Transcript of #2214 - Shane Smith

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan experience.

Train by day.

Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day.

What's up?

How are you? Good to see you. Good to see you.

What you been up to, man?

That's a loaded question. I'm doing a. I'm doing a podcast now.

You are doing a podcast? Yeah.

Yeah.

When did you start?

Yeah. Yeah. A couple months ago.

What made you want to do that? Just got tired of being on the outside looking in.

So that's it? Yeah, you know, it's you. Actually. I'm gonna paraphrase you, so you gotta tell me the exact quote.

Okay.

But you said, Covid was a fucked up time. And I went in thinking that vaccines were the pinnacle of human technology and came out thinking that the moon landing wasn't real and Michelle Obama's got a dick. And I was like, that was me.

Yeah.

Like, during COVID I was like. I became obsessed with social media and x and, like, just looking at shit and whatever, and I'm like, you know what's true? What's not true? Like, what's what? Like, because everybody's speaking so forcibly. This is one question I wanted to ask you is you talk to all these dudes all the time. One of the things I missed, like, I would be. I would be talking to people and be like, oh, this is going off gas. And I'd be like, oh, I was just there. That's not what's happening. Or, you know, this is happening in Iraq. Oh. I was just. I love talking to people. I love meeting people, and I love sort of knowing stuff. Like, you can just say, well, I'm gonna go there. I'm gonna figure it out.

Right?

So I saw this stuff on social media, and I was like, wow, you know, there's all this stuff, like. But no one's really going after it. And saying, like, as an investigative journalist, saying, what's real? What's not real, what's true, what's not true.

Right.

You are people doing it. Yeah.

They're all investigative journalists. They're all independent. They're all completely outside of any kind of Washington Post, which is.

Yeah, which is the only way to do it.

It's impossible to exist in mainstream media and be legitimate now. There's gonna be hundreds. There's gonna be guardrails. There's hundreds. Yeah, there's.

But you talk to everybody, and I. That must be fascinating because you get the inside track. Like, your brain is like a wealth of information.

Yeah. It's on. It's like, I had a. An unexpected education.

Yeah.

You know, like an unanticipated, unplanned education in all sorts of things.

Yeah. And these guys are super interesting. And you're. You get to learn, and that's amazing.

It's pretty amazing. Yeah. I mean, you learn a lot of bullshit, too. Like, some of the stuff you learned is not true.

Well, that's the problem.

Yeah.

I got a question.

Yeah.

Bobby Kennedy seems to be like, so, like, like, so fast. Like, I remember I used to watch Tony Blair during question period, and he'd, like, leap up and he'd be like, blah, blah, blah. And he was so, like, he knew everything and the facts and stuff. Like, you've interviewed him a bunch of times, or.

I've talked to him many times. I interviewed him.

Is he that good in person?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's legit. I mean, he was an environmental attorney.

Yeah.

That was his background. And, you know, he said, I mean, a crazy life. Imagine you're 14 years old and your dad gets killed by, who knows? But might be the government.

That's. That's my first episode.

Yeah.

Assassinations, deep state. Mmm. Getting into it.

Well, it's a real thing, you know, I don't know who's doing it or what faction or how small the amount of people are that are involved in. Imagine if you're, like, a legitimate person working for the CIA and you think that the CIA is trying to assassinate Trump, and you're like, what the fuck? Or whoever.

That's our first episode.

It's got to be. I mean, it's got to be a small faction of intelligence agencies that want to do things like, how many people do you think were involved in the Kennedy assassination?

So there's a guy named Peter Dale Scott who actually wrote the book on the deep state and brought, like, the concept over from Turkey to here and broke it. And if you talk to him, so he was really involved or wrote about or covered the. They tried to assassinate Castro. That was the first american deep state thing, which is like, by the way, it's. That's. That's factual. That's like, oh, yeah, they were the mob and Cubans and the CIA, and they tried to commit.

Many times they tried to kill him.

Failed.

Yeah.

And then, you know, that sort of morphed and there's all this sort of mix into the Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, Robert RFK assassination attempts that this guy was referencing. And you're just like, deep state has such negative connotation to it because it's like, conspiracy ish but you're like, when it, when it got explained to me by the guys who sort of coined the terms, which is, you know, like there's this intelligence agencies or the Pentagon, career bureaucrats who, by the way, go back and forth. It's a rotating door. They go to Raytheon, they go to Boeing, they go. And they get the contract. Trillions of dollars. And they act in cahoots with each other. And you're like, yeah, that makes total fucking sense.

Of course. Like, it's business relationship.

Business relationship. And then if they have something that needs to happen, you have all kinds of people who will do that thing for you.

Yes.

So it's not. Why. Yeah, exactly. It's not bureaucrats in the.

Yeah, it's a. It could literally be one guy who's a top executive or a hundred or, you know, a few people that come to a conclusion and don't even have to say it. And then a plan gets hatched. Yeah. And then next thing you know, there's a guy on a roof. Yeah.

We're already into. Yeah, I can just see the fucking tweets. But it. But for sure, like, it's like, I found that fascinating. Not only. So I started doing, like, the snipers. We got the sniper fascinating, dude. He has the longest confirmed kill, 3.5 km. So we started just talking technical shit, and you're like, okay, could it be done? And the sniper is like, what are the snipers have to say? And then we got to the head of the guy who trained all the secret service people, and we got that. Actually, we got Trump's head of security for 18 years. Personal head of security guy. First time you ever talked. It was great. Great guy. Keith Shiller. And then we got into it, and then everyone started talking about the deep state. Deep state. And what the fuck is the deep state? Like, I know what the deep state people think is. That's the other thing is online, everyone has so many givens, right? You know, like, in math, one plus one. It doesn't give it. So there's so many givens. You're like, well, let's look at the givens. Like, what is the deep state? So I met, I literally went after the guy who coined the phrase.

And he's like. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that sounds completely. I mean, I know those guys. Like, that sounds completely believable. And then, so when you believe that, then you start saying, okay, well, how do these things look like? What do they look like? It's fascinating, but I mean, look, I'm into all this stuff, and then you're. You're there, like, all day, every day, doing it must be. It's fascinating. I love it. So that. So I did get sick. My long winded answer, I did get sick of being on the outside.

Looking at it is fascinating. But I like the way I do it because I. I get to talk to anybody I want to. Like, I don't have to just deal with things that are disturbing.

Yeah.

I can, you know, talk to someone who's a beekeeper. I can talk to someone who, you know, makes cabinets.

Like, you made. You made your own empire, which is fucking awesome.

Well, it's just what I'm interested in. It just happens to be that a lot of people are interested in these things, so it's lucky. And it's also because I'm actually interested in it. I don't have to have fake conversations. Like, there's no one I have on where I'm like, I can't believe I'm talking to this. You know, like, well, you see that, right? You see that in, like, late night talk shows. They don't want to be interviewing this person too much. Yeah, it's nonsense. Well, vice, when you started vice, it was one of the most refreshing news sources because it was like, these intelligent people that didn't seem like regular journalists. They seem like just people that you.

Yeah, because they weren't. Yeah, they were just people.

Right. They seem like normal people, and yet all of a sudden, they're wearing a flak jacket in a war zone. They seem like normal people, and they're hanging out in a hot tub in Thailand.

That was it.

It's like it was normal people that were interested. Like, nice guy to travel, that one with hindmost arctic adventures. That is, till today, one of my favorite videos you guys ever did. I fucking love that story. Because it's amazing. You've got this guy that lives in.

The most remote human.

Yeah. Like, in this tiny cabin. He's been there since the 1970s. He doesn't even. He saw 911 in a photograph. That's all he knows about it. He doesn't have any television up there. He gets vhs tapes occasionally and watches them on a tiny tv. And he just lives in this subsistence lifestyle, just fishing and hunting and living off the land. And an intelligent, interesting, articulate guy, you know? And he seems way happier than most people I know for sure.

Yeah. He was the most remote human until we found those people in Russia and in, like, Siberia who had run from Stalin and this family who had gone up into the mountains and just lived there for, like 80 years.

Whoa.

By themselves. Like, made shoes out of bark and, like, totally self sustaining up in the mountains of Siberia. Like, they thought that they didn't know about the moon landing. They didn't know about, like, what kind.

Of gene pool do they have?

Not a lot. I think there was a lot of inbreeding. Yeah.

Oh, God. How many people were there?

I don't know. You can look. I don't know. It's like, there was six when they found him, I think, and one was like 80. Who was the youngest or something. Oh, God. Crazy story, though.

Yeah. So they ran from Stalin. Just. Just stayed alive.

They thought Stalin was like, you know, still there. Oh, my God.

It's just funny. You can't name a kid Adolph, but you can name a kid Joseph.

There you go.

And that word.

No, it's a little word. Joseph.

Joseph was too common.

Yeah, Joseph's very calm.

But wasn't Adolf really common with the Germans?

I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I mean, Joseph. Joseph is. Joseph is everywhere.

I know.

That's like a Bible. Yeah.

So, yeah, no Adolf in the Bible. So, no, didn't make the cut.

Didn't make the cut.

But when you guys were, you know, when it was young, it was like, it was new Internet, right? Because Internet opened up a bunch of different possibilities, and it opened up possibilities for legitimate, independent journalism and legitimate independent thinkers who were really disconnected from the sort of stiff, stuffy, mainstream perspective of what's going on in life. And you guys gave, you get. You guys gave a completely unfiltered perspective as a normal human who's experiencing these bizarre circumstances in these exotic lands. And it was awesome, man. It was awesome. And then now it's this bizarre propaganda machine that's ideologically captured to the point where it's preposterous. Like, they say things that are just so outlandish and so not in tune with logic or objectivity. It's so strange to see going from what you made to what it is now.

Yeah, look, I mean, I could get into the nuances, which are many and boring, but basically what happens is, you know, and I actually called it from the beginning. I said, look, we're going to get too big, and at that point we're going to become the thing that we're, like, we were a challenger brand and we're going to become the status quo, and then we're going to get our asses kicked. A b. I said, look, all Internet is now consolidating and media is consolidating. And everybody's consolidating because they have to. Because there's. The big five are taking all the money. And we knew it was coming, but it came like, look, I'll tell you another thing. In media, you know, there's not a lot of people picking shit. Like, you get to pick shit because you run your own shop. You're. You're the man. But, like, when you run media, it's like, people put on what people watch. That's the rule. Like, you just put on shit and people watch it. And then, like, if you say, I want to do this, and nobody watches it, then you don't get to say, I want to do this that often.

So. And we always had a thing where we gave the company over to the interns. If we just stayed a Gen X free giveaway, we would have never gotten into video. In fact, when we got into video, we were derided by the old guys for selling out because going to online video was seen as a sellout because we should have stayed a magazine. So we used to give it over to the interns, and then the interns just. They had a different fucking everything. They had a different philosophy, they had different subject, they had different fucking everything. And they were going. And by the way, the traffic was still there, and I was the same. I was looking at, the fuck is this?

Right?

The fuck is going on? And, you know, they're like, well, that's the traffic. And you're fucking things you like. It's no traffic because you're an old man. So, anyway, I was semi retired for a number of years, and, you know.

Look, when did you get out?

I moved to LA. Trying to remember now. 15, 1516 around there. So I moved to LA because our biggest clients were there, the biggest platforms were there. No one was out there. And I kids. And I was like, okay, I can move to the country and commute into New York, or I can move to LA. So I moved to LA, and that started a whole. That was nothing smart in retrospect, because you leave and it starts like Game of Thrones shit. And. And then also, quite frankly, if you want to know the metaphysical fucking reasons why I can get into it, okay. All right.

I love metaphysical.

So there you go. The best time for vice, the time that you're talking about, the time that I loved was, you know, you would go before all the big investors and everything. You would go to, like, Italy, right? And you would get an apartment, and, you know, you get a girlfriend. And you find an office, and you hire people that look like you or hang out like you or just are cool or whatever, and you would build it. You would buy the fucking computers on your credit card, and you would fucking go to the grandmother's place for fucking lunch in Cinque Terre. You would, like, fucking, you know, figure out all the cool places to hang out with your friends and stuff. And then you'd have a big party, and everyone would come and advice would be launched. Then you get on a train and go to Sweden and do the same thing. You'd live there for six months. You'd build something. It was tangible. The mag would come out, you'd start shooting stuff, and it would be fucking awesome. And then when it got to be, like, you fly in and you meet with lawyers and accountants, and it's shit, and then you fly out again the next day.

It's terrible. Right, right. And so when that happened, I was like, I won't do this anymore. And I'm not good at it. Like, I was good at building. I'm good at building. I'm good at, like, founders are not necessarily operators.

Right?

Things you've done is like, just keep your own shit. Your own shit. And I got, you know, my eyes were too big for my stomach in a way. Cause you're just like, let's keep going.

The big thing, too, is keep it small.

Keep it small, dude.

Keep it small. It's just me and Jamie, and we have a video editor that's not even local. He just gets it on the Internet.

And also Jamie's super good vibes, which is.

Yeah, no, it's the best, but it's. It's the most important. I have friends that have big podcasts, and they have, like, this huge staff.

Yeah.

And they have all these people running around. I'm like, what do all these people do? And it's like they want this feeling of they're the boss of a bunch of employees for some reason. Like, they want all these production people that are creating content, but then you have inter office conflicts, and they're always putting out fires and people are complaining, and then people leave and make videos talking about what a piece of shit boss you were. And it's like, hey, man, you're dealing in this thing where there's currency in that information. There's currency for these. These mediocre people. So you hire these mediocre people, and these mediocre people attack you because there's currency in attacking you, but you didn't need them in the first place, this whole thing was stupid. Like, you're making a little bit more money, but you have more problems, but you don't notice that money. Like, you have to pay attention to what you notice, right? What. Whatever the fuck you have in your bank account. If you are. If you're a fairly wealthy person and you have a $100 more, $100 less, $1,000 more, $1,000 less, you don't notice it.

But I'll tell you what you do notice. You notice hassle. You notice problems. Those problems are worth a lot of money to get rid of. Like, if you had a bunch of employees, like, fuck, what can I do? There's so many people. It's so annoying. God, I wish we were small again. Getting back to small again is a grind. You got to fire people. You got to downsize. You got to figure out how to do it. That's a mess, man. You don't want that mess. So that extra money that you got by making things too big, you fucked yourself. You got greedy. You looked at it the wrong. Like, someone said to me, like, I was in the park on the comedy store. This friend of mine who's not even very successful was like, I'm trying to find a new assistant. I go, why do you need a new assistant? He goes, you don't have an assistant. I go, no. I go, this is what you do. Do less shit. If you need an assistant, you're doing too many things. Do less shit. Don't get a fucking assistant. You have an assistant. You have what happens at David Spade.

The guy shows up with duct tape and a taser and tries to kill you. Remember that? Because they wind up resenting you because you got some person who's working for you, he's making $50,000 a year, and you're making. You have $50 million. They want to kill you. After a while, they're like, I'm a part of this too. You know? Like, they don't think of it as, this is a great job. This job could eventually lead to something bigger. People get resentful. Also, the type of people that are 34 years old are working as an assistant. Probably a little fucked up, probably made some mistakes, probably, you know, not really on the right path in life. Now all of a sudden, you're connected at the hip to this person, and then they want to tell you about their problems, problems. And maybe got an ex wife, or maybe they got this, and if they're making more money, they can make more money. So because you wanted to appear like you have a. Everybody wants a big organization. Like, vice is big now. You know, the JRE. We've got thousand employees worldwide. We have three employees.

Yeah. Smart. You know, Harvard should hire you to teach business because that is 100%. No, I'm just. No, that's this business fucking right. Like you just said, what's in my fucking brain? Like, it's that a hundred percent of that is true. Everyone should listen to this guy because it is a hundred bucking percent true.

When you're younger, run a tight ship.

Yeah, exactly. When you're younger, you're like, oh, fuck. And look, fucking punk. That came from nothing. And so it's like, when you have employees, there's a. There is actually a Harvard thing where they say there's a. There's a. There's a paradox. Wherever I. You hire somebody because you want to have someone to help you, but they're not as good as you. And you hire someone who's not as good as you, then hire someone's not as good as them. So then all this stuff. And you have to do more work. There's more hassles. Then you have a whole group of people reporting to you. And this is exactly not how to run a business. And I even knew that going in. And then you hire. And you're exactly right. You hire all these people. All they need to do is be in the same room as you.

Yeah.

And then that's access. And once there's access, then you're what you said.

Then you deal with their issues, and.

You deal with everything.

Shane, can I pull you aside for a second? There's a project that my friend and I are working on. Really? Like, to get you involved, but.

Yeah, no, it got to. It definitely got too big. And you're exactly right. Like, look, you're a wise dude because, like, you keep it small. You're exactly right. That's, like, after having learned what I've learned, like, we have a tiny little team that makes this thing, and it's super. Like, it's like the early days of ice where you're just. You're just making shit and talking to people and chopping it up and doing stuff and trying new shit out and do well. One week it'll be like this, and the other week it'll be like that, and we'll just fucking do everything. It's so much more fucking fun. You're 100% right.

Yeah. Fun is the most important thing. Like, if you. Brian calls, said this to me once, and it's really great advice. He goes, he goes, all you really want is to be able to go to a restaurant and not worry about what things cost.

Yeah.

Everything else is bullshit, 100%. It's true. Everything else is bullshit 100%. You get used to cars, you get used to houses. I realized early on I got an apartment when I lived in North Hollywood. It was the first nice apartment I had. And after I was in it a couple of weeks, it was just my house. Just like the house I have now. It's not that much different. It's just like you're home. Okay, great. What do you need? You need a couch, need a tv, you need a bedroom, you need a kitchen. That's all you need. Hopefully it doesn't stink. Hopefully it doesn't suck. Hopefully your neighbors aren't loud. Hopefully it'd be nice if you have a view. That's cute, but other than that, I'll.

Go a step further than that. Is you. I don't know about you, but you accumulate shit, right? And I cuz I never anything. I was like, fucking. I got into watches, you know, I got into shit, I got into art. Then I got like, I don't even fucking drive. And I got like, I got Johnny Cash's fucking car from 1969.

What kind of car is that?

So in 1969, Johnny Cash had a. The number one show in America. And ABC got him a one of a kind Rolls Royce. Extra long body, all. All black. Black mahogany interior. And check this out. So I got it. So it's me and Wayne Newton bidding. Remember I used to gamble. So I was in Vegas, won a bunch of money. I was actually had to fly to China and my buddy stayed there and he was me and Wayne Newton bidding against each other for. For Johnny Cash's car. And. And when we got it, you know, it just was like burning fucking fuel oils, just black smoke coming out of the terrible. So I turn it into a Tesla and. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fucking awesome, dude. It's awesome. We chopped it, turn it. We kept everything.

Is it online? Can I see this thing you can see?

Yeah, yeah.

Did you put it online?

No, but there's a picture. Picture.

Can you send it to Jamie so we can see it?

Just pull up Johnny Cash's Rolls Royce 1969. It's a black, all black Rolls Royce. So I turn it into a Tesla, redid the whole interior. Fucking.

Who did that for you?

I'd have to. To get the fucking. The name.

That's it. Look at that. What would Johnny Cash feel about his Rolls Royce getting?

I think you'd fucking love it, cuz I was out with Rick Rubin in that car yesterday.

That's Johnny Cash. Not Johnny Carson.

Johnny Cash, right.

Didn't you say Johnny Carson?

No, Johnny Cash.

You said he had the number one show on tv.

Yeah, the Johnny Cash variety hour.

Oh, my God. I thought you said ABC.

No, ABC gave him this car and. And. Yeah. Had it made it. I was with Rick Rubin in that yesterday. We were driving around in it. Uh, it's. And it drives. It's so fucking fast and it drives like a fucking crazy boat. Wow. You gotta come over now. Yeah, drive it. Fuck it.

That's incredible. So you took a test model s and converted it?

Yeah. These are the dudes who did it.

Wow.

And we redid all that wood now. So it's all the original black mahogany from.

So when the batteries go bad, you can just swap the batteries out, plug it in. No, you just know. But eventually the batteries will deteriorate to the point where you will get really low mileage. You probably get low mileage already. Right. That thing's heavy. God, that's beautiful. You must have to upgrade the brakes in a big way. Yeah, because it's very heavy.

Yeah.

Fucking beautiful car, though.

Such a good car. Because when I came out to LA, I'm like, I'm gonna get a shit brown Agatha Christie Rolls Royce and an MS 13 driver with like, the full 13 and like, a safety. Am I late for the party?

Hello.

And so, and so I got this one and I'm just. It's fucking awesome.

Wow, that's so cool. They're doing. There's. Ever heard of the company called Everati? Yeah, they're.

They do the electric, the swapovers.

Yeah, they do swap overs for. I know they do porsches. I think they do a mustang as well. But they take these classic cars. The problem is, like, you. You're not supposed to do that.

You're not supposed to do it. This thing is fucked up. I will say this.

I don't have any desire to have one of these things, but I think they're dope. As fucked as. But the thing is, like, for me, I see that. Oh, that's disgusting. Get that off the screen. I see that. That does disturb me to know what you took a GT 40 and turn it electric. The thing about those old cars is the mechanical feel. And that is 90% of the experience of driving one of those old.

Well, this car barely ran. Like, the problem. It was fucked.

Yeah, but you could restomod it.

You could restom on it. Anyway, I love it.

The thing is, like, they're supposed to have. I could see doing it with Johnny Cash's car. It's kind of funny, but you do into that, you should go to jail. You do that to a GT 40, you should go right to jail as it is. Well, not really. Originally, you know, this is the. This is Ferrari versus Ford. This is the original car. I actually have the next version of that, which is the Ford GT. I have one of the 2005 ones. That's a stick shift. I feel like if you drive a car like that, you have to drive a manual. It can only go 160 miles. Right? And that's if you're driving like a grandma. But it has 800 hp. It's probably fast as shit. You know, electric cars are different than any other car in terms of the speed that you get. The way it feels, you just go whoosh, but there's no sound. That car is. That's that car. That car is, like, visceral. It's exciting. There's an engine behind you. It's like, let's go, baby. Come on, Shane. It you feel in the turns, you want to feel the bumps. You want to feel the fucking steering in your hand, the wiggling of the tires.

Yeah, it's a ride. It's not efficient. It's not supposed to be efficient. It's an experience. It's a sensory overload. It's not just transportation.

Yeah.

That's why turning one of those things into electric is.

I did it because it was burning fuel. It was burning black smoke. Barely fucking ran.

That cart is fine.

So I love it. But the thing. My long winded answer to that question was I. I started. I collected all this shit, like you were saying. It doesn't bring you any fucking cars for you, because. So I just go, you know what? All of that shit. I was talking to Rick about this, too. Like, I'm just. I'm just gonna get rid of it. Like, the more I free myself from that shit and all that stuff.

Yes.

You're just like, you know what psychic burden I used to go, speaking of the old days of ice I had. Everyone used to laugh because I'd go for it, literally years with a backpack. And I just be like, well, I can buy all. I wears black jeans and a black t shirt. Like, I would just buy new ones. If I need something, you just go to a pharmacy. One of my. To this day, like, if I go to a fucking pharmacy in a foreign country, I'm stoked because it means I'm getting shit that I need, like shampoo and fucking toothpaste and little scissors from my nose hairs and shit. And that means, like, I'm on top of my game. I'm fucking ready to go. I could fucking interview people and do shit, right? Because I'm gone to the fucking pharmacy and. And, you know, I love going to fucking supermarket. Cuz you just like, I'm gonna buy some fucking food and then we're gonna go do some work and it's gonna fucking awesome. That shit gives me pleasure.

Yeah.

Gonna watch or fucking. Yeah, a car, shoes or.

Yeah, most of those. They're cool. They're cool. I'm interested in engineering and artwork, right. And I, like, that's why I have so much art in this place. I love people's expression.

Yeah.

And I feel like cars are artwork. That's how I view cars. Especially old cars. Yeah, I have a lot of old cars. And those old, like, muscle cars. 1960s to early 1970s muscle cars. That's what I love. I love them, I love them. I drive them like, they're just. It's like I'm an amusement park ride. That's how I feel about them. And I just, when I was a kid, those were the cars that everybody wanted. So to me, it's like I get a real joy, but if I didn't have them, I'd be fine.

Yeah.

If I just drove my Tesla to work every day, I would be fine. Like, the level of happiness you get in terms of, like, how much you have to work for some things, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. Many people strive for this thing that doesn't give you anything back.

Yeah.

It's just this thing that's hard. Just because something's hard to get doesn't mean it's good. And there's a lot of things that people strive for that are difficult to achieve, but they're not valuable when you get there.

No. And speaking of psychology. Yeah. Like, you talk about old muscle cars. The car I learned to drive was my grandmother's car that she gave to my cousin. And when I was 13, he was 16 or something, and he taught me how to drive. And it was a Nova ss. It was an old, like, fucking.

I have one.

Good.

I have a 69.

So beautiful.

I have a 69 that has been completely redone by this guy, Steve Strope.

So nice.

And it's. It's the craziest ever. This. Love it. This one's incredible because it's understated restaurant.

It's understated it's not like it's a powerful beast and it's. But badass looking, but it's not like. Like a Ferrari. You know, Ferraris can be beautiful.

Different.

It's different.

It's. It's a different flex.

Yeah.

You know, the. The Ferrari, you just have money. That's my. That's a Nova. That's mine. That's my 69.

No, love it.

Look at that.

Fuck. That's, like. Exactly. Hers was gold. I still remember that.

No, mine is like. It's got 1969 Camaro fenders. So they. They made it, like, wider so they could fit larger tires and tubbed it out. Yeah, it's all custom. It has a supercharged lt four.

That was her engine. Did not look like.

Yeah, that's a. It's a very efficient driving car. But it's just so fun. Yeah, it's just like you drive that thing. It's just this experience sounds. And to me, it's like those cars are the ones that resonate with me.

Yeah.

You know? So I have. But if I only had one, I would be fine. I just like them every now and then. But they're not. They're not the thing. They're not the end all, be all. They're not family, friends, love, community. There's all these things that people put those objects above. They put above everything in your life. You strive for that thing because it's a symbol of success.

Yeah.

And it's nonsense.

So I had a. Speaking of psychological damage. As for things, I grew up poor about went out with a very rich girl, and it was her birthday, right? We were in France was her birthday, and her uncle had forgotten her birthday. And so he said, oh, here, you know, take my watch, kind of thing. And they're like, no, no, no. You know, that watch is like, $50,000. Watch. Whatever. And I was like, there's no fucking watches worth $50,000. Like, $50,000. Like what? And it was like a classic patek. Fucking moon face. Whatever. And I remember clocking the watch, and when I got money, I became obsessed with the classic Patek, which is now, like 500 grand. It's not 50 grand. The moon phase.

And that's so crazy that a watch is $500,000.

Oh, some of them are like, $5 million. I mean, that.

Nuts.

Yes.

And so, like those Richard Millet watches. Yeah.

I mean, the. The most expensive are still pateks, but. Yeah, like those ones. Or, I mean, rare ones. Like, I was obsessed with. So I like the Paul Newman Panda, but they have, like, the lemon or the champagne panda, which is the gold version of that, which. Which they made, like, four of. And I want. I was chasing that down, and now I'm like, you can't fucking wear it, right? Like, every place I go, you can't fucking wear any. Like, I was fine here. And you can't put it through security. You know? So what the fuck? You.

Why can't you put it through security? You think they would snatch it?

Oh, watches get snatched all the time.

Yeah, but then you. Where's my watch? Yeah, it's just like, it goes through the little thing.

Yeah.

Like, how fast there's people.

So many. It's not happened to me. Although I have nearly lost them many times because, you know, you get. You have a few ales on the plane and take your shit off and put it in the box, and then, oh, no, I've never done it, but I. It's been close calls, but there's so many stories in the watch world about you're going through customs, you're going through security, you're going through somewhere, someone takes your fuck. I've had a lot of people who like, how much does that watch? And you're like, it's fake. I would just say it's fake. Anyway, so I'm getting rid of all that shit. Just because you're like, fuck, it doesn't fucking mean anything.

Yeah.

And what actually does mean shit is like. Like you were saying, like, you know, learning shit, educate, like. Like, making shit, but also, at the same time, like, going, like, I'm learning shit. Yeah, it's fun. Getting stimuli happy. Look, I'm fucking back talking to you. I'm. It's like. It's an. It's fucking interesting. It's good for your brain positivity, you know?

Yeah. It's good for your mental health. It's also. It's what life is about. Life is about growth. It's about learning. It's about experiencing things. And when you get an opportunity to talk to someone, like, I talked to this woman the other day, Diane Boyd. She wrote this book, a woman amongst wolves, right? She spent her entire life tracking wolves and handling them and collaring them and studying them. And she lived in a cabin in the woods for years by herself with no water and no electricity.

Love it.

Yeah. Fascinating. Like, just like, you're a totally different type of person than I ever experienced. What's your life like? What do you do? Like, what do you think about?

I'm hooked already.

Think about that. Yeah.

I love wolves?

Yeah. I mean, it's. To me, there's so many opportunities in this life to be stimulated by exciting and interesting things.

Yeah.

Where you can learn about stuff 100%. And if you can figure out how, that's your job and it's not just something that you do on the bus on the way home, but it's actually your job. That's. That's a good life.

Definitely. I mean, for me, that's what I love doing. I like talking to people, and I like learning, and I like, you know, if you're learning shit, then other people obviously do podcast. You're. They're learning, and it's just. It's an awesome thing to be able to do.

Is there a way to do something like the original vice, but just keep it small, never let it grow?

Like, listen, the Vice news right now is me, and I'm making podcasts. I'm doing shit that I find interesting.

Is it still vice? Do you call it vice? Yeah, I mean, vice still one of the owners. Like, how does it work?

I mean, it's.

It's cool.

I mean, it's complicated. I'm not like I. I was the largest shareholder, and then I went to owning nothing. I lost the most out of anybody. Not that I'm asking anybody to fucking cry for me, anything. It was actually a good thing because you. You like when you realize a lot of this stuff about happiness and stuff, you realize it not when you're cashing checks. You lose, you know, not a calm. See, never a good captain made, you know? But, yeah, throughout the. All the, you know, the changes, basically, I was still in the. In the backdrop, you know, just around.

Why didn't you sell when it got at the top? Why didn't you get rid of.

Actually, look, that's the whole. The whole thing about. I did. I sold some and, you know, took some money off the table, which is why I could semi retire. But everyone's like, you know, Shane, you could have sold. Should have sold. He said no. He said, I've never said no money in my whole fucking life. I was building Vice to sell it. I never fucking said no. That's all fucking or shit. We tried to sell it to time. Warder tried to sell it to Disney. It was just like, you know, at the. When Disney said no, we went into private equity. And then, you know, that relationship, there's never good, so.

Well, it's the old adage, go woke, go broke. And that's what happened with Vice. People stopped. They just stopped. Vice is one of the best examples of go woke, go broke ever because Vice was fucking huge. And it was exciting. It was interesting. You know, you had great shows, and then it just got too weird.

Yeah. I mean, yes, media and media got weird. And look, everyone's looking at for us, and then we can get on other ship. But you know, who left the fucking porthole open of the Titanic? You're like, yeah, hit a fucking iceberg. Not just us, you know, look at all the new media, like, right, it culture. Five, five companies take up eighty seven cents of every advertising dollar in the world, and independent media gets the rest. And it's getting smaller and smaller. The money dries up. And when the money dries up, you start getting frantic, right? You start fucking flailing around looking for shit, whatever. You start looking for solutions. Other people start looking for solutions. Young people start fucking saying, this is what we got to do. This is what you got to do. And you got 5000 people saying, what we got to do, rather than five.

Mm hmm.

And you got people who are semi checked out if not checked out. And, you know, shit got set. Nobody's fucking, it's my baby. Nobody got fucking more sick about it than me. But you're like, okay, you know, so now, you know, we're doing vice news is me. We're doing the podcast. We're doing it's fun again. We're just fucking building, trying to do new shit with fucking a high and with some other fun and. But, yeah, I do. I do other shit on my own. And I, you know, look, the other thing, too is I also spent time living my life, which I hadn't been doing, which I'm sure you do out here. You got to go and you got to live your life again.

And you have to live your life.

You have to live your life.

This idea that your career should be your whole life is foolish.

Foolish. It's foolish. And I learned that much time, you know, that much time. I was talking to somebody, you're Gen X?

Yeah. 67.

You're Gen X. Yeah. I was saying to someone, because we were the forgotten generation and everyone, like, I was shitty. And I was saying to someone, if you look at, you know, the Carl Sagan thing of, like, we live in the greatest envelope of history ever, like, of the billions of planets and the billions of years of this planet. Like, we live in this final time when there's oxygen and there's water and you can fucking eat and you can fucking, you know, and then I'm like, okay. If you look at that and then go, the best ever. Time has been like our little window. Like you're born in the sixties, grew up in the seventies, fucking free to go play in the cricket, fucking hunting and fishing and all that shit. And then, you know, no parental supervision, then you. But there's never been like a major fucking warning we're not getting pitchforked in the stomach. You know, food has been like, for the first time really in history. Food is now everywhere is good for every kind of, you know, like quality wise, you know, travel, luxury, fucking international travel. Like being able to do freaky jobs rather than work in a factory, dude, like all these fucking things happen for Gen X.

And God knows if it happens again, because AI is going to be all human endeavor done by machines and environmental shit and fucking, you know, the world is changing in ways we can't even fucking imagine. I have young kids and all the parents were clucking like hands about, they're not learning math. You're like, it's AI is going to change fucking everything. And so, so I'm like, I was talking to someone, I say it's ironic, but Gen X actually lived in the greatest historical window of all time, potentially. And so I'm not gonna just fucking not enjoy that. I'm gonna go out there in life and just be like, I'm literally living in the greatest single fucking window in the history of history.

We most certainly have. And we live in the greatest time of technological change in human history. We started out like you and I can remember when phones were attached to the wall. I remember when it was a. We had to spin the wheel. It was an event phone call.

You got a call.

And if you fucked up, like, God damn it, you gotta start a start from scratch. Took a long time to make a phone call.

Joe, there's a phone call for you.

Right? And when people would call and you were on the phone, it would just be busy. Yeah, when is he getting off the phone? And you call him back, God damn, he's still busy. And then it became call waiting. Oh, big, oh, hold on, someone else is calling.

I got someone else.

Maybe they're more important than you. You hold, please. And then he come back. And then it was caller id. Oh, this motherfucker's calling. Fuck him. And then answering machines were the greatest. And when you could get a remote answering machine so I could call my answering machine and listen to you leave me a message, hey, meet me at the bar at ten and I'd call you back and leave a message on your machine. Hey, I got your message. I'll meet you at the bar at ten.

I love that.

It was incredible.

I love that.

It was incredible.

I'll see you on Saturday at 08:00.

But we were also free from the confines of social media. And social media has brought an incredible amount of information to people, but has also created a lot of very mentally ill people where they realize it or not. It's like you're getting a low dose of radiation all day long, every day.

It's also addictive.

Yes. Very, very, very.

Dopamine hits.

Uh huh. Yeah. And then it's. It can be psychologically very damaging if you read stuff about yourself. You know, I've had many friends that started becoming successful and then started doing really well and then started reading people's comments. The hate is crazy and it drives them nuts. It hurts their feelings. It really does. I mean. Oh, poor baby. But I mean, really, as a human being. Yeah, they're human beings. And I know that the people. Look, if I was not a famous person, I was a person that was, like, who I was when I was 19 years old. I would 100% be leaving shitty comments on YouTube videos and shitty comments on someone's Instagram or Twitter or whatever. It's what people do. It's normal. It's not the people's fault because it's a very disconnected, disassociated way of communicating with people. That's not congruent. It's not normal for human communication. It's not what we're designed. We're designed to do this. I'm looking at you, you look at me, you smile. We're buddies. We have a good time. That's how people are used to communicating with each other. When you're communicating with people through text, it's fucking bizarre.

It's very bizarre. It's very different. And it's not good for you to take in the opinions of hundreds of thousands of people that may or may not be mentally ill, may or may not be going through a divorce. Yeah. Have an ax to grind or just look, if you're successful in particular, there's a lot of unbelievable, unsuccessful people that are very bitter, very sad, and they want to find everything wrong with you. We were talking about this in the green room last night. I fucking loved the new Beetlejuice movie. I loved it. I read so many bad reviews of it, so many bad reviews that it fell flat. I had a giant smile on my face the whole time. I'm a huge Tim Burton fan. I think the guy's brilliant, and I think his movies are so unique because they have this fingerprint of Tim Burton on them. It's like. It's so obviously through his mind, his vision. I think the guy's incredible. I love all his films. So for me, I was like, oh, this is great. When they got to the soul train, I was like, yes, I love it. This is so Tim Burton.

And so many people criticized that. In particular, there was something offensive about the soul train. Like, fuck off.

Also, people say shit about fucking restaurants and everything. And I'm like, yeah, it's fucking great.

Everything.

Fucking cheeseburger. I love cheeseburgers. Fucking good.

Some guy from the New York Times wrote a negative review about Peter Luger Steakhouse in Brooklyn. Peter Luger's steakhouse in Brooklyn is a fucking classic institution. If I'm anywhere near that area, I'm eating there 100%. That place is sensational.

It was near our old vice office, and we. When we didn't have any money, the hack was, you go there, order lunch to go, and you order the burger because it's all the ends of the steaks and the fucking killer burger. And you take it down to the river and you look at Manhattan and have this five dollar burger at the time, and you're like, this is the greatest fucking lunch in the greatest city.

Fucking love it here, man. If I could make it.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I was like, fucking New York, man. This is Peter Luger fucking burger. And there's Manhattan, and we're gonna fuck. I love. I just.

But this review is so toxic. And Ari and I had just eaten there. We had just been. No, Ari Shafir. We had just. Sorry. We had just been there, like, a month before, and we were like, what the fuck are you talking about? We had one of the best meals of our experience. Yeah. Sizzling butter on it. Other guys who worked there, been there for 35 years, shout out to Peter Lugers. Shout out to Peter Lugers. But it's the point. It's like, even a place like that that you should. You should go there and just take in what you're experiencing. You're experiencing a classic old school steakhouse that does it exactly the same way every time.

I have him for, like, you know, forever.

Forever. But it's just that people even in that will find negativity. Everything sucks. And I think we were talking about this last night that I think this is a symbol of the times we're going through right now because everyone is so anxious. The presidential elections are headed, and no one knows what the fuck is going to happen or what's the right answer? Is it better if she gets in? Is it better if he gets in? Is he going to be a dictator? Is she going to crack down on free speech? Are we going to be in world War three? What's happened? Does Iran have a fucking nuke? Was that earthquake a nuke or was it just an earthquake? You know, there's a nuclear test, the weather. Why does God hate Florida? Like, what? All these different things. Like, there's so much going on. Israel and Gaza and the Middle east and fuck, man. And so everyone is like, fuck Tim Burton, fuck that movie, fuck this, fuck that, and fuck that restaurant. And it's like. It's just this. The zeitgeist is disturbed. We don't have. It's not a peaceful time in our lot of anxiety.

Yeah, yeah. And I don't. You know, I think we're missing out on the reality of our existence, which if we lived at any other time, we lived in 1924, and you got a time machine to go to 2024, you'd be like, holy shit, this is amazing.

Or 1824, when you go get stabbed with a fucking bayonet and die of gangrene over here. Like, it was fucking unpleasant.

Yeah.

And you're eating. You're shitting all the time.

Because every day, everybody weighed 120 pounds. Because there was no food.

There's no food. And you couldn't drink water, right? Because you get the shit. Like, it was bad.

It was bad. There's a reason why most people in history were drunk, because they had to drink alcohol. Because if you drank regular water, you'd have fucking poison in it. It's like you're getting bacteria.

And then when we moved to cities, we're like, you know what? Now we got it figured out. We'll just put it in pipes. Beautiful lead pipes. We'll just put it in pipes.

Everyone's got plastic in their balls.

Well, that's the other problem I wanted to talk to you about is because. Don't you freak. Because when I first started studying politics, you have to take stats. And they're like, there was a southern dude teaching me. He's like, you can have a statistic to prove anything. And my thing now is this is what I became interested in, is like, all the. This is why I won't start with RFK junior. Everyone has all the stats, and then they give stats so forcefully that you believe them. Like, well, that sounds fucking thing. And there's stats about this and there's stats about that, and all the stats are bad. Yeah, there's no good stats.

There's no good stats. So there's a good stat in terms of, if you look at society in comparison to society of 200 years ago, it's safer.

Elon Musk.

Yeah, yeah. If you look at kinder, people are way more. It's. It's way, way more educated. We understand things more.

Yeah. And, like, if you look at the sort of coefficient of, of hundreds of years ago, Elon brought that up, and I remember looking at that going, oh, yeah, fuck, we're doing good.

Yeah.

Which is when I got into the. Carl Sagan said, we're actually living in the greatest fucking window of all time. Where's the fucking anxiety coming from? And I don't know who said this, but I think it was. I don't know who said this, but work satisfies need, desire and sanity. Like, you need to work to, like, for food.

Yeah.

You know, desiree, because happiness is going forward, and then sanity is, if you don't fucking work, you go crazy.

This is my fear. With universal basic income, which I think is inevitable.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's the only way we're gonna be able to keep people alive. My fear is that we're gonna have too much control over those people if we do that. And that people, those people will have no purpose, and we'll have an even more disenfranchised population than we have today. And the haves and the have nots will be even further and further apartheid. And there's no real education that is in school today, where you take a child and you say, hey, look, the world is going to change, and most of these jobs are going to be useless. You're going to have to find something that you love that resonates with people. And if you do that, people are going to be willing to exchange that for money, whatever it is. If you can make ceramics, this table, a guy named Drew made this table. I know the man who made it. He is a carpenter. He made a table out of wood. We gave him the specifications. I told him, I like oak. You like this is a handmade thing. And a handmade thing is always, to me, is going to be very valuable.

I love a handmade knife.

Yes.

You know, I love. I love things that someone worked. I love a painting. Like, a painting that. Someone like. My friend Taylor made this. It's. He painted it. Yeah, he sat down in his studio. He painted it. And I love that. That's always going to be valuable. The problem is, most people have never been encouraged to pursue their interest. They've been encouraged to get a job, and they probably don't even know what their interests are, how those interests, right? They've been stifled.

Well, you're exactly right. So, actually, when I was spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley, there was a lot of this talk, and they're talking about universal, you know, living wage or basic wage. And I was like, what are you fucking talking about? You're gonna give everyone 100 grand. And they're like, well, the synthesis of AI is all human endeavor done by machines. Like, wow, come on. So I was kind of the skeptic, you know, this is ten years ago, and now all of this shit has come true. They were already thinking about this back then because they're also saying exactly what you said, which is, let's say quantum computing happens and AI at the same time, which is probably three years away. One quantum computer has enough computing power than all the existing computers in the world today, right? And then you add AI to that, so there's a whole new fucking tech revolution where it becomes even more rich people who own shit. And. And even more so they're like, if. Unless you take care of though those people, they're gonna come because we're the nerds. They're gonna come with the hammers, right?

And the currency is gonna be bullets, it's not gonna be chips. And so you're. It's planet of the apes. You got fucking, you know, people on one side here, and the big brains on the other side, and you're like, oh, they're. They already knew this. They were already thinking this because they're like, we're gonna buy them off. But people are gonna go crazy if you buy them off.

It's not necessarily buy them off, it's keep them alive. Yeah, keep not gonna have any fucking.

Money and buy them off because they're afraid that they're gonna come.

I don't think we should look at it that way. I think there's got to be a concerted effort to educate people about the possibilities of their life on earth that you. That they've been indoctrinated to think that they have to be a worker. How many of these people are out there that are doing masonry work really want to be a painter? How many of those people that really wanted to be in a band? How many people. There's something probably that most people want to do. One thing the universal basic income will do is if, you know, you give everybody a hundred grand a year, wherever it is, you're going to satisfy their. They're not going to worry about rent, they're not going to worry about food.

Yeah.

So now maybe they can pursue. The problem is people get fucking lazy when you give them free money. It's just a fact.

Maybe you're right.

It's not everybody, but a lot of people, they just exist and they'll just play video games all day and, you know, look, if we're gonna deal with a society where everything is run by AI and automated, that you're gonna have to give people money because the extraordinary wealth that's gonna be generated by AI is gonna make that not that difficult to do. Especially when you consider how much money we give to other countries already.

100%.

Right. Over the last couple of years, we've given 100. What, how many billion dollars to Ukraine? I think it's more than. It's up to 200 billion now. Yeah, something crazy like that. That amount of money, when you're dealing with AI, when you're dealing with automation, just to keep people fed and housed, like, that's reasonable. But you're gonna have to figure out a way to give people purpose.

Yeah.

And that's gonna have to.

That's hard.

Be a revamping of the education system.

That's exactly right. It's a revamping of the education system. Because you're saying, well, all of these, we were, we were. And this is another great thing on Gen X, but we were built to be workers. We were. You're supposed to get universal education is supposed to just be enough so you can be a good worker and a good taxpayer and you get a job. And then, by the way, you get out of college and you already have debt, then you buy a consumer durable, you buy a fucking car, you buy a. Yeah, a washing machine. And that's, you know, we'll give everybody that, but we give you debt and then you buy a house and then you're in debt, and then when you finally get out of debt and then you die.

Right.

And so you just work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. And by the way, you're exactly right. You had to get a job job. Not f you end. It's just you go and you do it and you give you money and.

Yeah, I'm an adult, that's it. Yeah, and then.

But that's not true because all of this human endeavor is now going to be done by machines. You're like, okay, now what do you got? And I agree a hundred percent. It's going to be something that we can't even fathom. Which is, what do you really like to do?

Right.

What do you love doing? What do you. By the way, building a table is worth more than fucking being a corporate executive.

Well, it is if you enjoy it.

Exactly.

Yeah. If you have a business that you actually enjoy doing.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Like, that's what we have to teach.

Yeah.

Rather than we have to.

And there's also this comparing thing. You know, I was at dinner the other night, and my friend, who's friends with this billionaire, he's. His friend is a billionaire. And his friend was comparing his wealth to friends of his that own multiple corporations that are worth 30, 40 billion. He's like, I'm fucking poor compared to that guy. You miss the whole point. You missed the whole point of getting wealthy. Yeah, you have. Fuck you, bunny. And you're not even saying fuck you. You should be on a boat somewhere, man. Marlin. Fishing. You know, you should be fucking lying in the sun. You should be doing things you enjoy doing. You should be taking that trip you always wanted to take. That's what you're supposed to be doing. You're not supposed to be keeping up with other billionaires. So you're working 16 hours a day on Adderall just so that you can fucking get those stock numbers moving. What?

Well, the one. Yeah, but the smartest thing anyone ever told me about money was my old man. And he said, life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat. This is a guy who. The only dude who ever lost money on insider trading, he was not good. But. But it's true. Like, the one thing. The one thing that you do notice when you get a bit of people are fucking nice to you. That nice to you. And when you don't have money, not online, but, like. And then, and then, and then. And you realize, like, oh, fuck. Like, people, like, can be, like, are not nice to you, you know, in general, a lot of times. And you're like, that's fucking sucks. And. And, like, yeah, when you get a bit of money, a bit of success or whatever, people a lot fucking nicer. And that's the one thing that. That, you know, that I. That I remarked upon in my life. The rest of it's all garbage. The rest of it's all bullshit. But, but, but people being nice and, like, you know, not shit, not sucking.

Yeah.

Is. That's pretty good.

That's nice. And having a cushion.

Yeah.

So you don't have to worry about, like, I remember the first check, I got a real check. I got a development deal from Disney, of all people. When I was like, I guess I was, like, 26, and it was the first time ever I had, like, a good chunk of money. Like six figures in the bank.

Yeah.

And I felt weight different. I felt weight lifted off. Like a physical feeling of. Whoa.

Yeah.

Because every, like, my whole life, it's like, how am I gonna eat?

Yeah.

How am I gonna pay my rent? How am I gonna do this? And then all of a sudden, I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, I get it now. And I remember this revelation, like, okay, now I just have to keep this momentum going because once you have a good amount of money where you don't have to worry about money anymore, that feel you don't want to get. Ever get back to that desperation feeling. That's a terrible feeling. And that's the feeling most people are listening to. This existent. That feeling. Concern about your bills is the number one struggle in marriages. It's the number one stroke.

Number one stroke for everything.

For everything.

Well, this is why we're getting up. I had the exact same moment in my life. I never had any money. And then I'll never forget it. I was walking down the Ramblers in Barcelona because I was living there, trying to set up vice vein, and I went in a bank machine, and we had done some deal, and it was the first time I got paid any money. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was the same kind of deal, like, six figure thing. And I took out the money and I went, like, my life changed that. I still remember how. I. Like how it smelled. I still remember because my life changed as the first time I didn't have $28 in my bank account. Right. And I just went and, like, my, like, my breathing.

Yeah.

Just everything, like you said, like, it was like, weight lifts off. Weight lifts off you and that, that. And. And humans don't like to go backwards, but, yeah. Living in that sort of constant fear, that's the problem with money.

Yeah.

And that's why there is a chance. And it was good you brought that up, actually. That, like, you can. You can kind of take this anyway. You know, like, humanity can take the next, let's say, 20 years anyway. We want to take it. And you can take it to be like, let's fucking learn from what we've learned and be positive and try to take this as a fucking thing where humanity gets better and we do this in the right way, rather than just do it, fucking knee jerk reaction, freaking out. Fuck. Like, what the fuck's gonna fuck. Like, I think. I'm sure that you're gonna look back at a time when, like, social media was fucking fucking up kids heads and you say, that was crazy, dude.

Right? It's gonna be like, smoking.

We're gonna look at the stock market and go, yeah, it's fucking completely manipulated by supercomputers and trillion dollar funds, and the little guy gets fucked. Why would the fuck did we let that happen?

Right?

There's gonna be all kinds of coming out of the pawn moments where we go, hey, like, we were. We were doing it wrong. Yeah, but there's this big, you know, chaos is a ladder. There's this big, you know, chaotic time right now, and you're exactly right. And people getting anxious about it and everything, and you're like, yeah, we got to use that as a time to say, hey, why don't we fucking have an economy where there is a universal basic wage and or living wage? And we take that to doing shit where you do something that you like and you're happy about because that your job is probably going away.

I guarantee you it will cause less crime. I think crime will dip substantially. I think there'll be less civil unrest. People's needs will be met. It'll give everyone that feeling of, oh, I don't have to worry about my bills anymore. It's just finding purpose. That's going to be the next thing. And the people that are really going to be fucked are the people that didn't find purpose already. And then they're like, 40, and then that happens because they're going to be sad. And that's what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the people that are already sort of indoctrinated into a certain specific way of living. And then all of a sudden, their purpose, which was their job, you know, they worked at the factory, and they're like, you know, Johnny's employee of the month. Johnny, you're doing a fucking great job. We really appreciate you. That guy feels purpose. He puts in a hard day's work. When he gets that paycheck, he knows he earned it. That's who he is. He's the number one guy at the plant. He's the foreman. He's the guy the men respect. That's a real thing for human beings. We need a thing that makes us feel like we're progressing.

Yeah.

It's a part of our DNA. Our DNA. The reason why we're still alive. The reason why we survived is because we solved problems. We figured out what's going on. We've made ourselves useful, and it makes you useful to the tribe. It makes. Makes you feel good. You have a sense of purpose. That's the guy. That's the best hunter. She knows how to fucking plant vegetables. He knows how to make cloth. Everybody had a job and it gave you a sense of purpose. We're going to have to figure this out quick because I think it's going to be like the birth of a child. It's going to be like this screaming, painful. It's going to be this thing filled with anxiety, but it is happening whether we like it or not. And if we don't start educating children about the benefits of having a fulfilled life, where you're doing something you actually enjoy and not telling them, don't do that, it's too hard, don't do that, it's risky. Thank God I didn't listen to anybody.

Because my whole you wouldn't exist. I would have.

Not a thing I did ever anybody told me to do. Not fighting. My parents tried to stop me from fighting when I was doing martial arts, when I tried to do comedy. They were worried that, why aren't you? You did so well in martial arts. Why are you quitting and doing this new thing and every fucking step of the way? When I started doing podcasts, my friends like, what are you wasting your time doing this for? When you started doing video podcasts, why are you spending so much time doing video? That's so stupid. Nobody watches video.

Everyone says no.

I was like, I don't care, I just want to do it. Yeah, like, just do what you like to do if you can. But I just, for whatever reason, got lucky that I got into a pattern like that very early in life. Both my parents worked, so there wasn't a lot of guidance. So I found a thing that I liked and I just went and did it. And, you know, they're like, why are you wasting your time doing like a bye, mom, fucking leave the house? And I was on my own. And so I got into a pattern of that early, but there's so many people that don't, and so many people that get a job, and then that job's gonna go away and it's gonna be replaced by a fucking computer. And if you're listening to this and that happens to you, don't become an alcoholic. Don't just give in. Find something else. Find purpose. Find a thing.

Go back to what you love.

There's so many. I wish I had 50 lives to live simultaneously.

Me too.

I would have a bunch of different jobs. I've always wanted to do a bunch of different things. So many interesting things in this life.

Well, I think you're 100% right, but I also think, like, especially with kids, now is the time to start saying exactly that.

Yes.

Like, listen.

Yes.

You know? Like, I did what I wanted to do, and the same thing. Everybody told me no. You know, everyone told you no. And all that stuff, which, by the way, you know, when I heard them saying no, like, when you're like, I'm gonna get into fighting, and I. No, you're not. I'm gonna do comedy. Yeah, no, you're not, dude. You're not doing it. Oh, now I'm gonna get into pod. What the fuck's a podcast? You're not gonna fucking. I can hear them saying no.

Howard Stern used to mock podcasts, and he was my hero, as, like, a guy who loved listening to him on the radio and hearing him mock podcast. When I was doing. I was like, damn. I was like, oh, he's wrong.

The laugh of the victorious.

Ah, it's a good laugh.

It's a good one.

It's the best laugh.

But, yeah, so everyone said no to me, but. So now I agree. You have to go to kids and say, look, dude, do whatever the fuck you want and do what you're good at. Do what you're passionate about. Like, that whole thing.

We gotta stimulate them, stimulate them with interesting things. I mean, that's when we're talking about how I got this unexpected education on this podcast. I realized that it wasn't that I was not interested in things or that I wasn't intelligent. It's that I wasn't stimulated. And I was a very physical person when I was a kid. I had so much fucking energy. And when you're sitting in a class and you're a little buzzsaw, like, it was like, I can't do this. If I lived with the wrong parents, and especially in a different time, I would have 100% been medicated. But what it was was that I was a different car, okay? I wasn't a Honda Civic. I was a Shelby Mustang. For the shirt I'm wearing, I needed to go. I need to go. I got to get stimulated by things. I need stuff that excites me. I can't just sit down, and I'm.

Not good at listening, which is not what school does. Does it cut off the tall trees?

It doesn't just do that. It tells you to not go for it.

Yeah. Yeah.

It tells you you're a bad person.

Yeah.

If you can't, you don't fit. Yeah. And. But, like, somebody had to be Johnny Cash. There's a. We all celebrate these people that escaped. Somebody had to be Jimi Hendrix. Somebody had to be Richard Pryor. Like, obviously they were real. Like, so they did it and everyone.

Told them not to. It's like a reward for getting out of that fucking quagmire of bullshit. And that's what we. It's got to be the Smith Rogan Academy and just say, look, don't do any of that shit.

Yeah.

Fucking do what you love and also find shit that interests you and go do that. Because I didn't do that for a while. It's like a fucking purgatory.

You got to pursue it. Like, your life depends on it.

You do because it does actually does.

It actually does. And you can get gig jobs. You can wait tables. You can drive Uber. I drove limos. I did construction. I did whatever I had to do. I delivered newspapers. I did whatever I had to do to try to, like, do a thing that. And I didn't know if I was gonna make it. But back then, when you're 21 years old, you have no responsibilities, no health insurance, no nothing. And you could just fucking try things. Just try things. And if you don't do that, you're gonna be sad. And that's the reality of the world we live in. When people want to talk about the levels of depression in this country, what about the levels of purpose and do they coincide with the levels of. How many people have learned to control their emotions? How many people have learned to get their health in order? How many people have learned how to meditate? How many people have learned how to think about things before you make a decision and try to give yourself advice objectively, how many people.

Not over Medicaid or not Medicaid at.

All, not medicated at all, how many people have learned how to, like, apologize to your friends, apologize to your family if you made a mistake? How many people have learned to own up to when you were the wrong, when you were in the wrong instead of just covering it up and pretending and arguing and trying to, you know, distort things? Just learn. Yeah, learn and grow. Like, we all make mistakes. We all. And if you're on the wrong path in life and if you're doing something you don't want to do, figure out a way to get the fuck out of that job and actually do it. Don't talk about it. Fucking do it. Because if you don't, and if you do it, it's gonna be so exciting, it's gonna be terrifying. You're like, oh, my God. I can't believe I'm afraid. Oh, my God. I gotta. I gotta make this happen. But fucking go for it. You don't have much time.

You have to.

You got to.

You have to.

If you don't, you're gonna be sad. And that's just the reality of a lot of you. Or you're gonna be angry. And it's really. You're not even angry at the things you think you're angry at.

Yeah.

You're angry at your existence.

Well, that's when I go back to this thing of you want to talk about. Meditation is whenever you get angry or anxious, whatever, say, look, you're living in the greatest fucking window of time ever. In the history of fucking time ever. So when. What are you waiting for? The better window of time, right? It's not coming right. And so when you put it in a sort of grandiose perspective, you're like, I'm gonna enjoy the fucking shit.

Yeah.

Out of today. Because this is the best day in the fucking world ever.

It's the best day ever.

But not only in the. In the world, in the history of the world, but in the history of every other planet that we. That we. That we know about.

And part of what makes it exciting is that we're almost blowing it apart.

Yeah, well, that's the other problem.

That's what you should enjoy if you're sitting at a restaurant, having a nice steak and a glass of wine. You should enjoy the fact that, you know, we're not in rubble.

You should. That's a real thing.

That's a real thing.

That's a real thing. I feel like that every time I come back from somewhere, you know? And that's one thing about reporting, is you come back and you're like. You really fucking enjoy. You really enjoy.

This really is the promise land. It really is. I mean, clearly not for everybody, but also there's a possibility the opportunity awaits itself right here. It really is the greatest country the world has ever known. In the middle of all the bullshit we're going through and all the chaos and all the potential wars that we're involved in and wars we're involved in, it's still the greatest place ever. The greatest time ever. It's just confusing.

It's also one of the only countries you realize guys like us like, you have a kick at the can.

Yeah. Right.

Most countries, you don't have a kick at the can. You get the wrong last name, wrong accent.

Caste systems.

Yeah, well, just. And. And, like. Like England. Yeah. Europe, if you're as aristocracy, then you had everything. And if you weren't, you had nothing.

And if you want to get ahead, people get angry at you.

There's some stat, like, again, going back to stats, but there's some stat, like, 80% of the world's wealth is inherited, and by 20 2045, it's going to be even higher. And you're like, oh, fuck. You forget, because we come from, oh, we made money. Or Elon made money, or fucking Larry Page made money or whatever. Those are the real rich guy bezos. And. And. But the majority of the world, it's like, yeah, my parents had money a thousand years ago, so I have money today.

That's so crazy. And that's how you make Joffrey's.

Joke. Yeah, that's how you make lots of. Of them.

Yeah, you make monsters.

Monsters. And so. So, yeah, like, you come here and I'm like, I'm an immigrant. I came here. I'm fucking. I was the ambassador for fucking New York. I'm like, I came here with no fucking shoes. Fucking loves the greatest fucking city in the fucking world. Fucking amazing. And the Canadians were like. Because the canadian identity is like, we're not american, kind of.

Right?

And I was unapologetic. I went to New York. I'm like, this is the greatest goddamn city in the fucking world. Old and which it is. And then. And then. And then I moved to LA when I had kids. Well, this is pretty fucking nice.

I used to want to live in Canada. I used to love Canada.

I love Canada. Don't get me wrong. I love Canada. Canada's a great place to be.

I thought about living in Vancouver.

That's beautiful.

I was like, I could live in Vancouver, like, if shit hits the fan in the United States, I always felt.

Like a beautiful country. And Canadians are amazing people.

They're amazing.

Amazing.

I always feel like Canada has 20% less douchebags. That's my feeling. When I used to do shows up there, we would all talk about it. We'd do a gig in Toronto. We do a gig in Montreal.

Yeah. And realize that.

Beautiful. It is the best.

The best.

I love it up there. I love the people. They're friendly and hard working.

Great place to be.

Peaceful, smart. And they're smart and they're educated. It was always fun. I loved it. Up there. I just love the attitude of the place. I've met so many cool people in Canada. But now the way Trudeau is running it, it scares the shit out of me. I'm like, you guys are sliding into communism. You're sliding. Every day they push a little bit further, a little bit further. I mean, if you don't get rid of that guy, if you don't turn that thing around, you're fucked. Yeah.

Look, I've seen a lot of things happen in Canada where to me, it's. It's. Government shouldn't run things at all. Like, if we can stay away from it. What does that mean? It means, like, universal health care. So when I grew up, it was good. You could go to any hospital. The doctors were all good. Some of the best doctors in the world. And then because they didn't manage it correctly and it got too big. It got too, like eighty cents of every dollar was going to managing it rather than the doctors. So they left. They came down here, there's a big brain drain, and now you can't get a doctor. You have to sign up and wait for three years. It's like the NHS in the UK or something. And it just doesn't work because the government's too big. It's just, you know, once you get the government involved, it becomes like a welfare program. You're just paying all kinds of people to work on the thing, but no one's doing the actual thing that they're supposed to work on. The healthcare bureaucracy. Bureaucracy. So it's a problem. But my later stages in life, to get into this and to get into the american political system and the bulgose loony that is this political cycle and this electoral cycle and Canada and what's happening in Europe, I really get this feeling, and maybe, you know, we're gonna get into it on this.

But when I was younger, you know, and I was studying stuff and I was. I always feel like I would love to go back to being in college, because when I was in college, I just wanted to get out. I wanted someone. I wanted to get out and make money and stuff, and I just did everything to just get the fuck out. And now I'm like, if I could just read books and talk to people and then write about that, I'd fucking. Where? Where do I sign up?

Yeah.

Just thinking about shit. So I fucking would love to. It's wrong timing when you're. When you're. But anyway, but I used to study politics. I loved philosophy. I loved politics. When I first came down to America, and I had been studying american politics. Bubba Clinton was a consensus politician. Reduced the size of government, took the largest deficit of all time, turned the largest surplus of all time, and then Bush got in, turned the largest surplus of all time, largest deficit, increased size government. I'm like, no one said boo. No one said anything. And you're like, the whole fundamental principles of the Republican Democratic Party. Before Trump, there's none more. Reagan than me was the calling card of the GOP. Reagan was the best president for immigration if you're an immigrant ever. He was super pro immigration, and the Democrats were against it. They completely switched their platforms on it. And you're like, to me, when you look at America, you say, okay, it's a republic. It's a two party system. They're always in power ones. That's like a two party system. You're always in power. You're always in power, or you're fucking trying to control the house or not.

And you're like, is it all much ado about nothing? Is it all a political, like bread and puppet theater? It's like, this is super fucking important for you to watch over here, to give you some sort of thinking that I have some agency that I can vote, and it's gonna fucking matter about anything. Whereas what the fuck really changes on the big shit? Like, what the fuck really changes on the economy? What the fuck really changes for any of the shit that we're talking about, about school, about education, about big, like, the other shit you talk about, which is fascinating, and it's great that you do it about big pharma, big food, big education, military industrial, what the fuck really changes in that? Zero.

Zero. Yeah. The only thing that changes is if there's someone who really wants to push reform, really wants to change things. And the real question is, like, when you get a guy like Trump is promising all this stuff, how much can you actually get away with? How much can you actually change? What can you actually do? And will that change things for the better?

Very little. Politically. Politically, America is set up to do very. The american government is set up to do very little and do it very slowly. That was what it was.

Well, not only that, a long time ago, we gave in to allowing money to enter into politics in this huge, influential way, and then we allowed pharmaceutical drug companies to advertise on television, all those things. But those were the big ones, because as soon as you had control of the narrative, there's no way the media is going to spoil the relationship that they have with their biggest providers of revenue, they're not going to do that. So whether it's the food companies or whether it's pharmaceutical drug companies, they're going to ignore as much as possible about the negatives of these products. And then you have a propaganda state where you have these people that are literally hired to say stories they know are not true because this will benefit the people that are their advertisers. And that's where you get fucking crazy. It's also how that model implodes, which is fascinating. So that model becomes less relevant and the Michael Schellenbergers and the Matt Taibbis of the world, then people start turning to them. The Glenn Greenwalds of the world. People say, well, these people, Joe Rogan, are honest and they're, well, I'm not a journalist.

I know, but, but these people are.

Interview a lot of people who tell a lot of things that people don't get. Other places.

Yes. And then crazy people. But that's fine.

Let's get into aliens.

Comedians.

I want to know what you know about aliens.

Yeah, I.

Sorry, I want to hear that end of that, though.

I don't remember where I was going. Where was I going?

You were.

So what they've done is they've created their own demise by giving it to Satan's deal. So by sucking Satan's cock and getting all that money, you, you've, now you're not a news organization anymore. You're a propaganda outlet. And everybody knows you have the news. But that's what the news is. A thin layer of bread on the shit sand.

But yes, but that's been, see, this is the thing is that's been since the fucking beginning. It's nothing new. Like, I forget who it was, but I was talking to somebody goes, what is news? What is news, Shane? You know who Reuter was? You know who Reuter was? He, he started Reuters to start a newspaper to say fuck you to his enemy, blah, blah, blah. He just bought it. He was just a rich guy who bought it. I can't do his accent anymore. But basically he got incensed with me because he was just like, that's what it always was. Some rich guy would start a newspaper just to say fuck you to the other rich.

I did Bezos by the Washington Post.

Well, because he was on the COVID of the New York Times. What is it? You can't be on the COVID of the New York Times 18 days in a row and he was on 13. Washington Post, something like that.

Yeah, by the way.

And it worked. You know?

Yeah, well, I mean, look, you can use money, get a lot of things done, but it's just.

I'm just not. What I'm saying is there's always been money in politics and there's always been money in media. It's just now it's. It's more obvious than ever before. And now you're right. Like, there are agendas. So my whole thing is, like, I'm an immigrant, but I'm non political. I'm literally serious. Like, I. I believe in the game. I like the game. I like watching the game. And that's why I say, like, I like to take a look. Like, okay, there's this whole fucking thing going on over here where the status quo doesn't change. And I think you and I are like, look, that's what has to fucking change over there. That's the real power over there.

Yeah.

This shit, for me becomes. And it's funny because this is like, I don't know what I'm showing up myself. I don't know what the elect is. 53, 54, something like that to 54, 56.

It's pretty close around there somewhere. It fluctuates depending on what.

So we're on season 53, right? And that's why you have to have the craziness. You have to have two assassination attempts. You have to have fucking Biden, by the way, Biden has to be kicked out mid election. And we're going to get so, like, you're like, oh, season 53, the Fonz is jumping the shark, but the sharks being eaten by piranhas?

Not only that, Biden's wearing a maGa.

Hat like this, but that's like, look.

Can I pause you for a second? Because, Jamie, you brought something. You didn't bring it up. Somebody else brought up. Sean brought it up to me. Was there some sort of a physical altercation between Jill Biden's people and Kamala Harris's people reports about this stuff on Twitter?

But, like, it's just like, I haven't seen anyone show pictures or quotes. It's just like a Twitter account saying stuff like that.

What is it a good Twitter account?

I would.

There's a few people I follow where I know they're full of shit because they just want to see nonsense.

I like it, and I just.

What is this?

What kind of good?

Like, you know, it's a lot of the. Michelle Obama has a dick.

Yeah.

There's so many of.

So many of them. But I. I love. I love memes. Like, oh, my God, memes. And how fast and hard you want to talk about creativity and art? Like, some of them are so fucking good and so artistic and so quick. You're like, how the fuck did they fucking do that one? Like, I fucking love it.

Yeah. And there's so inappropriate. And that's what's fun about is because you never kind of say, but it's never this. But I'm like, yeah, I'll send this to Jamie so he knows what we're talking about.

Yeah, it's just like, so I'm just. But, like, it's like, there's so many of them now. And so anyway, that's like, I was during. During.

COVID Oh, well, this guy's pretty legit, right?

But just as a per White House official, which.

How do you say his name? Pope Siblinghenne. How do you say his name? Possibly, but this guy's pretty legit. There was a physical altercation with Jill and Kamala staffers in the White House after Joe's press room last week began with accusation the Bidens were undermining Kamala's deliberate. Kamala deliberately, per White House official. Well, it does seem like he's doing that. Like, when he called that press conference, he hadn't called any press conference. So he decides to call a press conference in the middle of a national emergency.

He's out.

Yeah. And he's out of. And everyone know, but he's still the president. So do that. He'd wearing the maga hat, like, look, there's no fucking way they're happy. They got kicked out. And Jill did not want him to step down.

Right.

She started taking cabinet meetings.

Right? Like, yeah, yeah, I saw that.

Who elected you? Can I do it? Let me do it. Let me do it. I'm not elected either. Let me just sit in, find out what's going on with these people. What are you talking about? How are you running a cabinet meeting? You're just married to the guy that's the president.

But that's the whole thing too, because she sat, it sat in that room. Like, you can go and you can sit in the room.

Yeah, but he wasn't there.

Yeah, he was, but she. I don't think she was running the cabinet meeting.

Okay. That's what I'd heard.

Yeah, that's what people say. Because there's a picture of her there, but she's not running the fucking.

Why you want to ruin a great story? This is fun. It's fun if she's running.

There you go.

If she. I hope she's running it. I hope she's boss. Bitch.

The thing. The thing about it, I married a.

Goddamn present for one more.

If you want to look at like, the greatest time of the Republican Party when. When Reagan was president, it was his cabinet. His cabinet was exceptional. And because he'd, like. He had dementia. But his cabinet was.

Not initially.

He did not initially, but later on. But his cabinet was running America. It was fucking great.

Right?

So you see, the cabinet should run America. I'd rather have the cabinet run something of professionals, people who are like, designed to do that, rather than. One fucking person is gonna go, yes, no. Yep, yep. That's great. They're the fucking queen of England and they're supposed to be the queen of England.

Yeah. Do you think his dementia was convenient?

Whose?

Reagan's. I always wonder if he was doing like a Jimmy the chin type thing.

No, I look, Reagan.

Do you like, here's Jimmy Tingle, who's amazing comedian. He had this great bit way back in 1988 when. When Reagan was in trouble for selling weapons to Iran. And he said, I can't recall.

Yeah.

And he goes, do me a favor, mister president. You ever sell an arms to people who hate us? Jot it down.

It'S pretty good.

He goes, make a note. Put it on your refrigerator.

Yeah, that's. I never. I literally never even thought of that.

I would do that. He said he couldn't remember anything. That's a good move.

That is a good move.

Who could tell you whether or not you can remember things? You could play dumb. Yeah, that's what Jimmy the chin did.

I don't remember.

Do you know that story?

No.

Jimmy the chim Gigante was a mob leader. And he would walk around with a bathrobe and slippers and just mumble to himself, yes. Would walk down the street with his capo. And the FBI knew this. And so what they did was they put these little microphones on all the hubcaps so they could record his conversation as he walked down the street. So as he's walking on the street, they were recording everything.

Wow.

I love shit like that.

I love shit like that.

Like when Israel intercepts the pagers of Hezbollah and blows everybody's balls off. That is. Look, it's terrible those people died, but it seems like they weren't good people. But at the bottom line is, you know, fucking genius.

That is to stop the actual shipment. Yeah. Sorry to figure out that they use this type of analog, major. Stop the shipment, put. And then get them to all blow up at the same time. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Months and make sure that no one's on an airplane.

There's an amazing book called rise up and kill first.

I've read that. Yeah. It's a great book.

It's about this.

Yeah.

Like, we can't win a war, so we're gonna assassinate our way to safe.

Yeah, yeah. It's all about Israel.

Yeah.

It's.

And using political assassination. Fantastic.

It's crazy when you find out they're doing that, like, God damn well, you know, goddamn genius that is. And you imagine being them and realizing, like, this is how deeply Israel's infested your organization, who. That's got to be terrible.

Just recently, they got the head of Hezbollah and then the second head and then the third head within, like, three or four days of each other, and.

Then they're trying to get new guys, and they're like, yeah, I want that gig.

I am. I don't want that game.

It's. The whole thing is. It's very, very fascinating. Well, they're the people that invented Pegasus.

Yeah.

You know, they invented that. The ability to just. They now apparently phone Pegasus to. All they have to have is your phone number.

Yeah.

And they're.

That's true. I have. I actually talked to one of the guys who owned that company. If you want to hack for Pegasus, I don't know if it still is. Turn your phone off repeatedly. And then. Because every time you turn your phone off, they have to re put the Pegasus in.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

Well, that's. That was from the dude.

I would tell that to people.

Just.

Fucking idiot. Shut.

I got it from the owner. It's true.

Meanwhile, you're never off the, like, we never off.

Exactly.

That's how you could use. Find your phone.

Yeah.

I mean, there's. I'm sure there's probably some hacks, but Eric Prince has a new phone called the unplugged phone that's designed by the guy who created Pegasus, apparently. And it's like this untrackable phone that kind of constantly, but who knows? I don't think you track everything. I think you are, first of all, with quantum computing, when quantum computing becomes ubiquitous, there's going to be no more passwords. That's all gone, folks. It does not work. It's up the window.

Bitcoin. Oh, yeah, your credit card.

Oh, you're fucked.

Everything.

Everyone's fucked. And we're not prepared for that hundred percent. No, it's gonna be real weird, because I've always said, like, what money is today, essentially, is numbers. It's just ones in the. And zeros.

Yeah. We make it up.

And the thing that you see with the Internet is as technology increases, people get more and more access to information, to ones and zeros, to data.

Yeah.

The bottleneck is gonna be money.

Yeah.

And eventually that's gonna break through. And then what do you own? And who owns what? And where is it stored and what is it? It's all.

It's all digital. And soon, very soon, there'll be no digital encryption. There'll be no digital safety at all. Everything. By the way, you're talking about money. Every fucking. So I. One of the most fascinating guys, I think you talked to him, too. I went to Russia and I hung out with him at the metropole, which is funny because it's the whole. Famously. The. Every room is bugged because it was the only place they let foreigners stay in Moscow. And so we were at the metropole, we got into surveillance and. But he opened my phone and, like, he was like. As we were having the interview, just showing me, like, how they can turn on the phone, how can this, and how to, like, take out this part and take out this camera and do this and do that. Just like, as he was talking about overall government surveillance of everybody, which, by the way, I don't think a lot of people know what he did. He. He said, look, the american government is illegally. Illegally spying on its own people.

Oh, yeah.

And. And by the way, hadn't told him. Illegally. They weren't allowed to. They. The Mafia guys, they had to get warrants from judges and shit to fucking. To bug those cars. Now they don't have to get shit.

They don't need shit.

They just say they have fucking planes with NZ catchers flying around they're picking up right now, or talking a hundred percent.

Every time I have a conversation, every text I send, even the fucked up ones, I go, what? Someone's got that. Oh, yeah.

So that's what they're gonna say. So not only do your money, but, like, your whole search history, whatever's in your fucking computer. I tell my kids. I tell my kids, like, your phone is your whole human archive. And at some point, someone can take that thing and say, this is, you know, evidence, or this is this. Or so, like, you. You have to make sure that your phone is, like, you have to always be thinking, because not only that, if.

You'Re in some sort of a trial, all that shit becomes public record. Yeah, that's what gets really weird. Like, there's two different people that were involved in trials where my text messages to them became public and got printed in stories. One was Alex Jones, the other was Elon Musk.

Huh.

It's very strange that they just have access to your text messages.

Yeah.

Like, for what reason? Yeah, because I'm talking to some guy that I know. Like, what do you, what do you. Like the fact that the Alex Jones thing, they wanted every text message he and I had ever exchanged.

Wow.

Fuck you. Yeah, fuck you. So we got it down to whether or not he talked to me about Sandy Hook. Hook.

That's another thing. There has to be tort reform. Anyone can sue anybody for anything and not have to pay their lawyer. The lawyer can take 50% of the crazy. It's, it's, it's, it's extortion and it's just, it's, it's, I don't know. So there, something has to change there because they're just sitting there suing people because they can.

Yeah, that's, it's a sport for people, and it's a way to make a living. I mean, it's like gold digging. So it's a viable strategy. You know, a lot of that. There's a lot of that. Definitely a lot of that. Tort reform. That would be good thing.

So we got tort reform, we got education.

But I think what we were talking about earlier with quantum computing and AI think we're all in real trouble.

Yeah.

Because I think this society is going to be completely reimagined and it probably will lean towards some sort of a more socialist existence because of necessity, because of this money, because I just really don't know how you're going to accumulate real wealth if everything becomes digital. I think if everything becomes digital, AI, quantum, compute, we're going to, we're going to have real chaos.

Well, the problem with quantum is it's going to be okay. There's a whole new. So when, when the sort of west or the north of the rich countries, whatever, leave everyone else behind, you know, monetarily is when, you know, the last 20 years of digital expansion and we just make trillion dollar companies and they're over here and we make all that money in that economy, and then you go to like two thirds of the world and that shit hasn't even penetrated yet. Right? So quantum computing, is that on steroids? Because it's like, oh, there's going to be a whole new economy because all the other computers are fucking obsolete. All the security is obsolete. There's a whole new economy being generated. Who's it going to be? Generating by the ultra smart, ultra early adopters, super, like, you know, fucking rich people who can afford the quantum, blah, blah, blah, right? And everybody else is going even further fucking that way, going, there's no more fucking fish, right?

And if you're just like, you know, rioting to get universal basic income raised up to $125,000 a year, like, that's what we're going to be dealing with. People go looking for incremental improvements in their life where they don't have any other way to make money. Money. It's like they're stuck on the dole. And we. We could have an entire class of society that's just stuck on the dole forever.

Which gets larger and larger.

Yeah. Which gets larger and larger. Especially as technology increases to the point where almost all jobs are irrelevant. Like, Hollywood is in deep shit. They're in real, real, real.

That's what the strike was about because I'm doing it with news myself. You can get like. So when you do news, you get like, you have news services, right? So you get a news service, you get a wireless comes in and you go, fuck. There's a bit. Somebody fucking blew up the car. And you have a news team. So you send out shooters and you send out a producer and they're talking, hey, I'm saying. And then he comes back and I would say news should be called olds because you're just in there three days ago, something happened by me, right? With AI. It comes in right away. This just happened in Gaza. You can have video, you can have. You can say, I want Walter Cronkite in black and white reading me my news from Reuters, right, right. It can be Peter Jennings circumflex blown out color from Vietnam era, could be. Nineties era, could be. I want proved a task. Fucking russian soviet fuck. You can pick your own newscaster reading you verified news, right? Right away before anybody else. Before fox, before fucking MSNBC, before at CNN, for anybody, BBC, anybody. And you're like, why wouldn't you do that?

Right?

So, of course. And. But if you take that a step further, everyone can become their own, you know, movie director because you can just plug in your story, want to talk about art? You can plug in your story, make a movie.

Well, you do it through prompts and it do it almost instantaneous. That's what's gonna be so bizarre. And then the real problem with that is if AI is controlling the news. Like, who's controlling AI? Like, what control? Are we gonna get to a point where we say, you know, we're gonna have to let sentient AI control information. Then we find out that sentient AI is withholding information from us because it doesn't think we're emotionally stable enough to process it, which we probably aren't.

Yeah.

You know, if there's some sort of a civil turmoil, that could happen because some information gets released.

If you were AI now, and we're looking at the shit, you'd say, these guys don't know, we got to take them. They're not good for this planet.

Yeah, we would corner Zelensky and go.

What are you up to? No, I'm not saying. I'm saying, like, you have a news, like, you have a service comes in, it's still people, but you have new service. And then AI can make the images or can make the video, whatever. But, I mean, look, when you. When you look at media, you're like, oh, it's. That's why the strike happened, because they know you could. Everyone can. Can make their own fucking movie. Everyone can make their own tv show. Everyone. And that'll be the thing. It'll be like, individualistic creators. It's not going to be big studios and shit anymore. Yeah, and. And that's. But that's just media. Like, it's going to be every fucking business.

Every business. Every business.

Smith and Ricardo were like, who wrote, you know, the basis of capitalism? They're like, yeah, well, you know, know, they were both apologias for the. For the industrial revolution, as was called Marx. But they were like, yeah, you know, the blueberry pickers will have to move to the cities and become iron mongers. And, you know, that'll happen. And they're like, well, blueberry pickers can't, like, forge iron. And they go, well, you know, a generation will die, and then they'll figure it out.

Right?

So that was the problem. And, you know, that's going to be the problem with AI, is, like, there will be this thing of, like, people moving to building tables or making art or doing whatever, but there's going to be. This is why I think our kids are maybe okay, but, like, when you said, what I worry about is the 40 year olds sitting there who bought it all, went to high school, went to college, did all the shit, got the fucking job, or sitting there, you know, trying to climb the ladder. And that's all gonna go away.

It's all gonna go away.

And coding.

Unnecessary.

You're right. Like, don't become an alcoholic, because, like, it's probably the biggest freeing thing.

Right.

Ever. But like, yeah, there has to be. Okay. Like, just pay that fucking person, right, so that they don't lose their fucking house. Because if you start losing your house, right, if you smith and Ricardo it and start losing your house, which I. This is my long winded thing to go, there has to be some sort of weird social thing about it, because if you just let them fucking die off, they're not gonna die off.

They're gonna say, yeah, yeah, that's the. The fear is rebellion, and I don't think that's necessary. I think clearly there's something happening to the human species that's technology driven, and we're moving into a completely new way of existing, and it's going to be a tumultuous journey. The transformation, the process is going to be scary. It's going to be very fucking strange because it's going to be unprecedented in its impact and the speed of its impact. Yeah, the speed is going to be, you know, the Internet, it took a couple decades before we figured out how fucked up it is. You know, it came around in the 1990s. People started using it. You know, kind of everywhere you've got mail, and then 2000, you started getting fucked up videos and craziness, and then along comes social media, and everybody's like, oh, my God. Everyone's connected and everyone's addicted. And then you're getting all this negativity because that's what attracts views. So your algorithms. Yes. Overwhelming.

Some of it I love, because it's like, wow. Yeah, you know, I didn't know that. And you find out it's true. So you're like, wow, that's pretty.

Yeah.

And then a lot of it, you're like, what the fuck? And that's not true. And you're like, yeah, and so, by the way, a lot of people have an ax to grind. That's the other problem, is CCP, Chinese Communist Party are openly saying they're trying to fuck with our social media.

Oh.

As is the Free Syrian army, as are the Iranians. As are like, as are we. As are we.

We are fucking with it. I guarantee there's some sort of government, government agency that's involved with, like, just distributing narratives and arguing against certain things.

Also, if you go to Russia, they're like, yeah, you have the ruble. We are trying to fuck with you. Yeah, we're definitely trying to fuck with you, of course. And you're like, okay, so if you're openly trying to fuck with us. And by the way, can you imagine if the Chinese Communist Party is spreading propaganda that there's dollar 28, big Max. Then what are they going to do when they have quantum computing?

Right. Well, once they have quantum computing, we're fucked financially.

It's a race between us and them.

Because as soon as someone has that with AI, the whole financial institutions crumble. We're going to be in a giant mess. And I don't understand how they could ever figure out a way to stop that. Yeah, I just don't. I see as technology scales up, it's just going to have more power and more access, and the innovation is going to come so fast, you're not going to be able to keep up with it and all sudden it'll be too late.

Yeah. Remember when we were growing up, there was a big thing about, like, how you adopt technology. It takes you like ten years to adopt. What was it called? It was as there was a term for. It was a big deal in the eighties and nineties about a culture lag, tech lag, something. You remember this? No. It was a big concept when I was growing up.

Anyway, how long it takes society to.

Adapt, to adapt to a new technology. And it was a big deal, and I. Culture lag, something like that. And there's like the, the amount, the speed with which quantum is going to change, every quantum. Sorry, quantum married with AI.

Right.

The speed with which it changes everything is going to be like. I mean, I don't think we're even going to be able to sort of process that change.

No, I think it's going to happen so quick. And I, I have the craziest thought about it that just keeps popping into my head is that I think that we are creating a new life form. That's what I really.

With AI?

Yeah.

Well, that's been the sort of.

But I think that's what the universe does. I think that's probably where all this, all these alien encounters are. I don't think they're biological anymore. I think life gets to a certain point where it, it gets so smart that it creates a new version of itself that's superior. Either it merges with it, I think that's what the aliens are. I think they're us in the future. I think there's parallel.

So that's the mathematical thing, right?

Yeah.

It's more mathematically plausible than it's us in the future, than we evolved this way.

Well, it's also probably other civilizations from other places that are far more advanced that have figured out a way to get here, and it might be interdimensional travelers, which sounds ridiculous. Until you talk to actual physicists that can tell you it's provable.

Dark matter, dark energy.

Ten or eleven won't even know what that is. Well, that's just a lack of an understanding of what the fuck is going on.

I love. I love that. Did you ever, if you haven't used Taylor Wilson, who's like the fucking genius, genius, genius of all genius physicists. He's a young kid, built a functioning fusion reactor in his Reno garage when he was 13 years old.

Michio Kaku did something like that.

This guy is. Is next fucking level.

I think he made a particle collider in his house.

Super. He refined his own yellow kit. He staked claims and got uranium and turned it into yellow cake.

That's nuts. How old is this kid now?

He's 30. But he was 13, so. He was 13. The government took him. I've been there. I've been.

That's his fucking super nerd.

He's so amazing. He's. But like, whenever you want to talk about anything that has to do with physics, he's the guy. And. But what I love about it is like, I think he was part of the team. I don't get anybody in trouble. I think he was part of the team where you knew about it. Anyway, he's explained it to me. The guys in Peru, you know, with the fucking most advanced telescope and they're like, VLT. Yeah. They're like, the planets are all here, right? And they should be here. They're not in the right place. And. And somebody had to go, the math is wrong. I like to believe it's in, but maybe not. Somebody said the math is wrong. And they're like, the math is wrong. That's all of the math. That's like, physics is wrong. Yeah, physics is wrong. So, like, because there's too much gravity to keep all the planets in play, they should be fucking flying off. And so, like, okay, 90% of the universe we can't see. It's dark matter, dark energy, and. And, and there's now this, these things and deep in the coal mines and they have like, these baths of some gas which they can see.

They're weakly interacting molecular particles. Wimps. And they have to been this, like, now the fifth dimension, which is now leading to there's infinite fucking universes and infinite possibilities and infant. So you're not crazy because physics is now saying all of this shit is fucking probable.

Yeah.

You know, so that's one thing too, is when I was talking to a very smart person, I'm not gonna say, but they're like, look, interstellar travel isn't gonna be you and I go on a fucking spaceship, right? It's gonna be. There's. You download your brain into a computer. It goes by via laser into another thing that's got a 3d printer of a human that resembles you or might not resemble you, and it goes and downloads, and that's how you go these vast distances in space. And you're like, oh, maybe so it. But if they're doing that in the few. Maybe. But if they're doing. I'm not saying that that's it. Right. But if it does happen, then it makes sense that you got these. These mixes. If you're downloading your brain into a computer, then it's possible mixed up with a.

What does that even mean exactly? What is the thing is, like, what is. Is your brain? And is the soul a real thing? Because I tend to think the soul is a real thing.

I do too.

I think there is some sort of a life force that's inside of you, that's not just your heart beating. I think there's a thing inside of people, and I think you recognize it when you're around people. And I think it's one of the most unique aspects of being a conscious creature is that we think of us. We think of ourselves as individuals, but we're really connected to some great. Well, of souls.

The sealed.

Yeah, yeah. There's some thing that's going on where we're all in this together in some bizarre way that's, for some reason, very difficult for us to recognize in normal regular life. It's hard for us to like. You get these moments where you feel it, whether it's a psychedelic experience, a near death experience, a profound love, feeling joy. Yeah. There's the birth of a child. There's moments in life where you feel like everything's connected. You see, like, through the curtains.

Yeah.

And you get a chance. This is so much bigger than us or creativity.

When something just comes to you and you're like, where the fuck did that come from? Right.

It's the. Yeah, it's in the. It's in this. It's in the space around you somehow or another. Like, there's. That's the concept of, like, consciousness being. Like, what you're actually is tuning in to what's out there. It's not local. Like, your consciousness is not this local thing. Your brain. The local thing is just an antenna.

Yeah.

And it's. It's distributing this consciousness through your unique biology and unique life experiences and where you live and who you're friends with and what you interact with on a daily basis, what kind of energy you get in, what kind of energy you put out. And it's all somehow or another bizarrely connected to the way the whole universe works, that it all works together as one unique, gigantic system.

Yeah, religion, philosophy, also psychology. It all is like, yeah, there's one thing out there. And you're like, what the fuck it is? And that's. I mean, that's what it comes down to, is like consciousness. And as you get older and more mortal and realizing we don't have that much more time, that's the kind of shit. That's why I said it's stupid to think that when you're 19 to study philosophy, like, when you get older and you're feeling more mortal and your brain's open to it, you're like, what the f are we doing here? What's it all about?

You know? That's the craziest theory. That came from the Bob Lazar stuff. The craziest. You know, the Bob Lazar stuff. The guy was working the back engineering UFO's for the government in 1980.

This is what I've been waiting the whole fucking time to get into.

He told the same story. This guy's told the same story for 30 plus years. The same story. He was an engineer, he worked at Los Alamos Labs. And then he left there and they hired him to do propulsion work. And they brought him in and they showed him this thing that had an american flag on it. And he was like, oh, it had an american flag sticker on it. He was like, oh, they're ours. That's why everybody's seeing these things. This is like some top secret thing that we're working on. And slowly but surely, and again, this is not fact. This is just his story. Slowly but surely, over time, he's brought in to analyze this thing, tell us how it works. He realized, like, this is not ours. It's too small. The ship was made for three foot tall inhabitants. Everything looked like it was 3d printed. There was no seams, there was no bolts. The whole thing had no. There was no electronics. It somehow or another was connected to the minds of the pilots. And it had some sort of a reactor that had a stable form of element 115, which was just theoretical at the time.

You know, it wasn't even proven until they proved it with a particle collider in like the two thousands. So this guy was telling the story about how they have this element. And so he bombard this element with radiation, and it makes this gravity propulsion device, and it moved. So one of the things that he said was that they had a very thick book that was all information about religion, and that this was one of the things that they had got from these alien inhabitants, that we are vessels, that they look at us as containers for souls.

Well, that's. That's.

A little dutty. But also, like, if. Just think about this. That sounds crazy that we're vessels for souls. But imagine if the life force of a soul is a real thing that's limited to biological organisms, but then you create life that is not biological, and you create this thing that is this sentient life force that's digital, completely digital, but it doesn't have a life force. It doesn't have soul to it. Now, imagine you bridge the gap with hybrids. So you have a thing that is part alive, part of biological organism, and part interconnected. And it needs to be, if it wants to continue to have creativity and desire and needs, and it actually has a task that it wants to accomplish, that this has to be connected somehow or another to biology, and that if you want biology, you have to have a soul.

It's interesting, because I, speaking of kids, I believe that humanity is a grand evolutionary experiment, because a lot of the things that happen to you are weird. Like, when you have a kid, you change. And when men have kids, they change. When women have kids, they change. The kids changing, like, all these things up, and it's just like this thing of, like, we have to do it. We have to do it. And it puts you on a path, and you're like, are we a grand evolutionary experiment? And if so, why?

Well, if this is what the universe does, when it creates superior beings, it kind of makes sense that we have all the attributes that we have. It makes sense that we're territorial. It makes sense that we fight over resources. It makes sense that we're competitive, and it makes sense that we're inquisitive and that we constantly search for innovation. We want the newest, best stuff all the time. We have. Throughout human history, we've always aspired to have the best plow, the best trucks, the best this, the best that we always want better. And we're always working on these things.

Yeah.

What does that lead to? That leads to artificial intelligence. It's almost like that's what we're doing. We're making this cocoon, and the butterfly is going to come out of the cocoon, and we don't even know why we're making it. We're just fucking toiling along, doing our thing. And it also connects to materialism, because one of the things that materialism does is it encourages innovation, encourages constant purchasing of goods. If the phones that we have right now are perfect and we never have to get a new phone, all you have to do is repair them. It would just be repair shops everywhere. You would need a new phone. There would be no need for innovation.

Light bulbs.

Yeah, yeah, right. But, well, light bulbs were better. They used to be better because they didn't burn out.

They never burned out.

Yeah, but then they came out with the led light bulbs and, like, it's actually even better because then they don't.

You know, I like the old light bulbs.

They're all cool.

Never burnt out.

They are cool.

Those ones burnt out. No, the original. The original light bulbs never burned out.

They just have to make the filaments bigger. Yeah, we're just like, nah, make it so they die off. Yeah, fuck those people. Make them buy another light bulb.

That's it. Yeah, all the time.

Yeah, the lights. Are you gonna burn the light bulbs?

Yeah, yeah.

And then they burn. They get black in the bottom. But like, shit, we lost the light bulb. Yeah, but if phones were. I mean, if we're satisfied with. Phones are so good, why do we need new phones? We do. All the iPhone 16 is coming out.

Are you gonna get it?

Ooh. Samsung has a 24 Ultra 25. Five's got a better zoom. And you just fucking keep hopping on that. It's just a normal thing that we do. We do it with computers. We do with everything you do with cars. And I think that that's at least a constant thirst.

Was it Moore's? Moore's law?

Yeah, Moore's law. But Moore's laws. Out the window.

It's out the window.

It's all exponential. Anyway, all this stuff gets popped out as soon as we give birth to that AI demon.

So I. I cut you off when I shouldn't have because I was wanting to. You talk to more people who are more connected about aliens than anybody else, so I wanted to sort of mine that a little bit. So. So, so he. It's three foot high. Aliens who have art. We have their technology in area 54.

Or whatever, supposedly area 51. Supposedly s four. Area fifty one. S four. Site four is where he worked. See, I don't know. You know, I don't know. I don't know how much of its bullshit. I think some of its bullshit. Right? So whatever it is you have to say some of its bullshit. It seems like the United States government is spending an inordinate amount of time studying these things. There seems like there's a ton of whistleblowers. There's a ton of programs that most of us did not know about. So why do these programs exist? So it is either a top secret drone program that has a super sophisticated propulsion system that's far beyond anything that we're aware of today. Today, that's probably true as well. But also, the universe is filled with stars. The universe is filled with planets. The odds that none of them have life are very low. There's Fermi's paradox. Like, where are they? Well, they probably don't want us to know too much about what they are because they want us to figure out.

A way our brains will be blown.

Well, also, like, get to the next level, right? Get to the next level and keep getting, you don't just fly in and give people death rays like Star Trek.

You can't change their evolution.

I would imagine the correct, the correct path is to let people evolve, let people make these mistakes, figure it out. Have revolutions, have elections, have innovation, have this constant desire.

Also, if they come, then we think, oh, there's the gods, there's the, theres the angels, theres whatever it is.

Exactly. Thats the problem, too. And then also I think theres probably an interdimensional aspect to it. Theres probably some things that arent even real that youre seeing, but they are real somewhere else, and you have a window to them. Theres probably bizarre states of consciousness where a certain amount of psychedelic chemicals are released by your brain in a certain level of anxiety, in a certain environment and circumstance where you have access to a frequency not normally available to you. And I think some people are having these kind of experiences and they're calling them aliens. But I do think there's something going on with crafts. And the thing about these crafts is they existed way before there's any be reasonable assumption that people had technology that could do those things. Like the Kenneth Arnold sightings from the 1950s are the best example. Something that was moving far faster than anything that we had. Silent, looked like a saucer skipping over the sky. They saw like a bunch of them flying around. These guys are fighter jet pilots. They don't have a history of making up things. They're not liars. And there's a ton of those sightings.

And those sightings go way back. They go way back. And it's probably some of the stories in the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. You know, there's a bunch of stories about flying things and flying chariots and wars in the skies. There's some wild shit. And you got to imagine that if this is a long, slow process that every intelligent being goes through in the universe, this is just like, we look out, we see all these different planets that are in the Goldilocks zone. So we know that the kind of life that we have can exist in these planets. How many of them have people or things or something? Some form of super intelligent organism? Yeah, probably infinite numbers. Probably infinite numbers. And they probably visit emerging civilizations. It just makes sense. Just like we would. Just like we would visit a Stone age culture and watch them from afar. If we found some lost tribe in.

Siberia, you know, with fucking island off India, you know. Yes.

North Sentinel island. Yeah. There's tons of examples of how we behave in those situations, and we're retarded. If you imagine something that's far more advanced than us, it would be much more sophisticated in its approach, probably would occasionally abduct people and study their biology. Probably does have a way to erase memories. Probably does leave people with, like, significant trauma and confusion as to, like, how this experience is real. How do you put it in the context of your normal day to day life?

You can.

How come it never happens again? Yeah, you're just sitting home. Wait, is it gonna happen again? And then the rest of your life, you, like, freaked out that the walls are gonna melt and also you're gonna be on spaceship again. If that is real. Like, who fucking knows? And those. Those people. Imagine being one of those poor people that does get abducted by aliens, and everybody thinks you're an idiot. Everybody thinks you're a liar. Everybody thinks you're a fool. Oh, mike lost his mind. Thinks he got abducted by aliens. Meanwhile, I really did.

Well, that's gonna be a problem when. When people finally find out, they're gonna be like, hold on a second now.

It's going to be a real problem. And I think it's a slow trickle. So I think that that's what we're experiencing, and I think this is normal. I think there's, like, deep denial in the 1960s, and there's also operation Blue book, which is a concerted effort to dismiss all the sightings as illegitimate and swamp gas. I mean, J. Allen Hynek, who ran that program, eventually, when he left the program, became a huge UFO believer and then completely changed his tune and explained how he was to debunk everything. There was a bunch of things that he couldn't debunk. I think the numbers, like 90, 1090 percent of the things you could. Oh, that's this, that's Venus, that's this, that's that. 10%. There's no fucking way.

Right?

This is like, whatever this is, there's physical evidence, there's a bunch of shit. Something happened. And he was a believer before he died, a big believer and a proponent, and would talk about UFO's openly. And I think there's too many of those guys for it all to be bullshit. There's too many people for it all to be bullshit. But some of it is bullshit. And some of it is ours. I think some of it is. I think some of it might be back engineered. I think some of the Bob Lazar stuff might be legitimate. Like they. They found things. Whether these things were left behind for us to discover, whether they, you know, made some sort of a deal.

Right.

But I think. I think there's intelligent life other than human beings that interacts with us.

Bingo.

That's right.

Yeah. Look, it's interesting. My whole thing is. I don't know, but it's interesting. And why. And why not, like, look into it and why not read about it and why not? I mean, people like, well, everyone's. This is the other thing. Not just with this, with everything. Everyone's so dismissive about everything, you know, I know why you're fucking wingnut, if you. Yeah, if you believe in that shit or if you read about it, or if you want to look into it, I'm like, I have questions, right? I want to ask questions. Why? Why is it bad to ask questions?

Right?

Why can't I talk about. Why can't I think about, by the way, people will freak out that we're talking. And you're like, why? We're two guys chopping it up like on your front porch, and be like, look, let's ask questions. You're an interesting guy. You meet a lot of interesting people. So you are well informed. Well informed. I'd say better than, I'd say 90%, 99% people. Okay, let's talk about it. That's interesting.

Yeah, no, it is interesting. I think so.

Yeah.

Obviously a lot of people agree. It's just you're always gonna have people complaining. You just can't listen. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like if you live your life by the whim of people that are willing to complain openly about almost anything, you're gonna live a terrible life.

Yeah.

And these kind of things, if they're not fascinating, to you, that's fine. That's. That's you. But I don't know how you could not be fascinated by congressional disclosures. Whistleblowers talking about programs that are beyond oversight, that are retrieving crashed UFO's and back engineering them. And we've been doing this for decades, because if they're telling the truth, either this is a spectacular lie or they're telling the truth. Yeah, and if they're telling the truth, how the fuck are you not interested?

How are you not interested? What I have to go another level is the problem that I have is you're like, okay, we're interested in big pharma, we're interested in big food, we're interested in oil, we're interested in military industrial companies, rinses, all this stuff. But if you start talking about aliens, or if you start talking about this or you start talking about multi dimensional, whatever, people. Well, negates all the other stuff you talk.

Why only to idiots. There's way more people that are. Even the New York Times in 2017, they posted legitimate journalism on.

That's a good point.

On UFO's.

But a lot of people, you got.

You know, sure, you can't listen to them.

People.

There's a lot of people that could join a cult. Like, if you wanted to start a cult, you could probably do a really good job. You'd probably have a lot of people in your cult. So be really easy. Pretty easy to do. Right? Why? Because a lot of people are gullible and they're stupid. It's easy to get people to do things. It's easy to get people mad. It's easy to get people that think that Donald Trump is Hitler. And it's easy to get people to think that Donald Trump was Jesus. It's like, there's a lot of opinions out there, and that's fine. It's part of the fun of life, that is. And morons and their stupid opinions is also flavor. It's a little bit of flavor and the soup of life.

There you go. Salt and pepper.

Yeah. And sometimes morons learn salt and pepper.

Yin and yang. I wanted to. I saw that on your thing that. What was it? The molecule, the life.

We still can't figure out exactly what that is. So what this is is quantum entangled photons. And the image that you're seeing in these quantum entangled photons is a yin and yang symbol.

Wow.

But we're trying to figure out, and this is where it gets, like, in the weed, scientifically. Is that what it looks like. Or did you make it look like that. To represent these quantum entangled photons? But the shape is arbitrary. Like, you chose a shape to get these quantum entangled photons to exist in. I don't know how you would do that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand the way they're recording it. I don't understand the technology behind it. I don't understand the science behind it.

Here we go.

Scientists have used first of its kind technique. To visualize two entangled light particles in real time, making them appear as a stunning quantum yin yang.

So we don't know if that's how it looks or if they. The scientists made it look that way.

Again. I'm reading this. I don't know what to tell you. A reconstruction of a holographic image of two entangled photos. The new method, called biphoton digital holography. Uses an ultra high precision camera. And could be used to massively speed up the future of quantum measurements. So, this is the way it's worded. Go back to the way it's worded.

It would be insanely cool if the.

Way it's worded is just weird. It's a first of its kind technique. To visualize two entangled light particles in real time. But this is the part that gets me making them appear as a stunning quantum yin yang symbol.

Yeah, you don't know.

It's like. What are you saying?

Yeah. It's not clear.

Yeah.

But it would be fucking cool if it was true.

Yeah, it would be super cool. It was true. But I think they made something this.

So that they would know if it worked, if it were giving this. As long as we see this at the end result and.

Right. So I don't understand that.

I don't understand any.

It's. I'm too stupid for this conversation, but just the facts that you. That we know that quantum entangled particles are real. Just the fact that we know this spooky action at a distance. And Einstein talked about the fact that we know that quantum particles can exist in a state of motion. And still, at the same time, they could be superposition like. What are you saying? They go in and out of existence. It's measurable. We don't know where they go. We don't know what's happening. It's magic.

It's magic.

It's all magic. And then the fact that atoms are mostly empty space. What does that even mean? What are you talking about? What does that mean? How are they connected? Just the nature of existence itself is magical.

Yeah. So when I went out into Taylor Wilson and he was picking up fucking yellow, like, uranium and turning yellow cake. And he was just speaking to me because to talk about someone who's interesting and he's like, well, I mean, we all know that, like, uranium is like stars. You know, parts of stars that explode and, like, hit the earth because they flew. So we're just taking a star that landed on Earth and we're taking a piece of it and then we're releasing its power. And I'm like, I didn't know that. He's like speaking like, everybody knows that. And I'm like, wait a minute. Uranium is like an x star that blew up, that landed on earth and you can take it and that's how you do it.

He's like, yeah, well, we are that.

We are that.

Yeah. I mean, with that song, we are.

But uranium is like the sort of the fire, like, they're concentrated and you're like, oh, you're making. By that. The fusion reactor is making a star. So you're making a star out of a star.

Yeah. You're taking stardust and turning into a star. What? How smart are people?

People are fucking smart.

Pretty amazing. And you need that in order to power quantum computing, by the way. You need multiple nuclear reactors to power quantum computing. All of its bananas, man. It's all. I mean, thank God, so many different kinds of people because there's people that are wholly obsessed in pursuing that and.

Then there's guys like us who will talk about it.

Yeah, exactly. Not exactly know what they're talking about.

Wow. I think this is what it is.

Yeah.

Taylor's gonna call me. What the fuck are you talking about?

I'm so fascinated by the people that studied just the universe itself because they're constantly dealing with new data. Like this James Webb telescope thing is like, thrown everything into a tizzy.

Yeah.

You know, there's these new red spots that were there. The formation of the universe. They don't know what the fuck they are and they went away.

Love it.

Yeah. Like, what is that?

Love it.

Quit. Here, I'll send it to you, Jamie. Because it's one of those ones where you're like. You read it and you're like, what does that even mean?

What?

What are you saying? Like, what is this?

Yeah, that's why I love to interview people who are much smarter than me. Because, again, I only understand half of what they're saying. But it is. I mean, it does because we think we know what we're talking about, especially, like, scientists and physicists. Physicists and everybody. And then something will happen. They're like, yeah, that was all badlandhouse. It's all new now.

This is it on live science. James Webb telescope found hundreds of little red dots in the ancient universe. We still don't know what they are.

Yeah.

Small galaxies are either crammed with stars or they host gigantic black holes. The data astronomers have collected continues to puzzle them. And then there's the data where they're finding galaxies that were formed too quickly.

Yeah.

So it's throwing into, like, they're starting to consider the possibility that the universe is far older than they thought it was.

It's. It's amazing. I love. I love it.

It's not.

I love it.

It's probably filled with life just like us. There's probably people doing stupid shit all over the universe.

Can you imagine if they fucking finally find out and they were. Yeah, they. Like Egypt. Mm hmm. What do you got there?

Nicotine?

No, I want. I thought was, I thought it was one of those on it mushroom things, which, by the way, you sent me and I loved them.

Which ones do you. Alpha brain. That's not mushrooms. We have a mushroom.

One mushroom shoom tech.

Yeah, that's a.

Whatever you said.

Yeah, that's a cordyceps mushroom. It's great for oxygen utilization.

Yeah, you said it's legit.

And do you know, I have to just buy it from us.

From.

Buy from. On it. Go get cordyceps mushrooms. Super legit endurance supplement.

I do it for concentrations.

Well, that's alpha brain.

That's alpha brain.

Yeah. Alpha brain is the nootrope that the alpha brain. We have a black label that's like a super strong one. Now that's really good.

But there's no funny, but I loved, I love the. You gave it to me and I was like, wow, this is fucking awesome.

Nootropics are legit.

And it's not, that's for just to not smoke.

No, no, I don't smoke. This is just fun. Gives me a little extra energy. Just a little nicotine. We makes the brain fire up.

Yeah. Yeah, for the brain.

It's really good for your brain. Yeah, it actually is. It's just terrible for your lungs.

Yeah. Well, if you smoke.

Yeah. The bad, probably the best way is probably a patch. But that just feels weird walking around with.

No, it's no nicotine. Good for the brain. Bad for.

Well, I know guys who do that when they work. They put a nicotine patch on just for really nicotine is a legit nootropic as well. Yeah, nicotine actually like positively affects cognitive function.

Yeah, I knew, I knew it was good for the brain, but not the lung thing is more the smoking because it's like when you burn something it's. You have 3000 carcinogen.

Vape is fucking terrible for you too. Anything you burn, well, anything you're putting into your lung, you're putting chemicals into your lungs. They're not supposed to go in there like get fired up that way. Yeah, except weed, of course, man. You know what's another unheralded nootropic creatine? Creatine actually increases cognitive performance.

I don't know what creatine is.

It's a muscle supplement. It's like a supplement that they figured out in the nineties and people started equating it almost like steroids. Like. Oh, like it was like a scandal creatine.

Like the, it's like a powder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it in gummy form. I get creatine gummies. Yeah, just chew a few of them every day. Great for your brain, great for your brain, great for muscle recovery. There's a bunch of different stuff that's good for your brain.

Yeah.

Ever try neurogum?

I don't try anything.

Neurogam's great. It's just gum. It's just gum. You chew it and it's got theanine in it and a little bit of caffeine. Great for firing your. So when you're doing this podcast thing, do you have like a weekly schedule? You do it twice a week.

We just started. I did, I've done like five and.

Like, again, so you do it once a week.

How often? And I do. I, you know, I'm interested in a lot of stuff and so I'm new to the podcast game, but I start, it's like, basically I start out like they're long, they're like three parters. And it starts out with something I'm fascinated by that's on social media. So for example, as a reason why I'm talking to you about this stuff, but like, you know, something can come up and there's memes and like the assassination attempt and then there's conspiracy theories on both sides and I'm like, everyone's interested in it. Why don't we dig into it? Let's dig in.

Right?

And so I dig in and I, you know, I know a lot of people can call them, get access and talk to them. I just ask questions. Again, I'm not, I'm not. And I don't have, like, I'm not trying to shoehorn anything into anything. I'm just like, what? Just rock. Just let's go.

What is this?

Yeah, yeah. And, and so I find that really, really fun, really interesting.

Are you mixing this in with investigative journalism? Are you like, going places and talking?

And then I'm just meeting interesting people and I'll meet somebody interesting. I'll just say, fuck it. We'll just talk and it'll just be a straight podcast and we're just talking for like 2 hours. Like, Peter Dale Scott blew my mind. And, and there's a lot of people out there. Like, it'll be a mix of big names, but I also want to go talk to the people who are putting stuff up and where they're getting their stuff and where they're getting their facts. Just dig in, basically. And you can dig in on the high end and dig on the low. What I found is if you get into creation of the meme and who's creating it, it sort of starts as a wide thing and then it goes down into like some sort of like a philosophy or something bigger. And then when you get to the people who are like, for example, with the assassination attempts, it got pretty quickly into the deep state. And I'm like, well, let's talk about the deep state because everyone bandies the word around, but nobody fucking really knows what it is. If you, like, want to get into clinical explanations or have real positive facts about what are the, like, you know, historical evidence of that this exists and that they do this all the fucking time.

Right?

And so I'm like, okay, let's, let's chop it up and get into it. And that was like, you know, super fun. And, and, and so I'm getting into all the stuff that I find interesting online and on, you know, in social media and saying, let's just get into it.

Yeah, just whatever you're interested.

Whatever. I mean, the thing, look, I love all of this stuff. So, like, I mean, right now I'm doing a lot of political stuff because it's the electoral cycle. That's crazy. And there's a lot, there's so much fucking bullshit. Like, and when you see stuff, you're like, where's it coming from?

Right?

Like, where's this fucking coming from? And you're right. Everyone has an agenda. Sorry.

That's just what's so crazy about having so many different groups manipulating us through bots that we don't really know what people actually think and the problem with people is they don't really know what they actually think they know. Like, what people. Like, there's a large percentage. And I'm gonna just say men, because these are the ones. Ones that bother me the most. Men who say things because they know that people want to hear them and because they know it won't get them in trouble to say it. And they don't necessarily believe it. Like, it could be about trans athletes. It could be about, like, some sort of. It's. A lot of it is connected to woke stuff. Yeah. Politically correct. A lot of it's connected to ideology. You know, like, they'll have a super positive gaslighting version of what's going on at the board border. You know? And they do it because they have to.

Super positive.

Yeah, super positive. Like, you know, it's important. Immigration is important. And, you know, it's very difficult for these people otherwise.

Okay.

And they have this, like, bullshit. Yeah. Okay. Also terrorists. Okay. Also murderers and rapists getting released from venezuelan prisons, making their way across the border. All that's real.

But there's two sides to that story. That's the one thing, too. Like, 100%. So I. When I did my dive into immigration, you're like, because the reason why I got into this, you see the gates opening up and people coming through, and I'm like, hold on a second. I've been reporting on the border for, I don't know, ten years. There's no fucking gate where people fucking run through the gate. Right, right. And then you look into the thing, and it's like, oh, yeah. Like, that was before the border. It's after the border. And this. They were trying to get to the border because what they try to do is, like, basically touch the fucking fence so that the border guards will then come so that they can get processed. Right? And so, like, the gates open and all that shit and the whole, like, open border shit. Right. Not true.

But you mean it's not true.

It's not have an open border where people are just fucking coming in? Like, look, I'm an immigrant. Like, I know how it works. You have to come in and.

Have you been down to the south?

Yeah, we've been down to the south. We've rode the beast. We're in the Darien gap. Look, hold on. Let me. Before I get fucking in today. But. But there's on the other side. Yes, it's true. So there's an immigration problem. Huge immigration problem. And there are bad people getting through, and there are cartels running things. And there are illegal people and all this stuff. And by the way, the Republicans have a great message that they stay on. The Democrats don't have a response to that message. Right? They're just. It's a political fucking quagmire. But I don't care about the political quagmire. I'm like, let's go down. We talked to the head of the border guards. We talked to the both the head of the border guards, we talked to sheriffs. We talked to militia dudes in Texas. We talked to. We talked to everybody. Right? And the problem is, is there's fucking shit on both sides. And there's no fucking sanity when it comes to immigration. There's nobody really saying, okay, this is what's happening here. This is what's happening here. Yes, this is bad, but this is this and this is that. And the other thing, and there's two narratives, and one narrative is there's open borders with rapists and murderers coming in and eating the cats and eating the dogs.

And then on the other side of, there's no real. Well, that's not really happening. What happened was they were in Mexico. And now that they're being released in here, and here's the stats, 80% are come to their meetings. Like, they're whatever the fuck it is. I'm forgetting the word now. But when they get, like, after they get processed. No, but they get processed. And then they have to come to a meeting and a meeting and a meeting. And the Democrats are like, it's 85%. And the Republicans are, it's like, 90% don't come, and 85% do come, and you're like, well, where's the fucking stats coming from? Can we not talk to Homeland? So we reached out to Homeland. We reached out to the fucking committee that runs immigration. We reached out to everybody. And this is why it gets so frustrating, is because nobody, like, every. Every answer is different. Every answer is completely different. Story to interrupt. But this is why I find it fascinating, because there are, especially on immigration, there are so many givens about what shit means. And in actual fact, like, an open border doesn't mean an open border. It doesn't mean you can just fucking walk across the border into America.

That's not. That doesn't happen.

But some people are walking across the border into America.

They're getting smuggled, or they're trying to get to the border where they give themselves up to border guards, who then process them. They become processed. They either get kicked out, they go back, they stay here, and then they get fucking whatever. There's. There's 50 different things that can happen. But, like, to me, when I saw the open border. So they'll still have a tweet, right? And it'll say open borders, and they'll have a fucking gate opening with people running through that gate. So you think, like, oh, that's the gate to America that people are running through.

Well, there's a lot of openings. I mean, that's not the thing.

It turns out that. That those. That footage is all. Of course not true. There are. There are openings in the sense of people can smuggle themselves in through the desert.

Smuggle. But people just go across on their own accord, too. It's not just like, smuggling.

Well, there's a lot of smuggling.

There's a lot of smugglers.

A lot of it. I mean, a lot of it is run by the cartels.

Yeah.

And. Which is bad.

It's horrible.

Horrible.

Well, there's a lot of missing children.

Exactly.

That's really scary. It's, like, somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000.

Very bad.

Scary.

Very scary. And. But I'm just saying, like, when you get into immigration as a thing, we're getting into it now.

You get two narratives, two completely different.

Narratives, and near the twain shall meet. That's the interesting thing, is, usually, eventually, you can get down something, right? And on this one, you're like, you like to pay. Literally. Excuse me. It literally depends on who you're talking to. Sip water.

Yeah. That's what's scary about today is that it's hard to figure out. And depending upon what tribe you're a part of, you know, if you're on the tribe of the right, you think one thing. You're on the tribe of the left.

Even if you're tribeless. I'm sitting there going, okay, so they'll talk to them about something. So I remember when I was interviewing Obama at the end of his presidency, I was like, you know, what are your big. You know. All he wanted to talk about was the Republicans. He didn't want to talk about his presidency. So I went to go see Speaker Boehner, because I was talking about speaker, who, by the way, lovely guy. Great guy. And he wanted to talk about his thing. And so you talk. And again there the twain shall meet. And you're like, at some point, you got to get down to this kernel of truth. And on immigration, it's almost impossible to find. Or maybe it is impossible to find.

Well, the bottom line is a lot of people are being brought into this country and then being shipped to swing states. That's real. That's undeniable. The percentage of people that are in swing states, of illegal immigrants moving to swing states is off the hook. It's crazy. It's a bizarre number. That seems to be a strategy. It seems because they get, of course you can eventually they're trying to do that.

I mean, you can vote like in 1020 years.

Well, it's like gonna be no id voting. Okay? Right. This is something that they're pushed in California and they pushed a lot of places. There's only one reason to have no id. That's to have people that can vote that shouldn't be voting. That's the only reason. If you only want the people to vote that should be voting. You ask for id just like you asked for id for everything else, for getting on an airplane for.

I believe in, I look, I believe in id. I'm just saying, I'm just saying if.

You'Re not a citizen, the only reason to have no id and to push that, and it's only being pushed by the Democrats. There's only one reason that makes any logical sense. You want people to vote that probably shouldn't be voting so you can get some extra votes. That's the only thing that makes sense. So then if you have people like Nancy Pelosi who's openly talked about giving amnesty to the people that already here, you have voters now. So you have voters in swing states that you brought into this country and you provided them an amazing life and the Democrats brought them there. They're going to be loyal to the Democrats, especially if the Democrats continue to provide them with housing and money. And why would you vote that out? Why would you vote for a bunch of people that want to deport you? They're talking about mass deportations. Imagine if you came here from Haiti. You lived a terribly poor life in Haiti. Now you have a good job in Springfield, Ohio, and you're like, I can't fucking believe we're in America. This is amazing. And someone comes along and gives you the ability to vote and then another group is saying, we're going to mass deportate you because you people are eating all the dogs and all the cats.

Then there's like this fucking. And of course you're, you're getting voters, you're bringing in voters and you're getting voters. You're gonna get them to vote for.

That's something I haven't seen. I'm not denying it or fighting. That's something we haven't seen, like, personally.

Right. We haven't seen it, but it's clearly a strategy that you could employ. And if you were gonna employ that, wouldn't you move those people to swing states? You would. And if you find out that there's an app that you can use, and you use this app, and they'll let you in the country, you can schedule a way to illegally move to the country, and then you're legally protected once you've done that. So it's basically an open border.

Okay.

You know what I'm saying? Like, I do.

I know what the app. That.

You know how hard it was for you to become an american? Okay. It was very difficult.

You came from a lot of time.

Right. It takes a long time.

Long time. Long time to vote. Long time to do the thing.

And you have to give a reason why. You're supposed to be the. You have to be an exceptional person.

Yeah. You have to study in which I did, and I got 100% of my test, and I have a couple of.

Friends of mine are just coming here from England, and they wanted to be. I had us do this visa thing for.

Yeah.

Like, give them a recommendation. But you have to be exceptional.

Yeah.

Something special. Or you can get on that app. Just come over.

Look, I'm not gonna get too into the app because I only did it through interviews, but the app is an actual thing that tracks the. The people who come into the country. It's. It's done.

Schedule.

It's homeland following them around.

It allows you to schedule an entrance into the country.

Yes. They're doing it to try to stop the waves of the illegals and making it somewhat legal.

And in any case, I'm not gonna simplifies people being able to get in the country illegally.

I'm actually not gonna defend it or talk about it anymore because I know the app exists and I know what you're talking about, and I know it's. You're right, it does. People do. And they sign up to it, and then they come and they get processed, and then they wait for their thing and blah, blah, blah.

Well, it's the big argument on the debate between JD Vance and Tim Walsh.

Yeah.

You know, and they tried to frame it as if this had existed for a long time. And that's when JD Vance had to step up and stop them and say, you said you weren't going to fact check. And that's. This is whether that's not true. That app did not exist. You can literally schedule it. It used to be for people that already here.

Yeah.

Like, for, you know, which. You know, kids that were born in Mexico but have lived their entire life in America.

Yeah.

We got to find out a way to citizenship for those folks. That's fucking crazy. If you. I know a girl. She's 28 years old, and she came over here when she was a baby, and she's not an american citizen. Citizen.

Yeah.

Because her family's from Mexico.

Yeah.

That's crazy to me. That's crazy. That doesn't make any sense. She's been here her whole life. She's a goddamn american.

Yeah.

Like, let's figure that out.

I have. Look, again, I have no dog in the race. I was literally just trying to get to some sort of. Okay, let's. What are the facts? I didn't. Like. That's one thing. Like, we. I got. I talked to everybody I could on both sides. And again, it's so confusing that even now, I'm like. Like, after having, like, it's. It's.

It seems like a strategy.

It could be. Look, it could be a strategy, and there's a strategy on both sides for sure. And. But you're. It's just like, it's. It's. It's so fucked up to try to find the facts on this stuff, right? Everybody has facts. Don't. Like, I'm gonna be inundated with. Everyone has fucking tons of facts, but. But what are the fucking facts?

Because it's real.

Exactly.

Right. Well, that's what so many things. I mean, we had that with COVID We have that with the Ukraine war. Like, who's responsible? Is it NATO? Is it, like, what? Did someone cross a red line? Would someone violate an agreement? What is happening, in fact. Right? Are they really hiding in tunnels like Israel, really shooting aid workers? What is going on? What are the real facts?

What are the facts? And that's what I want to do on the podcast. And sometimes you get there, and sometimes you don't, and immigration obviously being a very interesting one. And I'm going to continue on it because I'm like, it's not sad. Although maybe that's just the answer. The answer is it's such a fucking huge and confusing issue.

Well, it is absolutely a huge and confusing issue. And also, if you're a human being, you have empathy. If I lived in Ecuador or wherever folks are from, and I found out you could just cross America, or you could get on your app and you can get into America 100%, I would do it, and you would, too. And, yeah, we have the greatest country in the world, and that's why people want to come here. And, yeah, you have this land of opportunity. It's a amazing. But what we really have to do is make sure we don't let in murderers and fucking killers and rapists and thieves and gang members, and a lot of them are getting through, and that's what we have to be careful. But it's not just not letting people in. Sure. I mean, I bet we could sustain a lot more people in this country. And I bet a lot of those people that come over, hardworking, very ambitious people that are excited to be here, they would love to be a part of the american experience. They probably love to recognize as Americans. Americans.

Yes. Immigration as it's being run right now, is a fucking catastrophe. I think we agree on that. And it has to be fixed.

It has to be fixed. But the question is, but how do.

You find fix it if. If nobody, if it's become so political and you can get into Covid on this exact same problem, it's become so political that there's no fucking root basis in truth. And people believe on one side this thing and believe on the other side this, and fucking nobody's gonna meet him. And you're like, well, what the.

So then they need a show like yours to, like, lay it out. That's what it is. You need something where someone is like, at least try and not come at it from a right wing perspective or left wing perspective. Just come at it from like, this is what it is.

Yeah.

I think there's more politically homeless people now than ever. I really do believe that. And they're gonna side with one side or the other based on their opinion, mostly about Donald Trump. But other than that, it's like you're trying to figure out, like, what team you belong on. And both teams are filled with scoundrels. You go far enough to the left and far enough to the right, you have the same kind of monster that's just adopted a different ideology. That's all it is.

Well, they're politicians.

And it's not just politicians, it's gang members. It's just. It's the politicians, of course, that are like the leaders. But you've got these gang members because basically anybody can join. Anybody could join the left, and anybody can join the right. And there's a lot of mentally ill people out there, there. And so they join this, and their whole identity revolves on crushing the right or crushing the left and owning the libs. You know, that's a giant percentage of social media. All these mentally ill people that are in a gang. And that's all it is. That's why they attack people, try to de platform them, try to get them fired letter campaigns. They're gang members. It's gang. And that gives them purpose, because they don't have purpose in their life. Life, which is why they're on Twitter 12 hours a day, because they're mentally ill. And it's exacerbated by social media.

It is. Because it's become so big. It is informing policy. I mean, on both sides. Because if you look at what gets adopted as narrative, then the narrative is being written on social media. It's not being written by traditional news.

Right.

And so forth. Fine. Like, that's. That's why I'm like, hold on a second. I'm fascinated by this shit. You're fascinated by. I think pretty much everybody's fascinated by this shit. It's when it's informing policy, but nobody's actually reporting on it or digging in or getting in. Everybody's still. I fucked. I don't give a shit about the mainstream media. I give a shit about this stuff.

The only way you find the truth is social media. It's just you have to do a lot of sifting.

A lot of sifting.

You got to figure out who's legit. And that's where community notes comes in very handy. Yeah, I like that.

Yeah.

And it clowns people on both sides.

Yeah.

And it's good. It's very important.

Well, that's. So. That's what I said. I said, look, I'm just gonna go in and try to try to dig through some of the shit, which, by the way, proved to be a lot harder.

Fucking real journalism. Right? Like, if you want to do that, I mean, you know better than anybody it's real journalism.

Yeah. And it's. Look, it's fun because there's a lot of people want to talk.

Yeah. And especially the way you're doing it now where, you know, small.

Just small baby, keep it tight. Small baby, tight ship. I learned from the best.

Nobody wants to listen. All these dudes, they get big, and then they have staff, and I go over their place. I'm like, why are all these people here? Dude, there's so many people here. This is a mess.

You did it right. I'll give it to you, man. You did it right. And by the way, surprisingly, maybe not surprisingly, very wise. I'm speaking. I know of which I speak. I didn't fucking do it right. So I'm saying you did.

So nobody came knocking with those dollars. You know, I didn't have a thing that you could sell like that, you know? Cause my thing only works if I'm at the microphone.

You're at it. Yeah.

It's a different thing. And it only works if I keep doing it exactly the same way.

Do it, baby. I love it. I'm proud of you.

Thank you, my friend. You're a beautiful baby boy. We've known each other a long time.

Long time, bro.

It's kind of crazy.

Long time. Long time. But it was back in the fucking Tarzan or whatever. It was just over. Was that Tarzan?

Woodland Hills. Woodland Hills, yeah, the old school. Yeah.

You got me so fucked up on one of your fucking crazy weed fucking. This is a fucking purple haze. Fucking white widow.

Probably some Joey Diaz.

And I remember just like. Like, either is a microphone here.

Yeah, that's the problem. We used to get people way high before the show, and then they would kind of close off, be paranoid.

No, it's terrible because a couple of drinks, maybe, but I can't. Like, if when I'm stoned, I'm like, you know, I can't talk is a bad strategy.

Yeah.

Pretty funny, though.

It was fun for me.

Funny.

I used to love to get my opening act super high.

Yeah.

Just to watch them panic when they go out there. I'm like, don't worry about it. Just go have fun. You got to learn how to be yourself in that fog. And maybe you can find something different when you're out there.

Yeah, if you. If you. If you're, like, smoking it all the time, whatever, you can get through it. But if you're just coming in, going, oh, I'm gonna sit down with the fucking number one podcast and get as stoned as I've ever been and fucking try.

The scariest thing is when you're talking and you don't know what you're talking about.

Oh, yeah, you lose train. And you're like, I have no idea what I'm talking about, and I don't know what to come back to, but.

All you need is footnotes. Someone goes, uh, trains. Yes, yes, the train. That door opens up in your brain and you have access to all the information again. It's weird how it sort of compartmentalizes memory like that.

Those were. I gotta say, though, those were fucking fun and good days and. And you fucking blew up like an atom bomb, dude.

It's weird, but there were fun days because we were doing it for the right reasons. It was just for fun. It was just to do it, because, like, in the. Oh, it didn't make any money for so long.

It was just. How long?

Years?

Five years?

Yeah, something like that.

And, like, who was, like. It was, like, on it and sponsors.

It basically paid to keep the lights on and paid for web hosts and all, you know, how much did it.

Cost back then to put it up?

I don't remember. It was pretty. In the beginning, it was super cheap. Cause it was just a laptop and a microphone. Yeah, that was super cheap. And then we started expanding, and then once I got the first studio, I'm like, well, I really need a bigger one. Then I got a warehouse, and then it started getting.

What was the one in Woodland Hills that was, like, the first iteration or second?

I had two at Woodland Hills. Did you go to the warehouse one?

I went to the tiny one.

Yeah, so there's a tiny one. And then we had the big ass warehouse. We had a gym in there, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, it's just. It's like everything. Things scale up. But the most important thing is, like, the reason why podcasts work, I think, is because people are listening, and they know it's just a conversation. So it works in your mind. It resonates in your mind. You know, this is not like some heavily produced, produced thing where there's an agenda and there's a script and a teleprompter, and you're trying to pretend that you're being real, but you're not being real. So it doesn't feel right to people.

It doesn't resonate right.

And so the more people you have involved in it, the more it's not going to feel right. You know, like, my friend had a studio, and he has a glass wall, and the production staff is all working and walking around in this. This behind this glass wall, and he sees them, and I go, that's a distraction. Like, why do you have that? This is bad for the conversation. You've missed the point. The reason why it works is because the people at home, the people that are in there, have earpods on right now, going on a jog. They're just as much in this room as you and I are. Cause there's no filters. It's just us.

I'm taking mental notes right now because we fucked up a few of those things. But you're exactly right.

Everybody thinks that they want to be a television show.

Yeah.

And if you look at a television show, that's professional. Professional, I don't think professionals. Good. Yeah, I don't think it's good. I don't think that's why, like, I'm gonna take the best comedy shows are live comedy shows. You want to see comedy? Watching on Netflix is awesome. Watching live is 70% better.

Yeah.

Cuz you're there.

It's a really collective, collective experience. You go back to your. We're all together movie theaters.

Yep.

Rocks. Rock concerts, comedy shows. Shows.

Yeah. And I think once AI comes around, live performance is going to be one of the few ways that we're going to be able to connect with each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In a real way. And that's. It's a scary. A scary proposition because we really don't know. Like, maybe for the first time ever, if you lived in 1970, you were pretty sure what 1980 was going to be like. Maybe you're wrong a little bit, but it was. You're probably pretty accurate. You could extrapolate. You could look at it and go, I see where this is going today. We have zero idea what 2034 looks like. We are just guessing.

I'll go further than that. I was driving around our studios in Van Nuys, and I was driving from Mallory to Van Nuys, and I'm like, if you drive through, like, I don't know what. That's why I said Tarzana. It's probably Tarzana. It literally hasn't changed a lot since 1925.

Right?

Like, it's like the same houses, same fucking, like, okay, the cars are different, but there's cars and there's phones, but, like, okay, there's a bit of technology, but, like, it kind of is the same. Looks the same. There's not a lot. Really. And you're like, okay, a hundred years from now, this fucking looks nothing. Yeah, nothing.

Yeah.

Like it does today.

Yeah.

That's scary.

It is scary. It's weird.

But.

But. But we will remain.

Yeah. We both said, like, look, you can either be positivist about it and say, look, let's mold it to be like, great. I can fucking do something I love rather than work in a fucking factory fucking punching out, you know, tool and die fucking pieces. I can, you know, go do what my first love was or something that I makes me feel filled with joy. Or we can become fucking Autobots who are crying because fucking online AI driven girlfriend dumped me.

Well, the thing is also today, there's these kind of conversations that are out there that put these thoughts into people's minds and inspire them to do something that didn't exist when we were young. There wasn't these kind of conversations that could really light up the fires of your creativity.

True.

And your ambition. And you just.

In fact, it was the opposite.

Yeah. It was the opposite.

It was. No.

Yeah. Yeah.

Shut up.

You gotta be a real rebel.

Yeah.

You had to be a kind of a crazy person.

That's right.

Take that path.

You had to be fucking an outsider. Otherwise people were, like, conformed. Just fucking do what everybody else is doing. Being accountant.

Yeah. And as you were struggling, if you got outside the lines and you were taking a chance, as you struggling, people were praying for you to fall.

Yeah.

All of them praying that.

Yeah. Didn't work out because it shows them up.

Yeah.

They've made the wrong choice.

Yeah.

They don't like it, but that's true. That is true. People want you to fail. They do until you succeed. And then they're like, I was always in your core.

The thing is, some people don't, though. Some people actually want you to succeed. And they want. They succeed themselves. They want you to succeed. Can you realize, like, that's a better way to live? I am, too adopt that. You can adopt that even if it doesn't feel right, because you're, like, grinding. You're trying to make it out. I'm telling you, the hoping other people fail is the biggest waste of energy. Even your enemies. Let them fucking just live in their own life. Don't. Don't hope they fail. Don't. Don't put any energy towards it.

Everyone's just trying to get through the day. I'm a cheerleader. And again, when people I know or when my friends do well, I'm like, there's nobody happier than me. Like, that's fucking awesome.

Yeah.

That's just awesome. And also. And when people, you know, fail or have a hard time, we're like, okay, bro. Let's. What can we do? Let's fucking do it again. Let's fucking get. Get back on a horse.

Let's figure it out.

Out and. Yeah. Because otherwise it's just a fucking bummer. You're right.

Yeah. Yeah. Ain't no fun at the homies. Can't have none. Remember that song?

Yeah.

All right, brother. Tell everybody. How can they find it? Where do they go?

That's good. Which we just started, but it's, I think, on YouTube. It's. Shane Smith has questions and wherever. You can listen to podcasts, I guess. But I appreciate the plug. You got to come on some.

Always good to see you.

I love you, man.

I love you, too. Bye, everybody.