Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQAZTB1gkN0
Jo podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day back from the rain soaked Jungle of the Pacific Northwest where hippies flourish Chris Ryan dude they're out there man are it's like they're like monkeys in the jungle they're like bugs in the forest yeah flowers in the garden oh that too you could look at it in a positive way they're just it's it's a good place for them it's an interesting place you're going to be there soon I'm very excited I love Portland I I [ __ ] with them about being hippie infested but yeah better that than [ __ ] psychos you know that's true that's true it's an interesting place that it's got such a strong culture for such a small City yeah you know what I mean there are huge cities three times that size where like you don't even know you're there right based on how people dress food you know attitude whatever Portland is so specific and sort of microcultural yeah I I was talking to a friend who grew up there the other day and I asked him what's the biggest change from 20 years ago and it was interesting he said uh not eccentricity it was really eccentric then it's the same now you know that sort of became the calling card of Portland he said the big difference is there was no smugness 20 years ago oh now people are smug there yeah be because I think people who sort of choose that identity then go to Portland you know what I mean like hippies who are actually kind of Nazis yeah there's a lot of those right yeah like really judgmental hippies like super ultra left-wing people who are really just mean and they just find a Target and the target is a right-wing they go after them with or whomever or they often go after each other you know it's like so there's like a a fascist mentality that just happens to have chosen a hippie you know outfit off the rack exactly I had an girlfriend who was really into fashion and and I remember one time her saying we lived in San Francisco for a while and I remember her saying yeah I want to I want to go for a hippie look you know and I'm going to like buy the The Fringe and I just remember thinking like that is so antithetical to what a hippie is you know like to go buy expensive hippie
outfit isn't that perfect though that is America it's like it's like spraying body odor deodorant so you'll smell like a dirty hippie you know saw this commercial or not a commercial like a website rather online that sells used jeans right they sell jeans that people wore and they have like I mean they have like stains on them some of them have patches and they were $270 for a used pair of jeans good gig though be a jean wearer yeah or a good G gig to be selling these jeans you could probably buy from Goodwill for you know really cheap and I forget the name of the company but their their Hook is they're trying to make you look like like you know you're worn these man I don't care about what I look like man but you're you're buying $270 used clothes like you're instead of wearing them and turning them into that you're immediately trying to like adopt that Persona I'm a comfortable pair of jeans look at me with my like when you see like fake rips those fake rips that people have they're crazy like what are you doing you're buying torn clothes and you think it gives you a look I'm down home I'm you know the knees are just all worn out pants man I'm waiting for you know it works with clothes I'm waiting for it to work with the body you know cuz I just turned 53 recently and I'm like when is old and fat going to be in cuz it's about time when genetic engineering kicks in and everybody looks like Dr Manhattan yeah then like old ugly fat will be wow interesting it's new yeah it's something different man it's like like a lot of white guys who are into Asian women will go to Asian countries like China for instance cuz there's no white men there or not as many rather and so they become an odity it's like I've experienced that I remember the I can remember the first night I can remember the minute I experienced that thinking like what you know first everyone's looking at me okay I'm a foreigner whatever it's weird but these women are smiling and flirting and what that what's going on and and you know eventually someone explained to me like dude you're white they love and I've always the one thing about my body that I I would complain about is my skin skin I've never liked my skin like all I've got as much uh melanin as anyone else but it's all in my teeth so I've
got yellow teeth and and super pale skin you know um do you get burnt really easy when you go inside completely like what is your Backes Irish very white yeah and I'm a redhead which is like you know one tweak away from albino you know you not are you red head you like your hair is gone gray and now do you prefer the gray or the red well the you got like kind of thing going on you got a lot of blondish sort of accents well that's it when you mix red with gray you get blonde right but no when I was a you know until I was in my 30s or 40s probably um you know I had sort of orange red hair whoa yeah it was dark orange it was like copper wire kind of color MH um so it wasn't Bozo that's very it was close people are prejudice against that in men yeah women it's sexy yeah how what the [ __ ] it's geeky how does that happen well maybe because of the the novelty and also there's a there's a reputation among redheads for being sort of temperamental and everybody knows a temperamental woman's a lot of fun in bed right hm maybe that's it and temperamental men are just dangerous drunks exactly [ __ ] Irish [ __ ] that's funny I mean Raquel Welsh was a redhead although she was Mexican so I'm not sure how that happened everything I've seen from Raquel Welsh I it was so old I can't remember or was black and white black and white yeah she was a red like a dark red I think she dyed it yeah but just like Auburn reddish kind of what do you think Dy was like back then what would they just grind up some leaves and [ __ ] rub them in their hair well they probably had um what's that stuff they use in Pakistan uh uh henna oh yeah you know henna is goes way back yeah that's that stuff is strong as [ __ ] too right people get those fake henna tattoos they last for days yeah can't even scrub them off the dudes in Pakistan henna dye their beards oh interesting it's nice look oh that's funny so like when they're start when they start going gray that's their version of Just For Men yeah exactly that's funny man yeah yeah every no one wants to be gray that's the one thing like universally people like oh that's a [ __ ] tricky one man I'm not happy about my gray hairs I just grew in a little chin beard here and it's completely white and I had
one five six years ago when I was traveling and it was still red so I don't know what happened between then and now I got old man oh so you weren't shaving you were shaving it completely yeah so it was like a snapshot I there was no gradual process I still have mostly like say like 80% black in my beard but like the sides of my hair like where if I had any this is all going white now all this is gray on the sides it's just do you think the gray is more traumatic than the balding cuz I'm going through both both of them are rough um the gray is probably less traumatic cuz I know dudes who are totally gray who dye their hair and they look fine or or they look fine with the gray right gentlemen kind of I know both yeah it just well it just represents reality represents the finite nature of the body and you going through a process you know but also like I was talking about how I'm hoping that like Olden fat comes in now that I'm almost there or or there depend arguably uh you your your sort of balding experience happened at a really good time historically I got lucky sort of but I fought it for the longest time I had hair transplants I took Propecia and I put Rogan in there and which is very ironic when your name is you're going bald you're buying per sponsorship especially when you had to go to the counter like now you just buy it but you have to go up to the [ __ ] pharmacist used to have a prescription for that [ __ ] yeah I've bought a lot of Rogan in my day because my ex-father-in-law in Spain had me bring it back from the states every time I came to visit he couldn't get it over there I think it was like he thought it was stronger or better in some way so it was like the only thing that kept my relationship with him partly civil I so wish that I shave my head way way way back in the day when I first started worrying about it would have been way better cuz I love being bald like I really I don't if I could grow hair back now I would still shave it it's the easiest thing in the world I don't have to go to I had a great Barber and she was hilarious a hair stylist my friend Gabriella she she worked on news radio with me she was my she cut my hair forever you know but at a certain point in time she was cutting it it just looked like dog [ __ ] after she was just just like it get thinner
and thinner and then once I quit taking the propia then it was like a serious downhill slide oh really yeah [ __ ] was just dying left and right it was horrible well I agree with you I I think that all young men like in their mid 20s should shave their heads yeah just so you don't worry about it you if you're going bald for sure shave your head I say people I don't like to shave my head believe me take control yeah it's better than whatever the [ __ ] is going to happen if you don't shave your head I wanted to shave my head I when we were in India I was with my wife cassilda in India in Goa for months we we're in Asia for like over a year and I thought this is the perfect time to shave my head cuzz if I've got a weird shaped head or I look like a dork or whatever who gives a [ __ ] right nobody knows me um and I came to her one day we rented this house on the beach I was like Hey cut my hair I want to shave my head and she said oh please don't do that please I said why why well it's it's not just cuz I she's used to me looking like a dork but it was my father had just had a liver transplant and she said in India you shave your head when your father dies oh and like and she's very suspicious and she's got all these beliefs and she's like you know your father's in Rocky shape you don't want to be shaving your head you know yeah that's different yeah I could see that although I missed my missed my chance yeah I I missed my chance when I was on news radio that's when I got my hair transplant my first one I got three of them when I got my first one I was on news radio and I was like God damn this [ __ ] is going man I just like was seeing it falling out and uh I was like I'm thinking about shaving my head they're like don't do it don't do it I'm like my hair is starting to look like [ __ ] and uh they talked me out of it well because it would [ __ ] with your character yeah like he go you'd look like a psycho I'm like all right so I didn't you know people get used to whatever the [ __ ] you look like right exactly like I have a picture of Joey Diaz um back when he was like 210 lb it's crazy it's on my wall in my office I stole it from The Comedy Store it was a head shot that he had up and um I don't even it was up I think I stole it from the office I don't think they had
put it up so I snacked it um but it's um it's Joey like thin and like but if I saw if he walked in today looking like that I'd be like what the [ __ ] is going on yeah but I see him the way he is now I give him a big hug and that's Joey you know you get used to you get used to the change definitely and I was thinking about the I I turned 53 last week right so I'm thinking about time and all that and um here in La visiting my parents who are in their 70s so there's all that you know there a lot of cues for these things and um there there's this famous poem by uh Dylan Thomas where he says rage against the dying of the life and I of think like I don't know I don't know maybe embrace the darkness you know like the light you know like people fight he lost a fight against pancreatic cancer well you know maybe that's not a fight worth waging you know well don't know I know a guy who's got pancreatic cancer who's fighting it and they gave him a very short window to live and he's pushed way past that and you know and everybody's completely shocked but he has this amazing attitude and he's positive and enjoying love life and I think his point of view is not instead of rage against the dying of the light enjoy the moment and live your life that's yeah and I think because of that he's actually living longer right there was a guy his name was Bill hoer uh who I became friends with from the internet from my my own message board and uh he was uh a young kid who got pancreatic cancer and he lived for years and uh we became friends from online you know he used he would have a he had a screen name we would call it uh I think his screen name was called called pan can fighter pan can like pancreatic cancer fight I believe that was his screen name and um I would get him tickets to the UFC and get him tickets to a comedy show and one time he came to visit me in Florida and um he came to the show I got him tickets to the show and then you know he told me he was going to go sleep in his car and I was like you drove all the way down here you're going to sleep in your car he goes yeah I just wanted to see the show so I got him a hotel room and you know like this guy's got cancer you can't let him sleep in his [ __ ] car like your immune system is like super important when you have cancer sleep is super important for the
immune system but he was always so thankful and never weird and like for a kid a young kid who is facing this horrible disease that almost nobody escapes from it's like the percentage of people that survive one of the worst very very bad but his attitude was always like I'm G to [ __ ] fight this and I'm going to and he would post these tweets on the uh messages on the The Message Board like uh three years later I'm still alive [ __ ] like that kind of [ __ ] and you know he had tubes in his stomach when I saw him once like we saw him Eddie Bravo and I became friends with this kid we saw him maybe six or seven times over the years and uh you know one time we saw him his head he lost all his hair his eyebrows were gone he had tubes coming out of his stomach because you know of some surgery that he had and he was still alive and he still had a good attitude it was amazing what an attitude he had and I think that that attitude is probably what allowed him to live for so long but he eventually did die recently and uh as we all do right yeah it's funny I saw the the guy from 60 Minutes who was in a car crash last week did you see that um I forget his name um but he's 73 he was 73 years old and the headline said um this gentleman whose name I can't remember lost his life in a car crash and I thought you know when you're 73 you're not losing your life you've already banked 73 years right you're losing a couple years you're losing whatever was left 11 yeah maybe yeah Actuarial Table or something yeah right um that's not losing your life you spent that money that's like you know somebody robs you and they got everything well they didn't get everything they didn't get what I already spent you know right right right yeah it's not like they spent they robbed your whole life savings well they really Sav my whole life I've never saved I've been saving for a couple of weeks yeah really look at this picture of Vince McMahon from the WWE wow he's 69 years old seriously yeah this is insane and that's not shopped that's I'm going to uh I'll I'll should I forward this to you Jamie I'll pull it up what's that I'll pull up okay he's on the cover of muscle and fitness Tony hinchcliff sent this to me because Tony hinchcliff is a [ __ ] WWE fanatic and he's in love with Vince McMahon but
nobody in human history he's ever looked like that at 69 years old yeah testosterone is a [ __ ] yeah so if you want to rage against the dying of the light uhhuh that's the way to go get all pumped up testosterone replacement therapy go to a doctor they bring you to the same level so look at that picture that's ridiculous it's up oh sorry it's behind you yeah he doesn't have that other one on that's okay it doesn't have to Bey on but it's just ridiculous like who who the [ __ ] has ever looked like that at' 69 is it good or is it bad you know I don't think it would be too terrible if people could live to be a thousand years if I knew that we had the resources to support it cuz I would think like man what kind of amazing philosophy and insight would you get from a thousand-year-old woman who's lived hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years and you know and seeing culture shift and change and remembers as much as she could and tells you about life in a way that only a person has lived a thousand years and we are a little blips if you talk to a guy that lived a hundred years you're going to be fascinated if he has his faculties but someone has lived a thousand my God I mean it would holidays would be a [ __ ] though imagine the great great great great great grand kids she has to buy [ __ ] for that's true imagine the candles on his [ __ ] cake exactly dude would die blowing him out isn't it ironic don't you think um I think that we're going to see a a great advance in our lifetime of of lifespans but the real issue is do we have the resources for that because one of the things that is going on with our world as everybody knows is there's a lot more people today than there's ever been in recorded human history by a giant number and when you see places like India that are in dire poverty it's onethird the size of the United States it has three times as many people plus it's like wow I mean how that you're dealing with a lot of poverty and a lot of suffering and you know maybe it's a perspective issue and maybe what I consider poverty they consider life and then if I lived that life I would be accustomed to it it would be normalized but I've got to think that most people don't want to sleep on dirt and most people don't want to eat food that's bad or you know
struggle to survive in any way and dealing with rampant diseases and that you're dealing with an impoverished Nations you know when they don't have enough medicine to take care of people I don't know it's but I if we did have the resources man it would be amazing to talk to a thousand-year-old person who knew everything about the I mean if you could keep your faculties how grumpy would they get these [ __ ] kids today in their electronic hologram music pull your pants up when I was a kid we had drums we made out of animal skins [ __ ] kill those animals we chopped those trees down we hollowed them out we stretched the Skins made the pom pom boom boom boom boom boom but seriously I mean if you think about you know just how much things have changed since you and I were kids you know if you're talking to a guy's 500 years old it's like holy [ __ ] man well yeah the other thing is thousand years from now I mean if we really could you live to be a thousand years old thousand years from now people might not be necessary I mean we we might have evolved past this state in some sort of a gigantic technological leap I really believe that when you're looking at the the iconic image of an alien you know the big heads the big eyes and no genitals I think I we're looking at what holds us back as organisms and what the things that if you look at our Wars and our greed and just all the crazy [ __ ] Larsen and crazy [ __ ] that people do it's all attached to the primate body you know it's all attached to sex and breeding and greed and guilt and fear and the worry about being mortal if we can move past that in some genetic engineering leap or if it goes kurile on us and they develop some insane artificial body that you transfer your Consciousness into way more preferable you know you got all the buttons you can push for orgasm all the B buttons you could push for adventure all those exist inside your head and they can access them at any moment but you're looking at the world in some crazy 3D you know Minority Report fashion where everything you see you're interacting with the world in a very different way you might get a bunch of people to jump ship and the models might get better and then the next model might be so pleasurable so much better than being a human being
that it just [ __ ] people just start jumping chip especially yeah we're [ __ ] polluting the ocean guess what how about you live off photosynthesis we we're going to cure the whole thing all right gim no you live off the sun oh you incorporate algae somehow into the genome or something somehow or look there was a um a snail that I read about recently or a slug that shifts between photosynthesis and actually eating things and it eats certain algae and then through eating that algae can actually absor absorb life and exist off photosynthesis and this is a new find so it's like colonized its food and it's still alive yeah yeah that's it's ex it's somehow or another taking this ability from its food do you know how sea slugs have sex no oh this is great since you mentioned slugs I wasn't planning to talk about slugs today Joe but since you brought it up uh sea slugs are so interesting they're they're on the bottom of the ocean they're just sort of wandering around blind right on the bottom of the ocean what are those can they see what those things I think they're like motion detectors you know whatever antenna um but when two sea slugs now sea slugs contain both male and female uh reproductive organs right inside their body so they've got sperm uh and eggs and when two sea slugs meet each other they sort of rear up and and with those horns these horns come out of their their heads and they start slamming each other with these horns like a couple of you know mountain goats or something and eventually one of them will break through the skin of the other with his horn and at that point he injects sperm into the other and and so the other becomes female because now the eggs have been fertilized and that one's male W so it's like when they they're like fighting to see who's male and who's female which you know may be reminiscent wow that's crazy private school or summer camp Boy Scouts yeah yeah who's the boy religious Retreats yeah man that's fascinating that's fascinating it's amazing when you see all the different varieties of life when you see all the different forms that it can take and then you stop to consider that that's just in our you know our Earth's environment imagine like what they're
going to find if they can chip through Europa and get to those oceans it's very possible there's something alive under there it's being fueled from the heat of the volcanic vents most likely nothing we've never seen anything in the oan other than like you know we see like hermit crabs they'll use other people's you know we've never seen anything like build a structure other than that I don't think like nothing nothing you could consider like look there's a house you know like a beaver a beaver has a beaver Den you know even it's crude as [ __ ] but damn they're building their own little house it's kind of crazy and we obviously have insects in in the the world above ground that build incredible structures and Termite God you seen a cross of a termite M with the like the vents for keeping the temperature leaf cutter ants is that the one where they filled it up with cement uh and they they bring the leaves back and then they have a a fungus that grows on the leaves and that's what they eat yeah that's wild I mean termites probably do something similar well the termite thing I'm thinking of I saw some BBC special recently and I think it was termite Mounds in Africa and what they do is like where they have all the eggs has to be an exact temperature and humidity wow and this is in like Hari desert right which is dry and temperature changes a lot night to day and so they build these things and they've got this chamber and then below the chamber are cooling fins that that hang down perfectly spaced and the air circulates through them so that it keeps the temperature exactly the same all the time wow it's like how does I mean there are things in evolution that are not understood right like there are things where it's like well there's no um uh gradual way to get from point A to point B here how how do termites know to do that right you know that how do you encode that in DNA that doesn't seem possible based on what we know of DNA especially since it's not an isolated incidence this is happening all over the termite world yeah it's crazy and they don't communicate in a way that we understand right so there yeah it's it's very mysterious and I think there's a you know you're talking about like Quantum Le SS and thinking and stuff I feel like in a strange way and I'm even
hesitant to say this publicly because of it's an example of what I'm talking about like it's really hard to talk about the the areas where darwinian Notions of evolution don't quite make it because you immediately get lumped in with the religious lunatics you know what I mean so it the woo woo people or yeah so it sort of shut down an important conversation you know much like the Nazis I mean the Nazis were doing all this interesting science that you can't talk about you know or you can't talk about Eugenics like well that's a legitimate thing to talk about sure everything is legitimate to talk about including when you're talking about Nazi history why is that legitimate to talk about but Eugenics as a concept not saying as an actual practice you know I don't think you should take people's lives cuz they're dumber than you I don't think you could encourage some people not to reproduce like how dare you like people who have a genetic uh propensity to a certain illness like hey you know maybe you should adopt and here's a massive tax credit if you do right I agree with that but man I don't think you should be able to tell anybody that they can or can't breed I I think education is is important with all aspects of breeding but we all know that people make terrible decisions when it comes to breeding because they want to get that nut son and and then they're like oh no I made a person all right now I got to deal with it you know I mean I don't think we should take that away from people just because they have diseases or force them to get an abortion or if you know also one valid point that people who have illnesses say is um I don't want anyone else to have the illness that I have but I'm alive and I'm I'm okay and I have you know cable policy and I have you know whatever I have you know and I can still enjoy life it might not be perfect but you're telling me that this experience my experience in life because I have cbal paly or because I have something else is not valid and I'm saying that's wrong I'm hampered I'm hindered I certainly can't move the way a regular person moves however my experience is my experience and I can make the most of it and I enjoy it and I'm not necessarily trying to give a child this but I'm not
trying to invalid you know this is an argument for that I right but okay but let's look at the counterargument right because the Assumption there is you're as you said you're invalidating my experience but looked at from another way what are we comparing that experience to right we're we're exper we're comparing it to nothing we're not we're not comparing it to you know you should die you should be you know what we're saying nothing right now how do you compare it to nothing a kid who isn't born isn't suffering mhm right so I mean I think the the the Assumption I I've got a cousin this really smart little kid he's like five or something and the other day he was talking about how he uh before he was born he was saying that all fetuses should have um uh iPads but but no password right cuz cuz they wouldn't understand how old is he it's like five I think and because it's boring you know boring being a fetus right and I was like well my my aunt was talking to him and and uh he said uh she said well where were you when you were F he said uh I was uh sleepy dead he like sleepy dead yeah it's not like dead when you die it's it's dead before you're born and you're kind of sleepy so it's sleepy dead waa and like okay yeah this is a kind of a genius kid what if that kid actually knows something what if he remember some [ __ ] that we forgot I'll tell you I mean this is going to sound crazy but I remembered when I was a kid I remembered you remembered what I remembered the the feeling of where I came from before I was born what and what happened was and this is a weird thing I was just talking to to cildo about this recently um I remembered it as a general uh how can I say this like what I remember is as I got older as a kid I remember thinking I I'm losing this memory I'm losing contact with something I know and as my Consciousness was getting more sort of aware as a as a person right uh I realized that that was a really valuable thing that I was losing and so as I was like 12 13 14 I was like I have to remember this I I knew I wouldn't remember it as a memory so I was creating like a a record of it that I would remember if that makes any sense too you know what I mean like I know you know it's like people who have um I forget what it's called where they don't
recognize faces like uh that Oliver Sachs the neurologist has that and he describes it in one of his books and he's like they've got this face blindness so what they'll do is if they're having a conversation with you and they they're going to go to the bathroom and they know they're going to come back they'll be like okay the guy with the blue shirt and the thing and the tattoos is Joe you know just to create a record in his head and then he'll go to the bathroom so when he comes back he'll remember you're Joe wow yeah it's a it's a really interesting neurological thing I would like to see that guy draw a picture of a face yeah I wonder if they I wonder how that works do you know Oliver saxs he would be an amazing guest for you I don't know love to have him on though but you know who he is yeah yeah yeah I've heard of him I've heard of him actually describe that I forget what show I was listening to but he was actually describing that issue not not knowing what people's necessarily look like yeah I just it's hard to like imagine that it is right cuz it's something that's so automatic to us yeah he also wrote a book about hallucinogens hallucinations which was very interesting because it was the first this came out maybe five years ago and it was it struck me as the first like mainstream uh sort of non-apologetic discussion of the use of hallucinogens by a very mainstream Doctor Who's written all these bestsellers and he talks about when he lived in Tanga in the 60s and he took some acid of course he did you have to get in there exactly go to the farmers they a that place is ridiculous I was looking at a house there once and these [ __ ] hippies talked me out of even looking any further they they were like uh like the house had a tennis court behind it they're like if you buy the house you're going to let the community use a tennis court right I go what that's right under my bed like get the [ __ ] out of here no I'm not going to let well you you [ __ ] people are too much imagine all these dirty hippie showing up Sunday morning you're trying to sleep in hear Hey man that was in bounds knew it wasn't man you should share the score [ __ ] you that's good you said like The Californians Saturday Night Live
that's them dude I know it's so true I want to go back to what you were saying though like your your memory of um of before you were born you know I was listening to this uh Radio Lab podcast I know I've said that about a million times if you're playing the the podcast drink game it's time to have a shot up cuz I I listen to that podcast all the time but they were talking about memories and how poor people's memories truly are and how many people like believe that they have an idea in their head that's carved in stone this is what happened but if you if you look at the the actual events the provable actual events in comparison to their idea of what happened often times they're way off yeah you know eyt reports are Terri horrible yeah lot often people see that when uh they go back to where they grew up you know and you go back to your home and like your house looks smaller everything looks different it's just like wow it's like it's like somebody made a replica of where you grew up but did a shitty job because they didn't have all the data did you ever feel betrayed when you had that experience no no no I the opposite for me when I went back to where I grew up it was amazing I took my uh my wife and my kids and we walked through the neighborhood there wasn't even a neighborhood I lived across the street from the Charles River there's this big park-like area and uh I would go fishing um down the river there was like this Pond it was I would catch bass at and I took them on these walks that I used to take through the woods and I was like this is a crazy spot to grow up I didn't realize how weird it was so I grew up near this place called Echo Bridge and Echo Bridge is in the place called Newton Upper Falls and it's I had a waterfall across the street from my house and I never never realized like how cool this was like until I took the kids there and walked around I was like wow this is a wild place to be like all the places where I used to hang out with my friends and just you know it's nice and it wasn't all built up it was still there's still space I mean it's the hemlock Gorge reservation that's like the the area I think it's preserved that sounds nice I always imagine you like inner
city cuz I remember you talking about rough neighborhoods and stuff I lived in Newton from the time I was 14 to the time I was 17 or uh till the time I was uh well that was high school you know 14 to 17 and then like a year and a half two years after that I stayed there but before that I lived in a place called Jamaica plane right Jamaica plane was rough we only lived there for about a year and a half maybe two years at the most but I went to high school or um grammar school in this uh I think it was Curly I think that was the name of the grammar school but it was bad man it was real bad it was Jamaica plane has become more gentrified now but when I lived there in 1979 1980 I guess it was somewhere around then I think my first year of high school was 81 it was uh it was really bad there was a lot of like bad [ __ ] going down there were 17-year-old kids that were in the seventh grade you know they would like never graduated and like you would be in you know I was like a little kid and I was going to class and there was these [ __ ] full-grown adults that are in my class you know these guys and girls making out in the back of the class was all these like inner city kids like they were so I come from Florida where I lived before that in a college community in Gainesville Florida and we moved to like the only place in Boston that my parents could afford and it was this Jamaica planing place and they worked hard to get us out of there and moved us to Newton and Newton was like way more urban way more relaxed but Jamaica plan was [ __ ] sketchy it was sketchy it was a lot of crime like there's breaking enterings in our in our neighborhood all the time you know like we got a dog just to to bark to let us know if someone was trying to get into the house it was very weird it was a weird place to live and then Newton was a total different place that's cool that's something you and I have in common moving as kids I moved a lot as a kid I went to three high schools it's real common yeah with people that are interesting for whatever reason yeah I mean it's it my SI I have a younger sister and she and I sort of dealt with it in diametrically opposed ways like she um had developed a real need to be part of the community so as soon as we moved to we in Jacksonville
for example as soon as we were in Jacksonville she developed the local accent within a week you know I never developed any accent I sort of I became the pedantic arrogant [ __ ] who doesn't need friends you know that's how I dealt with it like you know okay I I mean I I got used to eating alone in the lunchroom you know like reading a book like I got my book I'll ignore the rest of you [ __ ] I mean I made friends but the the point was that I didn't like I wasn't reaching out you know I was trying to be and then that worked great in the you know the rest of my life traveling all the time living overseas all that I don't have a home and you're you're like this too right you move enough it's like well okay I lived here for a couple years I lived here for a couple years but when people say don't you miss your home all your friends the people you grew up with I don't know the people I grew up with you know they were stages I'm still friends with uh a couple guys from high school really yeah yeah me too yeah one guy from high school actually I have two two buddies from high school that we talk one that I'm pretty close with uh I saw him last when I was in Boston and um you know we've known each other since we were like 14 so it's it's weird you know seeing us now he has grown kids we went to dinner with him and his kids his daughter's like in her 20s I'm like this is crazy man you had a you know I've known his wife forever too yeah it's uh it's interesting to to see uh he he grew up in that neighborhood he lived there and you know we became friends when I moved into the neighborhood but um almost all my friends like Joey Ari like all these guys moved all over the place you know Duncan um you know Brian kin's the worst like not the worst I shouldn't say um but the most experienced cuz he lived in Saudi Arabia his his his family was involved in international finance and so he lived in all these crazy Middle Eastern countries he lived in Afghanistan I believe that's a whole different level oh he lived everywhere man yeah and he's one of the most interesting people I know because of that it's just like he there's pros and cons I think definitely there's like a definitely like a more calming confidence of growing up in a neighborhood where you know all the
people and you but there's also like a limiting aspect to that too especially if it goes wrong yeah you know like if depends on the neighborhood right yeah sure bad neighborhood or if you get labeled as like a person in the neighborhood where the kids ostracize or they get mad at you for something right yeah it's like you redefine yourself when you move to new places that's like the new girl oh she's the new girl where's she from she's from Portland oh she smell like feet you know like you see her she wearing granny dress she's got a pachuli on her think dude she's got I like Puli oh good for I got a you're the guy you're the [ __ ] problem I'm one guy I'm the one guy I mean everyone always like I like pachuli I like prune juice I mean I know it's a joke but it's like it tastes good good for your body too I guess makes you [ __ ] or not [ __ ] I don't even know I know it affects [ __ ] somehow but I mean I just like the flavor and pachuli smells good to me I it's not the worst smell yeah okay I like incense that's a very hippie thing people get angry at you you like the you don't like the smell of incense uh not if they're any anything but n Champa I like the NOG Champa got some stuff laying around here somewhere got one right there tell me this one smells good to you I'll put it out I'm sure it'll be fine yeah hey shout out to Duncan I I feel we shouting out why people shouting out well you mentioned Duncan and and you know when I I I tweeted that I was going to be on the show everyone's like oh you you enjoing Duncan like oh yeah Duncan couldn't make it he's in Big Sir living the time of his life that [ __ ] he likes it up there it's oh he loves it up there he's trying to talk me into buying a house dude I'll watch your house when you're not there what a favor you'd be doing you yeah oh he would be I would do that too I would totally trust him it's pretty cool up there I mean that's it's a very unusual place because you can't really support a large population it's like you can only live far you're kind of buted up against a mountain the water's right there it's like this is all you got you spend time at esselin ever talking about hippies no I did um I was invited to do a workshop there how's that smell is that okay I don't even smell it yet it's
going that way damn what's wrong with you you got something wrong with your nose son you should smell the [ __ ] out of that oh there it is yeah how's that it's nice it's nice you sure don't lie to me man I'll put it right out it's all right I hardly noticed it I tell you I mean I know it must be the coke oh sorry say how dare you that's a bad drug don't you understand that's a drug I had access I mean you're you're in this position all the time I'm sure but you know having access to like the best of the best of something I knew a guy in college who was the son of an oil Minister from a country I won't name just to keep me out of trouble he had a private jet he used to fly to Colombia he had a diplomatic bag so he could bring anything into the country oh my God he'd bring this [ __ ] into the country and he was like in this frat and I knew someone who was in the Frat and I was never a frat boy at all but they would invite me and like these like yellow rocks of coke you know and they like and it was the I mean I went to this dumbass College where everybody was rich so the drug scene there was off the charts and like I've done the best Coke there is right I mean I know the guy who invented MDMA I you know it's like I've got I had these really good connections for drugs and Coke sucks the best Coke in the world is [ __ ] I don't get it wow I mean my in my sense is that it it affects a certain personality structure in a really Pleasant way and I don't have that structure so for me hallucinogens are like boom that's pushing my my button right Coke it just made me [ __ ] nervous and drink too much well you're a self-deprecating guy and you joke around about a lot and you you're also introspective and I think that one of the things that people don't like about people that are coked up is that they want to talk about themselves they want to tell you how [ __ ] badass they are they want to brag they want to they want to talk about like making money we're going to buy this Forest we're going to [ __ ] you know like you know what I mean like Mike young used to always talk about how uh People on Coke always want to start a business with you and it's really kind of true it's like they always have these CRA yeah they have these crazy Grand plans and it
just I I've never been interested in it I I got lucky and I ducked it yeah when I was a kid I've told this story a hundred times but I had a friend my friend that I'm still friends with in high school right his cousin used to sell it and he his life went down the toilet and I watched him wither away lost like a shitload of weight became weird you know just always on coke and he wasn't on coke he was just exhausted you know just like Jesus that looks like a like some knowing someone who got bit by a vampire yeah like oh my God like you got you got the bug they got you they got you it's like you're taking all the energy from part of your life and concentrating it in the few hours after you do the Coke and like what are you going to do with all that energy except irritate people but I knew a girl and she was a great girl she wasn't a mean person she wasn't nasty materialistic she's beautiful she's really nice and sweet and kind but [ __ ] she Lov Coke godamn and she would feel bad about it she I [ __ ] love it I love doing coke and I'm be like really like what you know I was not curious enough to want to do it but listening to her you know she knew it was bad knew she shouldn't do it didn't want to do it anymore but she'd tell you God damn what I'm doing I love doing coke in my experience the people who tend to get really hooked on coke are people who have um issues with uh they feel bad about themselves they they feel they've got a lack of self-esteem they they feel like they they're not good enough they're not what there's shame and all that cuz the coke takes that away for a while that totally makes sense in this case because this woman her mother was like really overbearing and her mother was like super Alpha successful her mother was uh single mom and was like like no man's going to [ __ ] run me and so she was a lawyer and she was she ran successful business she had a law firm and she was like super like intense with her daughter about achievement about pursuing things about you know don't eat the wrong foods and you know eat you know she was like really like overbearing and gave her a hard time about her weight like you're too fat you're never going to be a model and like and so I guess the coke was like ah free I don't have to think about I it give her like maybe she had a
deficit created by her mom's constant you know just never letting her just be herself yeah you ever you know who Gabor mate is Noor I never didn't know the name I've only seen it written he's he's a cool guy if you ever want to have him on the show let me know he's he's a friend of mine he's a very interesting guy he's a a doctor who works with addicts he's been working with addicts in Vancouver in like the slum part of Vancouver for a long time a lot of like real down andout people um and he also is very interested in alternative approaches to addiction you know he's written about iasa as a way of dealing with addiction treating addicts and all that um but anyway he uh his theory is that all addiction is due to trauma it's not it has nothing to do with the substance or the activity it's that's just how it manifests right but it's all about psychological trauma it's all trying to alleviate suffering of some point of some kind and um it's interesting his research uh sort of uh meshes very well with this experiment that was done also in British Columbia I can't remember Williamson I think was the the scientist's name you know those famous studies where they give rats like uh they've got a water bottle it's just water and then another one that's got Coke in it and the Rats will just keep doing the Coke and they'll forget to eat and then they you know like die like these people you're talking about lost all this weight and just like completely focused this guy looked at that he he was a professor scientist he looked at that and he's like okay well that that's the sort of main study that everybody sites that shows that coke is addictive and it's Coke that causes the problem and it's the substance and molecular problems but what if we took those rats uh same kind of rats but instead of just being in a cage where there's nothing to do put them in a really interesting environment where there are lots of other options there are lots of other rats there are tubes to go through and things to climb and things to hide under and lots of stimulation right and then let's try it they try it what happens the rats do the coke once or twice and then walk away from it never go back right so there's an argument to be made that a strong argument that it's not about substances it's like I was saying
it's about the way this substance intersects with whatever your particular suffering is right so these rats in a cage are obviously suffering because they're not in a natural environment they're in a [ __ ] cage there's nothing to do except like get high so they get high that's a very good point that I never considered that is a very very good point it's called rat Park if anyone wants to Google it just Google rat Park cuz that's what he called this you know like sort of enclosure that he made for the rats imagine being a rat being stuck in a [ __ ] fluorescent lighting room and the [ __ ] metal cage and the little water bottle you got to suck on big to I mean GH the [ __ ] life they live is dog [ __ ] yeah you're in a prison C I imagine you got you got a prison a guy in solitary confinement right and you're offering him to get high of course he's going to get high and you're being surrounded by Giants everywhere you go there these enormous creatures who could easily reach in and just snuff your life out by squeezing it's true it's ridiculous and and by Nature you're terrified right cuz you're a prey animal you're you know yeah you you should be running from everything and all a sudden you can't run you can't hide right and they just reach and grab you and they [ __ ] give you Coke yeah which makes even more paranoid what a [ __ ] shitty life God damn Peta you might have a point I I interviewed this guy recently talking about animal stuff he uh he was doing his PhD in uh University of Pennsylvania and he he was working in Psychology but there were chimps involved in his research and so they like they would come into these cages but they had this big area outside back behind the cages right where so like at night they would go hang out and there were trees and stuff and whatever and so this is in the I guess 60s or 70s and uh so he would hang out until everybody went home and he was alone and then he'd sneak back into the area where the chimps were where he wasn't allowed nobody was allowed right like walking around with CH but he was like [ __ ] it if they kill me I don't think they'll kill me no problem so he he was a hippie right um actually he's the guy who who now owns this chain of paleo restaurants in Portland really cool guy Richard um
figures yeah he opened the first mountain bike shop in the country he's a very good businessman then he opened like he went to Portland cuz he wanted to um be in a place where you could get all your supplies for a restaurant all the food within 100 mile radius and he studied all over the country and he said Portland's the place everything can be grown within 100 miles he sort of was ahead of the mountain biking craze then he was ahead of the sort of Farm to Table thing and he opened a chain called um Laughing Planet which there were like 15 or 20 these uh uh like vegetarian burrito shops in Portland sold that uh cuz he had quintuple bypass surgery wow and he thought he was going to die sold that bought this beautiful Farm where he grows stuff now it's just amazing quintuple bypass surgery he's a vegan mountain biker he was a a vegetarian not vegan but he was a vegetarian and so he that's what he said he's like I work out I'm eating vegetarian for 20 years what the [ __ ] and he started reading about like wait a minute this idea of low fat is [ __ ] you know oh he wasn't taking healthy fats right he didn't know you know so now he shifted to paleo and now he's opened like you know he's got this expanding business of paleo restaurants anyway what am I talking oh so he would go back with these chimps and he told this hilarious story where he's with this chimp and he'd like go back there and and you know smoke a joint at the end of the day and The Chimps are wandering around and one day this chimp comes over and sits down next to him and he smoking a joint and the chimp reaches out no he does not get this chimp high he hands The Joint to the chimp no the chimp hits it and gives it back to him oh my God that that would be the greatest video ever on YouTu YouTube a dude get there's one of a chimp [ __ ] a frog have you ever seen that one oh I have seen that that's kind of sad yeah not for the chimp but but one of a a chimp smoking a joint with a dude especially a hippie that would be the ultimate don't Bogard don't Bogard it man and if you did Bogard it what are you going to do you know you better just give the chimp The Joint shut the [ __ ] up or it rips your arms off exactly and a high what's a high chimp like you know probably pretty
mellow it's like a it's like a paranoid rat like how do you know it's well that's another thing we were talking about um rats being in cages I I I got super high once and I wrote a uh a piece way back uh a long time ago on my blog before uh my 2009 Special before I started podcasting I used to write a lot and put it up in blog form and one of the things I wrote about is it it's called animal prison and it became like the foundation for a lot of jokes that I went to use in some of my specials but it was about getting high I got really high once and I went to the zoo and I was super not you know me personally my personal life but being at the zoo stoned made me like like especially Edibles you know I had eaten a pot something or another cookie or something like that and I was like really [ __ ] up about this I'm like this is just not fair it's it doesn't it's like it's cruel it's cruel and it's cruel in a way we're insensitive to and the joke was like hey man you know I watched The Chimps they were playing with the tire swinging around looks like they having a good time and like yeah well you can go to prison and you'll see dude's playing basketball it doesn't mean it's awesome right you know like people do what they have to do and they're in prison to have fun but they don't want to be there and that's the same thing with these animals that didn't like the idea that somehow or another they're s being saved I guess we're supposed to accept that they're doing conservation work for sure and that some of these animals can only exist in captivity in this day and age or or or or at least we have to have some of them in captivity to ensure their Survival cuz humans are pushing in on their area where they live but [ __ ] man that's especially with intelligent animals that's depressing as [ __ ] yeah I've got a friend I just did a podcast with him the other day he's uh sort of been hired by the whole Marine Mammal uh Consortium to try to help them deal with their image problem from black fish and blah blah blah right so we were talking about this and he's been working a lot in this place in Florida where the Dolphins are used for a therapeutic you know with like um vets with p TSD and kids who are autistic and stuff and the Dolphins seem to have a real sensitivity
and there's an interaction and a lot of them are born in captivity if you let them loose they'd be dead within hours you know they don't know how to survive and stuff um but anyway we're talking about this and you know I said like okay you know what are you going to do about the I understand he he has good arguments about the Dolphins and the smaller animals but like what are you going to do about the orcas man you know how how do you fix that and he's like he said there's no way to fix that like they just should not be there cuz you can't build an enclosure that is even arguably big enough and interesting enough for them and they live they're social so you can't just have one you got to have like 15 of them you know they're very Community Based animals so like isn't it possible that they could take an area in a bay like a very large area and take all the world's captive orcas and transport them to this large Bay like take a large area and part of the world that we don't go but it's habitable inhabitable for them and then you know fence something off underwat spend a lot of money to fix this issue and then slowly but surely reintroduce them to the wild give them a steady source of food like provide them with food and then provide them with food that's you have to catch yeah like give them more and more food that's like you're going to let a tuna go or whatever [ __ ] it is yeah habituate them and make it a project I don't buy the idea that it's impossible to take them and let them live in the wild you can take a 40-year-old man and teach him how to go forage through the the woods I mean look at survivor man that [ __ ] guy he taught himself how to do that [ __ ] he he can exist for months at a time out there in the wilderness and there's a lot of people that do that they have survival skills like that's what we call it we used to call hunting and Gathering is now survival skills it's not just existing as a person foraging for food like people used to do for [ __ ] Untold thousands of years I think you could teach orcas but it would have to take a long time it would cost a lot of money but you owe that to the [ __ ] orcas man that I agree I agree but you know we're not we're not yeah we get into what we owe to other you know beings a never ending you ever read
Peter Singer you know him no he wrote Animal Liberation which sort of started the whole animal rights frenzy in the 70s whenever it was really interesting philosopher teaches at Princeton now I think um and he made a really interesting AR argument about using primates in drug testing and cuz you know the argument there is well they're close to humans so their responses to Pharmaceuticals and things is is as close as we're going to get for our own testing and uh what he said he he's one of these guys who just thinks really clearly wherever it goes and he doesn't give a [ __ ] and so his argument was um okay A a chimpanzee has the intelligence and sort of uh demonstr able awareness of a three or fouryear old kid so they're they're beings they're thinking they're experiencing they've got emotions they've got relationships there's no question right they're not fish they're not you know um and every year thousands of babies are born with no brain with I forget the technical the medical term for it but they just their brain never developed in the fetus and they're born thousands really yeah maybe it's hundreds I don't know but a lot um and his point was these babies are all going to die they they're born they put them on these machines keep them going they're you feeding tubes and whatever um but they're never going to survive they feel no pain because they have no brains so why aren't we testing pharmaceutical on them wow cuz they're human that's some dark [ __ ] dud well it is you're right but it makes sense it's it certainly makes sense logically it's the the emotional fact instead we're torturing you know these living thinking you know Ware beings yeah um the idea being of course I mean the argument against that is that if it saves one human being who cares about the champ that's that's the the idea you know if it saves your life you know if your wife is saved you're you the person you love more than anyone else in this world is save because they tortured some chimp it's it's not a beautiful thing you know it's it's it's very dark but you would be happy that that chimp gave up his life right but I think that's why we have governments right to think beyond that person level cuz you know that's what war is Right war is innocent people are dying so that you know and and you
know there is no good choice right it's like okay a thousand innocent people die there or 100,000 innocent people die here well a government exists to kill those thousand innocent people ESS isn't that the real problem like what makes someone uniquely qualified to be the person that makes a very difficult choice and really no one deserves to be a person who decides this group of people dies so this group of people lives or or that this monkey gets a you know a battery cable attached to his dick right that's why Psychopaths do so well because they're not worried about the consequences because they're they're able to make those decisions is it psycho or sociopaths I've never really understood the difference between the two to be honest with you I think sociopaths don't feel empathy and Psychopaths like are prone to more violent Behavior I think if that makes any sense like I think sociopath from what has been explained to me and I might be butchering this probably should look but uh I think the idea being that they're not see feeling empathy like the rest of us are like if if they by their actions they get ahead but somebody else suffers it doesn't bother them whereas for you you would do something that would hurt someone's feelings to'd be like man I just can't [ __ ] sleep this is so freaking me out you know they don't have that that sense of empathy I have a friend who wrote a book called The psychopath test oh I've read that yeah John Ronson yeah I started reading it I should say I think I bailed on it I got bored yeah well you get the idea pretty quickly I'm not all add that [ __ ] like that man I can I'm really good with like a documentary on stuff like that but like getting deep into the dry issues of psychopaths and sociopaths and what's his take on it uh you know essentially that uh psychopaths are very uh prominent in fields like Wall Street uh military you know high they do really well in areas where you have to make decisions that you know hurt people and you don't give a [ __ ] here's an article in Psychology today that explains it in a way many forensic psychologists psychiatrists and criminologists use the terms sociopathy and psychopathy interchangeably uh leading experts
disagree on whether there are meaningful differences between the two conditions uh I contend that there are clear and significant distinctions okay sociopath and Psychopaths share this is what they share a disregard for the laws and social norms a disregard for the rights of others a failure to feel remorse or guilt a tendency to display violent Behavior Uh in addition to their commonality sociopaths and Psychopaths also have their own unique behavioral characteristics as well sociopaths tend to be nervous and easily agitated they are volatile and prone to emotional outbursts including fits of Rage blah blah Psychopaths yeah Psychopaths on the other hand are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others although they often have disarming or even Charming personalities interesting that's what I would think of as sociopaths psychopath are very manipulative and can easily gain people's trust they learn to mimic emotions now I've I've met people that do that despite their inability to actually feel them and will appeal normal to unsuspecting people I I've seen that I've seen that where I've had conversations with people and I realize that they're like mimicking emotions like oh yeah man it's horrible that that happened to him like oh you don't care at all like you're feeling like no you know there's a there's like certain feelings that people have where you feel you you you see it in them that they feel remorse or they feel sad or they feel empathy and then there's other people that are like faking that where it's like they're doing bad acting on a soap bar especially in La dude I mean I was on a TV show here two weeks ago or something and it struck me how the sort of their concentric circles of [ __ ] that get more intense the closer you get to the cameras you know there's like you check into the hotel and they're like hey Dr Ryan I said so kind of light but friendly but they don't give a [ __ ] right and then you got the driver who's like hey is everything good can I help you with that sir you know and then you get the assistant producer who greets you at the door oh we're so thrilled you're here Dr Ryan you know it's just and then you're actually on stage in front of the cameras and the the [ __ ] is
just like up to your [ __ ] neck it's unbelievable like all the fake emotions what kind of a show was it well I'm legally uh can't talk about I can't name it but it was like a like a talk show you know kind of like where I was talking about monogamy and you know hey you know and the the like the segment before me went long it was about dirty underwear and you know so I'm like that's important dude that's important to discuss are there issues is there bacteria can people die what about vaccinations they protect you against dirty underwear and I'm not saying it's a I don't I've never seen the show so I don't know if it's a good show or a bad show but it's just and i' I've experienced this in lots of shows not this show all right but lots of shows where like you're TV particularly you know why am I talking to you about TV but in my experience at least the way I interact with TV it's just such [ __ ] yeah it can be certainly can be but there's some shows you do that aren't [ __ ] like they like the Jimmy Kimmel show for instance you talk to Jimmy Kimmel he's like totally there he seems like a real guy he's a real guy he's tot I often wonder about I I was talking to this buddy the doing the dolphin stuff his he dat did a woman who was on a rebound from George Clooney talk about a tough gig right like you're the rebound from George Clooney I would take that over the rock I'll take George Clooney all day all day I dated a woman who who told me I was even better than Fabio in bed uh you should never know that a chick [ __ ] Fabio you're taking Fabio's sloppy seconds good Lord I know good Lord she didn't tell me till it was too late to to change course but it's one of the most dubious compliments I've ever received that's interesting uh even better than Fabio so Jimmy Kimmel was dating a girl who's on the rebound from George no not Jimmy Kimmel my buddy but anyway that got us talking about about famous people and who seem cool uhuh like George coloney to me George KY seems like if you hung out with him he would actually be a cool guy yeah I would imagine he'd be pretty cool yeah and so like how hard is that uh for a guy like that who's probably a thousand times more famous than like my level of Fame he's probably like legitimately like a thousand times more
famous than me that's pretty intense Fame he can't go anywhere George cloney shows up like helicopters will start Circle in the restaurant that he's at people just jump out of buses with cameras and try to touch him and and it relates to what we were just talking about like that fake emotion thing right how much true input is he getting from human beings goes to other countries that's one of the things that I think benefits you for a guy like that I think he's got like a [ __ ] Villa in France France notice how I said France because because I'm V I didn't say France okay I'm not like that he uh he's got he's got mad cash that's cool because it insulates him from a lot of the [ __ ] but well yeah but it also attracts the [ __ ] well I was going to say my buddy is friends with Johnny Depp and um his also in France and he spent some time with Johnny Depp in uh England and said it was the most ridiculous scene you've ever seen in your life the guy can't go anywhere everywhere he goes there's people with earpieces in and suits and they follow him everywhere like they're peripheral and you try to go outside he was like going outside to have a cigarette and they swarm on him we get you a ride somewhere do you need something like you're always a catered to and so he lives in this weird insulated world where he like runs from restaurant to restaurant and has chefs come over his house and cook he can't go to stores everywhere he goes he's being swarmed upon and for him uh apparently it happened uh after the Pirates of the Caribbean movies that like took things to this critical nuclear place where it's at right now where he's just like he's a story he's an an object of attention everywhere he goes it's going to be really hard to keep your [ __ ] together when you're like that because your version of reality is so [ __ ] yeah I mean you're not getting the sort of feedback that you need just to like know what's real you know how do you it's it's interesting the character that put him over you know into that world of strangeness was based on uh Keith Richards right yeah who I yesterday I was talking to my friend T who um he's an Italian Prince talking about European he was married to Olivia wild for seven years you know so he's
sort of like he's like in this world Strange World and uh he was talking his father was this crazy Italian prince who hung out with felini and Bridget BAU and Salvador do and you know he sort of started the DOL Vita in Italy in the ' 50s and squander this huge family fortune like in his lifetime on women and boats and parties and all this [ __ ] you know I love him yeah really interesting cat anyway ta is a great uh flamco guitarist and we were talking about like how do you get in you know how when did you start playing guitar and he said well when I was 13 um The Rolling Stones came to like Rome or wherever they were playing and my dad is an old friend of Keith Richards and he took me to the hotel where the stones were staying and Keith had like a whole floor to himself right and we went in and there were all these people and all this scene and actually Keith Richard's father was there he mentioned and um and my dad mentioned to Keith like hey to's learning guitar and Keith had a flamco guitar there and he picked it up and he did a few like riffs and he said to him if you want to learn to play guitar learn flamco because if you can play flamco you can play anything wow and T now is a [ __ ] great Flamenco guitarist and he was like man if Keith Richards like tells you what to do like you know that's what you do you know and he [ __ ] went with it it's great that makes sense cuz that flamenco's very fast finger movements like you would have to develop some incredible coordination or your fingers yeah like doing a Stones riff after that is easy yeah it's uh I always loved music but I've never had any inclination to learn an instrument yeah I I love it love to it nope no there's not enough time you know I mean I I have enough forms of expression that I'm enjoying I just I think it would be cool as [ __ ] man you know you watch like a Jimmy Hendrick solo and you go good Lord could you imagine if you could just just the feeling of being in it that deeply the flow you know it's just that's what I regret you know I I never had the discipline I took electric guitar lessons for two weeks and quit and I took piano for a week and quit and you know I was just too much of a [ __ ] off as a kid I could never get over the hump
to where it started being enjoyable yeah you need to be obsessed to to get really good at anything whether it's the drums or you know the guitar playing chess I mean it's all the same thing really it's like you need to just get obsessed at that particular discipline you know whatever it is that it takes to to get really good at it a big part of what makes someone really good at anything is like this crazy Obsession if you don't have that Obsession you'll just drift in and out from one thing to the other until you find the thing that you really are obsessed with do you think the now obsession is defined you know in the psychological terms as a pathology right obsessive compulsive disorder and and you know this is a very subversive kind of thought but it's like in our society this relates back to the Psychopaths who who attain great success are I mean our most really successful people uh responding to some deep trauma you know what I mean like they say comedians you know there's some need for approval and you know make people laugh make people love you you know because whatever your family structure I don't know as many comedians as you do but you know you always hear that right you know cuz I needed the attention I in actors like they need people looking at them they need to be on stage they're like drinking that up because there's some need it nourishes them on some level right so I wonder like is there you know like I'm thinking about people who say like I learned to play guitar so I could get laid you know cuz the girls were I guess I didn't if I didn't think of it that way so like if you had told me I would get late or maybe if you and your friends got together and you were like man we're having a hard time getting late okay here's the is let's form a band we're Mega band I think you probably wouldn't be as good as if you guys were like man can you imag look the stones were our age when they got together let's just [ __ ] do this guys you know if you like really had this desire to produce something that people loved and that's what you kind of have to do you have to I think to get to be a Keith Richards you have this you have to have this desire to produce something that people are going to love because like when you listen to his guitar riffs you know or any great guitar Stevie Ron
anyone I mean they have to have this deep desire to connect with the just the correct sounds that's coming out of their mind their imagination their their skill their interpretation of the moment you know like that's why people like like when someone does a guitar solo the idea being that this guy's just feeling it you know it's not the exact same solo every time every time they're doing it like you know if a guy just just starts riffing and everybody starts cheering and going along with it you want to see like what's what's in that guy right at that moment and it expresses itself through all the discipline and all the years that he's practicing guitar and then the the finger coordination that it's able to achieve and and you know there's some [ __ ] that's like you could tell they're just kind of they're just going fast you know there's going fast sh yeah there's people that shred and it's really cool and it's really impressive and then there's like some Stevie Ron [ __ ] there's some Stevie Ron where you like feel like him crying through the guitar yeah like there's like there's like this emotion that's attached to it and then people connect to and when you see like stev yon's version of Little Wing yeah you know you see a great guitarist inhabiting and loving another great guitarist you know there's something really beautiful about that [ __ ] yeah dude [ __ ] yeah his his version of voodo child is the only version I accept other than Hendrick right obviously I'm a huge Hendrick fan yeah I mean that's why I named this The Joe Rogan Experience to rip off HRI really huge always from the time I was a little kid I mean he just he has a special quality to him like that song Voodoo Child to me like that just the the opening yeah it's coming where the [ __ ] did that come who who did that before him I mean compare music before Hendrick and after Hendrick it's like I really believe that like especially Voodoo Child there's something about that beginning riff like when he really gets into it it's like God he was on some new place he was in some new dimension when he was and rering the guitar like [ __ ] that I'm not learning that I'm doing it my way that's he's just like so unconcerned
with what came before in a way you know it's drugs he was on drugs well that that's what I was going to say and and honestly the first time and special drugs not Coke oh right no he was on all sorts of generally yeah I mean the the I there it is there it is H hit that Crank that [ __ ] up listen to this what you really have to think about is like this is the late 1960s when this guy comes out with this now if you just go 10 years before that you're dealing with like Buddy Holly yeah and which is great music but this is just some Next Level [ __ ] like listen to this part this is one dude by the way in the [Music] Distortion that's my I have a few all-time favorite songs I don't have like a alltime favorite song but I listen to that [ __ ] when I'm in my car on the way to the gym I'll time it for like the last five minutes before I get to the gym is Voodoo Child cuz it's just just [ __ ] blasted put my phone on airplane mode [ __ ] you and hear this cranked always high that's just it just touches like your DNA you feel that guy's expression right through the sound I I get that with do you ever listen to Danny California red chili Peppers that oh yeah okay yeah there's a guitar there's a there's a thing that like the whole song builds to this [ __ ] wild guitar lead near the end and like if I'm working out or running or something I always have that on my playlist cuz I just there's like energy comes out of The Ether you know it's amazing yeah they had a cover of Higher Ground that was one of the few uh covers that I actually enjoyed as much as the original just like Stevie Ray Von's version of Voodoo Child there's some covers that are better I that I really love that genre of music you know where a cover like gets the essence of the song in a way that the original performer may have missed like there are a few a few examples I mean All Along the Watchtower you know I think HRI does that better than Dylan and Dylan actually said that as well you know yeah it's just so different his version is a different song I mean it's just so it's so different and you know here's one that people don't talk Suspicious Minds Dwight Yokum did a cover of suspicious
that's right oh it's better than Elvis people get mad white people Fine Young Cannibals did a version of it did which isn't bad yeah they did a great version too it's a funny song suspicious minds too you know cuz B it's Elvis saying oh come on baby you know I wouldn't lie to you who you going to believe me or Your Lying Eyes right especially in context of Elvis's life exactly you're ghost dude come on baby it's like JFK saying hey I'm a one woman man yeah sure you are dude well not only that Elvis was probably on so many pills he didn't know if he was monogamous had idea when he was the drugs are oh he was drifting in and out of Consciousness all day long I mean he was poor guy talk about trauma leading to Great Fame right yeah I mean way yeah a d damaged Soul you know seeking approval from the world well I often wonder if what we're seeing when we see great like great resonating forms of expression whether it's art or whether it's uh comedy or you know any music I always wonder if what we're looking at is a mathematical equation if we're looking at like a a yin and a Yang an EB and a pole and that the EB you know whatever it was that created this great deficit responds the body the mind the soul the spirit responds with this incredible work of art to sort of make up for all the trauma that it experienced when it was young which is why it's it's really tough to find someone who had this really Ultra privileged life who is accepted and loved and nurtured in every way who becomes this really fascinating great artist right like what you usually find is these people that are in pain and torn up and exactly yeah and I I I often wonder if we're looking at in a cultural context and we sort of like oh that guy is an [ __ ] or his life sucked or she was abused or he was neglected and we're we're we're looking at it in terms of like these um these definitions that we've already categorized in our mind but in fact fact what it really is is like math is that we're out yeah that we're looking at a minus and a positive we're looking at a Jimmy Hendrick this young black man in this incredibly racist world who comes along like right at the moment of this psychedelic acceptance where the whole world especially young people are turning on
in a way that they never have before the Beatles Come Along they do the White Album people are freaking out Clapton you know Leila Pink Floyd and then all of a sudden this comes along who's dressed like a [ __ ] Indian he's got a headband on and he's playing music from outer space chewing gum yeah I he's to you know Phil Harman uh rest sa who's uh a a good friend from news radio and he was uh he grew up um when he was young rather uh he lived in Hollywood and he worked as like a stage hand when Jimmy Hendrick played the whiskey and so he was right there with Jimmy Hendrick holding the speaker because sometimes the speaker ERS would fall off the stage like they were on the edge of the stage and you had to be there in case something happened so he was there when Hendrick's first burst on the scene so he is as close to Hendrick as you are to me right talk about front row seat right and he played guitar Phil was Phil did everything he could do he was a a true genius I mean he really could do anything and he had incredible work ethic that guy like we we joke around about it we had this uh thing we did at the Hollywood uh Walk of Fame he got a star earlier this year and Steven root and Candy Alexander and I were were joking around about how Phil had these notes like he would have uh his script would be he would have tabs for each scene and like these different color tabs for every scene that he was in and everything would be highlighted and he would have notes and stickums and everything was like super organized and we were always like can I borrow your script you know like nobody could find their [ __ ] script but Phil had his [ __ ] in a binder he would take his thing he would punch holes in them stick them in a binder you know mean he was super duper organized and anal about that kind of [ __ ] but one of his greatest moments you know when we were friends somewhere along the line he started smoking weed like all the time this is before I actually smoked weed and um he did it because he had a lot of problems there's a lot of marital issues obviously that led to his wife killing him but he enjoyed like after work was done not while he was there but after work was done he enjoyed getting high he loved getting high and going on a boat and uh he had a boat and he would take his boat
out and he would just love being high safe in and he was uh telling me one time we were hanging out in his room it was after after filming and he was high and he was telling me that story about him working at this club and holding the speakers for Hendrick and his day it's like one of my favorite memories of him you know because just I could see him as this this young guy it's like he was so fascinated by everything he's the only guy that I've ever met that I went to a strip club with and it didn't feel creepy cuz he he sat down he was uh he sat down I could say this now cuz he's dead couldn't if he was alive I'd probably not tell you the story but he used to love to go to this place called Bob's classy lady and it was uh in the valley that's great and Phil took me there um and uh he um he would sit by the stage and the girls would come out and dance and he' give the money and he was like a genuine childlike enthusiasm for their bodies yeah you know they' be like moving in front of be like wow you're beautiful oh you're be he was high as [ __ ] just high as [ __ ] and he was watching these girls dance and stick their genitals in his face and he just was loving it he was loving it a way that wasn't creepy yeah like it was weird it's like he had this almost like innocence about the way he was appreciating their bodies that I didn't feel weird being near him while this was happening CU it was just me and him could you feel it as well or were you I was too insecure yeah yeah I was too uh for whatever reason there was too many preset ideas about yeah bodies and I it also I was like at the time I think I was 26 or 27 20 maybe 28 at the most and I was pretty [ __ ] crazy you know I was just a different person it I was still operating on the momentum of my youth and chaos and I couldn't even believe I was hanging out with Phil Hartman at a strip club like to me like seven years before that I had been fighting you know it was like so recent it's like my competition days so flavored like who I was cuz like you know you're talking about the word obsessed what it means I if it is a sickness the sickness meaning that you can get good at something because of that sickness I was 100% sick when I was a kid I was sick as [ __ ] I was a psychotic in that way you know not in a
way where I didn't care about other people's feelings but just OBS maybe psychotic is not the word now that we've researched it maybe it's the word is just just singular in my purpose and vision on on Earth I just wanted to do that and only that monomania yeah and so it was hard for me to get out of that headset for a long time it was I was I to drift back into that headset try to fight it off and try to like assimilate and be normal but I felt like I like almost like a drug addict who had stopped doing coke or heroin or meth or something like that I had like gone into this world where there was no more fight ORF flight there was no more terrifying bouts of competition followed by preparation followed by more competition now all a sudden I'm hanging out with Phil Hartman his trip Club did performance feel that way at all like you know you got a taping on Friday leading up to it you're sort of nervous you're preparing you know to some extent definitely not a TV show TV shows especially news radio was one of the easiest jobs I've ever had in my life in terms of the actual performance of it I mean you would be a little nervous before make sure you knew your lines make sure you get it right but the cast was so [ __ ] good that like you were working with these people that were so funny all you had to do is just do your thing like if I it was me in a scene with Andy Dick all I had to do was just go Andy what are you talking about man what are you talking about and then he would do his wackiness and then I would do whatever I had to say and the the hard part was not laughing you know it was remembering your lines first and then not laughing that was amazing great job but acting what about standup that's a little different because you're creating it you know and news radio they allowed us a lot of room for ad liing but even if you do create it you're interacting with someone else and it's you know you're you're pretending some things are happening and it either works or it doesn't work and it doesn't work you you get together you take a five- minute break the writers all would you know Paul and Josh and all these guys would all huddle together and we' try to come up with another line you know so it's like everyone was working together on this thing so it was in a sense way
easier than standup because stand up like you're on your own [ __ ] you know if you're out there bombing especially PE people paid money to see it it's [ __ ] you know you you better come correct you better have some [ __ ] to say so yeah stand up more so but still never as terrifying as the the the in between bouts between competition it terrifying you ever was there ever any sort of possibility of you being on Saturday Night Live I never wanted to act at all I didn't a sketch that no I don't want to do that so how how did it happen how I mean you don't have to talk about if this is you covered this definitely have it's super simple I just got a development deal I did MTV half hour Comedy Hour I got a development deal they offered me a lot of money next thing you know I was on a Disney show of all things for Fox two hilarious things Disney show for Fox was called Hardball um when that was over I was totally ready to quit Show Business you're doing a voice no it was a character I played a baseball player Frank Valente and it was a terrible show it started off really good the guys who created it were writers from The Simpsons uh Jeff Martin and Kevin keran they were writers from The Simpsons they wrote for Married with Children they were brilliant brilliant guys but they were softspoken you know writers intellectuals they got steamrolled they got steamrolled they got steamrolled by hacks yeah the the the people who came in you know Fox didn't think they were strong enough to run a show so they [ __ ] up their pilot they [ __ ] up all all the episodes and they they tanked a great idea you know they they were Baseball fans and they wanted to make a hilarious sitcom about baseball akin to Married with Children for baseball right that was their idea and um I hated it I I hated I didn't hate them and I Lov I loved being in the pilot Jim Brewer was actually in the pilot with me um Jim played uh it was a onetime role for him and um it was just a bad Scene It was just not fun I didn't enjoy working with actors I thought some of them became friends but a bunch of them were like unbelievably self-centered and weird and just so you got no training or never did theater in Boston zero no desire either which is like infuriating to them that all of a sudden I was in their Turf who
this who's this guy guy and I played the baseball star I was the the guy who was the the star of the team so it was based on your comedy no not at all oh the the MTV thing wasn't a no the my comedy like got me to the MTV thing but the the the sitcom they had already written it I just they just cast me I met them and they said you could be that guy and so boom all of a sudden I'm in Hollywood and um they're putting makeup on me I'm like Christ um I did the pilot first uh so I came out here to visit I got one of those Oak Wood Apartments right you know on uh in Burbank that everybody automatically goes to they have these rented furnished apartments they have cable it's beautiful you just move right in sleep in some bed that some dude before he's been farting and jerking on and um I did that and then um then it became it got picked up then I got an apartment and I signed a lease cuz I figured ah this is going to stay I had the oak wood for like a couple of weeks like oh the show is doing well and they thought it was going to get picked up and then it got canceled yeah so then uh I got news radio same thing was just a audition went in for an audition as a cattle call like a hundred dudes really yeah I met them went in did an audition came back did a second audition bam I'm on a show that's amazing sitting there at the table with Phil Hartman Dave Foley so all told being on news radio I had even thought about ever acting for less than a year and I this was on my second TV show that's [ __ ] insane it's totally insane and the second show I ever auditioned for by the way I'd only auditioned for two shows ever and I was on both of them it didn't make any sense and and so you know so to what do you attribute this lucky as [ __ ] that for sure lucky as [ __ ] and the ability to perform Under Pressure one of the things about sitcoms about auditioning for them it's so unnatural you're in this room there's a table there's these people that you don't know and you're supposed to pretend that you know we're on a tropical island and we're trying to find where the first aid C cabin is you know you it's it's fake yeah like and a lot of times people like oh my God my life depends on this my bills and some people have never had to perform Under Pressure before but being a standup helps that tremendously because you're
you're accustomed to being nervous and then fighting helps that tremendously because you're accustomed to being nervous so those two things you know I I I performed under pressure more than the average person even though I didn't have a lot of acting experience interesting that's a very interesting way to look at it yeah I just I mean I'm interested in all this I just watched that SNL special the other night yeah lot of Phil Hartman he was amazing and a lot of audition tapes as well he's one of the reasons why I never wanted to do it though his his depiction of working in Cent live was not good no a lot of people hated it he hated it well Phil was a nice [ __ ] guy he was a nice [ __ ] guy he was it's a it's a very ultra competitive mean spirited place and Phil had the remnants of that almost like as a defensive shell when he first started working on news radio like he would say like things that like were really uncharacteristic of him later and it was really and we we actually talked about it he I don't want to name any names but he was talking about some mean people that he worked with on the showas he I don't know if I don't believe he he's got that reputation he does yeah a lot of people that come from that environment do because I think it's really hostile and they're all competing to get their stuff in the air and there's a lot of backstabbing you know there's people like doing favors for writers and trying to get their stuff in and there's a lot of there's a lot of greatness that comes from that too I mean Satur live if you look at the overall body of work and you just cherry-pick greatness my God I mean you have this incredible bouquet of John balushi and Phil Hartman and Adam Sandler and Chris Rock I mean you have great Eddie [ __ ] Murphy who was genius on that show him playing buckwheat my God I mean it was amazing it was it was a but I never had a desire to do that I don't want to compete with a bunch of people I don't want to be in a hostile Environ I've believe it or not it doesn't make sense because I I did martial arts my whole life I was trying to avoid hostility like I don't want to I don't want to argue I don't want any conflict I'm out I don't want to compete like the beautiful thing about stand-up
comedy is you're creating it yourself you go up there you do it you you're right you don't have to argue with people about it if they don't like it they're not going to laugh and then you're [ __ ] you got to restructure it and figure it out yourself you know that's how I feel about writing books I mean sometimes I miss like an idealized team kind of environment cuz I know how wonderful that can be but the reality is that generally when you work with people you don't necessarily like each other and it's a pain in the ass because of all the weird ego [ __ ] and so I kind of like that I can at least for a while make a living sitting in a room alone you know it's it's got its ups and its Downs of course there's also a positive aspect from the reader point of view that if I read a Chris Ryan book I know I'm getting Chris Ryan's thoughts they're coming unadulterated from your mind to your typewriter your your keyboard rather you know yeah and that's something I'm conscious of you know I read I don't know maybe it was that book you recommended to me the the war of art yeah but somewhere I read um someone said always write postumus ooh you know right as if you're dead because you will be and the book will still be there wow so like let go you know say what's true yeah yeah yeah that's amazing yeah that's way better than like if you're like a Beverly Hills housewife you're going to write some [ __ ] that's only based on you know like what's going to sell yeah you know yeah you know what I mean like they'll create these you know things like okay how is this going to work the best I I don't mean to single them out but I mean just like there some people that write some books where it's pretty obvious as they're writing the book they're kind of bullshitting who they are and what they're projecting yeah this will connect with that part of the audience but I don't want to offend that part so I got to yeah yeah you know you're were talking earlier about that whole EB and flow idea the mathematical sort of it all equals out at the end I've thought about that a lot not so much in in terms of individuals uh though it makes sense but I've thought about that a lot in terms of uh historical moments historical periods you know like Vietnam the the late 60s right like 65 to 71 that's when you know
more more Americans are dying in Vietnam right than any other period earlier than that before they ramped up it wasn't as many so you've got all this conflict all these riots in the street you've got Selma and Martin Luther King and all this agitation and at the same time you've got Jimmy Hendricks you've got the Beatles You've got all this music we're talking about amazing literature coming out of that fashion craziness tie Dy and afro and you know it's like when the [ __ ] hits the fan it's really interesting you know and and interesting people rise to the top whereas when things are stable the interesting people just you know they they don't get anywhere because it's too the the structures are rigid and controlling you know well sometimes there's a need for reform and change that makes these interesting things Blossom almost out of pressure almost out of like two rocks pushing together and they create a yeah there's there's this effect that happens because people are pushed into a certain way and and in that sense there always been the argument that we need a certain amount of evil to appreciate love to appreciate happiness and and good times we almost need a certain amount like people who this is uh in certainly no way supporting War but people who look at War uh like people in this country especially as just something and they don't they don't think about it deeply they don't think about it in a in a way where they they comprehend the loss of lives and the the sadness and the sorrow they just look at it as those are our heroes they got to do what they got to do over there so we could do what we do over here all right woo and it's like this really surface way of looking at this thing but it's it's almost because they are not experiencing the suffering it's almost because they're not experiencing the sorrow that they don't have this this this appreci like the appreciation that you have of not being at War shouldn't be that someone's over there fighting War so that you don't have to have War it should be that you you you realize that people can get along that people can love each other we could be friendly we could be nice you can go to a farmers market and everybody's saying hi you know you could you know that's a bad example but you know we can interact
with each other in a in a positive way or we could fight over an oil hole you know we could shoot each other and kill babies and [ __ ] Gunn down Innocents and Untold numbers over an oil hole I mean it's almost like having the no interaction with it having and and also having this sort of archetypal patriotism that everyone subscribes to that's sort of like there's a very cookie cutter vibration that certain types of patriot type people give off where it's like it's really like this is where we're going to operate we're going to operate in this very small box where the soldiers are heroes and there's no there's no doubt they're doing what they do over there so we could do what we do over here and they'll repeat that Mantra over and over again without any consideration whatsoever for what it means as human beings that we're you're you're you're dealing with groups of human beings fighting other groups of human beings for some reason that has not really been clearly defined to me that most of the people fighting have no clue what it is yeah most none of us do very few of us do and I think that for for someone who for someone who goes over there and and experiences it it's probably got to be really weird to see that sort of cookie cutter version of it uh being expressed by people like uh I have quite a few friends that have uh been overseas and been involved in the war and you you talk to them and man they have sorrow they have some horrible stories they have some [ __ ] they don't like to remember they have some you know some really difficult things on their you know this Brian Williams thing that happened in the news one of the things that I took from it especially hard was not that Brian Williams was not telling the truth because I think he's a [ __ ] Hollywood guy he's just a Showbiz guy he's an actor he's an actor he's an actor that reads the prompter instead of a script he acts like a standard actor I mean like they have the tie and they they talk like most of them do I made a mistake you know like come on man you're [ __ ] lying you lied you lied about some [ __ ] that went down but what would H Hit Me Harder was the pilot that was involved because there was a pilot involved that gave his version of the story and did some interviews and he said that um they were in a helicopter
and the helicopter took Small Arms fire and that the helicopter in front of them was the one that got hit with the RPG and it wasn't the one that Bri Bri Williams is in um but he was telling his story about this and then people started questioning no you weren't in the helicopter with Brian Williams this guy was in the helicopter Brian Williams and so the guy says man you know what I'm I don't really completely remember but what I it's hard for me to go over this I had put it aside but now that I'm being forced to remember it the nightmares are coming back and I'm having a really hard time sleeping oh really and he was talking about he said I don't really want to talk about it anymore I you know I said what I had to say is is this guy is certainly not lying he certainly did serve he certainly did get shot at certainly did see some horrific things there's no doubt about that no one questions that they're just questioning these these his version of events versus a couple other people have their version of the events and there just so much trauma involved in this guy's experiences over there that he's like I had tried my best to forget about this was what I can remember when people asked me about my experience with Brian Williams this is what happened and he gave a very logical account of it the reason why we were an hour L said we had a drop off a payload we dropped off our payload and then we went to it took us about an hour and then we went to the site where the had landed with and then we all had huddled down together in a snow Sandstorm and it it was an an incredibly traumatic event for all involved so it I'm not giving Brian Williams a free pass because he remembered this in a [ __ ] up way because I do think he bullshitted it I think he added a bunch of [ __ ] to his version of it and put himself in more danger because he didn't think that anybody had put the pieces together and when it came out look his story as itself would have been just as good if he said the helicopter in front of us got hit with an RPG we had a it didn't make you better because you almost died you definitely almost died anyway like his version the real version he almost died the real version he still was in a convoy that got shot at his helicopter didn't they were all forced to land and
endure a sandstorm for two days I mean that version is amazing you don't have to but it's it's indicative of the kind of [ __ ] artists that we have that are reading off the news that he didn't like that version he wanted to Jazz it up he wanted to make a little bit better my life was in danger for the news but it is as we started this conversation talking about how unreliable memory is right and Milan kunda said memory is not the opposite of forgetting it's a way of forgetting right because we do we remember things things you know based on emotions and and over time it changes and and especially a story like that I know a guy who's a compulsive liar I mean within 15 minutes of meeting this guy he told me he had trained with the seals he had played semi-professional basketball in Europe and he owned this amazing apartment that we were in that I knew he didn't own his boss owned who was this billionaire guy and and he was the private uh pilot of this billionaire guy this friend of mine right and so I knew this guy was full of [ __ ] but I also knew he flies a [ __ ] Lear jet for a living he's like on standby to fly this guy wherever around the world like dude that's a good story in itself you don't need to lie you know the guy who's working at Starbucks okay I you make up some [ __ ] why not you know Gets You Through the Night but you're a [ __ ] pilot like I knew a dude who was a successful comedian and a multi-millionaire and was would do really well but he would be he's a compulsive liar if you started talking to him about something that you do uniquely he would also do it you know like if you you talk to him about you know whatever going to the jungle and researching ants he he he would tell you about his time always a little better than your story right yeah he smokes cigarettes and he would tell me about his uh kickboxing experiences with world champions that's ballsy though like to get into your realm right oh oh it was ridiculous it's funny that's that's risk high risk well he was crazy complete he still is completely crazy but he's really talented too which is interesting he's a really good comic so it's like it's I can't give his name away folks I'm so sorry so maybe maybe he likes the thrill like
that maybe you're going to call him out nope I don't think so there's no masochistic just ego and alcohol and a bunch of craziness but smoking cigarettes telling me about how he's just sparring eight rounds with world champion which isn't totally impossible I had this guy in Joe Schilling recently he's one of the best kickboxers in the world and he admitted on the podcast he smoked cigarettes on a regular basis it's [ __ ] crazy but he's also outside of that very dedicated as an athlete just ridiculous that he smokes cigarettes in a endurance sport but he's a bad [ __ ] I mean like Bonafide legit trains all day this guy wasn't training this guy's drinking all the time I know he wasn't kickboxing like he's nuts like it's just but he almost can't help himself he has to just he starts talking and he just comes out and then he gets away there's a weird craziness I I remember meeting a guy once at a wine tasting uh who told me he was a demigod what does that mean well that's what I asked like what does that mean well it means I'm I'm half human my father was human my mother was from any he tells like some some Latin word for a star system somewhere and uh and he said like again within 15 minutes he said uh that uh he was the highest paid artist in the world because he had designed the that Atlas uh thing in front of Rockefeller Center which was the highest like most expensive piece of art anywh ever like whatever blah blah blah and and I was fascinated and the guy was super good-looking dude like he had like a little beard and a bit he was big and dark you know he looked like Satan like the mephistophiles kind of thing you know and I thought thought he was bullshitting me I thought that my friend had like put him up to it cuz I was high and I was just like so you thought he was just acting like he was just being Sil I thought he was goofing you know and that after a few minutes he'd break character and we'd all get a good laugh out of it and I even called my friend I was like hey Dave come over here I'm talking to the devil here he's got some great stories and then Cassie was there and then she came and he and he got into her and he started trying to impress her and telling her all these story and she's a psychiatrist right she sees [ __ ]
like before the rest of us even know it's coming you know it was very funny like the whole interaction wow yeah but it's a it's a it's a form of insanity you know like people have to scratch that itch I don't know and they kind of keep moving those people almost by Nature have to keep moving because eventually they leave a mess behind them they their lives implode you know the lies come down and cave in on them and then they got to find some new person to sucker in and that does happen you know you see that you see people drifting from one group of people to the other group of people and I've seen it I've seen it happen yeah it's weird it's weird when you meet someone who's just obviously full of [ __ ] and lying through their teeth as they're talking it's a very strange thing like do you know that I know and you're just going to like hope that I don't call you on it because you've seen that or you want me to yeah I wonder about that too like some people well again you know the my wife's a psychiatrist she she's dealt with all this kind of stuff and she laughs she just cracks up when she sees it she sees it immediately and just like her way of dealing with insanity is laughter and she works with well she's worked with all sorts of people but her sort of specialization is Looney like uh one FL of the Cuckoo's Nest kind of scenes right and I remember going in with her the first time I I visited her at work she was running a mental hospital with like double doors and bars over the windows these criminally insane people who had killed their kids and you know like crazy [ __ ] right and we went in there I wasn't prepared man we went in and it was just like lunatics and there was this woman like must have been in her mid-50s lying on her back in a little night gown no underwear with her like arms and legs you know like a crab doing a crab thing and we walk in it's like this you know [ __ ] and the whole scene just scared the [ __ ] out of me and and cassilda just started laughing like you crazy old lady what are you doing get up from there she just like laughs and the thing that I didn't understand until I hung out with her is that people who are psychotic know they're psychotic oh and so they kind of know how ridiculous they are and as a doctor when she laughs she
laughs in such a loving accepting I get you kind of way that it creates this instant Rapport and they start laughing oh so she like relieves a little tension right like it's all okay I know you're just another crazy person I deal with you all the time and come on it's it's kind of like how you know like a a gynecologist I imagine would have to sort of be so laidback that you kind of you know okay he's seen a million [ __ ] it do you know like it relaxes you in a way you know and I think she does that with uh with crazy people it's normal people who make her really uncomfortable oh yeah I mean imagine if you were a gynecologist and you were super nervous about seeing someone's [ __ ] okay I guess we're about to do it hold on throw some water in my face let me have a little more wine take your panties off oh Jesus it's happening it's happening all right let's see what you got wrong down there all right I'm going to look I'm going to look I'm looking I'm looking going to use a mirror like it's like it's a [ __ ] vampire it's Medusa you can't look in the eyes yeah so if you had to have a job like a normal job what job would you be good at what would you want to do not a gynecologist I imagine uh outside of Comedy I would probably be a martial arts instructor I enjoyed doing that you like teaching yeah I enjoyed teaching I bet you're good with kids I'll bet I enjoyed it yeah I used to teach kids class I taught a lot of kids I taught kids uh up I taught several kids from white belt all the way up to uh higher belts like I don't think I taught anybody up to Black Belt but I got pretty close because it takes quite a few years to achieve black belt so for most of them they is very rare that they make it to that far like they they'll learn some lessons along the way and it'll help them you know in life but to achieve that level of of a ability this is a lot of commitment so most of them did make it it's like maybe one out of a thousand ever make it to Black Bel really probably in a good school maybe I mean might be one out of 500 or 600 but it's whatever close to thousand whatever it is it's it's not 1% by any stretch of the imagination it's probably at a good estimate is 1110 to 1% right you know so buty I mean you I imagine you'd be
really good in that kind of an Environ not just martial arts but kids in general cuz they there's like a sort of an immediate respect you know like you're you know you look like a badass so it's like oh that take that guy seriously well I like kids that's one the reason and you're amenable you're open to them I I also I I'm a big take in Strays sort of guy I've always taken in stray dogs and cats and yeah been following your Instagram lots of good cat shots in there recently I got a new kitten I love cats man I do too they they're fun they're fun to have around they don't require your constant attention too they've got dignity they got their own life man and especially the key which which you obviously understand is have multiple cats yeah don't have one cat cuz then you're going to have the neurotic freaked out cat pissing in your bed but you have a the difference between no cat and a cat is significant the difference between one cat and two cats is negligible yeah right as far like the the toll on you whatever yeah I mean so get a few cats if you're going to get a cat and so they have each other when you're not around yeah you know yeah I got three of them that's what we had three play you know interesting enough um teaching was one of the things that really helped me on Fear Factor which Fear Factor seems like such a stupid show and it was kind of dumb but um there was some people that were like really freaked out and didn't know how to deal with like the stress of competition right and I was so used to it I was so used to not just not just teaching but coaching like even when I retired uh my friend Dimitri was uh fighting in this big National Tournament and I was in his corner for like and I and I pumped him up like during it was like one of his best performances ever like I'm good at getting inside of people's heads especially people that I know and telling them what they need to hear to get them to go out there and fire them the [ __ ] up you know and telling them like what you're really good at man you can do this and it's all about not having any doubt it's all about knowing how to stay intense and focused and and and and go out there and do what needs to be done and and giving them this sort of technical advice as well as like this emotional pickme up
like some some people have like a knack for that and I developed it by teaching kids right because kids are always freaked out man I took a lot of kids to tournaments and you know they'd be fighting other little kids and most likely they wouldn't get hurt but you know when you got a little seven-year-old in front of you and you're putting pads on his head to protect him from kicks and you're like listen you you just got to stay focused and don't be afraid all you need to think about is what you're doing don't think about what happens if it goes wrong never think of that always think about what are you trying to do and if things go wrong reset and think about it again what is my objective what am I trying to do stay defensive keep moving never stand in one place at one you know never stand put always always keep fainting always keep the opponent guessing and I'd go over all the most important things to them and then pump them up and tell you can do this when you get through this you're going to feel so good I know you feel terrible now but as terrible as you feel now when it's over you're going to feel so good and when they would do it and they would compete even if they would lose they'd be so relieved I'm like see now you feel good and this this this experience this harrowing stressful experience can give birth to this new appreciation of peace right it's it's the yin-yang again right we're talking about earlier I read a book recently a fascinating book called uh Paradise made in Hell uh Rebecca solnet and it's about uh disaster sociology right so it's studying people's behaviors in behavior in disaster wow right and so it's fascinating because the idea we have is like that's when people get really crazy and they you Loot and pillage and you know oh now I can rape and nobody will catch me and there are no cops and in fact what happens is the opposite that that's when people are most generous most kind they form communities they meet the neighbors they never said a [ __ ] word to for 10 years they're like taking care of each other and people and it sort of relates to war too you know people look back on on it and they say yeah there was a lot of horrible [ __ ] of people were dying stuff was happening but I remember it as
the best time in my life Wow and the the main guy there's this really moving passage where this guy who sort of started the the field who's no hippie he you know teaches at Nebraska or something he's like very straightup scientist but he said he said the best way to think about disasters is not as a disaster but as relief from the disaster that is normal life because in normal life we're all isolated we're all suffering alone and he's like man when the [ __ ] hits the fan that's when things get really wonderful well well there's no escaping the fact that it's finite when you're watching people die around you that's for sure yeah yeah well and again is like you were saying about you know you need the pain to enjoy the pleasure you need hunger to enjoy the food you need you know loneliness to enjoy companionship there is no light without dark isn't right and I think people uh one of the things that people Miss in their lives that leads people to become very stagnant and and disappointed in in their existence is that there's no thrills you know I think that's what leads people to um you know to get divorced or to get to become drug addicts or to to be self-destructive it's almost like people need Thrills and when you get stuck in a really secure job where you know all right Chris Ryan for the next 40 hours you know you're going to be stuck in this spot or you know 8 hours a day for the next you know seven days 5 days whatever it is you're going to be stuck in this spot and you're going to be at this desk and you're going to be dealing with all these cases that come your way and you're going to have to file them and then you're going to have to write a report and it's going to suck and you're going to just be lumped in to this group of people that are all doing the same thing and you're going to do it every week and at the end of the week you know when when the the day is done then you can go home and you can relax but there's going to be no thrills the the the biggest thrill would be merging onto the the highway oh my God here we go like other than that there's nothing there's no UPS is all just steady and normal and I think that's one of the reasons why people have so much road rage and stress and there's no real
experience yeah there's no they're not flushing out I often say in Spanish the word isolar means both to insulate and to isolate so we you know and this gets into this whole book I'm writing like Civilization is largely an attempt to insulate ourselves from uh Danger from strangers from any sort of uh Predators you know from anything that could be a danger to us we try to insulate ourselves from it and then at the end we're isolated right because we're surrounded by this margin this moat that protects us from what from from life right from the thing that makes you feel alive right like okay you want to be completely safe you know get inside this coffin you know and uh you know take some anesthetics and you won't feel a goddamn thing but how's that different from being dead you know it seems like we're all doing our part in this existence and we're we're moving past what we used to be from single celled organisms to higher primates to some weird thing right now that's a combination of conscious being and and physical animal and someone like Duncan someone like Duncan yeah and we're moving in this sort of advancing Direction and it's not it's it's not done you know we're we're yeah we're a part of a great process and what the stage that you and I are in they're going to look back at us and laugh the way we look back at Isaac Newton wearing a powdered wig or you know any of the weirdos that you know figured out all sorts of incredible things back in history but also believed a bunch of stupid [ __ ] as well like you you look back at kernus and the things that he discovered and it's unbelievable and amazing but today it's like duh like everybody already knows that you know like look at the that you live like imagine being Darwin and trying to express these ideas that you formulated over the course of your your life's work to a bunch of Christian Scientists which is what he was dealing with it's hilarious if you go back and think about it today like the his challenges of this idea of this monotheistic world that they that the scientist pretty much universally existed in at that time and and and tries to push forth these crazy theories that he's coming up with uniquely on his own I mean the the the
the resistance that he must have experienced to something that today is instantaneously accepted by everyone that's in in Academia in in in science I mean almost across the board his ideas are accepted so we we look back at those times and we go God they're [ __ ] so stupid back then well they're going to do that to us sure you know and it's not going to be that long I mean with Darwin you're talking about a few hundred years with us it's going to be a few decades and then a few DEC everything goes faster now faster faster and we're we're in the middle of this we're in the middle of this weird process of human beings changing and becoming more aware of all the flaws and the Folly in our civilization and our existence and all the [ __ ] we're fighting for today all the protest like black lives matter and you know people fighting for rights of you know everyone across the board from women to gays to this to that like what we're doing is we're trying to patch up the holes in this crazy system with with agitation and anger and loud voices and you know social media campaigns and it's essentially all just trying to make this thing into a more coherent more advanced version of what it is now and then that in turn will find the inherent problems in its existence and it will move just like the monkeys from you know 200,000 years ago that became human beings were fighting off all these different creatures and realize like yo we got to make houses this is [ __ ] like this this [ __ ] living in trees is [ __ ] the climb trees man I'm [ __ ] tired of my baby's getting eaten like let's figure out beers snakes you know you know let's let's figure a way to make a better situation and I think we're in the middle of that man I think we just like like all things you take it for granted that you're in the middle of it well if you look back on your childhood you know and today you look back and you go wow when I was 10 I was doing this and I was doing that but when you were 10 you were just in the middle of it you know you you look back at how much progress has taking place in your own life as a microcosm to your existence you know our all of our existence your your own individual memories and your own individual experiences they you're in the middle of it you're not thinking about being well we're as civilization
we're in the middle of this babyhood we're in the middle of this adolescence whatever the [ __ ] it is yeah you know and we're moving into some new place yeah and it's arrogant but very common for people to think we're at the end of it like this is The Cutting Edge it is The Edge but it's not the end it's not Perfection it's like yeah it's always always in in process always in process but amazing to think that right now we are at the Pinnacle of human knowledge we are at the peak the tip of the spear as far as like everything that people have learned and figured out up until now we have this database we've accumulated from hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of records and then you know after that it gets a little sketchy you go a few thousand years things get real weird in different languages things get even weirder and it gets more vague and more strange and more difficult to decipher but all that data that we've accumulated and the access to it that we have today unprecedented as far as we know and people it's amazing it's amazing to be at that time where you have a question you just like with a psychology Psy psych psychopathy thing we just bang we just Google it and we didn't have to go to a library we didn't have to order a book we didn't have to go to a bookstore or go to a class you just instantaneously get that information and I think that that is accelerating us in a way that we can't even comprehend yeah all no doubt yeah I think we're all experiencing it in a way that's it seems so normal because everyone has a phone you know oh let let me just check my my phone and see let me just call my friend who's nowhere near me and you know this affects getting back to the earlier thing about aging right like I this affects the experience of Aging because more has changed in our lifetimes because it's always accelerating yeah that like remember the first computer I interacted with right it was I was in my late 20s working in the Diamond District in New York and one of my jobs was to back up the discs in this computer the computer was the size of a big refrigerator and the discs were like you know double the circumference of a of an album and they were these massive things and they were probably like 50 megabytes each or something you know if that right
if that right I mean I probably got a thousand times the computing power in my pocket right now it's just insane maybe even more than a thousand yeah I don't know how it works yeah hey I got to roll get out of here man yeah I'm to see this weekend I'm tempted to like Miss the plane this is so much fun uh it's not the plane it's the rental car oh okay they're going to rape me if I'm late we'll hang out this weekend and we're we're promising to do one with you me and Duncan again we're going to figure it out I know we've been getting tweets everybody's busy folks [ __ ] happens um but we'll we'll get it together we'll get it together but thank you brother appreciate it fly down and you can you can follow Chris on Twitter it's uh is it Chris Ryan PhD yeah or is Christopher Ryan Chris Ryan Chris Ryan Chris Ryan PhD uh the one book that you can buy that he has is sex at dawn fantastic book guaranteed to piss off your wife leave that [ __ ] around what are you reading getting these [ __ ] ideas out of your head uh Chris Ryan ladies and gentlemen thank you brother appreciate it man a lot of fun yeah byebye n [Music]