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Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. On InSketches. I could save for the air, but-We're on the air. Oh, we are on the air.Yeah, we're rolling. I just turned my monitor around because I could see myself and I didn't want to be. But what InSketches, I'll just open up with a Chapelle story because that's what everybody thinks they're doing. Dave would be watching himself on the monitor. And I'd be like, I don't know, man, just be in it. And then I'd tell the cameraman to turn around. He'd be like, Did Neil tell you to turn around? So he couldn't watch himself. It just felt like, If you're doing Rick James, maybe just be Rick James, not see yourself as Rick James.

Maybe it's affirmed as Rick James.

Well, yeah, Rick James would look at a monitor. Yes.

Absolutely. In that character, I would imagine. That's actually a good move. By the way, rest in peace, O.

J. Simpson. Oh, my God. Rest in peace, O. J.

We lost the juice today.

We love you, juice. We love you.

Sam Tripoli posted something on Twitter today. It was O. J. Simpson. It just said, I did it. He posted it on Instagram. But I guarantee you that that's fake. It looks like a fake tweet. Yeah.

I watched. There's a lot of fake tweets. It's a video of a compilation of Norm doing OJ jokes. It's 11 minutes. I watched it. I watched it and then went back and started. It's so glorious. It was so relentless.

He was so good.

He was so fucking funny. We're talking about OJ. No, Norm was so fucking funny and the glint in his eyes. Yes. Half the time, he was bombing on on SNL because it wasn't really his crowd, and he didn't care. He did not care, and he got fired for it.

Well, he had a view. He had a frequency that he was on. And comics loved it and the audience loved it, but it wasn't necessarily SNL.

Yeah. The audience's home liked it. Yeah, it's 11 minutes of Norm just like, and then this stare after the punchline as it's either working or not. It's just glorious.

That's skinny, Norm.

Look how skinny he is there. Yeah. The suit too big. And Yeah, they didn't. It wasn't well... It wasn't lauded within SNL. It was like his own guerrilla unit, him and this guy, Jim Downey, who wrote all of it themselves.

Well, SNL seems like they handicapped themselves. Like they're handcuffing themselves.

Back then it was- Less.

Less back then, but now for sure.

I haven't watched very much. Me and Jost are friends. I just haven't seen it in a long time. He's funny. Yeah, Jost is very funny. He's very funny. But I haven't seen it. I had a sketch that I wanted Jost. The week Shane got fired, whatever, unhired, I thought of a sketch, and I texted. I was going to be in New York, and I had an open-door policy at SNL where I could just write because I wrote there with Dave. I had a sketch idea for Joss where it was a couple is getting ready to... They're in bed and they're like, So any STDs you want to tell me about? And they're like, No, I'm clean. Any podcast?

We wrote, and then it was like, I did one.

It was a good idea about Shane, but whatever. Then we wrote it, and then it got shelved. My saying it was some of the people at the show didn't appreciate this. Then I was hoping Joe... I was going to text Shane and be like, Hey, there's a sketch you should do, but I don't want to be like, you know, advocating.

There's room for a show like... Well, Gillian Keves is that. Have you watched Gillian Keves?

I think I've seen a couple of these sketches.

Fucking amazing. It's fucking amazing. It's underappreciated. Within the Gillian Keves fans, it's really appreciated, but the mainstream does not know how good those sketches are. He does OnlyFans' Dad, a dad who needs to make money. And so he does OnlyFans. It's fucking insane. It's insane. He does this Trump speed dating sketch.

Oh, my God. Oh, that one I think I saw.

That was very good. They're so good because it's Buck Wild. Because they're on the internet and Patreon and get away with doing whatever the fuck you want. And it just has to be funny. But that's really, you can't do that anywhere. If you're on a network television, you're dealing with so many executives. They're all terrified and everyone's scared and everyone's ideologically captured. There's certain things you can't joke around about. It's like, God, there's so much ground you can't cover. You handicap yourself. You just handcuffed yourself.

Well, it's also the As two aged men who have seen many parts of many eras of show business, it seemed... The whole thing has got the... Tv now feels like a 78-year-old woman who still thinks she's fine. It's like, Bitch, you're not fine no more. You don't got to carry yourself like everyone wants to fuck me. It's like, Not really. You have all I like the props from whenever women want to fuck you, but there's a lot of other women out here now, and they still think they haven't really adjusted. They can't. You know what I mean? How do you reduce network television? How do you reduce late night TV? How do you reduce sketch shows? It all still has to be what it always was.

The format is just so restrictive. The fact that you have to break for commercials, the fact that you have a specific amount of time, all that That is just you can't compete with the internet because of that. You just can't. Then you have all the meddling. I mean, you've done a workshop, you dealt with Comedy Central. It was fucking insane over there. It was insane trying to tell them what is funny and what is not funny.

I will say after six episodes of Chappelle show, they actually said, I believe the quote was, We don't understand your show. So just do whatever you want. They really said, We don't understand your show.

Because it's funny.

Right. Because it was really funny. That was the thing. We did the sketch, The Mad Real World, and one of the execs said, It's a collection of unfunny scenes back to back. I was like, Well, could we at least show it to the audience? Do you mind? Then we showed it and it crushed. Of course. Then I got in the execs' ear. I was like, I heard what you said about this. She was like, Hey, Neil, take it.

Oh, they were bad.

Because I was-Attached to it. I was attached to it, and I was also very… I knew it's with any of these things, you, Dave, anyone who's the star of the show, they're jumping out of the plane. Let them pack their own shoot. You know what I mean? You're jumping out of the plane. If you don't want to say it or you're not confident in it, then you shouldn't have to say it. And they wanted to pack the shoot the way they thought a parachute should be packed. And it's like, no, they'll let the jumper do it. And if it doesn't work, then you guys can get it.

It's really like someone who's watched surgery who wants to cut. It's so dumb. It's so dumb. They don't know what they're doing. And their instincts are almost always wrong. And if they're lucky, they find someone who's really good who can work around their nonsense and still create a quality show. But a lot of the times, it just gets in the way so much that you get 60%, 70% of what you could have had.

Yeah. You got to also hope that the audience overwhelms the network, meaning South Park got off to a hot start.

Well, South Park was South Park before Comedy Central was Comedy Central, right?

Yeah, they made a video.

Comedy Central, they were a little wilder back then. Comedy Central was the renegade. Then South Park became so undeniable. You had to just leave them alone. They were so good. You just had to go, just shut the fuck up and leave them alone.

Yeah, and that has to happen. It happened with Shapel show pretty quickly. After the Blind White Supremacy, there was first episode today, they were like, Oh, and then the ratings were good. They tried to meddle, but they're your heart wasn't in it?

It hit a cultural landmark. It hit this thing where Shapel show was the show. It's like, When is it on? When is it on again?

Whereas The Man show was more like, Doing pretty good. I think maybe Maybe we can help it somehow. Or you either want to... You just have to succeed the big way, and then they'll stop.

Yeah. It has to be so undeniable that they have to get out of the way. You have to actually say that. You got to get out of the way. Leave us alone. If you don't leave us alone, we're not going to do it. That's the only way to do it. It's like that format is just so limiting. That format was all that existed. That was the essential format for television. It was the only way to do it. You had commercials, you had an 8:00 PM time slot. This is all simple. You have 44 minutes with commercials. Do it.

What would you do if you were the owner of the BBC? You know what I mean? I don't know what these companies should do. Comedy Central is basically a production company now. They're doing the right thing, I think, in switching to streaming.

It's just a matter of being able to get enough quality stuff on streaming and get people over there. So they're going to have to shell out a lot of money for big properties. And they've done that with Disney's done that and Paramount's done that. And a few of these viable streaming platforms have managed to make really good shows and put them on streaming. And they can still do that. There's shows like Shogun, which is just fucking so good. But it exists in both. It exists in streaming and on television, and they make it for that. You still You have the commercial breaks, but when you watch on streaming, you just get the full episode.

Yeah. I also think there's probably very little input from advertisers, meaning if something's popular, people will just want to advertise on it. They won't give a shit what the message Is it family hour? Does this line up with Proctor and Gamble's values or any of that shit? It's just like, Yeah, are there eyeballs? Let's go.

Yeah. But even then, there's people that try to push back. Even against Shogun, there was this thing about, Why aren't there are no black people on Shogun. What do you think it's about? It's about Japan. It's like, what are you talking about? It's about I thought it was about guns. Japan, the 1600s. What the fuck is wrong with you? This is exactly what it is.

Yeah, I hope that didn't get very far.

No, it doesn't get far, but it's like they try, and that's the indicative of the pressures that those people feel behind the scenes. Because behind the scenes, it's all a bunch of grifters. It's all a bunch of network executive grifters that are all just working a DEI angle, and they're trying to make... Where's the diversity? How many times you've had pitches where you bring it in, they're like, Where's the diversity?

I don't have that problem because I generally come with a diversity. I am Mr. White diversity, but I hear you. The DEI, behind the scenes shit, I think that they're scared. They're just like, What's the latest priority culturally? Then they go like, We have to service that priority, or I'm going to get in some trouble. A hundred %. And they don't know. They're just blowing in the wind.

And they're so expendable. You can move network executives around like chest pieces. Just move them around. Chess? That overstates. Yeah, not even chest pieces. It's not even tic-tac-toe. Just move them a lot. They don't matter. They really don't matter. Basically, anybody could do that job as long as you have good quality television. As long as the people that are making it, the Paul Sims of the world, the people that make really good shows, just leave them the fuck alone and they'll make great things.

That's the thing I always wanted to say. It's like, My standards are higher than yours.

Well, you actually understand it.

I want to bomb less than you do. I don't want this to go poorly. I understand that it's because they're basically back seat drivers, they are extra over cranked. But I'm more worried than you. I'm, again, jumping out of the plane. Let me pack the parachute. But that's That's not why they moved to LA.

Well, they also want to make their mark on everything.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

They want to jizz in the soup every chance they can.

There was a thing I remember when we were doing Half Baked, I wanted to say, Hey, let us do what we want, and then at the end, we'll pass around a hat and you guys can take credit for something. Like, Oh, the title. Okay, that's not bad. The cat. Just let us do the fucking thing. But they want to do the fucking thing.

Yeah, always.

They want you to get started. You get this started, and then I'll come in and be a producer. I'll be what I imagined a producer was. But they don't have any original. But the good news is, you defeated them. I mean, podcast, YouTube, et cetera. It's like they're on there. It's hard not to curb-stomp them.

Well, it's just they almost can't compete with the instantaneous access, the free access. You can get it anywhere. Get it on your phone, get it on a tablet, get it on your computer, you get it anywhere. And it's available anytime you want it. You can pause it, you can leave. You don't have to wait for a time slot. You can watch all of them when they come out. It's just that format that exists, like the Netflix format of releasing the entire season of show. You can't compete with that. People love that. They love binging. They love it. They love the fact that it's available anytime you want it. They love the fact there's no commercials. All that shit is just trapped. And if I was a network executive, if I was at the top of the food chain, I would be really thinking, Is there another way to do this? Does it have to be this way? Does it have to be commercial breaks? Because nobody watches those. They're not good. They're not funny.

Okay, but I've heard, and I haven't experienced because I haven't made a show at Netflix other than standup, there are things that they need you to hit certain shit by minute 10. The end of every episode has to be a cliffhanger. Oh, really? That's what I've heard. I haven't experienced firsthand. As a show creator, I wonder if there is an imperative to want it. You want to know the information in terms of when do people turn the shit off? When do it will... I heard something like, if they watch the first three, then they'll watch 10. You have to... So they're like, Front load the first three with plot, character, maybe sex. I don't even know what the... I'm talking out of my ass a little bit, but I do know that they have information. So it's a formula. Yeah, that they want... It's like, you want people to watch your shit or not? In my news special, 53 minutes because I don't need it. I've never been like, Oh, good. It's an hour 20. It's never It was better longer to me.

53 minutes is perfect. Yeah.

It's perfect. I move jokes up. I was like, That joke... It's like when you do the live show, the first really big laugh laugh. In my live show, it was probably at, I think it was at 11:00. In Netflix, I moved it up to seven or eight. You know what I mean? Just get it in there quick. The big, big, like, Oh, fuck. A different energy laugh. Move it up.

That's weird, though.

But I get it. It's a four. I'm meeting them where they are.

Do you know what I mean? I know what you're saying.

I don't feel like I'm selling myself out or the integrity of my act. It's like, That's just how I did it.

You're just formatting it for this very specific system as opposed to a live show, where you're setting things up.

Yeah, and at a live show, they can't go anywhere.

They're there because they want to be there.

At home, they can watch everything ever recorded.

Yeah, right.

I'm competing with everything that's ever been made, The Godfather.

Yeah.

Can I beat... Is this better than The Godfather?

Apocalypse Now. Yep. He It's all right.

That's right. Rocky.

Rocky. Anything. All of it.

And every comedy special. Every one of them. And Norm. And OJ. And Patrice.

Yeah. Everything. All the old stuff, all the new stuff, everything all together. It's an It's an insane time for your attention. Try to captivate people's attention now. It's an insane proposition. There's just so much available.

What's funny is you… It's not even the Tortoise and the hare. You just haven't changed. You're just like, I don't know. I just talk for fucking three hours.

Well, this is what I did in the beginning, so I just keep doing what I do. I do it because I like doing it this way. In the beginning, Ari was the first one. He was like, You got to edit it. You have to edit it. No one wants to listen to three hours. I'm like, Then don't listen. It's that simple. I don't care. I'm just going to do the best thing that I can do, do it how I feel like doing it, and that's it.

Yeah, but you know that doesn't work for most people most of the time.

Most of the time, it doesn't work, but it works.

I'm not even saying... You know it worked. But I'm saying, do you ever think about why or do you even give a shit?

It's none of your business. I think if you think about why, you'll second guess your own instincts, and that's never good. Because they've been good to me so far. I I know what I'm... I just stick with me. I know what I like. And if I'm actually genuinely interested in that thing, this subject, I think other people will as well. If I bring on someone who's a beekeeper, I don't think, Wow, this is going to be a big episode. All I think is, I'm interested in bees. I'm going to talk to someone who's really interested in bees. Tell me, how do you do it? What's going on?

What is your... Do you look at which episodes do well? Or you just firewall it? None of your business.

None of my business. Yeah, I don't care. I don't pay attention. I mean, I know. I I hear. I hear this one's huge, this one's huge, whatever. I don't pay attention. This is what I'm interested in. I want to talk to this guy. I had Paul Stamets on yesterday, a mushroom expert. Amazing.

It's a good fucking guy. He's got his own protocol.

I know. That's his stuff right there. Host defense.

Is this psilocybin? No, no, no.

That's a agarricon and turkey tail. That's his immune stack that he uses. There's all sorts of medicinal mushrooms that no psychoactive effects.

And is any of this stuff proven?

Yeah, there's peer-reviewed studies, random controlled trials, double-blind placebo-controlled styles with the Garecon. Yeah, we talked about that yesterday, too. Yeah, he's a real scientist. So the stuff that he does is very, very legit. And he's also very diligent in the way he sources the mushrooms. They test them, find out which ones have efficacy, which ones don't. Because you can have, he was explaining that at Garecon, they've identified he has 107 strains that he has, personally. And out of those strains, they've identified at least four of them that are the most hyper beneficial, and they haven't tested them all. But those four, then that's the ones they sell. Great. Yeah. Then some of them are different from different things. Some of them are better for poxviruses, where other ones are better for RNA viruses. It's very interesting. Very interesting what they've done.

Good. I mean, yeah, This shit, it's cool. We have lived in a time with a good amount of change. Yeah.

Oh, there's a lot of change. There's a lot of change going on.

For better and worse.

Yeah, I don't know how much worse. There's a lot of confusion, but I think ultimately there's more information, and that's always better, and there's more freedom of communication, although there's a lot of attempts at restricting freedom of communication. There's still more avenues of communication than there's ever been for, which is almost always good.

And we've talked about this before, but the trusting that people can figure it out?

Yeah. Well, they have to learn to figure it out, just like people had to learn what things to eat that are poison and what things are edible. You have to learn that. And we have to learn that with information. We have to learn that with everything. We have to learn that with styles of communication. We have to learn that with people that are really shitty to people. People don't like that. That's not necessary. Learn that. People need to learn that. And we People need to learn that. That's how you learn it. You learn it by watching people get ahead, but just by being cunts, and they don't go so far, and the audience turns on them. And recognize that some people are just communicators, and you're just calm and nice, and that's better. You could still get all the same information and still have interesting debates and conversations. You don't have to be a cunt.

Because I think about, I'm not very... I feel like you're paranoid, or not paranoid, you're skeptical of control, right? Yeah. I always go, Why am I not skeptical of control? Compared to you or compared to a guy like Dave, who's also very skeptical of any authority or institution. I was thinking, I'm so glad to not be under the Catholic Church anymore, that everything is better. To me, the government, I don't give a fuck. I truly don't... Apple, you want to listen in? Good. I don't give a shit. You can't send me to hell. I don't even care if you overhear me. This is better than the way I grew up. But I'm skeptical. It's one of those yin-yen things where I'm skeptical of too much information chaos. I'm sure This will be probably the balance of the next at least 20 years.

Well, information chaos is also engineered, and that's one thing to take into consideration, that information chaos is not always organic.

I agree. And then what about that? If Russia, China are enemies, in quotes, wink, wink, whatever. Dave made a point that if If a country has racial divisions anyway, and then an outside actor foments them, it's the country's fault for having them in the first place. It's like, Yeah, but that's bullshit because if There's a marriage that is having trouble, and then someone comes in and fucks with it. That's the outside person's fault because the married people want it to be good. Do you know what I mean? America is going to have conflict naturally, and I think it's natural to to have that, and it's okay to have that, and we need to figure that out. But once the outside actor comes in, I still blame the outside actor for fomenting. I feel the same way with the information stuff. I'm with you in terms of, We do need freedom, but I still blame the outside actor for coming and creating more chaos.

I think it's an unavoidable evil. If you're going to have freedom, you're going to have the freedom of bots. You're going to have the freedom of people that hire people in these troll farms where they have thousands and thousands of accounts, and they just push different narratives, and they get involved. We had Renee DiResta on once who studied this, and one of the things that she studied about what are the things that Russia had done during the 2016 election was the creation of memes. Some of them were really funny. They were memes that were very specifically designed to push certain narratives and make fun of certain things, and that they had made so many accounts, thousands and thousands of They had actually organized a Texas secession meeting across the street from another meeting they organized.

I know. That shit was... It's so like Monty Python.

A Muslim meeting, yeah. They wanted these people to be fighting with each other. They do that online, constantly. There's so many times, well, I'll see something that's contentious, something that's socially... Something that's very explosive. And then I'll look in the comments and I'll see some outrageous statements. And it's like a couple of letters and a number for the account, and I'll click on the account, and I'll go into, Oh, it's a fake account. How many of those are there? There's fucking hundreds of thousands, if not millions. There's an FBI analyst that did an estimation, and he thinks that there's 80%. He thinks 80% of the Twitter accounts that are in circulation, at least at the time, were trolls. Yeah.

That would be That's part of the information chaos that I'm a bit like, This is going to be bad. It's bad now, and it's probably only going to get worse with AI and all that shit. But I don't know what the... I don't know if we talked about this, but If there was a governing body, let's say, over all of social media morality or whatever, or ethics, who would you even put on it?

You can't. It can't be done. It can't be done because the government can't be trusted because they're doing it.

Right, but let's say the people elected it. Do you know what I mean? If there was a way to get around the government. It's not possible. John Stuart.

Yeah, but people would have access to that. John Stuart couldn't talk about China on Apple, so he got- Right, he left. He left. Yeah, it doesn't work.

No, I'm with you. That's corporate. I'm saying who are even I think the solution is more complex.

The solution is- No, go on. The solution is technology ramped up to a point where lying is impossible. I think that is going to be tight. You're going to be able to have opinions, But lying about specific facts, I think, is going to be far more difficult with widespread use of AI and also when people have universal ability to translate languages instantaneously. Instantaneously. Right now, it's a little clunky. You could read tweets, and you could say, translate the tweet. You can do things like that, but you don't necessarily know what the fuck is going on. When it's universal, when you're going to have instantaneous translation into that. It's going to be far more difficult to deceive people when you have instantaneous access to AI, which is as long as the AI is not biased, which we've seen, AI is programmed, and the Google AI founding fathers.

We talked about this eight years ago when I pitch Robo President. Then it became, if there's an AI president, then the thing that's going to be argued about is what information are we loading in?

Right. What are the values that the AI has? Is the values for the human race? Is the values for New York City? Is the value for the country in general? Yeah. What is the values? What is its imperative? What is it trying to do. But the thing is, that's rudimentary AI. As AI scales up and gets far more advanced, and it's going to happen very quickly. It's going to bypass all that stuff, and it's going to come up with some a moral, ethical foundation that everybody is going to have to operate under. It's going to be very weird, Neil, and it's going to be very weird, very quickly.

I totally agree with you. I completely agree with you. I mean, in some ways, whenever I hear AI, I'm like, Help us AI. When they're like, It may obliterate us, I'm like, But if it doesn't, please help us AI. Please help us get out of all this garbage we've gotten ourselves into.

Yeah, it could both help us and obliterate us. It's going to be a wild ride.

It's going to be a wild ride. When do you think it'll be?

Four years at the most. In four years, we're fucked. In four years, everything's tossed. Everything's fucked. I mean, there's so many things that we let slide today that you're not going to be able to let Congressional insider trading slide. It's going to be a real problem. You're not going to be able to have bills where you have a border funding bill that also has funding for Ukraine. There's all that stuff is going to have to go by the wayside.

You think AI will prevent that? Yeah. How come?

Well, because people will be able to analyze everything about every bill instantaneously. It's not going to be as simple as you have to sit down and read a 2000-page bill. It's going to be AI is It's also going to break it down, and it's also going to break down who the people are that propose the bill, and then also what the influences these people have in terms of who their donors are. You're going to get very specific breakdowns of what all these things are, and people will be far more informed.

My feeling on that is that people, in some ways, are informed, and we're all powerless to change it. There's a little bit of that right now. Do you know what I mean? Citizens United or Dark Money or Astro Turfing or or pork and bills or tying things together or emergency. It's just all this shit of like, how the fuck are we supposed to even move the needle at all as people? At all. It seems impossible the way the shit's set up.

Yeah, it definitely does now.

Ai doesn't seem like, Oh, I don't think the problem is a lack of understanding. I think the problem is the system set up so that the only way to get a law made is getting a building named it. You got to have $10 million.

Yeah, there's a little bit of that going on, too. There's no way to run for president unless you have hundreds of millions of dollars backing it, which is just insane. It's insane. It's insane. Money and politics.

There's no way to run for Senate without a hundred. You're not a hundred. Right.

You're getting a job, it's $150,000 a year, and you're spending hundreds of millions.

People in the primary have a hundred. Sweetie. Isn't that nuts?

Yeah, Yeah, it's insane. People like Nikki Haley that had no chance of being President, had hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah.

That's just like, Oh, fourth runner up. Congratulations. Yeah. That's one of those things we're like, How does AI help us? Supreme Court's locked in for as long as they live. Fucking insane. Until you die. A sci-fi star chamber. Until you die. Wow. That's a horrible idea.

It's not even dependent upon whether or not your ideas they even make sense. Did you see Ketanji Brown Jackson? They asked her what a woman is, and she said, I'm not a biologist. Right, but you're a woman. Maybe take a crack at that.

You know what's funny is because you go more right, you go to her and I'm thinking Alito. Did you see what's... Whatever.

Well, I'm just talking about one specific thing that's ridiculous. If you ask me what a man is, I can tell you what a man is. I'm not a biologist either. I am a man.

Yes. I do worry about... To me, it's not even a lack of information. Sometimes it's a lack of information. I mostly think It's rigged against the people. It's rigged against the citizens to not have any say in any of this shit.

It definitely is somewhat. But you also do need someone who actually understands the law to withhold the Constitution, to uphold it, and to make sure that you don't pass things that do violate very core tenets of how our society is structured. What did Alito do?

Oh, I don't know. Just as a liberal, it seems like those guys want to get.

I'm pretty liberal. I'm just liberal what a liberal used to be.

Right. No, that's what I'm saying. You learn more, lean more right.

I learned at this point. I don't even lean more right. I lean more center, which is right now. The left has gone so far to the left. It's gone so this strange territory, this bizarre land of cult-like thinking.

It's very strange. It's driven by the... It's everyone's afraid of upsetting It's the tyranny of the minority. No one can say, Hey, do me a favor, shut the fuck up, or we're going to lose all of this. If we make this about just your minor grievance or issue, we're going to lose the whole thing. But it becomes about the various DI or transgender or whatever, all these things that are not unimportant, but they're just not the most important. You're not allowed to say to someone anymore, your shit is not the most important thing. Because of the ego mania of our culture, everyone's issue is the number one issue. It's like, no, it's the number one It's an issue for you, but it's not the number one issue for half of the population of the country.

Well, it's also the thing is if you oppose any of these protected ideas, you get attacked. You get attacked and labeled as the worst thing possible, whatever that is.

When you agree with them in 99% of other issues. But because they just prioritize, it's just this thing of like, no, it's like the kids playing soccer where it's just running a bunch of... This is the most important thing. It's like, Is this really? Then you can't go, The fuck are you talking about? You have to go, Yes, I honor. You have to start bowing, and I honor. You have to do the Nancy Pelosi down on a knee with the Kente Club. It's like, No, that's an important issue. It might not be the most important issue. Then they go, Well, then we're going to withhold our vote. Oh, really? You're a fucking child. You don't understand the way politics work if you're going to withhold vote because of one issue. It happens, and it's also a revolving thing of like, We're going to withhold because of Israel. We're going to withhold because of transgender. We're going to withhold because of DEI. We're going to withhold on and on. As someone who is on their side, it's a bit like, Oh, please shut the fuck up because you're going to blow this for all of us.

Well, each party becomes captured by the most extreme versions of it. You look at the right, the right gets captured by... People think of the right, they think of Proud Boys or something like that. Or guns.

The left, they think of a. Or now abortion, yeah.

There's always something. There's always something that's ridiculous.

Then it turns out that the Republican stats on abortion are like, 55% of Republicans think abortion should be illegal. You know what I mean? It's like, Well, then how the fuck did they... Because it's almost like they always say about Republicans, they're like the dog who caught the car. They use abortion as a driving issue thinking it'll never happen. Then it happened. They're like, Oh, fuck. I guess Arizona goes, Okay, we're Going back to 1864 or whatever, it's a law from the 1800s that they upheld two days ago.

Well, it's always interesting how ignorant people are about the rest of the world, too. I'm going to Europe where women have the right to choose. Well, go to France because they have a limitation there, too. I think it's a national limitation.

No, no one ever looks it up. Also, try to get a citizenship. How are you going to do that? How are you going to do it? Look it up once, but they haven't looked it up. I've been doing a joke about how American women are like, American men are the worst. I'm like, Who do you think is coming? Who's coming? Italian guys, first of all, they're bringing their moms. That's A. And B, you're going to have to start cooking dinner at 2:15 every afternoon. I hope you're happy.

Well, that's the least of your words. Sharia law.

I mean, that's the ultimate punchline. It's like, Middle Eastern guys, I'm not even going to finish this joke because they don't have the best sense of humor about their... Yeah, but if you look up genital mutilation, it's really grim in terms of what these other guys are out here doing, ladies. Not like us, American hero men. No, but it really is like a pretty... People don't look it up. They like sulking.

Yeah, but also there's so many issues that most people are just not informed. They just know what their side goes with, and so they adhere to whatever the doctrine is.

I remember looking up abortion laws worldwide four or five years ago and I was like, Oh. It wasn't as blanket as I thought.

Well, Burr had the best bit on that. I think you should have the right to choose, but I also think you're killing a baby. Yeah. I mean, at a certain point in time, it is a baby. It's The question is who gets to decide.

That's the whole thing of when... Because I did a joke like, Liberals have to support everybody, not fetuses. The New York Times wrote me up like, I just saw Neil Brennan do an anti-abortion joke, and it was like, joining Bill Bur and George Carlin. I was like, Are you trying to insult me? Because thank you for that fucking barbed insult. But yeah, even knowing when, even if you go, No, I believe it doesn't start, it's all scientists, it's like the heartbeat or the fetal, whatever. It's all a bit like you're all guessing. I'll admit I'm guessing. It's just which guess suits my needs. Do you know what I mean? If I got a girl that I'm I'm not trying to be with who's pregnant, who's periods late, I'm like, I believe in abortion to the fifth trimester. I believe in it late. Whereas if I'm 65 and can't get somebody or whatever, probably can't get someone. Sixty-five. Sixty-five or whatever, whatever age, there is no age of- Al Pacino just had a kid.

Al Pacino is 80 years old.

I know. Fuck.

Eighty years old. Yeah. He also wanted to make sure the kid was his, which is a great way to start.

Somebody I know was doing pickup at school with De Niro. Recently, it was just like, I can't believe you're still doing this.

Well, isn't this is like, I mean, how many times has he been married. These guys just dive right back in.

Yeah, I've never understood that. I've never understood that need. Rupert Murnaugh just did it. Rupert Murnaugh just got engaged.

I think they're just comfortable with having a partner, and they just don't want to exist in this weird state where they're texting people and calling people, especially when you're in your 70s.

You're trying to hook up. Don't get me wrong, it's humiliating. Right.

I bet if you're a '70-year-old famous guy and you get divorced, I bet it's probably pretty easy to find someone new who plays the role and probably pretty easy to get duped.

Pretty easy. Yeah, because they know. If I'm the girl, I'm like, I just got to ride this baby out. Yeah.

All you have to do is just be the right person that this guy needs for a small amount of time, and you don't have to work ever.

Ever again.

Ever. If you're a person who's running around there scratching out 60, 70 grand a year and barely getting by, and then you hook up with Robert De Niro.

In order to change your life, you need to stand in Robert De Niro's eye line with what my friend calls available sexual energy.

Yeah, available sexual energy and just be nice. Just be nice to him. That's all he needs. Just talk to him.

You're candy-striping.

Yeah, you don't have to work hard. Just don't be offensive. Don't be rude. Don't fuck with him. Don't insult him. Don't play the same games that you'd play with a 30-year-old guy that doesn't have any money. No. Play a different game.

If he doesn't text you back, it's because he doesn't know how to text, sweetie, because he's a fucking old dude.

Or he doesn't have his glasses, so he can't see what you wrote him.

A lot of this. I know. Yeah. That's the sad part about being our age is anytime I go look at this meme, all my friends have to put glasses and start holding. Exactly. I'm just thinking, Fuck, Christ. Fucking humiliation.

You can mitigate some of that. There's certain vitamins that you could take that stop macular degeneration. Pure encapsulations has macular support formula.

But does it work?

It's legit. Yeah, it stopped it. It stopped it for me. For you? Yeah, it totally stopped it. Totally stopped it.

Do you wear glasses, contacts?

I can. Yeah, I wear glasses when I write. I wear reading glasses when I write, but I can at my phone. No problem. I could read websites.

No problem. Did it get better or it just stopped?

Got a little better. Yeah, a little better with red light, too. Red light therapy. You have a red light bed that I lay in.

Are your eyes open?

Yeah, you keep your eyes open.

You're laying in a bed?

Yeah, it's just staring at red light. It's just chilling. Usually, I just listen to books.

Yeah, I would like to do that because it gets worse. It's just gets... It's such a bummer.

Harry got surgery. He got Lasix on his eyes, and then his eyes got worse after the surgery. They got better.

That can happen sometimes, right?

You have the natural course of macular degeneration that takes place as you age. His eyes were great at first. This is great. I don't have to wear glasses anymore. Then a couple of years later, five, six, seven years later, starts getting really shitty again. They go, Yeah, that's just what happens.

Yeah, I think that happened to Bill Maher, too. It got worse. He kept getting LASIK. Maybe I'm remembering this wrong. Then at a certain point, they're like, We can't LASIK you. You just have to wear glasses. That's scary.

Getting more and more eye surgeries is fucking terrifying.

Yeah, that's probably the one that makes you wince the most. Because it doesn't- Those videos?

It doesn't go well every time. There's certain times where people get infections or it just doesn't heal right.

Or your eyes are fucked. You have a halo around lights and shit. Oh, yeah.

I have a friend who can't drive at night. He got Lasix, and now he can't drive at night.

I think I would murder the doctor if that happened to me.

He was so upset because he's like, I could have driven at night and just worn glasses when I had to read things. He goes, Now I can't drive at night. Because if the headlights see him, it's just like he's blinded by halos. He can't see it around the circle. He doesn't know where the car is, where the headline is. He just sees this circle of light that surrounds things, like headlights and streetlights. Just terrible.

Yeah, that would make me That would make me feel so sorry for myself if I went for surgery and was worse off.

Yeah, that's a problem with some surgeries. The problem with surgeons is that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That's the only solution.

Yeah, that's most...

I've had a bunch of surgeries that I avoided where the doctors were like, You're going to need surgery. I was like, Are you fucking sure?

Are you sure? Nees, shoulders, shit like that.

Shoulders is the big one. I want to I was getting stem cells in my back. I had bulging disks, and they were like, You got to get that trimmed. And I was like, Are you sure? That's the only way to do it. It's not the only way to do it. What did you do? Spinal decompression, stem cells. Fixed it. I have zero problems. Really? Yeah, zero problems with my neck, zero problems with my shoulder. I had a full length rotator cuff tear on my shoulder, and they were like, You're going to need surgery, 100 %. And I went back to the doctor six months later. It's like, This is fucking crazy. That tear doesn't exist anymore.What did you do?It's.

Because of stem cells. And direct into it?

Direct into it, yeah.

And all, did you have to go far? Was it just like a local?

I did it in Vegas, and I did it in LA. I did it several times. I think I did three injections in my shoulder. Then six months later, I got another MRI, and they're like, You don't have a tear anymore. The doctor was blown away because this was all... We're talking about, I think my injury was like 2015, 2016, somewhere around then. This was all fairly recent in terms of the amount of the results that they were getting. This doctor had never seen anything like it. He was blown away. He had been an orthopedic surgeon for 20 years.

Did you have to do anything? Did you have to rehab it?

I did regular rehab. Once I got the surgery, I did a lot of bad- But you're trying to bring back...

What do you bring in?

You're regenerating tissue. You're regenerating tissue.

Can rehab help you with that? Or is that just stem cells?

It strengthens it. I think the rehab with the stem... The key is not injuring it while you're healing. The problem is it starts feeling better, and then you start pushing, and then you re-aggravate the injury, and then you're in this repetitive cycle. But if you can avoid that... My friend Shane Dorian is a big wave surfer, and he got serious stem cells down in Tijuana where they could do wild shit. And he got his entire back done. So they put him under and they do every disk in his back. And they're like, You can't do anything. You can only walk for a couple of months. That's all you could do. And for a guy like him who's a world champion surfer, and he's an athlete, and he's always exercising. He's always doing something that was crazy. All you could do is walk. But now he feels fucking incredible. It's just months later.

He has the back of his old back.

Well, it's definitely a lot better than it used to be. That's the key to these things. If you were allowed to do those in America, like you're allowed to do those overseas, I think you'd see remarkable improvements. But the problem is then you have orthopedic surgeons who don't want this to happen, and they'll try to tell you not to do it because if more people do it, they start telling more people to do it, people are going to avoid surgeries, and they're going to be out of a job.

There's one of these in... Jimmy, if you bring this up, there's a film that they can put on teeth that will basically just prevent cavities forever. Really? Yeah, I saw it three weeks ago. There's a microscopic film, invisible. They paint it on. They want to do it on kids, low-income kids. It will, again, maybe I misread it, Jamie, if you look it up. I haven't heard of that. That's crazy. No, it's a new thing, but there are... I am conspiracy-minded in terms of, Yeah, people will try to prevent that, but I wonder which ones they'll let through.

Well, if there's money in painting people's kids with that stuff, they might let it through. The scariest one is fluoride. The fluoride in the water thing is bananas because they're like, Oh, it prevents tooth decay. It also fucking causes a drop in IQ that's absolutely measurable. If you could see the difference between the amount of fluoride in a water and the drop in IQs in that area, there's a direct correlation.

But it's in a lot of countries.

Floride is a weird one, man, because there's a lot of very credible scientists that would point to the fact that fluoride is a neurotoxin. It's not good for you at all. And they're like, oh, yeah, but in small doses. But fucking says who? Says who? And for what purpose? The way I pointed out, it's like, say if someone gets skin cancer and you say, okay, well, we're going to put sunscreen on all the apples. Well, hey, hold the fuck on. How about just brush your fucking teeth? Why do you have to put that shit in the water? So every time I cook spaghetti, I have fluoride in my fucking spaghetti. What are we doing?

Yeah, I mean, I'm curious because I looked this up recently because what I've heard is the amount of fluoride that makes it toxic is just a huge amount. It's like the dog eating chocolate thing. They would look up how How much chocolate a dog has to eat to kill it? It's like half its body weight or something. It's a huge amount. What I remember is that in order for flora to be toxic, it's got to be a major amount.

Right, but there's a correlation between high levels of fluoride in water and low IQs. We don't really know, and it's developmental cycle of a child that you're interfering with. If you take children and you give them this neurotoxin and you have it in the water to prevent them from getting cavities cavities, and you literally lower their IQ, which seems possible.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how they came to the decision.

There's no fucking reason to do it. There's no reason to do it. It's stupid. Cavity Fighting Liquid prevents 80% of cavities, finds largest US study, new treatment, uses silver diamine fluoride, Sorry, buddy. Which is an inexpensive liquid that prevents cavities.

Guys, I should have never brought it.

Well, it's a surface thing, though.

You're not covering your fucking- Well, it's stuck in your mouth, though, I think.

You're not drinking it.

What What's it saying?

Dental cavities are distressing sensation that, if left untreated, can result in terrifying pain, swelling, and relentless night, restless nights. Team of researchers at New York University identified a cavity fighting solution that's both effective and affordable. The new treatment uses silver diamine, fluoride, which is an inexpensive liquid that prevents cavities and even shields the existing ones from getting worse. So that doesn't really prevent you from getting cavities. It stops cavities.

Didn't it just say it prevents cavities? Well, it says- And it's an inexpensive It's a liquid that prevents cavities.

But does it cover the teeth and prevents future cavities?

I believe maybe in the next paragraph, it'll say that.

It's quicker to apply and less expensive than sealant. So it seems like they're doing it on cavities. Prevent and arrest cavities, reducing the need for drilling and filling. So they can prevent cavities on people that don't have cavities, and then they can fill the cavities with this stuff and prevent them from getting worse. Dental cavities are prevailing concerns, center disease control. But doesn't just brushing your fucking teeth prevent cavities?

Yeah, yes. I don't have cavities. No, I have.

I haven't had cavities since I was a little kid. I just brush my teeth.

Thank you, fluoride. I don't think it's fluoride. That's the tonight's episode of Joe Ro. I have a well.

I don't have fluoride in my home water. Is that true? Yeah. I try to avoid fluoride wherever possible.

You live with... I mean, the first half of your life was you were riddled with fluoride.

I'm sure I got it.

Until you moved here.

I used to use floride tooth No. Even when I lived in LA. No, that's fine. I never drink water out of the tap.

Oh, you had your own well? I never drink water out of the tap.

It's fucking terrible for you. It smells bad. It smells like chemicals. Even if it's mostly okay, it's like, why are you doing that to yourself? Have you ever seen any of these studies on fluoride?

The ones I saw were just like, it's pretty minor, the ones I've seen.

It's not necessarily minor. It's poison, and it's not necessary. There's no reason for it. It seems like there's a a lot of money tied into fluoridating drinking water.

Look up countries that florinate their... Florindize? Florify?

Floribendate.

Their water. Because it's... I looked it up. Michelle, a lot of them do it. Yeah, I looked it up. If we all have bad IQs. It's fine. Did you watch the Sinanon thing? The what thing? There's a HBO documentary about this. It's really... You'll really like it. It's like...

About what?

It's called Sinanon. Sinanon. It was like a group. It was a cult. It started out as a self-help, as a twelve-step fellowship. It's the classic. Then it became a cult. Then the leader goes crazy. It's only episode two, but it really does follow the thing of every cult at some point, the leader goes, Hey, I spoke to God, and he needs me to fuck all your wives. Sorry, guys.

Sinanon.

Yeah. What is it about?

It's-so it's an old cult?

It's from the '70s, yeah. The golden age. The late started in the '60s, went into the '70s, starts in black and white. How am I not knowing anything about this? Yeah, it's on HBO Max or whatever. Everyone shapes their heads. That's so important. It's fucking right up your alley. Yeah, there's the guy. Yeah, look at him. They have audio of him screaming at them.

An attack against Hinenan was an attack against America.

Yeah, it's fucking custom made for you.

That's crazy. I've literally never heard of this.

It just came out last week. I have a thing in my new Netflix where I'm talking about you. I'm talking about the outsize role that because corporate leaders are basically a piece of shit, politicians are a piece of shit, clergy, imams, pastors are a piece of shit, now somehow it's all become like, well, what do the clowns think? Now it's up to comedians to be the moral arbiters. It's you, Dave. I mentioned Ellen, I mentioned Kevin Hart. I mentioned just all these people. That's like, why are you guys considered? I mean, I know why, because it's just everyone else couldn't do it. And comedians have opinions. Carlin was moral sometimes. Jon Stewart is moral. But it's one of these things. It shouldn't be up to us, guys. We shouldn't be the backstop. We shouldn't be the moral backbone of America.

We're one of the rare people, the rare groups of people that are allowed to speak freely.

Yeah.

And that's what it is. It's like, as long as we could find an angle where it's funny.

Well, that's the thing is people are mad. It's like on here, people get mad at you for not reading the talking points of the National Institutes of Health. You know what I mean? I never understand what people want you to be. Walk me through this where Joe says everything you want him to say. It's not possible. It's also not a show anymore.

But you also, you can't make everyone happy. It's impossible. If you try to operate in this world where you're trying to make people happy versus just trying to be honest, You're fucked. You're fucked. You're fucked from the jump. There's no way to do that. It's not possible. You won't be you anymore. You will be compromised. I feel that about so many things. I feel that about reading comments. I don't think you should read comments.

I think that it's been a detriment to certainly public comment or whatever we do, whatever public speaking, because It really does, you think about like, what are they going to... What's the worst thing you could possibly say about what I'm thinking of saying? It's a bad way to approach things.

It's also people that are deeply dishonest.

Of course. And deeply unhappy and deeply antisocial.

Like they did with your joke about abortion. Like, oh, he's just a grifter. He's a pro-abortion grifter trying to get that right wing money instead of just trying to make a point. But everyone's trapped. They're trapped in these ideological bubbles, and they don't know what to do. It's If you keep reading the comments on that bubble, you will stay trapped. You will stay trapped. You're fucked. You have to be able to think freely and express yourself freely. And you can be wrong. And if you're wrong, you have to be able to admit you're wrong. And you have to be able to say why you're wrong and why you thought this and why you think differently now. And that's just a function of being an honest human being. And it's possible to do. But God damn, that is a whitewater rafting trip that is fucking filled with rocks. There's bears catching salmon.

It's crazy. Scrape your fucking face. It's scary. It's scary. Do you monitor yourself at all? Do you know what I mean? Have you gone like, Boy, this is getting pretty. This is getting pretty. This megaphone is getting pretty big. You're having to hire a lot of security at your live shows. You know what I mean? I'm assuming the venues are getting bigger. There's just more. Does it ever go... I mean, it's got to be validating for you as a person. You got to be like, Oh, I must have done some shit right. And then does it make you police yourself? Do you go like, Let me really try to be...

I think it makes you... You definitely have to be more clear with what you think and why you think it. Instead of just shooting off the cuff Which I definitely used to do a lot when I was younger. I'd have an idea in my head and I just run with it and then I try to defend that idea.

But even the fluoride thing, right? Yeah. What we just talked about. That's the same conversation we would have had 10 years ago, right?

Sure, yeah.

Do you now think of how do you go, I have to know what studies are what, and if that's a true, and it's been replicated, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, or is it still the same? Like, I think I read that, the same thing we all do, generally, which is like, Yeah, I read that, or I heard that, or whatever.

Well, it's been a while, but I have read multiple studies on it.

No, no, no.

Yeah, but I'm saying- I've talked to multiple experts. If I didn't, I would say, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But fluoride is not healthy.

It's not a good thing for you to take. But I'm saying, I'm just wondering about your process.

But that's one of those ones where I can just say that. But then there's other things where it's like a vegan diet. I know people that do it. I know people that have pulled it off. It's possible to do it. You look like shit. No, I'm just kidding. You look thin and healthy. But you can do it if you supplement carefully, and you're a smart guy. You know what to eat and what not to eat.

I can get my blood tested. You get a guy, you get a vitamin B, you have money, you can do all the things you do to make sure that you're okay.

It Absolutely can be done. I know people that eat a vegan diet, and I also think there's biodiversity. There's some people, their ancestry is very different, their genetics are very different, and they're much more vegan diet is more tolerable for them. Like Indian people. Indian people have been eating vegetarian food for so fucking long. I would imagine that their body, their genes have adapted if they've come from a long line of vegetarians.

Yeah, like they're stuck with vegetable. They're stuck with- Maybe it would be beneficial for them to supplement with protein. Or they figured it out. They have it. Their body has figured. If whatever was deficient in, it's figured out a way around it by what was available to them.

Right. But when we look at countries that consume more meat, they're healthier and they live longer. Hong Kong is a great example of that. There's some great studies that have been done on Hong Kong. They have one of the highest meat consumptions and higher life expectancies.

Then again, it's like, how long have they been doing it? The blue zone, a little bit of protein. I guess what you're saying is the acknowledgement that shit's complicated and there's no one right or wrong answer.

There's also things like healthy user bias. The most important thing that pretty much most of the objective doctors will say, the most important thing is physical activity. Then if you are not physically active and you eat well, you're almost better off smoking cigarettes and being physically active than doing that.

By the way, this is always fascinating to me because I've been asking people, do you know what percentage of people die, smokers die of lung cancer? What percentage? 10 to 15%. That's crazy. Isn't that low? That's crazy. Wouldn't you think it's 60? That's crazy. It's 10 to... I've looked it up repeatedly. Am I misreading this? The amount of smokers that die of lung cancer is 10 to 15%.

But do they die of other stuff?

Well, yeah, of course, comorbidities, et cetera.

It's smoking just in general. You're limiting your oxygen intake. There's a lot of factors.

Yeah, but it's not as bad as you'd hope.

You know what I mean? This There's one doctor that I was talking to that was very adamant about that. He goes, Physical activity. If you don't have physical activity, you might as well be a drinker and a smoker.

Yeah, you're fucked. Then there's also the loneliness thing. Oh, yeah.

That's a big one, man. It's a big factor. What percentage of studies found the risk of developing lung cancer increases to 14% if you smoke cigarettes. If you smoke 1-5 cigarettes per day, your risk is around 7.7%. If you smoke more than 35 cigarettes a day, you have a 26% chance of develop... Well, that's a lot.

That's... All 35 cigarettes.

By 80, though.

By 80.

That's a whole lifetime of smoking 35. What is that? A pack and a half?

Yeah, almost two.

Is two packs 40? Yeah, 20 in a pack. Wow. 26%.

That's three out of four. Which, by the way, is the exact same number of FDA drugs that get pulled.

25% of all FDA-approved drugs get pulled because they kill too many people.

Oh, right. When they're like, Oh, fuck. We didn't test it good enough. Yeah.

We believe this pharmaceutical drug companies. That was the weird one for me during the pandemic was the trust in the pharmaceutical drug companies. Especially when I started talking to experts that actually spent their living litigating financial settlementsments for adverse effects of drugs. You find out that scientists, when you hear about peer-reviewed data, they're not even allowed to see the actual data. They see the analysis of the data by the pharmaceutical drug companies that perform the studies.

I'm of two minds about this because on the one hand, I agree with you and I've had similar experiences, and on the other hand, I'm like, I don't fucking have time to do the research on all of these things myself. I have a lot of time. Do you know what I mean? Everything's fucking corrupt, and it's so aggravating and so predictable because it's just human beings, and they're just going to be corrupt. You You just have to hope that the thing that the pill you're taking wasn't a victim of the corruption, or the operation, or even the stem cell, or whatever you do, you just have to hope it wasn't a victim of humanity. I'm with you because I've heard shit about... I've learned you can test for anything. I've heard statisticians say you can make anything. You can crunch numbers any way you want to get to what you need.

Well, they certainly have done that, and that's the big Viox scandal. In the emails when they released Viox, they literally said- Which one's Viox? Viox is an anti-inflammatory that they use that is no better than non-storidal anti-inflammatories like Ibuprofen. It's killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 Americans before it was pulled.

Well, there was that other one, the antihistamine that wasn't anything. What's that one? The Sudafed one. The one that was a month and a half ago, most cough medicine wasn't medicine. What? I assumed you did an emergency episode about this.

I never heard of it.

No, look at it. I don't even know what to look up. Cough medicine isn't medicine. Look up cough medicine isn't medicine. It was fucking insane. But again, my kid has a cold.

Right.

So my My kids literally stuffed up this very second. I'm a parent. The fuck am I supposed to do?

Right, you get medicine. This is medicine. It's at the store. Cough medicine. Got it.

Got cough medicine for him. Okay, good. I'm a good parent. This should knock it out. It turns out it's just a bunch of garbage.

What is it, Jamie? Did you find anything? I'm trying to dig through. I got conflicting information real quick.

This is what happens, Joe.

The pharmaceutical drug companies are like little trolls. They put a bunch of fake studies.

Or shit's complicated.

Yeah, shit is definitely complicated, but there's also a lot of financial issues.

No, I know. That's the issue. It's with all this stuff. It's like, shit's complicated and people are corrupt and people try to thwart information and bad information rises, and there's no... It's a spider meme. It's just everything's fucking incredibly complex.

Oj was dead for about an hour before I saw people connecting to the vaccine. Oj was telling people to get vaccinated. Well, maybe this guy who murdered his fucking wife and her boyfriend, maybe he was racked with guilt his entire life and lived in a constant state of anxiety. And everywhere he went, people yelled at him and called him a murderer. Maybe he didn't sleep good.

By the way, he still made it to '76.

Right, which is, I think, two years older than most people die. I think the average age is 72, 74. What's the average American male life expectancy, Jamie?Let's guess.It's.

Either-it's good. I'd say 72. I want to say 72. Well, black man is way lower. And fucking football players is probably 58. Right.

Good point. Which is interesting, too, because one of the things that One of his attorneys said that if CTE, the information was available today like it was in 94. They would have used that in his defense.

Right. Okay. Which is crazy. But well, does he get it? Then you'd have to say he's guilty. Is he found more innocent? 76.

So 76 years. So he hit the number.

Oj. Good for you, Bruce.

Oj landed exactly on the average American number. Here's what I found. So the FDA press release says this. Fda advisor declares ineffectiveness of widely used over-the-counter decongestant active ingredient.

The active ingredient in decongestants was nothing.

Popular over-the-counter medicines for colds and allergies don't work, FDA panel said, and that's Sudafed. What it really is, it took... It's like this ingredient in there.

Sudafed, Benadryl, and most decongestants don't work.

Wow. The over-the-counter histamine, antihistamine Benadryl is not being pulled from the pharmacy shelves. It's a misleading headlines, it says. Despite misleading headlines such as Sudaphead, Benadryl, and most decongested don't work. They're not being pulled from pharmacy shelves. Fda, Food and Drug Administration Advisory Committee voted 16 to zero on Tuesday that current scientific data does not support the use of active ingredient phenilephrine and over-the-counter products such as Benadryl, allergy plus decongestion. This does not, however, pertain to antihistamines such as Benadryl, which contain the active ingredient Phenhydramine.

Yeah, this is already confused. You know what I mean? I'm already like, Wait, what?

They're probably monking around with the stuff just to try to get it a little less scammy. Because it's a nasal decongestant. Okay. Brand names the medications include phenilephrine, such as Benadryl, have other products with distinct active ingredients. There's one ingredient that doesn't work. Okay, so maybe they do work. The FDA committee voted on the question of whether or not the evidence supported the use of the active… How does that word? Moity? Moity? Moity phenilephrine as an effective nasal decongression. The panel concluded that products which include phenilephrine are not effective against nasal congestion, though they were not deemed unsafe, but they don't work.

Parts of them work. One of the ingredients is nothing.

But it says that the products that include phenolapherine are not effective against nasal congestion. They were not deemed unsafe. That still says it doesn't work.

Yeah, there might be other ingredients that do work. But they might not work either. We'll have to wait and see.

Though the FDA is not bound to the committee's recommendations, why should it It's only science. Very likely the agency will follow its advice. In turn, this may lead to pharmacies pulling products containing oral phenolpherine, at least until acceptably reformulated versions are offered. There are branded products that include names Sudafed and Benadryl that do work as nasal decongestions. They contain the active ingredient pseudoephrine.Fenadrin. Effedrin.

Fenadrin, yeah.

Sudoephedrin. But because the dangerous illicit substance methamfetamine can be made in illegal laboratories with pseudoephedrin, these products were placed behind the counter years ago. In 2005, Congress passed the combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, which required pharmacies and other retail stores to maintain purchase logs.

Yeah, you got to show your driver's license.

I remember I bought some of that stuff once and I was like, What? What do I have to do? They were like, Yeah, people can make meth with this.

You're like, Do you know who I am? I'm never going to stop talking about that.

I'm like, How much meth can you make off of one of these things? Is it enough?

How many of these things- No, they would go from pharmacy to pharmacy.

Just get boxes.

Dirt It's the essence of it. Dirt bags. Yeah. Then cook it up. It's just like, just fucking get a job.

Also, just get Adderall.

Yeah, exactly.

They'll prescribe that to you.

Well, yeah, we're running short, Joe.

Apparently, we are, right? Yeah. We're running short on an Adderall.

Yeah. No, it's interesting to see you and people we've known so long being held up as like... When it's like, what was the thing you... Fit Simmons helped you steal back a car radio or something?

Hmm?

Didn't fit Simmons when you were roommates, or you dated his roommate?

Oh, yeah, I jumped a fence because my car got towed and they had my radio in it. I jumped a fence to get my radio.

That's the joke me and Fitzsimmons have whenever there's a headline like, White House, Concerned with Joe Rogan. We're like, I bet this is about the radio, right? Him jumping the fence to steal that car radio in 1990.

Yeah, I forgot about that.

It's funny.

He was like, What do you do it? I'm like, I'm going to hop this fence.

Get my fucking radio. Yeah, and he was heated in a bet. But it is like, Hey, I don't know. Maybe you and Dave are as good as it. I don't fucking know. You know what I mean?

Everybody should be able to discuss things. The problem is I can discuss things and millions of people hear it. That's the problem.

Do you ever... Yeah, that's what I guess I'm wondering. I think you're right to not pay attention, but does a part of you go like, Should I be paying more attention to this? Should I be more concerned about being a news outlet or whatever the fuck you're supposed to be?

I think I'm very careful about certain things, and I'm very careful that at least now, I know what I'm talking about, or I say, I don't know what I'm talking about. Be clear. Then also, if you know something and you don't say it, and that thing can benefit people or can inform their decision making, you should say it. It's important, especially if you know things. If you absolutely know something to be a fact, say it. Especially if you realize there's immense pressure from these financial institutions or pharmaceutical drug companies or whatever it is to not say that thing because it's going to undermine the profits.

Do you ever feel squeezed? No. Not squeezed, but do you ever feel people floating Information. You're like, Oh, I definitely- Hey, Jimmy, float that baby up on the screen.

I have conversations with people where I'm like, This person's feeding me bullshit. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's like you have to learn how to navigate those waters. I definitely think people have probably been angled to come on this show to feed me bullshit or feeding me bullshit once they get on the show. Yeah, definitely. You have to make a decision then. Do I even air this? Do I not air this? How do I dance around this? It seems like we should pause this and actually research it before we go any further because I feel like I'm being fucked with.

Yeah. Yeah. It The institution news media, institutional news, legacy media or whatever, it's another one of those 77-year-old women who still think they're fine. It's way worse. You can't fucking lie. If you pretend you have a monopoly on the truth, You know what you have to only say is the truth. It can't be... Obviously, there's biases, whatever human biases everywhere and institutional biases. But some of these people are so lazy.

Well, it's just like you were saying with the 75-year-old woman that still thinks she's hot. The news still thinks that people believe them. I encountered that when they were saying that I was taking horse medication.

You mean the horse medication that won the Nobel Prize as an anti-malarial? That one? That one. That one. That one. Four years ago? Yeah. Four years before, and now it's for horses?

Well, everything's for horses.

Well, yeah, everything's a horse medication. If the horse is sick enough. Grass is fucking everything. If a horse eats it.

They're so dumb that they thought that they could do that, which is absolutely wild. But that just shows you the arrogance of those organizations. They're so full of shit and so captured by money that they're willing to lie. And not just lie, but lie with the same lie across multiple platforms. And they're doing it specifically because they're being told to do that.

Yeah. And they're just hamerging credibility. For what? For nothing.

For one thing that is going to last for a year or so until people realize what the fuck is going on, and now you're doomed, and now everyone's going to go, Yeah, but they lied about that. What do they say about Iran? What do they say about Syria? What do they say about this and nuclear energy? What do they say about pollution?

What's funny is it is super... It makes it complicates things. Like, what are they saying about Israel? Like the Gaza and Israel, it feels like the... It's the most modern. In 20 years ago, this would have been open and shut. In 20 years ago, it would have been 9/11. They did this, we're going in, and anything we do is justifiable. Now, it's they did this, we're going in, and they're going with the 77-year-old former fine woman, and they're doing shit thinking that they can get away with it. Now, it's like, now everyone's All the shit that slowly leaked and came out Abu Ghraib, all the severe violations, now it's all happening on the daily. It makes things... Everything's so complicated.

It's so complicated. One of the interesting things about the Israel thing was that Hamas attacks on October seventh, and within days, there's pro-Hamas rallies. Before, Israel has even retaliated.

Douglas Morris talked about this a lot.

That was the most insane. I think that is one of those things where I am very inclined to think that that is fueled by foreign actors. I'm very inclined to think that TikTok algorithms and bots and all these different things fed a lot of these hyper woke kids into taking this contrarian stance against the popular narrative that Israel was just attacked and said, no, Israel is an oppressor and look what they've done to Palestine. It justifies it. What else can they do? What else can they do besides go door to door and rape and murder people? Is that really what we're saying? That you should cheer them?

I know. Then Israel does shit all time that you're like, fucking don't do that.

Exactly.

But at the same time, I'm like, I'm not... Yeah, it's like...

Bro, imagine living there, though. Imagine living either in Israel or Palestine and trying to find a solution to that.

Good. Fuck. Once you You look it up. Once you start researching it, you just go, fucking this is not... I don't think I can figure this baby out. This is a video game that you just toss the controller. Yeah. My I'm not even like this game.

I was reading today that there's State Department's warning that Iran is planning attacks on Israel. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh my God, what are you doing? Do Do you have nukes? Do they have nukes yet? I know they've been working on a nuclear program forever. What if they're the first person to use it and they use it on Jerusalem? Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, but people think that they know what it should be.

Do you get anxiety thinking about world events ever?

Yeah. I get it at night. Less so. Less so in that, which we can talk about a little bit, but less so just in terms of my own personal development. But if I had kids, I would really, really worry about it. About the future? Yeah. I'm involved with a woman who has a kid, so it's growing, my paternalism. But yeah, this is a pretty rough time.

It's a weird time. It's a really weird time. But I think every time is a weird time. In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, people were terrified of the future.

People didn't want to have to. I remember during George Floyd, Chris Rock goes, This is every week in the '60s. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X both got assassinated. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy. Real quickly.

Yeah, over the course of a few years. I think we develop societal amnesia, and we try to remember the past as some utopian time. But then if you look at the documentaries about the weather underground, and there's always been wild shit happening in this country. But it's also back then, wild shit you really only heard about through a large corporate media.

I know. That's the funny thing. Now, it's like we're getting You don't need to leak Abu Ghraib. You don't need to leak Gitmo photos. It's all coming out that afternoon.

Right. And then now there's the rise of independent journalism. The Glenn Greenwall, Matt Taibi These are people that you can actually trust. Michael Schellenberg or people that are on the street, and they're not attached to any large corporate media outlet. And that's very important because now you get a... If you're willing to do the work and willing to read what they're saying, you get a much more balanced, nuanced perspective on what the factors are and all these different contributing factors that are so hard to sort out with everything. If you try to pay attention to what's happening in Brazil right now, you're like, Oh, my God, What the fuck? If you try to pay attention to what's happening in any other foreign country?

Anywhere. Anywhere. Literally Canada. A shit that should be used to be a gimme. Canada is fucking fine. And then you go like, What the fuck? Mexico. Just go. Let's start at the top and go down. Finland, Denmark, Iceland, all of them.

Then how is mass illegal immigration, ubiquitous? How is it everywhere in the world, all at one point in time? How It sounds like islands in Italy getting overrun with these African immigrants that are coming over on boats.

Somebody made a really good observation, which is migration. It's been happening in all of human history.

But not like this.

Well, I don't know.

The statistics in the country, in this country, they're really easy to find.

Yeah, but I'm saying probably not relative to 17. They probably didn't have great records until pretty recently.

Well, they didn't have an open border policy until really recently. It wasn't as easy to come across. You also weren't being incentivized. You You weren't being given money. You weren't being given housing and shelter. Much to the demise of the people that are poor that live there, that are American citizens that are freaking the fuck out in these poor communities.

You also know that immigration helps the economy. Do you know what I mean? That's the thing it provides. It's everything's fucking like, Yeah, but also... So that's where I go, I don't know.

That's Tim Dylan's perspective. He thinks they're bringing in cheap labor. He thinks you can't get people to work.

That's always what it's been. Well, it's that, too. Including our great-grandparents. It was just they needed jobs. They needed jobs. And then the reason... Did you read the Cliff Nestroff book about comedians getting canceled historically? No. You might want to have it on there. It's really good.

What is it called?

Look it up. I read it not long ago. K-l-i-p-h Book, Nesteroff, N-E-S-T.

What is K-L-I-P-H?

What is it? That's his name. Cliff. Oh, Cliff. Yeah. Cliff Nesteroff.

Comedians, Drunks, Thiefs, Scoundels.

No, the outrageous history of showbiz, that one. But the reason why so many Jewish people, Irish people, and Black people became comedians. It was just because they couldn't get jobs anywhere else.

Lenny Bruce.

Yeah.

There it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Why they get canceled? Who gets canceled? It's been happening. Guys saying, I can't say anything in 1938. It's a tale as all this time. But people came for Yeah, all of these things, you're right, and it helps the economy.

There's a meme that I found online that is so funny because it's from 1934. It's a cartoon from 1934 that's basically saying exactly what everyone is worried about today, both on the right and on the left. I'm going to send this to you, Jamie, about the government. It's crazy because this is the same story. It's 100 years later. It's the same story. Pull that up.

It's the same one as Jews are subhuman and superhuman.

Look at this. Plan of action for US. Spend, spend, spend. Under the guise of recovery, bust the government, blame the capitalist for the failure, junk the Constitution, and declare a dictatorship. The cartoon appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1934.

Yeah. Isn't that wild? Yeah. The government is spying on you, and they're inept.

It says up there, it worked in Russia. So that's Stalin, I guess, is writing that out. Yeah.

Wild. Yeah. That's what it's- It's always been the fear. But this time does I feel pretty specific. This does feel especially grim, this period of history. But yeah, the anxiety thing, that's curious to me. I'm not curious, but I'm interested in the fact that it does give you anxiety. Does it give you anxiety for your Is it humanity overall?

Yes, it's humanity overall. I get it at night. I get it at night because usually that's when I'm high.

Usually when I'm riding, when I'm high, I get real anxiety because usually also everyone else in my house is asleep.

So it's just me, and it's late at night, and I'm just doomscrolling, and I'm writing, and I'm just thinking about the future. I genuinely get this fear of angst. What happens if everything goes totally sideways, which has happened historically all over the world.

With incredible regularity.

Yeah, it's almost predictable. There's always been instances where society was thrown into chaos. We have this very naive- Even the democracy thing.

It's the same way when you look up, where is abortion legal? Where are they putting Florida in the water? Look up where there's democracy and how long it's been there. Super easy. This is the oldest one, guys. It's not even 300 years old. It's like this is the oldest one. Then there's France, England, and there's not that many of them now.

There's never been one like this, and this one is only 300 years old, which is a blip. It's a nothing. Yes.

Relative to to. It is that thing of you have to foster it, you got to water it, and you got to till the fit, you got to vote, you got to get a... You got to research, you got to do all the shit. But as we can both attest, it's worth it.

Yeah. Well, this is the greatest experiment in self-government the world has ever experienced. It's fascinating. It really is. It's also because of this, this country has achieved so many amazing milestones, creatively. How much music has come from America? I mean, how much of popular music that the world hears?

The airplane.

Yeah.

That's us.

Yeah, the Internet.

The car.

The car.

The computer. Yeah. All of it. These are not small things.

Standup Comedy. Yes. Yeah. Standup comedy was invented here, and it's done best by people from here still to this day. Correct. That's just undeniable. Good luck. Good luck trying to do what we do. England. Yeah, it's just not the same.

No, but it's funny.

There's a few guys. There's Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr and a couple of others.

But the reality is there's a lot more here, a whole lot more selling out arenas.

Yeah. Just talking and good.

Good comedians.

I think this is the best time for comedy that's ever existed. I really do.

I mean, there's great- In terms of the amount of really good people who are throwing the ball very fast? Yes. I couldn't agree more.

I couldn't agree more. This is the time. This is the golden age of comedy.

Yeah.

And you know, Ari always says this, that this is a great time for comedy because comedy is dangerous again. Yeah. He's like, It's great. Comedy is dangerous.

Yeah. It is like the Red Fox After Dark Records thing now. But now it's more... And weirdly, now it's more like Douglas Murray books and speeches. Right. Those are like the contraband. I want to ask about the anxiety thing because when you... Do you worry about the safety of your loved ones? Yes. Do you worry about your shit hits the fan plan? Because my plan is, Hey, I've done Joe Rogan. When people come up, I go, You may remember me from Joe Rogan. We're good, right?

Oh, you Preppers? The preppers come for you? They're not going to come for you. The people that are going to come for you, the people that aren't preppers, the people that don't have any food.

That's what it's going to be scary. I don't have any either, though.

Yeah, well, that's good. Hopefully, you don't have any guns. Hopefully, you don't have anything valuable that they could take.

Do you think it's worth having a gun?

Yes.

Okay, so you're saying have a gun.

It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Yep. Always. It doesn't hurt you to have a gun, especially if you're smart and you take care of it and you lock them up and you know how to use them. Yeah, Yeah. It's like, one of the funniest things is people like, You should give up your AR-15. You don't need it. You should send it to Ukraine so they could fight the Russians. Do you see what you're saying? They're literally fighting against an oppressive force, and if they're unarmed, you should arm them. What happens if something like that happens here?

And you're saying that it can't- Oh, yeah. I did a joke in the last special.

The idea that it can't happen here is crazy.

The idea of taking it. Every year, they should have guys who are hoarding weapons, thinking that they could take on the government. We should every year have an NRA military showdown where it's 100 guys from the NRA versus three guys from the military, and they're just going to drone them.

Right. But here's the thing. The guys from the military, the guys who sign up for the military, are the guys who don't want to do that.

Well, I know.

That's the thing, turning them on Americans. This is the big fear about immigration, is that you're going to take these immigrants and you're going to indoctrinate them into the military, and they'll be willing to do things that United States citizens won't be willing to do because nobody wants to join the military anymore.

Oh, you think that? Is that? That's a big fear amongst the heavy duty conspiracy theorists.

They're worried that they're going to conscript these people. Look, they're doing that in Russia where they're saying, fight in the Ukraine war and we'll let you out of jail. So they're taking prisoners with life sentences and using them as cannon father.

Heck of a movie, by the way.

Yeah, and it's happening. I mean, they're literally using them as cannon father.

No, I know. And it's real like some monsters. Monsters. That they're letting out. Monsters. And they're doing monster shit, too. I've heard they're doing it to other Russians. They're just doing... These are not rational people.

No, they're psychos. Like full on psychos. And psychos in Russia, that's another level of psycho. Forget it.

Shut it down.

They have a long history of violence. And also loss, the loss that they experienced during the World War. Everyone talks about what happened with Israel, what happened with the Jews, what happened with United States, our military, Japan, Russia lost a lot of fucking people. And if it wasn't for Russia, we might not have even fought off the Nazis.

I don't think there's any dispute there. I think that was like they kept their attention on the east.

They have such a long history of conflict and loss and their willingness to have people die.

Well, that's what somebody told me is like, Putin's whole thing is just like, We're always at war. We always will be at war. Let me lead us.

He's a warrior, which is really scary when you got a guy who's a KGB guy that becomes the head of the country. Again, it's the hammer thing. All you have is a hammer.

Yeah, he doesn't. Well, that's what somebody is saying. It's like they don't have much industry. Also, he kills everybody.

Yeah. Any political opponents, anybody who's questioning him, you get poison, You get fucking drone bombed, whatever.

Yeah, you don't even got to be in Russia. They got a guy and they popped a guy in Spain a few months ago. Oh, yeah.

They'll pop you everywhere.

Yeah. Poison.

We do that, too. I'm sure we do that. The idea that we're innocent and that we don't have CIA assassins that go and whack dissidents.

Okay, I'll take your logic. Can we still condemn what he does?

It's hard. First of all, what if he does it 10 times worse than us? You definitely can condemn what he's done in Ukraine. You can definitely condemn bombing Kyiv. You can condemn a lot. You definitely can. But you also got to condemn NATO for moving their fucking arms closer to the Russian border and crossing that country and trying to get Ukraine to join NATO, which has always been his red line. There's a lot of really shifty international politics.

I'm of the mind that NATO has never invaded anyone. I get that they're trying to get the point you made about trying to get people to move to Austin.

They haven't been around that long.

No, I know they haven't.

But they definitely are involved in arming people.

No, but I don't think that you can get... Yeah, I'm with you. I just don't think they're an invasion. They're too disorganized. They need consensus from fucking however many countries are in NATO to like, We're going to... I don't think... And then who's going to govern, whatever.

But the idea is pushing arms closer to the borders of Russia to make an attack easier and quicker. All those things influence foreign policy. Those things are dangerous. They're creepy.

Yeah, I'm with you, but I don't... Is NATO perfect? No. But what he's doing is just aggressive bullying. Hey, man, we're trying to have a world where people can't do that anymore. We're trying to get...

Because it breeds chaos.

My point is that it's complicated.

The United States was involved in the coup in 2014. We instigated it. We provided weapons and money. We were a part of that. There's been a lot of those throughout history. I mean, we fuck around. We googled it the other day. How many countries the United States has military bases in it? Isn't it like 90? What was it again, Jamie? I know. I know.

The everywhere. I know. I know what the problem is. The problem is- Everywhere. It's like the way America work was, there's a moral framework. Louis had a great joke about it where he was talking about himself. He's like, I have all sorts of ethics and standards. I don't follow any of them, but I have them. I have standards for myself. In America, the game was that we would-Look at this.

There's 750 military bases in at least 80 countries. That is so crazy. The number maybe even higher, is not all data is published by the Pentagon.

Yeah, but Joe, we're American. It's good.

This is better us than China.

Well, that's what I mean. Yeah, it's better us than Russia. The game we always played was like, Yeah, we do shit. You can't Well, we're not- Now everything's transparent, or it's significantly more transparent. People have no tolerance for hypocrisy. It used to just be like side papers, you go like, Oh, America's a fucking hypocritical. And now, because of social media, it's like, I got you. I was like, Yeah, we're hypocrites.

Yeah. Well, that always leads me back to that Smedley Butler paper that he wrote in 1933, which is War as a Racket. He was this famous military man who, upon retiring, reflected upon his career and said, The whole thing was a racket. I thought it was protecting people, it was protecting banks. This is what war really is all about.

That still holds true today. I mean, it's the military-industrial complex speech. Exactly. I think the agreement was corruption, but stability. Now, corruption has been revealed, and now it's super unstable. Now, we can see all the corruption, and shit feels real, and you can't sleep. What's better?

You know what I mean? I think the erosion of the confidence of the government in this country is dangerous because there's kids on the street that are saying, We want to overthrow the United States government and get get rid of all the colonizers. What are you talking about?

I know, but they could clip the fuck out of you and show a reason they should be suspicious of the government. You know what I mean? Whatever, the pharmaceutical companies or the NIH or the Whiteout, you're skeptical. The problem is, I think there's not a problem, but you're skeptical, you know the limits of your skepticism. You know what I mean? Whereas everybody else just goes limitless skepticism. I don't trust They're young.

They just got out of college. They have no debt. Well, they have debt, maybe. But they don't have any life. Their life has just begun, and they want to throw... This country is corrupt. Let's just burn it all down. And then do what? And then do what? Do you want to be Saudi Arabia?

Where are you going to go? Where are you going to go? Where are you going to go? There was a basketball coach after the Celtics dynasty, after Larry Bird, Robert Parish, all this stuff. Then he was Rick was the coach, and they sucked. He said to the press, Larry Bird ain't walking through that door. That's how it is with all these kids. It's like, there's no better leader. For the women, there's no better men. There's no, This is it. We're going to make do with this. You want to help or not? Or you just want to mope? And also everyone's corrupt. And you should be skeptical, but But to the point where it's like, when does pure skepticism become chaos? When can you not believe traffic lights?

They get so frustrated at all. They do want to burn it all down, but they don't have a solution. They don't have a working solution of what happens once it gets burned down. What I worry about is I think the government is so inept, and I think the confidence in the government is so low that if something goes sideways, it's not going to be like everybody waits for the government to tell us what to do. You're going to have chaos in the streets, just like the George Floyd riots. You're just going to have that all over the place. That's the real fear. People with nothing will revolt, and guns are everywhere, and it could get real sketchy.

Yes. Or you go, it's chaos. It's 1968, 1969. Then you see cops beating up protesters, and you're like, All right, this is hard because I'm for the protesters. You I need order. As a human being, I would like... It's the freedom and safety. It's the two things that hang in the balance. It's funny to hear you say that you get anxious at night based on this world because- It's always at night.

It's always at night when I'm alone with my thoughts because I just realize all the things that could go sideways at any given time. One thing, one big thing, one big event. It doesn't even have to be an attack. It could be a natural event. One natural event and we're fucked. One solar flare that takes out the grid, we're fucked.

Yeah. To the George Floyd point, it's like, they shouldn't have fucking killed the guy. People can protest police brutality. The cops were wrong in how they handled that, and the testers. It's part of our society. It's part of our Constitution. We can. Then it's like, defund the police. I'm like, No, but... You had me. We're not. I fucking need cops. Need them. And then all those polls of low-income people were like, No, we want cops. So it's the tyranny of the minority thing.

Well, there's also the problem with the autopsy. The autopsy of George Floyd show that he had lethal levels of fentanyl in a system, that he was going to die anyway.

I heard they wasn't lethal. What does that mean? I mean, I've seen things where the levels of fentanyl were days old and whatever.

It wasn't Well, he had an enlarged heart. He was suffering from all sorts of ailments, like cardiovascular ailments. And he did have a high level of fentanyl in a system that I think is in the lethal threshold. Then you have this high stress event being arrested, also being compressed. Someone's pressing down on your body, restricting your breathing, and you're panicking, you're freaking out.

Very possible to have a heart attack there. Both things. But I don't- Maybe by himself, he wouldn't have had. You're of the mind maybe that he had fentanyl in his system, and it was not great police procedure?

It was 100% not great police procedure. Yeah. 100%, but also that guy had a history of abuse.

Yeah, no, but that's what I mean. Then people, et cetera.

But the question is, did he actually kill that guy? Was that guy dying? You know what I think happens a lot? What was the level? Because I'd read that When they did the initial autopsy, they didn't find that his death was because of constriction. It wasn't because of compressed arteries or any of that.

You know what I fear happens a lot? Is this a good example? Let's find out, though. Yeah, of course. I'm of the mind of like, That was wrong. Then you go, Yes, but he did have fentanyl.

No, I'm of the mind that that was wrong, too. That that's police brutality and abuse, and probably not necessary. It wasn't like he was thrashing and trying to attack. You could have restrained that guy, cuffed him, and that would have been it.

Right. My point is, it's not, But he he was on fentanyl. Let's say that was awful police work and he was on fentanyl.

Let's say the police work was good and the guy wound up dying. That's different. Then you say, Oh, he died of a fentanyl overdose. But if you look at the way they handled them, it was humane. It was-Correct.

Now, would there have been... Who knows? Probably not. Now, it's just historically.

That happens all the time.

What I worry, though- They always get arrested and they die of overdoses.

That happens all the time. But then you could use narcon.

Yeah, but sometimes they don't... It's like, you've read that where it's like, sometimes they just go, Fuck it. I've saved this guy too many times. You know what I mean? It's just cops being like, Fuck, I'm so sick of saving drug addicts all day. People that don't even seem to want to live. What I worry that's happening culturally, and it literally pick an issue, Israel, COVID, George Floyd, whatever, is there's these contradictory, not even contradictory piece of information. It's not a simple narrative. Right. I think a lot of times people just declare a mistrial in their head. They go, Fuck it. Somebody's lying. I'm getting the fuck out of here. There's no justice There's just everything's too gray, whereas 30, 40 years ago, it would have been they just killed a guy. There's no video.

Well, there's like, black and white, like Kent State. That's a black and white one. The National Guard comes in, shoots protesters. Everybody's outraged. It's horrible.

Yeah. But now it's... Kent State happens today. Maybe they actually wanted... There's a second video. It becomes almost like the Kennedy assassination. Everything's the Kennedy assassination, and where it is a lot of content, and then people go, Fuck it. I don't know what happened. I think that's where not even... Sometimes maybe it's nefarious actors, and other times it's just people who want to be contrary or whatever. There's so much information, and there's a limited bandwidth for people's attention span and time in a day that they just go, I don't know what fucking happened there.

That's a big one. That's the thing with boomers. Rfk has talked about this a lot, that boomers only pay attention to legacy media. They're not reading independent journalist reports.

Don't you think it's less so, though? Meaning it's a lot of Facebook links to shifty websites.

Some people now. I think there's some of that now, but I think there's still a lot of people that just put their faith in mainstream news, especially people that aren't online on a regular basis, or they're only friends with people that are their age. They have this mentality, the way they consume news and information. It's always been the same way.

Yeah. Covid, again, I'm sorry to bring this up for the listeners and myself. There was the tachycardia thing, and the heart rate thing. It was elevating people's heart. That was one of the main side effects. They acted like it wasn't much. Then fairly recently, there was like, Actually, there was more than we thought. I wonder, but then I've also heard from people that are skeptical. It was like, It's a pretty good vaccine in terms of lowering numbers of infections. But I think most people got the first wave of like, You have to take this. This is a vaccine, and then they heard this thing of like, it's not perfect, and then they got tired.

Well, it's been a lie, too, from the very beginning. First thing, they didn't even test it to see if it stops transmission, but yet they said it did. They didn't even test it to see if it stops you from being infected, but yet they said it does. All it does is impart some form of immunity that's specific to the wild virus, the first version. Yeah. Yeah. And the way they studied it and the way they tested it is so fucking corrupt. Just the fact that they said that it's 100 % effective against stopping death, do you know how they came up with that number? Two people in the control group got COVID and died. One person in the vaccine group got COVID and died. That makes it 100% effective. When RFK told me that, I'm like, There's no way that's it. Then we read the actual studies. I'm like, Oh, my God, that actually is it. They're allowed to say that.

Yeah, it's technically true.

Technically You can get away with a lot. But it's also like the VAERS system. I mean, the reporting of adverse effects is very underutilized. And so we all know people that have had bad side effects from the vaccine. And the question is, how many of them kept their mouth shut? How many of them are quiet? How many of them are suffering? How many of them the doctors are unwilling to connect it to the vaccine? There's a lot.

I know. I personally know more. Well, it's all fucking empirical. So if we Who gives a shit? It's like, well, I happened to know who gives a shit? It's one person. But I wonder what the way forward is with any of this stuff, because that thing of people just going, fuck it, I declare a mistrial. That It's probably not great for society.

Did you find anything about George Floyd's toxicology? Yeah, I'm looking. I'll just show you what I'm find. I believe this is the autopsy report. It shows that there was 11 nanograms per milliliter, right?

I have no idea if that's high or not.

What's lethal? 10 to 20. This is what Google says is lethal for humans. Lethal dose is two. Recommend serum concentration is 1 to 20 nanograms per milliliter for anesthesia and 10 to 20 milligrams per liter. Blood concentration. What's that, Jimmy? It would be in the anesthesia range. What you had in a system. So what's lethal? That's right here. Lethal dose. Is 2 milligrams. So he had nanograms. So he had 11 nanograms, which is significantly lower than 2 milligrams. Is that what they're saying? That's what that says. Also, norafentanyl was 5.6 nanograms per milliliter. So Did it say that he had a cocaine?

Caffeine. He had caffeine.

What is it? Oh, not even cocaine. Cotineine. I was looking through it to find out what it says is the conclusion. 11 hydroxy delta 9. So he had bullshit THC THC in him. He had that fake THC.

I know, but that's 15 years ago, that would have been the lead story.

Yeah. Negative for ethanol, methanol, isoproponol, and acetone. Methamphetamine, 19 nanograms per milliliter. So he had a lot of shit in his system.

Yeah, but he doesn't deserve to die. It may or may not have contributed to his death. It's like shit that you can't prove. But once that's in the air, it creates this sense of like, we'll never know what happened. Also the video.

You see him saying, I can't breathe. You see the whole thing.

I just worry about this haze of all this shit now, of everything. That's what I'm saying.

Does any study say that he had a lethal amount of fentanyl in the system? Why do people keep repeating that? All I was seeing in that was a bunch of people saying that.

I know. You're not repeating it malevolently. You just heard it repeatedly. You You know what I mean? You're not trying to make the guy look bad or whatever.

But a lot of people are.

I agree. They made that documentary. They're using that.

What documentary?

There was a whole documentary about it, and then that got debunked about George Floyd.

What does the documentary say?

All the fentanyl and all that stuff. That it would have killed him.

No evidence drug overdose was the main cause of death for George Floyd. This is from what year? 2022. Social media users make a claim that George Floyd killed, actually died from drug overdose. These claims are misleading. Official medical and court records rule. The police restraint not drug use was the main cause of death. Evidence to support the claim that George Floyd Lethal levels of drugs in a system. One Twitter user sharing the claim, George Floyd died of fentanyl overdose. Derek Chauvin should be freed. Okay, but this is when they're like, one Twitter user, one Facebook user.

No, this is one person said and another person. But if they're Being like it didn't, whatever, or can we trust the AP?

Yeah, that's the thing.

However, no publicly available evidence supports the claim that Floyd died from overdosing on drugs, specifically fentanyl or methamphetamine, rather than the actions of the cops.

What's that, Joe? I'd assume those are like Russian trolls just causing chaos.

Joe, that's my point. This is the world now. You are not predisposed to... But there is a thing of being predisposed to skepticism criticism. It seems cooler than being some square-ass. I'm a sheepel. What I'm saying is there's a value in both. You know what I mean? I don't know how to litigate it. I don't know how to prescribe it to people. I also know that people have a limited amount of time.

That's a giant factor. Yeah.

They got better shit to do. This is not their number one priority. I truly don't know what... That's the thing that would cause me anxiety. I mean, look, if you're looking for a new thing to be anxious, but But honestly, the thing with you is, because I've known you so long, is you're a decent, honest person. I will testify in court that any chance I've seen you have to be decent and honest, you've taken it. There's still stuff that you think might be true because it's fucking floating around. You're an intelligent, you seek information.

But this one I haven't looked at it. This one, I've just heard it. That's why I brought it up. Because I wanted to know what the actual... I've not read about it, honestly. I remember reading a headline saying that he had a lethal dose of fentanyl in the system and that people were arguing it. But it still doesn't take away from the fact that the policing was immoral.

Fucking awful.

That's the thing That's the thing that people have to deal with every day from the cops. Also, being a fucking cop is a horrible job.

I know. Everything is like fucking- So many things. It's the worst job on Earth. It's one of the worst jobs. It's a nightmare.

You're the professional enemy, and everyone you pull over is probably lying to you.

Yes. Then they all train that everyone wants to shoot them. They have to train that way. They have to just get home to your wife and kids. Then they show videos of them getting ambushed and shit, which isn't false. It's like they do get ambushed. It's not very up, but they can't worry about that. It's like, We have to worry about hecklers pretty much every show. Do you know what I mean? It's all these very, very complicated things. Very complicated. I don't know. I think that every Every point of view has some validity.

A lot of them do. That's for sure. Then you have the foreign actors and you have the disinformation campaigns that are state run, that we run. That's for sure, too.

Yeah, and We do it to other countries. But don't you fucking do it to us? We do way worse.

We actually go in and overthrow their governments, install puppet dictators. That's what we do. We've been doing that forever. We run bullshit democracies. We call us liberty to become a failed state. We've done a lot of wild shit. We still continue to do it right now with those 700 plus bases worldwide. We're involved in all kinds of shady things. Then there's also the obligation. If you're in the CIA or if you're- But shady shit that benefits you and me, Joe.

Not that shady.

Shady shit that undermines legitimate dictators. What do you do? Just let these people develop nuclear arms and take over countries? No, you got to do things to stop despots.

I know. That's the thing of now in the age of transparency and got you, your government is hugely hypocritical. It's like, Yeah, it's a fucking government. What do you think? We have to be? It's one set of rules for us and another for everybody else. Sorry. That's why you're all trying to sneak in here. What gives you anxiety? Well, it's because I come and give updates on my mental health.

How are you doing now?

I'm doing great. This is what I wanted to talk about. So all the ayahuasca set a really nice... Got me off antidepressants, got me believing in God in a central creation force that's not a gender, whatever. It's just a thing. It's just a magnet, basically. Say it's a woman. Yeah, please.Wrong podcast. God's trans. Yeah. And then the DMT broke me and put me back together. After the DMT, the 5-MEO that I smoked, it was a year and a half of... I thought it was eight months of chaos, and then I did an ayahuasca ceremony a year and a half after I'd smoked the DMT. It was the first time back, and I felt the DMT door close. I was like, It was open that whole fucking time? What do you mean by that? Okay, so DMT opened up my brain too much, a little too much. Open borders. I was experiencing too much of the universe. I believe most of being a human being is just like, this, you We understand that we're a rock in space, but it's just my fucking house and my apartment and my car and the things that I understand.

My family, the DMT made it so I could experience time a lot more. I talked about it last time where I had a hard time watching the screen saver on Apple TV, the mountain ranges and shit. I got a sense I understood how old they were. In a way, you're not supposed to. What do you mean? When someone goes, Hey, can you believe the Rocky Mountains are 700,000 years old? And you go, Yeah, that's crazy. But nothing happens. I understood how long a time that was. I was way out. I was way out. Then I slowly came back. It took a year and a half.

What was the negative aspects of being way out?

I told somebody I was aiming for God, and I missed my stop. I woke up on a moving train with no conductor and going a million miles an hour.

It was because you were taking in too much information that you hadn't considered before, so it became unmanageable?

The DMT Well, I had the Michael Pollin experience where the DMT took me back to... When I inhaled it, I went to before the Big Bang, and Michael Pollin said it on here because I looked it up. I was like, Where have I heard? I was like, That's where I was. The DMT was pretty much a DMT 25-minute, 35-minute experience of like... I was before the Big Bang, and my personality came back, and I was going like, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to be petty. I'm not going to be a virtuous person. I'm just going to be like, I'm going to remember this God connection and all that stuff. Then a week later, I had a reactivation.

A week later? Yeah.

You know that thing of like... There's a thing which people have DMT reactivations. Like a flashback? Yeah, basically the joke of an acid flashback. I had that, and it's Common with smoking DMT, and I had one. So now it's a Sunday in New York. I'm on a coffee date with a woman in this side of my frame. This side is fucking pure whiteness, infinite time. It was harrowing.

So you saw it?

It wasn't like a pure split screen, but it was energetically a split screen.

Was it something that you thought and you felt in your mind, or was it something you were experiencing visually?

Yeah, I shouldn't say that I couldn't see it, see it, but it felt- You felt it? Yeah, I felt it.

And so anxiety because of it?

I would say that I was split between reality, current reality, and then this infinity, energetically.

Was it giving you anxiety?

Yeah. I was so disoriented. I had the thought, Am I in God's imagination? Shit, that's not great to think when you're just on a Sunday walking around in New York.

Yeah, especially if you're on a date.

I mean, come on. You're just trying to talk. You're just trying to make something happen. See if this person Pay attention. My friend of mine said, she goes, You just seem really preoccupied. I was like, Yeah, I had a lot on my plate. Did you watch that Hemingway documentary on CBS? No. It's I recommend it highly. Ken Burns, Hemingway, Black and White Pushes. I'm not even a Hemingway fan. There were some passages that are like, Okay, this is amazing. But there's a part they showed maybe the Spanish Civil War. He went there. I think it's the Spanish Civil War. There's a passage from one of his books where he got shot, I believe. He explained it as like, My spirit came out of my body like a ribbon and then came back in. I was watching with my friend. I go, Hey, can we stop real quick? Because I was in that world. This was the reactivation day. I was like, Yeah, I need to not watch this because I'm in thing where my spirit can come back. It was like, touch and go. I think I made it this last time. I would have killed myself, but I knew I'd be going into more of it.

Wow.

It was like real difficult, like real on the edge of my ability. Sanity. Yeah. I would say, I don't want to say, I don't know what pre-psychotic would be, like pre-diabetic. I feel like I was pretty close. Now, over time, I got better every day, and I got returned to norm, but I was more able to fall in love, more generous. I'm funnier on stage. I get 15% more and bigger laughs because I'm spiritual. People notice it like, Hey, what's different about you? On stage is better. This Netflix thing is my best one because it's just like, I'm lighter. I'm just lighter. That was hard to deal with, but after the year and a half passed, I'm a better... It's easier to be me. It's easier to deal with me. Everything's improved. Then in the last year or so, every few months, I do MDMA, and in a, not necessarily a therapeutic environment, but with a spiritual bent. What's happened from the ayahuasca and the DMT is when I've done mushrooms, it's ayahuasca. It's a God connection, or what I perceive as a God connection. When I do MDMA now, it's a God connection. I believe I've been able to change my, I don't want to say spirit, but I think synapses, however you want to categorize it.Your.

Operating system.Yeah..

Basically, it's like you are getting an update, an OS update. The thing with updates on computers is the computer goes to sleep. Sometimes you're awake for these updates. You're like, I've literally done the joke on ayahuasca. Is there any other system you have? Because this is a little touch and go for me. I appreciate it, and I always get so much from it in the long term. But in the short term, I did ayahuasca I don't know, in November, and there was a point where I went up to the Shaman and I go, Hey, I'm a little close to God right now. Could you just give me a nudge? Because it's very hard to comprehend Honestly. As someone who's experiment in this world, there are moments that are hard to comprehend, and it's a hard thing to communicate.

It's interesting because I think overall, you say the benefit is worth it, but it's a slippery road.

Yeah. Well, it's hard. It's very hard to do. That's the thing, and we talked about this last time about the mainstreaming of all this stuff. It's Pandora's box, man, because there's a lot of people, I'm whatever I am, an intelligent person, an accomplished person, and I felt like I was pretty psychotic for a couple of days, and I would have killed myself if not. That would have been a significant So you genuinely thought about killing yourself? Well, I didn't have a plan or anything, but I was like, this is unbearable. No, it was like, this is unbearable, what I'm in right now. Where I'm on her, am I in God's? Who am I? What is this? What is any of this? What is steps? Walking down steps going, Why is any of this? Why am I a person in whatever? Got through it better. Then the MDMA, I've been able to, I don't know if you want to do software updates or whatever, but it's just made me more... I had one that was really great, which was I did MDMA, and I was able to... I'm a grudge holder, Irish Catholic, et cetera, one of 10, you get it.

I was able to just forgive all of my grudges easily. Just easily.

That's very valuable.

Yeah. The next day, I was like, Why was I so able to do that yesterday? But I was holding those grudges tight the day before. It's because my On the MDMA, I had oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin flowing through me. Love hormones, love... Kindness chemicals, generosity chemicals. I was able to do it. Most of the time, I realized I just have cortisol and adrenaline. Cortisol and adrenaline are organized, and they're judicious. That's the currency. It's like justice, retribution, wrong, right, organize, organize, punishment, rigid. I started thinking, what I consider a personality is just cortisol and adrenaline, or what I consider a personality. I just realized I have a kitchen in my head that makes cortisol sandwiches, and I'm just like, This is what I like to eat. No, I don't. That's just what it's giving out. I made a conscious effort to ignore my first... I now write, Don't believe your chemicals. Just don't believe them. Think beyond them and focus on the the softer chemicals or the more positive ones. I've also been doing a thing that's been wildly helpful, which is I was doing a gratitude checklist. Every day I would write things I'm grateful for.

Also not only things I'm grateful for, the facts of my life. The facts of my life are really good. I have three Netflix specials How many people have that? I have X amount of money. I've done great stuff. I have love in my life. I have a girl, I have friends, I'm respected, et cetera. I write it down to remember that I have all these great things. I am living my dream. I'm living a lot of people's dream. I'm also especially living my dream. But my brain was just writing like sci-fi. And of this person fucking out to get you, and they didn't... Just constant nonsense that was just purely based on chemical. So what I found is the more I do... So then Rain Wilson, the actor, suggested we were talking about Islam praying five times a day, and I was like, That's the right amount, if we're honest. Right.

If you want to really keep the software in tune.

Yeah, if you want to just remember like, Hey, I'm a vessel for a spirit, and da, da, da, da. He goes, Why don't you write in your gratitude checklist five times a day? I was like, Fine. I've been doing it. I rarely get to five. It's at least two or three. Every day, every couple hours, just remembering what the facts of my life are.

Do you think it's also... We have all human beings develop patterns of thinking, and these patterns get deeply cut. These Grooves, they're easy to fall into. This not trusting your chemicals is essentially not allowing yourself to go down these patterns of thinking.

Yeah. There's a saying that I've read. It was a book called The Shallows, about what social media does to us. But it was, you are what you do repeatedly. You are what you think repeatedly. We all, at least I do and did for a long time, wake up and start the record and just the monolog that's happening in your head. It's gotten me out of it. There are There's days where I wake up and it doesn't start and I'm confused because I don't go instantly negative. It's made me see my life differently. I went out of my way to view my life through the way truer lens, I believe. Do you know what I mean? It's true. I am objectively all the attributes that I list, and I'm so fucking lucky. You're so fucking lucky to get this experience. You're so... Think about this. The thing I would say to people is like, spin the wheel. 8 billion other outcomes of human beings alive right now. What are the odds you beat this one? Yeah. Just like the Joe Rogan. Like, literally the Joe Rogan experience. What are the odds you beat it? There's no fucking way.

Think about your life. It's impossible. I'm not even talking about the popularity and all that stuff. That's part of it. But think about having an idea, doing it in your whatever the basement or garage, wherever we used to do the podcast, and then it just becomes this? What? I used to think that I would always tell myself, Life's not fair. Then I finally one day had the thought, Yeah, life's not fair, Neil. No one's life should be as good as yours. I'm so lucky. It's unbelievable. I'm getting choked up talking about it. It's impossible. I would argue that most people that hear it, hear this, are in the same position.

Yet there's this inclination to focus on negatives, this inclination to focus on anxiety.

I think it's evolutionary. I think it is. I think we're trained to scan for threats. Yeah, I agree. I write in my journal my checklist, because I want to masculize it. Every threat is a gift.

Wait a minute. Is a checklist more masculine than a journal?

Yeah, than a journal. I believe it is. Really? Checklist because you have to make sure everything's good and the women and children are safe.

But a diary is feminine. Oh, fuck. Dear Diary. I'm going to punch you in the face.

Yeah. I write almost every day, no threats, only gifts. Everything I thought was a threat is just a gift over a longer timeline.

You've managed to do this without falling into a cult.

Yeah, I don't think. Not one that I know of. I'm not paying dues anywhere. It's just literally keeping It's like an emotional discipline in a weird way. It's the same way working out every day.

Well, me being your friend and knowing you for so many years, I guess I didn't know you well when I first met you. We only knew each other because we worked in the same place at Boston Comedy. You were a door guy, and I was just a young comedian, and we just became friends. I didn't know you well, but you were always nice to me. We're always cool. But you were always You had this tension. I always felt like I had to hug you. Even when I saw you when you were doing Chapelle, when I saw you, this is amazing. Look at you. Are you happy?

Can we give you a hug? You don't get it. No, really. I was I was just looking at it all wrong.

Right. But you were doing well. I always felt like it was... Sometimes when you have this me against the world thing, well, it really becomes you against the world because other people feel that, too. Then they don't want to connect with you.

They don't trust you. They go, Well, I'm in the world, so me against you?

They don't trust their emotions to just be relaxed around you. So there's a tension and a conflict there. It's like, you're definitely different now. You were different the last time I talked to you, and you feel maybe It's even more different now.

Yeah, that's right on schedule for what I did, what happened, what unfolded, if you want to get super. But it's like, even that thing of when I met you in 1991, '92, pause, and then flash forward to this. Yeah. I don't know, man. This shit worked out real good. It worked out great.

It did. But it's hard to see that when you're in the moment, especially when you're caught up in your own thoughts.

Well, yeah, and you're caught up in like, I'm late, or coffee's too hot, or this grievance litany that you think you're supposed to do it. Or it's like, even in the age of social media and constant, you're gloating by saying your life's great. Right.

There's that, too. For instance, people, a lot of people don't have a good life. Well, a lot of people do. But what have you done? What have you done to try to mitigate that shitty life?

Are you doing a checklist?

Have you actively move towards a more positive way? And how do you treat people around you? But with you, it's like I would check in on you every now and then. We would talk about different things that you were doing. I remember one of the first ones you were doing was the ketamine stuff. And I was like, That is wild. But I always felt so bad for you. I always feel like, God, this guy is just struggling with depression and anxiety, and I don't understand it.

The chemical stuff, ketamine didn't help the first time. I did it two months ago, and it was pretty great. But yeah, that's the thing. It's hard to know what's going to do what. And that's with any of these-How much does exercise help you? I do. I have a trainer, et cetera, but I have too many inputs. I don't know what's doing what. Do you know what I mean? I don't know what's like, Oh, that's definitely the other thing of the validation of a successful comedy launch.

Yeah, well, that definitely helps. I've had a lot of friends that were depressed and their career started doing better, and they just stopped being depressed.

I know. It's embarrassing. But I would- But it's not really- I know. It makes sense.

The anxiety of entertainment is, first of all, there's no clear pattern. Like, go to school, get a degree, get your PhD, do this, do that. There's not a clear path, and you never know if it's going to work out. How many guys have we known, especially be us who knew people back in the day that were talented, that we thought were going to make it and did not. And more talented than us. And we're better at the time than we are. And you go, God, how did they not make it?

Yeah. And that's the thing When you say, Are you moving toward, are you doing anything to improve your lot in life? It's like a lot of people try, and it doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

Yeah. And then you go, Why did it work for you? Why did it work for me. I can take some credit for effort. I can't really take credit for talent. Shit, but just came out. I don't know. I fucking been funny since I was fucking five. Do you know what I mean? I've just been myself. So I guess I cultivated and I was brave. I made brave choices. It's incredibly fortunate in a time where some comedians have deals with Spotify worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In a time where you can make a ton of money as a comedian. I always think this about athletes. I'm sure you have, too. A hundred years ago, none of the guys, none of the 100-millionaire athletes, they're all just good farmers.

Yeah, didn't exist.

One of the best farmers in the area. Yeah.

What did it mean to be an Olympic gold medalist in 1910?

Yeah, you weren't getting an endorsement deal. It's just like, yeah. We're really lucky. We're just lucky in so many ways. But I think whenever I tell people that, it's like, Yeah, but you're good, too. I'm like, So what? Yes, but I can't take credit for that.

Yeah. It's also like everyone's formula for success is different. No one can take your formula and just plug it into their life. But you have different circumstances. You have different hormones. You have different everything, different life experiences, different goals and needs and aspirations, different interests, different mentality. It It doesn't work that way. It's like everyone has to find whatever the formula is. But there's certain things that seem to be... They seem to exist, and gratitude is a big one. That's such a hippy Unfortunately, a co-opted word.

You talked about Chris Williamson, I think, right? You guys talked about. It really is like oprified, hallmarkified. Yeah, but real. Yeah, man. I think it's just a better way to look at it. It's just a better way to look at it. But we're trained to make it like, no, you did it because you grinded in rows when no one else was there. All your enemies were asleep and you were doing whatever. Yes. That's true, too. Yes, it is true. But like I said, a lot of people do that. Doesn't work. They freeze up when the mic comes, whatever. Whatever it is, you and I both worked hard and are fucking fucking fortunate. I mean, I had the thought, I'm so fortunate. There's nothing I can do to compensate for this, this level of fortune. Meaning there's no level of volunteer work. I could volunteer the rest of my life.

But you know what you do? You live a life by example. This conversation is so insanely valuable because there's going to be millions of people that hear you talk and say these things. And those people, many of them are going to get in their mind that there's a pathway out of this. Maybe I can't take Neil Brennan's pathway, but there's a pathway out of this. And here's a guy that was deep, dark. I remember running into you in the hallway one time at the Comedy Store, and you just had this look on your face, like the fucking the weight of the world was on your shoulders. And when I would say hi to you, whenever I'd say hi you, I would always almost feel like, I got to give this guy a hug. I really felt that way. I want to give you a hug. I'm a happy person. Let me give you a hug, see if some of this shit wears off on you.

But you weren't you now.

You're a different guy now. And just by people knowing that even though it doesn't feel like it while it's happening, every time someone's in the middle of some shit, whatever it is, a breakup, you get fired, whatever it is, when you're in the middle of some shit, man, it doesn't feel like it's ever going to change. It feels like this is life from now on, and it's unbearable, and I'm fucked. And when people hear a guy like you who's not only made it out of there, but made real measurable success, it's quantifiable, you could see it. It's undeniable. They go, Well, maybe I can do it, too.

Yeah, I hope so. They can. It's not easy. It's scary.

But what the fuck is easy? Yeah. You tell me something that's worth doing that's easy. What the fuck is easy? I don't even like that word. I hate that word. It's just a dumb word, easy. Eazy is not in the menu, but valuable, worthwhile.

I think that, yeah, exactly. But that's the thing that happens is because it's not... I was going to say the easy pass, literally on the freeway. That's easy. But even that, you got to fucking slow down. Right. Even that, you might get a fucking tire iron, someone left on the road. Yeah. But it is, like you said, it's worthwhile. If it's difficult, everything's difficult. That's the thing that we can fall into this thing of you had to take a fucking shower and shave and find a shirt. It's not effortless, but that's part of life. You can't get hung up on the upkeep part of it.

Well, my strategy for that is to self-administer things that are far more difficult than anything that I'm going to experience in my day. That's what I do with workouts. Workouts for me, it's not just a physical thing, it's a mental thing as much as, if not more, that it's a physical thing. Because I don't want to do it. I still don't want to do it. Sometimes I want to do it, but most times I don't, but I still do it.

Do you have consciously think like, I don't want to do this chore for my wife or whatever, and then go, But you just sat in a fucking freezing cold water for 20 minutes. You can do it, buddy. Or is it just embodied?

I've done so many difficult things that I'm just comfortable doing difficult things. I know those whispers, Don't do it. Take the day off. Take a nap. Do this, do that. I know how to avoid those, but I know how to avoid those just because that's the path that I've carved in my head. So my pattern of behavior is always gravitate towards difficult things and just do it. You don't want to do it and to ignore those thoughts. And if I can make them so difficult that regular life is easy, if you can fucking do a cold plunge, do 10 rounds in the bag, and then do 20 minutes in 195 degrees in a sauna. Like, the rest of the day is going to be easy. It's going to be. Those rounds seven, eight, nine, and 10 are so fucking hard. You're drenched with sweat. You look over the Timer, five more seconds to rest before the bell goes off. If you could just get through that, man, regular life is easier because it's not that hard. You couldn't sustain it. If regular life for me, was like round seven or round 8, forever. I wouldn't want to do that.

I think for a lot of people, they got to take the bus to work. That is round seven. There are just people that have a higher level of difficulty. Sure. Existence.

I've had those higher levels of difficulty in my life. That's one thing I'm very fortunate for. Growing up poor, I think, is very valuable. It's something I can't give my kids. I think about that. I really do. Because they don't understand the fear of not having food. They don't understand your parents are on welfare and you know that you're eating from food stamps. It's like that fear, that drive. There's no one coming to save you. You better go get things done. And you have to do it for yourself. And if you don't do it, it's not going to get done.

I still believe that there's a camp that you could start. Poverty camp for rich kids?

You'd be faking it, though. They always know that you're going to be there to rescue them. That's part of the problem. And one of the things that I think can mitigate that is them choosing difficult paths, difficult things to do. But it'll definitely not be as difficult as a poor person.

Yeah. You got out of it, and now you're doing pretty good. I just think it's important for me to remember. I can't prescribe like, Gratitude will do it. I don't know. But that's a thing that really helped me. And plus, Ketamine, transcranial magnetic stimulation, Zoloft, DMT, ayahuasca, mushrooms, MDMA. You've tried a lot of things. I've tried a lot of stuff, and I'm even fortunate to have added access to a lot of this stuff. 100%. But the and acknowledging that. But this thing of hard work isn't always adequate. No, it's not enough, but it's something. Yeah, it's all you can control. That's what I write. It's like, I can't I'll never be grateful enough for this, but I can work hard and I can be focused on the stuff that is what's important to me. Hopefully, it ends up being valuable to people. But I can't People would always go like, You're doing so well, and I'd be like, You don't. I'd be like, You don't fucking understand this stupid sketch show. It's never going anywhere. And then all these things, you look back and you're like, I should have been so happy. Yeah. Or I could have been so happy.

You know what I mean? It's an opportunity.

I think you talk about this. It's very valuable. I really do. I'm I'm glad you're happy.

And it's also the thing of I was going in the... I know you're doing a nice wrap-up, and you'll have to restart it. The thing of some days I'd be like... We all feel stuck in our existence. Instead of, and again, it's so corny, but sometimes I write in my journal, I get to be Neil Brennan. Not I have to be. I get to be Neil Brennan. You You get to be a father. You get to be whatever. All the things that are great. It's not a threat. It's a gift.

Elon posted something today. About, or it was yesterday, that anxiety is essentially conspiracy theories that you make against yourself.

I literally had that same. I thought about it with you and Dave, where it's like, I only have conspiracy theories about why people don't like me.

Well, I like you.

Thank you, buddy. I like you, too. Thank you.

All right. Let's wrap this up. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you. I really do think what you're saying is very valuable to people. I haven't seen your special yet, but I'm sure it's awesome. You're hilarious.

Crazy good. Neil Brennan.

When are you flying out?

It was number four last.

When are you flying back?

Tonight. Tonight? Yeah, I was going to come to the club. Damn, I want you to come. I know.

All right, another time. Yeah. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me.

Bye, everybody.