The Joe Rogan Experience - #726 - Josh Zepps

Episode Date: November 23, 2015

Josh Zepps is the host of #WeThePeople LIVE available on Spotify and at http://wtplive.com

Doom, doom, dum, da-da-dum Was it a wave? Gang signs. Gang signs. That's his gang. Fucking Jamie. He's in the JRE gang. Throws up the 3, 2, 1. Will you teach me after the show, Jamie, some of the signs? After the show? You can't even talk about it, dude. Sorry. Keep it on the DL. First rule of JRE gang.

You don't talk about JRE gang. Dude, this is the perfect time to have you in because the fucking world is literally about to go crazy. What's going on? About to? Yeah. I feel like it has. It's just the bubbling. think we we think it has but here we are in this uh wonderful office park in the valley in california everything's fine you go outside there's birds chirping so the whole world hasn't gone crazy it's true but there's spots that are going fucking crazy yale

has gone crazy you pay attention to that absolutely i did my whole show about it last week on my new podcast, which we're going to do an episode of after this. I'm very appreciative of. That's right. The new Josh Depp's podcast. What is it called? Hashtag WeThePeopleLive. If you search hashtag WeThePeopleLive.

We're so down with the hip social future. You got to get with it, Joe. I do. Hashtags are something I only use in jest. Yeah. Well, this is sort of in jest it's like it's tongue-in-cheek it's also a cool way of like if for people to search for you there's probably a bazillion we the people lives podcasts but there's only one that's gonna start with a hashtag so you put in a hashtag and ours will presumably be the first to come up i use it for the ufc only like hashtag ufc 90 193 if i'm talking about like an event yeah do that

but hashtags are interesting because if you ever go to hashtags, you ever go to like hashtag black Twitter? Yeah, I never do it. Jesus Christ. It's a scary place. Jimmy has a giant big smile on his face. That's where he spends 23 hours a day. Well, you know how sometimes you don't need to go to them because they come to you.

When you say something, then you get taken out of context. Then you get picked up by some blog. And then all of a sudden, like all over the weekend, I've been getting all these tweets just out of the blue about what fascism is. I was like, who are these people and why are they tweeting at me? I don't even know that I said anything about fascism. Well, it's because Breitbart picked up something that I did on a segment on HuffPost Live last week and wrote something up about it, about how apparently I implied that Donald Trump was a fascist, which I actually didn't mean because I don't think that he is. And now all of a sudden, I'm in the hashtag.

I'm part of the hashtag about fascism without even choosing it. I believe that most people who use the term fascist or fascism don't really exactly know what the term means. I think you're totally right. So let's help them out right now. Let's find the official definition of fascism. Because I think most people get it wrong. Fascism means an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.

So people use that. There's other definitions of it, of course. But extreme right-wing, authoritarian. People use that for a lot of non-fascist reasons. That's true. And I probably used it sloppily myself in the context in which Breitbart was picking me up. And they would have a point if I did come across as saying that Donald Trump was a fascist. But all the people who were tweeting back at me were saying, fascism isn't right-wing, you idiot. It's left-wing. It's left-wing. Socialism is the real fascism. You don't even understand the meaning of the word.

So I just responded with a link to the Oxford Dictionary, which also includes the word right-wing in it. Yeah, it's mostly considered right-wing. People are using it in the left-wing circles now or about left-wing circles because they're using it in the authoritarian context. That's right. That is, I think that's applicable because a lot of what is going on in like really extreme social justice left wing type organizations or groups is that they're trying to control behavior and they're trying to mitigate criticism. Like you can't criticize these concepts because these concepts are supported by, you know, social justice. I've got an interesting study on that that I brought for you, which you're going to like. And before I get to it, I don't want to forget what I was just thinking.

When you were talking about how here we are in the valley, birds outside. Chirp, chirp, chirp. Chirp, chirp, chirp. Sunshine. Trees. That's a very good birdie, Joe. Thank you.

Practiced that all day. Give us my little one. I want to hear it again. I'm going to put that as my ringtone all right do it dude you'll never hear your phone just put up really really loud um so i was in beirut briefly a few months ago and was standing on the rooftop of this swanky hotel looking out over the mediterranean and looking out over the the houses and i was like this is like an idyllic beautiful part of the world in terms of its natural beauty and i could practically swim from here to the greek islands help people are basically right the refugees and i had just been in the greek in athens as well which is like geographically physiologically italy greece

are the same as all these fucked up parts of north africa and israel and palestine and lebanon and not to mention syria and i was like just struck by how capable we are of fucking things up as people because the actual geography is the same. Like those waves are the same waves as the ones on the Italian Riviera. But the Italian Riviera is the Italian Riviera. And this shithole is this shithole. Through no difference of climate or sun or the birdies are still there. The birdies are the same.

But religion and politics just has an endless capacity to to screw things up you could call it religion or politics but it's really just power it's human beings trying to achieve power and you could do it through whatever modality you choose but the reality is it's just people that are trying to control other people and trying to gain things but i think it's in particular tribes trying to control other tribes and politics and religion make you much more likely, make it much easier to be tribal, much easier to not be an individual. Sorry, but sort of. But isn't the argument against that what we were just talking about in terms of social justice warriors and people calling people fascists? I mean, you're in a tribe.

If you're on the extreme left or the extreme right, you're in a tribe. If you're on the extreme left or the extreme right, you're in a tribe. When you talk to right-wing people, they're almost incapable of not bringing up liberals. Or the liberals think, they don't just bring up their own concepts and their own thoughts. They'll immediately disparage liberal ideas, like immediately. They'll tell you, well, you're a liberal. You believe in this and this and that, so you're a liberal, and they'll immediately downplay your ideas. That's a tribal thing. Absolutely. That's politics.

It's religion. And social justice warriors will do the same thing. They'll do the same thing about... I mean, the first time I came to your attention was with that interview with Suey Park, the Council Colbert activist, right? And conversing with- Still one of my favorite. When you just broke it down to her, you're like, this is so fucking unbelievably stupid. And you could tell she was just like devastated that you even had the balls to question her.

To people who haven't seen it, she wanted to have the Colbert report canceled because apparently it was racist and I didn't interview with her on HuffPost Live. Well, not only that, it was a joke about someone being- Yeah, it was a satirical joke. with her on Half Post Live. Well, not only that, it was a joke about someone being... Yeah, it was a satirical joke. Well, for people who don't even know the show, Colbert plays a character.

He plays an extreme left-wing kind of goofy character. Excuse me, extreme right-wing kind of goofy character. And in that context of that character, he made a joke about racism. It was a joke about racism. And in that... It was a funny joke, too. Do you remember what the joke was?

Yeah, I do. It was Dan Snyder, who's the head of the Redskins, right? Yes. Who was saying that he... So that he didn't have to change the name of the Redskins because it was racist.

He was going to set up a charity for Native American causes. And Stephen Colbert, in his right-wing persona, said that sometimes he'd been accused of doing jokes that could be considered to be offensive about Asian people. So in return, he was going to set up the Ching Chong Ding Dong Foundation for Sensitivity Towards Orientals or whatever.

Or whatever. And she found that offensive. Yeah. Not really. I don't believe she really did. I think she found it was a green light for her to attack and to use hashtag activism. And to get some publicity. There's a story that's making the rounds today. A Kansas City University professor who in a class about racism, a discussion about racism and discrimination, she used the word nigger.

And in using the word, all these students are trying to get her fired. And she's been removed of her duties right now. She's been temporarily suspended under review or whatever their process is. But in just saying the word, not saying someone is like, this is a word that people have issues. Let's discuss words that people have issues with. What are the origins of these words? Why are they problematic? What is, you know, what can be done about this? I'm not sure exactly what the context of our class is, but they... I'm sure the context wasn't, let's go around accusing black people of being niggas, right?

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But this is the same kind of thing. I don't believe anyone in that class was actually hurt by that. I think they found the green light and they attacked. Yeah. Don't we learn what to be offended by? Yes.

So it's possible that someone felt like an initial kind of reaction of, oh my God, I just heard that word. That's a good point. And I've been told that that word is completely unacceptable under all circumstances. And I've been told that I'm allowed to be offended. Yeah, that's right. And indeed ought to be offended. Yes.

And so, like, I was amazed by the power of that word when I first came to the States. Because only here do we have this dumbass word, the N-word, like that phrasing. That phrase, yeah. I mean, I'd never heard that until I came to the States. In Australia, it was completely unacceptable to ever use the word nigger against somebody. You would just never do that.

I mean, I was taught since the earliest days that racism is terrible. But you could talk about it in polite company. I mean, if it came up, you would be able to discuss the existence of the word, and nobody would ever say the N-word. But you guys have racism towards Aborigines. Totally. That's pretty real over there. But it's not towards black people racism towards aborigines that's pretty that's pretty real over there this is not towards black people right no that's right but there's there's there is a much much much bigger awareness of the kind of tragedy of the original sin of what happened when australia

was settled than there is here towards native americans i sort of regard native americans as being the people who've really been screwed in this country. I mean, not that it should be a competition of whose suffering was worse or like, I'll put my slavery up against your genocide. The way people fuck over more. Yeah, exactly. That's right. That's right. Because I always hate it when we get into those games. But nobody even talks about... Like in Australia, if you go to an awards ceremony, for example, if you're at the Grammys, every single presenter will come up and they will begin by saying, I want to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land, the Yadavundi people. You know, they'll at least give a kind of politically correct nod to the fact that we occupied a country and basically wiped out an entire people.

And, you know, you'll see Aboriginal flags flying on Parliament House alongside the Australian flag. I don't even know what the Native American flag is. Do they even have a flag? I don't believe they did. Well, they didn't. I mean, nor did Aborigines back then. They had some symbols. You know, they certainly had symbols that were indicative of different tribes or different regions.

But I don't think they had flags. I could be wrong. No, but, I mean, Aborigines didn't have flags. Aborigines didn't even have metal. Yeah, right. No kidding, right? I mean, they were at the time when the British settled Australia, and I always get accused when I say things like this of, you know,

biopolitically correct social justice warriors, of imposing onto traditional societies an idea of human civilization as being better if it's, like, industrialized than if it's not industrialized. Right. Because I'm like a white man who like totally thinks that like the 21st century is better than the fucking 15th century. Let me help out because it is better. Yeah. Yeah.

We have computers and the internet. We have books. We have a lot of things that are better than like flint knives. So let's just, having said that, you're such a white man, Joe. Having said that, if you think about like the traditional anthropological conception of human evolution going from like the discovery of fire and farming and then up through the Bronze Age and the Iron Age and so on, Aborigines when the British settled Australiaish settled australia were the least advanced civilization in the world by far i mean we're talking a mass and again i like the politically correct part of me has to keep qualifying they had been around for over a hundred thousand years so they were doing something successful like it's only been two thousand years since jesus well that's true

rabbits are doing a good job did you just Joe Rogan, did you just compare Aboriginal Australians to rabbits? I did, in that context. Okay. I like you for that, because I like analogies, and I like being able to accept analogies without thinking that the person is saying that the two things are the same in every respect. Yeah. Because I always get pulled up.

Like, I made a Hitler analogy the other day about, I was talking to, who was it, Donny Deutsch? Do you know that guy? Yes. And he was talking about how he likes Trump. And I made some parallel where I was like, he was, I was simply saying that like, he was like, he's popular. He's touching a vein. I was like, yeah, but is that the only reason to respect somebody? Hitler touched a vein as well. And he was like, he got all outraged on the air at the fact that I would say Hitler. He was like, you can't do that. Like, how dare you? I'm Jewish. I was like, I'm not saying that Trump is the same as Hitler, you idiot. I'm saying that the criterion by which you were judging his success

is flawed, and I was using an analogy to do so. Well, he should be ashamed, because he's doing the exact thing we're accusing the extreme left of. Yeah. He saw a green light and he went after it. That's right.

And he has that. Does he really think I'm a Nazi sympathizer or that I'm like shitting on him? And then, so then I was like, hey,

my grandmother was in the concentration camps and I pull a juke out on me and then I just moved right on. Yeah, fuck. Yeah. Donnie. So anyway,

yeah, Aborigines didn't have like metal and stuff. No, they were, I mean, they were extremely primitive. So far, removed from what we consider to be advanced civilization, that Australia felt it was okay to actually take their children and adopt them. And this was recent.

This was in like the 50s. You know, until 1969, Aborigines were classified in Australia as fauna. Whoa. In other words, they weren't considered... Not flowers. Not flora. There might have been a couple of floral Aborigines, but they were mostly in the same category as kangaroos. That's dark.

You couldn't kill them. You couldn't? No. You couldn't? No. But, I mean, they weren't officially classified as fauna. It's just that they weren't classified as human. Like, they weren't considered to be people in the... So, like, you can't kill a chimp either. Yeah.

Wow. That's fucked up. So it's a recent thing. But it's come a long way in the past 15 or 20 years. Now I think there's a general consensus that we really fucked them over. I hope so. You can't steal their fucking babies i mean no matter how primitive not to defend it but this was at the same time that jim crow was going on here right i mean it's not it's not like we were enlightened our well our forefathers were enlightened in the 50s about race yeah well

everybody was pretty fucked up back then i think it's very difficult for us to understand in 2015 what it was like in 1950. Because I think we assume that they should have known better. They should have been like us. But 100 years before them, they were cowboys. They had horses and trains, and that's it. And 100 years

before that, they didn't even have fucking trains. And 100 years before that, you're in the dark ages. that i mean you're you're in the dark ages yeah i mean you're the 1500s 1400s you're a few hundred years removed from gingus khan it's so fast and it's like i don't remember whether i've spoken to you about this before but i was when i was in greece on the trip that i was just talking about um i was standing at the you know the acropolis and i was expecting to be wowed like all tourists are by, oh, the sheer age of this thing.

Oh, I'm at the birthplace of Western civilization. And instead, what I thought was, I'd actually just been back to New Zealand because my grandma died. She was one day shy of her 100th birthday. Damn, almost made it. 99 and 364 days. So if she was just born premature, she would have had that. You know, I mean, when you were born, it's so arbitrary.

They induce labor. Yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it. If you take her from like the third trimester, she made it. She made it. From the quickening. Yes. She made it. Her soul made it.

Yeah, 100%. And what I was struck by at the acropolis and the parthenon was not like how old human civilization was but was like my grandma her lifetime is a manageable period of time in my brain i can think about that in a way that when you talk to me about something that happened 50 000 years ago it's just meaningless and when you talk about the size of the cosmos or a light year or something it doesn doesn't, like I might be able to understand it intellectually, but it just washes over my head. I don't know what you're talking about. But the lifetime of my grandmother, that's a manageable span of time. I can imagine her life.

A hundred years, yes. And you know what? This Acropolis at the dawn of Western civilization, before humans had even invented anything that we would recognize as being civilized in terms of laws and procedures and technologies that's only a hundred of my grandma's yeah yeah how about this or less no sorry it's 40 it's it's 100 it's like 4 000 years it's 40 of my grandma's jesus was 20 of my grandma's yeah a nuclear weapon my grandma was born during the gallipoli campaign in world war one hitler wasn't even a name that her parents knew when she was born during the Gallipoli campaign in World War I. Hitler wasn't even a name that her parents knew when she was born.

The Depression hadn't happened. The bomb hadn't been invented. Let alone computers. How fast are things going? Pretty fast. How recently was it over the span of geological time that we were monkeys?

Effectively monkeys. They believe 200, 000 years ago human beings were in this form their belief but it changes depending upon the fossil record like when they add new evidence like they just found uh like within the last couple weeks they've recognized a new subspecies of human beings ancient ancient subspecies. They found a giant tooth. So they're finding fossil records that pretty much coincide with the established belief that people are 200,000 plus years in this form. Like you could take a person from 200,000 years ago. They'd probably be considerably smaller than us because they didn't get a lot of food.

And you'd put them in a movie theater and they would look just like you or I. Maybe worse teeth. Yeah. As long as they kept their mouth shut, you know, we showered them, trimmed whatever fucking weird hair they had. You know, they're probably just very strangely hairy. But, you know, obviously in the fossil record, we're not getting too much, it's very rare they find

skin and hair, so they're just kind of guessing what they looked like on the outside. But they believe that about 200,000 years in this form, give or take 100,000 years. So that's pretty recent. More likely give than take. Yeah.

It's not really give and take. What's most sort of frightening to me is how recently technology has become as powerful as it is, especially nukes, and superimposing technology that was invented within the lifetime of my dad. Think about what we just said. Just that.

What's crazy and call it 300,000 years ago, 3000 of your grandmas. Yeah. That's it. And we're monkeys. Yeah. Just 3000, like a good size theater show. Yep. Like you go to the Chicago theater, that's 3,700 people.

That's a good spot to look at. Those people in that audience, if you get a full Chicago theater of 3,700 people, if every one of them lived birth to death, just stop and think about that. That's fucking crazy. It's incredible, isn't it? That's crazy. It's fucking crazy. That's incredible isn't it that's crazy it's fucking crazy that's 300 000 years and you don't even need to go that i mean you don't even take it that far before the kinds of lives that people were living and the kinds of concerns that they had to concern

themselves with was so parochial and they knew so little yeah i mean, even just back to the Middle Ages. I mean, think about having 50 of my... No, sorry, five of my grandmothers get us back to the Middle Ages. Five of them. That's fucking crazy. 50 get us back to before we had... Before the Parthenon. God. I mean, we are...

50. We are hairless apes who just... Just now. Just right now. Just happened to have discovered the atom. Amazing. And technology. The Chicago Theater thing is really freaking me out.

That's a good one. I like that. I love that. That one's freaking me out because that's monkeys. I mean, we go back to, like, we're basically fucking, like, the scene in 2001 where they're around the monolith. Yeah. That's what we're talking about. That's what we're talking about.

So how many people do you fit in a big stadium? 100, 150,000, something like that? Yeah, like a giant football stadium. Like the place that we did in Australia for the UFC, I believe, is 70,000 people. And that was enormous. Was that the MCG? That was Etihad Arena. They've started sponsoring everything since I left.

So I don't even know what that would be now because Etihad wasn't a big airline back then. Was it in Sydney or Melbourne? Melbourne. All right. It'd probably be the cricket ground, right? Formerly, though. Probably. It's got a retractable roof.

Yeah, that's right. It was the site of the biggest UFC ever, and it was 70,000 people. And that's an enormous, enormous place. But they have football places. Like, Jamie, you're a football fan. What's the biggest spot? I don't know if it's the exact biggest. Ohio Stadium in Columbus where the Buckeyes play is like 110 they can fit in there yeah 108 officially a thousand

what is that like when it's filled that must be insane super loud uh the way i mean the way they have the sound going to it's a little bit it bounces off each other right being in it so it's it's insane that's what we've got to be what the coliseum was like in rome and half half like but there's there's crazy people they They're drunk as shit. Yeah. They're yelling at each other. Yeah. And there's fights all over the place. I've been to huge stadiums that are like 100,000, 110,000.

So let's say 100,000 stadium, right? Right. It's a big place. But if you use your analogy, your Chicago, my grandmother analogy, that's 10 million years. Oh, my God. What were we 10 million years. Oh, my God. What were we 10 million years ago? We were rodents. Well, when did the dinosaurs die out?

65 million years ago, apparently we were a type of almost like a shrew-looking rodent. That's what we were. That's the current theory. Blowing my mind. That's what really makes evolutionary deniers angry. The idea that we were just shitty little rats. You telling me that I was a shrew? One Ohio State football game filled people ago, I was a shrew.

The crazy thing is that the science deniers, the evolution deniers, are the ones who are more monkey-like than the ones who believe in science. True. That was an old Bill Hicks bit. He used to think about people being unevolved. The people that don't believe in evolution look the most unevolved. Exactly. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Well, it's too hard for us to... I mean, we're sitting here. We're not science deniers, and we're looking at the age of your grandma, 100 years, and we're just going back a few grandmas, and we're like, fuck, man. Well, this is the first time I've been amazed by that, though. Although, you know when else I had this feeling was Richard Dawkins has this cool analogy where he says, imagine, he's talking about how evolution denies. I keep wanting to say climate denies. Evolution denies.

We'll talk about how there are these gaps in the fossil record, right? And how, like, well, what happened to the species that were interim species in between the species that we find? Richard Dawkins tries to make the point, the whole concept of a species is something that we sort of retroactively superimpose onto things because lots of animals, because the vast majority of animals die out and don't manage to succeed in this world. The vast majority of mutations fail. But he says, imagine getting a book, imagine getting a picture book, like a high school yearbook, and it's got your photo in it on the last page,

and the page before that is your mother's photo, and the page before that is her mother's photo, and the page before that is your mother's photo. And the page before that is her mother's photo. And the page before that is her mother's photo, right? And you go back and back and back and back, all the way back to the first dawn of life, hundreds of millions of years ago. And each page is going to basically look like the page before it. There's never going to be a point at which the shrew becomes a monkey or some amphibious creature becomes a shrew. Every child looks like its parent.

But as you flip through the pages of this book, it's such a thick book that over time, like one of those little cartoon figures that you could draw and it looks like it's moving on the page, you just start morphing back, back, back until eventually you're a fucking fish right but it's well you know your great great great great grandma is just add in enough greats yeah and that's what people don't understand it just has to be a really really really really really big book well our concept at times it's just too hard well look at it this way look at the changes that a person takes over the period of their life look at a person from you know think about a child and then turn that child into your grandma before she died that's a very different physical looking thing as age sets in yeah sure you know i mean there's a lot of changes that go on in nature like the

the growth of animals death of animals of, plants and things along those lines. There's all sorts of growth and death and all sorts of changing. And while we're looking at it in a static form, you know, if you go outside and look at those trees, they look exactly the same as they looked yesterday. And it takes a long time before you recognize, like, oh, this fucking thing's growing. I'm feeling that. I'm feeling that myself kind of for the first time. Like my birthday yesterday.

And I've gotten to that age where I don't really care about it. I don't really know. Like when I booked this trip, I didn't even know that it was my birthday yesterday. How old are you? 38. That's when you start denying it. I'm 48. So you really start denying it.

Denying what? Getting older. I'm not even paying attention to that. That's not even important to me why i'm concentrating on the present i live in the moment joshua you know yeah it's easy it's a comforting bullshit isn't it well when you get to be like 78 you're just like what do you do i mean what are you gonna not parasail because you're 78 you know no that's right but i think that the most it is true though

that like you know age is on the inside because i can feel that now at this age i just have to do a shit more work not to feel crappy and when i'm 20 22 it's just everything's great your body is just automatically functioning exactly as it should now like my ankle will just occasionally hurt you know that didn't happen when i was was 22. I actually remember the first time in my life when I was getting out of a car, and as I got out of the car seat, I went, I was like, what the fuck was that? Did I just grunt as I was getting up? I never grunted. You know, just a very small, like, Just to get out of a car seat? Wow. Yeah, but you know, just like

you might. It's not a big deal It's just like A teenager Never just leaps Out of the car seat Right Whereas an old person Gets out of the car seat

Going It's a good point I Might notice When I for the first time Just do the little Yeah It's like I'm getting old

You gotta exercise Welcome to my 30s Yeah That's the other thing Nature is trying to kill you And nature would like you To give in To the same decay that you see in animals and the forest and what have you. It would like you to just accept the natural process. But us and our clever little minds have figured out how to mitigate that process at least slightly with exercise and nutrition and proper rest and supplementation.

Hormone supplementation and going to the doctors and new inventions and cryotherapy and all this crazy shit that people figured out how to just put the brakes on this fucking inevitable demise. I know. We're living way too long for nature. Nature loves us up until we're in our late teens, early 20s. Yeah. But by now, I've been common sperm I've been cum and sperm for decades.

Nature's like, you must have had kids by now, right? TMI. You must have. Too much information. Well, I think everyone can figure out that I've probably been able to cum since I was a teenager. Well, you may be gone tantric. You might be one of those dudes. Possible.

Trying to keep the cum inside them and re-vigorate their body. Do they do that? Is that a real thing? Yeah. Can you actually consistently orgasm over a long period of time without coming? The problem with all that, and I'm sure I'm going to get tweets about this, is everyone who practices it is a fucking lunatic. So you don't know because you haven't actually tested it out. Yeah, so if you talk to them, they'll tell you, yes, I completely come inside.

I come internally. I absorb. I reabsorb. And the energy that I get from that is so much more amazing than the energy that you would get from an external orgasm. And then they just get, like, really into talking to me about tantric and they get annoying. You know? Do they do it by contracting the muscle that starts with a P, whose name I'm forgetting, between your balls and your ass? Prostate?

No, there's a particular muscle there, which apparently if you learn to build it up like we're doing exercises throughout the day then you can it will compress and it will push against uh the whatever that tube is called i'm really medically astute today the dick so it's like a male kegel right yeah exactly yeah have you ever seen that russian lady that can pick up i think she can carry like 32 kilograms for their pussy? It might be more than that. It's like more than 70 pounds, I believe. Oh. No, I haven't, Jack.

Yeah. She has this ability to like, I guess they put like a ball and then attach a string to a ball. At the end of the string is a weight. And she puts that ball inside of her pussy and just locks down on that motherfucker. And then can literally lift up like 70 pounds of weight. It's impressive. I've stood at one end of a strip club in Bangkok.

Had a Thai stripper fire darts from the other side of the room out of her pussy and pop a balloon that I was holding over my head. Wow. And she could fire those things with such aim. I don't know why I was so stupid, because I could have taken an eye out. What kind of speed are we looking at? Speed. I mean, enough speed. Yeah, speed.

Like, what? She must have been a good 10 meters, so maybe 30 feet away from me. Oh, my God. And she's firing them across the room fast enough to be able to pop a balloon. With accuracy. With accuracy. That's insane. Now, how is she doing this?

Does she have her elbows to the back of her knees, and she's got her pussy up in the air? No, she was standing up. I'm trying to picture exactly what position she was in. Yeah, she was sort of kneeling and standing. Kneeling away from you. No, sorry, not kneeling. Bent knees, but standing upright, and with a thrust of the hips. Boy. Shooting it out.

What? Bent knees, standing upright. Facing you? Facing me. Wow. That's crazy. That doesn't even seem like... That's like shooting a gun in the air when you're pointing it at the ground. That doesn't even make any sense. How did she do that? She might have had her hands on the ground.

To be honest, Joe, I wasn't focused on her fucking position. I was focused on whether or not she was going to take my eye out. I had my eyes closed most of the time. Well, if she had her hands on the ground, now it makes perfect sense. So she's like a table. Yeah, a table sitting upright. How's she getting the air to launch that thing? I don't know.

That's what's confusing about that. There were so many things that she was doing. They have all kinds of tricks. They have all kinds of tricks. They have all kinds of tricks. It started out with ping pong balls, all the classic things. Also razor blades. Oh. It's not pleasant.

Isn't it amazing what people will do if you're confronted with a town filled with drunk tourists who have already seen everything? They've seen Muay Thai kickboxing fights where 16 year old kids have fucking shinned each other in the head until they go unconscious they've seen legalized prostitution everywhere ladyboys everywhere everything is chaos just fucking scooters with 37 people piled on them and what do they got to do they have to adapt what's left it's evolution it's adapt or die you know you have to adapt you have to adapt.

You have to figure out how to stand out. Well, you got to shoot a dart out of your pussy, honey. That Josh Zeps' head. Yeah, there's, I mean, you want to make the argument that people are malleable. That's like one of the best arguments. Like, look at that. Not to mention, like, I mean, I've been to shows there where there are just i remember the finale to one show where it was like there were about how many fucking shows i go there a lot

do you go to thailand a lot yeah thailand is i i like to say that thailand is sort of our mexico if you're australian it's oh it's nearby it's cheap it's beautiful uh there are great beaches um how far is the flight i mean everything's sort of far for most Australians because Sydney and Melbourne are located on the southeast coast of Australia. So there's a lot of Australia to fly over. Australia is the same size as the contiguous United States. So you basically have to do the entire flight from like the equivalent of Miami to Seattle before you start entering Asian airspace. So from Australia, the country itself, it'd probably only be two or three hours to Bangkok. It's only like an hour or two to Indonesia and Singapore. But from Sydney,

then you've got to add on an extra six hours just to get out of Australian airspace. That's amazing that you guys are the same size, that Australia is the same size as America, as far as the continental or close to it. But there's only 20 million people. So you have less people than California. We have half. We have, yeah, I mean, two thirds of the population of California in an area the size of the continental or close to it, but there's only 20 million people, so you have less people than California. We have half, we have, yeah, I mean, two-thirds of the population of California in an area the size of the United States if you get rid of Alaska. It's a badass country. I fucking love it there. How's it there?

I know you were, yeah, that whole upset, right? I had a great fucking time. I did stand up there, too, the Palais Theater. It's fucking incredible. I love it up there. Down there, wherever the fuck it is, it's there. It depends on which way you go. Exactly.

If you go north, you can get there. You'll get there eventually. The globe's round, Joe. Yes. And it's spinning. The fucker doesn't stand still. But I love Australia. It's an awesome country.

It really is. It's great. The people there are cool as fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Aussies are nice. It's great. That's my number one go-to spot if the apocalypse happens.

Yep. If North America falls apart, Australia is pretty much self-supporting. Mm-hmm. It's democratic, really cool, nice people. Yep. A lot of space. Plenty of animals to eat. Yep.

Plenty of land to- Plenty of fish. Jesus Christ. I mean, you've got the whole South Pacific right there. Yeah, you just can't- you've got to watch out for your fucking killer jellyfish. Everywhere you turn, you have something that can kill you. That's true. They have- if people don't know, you've got to look gotta watch out for your fucking killer jellyfish everywhere you turn you have something that can kill you That's true They have if people don't know you gotta look up this thing called box jellyfish because they have they get a bay

Filled with box jellyfish, and they'll say don't go in the water might the box jellyfish are there They'll kill you instantly. How do you say straight off? They'll kill you straight off kill you straight off Yeah, and they will kill you instantly like there's just aze you when you go into anaphylactic shock. You're just dead. You're dead. I mean, some people survive if you get hit with one or two tentacles, but you're fucked, man, for like years. Yeah, well, don't go in the water. What the fuck

does that mean? It's the goddamn water. But in all of the areas of Australia, for a start, they're only there during certain times of the year, so you were there in summer. And they're not in Sydney or Melbourne, so you don't have to worry about them there. They're only in, you must have gone up to the Great Barrier Reef or something? No, no, no, I was just talking to people.

I didn't go in the fucking water. I'm not retarded. You can go in the water in Melbourne. No, no, no, you can't. They move around. The water, I don't know if you know, it's just like it's all connected. They could just travel to you. No, that's like saying that you're going to get eaten by a great white shark in Alaska. The great white sharks don't go to Alaska. Don't go in the water in Alaska

if it's connected to where the great white sharks live. So they just never go in the water anyway. It's the same fucking water. It's the same water. Yeah, but we're talking about gigantic distances. As far as we know. As far as we know, they don't go there, but they could. No, they couldn't. They'd die. It'd be too cold for them. If you knew that the woods were filled with werewolves,

but only at a certain time of the year, would you go during a full moon? No! You wouldn't. I'll answer for you. Depends on whether or not I trust it. Get the fuck out of the water. What you're saying is basically like you shouldn't go hiking in Panama because there are bears in Canada. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Yeah, there you go. So we've got a, Jamie's just brought up an image. Marine stingers are dangerous. Marine stingers are dangerous. Don't swim in these waters between October and May. Severe box jelly sting. So what are they? Emergency treatment.

Oh, that's one of those, they have a bucket of like vinegar. Yeah, that's right. So you're still fucked. There's a species called the Irukandji, which I can't remember whether it's the same as a box jellyfish or not, but someone's going to tweet me now that I've said that. And there was a case where these scientists on the Great Barrier Reef, they were studying the Irukandji, and they're almost invisible. They're very tiny, small little jellyfish with extremely long tentacles.

And they do the same thing as the box jellyfish, if they're not the same thing as the box jellyfish. And they had a carton, a bottle of Irukandji in water, and they put it in their research fridge, and a dude came in and drank the water thinking it was drinking water and died instantly. Oh my god. Jesus Christ. Put a label on it you idiots. Put a fucking skull and

crossbones on that shit. Yeah, there you go. There's an Irukandji. That is that little tiny thing will kill you. What the fuck, man? We're bad ass. No, you need to clean your water out. Your water's filled with the enemy. Those are murderers. She gets some governors saying that we're not going to let any Uruk-Hanji into the country

anymore. Yeah. That is insane. It's insane that little tiny thing can kill you. Yeah. That is unbelievable. But I mean, only Americans make a big deal out of how dangerous things in Australia are. Well, that's because you fuckers are used to it.

It's like the Thai lady with the ping pong balls coming out of her pussy. That's normal in Thailand. I mean, the reality about Australia is we've managed to export this Steve Irwin crocodile hunter vision of Australia as if we're all like rugged outdoorsmen who live in the bush, in the outback. The reality is almost half the country lives in two big cities. Yeah. And we're all sitting around swilling Chardonnay and drinking lattes, complaining about property prices and sitting on yachts and going to the beach. Very few Australians live in the outback.

We're a very urbanized country. I mean, America has much more regional variants. There's no equivalent of the South in Australia or the Midwest. Melbourne was incredible as far as the food. The food was amazing. It's great, isn't it? The coffee and the food and the wine. Oh my god.

They know how to live. They're doing it right. But you get killed everywhere. But that's my point. The sharks are coming into the harbour. How about those brown snakes? They're not coming into downtown. They killed everywhere. But that's my point. Box jellyfish and fucking brown snakes. The sharks are not coming into the harbor. How about those brown snakes? Not in large numbers. Well, they're not coming into downtown.

They're everywhere. You saw them? You can find them. My friend Adam, my friend Adam Greentree, he lives out there. And he works, he has a business and something involves mines. And they'll be working, like digging holes. And, you know, doing stuff out in the bush, I guess you guys call it, the bush, and they'll just find these brown snakes,

which will just fucking kill you. Yeah. Like, they bite you and you're dead. Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, people haven't died from a snake bite or a spider bite, I don't think, since all of the anti-venoms were discovered in the early 80s. Really?

Because every local medical center has all the antivenoms. How long does it take for a brown snake to kill you? Hours. Oh, okay. Yeah, you've got hours. So you've got a little bit of time. Yep, and most Australians are trained in knowing how to basically, obviously put a tourniquet on so that maybe you suck out the venom

and spit it out and identify what the snake was. Well, I find rattlesnakes on my property out here all the time. How long do they take to kill you? It'll take a few hours, but it'll fuck you up. I've had my dogs bitten three times. I've had to have them go and get antivenom. And for people, if you're broke, it's fucked because you don't have any money. It costs thousands of dollars, this antivenom stuff.

And, you know, otherwise you're going to watch your dog die because they swell up. The only way I found out they got bit was i knew that they were barking and barking and barking so i went outside and said ah fuck there's a rattlesnake and so i kill the rattlesnake and then uh they seem okay but then all of a sudden i see some swelling on their face i'm like god damn it and so then i have to take them down because they'll the rattlesnake will bite them and then pull away and still be alive and then bite them again and so their face just swole up like cartoonish, like a water balloon. Yeah, but they're fine in a day or so. Yeah, good.

It's just expensive. I mean, if a person gets bitten in Australia, obviously they don't have to pay because we have communism. That's a good communism. You know, I really get really pissed off when people talk about health care and health care in America. off when people talk about uh health care and health care in america and this this idea that somehow or another it's better to not have people covered with with medical insurance and there's always been medicaid and there's always been for extreme exam but people have had medical issues that have put them in severe debt and this doesn't i don't i don't think that we shouldn't have private private care in terms of like the best doctors and the best surgeons should be allowed to be compensated for their excellence.

I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But the idea that we don't have some sort – I mean, we have roads that are taken care of by our taxes. Why the fuck do we not have medical insurance or medical care that's just standard? Insurance or or medical care that's just standard and this is exactly what we're gonna talk about on my podcast Hashtag we the people live which is gonna which we're gonna do immediately after this because I want to talk to you about Bernie Sanders I want to talk to you better about it right now, too We can do both we do later now whatever freaking people out. They're like what the fuck I got a download something else But it's I just think that a country that cares about its people, one of the most important things is the safety and the health of the people. Like, okay, well, you shouldn't have to pay for the police.

You shouldn't have to pay for the army. It shouldn't be something that comes out of your check. Like, oh, you want to call the police? Well, we're going to require a credit card. No, no, no, a guy's breaking into my house. Well, do you have a current credit card? Like, no, no, the guy's breaking into my house. Well, do you have a current credit card? Like, no, no, no, no, no, I need the cops. I mean, I hear people like Rush Limbaugh saying,

should we buy everyone a car? Yeah. Does everyone get a car? He's a fat fuck. I don't listen to him. Do you remember? Fucking pill-popping asshole. Al Franken was on Letterman promoting his book called Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.

Yes. Do you remember Al's book. He wouldn't be able to write that book today because he'd be fat shaming. That's probably true, actually. And Letterman's first question is, that's an interesting title. How did you come up with that title? And Al goes, well, for a start, he's very, very fat. I love Al.

Didn't he lose a lot of weight, though, when he got on Oxycontins? Yeah, probably. He's taking 99 pills a day. That he lose a lot of weight, though, when he got on Oxycontins? Yeah, probably. He was taking 99 pills a day. That fills up a lot of holes. Like, you know, you think about how many 99 Oxycontins. It's a good handful of mass. Was he? Is that what he was doing, 99? Yeah.

That's not... It's fairly standard for, like, severe junkies. Like, they just start building up. You know, they start to take two and three at a time. Well, this is why you then graduate to smack and why we've got the heroin epidemic that we do in places like England. Yeah, but that's too hard. You've got to shoot it.

It's really easy to swallow those pills. You can snort it. You can smoke it. Yeah, but also you're getting this inexact amount. When you just take a pill, you have one pill, you throw it down your fat, stupid face. Yeah, 99 though. He was taking a lot. Pull that up, Jamie. Find out exactly how many

he was taking. He was taking so much that... Granted, this was told to me by Alex Jones, so I don't know exactly if I can authenticate the veracity of this particular statement. I'll take that qualification. But he said that that was why he went deaf. Because, do you remember, Rush Limbaugh was

going deaf. But he had a real medical explanation for when you overdose on opiates, when you take massive amounts of opiates, it affects your central nervous system in such a profound way and affects your entire physical body in such a profound way that it's possible you can induce hearing loss. way that it's possible you can induce hearing loss. I mean, I have sympathy for the guy just because he's caught up in what is a problem beyond any individual's sort of control. Like the problem of overprescription of opiates in America and like drug addiction. Did you see that study, by the way? He wasn't overprescribed. He was actively seeking out these prescriptions.

He was in Florida. But it's an addiction. It is an addiction. But he was also a massive hypocrite that was talking bad about people. I completely disagree with almost everything he says. I have a grudging admiration for him as an entertainer and a broadcaster because I think he's so great. Well, he speaks very confidently. Well, he's so good at getting you into a position in which his bullshit sounds reasonable yes right

and like drawing uh a kind of a line of logical fallacies in such a way that you end up thinking yeah this guy's making a lot of sense what's interesting is that he was really hamstrung and and broken down when he called that uh woman a slut who was trying to get birth control like she was trying to get she wanted her control to be covered right yeah by her university or some sort of insurance and you know he started calling her a slut and saying all these terrible things about her but I believe she needed birth control because of another medical ailment it wasn't just I might be wrong about that but it might be the way what his argument was and it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about

where he starts with something simple. He's like What do you call a woman who wants to be paid for sex? That's a pretty good You've got to get rid of the Australian accent I can't, Joe I'm not saying I do rush I wouldn't claim to be

a Russian person But he ended up getting to slut because his logical argument I wouldn't claim to be a Russian person. She's a slut, ladies and gentlemen. She's a slut. She's a slut. But he ended up getting to slut because his logical argument was she wants to be paid for something that is only needed if she wants to have recreational sex. Well, what do you call someone who we pay to have recreational sex? A prostitute. A slut. Jamie, find that out if you get a chance. But I do believe that she needed it for another reason.

There's other reasons why women take birth control. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. Like women with severe acne take birth control. Yeah. There's a lot of other things that birth control can help. But either way, he's a fat fuck and a dummy. He is.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a fat fuck. Some of my best friends are fat fucks. There's nothing wrong with being overweight, ladies and gentlemen. Well, there's something wrong for you. It's not healthy, but you could fix that. It's hard, but you could fix that. Just as easy as it is to get off of heroin. As easy as it is for Rush Limbaugh to get off heroin, he could

get off sugar and simple fucking carbs and all that stupid shit that makes you balloon up like that. Maybe just walk on a treadmill for 30 minutes in the morning. It's hard for people to change their patterns. It's hard for people to get excited about doing something that's difficult to do that's going to be ultimately beneficial for them because it drains your energy in the short

term. You know, you work out. If you're out of shape, you ever seen an out of shape person work out? Yeah. Fuck, man. Horrible. I've taken people to the gym that don't work out. Like, come on, come to the gym with me.

We'll just do a little bit of a workout and you get them on the elliptical machine and just go we're just gonna do 20 minutes in the elliptical machine and you look over five minutes in they're ready to fucking die i mean they're they turn white like their face turns flush it's crazy it's weird to watch you watch them struggle and then you get them to the weights and they just they can't do anything they're so tired did you see the study that came out recently about the huge increase in the death rate, the fatality rate of white people between the age of 35 and 50, I think it was? No. So there's a spike, which epidemiologists are saying is as noticeable in the data as the AIDS epidemic was in the 1980s.

Whoa. And there are three causes. Lattes. No, I thought it was going to be diet, right? I mean, when we're talking about this, I thought it was going to be heart disease or something that's related to diet and exercise. Right. It's suicide, it's booze, and it's drug overdoses. Wow.

And this is the only demographic group in America where the numbers are going up. and find a good job with a fucking plumbing supply company or some stupid shit they don't really want to do when they really want to be a musician or whatever. And then they just live depressed. And I think that's a giant percentage of people. Yeah. And it's getting worse. I was talking yesterday on Facebook to a buddy of mine in Australia,

Jacob Stone. Hey, Jacob. I'm sure he'll be listening to this. Hey, Jacob. He's a big fan of yours. You fucker. About how... But now we just start just ripping

on him. No, fucker's a good thing in America. We call each other fuckers all the time. Yeah, it's like... If we were in Scotland, we'd be like, he's a good cunt. He's a good cunt. Yeah. But we were talking about how, like, you're not allowed anymore to have any feelings as a white man

that are anything other than guilt about being a white man well first acknowledge your privilege before you say that you right now should acknowledge your white privilege before you even talk about what white people that's right aren't around what about non-cisgendered people of color okay uh i was just listening i was just listening to uh you know sam harris right yeah so i was just listening to the you know Sam Harris, right? Yeah. So I was just listening to the latest episode of his podcast where he's talking to this guy, Douglas Murray, who's this English conservative. And Douglas is saying that when the jihadi nuke finally goes off, what we're all going to be talking about is transgender pronouns.

Right? It's like, that'll be the discussion about whether to call them he, she, they, or they at the point when, like, real shit's going down. Like, we're so distracted by so many little, so many little cultural pieces

of bullshit at the moment that we're losing sight of the big picture. I think it's because it's too easy to get by. These people that are looking, I think, again, it's very easy

to live today. Much easier than it has been in an important time. And I think, again, it's very easy to live today, much easier than it has been at any other point in time. And I think also it's very easy to communicate today, much more easy than it has been at any other point in time. And before this era, the era of instant communication, if you had an idea, it had to be really good to get it out there to the masses. It had to be really good. It had to go through editors and publicists. It had to go to publishers. They had to be really good to get it out there to the masses. It had to be really good. It had to go through editors and publicists. It had to go to publishers. They had to print it.

People had to read it and recommend it. It had to be verified. It had to be excellent. You know, if you were Hunter S. Thompson, like there was a lot of jumps you had to go through, a lot of hoops, a lot of ladders you had to climb before you could publish, you know, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Today, any fucking dipshit can start a hashtag activist, you know, some sort of a, you could start a Tumblr blog or anything, and then it can immediately be picked up by people that also want to be outraged, and they'll go on this goddamn rampage, and it's confusing as fuck. It's because it's so easy to get by. We were like spoiled rich kids in a way. Spoiled rich kids with our ability to communicate ideas. I mean, I think the lowering of the barriers is a good thing and a bad thing, right?

I mean, the flattening and the fact that I don't have to go and talk to a network executive or a radio station owner about doing my podcast. I can just do the show that I want to do and put it out there. It's great. But you're right that we've become... Douglas Murray, this British conservative columnist, was saying he thinks that the problem is that there's a supply and demand problem between social justice warriors and racists because there aren't enough racists anymore, right?

So the left used to be agitated by fighting all of these big good noble fights but the like the fascists and the racists and all the people who they wanted to bring down have basically been vanquished not so now they're not totally yeah but now they have to talk now they have to accuse people like me of being racist i was accused of being racist the other day because i used the phrase to call a spade a spade. Whoa. And in the 1920s. You got called a racist for that? Yeah, in Harlem in the 1920s, a spade was a bad word for black people.

Not just the 1920s. That's like pretty recently. Was it? Yeah. Not in Australian language. So I wasn't even aware. Even in like the 70s and the 80s, people would use it in disparaging ways. Right.

Like the spades. Okay. So I'd never heard it but apparently i'm racist now so because there aren't enough actual racists to keep shouting it so they have to start shouting but a spade a spade is a card term yeah that's right it's a term about playing cards yeah call a spade a spade it's like a club or a spade or a heart like that is so fucking stupid did you see and also i posted something on stupid. Did you see? And also, I posted something on Facebook about, did you see the brouhaha about Meryl Streep's t-shirt?

No. So she's just finished shooting a movie in London called Suffragette, in which she plays Emmeline Pankhurst, who was one of the great women's rights, you know, campaigners back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. It's about the birth of the feminism movement. late 1800s, early 1900s. It's about the birth of the feminism movement. And in 1913, Pankhurst gave this speech,

this famous speech for women's rights, in which he said that the women's rights movement will survive, quote, so long as there is a woman alive to hold up the flag of rebellion, I would rather be a rebel than a slave. So they do this promotional thing in which here's Meryl Streep wearing a T-shirt, I'd rather be a rebel than a slave, meaning I'd rather fight for my rights than be downtrodden as a woman in the early part of the 20th century. Well, the internet blew up with how racist Meryl is because she's not understanding the context of that. I mean, there are...

Hashtag. So I put a... So here are some of the tweets. I mean, there are... Hashtag. So I put a... So here are some of the tweets. I can't believe this is real, someone said with a link to it, that the word rebel is juxtaposed with slave in that quote. Just, I can't fathom this.

Someone else says... Someone else tries to school him, says the quote is from Emmeline Pankhurst, who said it at a 1913 rally for women's rights, to which the social justice warriors respond, and I'm letting you know that it doesn't matter who said it. The quote is trash. And another person, white women have said a lot of terrible things

over the course of history. It doesn't mean you wear it on a shirt. And this just goes on and on. And I put it on Facebook and just said, I'm glad that we're focusing on what's really important. And, like, a black friend of mine said, you know, just started attacking me for being an apologist for racism. A black friend of yours? Yeah. What black friend is attacking me for being an apologist for racism. A black friend of yours?

Yeah. What black friend is this? Well, I'm not going to name him. We don't have to name him, but fuck him. He knows you're not racist. That's stupid. God damn it. The problem is there's not enough problems.

That's the problem. Well, that's kind of what I mean about the supply and demand thing, right? There's not enough actual problems for them to focus on. So, no, I think what I said, what i wrote on facebook was political correctness is exhausting and he wrote being black is exhausting okay and i said yeah and i wrote right fortunately that t-shirt has nothing to do with being black and then he went off onto this thing about how like everything you know people like you have to understand how other people are going to perceive things, and we have to be cognizant of always using the right words,

and it just ends up spiraling down into this situation where all of a sudden I have to be censoring every single word that I say in case some idiot misinterprets it and doesn't understand the historical context that we're talking about the women's movement in like early 20th century Britain

and not the fight against slavery in America? I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I don't think people are really offended by it. I think it's a green light issue. I think it's a green light. They look at Meryl Streep in that t-shirt, and if they understand the context of what she's trying to say,

like if you quote the original piece that it was taken from, if they still have a problem with that, then what they're doing is just finding a green light. It's a cunt green light. Like, I can go. I can go. I can hit the gas. That's what it is.

It's all it is. It doesn't make any sense. And she's posting something, or she has a T-shirt on, rather, that's taken from a historical quote. It's really simple. If you have an issue with those words because those words can be used in other forms, well, that's your issue. But to make a big deal of it and that you have an issue with those words, because those words can be used in other forms, well, that's your issue. But to make a big deal of it, and that you have to be more aware, and you have to be, you know, because being black is exhausting, or being Chinese, we built the railroads, for you to ride that railroad and not acknowledge the fact that Chinese people died during the making of that railroad.

Fucking Christ, enough. What we need is wolves. We need wolves at the gates. What we need is a fucking winter We need winters coming We need a fucking Game of Thrones type scenario But we've just had Paris The Paris attacks Why can't we focus on If you're in Paris I bet it's like that 9-11 after September 11th in New York New York was fucking amazing

And I hate to say this This is not minimizing the victims or the families of the victims and horrible tragedy without a doubt. No one's denying that. But what I'm saying is we were in New York City, me and some friends, when we were filming Fear Factor. And it was about 10 months or 11 months after 9-11. My memory might be bad. But the point being, people were noticeably more friendly. Noticeably more like they were engaging. They would say hi to each other.

The firemen came. I had a friend who blacked out because I gave her some California weed. We were hanging out in front of this bar. It was all these people that work for Fear Factor. And I busted out a joint. I go, you guys want to get down or what? What do you want to do? Come on, pussies.

And there's all these producers. They're like, okay, okay, we'll try something. We'll try something. This is fucking space weed. Just the deepest, blackest hole space weed, right? She takes a deep hit and you see her eyes start to flutter and roll behind her head. And luckily I was in a position to catch her. And I moved in and we grabbed her as she was like,

she was literally just blacking out on the concrete. That's some serious shit, dude. It was some serious weed. But it's apparently, it can happen to certain people if you don't smoke a lot of weed. And she just decided, fuck it, let's give it a shot. She took a big hit. And you see her eyes fluttering and she just gave up. So we called the fireman.

She took a big hit, and you see her eyes fluttering, and she just gave up. So we called the firemen. The firemen came, and it was like a nobleman on a knight on a horse had arrived. Everybody was so happy to see the firemen, like first responders, got so much love. It was amazing. It was cool. Well, hundreds of their colleagues had just died. It was also the fact that people recognized the importance of having first responders, having firemen having

policemen and that they really felt it like in a deep real way like thank you thank you for what you do if it wasn't for what you you do we would be in so much more danger you're like it's having having a very real memory of them stepping in and risking their lives and helping people and and seeing them covered with dust as they carried people out of the buildings. And it was solidified in people's memories. And then over the past decade or so, you go back and it's back to being New York again. People don't look at each other. Fuck you.

There was a feeling of vulnerability that existed because we had recognized a real problem. And we had gone through a real – they had gone through a real moment of intense adversity. Did you see in the wake of Paris, one of the things that I found interesting was this conversation around tragedy hipster, tragedy hipsters. Did you hear about that? What's a tragedy hipster? Tragedy hipster is someone who the moment something like the Paris attacks happens, starts shitting on people who are pouring out sympathy online or changing their Facebook profile pictures to the French flag or something by saying,

well, where were you? Why weren't you outraged when there was Beirut? I've got an article here in The Stranger, which is the Seattle blog, entitled, Why Putting the French Flag on the Space Needle is Racist. What? By Charles Medidi, November 16. Why didn't anybody acknowledge the attacks in Lebanon?

Why didn't anybody acknowledge the attacks in Nigeria? That's the point. Well, there's a real racist aspect to that. And I think there's a real argument for that. So, I think we have to be allowed to allow people to express like sympathy. Yes. I also find it a bit fatuous when everyone starts pouring out, you know, all of it. There are certain fashionable things to care about. You know, it's a bit like the Coney

2012 phenomenon or something, right? Where all of a sudden everyone jumps on some social media, social justice bandwagon. But I feel like Paris is a bit different. Yes, people should, social justice bandwagon. But I feel like Paris is a bit different. Yes, people should pay attention to Beirut. Yes, people should pay attention to Nigeria and Boko Haram. Yes, people should be more aware of what's going on. But as Obama said in the wake of the Paris attacks, it is understandable for people to have a more instinctive, sympathetic reaction to a city that they know, a city that they've been to, a city populated by people like them who are doing things just like them, going

to see a soccer game, sitting in a restaurant, than they are for parts of the world where they think that violence is more commonplace, like Nigeria. I don't think you can be belittling people for genuine expressions of sympathy. I certainly don't think that you should be accusing them of being racist. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I don't think you should accuse people of anything negative for expressing sympathy. But I think that culturally, when you look at the news and when you look at CNN and the people that are supposed to be responsible for letting us know what's happening in the

world, that's where the issue lies. Why are they concentrating solely on Paris? Why doesn't CNN have all this coverage of Lebanon and Nigeria that mirrors it? So you get this broad perspective of the actual world itself and say, look, this ISIS issue is not just an issue that happened to Europeans. This is an issue that's been happening all over the world for a while now. Absolutely. And CNN is fucking awful. I'm definitely not going to defend CNN. I mean, CNN is the worst example, I think, of just following the most predictable line on everything. They try not to alienate anyone by being too left or too right.

And as a consequence, they're just a mush of ignorance and like parochialism. But what do you do if you're Jeff Zucker? If you're the guy who runs CNN, what the fuck do you do? But you put Anthony Bourdain's show on. That's a good move. Yeah. But what else do you do? I mean, how the fuck do you cover the news in like a broad way and also make it a profitable entertainment enterprise?

Well, I would like to think that there's a market for smart conversations about things, which is what I try to do at HuffPost Live. And we don't get small numbers. I mean, things oftentimes I'm surprised when I have a smart conversation about the relationship between Islamism to Islam and the plight of poor Muslims in the suburbs of European capitals where unemployment is 35 percent and the demographics of the types of people in Iraq who are joining ISIS, who were 14 years old during the US invasion and who've just endured all of the rest of their lives basically being full of civil war and people being beheaded and strung up in the streets and who hated Saddam but hate America and hate the West now for everything

they've been through. When we talk about all that sort of stuff, some people are actually, you know, significant numbers of people are actually interested in hearing about it. Instead of, meanwhile, on CNN, should the mayor of this city in the Midwest that has a majority Muslim population be afraid? How come you can do that so good, but you can't do Rush? That was a total American accent. No, you're right. Do what I can.

People are problematic. It's very difficult for people to separate their motives from the reality of the situation that they're reporting on. Also, you're dealing with commercial interests. You have advertisers. You have all these different things that have a say or at least an influence on what gets said, whereas you don't have that. There's also the difference between broadcast and selective media. That's true. You have a selective media outlet, which means someone finds out about Josh Zepps from one of your many wonderful appearances all throughout the world and HuffPost Live and all these different things.

They get to know you. I like this guy's perspective. He's very intelligent. He's very articulate. And then they seek you out. And and all these different things. They get to know you. I like this guy's perspective. He's very intelligent. He's very articulate. And then they seek you out. And then they find your thing. They subscribe to it. And then they go to it because they're becoming a Josh Zeps fan.

Whereas CNN, it's at the fucking airport. I'm waiting for my flight the other day and they have CNN. And they're showing these people doing these things. And it's on. There's a difference between something that's broadcast and something that you select. And I think when someone gets excited about something like what you do, is someone who has chosen to go seek out your perspective and your point of view. It's very difficult to do that on a show like CNN or a network like CNN.

We have to be able to do better than we are, though. Certainly. Like 60 Minutes, for all of its faults, occasionally hits the nail on the head and does a good job and certainly used to. And people watch it and watched it. Still. I mean, Cronkite used to do it. Yeah, they do a great job.

You know, there's like, they're a good, I mean, PBS does a great job. Broadly, I think NBC News does a great job just as a whole collection. Brian Williams. With the exception of Brian Williams. Although, I mean, like, who gives a fuck? I mean, I can't. He's just a whole collection. Brian Williams. With the exception of Brian Williams. Although, I mean, like, who gives a fuck? He's just a voice. Yeah, exactly. I never expected him.

He could be a robot. He might as well be a robot. That's right. Who gives a shit what he did? Get Siri to do his job. That's what they should do. Exactly. Just have a fucking laptop there.

But here's, on your point about what people are going to watch and seek out, there's a good piece in Vox by Max Fisher after all the criticism of, like, why didn't the media cover the Beirut bombings? Because, like, one of the most popular, one of the most retweeted tweets the day after the Paris attacks was a tweet about, why is the media covering this so much

when they didn't cover Beirut? And so Max Fisher says, we did, and nobody clicks on it. Oh. We do, and nobody ever clicks on it. So because no one clicks at it, or no one clicks on it, then they just let it go?

Well, at some point, you have to, yeah, at some point, if you're interested in having a thriving media business, you have to give people what they actually want, which is judged by what they click on. That's where it's fucked. So they put Beirut at the very top of the page and then you know what it doesn't even register as a blip on the number of

clicks so then they downgrade it and it ends up falling back onto the world section of the site but I think you just nailed it because it's a business and that's where it becomes a problem that becomes a problem is that it's in an entertainment business like CNN is an entertainment network. Yeah. But they entertain you by showing you the real reality TV, which is the news. But much like reality TV, if you live in a house with a bunch of people and they film six hours a day and then they water it down to 44 minutes on television or 22 minutes on television, when they do that, they're going to do it the way they want to show it. They're going to chop out a bunch of other shit that you're not really interested in,

and they're going to paint a picture. And they can edit it and paint that picture in a variety of different ways. But they're going to do it in the way that they think is going to be the most salacious. It's going to be the most compelling for you to tune in so they can sell you a Toyota truck. So they can advertise Tide laundry detergent. That's really what it's all about. Exactly. advertised Tide laundry detergent.

That's really what it's all about. Exactly. And I think that's a real problem when you combine commerce with the dissemination of information. Here's the tweet, by the way. Jack Jones TV has a picture of an explosion in Beirut. No media has covered this, but RIP to all the people that lost their lives in Lebanon yesterday from ISIS attacks. Let's see how many retweets it's got. That's been retweeted 57,750 times and liked 43,102 times. The picture is not from the Beirut attacks.

It's from 2006 during the Israeli war against Hezbollah. And it's absolutely not true that no media has covered this. The New York Times covered it, the Washington Post, the AP. Hugh Naylor was sent to cover the blasts. The Economist had a piece on it. CNN, even CNN did it. The Daily Mail. So that's a fake picture.

That's interesting. That's right. That's from nine years ago. The wrong picture. That's the picture that Angelina Jolie tweeted too. She tweeted it. Yeah, yeah. She tweeted it about the Lebanon attacks as well.

So get on the fucking ball, Angelina. Stop adopting kids. Those are the tragedy hipsters, right? Yeah, investigate the veracity of the photographs you post, young lady. How dare she? Hashtag outraged. I'm hashtag, she's hashtag racist. How about that?

And now I don't know what to talk about Islam as well. Like the difficulty is what are you – I'm afraid of all of the right-wingers taking – my greatest fear about terrorism is that we end up living in like a quasi-fascist state because we overreact so much that every – like I got a little nephew who's two years old. When he's 18 and he's traveling around the world like I did, is he going to be able to sit outside in a cafe and relax? Or is he going to have to walk through a metal detector every bloody place he goes? It's a good question. And is he going to have any privacy? Or is the NSA going to spy on everything that he does? And are we going to let it because we're so afraid of having attacks like this? And is he going to live in a pluralistic society?

Or are we going to be so cowed either one way or the other where either we take our Trump id and oppress Muslims, which only exacerbates the problem, or on the other hand, we become social justice warriors who are like, this has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a religion of peace. There's nothing to see here. You don't have to worry about the Islamists, which means that we end up with mini theocracies in our own cities where you basically have illiberal communities that don't respect women's rights and don't respect gay rights you know just don't respect but actively suppress yeah i mean isis is throwing gay people off the roofs yep yeah and i don't know how we talk about this is the problem we and i by me by we i mean people like me who are broadly sympathetic to minority rights and who are broadly pro-civil rights and want everybody to be able to live life however they want to and i'm pro high levels of immigration

and i'm i'm not intolerant i'm not xenophobic i'm certainly not racist or islamophobic but how do we talk honestly about the fact that at the fringes of islam there is a big fucking problem and not yield that territory to the right wing, because you've got the rise of these right wing... Can you imagine if there was an election? There is an election in Paris, in France, next week. And how many more Paris attacks would you have to have before the National Front, the anti-immigrant racist party, won power?

In Sweden now, the third largest party is a party that wants to close the borders completely. I mean, you've practically already got that on the GOP side here. Well, no, not even remotely, actually. I take that back, because they want to close the illegal border, but they still believe in having moderate levels

of... Yeah, exactly. They still believe in having people like me come in. Yes. White people that speak well with a cool accent. Come on over. Yeah. Are you educated? Sure.

Come on over. Probably more educated than we are. Yeah. I think what we have here is human beings classically react to tragedies and massive events. We have problems and then we have solutions. And the solution is being debated. And there's the extreme right-wing answer to these problems, which is close up the borders, more military, more guns, attack ISIS, let's go to war, let's do this, let's do that. egos that have these platforms where they want to step up and they want to gather all this attention to themselves and point to themselves as the solution to this issue with their hardline

stances. And I think what's going to happen is technology, as it becomes more and more pervasive and invasive, and as we become more and more symbiotically connected to the ability to express ourselves through phones and through the internet. I think the next level of this is ultimately going to be some level that allows people to communicate in a way that it's not just typing things down and it's not just watching a video online. I think we're going to be able to communicate with each other in some sort of a neural transmitting

manner. There's going to be some next step level of technology with it, whether it's a decade from now or two decades from now, or there's, it's going to be, it's going to seem pointless to have phones. It's going to seem pointless. The idea of having a physical thing where you have to go to in order to

access information is going to seem absolutely ridiculous. And once that happens, we're going to see what we see right now in the world, where I think, regardless of how crazy the world is, I think, at least in America right now, this is absolutely the safest time ever. All this social justice warrior shit that we're seeing, and all this craziness about outrage and hashtag racism and hashtag this and that,

it's bad, but it's good. It's good because it's all about sensitivity. It's good because it's all about inclusion. It's good because it's all about eliminating anything that's disparaging or racist or anything where you are marginalizing groups based on something that they can't control, like what they look like or their sexual preference. And I think as we get deeper and deeper to this interconnectivity that we're experiencing right now we're going to absolve a lot of our differences and grievances through our ability to communicate with each other and connect with each other and i think we're experiencing like this adolescent sort of angst before we get out

of the fucking house and go out onto our own. I mean, we're becoming adults as a civilization. And along the way, we're experiencing the fucking teenage hormonal rage that, you know, a 14-year-old has when they're still trapped in their parents' house. The freedom that human beings are going to have in the future to communicate and express themselves is going to negate a lot of this hashtag college racism or hashtag college activism. I think what that's coming from is this feeling that a lot of people have that their ideas and their opinions aren't taken into consideration, that they're not taken seriously.

And that that's why they're overreacting and freaking out and walking through the fucking hallways in Dartmouth in the library. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Like, what are they doing? We have a greater ability now, Joe, to communicate with each other than we ever have already. But it's so recent. It's so recent.

I mean, I take your point. We're certainly in the adolescence of our species. But I do suspect that you're looking at this through the prism of a mind that spends a lot of time thinking about things and a lot of time having experiences that are uplifting and transcendent. Drugs. I'm trying to find a way of saying drugs. Just say drugs. But not just drugs. Float tanks, meditation, whatever else it is that you do in order to gain a perspective on things that is beyond your own little tribe.

My concern is whether or not there is a direct correlation between upgrading the means of communication, and I'm with you, that obviously the way that we currently communicate is going to seem completely antiquated in decades to come. But what we've seen happen when the internet began, you sound to me a little bit like people who I would listen to in the 1990s who would say, once everyone is online, there's going to be no need for difference anymore because everyone's going to be able to communicate everything and everyone's going to be able to be exposed to so many different ideas that you're not going to be able to be insular anymore. You're not going to be able to be parochial anymore, trapped in your own little circle of beliefs because with the internet, everything's going to be available at everyone's fingertips all the time some people yeah there were futurists who were saying that of course what's happened is we've had it's at the opposite effect that that the the availability of communication has on a widespread scale has actually enabled people to silo themselves into little self-thinking like communities of sameness so that we're actually

more divided than we've ever been because you can seek out only the information that comports with the way that you see the world so i don't think that a technology is necessarily going to drive an awakening i think the awakening comes from drugs and spiritual epiphanies and then the communication can be a tool to enact that but i can just as easily see some communication revolution being manipulated by jihadis the way that they currently use the internet and Twitter to coordinate terrorist attacks. I don't think it's an either or. I definitely think that there are groups of insulated people that search for confirmation bias and they stay within their tribe.

But I think one of the reasons why they're so active now, and there's more of them, is because they're recognizing the inevitable future and that you're not going to be able to insulate yourself in the past. You better get it in now while you can. Better stockpile that fucking food because the famine's coming. I think what you're going to experience in the future is going to be more and more deterioration of these insulated little tribes.

And I think that that's what we're experiencing when people have to apologize for things they would never have to apologize before. People like what we were talking about, like Al Franken saying Rush Limbaugh's a big fat idiot. That was just a few years ago that he wrote that book, maybe a decade ago. You can't write that book today. You couldn't put that book in the shelves. It wouldn't be supported. It wouldn't be supported. It wouldn't be supported by Barnes & Noble. Like, you're calling something a big fat idiot.

It's fat shaming now. And I think that this increased outrage is also increased sensitivity. It's also increased understanding. And once the dust settles in the argument, then people have to, like, you have to take into consideration the validity of other people's opinions.

Like, whether or not you agree with them or not, you have to understand that it's just a matter of this broad range of people expressing themselves will slowly, it'll slowly, like, come down to an understandable vibration. I hope so. So, and let's just unpack two things that we're talking about so we're not conflating two things, right? One is the social justice warrior debate here in the United States, and the other is Islamism. And we're sort of kind of having two parallel conversations about that at the same time.

In terms of social justice warriors in the United States, I hope that you're right that what they think that they're doing is being an extension of the great traditions of civil rights in America. In other words, that they're being motivated by a sense of understanding, as you say, and of compassion. And of outrage against what they perceive as being outrageous injustice. My concern is that what they're also doing is buying into a long tradition of intolerance and a lack of respect for pluralism

and for other people's ideas about things, for other people's right to express ideas that they regard as being incorrect. There's a... I mentioned earlier this study that I thought you were going to like that I bought. Let me just find it because it's good. So there's this professor called April Kelly Wozner,

and she's a professor of political science at Elizabethtown College, and she's got a chapter in this new paper called The End of the Experiment, The Rise of Cultural Elites and the Decline of America's Civic Culture. And it's this study, which is called the General Social Survey, which looks at how tolerant or intolerant particular demographics of Americans are, right? So they start by, hang on, I've got tangled up in my microphone here. I was getting too relaxed listening to you talk. I was like

kicking back. I was like getting out the popcorn, listen to Joe. So in the general social survey, they propose a bunch of different groups and they ask people how much they would like or dislike that group of people, right? Just to establish who we really, really don't like. The least liked group included in the survey was muslim clergymen who preach hatred against the united states right that's understandable and the second least liked group among americans are people who believe that blacks are genetically inferior so racist so then they ask people how tolerant they would be to towards those a person from that class of people giving a public speech in their community. And people in their 40s are more tolerant than people in their 30s,

and people in their 30s are more tolerant than people in their 20s. And when people in their 40s, the proportion who say that a Muslim clergyman who preaches hatred against the United States should not be allowed to give a public speech is 43%. People in their 30s, 52%. People in their 20s, 60%. So if tolerance means not like, oh, I support black rights or I support gay rights or I support trans rights, but if it means respecting the right of someone who you really disagree with to express that opinion, then young people are actually more intolerant now than older people.

They're more tolerant towards homosexuals and atheists, but that's because they like homosexuals and atheists more than older people do, right? That's not tolerance. Tolerance is not a measure of liking someone, but a willingness to extend political freedoms to people who you dislike. And young people are less willing to do that. Well, I think what you're saying, though, is they're less willing to accept hate speech, which they think are dangerous sorts of conversations. They think that someone who's a Muslim clergyman who wants to express the hate of America, it's dangerous because he could promote terrorist attacks. Someone who thinks that black people are genetically inferior to white people is dangerous because they could promote racism or they could promote someone confirming their

racist beliefs. And then instead of becoming educated or becoming enlightened, they go with their initial racist instincts and they go, I was right. The white man is superior. They're worried about hate. Right, but where does that end? Both those things are about hate. Well, is Meryl Streep's T-shirt saying, better a rebel than a slave about hate? Because it is to a lot of people in their 20s. How many people?

Well, enough people that she has to put out a press release about it i think like i don't think there's anything i think we are better off living in a society where bad ideas are exposed to conversation i mean you know sunlight is the best disinfectant you want bad ideas out there you want a big roiling conversation yeah where people who are stupid or have ridiculous ideas about the genetic inferiority of black people are able to be exposed, be argued with, be contended, because racists aren't just going to go away if you ban them from talking. They're going to go underground. They're going to find other communities.

They're going to increasingly self-segregate into their own little communities online. I think you want free speech to be a big roiling debate. You don't want to be censorious and judgmental and intolerant towards people whose ideas you disagree with. You want to take them on and expose why those ideas are wrong. And hopefully through that wrestling match, that intellectual wrestling match, you will end up progressing forward. You don't progress forward by simply banning ideas that you think are objectionable. That's agreed. That's a very important point. I think what they're worried about, though, is these people going to schools and indoctrinating

very gullible or very impressionable young people. And that's a legit thing because they themselves have been- But that reinforces the gullibility, right? Because you haven't been exposed to any other ideas. What I was going to say is that they themselves have been indoctrinated into the idea of liberalism and liberal thinking by charismatic people with interesting ideas that they believe in wholeheartedly and they're very confident in what they're saying and they speak very well. Those ideas become infectious.

And sometimes those... I've expressed this before on the podcast, that I listen to these Islamic clergymen speak, and although I have zero desire to become a Muslim, there's something intoxicating about people that are extremely confident about their ideology. And that's dangerous for people. It's dangerous even for a person like me, who's done a lot of fucking drugs, who does a lot of meditation, is involved in martial arts. I'm a free thinker. I'm a non-theistic sort of a thinker.

But I watch these people have these conversations with these massive crowds, and they're saying all these crazy things about Islam being the truth. And I feel an understanding why people would be drawn to that. I'm not saying that I'm drawn to it myself, but I understand it. Like I feel the compelling idea behind someone joining a group like that. I think that's right. I think it's because certainty is intoxicating, right? Yes. Yes. Like if you're discombobulated, if the world is complicated, if you don't know what to make of shit, especially if you're in a situation where you feel like you've been shat on for a lot of time, which is what a lot of these followers of these extremists do feel like, then it's nice to just have clarity. It's nice just

to have someone who knows what the truth is and who knows what the right path is. A perfect example of that is country music. I guarantee you, if you calculated- If you'd asked me to list five things that you were going to end that sentence with, country music would not have been top 50. I know a lot of people that I love dearly that like country music, and they read the least out of all the people that I know. All the people that I know that are really into really dumb country music, these motherfuckers aren't aware of shit that's going on in the world.

I have good friends that I love, but I have to talk to them, especially from the hunting world. The hunting world is goddamn hilarious because I've somehow or another become a part of this world because I've expressed this idea that I think is very important. We should be aware of where our food comes from, and I've become someone who gathers their food from a hunting way. But then you connect yourself with these people that are also in this which are they get became very religious There's a lot of religion, but but it's a weird kind of religion. It's it's it's almost like a hashtag Activist sort of religious idea where they don't understand the texts they don't like they'll have religious tattoos You're like hey fucker. You got to read the whole book like the book says don't tattoo yourself

Just like it says, don't blow guys. You know, it's like you can't be like I've had arguments with people. It's pretty much more explicit about the don't get a tattoo than don't blow a guy. The blow a guy bit is always nebulous about like lying with another man or something. But the no tattoo. Yeah. I just won't lie next time. How about the guy gets on his knees and sucks my dick.

What's the problem here? There's no lying. Yeah. I just want a line accent. How about the guy gets on his knees and sucks my dick? What's the problem here? There's no lying. Yeah. The tattoo thing is very clear. But when I got into it with these people was when that woman from Kentucky wouldn't marry gay people. Yeah. And I wrote this piece on Instagram and Facebook and it got millions of likes and all these

people traded it back and forth. And I got all this blowback from the hunting community because all these people that are you know really into god or really into religion and then you know they're also recognizing so like they were getting pressure my friends are in the hunting community were getting pressure to talk to me about my stance on god like this is hilarious like how much do you guys actually know about the scripts? How much have you guys read? How much do you know about the origins of the scripts? And it turns out very little, most of them very little. But there's this need to simplify things that appear to be very complex.

And the way to simplify things is to put it all in God's hands. It's all about Jesus. You know, Jesus said, well, I'll tell you why. I'm going to vote for him because he's on Jesus' side. Well, this comes back to the problem of tribalism that we were alluding to earlier in the show, right? That there is no greater way of encouraging people to be tribalistic than religion or political affiliation loosely understood, right? Right. So there's, you know, Dan Carlin's history podcast.

I mean, man, I love that guy. He's the best. Just incredible. Have you had him on the show? Oh, yeah. A bunch of times. Oh, fantastic. I missed those episodes. I'll go back and listen to them. I love that dude. I've, man, I love that guy. He's the best. Oh, just incredible. Have you had him on the show? Oh, yeah, a bunch of times. Oh, fantastic. I missed those episodes.

I'll go back and listen to them. Love the shit out of that dude. I've just been listening. I've almost finished getting through his World War I thing, which is like five episodes of three and a half hours each, right? This is like Rogan-esque duration podcasts. But way more produced, way more, I mean, it's brilliant. It's like they're audio books.

Yeah, yeah. It's incredible. I mean, it's like a 20-hour explanation of the First World War. It's just so fascinating. And just so good. And so one of the things that he's talking about is when he's talking about the Balkans, he's saying, like, when the Balkans imploded in the 1990s and we had the collapse of Yugoslavia and, you know, Bosnia and Serbia and all that,

he's like, you go there even to this day and you talk to a Bosnian Muslim or you talk to a Serb or you talk to a Croat about the problems that they've endured and every single one of them will point a finger at the other groups and say, they've been doing this to us for so long and back in this day they did that and then they did that and then they did that. It's like the Israelis and the Palestinians or something. It's like, oh, well, you know, 10,000 fucking years ago, my ancestors got massacred by blah, blah, blah. And it's so easy to think of ourselves in terms of aggrieved groups, whether or not, and my problem with religion is, and my problem with, and this is sort of a weird parallel

that I'm drawing just as i'm only sort of thinking this up right now but there is a parallel between jihadis and social justice warriors in the sense that they each are able to take an off-the-shelf pre-packaged kind of identity and set of beliefs about things and gain certainty from it and be part of a tribe and be part of a community and be fighting the good fight against people who disagree with them, who hold beliefs that they believe are objectionable, whether that belief is that the West is at war with Islam, which is what jihadis think that we want, or whether the belief is that racism is okay, which is what social justice warriors think that all white people think.

Right? There are these easy, off-the-shelf categories so think independently people think independently is a good idea um i don't know if i'm with you on that one though social justice worries and the jihad i see where you're going with it i mean it's i i think world their worldviews that are self-reinforcing and their cliques that are self-supporting right so you don't have to ask a lot of difficult questions. Right. I totally understand what you're saying.

In that sense, I think extreme liberalism is, in a sense, like extreme conservatism, is a religion, in a sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's an ideology. Ideologies are very dangerous. Ideologies where you have locked into a predetermined pattern of thinking that you just have to conform to, I think becomes very problematic for people because the world is fluid. It's there's a lot going on, a lot of weirdness to it.

And I think that there's also an issue in communication through language and communication through words and the ability to express yourself through words. It's sometimes difficult because what you're trying to do is you're trying to express intent. You're trying to get someone to understand how you think and view things. And you're trying to say, well, why don't you express and view yourself like I do? Or why don't you see things how I do? And maybe you're talking to someone who has a completely different idea of what those words mean and completely different idea of the context of this particular scenario that

you're discussing. It's hard. It's clumsy, isn't it? Very clumsy. It's difficult because you've got this kind of platonic ideal in your head of what you want to communicate, and then you have to just rummage around in the Scrabble bucket for the closest approximation to what it is that you're trying to impart.

Yeah, and that's why podcasts are so unique in a way because one of the beautiful things about it is that you do sort of search for the correct way to, I mean, you hear us do this sometimes, but this is like, and what we're doing is we're just trying to figure out what's the best way for me to express this idea that I've got bouncing around in my head where I'm trying to understand how this thing sort of lays out to everybody else. Like how do I broadcast it?

How do I get it out there in a way where you know what I'm actually saying, what I'm actually thinking, instead of getting outraged at something that's not what I meant, like this Meryl Streep thing. That's not what she meant. She obviously didn't mean, I don't want to be a slave. I want to be a black person in the 1800s. And there are certain triggers that are really hard for people to get beyond in communication, triggers that are really hard for people to get beyond in communication, but we have to find a way to get beyond. I think the most pressing form of communication that we have to grapple with now is how do we speak to the Muslim community and to one another about the Muslim community and about jihadism without either being bigoted towards Muslims or pretending that there isn't a problem of Islamism that has some relationship to the Muslim community and that has some relationship to the text of Islam, right?

Because the moment I say anything remotely suggesting, like the day after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, Howard Dean went on Morning Joe on MSNBC and said, these guys are about as Muslim as I am. Well, that's bullshit, right? I mean, that's obviously not true. They're more Muslim. They're arguably a lot more Muslim than most Muslims. I mean, they are very fanatically Muslim. At least they think they are.

So we can't keep litigating whether or not they're theologically correct or whatever. There is obviously a cancer at the extremist fringe of Islam that has to be dealt with and has to be talked about. And the more we just talk about it, the more the left talks about it in terms of, well, it's just a problem of extremism in all faiths. It's got nothing to do with the faith. The less able we are to actually have a conversation about what needs to be done and how to win over moderate Muslims and how not to alienate them. Because if tolerant people can't talk about it, then the only people talking about the problem are right-wing xenophobes or fascists, right? And so what we have to do is find a way, when we talk about those off-the-shelf ideologies, whether it's jihadism or social justice warriorism, we have to find a way to win over moderate Muslims and make them not feel like they're being alienated and judged.

We have to not be sending Southwest flights back to the gate as it was the other day because two people were speaking Arabic and watching a video about what's going on in the wake of the Paris attacks or something. And people freaked out because they think all Arabs are terrorists or something. We have to make sure that doesn't happen. But we can't have that not happen as long as everyone is pretending that there's not a problem with Islam, right, at the edge of Islam. And I don't know how to have that conversation without sounding like I'm intolerant. You've just got to keep talking. Everybody's got to keep talking. Everybody's got to keep talking.

The arguments against it come up. You talk about the arguments against it, and it just takes time. I really do believe that. I believe it just takes a lot of discourse. It takes a lot of communication and the clumsy type of communication that you get through language, through talking. I think the more this happens, the more this gets discussed, the more people gain an understanding. And again, like we were looking at people aging or like trees growing, it is a slow process that in

the middle of it, it doesn't seem like any progress is happening at all. But ultimately, if you look at the world today versus the world of 10 years ago, you see a big difference between what Al Franken was able to publish with that book and what you're able to get away with today. And I think that sort of in a weird way, for lack of a better analogy, it highlights the growth that's going on. It highlights this very strange era that we are currently experiencing. And with that, let's end this and do your podcast. So that way we'll get to, we're going to keep talking, folks, but we have to end this because

I got to pick up my kid in a little bit. But we're going to do an episode of We The People Live. Hashtag We The People Live. Hashtag We The People Live. Go over and subscribe. Josh Zapp's podcast, and it is available on iTunes. It's available. And SoundCloud. Or you can just follow us on Twitter at WTP underscore live.

Underscores. With these fucking underscores. I know. Some other bastard got WTP live. These cunts. I know what it is. Couldn't you just get We The People, the whole thing, or is that too many letters? I think it was too many letters.

I don't even remember. Okay. All right. We're going to do that, and then we'll be back. But Josh Zeps on Twitter, follow him. He's fantastic, and we're going to do his podcast. And that's it, you fucks. And we'll be back tomorrow with Bill Burr.

Holla!