Joe Rogan Experience #1241 - Sam Harris

Five, four, three, two. Hello.

Sam Harris: Hey man, good to see you.

Happy to be here.

Great. I listened to your podcast with Jack. Let's just get right into the jump in the Jack stuff.

Yeah, because I listened to your podcast with Jack and I found something very. When I did my podcast with Jack, first of all, I was not anticipating the blowback that I received. It was stunning. Uh, but, um, he, what, what I thought was, I was just gonna have a conversation with this guy, be fun, see what it's like to run this gigantic network that helps people communicate. You okay, Jamie? All right. Helps people communicate and distribute information worldwide. What is it like to start something like that up and have it become what it is? Like, have you managed to try to keep up with it and what have the headaches been? And right, apparently people online, particularly the people that want to comment about this, all they wanted to know about was censorship. And that was an issue with me. There was a question with me, but it became a far, it was a far bigger question for people online. They felt like that I tossed him softball questions, um, and that I didn't press him. Yeah.

And then I listened to your podcast and, uh, one thing about Jack is, very smart guy, very nice guy, but he talks in a very slow and methodical way. And when you ask him a question, he takes these routes. And if you don't want to jump in and press him, like, you're in this weird situation where he's not totally answering your question, but he's talking about the same subject that you're talking. Like, for instance, you brought up Louis Farrakhan, right? Like, how is Louis Farrakhan in good standing on the platform? And someone like, you know, fill in the blank, Milo Yiannopoulos or Laura Loomer or whoever it was, they get kicked off. He never got to that. He went around and around and around with you. And he recognized this after the podcast. I received a lot of blowback. He received a lot of blowback. So I contacted him and he said he'd be more than happy to come back on again and address all these things. And I said, okay, what I'd like to do is address specific instances of people being censored. And he said, okay, what I'll do is I'll bring in someone from the company that's in charge of that stuff, right? So I'm starting to put together a picture of what it's like to be a CEO of something as big. And he's also a CEO of Square. He runs the Cash App. There's a lot of stuff going on there, right? So he's obviously busy. How much day-to-day involvement does he actually have? And who gets censored and why they get censored? And how much is he willing to share about that? So we're going to find out in the next follow-up podcast. But I got accused of everything from being a shill to being a cuck to being, uh, and there's also an issue that you've managed to avoid wisely so of advertising the Cash App. An advertiser on my podcast. So because the Cash App's an advertiser on my podcast, right? The man had you by the throat. Exactly. Yeah. You think couldn't ask all those great questions that were queued up? The reality is, those are the questions I would have asked. Now, that's hard to say because no one's going to believe it, but those are the questions I would have asked. And I tried not to be too confrontational with a guest. But in hindsight, I probably could have pressed more, particularly on people like Kathy Griffin calling for doxing for the, the, the kid with the MAGA hat on with the Native American. There was, there's quite a few. But I noticed that. Well, what was your experience like with it?

Yeah, so it's interesting because you and I have, uh, we had different interviews because they were timed differently. I mean, this is, it's an interesting topic because this opens the door to all the ways in which our podcasts are different. I mean, you stream live. I sit on my podcast for at least a week. So in Jack's case, it was like two weeks before I released it. So I did my interview with him before this flurry of interviews with him came out. I mean, there's a Rolling Stone interview, there was a, uh, I think only, I think maybe a Huffington Post interview had come out. But basically, there was nothing out there. So I had no real examples of how he dealt with these questions, um, or how he talked. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, slow talking is not a problem for me because I'm one of the great slow talkers. So we're in a groove there. But he, um, I, I didn't know what his boilerplate was and and how he would, he would answer any of these questions. And, uh, your podcast came out before mine did. But mine was, mine was before the Covington High School Catholic circus happened, right? So the, the real missed opportunity for me was just a sheer matter of timing. Like, I, you know, because the Covington thing put such a fine point on everything that's wrong with Twitter and the way journalism interacts with it, right? It just, you know, I think it was, uh, Farhad Manjoo wrote an op-ed in the New York Times saying Twitter has destroyed journalism. And and it was not a crazy op-ed. In fact, uh, after the Covington thing and the whole, you know, and then Kathy Griffin would have been the perfect example to talk about, like, well, you know, why is she still on if she's calling for the doxing, right? Yeah.

But, you know, I think I had a substantially similar interview with him that you did, because he's, there's two things. One is he's great at sort of pirouetting around the, the, the sharp pointed question of, you know, what is the policy and why, why are you applying it in this seemingly disparate way? Uh, and it seems to skew politically in one direction all the time, right? But, you know, I think you also, I mean, you know, I did, I think you did naturally, we cut him some slack in that he's the CEO of these two corporations. He can't be expected to actually know what happened in every one of these micro cases. Like, I think I brought up the case of, I think her name is Megan Murphy. I, I hadn't even heard of her before. That's the lesbian woman. She was like a feminist who said, sort of, the wrong thing, uh, in the transgender space. She said something like, men are not women, right? Right, right. And she got banned. And for life or attention? I think it was temporary. But, you know, so I raised it. And, you know, he, he obviously can't know exactly what happened in that case, or at least it would be surprising to me if he knew. So the fact that he doesn't have his finger on each one of these cases and what the, what the rationale was, and he has this sort of generic answer that, what you're seeing, you know, in public is not necessarily what we're seeing. In fact, in, in virtually every actionable case, is not what we're seeing in private with respect to how these people are opening multiple accounts and doing seemingly nefarious stuff behind the scenes. Now, whether that is true, I don't know. But I mean, I can just say that Jack seemed, um, one, I, I liked him, and he seemed unusually open to talking about anything I wanted to talk about. And so I saw one allegation that got hurled at you was that, you know, you must have been constrained by, you know, the topics you couldn't touch in advance. You must have had some agreement with him in advance. You know, it didn't happen with me, right? Now, I should address that. There was no, no discussion whatsoever about what was off limits. Yeah. There was no, nothing. And he asked for no. So in my case, I tell all my guests. And this is the difference between you streaming live and me not. I tell all my guests, listen, if at any point in this interview, you put your foot in your mouth, or I put my foot in there, we can edit it, right? Like, we, I want you, I want you to be totally happy with what you say over the next two or three hours. So if you have to take something again, take it again. And, you know, we'll just hide the seams as we go. Now, that virtually never happens, right? And in Jack's case, it, there wasn't even a wrinkle like that. So, um, but, you know, I just, you know, I, I recognize it's a high wire act for a lot of these people, especially for someone who's running two publicly traded companies, right? And, um, you know, so when I invited him on, I said, I said, Jack, you know, we were DMing on Twitter and I said, listen, I promise I'm not gonna make you smoke a blunt on video. And that, that got him. So I don't know how you got him. But I didn't try to get him to select a bar. I didn't even think about it. Yeah. Yeah. We weren't drinking. We were just talking. It would have been better if we were drinking because it did seem very stiff. Um, I listened to it after the fact. And I mean, I get from their anticipation why it would be disappointing. I just thought it was kind of boring. I thought my podcast with him just wasn't very good. I sometimes do too many podcasts. And when I sometimes do too many podcasts, I think I run low on juice and I'm not as, uh, I don't know, I'm not as engaged or I'm not as fired up about it. And maybe I just should have, I definitely should have prepared more for him. But I really thought it was just going to be a conversation about what it's like. And I thought that would be really easy to do. Yeah, because it's such a unique position to be running something like Twitter. But he, you know, I don't know if he was evasive and because he didn't know the things or because he didn't want to talk about the things. But there was things like he didn't know exactly why Alex Jones was ultimately banned. He didn't, he couldn't recall or didn't know. No. Is that because he couldn't recall? Is because he didn't want to talk about it? Or is it because he didn't remember it? I mean, I don't, I don't know. I mean, you have to, you have to be inside his head to get that answer. Yeah.

I mean, he's clearly got a, a very practiced line that he uses to answer these questions. And I mean, because I, you know, I know what it's like to have boilerplate. You know, I've been on a book tour and you're just basically getting asked the same questions again and again. And here he's getting asked fairly pointed questions about, you know, where Twitter's going. And he's got, you know, I don't think this is dishonest. I just think, but it has this amazing ability to close the door to further inquiry because he, he gives you the full mea culpa right up front. You ask like, what's, what's the situation with, you know, the seemingly asymmetrical banning of people? And he'll say, you know, yeah, we really, I mean, we've got to get much better at communicating our process. We're not nearly transparent enough. This whole thing is in disarray. And my job is to fix it, right? So it's like a global, you know, we're [ __ ] up and we're going to get better, I promise you, right? Yeah. And that doesn't do any good for the people that are already banned, right? Especially. But there's not a lot to get beyond that, right? In an interview. You know, yes. So it's whether, you know, I don't think it's nefarious. I think it could well be totally honest, uh, but it does have this, this effect of, you just keep reaching a certain kind of brick wall that you didn't know was going to be there, you know? Yeah. That's, I felt that too. And I didn't, didn't really navigate that very well. And that was a big part of the blowback. But then the blowback was accentuated when they found out that he sponsors me, right? Because the Cash App is one of his businesses and it sponsors the podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I had a very similar result, and I don't have that that problem. So it's, you know, that I don't think that diagnoses your situation at all. But it's very interesting the difference between these business, the business models under which we run our podcasts. And just the different, I mean, just every choice you make and how to produce a podcast. I essentially have made the opposite one. You know, like streaming live, like this. The fact that you're so, this is just all very interesting to me because I, I'm kind of a reluctant student of digital media now because I've just kind of stumbled into this wild west that, you know, you, in large part, have invented, right? I mean, this podcasting space was nothing. And now we've got Spotify, you know, buying up. And it's like a land grab for audio. Yeah. That we were talking about that before the podcast. They just purchased some company. Was it Gim? What is it called? Yeah. For some ungodly amount of money. Yeah. Yeah. Like 200 million dollars. They're going to spend 500 this year or something. And so it's, it's this, we're all just making this up. And, you know, I'm making, and, you know, I've just released a meditation app, which is a different business model still. And so now I have these kind of two parallel digital businesses happening in my life. And it's, um, it's just very interesting the decisions you make or are forced to make and the consequences of it. And so like the fact that we're having this conversation live, you don't even have to think about whether you're going to edit this, right? Because it's streaming live. And you know, we're gonna, when we're done, we're gonna turn off the mics and walk out of here. And your job is done with my podcast. That's not the workflow at all. And I, I, I totally envy this, this approach that you have. But for a variety of reasons, I feel like I can't take it in my life. And so it's, uh, but it is very different. It dictates many choices, you know, down the line, which, um, uh, I mean, there's a positive and negative. But it's, you know, the positive is what you hear is what we got. And we're done after we turn these mics off. And that's, and that's not, you know, that's not how I podcast.

There's also the visual element of it. And the visual element of it. And initially was almost like a side effect. I mean, we, we first started it out visually. But then when it started going to iTunes, the iTunes aspect of it became the focus. The audio version of it rather became the focus. But then we decided to stream on YouTube and put it up on YouTube. But it was totally not profitable. It was just for for a goof. Like, oh, we'll have the video up. Why not? Some people like video. It was one of those things. But then you realize ultimately that YouTube becomes a viable source of revenue. And then it's also the way a lot of people like to watch it, you know. And they also like to watch because they can comment under it. So that was the other thing that came out of the Jack podcast. We got into a controversy about comments and about how comments are deleted or how they're shown and hidden and what happens. Because people are accusing Jamie of deleting all the derogatory comments. We don't touch any. We don't, we don't delete any of them. We don't do anything to them. We just leave them up there. And it's a mostly a cesspool. But I mean, even, even on a good podcast, there's a lot of crazy [ __ ] that happens on these things. But from what we think, and Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong, you think that what's going on is that people are marking other people's posts as spam. There's that. And then Brandon also has the theory that a lot of alt-right people are targeted, um, by the algorithm that YouTube uses. Like, in, in one case, there was a guy who had a Pepe the Frog avatar. And he said, like, his, his comment immediately went to spam. And that the other thing is that the comments are curated depending upon who is watching it and what account it'll be. They'll be different sort of. Yeah. They'll propagate different comments to the top. It's not a, this, you can actually change it if you, if you prefer to see the most new comment. Like, from your own personal YouTube, when you're watching, you, as a viewer or user of YouTube, have to make that actual. Yeah. So that, that conspiracy theory just heightened the whole thing, right? Okay, now they're deleting negative comments. Like, look, I don't like doing bad podcasts, but I will be the first one to tell you when I think a podcast sucked. Yeah. Um, that podcast was definitely disappointing. It wasn't good. Mine wasn't good. It was like, I said, when I listened to it, I was like, God, this is kind of boring. Yeah. Just wasn't, it wasn't juicy. There was nothing. He, we didn't get a flow. It wasn't like he and I were just shooting the [ __ ] having a good time.

Well, take that one decision. So you have decided to make video a main component of this podcast. No, it's still probably a small percentage of your actual listens. Not anymore. You know, not anymore. It's, it's gotten to, well, it's almost 50/50. Awesome. Because it's closing in on that. It used to be like 90/10, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you, so I have it. I don't have a video component. And so I just put audio on YouTube. But I put absolutely no energy into YouTube. I mean, that may one day change. But because I don't, I don't care what's happening on YouTube, right? So I never see the comments. And whenever I look, it is, as you say, a cesspool. It's insane. I mean, YouTube is just skews massively. Right. It skews just massively male. And it's probably skews very young too. So you have a, just, just like millennial alt-right craziness. Like, like, as I say these sentences, your YouTube page is just blowing up with hate for me. Right. You got a bunch of, you know, millennials with their thumbs up their asses just whinging, right? You know, there's a lot of older people too. Well, yeah, but I mean, it's got to be younger than most of where. Well, first of all, I'm not even seeing [Music] most comment threads that could possibly respond to anything I put out there now, right? So I got, I don't even look at my at mentions for the most part. I spend maybe five minutes a day looking at it. That's healthy. What's coming back to me? But and you were actually helpful in in reformatting my brain on that on that topic. But, um, so because I don't see any of that stuff, I mean, maybe I'm getting a lot of pain for my Dorsey interview, but I don't even know about it, right? And so I'm not having, I don't feel like I have to course correct in response to anything now. And in large measure, it is a consequence of just this decision that, you know, I inadvertently made that I'm just, I don't have a video component to my podcast at the moment. And so I'm not, I'm not spectating on, you know, the feedback on YouTube.

Well, the feedback thing is interesting because we were just talking about this before the show. That with feedback and comments on YouTube, essentially anyone can comment. And if you don't go banning people from the channel, which we don't do, it's not what we wouldn't do if someone was totally a piece of [ __ ], but we don't. So you essentially have this open forum. So it's like almost like a message board where people could just sort of comment. And it's unlike Twitter in that regard because Twitter just, you know, you get abusive and shitty on Twitter, they just get rid of you. If you get abusive and shitty on Instagram or on Facebook, Facebook, they'll just get rid of you. But if you're on YouTube and you're in those comments, you could kind of get away with more. So I would imagine that people that don't appreciate censorship and want to just just [ __ ] spew out whatever's on their mind, that would be the place where they would go. Especially if it's the same product. Essentially, the only thing different, and this is a thing where it got confusing with the YouTube people versus the audio people. With the audio people, it's very obvious that the Cash App is a sponsor because it's, we say it, this podcast is brought to you by the Cash App. Whereas in YouTube, they're like, ah, they're hiding the fact that the Cash App's a sponsor. Right. We talked about it during the podcast itself, but we don't put the ads on YouTube. There's ads that YouTube puts on, but we put the ads on, like after the show is over, I'll read the ads and we'll insert those into the audio. And that will go up to iTunes and RSS feeds and all that stuff. So the stuff that's on YouTube, it's abbreviated in the sense that, especially the live one doesn't have anything. So like this has zero ads. And then the ones that will be posted on YouTube later, it'll have YouTube ads, right? So that's what this. So there's a couple of conspiracy theories in that regard. There's also apparently an emerging conspiracy theory about that Jack was trying to pump up Bitcoin because they have some sort of a Bitcoin deal. Have you heard this one?

I read that, but like, it's from what I saw, it's not higher than it was at any point. It's still right around 3,500. So if there was a pump and dump scheme of some sort, then like, it should be like provable on the blockchain, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, I don't understand that. But is there any other component to it? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where that's coming from. I don't even. What did it? Yeah. All he said was that, well, the Cash App sells Bitcoin. So we talked about Bitcoin, I think, right? Because you can buy and sell Bitcoin through the Cash App. I should say. I think he said something about blockchain technology rendering everything permanent online. And yes, that was something different though. Yeah. But that, that I think that's in regard to comments. Into anything. Blog posts. Blockchain is essentially going to have everything that's online forever. But there's so many [ __ ] conspiracy theories about all this stuff. It's, it's fascinating. And as you know, we were talking about earlier with your, the way you do yours, you used to use Patreon and now you use your own website after the Sargon of Akkad incident, which you nobly stepped back away from Patreon now, or not? So no, belated, but whatever on what you think of Sargon of Akkad. Yeah. Well, it's not even that. It's, uh, yeah, yeah. Well, there's so many misconceptions about what happened there. And I, I, you know, I tried to clear them up on my podcast. But yeah, there's an interesting implication to not taking ads. I think what's happening, and this is much bigger than even podcasting. I think, um, I'd be interested to know what you feel about this. I mean, you have, you are the, the, the quintessence of the successful ad model in in podcasting, right? It's like, this is you. It's working fantastically well for you. And for people like Tim Ferriss and, you know, probably Marc Maron. I mean, there's, there's some, it's kind of like a winner take all thing happening in the space where ads are working great. Um, and I am a really also a, a highly successful example of the, the support model. It's like the PBS model or the NPR model. And what's weird is that I can't, like, that we, you know, you and I are both surrounded by people who have podcasts, want to have podcasts, and are asking us for advice about how to succeed and how to monetize. And like, I'm not even in a place where I can recommend my model to anyone else, right? Because it's, it's a very, you know, it's, it's very hit or miss. I mean, I just happen to have developed an audience that will support my work. And you had developed that audience previously, ironically enough, on YouTube. There's a lot of YouTube. Oh, yeah. Just debates. Random people putting people putting my content on their YouTube channels, mostly debates, right? Yeah. And as a, you know, as an author, but I mean, it was just the podcast grew. And I had this sort of forced choice. Where am I going to go? The, the, the ad route or or not? And I found that, I mean, I have two things to to say, fairly strongly against ads. But one really only one of them applies to me. And I don't think it applies to you or Tim or or anyone else. I just felt personally I couldn't use ads because of such as what my platform is and the kinds of topics I'm engaging. And it just didn't work. I mean, there was nothing highbrow enough where I felt like my credibility wasn't getting subtly undermined by by shilling for. I mean, it could be something that I just legit loved. And it could have been the Oxford English Dictionary. You know, like, you guys is the best dictionary in the world. You guys should use it. I still couldn't do it. And I tried it with the only thing I took on as a sponsor was Audible. And I did that for some weeks. And then just, you know, I love Audible, but, but it just felt wrong. And so I decided to just experiment with a different business model. And it's working for me. But it's, I don't think it can work for most people. And I, I view that as a problem. And the thing that I, I think is, is interesting is that there's this is much bigger than podcasting. So you have like, you have Facebook on the one hand, which is just a, a totally free platform where the users don't even realize that they're not the customers, they're the actual product, right? The users are the users are having their attention sold to advertisers. And it's this enormous business. And on the other end of the digital spectrum, you have Netflix, which is just a stark paywall, right? And, um, there's no way in but to pay the subscription. And, you know, that's, and, you know, Netflix could run ads and get more money if they wanted to, but they're, you know, they're not doing that. And presumably won't do that. And I'm hoping, just generally speaking, that the digital future looks much more like Netflix and much less like Facebook. And because I see what ads has, ads have done is they've anchored everyone to the illusion of free. Everyone expects their digital content for free, except in places like Netflix, right? So like, if, when you release a comedy special, when you release your next hour, and you sell it to Netflix, I would imagine there are very few people in in your fan base who are thinking, well, [ __ ] Joe Rogan, why didn't he just put that on YouTube? Right? Why is this on Netflix? They sort of understand that this piece of content is belongs on that shelf. And that if they want it, they have to subscribe to Netflix. Whereas if you did something slightly different, but, you know, functionally the same, if you put it on Vimeo and charge people five dollars or whatever, you know, Vimeo on demand, um, you, I think you'd get a lot more pain, right? Yeah. People would say, well, [ __ ] you, you greedy bastard. Like, if you're already doing great, just release your stuff, right? Yeah. And I, I view that as a problem. It's like, it's like a psychological problem. People have been anchored to the ad subsidized model more or less everywhere. And they expect everything for for free. And in my world, I'm trying to just to continually brook that expectation and push people into a different sense of, you get what you pay for. And and so that the hybrid model I've created for myself is, I'm putting more stuff behind a paywall, right? I mean, so that this is, it's not just pure sponsorship of otherwise free content, but I'm, I'm very personally, I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that if someone actually can't afford it, they can't get access to my content. So I just tell people, if you really can't afford the stuff behind my paywall, or you really can't afford my meditation app, just send us an email and we'll give it to you for free, right? So, yeah, I've heard that. I was like, this guy's crazy. I mean, it's actually, it's actually in the pricing in the app store for my meditation app, it's like, there's the pricing, and then below that, there's, if you can't afford this, you know, here's, here's the email address.

I think that's fantastic. And so that's free? Yeah, I'm splitting it that way. But I'm raising prices. So it's like, it's like a certain, because I think everything is too cheap in the in the digital space. I think I think we're anchored to, I mean, there are people who will spend five dollars a day on a cup of coffee every day for the rest of their lives. And yet, if you told them this podcast or this app that they, that they say is incredibly valuable to them, is going to cost them five dollars a month, they, they feel raped, right? You know? So it's, no. And I completely understand it because I know what it's like to hit a paywall and think, uh, I can't get my credit card out again. I'm not going to pay for this. I'm going to find this information somewhere else. So we've all been anchored to this thing. And, you know, something is going to win in the end. I mean, you know, I think at some point, you know, it's going to look much more like Netflix or much more like Facebook. And I'm, I mean, I'm throwing my lot in with the former. But, you know, it really is the wild west.

Well, the Netflix thing's different because Netflix has programs that cost a lot of money to create. This podcast is very easy. You're my friend. I call you up. Hey, you want to do a podcast? You come over here. I mean, obviously, we had to pay for all this equipment, but other than that, it just, and bandwidth and rent and all that stuff. But other than that, it just goes up, right? Whereas you do a comedy special, across hundreds of thousands of dollars. You have to secure a venue, you have to hire staff. I mean, it's a big deal. It's, it's that. And that's an easy thing in terms of like bang for their buck, what, what Netflix will get out of it. Um, if you do a television show, I mean, my god, you, you, you need to hire hundreds of people. There's wardrobe and makeup and set and there's writers and producers and executives and everybody has to go over the script with a fine-tooth comb. It's incredibly, incredibly strenuous. There's a lot going on when you create a television like Stranger Things or something like that. I mean, you have so much special effects. And so to ask for that for free seems to be, to me, seems ridiculous.

Well, yeah, but but except the, I mean, so I'm kind of spl, again, I'm running on two tracks here. An app is much more like a television show, surprisingly, than than it is like a podcast. But yes, but even if it's just a podcast, if you want to build something, if you want to build a media company, like either like, like let's say you were, let's say you were asking for support for this otherwise free podcast, people don't know what your aspirations are. I mean, maybe you want to start a podcast network, right? Maybe you have, you're trying to build a, a business that is that maybe you have massive payroll expenses that, you know, so the expectation that the product should always be free closes the door to any of those aspirations, if in fact you have them. And, you know, it's like, um, I mean, it's very interesting psychologically because, so, so I have, I've created this network of support for my podcast. But I see people do calculations that they would never do in a more transactional space, if they were just, let's say, buying my next book, right? So like, for me, offering a free podcast and then saying, if you find this valuable, you can support it, right? That, for, you know, from the side of being a creator of that content, it feels like the, the most transparent interaction possible, because a person can listen for free for as long as they want to, just to discover how valuable it is, and then they can support it to the degree that they find it valuable. Whereas if I'm selling you a book, you can't even read the book before you before you buy it, or you have to make the decision to buy it, and I'm trying to convince you to buy it because it took me all this time to write it. And, and, you know, you're, you know, it's, it's transactional. With, but with a podcast, people make calculations that they would never make when they're just figuring out whether they want to buy something. It's like, like, I'll, and it's really along the lines of what you just described. People say, well, how much does a podcast cost to produce, right? Like, if I knew what you were spending the money on and what it cost you to to do this podcast, well, then I would support you, right? But they're never saying, how much does it cost to write a book? And if I knew what you were going to spend the money on once you were, once you bought this book, then I would know whether or not I wanted to buy it. You either want the book or you don't, right? So the problem with the support model, and this, the problem with Patreon and everything else, is that it engages the sort of the philanthropy, charity side of the brain. And people are worried about what you're going to do and how much it all cost. Like, how much does this might cost, right? You know, like, that's, that's a question that someone is asking when they're donating, when they're donating. And the problem there is they're not understanding, you know, just the opportunity cost. Like, I, you know, I have to decide how to spend my time. Am I going to spend 90% of my time on a podcast? Well, that, if so, that closes the door to virtually everything else I can do, right? So it's, you know, it has to become a viable business. And so, I mean, I've recognized now that I'm, you know, to some degree going against the grain of human psychology in asking for support. And now I, now I feel like I'm going to ask much less. I'm going to tell people what the business model is. And, and, you know, and still, and remind them of it. But I'm personally, I'm going to go more and more the in the direction of putting stuff behind a paywall. And if people want it, then they can support. And so it's, it's a, it's kind of, it's sort of Netflix. The ultimate version of it would be if it were Netflix that would also let you get it for free if you really couldn't afford it, right? That, I mean, that, that's the guilt-free business model that I'm, I'm converging on now.

I like it. I like how you're thinking. And I like the ethics involved in it. And I think it's a great thing. And when you said it on your podcast, I was shocked, but it makes sense coming from you. Um, my thought is, I'm in negotiation or in discussions right now, and I talk to you about this too, about building an app. And what I want to do with the app is have a set amount of money that you pay per month if you want to sign up for the app. And you get the podcast with no ads. Right? So you could either get it from iTunes or whatever, you Google Play or Google Podcasts or you can get it from the app. And if you get it from the app, you pay X amount per month and you get the podcast with zero ads. And it'll stream live. I'm gonna figure out how to wait to do both of those things. My thought going into advertising, when I first, when I first did the podcast, I've been doing the podcast now for nine years. When I first started doing it, there was no ads for the longest time. It just cost money. It cost money to for bandwidth, it cost money to put it. But I was doing it for fun. And I didn't care. And I had my my revenue was coming from other sources. Um, a few years ago, uh, I decided what I was going to do was because I was getting ad, well, the first ad request was Facebook was, uh, the Fleshlight, rather. And you were the first person to request. I killed them. To not have the Fleshlight on your podcast. The first podcast that we did. [ __ ] prima donna. Well, it made sense. I mean, they were disgusting ads too. I mean, we would get ridiculous and and be really silly in those ads. It was just the juxtaposition. I just knowing that the mic would go hot and then, you know, 15 seconds before it would still be ringing in their ears. You know, if you want to jack off with this fantastic device, you know, and here's Sam Harris, neuroscientist, but moral philosopher. The Fleshlight experienced some pretty significant, uh, positive impact from that. I mean, their business went through the roof, right? Because of the podcast. I mean, they really sold a shitload of Fleshlights. Where they told me like some ungodly number, like 50% of the Fleshlights they were selling was code word Rogan. No doubt. That's not that. I, I don't want to picture too much of the armies of people using their product, you know? So word got around. And then as the podcast space started expanding, then advertisers tentatively were dipping their toe in. My philosophy and it still holds. That's like 2006 or seven or, you know, Jamie, 2012, 11, 11, yeah. I wasn't the first time I was on here was 2011. Wow. Started basically at the end of 2009. So, okay. 2010 was that you were probably on before? Yeah, you're probably on around 2010 or 11. There's no other ads other than the flashlight with you. Yeah. Um, and then the flashlight dropped off when we started asking for more money. They're like, I think we hit the point of no return. But my philosophy getting into advertisement was, uh, I'm gonna do whatever the [ __ ] I want to do, 100%, and have no impact whatsoever on the content of my podcast. Like, whatever advertisers that I choose, whatever advertisers that, uh, I make deals with, they have to understand that there's no way I'm changing the content of the podcast, right? And if I lose them, I lose them. I don't care. And that was the thought process going in. So I never hit up a snag like this Cash App, Jack Dorsey thing before, where people think that the reason why I was easy with him was because of the fact that he sponsors the podcast. It's a very obvious, um, conflict of interest, right? But, but people have to realize that if they churn out off your podcast, you've got just an endless number of advertisers. Too many lines. Yeah. So I mean, the cash is not a psychological component. It's like, there's one way of looking at it that they, they buy a lot of ads. They do buy a lot of ads. We do have a good relationship with them. But I don't need them. If they went away, I have too many ads. And that sounds gross to say, but it is a fact. I have many more ads than I have spots for ads. So if they went away, would not hurt me at all financially, because I put a limit on how many ads I do per podcast. I also don't ever interrupt a podcast with an ad. I don't do that, right? And because I don't do that, that costs me money. But I, I just feel like the experience of listening to a podcast unbroken is so much better than listening to a podcast, we'll be right back with this word from Casper mattresses. You know, it just, it feels gross. But in the beginning, I'm like, look, you know where it is, you can fast forward. But maybe you're into this stuff, maybe you need stamps.com, maybe whatever the [ __ ] you need. Those are the ads. They pay a lot of money. I'm gonna take that money and I'm gonna do whatever the [ __ ] I want. And if these guys decide, oh, you smoke pot, or you're too controversial, or you talk about this, or talk about that, we're going to drop you. Okay. That's my philosophy. And and I've lost ads. I've lost sponsors. Okay. I don't care. But if I lost the Cash App because I was too hard on Jack Dorsey, or if Jack Dorsey comes back and I'm too hard on him in grilling him about these people that have been censored, I hope he doesn't. But I like him. He's a nice guy. I want to know what the [ __ ] going on there. In fact, I'm having Tim Pool come on tomorrow. Tim Pool's an investigative journalist, independent journalist, who was, uh, used to be with Vice. And he knows a lot about the censorship issue with YouTube or with, uh, with, uh, Twitter, rather. And he knows about YouTube as well. But with who's censored and why, who's removed, who's been de-platformed, why they've been de-platforming, where the inconsistencies, and, you know, where, why, why is it skewing so heavily right? Where the people on the right are the ones who are getting banned, the people on the left are getting away with a lot of crazy [ __ ]. So we're gonna, we're gonna get into the weeds with that. And if the Cash App hears that and they decide to drop me as a sponsor, I don't care. I really don't care. This is a major source of income for me, but it's only one source, right? It's one of the things of being a stand-up comedian, working for the UFC, and having a podcast. And I have a podcast with ads on YouTube. And having ads that are on the regular podcast itself. I'm free in a sense to, I have plenty of money. It's not whether or not I'm starving or worried about paying my bills. I'm free to do whatever I want to do.

Well, also, I should be clear, like, I don't think, because this can sound totally sanctimonious, and it's not intended that way. I don't think my scruples around at reading ads on my podcast apply to you or or Tim Ferriss or many other people. I mean, like Tim is the ultimate example. Tim is somebody whose brand on some level is, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to go out there and find the best [ __ ] in the world, right? You know, the best shirts, the best workout equipment, the best. And I'm going to tell you about it. So I want to know what Tim has found, right? So if Tim, if Tim is reading an ad for something, you know, that is totally brand convergent for him. And I think you're very much in a similar situation. If you're talking about on it, or whatever it is, it's your own, your own part of on it, right? Yes. So it's like, I should also be clear that I say no to a lot of ads that I don't want. Like, there was one, there was an Uber for babysitting. I was like, get the [ __ ] out of here. What are you crazy? Actually, so that got recommended to me, uh, by somebody, but it sounds like it sounds like it sounds like Craigslist for babysitting. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. There's been a few that I've said no to, like quite a few. Some of them that are just boring. I'm like, I'm not reading that. I'm not selling that. That's stupid. But also, you're a comic who can send up ads. And it's like, I mean, I think Bill Burr does this where he kind of trashes the ad as he's reading it because he lost NatureBox because he told people to go eat apples. Yeah. Yeah, really. He's like, go eat a [ __ ] apple. So it's, I mean, that's totally like, and that, that's something that's a tool you have in your wheelhouse that has effects down the list. Like, it's one reason why you can stream live without really worrying about it. And I, I feel I can't. Like, so it's like, I mean, at the end of the day, like, if things go completely haywire on your podcast, you can say, listen, I'm a

[ __ ] comic. What do I know, right? You could, like, you can just, you can just pull the rip cord, yes, and you're fine, right? Right. I can't do that, right? Right. Like, so, like, you can't say I'm a [ __ ]. Yeah, so I can't say that. Yeah, right. I guess. Yeah.

So, I mean, I can, and there's certain circumstances where I should, but it's like, I should avoid those circumstances, right? Yes. Um, so, uh, you know, I have to prepare more for podcasts. And, um, I feel like, personally, I mean, it's, it's as much out of concern for my guests as well. Like, I, I just, you know, this is a high-wire act, but I want a net normally, so that people feel free to be totally unguarded because they know that if we have a spaz attack, we can, you know, we can, uh, you know, even uttering "spaz attack" will screw some people's careers, right?

We actually had a conversation about a podcast that I talked to you about, one of your podcasts, where you said that you actually started it over. You started it, and you're like, "Let's try this again. Let's just start from scratch." Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, maybe I, I think it would, I don't think it would be sporting to say which podcast that was, but yeah. So I had a podcast that went completely into the ditch for the first half hour. I mean, just brutal. And, and I said, "Listen, there's a really, there's a good conversation for us to have here. And now I know how badly this can go. All right? So, like, now I know just where the track is, I have to struggle to keep the train on. And so we're gonna reboot. We're going to start again, and we'll see what happens." And, you know, the podcast was, was not perfect, and I got some criticism for it, but people didn't understand that we were, like, you know, we had a, you know, we had, I had seen the pit of alligators and didn't want to fall in, right? You know?

Well, it made more sense, though, when you told me that, because I'm like, "Okay, it was heated before you even got to go, right?" Because you'd already gone through a half an hour of back and forth. Yeah, yeah. Um, I think people need to understand what it's like to do one of these things, too, because, uh, you know, you do it so often, it becomes pretty, and you're so good at talking, you're such a good orator, and you're so articulate that it comes off smooth and easy. You're just having a conversation with someone, but you're always considering the fact that people are listening to this. You're always saying, "How do I, how do I get more out of him or her? How do I take this, and how do I get this person to expand upon this? How do I, you know, how do I make this something? Make something out of this?"

This is one of the things that I felt with Jack, because he was talking in this way, and we're, we're really working hard on fixing all these issues. I'm like, "Oh, Jesus, I gotta change my gears here and try to figure out." Because, like, it's almost like we'd have to restart again every time a question would be answered, he would stop talking, and I'd go, "Okay, the next day. So long. You forgot what you asked, dude." Well, it's almost like I have to restart the momentum of it. But, well, again, I'm, I'm totally, I'm that kind of a speaker, so, you know, I, that wasn't a problem. But I didn't know what he talked like. I'd never heard him talk ever. So hearing him talk there, and and talking to him live, you know, I mean, some people are [ __ ] effortless. Some people, like Elon, took a while. Like, we had to start drinking. No, that was brutal. Yeah.

But so, like, but that, I mean, you know how much I tried to micromanage that behind the scenes, right? Thank you for that. And, you know, you guys basically broke all the rules I, I thought I laid down. Uh, and Elon did it because Elon tweeted, "Y'all be on Joe's podcast Thursday night at nine o'clock," or whatever. And so, okay, this is so, but, you know, I mean, I didn't want you guys to go live, right? I wanted, I wanted you to both have a chance to say, "Wait a minute, is smoking a blunt really the thing we want to be doing here?" Uh, so, you know, you didn't take my advice, and it was what it was. We were drunk by the time the weed came out. That was, what's what's interesting to me is we were drinking from the beginning of the podcast. We started drinking whiskey. We both had two or three glasses of whiskey right before the weed came out. Nobody cared. The fact that the CEO of Tesla was drunk, right? Like, no one cared about that. I mean, he wasn't drunk, but he shouldn't be driving. I don't, I don't know if that was obvious. I, I don't know if they saw that you were drinking. It was obvious in the beginning. We were pouring the whiskey, right? I mean, it was on the table. We had ice. We were clinking glasses. Salute. I mean, it was very obvious.

Yeah, I mean, the, the problem for me there with that podcast, frankly, was that I feel like you both got unlucky with just where he was in his life at that moment because it's like, so what? That podcast showcased, at least for the first, I don't know, 90 minutes, was just how many user interface problems you could have with Elon, right? Like, he just, he just showed up as kind of fairly weird, right? He's not, he's not always like that, by any stretch. I mean, he can give a very loose interview. And but you were working, I mean, it was just absolutely heroic work trying to keep that conversation happening, you know, in the beginning. But once we got loose, yeah, that was good. But it was still, it's like, you know, he was just in a space that he was so massively stressed and so overworked and just, I mean, he had, you know, fires everywhere that had to be put out. And, um, so I just felt, you know, as a friend, I just felt like, "Okay, this is sort of the wrong time to be doing this." And this is, you know, and, and so I just felt, you know, it just felt unlucky to me. So, um, because he's, uh, again, I, I, you know, I see him in, in many other moments, and he can be, um, that was, that was actually a circumstance where I was looking at the comments, right? You know, and, and I was saying, "Okay, these, these are people who are basically reading him as somebody who is, is much stranger than in fact he, he ever is." And I could see why they were doing that because he, the guy, he just seemed in a very stressed space in his life.

What was interesting, he was very different when he first got here versus when the mic came on, right? Right. When he first got here, he pulls out the [ __ ] blowtorch and starts shooting this flamethrower in the middle of the hallway, and we're laughing and having, I'm like, "He's gonna be easy. This is great, right?" And then we sat down, and then stiff, yeah, right off the bat. And I'm, I'm just trying to massage it and get them, get them, get them going. Although, honestly, I think that is another consequence of live. I mean, I'm not arguing that you shouldn't be live because it, it has a massive advantage for you as well, but it is, there's just a different feeling. Like, you know, if I knew that this was being taped and I could rethink the thing we're about to say about Liam Neeson or whatever it is, yeah, you know, it's, it's different. Yeah.

And so, um, but, well, the Liam Neeson story is a perfect one. Let's go there. Yeah, let's go there. A perfect example of a story where, you know, if you were Liam's friend, you would go, "Don't tell that one. Don't tell that one." He's like, "But I want to be honest." Yeah. Like, "Don't, you could be honest with me. I'm not going to judge you." If you tell me that someone got raped and you went out with a baseball bat for a week looking for a black man to beat up, I'll just kill to kill. I'd be like, "Oh, Jesus Christ, man. What the [ __ ] was going through your head at that point in time? Like, that's terrible. Like, yeah, like I feel awful about it. I can't believe that was me. But, but it didn't happen. Nothing happened." And now, you know, people are calling him a racist, and they don't want him in movies.

Well, I mean, this is, this is fascinating to me because, again, this is a much larger problem with, with massive implications. We need to think through the whole process of redemption for people in our society, right? Like, we, we have to understand, what are the, what are the criteria for successful apologies and for forgiveness, right? Like, what, like, just what? Because especially, I mean, we're, we're in a world where people are, are having their, their reputations destroyed and their careers threatened for tweets they sent as teenagers, yes, right? And, and, you know, more, this, this is to Dorsey's point, things are not disappearing online anymore. And at a certain point, you know, everyone, it's just going to be a 360 kind of panopticon view of everyone's life, you know? There are people who have grown up on social media, and everything is out there. And, um, I mean, the irony here for me is that you have, you know, progressives, and, you know, people on the far left who receive a disclosure like, you know, Liam Neeson's, let's take his, and they just want, you know, they just want to see him burned alive, right? Let's, let's just do the Wicker Man on this guy because this is, you know, this is so awful. And yet, alongside that, these same people on the left are people who have, as a, as a genuine ethical norm, the rehabilitation of murderers, right? You could be somebody who spent, you know, 20 years in prison for a crime you admit you committed, and there's this norm around redemption. And, uh, so there's, you know, there's no way to square those two things.

Well, they're constantly holding these two contradictions, right? I mean, here's another one: women's rights and support of the hijab. I mean, yeah, what? Yeah. This is what's going on there. How do you do that? You know, don't be Islamophobic, but also support women's rights and gay rights. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think Eric Weinstein, our mutual friend, calls these the, um, the Hilbert problems for social justice warriors. I mean, David Hilbert was a very famous mathematician who, at the turn of the, the 19th century, posed a set of problems in mathematics that, you know, were just, you know, the on his list of the most desirable questions, like the hardest questions and the most consequential questions to answer. And so, you know, Eric, being a mathematician, has flipped that around ironically and said, "These are, these are the questions that social justice warriors have to answer." And there are these impossible oppositions of this sort.

But so the Liam Neeson thing, and, you know, forgive me if there's some detail that has come out that I'm not aware of, but my understanding of it is he, you know, he had a friend who was raped, and then he reported this state of mind, this murderous state of mind he was in, where he was walking around with, I think, well, he calls it a kosh. I mean, that's a British word for like a, it's like a small metal club, right? Um, it's like a blackjack or like another term for it, I think. And, um, looking for a black guy to kill, you know, like just hoping someone's gonna come out of the woodwork and threaten him so that he could, you know, kill this guy in this act of instrumental violence because his friend had been raped by a black guy, right? So it's like, any black guy will do. Now, that's, that's sort of like the, the extra horrific wrinkle to the story, right? And he's confessing this as a kind of a symptom of transient mental illness, at least as far as I know. It's like, he's horrified by the fact that he was in this state of mind, right? Can you imagine, like, I, you know, Liam Neeson, an actor, uh, I have everything to lose. And although I don't remember at what point in his life he, he said this happened, um, can you imagine that I was in this state of mind, right? And this is, as you say, an all too honest disclosure, but it is damn interesting, right? And it is the kind of thing that we should be able to talk about, right? And it's not. And the fact that this is becoming synonymous with racism seems just wrong, given, given how he's, he described her, at least how I've, I've heard this, because he's saying, "Listen, if this had been an Armenian guy, or an Italian, or a Japanese guy, I'd be looking for one of them, right?" I mean, what, what this was, at least on his telling, is the, the virus of instrumental violence. I mean, the, the virus of, like, "This is how every blood feud ever in human history gets started." It's like, "You, like, someone from your tribe killed my brother, and now what I want to do is kill anyone from your tribe, right? It doesn't matter who, right?" And, and that's, you know, clearly as toxic as it gets, you know, ethically. But that's not racism, right? That's just, that is, we, we have a word for it. It's, it's instrumental violence. Um, but, you know, yeah, obviously he's getting totally pilloried over this. But we need, we just need to figure out how to talk about how people can redeem themselves once something this unsavory is, is revealed about their past, whether they reveal it or whether it's just, you know, found out about them. Yeah.

Um, I mean, it is racism, though, right? Because he's specifically looking for a black guy. I mean, I understand that it's a part of the other tribe. No, but it doesn't suggest that he has a, that he disposed, that he feels one way or another about black people. It's like, like, if you told me, um, uh, yeah, he could have said, again, it could have been, uh, an Irish guy, right? Or it could have been, well, I guess he's Irish. Is he Scottish or Irish? Um, it could have been an English guy, right? It could have been like any type, right? It's like the, the salience of the tribe is what he was reacting to, at least in his description. I don't know why you wouldn't take him at his word, given that he didn't have to say any of this in the first place, right? I mean, like, this is an amazingly honest and unnecessary disclosure, but it's, and I don't think people would think of it as racism if he, if the story simply was, uh, you know, "She got raped by a cop, and I was just hoping to go kill a cop," right? Right. You know, the same story, right? Um, and, uh, so, yeah, I mean, but we're so trigger-happy in our outrage with respect to anything, like, why do you think that is? Like, what, what is going on? Because outrage seems to be more in season than it's ever been in my lifetime. I don't, I don't remember outrage being so just such a, it's, it's, it's recreational. Yeah.

There's, there's, uh, I mean, it's back to Jack. I mean, a lot, it has a lot to do with social media and Twitter in particular, yeah. I mean, you have like, so, so for instance, I missed the whole Covington High School Catholic fiasco, basically was ignoring Twitter. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, like, "Man, this is interesting. This is, this is blowing up." But I, I was so off Twitter that I had, there was no temptation for a hot take for me, right? And I saw these people just torching their reputations by taking these, like, like Kathy Griffin basically calling for the doxing of these kids, you know, given all that she has suffered, you know, from, from mob behavior online, and she's, you know, whipping up her own mob. It was just nuts. But it's normal. That's what people do. It's what the platform is calling out of people. But it's also when people have been shamed and they've done something awful, then they reinforce their base, like that. Now she's like, so heavily hard left because the right wing ran after her. Like, anyone on the right that does anything, she's calling for her side to go after this person, like reinforcing that she's a part of that tribe, that she's a part of that left-wing tribe. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's so obviously everyone has a lot to lose doing this, especially in a case where all the facts aren't in. And if you just waited a beat, even the New York Times got this wrong. The New York Times writes an article about the kids in the MAGA hat that, that they have to rescind. And the, so then, as the dust is settling, and I see these people, some people are doubling down, some people are issuing public apologies. I see somebody who's actually kind of, you know, branded herself as, you know, one of my enemies for, for a reason I can't fathom. But this journalist, Kara Swisher, who, um, you know, she, she works for, uh, Recode and Vox now, but she's got a big podcast, and she's a, she actually writes for the New York Times now. She's got an opinion piece, you know, a regular column for the New York Times. She's a tech journalist. And I, you know, happen to know she doesn't like me because she's tweeted against, you know, she's said some disparaging things about me on Twitter. And we had a, you know, an offline conversation about it. But I saw her, she said one of the most vituperative and, you know, fairly crazy things in resp, in response to the kids initially. And then once more information came out, she walked it back. And she basically apologized, you know, good for on Twitter. And so, so I said, "Good for you, Cara." I, I just wanted to, to support this norm of acknowledging that you got something wrong. And I wanted to do it even, I wanted to actually do it for someone who I know really doesn't like me. Like, I mean, that was an added bonus for me because that's, that's another norm that, that I think we should support. It's like, like, we should, we should play fair even with our enemies. Yes.

And, yeah, I mean, honestly, you know, I try to play fair even with people who never play fair with me, even someone like, you know, Glenn Greenwald or Reza Aslan, I mean, people who have just, you know, lied about me endlessly. If I get something wrong about them, I publicly apologize for it. Um, so I did this. And so this was at the, the absolute 11th hour with respect to this, this, uh, you know, uh, scandal online. And when I saw the kind of pain I was getting just for con, you know, supporting Cara in her walk back of this thing at a moment when it was obvious she should have walked this back, I got people saying, you know, "Unsubscribing from your podcast," "You are, you know, now I know you're a [ __ ] racist." You know, it was just, just pure pain. And I just thought, "Wow, man, that's, you know, it's like you just touch this thing at its very end, and you're, you're, you know, it's the slime gets on you."

So, yeah, it is, it's the medium. You know, it is. We had no opportunity to do this before. It is the medium. And it's also people that don't feel like their opinions are being heard. Like, they want their opinion to be heard. They want it to be heard right now. And it might not be a very well-thought-out opinion, but they know that they have the ability to blare it out. And so, yeah, they just send it out. And that, that the ability to do that is just intoxicating for folks. And if they can reach you, you talked about this with Jack. There is a, there, what makes Twitter especially good for this is that everything has the same stature. Like, your tweets, no bigger than the other tweet that just called you an [ __ ]. Yeah. That's my Kurt Metzger, uh, take on it. Because Kurt Metzger was a hilarious stand-up comedian. He, uh, he'll write a Facebook blog. Only he only writes on Facebook. He's like, "I like how it's set up." He's like, "It's, there's a big, it differentiates between me and these [ __ ] idiots who are commenting under there." Yeah. Although, ironically, I hate Facebook. I can't even, I mean, just the graphic design on Facebook, I find so offensive that I can't even look at Facebook. So I use it as a publishing channel, but I'm, you know, I keep threatening in my own mind to just delete the account because I just don't, I mean, I've only read the comments three times, maybe ever. And every time I read them, it's like, "Jesus Christ." It's like YouTube, but alive.

I know. It's like YouTube, but with people with their real names. It's, you know, this is a new world that we're living in, man. And everybody's trying to navigate this thing and figure it out as it goes along. And not everybody's doing it well. And, uh, I think this world is going to get more and more intrusive. I think this is just the beginning. I think we didn't see Twitter coming. Whatever comes after Twitter, and this is one of the things that I, before the podcast, I wanted to really talk to Jack about to get his take on what he thinks is next down the line because there's going to be something that's more invasive. There's going to be something that is more, whether it's, I think probably something in the line of augmented reality. There were probably a decade away from something that makes this look like books look like, you know, a [ __ ] cork board at a bookstore. Yeah. You know, although strangely, we're liv, we're living to the golden age of audio here. It's like, we went full into video, and we're poised to go like, you know, 3D and, you know, VR, and then all of a sudden, audio is king.

Well, how about phone calls and texts? Like, I remember I called you out of the blue once, and it was like, "What the [ __ ] do you think I'm walking through a supermarket?" Somebody said on Twitter once, it was hilarious. Facetiming, facetiming me out of the nowhere is just like knocking on my door, yeah, without calling me, yeah, showing up straight up, like, she was angry that somebody facetimed her. No, it always feels like an old-school move to, like, my book agent calls me, you know, out of the blue, and it's just, it seems so old. Yeah. It is just like a knock on the door. My friend Joey Diaz only calls. Yeah, only for years he would scream at you if you text. And then recently, within the last two or three years, he started texting occasionally, right? But he only calls.

Well, I got to tell you, so having released this meditation app has given me a kind of a sanity check on everything else I'm doing, which is, it's very interesting because, so the, in releasing the app, you know, it's like, it's firewalled from all the other controversial stuff I'm doing now. Like, I'm not, you know, in the app, I'm not whinging about Trump or, you know, talking about any of the stuff I talk about on my podcast. It's just me trying to teach meditation as a largely as an antidote to all of the stuff we're talking about. It's like, every, we've got this, as Tristan Harris says, we've got the slot machine in our pocket that is continually gaining our attention all day long. And, you know, in my view, a meditation app is like the one thing you can have on your smartphone that completely subverts the technology, and it can get you to actually live a more examined life using the technology, right? But what's been amazing for me personally is that I put it out, and it is the only thing that I have put out, maybe ever, right, where it is, it's been received exactly as I've intended, right? There's no controversy. It's just like, like the people who are finding it useful love it, and they say thank you. And it's like, they're, they're getting exactly what I thought I was putting into it. And it's like, it made me think, "What the hell am I doing over here with all of this toxic stuff that has been endlessly maliciously spun against me and misunderstood?" And, you know, it's just, I mean, I have to, I have to do both because there's a lot of important things to talk about that are going to be endlessly spun and and maliciously misunderstood. But it is, it's been so refreshing to have one thing. I mean, you must get this with, with, you know, doing your stand-up, or maybe I don't have a thing. I get [ __ ] for everything, okay? But, well, or maybe, maybe UFC commentary. No, they come after me for everything.

Well, it has just, it has been psychologically, it's been a revelation to have one thing that I can put out that is just, it's just received, appreciated, and they got what I intended. And it's just, you know, "Thank you." It's just like, "Oh, [ __ ], that's possible. I had no, I had, if I ever knew, I had forgotten that that was possible." Well, meditation now, it kind of makes sense because the people are going to flock to that are looking to meditate. They're looking to improve their mind. They're not looking to spew hatred on Facebook. No. Yeah, yeah.

I thought that after the podcast with Jack, I was like, "Jesus Christ, I should just stick with a podcast with comics." Because podcasts with comics, even if you put your foot in your mouth, everybody knows you're just trying to be funny, right? You know, if you do a podcast, and, and the thing about the podcast with Jack, it's not even like I said anything bad. It's what I didn't say that was upsetting to so many people. But that's such a loaded thing. And because of that podcast, no, there's, there's negative to it, there's blowback, there's a lot of, you know, toxic anger and all that. But the positive is what I like. The positive that came out of it is me forced to re-examine how I do podcasts, re-examine the significance of each individual guest, and especially someone that comes with as much baggage, you know, with that, without lack of a better term, uh, as Jack, that you're, you know, you gotta think that there's people listening, and there's some questions that you really have to work at. You have to, you have to push through. And even if he's, he's dancing and pure wedding, I should have went back to, "Okay, why is Kathy Griffin on your platform?" Yeah. Like, if Doc sings bad, you want, you don't want docs, you don't want threats of violence. When someone says, "I want names." Okay, what are you gonna do with these [ __ ] names? Right? What are you gonna do with them? What are you gonna do with a 16-year-old kid and his names? And then when you see the actual, the actual video of what actually happened, and there's so many people that are still not walking it back, still no doubling down. A lot of people double down. [ __ ] him.

And here's another little piece of insight. My friend Matt, uh, lived in DC, and those hats, those MAGA hats, they're [ __ ] everywhere. There's these little, where these kids were, that area, there's these carts that sell these hats. So these kids bought those hats that day. It's not like they're these MAGA kids. They're probably just being [ __ ]. Right? They're unsupervised teenage boys. Their frontal lobe is not fully formed. And they're all together, feeding off each other like a pack of gremlins. Yeah. I was a teenage boy. You were a teenage boy. You know how [ __ ] stupid you used to be. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was probably way more stupid than you, but I was a mess. I, I had my moments. Yeah. No, I'd be just, you get a hundred teenage boys together in a crowd, you know, on a school trip, and you get some native elder drumming in one other one, you know, some guy's face. Yeah. You know, it was amazing what didn't happen right there. Exactly. So no violence, no violence. The way he handled it all, he did is smile. Yeah. Like that.

So, I mean, listen, I'm as biased as anyone against a Catholic school kid wearing a MAGA hat. Yes. It's like, you know, like, given, given my backstory, it's like, yeah, I'm totally poised to think this guy's an [ __ ] and is likely always to be an [ __ ]. But what people read into an uncomfortable smile, right? I mean, just like the, the, the shots of his face with the tweets that said, you know, "This is what white privilege looks like." "This is, you know, this is, this is the everything that's wrong in our society." It's just, we, we have to slow down. How about Raza wrote, "Have you ever seen a more unjust, punchable face?" Come on, man. You want to punch him? Yeah. Because he's smiling. Which is called. Raza calls for violence from the left are so [ __ ] disturbing to me because my parents were hippies when I grew up. I always thought of the left, and we always, I've, I've been called right way. I've never voted anything but Democratic in my life, except for Gary Johnson, right? Gary Johnson was the only time I voted independent or whatever the [ __ ] he was, libertarian, right? But that was just because he did my podcast. Yeah. I'll fall for Tulsi Gabbard because she did my podcast too. But the, the, the left was always very considerate, well-read. There were, there were the people that were more open-minded, there were supporting of gay people and minorities. That was the left. And they were non-violent. They were the people that are protesting Vietnam when I was a kid. Also just supportive of the virtue of speech, free speech, and self-criticism. Yes, right? Like, I mean, the, the disadvantage of the left against the right has always been, there's this self-scrutiny and willingness to wonder whether or not I'm wrong that isn't mirrored if you go far enough right. And, uh, it has, there has been so, there's been kind of an asymmetric war between left and right, you know, politically from, for much of our lifetime. But you go far enough left now, and you're, you're meeting a kind of totalitarian resistance to speech. And it's, uh, yeah, it's very, I'm just, it'll be interesting to see how the, the 2020 campaign plays out. But I'm certainly worried that we could totally blow it with some leftist social w, yeah, uprising. Wow. Yeah. That would be unfortunate because I think they would just double down. The other side, we would be better off with some sort of a reasonable centrist, right? Someone who just made sense. And, you know, one of the things that I liked about Tulsi is that she's a veteran. And, you know, I mean, like, she, she seems very reasonable to me. But except, I, I haven't followed her, um, career closely, but it just seems like she's not making the right noises on things like Syria and Assad. Yeah, I don't know enough about that to comment. Yeah, I don't know enough about Assad and the controversy of whether or not he gassed. Is well, not at that point. That is, I think uncontroversial in terms of what she, I mean, that is uncontroversial, which in terms of what she is saying about it, about him. I mean, she's capable of putting both feet in her, her mouth on that. I thought she's, she's saying he's not an enemy of America, right? So, yeah, I mean, again, I'm not close enough to it, and but I would, you know, be very circumspect about endorsing her going forward. Do a little homework because I, I think her candidacy is not going to age well. That's, uh, that's, uh, what do you like? Who makes sense to you? Elizabeth Warren's [ __ ] now. She's the most recent one. Yeah, that she's got the most recent one where she filled out an application, she wrote Native American on it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just having done the DNA test, yeah, playing that game with Trump. I mean, that was, that was such a miscalculation.

Well, the fact that she released the data, and the data is so clear. Well, it's almost like she had to, because otherwise he would call her Pocahontas to the end of time. But that, but then to then have to apologize to Native Americans for having done that, it's just, well, because the amount of Native American is so lit. I've been joking around about it that I am like a hundred times more African when she is Native American. Yeah, I'm 1.6% African, and she's less than, like, way less than 1% Native American, right? But these, these are, this is the sort of masochistic death spiral that people on the left can get into. It's like, you're like, the left, I mean, I've always said that the left eats its own in a way that the right never does. And it's just, it's, um, we have to find someone who can stand outside that circular firing squad, right? Uh, and it would be someone who's, you know, it would be, in my view, it'd be somebody like a, a younger Bloomberg. Right? I don't think it's, I don't think it's Bloomberg, but like somebody like a legit businessman who could call [ __ ] on all of Trump's fake business acumen, and who's not ethically compromised, right? But who can, who can get stuff done. And so, right. And, and definitely not someone who feels the need to pander to the far left on these identity politics issues. I think identity politics is really going to be bad for us against Trump because so much of the country, the crucial sliver of the country, you just have to ask yourself, who was it who voted for Obama twice, and then voted for Trump? Right? Those people aren't racist. Right? Those people are sick of being called racist, right? And, and the, so what's happening on the left around identity politics and all of these, I mean, it's not that racism isn't a problem. It's not that transgender issues don't have to be worked out. I mean, like, all of, like, all of those are legit concerns. But the fact that that's the center of mass politically on the left in, in a, a nationwide election against someone like Trump, I just think that's an absolute recipe for disaster. Yeah, because the people that subscribe to that ideology don't realize that how many people think it's silly. You know, when you're in the oppression Olympics and you're trying to win the gold, and for, and for how many people, it's actually misapplied. It's like, there, there are many more explanations for voting for Trump in addition to racism. Like, yes, every racist voted for Trump, you know, virtually, so that's fine. Every white supremacist voted for Trump, but that's not the story about why Trump got elected. Uh, and it's a long story. It's, it's, there's just much more. I mean, there are people who just have not, what do you think are not thriving in the current economy? You know, I mean, it's just like, you got automation displacing manufacturing jobs, you got the consequences of trade and immigration. And, uh, you have legitimate concerns about, uh, you have legit, there are legitimate concerns about immigration that have nothing to do with racism. And so if, if you're going to score any hesitation over something like open borders as a sign of your xenophobia and racism, you're going to lose virtually everyone who has a sane concern about how to, how you, you know, keep people in, how you, how you admit the right people into a country, right? I mean, there's their economic concerns and their social concerns. And, uh, yeah, I mean, and you don't have to be Ben Shapiro to share some of those concerns, right? I'm not saying Ben Shapiro is a racist, obviously. I'm saying he's a conservative, uh, and, you know, takes a more conservative line on, on many of these questions than I do. But, you know, it's like, you either, you either think, we just take immigration as the narrow case, you either think you should be able to know who's coming into the country, or you don't, right? Now, if you, if you think you should just have open borders, there are two problems with that. One is there are many good arguments against that, and two, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's got to be something like 95% of Americans would be terrified of that prospect. So if you're, if any of your platform is essentially saying a concern about immigration is synonymous with racism, you know, you have a platform that, that's going to alienate most people. And that's the Democrats are totally capable of seeming like that, whether in fact that's, that's true for, for most Democrats.

What do you think is, what's the primary factor? Like, what, what caused identity politics to reach this boiling point that it's at right now? Well, it is, I think, in large measure, what the internet is doing to us. It's not that identity politics hasn't been a feature of politics for forever, but there is a, there's the siloing effect. There's the, the effect that groups become more radicalized as groups because the most extreme voices tend to to pipe up more. And then, and, and everyone, everyone who's, who's silent, I mean, there's kind of a diffusion of responsibility around around countering these extreme voices. I get, you know, every, you can, it only takes a small percentage of extreme voices to cow the rest of a group and, and make the group seem like the extreme voices are speaking for the group, right? You know, and I, so I think what we have on, in both the left and the right, we have a small percentage. I mean, you know, the last poll I saw that trying to get this question was something like, you know, six or eight percent on the tails that are making it seem like these are, I think it's, I think it's more of a problem on the left than on the right because, I mean, the extreme right, st, is fringe and looks fringe, right? Like the guy, the guys in Charlottesville, in Charlottesville with their tiki torches, they don't look like they represent the Republican party or the, or the, um, the right, the, you know, conservatives in any general sense. They're a symptom of some problem, but it's a smaller problem. It's a minority problem. Whereas on the left, the extreme voices are have massive sway in, you know, major companies, and tech companies, in journalism, in academia, like, like the silencing effect and the reputational cost that's being paid by even very powerful people in all these mainstream forums on the left is, is just, that's not mirrored on the right, you know? Um, and it's, I mean, so I, I don't know if I told you this, um, certainly didn't say it on a previous podcast with you, but so I was at dinner with a bunch of, um, Silicon Valley people, and we were talking about, I, I was, it was at the moment when that, that Netflix story, uh, happened where the, um, where Jonathan Friedland got fired over using the N-word in a closed-door meeting. And, you know, it was, it was a using the N-word in response to my friend Tom Segura, who you met earlier, yeah, right, exactly, okay, special, yeah, where he said, "You can't say [ __ ] anymore," yeah, and then explained like that, you know, there's words you can't use anymore, right? Didn't even wasn't using it in a joke, like calling someone [ __ ] or saying something's [ __ ], but they were, and he was saying that that's like using the N-word. Uh, around, yeah, but he used the N-word in this meeting, right? And he says, "It's like using the N-word." Uh, and the, just the, the mere intonation of those syllables, yes, was so shocking, right? Uh, that he wound up getting fired, right? And again, he was, he was using it in the context of expressing just how careful Netflix has to be about speech. I mean, he was going social justice warrior on himself among social justice warriors, and he said, "This is how worried we have to be." And then he gave the magic incantations. You can still say [ __ ], which is amazing because it's def, I mean, in his defense, you kind of have to say both words. You're not saying the R-word, right? Like using the R-word is like using the N-word around black people. And we're getting to some weird [ __ ] weird place with this. Actually, no. Now I realize why I'm confused about why I think I've talked about this because I did a podcast with Chelsea Handler, which hasn't aired. I did it months ago, because she was doing a documentary on white privilege, I think. And I, I, I think I'm actually cast as the guy with white privilege in this documentary. Boy, that's gonna be fun. You have white privilege. Nice. So, but I, I recorded a podcast with her. So anyway, so we hit this this point because this had just come out, uh, then, and I think her documentary is probably for Netflix. So what was her take on it? Well, she was, she was basically, I mean, she was playing the other side of the net for, for this, you know, and, you know, not, um, I mean, we'll have to see. I mean, I think I, uh, at least in my own mind, I certainly made sense there, and she shouldn't have a lot of response to what I was saying. But I, I haven't heard the audio or seen the video. But the, so anyway, I was at a dinner with a bunch of tech CEOs talking about this problem. And one guy who, who I won't name, who runs a big company that, which I won't name, said, "Listen, you have no idea how deep this goes. Like, I have an HR complaint where there's a guy who identifies as a furry, right? He thinks he's a cat. And because we don't provide litter boxes in the bathroom, right? He's, he's launched an HR complaint." Right? This is real. This is, this was told as a real story in, in as a counterpoint or in, in amplification of the story we were talking about at Netflix, right? So it's like, this is, and yet this is happening. Like, this is people are having to navigate the CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies are having to navigate around this stuff in-house, right? And I mean, the Google thing over James Damore, right? I mean, that was, that was an enormous problem for Google, right? Like, that was the wheels were coming off, as far as I can tell, you know, from what I've heard. Um, what, and how, so just that, like, there was a, there was going to be a Google mutiny over James Damore if he, he had to be fired. Yeah, yeah. This was, this was a big deal at Google. That's so interesting. And what he, and what he wrote was essentially like a, you know, a B-plus term paper in human biology, right? And it was like, you may, you can, you can, you can push back on some of the science, say, or, but like, this was not a malicious distortion of the, the state of the science, right? And, and this was not calling for discrimination against women. This was just saying, "Listen, men and women are different, and they've got different interests, right? And this could account for why there's an unequal representation at the left level of, you know, software, the software development." Uh, and so what, like, we're on the left, we're finding it very difficult to even talk about differences between men and women, right? That there's, you know, you start with, you know, start with a uterus, and then, you know, count from there, right? That is already a taboo conversation to have. And that, you know, as we said at the beginning, in talking about, uh, Twitter, that one writer, again, I think her name is Megan Murphy, she got booted for saying, "Men are not women." Yeah. Like, I mean, that's so, so again, so politically, I'm very worried that unless we resolve that or just cut through it, we don't stand a chance against Trump in 2020.

I was reading a story about a woman who's on some sort of an LGBT panel, and she's a part of some group, and she was kicked out of it by a man who identifies as a lesbian, and he has a penis. Right? Right. Yeah. So, and this is a point that, think he has a penis. I want to be sure. He definitely identifies as a.

Lesbian, I might have read a Twitter comment about how preposterous that was and said the penis part. Well, this is something that Andrew Sullivan wrote in a recent article on this. He said that the transgender thing is at odds with gay rights in a fundamental sense. I mean, you can't balance these equations because, like, gay identity absolutely focuses on the legitimate differences between men and women. It's like, "I'm a man, I like men. I don't like women." That's my situation. But once you, once you change your notion of what, you know, how gender relates to sex, it begins to erode this, this claim on the legitimacy of gay identity.

The thing is that they're all marginalized, so they stick together. That's the idea, I guess, behind it, sort of. But there's, I mean, I can only imagine what, you know, Andrew Sullivan's Twitter feed looks like now because when he writes these articles, I'm sure he just gets eviscerated by the left. You know, and he's just, you know, straight up talking about, you know, "This is what gay rights looks like," and "This is, this is how you can't be a man with a penis who identifies as a lesbian." Right? You know? Yeah. But you can't say that, right? And you also can't say that a man with a penis is not a woman. Because if a man with a penis... I can say it because I can't be fired. But if you do say it, you will get a certain amount of hate. I mean, there are people that are saying that men who will not date trans women who still have penises are transphobic.

And this is, I mean, have you ever, have you ever met Jamie Kilstein? So Jamie and I have a checkered history. I don't know if we, maybe you and I have spoken about this. I've never met Jamie. But Jamie, when Jamie was social justice warrior number one, he went hard. He went hard upon me. Yeah, yeah. Like, he just, he just was dunking on me endlessly in ways that were totally unfair. I mean, he was just, you know, he was working very hard to become an enemy. And then he had his, his epiphany. You know, then the social justice mob came for him over something, over almost nothing, right? Over him trying to get laid. I mean, like, they were saying he was a creep or something like that. He's trying to hitting on girls. Yeah, I missed the details there. But then he came, then so then he's since sent me very, uh, friendly and apologetic emails about, just, you know, "I'm sorry what I did," and, you know, he wants to do a podcast. I haven't taken him up on it. But, you know, that maybe that could be an interesting conversation. He's sincerely apologetic. Yeah, he's a good guy.

I mean, he and I had our own issue at one point in time over a podcast that we did versus, uh, it was, remember when the Daniel Tosh rape controversy? Like, uh, do you, do you remember this? I know who Tosh. Not a rape joke, I should say. Rape joke. Some woman in a crowd, he was on stage, and he wasn't supposed to be there. It was at the Laugh Factory, and Dom Irrera put him on stage. And he goes, "Look, I don't have any material. What do you guys want to talk about?" And some guy yells out, "Rape." And that's always helpful. And so, you know, it's like some drunk in a crowd. He goes, "Jesus Christ." And so Daniel Tosh's take on it, okay, what's funny about that? Humiliation, violence. You know, he's, he's like berating this guy and trying to do stand-up while he's doing this. And some woman yells out, "Actually, there's nothing funny about rape." And he goes, "Wouldn't it be funny if someone just raped her?" And everybody starts laughing. I do remember. And so this woman wrote a giant blog about it, and she wanted him to apologize about it. And Jamie went after Daniel Tosh as a fellow, yes, as a fellow comic, saying that it's, you know, like, and I was like, "Well, she's a heckler. The woman heckled while he was trying to do stand-up." And he's like, "I'm not going to support rape culture." And he's like, "How the [ __ ] is that rape culture?" Like, he's clearly making a joke about something she said. That was very, very patronizing. Like, obviously he doesn't think there's something funny about rape. This is, he's just trying to work through this ad-lib set that he's doing with some guy who yelled out something that this whole crowd has to respond to. He can't just ignore the fact that it happened and go, "How about fire trucks, folks? Why are they always red?" You know, he can't do that. He's got to deal with what this guy said. And so that's what he tosses out there. And everybody laughed, by the way. But also part of his persona, persona, just he takes it to the edge, right? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he's, he's an edgy comedian. He's funny. And, you know, and Jamie and I had this little tit for tat about it. But he's very honest about his mistakes. Like when you talk to him, and he's, he's got great insight because he was that guy. You know, he was that guy that was going back and forth with people online all day and checking his mentions. Like, couldn't walk down the street more than five steps before he'd pull out his phone and check his mentions to see how people were responding to his latest dunking or takedown. Or, you know, it's just, it's a toxic thing that people are doing. It's this, you know, looking for people that are bad and looking for things that are wrong, looking for wrong speak. It's very toxic. It's toxic for the people that are doing it. It's toxic for the people that are receiving it. It's just, it's not a way that human beings would ever communicate one-on-one. I mean, I try to communicate with people the same way online as I would if they're right in front of me. I don't always succeed, but I try. That's my goal. My goal is to try to talk to someone as if they were right in front of me. That's clearly not how everybody's handled. No, no.

I think road rage is the best analogy of what's happening on social media. Yeah, I've adopted that. I've adopted that way of looking at it too. But the only difference is, road rage, you know, there's like a physiological reason for road rage because you're in a dangerous situation. You're subliminally taking stuff. You're going fast. You're in a metal machine with a bunch of [ __ ] that are probably looking at their phone. And everybody's going fast. And you could die at any moment if someone goes wrong. If you're on a highway like the 405, when you have five lanes going 70 miles an hour, it is a [ __ ] miracle that no one dies. And every day we do it. Every day everything's fine. Yeah.

Well, so let's go back to this idea of what the actual normative response would be when somebody puts their foot in their mouth or something from their past gets disclosed. The stupid and indefensible thing they did as a teenager, right? You know, like, you got these guys who are now having their careers destroyed for having dressed up, you know, in blackface or in a hood for Halloween or whatever it was. I mean, I, you know, I think that one politician said he's not even in the photo, but the photo was on his yearbook page. Or like, whatever you put on your yearbook page in high school, right? You find out this thing that no adult is going to defend. But what is the path back? What, like, what is the reboot that will, that should be acceptable? Because we don't even know. It seems we don't even know what could conceivably work to rehabilitate somebody's career. And yet, on this other side, we've got people who are being led out of prison for murders they admit they committed, or rapes they admit they committed, and they're rehabilitated. And these are stories we're supposed to feel good about, right? So we have to figure out how to square this. On the left, and I don't know, the way I've been thinking about it is that it has to be intelligible how you are different from the person who committed that thing. Right? Right. So like, if you did something that was, let's say, legit racist when you were 20, and I was like, Mark Wahlberg is an example of this. I mean, he was running around just beating people senseless, right? For racist motives, I believe, when he was a teenager. Well, a guy lost his eye, right? Yeah, yeah. So, but and I think that was a, I think it was a Vietnamese guy he attacked. Or, but I mean, he was just doing truly indefensible things. Now, I don't know what sort of PR moment he has had since or how he's apologized for it, or, but I mean, that was a, that's a very different time. I think if it was, if all that stuff was being discovered about him now, there may be no way back.

Well, the problem is with this day and age, it could be re-ignited, right? Like, even though he's apologized for it and even though that it's been addressed, it absolutely could get reignited. I mean, just talking about it on your podcast is [ __ ] him over, right? It could. Yeah. I mean, and also people have to recognize that there's some things, but you can't retroactively instill today's ideas of what constitutes racism on 1985. So if you were in high school in 1985 and you dressed up as Mr. T, right? You know, I don't know if that was racist back then. I never did it, but I don't know if that's racist. Like, if you had a bunch of gold chains and you made your hair black, or you made your face black and gave yourself a mohawk, you said, "I'm Mr. T for Halloween," right? And the pictures emerged today. What you did when you went door-to-door when you were 15 or 12 or whatever you were, knocking on people's doors, and everybody was laughing, "Oh, you're Mr. T." Nobody thought it was racist. But today. But let's take the hard case. Let's say you were racist. I mean, so I've had this guy, Christian Picciolini, on my podcast once, who's a, you know, ex-neo-Nazi. He's just legit racist, right? He's got all the tattoos to prove it. And now there are major problems with Christian Picciolini, as I think you know, that I discovered after that podcast. So this is not an endorsement of him. Sorry, Christian. But the, there's a path back. I mean, so like, he's celebrated on the left. Yeah, he's a former neo-Nazi, and he's, you know, yeah. I discovered him on Sarah Silverman's show on, wherever that is, Hulu. And, you know, he's a darling of the left, right? And darling of MSNBC for this redemption story. So, but what is the, you take someone like any of these politicians who have something in their backstory that is ugly. My feeling is all there has to be is a transparent and intelligible account of how you are now different, of how you can actually honestly look back on this thing and say, "Yeah, I am as embarrassed by that as you think I should be." Right? That is nothing that, that does not represent how I view the world at all now. But there's just, there's a, the spirit of the time on social media, again, especially on the left, and to our total dysfunction politically, is to never accept any of that. I mean, there is no apology good enough. Right? And, or the, or there's, you know, the most cynical possible interpretation of your apology. It's like, you're just trying to, the only reason why you're apologizing is because you want to save your job, right? And that, you know, we have to figure out how to, I mean, we just need some recovery disk that we can reboot from here because it's just not, this is going someplace terrible. And again, to look at it through the lens narrowly politically, over the next two years, it's to the massive disadvantage of the left. It certainly is. But I don't see any way to fix that with the current climate and this current attitude where people are engaging in this recreational outrage. It fits the climate. I don't mean, I don't know what would have to happen for people to come to some sort of a realization. I mean, it would have to happen to them like it did to Jamie, like what happened with Jamie Kilstein, is they turned on him, and he's like, "Oh my god, this is awful." Yeah. Like, "I'm, what's this?" And then he realized. I mean, I don't know what other thing could happen.

Well, I mean, what we're the game we're playing is part of it. I mean, you and I are in a position to take risks that, you know, even the people at the top of journalism can't. I mean, like, Megyn Kelly says one wrong thing, and you know, it doesn't matter that she's got a $20 million contract, she's just, she's fired. And when you look at the thing that she said, I mean, it was just a question. Yeah. I mean, she just didn't seem to understand how charged the phrase "blackface" was, right? She's just ignorant of that piece of history or something. But like, you know, so she just, she put her foot in her mouth. She gave an apology that was just like, you know, full-blown hostage video apology. Just like, "I am so [ __ ] sorry, you don't even know. Here, take a sample of my blood and you'll just see my, you know, test my cortisol." And not good enough. Not good enough. And they let her say the apology too, which is even more crazy. They let her come back, say the apology, and they go, "Good, thanks for doing that." So, but so she, no one's job in that space is secure enough where they can take real risks. But, you know, you and I, you know, you and I could do an interview with Louis C.K., right? And just process his coming back into stand-up. Yes. And do it in a way where if people didn't like it, you just say, "Okay, [ __ ] off. This is the conversation we had." And I think modeling that more and more. I mean, I think we have to take those risks. And people like us have to take those risks and hope to break this spell by having those conversations in public. I would hope that we're having some kind of an impact on it. But I feel like we're, you know, we're throwing buckets of cold water into a volcano. I just, I just don't know. I don't know if it's enough. But we have pretty big buckets. I mean, you have an enormous bucket. I mean, you're reaching more people than the biggest television shows are reaching. People aren't aware of this, but it's just a fact. So it's, so I think that's part of it. And then changing the norm somehow of how we engage on social media, I think, is another piece. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you.

The norm on how we engage on social media, I think, is flavored by two things: one, the immediacy of it. The fact that there's no person in front of you, you don't experience their anger or their fear or their sadness when you say something [ __ ] up. But also anonymity. And I think anonymity is good in a lot of ways. Like for whistleblowers, people that work in a certain environment where they want to be honest, but they would get fired. You know, with a very restricted environment, but they have maybe a controversial opinion they want to express, free speech, and they can't. They can't unless they do something anonymous. And even sometimes people when they do things anonymously, they get caught and they get in trouble. Like, I remember there was a guy on 4chan who was, you know, who would say a bunch of [ __ ] up things, like a lot of people do. And people tracked him down and found out who he was and then sent all these anonymously authored posts to his employer, and he got fired. And this guy was a father, and he had children, and he was supporting his family. And now he's struggling to make a living. He's got to try to figure out because he wrote some things anonymously online on a message board and he found recreation in saying [ __ ] up things. You know, I don't know what the solution is, but I feel like anonymity encourages less hospitable behavior.

Did you hear about the professor at an academic conference getting into an elevator and making a just a dad joke? So he gets into a crowded elevator at an academic conference, and someone asks, "What floor?" And he says, "Women's lingerie, please." It's like a Dean Martin joke or whatever, right? Someone in the elevator was so offended by that that they lodged a complaint. And I've, it's been now, you know, at least a month or so since I heard the story, so I don't know if he was fired, but he was fighting for his academic life over this complaint process. Dean Martin joke. I mean, just like that, in the fullness of time, that is going to seem like some insane witch panic, right? There's no such thing as witches, and yet people are getting burned alive because of allegations of witchcraft. We're in that kind of situation, and we just have to wake up. Yeah.

And so, well, you and I don't teach, and we're not in a university, and we're not in that bubble. I think the people that are in that bubble, and they escape that bubble, then go to whatever tech company or whatever business, they continue that same bubble-like behavior. And they want everybody to acquiesce. They want everybody around them to behave the way that they've been programmed to think that everybody is supposed to behave. And you see that now from a lot of young people. You see a lot of young people who are entering into the workforce think that the standards and the norms that they got enforced upon them at Yale or Columbia or wherever they went to school, like, this is how you're supposed to behave. Social justice is important, and this is real, and you have to recognize your privilege, you have to check your privilege, and you have to do this, and you have to do that. You have to support trans rights. You have to call out culture. Yeah, call-out culture is a big one. That's a big part of it. And cancel culture, you know, like everybody wants everybody to lose their job. You want, I mean, this is the way that things change. The way things change is you have to reinforce the fact that there's these new standards, and there has to be severe repercussions for deviating. Yeah. So very, very much about control. I mean, Jordan goes on about this, Jordan Peterson. It's like one of his pet subjects. Yeah, this is where this goes. This is all about control. And that it's a very slippery slope. And when you start telling people what to do and what not to do, and that there's like these, these indefensible, undebatable standards that have to be reinforced, and you can't talk about it. Like, and that's what happened with Megyn Kelly. She's like, "Well, how come?" And they're like, "Get the [ __ ] out of here." $60 million job. Again, the crucial moment for me is, why is it that the apology isn't good enough? This isn't this, but what is by all appearances a sincere apology? Yes. Like, like, where the link, there is no link to real racism. Like, there's no link to, like, "Oh yeah, I want to live in a society where black people have it harder than white people." Like, okay, if that's who you are, if you're a legit racist, well, then fine. We can understand why we want to boycott your business, or we want to, you know, we want nothing to do with you. Right? There should be massive social pressure against those kinds of noxious political commitments. But if someone misspeaks, or it's an off-color joke, and they were, it's like they weren't trying to offend anyone, and they're just, you know, they wish they could take it back. And like, and that links up with, I mean, did you see, you must have seen the Norm Macdonald? Yes. I mean, that was brutal. Yeah, right? Like, it's what he was, you know, he knew he couldn't use the word [ __ ] right? Because it's like, that's gonna get him in trouble. And so, I mean, it's hilarious.

And explain what happened. Okay, so he was on the Howard Stern show, wasn't he? I think I think so. He was, I could have this wrong, but the gist of this is right, I believe. He's on the Howard Stern show, and he was about to use the word [ __ ]. So, okay, I'll walk this back. And now, now it's coming back to me. He was defending, he was talking about his friend, the ordeal that Louis C.K. has gone through, this just massive exile experience, this massive social shunning. And he said, he was describing it in a way where he then got accused that he cared more about what Louis C.K. was going through than the women who felt victimized by Louis C.K. And that was not his intention at all, apparently. And so when he went to to clarify this, he was about to say, "You'd have to be [ __ ] to think that I cared more about Louis C.K.'s ordeal than the ordeal of these women who had their careers derailed." But as the word [ __ ] was kind of [ __ ] was coming out of his mouth, he tried to course-correct. And because he doesn't know what the [ __ ] he's talking about, he says, "You'd have to have Down syndrome." Right. Right. Which is worse. Right. It's more specific. And it's like, and then you got all these parents with Down syndrome who have kids with Down syndrome who are just, "Oh my God." And so now he's just, he was, he showed up on The View with this, this apology tour. And I mean, that's just amazing video to see him on The View, surrounded by these four women who know he's not a bad guy, right? Like they're trying, they're throwing him lifeline after lifeline. And he's so beaten down, and he's so walking on eggshells. And you got Whoopi Goldberg, you know, trying to just pull him back from the lions. And it should be so straightforward. Like, does it, is it part of Norm's goal to cause pain for parents who have kids with mental disabilities? No. Right? I mean, like, you can look into this guy's eyes for 10 seconds and know that this is not the bigot you're worried about, right? Right. Before, of course, you know. And yet people just want him destroyed. Okay. I don't know if they still do, but it's like the moment, like it was, I think it was a real concern that his show would get canceled. I mean, like this was, it hasn't been renewed for a second season. And one of the things that's maybe that's part of the problem. He was, it is part of the problem. He was devastated. I mean, I'm very good friends with Adam Egan. He's a guy who runs the Comedy Store. He's the talent director at the Comedy Store. And he's been on Norm's show. He was like Norm's sidekick on a show. He's a very good friend with Norm. Right? And Norm really suffered from this in a way that he never suffered from anything in his career, in terms of like his own personal feeling. Like he was devastated by it, by the blowback and the reaction. And he wanted to come on my podcast and talk about it, but Netflix is like, "Get the [ __ ] out of here." Netflix said, "No press. Don't do anything. No press." Okay. But so the fact that you can't talk your way out of it. Yes. That's the [ __ ] disease.

Well, the problem is not that you can't talk your way out of it. The problem is they wouldn't even let him attempt to talk his way out of it. Because they, I think they realize that Norm is a maniac. And Norm is a maniac in the best sense of the word. He's one of my favorite comics, and he's hilarious, [ __ ] hilarious. But he's also completely crazy in the best way possible. Right? Norm and I randomly, in some strange way, randomly were seated next to each other on two separate flights. Oh, yeah. Just randomly. Right? It's crazy. Like Norm, again, like this is crazy. And we had a great time just talking the entire flight. And we were talking about cigarette smoking. Yeah, yeah. I used to smoke. I'm so glad I quit. [ __ ] terrible for you. You know, yeah. I mean, it's just, but I just always wanted a cigarette. And then I'd be gambling, I want a cigarette. But I quit. [ __ ] [ __ ] cigarettes. It's like, "How long did you quit?" And you're like, "I haven't had a cigarette in years." I'm like, "Oh, that's great." We land at LAX, he goes right into a store and buys cigarettes. I go, "What are you doing?" Goes, "All that talk of cigarettes, I just want one now." He was lighting it on the way out the door. He couldn't get out the door. He lit it before the, you know, the automatic door. He was before it was opening, he was lighting that cigarette. I was like, "You're crazy." But that's many, many comedians are incredibly impulsive. And this is Norm. I mean, he's got such a, he's so off-kilter. He's got a sort of Gary Shandling, like you don't know what's going to come out of his mouth extemporaneously. Yes.

But okay, we have to be, I mean, let's put this back into the diversity Olympics. We need some respect for neurodiversity. Yes. Right? There are people who are somewhere on the spectrum toward autism. Right? There's people who are, there are spectrums we don't even know about. We haven't named for sure. And everyone is in some weird spot. And people misspeak, right? You, there has to be a way back to say, "That's not what I meant." Right? Like, like this is, offending people of this type was not my intention. At some level, that has to be good enough, unless, you know, we open your closet and we see that you've got swastikas everywhere, you know? And so, I think we have to hold the line here, you know? Yeah. And very few people are in a position to be able to do it. I mean, you know, like, you know, Netflix, Netflix doesn't feel it can do it. Well, Netflix is just so terrified of continual blowback, and they just thought, like, "If we're going to save this show, the way to save it is to get him to stop talking." He's just going to just take his other foot and take other people's feet and stuff them in his mouth as well.

I think one thing that might help to illuminate our understanding of how people behave is what you really enjoy talking about, and you really definitely changed my way of looking at things. That there's really essentially the concept of free will is a very flawed thing, and that you have to really take into consideration who a person is right now, and what has caused them to be this person right now. And that a lot of us are operating on this really bizarre momentum of our past and our behavior and our genetics and life experiences and all these different variables that really need to be taken into account. This idea that you are autonomous and you are the director of your own life is true to a certain extent, but it's also very complicated, much more complicated than we would like to admit. And when you're talking about something that happened when you were 17, like Brett Kavanaugh, or something like that, like, yeah, but Jesus Christ, you know, you're going to hold a 55-year-old man accountable to something that he did when he was 17? It wasn't a crime, and you're not exactly sure what happened. This is very strange. This is very strange stuff.

Well, so taking the red pill on free will makes you much more forgiving of a lot of this stuff. Yeah, because you see, everyone is an open system. No one authored themselves. No one created themselves. No one can directly regulate the effect of every influence that they had or didn't have. You know, it's like, you are the totality of what brought you here. I mean, the universe has sort of just pushed you to this point in time. And the only thing you've got is your brain and its states, and that is based on your genes and the totality of environmental influences, your, you as a system have had working on you up until this moment. And so the next words that come out of your mouth are part of that process. Now, the people, some people find this to be a, frankly, demoralizing picture. They think, "Well, okay, well, you're telling me I'm just a robot." But you're a robot that is open, continuously open to influence, to the influence of, you know, internally based on its own processes. I mean, there's like, there's top-down control of the executive function in the brain to your emotional life, say. And you're continually open to the influences of culture, right? You know, the culture is this operating system that you're interacting with in each moment. And whatever's getting in can change you in radical ways very quickly. There's no telling how much you can change on the basis of one new idea coming your way right now. I would argue that that process of change, I mean, if I say something that changes your view on anything, that's not evidence of free will. That is evidence of just yet more causality. I mean, you don't pick the changes that come your way. If I get you to see something that you didn't see a moment before, you're not responsible for the fact that you didn't see it a moment before, and you're not responsible for the fact that you now see it. It's just like the dominoes just kept falling, right? Right.

But it does give you this far more patient sense of, just, you know, all the causes and conditions that have created this odious behavior you're now disposed to react to in the world. Right? Like, you can, everything on some level is more of a force of nature than it is something that you need to take personally. It's like if there's a hurricane blowing outside, we don't respond to it the same way we would respond to, you know, Al-Qaeda dropping a bomb on us, right? It might create the same amount of damage, but in the latter case, where we have an identifiable agent, we feel like, "Okay, now we're in the presence of human evil, and we have to go kill these [ __ ] right now." We may have to kill them, right? Because that may be the only way of putting out this, this damage they're committed to causing. But we would kill hurricanes if we could kill them, right? I mean, we would nullify them. But the feeling we have in both cases is very different. The feeling you have attributing ultimate authorship to a person's behavior is super narrow psychologically and ethically. And it's, you know, the feeling of vengeance, right? Like, you don't, you have a, this feeling of vengeance is so natural to get triggered in response to a person. It's not natural in response to a wild animal who may have done something terrible, right? I mean, like, there have been examples of this where people have taken vengeance on animals, and it just looks like a kind of moral dysfunction on the part of the people who did it. I mean, there's a famous picture of an elephant that got hung from a railroad crane, I think back in the '20s, right? So, like, this circus elephant escaped, and it ran, it just rampaged through the streets, and it trampled a few people. And the people in the town, I don't know where this was, were so outraged that they decided to lynch the elephant, right? And yet, there's something uncanny about that sort of misappropriation of agency to an elephant. What is a mistreated circus elephant going to do when it gets out and is terrified and it's trying to get away from people? It's going to trample a few people. So we have a very different set of books we keep ethically for humans. But some of it's understandable, some of it's inevitable. But a lot of it gives us moral illusions that we don't need to have. And it gives us a kind of just an inability to take stock of all the variables that are actually guiding human behavior and react to them and mitigate them and disincentivize them intelligently. I mean, punishment makes sense not because people really, really deserve at bottom whatever their punishments are. It doesn't make sense in a retributive paradigm. It makes sense if it's the best tool to discourage dangerous behavior. And it works, right? So it's like, if you're going to punish people for things they can't control, well, that's stupid, because as much as you punish them, you're not going to moderate the behavior. So you have to punish people for things that are actually under voluntary control. And it only makes sense if it's the only tool to do the job. And if the moment you had, I mean, this is like, I may have brought this up last time we spoke about free will, but this is really the sort of reductio ad absurdum of where most people are on this topic. The moment we really understand human evil at the level of the brain, the moment we understand psychopathy, say, which is, maybe that's not the totality of evil, but let's center the bullseye. Once we understand psychopathy as a neurological condition that's governed by genes and environment, and we can actually intrude at the level of the brain to mitigate it. So like, psychopathy becomes a disease, right? It becomes an injury, a syndrome that we can fix. And let's say, let's say it's a very simple fix. Let's say it's a pill, right? Let's say it's just a neurotransmitter imbalance. In the presence of that breakthrough, we will feel very differently about that species of human evil. We will not judge it in the same way, because what will happen is you'll give people the pill, and they'll say, "[ __ ] I can't believe I was that dangerous [ __ ]." Like, "Thank you for, like, I'm as horrified by who I was before you cured me as you were." And so, so psychopathy, in the presence of a cure for it, would look much more like diabetes than it looks like evil. In the present case, people aren't imagining what it would be like to be there, what it would be like to actually fully understand the underlying neurophysiology here and actually have something. I mean, there's no guarantee we'll be able to deal with it in a simple way, but it's certainly possible. And I mean, the classic example is just like the Charles Whitman example, where you have a brain tumor that's causing this aberrant behavior. In that case, everyone, everyone sees, "Okay, this is not evil, this is a brain tumor." That's the tower shooter. Yeah, yeah, back in '64, I think. And so, but in the same way that a brain tumor's exculpatory there, I think a full understanding of the underlying neurology would be exculpatory. Again, it doesn't mean that, in the meantime, before we get there, obviously we have to lock up dangerous people if there's no way to help them. But the more we see the causes, the more we view this in terms of just sheer bad luck. Like, there are people who, when they're adults, are quintessentially evil, who we, and they provoke the greatest feeling of vengeance from us. But if you just walk back their timeline, you recognize that at a certain point, they were four years old at one point, right? They were the four-year-old who was destined to become this terrible person. It's an unlucky four-year-old, you know? And so at what point, where's the bright line that says, "Okay, here's the point where it's appropriate to just hate this person and feel no compassion"? And on the other side of this line, you should just feel compassion because this person's unlucky. There is no such line. And a complete understanding of this lifeline in scientific terms would obliterate any line you think you have. It would just be this cascade of causation. And adding randomness to the picture doesn't help, right? It's just the randomness is just somebody's in your brain rolling dice, influencing your behavior that way. Well, that doesn't give you the free will people think they have. So there isn't, ironically, there is what seems on some level deflationary of the gravitas of the human spirit. For people, it opens the door to, at least in my view, a far more ethical and tolerant and patient and understanding view of human failings and human frailty. And just, and then at that point, you can just have a conversation about what's pragmatic, what works, what helps people change. Like, this person over here who's doing terrible things, is there something we can do to make him a better person? Well, if there is, let's do that without all the judgment.

Wouldn't it be amazing if that's how we treated these public shaming events? Like, wouldn't it be amazing if we gave someone an opportunity to say, "This is what I did. This is how awful I feel about this. I would never do that again. I'm a different person. That was 20 years ago or whatever it was." And have everybody join in, "Hey, anyone could be you. Thank you for being honest about who you are now. Thank you for evolving. Thank you for expressing yourself in a way that maybe other people who have also committed really unsavory or unfortunate acts in the past, they can feel relieved by the fact that you've grown and evolved to become a better person." Oh, yeah. And that you're a different thing now. And you are the product of all of your experiences. You're not this one thing. You're not stuck in who you were when you were 16 years old. If you were Marky Mark and you hit that guy with a stick, whatever he did, you're not stuck in that spot forever. These don't mar. It's not a scarlet letter. It's not a mark on your forehead that you keep for life.

The thing about the Liam Neeson incident, which I find so interesting, is that there's a case where, I mean, what he's revealing about himself is pretty amazing, right? It's like he just decided, "Okay, we need a truth and reconciliation commission for who I used to be." Right? You know? And just volunteered this. And for me, like, I don't actually understand that state of mind. I mean, there are many aberrant states of mind that I can understand. I certainly understand what it's like to want to harm somebody and feel vengeance and all that. But the instrumental violence piece, I don't understand. I've never felt like, "Okay, this type of person wronged me or someone close to me, so any person of that type will do." Right? Like, but that is such a problem the world over in human history that it is fascinating ethically for someone of his stature to reveal that about himself. And he put it in terms of honor. I mean, it was like it was an honor. And this is what is so dysfunctional about honor culture. This is what we see more in the South than anywhere else in the country. And this is what you see basically everywhere you go in the Middle East. This notion of honor. It does link up with this tendency to find satisfaction in instrumental violence. Like, but when you try to run that software on my brain, that just looks like madness. The idea that any other person will do of a certain type. Right? That's just, like, I don't, that resonates not at all. And so it's just damn interesting. And the fact that the lesson being taken from this seems to be, "This should be the end of your career for having talked about this in the way." And again, you know, apologies if there's some part of the story that I've gotten wrong or I'm missing. But it seemed to me that he was always counting this in the horror and amazement appropriate to the disclosure. Like he can't believe he was inhabiting this state of consciousness. And it's just an amazing thing to reveal about yourself. I mean, so yeah, and I'm sure he regrets every second of it. Yeah. And that's the wrong [ __ ] punch line, right? You know, the thing that should happen is someone with a lot to lose should be able to say, "You know, how ugly a human mind can be. This is an experience I had. This is who I was. And you know, how much I have to live for and how much I have to lose. We have to talk about this kind of mania that can get humming on a human brain." Right? Right. We see this every time you open the paper, you see someone in the grip of this kind of thing. It even happened to me. Right? I think it's an amazing conversation to start. And the fact that the result is just an auto-de-fe is the problem we're trying to fight our way through at this point, isn't it? Because there's too many voices. I mean, there's just so many people that are reacting to it. If he's dealing with, he's not dealing with three or four or five voices, he's dealing with millions of people that get to chime in on this. Yeah. And you get a few thousand of those people that are furious at you. Like you were saying, like, I mean, this doesn't work.

I was just about to say it. I was going to make a comparison to your podcast with Jack. That you're not listening to, not reading the comments. But he's getting this gigantic signal from a huge number of people. You know, so this is all over my Google News feed. I saw it on Yahoo. I saw it, and all these different publications are talking about Liam Neeson's case. And so then everybody starts chiming in. And then the virtue signaling ratio is very high, and the anger ratio is very high. Then the people that think he's secretly still racist and doesn't want to admit it is very high.

And then there's also the fact that he's a man of wealth and privilege, and he's successful and famous. And there's got to be a bunch of jealousy that's attached to that, and a bunch of people that want to knock him down because he's at a very high hill. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. It's like, yeah, and I, I, I don't know. I feel, I, I feel for the guy. Again, I don't know him, but I just, I remember, again, forgive me if I get this slightly wrong, but I, I, isn't it true that like his wife, Natasha Richardson, just died in this freak accident? She was scared, accidentally fell and hit her head. But, but honestly, she didn't even fall. She wasn't moving when she fell. She was standing on a ski slope and fell from a standing position and hit her head on the, you know, the hard snow, obviously. And I mean, it's just, it's all it takes. Yeah, it's brutal. Um, yeah, so and on top of that, I believe his cousin or his nephew, nephew or niece, died the same way. Not the same way in terms of fell skiing, but also hit their head and died. Wow. So it's like, Jesus Christ, this guy. And obviously, there's many people out there that experience far greater tragedies. I'm not trying to quantify it, but yeah, he's, uh, you know, he, he tried to talk about a real thing, you know, he tried to talk about a real thing. And he's, he's given some interviews since then where he's, you know, he said, look, I'm not a racist. I'm just telling you I was in such a [ __ ] up state of mind because of this rape that I was willing to do something irrational and horrible. Yeah, yeah.

But he didn't know. It's, but he didn't. Interesting. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But and, but again, take it full circle. People, these same people who are calling for his head are prepared to forgive other people who did do that thing. But it's all, it's so dependent. Like I had Mike Tyson on the podcast, and one of the things that I got when I said it was part of that, that was fast. So many people were like, [ __ ] that rapist, [ __ ] this guy, [ __ ] that, all these different things about him. What I wanted to get into him with him was who he was when he was 12 years old, when he was a little boy, when he met Cus D'Amato and was taught out of box and was [ __ ] hypnotized. And this is one of the really important things that came out of that podcast was Cus D'Amato, who was not just this boxing legend who took in this young kid from the ghetto that didn't have a family, but also hypnotized him. Hypnotized him to be a destroyer. He specifically was saying to him, you don't exist. The task exists. You're going to move forward. You're going to bob and weave and rip the body. And he was programming this kid to get incredible amounts of positive response from violent acts. Violent acts in a boxing ring. And that's where he got his identity. That's where he got all of his love. And so he became this guy. And one of the things that I said to him, I said, did anybody ever teach you how to turn it off? And he's like, no, nobody did. Like, I'm not, I'm no Mike Tyson, and I was never like that. I was never like that. But I was far more violent when I was fighting. Far more violent. Far more prone to violence. It was my trigger was very short. Just, I was ready. Thinking about it all the time. Fighting all the time. I fought. I probably had a hundred fights. I was ready to go. Like your brain has, if you're, if you're getting kicked in the face and punched in the face a lot, and you're doing it through your developmental period from the time you're 15, for me it was 15, from him it was like 12 or 13. You have a different way of looking at the world because this is also in the recipes. Yeah. And the recipes are also, you might get knocked the [ __ ] out. You might get head kicked. You might get kicked in the neck with a shin. And, you know, you wake up and your friends are slapping in the face and putting ice on you. This is all real. And when you have that, the, the positive that comes from that when you're a 12-year-old boy and you're hypnotized by this great man who's teaching you how to fight, and you're getting so much love, you've never gotten love in your life. You've never gotten positive feedback. And you're getting so much of it from this. And then no one's teaching you how to turn it off. And you're wondering why this guy would grows up to become a [ __ ] maniac is punching people in the street is just just crazy and yelling at reporters, "I'll [ __ ] you in the ass, white boy." All that crazy [ __ ] that he did. Yeah, he was a maniac. I mean, there's no, no one taught him how to reflect. There was no Sam Harris app for meditation from Mike Tyson in 1986. You know, he was just a maniac.

Well, yeah, I mean, one problem we have here is that we, we don't have a norm around a good norm around mental health. Yeah. And we have, we've like zero norms around mental training. Right. So, I mean, so physical training. This is a very good analogy between meditation as mental training, which sounds just like just esoteric and woo, right? So it sounds like new age, you know, specious nonsense to many people. But if you roll back the clock 100 years, physical training made no sense. There were no norms around him. And the only guy lifting a dumbbell was that guy with the handlebar mustache and the leopard, you know, bikini or whatever he was wearing, the freak show, right? Yeah. You know, the singlet. Yeah. And now we have, we have a total understanding of the norms around physical training. Yeah. Like you're, there's just, you're actually a freak if you don't do some kind of exercise. Well, those, they've even changed and evolved over the last decade or so. Yeah. Yeah. It's gotten far more complicated and nuanced. It's continually evolving. But the, the framework, the paradigm, the fact that there's something to do to get better physically, and that those, those changes matter, they, they, you can engage your body intelligently so as to improve it across, you know, many different variables, flexibility, strength, that's all totally understood. And now we're just refining the protocol with mental training. Uh, and specifically the training of attention and how you respond to the, the uprising of your own negative emotion. Right. That is something that has been going on for thousands of years in contemplative, mostly Eastern context. And that's something that, you know, Buddhism really has a lot of, specifically an asymmetric amount of wisdom to to share on. And it's, um, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm very excited to be spending more time on it because it's the locus of so much of the fragmentation in our lives now is the smartphone. It's like, what's happen, what this thing is doing to us is continually amplifying not only our desire for our approval, but the, the ability to, to react in a, I mean, like, so there's just no reason to hesitate to condemn this thing that you're seeing. Like, you're, you're the, this, this upwelling of negative emotion, you see the out, the outrage you feel when you see something on Twitter, right? Is it's shortening everybody's views, right? It's making road rage more of a kind of a general feature of our, of our lives. And, um, this is, this is all trainable. Like you can actually, you can actually learn that when you suddenly feel anger in response to something that seems to have, you know, happened in the world, if you just pay attention to the experience of anger, if you just feel the, the mere physiology of it and get out of your thoughts about it, like you actually, you notice thought as a process, you let that go. You're not continuing to have a conversation with yourself about all the reasons why you should be angry or you should attack this person. And you just become interested in, in anger as a response. The half-life of the emotion is like seconds, right? It's impossible to stay angry for very long if you get out of the story you're telling yourself about why you should be angry. Now, there are certain situations where anger is, is appropriate, and it's good to have access to that energy. I'm not, I'm not advocating that everyone just get lobotomized and not react to anything. But until you can actually be mindful, I mean, mindful is is the technical word for what, what this is. And until you can actually get out of the, the thoughts and just pay attention to, to, in this case, a negative emotion, you have zero choice. You're going to stay angry for as long as you stay angry for. And people have this experience of being angry for days about things or being angry for hours. There's no way to stay angry for more than moments if, unless you're just lost in the story. And, um, it becomes a kind of superpower to, to be able to say, do I need to be angry about this? Or like, how useful is it to stay angry about this? And, and you can just get off the ride, right? You can literally, like, you know, I see a tweet from somebody who's trying to destroy my life, and I feel this initial, you know, contraction, and I can decide how long I want to feel that way for, right? And that's an amazing thing to be able to do. And it's based on a kind of training that very few people know even exists. And that, and, and so again, it's like, you're like, I'm now the guy in the, in the leopard singlet, right? But it's, um, you know, more and more we're going to understand that this is just has to be part of everybody's toolkit.

Well, it would be amazing if they taught kids that in school. If you've got to learn that when you're learning math and history. People are doing that. My wife actually does that. Really? In high school? Six-year-olds? Whoa. You can, you can teach mindfulness to. I mean, in the beginning, what they're learning is just basic awareness of their inner lives, right? Like, just being able to name the emotion they're feeling is an amazing capacity in a six-year-old. Like, a six-year-old is just acting out something, and you're now teaching them to, to know in that moment that what's pushing them from behind is sadness or anger or embarrassment. It's like, just to be able, just to have that recursive ability to reflect. That's already a major gain in, in kids that age. But yeah, you can learn it very early, actually. This was something I was talking about with, um, Stephen Fry on, on my podcast. So Stephen was very scared. He's, he's actually, he's adorable. He's like, what, like that nice, you're in the presence of just such a nice guy. Guys like radiates, you know, decency. Um, but, uh, he was, you know, fairly skeptical of just like, why would you ever have to train mindfulness or meditation? And I mean, the analogy that came up, came up to me, came up from me on the fly there, was that it is actually a lot like learning to read, in the sense that none of us remember having the, having gone through the ordeal of learning to read, right? Now, that learning to read was a hassle, right? Like, that did not come easily to most people. And yet now, it's just, now you, if you look at a page of, of text in a language you understand, you can't help but decode it, right? It's just effortless. And so this, I mean, this is these kinds of emotional tools and, and cognitive tools, just the ability to self-regulate emotion in, by becoming aware of it as a process, that is something that I think we could teach kids much earlier. And then we would be in the presence of, of young adults who would naturally have a facili, a facility for it, that where they won't even, they wouldn't even remember how hard it was to acquire it. Yeah.

What I was talking about earlier with Mike Tyson and, you know, his, his coaching and his, I mean, he essentially got mental coaching on how to accomplish one thing. Mental coaching on how to have the perfect mindset for one thing. How to, how to, how to kick people's ass. Yeah. What he didn't have was mental coaching on how to deal with the pressures of life, especially life. I mean, almost no one really understands what life is like to be a famous 20-year-old heavyweight champion in the world. I mean, there's no one. It had to be, it's alien. It's got to be alien. I mean, and to ask this kid to manage this state when, you know, you're talking about someone who just six years prior was virtually homeless and had no love in his life at all, and was being hypnotized by some madman who's a, you know, a boxing wizard who lives in the Catskills. And what we were talking about earlier about who you are now versus who you were 20, 30 years ago. When you meet Mike Tyson now, Mike Tyson is the sweetest, nicest, friendliest guy. He's so soft-spoken. He's really kind. He hugs people. He's a really nice guy. You know? And at one point in time, he was the scariest [ __ ] on the planet Earth. Yeah.

There's actually, there's another sort of uncanny valley here in, in martial arts training that, that I spent a lot of time in. When you're training in martial arts and seeing the world through this lens of violence and potential violence, but you're training in a way that's never really putting your skills to the test. So you're, you're basically, you're as a young man, you're living with this fundamental uncertainty as to whether or not you actually are capable of anything. Yeah. So you're training in like, fake martial arts, right? Right. Or at least martial arts where most of it is a kind of pantomime of violence and it's not being pressure tested. So it's not like, you know, where you're competing and you know what it's like to kick someone in the head and it actually works, right? It's like, this is, you're sparring, but it's all, yeah, you have to keep everything safe, right? You know, karate. Yeah. Um, or even if it's full contact, you have headgear and you've got, it's just like, you're not, there's still basic uncertainty, right? About what's going to go down on the street if, you know, if it's in the presence of real violence. And there, you're, you know, especially as a teenager, you're in this fairly toxic state of like, sort of always preparing for violence that still is in, you know, in most people's lives, a pretty low order of probability that it's going to occur. And yet, it's all, it's also backed by this fear of, you know, you just kind of the ego fear of maybe you're just full of [ __ ] right? And you're just, you're just going to get your ass kicked if this ever happens. And with someone like, you know, someone who's a real, obviously someone like Mike Tyson, there shouldn't, there shouldn't be any uncertainty about, like, he's got nothing to prove. He's in a bar and somebody says, you know, "What are you looking at?" At minimum, he doesn't have this fear of like, if he, if he walks away from that challenge, he knows he's walking away not because he was scared, maybe he, he's going to lose a fist fight with this guy, right? He's the best boxer on earth at that moment. It's, it's that he's, he's got way more to lose than the other guy. Like, why does he want to be rolling around in a parking lot with some stranger, you know? So, um, it's, uh, so there's this, this is very unhappy place that a lot of martial artists are in, which is, you know, they don't actually know what they're, they're capable of, and they're, they're living all the time with this, this, you know, kind of training software running in their heads. And it's, it's, um, it's a weird space to be in.

Well, it's one of the things that's so great about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Exactly. The Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. You, I mean, you're not getting punched and you're not getting kicked, but you are absolutely going full blast. And you have a hundred percent confidence once you reach a certain level that you could do that to an untrained person within its frame. You are pressure testing it. You know that it works. Yes. Now, you don't, you know, I would argue there, people still lose sight of the fact that in reality, people, people are punching, and they're not training a lot of punching or defense. And then there are weapons. And then there's a guy's friend who can come up and start kicking you in your head. So, yeah, it's like, like how good an idea was it to pull guard when you know someone else can walk up? Uh, but, you know, yeah, it's within its, you know, within its purview. Yeah. You're not, you're, you're working out all of your illusions. And that's, yeah, that's that's one reason why so many of us find it addictive. You know, it's just, yeah, there's that. And there's also, they're so nice. Yeah. Jiu-jitsu people are so friendly. And I think that's one of the reasons why they're so friendly is they're not carrying around all that [ __ ] that a lot of people carry around. Including, you know, there's some grown men that have never been in a fight in their life. And they get a couple of beers in them and they start talking crazy [ __ ]. I'm like, "Hey man, you don't even know how to fight." Yeah. You know, what do you do? It's like crazy. It's like someone who wants to jump into a NASCAR race. You've never driven a car. Like, stop. And they're talking to some guy with cauliflower ear and they don't even know what that means, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, to, to be a human being is complicated. To be a man and in the face of altercations with other men is uniquely complicated. You know, the, the kind of altercations that men get into, the kind of bravado and chest puffing and [ __ ] talking and the consequences of those things. Like you were talking about Liam Neeson, um, his wife falling down and hitting her head. A friend of mine was working in a bar and, uh, in Long Island, and, uh, one of the bouncers got in a fight with some guy and punched the guy and knocked him out. The guy fell back, hit his head off the curb and died. And that happens all the time. And people get knocked out, they hit their head on the ground, they die. Yeah. Yeah.

I actually, I did, when I, before I had a podcast and I was getting my midlife crisis took the form of me getting really back into martial arts again for after a hiatus of maybe 25 years. I had a, a lawyer who, who focused on kind of self-defense law. I mean, he was constantly dealing with cases where someone is either either claiming self-defense or it's a legit self-defense claim, but they're basically screwed. I mean, they like they punch someone and that person fell down and hit a fire hydrant and died, right? Like that. So they're, they're trying to beat a murder rap, you know? And so I just had him in a blog post, had him walk me. And I had a bunch of, I had two people comment, ask questions as well. I had Matt Thornton, the, who's John Kavanagh's jiu-jitsu coach, asked questions in this blog post. And I had, uh, Rory Miller, who's a self-defense trainer, just, just to try to flesh out all of the things you should be thinking about when you're the kind of person who is at all preparing for the possible eventuality of violence. Because people who train with guns or own own guns or carry knives or do martial arts don't actually understand what happens when, you know, like they agree to fight somebody or they like, like, like unless you, unless your MO is, and this should be your MO, to avoid violence at all, virtually any cost, right? Like you're always just trying to leave the premises if there's some sort of challenge that could become violence. If that's not your, your MO, you're just wandering into potential situations where you can find yourself in court for having shoved a guy and he, you know, fell into the street and got run over, right? Like, and then now you're the guy who's looking at the prospect of going to prison for, you know, for a, uh, murder or, or, um, you know, second-degree murder. And so anyway, I had him walk me through all the, the ins and outs of all of that. It was, it was a fascinating conversation because, yeah, there are people who, you know, they're extreme cases. They're, they're women who have shot their totally crazy husband who's like waving a baseball bat at their heads, and they're in prison for years for this, you know, they're just real miscarriages of justice where, like, you would think that the, the, you know, it would be very easy to prove that she was in fear for her life in this case, and this was, it was a legitimate use of lethal force. It's just so hard when no one's there. Yeah. If no one's, I mean, if you have eyewitnesses or if you know it's a public thing that happens and there's video of it, but, you know, if someone does something to someone and no one's around, you punch someone and they, they get knocked out and they die, and you say, "No, this guy was threatening to kill me. He was chasing me. He was threatening to kill me. I was terrified for my life. He lunged towards me. I saw the opening. I took it." And now he's dead. You could go to jail forever. Yeah. I mean, that's that, that's a reality. I mean, you should absolutely without a doubt avoid violence at all costs. Yeah. But you should also know how to fight. Definitely. I think that's very important. It's very important. Yeah. But very few people train. So it's like, in, in the curriculum of, of becoming learning how to fight, you know, training in, in whatever martial art or arts, there's, in most cases, very little time spent training avoidance. Yes. Right? And that's, that's a real missing piece because that is the most important thing to train. I mean, it's like, it's like you, you know, especially if you have real skills, right? Especially if you're walking around armed, right? I mean, the one, the one interesting psychological corrective that concealed carry does for many people is that once you're walking around with a gun, you realize what the problem of, of what any altercation can become, right? Like, you're not going to get into a shoving match with somebody if you're wearing a gun on your belt because like, if, if that escalates, you're pulling out your gun, and then it's a decision of whether to kill somebody, right? So, you know, and I don't have a ton of experience in this area, but, you know, for all the firearm training I've done with people, um, I just get, you know, you know, I know like former SWAT operators who are, you know, just out there, they're constantly armed. And these are like the last guys who are going to get involved in anything. I mean, they used to be cops, but now they don't even feel any burden to police any, like, it's like they're just, they're retired, emphatically retired, right? Um, because they just recognize how haywire anything can go for them if, you know, any, any process of conflict gets started. And again, I think this goes back to understanding how to manage your mind, you know, when the [ __ ] hits the fan and things go crazy, it's, it's very difficult for people to maintain a rational state of mind. And things can escalate so quickly, things can turn to violence so quickly, especially with irrational people or untrained people or people that aren't aware of consequences or maybe can't process it well. But, and the crucial piece, which, you know, many seasoned fighters and, and, you know, professionals don't have, or, you know, I would think many don't have, is this sort of this, this valley where your ego concerns are not worked out. It's like, when you, when you feel the emotional burden of a loss of face, right? Like, if Jocko Willink is in a bar and someone says something, you know, nasty to him or to his wife, Jocko doesn't have anything to prove. Like, Jocko knows he's a badass, right? So Jocko knows that he just, it's time to get out of the bar because he doesn't want to deal with the psychopath who doesn't know who he's dealing with. Uh, but someone who's not trained like Jocko, right? Could feel that backing down, especially backing down in front of your wife or your girlfriend, that is such an ego blow that, you know, the temptation to get into this, this monkey dance with the other person is just, it's, it's impossible to recover from, right? It's a very dangerous game. Yeah. Yeah. And people get into it all the time. And I've seen so many people get into it that just don't, they don't have any cards. Yeah. They're completely bluffing. Yeah. Yeah. Like, God damn it, man, just stop doing this. You know, I look, yeah, I've been doing martial arts my whole, whole life. And I'm terrified of fights. I see fights, just like, "Get the [ __ ] out of here before this goes bad." When it goes sideways, you know, men are just, we have thousands of years of awful DNA, you know, we really do. We, we're violent. Hundreds of thousands. Yeah. Violence was imperative. It was imperative for survival. You had, you had to be able to react and react quickly. And, yeah, you had to know what to do with your genes. They're never going to make it to the next stage.

Which is, I mean, this is a controversial thing to say. And I got in trouble, or one of my podcast guests, Gavin de Becker, the security guru, got in trouble on my podcast talking about the primacy of of intuition here. Like our intuitions are actually really good for detecting something that makes us uncomfortable about another person, right? And this is, this becomes politically incorrect really fast, right? Because it's like, you know, if you see a guy on an elevator who makes you uncomfortable, you know, Gavin's advice, and I think I think the real saying advice is just don't get on. But there are many people who get on just because they want to prove they're not racist, right? Or they're not. It's like, and I actually know someone who was in a situation like that, uh, and it didn't work out well. And so, I mean, intuition is bad for so many things. We, we have terrible intuitions for statistics and probability theory. And it's like, we're reliably, you know, whole careers and Nobel Prizes have been won on, you know, people like, you know, Danny Kahneman have have shown us how it's not only that our intuitions are bad for for these judgments, but they're reliably bad. And we can understand there's a there's a structure to how bad they are. But for judging people who are dangerous, you know, who give us the, who make the hair stand up on the back of our neck for reasons we can't understand, um, you know, where the eye contact was wrong, or the, or the just the way they were, you know, I mean, just like a, what's called a witness check, you know, like someone comes up to you and engages you, and then they look, just they just kind of look to check for witnesses, right? Now, like that, people don't aren't aware that that's even a thing, yeah? Right? But when, like that body language is is very salient to us. And, and, uh, there are there are hundreds of things like that that that, um, we immediately fee, that that prompt, you know, an intuitive response. And these are intuitions that are, you know, from a self-defense point of view, are worth listening to. Because like, the worst case scenario is you wind up being a little rude there. Yeah. Like, like, sorry, I'm not, you know, I can't talk. But, um, people are, you know, people are very dogmatically being kind of trained to ignore those, those kinds of intuitions.

What do you think those intuitions are like? What do you think intuitions are like when you meet someone, you go, "Well, this person feels dangerous"? Like, what is that? What's happening? Well, there's, it's a lot. You know, the gaze detection is a big one. I mean, we, you know, what people do with their eyes is a, is a major variable in just how we feel that, you know, the, the relationship is going. Um, but it's, uh, and there's there are microexpressions that we notice in, in people that we're not aware of noticing, you know, but like, it's just, there's this is not well understood. Uh, and we're bad judges of whether someone is telling the truth. I mean, this, this has been fairly well studied. I mean, there are people who, you know, even people who work for the FBI are not, you know, much better than chance at detecting whether somebody's lying. But there's just, we get so much information by, you know, body language and being in somebody's presence, and we get it so fast, uh, that it's, um, again, and they, I mean, they're, whether we understand it or not, there are evolutionary reasons why this is so. I mean, if we've evolved for anything as social primates, we have evolved to detect stuff that just is a precursor to violent intent in, in others, right?

Do you think it's just gaze, or do you think you can sense the energy of someone? There's certain movements that people make when they're thinking about hitting you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're certain, like, there's like a twitchiness to them, like a while pulled back, like almost like a spring or a bow. There's like a feeling you get around people that are looking to hit people. Yeah. Well, there's, so again, all of that's still vision, but there's, you know, I mean, who knows? We're detecting pheromones. We could be detecting people's level of of stress. I mean, just how tuned up they are. Yeah. Um, but, and this goes beyond, this is beyond just physical violence. This is just, you know, detecting psychopaths who are, you know, who are manipulative. I mean, just detecting, I mean, there are there are ways to spot people lying. Uh, you know, I mean, just, you know, they're, they're tells, like, you know, too much information, you know, like the people who are giving you superfluous, superfluous information as a kind of overcorrection. They're anticipating that you're going to doubt their story, and so they're filling in like blanks that you don't even need filled in, right? And, and it's, there are sort of patterns to, to sort of to that. But, and again, we, we pick up on a lot of this stuff without consciously being aware of what's going on. We just know that that's like, not a person I want to spend any more time with, right? Uh, but, you know, so there may be more of a literature on this than I know about, but a lot of this is not well understood. And, I mean, people like Paul Ekman have done a lot of stuff on micro, on, you know, microexpressions, uh, that goes back probably 30 years at this point. And there are people who are outliers who are great at detecting microexpressions where they really, they really just understand what's going on. But it's, it's not Edward, and AI eventually will be, if it isn't there already, will be much better than we are doing this. I'm so scared of that. Yeah. I'm so scared of them getting that wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Microexpressions are funny because they remind me of microaggressions, which is one of the, you know, one of the weirder social justice warrior things. Like things that used to be just slights where someone was just like slightly rude, not even slightly, yeah, just like, "Where do you come from?" Right? That's right. Speaking on an accent. They're like, "Where are you from? Where are your parents from?" How dare you? Yeah. How dare you question my authenticity? Yeah. No, microaggressions, or it's weird that that's actually accepted that this is something they're, they're actually pushing in certain schools that microaggressions are a real, a real thing. Christina Hoff Sommers just wrote something about, uh, or she, she put something on her Twitter today about a Yale article that was written today or that was put out today about documenting politically incorrect behavior, so that someday in the future, when someone is running for Congress or is up for Supreme Court or something like that, you could go back to their college days and remember when they said something, right? I mean, one of the examples this woman uses in this post was compared a woman to a large animal, a woman's body to a large animal in a private text message that she should have, oh, I should have screamed, "Shot!" I should have, yeah. And calls this guy in this, this article, "white boy." This white boy does this. And the white boy with a saccharine smile does that. It's like, which is like overtly racist. Like the, just the expression, like right in the way that she's describing it. Like, is it as if this evil character slowly makes his way to run the world, and he's been engineered since the time he was in college?

Well, that's it's going to happen, just by, just basically just based on everyone's use of the tools. Yeah. Like, you know, people are not diligently scrubbing their their digital history. And there may, in fact, be no way to actually do it, right? And so, so they're just, they're trailing them, you know, they're not even aware of what they're trailing in social media. So, so I, I mean, maybe, maybe that is that will just be a cure for the problem because it'll, at a certain point, we'll be dealing with people who were basically born, they were born on Facebook, right? Like they don't even have a moment, like they've got their baby picture there and everything that followed, right? And, um, then it'll just seem completely untenable. Like, let's just accuse people of everything. Yes. Everyone's guilty. Everyone has said that dumb thing, yeah, you know, that can be a matter of, can be taken the worst possible way. And, and if they're going to be hung from that, then, you know, no, no one will survive.

Well, it seems like that's what we're dealing with right now in a lot of cases, you know? Yeah. Yeah. The, what I think is really important, that, what you were saying earlier, was that there has to be some sort of path to redeeming themselves. That there has to be some accepted way that someone can go about redeeming themselves, and we can allow them to re-enter society without constantly bringing it up or judging them by it or always attributing their past behavior to who they are right now. I mean, look at, I mean, this should be so simple. Look at my collaboration with Majid Nawaz, right? So like, we were on this podcast together, yeah. Majid was scheming to form a global caliphate. I mean, the organization he was part of, and he wasn't a jihadist, thankfully, he wasn't actually blowing people up, but he was trying to get nuclear weapons in, in Pakistan, into the hands of the worst possible theocrats, right? That was his, matched with all of his charisma and all of his energy. And it's like, you know, mantra is fantastic. And he used to, an utterly nefarious purpose in my world, right? You know, if you know how much that is an issue for me, it's like, my, and Majid and I are just buddies now, right? So all I need is a clear path that he took out of the darkness to understand why he's a valid collaborator now. And, yeah, actually, on that point, I've, I've got people breathing down my neck to tell you, or tell your audience, this is how powerful you are, Joe Rogan, that the documentary is coming out on the, our collaboration, and it's, it's out now. It's, it can be found out there. It's what's called, uh, Islam and the Future of Tolerance. Nice. And it's actually, it's, it's not bad. It actually captures the spirit of our collaboration very well. And if you know, see it, if only just to recognize how awesome Majid is, because Majid is just a superstar. And the scariest thing about the state of public opinion in the Muslim world, from my point of view, is just how, how hard a job he has to just to have a conversation in that community. I mean, it's just, you know, he's so marginalized, and he's so reasonable. You know? But I mean, to come back to that original point, here's someone who was, whose life was purposed toward what, what I view as one of the most toxic projects I can think of, right? You know, give the nuclear weapons to the people who want to die as martyrs, right? That's the project, right? Right. And Majid is just an absolutely awesome collaborator now, right? So there's like, we have to, there has to be a path through some insane conversation to a reboot.

The real, the worry though, for a lot of folks, is that you are not really being honest about who you are currently. You just want an excuse for for to be relieved. Except it's so clear in some of these cases. Like, it's clear. I mean, take, I mean, the Norma MacDonald case, it's just utterly clear. Yeah. Right? Um, and I mean, even in Megan Kelly's case, utterly clear. Like, I don't think unless she's got some white supremacist, you know, side gig that I, I'm not aware of, she's just like, "Listen, I'm clueless. I said, you know, I didn't realize." You know? Well, they were looking for an excuse to get rid of her, honestly, right? But I think that even if they weren't, I think that still very likely would have been the end. I mean, it's like, even if her show had had better ratings, still that could have been an unrecoverable error. What if she was black? Well, no, I guess it doesn't work the other direction, right? The reverse is black, and she said, "What's so bad about blackface?" Well, I think she could stay on the air. That's interesting. I, I don't know. I mean, it certainly would have been easier. You know? Oh, yeah. I mean, like, what if Oprah said it? Yeah. What if Oprah's saying, "Who cares? You want to pretend to be Diana Ross?" Because that was the, the thing was pretending to be Diana Ross for Halloween, right? Yeah. You want to be Diana Ross? Yeah. I mean, I got to think they could get away with it. But, um, it's, uh, I mean, it was interesting. The thing that happened with Louis C.K. and Ricky Gervais and Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock. Yes. That was because I remember when that aired, I think it was 2011, and I remember there was nothing around that. It was just, it was totally fine. Yeah. Right? They were using the N-word. I mean, the problem, the thing that was kind of dishonest about the, the, the re-scandalizing of it was that in the context of that conversation, it was framed by the fact that they, they really were referencing one of the more famous pieces of comedy in, in history. And they were, they were referencing Chris Rock's act using the N-word. They're, they're black people. And then they're, and you, Louie, are an R&B, right? Like, you're the only white guy I know who. And then they're so they're talking in that context. And, anyway, yeah, it was, it was interesting how that almost, I mean, that blew back against Ricky and, and, yeah, that's one of those things though where they're just looking for more things to be mad at Louie for. Yeah. But I mean, but Ricky was also getting, and I think, you know, Chris, Chris took a lot of [ __ ] yeah. He took a lot of [ __ ] for that because he didn't, there was no blowback. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting times.

Yes. It's probably a good way to end it. Yeah. We just did three hours. Yeah. It is. It is interesting times. I mean, it's probably the most interesting times of our lives, in good ways and bad ways. Yeah. Well, we're, um, we're on the front lines of something. And you, you know, I, I don't know if you get enough credit for this, but you have, like, you pushed out into the space that no one even knew existed. And I mean, you're like, I honestly did, didn't even know what a podcast was when, you know, like, I learned what a podcast was when I got invited to get interviewed on your podcast the first time, you know? So, it's like, it's awesome what, what you've created here. So, well, thank you. Uh, it's all, it's an accident. Yeah. I just stuck with it. Yeah. Stumbled upon it. Yeah. And kept going. Well, I'm good at that. Keep it up. Thank you. Thank you. You too. Yeah. Sam Harris, ladies and gentlemen. All right. Awesome. [Applause] [Music]