The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Who is Joe Rogan? Part Two

Episode Date: June 9, 2019

Part two of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's interview with Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is an American stand-up comedian, mixed martial arts (MMA) color commentator, podcast host, businessman, television host, and actor.

Welcome to season 2, episode 12 of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson, Doctor Peterson's daughter, collaborator, and all-meat diet conspiracy theorist. Today, we're presenting Dad's Conversation with Joe Rogan, Part 2. Last week, Dad and Joe Rogan talked about Joe's Netflix specials, his parents' divorce, and his early life, drug experimentation, fame, and they ended up on the controversial subject of transgender children. This week's episode will delve into Joe's humble beginnings in Boston, how he discovered

martial arts, how many times he's had his nose broken, and how his martial arts career led him to becoming a stand-up comedian, and now the world's number one podcaster, which is crazy. One of the things Joe and Dad discuss near the end of the episode is the platform Think Spot that Dad is back. It will be featuring many of today's leading thinkers, including Dad, obviously. I've taken a peek at it, and it's actually pretty interesting. It has features I haven't seen on any other social media platform that allow you to share, engage, and debate in a thoughtful and intelligent manner, including annotation on video, audio,

and podcasts. There's opportunities to engage directly with contributors through comments, Q&As, live streams, and annotations. It's worth checking out. I think it might be big. It focuses on actual intellectual discourse without the restrictions put in place by other social media platforms. Go to ThinkSpot.com to pre-register for access during the current beta phase. They're setting it up and making sure

it runs smoothly with early users before ramping it up in August, I believe. It should be pretty awesome. We're in desperate need for a platform that doesn't arbitrarily decide to throw people off because of random crowd mentality. We know crowds can be stupid, so check it out. Thinkspot.com to pre-register for access. When we come back, part two of my dad's interview with Joe Rogan. Please welcome my father, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, as we go back to Boston with his special guest, Joe Rogan. And we're going to go back to Boston, okay? Okay, so you said that's really where things started for you.

You moved there where you were 13. Yes. And so what did you get involved in? First of all, like what kind of kid were you in school? Barely paid attention. I was, if ADD is real, I certainly had it, and I was very, very interested in what I was interested in. I was very uninterested in people telling me what to do.

And I essentially couldn't wait to get out of school. But I would excel at things that I had interest in. And the, initially it was art. I was, I wanted to be a comic book illustrator until I really got into martial arts and martial arts became the focus of my life. Around 14, 15 years old, that's when I really became massively obsessed.

And that was really the first thing that I ever did where I really didn't feel like a loser Like I really felt like oh, I actually have some talent There's I actually can be exceptional. There's like something because I you know I grew up Concently moving didn't really have a lot of friends. I would be new in this town. I'd get picked on I wasn't a big kid and there was a lot of a lot of issues with that psychologically and I didn't like being afraid of other kids. I didn't like not knowing what to do over in and the kids they're gonna bully me and pick on me. So I learned

about the annoying thing not to do what to do about. Yeah yeah and you know martial arts changed that 180 degrees and then I became someone who I would be afraid of You know, I became the opposite of what I was So what I was was someone who's terrified of conflict didn't know what to do and what I became was, you know I'll talk one no champion. I became a martial arts champion I knew how to fight. I had done it so many times. Well, so like what did you do? You just walked into a joint one day and decided that that's what you were going to do. Like how did it come about?

It was very fortunate. Well, I've done a little bit of martial arts training at a different place. And then one day I was in Boston for a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. And as I was walking home to the train station with a friend of mine There was a lot of people that were leaving the baseball game so the lines from the train for the tea Which in Boston public transportation was very long so we decided to go check out the J. Hun Kim Taekwondo Institutes right there and I had been really into martial arts because of what I said, you know, the aforementioned insecurities. And so I went up the stairs,

and as I was walking up the stairs, just fortuitously, a guy named John Lee was training and John was a national Taekwondo champion who was in preparation for the World Cup, which was this huge event that he was taking the international event, and he was about to travel to go to. And he was in the peak of his training. And so I walked up to the top of the stairs and I heard this crazy sound of what it turned out to be this man kicking this bag and slamming his heel into this bag and having the chain snap and and rattle and the the the the the thought of his

heel slamming into this leather bag and I got up there and I watched this guy work out I couldn't believe a person could do that I'd never seen anybody kick something so hard in real life. Anybody that had such an incredible martial art skill, like this guy did John Lee, who became a mentor of mine and taught me quite a bit. But that changed everything. I was there the next day. I talked to them, they gave me a brochure and a pamphlet.

And I was there the next day, and I was probably there every day of my life. Give or take a few days here or there if I was injured or something came up until I was 22 years old. So how many hours a day were you spending there? All day. I had keys pretty quickly. They gave me keys. They wanted me well right away my instructor recognized that I was pretty obsessed and I was physically pretty talented. So he had me teaching classes instead of paying.

He was like, like, if it's difficult for you to pay, I would like to have you teach. And there was some wisdom to that too, because one of the best ways for somebody to get good at martial arts is actually to teach. You actually refines your technique, you think about it more, you're expanding it to people that don't necessarily understand all the mechanics of it. So I started teaching, I would teach private lessons to beginners, I would teach group classes, and then eventually I went on to teach at Boston University. I taught at Boston University when I was 19.

I was teaching a accredited class there. But you actually counted towards your GPA. And so I did that. That was, I was already US Open champion by then. And then how long did it take? So you went in there when you were 13 and you were kid that had moved around a bunch and got pushed. I was 14 or 15 by the time I got to that school. Okay.

And then I had my black belt by the time I was 14 or 15 by the time I got to that school. Okay. And then I had my black belt by the time I was 17 and I was competing in the adult division by then before I was every 18. I was competing as an adult. I mean, he might have even put me in when I was 16 if I don't remember correctly. And then I won the state championship when I was 18 and I won it every year From then until I stopped Right, so you had a One or four years and a row. Just to run out of there. How long did it take before like we're used

Were you still were you a thin like you were you a skinny kid when you started? When did you start to bulk up and get big when did you start tough to get tough enough so that, you know, the problems with aggression stop, you know, with other people's aggression stop being a trouble for you? Well, luckily with high school, kids heard about it right away. You know, it was one of those things where, you know, you find out that there's some one of the kids

you go to school with, it's flying all over the country, kicking people in the head. Right. They just avoided me. Yeah, right. I became, it wasn't like, you know, I mean, I certainly never sought out trouble, but people avoided me. Like, you know, junior and senior year, I'd already become this weird kid that was obsessed

with martial arts, you know. And I spent, you know, most of my life from the time I was 15 to I was 21, training and competing. I probably fought over a hundred times. I traveled all over the country. I fought in California, I fought in Ohio, I fought, I fought all over the place. Right. and a lot of local tournaments and Connecticut and Massachusetts and new hamsters were one the US open and I You know just fought everywhere and that was that was most delight my life. Yeah, it was most of my life until I got in the standup comedy Right, so that was so you had a very singular life like that. Yeah, 100% singular, uniquely singular. But I avoided most of the pitfalls of high school partying and all that stuff.

I didn't do that because I was scared of getting hurt. I was scared that if I showed up for training hungover that I'd get beat up and that it would somehow, I was scared of anything that would take even a tiny bit away from my performance as a fighter. Because I was obsessed of anything that would take even a tiny bit away from my performance as a fighter Because I was obsessed with it. Was that scared scared of was that actually fear of Being hurt because you made a mistake or fear of losing the competition or Fear of being hurt fear of losing the competition fear of hurt and being hurt and training training alone

Was as scary as any competition. I had just complete completely by luck wandered into one of the best schools in the world for Taikwondo. They had produced multiple national champions and you know real top of the food chain athletes in terms of Taikwondo. And it was just dumb luck, but I walked into that school. And I could have walked into another school that was a few blocks away that was terrible. I just got lucky. I got really, really, really lucky.

So how useful are the technical martial arts like Taikwondo and an actual street fight? Not that useful. More useful than knowing nothing, but not as useful as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. A lot of people now are just learning mixed martial arts, which is essentially what you see in the UFC, where they're a jack of all trades master of none and the argument there's two arguments like there's an argument that that is a good thing to learn and then there's other arguments that being a specialist first is the best thing and then learning the other things later in life is the best way to go about it like a specialist for particularly a striker or a

grappler like being an elite wrestler or an elite jujitsu artist and then learning all the other stuff later in life because you have such a significant advantage if you can bring the fight into your realm of expertise. So if you are a striker, every fight starts standing up and if you're an elite striker and you know how to avoid takedowns and you know how to wrestle enough to keep a guy off you, you'll have such a significant advantage striking that you can dominate the competition. And we've seen that in the UFC, we've seen that with both grappling and with striking. But it seems that if you become a specialist in one particular area

and then learn those other things, you'll be better off. But you can't really just be a specialist, whether it's in Muay Thai or Taikwondo or Jujitsu. You really have to understand if you're a grapple, you really have to understand striking. And if you're a striker, you really have to understand grappling in order to at least avoid it. So, during this time too, you got to be a pretty big guy. So when did that start happening?

Were you working out like Madwell, you were training as well? Like, let me- But I was much thinner back then. I didn't do much weight lifting because I was trying to compete in certain weight classes. Like when I was 17, I was cutting weight when I was 17 and 18. I was trying to make 140 pound weight class, but I was trying to make the 140 pound weight class, but I was really probably about 10 pounds plus heavier than that. And I would dehydrate myself

and it was really affecting my performance. And then when I was 18, I moved up to the next weight class. That was 154, I believe it was. And when I moved up to that weight class, I got way better. That was what I really excelled. That's when I became like a real national class athlete

was when I moved up. And I still wasn't lifting weights much. I was just doing tight-window training. It was just a lot of heavy bag work, some calisthenics, but mostly it was martial arts work. Then when I started getting into Jiu-Jitsu, it was long after I stopped competing. That's when I started really getting into weightlifting,

because Jiu-Jitsu involves grappling, and I think the advantage to being strong in grappling is pretty significant. It's gigantic. And so that's when, you know, I was like 29 or so like that. That's when I really started heavily weightlifting and getting it. So that was part of it later.

How long did your initial martial arts career last? I fought from the time I was 15 and I think I had my last fight. It was either I was 21 or 22. I don't really remember those, but the last three fights were kickboxing fights. And I had those while I was doing stand-up comedy. So I was spreading myself toothed in.

I was working a bunch of different jobs. I was working delivering newspapers. I was working as a private investigators assistant. I did some construction. I did a bunch of different odd jobs to make a living. And I decided somewhere along. Who's paper, do you have a report, construction agent, jujitsu fighter, standup comedian?

You know, that's got a year, you're in a 19 year old situation. Yeah, well, jujitsu came later. Jujitsu didn't come until I was, I think I was 28 or 29 when I first started training jujitsu. Those, that was mostly just talk window and kickboxing. I really got into kickboxing and I was and I had three kickboxing fights And I was entertaining the idea of fighting professionally But I was also started to get really worried about brain damage

I started to see some signs from kickboxing specifically Yes, specifically because it was I was getting hit a lot more. Yeah. The kickboxing sparring that I did. I did that over the course of about two years where I really got heavily into kickboxing. I did a lot of boxing sparring and a lot of what you would call gym wars where guys would just we would beat the shit out of each other and you would get hurt and you'd come home with headaches and you basically were fighting in the gym. I mean, it's not a wise way to do it. The smart gyms now and the best martial artists, they very rarely spar hard.

They most of the time they spar technically. So they're hitting each other, but they hit each other like this. They don't blast each other full blast. They sort of touch each other. They're working on timing and occasionally you go hard just to make sure that you can survive with these techniques in a firefight. That you know how to deal with it once you get hit.

But we didn't spar like that. We've written, and is the lower combat intensity still useful for training for the real thing? Yes, it's, but you have to have some high intensity and some people that high intensity, they actually have drills that they use to sort of simulate actual exchanges that you would have. There's a lot of science to it now

that didn't exist back then. The gyms that I came up in were real hard-nose, really tough gyms that I came up in were real hard-nosed, really tough gyms. And if you weren't tough, you did not survive, and they weren't interested in anybody that couldn't take a shot or anybody that wasn't willing to go to war. So you would put on a mouthpiece, you put on a cup, you put your shin pads on, and you'd beat the fuck out of each other. And that was a big part of learning how to fight.

It was these sparring sessions were brutal. They were nerve-wracking, you'd be scared. You'd be scared going into them. They'd be anxious the night before. If I knew I had a sparring, a particular guy the next day, because I knew it was dangerous. You basically were having fights all the time.

So I'd have fights several days a week. You would fight. It wasn't really sparring. You would hit it, I'd have fights several days a week. You would fight. You know, it wasn't really sparring. I'd hit guys like covering a lot too, man. All the time. Yeah. From that. So okay, yeah, you just make a hole in this story too. So like you're doing great at Taikwondo. You've got your national level athlete and you switched to kickboxing. You're worried about getting hurt and that seems reasonable. Because like, how about not being brain damaged by the time you're 30? But then, you know, I guess kind of what I wonder was like, how many shots in the head did you have to take before you thought being a stand-up comedian was a good idea? Well, one of my dear friends to this day is a guy named Steve Graham and

Steve was when I met him I was 15 and he was probably 30 and he was going through his residency as an ophthalmologist and He had been a flight surgeon and the US Air Force and just he had been on the US ski team who's a national skiing champion, just a wild man. Just a guy who took chances and lived life to the fullest and was just one of the most hardworking people I ever met in my life. And I would make him laugh. And I would make some of the people laugh and train him because we were always nervous

Everyone we were go to tournaments. We were nervous because you know I'd seen many of my friends get knocked unconscious of these tournaments get kicked in the head Take into hospitals and you know, I'd seen it in the gym too a lot of guys getting beat up and knocked down in the gym It was constant and you know and you know it happened happened to me a couple times I'd been hurt and So we had this gallows humor where we would go to these events We traveled to these tournaments and everybody would be the tension be so thick Everybody would just take in deep breaths and trying to relax and just stay loose before you fight and I would be The I would be the class clown in that environment.

And you were in high school or junior high like when you were in high school. So I did have a sense of humor but it would manifest itself in cartoons. I would draw like cartoons of a teacher. I would draw cartoons of certain kids that would kiss the teacher's ass, I would draw them like kissing the teacher's ass and saying ridiculous things. And if the teacher was late to a class and you know, and I knew I had enough time, I would put something on the chalkboard and then pull down the screen so that when they would go to use the chalkboard, the chalkboard, they would pull the screen back up and see this ridiculous cartoon

that I had drawn the whole class would laugh, and then the teacher would ask, who did this, and luckily nobody ratted me out. But so I enjoyed making people laugh, but that wasn't, it mostly wasn't things I said, was mostly cartoons. Right, right, that's two different. Yeah.

Yeah, but with comedy, with the fighting, when we were getting ready to compete, I was just trying to add some levity. I was just trying to lighten up the mood because everybody was, and it was also, it was a charged environment. So anything that I said that was actually funny would get a giant reaction. And that became addictive. And I was pretty good at doing impressions. So I do impressions of our friends, do impressions of our instructor, all these in ridiculous situations, and my friend Steve Graham, and my other friend Ed Schorter, who's another one encouraged me, who I lost touch with unfortunately. Um, he, he said you should be a comedian.

And my take on it was, you think I'm funny because you're my friend, but other people gonna think I'm an asshole. Like the things that I think are funny are fucked up. Right. I have a fucked up sense of humor. I mean, here I am devoting most of my time to trying to get really good at knocking people on conscience. And that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to separate people from their consciousness.

That was, I was doing my best every day to get a good at that. So my second really perverse psychedelic drug. Yeah, it was the worst. Yeah, but it was, I was trying to hurt people. That's what I was trying to get good at. I was trying to get good at hurting human bodies. And I just didn't think, I thought that I was such a weirdo

and such an outlier in terms of how society viewed combat, physical hand-to-hand combat and interactions with each other that no one would think that the things that I was making fun of were funny. And this guy convinced me to go to an open mic night It's like you should go to an open mic night Just go there's a lot of comedy clubs in Boston go and watch and I went and watch and I realized well

One of the things about going to open mic night is Most open mic comedians are so terrible That it encourages you to try it. Because you're like, well, I can't be that bad. Like, I might have something that's better than some of these people. And then, you'd see a real professional go up and it would be so discouraging, because you'd say, my God, I'll never be that funny. That guy's impossibly funny. But I knew from martial arts that if I worked really hard

at something, I could get good at it. And I had this thought that maybe I could do that with comedy because I didn't want to fight anymore. I was already on my way kind of out the door. I was really worried about the brain day. I was on my way out the door from the time I was like 19. From the time I was 19, I was starting to way out the door from the time I was like 19 from the time I was 19 I was starting to worry about brain damage and then so you're like you're

53 of 51 51 51 and so much how much damage did you actually sustain you know like lots of people I don't know I don't know I mean I see how about physically muscularly and that sort of thing know. I mean, I see how about physically, muscularily, and that sort of thing. Oh, no, I'm fine. I had a bunch of surgeries. I've had my nose repaired. My nose was destroyed.

I had no nose. Like the inside of my nose was just didn't work until I was 40. And then I had a deviated septum operation. They had a cut out giant, calcified chunks of scar tissue and all sorts of I Literally my nose was useless until I was 40 years old Um, so that must be kind of a relief to have your nose. Oh my god. I tell everybody get it done

If you have a deviated septum and you can't breathe out of your nose my god this Ah, I couldn't do that till I was 40 yeah it was just all bro I broke my nose who knows how many times at least a dozen and it was just was always bloody I was always getting punched or kicked in the nose yeah it doesn't seem designed as a sense organ to be at the in the middle of your face where you get punched well it's a tiny piece of cartilage too. And it's a big, you know, you're a lot safer out there. Yeah, like a whale.

It also makes your eyes swell shut. It makes your eyes water. It makes it difficult to see when you get hit in the nose. The end of the nose is really annoying. But other than that, I had both my knees reconstructed. I had ACL tears and both knees, I had to get them then reconstructed and a bunch of other stuff. Oh yeah, so you took your bunch

by the broken things. Yeah, broken stuff, pretty good. Yeah, broken knuckles and I broke a lot of stuff. But everything works great now. I mean, after surgery and I mean, for a person who's been through what I do, what I've done with my body, my body works remarkably well. Yeah, it's amazing, actually.

You know, that's a lot. Do you think you'd be arthritic, at least, in some of your joints and that sort of thing? No, I'm pretty good. I mean, I also, very proactive. I do a lot of yoga. I've had a bunch of stem-selt therapies to deal with some significant tears of yoga. I've had a bunch of stem cell therapies to deal with some significant tears and injuries that I've had. But all that knock on wood, everything works pretty good. But the brain damage thing is I don't know. I really don't know. I really sit back and think

about some of those wars that I was in. Jim wars in particular. And some fights. And my last fight, I got TKO and I got stopped. I got hit with a left hook and dropped and my legs went out from under me and then I got up and I get hit again, fell down again, they stopped the fight and that was when I decided I'm gonna stop. I was like I'm not giving this the same amount of dedication I gave when I was at my best. I was breading myself way to thin with comedy and I just didn't I didn't have the same hunger for it that I had when I was at my best, I was breading myself way too thin with comedy and I just didn't, I didn't have the same hunger for it that I had when I was young or younger and I was also very aware of the consequences at that point in my life. I was like, I know what this is

going, I saw guys at the gym that were punch-drops, you know, that were slurring their words and they would forget things and I had seen some people progress towards that And it was very very disturbing to me, you know, I'd be lying in bed at night after a hard sparring session My head would be pounding and I would think what am I doing in my fucking brain? Like what am I doing myself? and I got real lucky that I found stand-up comedy I mean, if the UFC was around back then, I most certainly would have started fighting. And to not be training intelligently,

because I wasn't training intelligently, I was training like a meathead, and that was just all we knew about them. I probably would have sustained some pretty significant damage before I ever even got into the off. I probably would have already had massive brain damage before I ever had a fight Right, right so you so that's good

So you you stepped out at an intelligent time and so then you started your comedy career and you started at Open mics and so like yeah, you know me about how that developed Well open mic nights are very interesting. You sign up on a list and you may or may not get on. They pick people out of a hat, like say if there's 50 people sign up, 30 people get on, and you know, each do five minutes. And, you know, the host is generally a professional comedian that brings people up. And, you know, you have this weird culture of people that are struggling to try to figure out how to make a living in this sort of undefined art form. There's no classes you can take in it that are really worth anything. There's no books that you can buy that are going to teach you anything.

It's something that you kind of have to learn. The only thing that I like into is rap music. Because rap music seems to be very similar in the fact that you have to learn from other practitioners. You don't really learn from books. There's no like, I mean maybe there is now, I don't know of any like real legitimate university courses on stand-up comedy. I don't think they could teach it to you anyway because everyone does it differently. But I think that's the case with rap music as well. I think you kind of have to learn from the people that are already doing it. And one good thing about Santa Comet particularly today, today it's much more open and inviting and comedians have a lot more comradery than they did in the beginning because they're not fighting over scraps anymore. Now there's so many venues, so many different places to work,

and then there's YouTube and the internet, and comedians, there's much more of a supportive community of people trying to help people. And I try to really concentrate on that. I spend a lot of time trying to help young comics. I put a lot of young comics on my shows. I have them host. I've got a show tonight, and a young comic's going to be doing it for a few years.

Her name's Ali Mikovsky, she's the host of it. She's really funny. And I try to encourage them. I try to help them. I try to give them advice. I try to give them pointers. I try to, when they have great sets, I try to, you know, really thank them and say that was excellent.

And you got this. Just keep doing what you're doing and you can really make a career doing this. Because it's such an insecure business. It's just so it's such a weird undefined path that you have to take. And I love the art form. I love it as a consumer. I love it as a person who's an audience member. I really still to this day enjoy watching stand up. But back then, it wasn't that supportive. You know, we would just support each other, but the professionals weren't that supportive, not like they are today.

A few people, there's a guy named Lenny Clark that I'm still good friends with this day, and I opened up for him. He was a Boston legend, and I was super fortunate to open up for him when I had been doing comedy for about a year, and he gave me some great advice and that meant the world to me. And he was actually on my podcast just last month. I love that guy. And you know, he helped me out when

I was really, really, I was 21. I was really, really young in my comedy career. And so you started putting the same amount of dedication into that that you had been putting into the martial arts? Exactly. Yeah, I just became obsessed with it. And and just traveled all over the place doing open mic nights. I mean, me and my good friend Greg Fitzsimmons, we started out together. We're good friends this day. We started out within a week of each other and we used to travel all the way to Rhode Island.

We would drive, you know, an hour plus drive to go down there just to do five minutes and then we would at an open mic night for free and it would drive all the way home and just dream about one day being a professional. That was the dream. The dream was to pay your bills by doing comedy. Imagine if that that could you could do comedy for a living like that was the dream. I would never imagine that I'm doing what I'm doing now or I'm doing the sold out arenas. That wasn't even a hope. It wasn't even like maybe if it goes well, I could do this, maybe, I could do that.

That was never on the menu. And it's gotten to this really crazy astronomical place now that it's very hard for me to even imagine that that came out of those strange days in Boston just traveling around to all these different weird comedy clubs and writing constantly not knowing how to write, not knowing how to formulate a joke, having like many more misses than hits, you know, a lot of bombing, I bombed all the time. I do believe on stage. You know, you go to have that ability to to bomb and come back from it. I mean, because yeah, you're gonna have a lot more misses than

hits. That's for sure. That's a lot more. Yeah. So what do you think accounts for that obsessiveness that you described? I mean, that's a negative way of putting it. I mean, obviously you said that when you were in school, if you weren't interested, you weren't listening at all, but if you were interested in something, you were like laser focused and that really came up

in the martial arts, but it obviously manifested itself in the stand up comedy too. So what is it about you that that enables you? What do you think it is about you that enables you to zero in on something like that to the exclusion of everything else? I don't know. I mean I think some of it has to be attributed to the unhappiness of my childhood that when I would find something that I did get some joy out of I would just concentrate all in on that I think some of it also was like I wasn't really raised with a lot of discipline and I wasn't really raised

with a pat my my parents were both my stepdad and my mom were both working all the time So they didn't they weren't really around to sort of tell me what to do or how to live. And they weren't really around to let me know that everything was gonna be okay. They were always working. So they would come home from work at like six o'clock or something like that. And, you know, I'd been on my own all day.

Me and my sister had been on our own all day. You know, we'd come home, we had a key, we got into the house. And it was, when day. You know, we'd come home, we had a key, we got into the house and it was, when I, you know, there was a lot of real bad feelings, you know, like, and when I found something that made me feel good, I just did that exclusively. That's all I did.

And I still have that problem to this day, when I get obsessed with something, if I find something that means something to me, I think of it all day long. If I get obsessed with something, it becomes like a mantra that's in the back of my head. And I have to shut it off. Like I have to do my best to shut it off.

Otherwise I can't listen to people. I don't, like when people are talking to me, I don't wanna talk to them. I wanna go do that thing that I wanna do. Right, right, right. It becomes like a compulsion. And it could be socially negative. It could be detrimental to relationships and friendships.

Yeah, but it seems like that sort of thing is also absolutely necessary if you're going to develop high level skill at something difficult and unlikely because unless you're obsessive about it, practice it like all the time, the people you're competing with, they're going to take you out. So the funny thing, I would always be terrified that I would run into someone like me Well, I could not just ask But that's that was the fear that I would run into someone who is a hundred percent all in and then I was Fighting and when I lost my last kickboxing fight I wasn't all in and I knew I was in all and I knew I knew I wasn't the same person

I was when I was like 18, 19. I was a psychopath. I mean, I was 100% committed to doing nothing but that. And then as I was examining my future prospects in my life, and I started to become more aware of the problems of what I was doing, I became less and less. I had one fight that I had in California and Anna in the US nationals in 1980

It must have been my It seems like it had to been 86 86 or 87 Somewhere around there 87 86 or 87, somewhere around there, 87? Somewhere around 87. I knocked this guy out with a head kick and in front of his parents, and it was, everybody was, people were crying

and he was unconscious for a long time. He was unconscious for a solid half hour. And they dragged him off of the mat, they put him in a stretcher, they took him to the hospital, and never saw him regain consciousness. And, uh, I remember thinking that could have easily been me. Like, I didn't have any illusions of me being some impervious, invulnerable person. And I was really thinking about how I, I hit him so hard my heel was hurting the next day. I was walking with a limp from his head because I wheel kicked him in the head.

It's a particularly brutal move where you spin and your whole leg comes around, you're hitting someone in the head with your heel and he fell like he had gotten shot to spell face first out cold snoring. It wasn't the first time that I'd done that to someone, but it was one of the most brutal because he kind of ran into it too. He was trying to kick me as I was kicking him. So it was the force of his body coming towards me and me hitting him. And I was thinking that guy's probably never going to be the same again.

Like he's never going to get over it psychologically or if he does, it's going to be very hard for him. But he might be damaged for the rest of his life. That's a real possibility. And then I started thinking, am I willing to have that happen to me at 19? I was 19 years old. I was like, is this what you want to do? Do you want to get hit in the head like that

and never be the same again at 19? Because it easily can happen. You know, we were at 60 years to live like that. Yeah, we were at a, this was a national championship tournament. So he was a state championship, I think from Illinois. And I was a state champion from Massachusetts. And you know, wasn't like, he was a black belt. I mean, wasn't like he was a unskilled guy

So the fact that I was able to do that to him and I was able to do that to a bunch of other guys I knew that someone out there could do that to me, right? I knew that I knew that I wasn't the best in the world and I knew that even though I was a top I was you know, I was a real national level competitor. I wasn't world class, I wasn't the best, especially at 19. And so that doubt stuck with me for the next couple of years. And it was probably the first seed

of my new future was me hurting that guy. And thinking about what that was gonna be like, if that happened to me. Yeah, well that's a hell of a right turn. You took there to go into comedy. So, okay, so how now you became successful as a comedian. So, you started playing in little clubs like stand-up comedians did and like how did you get your breaks and how did your career develop? Well, um, it took a few years for me to get competent, you know, it took like two or three years for me to get competent and then three years in, I got extremely fortunate again where I met my manager, my manager who's my manager to this day. He basically picked me up when I was an open

mic comedian. I mean, I was, I was getting a few paid gigs here and me up when I was an open mic comedian. I was getting a few paid gigs here and there, but I was really an amateur. And he found me. He was looking for new talent. He came up from New York. He was like, you know, really well respected and well recognized manager. Still is, of course, his name is Jeff Sussman and we've been together for uh... shit now it must be twenty eight years yeah we've been together since really since i was an amateur and he uh... that's a successful collaboration to to span that amount of time

not many changes yeah um... yeah we've been together forever we've been together forever. We've been together forever. We don't even have a contract anymore. We haven't had a contract in think for like 10 years. So during all this time, this is just like a bit of a side, side question here, but you know, there have any time at all to pursue relationships with women? Yeah, well, you do comedy, you know, you're in clubs at night. Yeah, you know, you have most of your day to do whatever you want.

You know, to just, when I was just a stand-up comedian, I had a lot of free time. You know, I mean, you're writing jokes, but you can only do that a couple hours a day, or you get bored, and then it's not effective. And then you just kind of live in your life and hang out, and sometimes the best way to develop your comedy is to have good social interactions. It's actually kind of important when you're an aspiring comedian to be in a lot of social situations because you are around people, you hear people say things and then you think what they say is silly or what they say is you disagree or you agree, you see perspectives and points of view,

and you develop an understanding of how human beings behave. It's kind of very important. So yeah, I was around a lot of different girls and a lot of guys and just being out. And you're always at comedy clubs and night clubs, but I didn't go out other than that, you know I if I wasn't at a comedy club at night. I probably wasn't out You know was always the same thing with like my obsession with fighting and fighting came way easier for me than

Stand up dead stand up was way harder for me. It was Stand up was way harder. For me, it was way harder. It was way harder to achieve confidence. What was harder about it? Well, you said it took you two or three years to get competent. So that was a lot of falling flat on your face, I presume. Yeah. And even then, even like three years in, I still could bomb at any moment. I mean, I could have a bad set. I didn't know how to do it. But also, I was socially awkward. I think it took me a while to not be so socially awkward. That was an issue. And it was a lot of it was from my upbringing,

but a lot of it was also, I kind of cultivated that when I was fighting. Yeah, I didn't want people to like me. I didn. Yeah, I didn't want people to like me. I didn't care. Like, I didn't need them to like me. All I needed them to do, I mean, I kind of wanted them to be scared of me. You know, so when I was fighting,

I wasn't trying to make friends out there at all. I was just trying to fuck people up. I mean, so- When you were fighting, when you were fighting, did you have any relationships with women? Or were you pretty much good ones? Not good ones. No. I didn't. I wouldn't allow them to have much of my time. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I think to have a successful relationship, you have to spend a lot of time together, you have to communicate, you have to, the person has to almost be first place

in your life. Yeah. And that was never happening. And so that was, that would come up very often. Like, I was a girl that I was dating in high school. And you know, I used to teach at the school side keys to the school. So one time I took her up there because I needed to get a workout in

and she wanted to have sex at the gym and I was like, there's no way. I wouldn't do it. I was like, this place is sacred. Like there's no chance. So she was trying to fool around and I was, you know, I was adamant. I was like, this is never happening.

Like this is my, this is my as well be a church to me. I was like, it's not happening. And you know, I was so horny when I was 17 years old. To me, at 17 or 18, the say no to sex was crazy. Right. Right. That's a crazy thing. I think we're going to, we're going to clip that and put it in a little clip that says, Joe Rogan tells the story that no sane man would believe. Well, you know, I was, that was the first refuge that I had from my life of despair. So for me, I wasn't going to screw that up. Right, right, right.

And I felt like disrespecting the academy like that. Yeah, when you'd be treating an adult, that's something. That's something when you're a teenager, you know, like to actually be treated that way. It's a good thing not to mess with. If you're fortunate enough to have it. Well, I wouldn't even walk onto the training floor by myself with no one around without bowing. Uh-huh. I mean, there was no one there, but I would never leave the common area and step on the training floor without bowing first.

Right. Never. Never. Never. and step on the training floor without bowing first. Right, never, never, never. Okay, so when you're in comedy now, you said, you said you were all in as a fighter and you figured you went all in as a comedian too. And did you do that right from the beginning? Yeah, yeah, pretty much, yeah, right away. As soon as I realized that I could actually do this,

and as soon as I realized I decided, I mean, my first set that I ever did, I had a bunch of my friends come down and watch me, I wasn't good, the first time I ever got on stage, but I got a couple of little chuckles and laughs. And then I realized, this might be possible. I might be able to do this, and then I became obsessed with figuring out how to do it,

because it was, I saw it as a path, like, okay, this is a thing, okay this is a thing like this is a thing you could do that you actually love like I was a huge fan of the art form I loved watching it ever since my parents took me to the movies when I was like 14 or 15 we saw live on the sunset strip was a Richard prior movie in the theater where he did stand up and I had never seen that before. And I remember thinking how crazy is it that this guy can just talk and it's so funny. I was falling out of my chair laughing

and I was looking around, I remember looking around while the movie was playing at all these people in their chairs, just rocking back and forth and laughing so hard. Yeah, it's really something amazing. I saw Bill Costa when you're a young teenager teenager, like 16. I know you should know. I'll really talk about Bill Cosby, but I saw him live. And like I saw him live too when I was a security guard. Oh, yeah. I saw him live. Yeah, I was a security guard at great

woods. I saw kinness in there when I was a security guard. I saw Rodney Dangerfield there. Yeah, I saw quite a few people there. Yeah, it's not quite a few people there. Yeah, well, it was something to see him sit on his stool with his cigar and get the whole audience like literally hysterical. I mean, the guy in front of me was walking back and forth so hard he could hardly breathe. His wife kept elbowing him to kind of turn back into something vaguely resembling a human being, but it was really amazing to see someone with that much command to the audience and so consistently unbelievably funny. He's the most tragic story in all of show business. Next to Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson, I mean those are

the three most tragic stories in show business in my mind. Yeah. And, you know, he's a monster. And it's crazy. Yeah. No one really is a monster. What the hell, you know, the thing that's so strange about Cosby, you'd think, well, like, was this really necessary?

Like, man, the guy was famous on 15 different directions and really well respected. You wouldn't have think he would have had to date rape his women you know it's just well yeah I mean he he just he could have just had prostitutes I mean if he really just needed sex I don't think that's what it was I think there was a sick perversion and I think he'd like to do that to people he like to trick them I mean I'm just guessing right it has to be something like that, because it's something. It's so counterproductive and so psychotic. It's psychotic. I mean, I don't understand it.

I've tried to sort of imagine what it must have been like to be around in the 50s and the 60s. I think people did that to each other way more often than we'd like to admit. And I think that it was more casual than we would think of today, where people would slip someone amic-y, or, you know, I mean, he even had a bit that he did

back in the way back in the day about giving someone Spanish fly that you'd give someone something that would make them horny. I think he was probably a guy that had an incredibly inflated opinion of himself, didn't want anybody to ever reject him, experienced that a few times. Again, this is pure speculation.

And just decided that he was better than people, that he could just drug them. It's so strange, though, because his comedy was basically so, like, it was generally family-oriented. It was, you know, when he put himself forward as a role model and he was credible like he was credible as an actor as a role model And he seemed credible as a spokespersonist kind of kind of makes me think you know, there's this Idea that the psychoanalysts had this guy named Eric Neumann who was a student of Carl Jungson One of the things that Neumann said it wrote a called Depth Psychology and the New Ethic right after World War II, and it's a great book, a little thin book, but it's a great book. One of the things he says in that book is, don't be better than you are. And what he meant was, he didn't mean don't improve, like, it's time to be foolish. He meant beware of adopting a persona that makes you a far better person than you actually

are because all of that part of you that you're not admitting to, that's going to go off and have its own life because you're not integrating it, you know, you're suppressing it in some way. And so it's a living thing, you know, that well, like it in some way. And you're not it. And so it's a living thing, you know, that, well, like the aggression you had when you were a fighter, that's a big, deep part of you, you know, you can't just push something like that aside and pretend that it's not there and think that it's not going to go off and have some fun when you're not paying attention. Yeah. To me, like something like that must have got him is that he was he was split between this really good guy that he was trying to be which was like too good and

And and this this like more monstrous side of his personality that he obviously never integrated or perhaps never even admitted to It's really a hell of a story man It's like and it really is a catastrophe, I think. It was an absolute bloody catastrophe for his victims, obviously, but just as a general cultural phenomenon, it's so awful. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. They say you should separate the man from the art, but in his case, it's almost impossible to do because his art was his perception of life. So like when you're watching him, it's not like a painter or even someone who makes a movie. It's like when you're watching him, you're watching

him now and all you can think of as he's talking about these different things and about, I told my children what he's doing this lovable dad voice. And you know, all you can think of, that guy rapes people, drugs them and rapes them. Yeah, I can't enjoy it anymore. And he's unquestionably as far as like his skill. He was one of the greatest of all time. Yeah, yeah. All right.

So you got a manager and you got a good one and what happened? Yeah, I Moved to New York and then once I moved to New York. I started doing a ton of stand-up comedy I was traveling all over the place and I got better and better and I kept working on it working on it and just Doing a lot of gigs and just going all over the place. And then, to how old were you by the time you were like, paying your bills? Because that was your first marker for success. Probably like 26, 25, 26 was when it all started

coming together. Oh yeah, so that's not too bad. That's not too bad. I mean, I wasn't holding up. It was making a lot of no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no on MTV and each comedian, I don't know how much time I did on the show. I think you do like seven to 10 minutes or something like that. It wasn't a lot of time. And I had a set and I did on television and it went really well. And then next thing you know, I got all these offers to do television shows. I got development deal offers.

And then before you know it, I'm living in California. It was like that. I mean within a year. I was living in California I was on a sitcom and And then that sitcom got canceled and I thought I was gonna move back to New York. It was called a hard ball It was a baseball show on Fox. It was a sitcom about a baseball team That show got canceled. And then I got a development deal with NBC. I was going to move back to New York, but I'd signed a lease for my apartment. I hated LA. I hated actors. I didn't like it. I didn't. It was so disingenuous. The worlds that I had come from were the worlds of stand-up comedy, which

is about as real as you can get, either you're funny or you're not. from were the worlds of stand-up comedy, which is about as real as you can get, either you're funny or you're not, and then the world of fighting, which was even more real than that. And then all of a sudden I was around all these people that were just full of shit and weird, and they were put on these personas, and they wanted the casting agents to like them, and the producers to like them, and everything was fake. And everybody knew it was fake, but they all accepted it, and they talked the casting agents to like them and the producers to like them and everything was fake and everybody knew it was fake but they all accepted it and they talked fake and it was very very strange, very hard for me to deal with. I really didn't like actors, I didn't like being and the only place that I saw it refuge

actually. It's a funny thing that there'd be an automatic assumption that because you were a good stand-up comedian that somehow you'd be an actor. Yeah. To be the same thing. No, they're not. But the thing is that a lot of comedians had gone on to be super successful in the world of sitcoms like Rosanne Barr, Jerry Seinfeld, Tim Allen, those type of people that had these

huge careers, Brett Butler. So because of that, all that a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of, but I had a lease for this apartment, so I was kind of stuck in LA. So I was like, all right, let me just stay out here and see what happens for a year. That was my thought. And then I got a development deal with NBC. They wanted to do a sitcom with me, and then I wound up auditioning for a show that they had already had called News Radio. And that was with Dave Foley and Phil Hartman and Moratirney and Candy Alexander and Stephen Rude and Andy Dick and Vicki Lewis and we did that show for five years. And then you know by that time I had done a lot of stand-up at the comedy store. When that show was canceled, Fear Factor came along and I was touring as a comedian and... no that's a whole switch there.

Okay, so now yeah, you go from sitcoms to fear factor. So how the hell did that happen? NBC came up to me with the idea because I was on NBC previously and they liked me. And then part of the thing was that I didn't want to work with actors anymore. I was happy that fear factor was no actors. And I was like, oh, good, this is easier to do. It's just me talking to people. And since I had a background in coaching, because I had coached a lot of people at tournaments in competition, and I taught a lot at Boston University,

I taught at my own school, with Taekwondo, I was used to teaching people, and I was used to teaching people and I was used to encouraging people and getting people motivated. And I knew how to get fired up for competition. I understood. So you were actually one of the rare people in the world who was actually trained to be the right host for fear factor. Yeah, in a lot of ways, luckily, fortuitously, because I,

like, I would, when someone was nervous and they're about to do something, I, I could grab them and go, look at me, you could do this. This is going to define you. If you back off right now, and you get scared, and you're given to your fears, your anxieties, this is going to define you, or if you just press forward and realize you can do this and succeed, it will define you in a positive way and you'll build momentum in that direction. You can do this. And I was really good at giving people pep talks. I was really good at firing people up.

And it was part of the gig that it was like, it was completely unexpected. Because I thought the gig was just going to be these people do these crazy things and You know, I make fun of it which is part of my job and I you know we all cheer and and it would all play itself out because it was a reality show It was sort of a game show slash reality show was like a hybrid But somewhere along the line especially when they became really nervous If it if it was very intense and there was moments where I really, I wanted these people to win. You know, I wanted these people to do their best. I wanted these people to succeed. You know, and to be able to encourage someone. You're a lot of people who are not treating men. You know, from, you know, that's the basis

of psychotherapy. So, you know, it's really something to get people to face their fears. I mean, you were doing it in a very idiosyncratic way, very, very, what, unique way. But imagine it was psychologically compelling very often. Got any particular stories from that time? You got a good story from fear factor? Well, there was one time where there was this couple, not couple, a family. It was a father-in-the-son

competing against a mother and the daughter. And the father and the son were kind of jerks, which was part of the competition. There was a lot of trash talking, but they were really cocky and they thought that they were going to win, you know, and it was, you know, they had this, parent and child teams had gotten down to two and it was the man and his son versus the woman and her daughter. And everybody thought these jerks were going to win and we're kind of bummed out about it. But the women, the woman and her child, you know, they just rose to the occasion. And I mean, I remember talking to them and firing them up, but I still, I didn't know if they could do it. What was the challenge?

It was some crazy thing that they had a climb and do this thing. And I don't really remember all of it. Like they had to gather flags, it was all for time. But the sun, the kind of jerky sun, the jerky dad, they kept screwing up and they fucked up because they'd kind of taken it for granted that they were going to win And when the pressure hit them and they knew it was all on the line a lot of times jerks are just insecure And when they're under pressure when they're really faced with real pressure like this is the real moment Who are you really fuck all that talk who are you really? Fuck all that talk. Who are you really? They fall apart.

And the mother and the daughter won. And you're talking about a hardened crew of people that watch people eat, animal dicks and jump out of helicopters for season after season, episode after episode. We did a hundred and something show, a hundred and I don't even remember how many shows We got probably a hundred forty episodes of that show Everybody cried The camera people I got cried now if I'm thinking about it. Hmm. Hmm. When the mother and the daughter was Was it still effective? We're so happy. I mean, the mother and the daughter was, what was it? What was it?

It was still effective. It was so happening. I mean, there's a justice component to it, right? There's a comeuppance. It was a comeuppance. It was an underdog. It was just seeing their spirit. You know, when they were figuring out a way to win,

watching them win, to this day. I'll tell you, one of the things that makes me really happy about this interview so far is that, like I have a tendency to tear up in interviews, as you may have noticed, but this time it was you, so I'm quite pleased about that. I'm sure you've heard, a lot. You do, eh? Yeah, yeah, but particularly like that, I don't see

up for sad things. I tear up for happy things. Yeah, that was a little bit of a loss. That's an interesting thing to think about too, because it's not exactly happy, right? It's because you know, when these people come up to me and they tell me their stories, that often makes me tear up.

Because it's like this blast of dead, bloody seriousness with a happy ending, you know? So it's the comedy, because it's a happy ending, but it's rough and affecting and it, it, that makes me tear up. And I think my proclivity, I've always kind of had that ever since I was a kid, but seems to have come back with a, with a, with a, with you two, eh?

Yeah, yeah, always, always, but it's always been happy things. It's never been sad things. It's very hard to give me to cry with sad things. Sad things I sort of just, yeah, try them. Success. Yeah. People pulling through like post-fight interviews when I when I work for the UFC What someone has like a particularly incredible performance? I have the fight off hearing up

I feel so happy for them It's isn't it's isn't it strange that it's that same response to Soro it's the same response to sorrow, it's the same response to sorrow and triumph. But that's the theory. You know, like, what the hell's up with that? I don't understand that at all. I mean, it gets, I have a sign of empathy.

Yes, it is definitely a sign of empathy. But what's also odd is that with sad things, I can objectively analyze them. And I cannot get sad. I can understand that this is just life, and it is what it is. And I mean, I won't feel good, but I won't start weeping. I don't weep for sad things the way I weep for happy things. So you, that's interesting. So, so in some sense, you've, you've trained yourself to detach yourself from not kind of sorrow, but not to detach yourself from

triumph. I can rationalize and understand sorrow. I can internalize it. I get it. I know, I know what it is. And, you know, I just get so happy for people sometimes when things go well. Yeah, one of my guilty pleasures is I really like America's Got Talent and the BBC equivalent. What the hell is the BBC equivalent? Is it the X factor? Something like that.

Yeah. And it does the same thing to me. I'd see somebody slub themselves out there on the stage, looking pretty damn dreadful in about four different dimensions and then like knock it out at the park. It really, it's really something to see. Yeah, it's something amazing. Well, I think we, as a human being,

you realize how hard it is to overcome competition or this difficult moment. So these moments when you're tested and you know there's fears and insecurities in these people have to battle as well as the actual physical task in front of them. There's so much going on and there's so much anticipation and nerves and anxiety involved in that. To see someone triumph, I mean, I am a student of human will. I love stories of discipline and success. I don't like bad stuff. I don't even like going to movies where they're sad.

But people tell me about sad movies. I'm like, stop, I'm not going to that movie. I don't like it. I don't want to see it. I'm not interested. I know what sadness is. I've been sad. I get it.

I'm not interested in getting that in a form of entertainment. I like success. I like seeing people triumph. I like I like seeing the human spirit manifest itself in spectacular ways. Yeah, that's why I like my lectures. That's why it's so fun to do them, you know, because I'm out there trying to tell people that they have the opportunity to do that and to point out to them too that if they watch themselves they notice they love that. Because you know that's one of the things you go to a basketball game or a hockey game or something like that and somebody makes a spectacular play and it's little celebration of the human spirit. Yeah. The ability to do something impossible in the moment and everybody's up on their feet like in one second. Yeah. Go man, go.

Yeah. That's like that's the more that the better as far as I'm concerned. There's so much concentration on our, on our, you know, the destruction we wreak on the planet and our original sin and our weakness and, you know, the terrible things we do to each other. It's really nice to see those situations where people are celebrating

the triumph of an individual in a group like that and really says something wonderful about human beings, deep in their core for all of our problems. It's really something to be part of that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more and I think we concentrate way too often and way too much on the negative aspects of people. It's almost like sports is about the only place that doesn't happen. It's kind of strange because you do concentrate on the positive in sports.

You celebrate the winners. The cameraman, don't go over and interview the losers. I mean, that's not all that. But and it is, I don't know why it is that in sports, it's okay to just to celebrate the triumphant and the victorious. But it is okay. And no one questions it. It's, it's, are well, that's not true. Because now they have like non competitive games for kids. And, you know, that's hard to politically correct curriculum. But most of the time, most sane people will celebrate along with a victorious athlete,

and that's really something. All right, so fear factor. How many years did that last? Six years. Were the good years? It's good financially. Yeah, well, that's something. I made a ton of money and it alleviated financial pressure,

but I enjoyed doing it somewhat, but it was not like the way I enjoy the other things that I do. It's not like I enjoy standard comedy. It's not like I enjoy working for the UFC. It's not like I enjoy doing podcasts. All those things that I just talked about, those three things, those things are labors of love. They're passions. They're things that I'm really genuinely fascinated by and interested for the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you.

I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. I love the people who are in love with you. but it was a great job and I knew it was a great job and I knew I was really lucky to have it. So it was great in that respect, but when it was over, I kind of decided I was done with television.

When it was over, I was like, okay, I think I'm done with this. No more of this. From here on out, I'm just gonna concentrate on my own stuff. And so from then on out, I just really focused on standard comedy. And that's when my comedy career really took off was post-fear factor. I mean I had a comedy career during fear factor but it really took off post-fear factor because I really gave it all of my attention. So what happened after fear factor that boosted you on the comedy circuit? Well I did a special for Comedy Central and Spike TV

called Talking Monkeys in Space in 2009. That was like probably my best work up until then. And then, you know, from then, I've been on a pretty steady pace of doing specials every two years or so ever since then. Right, right, right. And that's being successful, no, I'm stopped. Are you getting better?

Yeah, and it's, yeah, I think I am. I think I'm getting better I think it's one of those things is as long as you keep concentrating on it And as long as you keep focusing on it, you're getting better I think my hour that I'm doing now is as good as anything I've ever done And it's not even done yet. It's only you know six months into this hour But I think it's some of my best work ever and I'm really excited to see where it comes Well, I mean probably there's no rush, because it's only six months into my last one.

I probably will work on this for another year before I even think about recording it. Oh yeah, so it's good now. It's really good by then. Yeah, it's like a samurai sword. You're folding the metal and hammering the blade, folding the metal and hammering the blade, and you gotta know when it's ready.

And I'll start to get a sense of where it's ready in about a year. And about one year, then I'll start going, all right, this seems pretty solid. Maybe it's time to rock and roll. And then I'll contact Netflix, and I'll say, hey, let's do it. You know, let's set it up and whatever just whatever city I decide.

And I'll just I'll pick a city. I'll pick and I'll just run it over my head. I'll pick a name for it. You know. Well, maybe I'll try to stay posted on what you're doing and come down and see it. That'd be fun. Yeah. I missed it last time you were here in Toronto. But I'd like to come and see one of your shows live. I think that'd be a blast. So yeah. Okay, so the next was the UFC, eh? Yeah, that was TV. You know, you kind of, you know, see happened while I was on news radio, actually.

While I was on news radio, I started working for the UFC way back in 1997. But it was, the UFC was more of a side show back then. It was a band from cable. You could only get it on satellite TV. It was a freak show. People didn't know about it. I mean, I loved it because as a lifelong martial artist, to me, it was fascinating to watch all these different styles compete against each other. But it didn't pay much money. And even though it was enjoyable for me, it got in the way of other aspects of my life. And so I quit around 1998,

and then somewhere along the line in around 2001, the UFC was purchased by this new company, and when they purchased, this might earphones are dying. I'm gonna have to take these off and unplug this here. Can you hear me still? Is that good? Yeah. Okay. Once it started, once the new company took over,

they were trying to get people to go to their events and they asked me to go to the event. You know, it was when I was doing Fear Factor. And so I went and watched it live. And when I was watching it live, I was talking to Dana White, who is the president of the UFC, and just talking to him about the sport

and all these different things I think about. And are you interested in this guy? I was asking about various obscure fighters who were competing in Japan. Maybe he didn't know about, he's trying to get these guys. And then somewhere along the line, he said, hey, you wanna do commentary? And I, I can't. I was like, I don't know about, he's trying to get these guys. And then somewhere along the line, he said, hey, you want to do commentary?

And I, I can't. I was like, I don't want to work, man. I'm just here. I just want to enjoy this. So he and I became friends and he talked me into doing it. And I first did it for free. I did like 12 events or so for free, just for fun. I was like, just get tickets for my friends

and I'll go and I'll do commentary for you, but I didn't take it that seriously. I didn't, everything was going to be, you know, a career. Very good. And I would be this, you know, well-known commentator in Mixed Martial Arts. I thought I was doing it as a favor for them and for fun for me. And, you know, lo and behold, here we are 18 years later. I'm still doing it. I presume they're paying you now. Oh, yeah, they pay me a lot. That's good.

That's good. That's better bargaining position, I would say. Yeah. Yeah, they're very generous. So that's kind of an understandable transition in some sense, because, you know, you got your social skills highly developed and you've got your ability to be witty on demand, highly developed and to pay attention to an audience and you had the martial arts background and so you have see commentator that that makes sense. It's that all right. So now, where does the podcast come in. How the hell does that happen next? I guess it's next.

It's next. Yeah, the podcast was 2009, I guess, when it first started. And the podcast was basically, it was just for fun. It was like something to do with my friends. Me and my friend, Brian, we just decided to set up a laptop and people would ask questions and we would just start just talking about things. And then it became a weekly thing and then we started uploading it to iTunes and then you know I started getting guests and then as the I mean it took years before it was profitable. I mean, it was just for fun forever.

Like a lot of things that I've done, it was originally just for fun. Well, that's pretty early, podcast too though, eight, 2009. So, very early, yeah. Podcasts were, I mean, for lots of people, they're still not a thing, although that's really changed in the last three or four years.

I mean, you know, they're definitely a mainstream media phenomenon now, but 2009, that was fringe stuff fundamentally. Yes, yeah, it was very fringe. So there wouldn't be an advertising market at that point, I wouldn't have thought, not much of what. No, there was no ads ads we didn't have ads for years and then Slowly ads are trickly and the first ad was the fleshlight which is a masturbation device It was so it was funny story about Sam Harris

Sam Harris who was a guest really early on when the fleshlight was the only sponsor requested that we not have the fleshlight as a sponsor on the the fleshlight was the only sponsor requested that we not have the fleshlight as a sponsor on the episode that he was on. And so I was like, okay, so I took that week off. I just decided no sponsor that week. That's funny. For very many reasons, it's funny that that was the first, well, you know, pornography leads the way, right? Yeah, well, you know, in the internet. Yeah, yeah, it is kind of funny. Yeah. And, you know, was even also funnier is that the guy who was, um, I guess he was a CEO of the flashlight or marketing something or another of the flashlight,

a CEO of the fleshlight or marketing something or another of the fleshlight, he went on to form on it with me. So on it, which is my fitness and supplement company, he and I are partners in this and it came out of our, the thing with the fleshlight or business agreement because it was really profitable for the fleshlight and he realized early on like wow like having a podcast sponsor something can be incredibly lucrative if the podcast is well respected and well received like this is sort of an untapped advertising market. Hey let's start a business and just use the podcast as a method of launching this business and let's see how it goes. as a method of launching this business. And let's see how it goes.

Right, right. So the podcast, that's, and that became very successful too. But the podcast sort of took on a life of its own. It went from being just me hanging out with comedians talking to me interviewing people like you, having conversations, I should say more than interviewing people like you, and you know, scientists and archaeologists and doctors and, I mean, everyone.

Yeah. All right. You started talking. Oh, you started talking to everyone. Yeah. Everyone. Really? And it was mostly comedians to begin with.

Yes. It was almost all comedians in the beginning. And the everyone part is interesting because that's something that people Resist or resent more than anything now like the thing about this that you see now you see this this this expression Giving someone a platform here. Why would you give someone someone a platform with those ideas? It's like it really comes down to this concept of Silent thing opinions that you don't agree with. And my thought on it has always been, I wanna talk to all kinds of different people. And even if I don't agree with them,

I wanna find out why they think the way they think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, there's also an element of useful, disagreeable, just there. It's like, I'm gonna talk to whoever the hell I want to. I don't care what you think about it. I interviewed Milo speaking of people that you're not supposed to be talking to. Recycling?

Yeah, like a week ago. Yeah. So I'm going to take a lot of heat from that. It hasn't been broadcast yet. I don't think I'm going to take a lot of heat for it, because we didn't have a political discussion. We had a political discussion. Well, I was really curious about how he got taken down.

You know, when he was talking about his sexual abuse when he was a kid and defaming it in some sense. Like, I watched that interview and I knew he was in trouble as soon as he completed it. I figured, no, you're, you said things that you're not allowed to say. And I think the part of it was that, see, I was split in two parts watching it, part because I was also watching it as a clinician. I thought that it was admirable of Milo to refuse to take the victim stance because he had been such an anti-victim, the victim stance because he had been such an anti-victim, what would you call it, agitator or advocate.

And so he said, well, I was a full participant in this, but then the clinic thought to be thought, no, man, you haven't updated your memory since you were 14. Like you're still thinking of adult Milo as 14-year-old Milo, and you're not thinking about 14-year-old Milo as 14 year old Milo, and you're not thinking about 14 year old Milo as a kid. And so that was sad for me to see that, because often when people are traumatized, in some sense around the area of trauma, they don't mature, like it's like they get stuck.

Well, look, imagine that you're on a path, and you come towards an obstacle that's impenetrable, but you really need to get through it to fully develop. It's part of what you need to grow up, but you can't. So you walk around it, but you leave the party yourself that could have matured behind there. And because it didn't deal with the challenge, like this is sort of what you were experiencing maybe on fear factor, maybe why you're such a, what you're so emotionally affected by triumph. It's like you get defeated by something like that. You can't overcome it.

There's part of you that gets stuck there in a sense. And something Freud observed, like a hundred and, ah, my damn near must be 120 years ago that people would fixate at a certain age because something had happened to them or at least part of their personality would. I could see that happening with Milo. And I thought that he was in a really tough spot because he'd been molested. He didn't want to play the victim.

Yet he actually was a victim, which was the perversive damn thing. And that, you know, the way he spoke about it could easily have been twisted, misinterpreted partly because of his own doing into a quasi-justification for pedophilia. And then he also said, well, you know, this was relatively common practice in the gay community. I figured it'd be cut to ribbons for for bringing that up. But he's not in the interview. It was really weird, you know? He said that it wasn't the left wingers that took him out. It was the conservatives. And they really had because he was slated to speak at CPAC and the straight Republican types, not the Trump types, you know,

but the more classically conservative Republicans didn't think that Milo Ynopolis was the right kind of guy to have speaking at CPAC, and so his sense is that it was actually the moderate right that wiped him out. And so that was, that was interesting, and I didn't expect that. And he, I also talked a fair bit about, I can't tell you all of it because then nobody has to watch the damn podcast or listen to it, but he's also shifted his viewpoint quite substantially on what happened to him when he was 14 and he describes the process he went through to kind of rethink that, not least, the controversy it caused. So, I think, well, that was our conversation.

It lasted a couple hours. It was, I asked him how he was doing and what he was planning on doing. And so that was kind of interesting to find out too. But we never got into anything that was remotely political. And so I was happy to have had the conversation. You know, the thing about people like Milo is I don't give a damn what you say about Melch's Jones is the

same sort of person. I think the same thing about Tommy Robinson for that matter. It's like these people are interesting. Like they're strange people and they have they have an effect on the world. And like what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to, what are you not supposed to be curious about that? It's like, how can you not be curious about Bilo? It's the de-platforming thing. Like they, they have this idea that you should not have a differing opinion.

If you have a differing opinion, it should never get a platform. And I think, yeah, well, it's also more perverse than that, even, it's the idea that if you give someone like that Quote a platform so now you're willing to talk to them that you must agree with them merely because you're conversing with them And it's like yeah, and that's a that's a that's all Well that guilt by association assumption is it's a terrible assumption by association assumption is, it's a terrible assumption. What does it mean?

You're only going to talk to people holding exactly the same ethical views that you hold on everything. On everything. Yeah, it's not nonsense. It's like that data and society thing that came out connecting everybody is alt-right gateways because they've talked to people that are on the right. I tweeted that lady when she wrote that. I said that Barbara Walters interviewed Castro.

Does that make her a communist? And so, basically, how I might take on all this stuff is, there's nothing wrong with talking to people. And I feel like Milo, well, Milo, you know, almost has been his own worst enemy because he's such a provocateur. And now they've turned a lot of that stuff that he was saying as a provocateur and they've turned it against him. But I think that you and him have this one thing

in common is that you get categorized by lazy people who are not good at nuance and they put you in this box that other people have created. And this box is, oh, this is an alt-right this. This is a conservative that. This guy's a Nazi. This guy's a white supremacist. This guy's a that. Whatever it is, they put you in that box.

And then socially, you have to, in order to fit into the ideology, in order to fit into this group think you have to sort of accept these definitions that this person's bad, you know, that that person's Gavin McGinnis is a Nazi, Milo Unopolis, a Nazi, that these people with this, these are the problem without any real understanding of who those people really are, without any real crap. Yeah, what happened? This started going into the CAD, right? It happened to come up and you pay. By the way, we're launching our alternative social media

platform soon. We thought it was going. Yeah, it's going to be, well, we tried out the first of the technology. I just debated Slavoie Giac on Friday, and last Friday, and he was hypothetically the world's foremost Marxist philosopher, although it turned out that he wasn't really a Marxist at all. He called himself a Hageleon, which is actually way different than being a Marxist.

And so it wasn't really much of a debate. It was more me attacking the Communist manifesto for half an hour, which I found rather straightforward thing to do, and then us having a rather acuclear and productive discussion for about an hour and a half. But anyways, things are tested there, technology, so live stream technology. And we've got some cool features that no other platform has. So it'll be a subscription service, and so that's partly what makes it a replacement for Patreon to some degree, you know, because we want to be able to monetize creators. But we've got new different terms of service. And so the central issue with the terms of service will

be that once you're on our platform, we won't take you down unless we're ordered to by a US court of law. That's basically the idea. So we're trying to make an anti-sensorship platform. And then we've got, there's other features too that are quite cool and unique. So for example, you might be interested in this with regards to your podcast. So if you listen to your podcast on our platform, people will be able to like pick a time in the podcast, like maybe a 30 second clip and just mark it out. And then they'll be able to either make a written comment about it or an auditory comment

and then send that to a friend or post it so that they're running continual, running conversations in audio and written form on podcast content Constantly we want to do the same thing for YouTube videos so that people can append their own video to any part of a video and then distribute that to their network or also posted so that people can watch You know so that we're hoping we can get a real dialogue, we can really add dialogue to the podcast and a YouTube world. We're also gonna do the same thing with books. So if you buy an e-book on the platform,

you'll be able to annotate publicly. And so what that should mean is that every book that's sold on our platform that many people purchase will become the center of multiple conversations and we can do that with books that are in the public domain. So for example, one of the books we're going to post right away is Beyond Good Neville by Nietzsche and I'm going to start annotating it. You know and so what what that should mean, you know, if you look at the Bible, it's a good

example. People have been annotating it for like 5,000 years, right? Every first has God books written on it. So it's just this incredibly expanded document that's pulled in thousands and thousands of people to this collective conversation. And this platform should be able to allow people to do that with great works of art. And well, and then with also with current affairs

and events, and such as YouTube videos and podcasts. And so it's nice looking too. It's got a fairly professional feel. We're hoping that we'll build a poll, people who are interested in intelligent conversation, specifically into this platform, you know, and maybe start to pull them away from YouTube and some of the less specialized channels.

I'm hoping it's that, that plus, you know, our anti-sensorship stance and be invitation only to begin with so that we can, well, so that we can beta test it, make sure the damn thing works and that we're not food for ourselves about its appeal. So that's come a long ways and hopefully I think we've got four, five, six people who are interested, who are lined up, Ruben is going to use it, I'm going to use it, James Altuker, Jocke Willink, Michael Schirmer, I think those are all end and Carl Benjamin, Sargon of the CAD.

There will be our first beta testers, fundamentally. We've reached out to them. That sounds awesome. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, man. If the bloody thing works, I'd like to have a conversation with you about it at some point, because... I'm for sure. I'd love to try it.

Okay, okay. Well, I'll let the developer know. But I think the annotation feature could be really cool. And we're also setting it up so that if you do comment, all the comments will be up and downvoted. And if your ratio of downvotes to upvotes falls below 50-50, then your comments will be hidden. People will still be able to see them if they click, but you'll disappear, you know, from the main street. We don't know if 50-50 is right, we're going to have to play with that, because we're also trying to control stupid trolling. And I think we're

going to put a minimum length requirement on for written comments. So that you can't just say four words like this guy's a fucking idiot. You know, like, no, we need that. So that, you know, if minimum comment length is 50 words, you're going to have to put a little thought into it. Even if you're being a troll, hopefully you'll be a quasi-witty troll. So anyways. Yeah, that's the ultimate battle, right? It's trying to combat the trolls in some sort of way or mitigate their impact. Yeah, well, it's the ultimate battle is to do that without being sensorious, right? Because you know, people get to express their opinion, but there's a difference between subtle, but there's a difference between productive dialogue and

difference between productive dialogue and provocation without wit for the purpose of causing trouble. There's so many people out there that are just bored and that's what they use the internet for. They're at work. They're in a cubicle all day and they get their jollies out of just fucking with people online. And my producer, Jamie, he has a friend who does that. I mean, this is what this friend does. he has a bunch of accounts and he just trolls people

he tries to troll celebrities and he tries to get them to respond to him and he says mean things to them and you know that's how he that's how he entertains us all he's at work. He's the same dark side that that was manifesting up to a much greater degree and bill caused. Yeah, you know it's now right guy. that was manifested to a much greater degree and bill caused. Yeah. You know, it's like, right? Well, the guy is also depressed. He's also depressed guy. He's a failure in life.

And you know, he's everything you would expect with someone who uses that kind of time for recognition. Right. So, you know, the issue with him is like, he should take some of that. So if he would admit to himself his aggression, he'd come to terms with it. He could take that damn aggression and he could integrate it into his personality. And that would take him able to focus on his life. You know, like you said, when you started your martial arts fighting, that you were obsessed,

hey, and you were also sick of being pushed around at all of that. And you were like willing to do something about it, but obviously, and it's obvious just talking to you that the aggressive part of your character is deeply integrated inside of you. It's not hiding out in some corner doing stupid things that you're not paying attention to. It's right there at hand. And you get a guy like the one you're talking about. He's split into meek and depressed

and ineffectual on the one hand and cruel and resentful and bitter on the other. If those two things would marry, you know, he'd get half his personality back and maybe some of his dynamism. Yeah. So it's a real waste of time. Well, I think a lot of people just feel, it's totally powerless. And they feel like this is the only way they can affect others

is by reaching out and trolling or saying mean things. And I think that many people take these terrible paths and lives in their lives, which are not productive, and they don't feel good about it. They don't respond well to whatever they're doing with their life. And they have this constant state of anxiety. It's like the Rose quote, most men live lives of quiet desperation.

Yes, except the trolls live life of noisy desperation. Yeah, that's what the internet has allowed. Yes, Jordan, I got to wrap this up. I got to get out of here, unfortunately. This is a long and wonderful conversation, though. Like we always have. I really appreciate you. Hey, well, we damned your gut caught up.

Do you got 30 seconds? Yes. Yes, sure. Okay. Well, let's let's send it off. I want to know what, what, what are you up to next, man? Like what do you want to have happened? You've got this crazy reach. you've got this crazy platform.

What's on your horizon? Anything other than what you're doing? No, no, I just enjoy what I'm doing. I'd like to continue doing what I'm doing. I'm very happy that people enjoy the show. I'm very, very happy that it's affecting people in a positive way, that they're getting inspiration out of it, and they're getting information, and entertainment, and education.

And it means the world to me. I love it. I love doing the podcast. I love doing stand-up. I love everything that I'm doing. I mean, I'm very, very happy with my career and family life. I couldn't be happier. So I just like to keep doing what I'm doing. I don't have any crazy aspirations other than continuing to get better at everything that I try to work at. Yeah, well, that's a crazy aspiration, man, because you've got a lot of things going for you.

You then are very, very unlikely, you know, and to hope, I don't mean to hope that they'll get better, but to continue to work, to get those better. That seems like sufficient aspiration for my perspective. Well, I think if you work at anything, if you work at anything, you're trying to improve. There's always room. There's always room for improvement and everything in your personality, always in your work and everything. And that's what I strive for. I strive for improvement.

Yeah, well, that edge of improvement is a good place to be. Look, I want to also to thank you. My pleasure. Just so you know what, you know, you're especially that first interview you did with me. My pleasure. I was really helpful to me. And I mean, I've enjoyed all the talks that we've had. And they've been really productive.

And they've had a, well, a very big impact on my life, but lots of people have watched them. And so it seems to me that we've had a pretty productive series of interactions, but I do, you'll do all of you some thanks. And also thanks for coming on this podcast, man. It was really good you didn't have. And I will definitely talk to you about ThinkSplot if once we get it going and see that it works

because it's not, I didn't have any hope for its success when it first, you know, was a little ugly baby thing because, you know, it's too impossible but it's looking pretty damn good and it's got some cool features. So, I'd be nice to have a censorship free platform if we could figure out how to do that. That sounds very exciting. I'm very interested. I can't wait to try it. All platform if we could figure out how to do that. That sounds very exciting.

I'm very interested. I can't wait to try it. All right, man. Thank you, Jordan. Hey, thanks a lot. My pleasure. Hey, good luck with your improvement, and I'm looking forward to your comedy special. Thank you.

Ciao, Jewel. Thank you, my brother. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books, maps of meaning, the architecture of belief, or as newer bestseller, 12 rules for life, and anted out to chaos.

Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. See JordanBeePeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. Next episode on the Jordan B. Peterson podcast, will be one of Dad's 12 rules for life lectures recorded at the Center in the Square in Kitchener Ontario on July 21st 2018. Should be a good listen as usual. Enjoy your week people. I'm stoked to be alive. Hope you are too. It's an amazing world out there. Talk to you next week. Follow me on my

YouTube channel Jordan B. Peterson on channel, Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, and at Instagram, at Jordan.B. Peterson. Details on this show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended books can be found on my website JordanB Peterson.com. My online writing programs designed to help people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found at selfauthoring.com. That's selfauthoring..com from the Westwood One Podcast Network.