#1031: An Unpleasant Sushi Date

Red alert, red alert, red alert, red alert, red alert, red alert, red alert, red alert, red alert,

knock, knock, knowledge fight.

Dan and Jordan, I am sweating.

Knowledgefight.com.

It's time to pray.

I have great respect for the knowledge fight.

Knowledge fight.

I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys.

Knowledge fight.

Dan and George.

Knowledge fight.

I need money.

I need money.

Andy in Kansas.

Andy.

Stop it.

Andy and Kansas.

Andy in Kansas.

Andy.

It's time to pray.

Andy in Kansas, you're on the air.

Thanks for holding us.

Hello, Alex.

I'm a fish ton caller.

I'm a huge fan.

I love your room.

Knowledge fight.

Knowledgefight.com.

I love you.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to Knowledge Fight.

I'm Dan.

I'm Jordan.

We're a couple dudes.

Like to sit around, worship at the altar of Celine, and talk a little bit about Alex Joe.

Oh, indeed we are, Dan.

Jordan.

Dan.

Jordan.

Quick question for you.

What's up?

What's your bright spot today, buddy?

My bright spot today is I'm seriously considering getting another tattoo.

Oh,

we are the tat guys, of course.

I like that.

And

I've been thinking about it.

I feel the call.

I like it.

And so I have a couple ideas.

I have a couple ideas of things I think I'm going to get.

But

I'm not so much.

I'm not, I came to tattoos old.

And so I have like a need for it to mean something.

Of course.

It has to be something that I really love.

And I was trying to think of what could I get that I will never be like, wow, that sucks.

This is garbage.

And I think the Kiko Mon soy sauce logo.

I have never not loved that soy sauce.

It's the best.

Okay.

It's been a large part of my life.

Absolutely.

It stayed unchanged throughout that entire time period.

Yes.

And I've been disappointed by every other soy sauce.

That's true.

Every other commercially available soy sauce.

Maybe not like craft artisan soy sauce or whatever.

100%.

It's such a big difference between the next brand and Kikoman.

I agree.

And so that means something to me.

Yeah.

And so I think I might get Kikomon on my forearm.

I mean you know I think it's cool but I think it's a good logo I have the jar right here I have a bottle on my desk yeah yeah yeah just in case right and you notice that it has like this hexagonal border

and I was thinking like that kind of

could be a repeating pattern and I was like I could get a whole sleeve of like

yes yeah like a beehive yeah yeah of Kiko Mon logos that's fun I like that that sounds stupid that sounds too much but I'm the idea is percolating in my mind.

To a certain level, every tattoo is stupid.

Sure.

You know?

So,

fuck it.

You know, go for it.

A whole sleeve of Kikuman logos might be.

Why not?

Why not?

What's going to happen?

I might get a sponsor.

I'm going to lose a job?

So anyway, I'm thinking about that, and there may be some updates on that in the future.

I like it.

I like it.

But what about you?

What's your bright spot?

My bright spot is these new shoes.

My wife has purchased me new shoes because I don't know if you recall, but about a week and a half ago, I was outside for the 20 minutes when a flash flood happened.

Yes.

And my shoes were ruined.

Yeah.

So I just didn't have any for a couple of weeks, as is my want.

And then my wife got these for my birthday.

Hey, how about that?

So, yeah, thank you very much.

They're my first

green shoe.

I have green shoes, too.

Do you have green shoes?

Look at that.

We both have green shoes.

Isn't that great?

I've never had anything but black or brown.

I swear.

I haven't either, and

I find it to be a tough adjustment.

Because you see the blue jean on the green shoe,

you wonder, is this okay?

It's a colors clashing that you're not used to.

I see it as camo, and I don't even see if I don't even know my feet are there.

Hey, hold on.

It's just more sidewalk in my head.

Well, how are they inside?

They feel good?

Pretty good.

Pretty good.

Just got some support?

I I got some insoles because I got flat feet.

I have the flattest feet.

You're out of the army then.

It's creepy.

So, yeah.

So I got some insoles.

They fit great.

Nice.

I'm loving it.

Awesome.

Fantastic.

It was a different day, but I, too, was caught in a flash flood deluge.

Yeah.

So

you had had that experience, and then you told me about it, and then a couple days later, fuck around and it happens to me.

It was right after my birthday, and to the point where I was like, well, I I got to get a cake.

I'm so wet.

I'm soaked.

I'm miserable.

It's near my birthday.

I got to get a cake.

There's only one way to deal with this properly.

So I bought a little cake.

I like it.

Again, I think that's a great move.

Yeah.

So, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over.

All right.

And we're going to be talking about something a little bit off the beaten path.

Okay.

We're going to be talking about.

See, we did a Mystery Babylon episode on Monday.

Sure.

And I, you know, we got to get back to our primary ding-dong.

Sure.

And so I was like, we got to get back to Alex.

But then I came across something that I feel like I can't believe I hadn't seen this before.

Okay.

And maybe I had and I'd forgotten or something, but it took over my brain a little bit.

Okay.

And that is a 2003 sushi date that Joe Rogan and Alex Jones went on that was shot as bonus features for a DVD.

I'm sorry?

Yes.

I'm sorry?

We're going to be talking about the time that Alex and Joe Rogan went out for sushi.

Was this directed by Jim Jarmush or something?

It was directed by Kevin Booth.

Okay.

All right.

Sounds right.

Produced by Jarmush.

There we go.

Okay.

Like coffee and cigarettes with a little pea coda.

There is coffee involved.

They go to Starbucks after they get sushi,

but no cigarettes.

Anyway, this is.

There's some really, really important things that happen in this.

I believe you.

But also some very unimportant things.

And Joe Rogan seeming like a completely different person.

And we'll get down to business on all of this.

But first, let's take a little moment to say hello to some new wonks.

Ooh, that's a great idea.

So first, my husband brought me Swiss cheese Cheetos from Brazil, which I immediately recognized as a sign to become a policy wonk.

Thank you so much, Jernal, Balzy Wonk.

I'm a policy wonk.

Thank you very much.

That sounds good.

Next, Tara is giving money to say hi to all the cats and dogs.

Thank you so much, Jernal, Balzy Wonk.

I'm a policy wonk.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And little titty baby John in Colorado for his 40th birthday, January 27th, 2024.

Whoops.

Happy birthday.

You're now a policy wonk.

I'm a policy wonk.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And we got a technical credit in the mix, Jordan.

So thank you so much, too.

Happy baseball season to Jordan from Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Show hey, love all around.

Also, hi, Dan.

Much love from Maddie.

Go, Phillies.

Thank you so much.

You're an Iowa Technocrat.

I'm a policy wonk.

Four stars.

Go home to your mother and tell tell her you're brilliant.

Someone, sodomite, sent me a bucket of poop.

Daddy Shark, bomb, bomb, bump, bump, bump.

Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent.

He's a loser, little, little kitty baby.

I don't want to hate black people.

I renounce Jesus Christ.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

I know that Philly has the reputation of really bad fans.

Sure.

Really aggressive,

like scary fans.

Good fans from a certain perspective.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But my experience of Philly fans outside of Philadelphia, you know, like people I've met in Chicago who are like big Philadelphia people.

Sure, sure, sure.

They've all been wonderful.

Of course.

I think it's just being in Philadelphia.

I think there's something about it.

There's a Wen and Rome element to it for sure.

I think that something about that city enables.

Here is where things are okay, and outside of here is where things are not okay.

It's like a smoking section.

Philly is essentially America's smoking section, I think.

Yeah.

So, um, here we go.

Let's talk about a sushi date.

All right.

So, an underdiscussed aspect of Alex's career, uh, and something we've touched on a little bit but never really gotten too much into, is his association with an outfit called Sacred Cow Productions.

This is a company that started with Bill Hicks and his producing partner, Kevin Booth.

Through Sacred Cow, Booth distributed a ton of Hicks's content, including posthumously.

And then, after Hicks had died, it took on the shape of like a collective of presumably like-minded artists.

Kevin and Bill had met Alex while they were filming a documentary about Waco, and in 2000, before his rise to prominence with 9-11 Conspiracies, their company put out the best of Alex Jones' VHS collection.

Then, in 2001, they released Joe Rogan's first comedy special, live from the belly of the beast.

This special is the one that features a cameo from Alex, and it includes the video where Alex and Joe put on bush masks and they dick around at the Texas Capitol, which seems to be the only positive memory that Joe has of Alex that he can call to mind to justify why they're friends.

That does sound correct.

I don't think that there's a grand conspiracy here, but we all need to recognize how incredibly weird it is that 25 years ago, a dipshit from local Access TV in Austin and the guy from News Radio were part of the same media collective, and now they're two of the most prominent media figures that have supported and cheerled Donald Trump's elections in 2016 and 2024, respectively.

I don't know if that means anything, but it's fucking crazy.

Yeah.

Also, Sacred Carol Productions offers a collection of videos and CDs that you can get from various performers like Rogan, Alex, and Doug Stanhope.

If you go through their collection of stuff, it's like Bill Hicks, Doug Stanhope, Alex,

Rogan, and then some tapes called No Bra at Mardi Gras.

Oh my God.

Yeah, they got a knockoff Girls Gone Wild.

Girls Gone Wild knockoff.

Great.

And a bunch of like real, high-minded, fuck the man kind of stand-ups.

You know what my problem with Girls Gone Wild was?

There weren't enough copycats around, you know, exploiting women.

That's fine, of course.

Everybody likes that.

We needed more of it.

That's great.

Yeah.

My buddies ordered something off of a late-night infomercial called Girls Going Crazy.

That's a true crime documentary.

And that led us to,

I think they must have just sent us more tapes or something because there was one called the Freak Box.

Nope, no, no, no.

I don't want to open the freak box.

What they would do.

So they,

these people, this company.

These fucking people.

They put up a makeshift box

outside a bar and then put a video camera in it and people could go in and do whatever.

Oh my god, it was very disappointing.

Yeah, that does sound right.

So, in 2003, Kevin Booth was working on a documentary about the war on drugs, and part of that was going out to LA to interview Rogan, which is a no-brainer.

That dude loves drugs, you're going to get a good interview out of him.

For some reason, Alex came along, and Kevin decided to record what I would describe as a very awkward sushi date between those two men.

And

we thankfully have this recorded for posterity because I think it tells you a lot about their relationship.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, sometimes, sometimes when you're looking at history,

there's just this weird,

weird shit happens that winds up altering the course of the universe.

You know, like the

Serbians who assassinated Kaiser Wilhelm, you know?

Like, if you read their story, you're like, no way do these guys change the universe.

Right.

These guys are kind of bumbling boobs.

Yeah, if you watch this sushi date, you would not expect that we would be where we are in 2025.

That's for sure.

How about that?

Also, I don't know if Alex knows how to use chopsticks.

I would strongly suggest he doesn't.

He gestures well with them.

I will give him that much.

I would almost say that if I were Alex, I would not learn how to use chopsticks on principle.

You know?

Well, I mean, I think that he would say something about his sister being being Korean adopted.

Well, there you go.

I'll take it back.

So

we start in the middle, essentially.

This

behind-the-scenes featurette begins in the middle of a conversation that they're having.

And Joe is talking about why weed is illegal, man.

All right, all right.

You're all just afraid of hemp.

Okay.

And the only reason why most of these drugs are illegal anyway is because we can't control them.

Marijuana is illegal now because they can't tax it.

I mean, because they can't stop you from growing it.

It's illegal now.

George Washington grew it.

George Washington grew it.

Well, we all know the whole deal behind it.

The reason why it was made illegal in the first place is because they came up with a method of producing the pulp from hemp that was much more efficient.

The way they used to do it, back when hemp was a viable crop and it was used by farmers all across the country when they made paper out of it, when they made clothing out of it.

Yeah,

it was all collected by slaves, and it was all processed by slaves.

But that's not very cost-effective once slavery became illegal.

So hemp died off and cotton took hold.

Now in the 1930s, in the cover of Popular Science magazine, they had an article that said hemp, the new billion-dollar crop.

And they were talking about how this new, I think it was called a decorticator, I forget what it's called, but it was a new machine that they had invented that made it much more efficient to process the pulp.

And they were going to make superior paper products, superior

cloth.

It was rotten.

It was also when DuPont came up with the chemical composition deny on.

Absolutely.

Now, what they did was, William Randolph Hearst, not only did he own newspapers, he also owned paper plants where he made paper.

And if hemp is a superior paper and everyone's using hemp, he would have had to transfer over all of his lumber yards and all of his paper plants to processing hemp.

It would have cost millions of dollars.

So what did they do?

Instead, they went after the other thing that hemp does.

It actually intoxicates you.

And they financed hemp.

And they did it on fear.

They did it based on fear.

They said Mexicans and blacks are smoking marijuana.

They called it the slang term.

They didn't call it cannabis.

They didn't call it hemp.

They didn't call it things that people would be familiar with.

They called it the slang that Mexicans use.

There's a drug called marijuana, and these people are smoking it.

They want to rape white women.

And they started passing laws.

The first thing that they're doing is that they're not going to make films where you're mutually drinking.

I've got all of them.

I've got Reed for Madness.

I've got

Marijuana Girl.

I've got a bunch of them.

And they're fantastic.

They're brilliantly stupid.

So

what Joe is expressing here is very interesting because a lot of it's true, but some of it is also a strong argument against Alex's fundamental worldview.

It's absolutely correct that the war on drugs and the criminalization of weed were political and specifically racist developments in our country.

Nixon's domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman laid it out quite explicitly in an interview he did with Harpers in 1994.

Quote, the Nixon campaign in 1968 and the White House after that had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people.

You understand what I'm saying?

We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.

We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

Did we know we were lying about drugs?

Of course we did.

A great deal of the hysteria around drugs comes down to this type of exploitation, like how the 1875 anti-opium laws in San Francisco were largely a covert effort at attacking the growing Chinese immigrant population there.

It's actually pretty funny to think about how much of this stuff we see about fentanyl is rooted in this same motivation and how deeply Joe is invested in creating propaganda around that issue that really is the modern-day equivalent to all those Reefer Madness films he rightfully mocked in this 2003 rant.

He's become the thing he always knew was stupid.

This whole part about hemp being a magic product and threatening William Randolph Hearst's paper factories, that's a little bit less historically based, but it might be Joe trying to come up with a larger financial explanation for why certain actions in history were taken as a way to absolve the past of being so damn racist.

Hemp is a versatile crop, and even though Joe overstates how it could replace so many other markets, it did get an unfair shake in terms of the whole market.

A lot of that is due less to Hearst's machinations and has more to do with the history of industrial hemp production in the United States.

There was some domestic production, but it was largely propped up by tariffs on importing bast fibers from other countries.

That tariff was dropped in 1872, and that had a crushing effect on the U.S.

hemp production.

So you could just get other shit from other countries at the same or lesser price.

Cheaper.

But in the later 1800s and into the early 1900s, a huge opportunity arose with the invention of the self-binding harvester.

Now farmers needed shitloads of high-quality twine to use in their binding machines, and hemp was perfect for that.

This led to the United States Department of Agriculture exploring ways to build up the production of American hemp.

There was promise, and it was, you know, there's a lot, there was some breeding of strains that was really showing a lot of potential.

Sure.

But then the Great Depression came and really shifted everyone's priorities about land usage, and hemp became not really as important anymore.

Imported, cheaper, possibly lower quality fibers were fine in this context, and the bottom more or less fell out of the building of the industrial hemp base.

There were attempts at making hemp a wider grown crop, but the timing was just really bad for it.

It never really made a comeback before the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was imposed, and racist attitudes and stigma toward weed rubbed off on hemp.

It didn't help that DuPont had developed nylon in the late 30s, but Joe doesn't have a basis for claiming that efforts to prop up big nylon were behind the diminishing of hemp.

Yeah.

The popular science article that Joe is referencing is actually from Popular Mechanics, and it's about the promise of a new machine that he got the name right.

It was the Decordicator.

This machine solved the problem of hemp being far more

labor-intensive to process than other fibers that are comparable, but it wasn't a miracle solution.

Even this article that Joe is referencing says, quote, one obstacle to the onward march of hemp is the reluctance of farmers to try new crops.

The problem is complicated complicated by the need for proper equipment at a reasonable distance from the farm.

The machine cannot be operated profitably unless there's enough acreage within driving range, and farmers cannot find a profitable market unless there's machinery to handle the crop.

This headline that Joe remembers is from an article that's discussing the potential gains that could come from industrial hemp production replacing our reliance on foreign fibers.

And even in that body of the article, they discuss how it's not a sure thing.

This machine did not live up to the promises that

were imagined.

Sure.

The bigger picture here is that a belief that DuPont and Hearst not liking hemp leading to hemp being crushed despite it being a miracle crop requires a belief that the free market doesn't exist.

That might be okay for Joe in 2003, but not Alex.

He can't possibly incorporate this into his strong defense of laissez-faire capitalist

kind of attitudes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you would have to expand your definition of the market to include existence, all, all existence is fine.

The free market is fine because these guys can steal from you.

Oh, is that part of the free market?

But

so much of the defense of the idea of like government not intervening and stuff.

And

it has to do with like the market will figure it out.

Right.

You know, like, and no, it won't.

Right, right.

If you believe that DuPont being really rich and and having this thing that

the free market doesn't sort this out.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it would have to be...

In order for the free market to actually sort something like this out, there would have to be no laws.

You know what I mean?

Like, no laws.

You're raising your eyebrows at me.

Old West kind of, oh, did you take something from us?

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, that's the libertarian fantasy, right?

Right.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

If you're rich enough, you can have an army.

I just remember, and I think this is what happened.

Maybe if we were going to pinpoint something that happened, it was this.

The only reason you had to listen to people like Joe talk was because you had a financial incentive to buy the drugs from them that you wanted.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

And now people just do it for free.

Well, yeah, but I think that Joe also, like, at this point, has a little bit of, like,

he has a gift of speech.

Sure.

He has momentum to the things he's saying.

Sure.

He has, there's a likability in the way that he delivers himself.

And it feels like this is a fucking fun guy.

He's a cool guy.

I wouldn't mind hanging out with him.

And he's going to sell me a bag.

Great.

And I'll leave.

That's kind of the idea.

So they get to discussing how you were raising your eyebrows and saying there should be no laws.

Sure.

I'm not saying that.

I'm just saying if you want things to be solved.

They think that there should only be laws about like you can't hurt people.

Yeah, that sounds right.

You made a point though that was really good about how if it doesn't hurt somebody and it's you know your body,

but as soon as they try to hurt you, then it is your business.

But here's the deal.

Making the drugs illegal drives up the price of the black market and makes it a violent industry.

So actually by making it illegal, nine out of ten home invasions are some drug addict.

So right there, making it illegal is causing most of our crime.

It is hurting us.

Absolutely.

You can't argue that.

You know, and the people who argue it, they say, this is what they say.

Well, you know what?

Alcohol may be worse, but we don't need more drugs.

This society needs less drugs.

Okay, well, let's make alcohol illegal too, then, fucker.

You know, we tried that already, and it didn't work.

You know why?

Because too many Republicans and too many fucking congressmen like alcohol.

You know, it's a good drink for someone who's trying to control society because it's a drink that pumps up your ego, it's a drink that gives you a distorted perception of reality, and it's not a drink that offers any insight whatsoever.

It's not a drug that gives you any enlightenment, it's not a drug that helps you in any way, shape, or form.

It's a drug that gives you a pumped-up ego and a very narrow view of the world.

Whereas

other drugs, you're going to eat my food, dude?

You're going to dig into my food, motherfucker?

I see what you're doing.

No, that's all my shit.

It's all yours.

It's all my sashimi.

So did you order?

Joe has to defend his food from Kevin Booth, who's trying to eat his sashimi.

Yeah.

I'm going to leave aside Alex's statistics because they're made up.

But I want to follow the train of thought that he's putting forth.

If something doesn't hurt anyone, there shouldn't be a law against it.

So drugs should be legal.

Further, the prohibition of drugs has made drugs more expensive and turned them into a huge illegal market, which leads to most of the crime in the country.

If that prohibition wasn't there, then the drugs would be legal.

That crime wouldn't exist.

I wanted to bring focus to this because it's a great example of some shit that Alex never believed.

He always supported the opposite position on, but he was smart enough to know early in his career that the only way he wasn't going to be written off as just another fucking limbaugh was to have positions like this that appealed to a more left-leaning audience.

This is is like really savvy on his part, the uh presenting himself this way.

And the interview is dripping in that energy of him like trying to make himself big.

I'm not like all those other Republicans that you hate.

I'm not even a Republican.

Hey, come on, man.

I'm cool.

Come on, Joe.

Yeah, you know, there is something to be said about the limbaugh who just says it's okay to do drugs being perceived as infinitely less racist.

Like right out the gate, just being like, it's okay to do drugs because of America associating drugs with racism essentially from the beginning.

Right.

But I think Joe is the one who's more bringing that part up.

Alex is saying that the prohibition leads to crime.

There's a less racism-based justification for why the war on drugs is bad.

But yeah, I think that you can, you know,

the never Trump Republicans have an outsized coolness to them

in a lot of people's minds because they have one right opinion.

Right.

You know, Ron Paul seemed fucking awesome to a lot of people because he was against war and liked weed.

Yeah.

People give people a lot of credit for things.

There is a generous willingness to forgive anything so long as you are on my team in this moment.

I think it's a Grinch syndrome.

Hmm.

Interesting.

So because you gave the presents back, your heart grew three sizes.

Instead of because I gave the presents back, I will have 10 times more presents next year.

Yeah, we like to treat all these people like the Grinch.

Yeah, yeah, well.

So,

you know, if you can, you know, it doesn't hurt anybody.

Adults should be able to do whatever they want.

Look, the bottom line is,

you're an adult, okay?

You're an adult.

I'm an adult.

Who am I to tell you what you can't do with your life?

Now, if you drive around fucked up on heroin, that's another thing.

You drive around fucked up on heroin and you crash in a car.

You should have your driving privileges revoked.

You should be penalized.

Joe absolutely agree with you.

Joe, that sounds like a libertarian view.

It is a libertarian view.

The neutral aggression.

Basically, libertarian.

Just don't hurt me and I won't hurt you.

Of course, that's not the same thing.

And the law can't get involved unless you're actively hurt.

But that's what society is, man.

Society is a bunch of people living together in cooperation.

And the only thing we should stop is things that hurt other people for no reason.

So Joe needs to clarify what his position is here, because it makes a big difference.

Does he believe that you can only be punished if you drive on heroin and it leads to a crash?

Or does he believe that society understands that driving on heroin is dangerous, so it has the right to place prohibitions on doing it, to the point where even if you don't crash and hurt someone, you should be arrested if you're caught driving on heroin.

This is an important distinction, since one just has the belief in consequences being given for actual harm done.

The other involves a belief that the state has a responsibility to protect its people from very obvious potential harms, like someone driving on heroin.

If he believes the prior, then he shouldn't believe that driving on heroin matters.

It's just illegal to hurt someone in a car crash.

If he believes the latter, then his view isn't really all that libertarian at all.

And I don't think they care to parse this.

Also, if you watch the video of this, Alex does not give a single shit about what Joe is saying, and the two of them really don't feel like they're that close at all.

That makes sense.

Yeah, there's a very, there's a tenseness.

There's always, I love, I love when somebody is like, well, these these things are obvious.

If you do this, you do this.

And they don't recognize that if you follow that train of logic through the interconnectedness of all things that we might consider hurt, quote unquote, then you're going to get literally our current justice system.

You're going to get a lot of things that are very similar.

Yeah, it's just a bunch of like, well, in this case, maybe we do a little bit of, it's like twisting dials and shit.

Instead of being like, you until something hurts somebody, you don't even know.

And it could be 15 steps down along the line.

Right.

You know?

Like, the question that I would ask Joe in this instance, first I would ask him like that clarifying question.

Sure.

And then I would ask, should I be allowed to build a bomb?

Sure.

Like, in my apartment building.

Should I be able to?

I'm not hurting anybody.

I'm potentially blowing up my neighbor's houses.

Potentially.

But should I be punished in advance for this possible thing that might happen?

No, you should only be punished if the bomb goes off.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm wearing these shoes, right?

They were made by

slave labor.

By creating the demand for shoes, am I then enabling slave labor?

What is harm or hurt, and how far do you avoid responsibility for it?

Yeah.

You know, it's not.

It's absurd.

It's not well

delineated here.

But I think the Joe has a decent perspective, and that is largely that strength and power within society is disproportionate.

Sure.

And one of the things about creating a culture together in a society is that we don't just let strength determine who has rights and what gets done.

Yeah.

And then this, this leads to

something crazy.

Look, it's an alpha male-dominated world, but we don't want the biggest, strongest people to run the world.

So what do we do?

We protect ourselves from being bullied.

We protect ourselves from being able to build.

That's what the Republic is.

Exactly.

We protect ourselves from people doing bad things to other people.

And that's the only laws that should be applicable.

Those are the only laws that should exist in the book.

That's it.

It's the laws that protect people from hurting you.

That's it.

Someone sitting at home smoking a joint isn't hurting anybody.

And at the same time, you know, parents will throw their kid in jail and call the cops on them for a joint of marijuana, but then they'll tell them, take your Riddlin and Prozac, which is a thousand times more toxic.

Well, you know what, man?

People are stupid and they're ignorant, and our society doesn't help it.

It's a material-based society.

People want to get material goods, they want to get material items.

They want to get shiny objects and a brand new Lexus and a bigger house than their neighbor.

And that's what they work for.

And when you're working, you're not thinking about life.

You're not being objective.

You're not being introspective.

You're not breaking down the world while you're stuck in a fucking cubicle.

All you're doing is working.

You're a little slave for objects.

You get home and you're tired and your fucking kids are yapping and little Johnny's been smoking a joint.

God damn it, Johnny, what are you doing?

Meanwhile, that joint might help that little motherfucker to stop becoming you.

That joint, that one joint, might make him look at his parents and go, oh my god, my parents are living in a fucking trap.

They're trapped in a cage.

They're living in the matrix.

Like, they don't even realize what they're doing.

One day they're going to die.

They're going to be old and used up and they'll have gotten nothing out of life.

What?

Family trips and a fucking softball game every month?

What is their life?

It's nothing.

It's non-existent.

Those are amazing points.

I know you need to eat.

He's being a radio host.

Alex is two totally different guys.

There's Alex that's my friend.

He's a very interesting guy.

Look at the Alex that turns it on, like, black helicopters will come and take your babies.

And there's Joe, the one guy, cool guy.

But Joe.

I try to be the same me all the time, but I do lie a little bit when I'm on Fear Factor.

I'm talking a bit louder.

That's what's happening here.

But when I'm on Fear Factor, I actually do pretend to be a different person.

Otherwise, I would run away screaming.

I tell you.

Joe.

So I think that moment is really telling.

Alex is two different people.

The guy who's Joe's friend and the guy who turns it on to rant about conspiracy shit like black helicopters.

Yep.

This is such a cutting thing for Joe to say, and I really think it sums up the vibe that you get if you watch this whole thing.

Joe wants Alex to drop the act.

He's supposed to be getting interviewed for Kevin Booth's drug war documentary, and Alex has inserted himself into things as a kind of host.

But Joe seems like he's not able to be himself around that version of Alex.

He's uncomfortable, his body language is very standoffish, and there's multiple times that he he makes these kinds of digs at Alex to the camera, talking directly to the audience or Kevin.

Trump, Kevin.

Sure, sure.

Beyond the obvious discomfort Joe has with being involved with Alex's character, on some level, he has to know that Alex hates what he's saying.

It's all good to believe in human potential and resent the drudgery of wage slavery, but Joe is going a bit further than that.

He's saying that like family vacations and recreational sports leagues are meaningless, which Alex should see as an attack on the family unit.

Joe is saying that, like, having kids, work, and your job, and being satisfied by that means that there's something wrong with you that would probably be solved by smoking a joint and expanding your mind.

On a fundamental level, this is counter to Alex's belief system.

But Joe is one of the only celebrities who will hang out with Alex in 2003, so he just lets it stand and say that Joe's making great points.

Yeah.

This is sad.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, there is the element of freak out the squares that has remained as like a through line throughout Joe's career.

You know, that was a really cool guy in the late 90s.

Right.

Well, I mean, but even to now, it is just that the people who are squares have adopted the language of freak out the squares, you know, like they're, oh, look at how freaking, look how scared you are of us.

Nobody's scared.

You just suck.

Yeah,

it's like the Paul Joseph Watson's whole like conservatism is the new punk rule.

Yeah, it is.

No, it's not.

No, it is just so not.

Yeah, you've tricked yourself into thinking that this character is that.

Yeah.

Like the late 90s guy who's ranting about drugs and expanding your mind to don't be a wage slave.

Yeah.

Joe feels like there's some kind of countercultural thing that he's doing now that's the evolution of this, probably, but it's not.

It's just

a full-on portrayal of whatever he was pretending to be back then.

I mean, it is, because what this is, what he is representing, is not what he thinks he's representing.

He thinks he's representing a principled stance.

Yes.

And what he's really representing is an existence that defines itself in opposition to whatever it perceives the greater culture to appreciate.

Yes.

And that's valuable for its own sake.

Exactly.

It doesn't matter what I'm saying.

There's him in opposition.

Yeah, there's an immaturity to that position, but it's kind of fun immaturity for a younger person.

When you're immature.

yeah, yes, although later he does say that he's 36, and that shocked me.

Boy, that is rough.

2003.

I mean, he does look good for the 30s.

No, for 36.

He seems like he's a lot younger than he is.

Yeah.

But it's still, you know, he's the guy from Fear Factory.

He's the guy from News Radio.

Like, that kind of immaturity is that now he's like in his 50s.

He's too old.

Yeah.

You're too old for this.

I'm too old for this.

Yeah.

You know?

I don't want to freak out the squares from my

right-wing, dumb shit

conspiracy podcaster.

You can be in Fugazi for four to six years, the end.

Then you got to grow up.

So Joe has some interesting political positions that he expresses in this conversation.

They're still a fucking mess, but the people at the highest levels of government are still slaves to government.

I mean, it's really.

Of course, it's completely out of control.

It's such a huge monster right now.

It's so completely out of control.

There's no way, how are you going to control it?

What are you going to do about it?

How are you ever going to change it?

It's so fucked up.

Just the Electoral College.

How about that?

How about that?

It just makes you feel so helpless about voting.

You know, just the way they process one man, one vote doesn't even exist.

Look, our whole system is fucked.

The whole idea that the Commission for Presidential Debates is a privately funded institution, so that means the people that are debating on television

that are running for president, that debate is being funded by the very people who will benefit from only certain people being in office.

Well, Ralph Nader was on the list to speak, and they just decided last minute.

They changed it to 15%, where it was 5% before, but then Ross Perot got it.

It used to be 5% of the popular vote in the polls.

And then you got to think: who the fuck votes in the polls?

You have to be an idiot to vote in the polls anyway.

You have to be so deep into the whole thing.

The government's called for a poll.

Oh.

Have you?

No.

I don't even know if they exist.

They might not exist.

They might be all fake man.

Yeah, who knows?

So I feel like Joe might not really be all that interested in the clear solution to these two problems anymore, which would be abolishing the Electoral College and public financing of political campaigns.

Yeah, it seems obvious.

In this election cycle, he arguably made millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Trump by having him advance on his show, and he's buddied up with Elon, who gave Trump hundreds of millions of dollars for the election.

Whatever concern he's expressing about the Commission for Presidential Debates being a private company, that's not part of his politics anymore at all.

The Commission on Private

Presidential Debates started in 1987, and prior to that, the presidential debates were sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

Prior to JFK and Nixon in 1960, there weren't televised debates, and after Nixon came off so bad in that one, there weren't big debates until 1976.

There was a 16-year lull.

The CPT, the CPD, is a non-profit, and it was originally run by co-chairs who were respectively the heads of the Democratic and Republican parties.

It was never meant to include third-party candidates, and the coordination between the two parties, it actually led to the League of Women Voters putting out a press release in 1988 saying, quote, It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign trail charades, devoid of substance, spontaneity, and honest answers to tough questions.

The league has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of of the American public.

Wow, it's a good thing things have gotten a lot better since then.

Sure.

So the H.W.

Bush and Dukakis campaigns had agreed to a bunch of demands that they would make of the league, including the right to choose who could ask questions and the, quote, composition of the audience.

The league said fuck off, and since then, the Commission on Presidential Debates has sponsored the events until 2024 when Biden and Trump decided that they didn't want to play along with the CPD, and now it's probably dead in the water.

It's kind of bullshit that third-party candidates aren't really included, but the CPD themselves makes a fairly decent point about it in their about page on their website.

Quote, candidates for federal office are not required to debate.

History teaches that it's speculative at best to assume that the leading candidates would agree to share the stage with candidates enjoying only scant public support.

They just kind of get to arbitrarily decide who's a leading candidate, but they're also right.

Political campaigns are a lot about appearances, so you don't want to look like a loser debating someone who's polling at 6% when you're like at 45.

They make it clear that, quote, the CPD's debates are not intended to serve as a springboard for a candidate with only scant public support.

They didn't change their standards to 15% because of Ross Perot.

They just formalized that as a polling threshold in 2000, justified by an argument that this was the threshold that the League of Women Voters used previously.

Before 2000, they didn't let people in who polled over 5%, and if you go to their website, you can find a long list of the people who were on their advisory panel for the pre-2000 debates and the process they followed.

It was a lot of discussion about what makes a leading candidate, who is relevant, who could conceivably win, and matters in terms of the public conversation.

It's not about the 5% or 15% thrift.

No, I mean, ultimately, it's about,

you know, fighting an old man.

Either I get my ass kicked by an old man, that's no good, or I beat the shit out of an old man.

That's no good.

So, why would I debate somebody with 5%?

That's ridiculous.

Yeah, and I think that if you have too loose of standards, you're going to fuck around and end up with like David Duke making a decent case for why he deserves to be on that stage.

Sure.

And I think that's a problem.

You know, I mean, like, do you think Ye couldn't have maybe tried to force something if you were required to have people who pulled over 5% on the debate?

I mean, the obvious reason I would have to dispute that would just be,

yeah, to throw them in there would be to reveal the parts of the campaigns that they don't want to show you.

Maybe.

You know, to have David Duke on stage with you might make you start nodding along with David Duke, and then people, you know what I'm saying?

Well, sure, but that is essentially what the CPD's argument is: is like

a leading candidate, a relevant candidate, wouldn't put themselves in that position.

Exactly.

So we wouldn't be able to do these debates if we just invited folks like David Duke.

Right.

I mean, the problem is fundamentally that they recognize their obsolescence.

Sure.

And I think that a decent argument could be made that Ralph Nader was, in theory, a leading candidate.

Sure.

In the same way that Ron Paul maybe was a leading candidate.

I think that you could make a decent argument that they should have included them, but

fall.

The argument that would be successful, I don't think, follows the same track they're on.

No.

So, anyway, Joe in 2003 is right about the system being fucked.

Sure.

He's wrong about a lot, and he accepts easy answers for hard questions, but at least it feels like he has momentum heading in the right direction, which it doesn't feel like anymore.

Feels like he has momentum, but it's not good.

So, Joe hates

money and politics.

Don't we all?

How much have we

alone?

Just the fact that people are, you're allowed to contribute money, gigantic sums of money, huge corporations that would benefit from these people being in office.

It's obvious that it's bought and paid for.

It's so obvious.

I mean, it's so sick.

The whole situation is so sick.

So, where's it going in the next five years?

It's not going to get any better.

I'm praying for a meteor.

I think we need a meteor that wipes out about 60% of the people on the planet.

You know, it's like the only way we're going to survive.

I don't know, man.

You know, it's just, I think, just enjoy yourself and try to have fun.

I don't know how much we're gonna change.

I should remind you that Joe had Trump and Vance on his podcast for softball interviews and has made a practice of helping launder the reputations of billionaires who gave vast sums of money to Trump's campaign.

Whereas once Joe thought that this excessive money in politics was an unsolvable problem that could only be solved by a meteor hitting the earth, now he's stupid rich and he's friends with a bunch of the people who profit from continuing that unsolvable problem.

It's crazy how that works.

Joe made a choice.

Yeah.

Also, Alex should be really mad about this kind of exterminationist talk.

The world's problems could be solved by killing 60% of the population?

That sounds downright globalist.

It does sound very globalist.

I guess it's fine from Joe, though, because he's on Fear Factor.

Well, now

it makes even more sense since he will have an underground redoubt.

Is that what we understand here?

Yeah, probably.

And Alex will get a little invite.

Alex will, but then Alex can't go under there because we know the zombies are going to pull them out and eat them.

Yeah.

And Alex wants to be part of the eaters.

Right.

He wants to be a zombie.

Yeah.

He's going to eat his neighbor's ass.

All right.

Okay.

So

this was awesome.

This next clip is awesome.

Joe wants wealth redistribution.

Of course he does.

And to kill conservatives.

Yay.

Our whole culture is a mess.

The only thing that would cure our culture is a mass global enlightenment.

I mean, how's that going to happen?

I mean, everyone has to do DMT and mushrooms every day for a month, you know, and we have to, you know,

evenly distribute wealth, and you have to educate all the fucking poor communities.

You have to stop dumb people from having children.

That's never going to stop.

You're going to have to figure out a way to raise the children of ignorant people and give them some sort of a hope for life.

You know,

that's not going to happen.

So what are you going to do?

You're going to have to take insecure guys and break them free of all their control issues so they don't become become conservatives and Republicans.

Well, that's not going to happen.

You know how hard it is?

You know how hard it is?

Of course.

But they're not social controlists.

They're trying to control things in a different way.

I mean, do you know how hard it is to change someone's life?

It's virtually impossible.

So you would have to kill every conservative or enlighten them.

The possibility of enlightening them is so slim.

But Joe, this whole left-right thing,

there is no left-right.

Exactly.

But I'm talking about controlling people's behavior.

I'm not talking about conservative

in a common sense of the word.

I'm talking about it in a sense of

worried about other people, all these gays trying to have marriages, you know, and someone's saying, oh, you know,

how is that Hillary Clinton?

How the hell is she?

All that kind of crazy shit.

You know, people worrying about gays, people worrying about specific ethnic groups, people treating people as anything other than individuals.

If you don't stop, what do you think about the whole Arnold election?

Why not?

I mean, it's happening without him.

I'm down for him.

He's a guy who lifts weights and did drugs and he likes to fuck chicks.

Put him in.

All right.

Why not anybody else?

Why him over anybody else?

Why anybody else over him?

It's all the same.

They're all completely full of shit.

You know, I mean,

he's one of those mackerel.

So that clip right there is shocking.

Joe is discussing his views.

Because one of them wasn't mackerel.

Right.

One of them squid.

Oh, shit.

Unagi!

So, Joe is discussing his views on how to fix our totally fucked up society.

And he thinks everyone needs to do a bunch of DMT.

Wealth needs to be redistributed.

We need to institute eugenic policies and insecure men need to be taught how to let go so they don't become conservative.

Alex should throw a swing at him after something like that, but his brand is so fragile in 2003 and the whole, I'm not a conservative like you think, that is so important to Alex having any relevance.

So he has to hear Joe say shit that's heretical to him.

And he responds by asking about Arnold Schwarzenegger's run for governor.

Yep.

Apparently, Joe doesn't know that Alex was one of the the largest opponents of Arnold's campaign and I'm sure that Alex was hoping for a different answer or an ability to throw to commercial something because that's not good.

No.

I think that clip is so breathtaking because Joe is talking about Alex when he describes the person who's holding us back.

When he clarifies who he's calling a conservative, he might have as well have been doing an Alex impression.

So you would have to kill every conservative or enlighten them.

The possibility of enlightening them is so slim.

But Joe, this whole left-right thing, I mean, I mean, there was no no left-right.

Exactly.

But I'm talking about controlling people's behavior.

I'm not talking about conservative in a common sense of the word.

I'm talking about it in a sense of

other people, all these gays trying to have marriages, you know, and someone's saying, oh, you know,

how is that Hillary Clinton?

How the hell is she?

All that kind of crazy shit.

I don't think that Joe realizes that he's condemning Alex to his own face, and Alex is just taking it because he wants to hang out with the celebrity.

But it's kind of insane to imagine that their friendship is based on this much much of a false premise and so little information on Joe's part.

It's

I mean, what he's saying is essentially, you need to evolve or die to Alex.

Right.

You need to let go of all of this bullshit that is so important to you.

Yeah.

Like being concerned about gay people getting married, your obsession with Hillary Clinton, your

fears about other ethnic groups.

He's saying these are things you must let go of, and you never will, so society can't move forward unless we kill you.

That's it.

I wonder about that.

I wonder about the interesting

after that, right?

Because if what Joe is expressing is true, that they cannot change, then what has happened is a result of that.

And that is that essentially Joe

has changed to Alex.

Yes.

So by proximity of one person not being able to change, if you want to continue to be around the unchangeable, you yourself must change.

Well, and therefore, we get where we get.

I think some of that is probably true.

I think some of that's a little bit true.

And then I also think that some of what Joe's doing here is an act.

Absolutely.

And I think that he doesn't have a solid grounding in a lot of the positions that he has or a lot of these beliefs.

Sure.

A lot of it is adolescent bullshit.

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger gets his dick sucked, so he should be governor.

Like, it's childish, immature shit that doesn't have a basis in any concern for like what would Arnold do as governor what are the differences between him and some other candidate sure um and I think because there's no roots to it there's nothing there's no there's no uh foundation it's easy to change this person yeah this person will change without even knowing it yeah well they're just gonna say whatever is like when he says we need to abolish the electoral college it's identical to Alex saying blah blah blah well it's because we're in 2000 right it doesn't mean mean anything.

Yeah.

It's not like, oh, okay, now I'm going to help.

It's the summer of rage.

That's all it is.

He doesn't actually care.

He's just saying the things that get you to react the way he wants you to.

Yeah, what will

sort of build up the brand that he's seeking to cultivate?

Right.

And that brand is really cool in the late 90s, early 2000s.

And I understand exactly why, you know, you take on this stand-up character and persona.

Yeah.

But yeah, because it didn't grow up, it's changed by

malign forces.

Yeah, to a, you know, like if you were to describe that era as the attitude era all across the board, as in like, it is more about looking like this big than it is about being that, you know?

Well, I think that in terms of wrestling, that's good.

That

they weren't all that.

Well, it was

there'd be a lot of murderers on the loose.

It was good for Joe's career, too, you know, to appear to be something, and then it just continues to appear.

You just change what you appear like, yeah.

Yeah, especially when opportunities arise that

are very, very lucrative.

It does.

You know, it's tough to look down the barrel of a hundred million dollar gun and go, like, well, I wouldn't take that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's uh, I hope I never know.

I me too, yeah.

So, uh, Joe says some great shit in this next clip.

You know,

the problem isn't something that can be fixed.

The problem

has so much to do with our diet.

It has so much to do with the way we take care of our bodies.

It has so much to do with what we put into our minds.

It has so much to do with education and the hundreds of years of education and lies that have been perpetrated on the people in our culture from the beginning of of our culture.

From the beginning of

the birth of this country, it's been completely full of shit.

I mean, our country was founded by a bunch of people who were fucking religious fanatics.

They wanted to own slaves, but they wanted to be free.

You know, I mean,

that Puritan ethic still fucks us up through the shit.

Joe, I got to tell you this.

I mean, you've said a lot of things I agree with, but at the same time, I think you're oversimplifying.

A lot of the founding fathers, I mean.

Fuck the founding fathers.

They were idiots, too.

Hold on, but I know.

Nobody's perfect, but you can point back.

You can point back.

I'm just saying, what we're talking about is...

I mean, how do you fix it?

I mean, certainly.

But don't point back.

Let's say, how do you fix it?

How do you fix it?

You can't.

You can't.

It's too fucked up.

Dude, it's too fucked up.

The best that you can do, the best you could do is enlighten people on how to figure out what you're doing.

But all I was trying to do is analyze something you said there and to get your response from it.

It was slavery still going on all over the world.

Most of the founding fathers were against slavery and then released.

Well, I don't know that.

I didn't meet the founding fathers.

I don't think you did either.

And it's very

no video.

He talks about liberty and freedom.

He's filled with lies.

Who knows?

George Bush talks about liberty and freedom.

He's totally full of shit.

We're fighting

axis of evil.

Yeah,

let me tell you something.

You cannot trust anything history says.

You can't trust anything.

So I like listening to this version of Rogan because he's right about so much and wrong about so much, but he's coming at it fairly coherently.

Like, this at least seems like a person who can exist.

You know, like,

this is a persona that fits.

Okay.

He's right that our country is completely fucked up because the entire time we've existed, we've tried to be two contradictory things at the same time.

We're slave owners who love freedom.

We lied to ourselves to rationalize some of the awful shit that we were doing, and history has never really fully reckoned with that history.

And that lives on.

He's right about not putting the founding fathers on some kind of pedestal and about how their words should be scrutinized in the same way that a modern figure should be.

They're just as capable of lying as Bush, so it's dumb to take things at face value.

That kind of stuff is all good, and it's nice to hear.

But this conclusion he comes to where you can't trust history and everything is bullshit, is so bad.

History is a tool, and just like any other tool, its value is dependent on how you use it.

We don't have a perfect record of everything that's happened from completely objective sources, so the practice of understanding pieces of history involves learning about context and how things fit together and what certain events can tell us about how people interacted with those events in history.

He doesn't believe this.

Joe doesn't believe that.

It's just a cool thing for him to say, for this character to say.

If you really believe that you can't trust anything from history, then you're kind of in a position where anything outside of your subjective experience is entirely unknowable.

And I don't think Joe would defend that.

Also, you just told me like 30 different things from fucking history right so i don't trust your dumbass what are we talking about here are you just wasting my time you told me about the decorticator earlier what are you doing yeah i feel like i want to give him a pass and say that he's phrasing these things like a comic might sure i think there is a little bit of that dynamic sure but it also sounds really dumb it sounds like uh the we believe in nothing from uh the big labows we believe in nothing and it's like oh fine you're nihilist i guess whatever sure go away yeah but i think i think the articulation of it and the way he's trying to come off is in line with, like, I'm a performer.

History's bullshit, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Cool, sexy nihilism.

Yeah, but he wouldn't defend that, like, history is all full of shit if pressed on it.

I mean, you got to get through the day.

Yeah, and that's why I give it a pass.

It's an embellishment for comedic approach.

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

Whatever, but it sounds stupid because he's trying to be also serious at the same time.

Yeah, yeah.

So, Alex is like, hey, man, the Founding Fathers are pretty cool.

And Mike Down for this, because this is a mic down sort of moment.

Oh, boy.

This is one of the finest moments I've encountered.

Well, this is all I'm saying about the Founding Fathers

is that they weren't, I mean, to some of our standards, they were bad, but they were light years ahead.

Who knows?

Who knows?

They were light years ahead of their writings.

They were light years ahead of a lot of people behind them.

That's what I'm saying.

They were raining.

They weren't light years ahead of Buddhists.

They weren't light years ahead of Tibetan monks.

They weren't light years.

They got ahead of slavery.

But they got slavery all over those countries controlled by the Buddhists and controlled by the.

I mean, look at the free...

Yeah, there's slavery all over the place.

And it's controlled by the Buddhist monks?

No, but I'm just saying.

I'm just saying that's...

I've got the documents to prove it.

If you go to my website, Infowars.com, I'll show you.

The Buddhist monks controlled slavery and prostitution and heroin use.

Actually, the Buddhist monks did help Hitler.

That's true.

They had Tibetan monks.

They're chanting for him, trying to defeat him.

That's actually typed down to me.

That's even on my point.

I thought you said they were trying to help him.

They were trying to help Hitler, yeah.

Well, they were trying to defeat him.

You support, no, you support Tibetan monks, you support Hitler.

No, no, I'm serious, Joe.

They,

because Hitler was in the Eastern Missile System, and he paid to have a bunch of Tibetan monks come there, and they found a bunch of them dead in the bunker with him.

You know?

They found a bunch of Tibetan monks dead in the bunker with him.

I thought they didn't even find Hitler dead in the bunker.

They got him outside with gasoline on him and burnt.

Yeah, that bunker now was.

Right there at the right door.

He was a little shaky.

A little shaky

i'm gonna have to turn the eggs this is the game on in a minute this is the alex jones problem i'm about to turn the egg alex jones is a very smart man with a lot of information at his disposal however

sometimes he doesn't have the answer so he will just make some shaky joe i told you i told you 24

about 9-11 24 months what did you tell me i told you about 9-11 the government behind it well 24 months ago 9-11 happened i think everybody knew about it so if you're joe and you know that periodically Alex will make things up and try to confidently pass them off as true pieces of information that he knows from study, Alex should immediately become someone you don't take seriously.

He's a compulsive liar who has no problem misleading you when it serves his ego to do so.

Who gives a fuck about the supposed vast amount of information he has at his disposal?

Because of his behavior, you can never really know if anything he's saying is true or something he's making up to slip out of an argument that he's losing.

I mean this fairly sincerely.

I don't think that Joe likes Alex very much.

I could believe that Joe has no idea what Alex thinks and has no interest in watching his show to find out.

He's been sold the lie that Alex is some kind of counterculture guy who's above the left-right paradigm.

That's enough for him.

I get the sense that if Joe knew that Alex was a religious zealot who hated gay people and thought he was on a mission from God to fight the literal devil, they might not actually have been friends at this point.

Probably not.

When Alex says that there were Tibetan monks who who were found at Hitler's bunker, he's signaling to hollow earth-type conspiracies.

According to many hollow earth folks, Tibetans have a connection to the inner world societies Shambhala and Agartha.

And it was important for Hitler to maintain good relations with them so he can maintain this link.

That makes sense.

The people in the inner earth, they have secret powers and all that stuff.

So he wanted to get access to those things, and the Tibetan monks were his best friends.

That makes sense.

In a crushing moment to be captured on film, Joe reveals that alex is playing games and that joe knows it alex is a compulsive liar and for whatever reason joe hasn't considered that a deal breaker for the last 22 years that is such a damning little thing there that's the alex jones problem yeah he makes shit up it is it is an incredible thing i guess they're just they're just these type of people and you can have those type of people i guess but if somebody's like

in a conversation with me and we are having an actual discussion and then they're just like, you know, Tibetan monks were in with Hitler, I'd be like, why are we doing any of this then?

You go away.

Now, if you tell me that as a non-sequitur,

then I'm not going to be as mad at you making it up.

However, if you pull it out as defense

for your claim that the founding fathers were awesome,

and then I have rebutted it by saying they weren't as great as Tibetan monks, if you then make this up

to

the rebuttal that I've made to your argument, then I think that that's a different kind of lie.

Well,

it's far more manipulative of a lie.

It shows that you don't operate in good faith conversationally.

I mean,

fundamentally, it is then a power thing.

It's just not about whatever we're talking about.

There's no point in us talking about things.

We should be arm wrestling.

That's what you would prefer because you win.

That's That's what I'm saying.

It's clear that Joe knows that Alex is willing to lie when his ego needs to.

He needs to maintain this idea that he has all the information, he knows everything, and

when that's threatened, he'll lie.

He just lies.

And because of that,

nothing is trustworthy.

Now, I have known compulsive liars in my time.

Sure.

If I knew that someone was a compulsive liar like this, I would never put them in a position where their positions could be taken seriously.

I would never try to launder their reputation and try and make them, hey, they're actually right about a bunch of stuff because you're going to explicitly get people to believe lies.

I don't know if I've ever known a compulsive liar.

Or, I mean, I've known of them, but I don't know.

I've never had a friend who is a compulsive liar because probably I'm the type of person who would be like, oh, you're a compulsive liar.

Well, now your nickname is Blank the Compulsive Liar.

Like, that's it.

Like, there's no reason for me to, like, that's who you are, you know?

Yeah.

That's why I can't be friends with that.

Well, I think that a lot of times it takes a while to figure out.

Sure.

You may make a friendship before you figure out some of this stuff.

I don't know.

I think that Joe is too aware.

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.

Of what he's around and who he's with.

He knows that Alex is full of shit.

It's something that, like,

you shouldn't have 22 years later.

It shouldn't, there's, it is, it is so close to the like

John Lennon's seven and he walks by a guitar shop and he's like, oh, I'm going to have one of those someday.

And you know, like, ah, all that.

Like, this is horrifying.

This should cause problems for somebody.

Somewhere along the line, somebody should be like, oh, well, because this exists, a thing must happen now.

Well, honestly, I think that like John Lennon walking past a guitar when he's seven or something like that would be this existing, but Alex coming off really well.

Sure.

And him convincing Joe of a bunch of points.

Sure.

Because then it's like, oh, hey, there's the guitar, and the seed of whatever in my seven-year-old brain comes to bloom in 25 or whatever.

Right.

But this is like.

I don't know.

I don't even know how to make the Lennon metaphor.

See, I was going at it from the other direction.

This is Rogan seeing who he's going to become.

But he sees,

but

the guitar is aspirational.

Sure.

Joe understands that what he's looking at is shit.

I mean, yeah,

I suppose I was thinking more of an inevitability to it.

But whatever.

The point is, this is fucked up.

It is fucked up.

This is ghosts of Christmas past shit.

You're not supposed to actually live a Christmas carol.

No.

So there are a couple moments, though, where Joe, I think he comes off okay.

Right.

There's some moments where there's a little bit of introspection, and one of them is here where he's talking about

this idea that he has where shit's just fucked, man.

And he realizes how people will hear that.

And it's fairly defeatist.

It sounds like pop-out to say that it's too fucked up and there's nothing you can do about it, but I don't want to waste my life trying to fix some shit that I can't fix.

What I do want, I want people to be aware that you can't fix it.

I want the people to be aware how crazy life really is.

This is what I tell people all the time.

If you ever think you've got a grip on life, if you ever think you know what the fuck is up, I want you to go outside and I want you to look straight up.

And you want you to realize there's a hundred billion stars in this galaxy.

This is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe.

All structure is an illusion.

All society is an illusion.

It's all built.

We are talking monkeys on a rock spinning around in space, and that's it.

Standard planet orbiting a standard sun, two-thirds of the way out on the spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy here.

Yeah, but bottom line is real importance.

That's it.

This whole concept of what's real and what's not real and what you're supposed to do, what you're not supposed to do, it's completely artificial.

No, let me just say, no one has any idea.

We wouldn't have fought the liberal freedom we have now, though, if people wouldn't have fought against thugs and against tyrants.

So to say give up, I mean, we still have, you know, give up.

I mean, black folks will still be pulling the plows.

I'm not saying you said that.

But you're saying, you know, screw it.

It's only going to get worse.

You can't stop it.

No, I'm talking about voting.

I'm talking about...

But I think speaking out, putting your ideas out, we don't put a chance to talk about egg rolls.

We didn't get a chance to vote for whether or not we wanted to go to war.

If we voted,

the United States had a chance to vote.

That's what it's supposed to be about, man.

I agree.

I'm getting people to vote.

Can I get another die code?

So there's been a miscarriage of justice.

I'm going to support this big major corporation that fucking goes overseas.

With aspartame, man.

Deadly poison.

Deadly poison if you're a fucking pussy

i could eat aspartame for lunch dude check that aspartame

show him right there ladies and gentlemen that's aspartame training

it was revealed today that joe bogan had been taking aspartame secondhand smoke man i said if you get cancer from secondhand smoke you're a fucking pussy

so this is a direct affront to all of alex's beliefs we are not monkeys on a rock we're created by god and we have obligations to our ancestors to protect the white race or the west if you prefer to use that term.

Alex should hate Joe.

Like, I think Joe doesn't like Alex that much based on the way they're interacting, but Alex should fucking hate Joe based on the things that he's expressing.

And I suspect that if he didn't host Fear Factor or wasn't willing to be seen in public with Alex, these beliefs that he's expressing would be a huge problem.

Sure.

Also, when Joe says that thing about secondhand smoke at the end there, I'm pretty sure it's a continuation of an axe that he has to grind with Dennis Leary for stealing material.

Earlier, he tried to make a joke about Leary, and I think this is him trying to play around with Alex, and I don't know if Alex gets it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Because that is a Dennis Leary bit that I think people accuse him of stealing.

Ah.

He has that whole big smoking chunk.

Right, right, right, right.

I love smoking.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I watched that last night

because I was reminded of it from this.

And

it doesn't hold up.

No?

No.

I mean, you can tell why he went on to star as a fireman.

It's

a lot of impressions of someone with a throat tracheotomy.

Oh, boy.

That's solid stuff.

That'll get him.

Sometimes somebody who took down the trakes.

You know what I'm saying?

They've been having it too good for too long.

Yep.

So

Joe has pushed back a bit on Alex.

Yeah.

And I think that Alex is in a position where he's like, ugh, I got to smooth this over a little bit.

And so Joe's talking about something he saw on TV.

And Alex's actions, I think, are really, really illuminating.

You know what, man?

You know, Hitler burnt the Reichstag.

Nero burnt Rome.

I was watching a documentary the other day where these Japanese

guys

set something on fire and they're blaming on the Chinese in the 1920s.

Really?

Wanted to go to war with China.

What was that have been?

I need that.

It was on the history of China.

I don't know.

It was just on a few days ago.

About,

Well, I wish I wrote it down.

I was in my hotel room.

I was just like, people are just fucked.

I just watched this.

I'm like, we've always been like this.

We love war.

So this is a very transparent move on Alex's part to pretend that Joe just brought him some valuable information.

It's a form of flattery where Alex's value is in digging up the truth, and Joe has made a contribution to that.

Apparently, he saw something on the history channel about some Japanese people burning something as a means of blaming the Chinese.

This is great.

Joe's done some research for him.

Alex either knows about what Joe is talking about, or else this reveals that Alex is a complete fraud.

This is in reference to the Mukden incident from 1931, where the Japanese government attempted to blow up a train to blame the Chinese to justify an invasion.

They fucked it up, and the explosion wasn't strong enough to blow up the train, and the plot was fairly quickly unraveled.

This is a big deal, and it led to Japan having to leave the League of Nations, so it's pretty weird to imagine that Alex doesn't know about this.

It strongly feels like Alex Alex has just been completely emasculated by Joe saying that he makes things up when he doesn't know correct information.

So Alex is trying to win him back over with this little pat on the head.

This is what Alex responds to, this sort of affirmation.

And I think he's trying to blind Joe with like, oh my god, you did so good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I don't think that Joe fully responds the same way that Alex does to flattery.

Yeah,

it is very much like,

I guess, carrot and stick is the only

way to perceive a conversation.

Not like, you're a person and I'm a person.

It's how do I get your actions to line up with what I want them to be?

You know?

Yeah, with Alex especially.

It's a pat on the head or I'm going to yell you're a sneaky snake.

Yep.

Yep.

That's it.

I'm going to say I can gut you like a pig or I'm going to be like, he's the smartest man I've ever seen.

He's the most important, you know.

Oh, my God, I never knew about these Japanese people trying to burn something to blame the Chinese.

Oh, my God.

Thank God you were in your hotel.

Oh, you're a miracle.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So they get onto the subject of JFK, because of course they do.

Sure.

And,

you know, they talk about, of course, the Northwoods, Operation Northwoods, that document.

And they fucking killed Kennedy.

They did.

And then, what was it, the Northwoods document?

Is that what it was?

Yeah, it calls for a U.S.

government plan to carry out terror attacks.

And what was that?

It was in 1962?

And Kennedy said no and got whacked a few months later.

They whacked that dude for a bunch of reasons because he really thought he was the president.

Well, no, that's it.

No.

I mean, he'd been a big hawk and everything.

That's what's interesting about Kennedy is he was all for him, you know, you know, big military.

He actually cut taxes by half.

He was almost, he was like a real conservative on a lot of issues.

Again, they scrambled all the terms, but he cut taxes by half, beats up the military.

Yeah, these communists kicked their ass.

And when they came to him with Northwoods, and I said it in my film, but it just came out even on Frontline.

when he came out and said when they came to him and said we want to kill U.S.

troops playing on enemies we want to hijack jets we want to blow some up in DC he said that's it I'm abolishing the CIA we're pulling out of Vietnam I'm cutting military funding we're not going to Cuba anymore and they just freaked I mean they were so radical they came to him with that plan to kill U.S.

citizens he said I won't do it how great it would it have been if Kennedy had a speech to give a State of the Union speech

and he just addressed all those issues how great it would it would it have been if he got on television and talked about what the CIA really does?

That's what they got him.

That's what he tries to do.

Great point, Joe.

Yeah.

Well,

two weeks before he was killed, he was at American University and he gave a speech.

He said, soon I'm going to be exposing the greatest evil ever.

Our government's been taken over.

It's a famous speech you can find online.

And he said,

this darkness is out of control.

We're going to stop it.

And he was going to give a State of the Union about it.

He was going to talk about it in the campaign.

But you're right.

He should have done it, boom, right up front.

Well, you know, that might have been the the last hope.

You know, I mean, maybe that was just romanticizing it then.

Maybe he had no hope even then.

Where did your instinct go about Alex making things up, Joe?

Because you just accepted that one.

So JFK gave the commencement address at American University on June 10th, 1963, and he was killed on November 22nd, so it wasn't two weeks before.

Alex is doing the old Alex thing, fudging details to be more interesting.

Ironically, if Joe would listen to that speech, he might get some inspiration about the hopelessness he seems seems to be feeling about politics and life.

Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself.

Too many of us think it's impossible.

Too many think it's unreal.

But that is dangerous to featist belief.

It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we're gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man.

And man can be as big as he wants.

No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.

Alex is just making shit up about this Kennedy speech, which is mostly about a desire for peace with the Soviet Union, and touching on things of like, we can't demonize the people of the Soviet Union.

That is the worst thing we can do, is see all of them as our enemies.

But also, it's weird that Joe doesn't have that same like history is all bullshit take on Kennedy.

It is strange.

Seems like he takes a lot of that shit on face value.

Very simply put, he likes what he hears.

Yeah.

And that means it's true.

Don't need to be so critical.

He doesn't like what he hears, and that means it's false.

Oh.

It's very simple.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

That's not good.

That's probably not good.

So while I was listening to this, I did have one thought.

And that was that Joe was making me want to smoke weed.

Oh, I was thinking I'm starting to get a little hungry for some sushi.

Oh, sure.

I mean, I do apologize if there's anyone

who's sensitive to chewing sounds.

But I was listening to this and I'm like, fuck yeah, man.

Sure.

Weed.

Yeah.

It's so cool.

Do it.

Weed is cool.

Weed is cool.

What marijuana does, its gift is it offers you an enhanced view of the world.

It spreads your consciousness.

It helps you absolve your ego.

It helps you keep your ego in check and actually calm it and give you a more balanced and objective perspective on the world.

It does.

You know, people think, man, I want to make some stupid.

It hasn't made me stupid.

It made me smarter, it made me more aware, it made me a better comedian.

In the three years since I just started smoking pot, my material has gotten so much deeper and more richer and more in-depth and I enjoy it more, I enjoy life more, I've changed the way I look at things,

I've gotten out of so many traps of confinement, of these predetermined patterns of behavior that people find themselves in, and we do it just because everyone else is doing it.

Well, me smoking pot made me realize that a lot of these things, it's just we're just connecting the dots because we're insecure, and we're not looking at what's what's really healthy and what really feels good, and what's really natural, and what really helps you, you know, enjoy your life.

We're just doing it because we think that's what we're supposed to do, you know, and you live a trap, and weed makes you aware of that, man.

Marijuana makes you very aware of everything around you.

It makes you very aware.

People call it being paranoid, but it's not paranoia.

Life really does suck that bad for most people.

And when you get high and you get paranoid, what's happening is all the bullshit is stripped away.

The bullshit veneer that most people cover their lives in, just so they could fucking get by, just so they could wake up when that goddamn alarm clock goes off.

That shit strips away when you smoke pot.

And you are all of a sudden alone with your thoughts and the reality of the world, the reality of the universe.

And for most people, that's way too much to deal with.

They would rather have alcohol.

They would rather dull it down.

That's one of the reasons why everyone's afraid of marijuana.

And that's one of the reasons why marijuana can help everyone.

Everyone should be forced to smoke pot.

You should be forced.

Not forced, obviously.

You should be encouraged.

You should be encouraged.

Okay.

I remember feeling like that.

Sure.

I remember being young.

I thought that was so fucking funny.

He's not young.

Well,

I think that, like, he's young.

You know how people say that they're young in the faith?

Sure.

Or whatever when they're.

That's what it is.

He's three years into smoking weed.

Yeah.

He's a born-again Christian.

That's what he's doing.

He's doing the thing.

He's doing the thing that everybody does whenever they make a massive life change in their early 30s.

Yeah, but I remember also having that mentality about weed when I was young.

And I'm not attacking weed.

I think that it can be incorporated into people's lives.

Sure.

Totally fine.

People respond to it differently.

So some people like it, some don't.

Neither should feel ashamed of either.

But I remember being being young and thinking like, this is free in my mind, man.

This is my medicine.

And it was not.

It was

that was a fun story to tell myself because I really enjoyed being high.

And it gave me, you know, kind of feeling of being like

deeper, more introspective than the people around me.

And maybe

that was an illusion

that I enjoyed.

Maybe a little bit.

I mean, you know,

you'll get over it.

that's probably the truth that we should bundle all other truths underneath is just like, I know it seems important right now, but you'll probably get over it in five to ten years.

Yeah.

And then you'll be doing something else.

It's okay.

You'll be fine.

And I think that this Rogan, the reason that this is good

or this person is compelling is because he's speaking to people.

who are in where they're at.

You know, like this, if you're somebody who's early in smoking weed or whatever, you'd be like, this guy fucking gets it.

Yeah.

This guy gets it.

And

that is maybe important.

He's articulating some things that you're experiencing.

Sure.

And,

you know, maybe you'll, or maybe you should grow out of some of the perspectives that he's

expressing, but also they can be an important part of the path.

Sure.

Like, I always thought about Lincoln Park as being like, these people are making fantastic music for teens.

Sure.

Like this is really, this really does hit on something about adolescence that like you're going through.

Yeah.

And I thought that was a really remarkable ability that they had.

And maybe if you're an adult and you're listening to it,

you don't have the same connection to it.

Sure.

That doesn't devalue what the music is.

No.

And I think that Rogan's the same thing for like young pot smokers.

Well, that's the problem, is that he remains that thing for the young idiots.

They've not grown out of him.

They've grown up with him.

Or they've grown stable with him.

Yeah, whatever.

The hope is that this is able to

be a part of your growing to the next step of your life and getting through whatever this is speaking to.

But it also ends up being a trap when it's your brand in the way that Rogan has made this.

Yeah,

there's a certain amount of the test of the small town to it.

You know, there's a certain amount of that patent bit where it's like, either you get a job and I'm going to fill my truck up for free, or you go, I'm getting the fuck out of here.

And that is kind of a.

And Joe got the fuck out of there when $100 million was offered to him.

He did not make it clear to the audience that all of this is kind of bullshit.

Yeah.

So they leave the sushi restaurant and they go walk on Sunset Strip.

Of course.

And they end up going to Starbucks to get some coffee.

Sure.

But Joe's trying to have a little bit of fun.

Oh, no.

So he talks about his dick.

You know what's weird, though?

The wider my shoulders get, the more my dick shrinks.

Is that related?

That's not true.

Is that related?

I don't know.

I'm not an expert on it.

You're not an expert on dick shrinkage?

No.

Yeah, man.

My dick's really little right now, but it's crazy.

It's crazy.

It's a little, but it attacks.

Well, Joe, we're walking along down the street.

Hey, let's cross.

Let's cross over here so I can get a cup of coffee.

Sure, I like one too.

We're walking along on Sunset Strip with Alex Jones is in performance mode, ladies and gentlemen.

If you could just be yourself all the time, wouldn't that be better?

Then, oh,

every now and then, you pull out your chest and become Alex Jones from the radio.

I am being myself.

He's gonna kick my ass.

Look, he's about to go.

I had a sprawl.

I got nervous there.

I had to get low.

I was only gonna do so.

He piled around my head on the pot creep.

Come on, buddy.

You know, I wouldn't do that to you.

Would you guys just fuck already?

Joe is just straight up calling out Alex at various points for being fake.

Like, your shit's fake.

Yeah, I mean, it.

Wouldn't it be better just to be yourself?

Could you stop doing you?

Yes.

Yeah.

That's damning.

I mean, it is so much like...

He fucking misses the most fundamental part of that, which is you don't know which one is the real one.

That's the issue here.

You think that the one that you like is the real one.

Everybody thinks that the one they like is the real one.

But often you have to believe that or

get away from it or you hate him.

Yes.

Exactly.

It's sad.

Yep.

So

I do think that there's some decent bits of Joe, though.

Sure.

Like earlier,

he was expressing some sort of, you know, hey, I don't want to be defeatist.

This ability to wrestle with his own ideas.

And in this next clip, I think he shows some really good sense.

Kevin, you get anything out of this?

This is all good stuff?

Oh, Kevin's a genius.

Kevin, you're going to edit this?

Put it like fast forward?

Don't worry, he will.

But,

Joe, we need you up there on that building.

Nah, believe me, I'm overexposed as it is.

I think I've had enough.

So how's the man show going?

It's fun, man.

It's fun as hell.

You're about to shoot more episodes?

Well, not until probably probably around February or March.

So, Joe, Alex is saying you should be up on that big billboard on that building.

And Joe has the good sense to know: like, I'm too famous.

I am on The Man Show and Fear Factor.

That's too much.

I don't want more than this.

He gives up on that.

Yep.

But that is a really good instinct that he has.

I think that that

might be one of the cornerstones of

what he lost.

Yeah.

He became fine with being up on that billboard.

I was, so I read this

book about

this like late 80s, early 90s hacking group called the Masters of Deception.

This is before modems.

This is like they're calling into ATT's phone lines.

Phone freaks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

They're doing this whole thing.

And if you see the way these fucking young teenage, early 20s boys interact around this

budding version of the internet that they have found that's just theirs.

You can see like the germ of two directions.

You can see the germ of them being the fucking 4chan assholes who are like trying to pretend to be cool in order to create some sort of fake,

you know, libertarian freedom.

Like, we can post child porn because we're, you know, that whole thing.

And then you also have the people who are like, maybe we should think about how this shit works.

And also, here are the things we can do.

You know, and it's, it's so much like that.

You can see it all as it's about to happen.

And you can see that what happens for them, especially, was like the way they interacted with the powers that be around them, because it was so negative, because everything that they got was so bullshit, they instinctively, just without even thinking about it, just go straight for the 4chan version.

They just barrel towards it like absolute insane lunatics.

Because the alternative is incredibly difficult and would require a softening of your position, sort of in a negotiation with those powers that are so awesome.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And if you don't want to do that,

there you go.

But the other alternative is don't ever get to the point where you have to decide to go one of those paths.

There is the problem there, yeah.

And I think that Joe has that instinct.

You can kind of see in that, like, it's not,

like, I'm not forced to choose to, like, be good or bad once I'm on the billboard, but I do have a choice to control my career in a certain way as to never be on that billboard.

No, I mean, ironically, for him, based on his arguments, it is not inevitable that we would wind up where we are.

You know,

like, it's not inevitable that that Joe turns into current-day Joe.

And it also feels like he has an awareness that he has an affirmative responsibility to not

go in that direction of being overexposed,

being on the billboard.

And that's fascinating.

Or being absorbed by Alex Jones' flattery.

Yeah.

So this next clip is another Mike Down clip because I need you to hear what happens at the end because I'm a little unclear on it.

But Alex is lying to Joe about the Patriot Act and how

you'll end up executed for weed.

And I think pay close attention because I think that Joe calls Alex an idiot.

Okay.

That's a really good question.

I mean, to address, I know Kevin will use that in the foundation.

Oh, sure.

That's what the whole Patriot Act is really all about.

It's not about stopping terrorism.

The new Victory Act says one marijuana cigarette or any other type of anything that's even controlled, even pills, you're talking 20 to 90 in prison.

Okay, it actually says, yeah, any drug possession.

They haven't passed it yet.

They're trying to.

Any drug possession, 20 to 90.

It's an act of terrorism.

And manufacturing anything, including growing marijuana, is a quote weapon of mass destruction because it quote hurts masses of people.

You can be executed.

Jesus.

I'll show you the subsection.

Yeah, I've got like AP articles, everything on Joe.

Hey, Kevin,

you need to interview this guy in front of you.

No,

he's an idiot.

Joe Rogan gives an infomercial for marijuana.

That's what I do give an infomercial for marijuana.

I think that he was saying to Kevin that Alex is an idiot.

Yeah, you need to interview this guy in front of you.

Because

Kevin is walking backwards, recording Alex and Joe walking down the street.

There isn't another person in the the frame who Joe might be talking about.

I include the possibility that there's something that's happening off camera that we don't see that he's referring to.

But given the amount of time that elapsed, the thing that Alex just said, the fact that this is supposed to be Joe Rogan's interview, you know, that's why Kevin Booth is there in L.A.

Yeah.

Alex is clearly taking over this thing.

I think he called him an idiot.

I agree.

And I think that Alex realized that because he jumped into that, Joe Rogan does an infomercial through week.

Yep.

You can see in his face almost a, oh, fuck.

Yep.

And

I think this is fascinating.

How do I save this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got to switch into like really performing.

Yep.

I've just hit blank.

Now here's my decision tree.

Like you can almost see the computer get to work on just instinctive BSing.

Checkout.

Yep.

Yep.

100%.

So I think that that is an awesome moment.

Between the Alex Jones problem of just lying and making shit up, that clip from earlier, and the, you should interview this guy, he's an idiot.

Yeah.

It doesn't paint a great picture.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Ah, man.

The past.

It's a real piece of shit.

Yeah, it is.

So the whole idea is to interview Rogan for this documentary.

Yeah.

And so they go back to the hotel where they're going to interview him.

So there's no background music and all that.

Sure, sure.

And so they start talking about just

talking about a drug war type things, police state, you know, and they end up talking about a guy who won Fear Factor.

Did I tell you about the guy who won Fear Factor?

He was speaking in tongues.

No.

Yeah, he was a real heavy-duty religious dude.

You know, and

once he won, he started clapping his hands.

Hallelujah!

You are gracious, God.

You're so beautiful, God.

You are so patient with me.

I saw that.

And he starts pointing at the sky.

Yeah, but they didn't get all this on camera for some reason.

The guy was rolling camera, forgot to press record or whatever.

But this guy's standing there pointing up at the sky.

He starts talking in tongues.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

But he's speaking a holy language.

Joe,

you had an experience a lot of us have had at the airport where somebody with a giant turban that could hide 20 pounds of C4.

Well, it wasn't a giant turban, but yeah, it was a turban.

Well, we saw a guy coming here with a giant turban that could hit.

How giant?

Was it huge?

He had looked like a bee blip.

He had the Goodyear blip on his head.

No, yeah, I was getting my sneaker scanned.

Hold on.

He didn't get it.

All right.

Start over commander.

This is what happened.

I was at the.

I do a joke about it in my act because it's so ridiculous.

It was like a bad scene in a bad movie.

I was at the airport and I was getting my sneaker scanned.

And the guy was asking me all these dumb Fear Factor questions, and I was being really polite because I was carrying weed and I was getting a little nervous.

Anyway,

he's scanning my sneakers for bombs.

He's telling me how much he likes Fear Factor.

And there was a dude in line that had a turban on him.

And I looked at the guy with a turban, and he looked me in the eye.

We made eye contact, and then he just walked right through while I was being scanned.

So the guy knows that you're a national TV celebrity with two TV shows, one of them number one in the country.

No, it's not number one, but it's not.

Well, I was number one.

He knew who I was.

Well, now we got to start over.

God damn damn it.

No, seriously, Joe.

Okay.

Okay, Joe, because we're just gonna put you in here telling the story about terrorism.

Okay.

Joe, what have your experiences been flying?

Have you seen a double standard?

Well, you know, I mean, I read about Al Gore getting scanned at the airport.

Like, the former vice president is going to say, you know what, this whole me being president thing didn't work out.

I'm turning to terrorism.

You know, so like they're trying to let people know that, you know, everyone's equal and even Al Gore has to be scanned.

And it's ridiculous.

I mean,

the randomness is just silly.

I got scanned because I bought my tickets a couple weeks in advance, so I got red flagged.

So they're running my sneakers for bombs.

He's checking my sneakers.

And he knows who I am.

And he's asking me fear factor questions.

I can't believe that.

She goes, is that really real?

Oh, I'll tell you what,

I couldn't eat that stuff.

So there's something really fascinating that's going on in this dynamic where Joe's the one who's supposed to be getting interviewed and Alex is trying to take over this interview.

And at the same time, Kevin Booth is the one who's directing this documentary and Alex is clearly trying to direct this interview.

Yep.

He's trying to be everything

that's going on in this room.

And when Rogan laughs at his question,

I think he's laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

Yeah.

He's not laughing because that question's funny.

He's laughing because, like...

What are we doing here?

Yes.

What are we fucking doing here?

I'm in a hotel.

What are we, what is fucking happening?

Get Alex Jones out of my fucking face.

Why are you trying to throw Byron Allen questions at me?

Is that in Comics Unleashed?

That is so fun.

Like,

he just couldn't get rid of Alex.

It's a bad penny.

He just couldn't say directly to his face, go away from me now.

And it feels like he's trying in some way.

So many oblique ways.

Yes.

But none of them are, Alex, go.

Yeah.

And like, there's something that feels like, all right, Joe Rogan is a comic, and this is a guy who worked with Bill Hicks.

This is a guy who's Kevin Booth's comedy royalty.

Sure.

In a lot of ways.

Yeah.

You know, for, especially for someone of Joe's character's persona.

Yeah.

So, like, that is not a connection that you would want to throw away.

Kevin Booth directed Joe's first special, that live from the belly of the beast.

Yep.

And so, like, maybe there's a feeling of I want to retain this connection, and I feel like I kind of got to put up with Alex if I'm going to hang out with him.

It just feels like shit.

Yeah, I mean, if I'm going to have to do this, I'm going to be a dick to him.

I'm going to be a little passive-aggressive.

And he's not going to do anything about it.

Yep, because I'm on Fear Factor.

Yep, and he's a star fucker.

And it's like, man, just none of this needs to be happening.

Nah.

This could all be not happening.

It could.

Ah, that's brutal.

Yep.

So they're talking about this guy with a turban.

And of course, this leads to some Islamophobia.

Sure.

And they start talking about how dumb Muslims are.

Sure.

But Joe wants to be clear, this applies to all religions.

Sure.

He hates all religious people.

Yeah.

They're all fucking stupid.

Great.

So this guy's asking me all these dumb questions and I'm trying to play along.

And right while this is happening, there's a guy in line with a turban on.

And I look over at him and he looks at me and we make eye contact and the guy just walks right through.

And he just walks right through.

Did you say anything to the screener at that point?

I just laughed.

I just said, I can't even believe this is happening.

I said, this is so funny.

Here's a guy.

He's dressed like a fucking genie.

And I'm being scanned.

They're scanning my sneakers.

I do, you know, joke, I say the tips of his shoes curl up in a circle, and they're scanning me.

Check him.

I want to know what goofy shit he believes.

I mean, he's wearing an outfit.

And, you know, religious freedom, the whole idea of religious freedom to me is

all religions are retarded.

Every single one of them.

They're all Anything where a person tells you they know what's going on and they can help you and they're going to give you the secret knowledge.

It's all bullshit.

It's all cult.

I don't care if it's been around for as long as Scientology or it's been around as long as

Islam or Christianity.

It's all ridiculous.

So when I see someone wearing an outfit, I know that's a zealot.

That's a guy who's really deep, deep into whatever crazy bullshit.

And I would like them to talk to him.

Well, I know that whenever we flew into Los Angeles, there was a guy getting on a plane to come here who had a turban that you could hide,

you know, 10 pounds of C4 in.

I mean, a giant brown turban.

But they were very busy searching old World War II vets in wheelchairs.

So I think that Alex should be really pissed off by this.

This is 2003.

He's been chosen by God for several years now.

Yeah.

He's had many visions from God.

He predicted 9-11 because God gave him prophetic visions.

This isn't like some point in his career where he can't

or he could even conceivably be not a zealot.

He is, by his own accounting of everything that's happened in his life, deeply

into God has chosen me by 2003.

So the idea that Rogan could be telling him that all religions are stupid and they're a cult and all this shit, Alex can't accept this.

They have fundamental disagreements where he would scream at somebody else for expressing views like this.

Yep.

Yep.

That's fascinating.

Well, I mean,

it just goes to the absolute meaninglessness of everything he believes because it is, again, just circumstantial.

It's conditional.

In this situation, it will do me no good to express these beliefs to Joe.

So I will express this.

If I was in a different situation, it would be to my advantage to yell this person down about how great Christianity is compared to Mario.

If I start screaming that shit at Joe, he might not think that being friends with Kevin Booth is worth it anymore.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's just so much like...

And if you don't know a person in multiple contexts, there's no way for you to know that for sure.

But if one of those people is a media figure,

you can.

You can know.

It's knowable.

You can know a lot.

And there's an element that Joe clearly does know something.

But the thing that he knows is that you're full of shit when you get on air, and oftentimes you make stuff up.

Yep.

And

that should be enough.

You shouldn't need to know all the specifics of Alex's career if you know that.

You can't purposefully lie to people.

Is that so hard?

I think that's a pretty good guiding line.

So

as they're sitting there in the hotel room, eventually the topic of exercise comes up.

Not exorcisms.

No,

although I wish.

I would prefer that conversation a great deal more.

No, Joe is talking about how important exercise is.

Sure.

And good for you.

Yeah.

It's a good thing to do for humans.

Agreed.

And Alex jumps in and then gets scolded for disrupting this interview.

Oh, God.

You're an ape.

You're basically a hairless ape.

You're a talking monkey on a planet.

And your body is meant to do things physically.

It's meant to chase after food.

It's meant to hunt and gather.

And you have to exercise it.

If you don't, those chemicals just, they just store up in your body and you're gonna become depressed You're gonna feel horrible Your body's gonna break down Your tissue is gonna soften your muscles gonna atrophy.

You're not gonna be healthy.

Yeah, I'm ready to work out.

God damn.

What you really need to do

What you really need to do is get up and exercise you need to take vitamins you need to supplement your diet You need to supplement your diet with essential fatty acids with vitamins colloidal minerals nutrients You need to do that and you need to exercise you have to keep your body moving you keep your body moving your body will stay younger much longer I'm 36 years old the guys guys that I went to high school with, so many of them, look like they're fucking 50.

I feel great.

I'm always hoarding.

I work out constantly.

My body works great.

I'm 36 years old.

Technically, I'm middle-aged.

I'm ready to go to war, Joe.

You got me fired up.

Ladies and gentlemen, what a speech dynamic.

Eat the cheeseburgers and he's going to fucking start eating.

Exactly.

You know what?

I used to be an exercising fiend.

I've been exercising actually a little bit more, Joe.

But let me tell you, what he's saying is true.

Eating this crap turns you into a weak blob.

What I'm trying to say is these companies have no interest in making you healthy.

They have an interest in giving you something that makes you feel better that they can get money from you for.

It's a business.

They sell you something.

They want to give you what they want.

Hold on, sorry.

Let me finish this.

If they wanted you to be healthy, they would give you advice.

They wanted you to be healthy.

Pharmaceutical companies would say, listen, man, you don't need Zolof.

What you really need to do is have a life that doesn't suck.

The reason why you're so depressed is because you work this fucking terrible job where you sit in a cubicle all day and

you stare at a computer and you file paperwork for some big company.

you get home you're tired your feet hurt and what are you gonna do you're gonna watch television you're gonna talk to your wife who you've you've been involved in this fucking crazy monogamous relationship with for 20 years where you have no desire to have sex with her anymore and you don't even communicate because most of your life you spent away from each other you don't have any uh vested in you don't have any uh you know shared interests so what do you do well you just you get depressed you get bummed out your life seems pointless and hopeless you're 40 you're dying so what are they gonna do they're gonna give you a pill and you're gonna feel better well

what they really need to tell you is you need to do something with your life and make it more interesting.

So, I mean, there's obviously the fundamental misunderstanding of depression and mental health stuff.

Just your life is boring.

And that's fine.

That's kind of what you'd expect from the adolescent standpoint that he's coming at this from.

I believe if you get cancer, you're a pussy.

Yeah.

If I recall.

Well, that might have been making fun of Dennis Leary.

But still, yeah, you know, like, this is

great.

It can't hurt to exercise necessarily, and exploring your creative passions is probably not going to lead to you being more depressed, but it's silly,

this kind of mentality.

And I think that, like,

obviously anybody who takes this kind of stuff seriously

recognizes that there's a place for talking

and working out some of your issues.

And, you know, what he's saying, people giving you some advice, you giving yourself some advice in a therapeutic setting.

Sure.

That has a place, and so does medication.

Like,

I don't think that the pharma companies should be giving you therapy in the same way that therapists don't prescribe drugs.

The both prongs are important.

And I just,

I don't know.

I think he's very stupid.

But if you were going to give me a pill that made me happy, it would be Kevin Booth telling Alex, let him finish a sentence.

It is like Alex's proximity renders everything you have to say pointless.

By virtue of Alex being nearby,

like a moon that's out of fucking whack.

Your tides are crazy.

There's no point in talking because out of nowhere, Alex might just pop out and be like, no, I want to exercise.

Let's go to war.

That's not

where we're here for a job.

You missed the job.

This is on a job.

Yeah.

This is, we're doing a thing, right?

Joe was on a roll.

I mean, what he was saying was stupid, but he was dumb, but he was

at least the thing.

And now, I will say that I'm a little bit more permissive of this kind of attitude because it's 2000.

Sure.

And I think that

at the time, there might have been a less

responsible messaging around some pharmaceuticals.

Sure.

You know, there might, there, I think there was more reason to believe that people were saying, take this pill, it'll solve your problems in 2000 than it is currently.

I don't think that like a lot of the marketing from these companies was, hey, we have magic in a pill.

Sure.

But culturally, I think a lot of people did have that perspective.

And so Rogan being like this, that's bullshit.

I think there's more of a comedic contrarian take that makes sense in 2000 than

the present.

Well, I mean, yeah, I don't know how much of.

Here's the problem with the past.

The problem with the past is I no longer know how much information anyone was privy to at any given point in time, nor what information, nor do I have like a

bar by which that information should be judged, or like a five out of ten kind of scale, because once the internet took over, that that renders like

that changes the way I think about everything.

Like now I have access to all information, so there is a certain amount of responsibility of like just being basic competence, you know?

What does that mean in 2003?

You know, yeah, um,

sure, you know, like but even even with all information available, you can't possibly take in all of it.

Sure.

So the responsibility is still weird.

But in 2003.

Right.

I'm just saying about me looking at us.

You know, like, I don't have any judgments because I really don't even...

How do you even relate to that anymore?

Right.

Well, you know, you know what?

I was talking about history being a tool

and it being about how you use it.

I think that what Rogan is saying is bad, but within the context of someone talking like this in 2000, like the surrounding aspects of it make it less like, oh, this is some RFK bullshit.

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

You know,

it's more palatable coming out of a 2003 mind.

Yeah.

But whatever.

I mean, you know,

it is like,

how far away from Stokely Carmichael are we?

While at the same time being so far away from Stokely Carmichael.

Sure.

You know, and that's

like, what era is what to compare it to?

Here's what we do know that Joe knows.

Yes.

Alex is full of shit and kind of annoying.

There we go.

And we can demonstrate that through this awkward sushi date that they had.

So that's really what's important.

That's what we're, yeah.

So Joe seems to think that, like, having a family and all that shit is kind of maybe a big part of the root of depression.

Right.

Which Alex really shouldn't agree with.

Because that's what's going to make you happy.

Be involved in relationships where you're actually friends with each other.

This is the thing I've been saying to people.

People getting involved in these crazy relationships where they have these these predetermined patterns of behavior that they think they have to follow.

You have to see someone and once you see them you should only have sex with that one person and you should be monogamous and you should stay together and you know what you know sometimes you're gonna do what the wife wants you to do.

No you don't!

You don't have to do what the wife wants you to do.

You have to do what you want to do and you should let her do what she wants to do and if that doesn't work together then you shouldn't hang out.

Friends are just friends.

And a male friend and a female friend together are still just friends.

This whole idea of defining it by wife and husband and mother and child, that's all ridiculous.

We're just a bunch of human beings.

We should just enjoy each other's company.

And that's why people are fucking depressed.

That's why pharmaceutical companies have a stranglehold on our culture because they give you something that makes you feel better about a life that sucks.

Powerful info.

I'm sorry for jumping in there.

That's okay, man.

You get excited.

No, I was listening to that.

I was wanting to go.

Three or four days, I've been swimming and jogging again.

I wanted to go do something.

That's the only way to have a happy life.

Just kill him.

He's like, How different is what Joe's saying from like, we're all purple penguins?

Yep.

You know, like,

it's Alex should not respond like, this is powerful information.

This should be a fundamental attack on God's hierarchy and divine order and the right way to live your life.

Like, if Joe's ideas are to be accepted broadly, that's the destruction of the family unit.

That is, man and woman do not exist.

What do you mean they're the same?

How can you raise a child?

Like, this is no good, man.

What next?

Trans people in sports?

I have a child, right?

But I'm not digging this kid's vibe.

I'm out of here.

Get him the fuck out of here.

Isn't that my friend?

I don't even like him.

What?

Yep.

I mean...

Okay.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

So here, this kind of is where we touch on a little bit of a problem.

And that is, I think that Joe's high.

Well, yeah, obviously.

I think he's high all the time.

And he's not really making a lot of sense.

No.

And so, in the same way that Alex can't stop himself from butting in,

Joe can't stop himself from saying

nonsense.

No, no.

He needs Alex's guidance, ironically.

Right.

Well, it's just like the problem is context.

No one in this room is capable of telling everyone in the room what they need to hear, which is just stop talking for a while.

Right.

All of you.

Wait in the hall.

All of you need to agree to shut the fuck up.

But unfortunately, if Alex isn't there, like, I think you end up with stuff like this, which is like, what are you even talking about?

There's a lot of vanity involved in exercise.

I'll be the first person to tell you.

I'll be the first person to tell you that there's a lot of vanity involved in take care of your body.

You know what?

But if I had to choose between having a nice body and having a bad body,

I think having a nice body is better.

You know,

is that shallow?

No, it's honest.

The people who say it's not,

the people that say it's shallow and it's not important, they're ridiculous.

You're being jealous, it's a cop-out, and you know that your body's wrecked and you haven't exercised your whole life, and you know women aren't going to find you physically and sexually attractive just by looking at you.

So you pretend that that's not important.

Let me tell you something.

It's very important.

When girls see your body and a girl takes my clothes off and she gets into it and they're turned on by you physically, that's fun.

A girl with a hot body is fun.

Anybody who denies that is ridiculous.

And anybody who thinks that a a girl who has a hot body has to have a shitty personality is a fucking moron.

That's ridiculous.

They're not mutually exclusive.

A girl with a hot body can be really interesting, just like a chick with a shitty body can be a fucking moron and stupid and often is.

Phone call.

There's a drug tie-in to this.

Can you talk about this?

That was probably a very important room service call.

Can you talk?

Hold on just a second.

Don't be serious.

I'm not in this.

I'm not in this, Kevin.

This needs to be Joe.

This is for the film.

It's not me dancing around or yelling or any of that.

Well,

it's...

No, no, the important question.

Okay.

Look.

Look.

So Alex is now talking to Kevin behind the camera, being like,

this isn't me.

This isn't my interview.

I can't stop Joe constantly from talking about how women with great bodies can be cool, too.

Like, this is it being like,

I could guide him, but then this just becomes about me.

Joe's an idiot, too.

These guys both think each other are idiots.

Do you know what?

It's so funny to me.

It's so funny to me,

all of the, like, we need a meteor people and all of that stuff.

It's so funny that it never occurs to them that just like, dudes.

You know, like, listen to these dudes say dude shit to each other.

But earlier in the episode,

Joe was saying that insecure men need to

be taught to let go of these insecurities so they don't become conservatives.

Listen to him.

He understands that there is a problem with a certain strain of masculinity.

He doesn't realize that he is it.

Exactly.

It is the dude he is in.

But he's also high, man.

I mean, he has these deep thoughts.

I thought he was opening up his mind to everything but the strain of masculinity that he exists within as a self-destructive force entirely.

What you gonna do?

It's fascinating because they both really clearly resent each other.

Just dudes.

Yeah.

Just

stop letting dudes talk.

You know?

Just listen to this shit.

Well,

listen to this shit.

Alex is kind of coming from a perspective of like, I can make this interesting if I just

bully this.

If I just jump in and do my Alex dance.

Yeah.

I can make this interesting.

And Rogan's coming from a place where he's like, I don't like you when you do that.

I like you as my friend who isn't that performing asshole.

Yeah.

And Alex is like, I can only be interesting and make things interesting when I'm being that asshole.

Yeah.

They're right.

And you're not being interesting right now.

Or

at least what you're talking about is not relevant to this document.

You're not helpful.

You're a wasteful film.

Very fucking

counterproductive for what we're trying to put out here to also have you being like, smart chicks could be hot.

Like, that's great.

Wow.

Stop.

Yeah.

All of that.

Sometimes people I'm not attracted to are dumb.

dumb let's go back to the Iraq war because somehow I feel like your Muslim bashing is more acceptable yeah because this is horrifying so we have one last clip here this is the end of how this

special

it wraps up this magic and it's Joe clearly was like I need a clean take Yeah, I need to just be able to get my rant in.

Right.

And so Alex, I think maybe was in the hall.

I think they might have taken Alex out of the room.

So

Joe can just get this clean take out.

Pharmaceutical companies pitch a lot of things, pitch a lot of drugs, sell a lot of drugs based on the idea of chemical imbalances.

Now, a lot of people do have an actual chemical imbalance in their brain.

There's a lot of people that are crazy, there's no doubt.

There's a lot of people whose brains don't function very well.

And there is a pill, there's some drugs, there's some tests they can do to find out if this is true.

And they can actually help people.

That's real.

But a lot of people take drugs, take pills that pharmaceutical companies prescribe because their life sucks.

And when your life sucks, you will have a chemical imbalance in your brain.

And that's a natural thing.

When you're depressed, if you have a terrible job, you sit in a fucking sex school

day, and you come home and you're in a loveless marriage and you have no hobbies and no interests and no passion and no creative output,

your life is going to suck and you're not going to feel good.

That doesn't mean you need a pill.

That doesn't mean someone should give you a pill and you take that pill and all of a sudden you're happy and you can deal with this sucky life and you can walk through it with a smile.

You know what?

If you want to be a drone and you're happy being a drone and you would like someone to just give you a pill so that you can accept that, that is available to you.

But that's not helping anyone.

What you really need to do is get the fuck out of this life that you're living.

We're taught to believe that

we're supposed to follow this predetermined pattern of behavior where you live this,

you know, you work 50 weeks a year for two weeks off.

you basically you slave you give away eight hours of your day we say well hey you got those other 16 hours to yourself but you don't you know if you work eight hours a day man you're fucking tired okay in between travel to and from work all that you cut a couple hours out of there you got eating you cut a couple hours out of there how many how many hours do you have left what do you got like 10 12 hours left in your day and what are you gonna do what are you gonna do you're gonna sleep you gotta sleep for at least eight or you don't feel good what what kind of life is that it's no life if you don't do something that you enjoy doing for a living, you're going to be depressed.

That's a fact.

And being depressed is not because you have a chemical imbalance in your brain.

It's because your brain is responding to a really bad, boring life with no stimulation.

That's what pharmaceutical companies don't want you to hear.

They want you to think that there's something that they could fix in you and just give you a little pill.

But really, the symptoms are just a part of your life being a fucking massive piece of shit.

That would have gone a lot better if Alex didn't interrupt

five or six thousand times.

And that's the end.

I think that, like, honestly, if I watch this, the way that it's not edited out where Joe is being a real, like, hey, the Alex Jones problem is that he makes shit up.

Yep.

And that it ends with him saying, that would have been a lot easier without Alex.

Yep.

The fact that all of that is there and this was released, it makes me think that Kevin doesn't like Alex that much.

Nope.

This makes Alex look really bad.

It is, it is, the artificiality of all of this is so fucked up in retrospect,

especially considering the amount of realness they think they are.

Yes.

Like, it is fascinating the idea that you can do a rant.

on Q, you know, like that's ridiculous.

That's just performance, which is fine, but you know, you're just saying lines, so don't act like you've got some big emotional truth behind you.

And then Alex is just exploiting fame, he's just there being like, oh, if I outburst here, maybe I'll get in.

This will be a good take.

He'll probably put me in.

That'll get me more

out there.

But he also recognizes that, left to his own devices, Joe goes down a bunch of dumb paths that aren't helpful, and he feels a responsibility to keep that on track.

And Kevin is clearly keeping the two of these people there to fuck each other up for his own purposes.

Maybe.

It is

fucking wild.

He's a sadist.

All of you need to go home.

Yeah.

And

I think that,

you know, obviously I'm not a Bill Hicks historian.

Sure.

But I do think that there's something really special about him as a performer,

as somebody who had a lot to say,

a style that was singular in a lot of ways, and the fact that he died young and was aware that he was going to die.

The fact that he had a terminal cancer,

it gives his legacy some kind of meaning that a lot of people don't have.

Sure.

And I think that Kevin Booth, being somebody who worked intimately with this guy,

probably wanted to replace him.

Because having that kind of person around you probably

feels great.

It probably is like being next to an alien.

It's exciting.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that maybe

you would want to believe other people to be that.

So you're saying he's got something of a Bill Hicks candidate list

laying in front of him.

And he's like, oh, I see Joe Rogan has some Bill Hicks in him, but maybe he's too high.

And I see Alex has some Bill Hicks in him, but he's a piece of shit.

You know, I don't know.

I don't know if it's a mental process like that, but I think.

I don't think you're wrong.

I mean, it's not a coincidence that the other big name that's in this group is Doug Stanhope.

I think on some level, Kevin Booth had this sacred cow production thing where he's trying to recast Bill Hicks in some ways.

Well, I don't know.

And try to bring together people who have the appearance of what Bill actually had.

Right.

And they're all faking it.

Right.

It's all fake.

Like a sacred cow.

Yes.

Ironically.

It is an apt and ironic name.

God damn it, you're good.

And a name of something that Alex should never have agreed to be a part of.

Absolutely.

A sacred cow is the kind of name that's like, that's what the devil would call something.

Anyway, I think that this

peep behind whatever curtain there is, I think it reveals a ton of that stuff.

And it shows artifice.

It shows that these people don't really...

They don't like each other.

And it shows that Joe, at least in 2003, was fully aware that Alex is full of shit.

Yep.

And

therefore,

should take a greater amount of responsibility in the way that he has actively mainstreamed and whitewashed Alex's career to the point where it is now.

He has a great,

conscious, active responsibility in Alex's

trajectory.

Yeah.

And I mean, listen, it might be lofty to hope that he recognizes his harm done.

On a simple, human, and personal and individual level, what he should really notice is that now he says to Alex what Alex said to him about 9-11.

When Alex goes, 24 months I told you about 9-11, he's like, 9-11 fucking happened, asshole.

Now he's the one who's like, Alex told me about 9-11.

Do you see,

that's where your brain should go like, oh, I have changed for the worse.

Well, it's it's exactly like what I was saying about him being able to accurately mock Reefer Madness in 2003 and creating it now.

You have become the thing you mocked because

you didn't follow the instincts that you had back then, which were things like, I'm overexposed.

I shouldn't seek fame.

I shouldn't do all of these things.

I know that Alex is full of shit.

I shouldn't play along with this.

He didn't follow those instincts, and because of it, we're where we are.

You know,

I think part of it is

Let's say he doesn't define himself in opposition to the mainstream.

What he does is he orbits the mainstream,

right?

And this orbit means that essentially he's always going to be dependent upon the mainstream.

And then when the mainstream is like, come on down, well, now he's part of it.

And he gets his $100 million dollar check.

The whole time, he's thinking I'm a separate thing, but he's not, he's just part of the solar system.

Right.

If you want to not be these guys, you have to be out, you just have to be your own thing, you know, and that means you can't orbit around the mainstream.

Yeah, you just can't do it.

I think that's that's true.

It's like it's like that Black Mirror episode

that was

about what everybody's like, there's like an America's Got Talent thing, and everybody's riding bikes or something.

I remember that.

And the guy has the thing.

The guy has the thing to his neck, and he's giving his passionate speech.

And then the next scene, he does it every morning, you know, and

that's how he gets paid.

It is, that is Alex.

You know, and that is,

you think that's Alex, but that's Joe.

That's what that really is.

Yeah.

You know, they're both.

They're both not free of whatever it is.

And

the freeness and all that shit is

fake.

Yeah, it's fake.

It's a piece of branding.

They just want

to be rich.

Anyway, I thought this was fun.

If only for a couple of those clips where Joe's being a real dick,

it's worth their weight in gold.

They are pretty great.

So

we had to.

Gotta do it.

This is how we see our primary ding-dong on this Wednesday.

But we'll be back.

We'll take.

The past.

Yeah, the past.

Fuck that shit.

Yeah, crazy.

Meteor should have hit.

Anyway, we'll be back.

But until then, we have a website.

Indeed, we do.

It's knowledgeite.com.

Yep, we'll be back.

But until then, I'm Neo.

I'm Leo.

I'm DZX Clark.

I am the mysterious professor.

Yeah, woo, yeah, woo.

And now here comes the sex robot.

Andy in Kansas, you're on the air.

Thanks for holding.

Hello, Alex.

I'm a first-time caller.

I'm a huge fan.

I love your work.

I love you.