? She didn't want to fuck him. They don't want to fuck you.

You're 80. Okay? That is just the law of the land. That's the way life works. This is the natural balance of nature. And, you know, you've figured out a way to inject influence and power and money and sort of pervert this whole system. Yeah. And when you complain about this perversion not working out in your favor, influence and power and money and sort of pervert this whole system. And when you complain about this perversion, not working out in your favor,

and this is why we need men's rights. It's go, Oh fucking Christ. You whiny bitches. You guys aren't men. You guys are babies. I think it's just unbelievable that they're even trying to, they're babies.

They're babies. Babies. And they're not recognizing the issues that women do have to deal with. Women have to deal with worrying about groups of men. Women have to deal with worrying about... If I walk into a parking lot, okay, and it's at night, and I see a woman

in that parking lot, I'm not worried about that woman. But if I was a woman, and I walk to a parking lot, and I'm walking to my car, and I see a man, and that man's looking me in the eye, I have to wonder what kind of a man that is. I walk to a parking lot and I'm walking in my car and I see a man and that man's looking me in the eye. I have to wonder what kind of a man that is. I have to think about that. I have to think about that as a man.

But as a woman, you really have to think about that. It's very rare that a man gets robbed by a woman in a parking lot. Of course it can happen, especially if the woman has a weapon. Of course, if you're in Russia, she might rape you. You know, there's some stories about Russian women. You know, there's some story about she held some man captive and forced fed in Viagra and fucked them for 30 days. And that's Russians. They're crazy. Some Russian chick might actually do that to you. But for the most part, it's a non-issue or statistically speaking, it's a very, very, very small percentage of the population has to worry about this. For women, the amount of women that get sexually assaulted, the amount

of women, especially like in college, it's crazy. In college, it's, you know, something like more than 1 out of 10 women get sexually assaulted in college. I don't know what the exact numbers are. I've read varying reports, but even 10% is fucking crazy. It's a really big problem. I agree. It's a big problem if you're a woman, because men are aggressive.

We're aggressive, we're filled with testosterone, and we need to come. It's a real problem. Every day a woman because men are aggressive. We're aggressive, we're filled with testosterone, and we need to cum. It's a real problem. Every day our balls are building up more sperm. And if you're a shithead and if you were raised improperly and you don't have respect for women or the opposite sex or anyone in general other than your selfish self, we have problems. We have problems with that.

So, yeah, we need accountability as men. But it would also help if there was places where people could relieve themselves. It would also help if there was a handjob place on every corner. I mean, God damn it. Every corner. Why not? There's a massage place in every corner. If you drive down the street in L.A., if you go to Ventura Boulevard, drive down the street,

if your back is bothering you, you can find a massage place one a mile. You'll see a neon light Thai massage, Swedish massage, this massage. You can go in and get your neck rubbed. Why can't you get your balls rubbed? Why can't you? Why not? Because we're crazy. Because we have these weird ideas about sex. We have these weird ideas about what is evil. And it's based on the Puritan values that this country was founded on, which are founded by religious nuts who were so kooky that they got in boats to escape persecution and traveled across the fucking ocean. I mean, that's the echoes of this ignorance is still propelling us today. Yeah. I think that, I don't know. I think that with all that stuff, the thing, I've

got a lot of sympathy for it, but I just keep coming back to this thing about, well, what is the, if, you know, what is it, are you going to set up a situation where it's not really a choice? That there's some kind of economic or other power that means that, or pressure that means that even though you kind of treat it like a marketplace where everyone's freely entering into it. Is that really going to be the case? I think that's the question. I think you're totally right. I don't know. And I'm not suggesting, by the way, that prostitution is going to stop rape. You know, what I'm suggesting is that there are real issues with human sexuality. And there's real issues with making things illegal that shouldn't be illegal,

whether it's drug use or whether it's sexuality. I think there's real issues in suppression. And I think when you suppress people from doing things, whether it's suppressing them from using marijuana, suppressing them from drinking, suppressing them from wearing certain clothes, suppressing women from driving, when you suppress human beings from things that are illogical, and I find it illogical that sex is illegal to sell. And I'm not saying I want to go to prostitutes. I don't. I don't. But I think they should be legal. I really do. I think it's nonsense. I think we live in this weird world where if something is legal to do for

free, how is it possible that it's illegal to do for money? It doesn't make any sense. I see your point of view and I agree with it wholeheartedly that you do have to worry about people being sold into this, that you have to worry about them being somehow or another compromised by this overwhelming need for the financial revenue that can be generated from sex and that people could be exploited and that could be a real issue with the objectification of women. It could change the cultural attitudes about things. But if you go to countries where it is legal to have prostitution. I was just going to say, I think in Holland. Yeah. They find lower instances of AIDS, lower instances of like Jim Jeffries is a buddy of mine who's a stand-up comedian from Australia. In Australia, brothels are legal.

And he talks about how divorce rates are way lower in places where brothels are legal. Because the men don't need to cheat on their wives. Like some men just give up. They can't get sex with their wife. And he goes, fuck, I'm fucking out of here. And they get divorced. And they go through this huge stressful situation. In Australia, you just go to a brothel.

get divorced and they go through this huge stressful situation in australia you just go to a brothel you know and jim was joking around about how his his mom and his dad were fighting and his mom was like yeah and he goes to the brothel every night i don't know if you know that or every wednesday night and he goes not every wednesday you know that was that was the punch line and i i don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's whether or not people are being exploited. That becomes the problem. But that becomes the problem with everything. I mean, if people are being exploited into labor,

if children are being forced to work in factories at young ages, which they are in other countries, and typically other countries that provide us with these goods that we so want, cell phones, laptops, all these different... I mean, how many children every year are scraping minerals out of the mountains that they need to use to make electronics? There's a lot of them. And this is exploitation. This is exploitation that we benefit from. And I think that we have to address all forms of that. But we also have to address ridiculous laws

that don't make any sense. And anytime you try to control people, anytime you try to suppress people's ability to express themselves in any way, if you don't like it, whether it's walking topless down the street, you can do it if you're a man, you can't do it if you're a woman.

That's what they're dealing with in New York City now. In New York City, you're allowed to be topless. There's some woman who calls herself the fucking naked cowgirl and she's getting sued by the naked cowboy because the naked cowboy is a guy who he wears underwear and he plays guitar with a cowboy hat on and he's like this sort of tourist attraction in new york well women are allowed to be topless now as well in a lot of places because like the idea is, well, why is a man allowed to have no shirt on but a woman has to? It's because you're saying that breasts are much more sexual when they're on a woman and that they need to be covered. And that sort of develops a sort of inequality in the law that a woman is – you know, a woman is oppressed or a woman is subject to laws that a man is not. And that seems to be very difficult to pass.

So you deal with some situation where women are allowed to be topless. And they should be. How many guys get arrested for being gigolos? Is it zero? I mean, when was the last time a guy got arrested for fucking a woman because she paid him to? Has it ever even happened? But women get arrested for prostitution all the goddamn time. I totally agree with that. I mean, that is the

rather than the people using them. Yeah. It's just totally, I agree with that. I think that when there's all, you're right that there's so many kind of weird things about sex and how that kind of plays out when you think about sort of social issues

and stuff like that. And I think one of the biggest things that's going on is the way that kind of plays out when you think about sort of social issues and stuff like that and i think one of the biggest things that's going on is um the way that kind of that kind of the sort of sexualization of of you know like public space and the the kind of world around us is like really influencing more and more children i think that they're kind of it's getting younger and younger that kids are being exposed to kind of sexualized stuff that is a real problem because it's changing their expectation of what sex is.

And there's lots of studies now showing how that, you know, like kids' sexual behavior is really different. You know, boys sort of viewing porn and violent porn

at a much earlier age thinking that that's how you behave, treating women really badly. Women thinking of themselves as sexual objects more. I think there's a lot of kind of quite deep problems that are coming out and we'll see in the years ahead from the way that that is just, you know, like sexual images and content is just becoming much more widely available for younger kids.

That's a really good point because it's so prevalent and it's so uniquely new, the ability to download porn on a cell phone. So essentially if your child is 12 and they have an iPhone, you send them off to school, they're watching people fuck. I mean, they're gonna. There's no way you're going to stop them. If that phone has internet data, if it has internet access, those kids are going to look at images. If they have somehow or another some access to an iPad or a laptop or something that's connected to wifi, if it's not blocked through some sort of a complicated filter that they probably know how to dismantle better than you do, they're going to see sex. They're going to see sex in a way that we never saw sex.

You know, I have this joke in my act that is a true story about when I was 11 years old, me and a couple of my friends found a magazine in the woods that was a foot fetish magazine. And, uh, we, it took us like a few minutes to realize what was going on. We were looking at this magazine cause it was really confusing. You thought it was like as a podiatry today or something? No, no. We thought it was a porn magazine for sure. Obviously that was the intent there. Yeah. Okay. Well, we were in the woods, all right? And I don't know if you've ever found pornographic magazines in the woods. I've definitely never found a foot fetish. Do you ever find a hustler or a penthouse in the woods? Yeah, definitely.

In the woods, right? Yeah. In the park. Yeah, woods. We really have woods where we were. But it's always like some poor bastard who's hiding his urges. It's a classic. It's a rite of passage. You know, when we were growing up, I think that, you know, it's very important some poor bastard who's hiding his urges. It's a classic. It's a rite of passage.

You know, when we were growing up, I think that, you know, it's very important. Everyone had that experience. Internationally. Yeah.

Because for me, it was in Florida and for you, it was in England. Right. It was amazing. Right. But the foot thing, that is,

you know, unexpected. So what the point was that we found these, this bag that had these magazines in it and and we're going through this one magazine, and it took us, like, many pages in. My friend goes, dude, this shit is all just dicks and feet. That's what he said. And to this day, I laugh thinking about my friend saying that

and that we were stunned and confused. Well, we were just looking at a magazine, and we were stunned and confused. Well, we were just looking at a magazine and we were 11. Today, kids get to watch actual sex. And apparently, the sexual activity of children is changing. Someone did some study recently that showed this massive increase in anal sex amongst children under 18 years of age. Yeah. I think it's a really big deal.

I really do. And, and it's, and it's the sexual activities changing. It's the kind of relationship between, um, men and boys and girls, you know, that's changing.

And the whole kind of, um, we talked about it early in terms of, you know, women's rights and men's rights. And I think that that, you know, the expectations of how to behave and how to treat women

and women's own sense, or young women, their own sense of themselves as primarily being about their, you know, sexual persona. I think that's all really a concern. You know, it's actually setting back some of the kind of progress

that's been made in terms of women, women's equality. I agree, but I think hopefully, at least because I'm the eternal optimist, I think it's temporary. And I think that ultimately it's all going to even out because I think that what people are doing is they're looking at these things, like if women are engaging in these sexual activities at a much earlier age, they're looking at it as like, this is something that they need to do to become more attractive to men, because this is what they've seen. They've seen this. My thought on all of this is that we're going to reach a point within our lifetimes, probably

within the next few decades, where we're going to be able to read each other's minds. I think it's inevitable. You know, over your house, actually, it was the first time I ever tried Google Glass. Right. And I remember putting this thing on and scanning it

and Googling things and looking at navigation screens in front of my eye thinking, man, shit's going to get really fucking weird soon. Yeah. I think we're going to be able

to read each other's minds. I think this whole dance that we do, do you like me, do I like you, I'm going to play hard to get, I'm going to fucking do this, I'm going to be the girl that takes it in the ass, and all the boys are going to like me. I think all that nonsense,

I think it's going to become far more complex. Human interaction is going to become far more complex because our concept of secrets is going to become far more complex because our concept of secrets is going to go out the window. That's really interesting, actually. I don't think it's going to exist anymore. If you look at the trend, what is the trend? The trend is that

information is easier to access now than ever before. And it becomes easier to access and easier to access to the point where you can ask your phone questions with your voice. You press a button you know, who is Steve Hilton? And Steve Hilton is a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it gives you the information. But that's just one step, and it's not going to stop there. It's not halting. It's exponentially increasing. So what's the trend? The trend is dissolving boundaries between people and information. That information includes information in your own mind. That information includes, there's going to be a much more effective interface

than looking at a screen and asking a screen a question. The interface is going to be somehow or another a neural implant, something that you inject into someone's body like nanobots. There's going to be some weird sort of an interface. And when that happens, they're going to come up with a better one a year later. It's going to be a more sort of an interface and when that happens they're going to come up with a better one a year later it's going to be a more invasive one and then we're going to have to come to some sort of an agreement where we're going to say hey listen in order for the human race

to establish an enlightened perspective we're all going to have to look into each other's heads we're all going to have to be able to read each other's minds and find out how we think and feel and so there'll be no more mystery in this world. There'll be no more romance novels. There'll be no more.

There's not. There'll be unnecessary. There's not going to be any romance. There's going to be this weird hive mind thing going on. And it's going to happen within 100 years. And it's going to be. I think that's incredibly interesting. And the way that that will change so many things if people just, you know, if that comes to pass and people can just know what the other person is thinking.

Well, think about what it used to be like before language was established. People used to grunt and point and kind of try to figure out what the other person wanted. I mean, we're essentially monkey people. What did we do? We figured something out. We got to this point. And now you compare your life today to that point like i i was in a conversation with a friend and um we have another friend that is like uh

he's becoming a prepper you know like uh he's fucking setting up his house for solar water and collecting rain water solar uh solar power and connecting collecting rain water and growing his own fruits and vegetables and doing so in this fear that society was going to collapse. And my friend Jimmy was like, if society collapses, you don't want to live, man. Like, you don't want to be that one fucking guy that's got all the food and you're, you know, standing on your porch with a rifle and you're all taking turns waiting for the zombies to come over the hill, you know, sounding the horns and alerting the people that the barbarians have arrived.

You don't want to do that. You don't want to go back to those days. You just don't. And I think that we don't want to go back to the days of no language, and we're not going to want to go back to the days of secrets. We're not going to want to. Once the no secret thing happens and people just get this kind of understanding of what it is to be a human being yeah no it's that it's universal yeah it reminds

me that there's this um work going on at stanford they have a virtual reality lab and they're looking at how virtual reality could change the way people think about other people about other issues you know there's there's one experiment they're doing where, I'm trying to get it right, where they, I think they put you as like in a forest situation. You think you're in a forest and then they measure some nature, some example of nature. And then they see how, you know,

they really give you a deep experience of that through virtual reality. And then they look at your behavior in the next week after that to see if you're more conscious of that, you recycle more, you change your behavior because of this completely false experience you've had to give you this virtual reality experience. And that's what they're researching in all sorts of other ways.

And I think it's just, and they're showing that it does. And you can actually influence someone's behavior by giving them this sense of another world. Yeah. And that's, again, just in its infancy. You know, the virtual reality stuff is just getting going. And I just think it's interesting, all these things, how they will affect so many aspects of how we relate to each other and think about these issues that at the moment are just so kind of superficially dealt with.

the moment are just so kind of superficially dealt with. It's going to get really squirrely when that artificial reality is indistinguishable from the reality that we're experiencing right now, because that's coming too. You know, that's what the whole simulation theory is based upon. You know, this idea that one day we're going to get to a point where you can't tell whether or not we live in a computer or we live in the material carbon-based flesh world. And if that's the case, how do we know that we haven't already gotten to that point? How do we know that we're not in a computer right now and we're thinking that we're experiencing this reality? But it's not.

It's not really happening. We're just a part of a program and that it's so good that you just, you can't, you think you really are Steve Hilton. You're not Steve Hilton. So, you know, the truth,

Joe, I always thought you'd toss it out. The thing is that when you, this kind of gets to a point where I just kind of, I can't handle it anymore. My brain cannot literally cope with thinking about some of this stuff. I remember a friend of mine repeatedly trying to explain to me like quantum physics and quantum things.

And I just literally can't understand it. Yeah. The quantum stuff is hard. Really hard. I have a, I had a. But this notion of, you know, alternate realities and things going on at the same time, I just can't get my head around it. It's almost impossible to do.

It's, it's really like when we start getting into quantum stuff, I don't even think they understand it. I mean, they understand it in terms of these theoretical concepts, but it's so abstract in a lot of ways. When you're dealing with things like, when they start talking about subatomic particles and they start talking about the things that they actually do know, like the things that you actually can measure. You can observe. Yeah. Like particles in superposition, meaning they're in movement and still at the same time, when they're talking about things blinking in and out of existence, they go away and they don't know where they went. And then they come back. Well, just that alone, the measurable stuff is so crazy that

the lowest point, not the lowest, but the smallest measurable point of reality, which is these quantum ideas. The world is made of magic. Things appear and disappear. Things are still and they're moving at the same time. They're here and they're there. They're in two different places at the same time. And they can take particles and they can move them across the world. And when they interact with each other, they interact with each other faster than you can count, faster than you can measure. They interact with each other like instantaneously, faster than any kind of communication that we could have between these particles, given the amount of distances in between them, the speed of light, the speed of sound. They're instantaneously interacting with each other. Now they're figuring out a way how to send particles through time.

They're figuring out ways to send particles through time, to actually time travel with particles. And so all this stuff that they're doing right now is just one step on this never-ending quest for technological innovation, this never-ending quest where people innovation, this never-ending quest where people are trying to satisfy their curiosity. They're not going to stop.

They're never going to stop. If we don't get hit by an asteroid, if we don't get... I think that's right. And you get all these good things coming from that along the way. I mean, I don't understand it, but eventually it leads to things that we all can use and deal with, and a lot of those things are really good. I don't think that...

I think one thing I would say about all this stuff is that, generally speaking, we are not critical enough of the technological advances. I think that a lot of them are obviously, you know, improvements. You know, if you think about just technology going back many years, you know, the way that, I don't know, like labor-saving devices in the home completely sort

of freed women from the drudgery and the horrific kind of washing machine all that stuff that was just kind of such a terrible experience and that's all a fantastic that's a sort of simple example of technology being really transformational in a positive way and i think generally that's probably true of technology it's usually an improvement but i do think that we have this kind of attitude of assuming it's good and just not really questioning it. Do we really want that? Right. I think that doesn't happen enough. Often the answer will be, yeah, we do.

That's great. Fantastic. Bring it on. But I don't think we stop enough to ask the question. And I think the scientists and the people doing this stuff, they don't really think about that. No. They want to do it because they can. And it's exactly as you said, it's this curiosity. Let's just go further because that's a human instinct.

It's like when Oppenheimer built the nuclear bomb. I mean, should that really have been done? Well, the argument, the intelligent argument is if they didn't do it, the Nazis would have done it. So, yes, it's important that the Allied forces developed it first. But I think that that's the job of – I think there's all sorts of roles that are played in a society. And there's the innovator and there's the scientist. There's the people that are constantly pushing the boundaries of technology. And then there's the social engineers who step back and go, okay, let's look at the repercussions of this. And how do we mitigate the negative aspects of it? How do we figure out how

to integrate these ideas into society and use them to enhance society? And what is being done to sort of manage that? And what is being done to minimize the negative impact? Yeah, that is a good way of putting it. They're different functions. the negative impact. Yeah, that is a good way of putting it. They're different functions. Yeah, there's just a constant, there's no one thing that's awesome.

There's things that are awesome and then there's repercussions that are like, yeah, but then there's this. Well, there's that, but then there's this part of it that we're not really comfortable with. And there's this sort of dance that we do as we build society and as society continues to grow and expand and our ability to do things changes our ability to access information our ability to accomplish goals our ability to

transmit ideas is so much quicker and faster and there's these repercussions to that that were before this this day and age were really unexplored because they weren't available. So we don't really know the long-term repercussions of children being able to access porn because they really didn't have it. Yes, it's new.

We don't know what that leads to. Yeah. Weird world. It's a weird world, Steve Hilton. Strange times. I think that is

a good, good summary. That's why you, tooth and claw, resisted. I know, and this is definitely going back in the book. But the way I agree to it is like, if I'm away, I need a phone and then they can get a hold of me. why you tooth and claw resisted yeah i know and this is definitely going back in the book but the way i agreed to was like if i'm away i need a phone then they can get hold of me yeah that's it

that's it and then you could shut it off occasionally but just give it to very few people you have to have a burner phone you have to have a phone that you give to people that could possibly be annoying so that any given time if it fell into the ocean you'd be like whatever with that fucking phone, you know? And then have a phone that you only give to your family and your close friends. Well, one of the things that really puts me off, I just can't, there's something about my kind of useless sort of fat stubby thing. I just hopelessness with touchscreens.

That's all you can get is touchscreens. When we were in Hawaii, you threw your fucking iPod at your computer and fucked up the screen. You were so frustrated. Steve got, you know, I have a regular iPod with the click wheel, the wheel. I like that. I like that. I like that. Oh, that's right.

Exactly. I like the new one. I like that. But the new ones, the iPod Touches, I don't find them as, they're not as easy to use when I'm at the gym. I find them to be frustrating, you know. But you got a hold of one of those because you couldn't get your regular iPod. You got so mad, you threw it at your fucking computer.

The mark is there. It reminds me of my techno rage every single day. But you're not a rageful guy, which is so crazy. Because you're normally the last person I would expect to get violent and throw something and get crazy. But it was an iPod that did it to you. I know, it was weird. But I do with technology, as people who know me and work with me will testify.

You're very Unabomber-esque in that way. Oh, gosh, okay. I better watch it. There's a great documentary on the Unabomber and how he became who he is. I don't want to get into it because I've a great documentary on the Unabomber and how he became who he is. I don't want to get into it because I've talked about it on the show before, but it's called The Net, and I think it's German. I forget what country, but it's available with subtitles.

But basically he was a part of the LSD studies at Harvard. They cooked his brain. That's Ted Kaczynski. Ted Kaczynski. The guy that? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And he was turned in by his own brother. His own brother recognized the writing in the manifesto, and he realized that his brother had gone insane. He's like, I think this is probably my brother that's doing this. Wow. Because I wasn't here then, but that was... So I don't have a sense of it being...

Obviously, I know what happened, but I don't get a sense of what a big deal it was. It was scary for a lot of people. In America, when big deal it was. It was scary for a lot of people. In America when that happened. Well, it was scary for a lot of people also because of who he was attacking, that he was attacking people that were technological innovators. He was attacking people that were involved in the distribution of technology. And he believed that, and in a lot of ways, correctly believed that there was something going on right now where people were creating technology and

this technology would eventually do bad things to the human race and to the biological existence that we currently exist in you know this this sort of like established way of being and living that we consider being you know inherent to being a human being and he felt like these people were the enemies of of humanity because they were fostering technology and creating i didn't really know that that was what was behind all that yeah he just he went too far ahead he got wacky instead of living in the moment and dealing with the moment he just saw this this attack by the biological humans or on the biological humans by technology, which essentially, I kind of see his point in a way, I don't see his point as far as like attacking people that are creating technology. But if you

really extrapolate where we are right now, and where we're going, this symbiotic relationship that we have with technology, where people are afraid to leave their phones behind, the phones will eventually become Google Glass, Google Glass will become an implant, an implant will become, behind the phones will eventually become google glass google glass will become an implant an implant will become well you know steve you've got good news and bad news the good news is you have a year to live okay the the bad news is you have cancer the good news is we have an artificial body that we have created that we're going to put your body into. The bad news is it lasts forever. So we're going to take, or is it the good news? You know, what it is is a new world that we're living in

where we're going to have weird choices that never existed before. And a lot of the people that are involved in Google, they hired Kurzweil. Ray Kurzweil, who is the proponent, the number one proponent of this sort of transcendental moment where we become one with computers. Where we become one either with some sort of a computer interface or we download our consciousness into an artificial body. Or we figure out a way to exist in some sort of a virtual reality that is eternal and there's that's a lot of people feel like that's where things are going to go yeah i mean it's the science fiction is really not fiction you know it's definitely happening yeah i think that the the why i talked to a friend of mine about this quite a bit, which is if you think about...

I'm just interested that there is... OK, the Unabono, that's an extreme example. And I didn't realise that it was so focused on technology. But there isn't really a... People like it, generally speaking. There isn't really a movement, a sort of anti-technology movement, certainly not that I'm aware of. If you think back to, you know, the...

I can't remember exactly when it was, but when you had this sort of industrial revolution and the luddites you know smashing up machines that were you know taking jobs away from people and in their view really kind of damaging society there's that was a it's got a quite a big movement yeah okay it didn't get anywhere and then you know history sort of made them irrelevant but there was a movement with their name and an organization that did stuff what did they want what was their their idea the technique though i think that specifically it was the the new equipment like the weaving you know during the industrial revolution in england then the machines that were now being used to to do the work that had been done by people

and they they objected to that not incredible And they would literally physically smash up the machines. That was, I think, one of the things they did. And I'm sure there's people with a better study of history that can give you a better picture, but they were called the Luddites, I think named after the person that set them up, someone called Ludd, I think. And I don't know how big it was,

but it was big enough that it's something we still know about, and it's part of the history of that era. And there's nothing like that now, not to my knowledge, where you don't have people going out and smashing up cell phone towers to make a point about technology. Well, I think it's what we were saying earlier. Because I think people like it. It helps them in their lives, and they like it. For the most part, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of earlier. Because I think people like it. It kind of helps them in their lives and they like it.

For the most part, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of benefits. There's a lot of benefits to technology. But I think it's what we were talking about earlier that maybe back then they didn't have enough information to draw upon and they saw it as being this direct threat to their livelihood. Yeah, I think that was a big part of it. Yeah. And I think today we're sort of forced into this realization that it's neither good nor bad, but rather something that needs to be managed. And there's good aspects to it. And then there's negative aspects to it.

And ultimately you have to figure out what outweighs what and how to lean it towards the positive, how to manage it in a way that it goes towards the positive. And I think that's the case that we were talking about with children watching television. You know, I know there's the Waldorf school. My oldest daughter was in the Waldorf school system for a while. And it's a lot of wackiness to that. Like they didn't believe in any technology. They didn't believe in any video games, but it was, it's been proven that video games can enhance cognitive function. The neural pathways that are created by stimulating video games can actually mimic games like chess.

You know, like problem-solving games. Games that stimulate the imagination and creativity. Like, they exist. Video games can be used in that same function. This idea that all video games are bad. And then I found out that the guy who founded this whole Waldorf system was a channeler. He was a channeler.

Like, I am getting a voice. There's a spirit. It's talking to me. Like, oh, you fuckhead. God damn it. I didn't know that. So I'm very curious. Our oldest son, you know, he's in the same system.

Yeah, that system is created by kooks, unfortunately. It's a wonderful system in a lot of ways. The school that my kid was at was great. But the reality is that it's founded by fuckheads. You know, founded by crazy people. I'm definitely going to look into that. Yeah, a channeler. Yeah, we'll talk.

I'll tell you the full deal when we get off the air. I'll tell you the conversations that I had with these fucking people where i'm like what what what what what channeler you know there's a lot of evidence that there's channelers no there's not actually there's none there's zero evidence that anybody's ever been a fucking channeler you know i have a friend who he loves to believe in stupid shit and uh he just he's not a good critical thinker he's a great guy but he's not a good critical thinker. He's a great guy, but he's not a good critical thinker. He's the first one that comes to me with a fucking ghost story. And he came to me with this psychic thing.

This guy knew all about my grandmother, man. The guy was real. The guy was legit. I go, do you know about your grandmother? He goes, yeah. I go, so the guy told you some shit you already knew. What kind of fucking use is that? You're just talking to some guy.

You're playing games. You're playing a trivia game. Playing a trivia game about things you already know about your own family. This is ridiculous. What kind of a question did he ask you? These leading questions that you answered in some way that he was able to concoct the story of your life. And people want to find that these things are correct. They want to find that these things are correct they want to find that someone is but there's almost no evidence whatsoever

that anybody has a functional psychic energy and method that is reproducible and it doesn't mean that I don't believe in the potential for psychic psychic powers because I think there's some weird connection with human beings it's probably emerging much like a lot of our senses emerge, I think there's weird senses that are emerging with human beings. Like, for instance, they've statistically shown in a way that's measurable that people can tell when people are looking at the back of their head. Yeah. You could tell when someone's looking behind you, at you, that people could sense it in a way that is more measurable

than chance so i think there's probably something there there's probably something when you think about someone and they call you and that happens see i've thought about people and all of a sudden i get an email from them out of the blue i haven't talked to them in years and also a person i was that popped into my mind like wow i wonder what that guy's up to. Boom, we get an email from him. Hey, man, what's up? Like, wow, what is that? Is that a weird sort of a distant connection that will eventually one day be much more strong? I don't know.

I don't know, but I know that a fucking channeler starting a school that tells you not to use cell phones and don't watch TV, that guy's a silly bitch. This is ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense. I think you're right. Anything that's really extreme is just not going to be right. So we definitely don't implement the extreme version of what they recommend. It's a question of balance, right? With all things. Even with reading.

You can't read all day every day. Go outside. Go for a walk. Go ride a bike. Go do something. Get out. You gotta get out. You gotta move. And I think that that's the case with all human experiences. I mean, if you're a person who's... There was a thing recently

that they... A thing that they did about sex and about porn and that people who watch porn, they actually have less brain matter. They have less matter in their brain, people that are obsessed with porn. And, you know, when you think about it, it's probably because whatever they're doing, whatever part of their brain they're stimulating, they're constantly focused on that and all the other shit about wondering about existential questions, the purpose of man, the idea of infinity. All these weird questions that normally bounce around inside a person's brain. They're completely non-existent because you're just trying to find the next person to jerk off to.

completely non-existent because you're just trying to find the next person to jerk off to you're just but you bet that guy the other week that came out within the government which could you see he was in the environmental protection agency i think and he was watching he was he was he lost his job he's watching porn like i think six hours a day or something in the office in the government office and you think what is going on that that's even possible well people are listening to this podcast in their office guaranteed they shouldn't be they should be working for six hours a day watching porn maybe they should be that's like you know yeah it's ridiculous but their epa epa employee downloaded 7 000 files of porn at work EPA employee downloaded 7,000 files of porn at work and watched them two to six hours a day.

Well, I don't think that guy was doing a good job of protecting the environment. I'll tell you that. That fucking freak. I'm not surprised. If you give people the freedom to move around like that, that's what they wind up doing. People are nuts, man. You give people the freedom to just do whatever the fuck they want. A lot of times they do things that just aren't smart. Yes. That's just the way human beings are. Especially

if you give them, it's like we were talking about as far as professors or police officers or anybody in some sort of an ultimate position where they don't have enough supervision. They don't have enough, just they have too much influence over others and they don't have enough just they have too much influence over others and they don't have enough oversight you wind up being this fucking guy supposed to be paying attention to our drinking water he's just beating off all day you know and then there's all it's also a job thing too it's like how many how many jobs you know really should there be for the environmental protection protection agency and how many people do they really need to do those jobs if this guy How many jobs really should there be for the Environmental Protection Agency? And how many people do they really need to do those jobs?

If this guy can work... Well, that's it, exactly. What is he doing there? Well, we know what he's doing there. What's the... If this guy can work in the EPA, and he can still hold down that job, and he's beaten off six hours a day and this was

for years apparently it wasn't like just he went nuts in just one week for whatever reason went for it it was like for years I wonder how many people are listening to this podcast right now that are like fuck that's me I want to get busted if you're in an office and like especially if your computer is facing like you and you're looking at the door so you get a clean shot at anybody walking in you know for men men are freaks you give a guy the opportunity to just beat off in his office a lot of times dudes are going to take it up you know environmental protection agency jesus christ what a weird world we live in where that's an issue you imagine if like it was back in the day where a guy who was assigned to work for the city water department in the 1930s, they found 7,000 pornography books in his office.

He'd be like, Frank, what the fuck are you doing, man? Like, I'm getting crazy with all this reading. I think in a lot of ways what we're dealing with when it comes to pornography, when it comes to the internet, when it comes to just technology itself is we're dealing with these things that have influence over people in a way that we're not designed to process. We're not designed to process movies, a giant screen where explosions and spaceships and all the stuff that's not real but we're seeing it in a way that's much more impactful than real life we're seeing it right in front of us yeah you know I think that that that fucks with people's heads you know I think that pornography the ability that anytime you want just go online and watch people have sex. Like, you know that you could do that.

It's at your little fingertips, especially if you're, like, sexually starved. You know, if you're like, you really want sex and you can't get it, and you're like, oh, I can watch it right now. I'm going to go watch sex real quick. Oh, I'm watching sex. That's a weird thing with human beings. It's a weird thing that we've sort of painted ourselves into this corner. We have all this technology as we were talking

about before. It's like we have access to it and it's about managing it really. But the sex thing is also, you know, reminds us that

we're just animals really because you've got, I remember, you know, really struck, my kids love nature programs. You watch these nature programs

and basically they're about sex and eating that's what happens that's what happens in nature that's what all these that's that's the majority of the scenes that you see yeah that is what it is and so we're just um in that sense animals well we certainly are and that makes the So it's the same... I don't think we should be surprised that it's such a dominant part of life. No, no, we definitely shouldn't be surprised. But we're also much more complex than the average animal.

That's where things get really weird. Where things get really weird is that, yes, we are animals, but we are also animals with computers. We're also animals that are aware that we're animals, so we have to think about our actions. We're self-aware. We're aware of the influence that others have on us. And we're constantly expanding that influence. So we're not just animals. We're animals with computers that may become part of machines. That's the thing that freaks me out the most is the symbiotic

connection that human beings have to technology and the potential for developing artificial technology or artificial life. I think that we give birth to that. I mean, Marshall McLuhan once said that human beings are the sex organs in the machine world. And I always wonder if we're not some strange caterpillar that becomes a butterfly that has no idea what the fuck it's doing. Or making some sort of a technological cocoon, thinking that we're just doing my thing, running around, looking at porn. No, you're a part of this gigantic machine that's processing and pushing for the innovation of technology.

And the innovation of technology will eventually give birth to a life form. They're constantly working on trying to map out the human mind yeah duplicate the functions of the human mind in some sort of a synthetic process and we're not anywhere close right now but the way technology accelerates exactly yeah it's it's it feels unlikely that that's not going to happen yeah i heard this i read this article by this really grumpy fuck who's an interesting guy he's a smart guy but he's's also just probably a lonely shithead. And he was mocking Ray Kurzweil and how Ray Kurzweil knows nothing about the human mind. And he was talking about the complicated functions of the human mind and the way the human mind processes proteins and that this is barely understood.

But what I read from this and what I got out of this is like, I don't think this guy understands that the biological functions are not going to matter. If they can be, if these biological functions can be completely irrelevant because they've figured out some sort of an artificial way to duplicate all of the exact same synapse firing mechanisms, like without all the biological functions, the processing with proteins, the interacting with the hormones

and human neurotransmitters, all that stuff is great if you're using a body. But this guy was so hung up on the fact that Kurzweil's wrong because we don't understand how the human body works. No, no, he's not. Because you're just talking about bodies. Yeah, bodies are super complicated.

We haven't totally figured it out yet. But we might not have to. If we can figure out a way to do all the things that a body does, but do it with a computer or do it with technology or do it with some sort of quantum computer, some sort of quantum computer that's contained in an artificial body that can completely replicate the functions of consciousness, the functions of emotions, of interaction, of curiosity, of creativity. If you can develop an artificial computer that's creative, it doesn't matter if you're luteinizing hormones and all this shit that you're bitching about. You're just bitching because you're showing your intelligence.

You're trying to show people how smart you are by criticizing a known genius because you're not a known genius. I mean, that's essentially what you're doing. Yeah, and it seems just superficial. I know nothing about it. But the body part of it feels like there's a ton of progress right there, the sort of biomechanics and robotics. That is easy compared to the brain. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I agree. It is. What they do know about the mind and they do know about the body is comparatively rudimentary when you think about what we know about a clock. We know everything about a clock. You know, you could buy a Swiss watch and there's a man out there that knows every single function of that watch, knows how it interacts, knows exactly what's going on, tick-tock, tick-tock. We don't know that about the body yet. You're right. You're correct. But we're not going to have to. We're not going to have to. Because they're going to come out with some shit that's way better than a body. They're going to come out with some shit that's way stronger than a mind, and it's going to be artificial. And one day it's going to go, hello.

And you're going to go, oh, shit. Why exactly are you guys living like this? And you're like, oh, I don't know. We're just kind of going on momentum. It's just how we do it. I don't think this is the best way to go about this. I don't think so either. I have a better idea.

Oh, great. And then this fucking thing is going to take over. And then we're going to have real problems. And he's going to really reform our campaign finance laws. We're not going to have any voting. In the reach of his mind, there's not going to be any voting. We're going to know what's important and what's not. There was a guy once, and I've brought this up before,

but it's important to note. There was a guy that we talked about on the podcast who had been bitten by a shark and the shark had taken his arm and taken his leg and he had this carbon arm and he was moving his fingers around and he was standing there talking with this fake arm and his fake leg

about how great it is that technology has provided him with a way to still be mobile and functional even though he had been attacked by a shark. And I was sitting there, and I was thinking, wow, this is fascinating. This guy is like kind of a cyborg. What we see is a man with an artificial arm, and the story was about how well they had created this arm to the point where this guy was living a totally normal life and you know was functional and mobile and could take care of himself even though his arm had been bitten off by a monster and then i thought about

what if it was both legs okay and then they figured out artificial legs who would say no to that nobody give him some artificial legs now he can move around okay what if it was his whole body? We'll say, listen, man, we're going to take your head. We're going to stick it on a robot body, but you're still going to be you. Oh, okay. All right. I'll take it. Okay. We're sticking your head on a robot body, but listen, we got a problem. The robot body is rejecting your brain, but we found an artificial brain that works just like your brain. We're going to download your consciousness to this artificial brain. You won't even know the difference. Okay. Well, then who are you? And what are you? What are you? Are you a person still? If you are your thoughts and your personality and

your memories downloaded into some creation, some sort of a new thing that they've done that mimics all the functions of the human mind without any of the biological limitations. What are you? Yeah, I remember that. It's so funny you're talking about that because it reminds me years ago when I was doing my interviews to go to Oxford University and I had an interview with a philosophy professor and he gave me this scenario which I now know is a famous philosophical thing. It's called the experience machine, and there's this construct very much like what you're talking about, which is like if we could put you in a machine that gave you all the experiences of a fantastic life, but it would be a machine doing it, would you choose to do it?

And I remember saying, no, I wouldn't want to do that because I'd feel I'd want to have really done it myself. And if you're just in a machine, that's not the same thing. Ah, but what if the machine made you feel like that you were on and whatever I said, there was some kind of comeback. And in the end, I just remember getting really frustrated. I don't know. That's why I want to come and learn about philosophy so I can figure this stuff out. But I have no idea. I kind of lost my temper.

I never did figure it out. Did you throw your phone at him? Way before the phone era but it was just there comes a point when i just find it really hard to to um to even to go very far with this and i just think oh well whatever let's just sort of get on with you know practical life today well it's essentially it's the dunbar's number of philosophical discussion our minds are limited in our ability to sort of take these ideas in. We don't have the capacity to extrapolate. It's too much. So this concept of recreating reality in an indistinguishable manner, it's too weird.

But I think it's something we better start talking about because it's coming yeah and i'm i you know i'm really happy that you are and i think it's really important that other people are i'm just saying i'm not it's way more important than other people are doing it than me in the hierarchy yes i think that you know a lot more about it than i do and you've read more about it than i i have and um i just think that is, yeah, it's really important that generally we talk about it and keep, you know, a really strong sense of awareness of how these things might change stuff. And a lot of the time it will be for the better and that's great, but we should just talk about it. Well, I had the opportunity to talk to Kurzweil for an hour and a half and I sat

down and interviewed him about these things and it was really fascinating. We had a great conversation, but this guy is not thinking about negatives at all. All he's thinking is a gung-ho, full blast, pedal to the metal. He takes giant bags of supplements every day because he's an older man. He's just trying to keep his biology alive long enough to see this new birth of technology. And when it gets really crazy, what he's trying to do also is he's trying to make his father come back to life. His father died when he was young, and he believes that if they figure out a way to recreate a person from memories from just the the knowledge of who this person was images that you're going to be able to recreate

this guy in some sort of an artificial form i mean it's one of the things he's discussed this this he wants to see his father again and the idea that he can recreate his father technologically from his memory from all sorts of different things from memory from all the the data that he knows from recorded stuff one of the most fascinating concepts that i've ever um heard when it comes to the increase increasing power of computing is that they're going to get to a point one day, if computers continue to accelerate, they're going to get to a point one day where they can take into account all the positions of all the objects and all the things that exist all over the world as data, and from them extrapolate where things will be and where things were.

So by where things were, meaning knowing everything in this room, where it's at in this position, they'll be able to figure out how it all got here. Who moved, Jamie moved this over there, and Brian picked that up and turned it on, and they'll literally be able to calculate the past. They'll be able to, by what we have here, by everything we have here and what we know, they'll be able to calculate the actions of the past. They'll be able to, by what we have here, by everything we have here and what we know,

they'll be able to calculate the actions of the past. Madness. We're running out of time. He's holding his hand up. The computer's going to get that crazy. Because at this point, I'm just like, okay. That's madness. It is. I don't understand it. They'll be able to look at the ground itself.

Look at the content of the dirt, the pollution in the ocean, the carbon in the air, the distance between these two trees and the amount of pencils that are on your desk, and they'll be able to figure out the past because computers will be so far advanced. It just reminds me of that line.

I can't remember which Woody Allen film where he asks his parents, how does the TV work? And someone's like, what do I know about how the TV works? I can't even figure out how the can opener works. I just think, like, you know, the TV baffles me. This stuff, you know, impossible. Yeah, well, it should. It should.

And it's only going to get more and more baffling. We're stuck with these dumb monkey brains. Yes. That's the problem. We're the dumb monkeys that are sitting around here waiting for things to change. And when things do change, we will be just as weird as some Australopithecus. If you put him in a time machine from a million years ago and threw him into the fucking Burbank Mall, this thing would be running around going, what the fuck is this?

Because things change, because things grow, and things evolve, including humans. We're just along for the ride. So I think the real key to human beings, and it's the most difficult aspect of life, is to get really good at this moment. Get really good at just existing in the moment and enjoying it. I do definitely agree with that. It's fucking hard to do, right? Yeah.

It's great. It's a great way of thinking about it because it just means that you don't worry so much because there's stuff that you can understand and relate to and be good at and enjoy. I think that's totally right. And there's some power in worry. You can't worry about worrying

because worry causes preparation. Preparation causes you to cover your bases and remove a lot of paranoia because you relax. Like one of the best things you could ever do if you're worried about something is handle it. You know, you handle it, you deal with it, you don't have to worry about it anymore. So I don't think there's anything wrong with worrying a little bit, but I think it's like all these other things that we've discussed. It's a balancing act. Don't go crazy and watch porn all day. But if you watch a little bit, I think you're going to be okay.

You know, don't get nutty and sit in front of the TV 24 hours a day. But watch Game of Thrones every now and then. I don't think it's going to hurt you. You know, get outside every now and then. But don't stay's gonna hurt you, you know What do you get outside every now and then but don't stay there when it gets cold you need to get indoors You know this the world's big There's a lot of shit going on and it's simply a matter of there's so much happening and there's so much to take in And there's so much going on that there is not one good or bad There's just a bunch of different things happening all at once

Yeah, and that's why I totally agree with you that the more you can give people the freedom to experience and enjoy it and kind of, you know, write their own story about how they, how they do stuff and not be told what to do by others, the better. Indeed. CrowdPAC. There you go. CrowdPAC.com. That is the website.

If, uh, if you're interested in that, and the elections are today. Shockingly little discussion, both online and on the news about them. But if you're curious, go to crowdpac.com and get your voting guide. Go there and click on it and enter in all the information and find out what's going on. I did check this out. I think it's pretty cool what you've done. Your political priorities.

It's really early days. This is the first little test version of it. We're just doing it for California. I'm sorry if people are listening outside California. It won't work so well for you. I should say that, because it's a test. But we'll be back for the midterm elections in the fall with a whole new set of things and data for politicians all over the country. So September, we'll be back with a much more developed and a much sort of bigger and better product. And I think it's going to really shake things up a bit.

That's the plan anyway. I think it will too. I think it will too. And we need to get you together with the young Turks. Yeah, that sounds great. I had to check that out after you mentioned it. The Wolfpack thing. Yeah, yeah.

He's on the right track when it comes to that stuff too. Steve, thank you very much. Thank you, Joe. That was three hours. Three hours. Three hours. Just flew right by. Look at that.

Bam. Three o'clock. Thanks to our sponsors. Thank you to stampscot.com. Go to. Just flew right by. Look at that. Bam. Three o'clock. Thanks to our sponsors. Thank you to Stamps.com. Go to Stamps.com. Enter in the code word JRE and get your $110 bonus offer, which includes a digital scale and up to $55 of free postage. Thanks also to LegalZoom.

Go to LegalZoom.com and use the code word ROGAN at checkout for savings. And thanks also to Ting. Go to rogan.ting.com and save $25 off of any new device. That's rogan.ting.com. We will be back. This is it for the rest of the week. We'll be back next week with a lot of fascinating shit. Ensign Inouye will be here next Wednesday.

That's the next podcast. Until then, go fuck yourself. No, don't do that. Be nice. Be nice to each other. Live in the moment, my friends. Enjoy it. Much love.

Big kiss. Mwah.