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Please welcome the great and powerful Jon Stewart government podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, trained by Joe Rogan podcast by Night All Day.

Hi, Jon Stewart. Hi, Joe, what's going on behind you? What is all that jazz? Oh, it's all my when my kids were younger, this is their home in the attic. So when they were younger, came up here with their cousins and doodle and then I got kicked up here. It's my office now and I'm here with the bunny and the guinea pig in the rat.

Hey, man, I miss you. I miss you on TV right now. I really do. This is a perfect time for you. It's kind of crazy that you're not hosting that show anymore, but there's so many people doing that.

You know, I was I really did burn out. Like, I. I felt like it's just redundant. You know, the nice thing for what you do is you get to cure it and kind of be more active and to follow your own rhythm for it. I was really tied to that rhythm of. The twenty four hour news cycle, right, and how fucking redundant it is and how cyclical and at a certain point I was like, I don't know what else to do with this.

And so I didn't want to stay just because I could. I just done it long enough. And so I thought, well, let me just it was just time I thought, like, the audience needed a fresh perspective. I needed a fresh perspective. Like, I just I just felt, John, like I was more I was more mad about shit than than. Inspired, you know, I appreciate that you decided to go out at the literally at the very top, but it seems like.

Especially right now, John Oliver's killing it and Trevor Noah is doing your show, and it's like this is this is that there's so much to mock, it's almost like an overload. And doing real commentary on politics today in my it's almost like you're doing commentary on pro wrestling, like this is a rigged game and you're on here pretending like this shit makes sense. Yes, I guess you're right. Well, it's also because that's the economic system that's been set up around politics is the very same that Vince McMahon set up around wrestling.

You create I mean, it is a kind of kayfabe. It's a sort of like there are characters. You know what it's like when you're trying to produce something every day you're going to go with kind of a boilerplate structure. So you're going to say, all right, our show revolves around you're from the right, you're from the left. Whatever comes in, we're going to filter it through that. We're going to keep it producible. But it starts to, like you say, it becomes inauthentic.

But the same thing would happen to me sometimes with like I'd be doing shows and you would know you weren't necessarily feeling the outrage of something or that the commentary was going to be a spicier, as deep as you might want it. But you might kick it up a notch anyway, because it was performative. And I and I always had to fight that instinct to not.

To not give in to the gravity of what was expected, of what makes it such a tightrope to walk, because you're commenting, you're doing comedy on something that's actually serious, and it's great to mock the ridiculous aspects of it. But really, like if you're doing The Daily Show right now, like we really are in a legitimately troubled time, like it's not it's not like a troubled time of 10 years ago or eight years ago. Like this is a real troubled time.

No, and I think as that builds up, it becomes harder and harder, but I can recall, you know, people people say sometimes and I think there's a certain nostalgia that people view my time on the show as and I'm not being self-deprecating. I just mean, you know, when you walk away from something, I think a kind of nostalgia about how I took a fair amount of shit while I was there. And but but the point is, like Charleston happened when I was hosting that show.

Ferguson happened. The Iraq war happened. 9/11 happened. Like Jesus, these types of things were always and what would happen is you started to feel like. You were expected to say something. Profound about you, that you didn't really have that in you at times or just that's a bar that was beyond you really did just want to help your staff get through it more than anything else. And so these events would come up and the weight of feeling like you had to say something meaningful in that moment for people, because that's the role that either they had let me know that you had in their lives or that the show kind of took on.

You know, became kind of difficult to navigate. Because the shit is so cyclical, like the man I could go back in and do you my 10 war on Christmas bits year when that shit would flare up. But like at a certain point when things like Charleson happened, where Eric Garner, like I had nothing in the tank comedically, like all I could do. Was stare into the camera and just express sadness and helpless. It's like, you know what it is, it's impotent rage at a certain point.

Rage against it. But over a period of 16 years, if you feel the thing you're raging against, grow stronger. Right. And kind of collapse onto you and not make headway. Nobody likes to piss in the ocean or you like it. But at a certain point, if that's your job, I think it. I think people began to look at the show like it was supposed to change things and. And that's a hard that's a hard place to be for for a comedy show.

Well, it's because you're reasonable and there's not a lot of that out there legitimately. And like the people like, please, you do look, people are begging for the rock to run for president. This is how desperate we are. People have asked me to do it. Look, I'm a fucking bona fide moron. You don't want me running anything. You certainly don't want me running the country. And if enough people have actually asked for that, you just know there's a feeling of desperation in the air.

And, you know, when you were running that show and you were you were doing great comedy about real shit. And as this real shit compounds and piles up and it doesn't seem to have any effect on this real shit, all this great comedy, after a while, I can understand why it would start to feel like what am I doing here? Like how long?

How long do you know who what is that guy's name? Who was doing the resistance? The guy was in the basement of GQ. Can Olbermann. Keith Olbermann.

So I thought, well, yeah, I am a little unhinged. Right. He was doing this thing in the basement against Trump and he's like, it's just days from now when Trump is going to be arrested. And I could feel that this was also kind of what he was doing, like he was trying to make some sort of an impact, but it just kept not working and kept not working.

Yeah. And it's still all chaos. And he's like, fuck this. And then he just walked away from it. You know, it seems like trying to enact change is so difficult that when actual change happens, it's one of the reasons why it happens in such a big way. It's like there was so many people bounding at the wall and pounding at this wall that when boom, when the George Floyd protests broke through, then all of a sudden it's we've got real change.

Let's take down these fucking statues and light everything on fire. And it's this feeling of change and of chaos that is also representative of the fact that it takes so long to turn our cultural battleship. It's like to actually get a real turn. It's so hard. That's so everything stays the same.

No matter how mad people get that turn, even at that point, that's still the easy part. Yes, the the easy part like this, it's not going to get fixed by HBO, Max pulling Gone with the Wind like it's like when you pull a movie nobody was planning on watching on a streaming service. Nobody can find like we're still at the symbolic stage. Yeah, we're still doing this shit that is symbolic when and this is where leadership becomes such a crucial component.

So you have this great awakening of energy. It has to be channeled into something lasting and meaningful. And we have to diagnose the real problem underlying this moment so that we don't make a mistake. And just changing the window dressing and the building on the buildings, you know, like this has to be this has to be foundational in a way that will create something lasting. And that's that's the hard part.

It seems like the shift is big enough that something is going to happen in that regard. It just seems like this shift is nothing like anything we've ever seen in our lifetime. And it's worldwide, which is really crazy. Like the George Floyd death sparked all these protests worldwide, which is really never happened before with anything that really is taking place in America.

And it just seems like there was also a lot of frustration during the bailout period of the covid crisis that all these corporations were getting so much money. The people got one twelve hundred dollar check and then then there was no more talk. And this you don't know where the money is.

There's really no accountability even for where that money went. Right? That's a great point, Joe, because that's so that's what I'm talking about by structural change. Like I feel like in this moment, this horrible crime and murder sparked something. But what's underlying that is not just the racial inequality and the inequities, but this whole idea of we build our society economically from the top down. Yes, that's the shit that's got to change, right? You have to.

Well, like when you talk when you're in a pandemic, right, and tens of thousand people are dying, and then we say to ourselves, all right, well, who are the essential workers? Who are the ones that are the fabric of our society and culture that keep the wheels turning and the trains running? Who are those people? Well, it turns out they're the most poorly compensated people in our society. As we flipped the paradigm for some reason since the 80s, the investor class has gotten the break and the working class has gotten minimized.

We've devalued work while overvaluing investment is such a high point what it does, I don't think we can have the structural change until we flip that like fuck man. When people talk about freedom and liberty, what's more for freedom and liberty than not having your health insurance tied to your job. Right. What kind of freedom do you have to make decisions in your life when you fear that? If I take a chance, if I go for something, if I try and change my lot in life, my kids will no longer be covered by shit like all the things that we built up to.

Except I think we have to turn it over and it has to lead more people should be able to have like. A Dignam, you should be able to work a job and not be poor, you should get to work a job and not need food stamps, like that's where we're fucked. We spent how much in this pandemic? Three trillion dollars, something like that. Four trillion. Something along those lines.

Who knows if one hundred million of it went to Coca-Cola? Like, we have no idea. Right. But you got 80 bus drivers in New York who were dead. Because they had to keep going in the pandemic. Yeah, I think you're making a really good point about what's essential as well, when when we found out what the essential workers are. Right. People who work at supermarkets, people build homes like all these essential jobs, bunkered down, cannot afford to write.

You're putting yourself in, you know, it's funny, I was talking to a friend of mine, MDT, who is, you know, he was really like grievously wounded in war. Right. And I thought we were talking about, like, coronavirus. And I was like, I feel like I'm in fucking danger when I go out. And, yeah, welcome to being downrange, like the you know what I mean? Like, it's just not it's not something that we as Americans would ever consider our lives where we're really sheltered in a lot of ways to what a great vast majority of the world faces, but also the vast majority of our own citizens face in terms of having lives that lives that they feel are built on sand as opposed to granite.

And so his point was like. Yeah, you know, that's what it feels like when you're in a war, but I signed up for that like bus drivers and grocery store workers, like they had to fucking decide, like, I need this money more than I need to protect my life and maybe the health of my family.

What a terrible position to have to be and unprecedented. And and we're ill prepared for it.

And it really did highlight what's essential, though, which is get back to your point about this idea of income equality. Like people will balk at that, like, hey, this is a game. If you want to figure it out, figure out how to make more money, invest and do this and become a banker. And you fucked up and you want to be an artist or you fucked up and you wanted to be a carpenter. You should have been a, you know, whatever.

And but what they don't understand or don't consider is when shit hits the fan like it did with the covid crisis. You recognize like, hey, all that stuff is nonsense. If someone doesn't take out the garbage, all that stuff is nonsense. If you don't have health care, all that stuff is none of that money means anything. If the fabric of society deteriorates to a point where literally everybody has to stay in their home and you can't work. And that's what happened.

And it really flipped the whole thing on its head because we had to consider survival. We had to really consider survival instead of just existence. We were saying, oh, my God, we have to protect ourselves from this viral viral attack. And what it makes you realize is how much money it takes to ante up to the American way of life. What I mean by that is like if you want to buy, if you just want to buy into play hand, right.

What's your ante? Well, now they say you've got to go to college. So you're talking about a two hundred thousand dollar ante. Yeah. To get in the fucking game. Right.

To get a job when you get out where you're not going to make a fraction of that every year. So you're going to be behind the eight ball for the rest of your life right now.

Think about, you know, black people not being able to build equity and wealth through generations, you know, government policy that excluded them from, you know, from whether it's the Homestead Act or the Federal Housing Administration or the GI Bill, you know, all these government interventions, socialism, if you will, entitlements if you were made to help white families build equity. Right. Over generations, black people were explicitly excluded from that. So add that on top of the amount of money that you're going and you start to see the hole that we've dug for people.

Yeah. And if we don't address that whole I don't care how many fucking comedy sketches we pull and how many things go like we're not doing anything. Yeah.

We have to address the hole that exists from being one hundred and fifty years removed from slavery, which is crazy. That's not that's a blink in time. It's nothing. And how crazy is it that like and you always I always hear it from like but people like George Floyd think that was terrible. But they say that. But I'm like, no, no, no. But he wasn't an angel. No, but you know, what does it matter?

And when you're upset that people are pulling on Confederate statues, like people have been begging for that since they got those things got put up in the 1920s to really lock in Jim Crow, like those things, aren't there? They're not memorials to the dead. They're hagiography to a war for slavery, like when we shot the movie Down Seltmann. So I saw these monuments. You would think they would say, like, here's a statue of Robert, this motherfucker.

I don't know what to to keep people slaves.

And then we built this thing in the twenties to make black people kind of afraid so that they knew they couldn't do it. But it doesn't say that. Right. Said this is great, man. Like, of course, people are going to pull them down because they've been begging for us to do something about it for one hundred years.

It's also the origins of those. A lot of those statues were actually put up during the civil rights movement and they're cheaply made. They were put up as a middle finger to the civil rights movement. No, no question. Yeah, but but we need something. I like there has to be a process, and I always think about like what South Africa did. There has to be a painful led process that allows us, because I still think to this day and I don't know how your experience with this is, but like.

I still think there's a large swath of, you know, white people in society who feel like they blame black people for not being able to get out of this hole that we put them in or that the government put them in. But they think it's a problem of culture and virtue, like, hey, man, if they would just pull the pants up and talk different, you know, they wouldn't have such a hard time. Hey, why don't you just work harder?

So that's a ridiculous perspective.

And it's also not based. You don't have anyone who would think like that, doesn't understand how human beings develop and grow.

If you have someone it's widespread. I would say it's right. Yeah, it's it's it's a dangerous narrative. Whenever you blame people for their circumstances, if their circumstances are grossly out of their control and really severely limit their progress. And that exists also for if you want to talk about coal mining populations in Texas, it's the same shit. It's people that we don't all start out at the same starting block. So all you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps motherfuckers, you're lucky you have arms.

OK, there's people out there born with no arms, like we should all be thinking of ourselves in this country as a community, not as a bunch of people in competition with each other. We're all piling our money together. Every year. We throw our taxes into the mix to try to take care of the infrastructure and the government and the housing and all the all the different things that get paid for by our taxes. We're a community man and we're not thinking like a community.

We're thinking like a bunch of people that don't want other people to have the same shot in life. That's it.

But I think you struck on something, though, that's very important in all this. And that is. A theory of limited resources like of the conflict between what you would consider like the more nativist wing of American politics and.

The more progressive side is this idea of resource guarding, you know, we're going to they're going to I work my fucking ass off, I play by the rules and they're going to take all my labor and they're going to pour it into these people.

And I do think we have to address that idea that, like, we're here to build equity, let's all get together. And the project of this next generation is to build a stronger foundation, a granite bearing for everyone to stand on so that there's a few people standing on Mount Everest and everybody else is in sand. And quicksand isn't the way that we run the society and think of these programs not as entitlements, but investments. If we invest in dignity of work shit and start building that up, well, food stamps and welfare start to go away.

Yeah, because we're building something more substantial. We built a great middle class in the 50s for white people. We have to do the same now for the country and and also reassure. You know, people who are resentful of that, that they're not being left behind either, that nobody is saying and your lives are fucking cake.

It's not like it's going to change your life that much either. Man, this this mentality that, oh, Bernie Sanders.

Like when I was a supporter of Bernie Sanders when he was running, I got pushback from people that were like, So you want to give your hard earned money, more of it away to the government and you think the government is going to solve this? My my perspective was, if you just looked at it this way, if you could give let's just get crazy. If you could give 25 percent more money to taxes, but the world would be 50 percent better.

Right. Wouldn't you want to invest in that? Like, I understand that people check to check. I understand. But if people like me, people that earn a good amount of money are the ones are going to be hit the hardest. If you wanted a better world, wouldn't you be willing to invest some of your money into that better world?

And if that money goes to making sure that no one has to do this in the future and that we develop this better these better communities in these places that have been fucked for decades, you want you don't want that. You don't want a better world for your children. You want you don't want to save or what do you want to die with all this money in the bank like it's crazy.

It's a question of, you know, when you look at the greatest anti-poverty program we've ever put in place in Social Security. Now, the flip side of that is what they'll say is that the problem with some of this is they don't trust the mechanism by which that money is going to be invested. Of course, because they have been sold to some extent, a little bit of a lie that that this trickle down theory. So. Every administration that comes in is going to stimulate the economy.

They all do it. We don't have a free market. The Fed right now is driving so much money into stocks. You're talking about zero interest rates, negative interest rates. Right. They're driving everything away from bonds and savings so that the stock market, which for some reason we've come to look at like a pulse oximeter of the nation, which it's it's not it's oh, my God, we lost three hundred dollars today. Like, we've come to look at it like it's our temperature.

Yeah. So everybody's going to stimulate the economy. So what did what at what Trump did a one point five trillion dollar tax cut. Right. Overwhelmingly, though, it went to people who already have a shit ton of money. And then we cut the corporate tax rate from one hundred, I think was thirty five down to twenty one, right. Supposedly they were going to reinvest it but they mostly did buybacks. So they're increasing their investor wealth through that as well.

So you're talking about. Trillions of dollars of stimulus, right, that are just going to that same theory. Take those trillion dollars and let's invest, let's stimulate the economy, but not from up there, from down here. Let's do it. Let's take that and fucking Marshall Plan, our country. And build it so that it's sturdy on the legs, you know, you know, you're a fighter, sturdy on the legs. If you're not starting on the legs, you got nothing.

My idea is we should get Dick Cheney involved and we should hire Halliburton to fix up the inner cities like it did all the places we bombed in Iraq, give them some no bid contracts, pour that money back into the community. I mean, I'm talking about Halliburton, but it's a business. There's something there. Well, I had a thing we're trying to do this thing for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who've gotten sick from burn pits. Are you familiar at all with would burn pits?

No. What is it? So in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, I mean, this will go back generations. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of the hired contractors to dispose of the detritus of war, they would build these sometimes 10 or 20 acre pits. Everything would go into them from mass waste to hazardous materials to computers to everything. They light it with jet fuel. And they. So now you got guys that are down range that are also down.

I mean, they're living they're basically camping out in a toxic waste dump. Right. And they are incinerated. So they come home and you're starting to see pulmonary issues, cancer issues. These guys are the dying. Yeah.

And they're not be it's not being they have to advocate against the government. So we're trying to put together working with this team, coalition wounded warrior groups and people, Vassos and groups like that, to address this legislatively, similar to what was done for the 9/11 Commission. Right. So I thought. Because it's always about money. We always have money for war, but we almost never have money to pay for what are the. Absolutely. Could have seen coming a mile away consequences of what our veterans face when they come back, right.

You don't take it when they're when they're out there out of sight. Out of mind. And so my idea was you have all these profiteers, Raytheon, Halliburton, all these groups make them kick in 10 percent. A contingency in war so that when these guys go home and the government backs away, there is money there to take care of. What is the natural? Damage that's done to these people in the name of fighting for our country so that they don't and their families.

I mean, these people have to become their own lawyers have to go in front of medical boards and they have no support. Their families are oftentimes caring for them, whether they have health issues or traumatic brain injury or, you know, other kinds of invisible wounds. And they're kind of hung out to dry. Yes, not kind of. Very much so. But, you know, the UFC had a program back in the day where we were working with the Intrepid Center for Excellence to work with traumatic brain injury patients and to raise money for them.

And we were doing this UFC fight for the troops to raise money for it. And what got me sick was how is it that we have to do this like that? This isn't something that's taken care of in the budget clearly in advance, like you're blowing people up and you're not preparing for people to come back injured. You're sending young, brave women and men to die for their country or or risk severe brain damage. And you don't have enough money set aside to treat them when they return.

I'm like, that's insane.

Everybody thinks that soldiers come back and they've got health care for life. They don't know. They don't you you've got a five year window. But if you get something that they deem was not service related, so you could have been sleeping next to an open air burn pit.

There's a guy in Texas where we work with his wife, Rosie, and Leroy Torres, who's literally like his case wouldn't be. They they denied his case in front of the Texas Supreme Court.

Yeah, it's evil. There's this evil, absolute intention to deny health care and it goes all the way back to Desert Storm.

You remember you remember the whole to Vietnam. Yes. Yes. We're still fighting the government over Agent Orange. Right. And still being denied. Yeah, but yeah, Honkers, it's crazy.

And the depleted radiation sickness that people were getting from the Iraq war.

Right. And the guys that went that to base. Yeah. And I think it was Uzbekistan and it was a toxic waste. Like these soldiers literally had like irradiated tar on their boots, sick as shit. And they can't get you know, there's blue water. Horibe there's I'm telling you, like every or inevitably and they're always told the same thing and we don't have the science yet. And it's going to take us twenty to twenty five years on the science.

But you do have the science because you got the science from it's not like yeah there's a jet fuel burn at the Trade Center. So like the science is in use that science like stop fucking with these people and help them. Yeah.

The jet fuel burn of the Trade Center is another excellent example of first responders. Right. That were terribly sick. And in many, many of them died because of the fumes and ran people into the surrounding areas. In fact, Summers died of lung cancer and she lived near there. Yeah, I don't doubt that it's related.

Could be related, but it's something people did. Jimmy's drug. He was a cop and he got really sick. I mean, those guys develop the pile, cough like a day into the search and rescue teams. You get sick. And they kept trying to tell him that a first it was in his head and then it was it had nothing to do with where you were and working on the pile and 9/11. And then they tried to say, like, it's from snorting drugs.

They fucking, you know, ruin this man's reputation as he's dying. He dies. They do an autopsy in his lungs. Everything you could possibly imagine from a pulverized building, Jesus, asbestos, limestone, cyanide, like grass, like it was an utter disaster and they just keep fighting people and they're doing the same thing to these veterans now with with the burn pits. And it's, you know, the whole thing. She's got to stop that.

There's got to be a presumption for these illnesses so that these guys don't have to fight so hard to get decent health care.

I think along the same lines, we're talking about reform of the police department. There has to be some reform of the health care system that deals with veterans because it seems to be just this long history of doing it a certain way to save the most money possible. And the idea that these guys are sacrificial anyway, you know, they're sending them off to potentially die if they come back alive.

We you know, we do our they do their very best to not treat them and to not spend any more money on them.

And it's it's it's amazing.

We have so many guys that are still patriotic, that still want to go and do this, considering the fact they're treated so poorly when they return.

Yeah. And they lose, you know, they should be in the military is isolating in the first place is not that, you know, it's only less than one percent of the population. Put on top of that, when you get out, you're used to being with a unit, you're used to that camaraderie, you're used to all pulling for the same working as a team. Well, now you're removed from your unit. And if you're hurt, that's even further isolating.

You know, and in that moment, to have to then you're worried about your future, your family's future, and in that moment when you when that's when the government should step in and go, hey, man, you fulfilled your service to us. You fulfilled that covenant. We will fulfill that covenant to you. We will send that that we'll do the right thing. Right. And they and they do the opposite. They do the opposite. It's some of the shit is so simple and fair and obvious.

And you do wonder, like. How has the system become so corrupt and corroded that we can't anymore as a people? Doing the right thing to do the right fucking thing. How did that how do we get here?

Well, I think, again, this speaks to what's going on in this country in terms of revolt that we realize, like all this stuff where you're talking about the health care system, whether you're talking about police reform, whether you're talking about impoverished communities that are stricken with crime and drugs, it's not changing under the normal conditions like something has to happen and something has to happen in a big way to change it. And all these things need to be addressed.

Right. Health care of soldiers needs to be addressed. Reform of the police, reform of these communities like it has to be addressed. If you're going to spend trillions of dollars to bail out these large corporations, you've got to you've got to work on these other problems, too. You can't just ignore them because they're not the ones who are funding your campaign.

And that's but that's a huge issue. And that's the thing that's got to stop. Look at even twenty eight. Right. So we have this enormous economic collapse in 2008, housing market sinks and these derivative mortgage things go down and the world economy grinds to a halt. Thousands of people lose a job. Foreclosures all over the place. So they come in. And they pump billions of dollars into the organizations that sunk the fucking ship in the first place.

Yeah, that's where the money goes. And I remember asking the Treasury secretary at the time. You know, this is a mortgage question, right, because they the derivatives made it like a geometric problem. So if they're bundling mortgages and eight percent of those mortgages go underwater, it sinks the derivatives market, which is trillions of dollars as opposed to billions of dollars.

So I said. You know, with all that money, what if you just made those mortgages that were underwater home? Because the moment you do that, doesn't that fix your derivative problem, don't you haven't you just made and plus then people get to keep their houses? And what he said to me was, you can't do that because of moral hazard, huh? How so? Moral hazard is a theory that you can't incentivize bad behavior. So what he's saying is the people that took out mortgages on their homes, that went underwater, that's their fault.

So you can't bail them out because that would be sending a hazardous message morally. About the economy. So I said. What's the moral hazard of then making the people that actually blew up the economy whole again? What's that? How is that not moral hazard? And he said. The plane was on fire and we had to land. But they were the ones who let the plane on fire. How are you? You're rewarding them for that? Yeah.

Yeah, it's I've heard both sides of that argument, I've heard the argument that, no, nothing's too big to fail, let it fail. And then I've heard the argument that if it did feel fail would be so catastrophic, but I'm saying it wouldn't have failed.

So it was a failure because they bombed.

Yeah. Yeah, they did it all to themselves. But if you made the mortgages at the base of that, OK, so let's say 10 percent of the mortgages were underwater. But, you know, so let's say you had two hundred thousand dollar mortgage and now the house is only worth a hundred fifty thousand dollars. So instead of giving a million dollars to AIG at the top, give fifty thousand dollars to that mortgage, bring it into line with its value, suddenly that thing's not underwater anymore.

It's like putting ballasts into a ship that's sinking, put the ballast in the ship comes up rather than just saying, all right, we'll buy you another fucking ship.

That almost seems too logical, though. That's right. That's kind of part of what's the problem with all this. But that's what I was saying.

Like, that's moral hazard. I was just like, I don't even know what to do with that.

Incentivizing bad behavior doesn't count when you're the ones who tanked the economy. I mean, it's like what you're talking about today. Like if someone tried to say that these small businesses that are going under because of the covid sanctions, because everybody's been locked down, rather, if those people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it's a great example why that analogy sucks, because, like, there's nothing to do, man. You can't work. There's nothing you like.

What do you want them to do? There's no opportunity. It's everything's shut down. If you go under at this time, it's not your fault. It's one of the rare times.

If I'm the government right now, here's something I could do that again, like it seems like. A simple solution, which is like just suspend and extend, yeah, so the country shut down, right. What's people's oftentimes biggest worry, my rent or my mortgage and then extend. You know what we're going to do a six month suspend. Nobody is going to. And if the landlords need to be helped out, that's where we'll focus. We'll make sure that the landlords don't go under from having to pay too much in taxes or having to pay too much in repairing, but attack the problem at its core, which is people's insecurity about their unemployed.

They have to still pay the rent and their mortgage or other bills. Let's take a big chunk of their not oftentimes from people. Mortgage and rent is one of the biggest, not just fucking Sangli, because you clearly have the wherewithal, the money. We're suspending and extending. Everybody, like, give people a chance to breathe just for a moment and for the landlords, I'm not trying to kick them over like. Give them some kind of rent, a real estate tax break or some operating expense to keep everybody, you know, it's almost like like you're a patient on a ventilator, like let's just keep everybody a fucking life till we get past this moment because they keep saying what we got to we got to reopen the economy.

We are the economy. Right. There is no corporations may be people, but these corporations still can't catch cold and we can. So I don't understand why they don't do something that seems simple and addresses like a real concern grassroots on the on the floor. Again, you're speaking to logically think it's it's just a it's such a difficult time, too, politically, because the the ideas get segmented into left or right. Right. Like even the ideas of how to address covid, how to address the economy, how to address all the everything becomes politicized.

And I think that's that's terrible. Yeah. That's it's really unfortunate because. Well, it's even yeah. It's it's it shouldn't be that way. And I'm not sure how it started that way. And it's really unfortunate.

There's got to be more emphasis on testing and there's got to be more emphasis on showing people how to keep their immune system healthy and then recognizing people that can't do that and doing what we can to protect them. They're going to wear masks.

Joe Rogan, and he's saying out loud, I'm going to wear masks now. I always been that was fucking with Bill Burr to try to get them different people really serious about that. I was like, what are you going to wear a mask? And I see Bill over there steam. And I'm like, here he goes. Here he goes. Like, I wear a mask whenever I go out in public because it's the law and I don't want anybody yelling at me.

But also when you decide, no, I get fucking excuse me, I get tested all the time to what's on a side note.

What a great is Birx. He's the best. I love him. He's so funny. He's so funny and so prolific. But here's the thing that I almost love even more ill just send me like a video of like a great drummer that he loves. Oh, yeah, yeah. I took it up, but he's really good, but I just love that he's so he's great and I love getting him wound up.

That's what I was doing with the whole mask thing. And I think I was like really arguing you shouldn't wear a mask or you're a bitch. God, it's. But that's also the problem with soundbytes on Twitter.

Yeah. It's you know, it exists. It's the content factory. And, you know, anybody that creates content, you know, then that goes out into the world and look, they're looking for eyeballs to. And that's why I always feel like. Like I should, but I can't complain about it, because that's part of the game, right?

That's part of the game. It's what I do for a living. So, like, when people say political correctness, it's overwhelming, just like it's just other people pushing back and getting to say their shit. And that's.

Exactly what they should be doing, the Internet as democratized outrage and there's more speech now than there's ever been before in the history of the world, like we all know what it's like.

What's the movie with a. Mel Gibson, where he knows what women what do you think? Yeah, right. So he had E.S.P. Twitter and the Internet is just we all have to go. And now we know what everybody is thinking. It's all every day we're just bombarded by what everybody's thinking.

Well, you're also bombarded by the people that spend the most time doing it because there's a lot of mentally unwell people that spend their entire day camped out on Twitter having arguments. And if you want to venture into that world and risk your consciousness and your health, your met your literal mental health by communicating in this really crude manner with text messages and, you know, arguing over semantics with people that you don't even know, it's a terrible way to exist.

Are you on Twitter? Do you have a daughter? I have a Twitter account, but I don't read it.

It goes no, I post things on inor on Instagram. They go to Twitter occasionally. I'll post things on Twitter, but I don't read it. It's just too toxic, man. I get it, you know.

And I know when I fucked up and I know when people are mad at me when it's legit and valid and I know when they're mad at me for nonsense. And I, I am my worst self critic, so I don't need other people yelling at me. I know what I did wrong.

I stay clear, healthy. I think that's the only approach you can have in this environment. I think it's a healthy way to look at it. And, you know, I always try and keep myself like you figure when people are coming at you, there's going to be something constructive in there. Sometimes I've been energy to, like, find it. And sometimes I'm just like, I really can't.

Yeah, sometimes you can't do it. But yeah, there's value in criticism. It's very important, but not too much. It's like anything else, like there's value in a little bit of snake venom. You develop a tolerance, but if you get a big fat dose, you're dead.

And it's in many ways it's the same with interacting with people that are upset with you. There's going to be people that are upset with everybody for no reason. No matter what the story is in the news, even if it's clear cut to you and I, there's going to be someone who has a violent opposition to that idea. It doesn't mean they're right and doesn't mean you're right. It just means people have a lot of different fucking ways of looking at the world.

And if you want to exist in conflict in perpetuity, stay on Twitter and stay on Twitter all day long and just argue with people. I don't want to do that. You know, and again, it's not that I don't have any room for improvement. It's not that I don't appreciate or accept or recognize the value of criticism, because I definitely do. It's that it's not healthy. It's not healthy for me. It's not you know, it could directly affect the kind of content I put out.

It's not good that that's what I was about to say. Do you feel like one of the hardest thing to do is to maintain your kind of creative barometer so that you don't let those kinds of things when you feel like they're not constructive, pulling too far to the outrage world or some other things like to maintain that. And that's why I think it's because, like what you do in terms of conversation, like you basically say. You know, I'm going to do long form because that, you know, feels like, at least from my perspective, the healthiest form.

Yeah, it is conversation, but is even in that case, people will take long form, edit things out of context. And then it becomes the same problem that we have with Twitter and with everything else. You get these little soundbites that these little video clips and you don't understand the full context of the conversation or what what was actually said. And then people get outraged at that. It's you know, it's we are living in a very strange time.

And I believe it's an adolescent stage of communication. And I think it's going to give our frustrations for this are going to give birth to a better form. And I think one of the things that podcasts, what it's in response to the popularity of the long form is in response to people being upset with like these traditional late night talk show things where there's a window here with one guy on the right and the window here with the guy on the left and his person in the center, and they're yelling at each other.

And then you cut to commercial and you don't really feel like things got resolved. So the response to that, where people have gravitate, it's it's theater.

Yeah, I think it was it hard for you? You know, when we came up with comics, it was also at that point, like it was sort of a gladiatorial environment, you know? And I remember, you know, the Boston scene, you know, was always like a tough scene. Yeah. You come up and it was kind of gladiatorial and but you had that audience and you develop kind of that thick skin. Is it hard to then make that switch?

In your mind, to this different form that so much more considered, so much less about? Conquering the stage. Yeah, it is about being open and is that something that for you? What was the switch for you from those two forms, because that's a that's an interesting switch. Well, in the beginning, there wasn't a very good switch. You know, it's like one of the reasons why the early episodes sucked. It's like I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't think anybody was listening.

It was just for fun. And there was a lot of just hanging out with comics and just doing what comics do if we're at a diner somewhere, just talking shit and making each other laugh.

But we were doing it and videotaping it. And then along the way, I started interviewing actual interesting people and talking to them and having conversations and not I don't you know, there's a place for comedy and then I don't I make a really big point in never trying to force comedy into places where it doesn't belong. That's I do that also with the UFC. When I do commentary, I'm never funny. There's no reason to be. It's not when my job is, you know, and then when I'm doing a conversation with someone, I just try to talk.

I don't try to be a comic. I don't try. I just I'm a human. I want and I want to know what they're talking about. And I want to I want to get them to expand upon their ideas as best as they can. And I want to be engaged. That's what I'm trying to do. So it wasn't that it wasn't that was a big transition. It was that I had to learn how to do this thing that I didn't think was a skill.

I thought that, like being on the radio or podcasting, you know, was just talking. That's what I thought.

So you just talking. And then I realized, no, no, no, you're talking in a way that people want to listen. You're making it entertaining. You're keeping your ego in check. You're you're moving the conversation along with not being overbearing. You're not letting people ramble too much where it's boring you. You got to figure out how to juice things up and push them and massage them and move them around. It's a skill. And I didn't think it was a skill.

And, you know, and like I said, that's one of the reasons why my early episodes suck so bad. There wasn't even any consideration to the fact that people were listening. It was just fun. We're just doing it for ourselves. And then along the way and this also speaks to the value of criticism. I read a bunch of criticism about what was wrong with the podcast. You know that I talk we talk over each other, I talk too much, whatever it was.

And I took it to heart and I would think about it. I'll go, OK? I got to consider that people are listening to this. This isn't just what I want to say. It's what I want people to hear and how I want it. Just like stand up. You want the joke to easily enter into a person's mind. So it's so well-written and so perfectly timed that the audience goes, Jon Stewart's got this. I'm just going to sit back and let him take my thoughts on a ride.

And that's that's what really good standup is.

I mean, it's one of the reason why Dave was able to do that 846 special that way, where he has this long, drawn out story with so many important points and a few laughs thrown in there, but so engaged. And it's he's so you just go with him, you just let him take you just let him take you. And that's that's everything. Whether it's someone giving a speech or, you know, I mean, even like just almost every conversation that we have, it's there's a skill to it that we're not taught.

I mean, you know what it's like to talk to someone where they're not even really talking to you. They're just kind of waiting for them to talk. They're waiting for you to finish so they can talk about themselves. That's that's a real problem with people and communicating.

And I had to learn how to I learned how to be a better communicator, really, and also how to be authentically you, because there is now like, I think the best measure sometimes of art or a standup or those things is when you hear things or see things that are uniquely that person, like nobody could have delivered eight forty six the day. Right. That's it. Just authentically, uniquely in your voice that you develop authentically, uniquely. And that's a hard thing to develop.

It's funny because I feel like that's what standup helped to do for me, because when you do that in front of an audience, even I'll give like Bosnia as an example, you know, when we'd be working next, you do that that run of Nix's like the Framingham and the other ones, you know, they go to the one in central Boston first. And I can remember. I hadn't played the room before, and I was I was a young and I just on Letterman, I think I'd gotten like a big break.

And so the guys at Nick's took me on that run, the headline of my first run on those Knicks problems. So I came into Knicks and they were just going to throw me up on stage. And what they did was so such a learning experience because you kind of think like I'm on Letterman. I'm just going to walk into this place. I'm coming up from New York, hotbed of comedy. I'm going to fucking strut my stuff and Knicks.

And they threw up before me, I think it was Lenny Clarke, Kenny Rogers and Sweeney.

And I walked in the room and it was like Dresden, like they had so blown that room out with brilliance. And then it was like and from New York, a Letterman guy, Jon Stewart. And it was it was like they were clubbing a baby seal, like I was just a man. They did that to everybody.

But so, like, wonderfully humbling. Yeah. And you is it makes you realize in a moment like, all right, I've got a shit ton of work to do. Yes. Like I mean, can you just murder it with brilliant shit and you're just like, oh boy.

Yeah. If you want to be humbled that the Boston comedy scene in the late 80s and the early 90s, that was the place to be. It was a great place to develop, too, though, because Lex, you know, I mean, you never want to be overconfidence. One of the worst things you could be in anything. And you never want to be lazy if you're especially when you're delivering something to people that are actually paying to see you talk.

Right. Like, man, there's such a such an important. Connection that you have to those people, it is got it, you've got to do the work, it's got to be your best version. And if you're not doing that and they know you're not doing that, they get angry at you. It's like it's the anger that an audience has towards a comic that's bombing is very difficult to describe. You know, like they're mad. They can do that, too.

They can talk to like, why the fuck are you talking? Like, if you're not and, you know, there's real valuable lessons to that as a coming up that you do apply to, whether it's podcasting or hosting any kind of a show.

Yeah, no, there's a fragility to it. And if you don't stay on top of it, you know, the energy that room is, it is a bear that will get up and walk out of the room if you're not careful. But it's interesting also there now. So, you know, now stand up when you're known versus stand up when you're not is also a different picture because you walk into a room when they know you and there is, you know.

You don't have to be a shark if you don't want to, because and that's a discipline as well. To make sure that you're not coasting on maybe some goodwill that they had for you based on something else that's very dangerous.

That's one of the reasons why the Comedy Store so important, because when I go there, it's not my crowd, it's my crowd. And, you know, Anthony Jeselnik crowd and Ali Wongs crowd and like, there's a lot of people, they're coming to see everybody. And so and you're going on after all these murderers. So it's when you're when you're in that kind of an environment, you sort of have to dot your I's and cross your Ts.

You've got to do the work right.

Are you still really involved in it? Because for me, you know, once I started the show and once I had kids, like, I'll really get to the clubs anymore. So it almost feels like old Timers Day when I show up like Shiota, you know. But I wish I wish I could get out there more every night, it'd be like eight o'clock and be like I should I should just drive up to the city and go work the cellar.

And then my wife will be like, Bachelor in Paradise isn't all right.

Yeah, well, the way I had been setting it up at the store was all my sets would be after 10:00 for the most part, except rarely, rarely I would do an 8:00 show so everybody would be in bed. So I'd leave my house and my set wouldn't be probably until 11:00. So I'd leave my house and everybody be asleep. And it was perfect. And I just and that's also my favorite time to write to. I would come home from the store and everybody be asleep, fire up a joint and sit in front of the laptop and come up with some ideas.

And it's I had it down to a science before the the lockdown right now.

Has the lockdown messed with your routine? Are you a creature of habit?

I don't know. I mean I mean, my comedy routine is certainly has. I don't know. I mean, I'm doing my first shows this weekend in Houston. I don't know what the fuck is going to happen. I don't know if I know how to do it anymore. It's going to be very strange.

Houston is like you couldn't go more into the belly of the beast like. Right.

Yeah, it's like it's like being on the surface of Venus, like it's off the charts with this, like, yeah, I'm going to go on stage at two bottles of Lysol and just, you know, girls do that thing where they spray perfume when they walk through it.

I can't do that with Lysol on stage a little bit on the outside.

I mean, I think it's really critical to strengthen your immune system. And I do a lot of things to do that. And I think that that's something that people need to really concentrate on. And I really wish that our elected officials were talking more about that and having speeches with doctors and doing the opposite.

You remember Michelle Obama tried to do like try to put kale in something and everybody was like, what? I'm sure I will go back to tater tots like that.

Well, yeah, I mean, just the science on vitamin supplementation and how critical it is for your immune system, particularly vitamin D, that that could literally save lives. And that knowledge is not secret that I was out there.

You did the those those episodes on the game changers. The change was and that was it was fascinating to watch because I watched that movie. And, you know, nutrition is also like diet is such an important part of what we do to ourselves that we that we don't think, and especially in a time of covid where so many people like you say, like when you see what this does to people with Type one diabetes or with other kinds of conditions that might be caused from either poor diet or lack of access to healthier options and things like that, you realize like shit, we've put ourselves in a very vulnerable position.

Yeah, very vulnerable. But how are you? Andrew Schultz had a really good point. He said this this pandemic highlighted the vulnerabilities both in our economic system and in our health system, like the way we are as human beings. What who who's vulnerable? The obese people, people with diabetes, older folks. I mean, it highlights all these issues where, you know, we we really need to concentrate on for the future. If you want more people to survive this, there is there are strategies that can be implemented.

And we really we really need to talk to people about just being normal stuff, being denied, being well hydrated, making sure you're not dehydrated, well rested, teach people meditation techniques is not hard to learn. Some breathing exercises that have been actually proven to increase your immune function. It's not hard to teach people about vitamin D and supplementing it if you can't go outside.

So how do you get people then to take action? Because here's the other thing you remember, like people's lives are hard. Yeah. You're dealing when you're talking about, like we talked about earlier, like economic inequality, you know, it's hard to go into an area where they feel like shit. I don't know where my next meal is coming from and be like, here's what we're going to do. We're just going to sit and breathe quietly for five minutes and everyone's going to know it's a really difficult it's like a hierarchy of needs, you know, how do you how do you work into the idea that those types of theories are actually important to the betterment of like in the stability of the larger part of their life when they're fighting so hard just to stay afloat?

Yeah, it's a that's an interesting point. And I think what you have to do is it has to be, first of all, told by people who are doing it successfully. So people that are doing it that like maybe were struggling with their immune system and turned it around and got healthier, like those people are the ones that the people that are in a bad position right now, they really respond to when it comes to there's an emotional connection with if you see some guys on the cover of Men's Health magazine, he's ripped and he starts talking about fitness, like, get the fuck out of here.

I can't relate to you. I'm never going to look like that. But if you see someone who is in this, the situation that you're in currently and they turned it around, you already look like that. Well, not me. But listen, I've been working out my whole life. I've never stopped. But if someone is fat, I'm talking from their perspective and they see some guy who's really thin and chiseled, then it's not going to make sense to them that they could ever be like that.

But if they see someone, there's a lot of really fantastic photos and Instagram and Facebook pages online where you can get inspiration from someone who actually stuck to a diet, actually stuck to an exercise routine, and then speaks really well about how much it improved, the way they feel, their emotions, their depression, all the aspects of their life. And that's, I think, one of the more like David Goggins is a great example that I use him all the time because he's this incredibly inspirational guy who is a Navy SEAL.

And at one point in time, he's 300 pounds, he's drinking milkshakes, and he puts those pictures of himself on Instagram all the time just to let people know, hey, I'm not some alien. I'm a person who is weak, just like you. I was lazy, I got fat. And then I figured out how to train my mind to be disciplined and I'd figured out how to be happier. And I think that that's really important for people to see that it's we're not in a static state.

We're all in a constant state of improvement and growth, hopefully, or deterioration if you're not careful.

But does that you know, the thing that I worry about those sometimes is similarly to economic distress. Does it make a person's health be a function of their virtue? Does it does it take something that is beyond a lot of people's control that isn't that a little bit of like a if you just pull your pants up, you could do it like. No, it's not it's not what it is on the way. I know what you're saying, but it's not it's I did this and I can show you how I did it and maybe you can do it too.

That's what it is. We don't have to look at. Every success is somehow another thumbing in the face of people who can't achieve a similar goal. But there are enough people out there that can that we should concentrate on that, because I think it will have a significant improvement on the overall health of us, again, as a community.

And I think this is really how we have to look at the United States and human beings on Earth in general. We have to look at each other as a bunch of people that could very well be neighbors. We're we're a community.

And if you're my friend and you were fat and you were willing to listen, and I used to be fat, too. And I can tell you, hey, man, this is what I did. I stopped drinking soda.

There are people there are people that are I mean, I understand the point there. And I'm look, I'm an advocate for plant based stuff. I think that's it's a healthy way to do it. But obviously, eating is such a personal experience that I hesitate to ever impart that in any other way. But. I just feel like. Sometimes for people, it's almost more debilitating for that mentality of. This is how you doing? Just got to get your shit together and go through this way.

I do think you have to present more options, but know that it's maybe more complicated and people can be overweight or whatever and be healthy. It's not necessarily, you know, something that's corrosive to them, but.

Well, it is, though. Being overweight is necessarily corrosive. It's not healthy for anybody. It's less healthy than being at an optimal weight. That's what's important. It gives you some sort of a burden. Whether that burden is sustainable is debatable. Maybe for some people it is. For some people it isn't. Look, some people can smoke until they're 90 and they're fine. Other people get pancreatic cancer like Hick's and die in their 30s. It depends wildly on the person.

But the idea that you can be fat and you can be healthy, I think is a dangerous narrative because you're telling people, listen, don't improve. You don't have to you can be healthy and be obese at the same time. But the medical science does not really support that. The more weight you lose up to a certain point, you know, but when you get to a healthy body mass, your body works better. It's really simple. It doesn't tax your immune system as much, doesn't tax your heart as much.

It's better for you. It's better for your joints.

It doesn't mean that we should ignore people that are overweight and, you know, pretend that, you know, they're they're not worthy or they're not they're not good folks.

I have a very emotional reaction that because I feel protective, you're nice over people and I just. Yeah, I think I know, sweetheart.

It's great. It's a good thing. No, it is. It's the reason why you're thinking like this.

Because we're talking. Right. We're talking about people doing well and you're like, fuck. What about the people who can't do well? Let's reach out to them and offer them an olive branch and. Yeah, I get it, man. I guess you're right. You're right. Look, I have very good friends that are morbidly obese and they don't want to listen. And there's nothing I can do. I just hug them when I see them. And, you know, I hope that one day they come to grips with it and they change, but they don't have to.

You know, you you live this life for a certain amount of time. And if you want to live it, eating cake and drinking beer, that's you. You do whatever you want. We're all on the end. In the end, we're all going to be in the ground. It's all pointless. Oh, wait a minute, we just had an hour long conversation about the optimistically taking this country and turning it around and very fatalistic all of a sudden.

Well, that's true. The end in the end, we're all dying. That's how that story ends. We're all dead. So the story what I don't want people to do is suffer and I want people to feel better while they're alive. And I think that's something that's missed in the message of health improvement. So you will actually have a better experience on Earth and it'll help you mitigate stress. It'll help you. It'll help you have better relationships because you won't be burdened down with a lot of, like, anxiety and stress that literally comes from a physical release of energy.

I look at the body like a battery, and I think that some people's batteries just overflowing with corrosive material because they never exert it, they never blow it out of battery. A battery is a bad analogy, but there's there's a certain amount of physical requirement. I think your body has to has. And if you don't give that that body, that physical exertion, it doesn't feel good. We've evolved to hunt and gather and build homes and survive from predators.

And we carry around all the burdens in our body of this past. And there's no getting around that. And you could either deny it and just deal with all the tension or you can exert your energy, find some way to calm your mind and live a life that's better.

Let me ask you a question, because now this is. I'm wondering because you're talking about sort of evolving to a place where everybody think like when you had James on and he was talking about. Do you have moral qualms about meat or do you not, like you say, know, we're hunters and and that like, is that ever an issue for you or is it purely a health issue or.

There's both things. There's a health issue. There is a moral qualm with factory farming. There's not a moral qualm qualm with help with hunting, because I know the reality of the life of a deer. If you don't kill that deer, it's going to die a horrible death from a wolf or a coyote or a mountain lion or whatever the fuck gets a hold of it. It's going to freeze to death. It's going you can either die quickly by the hand of a person you respect that life and nurture your body and the bodies of your family.

Our problem is disconnection more than anything. And let me tell you something. When the covid lockdown happened, I got more requests from friends and more requests for information about hunting and gun ownership. How do I protect myself and how do I feed myself and how do I grow food? Those were three really big questions that I kept getting from people.

It's funny, I have such a different perspective on it in terms of just the. The relationship between myself and I didn't have a big meat eater, big deli guy, pastrami and corned beef and all that, my wife got into rescue and these types of things. And we ended up with a farm with pigs and goats and sheep and things like that and. It became untenable for me to make that decision, you know, that that sort of that decision of I think you'll be better off if I kill you.

And it became it was something I could no longer manage once I knew the process of it. And that it was a hard it's been a very hard process for me. It's only been about four or five years. How is your health? I mean, I'm an old Jew, so baseline pretty much we don't age well to begin with.

How old are you now, John? We age a bit like avocados when you leave them out. I'm fifty seven.

I'm fifty two. So we're in similar boat.

Similar boat. Yeah. But I mean, it's hard to know. I feel good. You know, if you look at markers like cholesterol or blood pressure, those things, it's better. But like you say, I don't I don't know enough about how the body processes to know if I'm I feel better. The numbers say I'm better. But, you know, genetics, I'm sure, plays a part in it as well, but the funny thing is like.

I don't even think about it anymore, like, it just don't even think about it anymore. Well, once you get into a custom and once your gut biome changes, you know, you really get accustomed to whatever you're eating, good or bad, unfortunately. And that's one of the reasons why people have such a hard time quitting sugar and bread and pasta and things along those lines. So your body just craves it. That's what it wants. When you start eating healthier food, your body does great.

That can go off of meat and still be incredibly unhealthy. Like, you know, you can be vegan and just exist on Lay's potato chips, right? Yeah. And so it is, you know, and it's a tough road and the world is certainly not it's not built for that. And it certainly feels a little bit. A narrower lane. You have to do and I also think it's an incredibly emotional topic. Yes, very little. That's as emotional and personal as what people put in their bodies and how they eat and what they do.

And I'm always very respectful because I also I got no leg to stand on, man. I like this is what I'm doing. It feels better for me, but I. I always say like, but. It's such a personal and individual choice, and you everybody's got to do for themselves, the only thing I would say is like I do think it's important for people to get educated on it, to read up on, like you say, factory farming or what might be the, you know, nutritional cost of it, or what are some of the things that are in it or what be is it going to do to our community when, you know, we use so many antibiotics in the meat production?

That's the only thing I say is like trying to educate yourself to how your meal gets to your table. That's why I'm a huge advocate for like local farming and agriculture, because those are the people that just grow in their food and they're bringing it to your table. I find that incredible. But but I also don't I try not to take a position of judgment on people because I feel like that's unfair. But I think that's very wise of you.

And I think that there's a lot of people that share your position on animal death. And I think that's one of the more promising aspects of laboratory created meat. As long as it can be done in a way that's actually going to be healthy for us. It seems like there's some real science behind that and they're very, very close to releasing that on a large scale. So it would be actual meat that doesn't come with death, which is really fascinating.

Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about like the one that they had. I not like it's a tank and he pulls out, it's like twenty thousand dollars for a chicken breast just like they did that.

Yeah. It was really expensive at one point in time, but they've gotten it down to a burger now, like they can actually make a burger out of this stuff. And they feel like as this this technology improves, they mean essentially flesh when it's not good, when you if you could if you could still have the part of me that you like.

But it came without death.

Do you think you would make that switch or is that something that was certainly would with domestic animals that the difference between that and hunting? There's there's a conservation aspect of it. One thing that leads to protection of wildlife habitat is actually the money that comes from hunting tags and hunting equipment.

There's that there's also the the type of relationship you have with your food when you actually work very hard and hunt it and kill it is very different than buying food from a store.

And I would say similar in a similar way, growing food.

When you go to Whole Foods, sometimes you really got to stop that. You know, there's there's a lot that goes into the trip to Whole Foods. It's yeah. It's find a good parking spot.

That's right. Yeah, I get it. Growing your own food in your backyard is very satisfying too. And I would say to people like that's a micro cause I'm like it's a very micro form of what it feels like to hunt an animal and then eat it and feed your family for, you know, if I shoot an elk, I eat it literally for a year. So one animal death equals like a year of my meals. And, you know, there's also the moral high ground position.

You know, I think a lot of people love to look at the moral high ground of eating vegetables and only eating vegetables as being a superior way to live their life. And that's that's a good decision. I understand where you're coming from. I understand that there's people that look at life very differently than me. They maybe don't have the sort of fatalistic perspective, even though it's respectful. I have a very fatalistic perspective when it comes to just all organic organisms competing for resources and for for life.

These animals, I mean, I've run into them when they've killed each other. I've seen animals that have been taken out by other animals. I've come across their bodies torn apart by wolves in the woods. It's a wild, wild thing out there, man. And I think we're so insulated by it in in our culture of today that it's one of the reasons why veganism and all these things are becoming so attractive. I would hope that along with that, we're going to be nicer to each other, that we're going to be we're going to grow to be a kinder human race.

I really, really hope that.

Yeah, because I think it's about consideration. You know, for me, I think it was there was a certain part of consciousness that I never ascribed to animals to some extent. And it's funny because I always thought of myself as, oh, you know, I love animals. I always had dogs and cats. You know, you find a bird with a broken way and you stick them in a box. Two weeks later, he flies away in Europe.

But I never really ascribe, like, individuality to them. And I think that was the change for me was interacting. In an individual way with your farm on the farm, yeah, you know, I always tell my mother once, once we named them, but it's fine. Yeah, you watch them like they're playing. They'll play, are they? And it just changed my relationship to what I wanted it to be with animals. And it just made it untenable in that moment for me.

But I truly understand like that that is an. A really individualized, personalized experience that that that I made and like I said, I would love it for people to make that connection because I think it's profound. There is there is something about that connection for people that when they do see it, it's funny. I'll talk about the pigs and they'll be like, what are. They just eat everything, they're like, no, they're really playful, they're smart, did you belly rubs?

Yeah, it's it's but that was shocking to me. I didn't know that. I just thought, oh, it's like a blob of beings.

We're talking about nature, John, and there's nothing natural about a farm. That's part of the problem. I mean, it's all it's an animal prison and they're domesticated because we give them food and we kind of remove the the natural fear that they would have of any, you know, eyeball facing forward predator, which is what we are.

You know, what's interesting about to their health? Like what? Having our farm with sheep and goats and pigs and they're all rescues. It's like having a nursing home, like you can't believe the fragility of factory farmed animals like they are to be sick, like pneumonia, like genetically designed to gain too much weight for their legs. It really is, you know, the island of misfit toy, like they they are genetically modified or done whatever they've done.

And the health of these animals that are in our food supply that are a mainstay of our food supply is really suspect. Yeah, that's why the nursing home.

Yeah, that's why I prefer hunting. When if you're eating an animal that's a wild animal, you're eating an athlete.

I mean, they're they're sinewy and thick and they're strong and they've survived and they're so much more nutrient dense. When you're when you're talking about factory farmed animals, you're talking about I mean. Well, factory farm animals is the worst version of what human beings are capable of, that we're capable of ignoring suffering to the point we lock them all in warehouses, their piss goes down in a tunnel and fills a small lake up. And they've flown over these places with drones.

It's horrific, right? The pig farms in particular, they're horrific.

But when you're talking about what you're doing on your farm, like, of course, you can't eat those things. They're your pets. That would be I mean, you're naming them and feeding them and touching them.

And I extrapolate that now. So I, I think what happened was I went, all right, that's in the same way that, like, I love my dog. But if you have a dog, I wouldn't kill your dog because I look at dogs now in a different way. So I think I extrapolate to. The animal kingdom, in a way, a different I have it I feel like because of my wife and she's been she's a much kinder, smarter version of me, so.

Because of her kind of showing me that relationship and experiencing myself like it's just changed the way that I view it and that's been, and it kind of takes us back around to the earlier part of the conversation, because when you think about animal agriculture and you talk about those hog farms, where are they located?

They're located in the poorest neighborhoods. They locate and the environmental damage that they do is also damage that's done to poor rural communities that live around them. Now, I'm not suggesting that there's not economic there's an economic incentive and an industry around it and certainly not you. You don't just and industries. But reform, again, like it's sort of like George P. Bush said this. He was talking about Donald Trump because. I'm going to support Donald Trump because Donald Trump is the only thing standing between America and socialism and outside.

The only thing standing between America and socialism is an inability to meaningfully reform capitalism. And it's more damaging effects. And if we can do that, then the people take to the streets. I think reform, like Bernie was talking about those other guys that will save capitalism, that will save democracy by showing that we recognize that there is collateral damage to the systems that we use to gain wealth and to gain power and if we can reform those systems meaningfully.

For the people who suffer most terribly under them. We save it, but if we can't, the Bastille gets stormed like that's just what Kennedy say if you make peaceful evolution and possibly make violent revolution inevitable. Yeah, so we I think at some point we have to demonstrate the will and the stamina to be able to attack these problems. And that's why I'm voting Joe Rogan.

Yeah, no, I think everyone agrees, but everyone feels like their hands are tied. And again, I think that's one of the reasons why these protests and just this this whole explosion after George Floyd has been so transformative, I think because people recognize like this is a real moment of change. And, of course, opportunists and looters and all kinds of other crazy shit happened along the way. But it's it speaks to the fact that there's so many people in the street.

It speaks to this this like we can actually do something. Now we've got momentum. Let's keep it moving. Are you hopeful? Yes, I'm always hopeful.

I'm very optimistic, even though I have a fatalistic perspective, the exact same in these terrible times. How do you remain hopeful? And I'm like, because better people outnumber shitty people. Yes, a long shot they did. That's just the truth. They were sometimes powerless. Sometimes we may act out of fear or or whatever that is. But better people outnumber shitty people by a long shot.

And we were in an adolescent stage of our evolution as a civilization. It's growing and changing. There's never been a civilization like us today and we're growing and changing to try to suit our real sensibilities and to try to to try to get better at this fucking thing and not just accept this old crazy corrupt structure that's existed forever. Thank you. You know, you've put a little fire in the belly like this around doing the thing, but like I've really enjoyed I really enjoyed the conversation.

This man, I always enjoyed talking to you. I appreciate you very much. And I don't get to see you enough. All right, my friend.

And hopefully when this all ends, everybody can gather again at, you know, at the store and had a good set and talk some shit with each other and have some fun.

Let's do it, brother. Take care, my friend. And good luck with your film. Irresistible doubt when, Joe.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I watch it. Jon Stewart, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, my brother. Thank you, sir. Bye bye.

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