#2254 - Mel Gibson

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day! Alright, we're rolling.
What's cracking? Oh man, my back just now. Fantastic.
What is going on with your back? You've had back issues in the past, right? We talked about that the last time you came out. Well, I was born scoliotic, you know? Yeah.
So it's like I just bought my own pen along so I could click the shit. You remember? Here, take all devices away from me.
I can't believe you remember. You remember clicking on the pen? That's hilarious.
Oh, yeah. I'm a fidget, you know, so let me take everything off.
It's not good. Oh, yeah.
Born slightly scoliotic. And then, of course, I banged myself up over the years, you know.
Of course. Do they do anything other than surgery for people with scoliosis? They do because I don't want to do surgery.

Once you start opening stuff up and fooling with it, there's no going back.

Especially the back.

Yeah.

Back's a rough.

I've never met anybody that had like fusions or anything where it turned out good.

No. And like Hippocrates, you know, the father of medicine, he said, in any ailment, look first to the spine.

And it was like, he's kind of right.

Yeah. It emanates from the core.
Well, if your back is fucked up everything's fucked up yeah you know no matter how strong your arms and legs are if your back is fucked up you're you're in trouble yeah that's true your brain everything everything goes to hell well you're in pain all the time yeah people with back problems like they can't think straight because you're always like you know it's always There's a gift to not thinking straight tell me tell me more i want to know well it actually takes you down some pretty weird paths you know um uh if you're happy all the time i don't know you don't have you you don't have to strive to find thoughts to make yourself happy right so it's like uh um it's a good predisposition, I think. I agree to that.
Yeah, I think being happy all the time is kind of an unlikely scenario. No, nobody is.
Yeah. No.
But we all want it. You notice we all yearn for it.
That's the only thing we all want, right? Right. Just happiness..
Well, it's also we're shown it like in, you know, television, movies. We're shown happiness as this goal.
Like, seek happiness. Sure.
Should be happy. All the time.
Happy. Should never be upset.
Yeah. Well.
It's not realistic. It's completely unrealistic.
However, it's nice to have those little journeys through art where you can actually explore those things. You can explore your ids, you can explore happiness, and so you can experience the opposite.
I look at situations around me and I generally feel pretty grateful for what some people go through. I'm grateful.
And everybody's got their crap, you know. But like this morning, for example, I would be surprised if my home is still there.
Yeah, we were just talking about that. The Palisades is on fire.
Yeah. My friend Tom, Tom Segura, his house is gone.
Yeah. It's where he used to live.
He sold it, luckily. Yeah, I have a son.
He's in a sort of volunteer fire brigade, Milo. I call him the mayor of Malibu.
And he's running around. And I asked him, how's things looking there, Milo? He says, not good, pops.
He says, your neighborhood. And he sent me a video of my neighborhood.
And it's in flames. It looks like an inferno.
Yeah. You think this will get you out of California finally? Yeah, maybe.
Where are you going to go? Oh, I don't know. I got a place in Costa Rica.
I love it there. Costa Rica's nice.
Yeah, I bought there many years ago. Yeah? It's in a real nice spot.
It's not too touristy or dirt roads. Oh, nice.
Off the beaten. Does it feel safe out there? Pretty safe.
I think, look, no place is safe. I mean, you've got the Dariang down there, you know.
What's that? It's kind of in the, what's the next country down? Panama. And there's this no man's land where the Colombians come through.
And it's like, you know, all kinds of dirty dealings in the jungle with, you know, who knows, you know, drugs and mules and, you know.

Yeah.

So, you know, it can be dangerous and I've heard of danger happening there.

You know, you hear about somebody getting chopped up by a machete.

And Costa Rica, it's actually a cool place because it never had a culture of death.

Like a lot of the Central American countries did.

They have a culture of death. Even Mexico, I mean, they used to tear people's hearts out and pyramids.
The Aztecs. All that sort of stuff.
Aztecs were like the Romans. The Mayans were like the Greeks.
But they all sort of dabbled in some stuff. Costa Rica always had a policy where they, it was like the Switzerland of Central America.
They emphasize education and health and everybody's literate and it's kind of interesting in that way. But it deals with its own little troubles.
This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Have you ever been shopping online and the website just gave you the ick? Let me tell you, that wouldn't happen if they used Squarespace.
Squarespace design intelligence empowers anyone to build beautiful, more personalized websites tailored to your unique needs. And with Squarespace payments, it's super easy to manage payments

with just a few clicks. Plus, with Squarespace's integrated and optimized SEO tools, there's all the help you need to get people to your site.
Head to squarespace.com slash Emma for a free trial and use code Emma to save 10% on your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty.
All right, Call of Duty, Warzone fans, it's happening. The moment we've been waiting for, Verdansk is back on April 3rd.
Yep, you heard me right. The iconic map, the one that started it all, is making its epic return.
I'm talking Superstore chaos, rooftop snipers at the hospital, the madness at prison, all of it. Starting April 3rd, you can drop back in, relive the mayhem, and feel the adrenaline rush that you've been missing.
Whether you're a war zone vet or a newbie, it's your chance to drop in to Verdansk. New gameplay updates, Verdansk era weaponry, all the classics, all the chaos.
So call up the squad, load up, and get ready for those heart-racing moments that you've been missing. Verdansk returns on April 3rd.
Don't miss it. This is going to be wild.
Download Call of Duty Warzone for free, and I'll see you in Verdansk. Rated M for Mature.

Yeah, well.

Like every country, you know, corrupt.

Anywhere down in that part of the world.

It's just like there's so much sketchy shit going on all around you.

Yeah, there can be.

Yeah.

Yeah, one has to be forewarned, forearmed, all that, you know.

So I have a nice place down there.

Yeah, I have some friends that have a place in Mexico. I'm always like, don't you ever worry.
Yeah, I worked in Mexico a couple of times. I was down there, and it was in Baracruz.
And apparently people were rolling heads into bars and stuff like that, rival gangs and stuff. And they said, I'd go for a walk.
And they'd say, you're crazy going for a walk. You'll get kidnapped.
I said, I'm not going to get kidnapped. I'm the guy that pays.
You're going to get kidnapped. And I'm not going to pay your ransom.
It's like, I never felt insecure in that way. And, you know, if something's going to happen, it's going to happen.
Yeah. You know, if your number's up.
I know, I used to watch guys who do what I do for a living, and they'd have a phalanx of bodyguards around them, you know, and, like, for security and stuff. And I used to have that stuff for a little while, but, meh, it doesn't make any difference.
You're going to be okay.

Or not.

Or not, right?

Until you're not.

Until you're not.

And everybody's going to be okay until they're not.

Yeah.

I got in a dodgy situation one night and I acted crazy.

Yeah?

Yeah.

What happened?

If you act crazy, everybody leaves you alone.

Especially if you are a little crazy.

You know?

You're in a stress mode, so you actually get angry.

If I feel like I'm threatened, I get angry, which is what happens.

And then you get really in people's faces, and they think, this guy's crazy.

But all the old cultures thought that.

Like when there were people traveling across the Great Plains to go west, you know?

If you acted nuts, they'd leave you alone because they didn't want your evil spirits.

Oh.

So what happened with you?

Nothing.

They left me alone.

But where was this?

Oh, man, I was in a bad neighborhood.

I was, it was when I first got into L.A.

And I was to go to dinner with Costa Gavras. He was a Greek director.

I went the wrong way. And it was before they had, you know, phones with like, you know, all that stuff.
The Thomas guide. It was the Thomas guide.
Anyway, I wasn't guided well by Thomas. I ended up in the wrong place.
And then my muffler fell off. And I was driving a Mercedes, you know, pretty nice sporty car, you know.
And I thought, oh, and I had the wife in the car. I pulled into a side street.
The sun was going down. And as I got out of the car, I thought, oh, I got to fix this muffler.
I can't just drag it. People started coming from houses and they came up to me and I saw them coming in the rearview mirror,

and I jumped out of the car and got in their face,

and I said, what the fuck do you want?

Because I thought, I felt threatened.

And the guy said, man, I'm just looking for some money.

You got any money?

So I was being mugged, and it was like,

I thought I'll think about it when I'm fucking finished.

I opened the trunk, and this is the weird part, Joe. I will never quite understand this.
I opened the trunk to see what I could find to help me put the muffler back on. And sitting there, the only two things in the back of the trunk was a pair of wire cutters and a coat hanger.
It's exactly what I needed. And I don't know why it was there.
That's weird, isn't it? That's very weird. So you use the coat hanger to wire up your muffler? Yep.
I cut a piece of wire, wired the muffler up. The whole time, more guys are coming.
Jesus Christ. And they're standing behind me and I'm feeling like, oh.
And anyway, I get up, I finish the muffler, slam, and I'm acting mad and crazy the whole time.

And I think, this guy's nuts.

And I get back to the car, and my wife gives me a handful of cash.

And I thought, what's this?

She says, it's just fives and ones.

Give it to them.

So I threw it and drove off.

But it was like, it was looking hairy for a minute.

And you never know.

What year was this?

Oh, my God.

Back in the 90s.

Fitness isn't just about what you do in the gym. It's also about your nutrition, but even with the best diet, some nutrients can be hard to get and AG one can help fill those gaps.
AG one delivers optimal amounts of nutrients in forms that help your body perform. AG one makes foundational nutrition easy because there aren't a million different pills and capsules you have to keep track of.
It's just one scoop mixed in water. It's such an easy routine to keep in the mornings.
Ingredients in AG1 are selected for absorption, nutrient density, and potency and are intentionally picked to work in sync with the whole formula for optimal impact. They're seriously committed to quality.
AG1 is tested for hundreds of contaminants and impurities and they're constantly reformulating their recipe to dial it in. This is all part of why I've partnered with AG1 for years.
So get started with AG1 this holiday season and get a free bottle of vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase at drinkag1.com slash Joe Rogan. That's a $76 value gift for free if you go to drinkag1.com slash Joe Rogan.
Seriously, get on this. So things are more dangerous now.
I think they are. Yeah, I think so for sure.
Yeah. Yeah, we were just talking about the wildfire situation and how crazy it is that they spent 24 billion dollars last year on the homeless yeah and what do they spend on preventing these wildfires zero zip zip and in 2019 i think newsom said you know i'm going to take care of the forest and maintain the forest and do all that kind of stuff he didn't do anything didn't do anything and then on top of that they cut the water off yeah that's right yeah it's all funny and then i think all our tax dollars probably went for gavin's hair gel i don't know but it's like you know it's sad it's like the place is just on fire well the whole state is just so poorly managed it's so it's so frustrating and confusing and then he gets on tv and pretends like everything's great and california is the best We have the best state.
We have the most amazing economy. I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind, dude.
You've ruined this state. Personally ruined it.
Well, it's the same team that was up in San Francisco. They came down to L.A.
and they're doing what they did in San Francisco. San Francisco is kind of like apocalyptic now.
I went there and it's just like people, you know, homeless.

You know, it's just a mess. It's just unbelievable that society can crumble that quickly.
Mm-hmm. It really is unbelievable.
It doesn't take long. No.
Yeah. I read a book once by Jared Diamond called Collapse.
You ever read that book? Yeah. Yeah.
Crazy, right? It says all the things you need for a civilization to cave in and collapse. And a lot of the things are present.
All those earmarks, the precursors of a collapse, they're present in our time. So it's an interesting observation.
Yeah. And we're no smarter than our grandparents, I don't think.
Well, that brings me to one of my favorite movies of yours is Apocalypto. You know, when the Mayans were running things, like, who could have ever thought when they had such an incredibly sophisticated society, unbelievable construction, like the stuff that they had built that one day you just walk through there and there's nothing.
Nothing. Nothing and nobody.
In fact, there's something because it's interesting. Somebody was flying by what they thought was a volcano in the 30s, some buzz boy.
And he thought, hey, somebody built that. Wait a minute.
There's four by eight foot bricks. That's man-made.
And it is literally the biggest pyramid in the world. It's bigger than the ones in Egypt.
And it's in Guatemala. Yeah, we talked about that the other day.
Yeah, it's a recent discovery, right? Well, not that reason. I was, maybe 20 years ago, I visited.
I went down there with the archaeologist, the guy named Richard Hanson, who's from Idaho or someplace. And he's down there with his family.
He's been working tirelessly for like 30 years trying to extract this pre-classic city from the jungle. And's not a bunch of tourists all the pyramids in Tikal would fit inside the one big pyramid in El Mirador really yeah it's a monster and so that tells you that the pre-classic civilization was bigger and grander and more sophisticated than the civilizations that came after it.
Yeah. Pretty interesting.
Well, it is unbelievable how, like, when the accounts of, like, people that visited Mexico and visited the Aztecs, like, what the markets looked like and how insane it was and how gorgeous it was, and that just... Yeah.
Disease. Yeah, disease.
I don't know if it was disease or what. I think the people were pretty dissatisfied.
It would have been hard for Cortez with his limited numbers to actually take over a civilization like that unless they kind of happened upon a civilization that was pretty dissatisfied with the way things were going. Yeah.
So I think they had people to help them sort of rebel. When you're making a movie like Apocalypto, I mean, that's a crazy undertaking.
You're making an entire movie where there's no English in it at all, and it's a blockbuster. Yeah.
Yeah, it's cool. It was fun.
That's one of the best movies, man. It's a fucking great movie.
Well, because I think it's scary because nobody's speaking your language. and you're looking at indigenous peoples who you,

and because they're not speaking the language you totally kind of buy it and you can buy the horror and and the primal nature of of the story you want to tell and really it's just a series of fears one after the other you know being chased by you know scary guys or

eaten by wild animals or you know hit by blow you know blow it's all like uh a series of these things but i think basically what i was doing was trying to talk about our time now and the civilization that we live in and how close are to collapse? And what are the things that lead to collapse?

It's environmental stuff.

It's human sacrifice.

Yeah.

I mean, we do that.

Kind of.

We do.

Yeah.

Yeah, we do.

We just dress it up.

Yep.

When you find out medications are killing people and they keep prescribing them,

and they do it for money,

that's kind of sacrifice.

When you find out that wars are irresponsible.'re not just wars not just no they're they're for money we send our young people over there to die sometimes for good reasons sometimes for not i mean i have i love this i love the warrior i do i love the warrior but i hate the war. Yeah.
We hate an unjust war. Yes, absolutely.
Anyway, it's a mess. But the human sacrifice aspect is alive and well in our society, I think.
It really is. It's just dressed up in a different way.
Yeah. Yeah, rhetoric around it.
But they've always been able to justify it. Like in Apocalypto, it was like, yeah, so the crops will be better.
Hey, we'll just, you know. Yeah, kill a few people.
Yeah. And then I had all these people come out of the woodwork.
Hey, we're archaeologists and scientists, and that never happened. So there's this revisionism about it, too, that it didn't happen.
But there are accounts from the time where, yes, people did witness these things. And, of course, I had a bunch of battery of archaeologists and scientists and professors on my own that say, yeah, well, this stuff did happen.
Here's the depictions of it in paintings and images. So it did happen.
When you set out to make a movie like that, first of all, what brings you to that? Did you get the script first? Was it an idea that you had in your head? It just came from in here. And I was working on something.
And a buddy of mine said, so what do you want to

do next? I said, ah, man, I want to direct something. And I always want to direct a chase

film. He said, what kind of chase? I said, a foot chase.
He said, what? I said, yeah, people chasing

you. I mean, there's something kind of primal and scary about a foot chase.
And I think in order to

have a foot chase, you can't have a society where there's any kind of cars or anything like that.

Otherwise, you have a car chase.

But I want to film a foot chase like it's a car chase.

And he said, oh.

I said, what are you thinking?

I said, well, I'm thinking if you go back before Columbus discovered America, you know.

And it's like people assume that Columbus discovered America and then life began.

I said, I want to know what was happening right before he got there, before he got there.

And I said, so want to know what was happening right before he got there, before he got there. And I said, so I had this idea that you see all this stuff going on and there's no time period on it.
And then all of a sudden you date it by the arrival of Europeans. And I thought, it's kind of like the Rod Serling, you know, Planet of the Apes.
Yeah, yeah. It's kind of a cool, cool ending.
And he said, oh, wow. And he said, where do you think Columbus landed? I said, well, let's look.
So I looked up, and the first peoples he encountered were Mayan trading canoes off the coast of Honduras. And I thought, cool.
What was happening in Honduras? And you look at these towns and pyramids and temples and stuff at that time.

And then the story was born from there.

And of course, then we read the book by Jared Diamond, Collapse.

I read the Mayan Bible, the Popol Vuh, and, you know, tried to delve into what they believed

and what their civilization was like.

And they had concepts, as we do, of heaven and hell, or reward you know it was a little different quite a bit different actually in fact when i went down to the archaeological sites at hill mirador they dug something up and it was like well what is it and i said we don't know it could there was this carved image in the stone of this Mayan warrior drinking. He had an ear spool.
And it was like, hmm. So they dug further and further, and it went like 26 meters down.
And it was the entire story of the Popol Vuh, of the twins going into hell and getting their father's head and swimming back. And it's crazy story and it um uh kind of dated that book because i think it was a almost 3 000 years old this this uh mural this carving so it tells you the story is pretty old and they thought initially it was probably back in the 1300s but this confirmed that it was at least 2600 years old something.
Yeah. So it's pretty cool that to be there when they're digging that stuff up is mind blowing.
This episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax. One thing I've learned from doing this podcast is the value of having real experts around, whether it's someone breaking down complex science, health, or even philosophy, having the right people makes all the difference.
That's exactly what TurboTax does for your taxes. Because now taxes is matching with a TurboTax live expert for your unique tax situation.
Your expert is backed by cutting edge technology that cross checks millions of data points for absolute accuracy. And while they work on your taxes, you can get real-time updates on their progress and get the most money back, all while you go about your day, which means less stress for you and the best possible outcome for your return.
It's 2025. It's time to file like it.
Now, this is taxes. Intuit TurboTax.
Get an expert now at TurboTax.com. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.
Sometimes speed is a huge asset, like in the ring or on the field, being quicker than your opponent could be the difference between winning and losing. In the world of business, it could be the difference between finding or missing out on your next great hire.
Luckily, you can speed up the hiring process with ZipRecruiter. Their new ZipIntro feature can help you meet several interested, qualified candidates at once, kind of like speed dating.
And right now, you can try ZipIntro for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. ZipIntro works fast to find the people you need.
You can literally post your job today and start talking to candidates in back-to-back calls tomorrow. It's that fast.
And best of all, this feature does a lot of the legwork for you. It finds you top talent for your role and schedules those calls.
All you need to do is pick a time. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with Zip Intro only from Zip Recruiter.
Rated the number one hiring site based on G2. Try Zip Intro for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan.
Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. Zip Intro.
Post jobs today. Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow.
Well, they're missing so much of the Mayan history. It's very interesting.
You want some coffee? I want some water. That's water.
Water. They're missing so much of the Mayan history, you know, because everybody's gone.
But one of the—you ever see the very bizarre carving where it looks like there's a guy who's sitting in a cockpit of a spaceship?

Yes.

Like looking through some sort of an eye thing?

Yeah, they got some weird stuff.

It's like.

Weird.

Yeah.

Where there's fire underneath the chair.

Like, what is that?

They got dudes that look like Europeans.

They have these guys with red beards and helmets and stuff.

Yeah.

It's like these Phoenician guys who probably traveled over there early on. Yeah.
Probably maybe in the sixth century or something like that. So it wasn't that long a boat ride.
So they probably went over there and made contact and they thought they were gods or something. And then they went away again.
And they said, well, wait for them to come back. And, of course, they did come back.
but it didn't work out the same no no no well there's so many accounts of you know people visiting the especially when you get into the amazon sure oh i don't know about the amazon oh my god what's tell me about that well first of all the amazon used to be filled with people and most of the amazon is man-made the jungle in the Amazon I didn't agriculture yeah wow yeah okay the jungle in the Amazon they didn't even know this until fairly recently and they now know from flying over they use a light lidar which is this light so they so when they use this laser radar shit when they fly over it they're finding all these grids and pathways and cities in the jungle so the jungle had consumed all these cities i think there was millions and millions of people living in the amazon and that europeans came over diseases everybody dies jungle consumes the city people come back 200 years later looking for it like the lost city of z like that uh that story right they go back to look and there's there's nothing left yeah guns germs and steel yeah yeah yeah great yeah wow that's fascinating i'll have to look into that and we're going through all those things right now guns germs and steel oh yeah oh my god yeah germs yeah germs i had i'm just just on the tail end of some hideous flu that was going, I don't know if you got it. Did you get the H5N1 or whatever the fuck it is? I don't know what the hell.
Yeah, I've had that. That was the swine thing.
I had swine flu one time. Did you have that in 2009? Yes.
Yeah. It was around then.
Yeah. Yeah, it was an epidemic, a pandemic, whatever you want to call it.
But it didn't have the same sort of press releases that COVID did. Sure.
I got the swine. I acted more like a pig.
Terrible. Terrible.
Wallowing in my own mud. So I like Flight Risk.
It's a fun movie. Oh, it's a hoot.
It's a hoot. I mean, I think the first thing you got to do with any film, and I think it's incumbent upon all directors, artists to entertain first in some fashion,

even if it's a heavy story,

you have to find some,

some aspect of it that entertains.

And,

and I think this for entertainment sake is just fun and it's quick.

I'm not subjecting you to four hours of like watching autism dry.

Right.

It's like,

you know, it's 85, 90 minutes 90 minutes yeah it's a good time yeah and mark is insane yeah he's great in it he plays a good psycho oh he's a psychopath mark's got a good dark side there's some there's some dark stuff there that he was able to draw from and uh every now and then he'd let it out i can't even repeat some of the stuff he'd say. In fact, we had to cut most of it out.
It was, like, really sick. But we hint at it.
Anyway. When you make a movie now, I mean, you've had such a career.
When you make a movie now, like, what motivates you at this point in your life? Like, how do you decide, let's hit the green light on this one? Yeah, there are things that speak to me and, uh, and they speak for a, for a long time. It's, uh, I remember when I was a kid in high school, I was studying English and they were, where did the English language come from? And they talked about, wow, it came from this old guttural German, old Norse that the Vikingsings brought across and i was thinking wow that's cool the vikings you know and then immediately i start thinking man somebody should make i want to make a film about vikings and they only speak in old norse because if if they say if they say uh you know if they speak english all of a sudden right you're not buying it but if they speak in some guttural language, you're sort of scared by them.
And it's like, that's scary to me. And then I said to myself, I'm 17 years old.
Why am I thinking about making films about Vikings? I don't know anything about making films and not much about Vikings. So why the hell am I even thinking about that? But that was something that was early on was like a drive, I guess, to sort of depict things like that.
So I did films in other languages, in Mayan and in Aramaic and in Latin. And there's a power to that.
I noticed when I was young, I used to go and watch a lot of foreign films. I watched French movies, right? Or German or whatever they were, Spanish.
I'd watch them and I'd think, wow, the acting's great in those and it seemed better because of the subtitles. Right, yeah, yeah.
More believable somehow. I don't know.
Right, because you're not hearing insincerity in their voice because you don't even understand what they're saying. Yeah, you just feel the emotions in the words.
And also it has to take your attention because you have to do another function.

You have to read.

Yeah.

Which is another thing that sort of maybe blinds you to the flaws in the filmmaking perhaps.

So, you know, hey, it's a great trick.

Yeah.

It's obfuscation.

There's a thing about reading it while you're watching it.

It's like an added element of concentration.

You know, like subtitled movies, you feel like you're a smarter person watching a movie where you're reading it as well. Yeah, and there's something about the written word that's like, it's a pretty interesting thing to throw into the mix.
I know when I first started, it was kind of confusing, but then I got really good at it. And I think, especially with something like, what, the passion that I did, the written word very important.
Because it was, you know, you got all those books, the Bible, you know, you've got the different gospels and stuff that people are quite familiar with. Half the time, they didn't even need to read the subtitles.
They could look at it and know what was going on. Playoffs.
We're talking about playoffs? You bet we are. Get in on the action with DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NFL.
Scoring touchdowns is key to winning the playoffs, and you can score big by betting on them at DraftKings, the number one place to bet touchdowns. Ready to place your bet? Try betting on something simple, like a player to score six.
Go to DraftKings Sportsbook app and make your pick. New DraftKings customers

can bet five bucks to get $200 in bonus bets instantly. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook

app and use the code ROGAN. That's code ROGAN for new customers to get $200 in bonus bets

instantly when you bet just five bucks. Only on DraftKings Sportsbook.
The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
In New York, call 877-877-877-877-877-877-877-877-877- for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.
Please play responsibly. On behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas, 21 and over, age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction, void in Ontario.
Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.co slash audio.
That was a crazy movie because it was a great movie, but it seemed like there was resistance to that movie. Oh, yeah.
No, there was. Which I thought was very strange.
There was like Hollywood resistance to that movie. Like people didn't like that you were making it, it seemed like.
Yeah, there was a lot of opposition to it. And I don't know.
I think if you ever hit on that subject matter, you're going to get people going. of course it's big subject matter.

And it's like, uh, you know, and my contention is, you know, when I was making it,

it was like, you're making this film.

And the idea was that we're all responsible for this,

that his sacrifice was for all mankind and that for all,

all our ills and all, all the things in our fallen nature, It was a redemption. So, you know, and I believe that, you know.
I actually am, you know, I was born into a Catholic family. I'm very Christian in my beliefs, you know.
So I do actually believe this stuff to the full. So depicting that was an honor, but it was also, yeah, you got the daylights beat out of you for it yeah because there's there's resistance first of all from secular hollywood where for whatever reason christianity is the one religion that you're allowed to disparage yeah christianity is the one religion where people the all these progressive open-minded left people, they'll embrace all these different religions until it comes to Christianity.
And for whatever reason, that represents like white, male, whatever it represents, colonialism, whatever it represents that's negative. Yeah, sure.
It's gotten a bad rap. And people do feel free to beat up on it.
Even I do when I see it's like, you know, when it's not fair. Right.
When I think it's off. Right.
Like, you know, when they appoint some cardinal in some diocese and he's been covering up for like people who are child molesters. Yes.
You know, like Theodore McCarrick or Cardinal Wuerl or those kind of guys. I mean.
Or the Pope. Yes.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Benedict. Not Benny.
Well, he was covering up, but like so is the guy now. Is he really? Well, yeah.
Yeah. It's not great.
I thought he was like the more progressive Pope. Oh, he's very progressive.
Yes. But he's covering up for stuff as well.
Well, they all are. I mean, it's a dark institution in a lot of ways because it's history.
Well, you know, the institution, it was instituted by Christ, you know, but that doesn't mean that it can't be flawed. And there's a school of thought that says it isn't what it purports to be anymore.
It's moved away from what it was intended to be and what it is. Almost there's a guy called Bishop Vigano who says it's a counterfeit parallel church.
And it's running an entirely different religion. I actually don't adhere to a post-conciliar church.
I adhere. Can you define what that means? Okay.
There was an event that happened in the 60s. First, there was an event in the Vatican where they elected John the 23rd Pope, right, in 1958.
I was two years old, right? He he was elected and it was a very funny thing that happened in the conclave you know usually there's white and black smoke that goes out of the the chimneys to tell you we have a pope you know have a must pop them you know and the white smoke came out and everybody cheered and they went crazy and then about a an hour later, black smoke came out. Never in history has that happened, that the white smoke came out and then the black smoke came out.
So white smoke means we found a new pope. Black smoke means no pope.
That's right. They'd have votes or there'd be one reason or another they'd have a round in the conclave and black smoke would come out many times, many times maybe.
Maybe it would take two weeks. But never was it known that white smoke came out, then black smoke came out.
So what was the scenario? That somebody was elected and that maybe something else happened and he was pushed aside and someone else was put in. So it was power struggle.

Some kind of power struggle.

And, of course, the man who came out was a man called Angelo Roncalli,

and he was John XXIII.

Now it's interesting to note that never had a pope

taken the name of another pope ever before in history.

But this man took the name of a known anti-pope from the 15th century that Cosimo de' Medici put in there as his own man. I'll get you in the chair and then everything will be rosy.
You know, everything will go good for business. You know, whatever he was putting him in there for some corrupt reason.
But and there have been corrupt men in that place before. I mean, there's Alexander VI and Julius II and julius the second and sixtus the fourth i mean

some of these guys are you know they're not saints um so he took the name of a known anti-pope from the fifth century who actually said yes i'm an anti-pope sorry i'm not the right guy because there was more than one and he confessed to being and he wanted to you know square square things with the Almighty, I guess.

So he confessed to being an anti-pope. And so he took the same name as that guy, John XXIII.
So it's interesting, don't you think? I mean, why would he do that? Well, whenever you have that kind of power, like I'm sure you've been to the Vatican, right? Yeah. It's stunning.
Yes, it's huge. It's so great.
When you're're walking around you see just the massive amount just a dollar value in the art that they possess yeah it's fucking insane it's crazy yeah and uh you know it's a very small country it's a country yeah it's a country inside of a small city yeah because rome's not city. No.
And then it's got a country inside the city? Yeah. With walls around it? Sure.
And you can't extradite people? Yeah, pretty weird. How convenient.
Yeah. Even Ratzinger, he didn't drive from the Vatican to the other place.
He flew. Ooh.
And it was only a little while, because who knows why?'t know well he was wanted yes yeah i mean he had done one of the things that he had done was he had moved a priest that had molested a hundred kids and he moved him to some new place where he molested deaf kids yeah yeah boy yeah yeah i know that's Yeah. I know.
That's the dirtiest, most evil practice that the Catholic Church has been accused of. I think so.
And many institutions as well. But that is a very bad one.
And I think it's all part and parcel of the same corruption that crept in. And when you asked what's the difference between pre-Vatican two so vatican two happened and of course they they took the church and they they reformed it and they changed things in it and it didn't necessarily agree with everything that went before it and up to that point yeah you could find it agreed with itself but of a sudden, you got something else to the point where now, I mean, we got a pope that brought a South American idol into the church to worship.
Really? He did. The Pachamama.
He brought the South American. And he got that.
I don't know what that is. It's kind of like a South American god, Pachamama.

Why would he do that?

Good question.

But he did.

Did he have an explanation for why he did it?

Yeah, it's kind of a weasel worded thing of like, oh, all religions are just as good as one another.

But, you know, if that's his contention.

He shouldn't be the pope.

No.

How can you be the pope if you say all religions are just as good? Yeah, we. That's the Pachamama.
So he brought that in. Into the Vatican.
The hierarchy even worshipped that they had a ceremony around it. What? Well that constitutes apostasy.
Yeah. That's an apostasy move.
Worshipping false gods. Yeah.
That's number one on the Mosaic hit list. Yeah.
Moses goes up on the mountain. He comes back down.
People are worshiping him in a golden calf. Yeah.
You know, it's that. Yeah.
So you can't do that. And for me, that's a departure from, you know, that's called apostasy.
Right. That's a falling away from it.
And the very nature of apostasy means that you have to be part of it to fall away from it. Mm-hmm.
So it's an inside job. Ah.
Yeah. So do you think there's a motive behind these things? I don't think you, well, probably.
What do you think it is? I don't know.

But it isn't good.

I think, look, I think we're looking at a world where, and this is in the next film I'm going to do, I'm going to try and tackle this question.

That there are big realms, spiritual realms.

There's good, there's evil, and they are slugging it out for the souls of mankind. And my question is, why are we even important? Little old flawed humanity, why are we important in that process where the big realms are slugging it out over us? And I think there's bigger things at play here.
And institutions that purport to touch on the divine are necessarily going to be affected by that slugfest that's going on between good and evil. Right.
And sometimes good gives up ground. Yeah.
And maybe not on purpose. You know, maybe there's some deception involved or self-deception.
Co-opted. Every morning when I wake up, I actually pray that I don't deceive myself.
Because it's like your mind is a very funny place. I mean, I've always said it's your second thought and your first action that you're responsible for.
Your first thought. Throw it away.
You know. Right.
But upon consideration. Yeah.
The second thought is what you're responsible for. Yeah.
That's the difference between first degree and second degree murder. There you go.
Right? Right? There you go. First degree, like, I'm plotting this out.
And we take that into consideration when we sentence people. Sure.
Like, if you're a person who just, you're all of a sudden you're in a fight with a guy you didn't expect it and you stab him and kill him second degree murder yeah but if you're like i'm gonna kill this motherfucker i'm gonna find out where he is and i'm gonna go get him first degree sure i've planned a lot of murders in my life you know yeah we all have yeah in your head you plan the murder and you think well that's not But I think I could get away with it. Right.
There's the second thought. Yeah.
That is interesting that we take that into consideration. Yeah.
That we do. Like if you've had time to think about it, you're a different kind of person.
The person acts in the act. Sure.
You're in your animal brain. Act of passion.
Yes. And I found this out.
I actually spent a long time in my animal brain, which is a very horrible place to be. And when you say that, what do you mean by you've spent a long time in your animal brain? You're in flight or fight.
Right. All the time.
You don't even sleep. It's like really not a good place to be.
And if anybody looks at you the wrong way, you want to bite them. Yeah.
And sometimes you say and do things that are socially unacceptable and you know i went and got a brain scan by this guy called daniel amen who's this brain guy he's against all psych meds and stuff but he thinks like let me have a look at your brain and he put a radioactive tracer in me whoa and to photograph my brain he works with a lot of right yeah he works a lot of football players and guys who have had brain injuries. Man, it's thirsty in here.
But... So he looked at my brain and he was like...
And he opens the file and I'm in there with the guy and he looks up and he goes, are you okay? And he goes, first, no, first he went like this. And I said, what? And he went, are you okay? Like that.
And I said, yeah, I think so. And he, he came over and he sat next to me, but very slowly and cautiously.
And he says, no, you're not. And I said, what do you mean? He says, you've got the worst case of PTSD I've ever seen.
And I said, you mean like even worse than guys in war and shit like that and he goes yeah and he says you're not okay jesus christ and i was like and i and i started i started to well up you know like no no i'm not oh boy and it was uh he had a very miraculous and great remedy for it, which was to eat a bunch of fish oil, vitamin B complex, and get into a hyperbaric chamber for 40 sessions. But make sure you do at least two or three a week.
It fixed my head. Really? Yeah, it got me out of that wacky place, you know? So it was something to do with nutrition and oxygen? Yeah.
And your brain is neuroplasticity. He explained neuroplasticity to me and how, okay, you can get brain damage and like holes in your head and, you know, concussion.
I used to play rugby. I've been knocked out on the field a couple of times, you know.
That explains a lot.

You know.

Yeah.

And so it actually,

you can actually heal the holes in your head.

It looked like Swiss cheese

in there.

It's like horrible.

A lot of these football

players get like that too.

The poor guys,

I mean,

they get depressed.

Oh, yeah.

You know,

oh, yeah.

Hormonal imbalance,

pituitary glands fucked up.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, not producing testosterone or human growth hormone correctly depression, low energy irritability irritability, you want to kill somebody terrible thing and it's just not socially acceptable plus I don't want to go to prison well the rugby I bet that's a giant factor uh yeah i played from like 13 to probably in my late teens and and you get knocked around a hundred percent yeah yeah there's no ifs ands or buts about that no helmet no you know well people don't realize like even shots to the chest cause brain damage oh yeah yeah that's what people are realizing now yeah sure i mean you know and like i'm addicted to the ufc right i love it but i know that these guys are i i feel kind of sorry for him i do as well yeah and one of the guys i i knew one of the guys fairly well and usually i'm pretty immune to like but like he was in there and he was fighting against volonovsky.
It was Brian Ortega and he was getting his ass handed to him in one fight. He almost got him a couple of times, but like.
Yeah, he almost submitted him twice. Yeah, I know.
But because I knew Brian, it was like my son was in there. I almost started crying.
And it got to me. I was like, I should probably feel like this about all these guys, but I don't know them as well.
It becomes a problem for me when I'm friends with a guy. And then also I see when they're on the tail end of their career and they can't take shots anymore.
And then when you talk to them, you recognize the speech patterns are slurring. Yeah.
Yeah. I met Muhammad Ali when he was in a chair, you know? Oof.
And I don't know if I could even tell this story what he said was so funny but he was still in there and he was still a little devil and he was like uh and he was still he was still fucking with people of course but it was like uh i can't i can't tell this you can't no man okay well footnote it tell me later i'll It is funny. But it was my assistant, you know, is what he said to my assistant.

It was like so funny.

And then he said it and we all were like, whoa.

And then I looked at him and he was just laughing.

He was laughing his ass off.

So he was still all in there, but it was hard.

I guess he had the damage of being punched. Yeah.

Trauma-related Parkinson's disease. Yes.
Very common for fighters. Oh, my God.
Oh, no. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's not good. No.
I got knocked out in a fight when I was, like, 20. And it was, like, knockout.
Like, out. And it was, you know, I woke up in the hospital.
Not good. No.

Well, a few of those will explain a lot.

Yes, it does.

Yeah.

And we didn't know that, you know, back then.

That's why it always drives me crazy in a movie when someone gets hit over the head with a gun and knocked out.

And then five minutes later, they're fighting and they're fine.

Or shot in the arm, you know.

They kill you.

This episode is brought to you by Farmer's Dog. It doesn't matter how old your dog is.

It's always a great time to start investing in their health and happiness.

And thankfully,

you're not going to be They kill you. This episode is brought to you by Farmer's Dog.
It doesn't matter how old your dog is. It's always a great time to start investing in their health and happiness.
And thankfully, the Farmer's Dog makes it easier than ever to feed your dog a healthy diet of real meat and veggies. Dogs prefer their food, even picky dogs, and owners prefer their service.
If you have a question about your dog, your plan, your delivery, or anything else, they have 24-7 customer service that connects you to real humans who are genuinely interested in providing the best experience possible for you and your dog. They give you detailed instructions on how to transition your dog to fresh food and even pre-portion it for your dog's specific needs.
Feeding your dog healthy, human-grade food shouldn't be complicated, and with the Farmer's Dog, it isn't. The entire experience from box to bowl is a breeze.
So try the Farmer's Dog today and give healthy, freshly made food a try. You can get 50% off your first box of food, plus free shipping.
Just go to thefarmersdog.com slash Rogan. Tap the banner or visit this episode's page to learn more.
Offer available for new customers only. This episode is brought to you by Oracle.
There's a growing expense eating into your company's profits. It's your cloud computing bill.
You may have gotten a deal to start, but now the spend is sky high and increasing every year. What if you could cut your cloud bill in half and improve performance at the same time? Well, if you act by May 31st, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can help you do just that.
OCI is the next generation cloud design for every workload, where you can run any application, including any AI projects, faster and more securely for less. In fact, Oracle has a special promotion where you can cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI.
The savings are real. On average, OCI costs 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.
Join modal, Skydance, Animation, and today's innovative AI tech companies who upgraded to OCI and saved. Offer only for new U.S.
customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify for half off at oracle.com slash rogan.
That's oracle.com slash rogan. That always makes me laugh, too, but we used to do it.
Well, you kind of have to, right? Yeah. It's like part of the whole thing of telling a movie.
You got to. Sure.
I mean, Michelle. Suspension of disbelief.
Michelle Docker even brains Mark Wahlberg with a fire extinguisher at one point. Yeah.
He's back. Brains him, shoots him.

Oh, yeah. He's a cockroach.
You can't kill him.

It takes a lot more.

You'll find out.

But we're,

you know, people used to think that concussions are just something you

recover from. Like, no big deal.
You get a concussion,

take a break for a little while,

you'll be fine. You might not be fine.

No, you're not. I got a concussion at my daughter's wedding.
This is really weird, okay? So she's getting married, married a great guy. They've got a great family.
And a buddy of mine from Australia comes to the wedding. And he goes, hey.
He comes up and I go to hug him. And he ducks down and he comes up and he puts his shoulder into the point of my chin.
The guy weighs 240. And he puts his shoulder into the point of my chin and knocks me the fuck out.
Jesus Christ. I'm like, ah.
And like for the next four months, I'm messed up. I have to get like a guy to work cranial sacral, you know, fix me up and stuff like that.
It really messed me up. Fucking Australians.
Yeah. Yeah, there you go.
Wild folk. Worse than Germans.
Wild ex-prisoners. Yeah, yeah.
Wild prisoner of mothering. Yeah.
Anyway. So this story that you want to tell about good and evil, like, do you have a script or is it just a thing in your head? What is it? Yeah, it's the resurrection story.

But it's not just, it's not linear because you can't really, it's hard to understand.

So it's got to be put in a framework where you answer a few other questions as well.

And you have to juxtapose the event itself against everything else so that it makes some kind of sense in in a bigger picture which is a hard thing to do and it took my brother and i about and and a guy called randall wallace plus my brother and i took us six seven years to write. So are you doing this with historians as well? Are you trying to make it? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, historical stuff.
Well, I regard the Gospels as history. It's a verifiable history.
Some people say, oh, it's a fairy tale. He never existed, but he did.
And there are other accounts, verifiable historical accounts outside the biblical ones that also bear this up that, yes, he did exist. And the other aspect of that is that all the evangelists, the apostles who went out there, every single one of those guys died rather than deny their belief.
And nobody dies for a lie.

Nobody.

Right.

So that's part of what I'm doing.

It's like showing nobody dies for a lie.

Yeah.

Well, the resurrection is the one that is the most difficult for people to swallow.

Yes.

That's the one that requires the most faith. The most faith and the most belief, yeah, resurrection.

Yeah.

Who gets back up three days later after he gets murdered in public?

Who gets back up under his own power?

Buddha didn't do that shit.

Right.

You know, so.

You believe that was a real event?

Yeah, I do.

Yeah.

What brought you to that belief?

Is this something that you've always had or is it something you studied it and you've come to this conclusion because of the historical accounts? Yes. I think as a child, you know, one accepts things on faith because, you know, you're raised by people who are nice to you and they believe it.
And my dad was a pretty smart guy. He was like Mensah smart, you know, like real smart.
Like back in 1968, he won Jeopardy, right? Really? And then they brought all the Jeopardy winners back, and he played all the winners, and he beat all of them too. So he had a mind like a steel trap.
And his memory was practically photographic. My memory is pornographic, but his was like, I don't have that that kind of mind right um but I'm more like he did math and you know I can't add but uh um so as a child you learn um these things and you accept them on faith and I still have that faith but as I got older I came to it through intellect and through reading and putting things together and accounts.
And then occurrences, like in my own life. I mean, just recently they verified the Shroud of Turin.
Have you seen that? I've been reading about it, and I know that there's some contention. There's some discussion and debate about it.
But they used to think that it was only a couple hundred years old, and now they've changed that. Yeah, they've said, no, it's back then.
They also don't understand how it was made, which to me is very fascinating, because it's not paint. They don't know what caused the image itself, and how that technology would have even been available it wasn't a couple thousand

years ago an intense light i mean atomic to leave almost like a photographic imprint on a piece of cloth yeah and it's wild pull that up pull the shroud of turn up oh yeah it's wild to look at because it's so interesting.

Oh, yeah.

And you can see it, that it depicts a first century Hebrew male, because the hairstyle was from the first century, and a Hebrew hairstyle, that he was about six feet tall, that he was completely scourged all over his body. He was crucified.
That's it there. The one on the left, the one on the right is just like an artistic rendition that's the face yeah click on that one the face the face yeah that's good enough get that large that's fucking crazy yeah yeah scourged beaten yeah crap the wounds on the thorns the hands the feet uh and and the scourging and And the hairstyle was from the first century.
And the pollens that they found in the cloth were from that region. Also, the weave was a first century weave that was typical.
And another guy, an archaeologist who I knew who actually translated the Passion in Aramaic, told me that if you look close, you can see the image of a Tiberius coin marks on the eyes. Now, I don't know if that's real or not.
I've never actually checked that, but that there's images of Tiberius on the coin. So they would put the coins over the eyes? Yeah.
So that would date it. But they have now verified that it does actually go back to that time period for a while they were testing pieces that had been repaired in the 13th century or right you know what is the latest on that jamie can you see like i was trying to get that i have two different articles from within the last six months yeah the smithson yeah obviously of course Dig into which one sounded the most accurate.
Well, it's such a crazy thing to even try to verify. Yeah.
What are you saying? You're saying that this is really the shroud that Jesus was covered in? So you're saying Jesus historically absolutely did exist, and we think that this is the shroud that covered him. Just that alone people incredulity people's immediately they're they're they their hackles raised like wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute and they just instead of like looking at it objectively they almost always want to look at it from a point of view of dispute disproving it immediately dismissing it immediately but that's you know that's science isn't it you have to sort of you know you play the devil's advocate yeah and that's And that's okay.
Go for it. Are you aware of Graham Hancock? Oh, no.
Graham Hancock is sort of a historian that has a very – he's got a series on Netflix. He's a fascinating guy.
And his career started because he was investigating these accounts in Ethiopia of the Ark of the Covenant.

Right.

And that they believe the Ark of the Covenant is in this one church that's protected by all these monks that wind up getting cataracts and radiation disease and sickness.

And they think that it's because they're protecting this Ark of the Covenant, this actual thing, that it's an actual physical thing that's there. And if you touch it, you get zapped.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that even being in its presence fucks these people up. Maybe.
Maybe. Who knows? I mean, it's got to be someplace, right? They buried it.
They lost track of it. Yeah.
But, man, it used to be. And all the stories are, if you even touch it, you'd fall over, you know, because it was constructed electrically somehow.

Yeah, like what is that?

What's in there?

Why is it giving people cancer if they're really protecting it? I think it's the actual structure of the container it's in that is the problem. That's my thought on it.
I could be wrong. But I think inside it they have things from like when Moses was like manna and stuff like that that they managed to keep from like, for example, they say that Golgotha, the place where the crucifixion happened, it's called Golgotha, the place of the skull, because that's where Adam's head is buried.
Really? Yes. And it's also perhaps the same place.
And it tells you it's kind of in the same area where Abraham almost sacrifices Isaac. Oh.
So it's interesting.

Yeah.

And it's, and the cross, when in any artistic depiction,

at the foot of the cross, underneath it is the skull,

representing the skull of Adam.

Huh.

So it's interesting.

Yeah, there it is. Yeah.
That's the skull of Adam, huh? Yep. Wow.
Place of the skull, memory, myth, in the Chapel of Adam. What did you find on the Shroud of Turin, Jamie? Both those articles just asked one person.
One researcher thought it was. Another researcher, based off of their research, said it wasn't.
Can you put it to the one that thought it was? so the one who thought it was another researcher based off of their research that it wasn't can you put it to the one that thought it was um so the one who thought it was is uh like a nuclear researcher a nuclear researcher jesus christ one was like a ai artist from brazil yeah so i don't know who has the most so it says study published in journal Heritage, the authors conducted dating work on a sample from the shroud,

coming to the conclusion that it may be a 2,000-year-old relic.

The shroud, which has long been a subject of intense scrutiny,

features a faint image of a man some believe is the body of Jesus,

miraculously imprinted onto the cloth.

While the latest study does not discuss the question

whether or not the artifact was indeed Jesus' burial shroud, specifically the authors did find its age is roughly consistent with his time. Oh.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think, isn't the Smithsonian guy all for it? I don't know. Maybe that's him.
I don't know. But, yeah.
There's for and against. There's always been.
but the but the but the image is like yeah it's pretty crazy yeah whatever it is is pretty crazy and the fact that they don't know how they made it is also pretty crazy yeah it's not a painting no then not not exactly sure how it even came about yeah it had to have been some kind of intense light well the thought was that even trying to replicate something like that today would be incredibly difficult to do. Sure.
It's like an x-ray vision. It's like an x-ray.
You really see it in the negative only. Right.
Right. It's like a negative.
Yeah. Hey, I buy it.
But that's not the only reason I buy it. I mean, I think there's other logical reasons why I believe.
Like what are those? Oh, okay. Stuff that happens in your own life.
The results you get from actually appealing to a power greater than yourself, you know.

And, I mean, I don't think it's any secret.

I am flawed in the fact that I am by nature born an alcoholic, right.

I did drugs.

I did alcohol.

And there was nothing that could stop me from doing that.

Nothing.

So I was really kind of on, you're on a downhill run.

Thank you. stop me from doing that nothing so I was really kind of on you're on a downhill run so I regard the fact that I was able to appeal to something greater than myself to help me and actually stop me doing that I think that's a miracle it is for me it is and for many you know so well that is the thing about AA, right? It's a part of the whole process is appealing to a higher power.
Sure. It's a spiritual program.
Because you're suffering your spiritual malady. So it's a spiritual cure.
And that's the essence, I think, of why it works. Because you can't explain it otherwise.
I mean, well, you kind of can. But I think what you're being asked to do is to think about other people and other things more than yourself.
Because it's kind of an ego disease. Yeah.
So if you... That is the problem with addiction, right? It's very narcissistic.
Very narcissistic. Because you're constantly thinking about yourself and what you need.
I need a drink. I need a bump.
I need a lot. You know, I need something.
Sure. I need...
And no matter what you need, it's never going to be enough. Right.
Right. So you actually have to appeal to something outside that you consider bigger and better than yourself, which instantly kind of pushes you more in the direction of humility because you're not the center of the universe anymore and that you can't do it.
And the first step in any of that sort of stuff is accepting that you are powerless over it. That's the most powerful step you can do is that you're powerless.
When you realize that, you're like, okay. There's fuck all I can do about this.
I have to appeal to something better than me. And that to me is a miracle.
Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Visible.
Now you know I tend to go down a lot of rabbit holes. I want to know everything about everything.
And if you're like that, you need wireless that can keep up. Visible is wireless that lets you live in the know.
It's the ultimate wireless hack. You get unlimited data and hotspot, so you're connected on the go.
Plus, Visible is powered by Verizon's 5G network, meaning fast speeds and great coverage. And with the new Visible Plus Pro plan, you get premium wireless without the premium cost.
And the best part, it's all digital, no stores. You can switch to Visible right from your phone.
It only takes about 15 minutes, and then you manage your plan in the app. Ready for wireless that lets you live in the know? Make the switch at visible.com slash Rogan.
Plans start at $25 a month. For the best features, get the new Visible Plus Pro Plan for $45 a month.
Terms apply. See visible.com for planned features and network management details.
This episode is brought to you by SimpliSafe. We've all got our daily rituals, like in the mornings, you might grab some coffee, do some exercise, eat a bowl of cereal, and then head off to work.
It's nice having a routine you can go back to again and again. You might even find it comforting.
But you know what can bring you even more peace of mind? SimpliSafe. They have some of the best home security systems out there, and I'm not just saying that.
The CNET named Simply Safe the best home security system of 2025. Their systems are top-notch.
I think part of that is because Simply Safe gets the job done fast. They work to prevent break-ins before they happen.
Using AI-powered cameras and live professional monitoring agents, they can keep a close eye on your property.

And if they detect any suspicious activity, they can keep a close eye on your property, and if they detect any suspicious activity, they take action. Whether it's activating spotlights, talking to intruders in real time, or contacting the police, SimpliSafe gets it done.
It's also nice to know there's no bullshit with these guys. There's no long-term contracts or cancellation fees.
SimpliSafe even has a 60-day satisfaction guarantee or your money back. Make SimpliSafe a part of your daily routine.
Get 50% off your new SimpliSafe system with professional monitoring and your first month free at simplisafe.com slash rogan. That's simplisafe.com slash rogan for 50% off and your first month free at simplisafe.com slash rogan that's simplisafe.com slash rogan for 50 off and your first month free there's no safe like simplisafe yeah well it's a very uniquely human thing the ability to course correct and also just the the concept of addiction in the first place sure you know it's a very uniquely human thing that we all know there's dark roads our mind can go down.
And then we wonder, like, what is the purpose of these dark thoughts? What is the purpose of this destructive behavior that we're all prone to in some way, shape or form? What is the purpose of everything? Yeah. I mean, why am I here? What's the meaning of this? Yeah.
I'm looking for purpose. And what is it we're here for? I think, you know, we have to leave some stuff, but you have to leave some good stuff.
You can leave plenty of bad stuff, you know, and it's, and we're all prone that way. I often think about, you know, the human race as a whole, you know, you think about guys like, you know, Stalin or hitler and chairman mao or and i'm i'm pretty sure i'm not going to be sharing a cell in the afterlife with those guys you know right i don't know where i'll be on the ladder but uh depends on how you end up right well that's it yeah it really is it's like you know and we're allowed to make mistakes and we do we are so flawed and I am I

I'm more flawed than anyone, you know, but it's a

Something that you I think and it's pretty safe to say I'm in the third act now

You're in act two, right?

Gesundheit, but I'm like I'm in the third act man, so you got you have to think about

The other side.

You have to think about what comes next.

Is there a next?

Yes, there is.

I believe there is. And I think it depends on how you live now.
And the beauty of believing is that even for your transgressions, you can be forgiven and you can be redeemed. But it's all up here.
Right. You know.
It's the true acceptance and understanding of what you've done and what you should do. Sure.
You have to look at yourself honestly. Yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Honestly, you have to be able to accuse yourself and understand that there is, it's a great deal of mercy involved in the fact that I believe that God sent his son down to tell us, okay, I'm going to ransom you people from your fallen nature, and I'll give you a road map on how to do it. And people do it.
There's even people that do it that have never even heard of know, some guy in the jungle someplace, I'm sure. Right.
You know? Because the creator is above the law. I mean, it's an interesting fact to note that the first canonized saint, you know who it was? No.
The first ever confirmed canonization as a saint was Dismas. You know who Dismas was? No.
He was the thief on the cross next to Jesus. Oh.
And he says to him, you're going to be okay this day. You'll be with me.
Unbapt baptized, criminal, all that stuff.

So the lawmaker is above the law.

So there's a lot of mercy.

What about people that never experienced Christianity?

What about the uncontacted people?

That's right.

That's what I'm saying.

Some guy in the jungle.

Yeah.

It's been known that it's called invincible ignorance because they don't know what the

truth is.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

It's possible that they can be saved as well.

So what are your thoughts on evolution?

Mm.

Wow.

Eh.

The Darwin thing?

Yeah.

I don't really go for it.

No?

Eh.

Ice-aged dinosaurs, you know.

What did they turn into?

I mean, things became extinct at some point.

I don't think I was some kind of like, you know, legless thing that crawled out of the ocean.

I don't think I came from that.

I think I was created.

Do you think other things were legless things that came out of the ocean?

Do you think like multi-celled organisms came out of single-celled organisms

and there was some sort of natural selection and random mutation and it led to everything else but us sure look at gain of function right you can like you can make stuff happen i'm sure stuff did happen um but i think it's all part of creation i think it's all ordered i think anyone left anything left to itself without some kind of intelligence behind it will devolve into chaos.

And so that there has to be some big intelligence that orchestrates everything.

Not that we don't have chaos in the world, but I think that's our own making.

But what do you think separates us from all the other creatures?

Well, I think we have a soul soul we're created with a soul um and you know i went to a restaurant last night it was a steakhouse in austin and it was interesting because all the pictures on the wall are pictures of animals that look resentful like cows and steers staring at you looking angry as you rip into a steak. But I just believe we are higher than those creatures because we have a soul.
We have an intellect above theirs. And we aspire to higher things.
We have aspirations.

And, you know, this is part of why people drink and smoke and do dope and all this kind of stuff is because they're looking for a spiritual experience. They're looking for like they actually call alcohol spirits.
I mean, they're looking for something higher. and I think we all have that yearning in that we want to be happy

and we want to be at peace

and we want everything to be hunky-dory. So there's this yearning in building all of us for that to aspire to something greater.
And that's why we're inspired by stories, I think, because it's like, you know, hero stories. You know, Joseph Campbell's stuff, the hero with a thousand faces and stuff.
It's like these stories inspire us. I met, I was at a party the other day in, in, in Tennessee.
And you think, Tennessee, what's going to happen there? It's going to be squeal like a pig. No, man, there's some people live in Tennessee.
Sure. sure but like amazing people and i found myself in a conversation with four tier one dudes all of who did something extraordinary and it was that tom slattersley guy it was the black hawk down guy there was sean ryan who's he's got you probably heard of this guy friend of, a friend of his.
Yeah, right? Yeah.

There was a guy called Christian Craighead.

You know who that guy is?

No.

Whoa.

And then there was Eddie.

They wrote a book about him.

Eddie Gallagher?

Gallagher, yeah.

Eddie Gallagher. I was talking to four of these guys at the same time.

And I didn't know who did you even talk to? But their stories are amazing, especially – and the one guy I ended up talking to was an SAS guy, British SAS. And he just looks like a bank teller.
But he did something extraordinary and incredibly brave and with no regard for himself, only regard for other people. And it was like, whoa, you hear these stories and it's sort of just like it pumps you up.
You think, could I do that? Could I be that person? I don't know if I could. In a way, I don't even want to ever find out because you have to be in an extreme situation.
Right. But hearing about other people and how they behave in situations that are difficult is very inspiring.
So, you know, it's, yeah, there's so many of those stories around and through history. Well, that's another unique thing about human beings is that we learn from others in a very extraordinary way and that's one of the reasons why we like stories yeah why we like myths and fables because there's there's lessons you can apply to your own life without having to actually go through those things yeah well that's right i made a film about that guy um desmond doss you.
I don't know if you saw it. It was like Hacksaw Ridge.

It was this film, and it was about a medic who figured so much killing going on,

he's going to go into the battlefield and save lives.

And he didn't have a weapon.

And he was in the worst place on earth.

And he got a Congressional Medal of Honor

because he kept going in to the worst place possible and dragging wounded guys out with no regard for himself. I mean, who does that kind of stuff? And over and over again, he didn't just do it once.
He did it hundreds of times. He finally got hit with shrapnel and a bunch of other stuff, but he lived to be an old man.
But wow.

And it was just pure faith. So those guys, those kind of stories inspire the hell out of me.
Anyway. So back to this idea of evolution.
So do you believe that evolution exists in animals? Do you think there's some sort of a natural selection process, or do you think that it is all intelligent design? Well, I think everything was created, right? And maybe things do move on and adapt and change through time. But I think that that's a function of an intelligence also.
And I mean, look at the fires in L.A., you know. I mean, what's that going to do? It's going to give me a new house, you know, maybe.
Maybe. Or a new place to live.
Yeah, something. Yeah, I'm just not totally convinced.
I feel it. And I can't really, I'm sorry, I can't intellectually tell you why I don't believe in evolution, but I don't.
It's just a feeling. I don't think I was some ape.
Or I don't think my ancestors were. I think they had to be pretty smart to survive.
So what do you think all these pre-human hominids are that they keep discovering? Like, tell me what a pre-human hominid is. Like Australopithecus.
Oh, right. Or some of the other human-like creatures that never made it, like Denisovans, Neanderthals.
Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that.
Okay, well, they've got something called Zinjanthropus. You remember him? No.
Zinjanthropus, man. And he was like, hmm, you look kind of like this.
But it was like they looked at it and they did some core samples on it. And it was put out there by people advocating evolution.
And they discovered that it was a human skull attached to the jaw of an ape. Oh, I do remember this.
So it was a hoax. Yeah, there's been some hoaxes.
Yeah.

But there's also been real stuff. Really?

Yeah. You don't think so? Well, maybe.

Well, what do you...

Well, you know, like, I don't

know, tell me. Well,

what was that one that we looked at the other day that was one of

the first pre-humans

that buried their young

or buried their dead, rather? It was

Homo

Ninaldi. What was it? Remember that? I can't remember how to say it, but...
No lady, yeah. Pre-human, hominid, very small creature that buried their young, or buried their dead, rather.
I keep saying buried their young. They buried their dead.
You know, Australopithecus. There's a bunch of different, you know, the Lucy skeleton.
There's a bunch of different pre-human hominids. Yeah, maybe they were monkeys.
I don't know. Yeah.
Well, they're similar to us, just not where we are. They're on the road to becoming what it means to be a human being.
Yeah. I don't know.
I don't know. What do you think those are? I don't know.
They could be animals. Or they could be like, look at today.
I mean, you can get some mosquito can bite you and your kid can be born with a malformed skull or something. It's like, you know, they have those, you know.
Yeah. But this is like a genetic thing.
Like they've mapped the genome of these creatures.

Oh, they have?

They're different.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know how to explain those, Joe.

I don't know.

But you do think that human beings were created by God?

Sure, I do.

When do you think that happened?

When?

Probably not that long ago.

Really?

No, not really. What do you mean by not that long ago? Probably only about 8, that long ago.
Really? No, not really.

What do you mean by not that long ago?

Probably only about 8,000 years ago.

Really?

Yeah.

So what do you think things like Gobekli Tepe are when they find these constructions that are carbon dated to 11,000 plus years old?

I question carbon dating.

Really?

Yeah.

That makes things a lot simpler. Well, yeah.
There's a lot of money in claims. Really? Water's there.
Yeah. Well, carbon dating seems to be pretty rock-solid studies.
Yeah. I mean, the science behind radiocarbon dating and detecting carbon isotopes, It's like, that's pretty legit.
Yeah. I don't know.
I can't square it. Yeah.
Well, you don't have to. And I don't have to.
What difference is it going to make to me? Yeah, that's the thing. It doesn't make a difference in terms of your experience in this life on earth no like you you can have your faith and your ideas and live a great life from beginning to end and it might not suit you to really ponder evolution and all the puzzles and problems no it doesn't you know yeah and i just like you know i look at all sorts of of stuff like that, like, you know, the icebergs melting and the water overflowing.
It's not. Ever have a glass full of ice and watched it melt? Did you ever see the glass flow over? No.
Takes up less room, you know. Yeah.
You know, the hot greenhouse, whatever. Well, there's a lot of horseshit that's involved in climate change for sure.'ve studied that, and I've had many discussions over the last four years.
The problem with anything is that once a narrative gets established, and then there's a profit attached to the solution to that narrative. Yes.
And that's green energy, and green energy bills, and there's businesses that are wrapped around there. And then there's also this fear that they love to pump into people about climate change, that, you know, they terrify the shit out of young people that we're going to destroy the world and climate change.
You must act now. And then you become beholden to the political party that it's espousing these ideas.
And then your enemy is the deniers of this science, even though you don't even understand the science. Yeah.
And did you see the Washington Post article that they published recently about temperature

change on Earth?

No.

Well, there's a down, like what they've realized is over the last, you know, X amount of thousands

of years that the temperature on Earth is plummeting.

Yeah.

And it's dropping.

And then when they look at the dips, this is the most important thing for anybody that's really freaked out about climate change there's no static temperature of earth ever there's never been a time where it maintains a temperature until human beings came along and fucked it all up that is just not real before human beings ever existed if you trust core samples, there's been a giant rise and fall and this constant dip.

There it is.

Scientists have captured Earth's climate over the last 485 million years.

Here's a surprising place we stand now.

Look at the dip at the end.

Whoa.

That's where we are.

That's reality.

And then if you look at the course of history, you look at the rise and fall like it's never a straight line way before human beings ever existed If you believe these silly people way before human beings had ever existed. There's always this rise and fall and This idea that the whole thing is based on carbon emissions from human beings is total bullshit.

It's not true.

We might be having an effect, but we're having a small effect, a very small effect. And the other things are completely outside of our control, including solar activity, the distance between the Earth and the sun.
There's a lot of factors. There's all sorts of factors involving natural activities like volcanic emissions, you know, which devastate.
You know, the entire human race was knocked down to a few thousand people at one point in time because of the Toba volcano. Oh, my God.
Yeah. Yeah.
No light. Yeah.
No light for years. Good luck.
Yeah, yeah. Good luck.
And the people that survive are fucking barbarians.

Yeah.

The most savage.

And then it takes a long time before they can figure out civilization again after that.

It's like dinosaurs.

They just stop.

Mm-hmm.

So what did they evolve into?

Chickens.

I guess.

Birds.

Raptors.

Well, they think a lot of dinosaurs had feathers now.

Yeah.

That's the newest thing. Yeah.
Maybe. You don't think so? I don't know.
Well, they think a lot of dinosaurs had feathers now. Yeah.
That's the newest thing.

Yeah.

Maybe.

You don't think so?

I don't know.

I need to take a pee.

I'm so desperate.

Okay, let's take a pee.

Let's take a pee.

We'll take a break.

We'll bring it back. I need to take a piddle.

It's a nice picture.

That's got to be a moment in your head where you're just like every now and then just go,

fuck.

Yeah, yeah.

It is funny. Yeah.
but it was a good picture the only thing that was going through my head was okay i can't i just can't look bad and i didn't have anything no grooming implements so i just just tried my best to not look too bad. There you go.
Yeah, you talk about humility. Like, what gives you more humility than being publicly humiliated? Yeah, sure.
Yeah. Public humiliation.
And you know what? For most people, it is their number one fear. Sure.
Is public humiliation. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Public speaking and because of that, public humiliation. Sure.
Yeah. Happens all the time.
Because we're so concerned about other people's opinions of us. I guess.
Yeah. Because we're not sure of our own opinions of others.
Well, you've been through a lot. Well, so have you.
Yeah. I mean, I remember, you know, I think they were giving you a grilling once for taking horseworm medicine yeah funny which yeah funny how that works yeah funny how that works funny how funny how that does work yeah what's really funny is uh how that was that a part of the demise of mainstream media because people were like well this is crazy this doesn't make are you guys really the news? Like, what is this? Yes, I know.
It seemed to be, they seemed to be complicit with a. A 100%.
And, you know, you think, well, why? Well, why? Because of money. I think this is what we were talking about before, that there is good and evil.
Yeah. And sometimes it manifests itself in a very clear and obvious way.
And I think that's what that was. That was evil.
That was putting people's lives second and putting money first. Well, I don't know why Fauci's still walking around.
How is that guy still walking around? I don't get it. If just people understand the history of the AIDS crisis and what that guy did back then.
Did you read that book? Yeah. Yeah, I read the book.
I listened to it. Yeah, I did too.
I drove up to San Francisco and I listened to it and I had road rage. Oh, yeah.
And it was like, whoa, how is he still there? How is, first of all, people that don't believe it, how come RFK Jr. didn't get sued? Yeah.
How come there's no lawsuits? If there was lies, there would be lawsuits. No, but that's right.
He'd be publicly humiliated. Instead, they kept that book off bestseller lists.
That book sold millions of copies. I know.
They hid it. That's when you find out that bestseller lists are actually curated.
It's not really bestseller. Yeah.
It's censored. It's all censored.
Everything's censored. But that book is an accurate depiction of what Anthony Fauci did during the AIDS crisis, which probably was an AZT crisis.
Yeah. It was an AIDS crisis.
I mean, it's fairly incontrovertible now that he was fooling with gain of function. 100%.
And, you know, why is he still around? Right. Or at least free.
Right. Right.
And no repercussions. Yeah.
Whatever happened to that story where, you know, the wombat and the weasel got together and they were horsing around and a bat pissed on him with a golden shower. And all of a sudden it was in a wet market.
Yeah. Very wet market.
You got, you know. Complete total horseshit.
Totally. The scientists that we're supposed to trust for pitching that horseshit.
It was like the AIDS thing. Some green monkey bit of Qantas Stewart on the ass.
Then he went around the world and got everybody sick. And it was like, you know you want to go to the aids rabbit hole look up a guy named peter duzberg oh yes i know yeah i read that book yeah that is crazy because he's telling the truth this is the fucking covid crisis times a thousand yeah i had him on the podcast way back in the day it was one of the earlier guests that i had it was like way back in like 2010 It was one of the first times I got openly attacked for someone being on the podcast

There was like blood is on your hands. I'm like first of all.
No, it's not it's 2010 who's dying of AIDS zero people So stop it's not bloods on your hand like if this guy's correct

He's a tenured professor at the University of California Berkeley who is

Like his work on cancer is you know, everybody thinks it's groundbreaking work, brilliant doctor, but he was a heretic. He was a guy who stood outside of Fauci's...
The narrative. ...doctrine and the narrative, and he said, I don't believe that HIV is what's causing this when all these people that are having these immune systems are all heavy drug users.
Yeah, well, that's right. He's like, I think this is a disease of a decimation of the immune system due to heavy drug use.
And then on top of that, you're prescribing this chemical, this AZT that kills people. They stopped using it for chemotherapy because it was killing them quicker than cancer was.
I was in the Sydney Theater Company in the 90s, and I was going to a funeral once a month of friends. They were all dying.
It's crazy in the 80s and 90s. And they were all getting AZT.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah.
I don't know. Well, the ones that were getting AZT, even the ones that were asymptomatic, like Magic Johnson.

They were giving Magic Johnson AZT.

He had to stop taking it.

Yeah.

Because he was making him sick.

It was killing him.

Yeah.

Yeah, I read it.

And, like, it's even with RFK's book.

And he's an amazing guy.

People say, oh, he's kooky.

He's crazy.

He's not crazy.

He's not.

He's one of the most erudite, you know, they say he's an anti-vaxxer.

He's not. He's not.
He's like, he's a very shrewd. He's never lost a case, I don't think, when he brings something to suit.
I don't think he's ever been defeated. But that book is not just him.
It's him and about a thousand highly qualified scientists and physicians commenting on the whole situation. So when you read it, it's a pretty pretty convincing document and you're right.
Nobody sued him for it. Yeah, you know It's pretty scary.
Well not not only did they not assume their their response is to try to ignore it They don't want to debate him on it. They don't want to do anything No, they want to just ignore it and hope it goes away But it doesn't go away and the more people talk about it the more people read it and when you do read it and you go if this is true what the fuck is going on? And how is that monster still loose? Yeah, oh and he seems like a monster the way he talks about things He just seems well first of all there's so many instances of him lying There's so many like where he said one thing two years later It turns out to be a lie said one like whether it is the natural – The mask thing.
Yeah, the mask thing, whether it's the natural spillover, the lies about gain of function to Congress. Yeah, sure.
When he was lying to Rand Paul about whether or not they did gain of function research. How is that not perjury? How is he not in trouble? Yeah, well, hey, other mysteries, you know.
Well, then the Biden administration is now talking about taking that guy and giving him a full pardon. It's like fucking crazy.
Yeah, they might. I gave Hunter a pardon.
Yeah, but Hunter's... Hunter didn't need a pardon.
Was he indicted? Well, I mean, he was in trouble for tax evasion. Oh, I see.
There's a lot of tax problems. He definitely did some uncool things.
And then there's the Burisma thing. But the crazy thing about his pardon is it starts at the time of him being involved in Burisma.
So it's from 2011 all the way to today. Right.
That's what he pardoned him. It's the biggest sweeping pardon that anyone's ever received ever.
And Biden's pardoned more people than anybody ever, too. He was already over 8,000 people pardoned.
Yeah. A lot of criminals on death row and stuff.
Well, there's that. But then there's also people that like the kids for cash judges, you know, where they were locking up kids and putting them in child detention centers because they wanted money and they were doing it for kickbacks.
Yeah. I saw that.
Evil. There's a documentary.
Yeah. Evil.
Again, what we're talking about, good and evil. Yeah.
Like, these are real things. And rational people that profess themselves to be intelligent and secular, they don't want to believe in good and evil.
They don't think that they're – they just think people do bad things. People have motivations.
They do bad things. But they don't want to believe in the concept of good and evil because these are biblical concepts.
They are. Right? Yeah.
And I – you know, they've been around since the beginning. And people want to pretend they're smarter than the people that sort of embrace these biblical concepts right or yeah i think uh that goes into evolution again are we smarter than our grandparents you know i don't know well we are about some things but we can't survive the way they did nope they're obviously intelligent yeah it's just they didn't have access to information the way we do.
But there's a difference between information and intelligence. Sure.
Yeah. I don't have many devices for information.
I read books. I read mostly history books.
Yeah? Yeah. Oh, I got a recommended book to you.
Okay. It's fascinating.
And it's called The Frontiersman. And it's about a guy called Simon Kenton.
You ever hear of this guy? No. Whoa.
And it was written by a guy who's now deceased. His name is Alan Eckert.
And it is really about opening up Ohio and Kentucky and places like that with this guy Simon Kenton, who was just an Irish immigrant. He wasn't much for farming and stuff, but he thought he killed a guy.
And so he ran away because he thought he'd be indicted for some crime or something. And he ended up being this frontiersman.
And it's a very interesting document because you get the history of what was going on at the time when the country was opening up between the settlers and the Indians, you know, the Shawnee. One of the most brutal books I've ever read.
Really? Oh, it's very well done. And it has a narrative.
But it's reconstructed from all kinds of historical documents and letters and diaries and all this kind of stuff. So I think the guy took about 15 years to sort of compile all this stuff and write it.
And the first half of the book is about this guy, Simon Kenton. And the second half is about Tecumseh, you know, the chief.
one of the most fascinating books I've read you can't put it down really? yeah because it's just like it's like little chapters I'm gonna get that right now have you ever read the Empire of the Summer Moon? no Empire of the Summer Moon is about the Comanche and it's all about the settling of this area. Right.
It's fucking incredible. And again, one of the most brutal books ever.
So this is The Frontiersman. The Frontiersman by Alan Eckert.
Yeah. This episode is brought to you by TikTok.
7.5 million U.S. businesses, from restaurants to mechanic shops to real estate firms, rely on TikTok to grow.
Together, they employ more than 28 million people. Because when small businesses thrive, communities do too.
Small businesses thrive on TikTok. Learn more at tiktokeconomicimpact.com.
This episode is brought to you by Amazon MGM Studios new movie, The Accountant 2, in theaters April 25th. Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal are back in The Accountant 2.
When an old acquaintance gets murdered, he leaves behind a cryptic message that leads straight to Christian Wolfe, the uniquely skilled accountant, to figure out who's behind it. To solve this thing, he will need to team up with his estranged and seriously lethal brother, Brax.
It's got crazy action, but it's also hilarious. The relationship between the brothers is something anyone with a sibling can relate to.
And trust me, this is an R-rated action thriller that you got to experience on the big screen. The Accountant 2, only in theaters, April 25th april 25th check out the accountant to movie.com to learn more i'm gonna check that right now just so that i make sure that i have it yeah and it's all in little bite-sized chunks and it actually for a history book it has this incredible narrative with heroes and villains and all the players.
Very interesting document. I'm getting it right now.
Oh, yeah. Don't read it before bed.
No? No, it gets pretty dark.

Why are you so drawn to history?

I don't know.

I think because maybe I'm trying to learn something.

It's been about 80 years since the last big war.

Alan Eckert, got it.

I think I just want to learn.

I mean, my dad went to World War II. He went to Guadalcanal, right? He got bit by mosquitoes.
He had, you know, malaria, which is interesting to note that he used to take hydroxychloroquine when he'd get a malaria attack. Isn't that crazy? And then when I tried, when my doctor recommended I get it when I had COVID, they gouged me 800.
It used to cost him 30 bucks. They wanted 800 bucks for it.
They were gouging. Well, not only that.
When Trump talked about it, then all of a sudden they demonized it. Yeah, yeah.
They laughed. Yeah, which is crazy because it's an antiviral.
It works. Yeah, it works on malaria.
Yeah. Yeah, and people have been taking it forever.
Sure. Pregnant women can take it if they have the flu, and it doesn't hurt the baby.
It's pretty safe. It's like ivermectin.
But that's what's so bizarre about the time that we just went through, because there's more information now available to people instantaneously than ever before. You look it up on your phone, you instantly know, oh, ivermectin, the guy who created it, won the Nobel Prize.
Yeah, 2014. 15, yeah, for use in human beings.
Yeah, yeah. So what the fuck is going on? Yeah.
Like, who's running this thing? And it's harmless. And it wasn't made for horses.
It was made for people. And then they used it for horses.
Right. Well, it's like saying penicillin is for horses, because they use that on horses, too.
Like, that's stupid. They told me it was for moldy bread.
That's what it was from, yeah. Yeah.
But, I mean, there's a lot of medications used on animals, too. You can't say it's a veterinary medication just because it's also used on animals.
No, that's true. It's been used on literally prescribed billions of times on human beings.
Yeah. It's like the stem cell stuff.
They started using it on horses with emphysematic lung conditions, racehorses, because they would bleed. And they got the stem cells from the umbilical cords of their offspring, injected it into them, and it healed their lungs, which is part of my story.
Because I smoked for 45 years, and I couldn't stop. And I read this silly book by Alan Carr, not the little guy who, you know, managed the village people in the caftan, the little fat guy.
But, no, this other guy, Alan Carr, and he wrote this book. And it's the only thing that made me stop.
It worked like crazy. But the book made you stop? The book made me stop.
I read this book. It was the book called The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.
And it's a silly title, right? And it was sad when my son gave it to me. He said, stop smoking, Dad.
Here's this book. I left it on.
I used to walk past the bookshelf. I'd go, dumb book, dumb title, you know.
And then I finally, my doctor said, you have first stage emphysema. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.
He said, yeah, you've got to get the smart side. I'd better read this book.
So I read the book and I stopped. Right? So it was, I think it was like neurolinguistic programming or something like that.
You read it and you kind of self-hypnotize yourself. But it worked.
What did the book tell you? It said, it didn't tell you you're bad, you're going to die. It didn't tell you all that sort of stuff.
It was like, I mean, they had things like, maybe I'm blowing it, but they had a chapter where it says, okay, we focused on the negative aspects of smoking. Now we're going to talk about the good aspects of smoking in the next chapter.
And then you turn the page and the page is empty. And it's just a trick.
It's a mind trick. The whole thing was a mind trick, but it worked, and I don't know why it worked.
But it was sort of like self-hypnosis while you're reading the book. And it wasn't a negative thing, like, I gotta stop this.
It's bad. It's bad.
I'm scared. It wasn't even that.
In fact, if I hadn't had the stem cells afterwards, my lungs completely healed from that, by the way. Did it do it intravenously? Yeah, intravenous.

And it gets stuck in your lungs.

Was this Dr. Reardon? It was Reardon.
Yeah. And we talked, yeah.
Yeah. It worked.

Stem cells are incredible. And the fact that you

can't get them the way they can get them in overseas,

the way you can get it in Panama, where Reardon

has his clinic, and Tijuana.

They're getting better here.

They're getting better, but there's so much resistance

because of the FDA. Yeah, sure.
And the

resistance is purely because of money.

Again, it's an evil thing. It's not because they're

I'm so. Yeah.
And, you know, there's an agenda. I think, you know, pharma wants to keep you on stuff.
Yeah. They want to sell you something.
So if there's a surefire cure for something it's not necessarily hailed no well and then there's also the problem of the media the media is lockstep in with these businesses that are promoting these things yes and they're not giving you information they're giving you propaganda before they're giving you information propaganda is moreanda is more important to them than information. Yeah.

And that's what's crazy.

It's like we're counting on you guys and you fucked us.

You fucked us for four years with this COVID thing.

And now you expect us to listen to you about the fucking swine flu or the bird flu or whatever

other thing you're trying to freak us out about, which always coincides with some sort

of a political event.

Like here it is, the inauguration of the new president. And oh, look at this.
There's a new disease. What have we got now? What is it? Do you think there will be? Well, there is.
There's this fucking swine flu, H5N1, whatever it is. I thought it was bird flu.
Bird flu. One person died.
One person in America, first person died, 65 years old with a bunch of comorbidities. Yeah, okay.
Which is usually what it is. But by the way, 65 people with a bunch of comorbidities die all the time of nothing.
They die of anything. I mean, this is like a car that's falling apart and you run over a nail and, oh, the nail killed the car.
That car was falling the fuck apart. The nail you ran over was the last nail in the coffin,

but the thing was falling apart.

I got COVID from my gardener.

And he had it first, and then I got it.

And I was like, ah, did I grab the hose or what?

You know, what was, I don't know.

But it was, I knew the guy for 20 years.

And we both went to the same hospital.

And he died and I didn't.

Jesus. I think we both got remdesivir, which is not good.
Not good. Not good.
Causes kidney failure. I know.
I couldn't walk for three months after I had that stuff. Really? Because it kills you.
I found that afterwards it kills you and that's why I wonder about Fauci. Oh, you should wonder about that guy.
Meanwhile, they were trying to stop people from getting monoclonal antibodies. Yeah.
Yeah. They've restricted monoclonal antibodies, which is fucking insane because they wanted to promote that vaccine because they wanted to profit off of it, which brings us back again to evil.
Evil's real. It's real.
Putting money over human lives is evil. I agree.
It's a real thing. And there's a temptation to do it too,

which is even more crazy.

I don't believe that there is anything

that can afflict mankind

that hasn't got a natural cure for it.

I think that there has to be.

It just makes sense to me.

Now, I couldn't prove that,

but I just believe that.

Yeah.

That there's got to be something that cures things

and I'll tell you a good

story. Okay.

I have three friends

all three of them

had stage four cancer

all three of them don't have cancer right

now at all

and they had some serious stuff going on

and what did they take?

Yeah

Jesus. They took some

what you've heard they've taken. Ivermectin.
Fembendazole. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm hearing that a lot. They drank hydrochloride something or other.
There's studies on that now where people have proven that they... People are drinking methylene blue and stuff like that.
Yeah, methylene blue, which was a fabric dye. Yeah.
Yeah, it was a textile dye. Now they find it has profound effects on your mitochondria.
Yep. Yeah.
This stuff works, man. There's a lot of stuff that does work, which is very strange because, again, it's profit.
When you hear about things that are demonized and that turn out to be effective, you always wonder, well, what is going on here? How has our medical institutions, how have they failed us so that things that do cure you are not promoted because they're not profitable? That they can't control it. They don't have a patent on it, whether it's vitamin D, K2 and magnesium you know zinc and quercetin

I do all that stuff. I do all that stuff.
Did you do the Bricka thing? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Me too.
I lost like 30 pounds, right? It's fantastic. I was talking to Dana, and he said, oh, you know, I was like, yeah.
And I said, yeah, I got to do something about this. I'm like, I'm 5'10", 235, you know.
That's too fat. Yeah.
So I had to sort of roll it back some. Now I'm under 200, which is about where it should be.
And it was that Brecca stuff. No, Gary's a national treasure.
Yeah. And he gets shit on all over the place, too.
Oh, sure. Going to sauna.
But I feel better. Oh, yeah.
Oh, I do all that stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Cold plunge, sauna. I'm ritualistic with it.
Yeah, that's good. It's part of my everyday life.
I hear your cold plunge is like 34 degrees. I don't understand that, though.
I mean, dude, 34 degrees. Whoa.
Yeah, it's cold. That's hardcore.
Yeah, you get accustomed to it. It, to me, is not.
I guess. I mean, it sucks.
Every time I do it, I'm like, don't do it. There's like the part of me that's like my inner bitch.
I'm like, we don't have to do this. We don't have to do this.
But luckily, the general is stronger than the inner bitch. The general is always telling, shut the fuck up and get in there.
And I just get in there every day. I do like 48, man.
That inner bitch is always talking, though. He never shuts up.
No. Never shuts up.
Don't ever think that it, like, even though I do it every day, anybody who's like, I don't know how you do it. I don't know how I do it either, but I fucking do it.
I make sure I do it. I just, I'm the boss.
Yeah. Do you do the saunas, too? Oh, yeah.
Do you do the red light bed? I have a red light bed, yeah. Yeah.
I have a sauna, red light bed. I have a hyperbaric chamber.
Wow. I have everything.
Hyperbaric chambers are the best, man. It's incredible.
Incredible. Good teamwork.
I got to get back in there back in there i feel like i got more holes in my head it's phenomenal for just overall recovery for everything and it's it's also been shown to lengthen telomeres they did a study out of israel yeah they gave people a protocol over 90 days you do 60 sessions of 90 minutes over 90 days yeah and it's shown the lengthen telomeres and decrease your biological age. Okay.
And you just feel fucking great. That makes sense to me.
Yeah, you're flooding your body with oxygen. Most diseases, a lot of them, come from a lack of oxygen.
Your body not having enough oxygen is very bad for you. I used to have a Qigong master.
This is what kind of blows my mind about medicine and about ancient stuff. This guy is from Shanghai.
He didn't speak much English, right? A little bit. His wife would translate for him.
And he'd come in and he could like point at you, right, from this far away and you'd feel it. but like feel it like to the as palpable as someone pushing you around it's like really yeah yeah yeah i'm not kidding you're like what year was this when this was happening oh shit i met him when i was like 40 yeah he only just passed away damn too bad i'd like to meet that guy oh no there's people like him there are others like it oh yeah he's not the only one he learned it from somebody and i think he i think he imparted some knowledge but you know he would get you and he could he could like point at you and stuff like that and it makes you wonder like how did they build the pyramids you know i mean if if he can use his mind and kind of get into quantum physics and move shit around with thought and with energy.

There's actual energy coming out of his fingers.

They could have built the pyramids like that.

I don't know.

Maybe somebody had that down somewhere.

Well, I'd like to hear a better explanation.

Me too.

Well, it was really weird.

One time he was working on me and he was working on my liver. He said, your liver's blocked because he looks at you.
And if you look at him, he looks away. And his wife engages you while he checks you out.
And then he gives you a little body map and he puts X's all over it. And you go, yeah, that's right.
I got a pain here and a thing there. And, you know, he knows where everything is.
He knows exactly what's going on. Did you ask him what he's seeing your aura? Like, what is he seeing? Everything.
He sees everything. He was an allopathic doctor first.
He went to medical school. He could write your prescription.
He could do all that stuff. He was a doctor.
And then he saw a Qigong master, this old guy, and people were lining up getting cured. And he thought, that's really interesting.
And he learned that on top of being an allopathic doctor. So one day he's at me on my back, and he's pushing, and I can feel my back, and I'm at the wall, and there's a poster of a film on the wall, you know, my office.
And I'm looking, and I can see him in the background, and he's like down like this, like, ah, like kung fu pointing rays of energy at me. And he hit me.
He started yelling at my organ, at my liver, like, you know, whatever. And I went up the wall and there was like eight inches of air under my heels.
And I was up the wall and I was like, whoa. And I came back down and it freaked me out.
And I looked at him and he just went, ah, he said, don't die. It's just science.
Like that. Just science.
Just science? Yeah. Just science.
And I was so freaked out. I went to a priest.
I said, is this guy demonic or something? Because he's lifting me off the wall. And the priest was like, he was an old Jesuit, right? A traditional old guy.
And he was a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Elmer Fudd, you know. That's the way he sounded.
And I said, is this anything, like, demonic about this guy? He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, did he heal you? Like that. And I said, why, yes, he did.
And he said, that's all right then. And he says, I have no trouble like that because it was it was within the realm of possibility that somebody had power like that and then it's inexplicable but that it works and it did work he yeah he just passed away he was pretty old there was a place that you know i bought a comedy club out here and before uh the building that we bought was the Ritz Theater on 6th Street but before that I was under contract to another building and this other building was owned by a cult and this is a crazy story the cult was awful horrible there's a documentary on it it's called holy hell and this guy who was a gay porn star and a hypnotist he was a a yoga instructor, got a bunch of people in West Hollywood, and then eventually moved them all out here to Austin.
But what this guy was doing, one of the things that he would do to his disciples is he would do a thing called the knowing, and they had to be chosen for it. They had to earn it.
And when he would get them and bestow the knowing upon them, he would touch their head and they would have this incredible experience where they said they contacted God. Now, all these people denounced him eventually.
They left the cult. They all said he was a con man and this and that.
But they all talked about that experience. And they said it was the most profound experience of their life, that they really do feel like they came in contact with God and it's like what can a person if a person truly believes and this other person truly believes that they can do this to them and they have this moment and something does happen like what is is that all inside of us do people have ways of pulling that out of you that we've lost track of that? We don't know and even an evil person who's running a cult and manipulating people and exploiting people Still has this thing that he was able to do to them that even after they've admitted that this guy exploited them They say that was the most profound moment of their life.
That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Because I think, yeah, there are party tricks that you can get.
Right. But is that party trick, if it really is a pathway to connect you, at least temporarily with God, that there is a thing inside of us? Well, that's why I went to the priest, because I thought, listen, because I'm off the floor.
Right. So I thought, I got to check this out, because this is too weird.
And he said, did he heal you? And I said, he did. And he said, that's all right, then.
Because the guy wasn't trying to get anything out of me. Right.
In fact, he never charged me. Really? The first time I went to see him, he charged me.
And it was like, okay. and fact he never charged me the first time i went to see him he charged me and it was like okay and then he never charged me again and he used to call me when i was sick really i wouldn't call him he knew when i was sick he'd call me he said i need to come see you i'm like okay so he had like some sort of a direct line with your energy something pretty amazing yeah and and and he could oh this is the other thing he could teach you martial arts like quickly without you having to know what to do it was a weird thing he did it firstly with my son who he got him for a couple of weeks and like he said i'm going to show you something and i went out there and he blindfolded me he had had these two swords and he was doing all this crazy stuff.
I'm like, what? I said, how did he learn that so fast? He said, it was in him. I'm like, whoa.
And then he started to do a thing. He taught me how to harness this energy and to actually begin what seemed to be almost like involuntary movement, and depending on the hand mode you took, it would create a style of kata or self-defense.
I used to do a crude martial art. Not crude, but like a hard martial art.
What was it? Kyokushenkai. Okay, yeah.
You know, way back. Kyokushenkarate.
Yeah, yeah yeah i think it's korean it's japanese it is yeah i can't remember but it's like you know i didn't stick with it but it was uh but but he he he got this whole other approach of breathing and visualizations that would actually draw energy into your lower chakras and And then you'd release the energy, and it would create this kind of movement. And I showed it to a friend of mine who was a martial artist.
And I said, tell me about the footwork I'm doing here and what I'm doing. And he looked at me and he says, that looks really good to me.
It was kind of like, what's that really soft kind of martial art? Tai Chi. It was like that.
I was doing stuff like that. It was crazy.
And it was really a great release. But it was about visualization and breath.
Yeah. And the release of that energy that you pent up from all around that you visualized coming, manifesting itself in you.
There's got to be something to all that stuff people have been practicing tai chi for a long time yeah they wouldn't be practicing to save movements for all these years if it didn't do something yeah pretty interesting yeah it keeps people young and healthy they do it in china you see groups of people out in in asia sort of out there in groups do it all in unison it's like it's a good thing exercise yeah what do you do now for exercise oh gosh i'm terrible i've been i've come off i'm falling apart i got this i got dead dead guy's parts in my shoulder i've got you know cadaver parts and my this shoulder fell apart this shoulder fell a hip a foot it was terrible i couldn't walk for about a year almost. Really? And so, you know, you fall down.
That's partially why I had to go and see Breckett. I sort of get the couch potato stuff off.
But, you know, I lift weights and I do some, you know, walking and stuff like that. Like really get your heart rate up and stuff like that.

So, you know, I'm trying, Hey, I'm, I'm, uh, you know, I'm 69 years old. So it's like, it's getting to be like seven decades or, you know, but I want to stay fit if I can.
And I banged myself up a little too much on my early life. So I'm paying for it now.
And, like, in your 60s, man, you're not there yet, but stuff starts, like, giving up on you. Yep.
It's like. I feel it in my 50s.
Yeah. How old are you? 57.
58 is when it starts, man. Oh, Jesus.
Yeah, that's when I first noticed it. It was like, oh, what's going on with this hair, this shoulder? And I went down to Reardon, of course, who shot it up with stem cells,

and it was good for like two years.

You just got to keep going back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't go back often enough.

That's the thing.

I think it's just your body's just not going to heal the way it did when you were younger

unless you consistently get therapy for that.

Yeah, yeah.

You're in good shape, though.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

So I was in reasonable shape at 58, And I think I'm in reasonable shape now. But I'm just, you know, it's just trying to push the old man off.
And there's various methods to do it, you know. Yeah, that's what it is.
Keep the body as young as you possibly can. Yeah.
Yeah, and demand a lot from it. That's what I do.
Yeah yeah i just demand a lot and make sure i recover i think a lot of it's about meditation too you know you can actually um get into a good headspace that kind of cools you out and stops the stress even no matter what's going on i'm gonna have to do it tonight when i find out whether i still have a home or not yeah well if anything looks demonic it's the fires in Los Angeles yeah I remember one time we were filming fear factor and we had a drive home we had to cancel the shoot or ended early and drive home because the fires had hit and this was like up we were off the five and driving home for 50 minutes on the highway the The right side of the highway was in flames. Yeah.
Like Lord of the Rings, like Sauron is coming over the top. It looked fucking insane.
It's biblical. Yeah.
It looks insane. And you got to be careful, too, because you could die.
Oh, 100 percent. If you can't breathe.
I mean, if you can't breathe or if the cars in front of you catch fire and the wind blows this way and all the cars catch fire and you can't get off the road because to the right of you is on fire, to the left of you is on fire and the fire is coming up the highway. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, people have died that way. And it can happen in an instant.
Yeah. I got hung once by mistake.
And I was on a film set. And I had my neck in a noose, and I was directing the film.

So I'm on a ladder, and I'm like, so I'll just be hanging here like this.

And then the next thing I knew, I was waking up.

I was on the floor, you know, and there were all these people standing over looking at me.

And I'm saying, what are you people doing?

Get to work.

You know, it was like, and they said, well, you hung yourself.

I said, whoa, you're kidding me. It happens in an instant, and you don't know it.
It wasn't painful, nothing. I was just gone.
Well, you probably got choked out. Yeah, choked out by the noose.
And then they grabbed me by the legs and got the rope off. Jesus.
During Braveheart, it was like. Oh, really? Oh, wow.
It was funny. So I found out what it was like to sort of go into the next realm.

But, of course, we did.

I was fortunate enough to work with Horian Gracie 39 years ago.

Yeah.

You know, he'd just come from Brazil.

Well, I remember when you were doing Lethal Weapon.

It was the first time I'd ever seen jujitsu in a movie.

A leg choke on film.

Yeah.

He taught, yeah, Horian taught me the leg choke. He said, now you grab your foot and you...
Yeah. I was like, okay.
And it was cool, but it was... Now my girlfriend does it, and she's like a purple belt, so I've learned...
Really? Yeah, I've learned not to talk back. Oh, she's legit.
Yeah, she's legit. Purple belt is basically a black belt.
You just need a little bit more time. Yep.
If you can get... I always tell all jiu jujitsu students, if you can get to purple belt, you are a black belt.
You're going to be a black belt. Oh, she will be.
You just got to stay on that path. No, she is.
She's obsessed with it. Yeah.
And she's, you know, as I say, I don't talk back to her. I think the purple belt is the hardest belt to get to.
It is. Because it's just like in the beginning, you're just getting crushed.
That's jujitsu, especially for women.

It's so difficult for women because they don't have the physical strength that the men have.

Because you can kind of get away with a lot.

If you're a big, strong guy, you can get away with a lot of shit.

But then by the time you get to Purple Belt, like, man, you have to have real technique. And you have to have a real understanding of what's going on.

She's got a good mind.

And I think she's like a chess player.

It is like that.

Because I know from fighting with her.

She wins arguments when she's wrong.

Sometimes you let them win though, right?

You have to.

You're just like, you got to walk away.

Oh, yeah.

Sometimes it's like, oh.

You got to go, okay.

It's my second thought in my first action.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.

But she got the purple belt.

That's amazing.

Good for her.

It's good for her.

Yeah.

Yeah, a woman black belt.

That's an unbelievably exceptional woman.

They can get to that because they have to roll with men.

And it's just a significant disadvantage.

Big dudes and stuff.

And she's like, you know, she's done some exceptional things I've heard. So it's like, yeah, it's pretty good.
That's awesome. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I didn't follow it up.
You can still do it. No, I'm a more baseball bat gun kind of guy.
I'm in trouble. I just like, you know, that kind of stuff.
Well, be careful with that in California. You could wind up being in jail.
Yeah, that's true.

You wind up using it to protect yourself and they'll lock you up.

Yes, it's...

Which is also evil.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that happens a bit.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, well.

Yeah, there's a perverse nature in our society right now with the law.

You know, when you look at your life now and you're on your third act, as you were saying,

like, what do you look forward to these days?

Is it creating things?

It's creation. Yeah, I think it is.
It's about creation. And I figure, I'm pretty average at most things, but I'm good at a couple of things.
I know how to tell a story on film. I know how to do that.
I don't know. That's a weird place to be.
But I think a lot can be achieved by art and image. And you can convey a lot without actually having to say it.
You can do things to affect people emotionally or spiritually even without being overt. I always like to reference just a shot and it's in a Ridley Scott movie, right? And you don't know why it works or why it's effective on some level, but it's kind of a profound, effective shot.
And it's that first shot in the Gladiator movie where he's running his hand over the wheat, right? With that music and stuff. Why does that work? I don't know.
You can't explain it, but it works. Well, Ridley Scott is a master.
That's a visionary human being. He sees things.
He knows how to shoot. Yeah, yeah.
And that's really good. It's a valid pursuit, I think, in storytelling, if you can do that.
Every time he goes out there, it's eye's eye candy it's a feast for the eyes you know do you have different goals with like different projects like obviously flight risk is entertainment it's fun it's entertaining entertainment yeah and uh yes different goals and it was the other thing too is it's like we're living in a different time now in the film world i mean everything's upside. And you have to compete in a medium where you have less time, less money.
Do it fast. Do it now.
And it's like, wow, can I do that? I always had the luxury of, like, you know, big budget and 3,000 people on horses and all this kind of stuff or, you know, and was able to take my time with stuff. i had 22 days and here here you got tell this story in 22 days so i felt the challenge of being able to do that and being able to make something that really got people like they could watch it and enjoy it you know and i'm glad you saw it i'm glad you liked it um that's all I want.
I just want people to have a nice little ride, a fun ride, entertainment. But yes, you have different goals with things.
I mean, the next thing I'm going to tackle is more profound for me. It's going to take more out of me.
This is the resurrection story? Yeah. And I even have to change my entire life to do it.
How so? You can't go into a project as profound in nature as that without somehow preparing yourself for it. It's like preparing for a fight.
It's like you have to be fit for the fight. And, yes, so you have to spiritually prepare yourself for that.

And that's going to take some sacrifice because, you know, I profess this and I profess that.

I'm not a great example of Christianity.

You know, I'm just, you know, I'm flawed and I make a lot of mistakes. But I have to try and be better somehow in order to go in and make that film.

So what does that mean?

I think I know what it means, you know.

Well, one of the things that I thought was fascinating was reading and listening to Jim Caviezel talk about his experience playing Christ in your film.

Yeah.

It just truly changed that guy's, the course of his whole life. Well, it was fascinating to watch him work, actually.
And most of the time, I just, like, backed away because he was doing something that, and I've seen a lot of people portray Jesus in films, right? And I never buy it. You can't quite buy it.
Something creeps in the color that's not... Something's not right or discordant.
And some of them are pretty good, but you never quite believe it all the way. What was the Willem Dafoe movie? Oh, that was a Scorsese film.
Right. What was that called? The Last Temptation.
That's right. That's right.
Which, interestingly enough, I was in a hotel in the Savoy and I had food poisoning. I was near dead from, I ate a bad oyster in London and I was dying in a hotel room and I couldn't even leave.
It was the worst. I think it was like salmonella or something.
And I saw this cord on the side of the bed and I pulled it. And all of a sudden a door opened up and a butler like Jeeves came in.
He says, yes, sir. And I'm like, whoa.
And I said, I'm really sick. I said, what do you think I should eat? Might I suggest some warm consomme and a cup of tea? I said, okay.
So this butler took care of me in this hotel.

But while I was there, Scorsese calls the room and says, come here, I want to talk here.

So I go in and talk to Martin.

And he's in his room.

And all the windows, the screens are drawn.

He's got 18 different TVs going on at the same time in this dark room.

And he's talking to me about The Last Temptation of Christ.

And he wants me to play Jesus.

And I said, whoa, i'm not doing it and i sort of got out of there and then i went back to my room and they changed my room now this is really weird they had changed my room and moved my stuff and they told me they were going to do it but i forgot so i'm using a key to get into my room my room, and it won't work. And the door opens up all of a sudden, and it's Keith Richards in his underpants standing there staring through me.
And there's a girl in a mink coat walking around it, mink coat and nothing else, walking in the background. And Keith Richards standing there in his underpants with a spliff.
And I'm like, I tried to explain that I thought it was my room but it wasn't and you know it was ridiculous i'm 26 years old and he just looks at me like he shuts the door in my face i thought well that was my that was my meeting with keith richards he slammed the door in my face so it's like it's fantastic you know anyway but what were you talking about caviezel playing christ Christ. He did something I think that nobody else did.
And I think he pulled it off because I totally believed it. I believed it too.
And it was like, what did he do? He emptied himself out. Yeah.
And he invited something else in. And he left it.
He didn't try anything. He emptied himself out and he meditated.
And he let Christ in. And that role seemed to have had a profound effect on him.
It did. As a human being.
Oh, absolutely. And kind of fucked him up in his career.
A little bit. Because people associated him entirely with that film.
And then they associated him with Christianity, and then they associated him with right-wing politics. Yeah.
Yeah. And then, you know, he got sidetracked by a few guys.
I mean, there's some people out there who, like, they get in your ear, and it's like Cassius, you know, talking about us. And they get you up to make a speech somewhere, and next thing you know, it's like people throwing eggs at you.
Yeah. And you wonder, should I even be saying this? And so he stepped on a bunch of landmines.
But yeah, it did have a profound effect on him. But I think he was already mostly there anyway.
And I noticed that because when I was trying to cast it, I thought, who could play this? And I saw the opening shot from Terry Malick's film, which was The Thin Red Line. And it was just a big close-up of Kviesel.
And there was something otherworldly and childlike going on there in the close-up. And I thought, who's that guy? He's amazing.
Of course, he couldn't keep the blue eyes. He had to trade them out.
So I changed the color of his eyes to brown and all that stuff. So it looked like he came from the region.
But amazing. He already had a quality, an ethereal kind of otherworldliness, space cadet quality.
Yeah. And he's still kind of like that.
He's still like, wow. Yeah, I wish I had met him, or I haven't met him still, but I wish I had seen him before and then after.
You know, to see, like, what, did that role change him? Because it seemed to have strengthened his faith sure it did yeah yeah he got he got in real tight with it and i think he had some experiences while he was doing it he suffered a little you know and uh didn't he get struck by lightning well there's two times there was these lightning strikes happening on the set you know and it was this guy with guy with him. He was a young fella, one of the assistants on the film.
His name was Jan. And old Jan was like, he's like 6'2", Italian, northern Italian guy, you know.
If he tripped in the street, women would slide under him, you know. It was that kind of stuff.
The guy was like a babe magnet. Right.
And and I think he was taking full advantage of the gifts he had. But he got hit by lightning the first time getting people.
We were out on the hill and there was a lightning storm, like with the crosses and stuff. Oh, Jesus.
And and this guy called Chieppo. He was a grip and he never spoke a word to me the whole time.
He's just a quiet kind of guy. And I figured, oh, he doesn't know English.
But he came up to me, and in perfect English he said, you know, I think you should get all the people off the hill. We could be struck by lightning.
And I thought, oh, that's a good idea. Let's get off the hill.
So we're moving off the hill. Everybody's getting off.
And this kid gets hit through the umbrella, this yawn guy and he gets zapped by lightning right but he's 22 and he goes to the disco all night and dad you know he's doing the whole you know 22 experience and he he comes back the next day he's like yeah it was great and then he was with jim the second time it happened but this time i found him in a Fiat Bambino with his knees up around his ears, like waiting for the third strike. He was like, this just doesn't happen twice in the third strike.
And he says, I have to change my life. So it was pretty funny.
Filming that movie must have had a profound effect on a lot of people. It did, yeah.
Because doing something that wasn't just a film it was yeah verite kind of yeah and it was strengthening people's faith that film was a I mean profound success and a lot of people dismiss the idea of it even yeah you know especially in Hollywood I mean you had a self-fund all that right yes it was self-funded. And it was a very strange experience, that one.
Because I put the money in. I thought, well, maybe I'll break even.
And it was, then I got these messages back. All the majors wouldn't distribute it.
So I was like, nobody will distribute it. Okay, I guess I've lost, you know, the money.
But it was the experience and uh so um one guy was left in the room at the end when the when the dust settled it was some guy he said i'll distribute and he had a little company called new market and they distributed like one or two films before and uh i think it was a charlie's theron movie called a monster about that horrible serial Oh, yeah, yeah. And he said, I'll do it.
And, you know, it was just really basics. I went and I met the exhibitors.
And, you know, and this guy was like the distributor. This little company was just him and a toothless dog and a fax and an assistant.
And it was like, okay, the smoke and mirrors about this with between the distribution exhibition i met i made handshake deals with all the exhibitors yeah we'll show this i said okay and then we put it out there and it went out nobody expected it to do much but it did phenomenally well and um and there was this kind of thing in the town that said, did anyone just see that? Did anyone just see what that guy did? Can't let that guy do that again. And we don't want anyone doing that.
You know, because it sort of walked around the entire system. Yes.
And scored. Right.
So there was two things. There was resistance to the Christianity aspect of it and promotion of Christianity.
And then there was resistance to the fact that you went outside the system. It was outside.
Well, I had no alternative. Right.
Because no major would back it. Because of the Christianity aspect of it.
I guess, yeah. Yeah.
Well, Rupert Murdoch said, you know, he wanted to. And then he said, nah.
And then somebody advised him and said he'd be out of business in five years. Rupert Murdoch.
Wow. In five years if he distributed that.
Yeah. And I was like, wow, if he's scared, I'm like, I'm going to crash and burn here.
But it actually did all right. It did phenomenal.
Yeah. And then, again, I tried to.
I went with a studio on Apocalypt apocalypto but man that didn't work out so well it didn't no in what way well it was interesting the the film was a film with it had no stars it was in another language and it came out on a weekend with another film that had Leoo leo in it and another film that had cameron diaz in it and um so those three films came out on the same weekend and the one with no stars and without the language won the weekend monetarily it won the box office by a narrow margin on the other two. And the second week out,

Disney pulled the screens. Really? Yeah.
So I thought, oh, that's funny. Well, screens are gone.
I guess there's another agenda because that was another self-funded one. Did they pull the screens because they had movies that they had already made deals with? I think so.
But, you know, it's just politics and, you know. And I think perhaps the distribution deal on that wasn't as good as something else.
You know. So it's, you know, it's all business.
It's a phenomenal movie, though. It's a great film, yeah.
And it did better afterwards. In DVD and streaming and all that? Sure.
Yeah, that yeah yeah it did well yeah yeah i watched it again like two years ago yeah i hadn't seen it in a while and i watched it again and i forgot a bunch of aspects of it like god damn it's a good movie it's just primal yes and i think i love primitive stuff you know and primal emotions i mean basically it's a guy just trying to get back home

to save his wife and kid.

And he's got a lot of obstacles in the way,

like jaguars and bad guys chasing him

and trying to skin him and trying to rip his heart out.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

And I sat in the room with my assistant.

He said, what do you want to do next?

Chase movie?

He said, well, so we found out where the Mayan canoes and Columbus and all that. And then we just started making the story up in the room and we wrote it.
Wow. Yeah.
Some assistant, man. He actually wrote.
He actually tapped it out. Crazy.
So when you're making this resurrection movie now, you also have this obligation. You're doing a very similar thing that you were doing with the Passion of the Christ, where this is a profound story.
Yes. When you put something like that together, how do you choose who's going to be the next Jesus? You use him again.
Caviezel. Yeah, I know it's 20 years later.
It's 20 years later, but it's... Yeah, but it's the right guy.
Yeah, but it's supposed to be three days later, but he got 20 years older. And I think I have to use a few techniques that they've started to get really good with the face.
The CGI. Yeah.
Oh, they can do amazing things now. You can actually get some of the same people.
By the time you film it, it'll be even better. Yeah.
When are you going to start filming? I'm hoping next year sometime. There's a lot required because it is, I'll just tell you this, it's an acid trip when we wrote it.
It is like, I've never read anything like it. And my brother and I and Randall all sort of congregated on this.
So there's some good heads put together, but there's some crazy stuff. And I think in order to really tell the story properly, you have to start with the fall of the angels, right? Yeah.
Which is you're in another place. You're in another realm.
You know, you need to go to hell. You need to go to Sheol.
So you're going to have hell? You're going to have Satan? All that? Yeah. Whoa.
Sure, you got to have, yeah.. How do you depict that? This is a good question.
And I think I have ideas about how to do that and ideas about how to evoke things and emotions in people from the way you depict it and the way you shoot it. So I've been thinking about it for a long time.
So it's not going to be easy and it's going to require a lot of planning. And I'm not wholly sure I can pull it off, to tell you the truth.
It's really super ambitious. But I'll take a crack at it because that's what you gotta do walk up to the plate I think I can get it but it's not about me it's about something else well if anybody can do it you can do it well I Yeah.
It's trying to find the way in that's not like cheesy or obvious, but that actually it's almost like a magic trick in a sense. It's diversion.
It's obfuscate this, show that. Look over here.
Yeah. Do you you have a title uh yeah it's just like the resurrection of the christ yeah it's like uh so that's a title and yeah it's uh it's very ambitious that's all i'll say it just it took a long time to write it's really ambitious, and it goes from the fall of the angels to the death of the last apostle.
Do you have a start date? I don't have a start date. I just have to begin pre-production and see what happens.
And it's just going to roll in its own time. It's taking its own time.
I thought it was late. I thought, well, it's's taken too long but it's probably just right yeah it's when it's supposed to be yeah well if you believe that that's true yeah yeah i don't know i hope you're right i think i'm right my instincts are that i'm right yeah yeah and if i was going to trust anybody with that story it would be you Yeah.
I don't know. It's a massive thing.
And theologically, it's something that you have to really look at and make correlations that ring true because it's not all written. Do you consult with someone like a biblical scholar? Oh, yeah.
Oh, my goodness, yeah. Yeah.
And, of course, there's your own thing that comes into it from having read the book a few times. You read the book a few times and it's amazing how your memory, how there's these recessive files somewhere in the background, how you can correlate this piece to that piece over there.
And that's important because juxtaposition is everything with this story. And what it means in a bigger picture.

Yeah.

So it's hard to explain, but it's quite involved.

Yeah, I can only imagine.

Yeah.

And I don't know that you can do it in a foreign language because the concepts are too difficult now.

So you may have to resort to the vernacular

so that that at least is clear.

Is that up for debate right now with you?

Yeah, it is.

I'm thinking like, eh.

But look, have you seen these apps now where they have this AI stuff

where the guy's talking German and then he switches to French

and then he's Spanish and then Chinese?

Yeah.

Have you seen that?

Yeah.

And his mouth moves.

It's the same voice.

I mean, it's crazy what they do. So are you're gonna use that kind of a tool you think you could will you begin it in Aramaic or in Hebrew? Maybe yeah Aramaic is is really the kick isn't it but You know I think I think I'll write I've written it in English, but I wrote the last one in English, too, and translated it.
And then the people had to learn to speak it because I think there's only about 400 people that actually speak Aramaic still. Wow.
And apparently they understood it, so I was happy about that. Wow.
So that was good. Yeah.
400,000 people, sorry, in the world. Oh, that makes more sense.
Yeah, yeah, sorry, 400 people. I've, like, preserved those 400 people.
Yeah, not many people speak in Latin still, but that's quite well known. Well, I can't wait to see it, man.
And I just want to say I appreciate you very much, all the stuff that you've done. You've made some really awesome pieces in your life.
You really have. Thank you.
Done some great stuff. I'm blown away by where you got to with this, which is like, didn't you start off just smoking a spliff on a couch with a guy? Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
It's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty bizarre.
Yeah. I'm not exactly sure how it happened no that's good i just kind of kept doing it yeah okay yeah yeah i'm a fan thank you i watch it all the time thank you there was no plan to it i'll tell you that no there still kind of isn't i still kind of do it the same way okay every day you wake up yeah i just look at my just look at my phone.
I go online. I say, who do I want to talk to? Yeah.
This guy might be interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
That's really it. Who's next? You get some pretty interesting people.
Yeah. Yeah.
I was amazed at that. I can't remember his name now.
Terrence, what? He's all into...

Terrence Howard?

Yeah.

Yeah, the actor?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brilliant guy.

He had a bunch of stuff going on.

I was like, whoa.

Yeah.

Oh, he's out there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's out there.

But, I mean, you have to be

to be one of those guys.

You do.

Well, listen, brother,

thank you very much for everything.

Thank you.

Appreciate you coming in here.

Yeah, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Your new movie's great, and all your stuff's great. I'm a in here.
Yeah, thanks. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Your new movie's great

and all your stuff's great.

I'm a big fan.

Yeah, tickets on sale today.

Yeah.

When does it come out?

Oh, God, on the...

25th?

24th, 25th.

Yeah, 24th.

Okay.

So soon.

Yeah.

It's fun.

It is fun.

Yeah.

I enjoyed it.

Yep.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Joe.