Shane Smith | Club Random with Bill Maher

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Speaker 1 Yes, General Butt Naked.

Speaker 1 Who's he? Did you ever interview him? I did. General Butt Naked? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You brought it all around. You brought it all around.

Speaker 1 That's what Trump calls a weave.

Speaker 1 You just did a weave. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Shane, I haven't seen you in minutes.

Speaker 1 How have you been? How's the family? Good, thank you. How is the family? Last time I talked to you,

Speaker 1 you and your wife were getting over a case of some sort of parasite in your colon. Oh, yeah, that was me.
You.

Speaker 1 I thought you passed it to her or something. No, well,

Speaker 1 I had a stomach, a flesh-eating parasite in my stomach that was,

Speaker 1 I got in Afghanistan. And they always say, whatever you do, don't drink yellow tea in Afghanistan.
Oh, don't I know it?

Speaker 1 And I was interviewing the head of the Taliban, and he's like, have some tea, you know, because it's a cultural thing. And you're like, no, thanks.

Speaker 1 I'm not, you know, and they're like, you know, have the tea. And then there's silence in the room.
So you're like, well, I guess I'll drink the tea.

Speaker 1 I drank the tea cut to be, you know, getting the butt drill, you know, and where they check for parasites. And I had the doozy of all parasites.

Speaker 1 But it doesn't affect them because they're so used to it. I was getting, I was supposed to get a, no, so yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So I was supposed to get a...
Like Mexico. Like Montezuma's revenge.

Speaker 1 Right. There you go.
Water. Which, by the way, I've I've had many times as well.

Speaker 1 I have a lot of laws about traveling. One is the worse the GDP, the better the chicken.
Because it's like yardbirds, you know, and so the chicken, you're like, this chicken is delicious.

Speaker 1 But also, the more you need a toilet, the worse that toilet's going to be.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's true. If you're in sub-Saharan Africa, it's just going to be arcing ropes of shit everywhere.

Speaker 1 But if you're in Japan, where you're just going to have a perfect,

Speaker 1 it's got like songs and it'll wipe flowing airs. It's got songs.
It's got songs. Yeah, you press the button.
No, I know. I've been to people's houses here in wealthy Los Angeles where I

Speaker 1 rarely leave except for other parts of America, which is why I admire you so much.

Speaker 1 And I can't. figure out how to use the toilet.

Speaker 1 It's so complicated. It's like I have to like

Speaker 1 sheepishly walk out and say,

Speaker 1 listen,

Speaker 1 you know, my pee is in your toilet. Thank God it wasn't nothing more severe,

Speaker 1 because I just can't figure it out.

Speaker 1 I am addicted to Japanese toilets. I must,

Speaker 1 I've had, I have PTSD from

Speaker 1 so much time on the road and so many stomach parasites. So Japanese toilets are my one luxury.

Speaker 1 If people don't know what we're talking about, I mean, Vice, which started out, of course, as a magazine in Canada and then became this awesome show, which I had the honor of being an executive producer on, which means I did very little and slapped my name on it.

Speaker 1 But you and your crew and your intrepid reporters, but you leading them as the general, went all around the world to the worst places. I mean, that's what Vice was known for.

Speaker 1 It's why it was such an awesome show.

Speaker 1 And it was on HBO for how many years? Five? Seven? Seven? Seven years.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I mean, you would go to Venezuelan prisons

Speaker 1 and you would go to Afghanistan and you would go to Somalia. And just, I mean, it's amazing that

Speaker 1 you don't look any worse for the wear. Really? Thank you.
I mean, I just, but you got rid of the parasite? Yeah.

Speaker 1 How do you get rid of that thing? You know, just very, very strong antibiotics, which, you know,

Speaker 1 probably will make me grow thumbs out of my back when I'm older. But, you know, not good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, there was a, yeah, those were the good old days when

Speaker 1 how that all started was we were in Iraq and it was,

Speaker 1 we were shooting the only heavy metal band in Baghdad. And,

Speaker 1 you know, we, it was not a political thing, but we were there when W went and said, mission accomplished. And he was in the green zone and we were in the red zone.
And everyone was shooting at us.

Speaker 1 And we're like, the war is not over. And they're like, see, that's real news.
And we're like, real news? We're talking about heavy metal.

Speaker 1 And so what we decided to do is, you know, just go there. You know,

Speaker 1 production is just a plane ticket. So we're just $2,000.
I think I flew to Liberia for $600 on belgian air and we went to like because because because we had done this story in in vice

Speaker 1 where a two-pack where a container had been stolen from a ship and it had two pack shakur t-shirts in it so of course it became an army's uniform the two-pack army and they fought general butt naked's army who fought naked and so that's a very vice story right general butt naked versus the two-pack army so we're like well why don't we just go there what do you what do you think if you had to be forced to move uh is the worst place in the world.

Speaker 1 Where would you least like to have to go?

Speaker 1 I'm sure

Speaker 1 it's quite a final four. I mean, like North Korea, Afghanistan.
I mean, there's some great contenders for a worst country to live in. Of course, the kids here in America, they know the answer.

Speaker 1 America.

Speaker 1 They live in the best place with all our flaws at the best time in history.

Speaker 1 And they think they're living at the worst time

Speaker 1 in the worst place. Best time in history.

Speaker 1 By far.

Speaker 1 far yeah i was saying that to someone the other day you know i'm gen x and you know gen x we're this sort of forgotten generation and you know the boomers are on one side and z's on the other side and we had this weird you know existence of not being any anywhere really and i was explaining to someone i'm like if you believe carl sagan which i do saying look there's billions of years and of evolution

Speaker 1 billions and billions and billions and billions of planets right

Speaker 1 and and there's this one tiny fucking window when humans can exist without like you know mastodons killing us and like getting gutted by like a fucking pitchfork.

Speaker 1 And we live in that sort of one window. And not only did we live in that window, we live in the Gen X window, which was like no war, economic prosperity.
You could travel. There's luxury.

Speaker 1 There's Japanese toys.

Speaker 1 I always say the 90s. Right.
Between AIDS and terrorism. Right.

Speaker 1 Like AIDS and not the AIDS is still around, but like when it became not the terror it was in the 90s and terrorism was something that was still still done,

Speaker 1 was still being done in movies.

Speaker 1 And no big war, you know, no, and so, you know, lots of, lots, lots of freedom, Clinton Road, luxury, travel, seeing the world, great food, foodism, hipsterism.

Speaker 1 And now, like, if you look, if you, you know, look at the environment, you look at AI, going to be a huge disruptor, you look, and you say, there's a good possibility that Gen X might have been the greatest single generation to live

Speaker 1 in history, luckiest,

Speaker 1 luckiest in history. And I'm like, you know what? We should be happy every time.
And also, the last, I always say that I called Gen X the last sane generation

Speaker 1 because they were the last free-range

Speaker 1 generation. I mean,

Speaker 1 100%. I don't know if you ever read Brett Easton Ellis' book, The Last One.
It's not a fiction. He wrote a novel that he wrote a novel since, but this one was about five years ago.

Speaker 1 We had him on the show. Not a good talk show guest, but a great writer.
Yeah, great writer. And he wrote, I think it's called White.
Right.

Speaker 1 and it's it's a lot about being a free-range kid in the 70s yes you know and go yeah and of course in and as a boomer that was not even discussed of course you were free range yeah go and go play in the crick i mean it was actually the the reverse was horrible if you were somehow needed your parents to to

Speaker 1 shepherd you to places yeah you know they were like i'm not a chauffeur yeah life was stand by me you went out there were dead kids there were beaches beaches, there were fucking trains.

Speaker 1 And then you'd come back, mom, I lived. And you just shut up, eat your TV dinner.
But it was fun. So fun.
So fun.

Speaker 1 And it made us better. Well, look, I don't know what the fuck happened.

Speaker 1 And somebody's, a lot of people have written a lot of shit about this, but we went from literally having no parental supervision to being like, I guess we're known as like the super.

Speaker 1 most

Speaker 1 supervised. I guess because we didn't have any and we're like, there, but for the grace of God, go, I didn't die.
So now we're overly suffocating or something. I don't know.

Speaker 1 But, like, why are our kids so parented and we kind of weren't parented? You know what I mean? I don't understand that. Well, we weren't over-parented.
I was definitely parented.

Speaker 1 I think they struck basically the right balance. Now, you know, were they a little

Speaker 1 light on? Well, like,

Speaker 1 you know, I remember when I went through puberty, basically, and

Speaker 1 into like having my first girlfriend, I mean, there was so little discussion of it in the house before, so little of making me feel comfortable with it.

Speaker 1 My father and I had one, you know,

Speaker 1 discussion, yes. And I remember he opened it with,

Speaker 1 Your mother thinks I should have this talk with you. Right away, the disclaimer.

Speaker 1 I'm distancing myself from this already. Not my idea.
I have to do it. And I, you know, but mother thinks

Speaker 1 we should have a discussion about sex. And I said, what is it you want to know, Dad?

Speaker 1 No, I didn't say that because I certainly didn't know much either.

Speaker 1 We were very innocent in that era. But it was just, it was about three minutes of the most excruciatingly awkward, embarrassing.
And then we both were like, okay, we did it.

Speaker 1 We filled the quota barely, but we had some sort of thing where the penis goes in the vagina and let's just keep painting the deck because we were like painting the deck.

Speaker 1 Like he chose that as the moment. That's the time.
We're going to be working, so I don't have to look at you.

Speaker 1 Right. We have an activity.
It was like a director at a Medcom. You got to have an activity while you're doing it.

Speaker 1 You're unpacking the groceries while you're having the discussion about your marriage. I got

Speaker 1 if she comes home pregnant, I'm going to kill you myself kind of thing.

Speaker 1 From your father? Yeah, it was a given. It was a given that probably because.
But did you get the talk about the

Speaker 1 pretty much everything because he knew how much of his porn I had snuck into?

Speaker 1 Your father had porn? Oh, yeah. Like magazines, old school magazines.
Magazines, yeah. Yeah, that's what I remember.
And I remember like which one? Videos. Were there Canadian ones?

Speaker 1 No, like Playboy Porn. Where the pussy was very polite.
I remember, I remember,

Speaker 1 thank you. I remember he had

Speaker 1 one, which was, you remember Cicelina? Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 1 Cicilina?

Speaker 1 Do you remember Cicelina? I don't.

Speaker 1 Cicelina. Cicilina.
Who is that? So famous, because that's what I said, would you remember? Speaking of politically incorrect, Cicciolina was an Italian porn star. Oh.

Speaker 1 who became a member of parliament in Italy. Oh, yes.
And married. Oh,

Speaker 1 I know exactly who you're talking about. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I didn't know her name was Cicciolina. Yeah, Cichilina.
That's her real name or her porn name? I think that's her porn name. Well, it matters to me.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, Cichilina, he had a Cicholina tape. So, I was like, yeah, that's where I learned how to study politics right there.
Tape. Like a VHS.

Speaker 1 And you watched it when they weren't home? Yeah, well, not when they were home, yeah.

Speaker 1 Then that'd be really fucking weird. Oh, dad, are you listening? Right.
Can you hear the Italian? And

Speaker 1 was it graphic? Oh, yeah. Blowjob?

Speaker 1 And then fuck? Everything, yeah. Anal?

Speaker 1 Probably not. Right.
Anal is a recent thing. Not for Chichilina.
Not for Chicholina. I mean, come on.
I mean, it's bad enough. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, that's Italy. In Greece, that's...

Speaker 1 Chichilina. Chichelina would, that would be where we go first.
Look, Chichilina did not get fucked in the ass. And I'm not going to listen to this.

Speaker 1 I think she said to somebody, Gorbachev, or some president, I will fuck you to stop this war, whatever war that particular war was.

Speaker 1 The Italians have had a rough enough week without thinking that Cicciolina got fucked in the F. You know why I say this? Why? Well, it was in the news yesterday that Columbus was a Jew.

Speaker 1 Oh, God help us all. Did you see that? No.
No? No. They dug him up.
Right. Dug him up.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Columbus. To do a

Speaker 1 CNA test? Buried in Seville. Really? He wasn't originally buried there.
He wanted to be buried,

Speaker 1 I think, think,

Speaker 1 on Hispaniola because he discovered it.

Speaker 1 Of course, he never set foot in America, but it's another story.

Speaker 1 And then they moved the body at some point to somewhere else, and then it wound up in Seville. Is that what I just said, Seville? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, in 1898, dug him up, did the DNA testing. And of course, they can't say for sure that he was a Jew.
I mean, it wasn't like the skeleton was wearing a yarmulke.

Speaker 1 But, I mean, it was complaining about the air conditioning.

Speaker 1 Well, he's a skeleton. Come on.
He's got no meat on him. Okay, so they said by the DNA, it's very highly likely that he was a Sephardic Spaniard.
Right. I mean,

Speaker 1 he did

Speaker 1 go on his mission for Spain, of course, even though they said he was Italian. He probably was born, I think he was born in northern Italy at the time, Genoa, yes, which was a city-state.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But Jews were born all over, as they were, a diaspora.

Speaker 1 So he could have been that.

Speaker 1 But they're saying, and then the drawings of him, I don't know how they get these drawings. I mean, he looks a little Jewish.

Speaker 1 I did not see that, but it's very. No.

Speaker 1 I mean, so if the kids needed one more reason to hate Columbus, now that they hate the Jews too,

Speaker 1 there you go.

Speaker 1 It's like the unified

Speaker 1 theory of Jew hating.

Speaker 1 The colonizers, Israel, Columbus is a Jew hater. I mean, come on.

Speaker 1 Okay, so what are the four worst countries in the world to be in? Look,

Speaker 1 to go there for a week, it's absolutely fascinating. We were speaking about sort of...
Go where?

Speaker 1 North Korea. Oh.
North Korea for a week. Oh, yeah, you went there a couple of times.
A bunch of times. But like...
To go there, it's like Disneyland for political wands. Oh, I remember.

Speaker 1 That was the vice episode that got us the most publicity. Yeah.
That was amazing. Well, if you remember what happened, we had shot the whole season

Speaker 1 and we were very proud. You know, we'd done a lot of stuff, done a lot of good work.
And then the last thing was I figured out, because I had been there a bunch that they love basketball.

Speaker 1 And if we got, they love the Chicago Bulls. And we figured out if we could get the Chicago Bulls there, that they would.
And so the Chicago Bulls wouldn't go.

Speaker 1 We called Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippin, and they said, fuck you. But we called Dennis Rodman and he said, I'm in.
I'm signing

Speaker 1 cards at the.

Speaker 1 That's how that Rodman-North Korea connection came about.

Speaker 1 It was Vice. It was you.
And with the Harlem Globeshotters, who, by the way, are amazing. The Harlem Globetrotters are like the best ambassadors America could want.

Speaker 1 So we went over, played the national team, was a tie,

Speaker 1 and Kim Jong-un came and

Speaker 1 invited our crew. I remember.
I remember. So I had, speaking of the stomach parasite, I had a hernia operation.
I had to delay because of the stomach parasites. It's right at that time.

Speaker 1 So you have a good memory. I was in the bath reading the fucking, no, I was reading my phone, I guess.

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Speaker 1 I was reading the papers, I was reading the phone, and every fucking news site in the world shat on us from on high. They're stunt journalists, fuck biceps.

Speaker 1 And by the way, the BBC really shat on us, and they had just got caught for trying to sneak in with a school group. And you're like, you're going to endanger school kids, but I'm the fucking asshole.

Speaker 1 And who? Oh, that's so infuriating. Infuriating.
All these elitist,

Speaker 1 stupid journalists who sit who are like lazy about the most basic things about journalism that they could look up or find out right here in America, shitting on you over in North Korea.

Speaker 1 So because they couldn't get in, and so we got this, because everyone gets the same documentary of North Korea because

Speaker 1 they just give you the same one and everyone has the same one. Anyway, so we got this thing.
And I just remember we're just launching the show.

Speaker 1 And I remember being devastated because everyone was shitting on us. And Klepler called us, called me up.
He said one thing. He said.
Klepler, the president of HBO. Klepler, shout out.

Speaker 1 You're a fucking genius. I love you.
My favorite. The last of the great, him and Tom Freston, the last two great

Speaker 1 media moguls. Who's always had my back and my back, our back.
HBO.

Speaker 1 And by the way, that job of having the back of people like us is not an easy one. It's not an easy one.

Speaker 1 Because in cancel culture, which we lived through and still are living through, they come at you very hard.

Speaker 1 Like, we will picket your office.

Speaker 1 We will do

Speaker 1 journalists on on you. We will do everything.

Speaker 1 So for a guy to stick up for us meant something.

Speaker 1 Shout out to

Speaker 1 one of the last, I always think,

Speaker 1 last of the great V8 interceptors. You were a fucking mensch.
Anyway, Plepler called me when all that shit was going down and he said, you know what they said about Rome?

Speaker 1 He said they called it, they had a one-word review, Carthage. And he said, look, you have a great show.
Don't worry about it. And we launched to a five.
We launched to a crazy number.

Speaker 1 And I realized, you know, all of that publicity, no one gave a shit about us. No one knew about us except for you.

Speaker 1 And all of a sudden we were this popular show because everyone had shat on us from on high. And the first episode, everyone was like, this is fucking awesome.

Speaker 1 But also, it was such a great companion show for my show because it was also like,

Speaker 1 I know this sounds immodest, but like the only place where people could see real shit.

Speaker 1 So it was like my show into your show. I mean, I mean, Vice did not look like anything.
I mean, 60 Minutes is the closest thing, and 60 Minutes has done much great work over the years. Oh, yeah.
Much.

Speaker 1 And they have gone to places that are dangerous,

Speaker 1 but not the way Vice did. Not as far under the fingernails.
Huge fan of 60 Minutes.

Speaker 1 It used to be

Speaker 1 the greatest news show ever made. Yes.
The only. The only.

Speaker 1 The only.

Speaker 1 And it's still great.

Speaker 1 I still never, I have not missed an episode of 60 Minutes in the history of that run. Another shout-out, Jeff Fager,

Speaker 1 who ran 60 Minutes for a long time, did a phenomenal job. But yeah, Plepler with us, he was always had our back.
And Don Hewitt, who invented it. Yeah, Don Hewitt, amazing.

Speaker 1 Who said, our job is to make interesting what's important. Exactly.
There you go. Bang.

Speaker 1 That should be today. Bango.
Well, that's what we're trying to do. I mean, the reason why that quote is in my mind is because I live by it or try to and and I've always remembered it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Our job, if you watch, I mean, I used to watch the nightly news and then I watched it almost just to make fun of it. And now I can't even watch it.
Can't watch it.

Speaker 1 Because it's just, it should be recalled, renamed

Speaker 1 some video we found that was cool that we thought we'd show you. I mean, that's, I mean, you get about three minutes of real news before you're into like, a plane had a problem.

Speaker 1 Unless they all died, shut the fuck up. I don't give a shit.
It's not a story.

Speaker 1 And they show a shaky plane or something and passengers freaking out when all the shit that they could be covering goes uncovered, which is the kind of shit you covered.

Speaker 1 And then by the time you get to the last segment, it's just the one-legged skier. Well, I think it's worse than that.
I think it's fucking op-ed.

Speaker 1 It's so like you get like whatever, 15, you know,

Speaker 1 minutes maybe of

Speaker 1 some sort of video like you're saying, which is not the video they should be showing. And then let's all talk about the video and what we think about the video.

Speaker 1 Everybody's just talking about it off, bad, off, bad, and you're like, I don't give a shit what you have to say. I mean,

Speaker 1 and that's where the better

Speaker 1 news is given.

Speaker 1 That's not even TikTok.

Speaker 1 Imagine the mind of someone who gets their news from TikTok. Yeah.
I mean, there's a problem.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, we have so many problems like that: problems of character. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Problems of discipline, problems of minds that are just mush, including one of the candidates for president that we're going to be voting for is just, I mean, not that he always hasn't been an insane person.

Speaker 1 Maybe not always, because like

Speaker 1 that movie that just came out about him, The Apprentice, is awesome. If you haven't seen it,

Speaker 1 it is so good. The reason why it may not do well, and I think I hope it does well in the way Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 did really well before the 2004 election.

Speaker 1 Is that it's

Speaker 1 people,

Speaker 1 if they hate Trump, it's like, okay, I'm not going to see it because I wouldn't want to patronize him.

Speaker 1 It's an honest character study. Just look at it as that.
He did change. He was his father's son.
The father was awful and partly made the son who he is.

Speaker 1 So I know people who saw it and said, I don't like it because it's sympathetic to Trump in the beginning. Well, maybe he is sympathetic in the beginning.
He was collecting like rents from his father.

Speaker 1 He opens the door and they throw hot water on him because that's what happens when you were a slum lord, which his father was sometimes, and people didn't want to pay the rent.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, it's just, if you just...

Speaker 1 watch it as a study of a human, it's quite interesting. And then, of course, it's very brutal to Trump in the second half.
But he did change. He did become this monster.

Speaker 1 But don't you think,

Speaker 1 I'm asking the one guy who knows and is probably going to tear me to shit for saying this, don't you think that all politicians are sort of narcissistic, charming megalomaniacs? Not all. No.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a tribute in my book to a guy named Henry Waxman, who you probably never heard of, and that's why

Speaker 1 he's so great. Okay.

Speaker 1 It's a tribute. We did it as an editorial.
We gave him the Baldy Award. He's a bald, bespeckled congressman

Speaker 1 who single-handedly wrote

Speaker 1 boys. Wrote probably all the progressive legislation

Speaker 1 since

Speaker 1 1980. He's not in Congress anymore, but he was until recently.

Speaker 1 There's a Republican who said,

Speaker 1 If you don't like progressive legislation, it's something like, it's because you were looking away while Henry Waxman was,

Speaker 1 I mean, everything from, you know, seat belts, that kind of stuff, anything that aids,

Speaker 1 you know, recognizing aid, he just did it all. He was a political mechanic.

Speaker 1 He was just a guy who wanted to do the job.

Speaker 1 That guy you don't find that often in

Speaker 1 the Republican Party.

Speaker 1 You don't often find it in the Democrats, but much more often. Democrats are wonks.
Hillary's a wonk. Obama's a wonk.

Speaker 1 They really care about the work, and they know in detail what you need to know about the work. Republicans have this idea, oh no, big picture, you know, Bush, we got attacked, war, where, sir?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I'm not a detail man.
You figure that out. Republicans have wonks too, but yeah.
No, they're not. Come on.
Name one Republican wonk. All of the neocons.

Speaker 1 Neocons. Yeah.
Oh, like

Speaker 1 Rumfelds, Haney.

Speaker 1 Yeah, those are.

Speaker 1 They're not in the office. I'm talking about Republican versus Democratic politicians.

Speaker 1 You can't name any Republican wonks who really care about the. I mean, that's not true.
I'm sure that they do.

Speaker 1 Some of them do their work, and I'm glad they do their homework, because, again, I don't trust the left either.

Speaker 1 But generally, the people who just want to make policy and make lives better and make government work better, yes, they spend too much money and they have a lot of flaws, but they generally tend to be people like Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 1 They're wonky people who like the idea of government. They know all the things.
There's another, I think, a great one we did about celebrities who want to be in office.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Reagan had a cabinet of wonks. I mean, he put a cabinet of wonks.
A long time ago. He was the Queen of England, and Schultz was the ultimate wonk.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Yes, you're right.
But that's a different era and a different Republican.

Speaker 1 That Republican is gone. Agreed.
I'm just saying. No, no.

Speaker 1 Wonky.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that Republican doesn't exist much anymore. I mean, mean,

Speaker 1 they exist on the outskirts. I mean, they exist writing articles for,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 what's the Republican magazine?

Speaker 1 Don't put me out. No, you don't know that.

Speaker 1 No, I'm stoned, so I can't think of it. But, you know, they have one.

Speaker 1 Like a magazine? Yeah,

Speaker 1 there's a hardcore right-wing. It's very influential.
I mean,

Speaker 1 Drudge Report? No. No.

Speaker 1 I don't know. We'll hire pair on it later.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it's very influential. It was very influential in the Iraq war.
You know, they were like all for the surge, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 I mean, they're not completely crazy, but I think they were against Trump at the beginning. Right.
Well, the Republicans were against Trump in the beginning. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then he took over the GOP.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 that's what happens with the... You know who I liked? You know who was wonkish and a political mechanic and who got fucked by his own party? John Boehner.
He was trying to make shit work.

Speaker 1 He got fucked for even meeting with Obama. I wouldn't call him a mechanic.
He was a political mechanic. He worked on consensus.
He was trying to make shit happen. He was a drunk.
Yeah. He was

Speaker 1 a charming drunk. Maybe.
Okay, some drunks are. I don't know.
I never met him. I know he used to burst into tears if he saw an American flag.
He was emotional.

Speaker 1 Emotional cat. In a sandwich.
Emotional cat. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But listen, he got kicked up by his own party for his meeting with Obama.

Speaker 1 I'll take him and

Speaker 1 his I weep about how much I love America much more than I will the kids who think America is the worst place in the world. I agree.

Speaker 1 And I mean, really, I mean, the idea that I've heard the term death to America now chanted on American soil. I mean, I've heard it as you have and you've been to these places chanted in Tehran.

Speaker 1 A lot of those people have never left America is the issue. Well, that's the point.
They need to talk to you. Yeah, well, listen, I come back here.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you the truth. Every time I come back here, I'm like, oh,

Speaker 1 it's horrible. I love it.
I love it.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 But you are exactly the person who needs to talk to the kids who think they live at the worst time

Speaker 1 in the worst country. You're wrong.

Speaker 1 Just you're wrong. You're wrong.
From someone who's been there. You know, the difference.

Speaker 1 Look, every generation looks back at the former generations and goes, oh, these kids today, I mean, they did it to us.

Speaker 1 But the difference is that I don't remember my views on things that I had no idea about because I was too young taken as seriously as these kids are. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, because Gen Z, so the baby boomers were the largest media economic cohort, socioeconomic cohort ever,

Speaker 1 and were so till today when they're dying off. So now it's going to be Gen Z.
So Gen Z are going to run shit, A.

Speaker 1 And just like the baby boomers did.

Speaker 1 The problem now is you have kids coming out of college and being like, I read a book, and so therefore this is what that. And you're like, look, go to these places.

Speaker 1 Go see what it's like to never have a kick at the can, ever. And if you have the wrong name or the wrong accent, you and your kids and your kids' kids will never have a kick at the can, ever.

Speaker 1 And so, look, I'm an immigrant. I came here with nothing.
And you're like, it's still the American dream.

Speaker 1 It's still a place where you can go from rags to riches, where you can manifest destiny, where you can can make it all happen.

Speaker 1 And you can say what you want about a lot of other places, but you can't do that, I would say, in 94% of the globe.

Speaker 1 What's so ironic is that the thing they really hate, because they're so uneducated, they only really know black and white. And I mean literally black and white.

Speaker 1 Everything is seen through this lens of identity politics.

Speaker 1 So white people bad. Everything they did was bad.

Speaker 1 So ironic because everything that makes their lives possible was, I'm sorry, probably invented through Athens, Rome,

Speaker 1 Jerusalem, Philadelphia, London.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, rule of law,

Speaker 1 free and fair elections, respect for minorities.

Speaker 1 These are all the things that make life good. The fact that we have protected markets, that you can actually do business without it being dominated by corruption.

Speaker 1 I mean, these are the things that make life good for everybody.

Speaker 1 Human rights, the idea of you get a trial by jury. They take all these things for granted.
People made these ideas up and fought and died for them. I'm sorry some of them are white.

Speaker 1 I wish it all happened in Wakanda.

Speaker 1 Look, look, it's hard to argue with.

Speaker 1 I will say that there was a time when England especially went out, took all the resources from everywhere, brought them back to England, manufactured them, and then sold them back to the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 And being an ex-colonial, you're like, yeah, I grew up loving British comedy and British fucking TV and British books and British,

Speaker 1 but they were doing some bad fucking things. The British to Canada? To everybody.
To everybody.

Speaker 1 But not as bad to you as they did to me.

Speaker 1 Not as bad to us as Africans. What did they do bad to you?

Speaker 1 They did bad to the natives well they did bad to the natives if you want to look at if you want to look at world war one and world war ii canadians were known as cannon fodder and in fact d-day they just sent the canadians on the first waves to get killed problem

Speaker 1 no so we were we were we were really canadians were cannon fodder famously famously they'd send in the canadians and the australians i bet you they took

Speaker 1 their kiwis very politely

Speaker 1 thank you no we were cannon fodder for the brits as as were all the colonies. I shouldn't just say us.
I mean, it was the colonies.

Speaker 1 There's a great scene in Braveheart where

Speaker 1 Braveheart, of course, takes place in Scotland in 1315 when the Scots were looking to be free from the Prince.

Speaker 1 And William Wallace, played by Mel Gupta, brilliantly in a brilliant movie, whatever you think of his politics.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the bad guy is King, who was the king in England at the time? King William Wallace, wasn't it? No, he's William Wallace. It was William Wallace.
No, I think it was King John or King Edward.

Speaker 1 I think Edward. Edward, Edward.

Speaker 1 Played by the Patrick McGoon. He's so good, who was he threw the dude out the window.
It was an amazing scene. Yes.
And

Speaker 1 it's one of those scenes that you see in all the movies where there's medieval battles and one side is arrayed on a battlefield against the other. And they're about to do it.

Speaker 1 They're about to throw down.

Speaker 1 Throw down with all of them and run at each other. I mean, the fact that men do this just says a lot about how bad men are.
Okay. But they're going to do it.
And

Speaker 1 the guy says to King Edward, Patrick McGillan,

Speaker 1 should we do the archers now, sir? And he said, no, send in the Irish. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The Irish, sir? He says, yeah. Arrows cost a dollar apiece.
Arrows cost a lot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then

Speaker 1 the Irish run out and the other guy, Irish guy, convinced them to come over. And he goes, you can never trust the Irish.
And then they go in.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The Bruce

Speaker 1 sold out to the Scottish.

Speaker 1 I'm always making this point about the past. It's like, we just, we grow up

Speaker 1 historically as a species in a way that's completely analogous to the way we grow up. as individuals.
You don't expect you

Speaker 1 of 10 years old to have any sense of right or wrong or morality or whatsoever.

Speaker 1 And when we were, you know, in 1315 or whatever, or, you know, 2000 BC, whatever, humans were just, nobody even thought that slavery was wrong in biblical times.

Speaker 1 We know because we have the Bible and there's no, no one ever says, let's just not do it.

Speaker 1 Like every

Speaker 1 country, well now country, but every

Speaker 1 historical, every country all had slaves. black, white.

Speaker 1 I was reading some stat that there's more slaves today than there's ever been, like numerologically. That's bullshit.
Well, but there's a lot of slaves out there. There's not a lot of slaves.

Speaker 1 I looked into this also. Okay.
There's not a lot of slaves. No.

Speaker 1 There's people, you know, where the people who

Speaker 1 resemble it most closely are

Speaker 1 rich Gulf states

Speaker 1 like Bahrain,

Speaker 1 United Arab Emirates, Gutter, that have these workers,

Speaker 1 usually from Asia,

Speaker 1 Bangladesh, the Philippines. They treat them about as bad as you can treat a worker.

Speaker 1 And sometimes

Speaker 1 it's so close to slavery, indentured servitude.

Speaker 1 But of course, because they're people of color, we cannot.

Speaker 1 Criticism is not.

Speaker 1 We actually did that.

Speaker 1 We snuck into where the camps where the they live as they're making

Speaker 1 you know the high rises and all of this

Speaker 1 we actually did that and and

Speaker 1 you're right I mean it's as close as you get I mean I mean what I've talked about apparently there's there's I'm not I shouldn't speak on it because I don't know the stats so I don't really know but but you did story on it well we did story no I'm saying on that on wage servitude where they take your passport and they don't give you the money and you stay there for 22 years and you never pay off your debt I mean but I'm talking about it's very close very close I'm just saying if they did that in Belgium,

Speaker 1 I think it would be a bigger story. Yeah.
Oh, sure. Yeah.
100%. Okay.
And that is one of the real big problems of the left.

Speaker 1 Like, only white people can do bad things.

Speaker 1 Look, that's just

Speaker 1 terrible to be. Today more than ever.
Right.

Speaker 1 That's the one.

Speaker 1 I don't know where that is. Is that a university thing? Because it seems like university is percolating into mainstream.

Speaker 1 You know, this Chapel Roan open letter I did last week talking about Israel, thinking I could reason with someone who has shown an ability to reason. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, it's so interesting.

Speaker 1 It did amazing business. When I say business, I mean retweets and re, you know, over 10 million, which is a lot for us.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But like, and very little blowback. Like, there's no way to argue.
It's so hard to argue with the pictures of the women in Burkas.

Speaker 1 It's like once you show that picture,

Speaker 1 which is apropos

Speaker 1 to this conflict, if you think it isn't, again, you don't know much about history or the present,

Speaker 1 it's just so hard. So this is kind of infuriating to me.
You may have had it happen to you, too. It's like when they can't argue with me, they just ignore it.

Speaker 1 It's like, I can't win this argument, so I'm just not going to engage. And in three days, we'll all be talking about something else.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Look, I'm going to say two things, probably

Speaker 1 light up the Twitter sphere. But the one thing was, and I remember saying this a lot during our reporting, after 9-11, you were like, look, you know,

Speaker 1 9-11, like you were saying, you know, there was a period of non-terrorism. 9-11 changed the world, right? It galvanized the world into two camps.
It did exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted.

Speaker 1 It was a very successful piece of terrorism. If you look at it, just

Speaker 1 again. Now, if you look at what was happening in the Middle East, which I was there reporting on, the Abraham Accords

Speaker 1 were ratified, where the GCC were going to recognize Israel. The biggest thing since 1947.
I got to stop here. The Abraham Accords were something that happened in the Trump administration.

Speaker 1 Under Jared. Under Jared Kushner to get, and they successfully got Bahrain,

Speaker 1 Oman, Oman, Saudi,

Speaker 1 did the GCO

Speaker 1 to have a treaty with Israel.

Speaker 1 And recognizes Israel. And Israel already has treaty and recognizes.
And Israel already has that with Jordan

Speaker 1 and with Egypt.

Speaker 1 Groundbreaking, huge. You know, I mean, mostly what you hear about Israel, and it's certainly true, is that it's surrounded by enemies because they are surrounded by Hezbollah in the north

Speaker 1 and Gaza. But here are, okay, if you could...

Speaker 1 neutralize the Gaza situation somehow, now you've got Egypt, long-standing treaty there, Jordan to their other side treaty, and now these other countries, and

Speaker 1 they were about to get Saudi Arabia. So if you look, this is my long-winded thing from 9-11, is

Speaker 1 the Abraham Accords, again under Trump and Jared,

Speaker 1 biggest thing since 47, at least bigger than since Camp David and Jimmy Carter. Right.
Massive, massive, massive, massive thing. The problem with that is the enemy of Miami becomes my friend.

Speaker 1 So Iran sees this and says, hold on a second.

Speaker 1 We have Israel and the gcc

Speaker 1 our two biggest enemies gcc even i don't know what that is the oh jesus now you're going to call me out and i've had a few drinks the gulf cooperation council or committee it's basically the seven or eight gulf states right the ones you just mentioned the ones that are keeping the pakistanis in indentured servitude so

Speaker 1 they were going to recognize israel and do all this stuff do this stuff So Iran sees this and goes, fuck, if that happens, we're screwed because we've got the GCC and Israel together.

Speaker 1 So they pay for the three H's, they pay for the Houthis, they pay for Hamas, they pay for Hezbollah, and all of a sudden, Hamas comes out

Speaker 1 like out of nowhere, comes and starts doing these heinous, fucking terrible 9-11 style attacks. And by the way, it fucking worked.
The Middle East now has gone 20 years backwards.

Speaker 1 The GCC, the Abraham Accords have gone out.

Speaker 1 Everybody's just, you know what? Fucking Israel's now on its fucking island again. And Iran just said, go do it because they've been paying their salaries for the past 20 years.

Speaker 1 And you're like, they fucking won because they destabilized. But they didn't win because the war isn't over.
No, but hold on. That's not what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying, I'm saying they destabilized the region again. Yeah.
Again.

Speaker 1 And at some point, we have to say, look, terrorism can't fucking win every fucking game.

Speaker 1 They're not allowed to win every game.

Speaker 1 No, I really wish you had some sort of seminar that the kids would listen to, but they probably wouldn't because you're over 50. Are you over 50? Oh, man.
Yes, look at me.

Speaker 1 Okay, man, you look great. I'm over 50.
I mean, I don't know how old you are. You're generically middle-aged, which is as good as you can.
It's as good as you can be.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm older than you. I know that.
You look fucking good. Well, thank you.
We're just a fucking mutually beneficial society. Yeah.
Hey, what kind of

Speaker 1 show you're going to be. You got a full head of hair?

Speaker 1 You do. Yeah.
I don't know what I'm allowed to say, but you're dating supermodels. You got a full head of hair.
Let's fucking go, man. Well, I'm not dating supermodels, but I have, and it's not good.

Speaker 1 Let's go.

Speaker 1 The kids say L F G. That's what we're doing.
Let's fucking go. There we go, brother.
But, I mean, we do need someone to crack through.

Speaker 1 Well, someone needs to say sane shit, which you do. I know.
You need to say sane shit. But then we need to get...
I mean, the point about Chapel Rohan was like, but can I get her to watch it?

Speaker 1 Can I get her, or not her, yes, her would be great, but also those people to pay attention to what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 My point about like nobody really on the internet was able to refute it because it's irrefutable.

Speaker 1 What I'm saying, you can't refute. Israel was in that land forever.
It is their ancestral homeland. There have always been Jews there.
It does not the same thing as colonizing.

Speaker 1 Whatever thing

Speaker 1 where I'm going against the bullshit that they've learned on TikTok, that they're colonizers, that it's an apartheid,

Speaker 1 that they're committing genocide.

Speaker 1 There have been genocides committed in the world. This is not one of them.
And they could if they wanted to.

Speaker 1 The reason why so many people have died is because Hamas uses their civilians as shields.

Speaker 1 They're responsible for this.

Speaker 1 There is a simple solution to this. Stop attacking Israel.
Accept them as a state in the region. It is their ancestral homeland.
There was a deal by the UN. I said this to Chappelleron.

Speaker 1 We We like them, right?

Speaker 1 You know, I'm trying to get through to these kids in any way I can. But if they just turn off and go, why should I listen to somebody that age who knows so much more than I do, boring.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm going to say three things. How do you get that? I'm going to say three things.
You asked me the worst place in the world that I would live in. Let's get to that.
I would say...

Speaker 1 Man 9. I would say man naive.
I would say to you,

Speaker 1 North Korea.

Speaker 1 The reason why I say North Korea, it's a a fascinating place

Speaker 1 to go for a week because you see Stalinist Russia in 1953 or Maoist China in 1964. By the way, that's the one, if all the ones you're going to say, I would most agree, number one.

Speaker 1 It scares me. But if you lived there.
Oh, my God. If you lived there.
O-M-G.

Speaker 1 We would hear stories of if you go to a concentration camp,

Speaker 1 they eat kernels of corn out of cow shit. Beyond.
I can't even. And so I'll say one other anecdote.
I was driving in the country, which you're never allowed to do.

Speaker 1 And they don't have like villages in the country. They have like a one Stalinist apartment, like 50 foot, 50 story high building in the middle of nowhere.
But they've ripped out all of the windows.

Speaker 1 How does the grubbab driver get there? So, so check this out. So you have just forest and then this Stalinist, you know, 50 story high thing that they built in like 1953.

Speaker 1 And then so, so then, but they've pulled all the windows out because they had to sell them to China. They don't have any money.

Speaker 1 They've pulled the rebar out so it it looks like a concrete-eating woodpecker has, you know, so it's just got hold. But they're on the 50th floor, and you look up, and there's cooking fires.

Speaker 1 So you're like, hold on a second. These guys are carrying up, there's no water, so they're carrying water from the stream and wood to have cooking fires on floor 49.

Speaker 1 And you're like, okay,

Speaker 1 you want to know where I don't want to live?

Speaker 1 There. Right.
Now, that said,

Speaker 1 this is, I'm going to invoke your ire. What I'm hearing, what I'm hearing, Shane, is that you're a racist and you hate Asians.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm hearing. The opposite, sorry.

Speaker 1 My producer's laughing because he knows the truth about that. But

Speaker 1 what I will say is I spent a lot of time in Israel

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I love it. Like Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv, Jerusalem. I mean, there's one city block.
which is like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam on the same block. And you're like, okay, same God, same fucking thing.

Speaker 1 Everybody shut up. And I love it.
I love Israel. I've also spent a lot of time, like my secret was Lebanon.
I used to love going to Beirut and everyone goes, stay safe, dude.

Speaker 1 Cut to me on the fucking beach, eating Branzino, drinking wine, going to the fucking open air, the best club in the world, raids, everyone like, yeah, it's super dangerous. Don't ever come here.

Speaker 1 But what year is this? See, exactly. So before all of everybody left and before, but I've spent a lot of time in the region.
And I'm going to say this, and I'm going to go back to North Korea.

Speaker 1 When we did the Rodman thing, what you realize is people are fucking people. And the kids love the basketball and the young kids love the fucking Harlem Globetrotters and the regime is fucked up.

Speaker 1 The regime is fucking terrible. And I'll say that fucking, my hotel should have been hotel murder because it just reeked of fucking murder out fucking blood.

Speaker 1 And you're like, I don't want to ever come back here. Sorry if I'm applying for a visa.

Speaker 1 This was an omni?

Speaker 1 This was an omni. By the way, their version of an omni.

Speaker 1 So North Korea never wanted, because it's the antithesis of freedom.

Speaker 1 That said, the people of North Korea were just fucking there for a fucking basketball game and they're bringing tears to their eyes because I like fucking basketball and the Americans are there.

Speaker 1 You go to fucking Israel, they're fucking nice people, they're beautiful people. You go to Palestine, they're beautiful, nice people.

Speaker 1 You go to the region, you go to Saudi, you go to everyone, there's so much propaganda. The Saudis are so fucking, it's not true.
The fucking, these guys are so fucking, it's not true.

Speaker 1 The people are fine. I had the same experience making religious.
Yeah. We shot the last scene in a

Speaker 1 area that where we wanted to have dinner was Palestinian-run, and the bodyguards were super nervous. They spent an hour checking out the restaurant before they let us in.

Speaker 1 And then when we got in, it's like they were happy to have our money

Speaker 1 and we were happy to have their food. We were starving.

Speaker 1 And you realize just what you said. It's all about the politicians.

Speaker 1 And it'd be so easy to solve all of these problems.

Speaker 1 Israel and the Palestinians could totally get along.

Speaker 1 Like, same people, same food, same names, same language. And you sit there and you go, if we could just fucking be people.

Speaker 1 And that's why when people start talking about shit as if they understand it, they've never been there.

Speaker 1 They're talking about regime. No.
They're talking about policies. They're not talking about the people.
They don't know what the fuck they're talking about. That's what pisses me off.
Right.

Speaker 1 And you're right. Same everything, Semitic people.

Speaker 1 I have an organization called

Speaker 1 One Nose

Speaker 1 because they have

Speaker 1 the same nose.

Speaker 1 And I would like to solicit donations today to One Nose.

Speaker 1 It's my dedicated.

Speaker 1 What was your old fucking show called? Politically Incorrect? Holy shit, man. You've been doing it for 30 years.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I haven't changed.

Speaker 1 You're a beautiful baby boy. Your mom and I love you very much.
Well,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 hope that the kids can get some wisdom somehow. Shoehorned everybody needs to fucking shoehorn it in there because, you know, again, their go-to is you're old or, you know, get off my lawn.

Speaker 1 That's not an argument. That's what you say because you don't have an argument because you're too lazy to do the research and understand what the fuck we're talking about.

Speaker 1 And if you don't understand it, then really

Speaker 1 you don't get a vote anyway.

Speaker 1 But at least, you know, I'm not trying to mock you. I'm just trying to educate you.

Speaker 1 You know, and maybe you wouldn't wind up on this side. That's what I kept saying to Chapel Rohn.
Like, is this really the people you want to throw down with?

Speaker 1 The people that make their women wear burqas? You're a fucking drag queen singer.

Speaker 1 What you do would get you thrown off a roof in Gaza. You're on the wrong team here.
You're on team.

Speaker 1 we think women are second-class citizens, and we're not afraid to say so.

Speaker 1 I mean, Gaza, the place where your heroes, Hamas, live, has no laws against or effectively executed laws against sexual harassment or marital rape or, you know, underage marriage, any of the things that are like, you know, just derigueur, we think are the worst things in the world here in America.

Speaker 1 Like I was, like I'd say, you have a lot of people who have never been. Like one of the things that we found is if you just go somewhere,

Speaker 1 and quite frankly, we look back at this glorious time of news, like the Walter Cronkite era, and it was literally a stringer who never left the hotel drinking whiskey would get something and he would send it back.

Speaker 1 They would write it on a teleprompter. He'd read it, and everybody believed it because it wasn't disproved.
Right.

Speaker 1 And so one of the things we did, speaking of heavy metal in Baghdad, we started just going places. And for my first trip to Afghanistan, I went, we won an Emmy for that.

Speaker 1 And because we found all these stories of

Speaker 1 misuse of funds and billions of dollars going missing, forts being taken over the Taliban, like Sain,

Speaker 1 where did you get your fucking stories from? And I'm like, Sigger. Sigger is the Special Investigator General of Afghanistan.
It's the American government.

Speaker 1 We just went and said, where is the fucking shit happening? But we went there. And what you find is

Speaker 1 nearly 90% of the time, completely the opposite of what everybody takes as a given.

Speaker 1 because it's just fucking, this is the story and this is what we're saying. In what way?

Speaker 1 I mean, everything. Like what? Well.
Like, what's opposite? Well, every, so I remember, well,

Speaker 1 for example, we went to

Speaker 1 Fallujah

Speaker 1 and. That's Iraq.
Correct. Oh, they said Afghanistan.
Oh, no, in Afghanistan. Oh, okay.
So Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 for example all the stories would be coming back oh well just everything we're winning the war there's no heroin we've convinced everybody this

Speaker 1 And you're like, okay, I went there. Like, heroin is like, 90% of the world's heroin is coming from here.

Speaker 1 And everyone you would talk to are like, oh, the Americans leave and the Taliban have more land than before they came in. Everyone.
It was so, such a, it's as much of a redo of Vietnam. Yeah, worse.

Speaker 1 As Letty Gaga was of Madonna when she first came out. It was like the same thing.
And somehow we forgot. More expensive, longer.
Well, but the same shtick. Yeah.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 So, but if you're there, everyone's like, well, we're close to winning and we've taken this territory. And if you're there, you're like, yeah, no, the Taliban have won.

Speaker 1 And the minute the Americans leave, they're going to run everything. They're going to have all of our money, all of our stuff.

Speaker 1 They're going to have all this, you know, our heroin money and our legitimate money. They're going to take all our bullion, all our tanks, all our planes.

Speaker 1 And they're going to make it even worse on the women. Well, or on everybody.
I mean, they went so far. to, I think some of this is just trolling us.
I mean, like

Speaker 1 this, again, what I was saying to Chappell, like your heroes in Hamas are only slightly less conservative than the Taliban,

Speaker 1 who this last few weeks

Speaker 1 went to places where, again, I think this is just trolling because already you're keeping women like head to toe covered. But now they can't be heard in public.
Right. Like you're

Speaker 1 no, no singing. Right.
No,

Speaker 1 their voice can, I mean, that's trolling, right? I mean, you've made your point and now you're just saying, you know what? Fuck you. Fuck you, kids.
I'm going to say,

Speaker 1 what do we have to do to get you protesting us?

Speaker 1 Hamas, if you spend any time in the region, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis. We were actually, I believe, shout out to Ben Anderson, one of the first to ever report on the Houthis.

Speaker 1 The Houthis, of course, are the ones in Yemen. Yemen.
Yemen, which is, you know, the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula,

Speaker 1 borders south there. And,

Speaker 1 like, they have nothing to do do with Palestine. Correct.

Speaker 1 And yet they're lobbing missiles at Israel. Correct.
Nothing to do with Palestinia. Also,

Speaker 1 the Houthi is the name. And it was one tribe, small little tribe from the north, Sada.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you were there in Yemen? Oh, many times. Yeah, yeah.
I got arrested. And shout out to Haitim.
Haitim got me out of secret police prison. When you fly into Yemen, it's a direct from Burbank.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I fan nice. I go from Van Eyes to fucking Yemen.
Very difficult to get into Yemen. How do you get into Yemen? Surprise, surprise.
Don't say practice. Yeah, practice.
No, I took a freighter.

Speaker 1 A freighter? Yeah. Oh, my God.
I took a freighter. I feel so guilty, Shane.
I have that same Emmy, and I've never been east of La Brea.

Speaker 1 I feel so guilty. But you know what? You know what, dude? You don't have a stomach.
I'll go stay here with the women. You don't have a stomach eating.

Speaker 1 I'll protect the women.

Speaker 1 You go get the virus and the stomach eating.

Speaker 1 Not to be an asshole, but you are doing an essential thing of bringing what's important to people. So true.
And hold on. Let me, can I say one thing? Please.

Speaker 1 The left does this thing about doing politics through humor. They're not funny and their politics are shit.
You're funny and your politics are spot on. So well done.
And that's important.

Speaker 1 And somebody has to do that. I so appreciate that.

Speaker 1 And especially since I can do that and still have dinner at Madero. There you go.
And since I can't do that, I have to go to Liberia and go, this shit's fucked up. Bilmar.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the, you know what?

Speaker 1 God

Speaker 1 that I don't believe in really did me a solid when he made me funny because that makes up for so many things and it allows you to just, yeah.

Speaker 1 But you have to shed light on the stuff that's important and you have to do it in an entertaining way. What I found.
How do you get into Yemen? You said a freighter. I had to go on a freighter.

Speaker 1 What is a freighter? Like a

Speaker 1 ship, like a tramp steamer a tramp steamer like your humphrey bogart in 1954 exactly i love it so by the way i love it but where did that i love it really i love it but hold on hold on hold on i used to love it i remember i would tell you this one time i'm allowed to tell a story where i was very fucking pleased with myself which jake my dp used to always say shane fucking definitely likes to fucking dress up one of the things was

Speaker 1 which is self-deprecating but if you go walk around in khakis and have dudes doing this, you learn the hard way, you're a fucking target. What's this? Talking into your wrist.
That's security.

Speaker 1 Oh, I get it. So what I found early is if you fucking put a chicken bone in your beard and wear rags, nobody fucking messes with you.
A chicken bone in your beard? You just look like a bomb.

Speaker 1 Oh, I see. So just don't have fucking dudes in khakis talking in your wrists, right? Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There you go.
Okay, you're a smart man. Right.

Speaker 1 So anyway, I was reporting in Kashmir, and there's a very specific Kashmir-y chappal, which is like the hat with the thing and the long shavarkumis.

Speaker 1 And so I just come from Kashmir and we were going to Northwest Frontier Province

Speaker 1 to hang out with the Taliban in SWAT, which is like fucking dangerous, right?

Speaker 1 And so I was with my partner, Saroosh Alvi, who's from Pakistan. And we were going into Northwest Frontier Province and I'm basically a pink Irishman wearing fucking

Speaker 1 Kashmiri chappal. And so we were going there and my producer says, fuck this.
Like, let's get the fuck out. Like, this is fucking just too fucking crazy.
And

Speaker 1 I remember myself and Sarush, we went into this guest house because there's no hotels or anything.

Speaker 1 So we're in this guest house and the lady goes to Sarush, who's Pakistani, goes, does your religious leader require any special diet? Right.

Speaker 1 Because there's no fucking way that a pink man wearing Kashmiri Chappal is anything but a Dagestani fucking badass.

Speaker 1 So he's fucking there for only fucking one reason. So we're not going to fuck with him.
And so Sarush responds to Nerdu, no, he would just want to be left alone. Thank you very fucking much.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I'm fitting in. I'm fitting fucking in in fucking SWAT Valley in fucking Peshawar.
So that, that, I've got to say, was the fun.

Speaker 1 But I remember driving in with Sarush in this fucking minivan into SWAT. And I remember just going, this is fucking fun.
Like, this is super fucking fun.

Speaker 1 We're in here. there's all kinds of crazy going on we're reporting on it we're in the middle of of global politics and we're reporting what nobody else is i always say

Speaker 1 don't pity the martyr he likes his job exactly and i can compete i think with that story about you going go baby you going into cashmere go baby

Speaker 1 i have a sweater that you will not believe

Speaker 1 It's so scratchy. Come on.
It scratches my nipples. It is so comfortable.
It's like you're wearing nothing and you're still warm. Okay, how does that happen? How do they do that? I don't know.

Speaker 1 But thank you for allowing that to get to America. So Dagestan.
Let's educate to the public where exactly is Dagestan. So Dagestan is on, is like the southern

Speaker 1 little tip of it's one of the stands of Russia.

Speaker 1 What's amazing about Dagestia? Chechnya. Well, there's Chechnya here, right? And there's Dagestan here.
On either side of the Caspian Sea, I believe the caviar sea, whatever.

Speaker 1 Well, in between, which is the Caucasus. Yes.
The Caucasus Mountains are between the Black Sea and the Caspian. Yes.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the only reason why I know it's the sea is because we got caviar from the Dagestani mafia, which was illegal. But it just amused me that you thought

Speaker 1 the whole world would be laughing when you said it's from like the Dagestani. And then I hope the Dagestani.

Speaker 1 Stop it.

Speaker 1 The one thing I wanted to say about Dagestan, which is interesting, is basically the Spetsnets, which is the Russian Navy SEALs, like their secret fucking army, you know, Green Berets, they essentially run Dagestan because it's such a, like there's so much terrorism going on.

Speaker 1 Basically, you have half the population, what they call going into the forest, which is learning to be

Speaker 1 like a terrorist

Speaker 1 super,

Speaker 1 but because like Wayne Gretzky used to play with a concrete puck. So when he would go in, you know,

Speaker 1 and play with a real puck. So these guys are like

Speaker 1 these guys grow up under the Spetsnest, under this Russian Secret Service.

Speaker 1 So they're such good fucking terrorists that they go and they become the generals or the colonels or the majors of the terrorist groups, the terrorist cells in all these countries.

Speaker 1 So when they see a pink man

Speaker 1 wearing Kashmiri chapel, they're like, fucking Dagestanis are here. I see.
Right. So when you go on with your race business,

Speaker 1 the white dudes are terrified. If you're white and have a headed beard and are wearing some Kashmiri chapel, they're terrified of you in Pakistan.

Speaker 1 It gets back to my point that I made on your show that the Russians are white.

Speaker 1 Even the Dagestanis

Speaker 1 are white. People are fucking scared of the Dagestanis.

Speaker 1 They're the best UFC fighters. They're the best wrestlers in the world.
And they're quite frankly, I don't want to be weird, but this is the best terrorists in the world. They are tough motherfuckers.

Speaker 1 Stealing the fucking caviar notwithstanding, that's another place I don't particularly want to live. Where? Tagestan.
Tagestan. But okay, so if North Korea is the number one place, you want to.

Speaker 1 Liberia, number two. Liberia?

Speaker 1 The American colony in Liberia? It's an okay.

Speaker 1 I'm impressed. You know, it's an American colony.
Absolutely. America, Liberia, for folks

Speaker 1 who haven't been, it's on the west coast of Africa. It's near Ghana.

Speaker 1 It's Nigeria. Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone, that area, western.
West, west, yeah. From where, from whence the slave ships came and went back.
And went back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But Liberia was an American colony in Africa.

Speaker 1 Liberia, Monrovia, is named after Monroe. Yes.
Constitution written here. It was taken over by a sergeant named James Taylor.
Not James Taylor.

Speaker 1 James. Oh, now you fuck me because I have

Speaker 1 it's an American name, but he made himself a dictator there.

Speaker 1 It used to be a very,

Speaker 1 I thought, desirable place to live. Oh, fuck, no.

Speaker 1 never at no time in its history no

Speaker 1 it so basically the the slaves went back the american slaves promptly enslaved the africans uh as a uh uh

Speaker 1 under under under the the the the plantation system the american slaves went back enslaved other africans

Speaker 1 the local africans so america bought liberia yes gave it to our freed slaves they they enslaved the local

Speaker 1 liberians that can't be right shane but as every gen zero so so so there was that can't be right there were many civil wars and it would be if you had an african

Speaker 1 charles taylor charles taylor charles taylor charles taylor very bad man bad man very bad man bad man very bad general butt naked became famous fighting against charles taylor yes general butt naked

Speaker 1 who's he did you ever interview him i did general butt naked yeah now where was he a warlord? Liberia. Liberia.
Okay. So he fought naked.
His real name is Joshua Blaugh. He's now a preacher.

Speaker 1 Now a preacher.

Speaker 1 He killed. He killed

Speaker 1 thousands and ate them. Here's the thing.
He was famous for going into battle naked, but also eating the hearts of

Speaker 1 pure people before he would go into battle. EDMN also ate the voters.
Yes. Which usually is not a good thing for the political party.
Not for electoral politicians.

Speaker 1 But no, seriously, General Butt Naked, I interviewed him. I actually had Stockholm Syndrome because I was hanging out with General Butt Naked and there was all these other generals.

Speaker 1 And Liberia is a terrifying place because you'd be somewhere and all of a sudden you're surrounded by people and your security is like, I don't know what to fucking do. We're fucked.

Speaker 1 And so it was terrifying. We got one guy out of jail, General Bin Laden.
We got General Bin Laden out of jail.

Speaker 1 Because they all take names, not the General Bin Laden, but they take names of scary generals.

Speaker 1 He got him out of jail.

Speaker 1 because we got him out of jail, we bribed the jail to get him out. And then all of his people surrounded the building and were like, oh, we're fucked.

Speaker 1 And because Butt Naked was so feared, he would get us out of problems, like a lot of problems. And so to go back to Liberia, Liberia might be fine.
I don't know. Monrovia is terrible.

Speaker 1 The worst slum I've ever seen is a place called West Point, which is the biggest slum in West Africa. And it is in Liberia and it is terrifying because

Speaker 1 I remember I bought like some kids. You buy like a can of Coke or something and

Speaker 1 they put like a tiny little bit into plastic bags and like you give it to the kids like here.

Speaker 1 And then like the bigger kids come and then the bigger and then all of a sudden there's a fucking like war over the fucking, you know, this little thing of Coke and I felt terrible.

Speaker 1 But like anything like shoes. like shoelaces like it is fucking survival like it is fucking whatever the fuck you have right I'm going to fucking take it.
Right.

Speaker 1 And like, it's like you're like, that's terrifying. There is no law.
There is no, and by the way, if you have, it doesn't matter, I have no money, everything I have, I look like a fucking ball.

Speaker 1 Those fucking shoes are fucking worth something to me. Right.
So I'm going to kill you and I'm going to take your fucking shoes. Sounds like prison when you're not in prison.

Speaker 1 It's worse than fucking prison. I can't even describe it.
It's like,

Speaker 1 it's beyond terrifying. So you went there.
Did you stay overnight there?

Speaker 1 Well, I went and did an interview there. And so I have this thing

Speaker 1 where whenever I'm about to die, I'm like trying to explain to my dad why.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we try to get out of West Point and people surround the car and it's bad. And the film's rolling.
And I'm like,

Speaker 1 dad, sorry. We came here to shoot a news story and it got out of control.
And I'm a stupid fucking idiot. And I'm sorry.
Because I was like, this is fucking it. Like, this is like.

Speaker 1 Why? Because they were surrounding the car. Yeah, we went into the fucking worst place on fucking earth.
And just, what the fuck were we thinking? It sounds like Blackhawk Down.

Speaker 1 It was like Blackhawk Town. Exactly.
Exactly. So how'd you get out?

Speaker 1 Our driver just fucking.

Speaker 1 you know, went ape shit and got us the fuck out. Oh, you just plowed through.

Speaker 1 Oh, I thought you were going to say we talked our way out. Oh, fuck, no.

Speaker 1 No, it was bad. It was very bad.

Speaker 1 So they were chasing you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God.
The one time I talked my way out of that I'm proud of was we snuck into Mosul for that. Did I talk about Mosul?

Speaker 1 Mosul, northern Iraq, where they, where they captured one of Saddam Hussein, or both sons. Yeah.
They were both. Yeah, sorry.
That's Mosul.

Speaker 1 Uzay and Husay. Yeah, this is Fallujah.
We're hiding out. I got it wrong.
It's Fallujah. So Fallujah, that's one thing.

Speaker 1 You had asked another story and i've forgotten because i'm drunk but fallujah we were going into fallujah because that's one story that we had so yeah we broke the story on the american military were using depleted uranium shells

Speaker 1 and they said they weren't uh and they use them because they're really good at sort of vaporizing a house you know and it turns it to dust we heard this story that uh it the fallujah has more uh child deformities than hiroshima Nagasaki.

Speaker 1 Right. So we're like, okay, well, that's a story.
So we went and it was the precursor of ISIS was running Fallujah, this militia. And we went in the front door and they said, no, you can't come in.

Speaker 1 And we said, okay. So we went the back way and interviewed like

Speaker 1 the doctors and the kids and the things. And there were so many, you know, crazy atomic

Speaker 1 mutations in the children from these depleted uranium shells.

Speaker 1 Thank God we fucking interviewed the mayor of Fallujah because when we went out, the fucking driver went out the first gate where we had been refused.

Speaker 1 And they said, we told you you couldn't fucking come in.

Speaker 1 So they take us down this, in the forts in Afghanistan, sorry, in Iraq, they have these, they look like the triangular barriers on a highway, but they're like 20 feet high and they're bomb blasting.

Speaker 1 And we drive down it and at the end, there's always a fort. You know, there's a fort with machine guns.
And in this one, there's a field. of rocks and that's bad because that's a killing field.

Speaker 1 So we end up in this fucking killing field and we're like, oh, riding over the rocks? Sorry, there's a, there's, there's like this, these blast walls. You're driving.
So it's man-made.

Speaker 1 So there's blast walls. And when you get there, there should be a fort or a fucking Nissan hut or something.
Communications. It's if it's a field, it's bad, right?

Speaker 1 You have to drive over. No, to get where you're going.
No, there's nothing there. There's a field.
The field is a killing field. That's where they take you to kill you.
Oh, I see. So

Speaker 1 we get there and we're like, oh,

Speaker 1 there's a killing. like we're fucked.

Speaker 1 And I remember my producer is a big tall guy. And he started saying, how, this is no different.
He was speaking in falsetto for some reason.

Speaker 1 There's no, this is no different than when Saddam Hussein was blurry than Saddam Hussein. And how to think?

Speaker 1 I'm like, they don't speak fucking English. All they hear is fucking blah, blah, blah, Saddam Hussein.
Blah, blah, blah, Saddam Hussein. Like, shut up.

Speaker 1 So we're there.

Speaker 1 And. It's fucking getting really fucking like, oh, shit, I'm talking to my dad in my head again.
Gosh.

Speaker 1 And I remember going to the guy saying, we were trying to call the embassy and we're trying to call a fucking dude. I was trying to call everyone.
I said, just call the fucking mayor.

Speaker 1 Just call the mayor because we had interviewed the mayor as a fucking favor. I said, just call the mayor.
They called the mayor and I said, I'm trying to get the fucking story out about the children.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to get the story out. Tell them I'm trying to get the story out.

Speaker 1 And it went from us being in a killing field to them saying, let's go have a feast together and you can eat all this fucking, you know, bull's balls. I always say that about Middle Easterners.

Speaker 1 They're either killing you or feasting you. There's no in between.

Speaker 1 My friends.

Speaker 1 But once again, Shane, I think I can top you with this story

Speaker 1 because I have been to all of Puff Daddy's freak off parties. Are you familiar with his freak off parties? You beat me on that one.
Wait, wait, wait. I've never been to that.

Speaker 1 I have been to all of them. Wow.
Do you know what his code name is at his freak off parties? No. General Butt Naka.

Speaker 1 You brought it all around. You brought it all around.

Speaker 1 That's what Trump calls a weave.

Speaker 1 You just did a weave. Exactly.
Whenever somebody was like, get General Butt naked, we need more orders. You just did a weave.
It was like they meant, go get Puffy.

Speaker 1 I think that's going to be the viral thing.

Speaker 1 General Puff Daddy, General Butt naked. No,

Speaker 1 that's even another thing. The new scary general in Liberia is called General Puff Daddy, and his nickname here

Speaker 1 was Butt naked. By the way, Puff Daddy, one of the greatest names ever.
He should never have keep chain diddy and p diddy puff daddy perfect done

Speaker 1 not as good as general butt naked come on i'm not saying puffy hasn't done worse things i'm just saying he should have kept that name keep the name keep the name puff daddy was the coolest name and now that he's not using it what would

Speaker 1 you take it over me you

Speaker 1 i i am puff daddy i mean i literally am that i'm those things wrapped into one man but you know it people would think of him and the and the the parties.

Speaker 1 There's all kinds of, there's all kinds of legacy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, those parties are still going on, but they're just dancing now.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so we've covered the two, that's one and two. I love this line of questioning.
Yeah. North Korea, Monrovia, Liberia, a surprise choice to me.
Dude. Three would be what?

Speaker 1 Third worst?

Speaker 1 Someplace else where you were thinking you were going to die?

Speaker 1 Kandahar. Kandahar.
Okay. Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 A very solid choice. Home of the Taliban.
Home of the Taliban and the brave.

Speaker 1 The brave Taliban. It's odd.
They have the same anthem we do.

Speaker 1 Home of the Taliban.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Now, I've heard they're bad people, but are they just really misunderstood? I mean, look, everybody has different views on women.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, look, Harrison Butker and I don't agree on everything, but,

Speaker 1 you know, I don't think he's a terrible person. Am I wrong to think that it's the same way with the Taliban?

Speaker 1 Just missing it. The Taliban have been killing people for a long fucking time, and they're going to keep killing people for a long fucking time.
And it's,

Speaker 1 look, I will say they're the best freedom fighters in the world because they never fucking give up. Do you want to go there if you're a fucking liberal wit who likes to fucking make waggish jokes?

Speaker 1 Where'd you you stay in Kandahar? So that's a great question. You can't stay in.
You have to stay again. You have to stay in guest houses and they will report you.
Guesthouses in Cafar. Kandahar.

Speaker 1 And they will report you to the Taliban because it's the Taliban's home. So you say guest houses.
You mean Airbnb?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like Afghani

Speaker 1 guest houses. I don't know what that is.
Well, how do you arrange the guesthouse thing? Is it a, you know. You know.

Speaker 1 You don't want to go by a single email because that's what happened in that movie where Cameron Diaz switched houses.

Speaker 1 You have to have local fixers fix you. By the way, if you don't wear

Speaker 1 some sort of chuppel in Kandahar, you're fucking done. I mean, I was there.
You want to hear a crazy story? I don't want to talk about it. Always.
Okay, this is the crazy. You like this story.

Speaker 1 I'm asking. You're going to like this story.
Literally. Okay, there's a guy named, the reason why I was in Kandahar, there's a guy named General Abdul Rizik, otherwise known as the Taliban killer.

Speaker 1 He's the Colonel Kurtz of Afghanistan. And what happened was he was a young guy.
His parents get killed by the Taliban, right?

Speaker 1 So he goes through the tunnels into Pakistan, into Wazir, Northwest Frontier Province, and he sweeps the floor. He's illiterate.

Speaker 1 Like you want to talk about poor, sweeping a floor in a fucking Waziristan, fucking, you know, not rich. So

Speaker 1 he sneaks back in as a teenager, and it's kind of like the artful Dodger kind of shit. They're wearing like Adam and the Ants, like, like, like, like threads of weird shit.
And they look crazy.

Speaker 1 They kind of look good, I've got to say. Their style is good.
It sounds like it's dope. If we have an Adam and the Ants picture, it'd be great.
No one understands that. But they look pretty good.

Speaker 1 But he started killing Taliban dudes because they killed his parents, right? Sure.

Speaker 1 So when the Americans invade, they say, anyone who's fighting the Taliban, right, come, come, and we're going to give them training. So they train him and they give him money.
So he goes back.

Speaker 1 The reason why I say Colonel Kurtz is he goes back to Kandahar, where he's from. And all Taliban activity goes to zero.
He kills everybody. There's no Taliban like in Kandahar during his period.

Speaker 1 He also becomes the biggest drug dealer in the world. He has $2 billion of gold bullion.
His brother killed Karzai's brother, the prime minister's brother. And

Speaker 1 so I go down there to interview him. And I'm wearing like fucking full-on plastic thing.

Speaker 1 And I interview him, spent two days down there. And the day I entered, the first day I went to go interview him, I pulled up to his compound and there were two masks on

Speaker 1 the ground. And then they said, you can't interview him today.
And they had to go back and I said, oh, and they said, oh, those masks were human faces.

Speaker 1 They were bombs. And they blew off their own faces off their own bodies.
It happened. It happened.
So I go back, I interview him. So I fly to Kabul.
right

Speaker 1 and Kabul this is how good Kandahar is Kabul is like Paris in the springtime it's like there's food right and there's beds the capital and it's but it's the capital Kabul usually is people are terrified.

Speaker 1 You know, people are wholly fucked up. Well, I mean, it's the capital of one of the worst places in the world.

Speaker 1 But everything I've ever learned about it was that if you have to be in Afghanistan, at least be in Kabul. Because there was the government there.

Speaker 1 Well, this one hotel, the Serena, it periodically gets bombed or shot or attacked, but it's a hotel. But it's a hotel.
Yeah. So Kandahar doesn't have.
So when you come from Kandahar to Kandahar.

Speaker 1 I mean, why the brunch has to end at 11? I don't know.

Speaker 1 you go so anyway i get there and the the the the american guy american embassy reaches out to me and they have dea treasury and somebody weird treasury no it was cia it wasn't weird it was cia treasury dea and so they take me to the bottom of the basement of the american embassy and they say okay we're going to trade with you on deep cover all these stories give us rizzik what's going on rizzik and i'm like what what do you mean what's going on rizik and they're like give us give us you know give you trade, and we'll give you stories.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I fucking asked him questions in English. He responded and passed you until I translated.
I don't know what the fuck. Give me Rizzik.
Rizzik is your guy.

Speaker 1 If you dropped a dime on Rizzik,

Speaker 1 wouldn't you 100% be then killed?

Speaker 1 And also, it's not great to like drop a dime on your own fucking sources in your own interview people. Especially when the people you're dropping the dime on are the Taliban.

Speaker 1 Also, well, not the Taliban, the Taliban killer, Colonel Kurtz. But my whole thing is,

Speaker 1 he's your guy. Why the fuck are you asking me anything? You know, so to go back to it, you're fucked if you do, you're fucked if you're out, you don't.
Don't visit Kandahar. Number three, bango!

Speaker 1 Long-winded, long-winded, but I get there in the end, Bill.

Speaker 1 Long-winded. That's what a podcast is.
It's long win. I'm learning from the best.
I love your podcast. I love it too.
Thank you. Funny as fucking songs.
So glad you're on this network.

Speaker 1 You're perfect for this club random network. This is exactly what we should be doing.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 don't worry about long wind. When I first started these, we did an hour, and everyone was like,

Speaker 1 you're cheating us. An hour.
I don't understand the American attention span. It's either seven seconds or two hours.
Nothing in it. Two hours if it's audio, seven seconds if it's audio.

Speaker 1 It's just unbelievable. It's like, I don't get it.
But yes, no. All right.
So what's the number four? Number four,

Speaker 1 worst place. We have North Korea, Monrovia, Liberia.
I don't even know if it's a country, but I think it is. South Sudan.
South Sudan is a country now. Yes.
It wasn't when I was there.

Speaker 1 And that is, again, a very solid choice, one that I would have guessed would be in the top four.

Speaker 1 No, South Sudan. It was not when I was there.
Sudan, for fans of George Clooney, is where Darfur is. I say that.
That's North Sudan. I've been there too.
I snuck into Darfur. That's not recommended.

Speaker 1 Province of Sudan. Yes.
And George Clooney did a lot to bring aid there. And

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 he has my great admiration too.

Speaker 1 He's a good cat. Using his celebrity.

Speaker 1 I don't agree with his wife on Israel, but let's not familiarize. You don't have to go there.

Speaker 1 South Sudan was not South Sudan when I was there, and it was grim.

Speaker 1 I had cereal that tasted like rotten chicken.

Speaker 1 I mean, remember that. It's famous for one thing, famine.
Yeah. well no that yes yeah okay you're right

Speaker 1 on the tourist posters it says come for the famine

Speaker 1 stay for the ebola no but i uh

Speaker 1 i

Speaker 1 i i remember oh we kid the third world no well sudan's fine like sudan much like venezuela could be rich i mean one of the things about sudan darfur so i snuck into darfur speaking of darfur uh speaking of racism all you hear about is arab on black uh you know right ethnic cleansing etc etc right And the reason why I actually went to South Sudan was I went to Darfur, snuck into Darfur.

Speaker 1 Again, stupid. Do not do that, kids.
And

Speaker 1 we found out that. How do you sneak in?

Speaker 1 That's a great question. You can watch my documentary on bikes.
But anyway, I snuck in essentially.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I was in Sudan and I went with the UN

Speaker 1 on a sort of a relief plane and a hitchhiked. And I got in and there was a guy named Mini Manawi who was the head of the sort of anti, he was the anti-Janjuid.

Speaker 1 The Janjuweed are the dudes who have the bad guys and the thing. By the way, they look fucking great, but terrifying.
And so

Speaker 1 Mini Manawi. It's kind of the Taliban of Sudan.
There you go.

Speaker 1 The Janjuweed. The Janjuid.
They were terrifying, like super terrifying. But so Mini Manawi was fighting them.
But not as bad as Israel. Okay, too.

Speaker 1 So So they're pretty bad. I mean, I'm going to say

Speaker 1 I don't know if anyone's worse than the Genesis. No, nobody's worse than that.

Speaker 1 But we found out when we were there that they had found oil and that the whole thing was just a pretense to get other people off the land so they can get the oil.

Speaker 1 And they said, well, there's no difference than the Liberty Wells Chevron down in South Sudan. And we're like,

Speaker 1 what the fuck? So we flew down to South Sudan, which was having a full-on civil war. That's how they became a country.
There you go. And so

Speaker 1 with Basher, the guy from Khartoum. So we went down there and I was filming this fucking civil war about oil, which I was like breaking the story.
So I was super stoked. But it was fucking grim.

Speaker 1 I've got to say, dude, it was not enjoyable. So that's number four.
Well, I can understand it. I mean, South Sudan, and I wish them luck as a country.
And I don't blame them because, you know,

Speaker 1 the bureaucracy in Khartoum. I mean, where all the elitists are

Speaker 1 in Khartoum. That's true.
But, you know, the real people are in South Sudan. I mean, am I right?

Speaker 1 Like the people people,

Speaker 1 not like the, you know, fancy

Speaker 1 the goat milk eaters in Khartoum.

Speaker 1 Khartoum. Khartoum is.

Speaker 1 Khartoum is. So, okay.
So they have people like this all day long in Khartoum with machine guns pointed at the sky. Why? Because the Americans are coming.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, we did bomb the... the uh

Speaker 1 to go back to black hog down

Speaker 1 well also during clinton's administration did we bomb

Speaker 1 yes we bombed something that we said was building weapons and it it looks like it was a

Speaker 1 farm port sudan i think it looked like it was a pharmaceutical yeah maybe it was port sudan yeah i think they were making aspirin and we thought and then we thought they were

Speaker 1 making

Speaker 1 nuclear weapons okay so we don't get everyone right yeah no

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, Khoom's not good. And like South Sudan was worse.
I mean, yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So that's number four.
There's a movie called Khoom. Is there? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why would I say it if there wasn't?

Speaker 1 Which is about the battle that took place in 1859.

Speaker 1 Well, I know that one. Was it Gordon? Yes.

Speaker 1 1859. Yeah, Gordon, yeah.
Olivier, Lawrence Olivier's in the world. Oh, I love him.
And Larry.

Speaker 1 It's what happened was the British conquered Africa north to south. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the French conquered Africa east to west.

Speaker 1 And they met at Cartoon.

Speaker 1 And, of course, it was wrong. I think Gordon got fucked in that one, didn't he?

Speaker 1 I don't, you know what? I don't remember. If I remember correctly, the British.
That's the Four Feathers, maybe. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 They got screwed. It's Michael Caine and, that one.

Speaker 1 About South Africa.

Speaker 1 Well, the Michael Cain one is the man who would be king, which is Afghanistan. Yeah, that's.
Oh, that's Afghanistan. Afghanistan, right? Yeah.
That's Alexander the Great. Right.

Speaker 1 Which, by the way, come on. Alexander the Great in Afghanistan.
It is. Yeah.
The man who would be king? Yeah. So it's there in India.

Speaker 1 They go to Kafiristan, which is Afghanistan, because you have to go through the mountains to get there. And they think there's Sikander, which is Alexander the Great.

Speaker 1 And so they think that they're, because

Speaker 1 they're,

Speaker 1 what's it called? With the

Speaker 1 plane meets the thing with the fucking

Speaker 1 Masons. They think they're Masons, which Alexander the Great was a Mason.
So they see the Masons, so they think they're kings. What's that, a club? The Masons, Freemasons.
Come on. It's a club, right?

Speaker 1 It's a, it's a. Are you kidding me? Freemasons? Come on.

Speaker 1 Alexander the Great was a Freemason? Well, that's in the movie. I don't know if it's for true.

Speaker 1 The man who would be king is about

Speaker 1 Peachy and Daniel who go north to fucking Kefiristan to become kings. And that's what happens.
And it's Afghanistan and they go and he gets his fucking head cut off. That's a pretty good Michael King.

Speaker 1 There we go. I think your history's way off.
Anyway, I'll check it out. No, that's well, that's the story.
It's Kipling. It's Kipling.
And the story is that

Speaker 1 they see Alexander the Great's thing, which was that they were Masons, so they become kings. And then when Roxanne bites him and sees blood, they're like, well, you're not a fucking god.

Speaker 1 So they cut the fucking head off. So here's my question.

Speaker 1 Like when you're on one of these shoots, like we see the footage that you get, which is, of course, a tiny percentage of the time you actually spent there.

Speaker 1 Like you're in Kandahar.

Speaker 1 You're in Monrovia. You're in any of these fucking hell holes.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, I know Trump's a bad person and I certainly hate him and don't want him to be president, but, you know,

Speaker 1 shithole

Speaker 1 wasn't exactly wrong about places in this world? You're in a shithole. Yeah.
What do you do during the downtime? Jack off. Shut your mouth.

Speaker 1 Wait.

Speaker 1 Jack off. Yeah, like it's a stress release.
You're stressed. But you can't do it all day.
Sort of.

Speaker 1 Really? You sort of can. I mean, there's a lot of waiting.
Definitely.

Speaker 1 I understand the waiting. There's a lot of waiting for warlords.
You're in a kind of a shitty room.

Speaker 1 You've got no connectivity you got no computer you have no phone you have your dick you have your dick dick's always there baby you have your dick and you have your mind yeah there you go just replaying

Speaker 1 and what are you jerking off to that chick i saw her eyes through the slit in her burqa well there's something called memory i know i understand and uh no look i mean

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 some of the best times are actually hanging out with the crew.

Speaker 1 Shout out to Jake Berghard, like the best DP ever. You hang out with the crew, you know, you eat some chicken to go back to the worst fucking GDP, the best fucking chicken.
Liberia is a great chick.

Speaker 1 Like you just, you have some weird fucking chicken, which is going to make you have the shits.

Speaker 1 And you spend a lot of time on the toilet, which explains the jacking off.

Speaker 1 There it is. I mean, what are you going to do? And,

Speaker 1 you know, you maybe do some writing, you do some reading. There's a lot of thinking, which is why I, you know, when you're there, you do some good interviews.

Speaker 1 because you're sitting there, you got to get metaphysical. Like, to go back to your point, you're a pretty fucking smart guy.
You go, you go to the metaphysical.

Speaker 1 You're like, well, let's get to what the questions are we should really ask.

Speaker 1 And so instead of just being like, why is the Taliban so mad at us? Like, you sort of, you're so fucked up and you're so that you get in there and you're like, okay, let's talk about humanity.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 once again, Shane, I have a very similar experience.

Speaker 1 I was making a movie in 1985 in Mexico called Club Med, and we shot it at the Club Med. Oh my God,

Speaker 1 there was like weeks on his.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, I wasn't in the shot for like two weeks in a row. What am I going to do there? Yeah.
I mean, very often the tennis courts were so crowded, we had to play doubles.

Speaker 1 I mean, it was just a nightmare. I mean, I remember being, you know, snorkeling.
How many times can you look at the same blowfish? I mean, after a while, the whole fish was like, okay,

Speaker 1 why don't you take a picture, man?

Speaker 1 all right i'm gonna go back to my day job all right bro this was so awesome i'm so glad you're here with the crew great to see man uh it's an honor to have you on the club random whatever it is oh well you know what let me read my i yeah there we go come on november 1st and 2nd at vegas oh

Speaker 1 The David Copperfield Theater at the MGM Grand. November 16th, the Beacon in New York.
Oh, my God, what a great. And then next day, Washington, D.C.

Speaker 1 That's my, the whole, There's only four more days. You can see me live this year.
The act is off the hook. You should go see it.

Speaker 1 November 17th is the theater at the MGM National Harbor in Washington, D.C. I think that might be in Maryland, but I may be wrong.
They're all very close together there. Anyway, come out to see me.

Speaker 1 I may not be doing that much longer, and I'm having a ball doing it. And this, and thank you.
And back to work. Thank you, buddy.

Speaker 1 Okay, thank you, bro. That was awesome.
So much fun. That was really great.
We'll do it again. Love you, man.
You too, proud. Biggest fan.
Thank you. I know you hear that a lot, but not for me.

Speaker 1 I'm proud of what you do.