The Joe Rogan Experience - #590 - Ana Kasparian

Episode Date: December 20, 2014

Ana Kasparian is a producer and co-host of "The Young Turks" and also teaches journalism at Cal State Northridge.

Was Jamie here the last time I was here? Yes. He's very unremarkable in some ways. Remarkable in many. But unremarkable in his presence. He's like a ghost. He moves in the darkness. That's Jamie we're talking about.

Anna Kasparian, welcome. This is it, we just do it now. We just start from here. I like it. She brought Mr. Anna Kasparian. The boyfriend's here. So all do it now. We just start from here. I like it. She brought Mr. Anna Kasparian. The boyfriend's here. So all you sad dudes at home, they're like, maybe Anna. No. No, it's never going to happen.

No, she's got a boyfriend. She's here. We're boozing it up too. Well, he's got to be on his A-game at all times because I don't know, maybe it could happen. Oh, shit. What a terrible way to start a podcast. I'm fucking around. He's amazing. He really is. He is amazing. I'm fucking around. He's amazing. He really is. He is amazing.

He's wearing pajamas. It's nighttime. He doesn't give a fuck. I like it. Plus, he's Cuban. I got a big respect for Cubans. So, yeah, we're back with Cuba, right? Isn't that the new thing?

That's going to be able to go over and get some nice cigars now. Yeah. Now, Congress needs to get involved, right? And Obama can't unilaterally lift the embargo. But I think that overall, this is good news. And I know that there are Cubans in Miami that are against this. They think it's a terrible idea.

But look, the embargo lasted 52 years and it didn't end communism. It just strengthened the Castro regime. Well, it made things really weird. You ever look at those photos of Cuba and you see the 1950s cars that they've all fixed up? Yeah. It's kind of fascinating. It really is. I mean, when you can't import vehicles from the United States, you know, you got to keep up with the vehicles that you have. So they are in perfect, impeccable condition. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. It's weird to watch. Like

you see like a red light. There's these photos of these cars that are beautiful, classic cars that are all in great shape. It makes you realize we're kind of trapped in this cycle of constantly getting new shit, constantly getting, oh, it's the 2016 Lexus. We get so excited about the new one. Oh, the new one's headlights move when you move. Oh, fucking Christ. We could get by with these 1950s cars if we really wanted to except the brakes suck and the suspension sucks look i'm not an expert in cars at all but i will say that the vehicles that are being built now won't last as long as the cars that were built in like the 1950s like do you think a car that was built in 19 i'm sorry 2014 is going to last 40 years or even a few decades?

I wonder. I don't know. I don't know enough to say whether or not they're really built better. I just think they were, there's a weird thing that happened between like 1960 and then into the 1970s and 80s where cars just sucked. And like in the 1960s, like between like 1964, 65 65 like the old corvettes and going into like the muscle cars or the classic 1967 camaros or those kind of cars those are some of the best looking cars human beings have ever figured out and they have this weird sort of like flair to them that

you just don't get from cars that came from the 90s like those cars look like shit like i was we were watching this auction once, and we talked about it on the podcast. Didn't we, about the Camaro that was for sale? Yeah, I think so. They had a Camaro for sale, like a 2002 Camaro. And everybody's like, get that fucking piece of shit out of here.

Nobody cares about a 12-year-old Camaro. Get it out of here. Wow. But a 30-, 40-year-old Camaro is the shit. Of course. Yep. So somehow or another, we entered into this era where people don't want to fix those things up. You just want to get rid of them.

Like there's like pockets where people are like, you know, you don't fix up a 2002 Camaro. Get rid of that fucking thing. Yeah, that's so true. Um, there was a neighbor I had that had this amazing red Mustang. I don't know which year it was, but it was just such a beautifully crafted vehicle. And I compared that classic car to the Mustangs that are being built today. And I felt like there was no comparison. There was something sexy about that car. And Mustangs are sexy today too, but not to the same extent. You know, it has like the curves

of a woman almost when you look at a Mustang from decades ago. Yeah. So they figured something out and I don't know what it is, but they figured something out from like in the 1960s where they figured out how to make these cars just like, whoa, you look at them. This is just classic shape. I think that's coming back though. I think the last few generations of American cars, they've really figured out like some of the new Cadillacs are beautiful. They really are. So I recently leased a new car and I settled on a BMW and it's a great car. It's a little three series.

I really wanted like a white exterior with red interior because I'm an Armenian. It's in the blood. Yeah, it is. It's in the blood. We like flashy shit.

So it was funny because I remember talking to Christian, my boyfriend, about possibly getting a Cadillac. And he was like, yeah, Cadillacs are cool. But they still kind of have like the old man stigma attached to them, even though they're beautiful. Yeah, they do a little bit. Right. Yeah. Even the new ones that are spaceshipy, they still have that thing. It's like for the longest time, that's what they were.

Yeah, but I really have no room to talk. Before I got the BMW, I was driving a Lincoln. Those are very old-manish. Yes, they are. That's about as old-manish as you get. Yes, they are. But I love that car. It was an MKZ hybrid.

It wasn't like a hip car, but it was smooth. Smooth ride. They've adjusted. American cars over the last few years have really adjusted. It seems like especially since they got all that money to sort of rebuild, there was a lot of restructuring, and it just seems like they came out with some pretty exciting cars, like some really nice cars now.

Well, they had no choice. After that bailout, you better fucking deliver. Yeah. In the world of muscle cars, they've made choice. After that bailout, you better fucking deliver. I mean... Yeah. Yeah. They've made... In the world of muscle cars, they've made amazing, amazing cars. They have a new Camaro out, the Z28, that is like, essentially, you could buy a race car from the Chevy dealership. I mean, it's a real race car.

It's got 500 plus horsepower. It doesn't even have a radio. It has a speaker in the door. It doesn't have air conditioning. It's ridiculously... That sounds fucking terrible. They wanted to make it as light as possible. Right. Of door. It doesn't have air conditioning. That sounds fucking terrible. They wanted to make it as light as possible. Right, of course.

It's like this light battery. But it's insanely capable for a car that you can just buy. I mean, this thing can run on a track. It pulls more than 1G of its own body weight sideways. And it's a Camaro. Yeah, that's impressive. But I always wonder about people who buy cars like that. Are you body weight sideways and it's a camaro yeah that that's impressive but i always wonder about people who buy cars like that like are you really going to take it to a track probably not are you going to drag race it you probably shouldn't probably shouldn't but

even if you're driving legal speeds those cars are way more fun than regular cars yeah definitely even if you're just getting onto the highway, just that moment of acceleration to merge. You don't have that in like a Honda or in a Volt. So I should, yeah, I shouldn't be admitting this because it's probably not a good idea on the road, but I have like a little bit of road rage. And my least favorite thing on the planet is when I want to be respectful.

I want to follow the rules and I put my turn signal on and I want to switch lanes, right? And the motherfucker behind me sees that I put, sorry, I put the turn signal on or whatever, and he or she starts speeding up so I won't be able to pass, right? And with the Lincoln, I wasn't able to speed up enough to cut them off. But now with the BMW, I'm like, oh, you're going to speed up? Well, then I'm going to cut your ass off.

I love it. It's such a good feeling. That's so ridiculous. Why do we do that? Do you catch yourself doing that, like accelerating and then just going, why am I getting involved?

No, no. Why am I getting involved in this? No, I never. You just go to war. I go to war. That's so crazy.

Don't you think it would be like healthier for all involved if you just like, just let this motherfucker go? You know what would be healthy? If we all respected one another's opinions without getting outraged. If we were more compassionate and empathetic. But we're not.

We're animals and we're hateful and we're not inherently kind. Don't you think that that's not universal though? I know a lot of people who are. Don't you know a lot of people who are? I know people who are kind. And I think it's, of course, a mix of nature and nurture. Right. But I don't know. It's funny because I was having this conversation on The Point, which is one of the shows I host for TYT Network. And I said, you know, doing this job and especially this year, I started feeling a little more depressed. And it was because I started realizing that there are a lot of really bad people out there.

You're exposed to it on a regular basis through the news stories that you cover, through the emails you get, through the tweets that you read, through the comments that you see. And it's discouraging. It's disheartening. And I'm trying, I'm like in a rut right now. I'm trying to rise above it and not let it get to me. But, you know, you hear the police brutality stories. You hear the, you know, the cases where people get shot and killed and there's no justice for them. You read how people will be supportive of those types of behaviors. You're like, what world am I living in? You know?

You're dealing with insane numbers. I mean, that's one of the parts of the world that's so hard to handle and manage in this they've had being born in certain situations, the resentment of that. Rampant crime in your neighborhood, growing up in these neighborhoods. I mean, there's just so many people. Yeah. And so many people that just have a shit roll of the dice. They just got a shit life, you know. And you have to be aware of that. And you kind of have to understand where people are coming from when they're, you know, not necessarily the best people on the planet. But at the same time, look, the Internet just exposes you to things that are way outside your bubble.

Right. So I remember when we covered the whole Ray Rice story and, you know, we saw that surveillance footage of him knocking his fiance out with one punch. You know, of course, we condemn the action. And a lot of people were like, what do you mean? What do you mean? She was she was mouthing off. Did you see what she was doing? She was charging at him. And it's like, Ray Rice is a freaking football player. It's much larger than her. I mean, she can't really do much damage to him. Right. And so I get the I get the argument that, oh, if someone's attacking you, you should be able to defend yourself. But you should also know your own strength, right?

So we make that argument. We got so much hate on those Ray Rice videos. It was amazing. And I couldn't understand it, and I still don't understand it. Yeah, that's hard. You know, I grew up, when I was a little kid, I saw my dad hit my mom. And my mom moved out, like, immediately afterwards. And I'll never forget it i'll never forget like seeing that and it's it's a there's a big difference it's like a little kid

trying to kick your ass and so you knee him in the face and knock him unconscious like you wouldn't do that with a little kid right you'd hold them off yeah, if it's a woman and you're a 230 pound, 240 pound super athlete, I mean a fucking super athlete. You ever see that guy run? Like Jesus Christ. I haven't seen him run, but I've seen him knock someone out with a single punch. It was a nice left hook, actually. He had good technique.

Like the way he threw it, he really knows how to throw a punch because it was in a short range. A lot of guys would have wound up too much and they would have never landed it from from that position so as an analyst it was a very good punch but it was rude as fuck that he did that when she just kind of slapped him in his head yeah he shouldn't have the other thing is this is what people don't like to talk about but it's it a reality, is that guys who've experienced a lot of head trauma are way quicker to pull the trigger. They're way quicker to react in a very impulsive way. I love that you brought that up because while we were discussing that story, I brought up the potential of all of the head trauma leading to more violent behavior.

And look, I'm not a neuroscientist. I don't know. That was just my speculation. But I think that it's a pretty good hypothesis that I'd want to look into a little further. But yeah. Did you see the HBO Real Sports thing on it recently? No, I haven't. Yeah, they did a piece on it where they were talking about people who were like really kind hearted and normal and very peaceful and then once they started playing football and they experienced a few head injuries their personality shifted and they became like really angry and really aggressive and really just and a lot of people think that it has to do with depression which is like super common as well for like guys who

experienced some significant head trauma and that this depression might make these guys like more quick to snap or more angry or more impulsive and that's a lot of that's just related to head trauma and that's that's a that's a scary reality that comes with football yeah look i wouldn't be surprised look i don't watch much ufc stuff actually i don't watch any i'm not gonna lie to you but how dare you? I know. But is there head trauma involved with that as well? I mean, you're using your full body to beat the shit out of someone. No, none. No? Of course there is.

That's the point. Okay, so were you ever concerned about that? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think for the athletes, it's a risk that pretty much everyone is aware of at this point. It's a risk that pretty much everyone is aware of at this point. And many of them, I think they impose like a threshold. They impose on themselves like, if I get knocked out too many times, if I feel like it's happening too much, if I feel like I can't take a punch anymore, I'm going to get out.

And a lot of guys have done this and done this like really intelligently and made speeches about it and, you know, put up blog entries about it. But it's a common theme is that these fighters, they realize at a certain point in time they're not durable anymore. They get hit and they get hurt really bad, really easily. And then they start really being worried. And that's smart. The smart thing to do is to get out then. But unfortunately, you can't tell someone when they can and can't compete. So some guys, they stay too long. Right. And they have those two, three fights that they probably shouldn't have had. And those are hard to watch. Yeah. Well,

you know, we had this discussion about whether or not in, let's say, a few decades, football will be outlawed because of the head trauma that a lot of these players endure. And, you know, my argument to that would be, it's not always the answer to ban things, right? So for instance, banning marijuana didn't work. Banning drugs didn't work, right? But one thing that you could do is actually educate people as much as possible about, you know, the consequences of doing such things. And then they can make an educated decision about it. With the NFL, the NFL withheld records and studies from its own players. So they wouldn't know about what this head trauma would do to them in the long run. And so if I were like a legislator or something, I wouldn't advocate for banning certain sports. But I would say, look, there needs to be more transparency. There needs to be more education. That way people can make a decision for themselves. Now, it's kind of hard

to do that when you're 18 and you've been drafted out of high school. But, you know, nonetheless, I feel like more education is the best way to handle a situation like that. Well, I think because of the data that's in now, I think it's undeniable. But I think for a long time, it was one of those things like when cigarettes first became illegal you know there was like a lot of resistance to making not illegal rather but when the cigarettes uh became uh like responsible for cancer when they became like responsible and started having to pay out payments and having to uh like did tobacco I mean how much how much money of tobacco companies had to pay out in these giant lawsuits, like billions and billions of dollars, but they're still making so much money that it's viable for them to stay in production.

But at one point in time, they were completely denying that there was any link between cigarettes and cancer. It's amazing. They were literally getting doctors to prescribe cigarettes. I mean, that was like a common prescription for like weak kids. They had prescribed that little fucker cigarettes. Right. I mean, similar things are happening common prescription for like weak kids. They'd prescribe that little fucker cigarettes. Right. I mean, similar things are happening right now.

Similar things are happening. I don't mean children, but like guys in their 20s. Right. Similar things are happening right now with pharmaceutical companies and some of these prescription drugs. I mean, things that are being marketed as harmless are being pushed on kids that shouldn't be taking pharmaceutical drugs right now. It's amazing.

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. And I think that when the football players have all demonstrated this consistent pattern of brain trauma, you know, they hit each other all the time and they're trying to figure out how to mitigate that. But along the way, the data becomes undeniable. So now they're at that same spot where the tobacco companies were. Okay, cigarettes cause cancer, but we still want it to be legal.

You know, okay, okay, football causes brain damage, but we still want to play it. Do you guys still want to play football? Who wants to make money? You want to make money? You worried about getting hit in the head a couple times? Okay, we're going to do our best

to not hit heads together, but we're playing fucking football because we're men and we're Americans. Yeah, yeah. Right? That's what happens. And dudes will fucking march out there,

bro, I'll fucking keep banging heads. I'll still bang heads. I'm going to fucking bang heads and get penalized. We're animals. We're savages. Especially like when you are just a complete stud athlete and you're involved in this ultra competitive world of trying to dominate other stud athletes

and spike balls in their face. They're just fucking out there. They're going to play it. I got to admit, I just visualized a super stud athlete spiking the ball and I got a little turned on so I can understand why they do it. I can understand why they do it. Fuck yeah, can you imagine if that's you?

I don't watch much football, but I love highlight reels. I love watching ESPN because they'll show like the best shit. I don't have time. I don't understand the downs. I really don't. I don't even know the rules. I don't know the rules of football. Neither do I.

So we're on the same boat. Dudes are calling flags. I'm like, what is all this rest? Why is everybody resting? This should be just constant chaos. I would want to see it like an MMA bout. Just fucking five guys on this side, five guys on that side. Move the ball.

Go! Chaos! Craziness! No breaks. And when you get it across, you fucking march it back the other way. And do it that way. And no breaks. No breaks.

None of this whistle blowing. Get that white guy off the fucking field. That little tiny white guy with the white outfit. He's going to get killed. Someone's going to accidentally run over that fucker and he's going to die. These 300-pound men on who knows God what kind of concoctions that are made in laboratories

that have allowed them to grow so big. Yeah. I mean, I feel the same. I'm going to sound so stupid to your male audience because I don't know the ins and outs of sports. I'm not a big sports fan, but that's kind of how I feel about professional basketball games, right? So like, I go and see Christian play basketball and I love it because they don't take any breaks. And I'm like, awesome. I get to watch them play and I really get into it. You watch the NBA and there's

like a freaking timeout called every two minutes. And you're like, Jesus Christ, just keep playing the game. And I understand there are good reasons for it. It's all part of the strategy. But for someone like me, who's not a big sports fan, I get turned off really quickly because I'm like, oh, great. Next commercial break. All right, we're going to wait. Like it loses the momentum of the game and I lose interest. Well, for sports fans, I think what happens is you have these highs and lows and you just sort of like settle in through the lows while they're blowing whistles and moving guys over here and talking about this and arguing about that.

Well, and it gives you things to debate. Like that's a bullshit call. There's fucking refs are retard and it gives you shit to talk about when you're at home. Like I like when I'm on Twitter after fights, I don't even fucking read comments. I'm like the last people I want to hear about is people that didn't like the way I called a fight on Saturday. This fucking queer and his fucking fake jujitsu.

It's just like opening up the devil's asshole and looking for advice. But that's part of the fun. Part of the fun of being a sports fan is getting pissed off at shit and it's like it's an american outlet a uniquely american outlet like american sports radio i've done a bunch of radio shows with sports radio guys they're very unique and that they'll just start shitting on these players well let's let's be honest he's lazy the fucking guy never gets up before practice he's not putting in the extra hours. He doesn't want it. And like, I got to agree with you.

He's got no heart. He's got no heart. He's a fucking super athlete in the NFL. What the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. But that's the style of like shitting on them. And they get these free shots because, I mean, this guy is a Ray Rice or a super athlete type dude. I mean, not Ray Rice because his thing wasn't about sport itself.

It was about violence. But, like, you know, pick one, you know. Pick any superstar. Who's a superstar football player? Like, awesome running back. Currently, DeMarco Murray. DeMarco Murray. Like that guy.

That's, you know, come on. Dealing with stud athletes. That's what they are. Very rare people. Yeah. I think the issue with the head trauma is they're just gonna do it no matter what they're just gonna do it well that's on them like i i believe in individual liberty if you want to do something that's going to harm yourself then you should have the freedom to do it right but i want to

make sure that there's as much information and education out there as possible so you make an educated decision that's true yeah decision. That's true. I think that's true. Or that's very valid. And the idea that they knew about the damage beforehand, they withheld it, that's not cool. That means you're working with people who don't really like you. Well, the NFL agreed to a settlement. I don't remember the exact number.

It was $200 million, a little more than $200 million. I remember that, but I don't remember the exact number. It was $200 million, a little more than $200 million. I remember that, but I don't remember the exact figure. Anyway, part of their settlement was that they wouldn't have to release the studies or the findings about the concussions and the head trauma. And I thought that that was so shady. Now, that was the original settlement agreement, and I believe a judge struck that down. So we'll see what the outcome of it is. But that's really true. Yes. We reported on that over a year ago and it was wrong. I mean, when I read about that, I was like, how freaking shady are you guys? Think about it. They make so much money out of these athletes. And true, the athletes make millions of dollars in a lot of cases as well. But I mean, it's so disproportionate when you think about the the health consequences of what they're playing yeah um i don't know i just i worry about all that but it's there's a good you're making a good argument you know it's also the the other point that you have that's very

good is that these guys are making millions of dollars and they wouldn't necessarily be making that kind of money doing other things no and. And they're uniquely built for sports. I mean, these people, like, if you were just around a guy who was the size of an NFL lineman and he just worked in your office, you'd be like, Jesus, the fuck? You'd be, like, walking to him in the kitchen. You know, you're on your way to the coffee machine. You're like, what the fuck is this guy doing here? There's huge people.

Like, Matt Mitrione is a fighter in the ufc he was a lineman i believe he was a lineman in the nfl i know he played in the nfl look that up see if he was a lineman but every time i interview him he's this fucking giant human yeah like if this guy was just hanging out at a bar and he was angry you would be oh shit the giant's angry you know you want that guy worn out from football practice okay you want him running up hills and bashing into other giant dudes like if you don't have that outlet for a dude like that yeah it's terrifying and by the way i mean there i'm sure that there could be precautions taken to lessen the number of people who suffer from concussions i don't know how i don't know how it's interesting because with a game like rugby the number of people who suffer from concussions. I don't know how. I don't know how.

It's interesting because with a game like rugby, the rate of concussions is actually much lower than regular football players, right? And it's because they don't have the same type of protection that football players have, so they're a lot more careful with what they do. That's a very good point. Yeah.

That's very astute. That's actually an issue with MMA as well. I've been actually saying over the last couple of months, and I've had a bunch of guys agree with me that are fighters, that thing we shouldn't have gloves. And the gloves, what they're really doing is sometimes they actually, there's a lot of eye poke problems in the UFC. And a lot of these guys are saying that the gloves actually are pulling your fingers apart. So as your hands get tired and you're fighting, sometimes the gloves are difficult to keep closed. It actually requires resistance to close them.

So there's accidental eye pokes that are happening. They think that with bare knuckles also you'd be more judicious with your punches because it's really easy to break your hand. Right. Like especially if you hit someone in the head, like in their forehead with the back of two knuckles. These are really weak. They're not really supported that well.

Like in karate, they kind of teach you to use the front two muscles. Uh-huh. Front two knuckles, rather. Uh-huh. But if you're barehanded, you have a really high likelihood of hurting your hands. And you also, your wrists. I don't think your wrists should be taped up. Because people get to tape their wrists.

They tape them up tight. And that way your wrist doesn't move when you punch people. It allows you to punch them way harder. because like you having your hands wrapped and everything like that that's an unnatural state for your hands and it turns them into weapons right because ordinarily they're kind of vulnerable and if you break them it's you have huge a guy who breaks his hand in a fight has huge problems because now you can't punch with this hand effectively you only have one hand and if you even if you have to grapple like you probably you're not gonna be able to squeeze hard with it so you're fucked what the hell got you into ufc fighting like just an excess of testosterone you want to beat the

shit out of people like no no no no honestly i got into martial arts when i was a kid because i was very insecure and very lost and i needed something to like put me put me in a challenging environment where I could put like some physical intensity into something that was very competitive and very dangerous and scary to me so it became what the way my instructor used to describe it is that it's a vehicle for human potential, developing human potential. And that when you're doing with martial arts, you're not trying to kick people's asses. You kind of are. But what you're really trying to do is you're trying to do something that's unbelievably difficult and scary. character in a very profound way that a lot of people don't, they don't experience the terror

of someone trying to kick your head off. Like literally you feel the whoosh of heels going by your head that would have separated you from your consciousness with no doubt. And you see it happening left and right around you. See guys getting ax kicked in the head, wheel kicked in the head, turning sidekick to the body, and they crumple like they got hit by a car. I've seen that so many times. It's terrifying. I can't imagine what the adrenaline is like

right before a fight. It's very hard to manage. Some people have the biggest issues with managing the adrenaline, and you see it in the UFC all the time with guys who are having their first fight. We even call it octagon shock because it's so intense.

Like all these lights are on and the camera's on. You're like, holy shit, I'm in the fucking UFC because they've been fighting in all these smaller organizations. Very few people have seen it and they've developed this record and they've got some good skills. And then all of a sudden this just wave of adrenaline hits them and they're

like, holy shit, their hearts going like you could see it. They're breathing heavy. They're trying to calm themselves down. It's very hard to manage. I can't imagine it. So one thing that I've always been really terrified about is skydiving. And I know,

I know! Fuck all that. So Christian and I have been talking about doing it. Don't do it together. Do it one day, one the next day. If one of you dies you can miss the other if you both die together we'd feel like we're fucking idiots i know i know i love you i love you it's over i feel like i'd almost prefer that if i if i had an option between that's so romantic i guess that's so sweet you guys are really in love it's unbearable

you're going to do some romeo and juliet type shit no but one of the things one of the things that scares me about skydiving isn't even the act of me like already outside of the plane and seeing the ground come toward me i'm more afraid of the feeling that you get the adrenaline rush that you get before you jump out of the plane i don't like adrenaline that's a shitty feeling and i don't understand people that are adrenaline junkies you're talking i'm just picturing feet on the edges looking down holding on to the side going fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck i just can't i can't i mean we're gonna end up doing it but i know i'm gonna be miserable Who was it that was on the podcast? Was it someone on the podcast that told a story about the first time they went skydiving,

their first parachute didn't work and they had to cut it off? Oh, my God. Was that someone on the podcast? I don't know. Was it someone? Someone was talking to me. Might have been Steve Graham. God damn.

No, it wasn't Steve. I got to remember who the fuck told me this story, but they went skydiving and their fucking parachute didn't work. They had a, the guy had a, he goes, we got an issue here. He goes,

what would that mean? He goes, well, I'm going to have to cut this parachute loose and we're going to go with the backup. And like, what? He's like,

what? So he's on the, you know, this guy's on his back, you know, this, you know, you know,

they do that. Like they're about to choke you. And that's how you fly through the air. And I just wouldn't want to know. And he's fucking sawing off the other one so it doesn't get tangled up in the second one when he pulls the back up and if that doesn't work you're a fucksville no no we're not doing it i don't want to talk you out of it um but my uh my friend brian brian redband you've met him his dad was working with this person. I forget if it was a man or a woman.

Was it a woman? He's told the story. I think it was a man. Might have been a woman. Anyway, working with this person, and they were always trying to get him to skydive. Come on, you've got to come with us. It's awesome. It's such a rush.

Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. Just so I can find the time. I'm with my kid on the weekends. And then one day he shows up at work on Monday and he's like, where's this person? They died skydiving. Oh, my God. Really? That's you hitting a lawn.

Oh, my God. It's your body in the lawn coming from 10,000 feet, just rocketing towards Earth, being sucked into the gravity. I feel like my life's pretty exciting. I have an exciting life. I don't need to jump out of a plane to feel like it's... And by the way, as I was looking up skydiving tickets and all that other stuff, I did look up the number of people that die per year due know skydiving tickets and all that other stuff i did look up the number of

people that die per year due to skydiving accidents just to and it's actually not as rare as i thought it would be okay like i thought it would be like one person has died over the last 10 years and i know there there are a lot of accidents that happen how many was it a year i don't remember but it was enough let's guess skydiving i think it was like i think it was like 11 out of a thousand or something like that maybe i don't remember the number but it was it was that alone is enough to make me uncomfortable i don't know what that means though as far as i don't know how many people are skydiving so if it's 11 out of a thousand how many how many people do you think die every year, if you had to guess? I'm going to go with like 25.

Hmm. Okay, hold on. Don't pull it up yet. Because I got to guess. Hmm. Let's see. I'm going to guess 50. 50. Wow, that's a high number. Out of how many do you say? I don't know. Per year.

Oh, alright. I got the number here. 42.5 fatalities per year. 42? Fuck that. It says the 1970s. Hold on. In the 1980s, the average was 34. Okay. What do you got? I got 21 out of 3 million.

That's in 2010. 2013 is the last year they have it, and they have it's 24. 24? All right. I said 25. So that's still too much for me. Yeah. It's out of 3.2 million jumpers.

But if you look at this calendar, this is pretty crazy. Because if you look at this schedule, the data, what's really crazy is they're showing you the numbers you get 2013 and then you get 24 and then you get estimated animal annual jumps 3.2 million okay fatalities per jump very low but when you look at it on paper imagine if you were living in one town where this many people fell from the sky every year okay if all skydiving was only in Kenosha Wisconsin and you're working on a farm in Kenosha and you just every day you hear there's 32 in a fucking year that's more than one a month more than once a month someone falls from the fucking sky and dies screaming as they slam into a planet. Ah!

Boom! 2000, 32. Boom! 2001, 35. 35 bodies in a year falling from the sky. If it was in one neighborhood, it would fucking suck.

It would literally be raining people. Every day you would go outside terrified that you're gonna fucking get your car started and a guy comes from the sky and slams into your hood joe but you've already convinced me to not go skydiving you don't need to do any more i'm not trying to convince you i'm not trying to convince you but i'm i'm just imagining that i'm living in a town you know just let's say Chicago. It's a city.

It's a whole city. Big city. 35 people fall from the fucking sky on a Chicago a year. You'd be like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And look, the craziest part about it is it wasn't something necessary. It was something that you paid for. And it's expensive. It's like hundreds of dollars to go skydiving.

So you just paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to die. Yeah, well, yeah, essentially. With someone attached to your back. But it's got to be a rush otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. Yeah, I don't need that rush. You know?

That story was from Ryan Parsons and they had video of it. Oh, that's right. That's right. It was Ryan. There's video of it. Oh, God. That. That's right. It was Ryan. Oh, God. That's right. No, we're not watching that. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't need to watch

that. Yeah. I don't even like hiking next to a cliff because I'm worried I might step the wrong way and somehow roll down the cliff and die. You have to worry about shit dropping on you, too. Yeah, true. Things fall. You always drive by when you're driving down roads and there's those falling rock signs, you see rocks on the road.

Yeah. Like if you're below one of those rocks, they hit you in the fucking head and you're deadsville. Or your windshield. Yeah. It's scary out there. But there's a certain amount of fun in being in those weird environments that are kind of dangerous. As long as you recognize it. It's like hiking.

As long as you're careful and you know what you're doing. There's a certain weird thrill to it. When I was in Alaska, we were on this island called Prince of Wales. And there was a deer that was below us. And we were sitting on the edge of this rock. And it was literally a fucking cliff. So there's the edge of this cliff, and I'm looking down,

and I'm like, oh, fucker. My whole body tightened up. He's like, you don't want to go near that cliff, do you? I go, no, I don't want to go near that cliff. He's sitting there with his legs dangling over the edge. I'm like, fuck that shit.

Fuck that shit. Fuck sitting like that. Not interested. He's sitting with his legs dangling over a cliff, and there's like a fucking thousand foot drop underneath him or whatever the hell it is. 500 foot drop at least. Yeah. It was like, you're dead. No, no interest in that. No interest in that. That fucking thing that it does to your body. When you see someone do that, when you look over a ledge and you see that view

and you're like, oh. But dude, some people get off on that. Like not sexually but like they get a rush that they're addicted to. And I don't know what it is about people who love that. But I don't. I really don't. Maybe I'm a boring person. But I like being comfortable. Well, it's a weird thing to love, to love to be scared.

You know, you don't want to die. You don't want to get hurt. But you want to be scared. It's a weird thing. But it's really common. I i mean look at roller coasters the scariest fuck most fucked up things you could do in your life these days or go to some of those like magic mountain roller coasters yeah holy shit those are terrifying yeah was that one they have the x something or another they have a one called the viper and one called the x the the x one you can't

even have anything in your pockets. They strap you to this concoction. It spins you around. All this fucking chaos. It is so terrifying. Because you're like, if this thing goes wrong, my shit is just breaking apart. Your body's going to get ripped to shreds.

You're going to get smashed into the gears of this machine that is so powerful that it's whipping 200 people simultaneously around. You know, surprisingly, roller coasters don't scare me at all. Oh, God. Not even a little bit. Like, I don't mind roller coasters. I just, anything where there's like a free fall involved, I'll get scared.

But other than that, I feel like I can handle it. Roller coasters are great. I love roller coasters. But there's always that somewhere in your mind has to recognize that people have died on these fucking things. It's not very many. It's very few. Yep. Very, very few.

Most likely you're going to be fine. But you might not be. I mean, look, you put your life in danger every time you get behind the wheel and you drive. I'm averaging an accident a year at this point. Is this that thing, Jamie? What is it called? It's called the X2 at Magic Mountain. Oh, good Lord.

I did this fucking thing. Oh, God. They give you a locker, okay? This ride's so fucked up, you get a locker. You get to put your shit in a locker so you don't have anything in your pockets because anything that's in there is just going to fly into someone's eyeball. The top thrill dragster at Cedar Point

I've been on. You go 120 miles an hour I think in like 3 seconds. And up to 420 feet within 6. What the fuck are you saying? And then straight down. Look at this. It's a roller coaster where you're hanging upside down and spinning around in circles.

Oh good Lord. You're just experiencing it from watching it from an outside perspective. If you're sitting in those seats, it's madness. How did you feel when it was over? Usually when a roller coaster is done, my entire body is kind of trembling. But when you're in the moment, you don't feel it. And I don't mind that feeling the thing that i don't like is just the anticipation of something that scares me so like

again jumping out of that plane like the moment before i jump out of the plane is what scares me the most um but yeah when i'm in the middle of it i feel like i can handle it fine i think a lot of fighters get addicted to that overcoming that moment and being calm and peaceful in that moment. Because especially what I did doing Taekwondo is not nearly as terrifying as doing MMA. Because MMA is just a... It's more likely that someone's going to have an answer to your bullshit than it is if you're just doing one discipline,

whether it's boxing or something like that. There's just so many variables. It's really easy to get smashed. And it's hard to beat everybody in MMA. It's one of the more difficult sports to become truly dominant in. And so when these guys are getting into that cage, you could see this wrestling match with this anticipation, with all this nervous energy. And it's a huge part of it for them.

Because when they win, you've never seen anybody happier. When a guy has a huge victory in the UFC and they throw their arms up and they're, fuck, yeah! There's this craziness to it. It's just, you can't imagine someone being more excited to win something. You don't ever win a game of ping pong

and go, fuck! Like, they jump up. They're just so pumped up that they literally can't control it. That's how I feel at the end of the day when I haven't read a comment

asking me to sit on someone's face. You go days without that? Fuck no! I get that kind of shit on a daily basis. So if I go, like, one day without reading,

like, a crazy-ass comment, I'm like, oh my my god it's a good day you know what though the problem is they probably get you conditioned so if you went a few months without any of those comments you'd be like hey come on every now and then it's fine on their face what the fuck yeah come on every now and again come on boys i'm not saying cut it out entirely how rude imagine if that was the case if You just, you know, once you missed it, you're like, shit. No, but you know, the one thing that I did realize is, I mean, in the very beginning of my career, I guess, when people wouldn't focus on what I was talking about and all

the comments were about what I look like, I was like, oh my God, no one's paying attention to what I'm saying. And I was like, kind of hurt about it. And then I realized like, these people are telling me I'm attractive. There are worse things in the world. I can move on with my life. You got a super lucky roll of the dice genetically.

Thank you. That's very sweet. Yeah, right? So like if they're saying that you're hot, like that's fine. Let it, you know. Yeah, so I don't mind those comments anymore. But it's a weird thing that men do to dismiss women, right?

They'll talk about your looks or your makeup or something like your heels you know that's that's cheap that's like a cheap tactic like if someone's talking about an idea yeah you start talking shit about their makeup you know like oh like girls and heels and look at her with a little skirt yeah but then again from the male's point of view it's very weird that you get to wear skirts. Really? Do you want to wear a skirt? I mean, I wouldn't judge you if you did. I don't want to wear a skirt. However, it's very weird that one gender gets to regularly expose their shaved legs and flip them back and forth in interviews. It's very strange. It's very odd that you have the one gender that is more desirable physically more

pursued if you had a bet like who's pursuing more is women are women pursuing men more or men pursuing women more for sure men are pursuing women more so the the women are more pursued but more exposed in their attire on a regular basis like there's a tiny piece of cloth separating your vagina from the cold, hard world. Yeah. And that's standard business clothes. Yeah. That's kind of odd.

Right. I guess. But you know, it's funny because there's, there are, there are different schools of feminism, right? I just said feminism.

Your viewers just like lost interest. They just fucking started throwing up. Anyway, just stay with me. Stay with me. with me please okay so there's one school that thinks like if you are a woman do not flaunt your sexuality do not embrace femininity reject it um because that if you do flaunt it that's all people are going to focus on and but like i fucking hate that school of thought right because i think femininity is great and i like embracing the differences between men and women men women are not equal that doesn't mean that men are better than women or that women are better than men we're freaking different right

yeah and so embrace the fact that you have differences but expect or or yeah expect equality when it comes to situations regarding employment and things like that, right? But yeah, I mean, I'd love to do like, you know, sociological, historical research to figure out why it is that women can dress that way and men don't, whatever it is. But also, I don't know. It's funny because going back to what you said about men pursuing women more, I think that that is changing slowly based on... With Tinder. Sure. Okay. So there's that element of it. Those kids are out there just banging left and right. These crazy kids. There's that element of it. But I also think that as women become more dominant in the workforce,

I think you're seeing more and more women feel confident enough to pursue men. At least that's my experience. I think it's insulting to think that a woman uh can't wear whatever the fuck she wants whatever she likes to wear the way dress the way she wants and still be intelligent that's that's really like a form of sexism inside of like your own gender it's like you're you're separating the idea of like a serious woman yep you know a serious woman and a woman who wants to look sexy well says who says you yeah says who's the who's the one who gets to make this call and you know here's where it gets really weird the one exception to that as far as like women dressing up and like really like skimpy

outfits and looking really sexy and wearing high heels and makeup and really girling it up the one exception is transgender women transgender women are always supported as deep as they go into the woman category. Like as deep as they go into the femininity category. You go girl, you go girl. Nobody ever says to like a transgender woman, Hey,

you're dressing like a whore. You know, they give her some slack. I think that the same courtesy should be extended to anyone. And, and whatever a woman wants to wear, I am supportive of it just because like someone might wear something that i wouldn't want to wear myself but that doesn't mean that i should sit

around and like judge them and say oh i'm not going to take this person seriously so i got to give a quick example because this kind of shows you how progressives can go too far when it comes to certain things so i have this friend from grad school um who is like a hardcore progressive right from grad school um who is like a hardcore progressive right and he was i commented on or i did a status update on facebook when i recently went to france for a media conference i didn't know that i had to walk around um on the plane or else my legs would get fucking swollen as i've ever seen them like they got really swollen. So none of my shoes fit once I finally landed. And so I wrote on Facebook that I had to buy a new pair of shoes that were a size and a half larger than what my feet really are just so I can wear heels to this conference. And he commented back and he's like, Why are you wearing heels? And why are you subscribing to the male expectation of femininity and beauty and you're doing a disservice to feminism and I was like really I was like you're don't you find it ironic that you as a dude are now telling me what I should wear as a woman in order to follow the right perspective of femininity like or feminism I

should say so that really made me upset because for me wearing high heels isn't about attracting men sure there's some part of it in there, but what I actually love about wearing heels is it makes me stand straight. It makes me feel sexy. It makes me feel confident. And I feel like once I put on a pair of heels, I can rule the world. It has very little to do about attracting males. Yeah, you should be able to wear whatever the fuck you want. If Gene Simmons could wear those boots with the teeth in the bottom of them and still be one of the manliest men ever, I mean, come on.

He's wearing boots that went all the way up to his knees. Nobody complained. Nobody, give us back your man card with your feminine outfit. What's up with the shoes, boy? What's up with the fucking shoes? Disappoint me. No, you know, he doesn't have to go on stage

with Timbalands on, you know? Some fucking rodeo belt buckle. He's wearing leather pants come on he's got fucking glitter all over his body he's wearing makeup he's got makeup on come on what the fuck wear whatever you want who gives a shit

that's the problem is people are getting genuinely upset about something that's none of their fucking business and they're just deciding that because they've met women who've dressed sexy all women who dress sexy are idiots. And they do with men. Men who work out. Men who work out are fucking meatheads. Oh, what are you going to the gym, meathead?

They'll diminish you because you work out. It's the same thing. It's so stupid. Nice tight shirt. I think a lot of it comes from jealousy too, to be honest with you. Of course it is. Right? Yeah, of course. I mean, if you're a hot dude who's been working out and you're getting criticism from other guys because you're a meathead you're a dude coming from a jealous place i like that they've invented that dude bro thing because it really is very

quickly diminishing yeah like if someone like says anything yeah he's the most dude bro guy ever wow that fucking hurts actually it works because everybody knows what they're talking about you're like a dude bro it's just like a it's such a great thing to say because you can't even get upset at someone saying it because it's not even like you're a cunt face you know it's like he's a dude bro like i don't even know what you said i don't know what that means so diminishing but it's so effective yeah yeah well you know people are weird they're weird that we're weird at what we get upset about you know me included i get upset about shit and then I go, why do I care? What the fuck is wrong with me?

Yeah, that happens time to time. All the time. I definitely feel that, especially doing what I do. Like sometimes I'll get upset about a story and I'm like, wait, why am I letting this get to me? Yeah. You know, and then sometimes we'll do a story where it'll have this profound effect on me. Recently, I don't know if you read about George Stinney, who was executed in 1944, this 14 year old boy. I heard that he was exonerated recently. He was exonerated recently,

executed in 1944 because he was convicted of killing two white girls. So he had nothing to do with it, as you guys know, exonerated recently. And we were doing the show and our COO, Steve-O, came in and he's like, hey, guys, sorry to interrupt the show, but I want to give you a quick update on a story that I find important. And then he gave us the details. I had never heard about George Stinney until that moment. And I don't know what it was, but when he told me about that 14-year-old who weighed 90 pounds getting executed for a crime he didn't commit, I't hold back tears and for the first time in a really really long time i was about to burst into tears on camera and we had to go to break so i can kind of like you know contain myself do you not want people to see you cry um i so i want to be as a woman it's difficult because

you don't want people to immediately go to oh Oh, she's just an emotional female. She's not a reliable source of news. Right. A lot of people think that if you're passionate about something, that means that you're irrational and that you're just an emotional girl. And so I go out of my way, regardless of how how much I want to like break down. I go out of my way to make sure I don't cry on camera. And then also, whenever you cry on camera, I immediately think of like the Glenn Becks of the world who are like super fucking cheesy and they're doing it to ham up the audience, right? Yeah, I don't think you should ever worry about being fake because you don't give off any of that. So I think if you felt like crying on camera, cry on camera.

But if you don't feel like crying on camera, you don't have to do that either yeah and it's it's interesting to wonder why like i've never cried on camera either but i've cried i've cried it like on movies and shit you have yeah i i cry i mean i have daughters i cry easy i'm a bitch oh that makes me like you more i do i cry for no fucking reason. It's pretty easy, too. Like a good song or a good, like, you know, especially anything where, anything where, you know, people are losing loved ones. Yeah. You know, I remember I watched this documentary once. It was like a, one of these, not a documentary a documentary, like a, um, it was a cable

show that was documenting Malibu fires. And these fires were just devastating fires that swept through this hillside, destroyed all these homes. And this one guy was a fireman and he had a house that he worked his whole life to build. And, um, he, he built it himself and, you know, he didn't make a lot of money, but he saved up enough to buy this piece of land and literally build his own house over the course of several years by himself. And he was living in it and his house was spared, but his neighbors wasn't. And this guy was just weeping, just weeping, weeping for his neighborhood, for, you know, the idea of losing his own house and this whole thing. And I was watching this in the green room of a show that I was about to do. Oh my God.

And then I had to go on stage is where, before I realized you can't do that. Like I'd only been doing comedy a few years. I was, I was a rookie. And so, uh, I was doing this show with this guy,

JB smooth. I don't know if you know who he is. He was on, uh, ask, uh, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Hilarious,

hilarious comedian. And it was supposed to be, JB was supposed tob Your Enthusiasm. Hilarious, hilarious comedian. And it was supposed to be, JB was supposed to go up first, and then I was supposed to go up second, but JB got lost. It was a college in New Jersey, and it was in the middle of nowhere. It was really hard to find. I got there early, but I left way early and just got there early. So they told me to just sit in the green room and watch some TV and relax. No worries, we'll start the show whenever. And so I'm sitting there watching these people crying,

this girl calling for her dog. She's calling for a dog. You know, she's like, Rusty, Rusty, that fucking dog is dead. You know, it's dead. And you've got a camera on this girl while she's calling for this non-existent dog. It's a goddamn inferno. It looks like Satan came over the mountain with fucking flaming horses. It looks horrible. And they're focusing on this girl. They're sucking you in, showing you the humanity of the situation.

I'm fucking crying like a bitch. Oh my God. Crying like a bitch. And then I got to go on stage. That's, no, that's tough, man. That's tough. Like it's hard to, you know, gather your thoughts

after you see something traumatic like that. And it really like hits you. The first time I've only cried on camera twice. OK, so I just mentioned the George Stinney story. That was the recent incident. The first time I ever cried on camera was actually years ago. And we did a story about I think it was a natural disaster that happened somewhere. I don't remember.

I think it was a natural disaster that happened somewhere. I don't remember. But someone had died as a result of the natural disaster, and he got buried. And there was this photo of his dog just sitting and waiting by his grave. And I don't know, just understanding the loyalty of that dog. How does the dog know that he's there? Are you sure that someone didn't tell him to lie down right there? No, no, it was a real story. I don't know if the dog had, like... How does that dog know that he's there you sure that someone did tell him to lie down right no no it was a photo no it was a real story i don't know if the dog had like how's that dog no maybe the

family members went to the burial or whatever and the dog like realized it i have no idea but it was and it was it was reported by a very credible news organization so it wasn't like oh look this was posted on reddit and and it's real no it was i might believe reddit more yeah well it was like the associated press or reuters or something like that um the problem with those stories is they sound great and so there's no harm in them being bullshit yeah so you could just put it out there was a dog gonna fucking come and rat you out you know the dog's gonna be like yo this is bullshit dude they gave me a bone they told me to lie down there i don't know where that dude's buried.

Fuck, this is bullshit. The story's bullshit. So it's no risk. So they can just make shit up. Well, okay. So that's true. Yes. And you're right.

That's like a harmless made up story if it is made up. But the worst thing is when you have like credible news organizations or like a magazine like Rolling Stone doing a really, really terrible job with that UVA story. Do you know about that? Yes. Yes. That's unfortunate. That's unfortunate because, you know, it's very unfortunate when you release a story that has troubles

and that these troubles could have been investigated before, especially when it's on a very, very, very sensitive topic that everyone knows needs to be addressed. Everyone, I don't think there's a single person that doesn't believe that sexual assault isn't a problem. It's a huge problem. You haven't been online then. Yeah, but everybody, no, everybody must know. Everybody must know that it's possible.

Everybody must know that women can get sexually assaulted, right? Yeah. So whenever you know that that is true, it has happened, it's 100%, it's undeniable. If you have a situation where someone is accusing someone of covering something up, all I'm saying is, you've got to go over that bitch with a fine-tooth comb. You can't leave them with any evidence that points. Because not only is, if you fail to make a credible story that can't be backed up,

not only does it fail in that attempt, but it strengthens the resolve of the other people that think there's a lot of false rape accusers. 100%. That story did so much damage to those who actually are, and who knows, this Jackie girl might actually be a rape victim, but maybe she can't recall the specific events. I don't know. I don't know what her story is. I have no evidence. I don't even want to comment on that, right? But regardless, the misreporting and the misinformation that was portrayed in that Rolling Stone piece

does a disservice to the actual rape victims out there who are trying to get people to believe them, but people are denying that they went through something as terrible as rape. And look, it's funny. I teach a journalism course at Cal State Northridge, right? And Journalism Ethics 101 is that you get both sides of the story. That doesn't mean that you are neutral.

You should be objective, right? But don't be like, oh, this side says this, that side says that. Now you guys decide. I'm against that, right? But you still have to get both sides of the story. And then you as an investigative journalist need to go out there and seek the truth. And that didn't happen with the Rolling Stone piece. They agreed with Jackie that they would not corroborate her account of the events with anyone else. What kind of fucking journalism is that? That's crazy. I mean, that story actually really pissed me off because that did a lot of harm. How do you think that that kind of an agreement gets put into place where someone says, we won't corroborate the facts of the case, that we won't try to investigate it any further? Like, why would someone agree to that? It doesn't really make sense, right? I think maybe I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but maybe they understood that this is a sensitive story and here is a woman who is a

potential rape victim and they want to be very sensitive to her and so they kind of like walk on eggshells for her right but so that's like the best case scenario for rolling stone if that's what their intentions were the worst case scenario is if and I don't know if this is the case, but if you have a journalist who has her own biases and she uses those biases to justify only using one source for her story. I don't know which one of those two scenarios actually occurred, but nonetheless, the outcome was disastrous.

And it was, I mean, that came out um or the aftermath of that story came out when my class was winding down but if i get the you know honor of teaching that class again i'm going to bring up that case and i'm going to be like do not do this this is the most irresponsible type of journalism you can do it's it's super unfortunate too because it could be avoided yeah it could be avoided with due diligence and that's the one thing that people complain the most about like web sites. Like they don't really, they're not really under any supervision. Like they can do whatever they want. You have excellent ones and you have piss poor ones.

You have ones that report things that are just totally made up. I can't tell you how many times a week someone sends me something that's, it's not even a parody site. It's just a complete made-up site. There was a site where someone was sending me new species of hominid found. And they thought that they found dead leprechauns. There's a dude. He's sweeping.

He's using a paintbrush to sweep the side of a mountain. And there's a little dead leprechaun skeleton. I'm like, get the fuck out of here, dude. Did you really send me this? Are you an asshole? But that's the internet the internet's beautiful you can do whatever you want but you don't expect that from like rolling stone from rolling stone you expect you know it's god damn it that's where hunter s

thompson used to write you're supposed to have like the highest journalistic ethics ever you talk about important stories you have matt motherfucking taibbi i was about to mention i mean matt taibbi is amazing he's a monster he's a freaking muck he's the best yeah he is he's the best ever at that he's the best ever at that and he's brilliant to read too it's it's fun stuff like he's you know he's he's a he's a fucking he's a journalistic gangster is what he really is he really is i mean there are very few journalists out there that i look up to matt taibbi is certainly one of them. He's an animal. So yeah, I mean, I think that that Rolling Stone piece regarding UVA not only did damage to people that have been raped, but it also did damage to their own magazine. It did damage to the other

reporters out there who do the due diligence necessary to put out a responsible news report. I don't know. It was disheartening. I did not like that at all. I think people get super scared and sensitive when it's dealing with that subject, the subject of rape. It's such a dark subject. So when people are dealing with that, I think sometimes they just don't look at things as objectively as they could if they weren't like really locked into this like very kid gloves approach to this one subject i mean all subjects where this a victim are awful whether it's molestation whether it's violence whether it's any you know anything that happens like person to person human interactions it gets fucking sensitive as shit including sexual stuff like rape it's all like super sensitive but when when you're talking about a crime and a story,

there's this real fear of blaming the victim or this real fear of questioning the victim or the real fear of stepping. I mean, can you imagine the horror of being raped and then the horror of someone accusing you of lying about that rape when it actually has happened? Yeah. So it's very weighted because of that.

Rightly so. So everybody that approaches the subject of rape is like very, very kind and sensitive about it. But it seems like in this case, it's just a fuck up because you're talking about stuff that wouldn't be that hard to look up. Right. You could,

you could just, you know, and you don't even have to like do it with that person. You just start doing some work and find out, you know, who was in what fraternity and what, what social affairs were. I mean, they have to like keep logs of shit. I mean, Jackie described someone that she knew from years prior that doesn't even go to the

school. I mean, just simple little details from her story, you can corroborate without, let's say you don't want to talk to anyone who was one of the alleged, you know, rapists, because she was allegedly gang raped. Let's say you want to just check on the little facts like okay was there a party thrown by the fraternity on the date that jackie specified that's a very simple thing to check out they didn't do that yeah irresponsible to say the least it's just crazy that it's rolling stone yeah that's what's crazy it's just crazy. It seems that it's also everybody's like, there's so much content out there. I mean, there's so many different websites. There's so much competition.

I think people are maybe many times in a rush to get salacious stories out. Because anything that's very prominent and terrifying, like a gang rape. People who have daughters think about, oh my God, a gang rape. You know, people who have daughters think about, oh my God, a gang rape, what? Yeah. And it got away with it? And then there's also the issue of people that experience trauma, that they lose a lot of memory.

That's a fact. People have had traumatic experiences, the very impactful emotions and fear and self-loathing and all this shit that comes with traumatic experiences, a lot of times people black things out. Like, there's a lot of people who have PTSD for events that have happened in their life, and they, you know, really violent events especially,

they just block them out. Like, you know, I've talked to people that don't remember, like, big chunks of their life. Yeah. And it's people who've experienced some fucked up shit. Exactly, which is why it could have happened. It could have easily happened. What Jackie mentioned or told Rolling Stone could have happened.

But again, it's up to Rolling Stone to do its due diligence and make sure that everything that she is reporting to them is true. Yeah. There's a real issue of people just not being truthful and being crazy. You know, people like to make things up yeah there are there are a certain amount of people that for whatever reason they just will start talking and the words will come out and they're just talking about shit that actually never really happened and they're just making things up and i've met a bunch of them i'm sure you have too of course it's it's it's possible you can do it you can like lie and get pretty

fucking far in life. You can sneak through certain gates and climb over certain walls. Fake it till you make it. There's a lot of people that get away with doing that. So you never know when someone's telling a story about anything where it's a he said, she said story. You really never know until you look deeply into it what's going on. Exactly.

Whatever small percentage of false rape claims there are, I don't know what the percentage is. Like someone said it's like 2% or something of all rapes that people claim are false rape claims. It's just someone trying to get back at an ex-boyfriend or someone trying to fuck somebody over. But that's still 2 out of 100. You've got to look at those.

And even those numbers aren't reliable. You know, it's really difficult to study something like that. But yeah, I mean. And that's not victim blaming either. Okay. That's just being rational and logical. Yeah. That's all that is.

And this idea that you shouldn't look at things rationally or logical or you shouldn't want facts while still being kind. You know, you can still be kind while you want facts. You know, look, it's unfortunate. It's very unfortunate when you run into someone who has made up stories because you're like, oh, you poor bastard. You're just this crazy liar person. of stories of like teenage girls who have been raped right drugged and raped at these parties and then their rapists will take pictures of them as they're passed out naked no this is this is amazing there was a girl named jada this happened to her and we reported on her recently so her rapist took pictures of her as she was passed out and she had her leg bent in like a peculiar position and then they started like basically circulating that photo among their peers so all of a sudden a bunch of people started bullying her for getting raped and so they started like a hashtag called jada pose and they started posing

in pictures in the way that she was in that photo and just making fun of it like posting it on twitter and facebook and bullying the crap out of her this happened in houston and she what's amazing about this girl she was 16 when it happened she was resilient enough to not let it destroy her and so the mainstream press has a policy and i think it's a pretty good policy of um hiding the name or the true identity of a minor who's been sexually assaulted or raped or anything like that. And she came out and she's like, no, I don't want anyone to hide my image. I don't want anyone to hide my name.

I want to come out and speak out against it because a lot of teenagers go through the same thing that I've been going through and they commit suicide. Right. And so I think it's important to have a really serious discussion about why kids think that that kind of behavior is OK, because, look, in the school district that I went to, L.A. USD, we had comprehensive sex ed. Right. And in comprehensive sex ed, they talked about everything, including rape and sexual assault and molestation. And those were really uncomfortable conversations to have in middle school and high school. And those were really uncomfortable conversations to have in middle school and high school. But I felt like my peers had an understanding of how serious situations like that are and how you don't bully someone who's a rape victim. And since this happened in Houston, I'm wondering whether or not they had the exposure to the same type of education that we had. Right. Because if you understand the weight of sexual assault and rape, you wouldn't make fun of or bully the victim.

You see what I'm saying? So I don't know. I don't know. That's just my speculation. And that's like a hypothesis that I have. But I'm really curious to look into it, because how vicious is that to make fun of someone who's been raped? Children lack perspective. They don't have a lot of experience in life. And there's a lot of what being a child is, which is essentially a reflection of the people that are around you when you're growing up. And they're very young. You're talking about kids that are less than 18 years old. They all have pathways that have been beaten into their brain by either family or circumstance or being around the knuckleheads they're around and a lot of times they lack perspective and people are also they're also terrified and confused and everyone is i mean every fucking young kid that grows up that is a bully is probably just as scared if not more scared than the people they're bullying they're all terrified so they're doing a bunch of stupid shit you know that's like a big part of being a young person. And what the real issue is, is we shouldn't have young kids alone that much with each other because they get all Lord of the Flies.

Okay. They're supposed to, young kids should have parental supervision. And then when they get into their teenagers, they should still have a lot of real grown ass men around. Yeah. They go, hey, fuckerer like settle down like stop everyone what what are you guys doing like let me explain to you what's wrong about your behavior from someone who they trust like a real woman who is running the class is going to go everybody sit the fuck down like what do you think you're going to accomplish with this what do you what exactly do you think

you're going to accomplish by running through my fucking classroom and throwing pencils at each other and pulling hair? You guys are fucking crazy. Sit down. Yeah. And someone who talks to them like that where they go, oh, well, I respect Mrs. Johnson. She's totally shut the fuck up and sit down. But a teacher can't even say that. It can't even speak in the language that the kids use on a regular basis on their own because that's profane.

And sometimes it's the only way you can get their attention. Dude, that's why I love teaching at a university level, because at least you're able to have that type of freedom right like no one's sitting there telling you what type of language you can use or what can you swear in your class i swear in my class all the time your class is fitting to get packed right now no i love my class people i can sign up is there like what i have to do i take some tests and shit how do i get in this no tests i mean it's a broadcast um news class so i teach them how to put news packages together we do mock production meetings that are very similar to what you would have in like a real newsroom it's a fun class i love it it's very interactive um but i tell

them in the beginning like look i'm not much older than you guys. I'm 28. I cuss. I'm going to talk to you as if I'm your peer, but I'm not an easy professor. So don't take advantage of that. Like, I want to have a discussion. I want us to like understand each other. Like I have that whole spiel in the very beginning and I want them to open up, you know, I want them to trust me and I want them to respect me and have like a real conversation with me when I'm actually doing my lectures because there's nothing worse than having some monotone old fuddy-duddy come in and tell you like okay today we're going to talk about journalistic ethics they're not going to pay attention to that I've had those professors yeah especially when you use the word fuddy-duddy that just nailed it yeah just knowing what a fuddy-duddy is.

Yeah, I mean, people definitely would rather communicate with somebody who they feel like is a regular person. And, you know, university level, of course, you could do that. But with kids, like, my God. You know, like, leaving them alone to be mean to each other, these 13- to 14-year-olds. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody fucking settle down. Like, you guys don't even know what you're doing here are you being mean to this little girl because somebody

drugged her and fucked her do you know how crazy that is like you girls out of your mind and also kids get wrapped up in

rivalries to the point where they want each other dead like 14 year old kids will fight to the death like they literally

have this idea that fucking bitch I want her dead and they fucking get out of school and hit each other with their purses and pull hair and dudes will like teenage boys are some of the

most dangerous people you ever run into because they're physically they start they're starting to get their testosterone they're starting to get strong they and they've only been doing they've only been strong for a very short amount of time like an 18 year old boy has essentially only been man strong for like two years right So he has this new thing. Between 16 and 18, I might be able to fuck this dude up. They have this weird thing about them that they have to manage. Yeah. And if they do that without any guidance, if they do that with any supervision,

if they definitely do that without any tests, trials, and tribulations, if they just don't ever get to express that violent chimpanzee echo that's ringing around inside our atoms. If they don't express that, they won't be able to control it. It'll spin out into the trees. They won't know what the fuck they're doing. I mean, this is part of the reason why growing up, my mom never let me go to sleepovers or camp or anything like that. I'm sure like...

That and gay shit, probably. Well, the prevalence of like sexual assault among what do you mean gay shit girls get together camps oh yeah i mean i i waited until i was like in my 20s to get into that kind of stuff but um but yeah like i think my mom understood the kind of things that happen when a bunch of teenagers get together and so she was like nope you're not going anywhere yeah when i was i went to boy scout camp and they fucking tied this kid up and put toothpaste all over his clothes. They took him, they tied him like to his cot and they carried the cot into the woods.

And we were in New Hampshire and it was in the middle of fucking nowhere. There was no light outside. Like I had never been to a place where it was dark out because there was no moon that night. You couldn't fucking see your hand. Oh my God. Like you're trying to see your hand and you can't see your fucking hand like there was no light none and they put this dude they fucking they brought him out into the woods and left him there this guy's

screaming this isn't funny guys this isn't funny and uh they woke me up one of them grabbed me and i jumped up like fuck you dude you're not taking out there. I'm not going to that fucking woods. Oh, my God. When they put toothpaste in your clothes, it's very hard to get toothpaste off your clothes. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. You got to really scrub it, that shit.

It doesn't just come off. So you can't just put it in the washing machine and it's gone? Well, you know, we're in the woods, too. Oh, okay. They're washing clothes with, like, literally washboards. That's hilarious. You know, it was a camp. We had archery and shit.

There was guns. They gave these little fucking psychos guns. I was in the archery range, and I heard, I go, what the fuck is that? A guy goes, a ricochet. I go, a fucking ricochet just came near us? That's amazing. Why is someone shooting?

Somebody probably hit a rock, probably an accident. Like, fuck. Little inner city fucking creepers going to Boy Scout camp. Little animals, man. This is just making me not want to have kids. I went once. I'm like, I'm good. I was there for two weeks. Oh, my. This is just making me not want to have kids. I went once. I'm like, I'm good. I was there for two weeks.

Oh, my God. I miss my parents so bad. Couldn't wait to get home. I was like. How old were you? I'm such a bitch. I was probably. It was under 14.

So it was probably either 13 or 12. Oh, and you missed your parents. 12 or 13. Oh, fuck. Yeah. It's adorable. Animals. Little savages I'm out here

going to Boy Scouts with. Plus, you know, 13 or whatever the hell I was, like, that's fucking young. Yeah. You know,

you're out there in the woods with a bunch of fucking crazy dudes you don't even know. Like, whoa. Yeah. That's not good. And there's older kids too.

Like, some of the kids are like 15, 16, 17. And a 17-year-old kid and a 14-year-old kid should never be unsupervised. Yeah. Especially if a 17-year-old kid and a 14-year-old kid should never be unsupervised. Yeah.

Especially if the 17-year-old kid's a creep. Because they'll just decide that the 14-year-old has to do shit. You know, and then force them to do it and beat their ass. Because finally they get to tell other people what to do. Like for 17 years, their parents have probably been telling them what to do. And if they grow up in an abusive household, you know, like so many bullies that I met when I was a kid, it turned out like when you went to their house, you realize, oh, this guy gets bullied at home.

And then he goes and bullies people at school. Yeah, of course. I think parenting has a lot to do with it. The way that people are raised has a lot to do with it. I had a friend who used to get in fist fights with his dad. Fist fights. And this fucking guy, I won't say his name, because he's a good dude. He's not a bad guy. I grew up with it. I had a friend who used to get in fist fights with his dad. Fist fights. And he would, this fucking guy, I won't say his name, because he's a good dude.

He's not a bad guy. I grew up with him. And he would fight anybody. Me and my friend Jimmy would go with this guy and we would, he goes, that's it, we're fighting tonight. And I'm like, we're fighting tonight? We're fucking fighting. And he would just find somebody, like, come on, motherfucker. And just find a guy and start a fight with him. And I've never met anybody like this. This guy just would, just literally for motherfucker. And just find a guy and start a fight with him. And I've never met anybody like this.

This guy just would just literally for no reason go find a person and go, come on, motherfucker, we're fighting. And he would talk about it like he had a good one, too. He had a good left, right. It was like he wasn't really a very good fighter. He's half decent. So it wasn't like he was even winning these fights. Like a lot of times he would get in fights and get his ass kicked. But he had a pretty decent one, too. But this fucking guy would just start fights and then i went to his house

and then i got became friends with him he was friends with my friend steve and when i became friends we we hung around and i realized like oh this guy got fucking abused like he got beat up all the time like he was he would get in like fistfights with his dad when he was young you know like young you know his dad would punch him you know it was like scary shit so when you when you meet like the monster behind the curtain you go oh this isn't so cute anymore yeah this isn't so funny now i know why this guy's doing this he's he's an asshole because he's getting bullied because like when i became friends like we never had a fight we never even had an argument we were really friendly with each other and for whatever reason it was like he just

would find people that he wanted to fight and it was just and I couldn't understand that I was like why would anybody want to do that until I realized like oh this dude's like fighting his dad all the time he's probably fighting his dad every day damn yeah that's some crazy shit I don't know shit roll the dice is what it is it really is i mean i think about every once in a while i get kind of down about certain things like ah am i fulfilled at work am i happy like oh i could be doing better and then i think about white people problem 100 right like i've been giving i haven't been giving christian a hard time but like

every once in a while i'll come home and I'm like in a bad mood. He's like, what's wrong? And my, my problems are such bullshit problems. You know what I mean? I have great parents. I was able to get a good education with no debt. Like I have a job that I love. Like I have friends that I love.

Everything's great. So like when I try to put things in perspective and stories like that really do put things in perspective for me, people who don't have like a home to go to people who don't have good parents, like there's a lot of pain and suffering out there. You know, I remember, um, I don't think I told you about this,

but, um, we had gone to San Diego and I tried, um, mushrooms and for the first time. And, uh, it's like a good, it's a good way of kind of like

putting things into perspective right because i felt euphoric everything was great i had a really really good experience with it but there was one point when we were like walking down the street and there was this one elderly homeless man just walking he's like stumbling like he can barely walk right and like that hit me really hard like this man has such a bad life like he's out on the streets he's elderly he's older than my dad you know and I think about my dad and he's like getting up there and like you know I his body's kind of starting to break down a little bit and I'm like man this guy I mean he has no family he has no one looking out for him he's out here on the streets and like I don't know like it really really hit me and it put everything in my life in perspective like how freaking lucky I am yeah

it's interesting isn't it funny it's it's kind of says something about people that it's very in very poor taste to make fun of poor people unless they're so poor they don't have a home and then they're open targets yeah you know what i'm saying like as far as the way people mock people like people will mock homeless people like it's a really common thing to talk about homeless people on stage but if you talked about really yeah yeah yeah jokes about homeless people are very common because homeless people are a lot of times are crazy. It's not their fault. One of the reasons why a lot of these people are homeless is because they have mental illness. And they're undiagnosed or they don't have money for prescriptions or they lost their job.

Sometimes they are diagnosed. But if you're a paranoid schizophrenic, like my friend's a social worker and she has this one client. He's this really young, attractive guy in his 20s, right? And he recently got diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and he is in such denial about his condition that he will not get any help. And now he's homeless. He's living in a car.

It's a devastating story. And it's like he has the resources, his family has the resources to help him. He doesn't want the help. So what do you do with situations like that? He's out on the streets. There's not much you can do. And that's the reality of mental illness. And's it's it's a weird thing where like you can't make

fun no one would make fun of really poor people like haha they're poor but you know you could be like ah this fucking idiot sleeps under a tree you know look at you you're sleeping bag in the fucking park you dipshit you don't even have a house really like it could be a point of mockery like people would walk by them and even tell them to fuck off whereas like you would never do that in a poor neighborhood it's kind of strange it's like if you reach poverty to the point of where you don't even have a roof over your head you're fair game it's weird right yeah we have our own way of demonizing poor neighborhoods though we demonize them by allowing police brutality in those areas and justifying it by saying,

well, it's a poor area with a lot of crime, so of course a cop can shoot an unarmed person and not pay any consequences for it. What is your take? And I was really interested to talk to you about this. First of all, on the amount of police brutality cases that are happening, is it just because people are reporting them now?

Is it because people are recording them now? Or am I just really only paying attention to what gets broadcast and the same things are always happening? Yeah. I think that this is probably something that's been going on for quite some time. But now, since we have access to surveillance, since people are using their smartphones, since communities are starting to like really be on edge in regard to the excessive force, now we're seeing a lot more coverage about it. And I think that there's now a tipping point. And I don't know if it's going to lead

to a new civil rights movement or what the outcome will be. But regardless of what you think about Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin or any of these other high profile cases, I think it's hard to believe that anyone would watch a video of Eric Garner in New York City pleading with the cops who have put him in a headlock to let him go because he can't breathe. Right. And then the cop who kills him doesn't have to deal with any consequences for killing him after putting him in an unlawful headlock. It's against the law as a cop in New York to put someone in a headlock like that. But it didn't matter. He did it. Eric Gardner dies. And I don't know, every time I watch that video, I'm like, God, just let him go. Let him go. You know the outcome, but you keep telling yourself, let him go. Let him go. Come on. He can't breathe. He's telling you he can't breathe, but they didn't fucking let him go and he's dead. How is that okay? How is that kind of excessive force okay? And if that's not enough to convince you, keep in mind that the cops harassed him because

he was selling untaxed cigarettes, loose cigarettes. Are you fucking kidding me? You're in New York. We're talking about Wall Street robbing the american people destroying the economy never paying any fucking consequences for it and now you're gonna go after this man because he's selling loose cigarettes it's ridiculous yeah that that case was really disturbing to me because that guy didn't have any cigarettes on him he didn't have anything on him like you know there's no reason he broke up a fight cops were called because he fucking broke up a fight. Like that story enrages me.

It really does. Because even with all of that evidence of the police wrongdoing, grand jury verdict says, no, we're not going to indict the cop. And then you have people that defend that grand jury verdict. How do you watch that video and defend it? Did you actually watch the video? Did you look into the story? Or did you just decide, oh, yeah, it's a poor black guy.

You know, black guys are always trouble. So fuck it. He died. Who cares? Well, people have this real problem when it comes to issues like this, where they either go all the way to the right, or they go all the way to the left. And the reality of that situation is that there was no evidence. This guy didn't do anything wrong. He was standing there. Had he been arrested before? Yeah. But so what? What are you saying? that because a guy's been arrested before you're allowed to just fuck with him forever and if he's selling loose cigarettes that's it that's what you're worried about like you're not talking about a guy who's selling slaves or a guy who's stealing cars you're talking about a guy who's just avoiding a cigarette tax i mean it's so bizarre amazing it's so bizarre the

amount of money you're talking about is so goddamn minuscule and unimportant in a city of fucking trillions of dollars are flowing in and out of it daily and you're getting this kind of headlock he was selling cigarettes for 50 cents a piece or something like something so i mean but when they started grabbing him like they didn't need to grab him he wasn't doing anything he wasn't going anywhere he wasn't running away nope they're just grabbing him and when he was saying like this this ends today like y'all always fucking with me this ends today and they're like he's just looking at this like what this is so pointless like shouldn't cops should be worried about the most important shit first did you solve all the murders did you

find all the stolen cars do you did you solve all the burglaries okay let's stop fucking with the cigarette dude and let's just think about that shit. Like, there's only how many people that are cops? Yeah. What's the number? There's got to be more crimes than cops. It's the only thing that makes sense. So why the fuck would you concentrate on this shit?

There's like, how many of you guys? Four or five? You know, I know they came because of a fight, you know, but what do you think? They just wanted an extra collar because they got there and decided to arrest this guy? I don't know. That was one of the more disturbing stories that we covered.

Because a case like Trayvon Martin, you know, you don't have surveillance. A case like Michael Brown, you don't have video. So it's, I can understand, even though I don't agree with them, I can understand the doubters, right? But with a case like Eric Garner, the proof is in the pudding. It's right in front of you. You have the video footage and still there were no consequences for the cops. And so, you know, when you have police departments and police unions criticizing NFL players for protesting some of these grand jury verdicts or protesting some of the actions of these police officers.

I mean, you got to wonder like what planet they're on. Like you guys got away with murder okay let it go if people want to protest it let it go the worst thing you can do is win and then go out of your way and tell people that you're offended because they're upset that you won yeah what do you know the law in terms of what kind of uh like the way you're allowed to grab someone's neck like no I don't know specifically but I know that that headlock was unlawful, which is why I don't understand why there wasn't a grand jury verdict. Because here's the reality.

What he's doing definitely is a chokehold. His hands are together. And his hands are together in some of the pictures. In some of the pictures, he's doing this, where his hands are together. Technically, it's still a choke hold if you're using one hand but there's not nearly the same amount of leverage as when you're using two hands when you use two like this is the real like what they call a rear naked choke that's what puts you to sleep really quickly but you can still put a guy to sleep like this you can put a guy to sleep with a lot of

different ways to grab your hands once you're grabbing your hands so if he's grabbing his hands it's a choke hold but even if it's a choke hold. But even if it's a choke hold, he might not necessarily be choking him. He might be just holding him. And the only one who knows that really is that guy, the guy who did it. Or people who are watching. Because you either see him really squeezing down the neck or he's holding on, he's got the head in here and he's trapping it, but he's not putting any pressure on the neck both of them are possible but the breathing thing most likely had to do with this guy being diabetic and have a lot of health issues you know the choking thing you know you you can cut a guy's air off you know when you're choking him and it is possible because he had his arm around his neck

that was happening but it all could also could have been possible the guy was just freaking the fuck out. These guys were on top of him and he's having a heart attack. And either way, it was caused by these guys fucking with him. So even if their intention was not to choke this guy out,

even if they grabbed him by the neck, what you did killed the guy, like for no fucking reason. Here's what you should do when someone tells you, I can't breathe. Let off him. Get off of him. But you can't do that with psychos right you can't let psychos play you say if you if you

if you're a cop in new york city and you got some guy who's like a you know some football player that's running amok and you you handcuff him you finally drag him to the ground i can't breathe i can't breathe you let him up but he fucking head butts you and runs through the casino you know what i mean like that can happen like you can't really listen to everybody that says, I can't breathe. Right, but look, I have no doubt in my mind that the cops in that incident knew that Eric Garner is not a psycho. Okay?

Maybe that's why they were willing to engage with him physically. Even though he's a big, giant dude, they knew he was a teddy bear. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Like, they knew they could get away with it. Did you notice in the beginning of the video, the cop who put him in the chokehold, like waited for backup before he attacked Eric Garner.

So it was like, he had it in the back of his mind. Like, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to do what I'm going to do. I'm just going to make, wait and make sure that I have backup for it.

It's just such a sick video. I mean, for all the listeners who haven't seen it, please, please take a look at it because I, it just doesn't make any sense because I think that there's a lot of people that join the police force that have great intentions definitely and i think that when when when you get into situations where people have what is really pretty basically ultimate power over other people it

becomes fucking tricky as hell because people like to abuse power they do they get into that sort of a position and they just take advantage of it and they do things that they can justify but aren't morally right. Yeah. And this is one of them. It's like this is not serving or protecting. Are you guys the bodyguard of the tax collectors? Is that what the fuck you're doing? Are we professional leg breakers who are paid for by the citizens of the United States?

No, you guys are cops. In the best sense of the word, you're loyal and fantastic and a great asset to the community and a very important aspect of the community when it comes to keeping peace and, you know, and promoting like a sense of protection. same police force that killed Eric Garner for selling untaxed cigarettes was also the same NYPD that went after Occupy protesters that were protesting against what Wall Street did to our economy. How many people were there though? How many people were involved in the Occupy Wall Street thing? Did they just send the cops out there and just have them start arresting kids? What I found really interesting is JPMorgan Chase had donated a huge amount of money. Millions, right? Millions of dollars to the NYPD

as the Occupy protests started to get really fired up. And so, look, money talks, right? Wall Street bankers and the people that did what they did to our economy in 2008 have money in power. 4.6. 4.6 million? Yes. That's so blatant.

If you have that kind of money, then you buy the police force. They're going to look out for you. Okay, so when do cops really care about taxes? Yeah. They care about taxes when the powerless aren't paying their taxes. How rude is that, though? 4.6 million? That is so goddamn blatant.

I mean, it is. I remember when it happened, I was like, really? 4.6 million? That is so goddamn blatant. I mean, it is. I remember when it happened, I was like, really? You guys are so transparent. I mean, I got to respect the fact that you guys are that transparent about it, right? Yeah, I respect that. That's gangster as fuck. They just laid out a 4.6 million dollar check. Listen, I would like to roll my bends into the garage in peace, sir.

We got a big fat cigar while he's talking to you. Yeah. I think we can work something out. You guys need new helmets or some shit? It's the world we live in, man. $4.6 million is like, that's like saying, you know, look, we have so much fucking money. Yeah. That these hippies, I'm willing to pay $4.6 million if you just clean this bitch up.

And they did? Is it done? If you go by there, is there anybody? What was the square? Do you know what the square was? Zuccotti Park? Zuccotti Park.

That's what it is. Is there anybody there anymore? I don't know if there are Occupy protesters there now, but I mean, I think it's safe to say at this point that the Occupy movement

has died down considerably. Which sucks because, I mean, I was very supportive of it i was behind it i really wanted to keep it alive at the same time that the banks were doing what they could to shut it down you also had the mainstream media which is bought by corporations also doing its best to discredit it belittle it and so you have like people watching the news thinking like oh cnn and and fox news like this is you know this is a

reliable news source thinking that these occupied protesters are all these crazy druggies that are living on the streets and they're causing riots and they're looting and this and i mean kind of similar to what happened with ferguson protesters all of them were painted as looters in the mainstream press when the reality is you have a few crazy people that might co-opt something right that might cause some trouble but that's not indicative of all the protesters you know that's not something that you're going to see with all of them it's just like a tiny fringe that might be causing some trouble but it's interesting that the mainstream press will focus on those as opposed to the people who actually have an important message

that they're trying to get out i think they just focus on what they think people are going to watch they're going to watch this they're blocking off the highway which is by the way you you guys who are protesting the police i get what you're doing it's very noble there's a lot of like a lot of people with a lot of really good ideas and a lot of really positive energy and they they really want to make some change but i just think there's a lot of like a lot of people with a lot of really good ideas and a lot of really positive energy and they they really want to make some change but i just think there's a lot of real problems in blocking off the highway and one of them is medical care people that are sick or people that are injured for loved ones to lose loved ones because the highways were blocked off the ambulances couldn't get through it would be so horrific and tragic, compounding an already horrific and tragic situation.

And I don't think it's necessary. I think there's got to be a way where you can allow traffic where regular folks who probably most of them agree that police violence is out of hand. You shouldn't be just blocking off highways because you can run into situations where you cost people their lives and you cost loved ones you loved ones are in horrific grief because this person didn't get to the doctor in time and bled out because the fucking highway was completely shut down because some white kids wanted to show how down they were that they were going to get arrested and put zip ties on me bitch i'm going to fucking snap this. I'm going to Instagram these pictures from the back

of this paddy wagon. I'm so down. I'm so down. We're going to block off the highway. Fuck capitalism. You know, there's a lot of like strong wills and good intentions and people that really want the world to be better than it is today. That's the motivation behind it all. Yeah. But it is very problematic when you do things like stop fellow citizens from getting places and using traffic systems and using, that just gets weird, man. You don't know what you're fucking up. And if you did, you would fucking hate yourself. You can't, and you can't blame it on anybody else. You can't blame it on the cops. You can't blame it on Ferguson. you can't blame it on anybody else. You can't blame

it on the cops. You can't blame it on Ferguson. You can't blame it on the president. If you are blocking the highway and someone dies because of that, you have to blame yourself. You don't need it in your life. There's other ways to protest. Yeah. No, I agree with you about blocking roadways, but there also is a very delicate balance because the reality is protests and political activism is not meant to be convenient. And when it is convenient, then you don't get heard. So sometimes you do have to stir the pot. Sometimes there needs to be civil disobedience. Absolutely. Do you think there's a way to do it without blocking the highway? Definitely. I'm sure there is.

What about the city hall? Sorry to interrupt you, but what about their city hall? Why don't they just swarm that? I'm sure that they did, but I don't know if that's enough, really. Look, nothing bothers people in authority more than having protesters that are causing a ruckus. And by ruckus, I don't mean breaking into innocent businesses and looting and doing crazy shit like that. But there needs to be civil disobedience, right? A protest, like the way that protests are supposed to go down legally is ridiculous. Like you got to get the right permits for it and you got to be in the protest zone.

But like, yeah, let's put all the protesters in a corner and ignore them as they're holding their signs. No, protests are supposed to be inconvenient. They're supposed to get people's attention. It's supposed to fire people up. What about this idea? What about going to City Hall and having so many people show up that you block the entrances to all the buildings? I mean, I'm... You don't let anybody in.

You just say, look, you guys are broken. This thing's broken. We're not letting you in. Get the fuck out of here. And so everybody locks hands. So if you want to get arrested for blocking the highway, how about you block the real issue, the real problem, the real source of government?

And if you did that, I might be like terrorist act of suggesting this. I should probably say, don't do this. I mean, everything's considered a terrorist act. Whatever I'm saying. Don't listen. I know. I'm the fear factor host. I'm not to be taken seriously. Don't do that. Don't block City Hall.

But don't block the fucking highway. I mean, there's got to be a way. I'm sure there is. And I'm not good at organizing these types of events. But I think you do make a really good point about blocking roadways and things like that. There was a question I wanted to ask you, though. I'm really curious if you've ever had to deal with any type of police brutality as a dude. No.

No. Fortunately, no. I've seen it. I've seen cops beat the fuck out of people. Really? Yeah, yeah. I've seen. But, you know, a lot of times it's drunk assholes.

The cops are, you know, having to protect themselves. I've seen that, too. You know, I've known a lot of police officers over the course of my life because my dad was a cop. And then growing up doing martial arts, I knew a lot of dudes that were cops. Like from the time I was 14, 15 years old, I was around cops all the time. And so I'm just, you know, for the most part, I don't look dangerous. I don't look like a suspect. And now to this day, now it's easy because most of them are UFC fans. Like cops want to learn how to defend

themselves. So I usually just talk to them and everything's cool. I'm respectful. But when I was a kid, I wasn't the one that you had to worry about. Not a big black guy. You know, I'm a little white guy. So it's like, if I was polite, no, sir, give him my license, registration. I never had a problem. But people in the worst situation can react in the worst way, and that includes cops. I mean, you don't know what the fuck that cop had to do before he got to you that day. He could have been in some sort of crazy situation where someone's trying to run him over with a car, and he pulls a meth hat off an old lady or just ultimate chaos. He could have gone to a domestic violence situation where he saw somebody get shot.

By the time a cop gets to you, who the fuck knows what he saw right before you or just in the years before you. So they could be really high strung. And I think that some people don't recognize that. And I also think that the idea of being a cop is probably ridiculous. And almost no one's qualified to do it for a long time. Because I think the amount of stress that they see or they experience and the amount of violence that they see is almost, you know, in a lot of ways it's crazier than being a soldier.

Because some of these guys are putting in 25 years. I know. I can't imagine it. I really can't. Some of them are seeing all kinds of crazy shit for year after year after year. It's like that becomes their reality. It changes like who they are. I've never, I mean, I've never seen a dead body in my life, but cops see that kind of stuff on a regular basis. So I don't want to discredit cops out there that are doing good work. And I

know they exist, but I think it's also important for them to speak out against the police brutality that they see. I think a lot of the reason why people are kind of opposed to police in general is because the good cops are usually very reluctant to speak out against the bad cops. And they protect one another. And so I think it's important for the good cops to speak out against them because the bad cops are the ones that are really you know muddying the waters and um tainting the entire police force you're you're right and i think there's a really accurate representation of what a bad cop really is when you just look at anonymous posters on the internet i think that and you get a number of people i don't know how many cops there are that are professional police officers today in the united States of America, but just whatever that number is, if 2% of them are fucking douchebags, which is really likely, when you take 100 regular people, just 100, the odds of you having two is pretty good. It's probably 70, 80%.

The odds of you having one douchebag out of 100 people is 100%. So it's at least 1% douchebag in every 100, unless you're in like Boulder or something where people are just super sweet. Unless you're in some weird place, you're going to have like one out of 100 people that are douchebags. That's going to be the case with police officers as well. So if you look at internet comments, like especially like how many people tell you to sit on their face and shit like that, look at all the assholes that are out there. But then compare it to the amount of people that are out there. You're dealing with some insanely incomprehensible number of people that are online right now.

It's hundreds of millions just in this country just throwing information back and forth and the shitty stuff gets through the net and it hits you and you're like, people fucking suck. No, most people are awesome. The vast majority of people are awesome. The vast majority of people are great. The vast majority. But it's just like 1% or 2% that sneak through that fuck the whole thing sideways. Yeah, definitely.

There's no question about that. That happens with cops too. I think cops are representative of the general public as a whole and if you if you looked at only the shitty web comments and ignored all the people that are like posted in Facebook posts on each other's walls you look so awesome I'm so psyched for you you guys are the shit I love you to death all that positive shit that people do back and forth with each other that's like that counts too we don't focus on that we're always focusing on these assholes open letter to you know these shithuds to write angry things and you fucking got fat this season huh you know this assholes assholes yeah you're

right gonna have assholes you're right i mean when i think about like my instagram page for instance oh good right like i get i get a lot of love on instagram like i very rarely will get like a terrible comment on there and and i i love people who follow me on Instagram. They're super sweet, super nice, really respectful. Every once in a while I have to block someone, but it's not, it's very rare. So yeah, I think I should focus on that as opposed to like the crazy ass people that write terrible things on YouTube. Well, it's just the sheer numbers. Yeah, true.

We get caught up in a few variables, a few people that sneak through the net. And I think with cops, we've already established it's an insanely difficult job. It's really hard for people to process all the stress. It's not something the average person experiences. And it's also, therefore, not something the average person can commiserate with or understand or even conceptualize. You're not seeing people shot all the time like you've never seen a body and you're talking to a guy who works in the fucking gang unit like jesus christ yep you know you're you're dealing with two completely

different realities yeah and i think there's that and then there's also the two percent thing like you get a hundred people you know there's more than a hundred cops one of them's a cunt all right he's just he's an asshole there's no it 100 cops. One of them's a cunt, alright? He's an asshole. It doesn't mean that all cops are like that. Right. And the other problem is, when you're around cunts and you've got this fucking code of silence and, you know, even if it's one cunt out of 100, if he's get away with some shit,

you want to get away with some shit too. You're all brotherhood and the fucking badge. Yeah. And that's where bad cops come from. Definitely. That's where all that a lot of them have good intentions when they get involved and then they slowly but surely get corrupted. Yeah. I think it's a culture problem within police enforcement and it needs to be addressed. And one way that you can address it is ensuring that prosecutors and district attorneys and other people that are in the justice system aren't in bed with cops. So when they do do something wrong, you know, there are

proper consequences, you know, are proper consequences you know in response to what they've done um but it's interesting because i never thought for a million years that i would ever experience like a bad cop you know because i'm not the demographic that usually deals with crooked cops right i'm you know a white girl you know who is driving a nice car and i am very agreeable very nice with cops whenever they pull me over i think you're a white girl but if you were trying to date some dude who's a white dude in wisconsin and you can't and she's armenia interesting that's true that's true i'm not yeah i'm not like barely a white girl You're in some weird category. But it was funny, like a few weeks ago.

Really? I mean, it's not a bad thing. I love Armenians. Armenians are fiery people. I love Armenian fighters are some of the most exciting fighters to watch. Super aggressive. I believe it. Carl Parisian, Manny Gambirian, some of the most fun guys to watch.

Animals. Yeah, they really are. Yeah, Gegard Mousasi is another Armenian. There's a lot of top fighters that are Armenian. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Okay. They're a good percentage. That's good to know.

I didn't know that. Yeah, there's quite a few of them. Quite a few of them. They're known for kickboxers, too. A lot of good Armenian kickboxers. That's cool. I like that. I'm going to an Armenian Sweet 16 right after this.

So I'm looking forward to that. We're going to eat a ton of food. Don't put on the gloves i won't i won't bitches can throw i won't mess with them um but yeah like i got pulled over by a cop a few weeks ago because i did something wrong i made an illegal u-turn and i knew like i remember right before i did it i had two of my colleagues in the in the car with me right before no three of them right before i did it i looked around and i was like is there a cop is there a cop nope i'm gonna do it so i start doing the u-turn and a cop turns the corner and i was like damn it okay whatever i'm gonna get a ticket it's fine i deserve it right and

i'm not combative or anything pulls me over before he says do you know why i pulled you over right which is what they usually say when they believe me i've gotten a lot of tickets first thing he says to me is why are you laughing and i wasn't i wasn't laughing i'm about to get a ticket right and i don't want to get a ticket i just tinted my windows illegally i'm probably gonna get a ticket for that this is on the internet everything's gonna be fine. And so I'm not laughing, right? And so I look at him. I'm like, I'm sorry, officer. I'm not laughing.

If it seems as though I have any type of amused look on my face, it might be because I just did something really stupid, and I can't believe I did something stupid, and I really apologize. He's like, I can give you four tickets right now. I'm going to give you four tickets. And I was like, okay. He's like, do can give you four tickets right now. I'm going to give you four tickets. And I was like, okay. He's like, yeah. He's like, yeah.

He's like, do you deserve four tickets? And I was like, if I did four things wrong, then I guess I deserve four tickets. I was just being so agreeable with him, right? I'm like, I'm sorry, officer. I apologized to him like 50,000 times. And then, you know, he just like stood there and yelled at me. And then finally, oh, and then it was, you know, I like stood there and yelled at me and then finally oh and then it was you know i had just gotten the car so i hadn't gotten my license plates yet and he's like where

are your license plates and i was like it's a new car i haven't gotten before i could even finish the sentence he's like i don't care like he was just really mean and i was like oh do this guy is like roided up i don't know what his issue is. He's pissed. Right. But I'm just going to keep agreeing with him and let it go. The story gets better. That's just the beginning. So then he goes back to his car and gets his little citation booklet thing. And he I don't know what he looks up. Maybe he looks up my identity or whatever. And then all of a sudden I hear him say something and I couldn't hear him because it's kind of a busy road. And so I look at my my co-workers and I'm like, did he say something to me? They're like, we don't know. We didn't hear him. Right. They were like spooked out because this guy was being such a dick. And then he said something again and I still couldn't hear him. So I like poked my head out the

window and I was like, I'm sorry, officer, I couldn't hear you. Can you please repeat that? And then he was like, I need you to step out of the vehicle and i don't know what it was about him saying that but i immediately freaked out okay and so like i start tearing up and i'm trying to hold it back and i'm like why does he want me to get out of the car is he going to search it there was nothing in the car but i'm like you're not allowed to just search your car they have to ask you for permission or have some sort of a warrant and also he needs probable cause to have me to have me step out of the car there was no reason for him to have me step out of the car that alone was not a lawful request but anyway i stepped out of the car i went by him and then i realized very quickly that this cop is a fucking pervert okay and so as i'm crying

he's getting a rise out of this and he starts asking me like a bunch of questions like, why were you using your phone when you were driving? And I was like, my phone was in my purse and my purse was in the backseat. I wasn't using the phone. He's like, how often do you use the phone when you're driving? I was like, never. And I was like, I would never do that. I know that I made the U-turn. I deserve the U-turn ticket.

Please give it to me. And I'm going to go to. He's like, where were you going? And I was like, I was just trying to go back to work. And he's like, he was like, when was the last time you deserved a ticket? And I was like, what the fuck? Where's this guy going with this? Right. And then finally he was like, where do you work? And I was very close to work. So I pointed down the street where our offices are. And then he was like, he was like, what do you do for work? Oh, no. Yeah. He's like, what do you do for work? And I was like, oh, I'm a reporter. Right. I don't want to get into the details. Like, I'm actually an internet commentator. Like, what? I just said reporter. And then he was like, he's like, oh, there's a newspaper company down the street. He was like an older cop. I don't know. And I was like, no, I work for a show called The Young Turks. It's an online news show. It's the largest online news show in the world. You had to tell him it was the largest? You gave him the fucking stats?

No, I mean, I got to keep it real. He's got to know what he's, you know. You got to give him the stats. And then he asks me, what are you going to report on this little incident today? Oh, God. And then I was like, nothing. i don't report on my personal life and then he slowly closes his citation book and he's and then he says are you upset or no he's like are you disappointed he used the word disappointed are you disappointed that i'm letting you off with a warning and i didn't know what to say like do i tell him yes because i

deserve a ticket please give me a ticket officer or do I tell him yes, because I deserve a ticket. Please give me a ticket officer. Or do I tell him no, I'm not disappointed. I'm actually fucking stoked because I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for this ticket. So at first I didn't say anything at all. I'm just standing there looking pathetic and I'm crying. I'm literally crying at this point. Right. And then he was like, did you hear me? He's like, are you disappointed that I'm letting you off with a warning? And I was like, no, I'm not disappointed. And then he's like, I hope you have a better day. And then that was it. It was the creepiest interaction I've had with a cop. Do you think you cry easy? No, I used to, but I don't think I cry easy anymore. And I wasn't crying until he told me to step out of the car.

That's a weird request. Yeah. That's a power move for sure. I mean, you're not a threat. You didn't do anything dangerous. You're not involved in criminal activity. I told him I deserved the ticket. I gave him my license, my registration.

I did nothing wrong. There was no reason for him to have me step out of the car. None. Well, that's the power trip part that everybody hates about cops. Yeah. You will run into people like that every now and again. They have so much power. cases like that i will cave into authority right i like to question authority but in a situation like that i'm not questioning authority i'm doing exactly what he wants me to do i'm doing i feel powerless right so now that i think about it in retrospect i get angry because i wish i would have handled it differently i wish i would have gotten his badge number i wish i would have gotten

his name i wish i would have been able to do a report on it on our show and actually be like hey this is a cop from culver city and this is what he did right but i didn't think about it in the moment because i was so scared and i felt so powerless i don't know it was a crazy experience okay so here's why that's disturbing it's disturbing because you're this very powerful, intelligent, outspoken person. You speak regularly online to untold millions of people worldwide in these videos. And yet in this one interaction, you were so taken aback by this cop and so scared that you were crying. And you, you didn't get this guy's badge number. You didn't get this guy's badge number you didn't get this guy's

number you who has the recourse you who has the the vehicle for delivering this information all over the world and exposing this real thing that you went through you didn't so now imagine a girl who's insecure a girl who is terrified of public speaking a girl who maybe has had some sort of a weird background that she grew up, and she's in that sort of a same situation. She runs into that same asshole. Yeah. No, I can't even imagine it. I can't.

Yeah, I mean, they would be, like, shaking and weeping and freaking the fuck out, and this guy gets off on that. I mean, that's really what you're dealing with. And it shows how effective it is that it works on you because you're not a pussy. No, I'm not. Can you say that to a chick? Yeah, you can say it. You can say it to me.

I'm not going to be offended by it. It seems like it was the wrong thing to say. You can call, yeah, you can say it. Yeah, but it's like too confusing. It's like too many variables. You're not a coward. You're not at all. You confront things.

And so for you to be freaked out by it, it really sort of highlights what a confrontational situation that is and how it can really be a problem. And there were a lot of factors that played a role. Not only was there the power imbalance there, but there was also the fact that he was just this huge cop that was towering over me as I was standing there in front of him. And I felt so small. As I was standing there in front of him and I felt so small and I felt like he was so angry for no freaking reason that I was so scared that if I said the wrong thing that he might do something to me. You know what I mean? Even though my co-workers, there were three co-workers in the car. After it all happened, they were like, that was insane.

Well, sometimes cops will like literally like a really bad cop will literally put himself in a situation where you put your hand up to stop him. And if you touch him, that's assault. And then they grab you and throw you to the ground. I mean, I've seen that happen. That's why I was so scared. I didn't know what he was going to do. But he definitely got off on me standing in front of him weeping like that. He definitely got off on the fact that I recognized that there was an imbalance of power there.

And I don't know. Again, I think about it in retrospect, and it makes me so angry. And in the moment, I was so powerless. Are you going to become a vigilante and just go run in red lights until you find this motherfucker? I mean, I would love to- You son of a bitch. I wish I could identify him and, I don't know, get some sort of justice. But imagine, think about that.

And I don't know, get some sort of justice. But imagine, think about that. Think about the relatively minuscule amount of discomfort I felt in that situation compared to what other people deal with. Oh, yeah. I mean, think about how powerless and how angry those people are. And so when you have angry protesters, right, that are responding to Ferguson or Eric Garner and all those other things, and then they have the media tell them, you guys move the conversation because people have to address it. And it may be so impactful that cops might actually think twice before they squeeze a trigger

because they don't want more craziness and more eruptions of violence or rather protest, not violence. In fact, cops actually doing the violence. Did you see that? That one undercover cop that got busted and he had a gun. He was pointing at a guy taking a picture

because they were causing violence they were doing shit you know like they they've done this tactic for the longest time like one of the ways that they can stop protest is they use what's called agent provocateurs yep and agent provocateurs are someone who looks like a regular protester but what they are is police officers or military or people they hire, and they go in and they'll wear bandanas and cover their face and shit, and they'll start smashing things.

They'll smash windows, and they'll turn things into looting, riot-type situations, so that the cops have reason to move in with force and start arresting people. And that's how they stop a peaceful protest and it's so creepy that this is a tactic that has been used for a long time and it was always like one of those conspiracy theory tinfoil hat stupid things and then we realized oh no these motherfuckers

really do this it really happens yeah i remember the first time I had heard about agent provocateurs, I was like, come on, guys, how conspiratorial and loony is that? So loony. And then I realized it was happening with Occupy. I realized it was happening with recent protests. And it's just I love how they try to discredit peaceful protests by doing that, by coming in and looting and starting violence and making it seem as though all of the protesters are violent. Because again, the mainstream media is going to latch onto that. And you're right. I think that that's definitely better to drum up ratings. I mean, if you're going to do a news report on a peaceful protest, is that going to do well with ratings? Probably not. If you're going to do coverage of looting and violence that's taking place in relation to the protest, people are going to be, they're going to get fired up.

They're going to get angry and they're going to start referring to these protesters as animals and all that. I mean, I've seen so much of that. But don't you see a resistance to people doing stories on the actual undercover cops who got busted pointing a gun at the camera? 100%. I don't see anything on that. I didn't see anything on that on CNN. I didn't see anything on that on any of the coverage of the L.A. riots. I was like, do you guys not understand what's going on here?

CNN's probably still reporting on the missing plane. I mean, I don't know where CNN is right now. These riots in Oakland, rather, not L.A., they were so fucking crazy. I mean, these kids took over highways. There's a lot of them, you know, and a lot of them got arrested. And to see that photo of that guy pointing a gun at the cameraman who's he's pretending to be a protester it's like what the fuck is going on yeah like this is crazy you guys are pretending to be protesters you're

smashing window you get paid tax dollars to smash windows they get tax dollars they get paid tax dollars to undermine a political process, a democratic process. And turn it violent so they can come and arrest people. It's amazing. So bizarro. So bizarro. You know another thing that was bizarro? I saw a lot of people that were quote-unquote progressives or quote-unquote really left-wing, strong left-wing people. people and they were in at least if not in agreement they they were they were um at least

understanding of the people who looted and smashed windows no and one one guy went to his his twitter page and he had this crazy statement like if people respect you they'll respect your shit obviously people didn't respect this place and it was like an H&R Block with a brick through its window. I was like, what are you doing? Like, this is crazy. Like, Starbucks is, they're smashing Starbucks is, fuck corporations. No, I can't stand that. I mean, that really does distract people from what the real message is.

The looters are not doing any great service to the protest. The question is, how many of those looters are cops? How many of them are cops? And how many people who are like strong, super progressive people are getting caught up in the momentum that was actually kicked off by vigilante cops or agent provocateur cops? That would be hilarious. I mean, that's, and you know, going back to the whole journalism angle of it, I mean, that's what the great thing about investigative journalism would be. If we had strong investigative journalists in this country, they would take that beat and they would go to these protests and investigate and try to figure out how many agent provocateurs there are out there. But we don't have that anymore. And that's what's scary.

It's scary when you can only refer to a few people in the country as good journalists like Matt Taibbi. Michael Hastings at one point, unfortunately, is not here anymore. You know, the Jeremy Scahills of the world. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. We live in a very unique and interesting time of expanding possibilities. So it's cool to be a part of it and watch it all going down, but it's interesting trying to see it sort itself out as everything's going on.

But it's hopeful to me. I'm very hopeful, you know, even though there's a lot of fucked up shit in the world. I think that when I see these, like, Oakland protests, even though I don't agree with shutting down highways, I love the fact that there's this many people that are pissed off at the way things are going. Even if they're misguided in some way

or overzealous in some way that their their intentions are the correct type of intentions because they recognize that we have a kind of a wacky system yeah you know and and i i think not enough attention is put on the idea of cops and the idea of being a cop being this insanely fucking difficult thing to manage yeah i think it's one of the reasons why you see so much violence. You see that cop that was busted in Denver who had the guy on the ground. He was punching him in the face. And the wife came over.

She was pregnant. And they tripped the wife. And she fell down. No, I didn't see that. Oh. And then they took the guy's camera and erased the video. But he had already uploaded it to the cloud. So this guy got on the news with this video of this cop just fucking throwing haymakers at this dude's face.

You know, it's just, come on, man. You don't have, there's no need to do that. You don't have to do that. You're doing something. If you wanted to arrest someone for a crime, you don't have to punch them in the face. They're not even fighting back. It is crazy. Yeah.

I guess the only upside of it is the political activism that's coming out of it. Yes. But it's funny because, you know, you're mentioning how you're hopeful, but I feel like society keeps devolving. Like, it gets worse and worse. And now we have this whole situation, like, you know, not to do a stark transition, but now we have, like, this ridiculous situation with Sony and, like, the hackers and how we have Kim Jong-un dictating what kind of creative freedom we have here in this country.

I mean, that kind of stuff is coming out now. And you're just like, really? Is there really hope in this country right now? Yeah. If the interview goes down, what hope could there possibly be? It's not even about the interview going down. It's basically over. It's a Seth Rogen movie, and they're not going to put it in the movie theater.

We should just fucking move to the woods. We should all just give up on civilization. Well, you're forgetting about James Franco. James Franco's in that movie too. He's in that movie as well. So this is a double disaster. This is a huge box office hit off the bat. It's going to be number one the first week it comes out. It's all strategically planned.

But isn't that the best part of the story? That a freaking comedy movie featuring Seth Rogen and James Franco is what caused this ridiculous hack. And it's what caused like the North Korean government to be up in arms. Like I get it.

The storyline can be a little offensive to your dictator. Right. If it has to do with assassinating him. Their dear leader. Right. But like I feel like this entire story and this entire situation is full of pussies. Right. Oh my God.

This fucking crazy Armenian broad came in here. here but it's true it's true you have pussies on one side with sony backing down from right from the movie you have supposedly north korean pussies that are so offended by a movie they're like oh my god how dare you offend our dear leader we're gonna go after you i mean around, just a bunch of people that are scared. And I get it. Okay. The email hack was devastating for Sony. A lot of private information, embarrassing information was leaked to the press. Right. But at the same time, like you, you can't let a dictator of a country like North Korea

make decisions about what your company should distribute as a movie. Like, it's ridiculous. Well, even Obama said it, which I thought was amazing. Like, Obama's commenting on a movie being distributed. It's become an international affair. Yeah, it really has. And I don't know how this is going to end up. But one thing that I will say is I'm not going to believe the feds that this is

100 north korea is doing like for some reason i find it inconceivable that it's a bunch of hackers from north korea doing this might be some 14 year old kid in australia in his underwear right now laughing his ass off but it's i was thinking about that yesterday like it's it's speculation and i have no evidence to prove it right but like a lot of these hackers are like teenagers and and they're really smart and they're really savvy. And sometimes they're not even smart and savvy. Sometimes people are really stupid with their passwords and all they have to do is guess

and the hackers will get into their email and that's it, right? Well, the reality is if someone can break into your system, if you haven't found that someone isolated them and arrested them, then you don't know who the fuck they are, okay? You just don't. So if you're just taking any old threat

from someone like that and saying it's Kim Jong-un and you're not giving us any reason to believe you, I don't know. I don't know if you're right. You might be right. It could be him. I mean, he's got 1,800 cyber warriors.

They're there. They're ready to rock and roll at fucking any given time. They're all in line. They goose step over to their desks and roll at fucking any given time they're all in line they goose step over their desks and they start fucking people up all over the world for the dear leader and it's also kind of amazing that like in this day and age where we've given up so much of our individual liberty our freedoms in the name of national security all we need is one anonymous threat that there would be another 9-11 type attack.

And then we back out of like showing a movie. I mean, think about it. Think about how we're all spied on indiscriminately on a daily basis. Okay. Think about the fact that, you know, after 9-11, we gave away so many of our rights because we were so afraid of these big, bad terrorists and the government is supposed to be keeping us safe, right? The CIA is supposed to be on top of everything. Our intelligence is supposed to be keeping us safe, right? The CIA is supposed to be on top of everything. Our intelligence is supposed to be top of the line. And all it takes is one anonymous threat and people are like tucking tail and hiding behind the bed. Right, but isn't that the fault?

I mean, or I shouldn't say the fault. Isn't that the decision, though, of the company itself? Because Obama himself has said that he thinks that it was a mistake. So it really doesn't matter whether or not the CIA protects anybody or whether or not the FBI. It was their choice. Yeah. It never moved past that.

So I don't think it's in that situation. I don't think it's fair to blame like the CIA or any of those people. It's just like they decided to pull it out. Obama told them that was a mistake. No, no. I agree with you on that. But at the same time, like, aren't we supposed to have certain agencies within our government that know everything because they're spying on everyone? This is actually an argument for it, right?

No, this is actually an argument against it because they spy on so many goddamn people that are completely innocent that their systems are just like full of information and data that's absolutely useless. OK, so that's that's one of the biggest issues that I have with this. I interviewed Laura Poitras on a show called Take Part Live. And she was getting into detail about that, about how the way that we collect intelligence right now is actually the most ineffective way, because we're collecting so much data on people that are totally innocent. So how do you sift through all of this data and determine whether or not someone's an actual threat? Yeah. How do you? Do they have a, are they building it, like building these storage facilities, hoping they'll have better search mechanisms in the future? Is that the idea? I have no idea, but what they're doing right now isn't working. I mean, when you have something

like the Boston bombing and you have like terrorist attack. I mean, look, we don't have terrorist attacks here all the time. You know what I mean? Like despite the fear mongering that you see in the mainstream media, it's just fear mongering. Right. But every once in a while when you do have some sort of event like the Boston bombing, it's like, well, I don't know. NSA, you've been collecting all this information on everyone. And you have these people that are posting things online talking about how they want to kill Americans and plotting to do certain things.

How come you didn't catch these guys? Like, why is it that you guys are focusing so heavily on the type of porn people are watching, but you're not focusing heavily on, you know, the real threats that are out there? Well, that's where it's a real shame when you've got a bunch of agent provocateurs at Occupy Wall Street where nothing bad is happening. Yeah. And that's where it's a shame it's like i don't know who what agency they're from whether or not they could be involved with some sort of a terrorist activity

investigation unit but if you if you wasted resources looking after hippies in a drum circle and that could have possibly saved somebody's life yeah people are going to be like really understandably pissed off which is one of the things about this agent provocateur thing in Oakland that pissed people off. It's like, come on. We're paying for that. We actually pay for that. Yeah. Our taxes.

Every citizen contributes to the payroll. I mean, that's crazy. We're paying you guys to undermine us. Paying you guys to break windows and pretend you're fucking bad protesters and try to start people looting so that you can come in and sweep them into the paddy wagon and fulfill quotas. That's the weirdest thing. Like, what the fuck would they do if we all collectively as a country decided we will not break any laws for 30 days?

They'll probably frame us. They would have to start framing us. Their budgets would fall apart. Their fucking departments would fall apart when it came time to like budget meetings and shit. Well, we've had no crime since 19 blah, blah, blah. Why do you think police enforcement, for the most part, is against legalizing marijuana or legalizing drugs in general? It's because they will be out of jobs. I mean, there will still be crime, obviously.

But when you look at our incarceration rate and how we incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, it's because of drug laws. And there is a lot of profit to be made off the prohibition of marijuana. Cops make money off of it. That keeps them in business. Correctional officers remain in business. Private prisons remain in business. There's a lot of money behind prohibition. Yeah. Stopping people from doing things that they want to do that doesn't hurt you is ridiculous. And it's some daddy shit. You're, you're daddying people. You're telling them what they can and can't do. And then I include things that I'm totally opposed to like cigarettes. I think cigarettes are the dumbest way to die. I just, it drives me crazy when I see good friends who

have a problem with cigarettes and they can't kick it. I'm like, I'm watching you poison yourself. This is so stupid. But I'm 100% in favor of you being able to do it if you want to do it. Same here. Who is anybody to tell another person what they can't do? It's one thing to tell a person don't commit a crime or don't commit assault or don't harm people. But that's the number one problem with the government telling you that anything is illegal, whether it's mushrooms or prostitution or anything. It says who? It says who?

Yeah. I mean, look, that's one of the reasons why I'm in favor of legalizing things and regulating them with common sense regulation. So like with prostitution, legalize it and regulate it. Okay. So these people can stay safe when they're trading sex for money with drugs. Obviously, I'm not saying, hey, this is a wild, wild west. Let's legalize everything and not have any regulations. And that's usually what are like, that's the type of argument that pro-prohibition people will say, right? Like, oh, if you legalize it, all of a sudden, like 10 year olds are going to be smoking pot. No, they're not. No, they're not. We have laws put in place to make sure that 10 year olds aren't drinking alcohol. You can do the same thing with marijuana there's also an issue with uh it's not an issue of public

opinion because public opinion is very important but there is an issue with needing 50 or more of the people to agree in order to give you freedom like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa it's not that hard to trick half the people they have mortgages and fucking softball they have to get their kids dressed for. It's not that hard to trick people about stories of brain damage and memory loss and men growing tits. There's plenty of fake data that you can bandy around in court and people could get confused. So 50% is not good. 50% is not a healthy number. It should be, let's find out first what category we put these laws in.

Here's a category. Does it hurt anybody else? No. Okay, so this is a personal choice category? Yes. So it doesn't even have to be 1%. This is what it should be. How many people are opposed to it?

And what are your reasons for being opposed to it and what are your reasons for being opposed to it and are they rational and are they based on the data we currently are aware of and if they're not they're not valid and and you need to say like do you believe that marijuana makes you grow tits do you believe that marijuana caused i had a like some lady she was telling me testicular cancer i'm like what are you talking about? Yeah, I read it online. Like, no, you didn't. Just making this up. And also, if you've read it online, it must be true. That person, my point is, could vote on it.

If they went to the ballot and they go, oh, fuck that. I don't want my children hooked on weed. Click. And they hit that. Their vote, whether informed or not, is valid. And I think you should have to prove that your point in some way is informed. Well, that's one of the issues with ballot initiatives. Not only are people either uninformed, but they're also misinformed a lot of times because there's a lot of money behind

the advertisements that are either for or against ballot initiatives, right? And the thing that amazes me about political ads is politicians can straight out lie. Yeah. Political action committees can straight out lie in any political ad. And why is it that when it comes to an advertisement for a product like beer, for instance, right? Like if Samuel Adams was to advertise right now, like our beer is going to give you superpowers and you're going to all of a sudden lose 20 pounds. And like they can't do that. It's false advertising. Why is it that politicians are able to falsely advertise whatever the hell they want?

It's probably because they're the gatekeepers and they're the ones who get to decide whether or not something is illegal. But I've seen so many political ads where I'm like, that's not true. That's not true. Why are they able to say this? That's amazing. So with ballot initiatives, there's money behind, you know, there's legalized bribery behind a lot of it. There's amazing. So with ballot initiatives, there's money behind, you know, there's legalized bribery behind a lot of it. There's a lot of misinformation behind a lot of it. And if you're not someone who sits down and analyzes political news all day, it's very easy for you to be misinformed. And that's not your fault. It's because of the system and how it's set up against you. Yeah. And it's also no one has any incentive to change it to make it even.

Yeah. You know, Why would we do that? That's true. Wait a minute, we're going to make less money, and what else is going to happen? There's going to be less jobs, and what else is going to happen? They're going to have some power? Fuck that, dude. It's the same thing with climate change. I mean, people immediately go to, oh, less jobs, and that's all they really care about.

That's hilarious. I've had conversations with people about that when they see all the oil work they're doing up in Canada, the devastation to the environment around it. You're like looking at photos, you're like, holy shit. How do you justify that? People are like, oh, relax. It's just a little bit. Because so many jobs are dependent upon that.

They're very sensitive to people criticizing it. If you don't know, if you're not from around there, I mean, that's like a major source of income for a lot of folks up there. And I understand it because that's your livelihood and you don't want anyone messing with your livelihood, which is why it's so important for the federal government to invest in renewable energy. Because then you transfer the jobs, you know, from dirty coal and whatever the hell we're doing to renewable energy sources. New jobs can be created, but we're not even willing to have that conversation because right now we're doing to renewable energy sources. New jobs can be created, but we're not even willing to have that conversation because right now we're stuck on this ridiculous debate as to whether or not climate change is man-made or not. Why are we having that debate? Why are we having

that debate? Drives me crazy. I think we need to work in LA for sure on solar. It's so ridiculous that we live in a place that's literally sunny 300 days a year. And if you fly over it, you don't see a single solar panel. It's crazy. I know. I know that the expense of the technology right now is pretty high, but I guarantee within the next decade or so, it's going to drop down to some sort of a manageable point where people will consider installing them on the top of every building.

Yeah. You've got free electricity. I mean, it's got to be worth something. Even if it's not 100% of your electrical output, it's probably like high 40s, 50s. I mean, I don't know. But as they get better at these things, I mean, they figured out some new,

it's like a spray-on panel that they can take electricity from the air, a spray-on solar panel. Shut up, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing. There's all kinds of new, is that it right there?

Fully transparent solar cell that could make every window and screen a power source. Jesus fucking Christ, Anna. That's amazing. That's amazing. I love it. These goddamn geniuses

that dance around amongst us. We are mere apes. We are mere apes. We are mere apes. We really are. Someone figured out a way to make glass power up your fucking tv i know i know i've had this conversation i've had these like philosophical conversations with jank on our post game show for our members and like i'm probably the most like

pessimistic self-deprecating person on the planet because oftentimes on our post game shows i have like these like quarter life crises where i talk about how i'm a failure and how i haven't done anything meaningful with my life i mean think about like you see stuff like that you see these like astrophysicists and these neuroscientists and all these amazing intelligent people and you're like what do i do i just read the news and i comment on it you know and that sounds very self-deprecating but it's true like i wish i could do something that actually changes changes the world like that that actually saves the planet yeah but if that fucking egghead had to do your job he would suck at it people always tell me that to make me feel better but whatever his legs look like shit he's wearing fucking wearing your shoes they don't fit if you put

him in your job he would be terrible at it you gotta realize that like everybody has their own little station in this life that's true if you. If you really treat life for what it is, it's some sort of a weird experience. You know, it's a temporary experience. It lasts a long time relatively like in comparison to like holding in your pee. Yeah. Your life lasts a long fucking time. But the reality of it is it slips away pretty goddamn quickly. Yeah, it does.

of it is it slips away pretty goddamn quickly. Yeah, it does. And the things that we dwell on are like these markers of like achievement and these like measures of success and these, you know, our ability to measure ourselves against the other people that we're competing with in some sort of a weird way. But all that stuff is self-defeating. What we really need to do is find some sort of a comfortable medium where we're actually doing what we want to do most of the time. And obviously what you want to do is what you're doing yeah so you win yeah if you were that fucking dude and you're doing computations till three o'clock in the

morning on some fucking glass that's gonna make electricity and nobody gives a shit what your shoes look like you'd be like fuck this job this job sucks i'm tired of working 16 hours a day on fucking stupid solar glass i'm tired i'm tired i want to be a day on fucking stupid solar glass. I'm tired. I'm tired. I want to be a reporter. I want to be on TV. I want to wear cute clothes. Come on. What the fuck? All right. Fair enough. Fair enough. See, you wouldn't be happy. You're happy with what you're doing. I love what I do. Don't get me wrong. I love what I do. But every once in a while, you do size people up, right? Of course. Well, especially because you're an educated, successful woman who already had a little bit of chip on your shoulder especially because you're an educated successful woman who already

had you're a little bit of chip on your shoulder plus you're armenian and then you're out there in this competitive environment where in all fairness i think women have to uh i feel they feel at least that they have to prove themselves maybe even 10 more than men who are just as competent as them just to be accepted as like as at that same level yeah because men have this idea oh she just wants to get pregnant and then she's gonna take paternity leave and she's not serious about this job and there's a lot of people that have those kind of prejudices about women in the workforce so you all automatically have to get gangster on people so you're you're always ramped up an extra 10% yeah there's also there's also this

notion and I don't know. Kristen's looking at me like, I nailed it. I know. I know I got you. I know I got you. I know what's up. There's also this notion that an attractive woman can't be smart. It's rude.

A comment that I get often, and it's a sweet comment, and I love people that send this to me, but I think that they're a little misguided, is like, oh yeah, beauty and brain, such a rarity. And it's like, no, it's not. It's not a rarity. Because they want you to be dumber, because that way they can fuck you. They can throw their tricks and their voodoo on you, and they can fuck you. But I mean, I think you're one of the more intelligent podcast guests that I have. Thank you.

Rhonda Patrick. Rhonda Patrick, every time I goddamn talk to her, I don't know half the shit she's talking about. There's this Dr. Rhonda Patrick who's found my goddamn talk to her, I don't know half the shit she's talking about. This is Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who's found my fitness on Twitter. She's amazing. And she comes on the podcast like every few months and breaks down all sorts of different issues between vitamin absorption. And the last one was head trauma. Like she schooled me on head trauma and the issues with head trauma.

Like all the things that I kind of like had she like in depth described them in great detail. And like, as she's talking, like my, my, my, I'm just trying to just keep up at all. Wow.

Is there certain important times I'm just tapping out of my, I'm going to have to go over this after it's over and take notes. Cause there's no fucking way. Cause she'll go on. He's like 10, 15 minutes, super complicated rants. Like I've talked to people on Twitter that said they listened to that podcast seven times.

Wow. They just listened to it over and over and over again. What vitamin B complex is most important for this and what vitamin D contributes to muscle fiber growth and she hits you with all this different shit and it's like, whoa. And she's beautiful. So that's nonsense.

She's way fucking smarter than me. There's a lot of really good looking guys that are smart as fuck. And for some dudes, that's annoying as shit. You see this beautiful, handsome, Adonis character and you're like, that stupid fuck. Meanwhile, he's a PhD. Like Vladimir Klitschko, the fucking heavyweight champion of the world. He's a doctor. He's got a fucking PhD.

That asshole. And he's 6'6 and shredded. He speaks four languages and he'll fuck you up. Damn. And nobody wants to believe that. You want to think, oh, that fucking meathead. Oh, he's a boxer. Yeah, I bet he's real smart.

He's way smarter than you. He plays chess every day. He's a fucking world champion boxer. Look at that handsome bastard. That's the heavy world champion boxer for like 10 look at that handsome bastard. That's the heavyweight champion of the world. Get the fuck out of here.

Wow. He's a super athlete from the future. That's some Russian fucking engineering shit. That doesn't even make sense. How tall is that dude? He's like 6'6 or something.

You look just like that without your shirt on Christian. Oh Christian. This place got hot and heavy. 6'6", 240. 6'6", 240. Jesus fucking Christ. 6'6", 240 with a doctorate degree.

Nobody wants to admit that. They want to say, oh, that big fucking meathead. That big fit. He's way smarter than you. And he'll fuck you up. Sorry. But you're probably better at Pac-Man.

Yeah. You're probably better at World of Warcraft. You probably got a higher rating. It doesn't, you know, like people are weird, man. Everybody wants it to be a goddamn race from beginning to end. Enjoy your life.

Everybody gets a different hand of cards. Do whatever the fuck you can with it. Don't get crazy because it doesn't last. It's just have some fun. Try to make it the most enjoyable. That's six foot six fucking Adonis. He might be miserable.

What do I know? You know, he might have a wife who screams at him, throw shit at him. We don't know. We don't know what his life is like. You know, he might have shitty taste in music.

He might be like, you know, he might fucking be listening to terrible music all day. And you're like, I hate him. I don't want to be him. We're weird.

We're weird. We compare. Like you're comparing yourself to these solar glass people. Yeah. I'm like, thank God those eggheads are out there. Much love to you.

If you need me to tweet something, holler at me. I'll help you out. You're right. At the end of the day, as long as you're doing something you enjoy, as long as you're surrounded by people you love, you've got to enjoy the moment a little bit, which is what he tells me all the time. So important.

Cubans know how to rock it. Oh, yeah, they do. They do. That's a fun – Joey Diaz is my favorite human being of rock it. Oh yeah, they do. They do. That's a fun... Joey Diaz, my favorite human being of all time. He's born in Cuba. He knows there's a different flair to the Latin cultures.

They have more fun. We get more shit done. We do. We get more shit done. But what do you want? Do you want to get more shit done? Or do you want to have more fun? And it becomes this balancing act of, man, I don't know you they said like people that are the most happy in the world like there's some sort of uh you know index of most happy countries mexico was pretty fucking high yeah i was actually really surprised about that really was especially good

time good for them yeah good for them yeah they're. You know, we are caught up in this idea that unless you're keeping tabs, unless your numbers are ahead of their numbers or your position or your social caste system is ahead, then you shouldn't be happy. But it's so stupid. Yeah. Like, you know what you need happiness? Friends. Hang around with a bunch of friends.

Yeah. Have a good time. Do stuff that you like. That's it. Be nice to each other. You'll get more friends. Yeah. Be nice to those friends. They'll be more friends. Be nice to those friends.

They'll be loyal to you. You'll be loyal to them, your brothers and sisters. You stay together forever. Everybody's cool. It's all you have to do. You find a gang of friends. You collect friends that are cool

and you enforce your love for them and they enforce their love for you and you shield yourself from the outside world by forming these pockets and communities of awesome people. That can be done. That can be done.

But it can't be done if you're fucking king shit, real estate mogul, wants to fuck over your partners and your investors. So true. You're just trying to pump and dump stocks and fuck you. Like the guy in Wolf of Wall Street. That sort of crazed mentality of capitalism above all costs. You're missing out on the balancing act of life. You're an asshole.

You're a guy who thinks he's going to run the marathon by running as fast as you can right from the beginning yeah no one's oh no one's ever thought of that everybody's thought of that stupid you can't do that you can't sprint for three hours you fuckhead it's not possible everyone knows by now so when you're doing that what you're really doing is you're sprinting your way through the beginning couple miles of a marathon until you fucking die that's what you're doing you're doing that, what you're really doing is you're sprinting your way through the beginning couple miles of a marathon until you fucking die. That's what you're doing. You're treating life like a moron. This is better than any therapy session I've ever had.

This is great. I feel better about life. I do, too. I do, too. It's coming out of me, and I feel better about it. But that's what, you know, I mean, and everybody says, like, you know, hey, me, you know, that's easy for you, or I can't afford it. Without a doubt, everyone has different circumstances. But without a doubt, every circumstance could be managed more optimally.

Every single one that's ever existed. We're flawed and we learn from our mistakes, which means everyone approaches every single situation in their life where you're just kind of basing it off of the information that you've acquired the knowledge that you've gathered the experience that you've sort of calculated in your brain and this is how i think and then if it goes fucking shitty like your cop situation you go well now i got some fucking new shit in here and the next motherfucker that tries that nonsense i'm asking questions i'm writing things down and i'm making a fucking story and i'm making a fucking difference. And that's the difference. That's what happens with us. We grow and learn. I mean, that's what it's all about. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There's no question

about it. I would say like the happiest moments of my life were not when I was sitting there competing with other people or trying to achieve more in my career. It was definitely moments where I traveled somewhere with a really good was definitely moments where I traveled somewhere with a really good friend, moments where I've, you know, shared like a really great meal with a coworker. Like those are the things that are more memorable. And I think that my generation's moving away from like the obsession of owning big things, right? Like less people in my generation are buying homes, partly because they can't do it because they're straddled with student loan debt, but also because they don't want to be tied down to one place. They want to go see the world. They want to go experience things. And so, you know, we talked about this a little bit the first time I was on your podcast. But sometimes I struggle with that, too. Right. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, I want to buy a big house. buy a big house.

And then other times, I'm like looking at my quaint little apartment and I'm like, this is fine. I'd rather have some money saved in the bank to go on some cool trip and like meet people and learn new things. If I was Joey Diaz right now,

I'd go on a rant about, fuck that shit, you're getting paid. You need a fucking big crib with pillars like Elvis had. Marble shit like they had in Greece. What the fuck are you talking about? What, are you going to keep your money in the bank

and those fucking people are going to steal it on you? Get the fuck out of here. You want you going to keep your money in the bank and those fucking people are going to steal it on you? Get the fuck out of here. You want a Bentley and a fucking jet and a helicopter and missile launchers and a fucking pool with your face on the bottom of it. That's what Joey Diaz would say.

And I agree with him. You're making a lot of money. You should fucking spend that shit. Fuck a one bedroom apartment. Live large. But yeah, just have fun. It's hard for people to do sorry people we quantify too much we do quantify our lives too much you know question but you know i think there's one thing that if i could ever give especially men advice healthy friendly competition that is the difference the real problem that people have

with competition is is very self-defeating and a lot of times losing at things is insanely frustrating and it makes men especially angry and this is a trap and this is a trap and it's essentially a non-management of a biological system that's put in place to allow you to try to rise to the highest possible spot in the social spectrum for you to breed and it's a trick and that trick is in place and it can fuck men up so they can get angry at their best friends if they're playing pickup basketball they can get to a point where they want to have fistfights over basketball and men if but if they didn't if the exact same thing happened and they still experience the heightened sense of competitiveness, but always with friendship and love for the person you're competing with, you can have better results.

You can have better results because you're still going to have that same competitive drive, but you never allow yourself to hate the opponent. Right. You waste energy, in fact, when you hate the opponent. I think, I mean, I don't know if this is the same for men, but whenever I meet a woman who's super accomplished and I feel a little bit of envy, I actually... I just picture you turning green. I know, right? No, I actually use that as more of an inspirational thing as opposed to like, oh, I hate her and now I'm going to tear her down and try to find her fault so I can feel better about myself. down and try to find her fault so I could feel better about myself. I love meeting really successful women that shake me out of my complacency because as humans, we love to be complacent. Whether or not we are aware of it, we kind of like slide into that comfort zone.

And so I like it when I meet a woman who's like smarter than me, more successful than me. And instead of like hating on her, I'll be like, what can I do to be like her or better than her? Yes. That's healthy. That's very healthy. And being inspired by people that you meet, especially people that are doing like what you're doing for a living or what you're doing or for a hobby or anything that you, you know, any pursuit, whether money's involved or not, they can be incredibly empowering or defeating. And with men especially, men have a real issue in denial of the actual competitive nature of the scenario. Like there's some men that they have this idea of what they look like and this idea of what a bad motherfucker they are and how cool they are and how funny they are. And the rest of the world has a completely different opinion.

And they don't ever allow themselves to see what they're doing wrong because then it chips away at this armor that they've put on this armor being this false opinion of themselves and they go out of their way to make sure that's never exposed through trial and that's what one of the things that separates people who do difficult things, anything that's really hard to do. I think in doing something that's very difficult, whether it's running fucking marathons or climbing mountains or martial arts or anything you're doing that's hard to do, you learn about your ability to push yourself. You learn how to overcome obstacles. Totally. You learn about yourself in a way that people that are sort of in denial about where they're standing

as far as how good they are at anything you know there's some people that think they're the shit and they don't even have a job like alright bro I'm the shit if I was working there I'd be fucking running things if I was the president man I'd tell everybody to fuck off tell Russia to suck my dick man new paps blue ribbon gets opened you know there's a lot of people that think they're

fucking awesome but if you peered in on them you know if you had a window into their trailer and you saw their fucking, you know, dirty socks and their foots kicked up on the couch, you'd be like, oh, my God, you fucking idiot. Yeah. You don't know how the world sees you. And for men especially, it's like the need to belittle competition is a very dangerous thing. You know, the need to not be empowered by people that are better that you see around you. Because when you see them and you embrace and you have no hate in your heart, then you can actually be empowered and it'll actually make you better at whatever you do. Yeah, absolutely. You got to learn from people

around you. You know, you got to learn from the mistakes that people make around you. You got to learn from the people who are doing things that are better than what you're doing and and don't my tendency is to feel down about myself time to time i don't end up hating the person who's better than me i start like being very critical overly critical of myself like don't let that happen either because that's very destructive yeah um but yeah like i'm lucky that i work in a field where i'm exposed to super intelligent people on a regular basis I don't agree with everything that Cenk says We have differences of opinion

In a lot of different things I'm going to take that and I'm going to edit it And I'm going to send it to him right now Damn But Cenk's my mentor I learned a lot from him And I'm so grateful that I was able to Grow next to him

And learn a lot of stuff And he also built a company that expanded to the point where we have a steady flow of intelligent people coming in all the time. We have these great conversations. I'm always learning new things. I love that I have a job where I get to learn new things. You get that too. And it's awesome. You guys have a dope office too.

You like it? This is a corporation. You guys are a corporation. You have a fucking staff. Dude, it wasn't always like that hoving over workstations everyone's friendly though it's very nice yeah yeah people super cool environment with you by the way when you came in not like in a creepy way um so i'm gonna give him a shout out because he's a big fan and he's like listening right now um hasan who's actually jenks nephew is like such a big fan of yours and he was like oh joe's to be at the improv.

Like, I got to go see Joe. And then I noticed that like as soon as he saw you walking through the studio, he wanted to take a picture with you. And I was like, oh, my God, Hass, you're so embarrassing. Please stop. Oh, that's all right. You can take pictures. It doesn't embarrass me. It's fine.

So shout out to Hassan. Yes. What? What? You guys have like a real corporation. Like you go in there. It feels like you know what you're doing. You go in here.

If Jamie died, I'd be fucked. You go in here. If Jamie died, I'll be fucked. Bring Brian in here every day. It'd be a disaster again. How is Brian? He's great. He's not here. Well,

it's some podcast he doesn't do. Oh, I see. He does ones that I feel like he would be best suited for. I see. I see. Okay. If that makes sense.

You know, I think you can only do so many podcasts with the same. If that makes sense. You know, I think you can only do so many podcasts with the same person over and over again. You know, I think, I think one of the things about doing podcasts is you got to do what, like, you got to talk to the people you want to talk to, have the conference and you got to do it when you want to do it. Like that's the whole idea behind it to me is that, you know, there is no set schedule. There is no employer that's telling me what I can and can't talk about. Guests that I'm being forced to interview. Right.

That's the worst. That's the worst. Yeah. The cool thing about it, too, is that it's now podcasting has become something that people are willing to do. I had Paul Stanley from Kiss on this year. And I was like, you got to get the fuck out of here. I can't believe I got Paul Stanley sitting here. I was such a little fan boy.

Yeah. Such a little fan boy. Joe Perry. Joe with joe perry joe perry's my friend joe perry from arrowsmith i'm like this is my friend joe perry you know what though you gotta it's ridiculous you have to give yourself some credit though because you do a three hour long podcast in the middle of nowhere la wise it's not hard to do it's not it's not but it's intimidating if you haven't done it before. So before I came and did the first podcast with you, I was definitely nervous. I'm like, oh, my God, three hours. Like, what are we going to talk about for three freaking hours straight?

No breaks, no nothing, right? So the fact that, you know, these big name people are willing, not me, but like, you know, the people you mentioned earlier, are willing to come in and sit down with you for three hours. That means that you've made it, my friend. I don't even know what that means, but it's pretty cool to be able to talk to Roseanne Barr for three hours. Roseanne Barr is awesome. Roseanne Barr was giving me a hard time the other day because we had this show on and there was no chicks on the show.

And I said that I secretly, she goes, what the hell? No women on the show at all? Question mark. And I said, I secretly made no women on the show just because I knew you would complain. Success. That's hilarious. at all question mark and I said I secretly made no women on the show just cuz I knew you would complain success and then she said well you know something to the lens of you're on the show that I guess a chick is on the show and I said well if you're calling me a chick and you're a check that's a compliment she's great she's awesome she's so crazy she is she's in my opinion like one of the all-time great comics like she doesn't get and I told her that

when she was in the studio, if I had a list of top ten most important comics, in my opinion, she became a totally unique and new thing. When she burst onto the scene, she was murdering it and doing these HBO specials. There had never been a woman like her before. Tell men to suck it. Shut up.

She had this fucking attitude with good joke writing. Like that attitude plus good joke writing and a genuine not give a fuck outlook on things. Yeah. And now when she talks, it's really funny because she talks about her life. She's super honest about how crazy and off the rails she was. She is. She's the best. A really good friend of mine dave rubin um who also

does a show for our network is very good friends with rosanne and she apparently has like a tv studio like that she built herself and he's now like doing some shows like out of her tv studio um and like i've heard stories about how freaking awesome she is and i love it i love how open she is and i I don't know. She's a lot of fun. I've met her a few times too. She's great. She also is not dogmatic.

You know, she had this idea about chemtrails. Oh, they're spraying things in the sky. You know, and we had this conversation about it. And I said, they're not really doing that. That's not what's happening. I'll tell you exactly what's happening because we investigated it. And there's a lot of people that believe that,

but they really haven't looked into it. It's scientifically been proven that when a jet engine goes through the atmosphere it's a certain temperature and a certain amount of condensation

it actually produces artificial clouds. Yeah. It's a very scientific principle behind it. It's really easy to understand and you see it explained and you go,

oh, that's what it is. And so they're always like, well, why is it always in grid pattern? I had a guy on the podcast and I'm like, because that's what flights do. They go the same way every day it's a flight pattern you think planes just take off like a boat out in the ocean just any fucking path they want you know like you

got a fucking sailboat you just left and right no you you have to go exactly where they tell you to otherwise you slam into each other you fuck you know like so but when i told her this, she sort of went, oh, okay. She didn't get crazy red in the face or argue about it. Right, right. Why I heard. That is such an admirable quality in people. Because when someone's pointing to something you just said, and they're like, no, that's actually wrong. Here's what the reality is.

I mean, I think the human and, you know, understandable reaction is to like, try to defend yourself, even though you know, you're wrong. And it's like the best feeling when you finally just like recognize like, oh, I'm wrong. I'm just gonna admit that I'm wrong. And I'll do more research into it and figure it out. You know what I mean? I think that's more admirable than like, no, I'm gonna defend myself, even though you have evidence proving that what I just said is bullshit. Well, I think people are learning now in this day and age that it's there's really no benefit in pretending you're never wrong yeah especially when it comes to things that are like you no one has all the information exactly you can't there's too much going on in the world you know everything about

aviation you know everything about viruses you know everything about computer codes you know everything about portuguese you can't there's too You know everything about computer codes. You know everything about Portuguese. You can't. There's too much shit. You don't have enough time in the day. Yeah. So you might have a misconception in your mind. It doesn't mean you're a fucking idiot.

It means you were wrong. You're a fucking idiot if you continue to cling to it, even while it's being explained to you. Yep. That it's not correct. That's what makes you a fucking idiot. And unfortunately, especially for men, again, we cling to ideas. We don't want to ever say we're wrong because then we give up this position of being smarter. Right.

Or this position of being better or winning. Yeah. Kevin Pereira said something to me that I loved and it's so true. He's like, what's wrong with saying I don't know time to time? Yeah. So smart. You know? Yeah.

And it's true. Like, there's like this fear especially when you do an interview with someone or when you come on a podcast that someone's gonna ask you something that you don't know the answer to and then you have to utter the words I don't know because you're gonna get criticism for it but like why it's not like I know everything that there is to know that's crazy those two percents out there hunting cunting it up, that's what it is. Those are the ones who are going to complain. Because those are the ones who are not going to know.

Of course you can't know everything. I can't believe she doesn't know about the Balkan Islands. There's always going to be someone. There's always going to be that problem. And there's a lot of people that are out there and they pretend that this never comes up in their life. Well, you don't talk about things that I'm not aware of.

Of course you do, stupid. Have a conversation with someone you don't know. They'll start talking to you about some shit you don't know about. Someone from somewhere else lives a different kind of life. You couldn't possibly know what they know. Just stop. No one can know everything. And it doesn't mean you're dumb.

And that's the problem is that in small social circles or especially where the instinct probably comes from, tribal situations, you all have access to the same amount of data. The one who knows more is the one who's more wise, who's the one who's paid more attention, or the one who has more experience or more success. So that man becomes preferable.

And so when you're in an open environment like Earth in 2015, you can't do that anymore. That's stupid. There's too much shit out there. The amount of data is unprocessable. When it's about, oh, don't eat that yellow leaf because it gives you diarrhea. You eat the green leaf and you're dead in 15 minutes. You've got to know that stuff or you're a dumbass out in the jungle and you're going to die.

Right, exactly. But that's a finite amount of shit. It's just about what fish will kill you if it bites your dick. You know, like this, you don't, you know, the amount of data that you have to process being a human with a computer today, it's insurmountable. It really is. It really is. So there's no shame in saying, I don't know.

In fact, I trust people more when they say, I don't know. Cause the worst thing is when you have someone in the media who has no freaking idea what they're talking about and they're just bullshitting their way through an interview or bull you know like you know sarah palin wasn't so good at bullshitting her way through it but instead of saying i don't know her dumb ass tried to answer questions in like the most ignorant way possible well she got busted the whole thing the can of worms opened up with that Katie Couric discussion. Yeah, it was so good. It turned out she doesn't read anything. It was like so obvious. Oh, you know,

you know, I read all kinds of shit. I read newspapers. Oh, yeah, I'm reading fortune cookies and stuff. She just decided to just go on that with no preparation and just charm her way through it. I bet she thought it was just going to be all softballs. But that's the thing. First of of all a lot of the questions were softball i mean

how about this do you think that that same approach would have ever been done if it was a man do you think that a man from alaska would be asked what books he reads or what newspapers he subscribes to i bet they wouldn't well i think that honestly with the way the interview went it started off with respectful questions. It wasn't like a gender thing at all. Like, oh, you're a woman, so I'm going to softball you. I think that Katie realized that this woman has no idea what she's talking about. And so her follow-up questions were super tame.

You know, kind of like, all right, well, do you read newspapers? Yeah, it never got really confrontational the way maybe you would do it. Right. Do you think you would go after her? Yeah, I think I would. Oh, I think so too. I remember when I was at... But I think Katie was probably setting her up. She's probably giving her some soft jabs,

waiting to drop that, what do you read, bitch? Blam! You don't think they researched and found out that chick doesn't read anything? Probably. They probably did. Actually, I think that Katie Couric was tactful. She handled it. Jamie agrees. Yeah?

Set her up with a big right hand. What do you read, bitch? Blam! The knees go. Eyes roll back. Plus, meow, meow. There's a little bit of that. Like, Katie's thinking, I could be the fucking president, too.

Meow. But just think about that for a second think about how that woman almost became the vice president of the united states yeah sort of sort of kind of yeah would have been fun just like dan quayle would have the same type of shit mccain's still alive look all these woe and that's true so she wouldn't really have any influence but maybe though the job might have killed him because we don't know what obama really would have looked like if he never got that gig. I mean, he might have all black hair right now. Could you imagine that?

Yeah. If he looked pretty similar to the way he looked six years ago? I mean, he aged so much in six years. They all do. I mean, think about how terrible this job. I would never want to be president of the union. I wouldn't want to be a politician, period. It sounds like a terrible job.

It also sounds like an incredibly flawed system that you're taking part in. And where it's almost like the ants are trying to rebuild the ant colony while they're carrying leaves in like guys we got to make new tunnels fuck off carry this yeah how are you going to fix this gigantic ant colony you're not going to fix that what a great analogy i love that but isn't it like that kind of in a way it's like you even if you're the president even if you're the one person that gets to talk to congress and you have debate and you do speeches and all this different. The reality is, my God, what a machine is behind this fucking world. My God, how many influences.

My God, how much money. My God, how much longstanding patterns of behavior that are very difficult to change, like lobbyists. I know. If somebody tried to propose lobbyists today in the age of the internet, if there was no lobbyists and they tried to come along and propose lobbyists, people are like, get the fuck out of here. 100%. What are you talking about? 100%. If the internet got to vote on whether or not Congress would allow corporations to donate money like an individual, they would go, are you fucking crazy?

Why would we do that? Why would we do that? What's the benefit? Dirtier rivers? What's the benefit there? What's going to come out of that that's good? I know. Yeah, the system is definitely set up against us and the entire notion of a democratic process. You can't have a democratic process when you have corporations giving unlimited amounts of money to politicians. It's just not going to happen. There's no competition. money to politicians it's just not going to happen there's no competition you know this is this blew my mind although i've done this type of reporting for so long it shouldn't surprise me during the midterm elections the coke brothers spent between 275 no 225 and 300 million dollars i mean let's just go to the lower end of that 225 million dollars to influence the midterm elections that's so crazy

it's amazing it's so much money it's so much money I love that they're called the Koch brothers too I hope they do a lot of it I hope they do it in their underwear while they're getting their toes done you know they just constantly getting massaged and eating grapes people dangle grapes over their

face I mean I always wonder Koch brothers just living like gangsters They're just constantly getting massaged and eating grapes. People dangle grapes over their face. I mean, I always wonder. Cook brothers just living like gangsters. How much money do you need? How much freaking money do you need? Well, obviously you don't need that $225 million you just give to those stupid politicians. And the politicians eat it up. They have to.

Yeah. Well, yeah, how much money do you need? But I think it's also their professional players of the game that has made them incredibly successful. They're the baddest motherfucking Monopoly players on earth. They figured out a way to do it at a very high stakes. I'm sure it's insanely addictive. They don't want to let it go. No, I'm sure it is addictive as well.

And first of all, they're terrible people. So don't think that I'm excusing them. How dare you. But I will also say that if the system is set up as such, why wouldn't you take advantage of it? Because you're nice, because you're ethical, because you realize you're a temporary life form sharing time with these other people. And you try to make the world the best possible, have the best possible influence on it that you can. That's not the best possible influence on it. And it's not the best possible influence on it that you can. That's not the best possible influence on it. And it's not the best beneficial. For you, it's not that beneficial because you've already reached this point of diminishing returns where you've got enough money to donate $225 million.

Yeah. Whoa. Do you like fly fishing? Because you should do that with your days. No, I know. Could you imagine? I would never even think about working in a bank if I had enough money where I could give someone $225 million to fix whatever fucking laws or make it – whatever the fuck shenanigans. To tilt it in my favor. Oh, my God. I would be like tuna fishing.

I would get a jet ski that goes 100 miles an hour. It'd be having fun. I know. Why would you want to be involved? You're like 80. What are you doing? How much more money can you enjoy? I don't understand it at all.

I mean, what's the point of building this kind of wealth if you don't actually enjoy it? And I'm sure they enjoy it in some ways, but they also spend a sizable chunk of their lives destroying the country. I think there's also a momentum behind it, like a success momentum, almost akin to what you were describing when you see other people that are more successful. And even though you get inspired by it, some people may not. Like that thing that drives you to worry about your success level, which is very high for, would you say you're 28? Yeah. Very high for a 28-year-old woman. You've been on a very successful news show for many years now.

You're very respected. You do these conversations with people online. They're very well-received, but yet you still will trip about what you've done or what you haven't done. Well, I guess when you're a super fucking crazy billionaire, maybe you want to be like Dracula or something. Well, I guess when you're like a super fucking crazy billionaire, maybe you want to be like Dracula or something. You know, maybe you want to have a horde of undead slaves that bow before you and just waiting for you to have enough money to buy some technology that turns the world into fucking goblins that are at your command or something.

I don't fucking know. I'm not exactly sure if I get that kind of motivation. You know, like that $100 billion motivation or $10 billion. what you're doing, what you're doing. I don't know. I don't understand it either. And, and, you know, like earlier in the show, I talked about how I questioned whether or not people are inherently good. And you know what? I think a lot of people are inherently good. And we've turned you around. You, you have, this was, this has been a very productive podcast. We've turned you around. You have. This has been a very productive podcast. The one thing that I will say is I get a lot of pleasure out of giving back to my community because growing up here in L.A., there were so many things They were working class. And I had a great public education. I had, you know, access to something called healthy families, which was

like an affordable form of health insurance for kids. Like, all of these things were paid for by taxpayers, right? And these are the things that helped me build a life for myself and helped me become successful. And I feel like it's my obligation to give back to the community and help in any way that I can, because I want to see people who are maybe from a poor neighborhood grow up and be able to do what they really want to do with their lives. You know, I'm living my dream right now. I want to make sure other people have that same ability. That's beautiful. I think it's really cool that you do that. And I think it's really cool that you teach that journalism course too. I love it. Yeah. It's cool that you're doing it and you're like someone who's actually

out there doing it as a gig you know and then you're teaching people how to do it and do it correctly that's badass yeah it's great Anna Kasparian we're out of time we just did three hours it's insane insane so fast flies by I know if I didn't have to pee so hard it would have been like the last 10 minutes I'm hanging in there. But okay, Twitter, Anna Kasparian. Is there anything you would like to promote or tell people you've got coming up? So I have a personal YouTube channel. I post a lot of stuff on there. It's youtube.com slash Anna Kasparian.

So check me out there and Instagram, Anna Kasparian TYT. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. It was always fun. I loved it. I had a great time. I had a great time doing your show too.

It was really fun. Aw, thanks. All right, folks. That's it for now. We will be back next week. A lot of fun guests. I loved it I had a great time I had a great time doing your show too it was really fun aww thanks alright folks that's it for now we'll be back next week a lot of fun guests I can't tell you who it's some secret shit

but we got some good ones alright so enjoy your weekend or whenever the fuck you're listening to this and much love big kiss bye Thank you.