Dave Rubin

00:02And we're live. Dave Rubin, I'm trying to shut this Shut that thing off for two seconds. Jesus. We are here to celebrate the fact that Chris Christie got kicked off of a quiet train this morning for talking on his phone while drinking a McDonald's strawberry shake. And this is the guy who wants to ban pot. How about ban yourself, you slob? How dare you? How dare he drink a McDonald's strawberry shake in public in light of everything? Not only that, after having his stomach stapled. Yeah. It It didn't really take Yeah. You know, it's stretch those out. You can, but you have to do something. You think he's doing something like You just keep eating. You just keep plowing through. I know a guy who's blown through two of them. He's had it done twice and blown through it both times. So, you actually like tear open the staples? Like, is that I, you know, I haven't done any MRIs, you know, or

00:53operations on these people. I thought we were going to go heavy medical stuff today. been explained to me, Dave Rubin, the skin is flexible and if you just keep stretching that out, it's clearly when with these people like I have a friend and uh his friend is is a friend of mine as well, but a good friend of his and he was about he's about to go do this and I said, "Please try to talk him out of it because you don't need surgery. You just need to change your life because the surgery is only going to fix the physical aspect of it. there's a reason why you're stuffing all this sugar and fat and you're just you're addicted to food. So, you need to find out what it is, what's going on. Like, so you're talking about the the psychological part of the emotion. I think that's where it's really at. I don't I don't think it is the physical thing. I think the physical thing is a

01:38manifestation of the psychological issue for sure. You get physically addicted to to shitty food. Like, I quit sugar recently. Shouldn't say I quit sugar cuz I had a little this weekend. Um, so I don't I didn't quit it, but I I removed it from my primary diet and I I quit it altogether for two weeks. Yeah. And what happened to me 5 days in was really shocking cuz I had a massive headache. Like 5 days in I the cravings were freaky and my head was killing me. And it's like Snapples and protein bars and low-fat milk. There's all this that has sugar in it. Granola. You think of granola as healthy. And then I would look at I'm like 20 gram of sugar in a serving of gran. And I usually have two servings. I mean, look, it's not even sugar what we do. We do in America, we do high fructose corn syrup. I don't know if to illuminate you on this, but in our Coke, in our can of

02:32Coke because it's cheaper to put corn in it to sweeten it. We're drinking corn instead of sugar. That's why people get Mexican Cokes. You know what I mean? You go to a fancy restaurant here in LA, they give you a Mexican Coke cuz that has real sugar. Think how just warped our whole system is the corn thing. But we could do five hours on corn because corn is, you know, it's in it's in wallpaper. It's in everything. It's amazing. And you know, you're trying to get off sugar, but what you're really trying to get off is corn. There's definitely that as well. Um, but I I I think um even just simple sugar. It's like even like I read this one thing. It's like uh I forget what the product was, but it was one of the ingredients was pure cane sugar. Like you're selling me something amazing. Well, that's Pepsi now. They pure cane sugar. Like holy sugar. It's still sugar, but it's

03:22still your body doesn't necessarily differentiate. It's still sugar. Real salt. You know, like that's that's how dumb that's how dumb people have become about food. We were talking a little bit about food before we started, but like it's really it's like the most important stuff. What you put into your body so that then you can function on this earth. And and we're so warped. We got corn instead of sugar even just now. So I I I told you I drank like 17 coffees before, but I didn't put any. You have stevia and everything. I just went straight black, nothing. I've been drinking straight black lately, too. But uh it's actually, you know, uh I had this guy Peter Giuliano on at one point who's a real coffee expert. And uh when you talk to a guy like that and you talk about putting cream in the coffee, you could see his face like, "Oh, what are you doing?" Yeah. Like to him it's it's

04:10a sacrilege almost like what would he say to drink it? What's the best way? Just black. That's it. Yeah. And I've been drinking it black. I actually prefer it um what in a method that this guy Rob Wolf created, which is you mix it with grass-fed butter, MCT oil. The problem is for a podcast that gives me fleg and I start in the middle. It's annoying as for people that are listening, but it's pretty damn delicious. It's very good. Yeah, I still do that, but I just don't do it before podcasts anymore. So, I did it I did it for about 6 months. I was doing the grass-fed butter and coconut oil, just like a teaspoon of coconut oil, and it's amazing and you feel great and it's delicious and all that, but I did over the course of about 6 months. I probably gained like eight pounds from all the butter. It's it's a lot of calories to be plowing in in the morning. But, it does do some good

04:58things. I think it has something to do with how the caffeine actually ingests into your body. It slows it down so you don't get that like burst of energy and then crash and all that which was all great but you know 8 lbs in 6 months. That is a lot to gain. Most people it dulls their appetite. It didn't dull your appetite. Um no not really. I don't give up. I live in West Hollywood. I there's a certain amount of working out I have to do. Not not Joe Rogan level but you know uh it's uh just to stay in the neighborhood just a certain amount. Have you ever down like Santa Monica in the middle of West Hollywood? I live in the gayest place on earth. I've never seen so many Daisy Dukes. It is it really spot. Well, first off, I'm considered morbidly obese by these people's standards because they they starve them. I don't understand. For people listening, Dave Rubin's a very

05:44slim man. Yeah, if you're just listening, slender and fit. So, um the thing is these guys, you know, it's the gayest place on earth and these guys work on their bodies all day long. You should not be carrying a dog. They carry their dogs these obsolopsas and all these other your bicep shouldn't be bigger than your dog. You know what I mean? That just shouldn't be and you shouldn't be car I I have a pit bull. She's not, you know, my bicep's not bigger than her. I think that's a healthy way to do it. But yeah, in West Hollywood, these guys, they I don't know how do you starve yourself and have huge muscles. I just don't steroids. It's steroids. That certainly helps. Yeah. Um, you can there's there's some stuff that uh fighters have been caught with that uh I think it's called there's one called clenbutral and another called stenosol I think and the idea behind that stuff the clen I

06:35think is supposed to like really just lean you out. It's a bodybuilder thing and the stenosol allows you to keep mass on or helps you assist you in keeping mass on when you cut weight. So, for fighters that are trying to be like the biggest in their weight class, they're dehydrating themselves, but they want to keep as much muscle mass as possible. That that can't be good for long-term health, right? So bad for your body. I mean, I I see it with these guys and it's like, you know, they're doing this just so that they can get somebody that has a better body than them so they can and then they move on to the next one. It's like this endless game, you know what I mean? Like, I got a hot body, he's got a hot body, I'll him now. I move the like it's just this, you're climbing this ladder. It's like Icorus, you know what I mean? You're just going up and up and up, but one day

07:16this thing is just going to blow up in your face. Yeah. But you know that could be a sex. If you look at life though, like life is this temporary trip, right? You you have maybe 50 years of people actually wanting to have sex with you, right? If you're so lucky, you take care of everything. So that's like from 18 to like when you're closing in on 70, everybody who you is just doing a new charity. And that's the saddest. That's the saddest. these these you I see this these overly tanned hair plugged guys that are 70 years old and they're still at the gym hoping that that 28-year-old is looking at them and instead they're staring at everyone and gawking at them horribly and it's it's all gross. It's it's really sad and we we can get into this a little later, but it's also shows me why the the gay marriage thing was so important because these are I actually have a lot of

08:07empathy for these people although I can you know it's easy to make fun of but like if you couldn't ever enter a relationship that then is you're going to build like what you have with your wife where you can build a life you know and you can have kids and move forward in life well then if all you have is just you just keep doing it you know and as many guys as possible rotations different ones texting you all day long trying to put it together. Yeah. I mean trying to figure out when you could squeeze the time in, you know, and it I Exactly. And I guess it, you know, it feels good in the moment, but for the long-term health of just like what being human is, it's not so great. But I think, you know, interesting interestingly enough, if you look at the perspective of like a a full long life, like it's just a bunch of moments. It's just like trying to maintain happiness

08:54at a certain level as much as possible. And you could be Chris Christie where you're addicted to McDonald's shakes and being a fat slob sandwich. Isn't there an adviser? Too much ego. He doesn't listen. Yeah. Or, you know, you could try to fill yourself up with that and, you know, be married and have kids and, you know, and have that part of your life achieve normaly. Or you can do the super tan roided up dick sucking rampage that those guys that work out at like gold's gym on Cole. Do you know that that spot? I don't know that one. But dude, when I was on news radio um I we used to work out uh we used to work at Sunset and Gower. That was the studio. Yeah. And Gold's Gym was right down the street. So sometimes we'd have off like two hours during the middle of the day where they had to rewrite scripts or stuff like that. So I just shoot over to Golds, get a workout in and come back.

09:45But it is the gayest gym. It's not It's It's a a ferocious disco is what it is. It's just a bunch of men with scrunchy socks on and Timberlands and like super short shorts and just the tightest tank tops and you walk in there like a wounded antelope just gingerly stepping close to the water hole. But how did you feel there? Cuz you're you're in good shape. But but you're in good shape, right? Like you care about your body, right? You're doing the right things. But you go in there and you see these guys and you you does it completely like oh like I'm a fat No, it wasn't that at all. I was I was in my 20s when I was doing that. This is when I was on news radio. But I was I was being targeted. Like that was the problem. Like guys were like you could have 20 pounds on the bar and guys like I'll spot you. Like I don't need a spot, dude. Just get your balls from above my head. Like

10:36they would be on the bench and dudes would just put their dick above your head to grab the bar. They just wanted their dick in proximity with your face. You know, like when you're doing bench presses, they can literally bench press with their They can. This is pre Viagra, too. You got to think cuz this was in the '9s. These poor bastards were going on the Natch. And when it And when it went bad, then they had pumps. And the was it Liberace movie with um Michael Douglas? behind the candra. Yeah. Yeah. They have imp they used to have implants, I guess, back in those days. Those poor guys. I had no idea we were going to start like this. I didn't either. That's the beauty of this show. Let that run. But I for a a brief moment, not not entirely because I can defend myself, but I I felt what it was like to be a woman that was pursued by men because men are gross. Yeah.

11:26Well, that's the thing. It has nothing It has nothing to do with gay or straight. It's a man thing. So if you happen to be a man into men, well, congratulations. You just got welcomed to that world and you were treated like a woman. So I have great sympathy for women that have to deal with this I got treated like a woman with a gun. It's like, you know, like, okay, all right, relax, relax, you know, because I I I wasn't vulnerable physically. Yeah. Cuz I was like, dude, stop. Yeah. And then it's two dudes looking at each other and I'm like, you know, come on, man. Get the out of here. It wasn't like a woman who like could physically be overpowered by this guy. It was like a guy saying, "I'm going to kick your ass if you don't stop trying to me." Like, "Stop." Were you always amazed at their relentless relentless relentless tenacity to never take a quue? Joe Rogan not into it. And they

12:17can never take the queue, right? Yeah. Well, it's only a few guys. Most guys would figure out that you were straight and they were respectful. The vast majority. But it only takes if there's 300 guys working out at the gym, it only takes two guys to up the entire experience, less than 1%. And they'll just But those are the ones that are just like they're going to go for it. But how, you know, there's probably 50 other guys that are trying to work their way into the friend zone, right? You know, which is what women experience. What women experience is a bunch of guys. I I can't tell you, especially when I was younger and I was single, how many girls that I dated who would work with some guy who would say, "Well, Mike from the office says I'd be like, "Mike's trying to you." Yeah, Mike's trying to you. He's not even a real person. He's not even a real

13:00person. Mike's wearing a kabuki mask and he's doing a dance. It's a mating dance. That's not what he thinks. This is Stop it. Meanwhile, I got to go to the gym and deal with that. Mike would marry me and Mike is a idiot. Jesus. But that's what it's I mean it's there's a reason why there's seven billion of us because this this drive to procreate and not even on a conscious level. It's not like oh my god I have to get this girl pregnant and have a baby. It's like I got to come inside of her. Yeah. You know I have to come I have to figure out how to get this person touch my body and create pleasure. you don't take you don't take the the the objective steps to recognize, oh, this is a gigantic biological trick that's been set in place by nature because it was really hard to survive just a few thousand years ago. It was insanely hard to survive and you had to make sure you

13:48made as many people as possible so that they made as many people as possible so we can keep this party going. That's what it is. That's what it is at the end of the day. That's what it is. And that's why it keeps getting dumber. I'm sure you've seen Idiocracy. You ever see Idiocracy like that? You know what? I honestly haven't seen it. I've only seen clips of it, but I had a bit that people accused me of stealing from Idiocracy, but luckily I did the bit before Idiocracy came out, so I got I got grandfathered in. That's the That's the comedian's dilemma when you're doing good So that 10 years later, everyone's like, "Oh, you must have stole that." And you're like, "No, no, no. I did that 10 years ago." Well, it wasn't that close. It was just the the concept that many people have had is that dumb people are out breeding smart people. That's the that's the movie.

14:30Mine was that it explained the pyramids. My thing was that the idiot pyramid workers would show up one day and go, "Uh, I was supposed to get my check on Friday. Where is everybody?" But all the smart people who figured out how to build the pyramids had already died. Yeah. And that we had to So the people just moved into the pyramids. Like, why we live in these mud houses? We can live in the pyramids. So they moved into the pyramids and pretend they built it. And there's this long thing that sort of explains what's going on today. Yeah. And I think that we we all think at a certain level that that's true, that there's way more dumb people than there are smart people. And we all think that we benefit from people like Elon Musk and innovators and geniuses, but how many of them are there? Not many. Not many. Not many. It's a tiny tiny number. Yeah. Well, listen. I uh I just got gay

15:14married like a month ago. I love how you say gay married. I have to say gay Well, first of all, people don't believe that I'm gay. They just simply don't accept it. Why don't they accept it? They say I don't act gay. I play sports. I don't, you know, like I got this at the gap. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not like gay. go to Amber Comry and Fitch and get assaulted with that smell that they zap you with when you walk in there. You know, it's funny. I know that smell. Uh I used to be afraid when I was closeted like in high school and college cuz I didn't come out till really my mid to late 20s, but I used to be afraid of Abberrami and French cuz they used to have those shirtless, you know, like these shirtless hot guys standing outside and I felt that they could that they would know. Like I just thought like these guys are going to know that I'm gay. Wait a minute. They used to

15:55have guys standing outside the the store. Yeah. Oh, you don't remember that? Like even the stores at the mall, they'd have just these shirtless guys all, you know, they all perfectly tan, they all look perfect, and they would just be standing there greeting you. What? And to me, it was like it was like I missed this. Yeah. It was like walking into a porn. So I was afraid that they were going to like read gay on me. So I never I'm not kidding. I don't think I have ever bought anything from Abberi. I've been there many times, but I never saw this. That's how you missed it. Good for you. What year was it that they did this? They were for a long time. They were doing this probably in the mid early 2000s. Yeah. I know. I probably didn't go to Abberromi and Fitch until the mid 2000s some maybe they were phasing it out. You know what's really interesting that started as a hunting

16:39and fishing supply company. Yeah. Like boy did they make a turn. Yeah. And Yeah. And then that guy, you know, the guy who runs it who's got he must have body dysmorphia or something. There's this guy. Pull it up. He's the He's the one I don't know what his name is. He's the one who uh he really instilled this idea that everyone there has to look perfect and look the same sort of and that's why they've had all these lawsuits with people that were either a little fat that couldn't get jobs there or I think there was a girl who wanted to wear a hijab or all all that stuff and but if you look at this guy we'll pull him up got so much work done on his face cuz he's just it goes to what you said before he's like expressing his own weaknesses and he's projecting them sort of onto a generation of kids and he's also expressing his own like confusion externally whether he realiz I mean look

17:27at that guy whoa like he's had some serious 61year-old CEO we don't need to say his name says dude a lot he'll say what a cool oh this is salon.com first of all salon yeah salon you I am down with that you creeps fuds they're just aggressively shitty and I I don't who writes those headlines those tweets I had to unfollow them because I was like this is such epic and just such dishonest is trash. Yeah. Like Dave Rubin, why he's everything that's wrong with gay people today. Exactly. I mean, you would get those kind of articles and just twisting and distorting your real positions to make social brownie points to appeal to the hardest of hardcore aggressive social justice warrior lefties. Can we get everybody to hate everybody? Can we split everybody down to just their color and their sex to the point where you can then control everybody? Because if anyone gets out of that

18:22little box, there's something wrong with them, not something wrong with you. Well, this poor guy, he's not hanging in there well. Like Robert Redford, that is hanging in there. Well, he's hanging in there well. He's obviously an old dude, but he doesn't look like a monster. Yeah. Like I was at um my kid has a gymnastics class and there's this poor unfortunate woman who goes to this gymnastics class who uh she looks like she's quite wealthy. She's always dressed very well, but she's got what I call monster face. And monster faces when they shoot their face up with filler and then they do the lips and then they pull their face back. So they have this sort of reptilian mouth where their mouth is way too big and it's way too big because they're pulling this skin. So the opening of their mouth doesn't match a normal person's face because it's it's bigger. It stretches like this guy's Chris

19:11Christiey's stomach. You keep pulling it, it gets bigger. I mean skin is flexible. Think how deranged really like the idea of that. You know, these people care about what they look like, right? So, they want to look better. So, they go in that first time, they get a little Botox or they get wtolin or what one of those fillers, whatever that is. But think how the course of that changes the way they think about everything to the point where that woman probably thinks she looks good. You know what I mean? That's that's an adventure in the psyche right there. Yeah. I mean, it's the same as bodybuilders. It's the same as people with anorexia. Yeah. It's the same as the guys we were talking about before. You know what I mean? They just keep you just keep doing it. No matter what you do, you take off your shirt, you look in the mirror, and you go, "This should be

19:52a little tighter over here, you know, and the woman's looking at her." It's always the upper lip. That's the one I see on these women. They get it fat. I have this poor lady that I know that had her lips done and every time she talks to you, she's got a scar like inside of her mouth that's like it's her lip, you know, it's like it it there's a line. So like it the lips never move correctly because like Lisa Reena, is that her name? Yeah. Well, she had that thing removed, right? She she was the one that had like the crazy crazy lips and I'm pretty sure about a year ago uh she had like something taken out or some filler removed or something. But I get it though, man. I had hair transplants when I was in my 20s and I didn't take big definitely didn't take them. Not anymore. I I had a joke about it and the joke was it's like taking really healthy people and moving them into a

20:42neighborhood where everybody's dying. It's like you try to repopulate like Chernobyl. You know, you thought you were gentrifying the front, but in the end you just killed more people. Well, you know what it is, man. You keep losing hair. So, it worked at first. Like, oh yeah, the parts that was falling out, I filled it in. We're good. But you're not good. You keep it keeps it keeps up. So, you did the thing where you actually have like cut out. See the back of my head? Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah. They cut a strip out. How long did you let it go before you gave up and just said, well, I had it done and then it's slow. It was just slowly giving up. And then there's also uh things you can do like you could take Roane, which kind of keeps it in. But how funny is it when your name is Rogan and you go to buy Roane? That's that's ironic. Just for that reason alone, you

21:28probably shouldn't have been on it because it was like I just dealt with it. I dealt with that. But I'm like, if it works, I don't give a And it did kind of work. And then Propecia, which works really well, but also kills your death. Yeah. So, you got a you got a lot of a lot of options there. I did I I was on Propecia for about six months about maybe seven or eight years ago, and I couldn't get a boner. Yeah. It's a boner killer. Yeah. I'd rather have a boner than hair. Like, I can fully say that. But I now that I shave my head, I actually like it way better. It's so easy. And you don't get kidnapped by uh people that are cutting your hair. Cuz uh I used to cut get my hair cut by this lady who I love dearly, but sometimes I'd be in a rush and she would hold me hostage with these stories cuz she'd be holding the scissors. Then I told her, "You're not going to

22:12talk to me like that." And and I'd be like, "Uh, really interesting. Cut my hair so I can run. Cut my hair so I can run away." So basically, you shaved your head cuz you didn't want to listen to this No, she was not. She's not a She's my friend. I love her, but her stories are terrible. But it's not even that. It's just it's it's just something to not think about. It's like all of a sudden when I shaved it, it was like instant freedom. Like, oh yeah. And I used the back of my head as a public service announcement. Like if anybody's thinking about getting a hair transplant, I'm like, look at my head. See the scar? You don't want one of those. I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world. Can you swim? Let me get this straight. Can you swim? Because I always see in the commercials when they get the hair, suddenly they can swim again. It seems like they couldn't

22:49swim. They they had lost the ability to do the breast stroke. Well, the wig commercials are the same. In the wig commercials, they're always underwater. It's like crazy. So, you're telling me you can still swim? It's not as good. I'm I'm a little sleeker through the water, so it's confusing. My timing is off. It all makes no sense because the you see the Olympic guys, they wear the caps so that it it makes it seem like they're bald and they're swimming well, and yet you watch those commercials and then they have a head of hair and they're swimming well. So, it's it's a very confusing. Well, I think the idea is that if you get in the water, like instantly all the work that you've done with hairspray to lock this monster in place, it all evol dissolves with the water and you leave behind an oil slick. But, uh, when you, uh, when you get in the water with one of those

23:33wacky wigs, the little hair club jammies, when the idea is that you can, nobody can tell. Nobody can tell. Now, I know you have theories on things. Do you have a theory on hair loss? Was it stress related for you? No, it's just genetics. purely genetics. It's 100% genetics. It's dihydrotestosterone. Your body produces a derivative of testosterone, DHT, causes your hair to fall out. I don't know why it exists in humans. It's it's a strange thing and why it exists in some and not others. But they're they're like really close to fixing that apparently with just like some sort of a pill or rub, but that'll probably cause cancer or make you look blind in one eye. You have diarrhea and all that Every pill we take causes 20 other things, you know. You know, I really think that they need to start. They need to show us when they talk about the pill, whatever pill it is. You

24:21got restless leg syndrome. You got What is that? Your legs can't stop. How's that real? How? Bill does a funny bit on that. Like, you know, because we sit all day. It's your body like revoling against you. Like, get the up. Go. I wonder if it does. I wonder if like joggers get restless leg syndrome. Probably not because they're actually moving. Yeah. I mean, well, that would be really interesting to study. Jamie, you're a runner. Do you ever get restless legs? You do? You got the restless leg. I've had it my whole life. You get restless restless leg. But you run a lot. That's why I always was moving my legs over here. I just feel like they need to move. I don't know. It's weird. Wow. I don't know. I'm not sure. That's not real though. I don't feel But don't you think they should have to show like when they show you the pill and they and then everyone's running in a field. It's all that

25:01marketing nonsense. But then they'll say it could cause suicidal thoughts. They should have to show someone going through suicidal thoughts or show somebody having diarrhea. Like they they keep doing this, but the guy's running through a field having a health. Show me what what it's like. Sudden death. Show a guy walking down the boardwalk just dropping dead. You know what I mean? Like why are they allowed to do that? It's such mixed messaging. You don't understand what you're getting yourself into. Chantics, you're going to stop smoking. You might drop dead. You might, you know, explosive diarrhea, whatever it is. Like show me. Yeah, that's one thing. If you're advertising a car, right? You know, if you've got like the newest Cadillac and it looks cool and you're driving, you look cool driving like, man, I want to get one of those. that that's sort of okay. But if

25:43it's another thing, if it's some crazy you remember there was a drug that they were selling for a while they were advertising that was a supplement to your current anti-depressant. Oh, that was like Ambilify or something like that. Yeah, one of those. Was that the one with the cloud? The cartoon cloud that was following the guy? I think it was. Cuz if you have a cartoon cloud following you, you got some serious problems. But there's something up about advertising for something that's a drug that can affect your mind and possibly cause suicidal thoughts because advertising is entirely designed to coax you into buying the product. Sure. And that's a big life decision. That's like ask your doctor about it. You shouldn't be allowed to say that. You shouldn't be allowed to say it because then every first off everybody's on prescription drugs. I I'm not on any

26:29prescription drugs right now. I I have been I for about 6 months also around the Propecia time I was on uh Lexapro or one of those like mild that kills your dick too. You had a double whammy. Your dick was getting kicked and punched. Yeah. Well, he's fully back. He's back and better than ever. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. Success. Um but I was on one of those and when I when I got off um I you know you're supposed to tell your psychiatrist or whatever because they'll wean you off it. But I was like I didn't like the guy and I was like I'm just going to get off this thing. You didn't like your psychiatrist? Are you keeping from him? I didn't like him. His last name was Reuben, which is why I went to him. And then I just didn't like him. And I was like, "Fuck this. I'm not going to do it." But anyway, uh I just figured, all right, I take instead of taking one a day, I'll just do one every

27:09other day and then one every three days, something like that. And it worked. I I weaned off it. I kid you not, I swear to God, this is true. I remember when you used to turn on an old computer, like an old desktop computer, all the worring and the buzzing and you'd hear the hard drive spinning and all that I could feel that in my brain for about two weeks when I got off it. Wow. I felt my brain actually like resetting or something like literally a worring. There was like and then like little like sparks. Was this when you were thinking or any time? I I just remember I lived in New York City at the time. I remember very vividly one day I was walking down Amsterdam and I maybe a week out and I felt my brain like just coming back on. So that it does something to you. It does something. And forget and the boner stuff and you know all that. I had a the reason I got off it actually was

27:56because one of my best friends, childhood best friends was killed in a car accident and uh when I heard I had almost no reaction. This one of my best friends from four years old and I just was like I was sad but like I didn't have a sad reaction, you know? Like I knew it was sad but my reaction wasn't sad. And then I was like, "All right, that's it." That's a It's a terrifying thing to remove the lows. Yeah. All the lows like the lows are there to teach you. Yeah. I mean you got to learn you you got to learn from failure. Failure is important. It's and and and feeling bad is important. It's it really is because it makes it makes you understand and appreciate the magnitude of feeling good. Like it it draws you towards that as a better alternative. Sure. And especially as an artist, as someone that that speaks and is supposed to have a full set of emotions and be able to go

28:50on stage, tell people what I think. You know, you know, that's the argument with school shooters. One of the things about school shooters is a massively disproportionate amount of them are on. And the idea is that they can do that. And you know, it's the well, what is it for what you know, what came first? Is it the disease, the mental illness that causes them to be able to shoot somebody in the first place? Or is it the fact that they're on pills? Is it the fact that they're on pills because they're mentally ill? Who the knows? But people that I know that have been on various anti-depressants, SSRIs, or whatever, they they tell you that things don't bother them. So if things don't bother like shooting people like the lack of empathy like it seems to me in my armchair psychology you know position that that would there there's be a correlation there. Well it's always why

29:40we we have a real inability in America to talk about two things at once that two things could be true at the same time. So like when you look at the shootings immediately the people who are against guns will say it's about guns and the people who are for guns will say it's about mental health. I'm pretty sure two things could be true at the same time. And we have a mental health problem and we have too easy access to guns. I'm You're a hunter. I'm pretty sure you're for the Second Amendment, right? Yes. Yeah. I'm I believe in the Second Amendment. We should be able to arm ourselves, but it is still too easy to get guns. You shouldn't be able to necessarily have a assault rifle to plow down, you know, 30 people at once, all that. Um but at the same time, yeah, a huge percentage of these people are on some sort of medication. That's not a coincidence. Not at all. And if they

30:28didn't have something wrong with them, no matter how many guns you had access to, you're a you're a relatively sane guy. No matter how many guns you have, you're not going to shoot a school, right? So that says, yeah, there's some mental health component to this. Well, I think it should be really difficult to get a car, too. I mean, I think it should be get difficult to get a gun. I mean, in in so they should do some sort of background check. They should they should evaluate whether or not you have any competency whatsoever. Have you how much have you learned about shooting a gun? And that's not the case right now. Yeah. I mean, the other problem is there's so many guns out there that the people that are doing this like this last guy in Oregon, I think he didn't get the gun. It was his mom that got the gun. I think so. You can get a gun even if even if you shouldn't be

31:10able to get a gun. Yeah, that is an issue. But we should make it at least more difficult. And the the mental health aspect of it is a huge problem. And to to say that it's not that it's only a gun issue is is a blind thing that people do. Yeah, I I think you're right. I think there's there's a bunch of different issues at stake here. And I think that's the case with a lot of different things. And that's one of the problems that I have with like the idea of a left and a right. I think I have a lot of left ideas, almost all of them, you know, and then I have a few right ideas. I have I'm I'm on sort of both sides of a lot of Yeah. Well, I definitely want to get into that with you because that's become like my my home now. this really this split on the left between what what I'm calling the regressives and people that I think really stand for liberal principles.

31:52That's all on the left. But yeah, I have some you know I have a lot look comedians in general I think have hugely strong libertarian leanings because you want to be I'm a firm believer that the government should have very little to do with our lives. Make sure I don't get shot which they're not that great at that. Uh you know take care of the economy. Keep us safe. Like that pretty much is what I think the government's role should be. That's about it. You know, make sure we have a good education system. The road should be okay. You like pretty limited stuff. And I think usually for some reason comedians do fall on that scale. You know, Chris Rock is there. Bill M. There's a zillion comedians on that side of it. Um, but I've seen a massive split in the left right now. And this goes to all the the social justice warrior and everyone's a racist and a homophobe. And

32:36it's exhausting. And it's it's uh well, look, you you've had Sam Harris on a bunch of times. Look what these people have done to Sam Harris. It's insane. They're just using him as a target. I that's what I believe. I I believe that instead of looking at his actual positions and being objective and and saying, "Does he have a point? What is his point? Let's debate the point. Let's let's debate the merits of the point." Instead, he's a guy that you can point to and say, "Well, he has a strong position about Islam, so he is Islamophobic. He is therefore racist and he should be attacked and that piece of shit." And I mean, I've seen the same written about Christopher Hitchens. You know, I saw some people when he died, they were writing good riddens, and I made fun of this one social justice war because he was saying good riddens to Hitchens, but then when

33:25Osama bin Laden died, he was like, I'm not going to celebrate the death of any human being. I'm like, well, this is hilarious. This is Yeah, I know what you're doing. You're not thinking. You're not thinking. You're You're writing things. And this is part of the problem with social media. And I think one of the things that we're finding with this whole social social justice warrior issue is that it's not necessarily just opinions. It's opinions that are being expressed in a way where they know people are going to hear it. They know people are going to see their writing. And so that that knowledge that someone's going to see what you're writing and react to it either positive or negative affects your choices. It's like reality TV and what they're doing is like when you see people act fake on reality TV cuz you know that they know the cameras are on them. That's what

34:11you're doing when you make a social justice warrior tweet. You're 100% right. So I know someone I can't give their name who right now is is pretty big in the reality space on a reality show right this second. Know them very well. And he says to me all the time like that's what he's doing. All he's doing is ramping it up to stay on the show to keep the whole thing going and that's what these people are doing. So Sam, how many times has he been here? At least twice, right? Probably four four or five I think. Four or five times. So you've sat with this guy for hours, right? You probably 20 hours with this guy at least. Do do you think he's racist in any way whatsoever? But he's you know what he is? He's fearless. Yes. And and and I'm not saying he doesn't have fear of normal consequences of, you know, whatever danger. It's not that. It's just that if he has a principle, he will express it.

34:56And I' I've disagreed with him about certain points. Of course, his his principles and his opinions are he will truly express them. And in unpopular subjects like when you're talking about Islam or you're talking about religion in general, I mean, he takes a tremendous amount of heat about that. And I But he only gets it for Islam though, right? Because that that's the truth of it. Like this is a guy who wrote letter to a Christian nation. Guess what it was about? Christianity. Nobody called him a Christianophobe. Right. So when Bill Maher So that night that the whole thing all hell broke loose with Affleck. Yeah. On uh on Real Time or heaven. Heaven broke loose. Or or heaven. Right. Exactly. Uh whatever you want to call it, some imaginary Um that night, and I know we've both talked about this a ton, but what happened was Affleck immediately went to the social

35:46justice warrior. I'm holier than thou. I'm going to prot protect the dra downtrodden thing, right? And it was nonsense and Sam sat there. Again, you can disagree with the premises of what he says. You can disagree with his feelings on profiling or nuclear first strike. But he'll debate all of those. I sat with him for an hour and a half and he would have done three hours, but our crew guys had to leave. I mean, this is a guy who will stake out these positions and unpopular positions and put them out there and they just want to shout him down. And what the what the real thing though is it's the chilling effect on that is that what it's not about shutting down Sam. If Sam disappears tomorrow, I think it would be really bad for our discourse as a country and I think this is a guy saying important But ultimately, guess what? They're going to come for Joe Rogan. They're going to come for

36:32Dave Rubin and they're going to come for all the other people that are tweeting about this And what they're really doing is just trying to take the moral high ground. They're trying to take the position of being like, first of all, if if Ben Affleck had a real nuanced and objective position, he certainly didn't express it on that show. So racist racist racist. Yeah. He's a idiot. He really is a idiot. You know, I don't know that I can go see that Batman movie because he he has turned me I love superhero movies. Love them. Well, that the fact that he was willing to take that position on a show like that and argue it like that without without I mean, first of all, I I like Bill Maher. I think he's a very funny comic. That show sucks. This is this is why the show sucks. I like it a lot. This is why it sucks. It doesn't suck because it's a sucky show. It sucks cuz

37:17all these subjects are massively important and they have a bunch of people shouting over each other. Like here, like you and I have like very strong opinions and we want to express ourselves and there's only two of us luckily because it was if there was five of us in the room right now and we were all talking, it would be really hard to get your points across because you've got to kind of like jump in and and and this is what happens when you get a guy like Sam Harris and a guy like Ben Affleck and Ben Affleck, what you're saying is so racist. It's so racist. instead of having an hour to go, okay, well, why don't you tell me why it's racist and give me your thoughts in the Middle East and tell what you would do about, you know, x amount of people who are so entangled in their ideology that they want death upon people. They wish death upon people who leave the

38:01religion. Yeah. Tell me what you would do about that. Tell me what you do about people that think that it's wrong to have women go to school. Tell me what you would do about We're talking about ideologies. You can call it Islam. Yeah, you can call it Islam. You can call it the Mooneyies. You can call it Scientology. You can call it whatever the you want. But what what it really is is a rigid set of ideologies. It's these are ideologies that you are forced to subscribe to a predetermined pattern of behavior and thinking. And if you are not in that predetermined pattern of behavior and thinking, they wish death upon you. And they think that they should be able to stone you if you're a homosexual. They should be able to stone you if you're an adulterer. There's a horrible video online of this poor woman whose father throws the first rock. Oh, I've seen it. Have you seen

38:45it? Yeah, I've seen it. And she wants to touch him before before he kills her and he he won't touch her hand and he hits her with the rock. But think about the absurdity. So there's there's so much here, right? So think about the absurdity of this that the hatred for these people, the hatred for Sam, for Bill Maher. So whe whether you like Bill Mer or like I do like Bill Maher and when I say it sucks, what I mean those formats, all those talk show formats suck. those split screen Bill will Riley things where Bill talks and three experts shout. We'll be right back. It's there's not enough time. Yeah. Look, he Bill Maher loves Bernie Sanders. Obviously, he had him on the show last week. He only had six minutes with him. That's crazy. Imagine what me or you would do with that guy if he was here right now. We could we could literally talk all day and he would and he should.

39:28Bill should have a show like that where it's just Bill sitting down with these people and not being forced into that soundy type of conversation because that's what they're doing. Well, listen, I love Bill, but I'll do that show. How about that? There you go. So, don't thank you for that. You'll be archaic Let him That's fine. That I just think that format is like everybody thinks that everybody needs to be like fast fast. It's not the case. Well, look, I think both of us are proof that it's not the case. I think for a long time everything was getting smaller and smaller. The internet burst this thing. Twitter came out. We're going to talk in 140 characters. Vine came out 6 seconds. So everything kept getting smaller, smaller, smaller. But what I'm absolutely seeing now, we've only been doing my show in its current incarnation for two months. Sam was my first guest.

40:12This was first week in September. And we started doing long form stuff again. Exactly what you're doing here. And what I've seen is the more the longer we go, the more we extrapolate ideas, talk about stuff, don't scream at each other. Yes, I'm bringing on people on the right and on the left. And the more that we do this, the more people want. So, I think there's a bounce back now from that short thing, you know, where everybody on television, they start, you know, and it's partly like a show that I love on ESPN, pardon the interruption, and they would have the the countdown going, you know, and everything had to be quick quick quick. But I think people are actually ready for this. And and I think clearly, and I don't think it I mean, that's why this is working for you. You know what I mean? People want to actually hear a couple thoughts. Let's hear two things that don't necessarily

40:56line up. And let's hear people that Listen, I hope that plenty of people that will be listening to this will disagree with me, will disagree with you, and at the end we'll go, well, it's not cuz they're racist, but they got some ideas that let's challenge those ideas. Well, I think the entertainment aspect of those shows where there's like five people in a room and and then also you have a audience that cheers when they agree. Yeah. And some and some of them are just so lefty, so super, you know, applauding at every point. It feels good because he shuts up his own audience, which how many com I've literally seen him do standup where he's yelled at the audience for giving him applause breaks. I mean, how many times have you ever seen that in a comedy show? That that's pretty good. Yeah. Well, and during his show, he does do that when people chime in. you. But I I

41:42just think that the entertainment aspect of of expressing yourself almost sometimes takes precedent over the concepts and the ideas themselves because it's all in how you deliver it and how forcefully you can get it past the other people that are trying to say contrary points. So the the Ben Affleck thing is the perfect example of that because by yelling out gross and racist within a minute, right? So think about it. It's pretty much the worst thing you can say about somebody, right? To call them racist, that's pretty, you know, beyond you're a child molester or something. It's it's pretty much the worst thing you can say. Think about if you were having an argument with somebody about about this stuff. Let's say you were privately arguing with someone about Islam and religion and blah blah blah. It would take a while for you to call them racist, right? Like

42:22you wouldn't it would take you'd have to go pretty deep by the time that you personally got there to that place where you were to say you're racist. I don't think I would even I would probably say that idea is racist before I would even say you're racist because I I got to think that like when some people will say, "Well, I have black friends." Well, what do you like about black people? You know, like you go into that for and at the end of it, well, they smell different and I like I like to be around people that are dumber than me. Okay, you're a racist. Now you're a racist. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like but but that illustrates your point perfectly that the problem with these shows and the problem with this discussion and problem with social it's all like a perfect storm of craziness because the next day after that show all the online sites mediite everybody the

43:07headlines were all Ben Affleck calls Bill Maher and Sam Harris racist. So suddenly the onus was on them to prove that they're not racist. That is not only is that bonkers but I asked Sam about this and he he said something that I thought was fascinating. He was on that show to discuss his book called Waking Up, which is a spiritual guide to uh it's a guide to spirituality without religion. So he's talking about meditation. He's talking about inner peace. I've read the book, you know, like some pretty lofty stuff. He said from that point forward, the next six months of my life were on a book tour about inner peace, but all I had to do was defend myself that I'm not a racist. I mean, really, think how cosmically warped that is. Well, and it came from, I believe, Ben Affleck wanting to state a position that he felt would be very popular and would resonate and would get

43:55him social brownie points. I really believe that because what he did, what he said, the way he expressed himself is not nuanced. It's not objective. It's not complex and well thought out. And this is a very, very deep and important subject. A massively important subject. Cuz what we're talking about in 2015, when you're talking about any ancient religion, you're talking about clinging to these ideas that were formed and ingrained in these communities well before science, well before people had a deep understanding of human psychology, of human nature, of the power of suggestion and culture, and well before we understood the way the world actually works as far as like as far as nature, as far as physics, as far as just the formation of the universe. All this information is not applicable to most of the religions in the world today. Not only are you right, but that's even what

44:45Sam wrote in End of Faith. Batman tripped him up. Batman before the movie even came out, the new Batman. Like, think how insane that is. If you really step back and dissect what you just said there, that if you took what the average person thought of the world and of science and of medicine and everything that we know of and food and everything in 1840, by that standard now in 2015, that person would look pretty damn dumb. Yet, for some reason, these books that were written, you know, thousands of years, thousand, whatever it is, somehow those have some validity that we should still respect. We shouldn't respect these books. They're ideas. They're ideas that time has long since let go of. So by respecting them, we're actually doing something crazy. If we want if we really want to be free, if we want to be free thinkers and and people that I I don't give a about anyone's race or

45:34religion or sex or sexuality, I judge people on what they say and what they think. And what the social justice warriors are doing, they're trying to win this argument by shutting everybody down. Yes. And they they're doing it. I think there is a degree of them doing it for lofty reasons. I think Ben Affleck thinks in his lofty rich Hollywood whatever that he's helping the downtrodden. I think there's something I don't think he does really. No entirely cynical. You know why? Because I know too many actors and I know what they are. You know here's here's the thing about actors and this is not all actors obviously just like you know not all comics are heroin addicts and drug addicts or whatever. I think that what it is to be an actor is to pretend to be something else, right? That's that's what it is. And it's also you have to get past the audition process. And the

46:22audition process is essentially saying all the right things. So Dave, where were you from? Like where'd you grow up? And you have to like, you know, who are you voting for this? Like there's there's that There's a reason why Hollywood leans almost entirely left, right? Do you think they really do? Cuz I think a lot of them are secretly voting Republican. They're voting on taxes, right? You know, you got your Charleston Hest and your you know, there's there's a few John Voits out there and the guy from uh what was it? We'll be back in two and two. What the Chuck Willery is like hardcore. I follow him on Twitter just to laugh at all the Republican that he writes. There's there's always going to be a few Hollywood conservatives. Obviously, Chuck Luller is not in any big movies or anything like that, but there there is always going to be a few conservatives in

47:04Hollywood, but the casting people, the the producers, the executives, overwhelmingly left-leaning. And to be in that club, you have to agree with them. And there's a problem with that whole audition process when it comes to actors. You can't work unless someone approves you. Unless someone takes you in and accepts you and chooses you. Dave, you're the right guy for the part. Yes. Yeah. And you can't say anything controversial that will that up. And then you're essentially like you're on a dating program for the world. Not not dating like you're trying to get laid, but like you're trying to get the world to love you. So when a guy like Ben Affleck, who's been doing this his whole life, gets on that show and someone says something that he thinks, I can get in here and make some points. I can get some social brownie points up on the board. I think that's

47:52racist. You're racist and this is gross. He's just like a guy at an audition. He's full of You know what, Rogan? I'm going to prove to you right now that I uh I don't just say but I believe it because you've changed my mind. That argument was good enough that you've changed my mind. That I do agree that he wasn't doing it out of some lofty thing that it's purely that I'm will there might be a, you know, maybe we can split hairs a little bit and it's 8020 or whatever, but I think that actually does make more sense. And it also it it explains why it happened within a minute because he was ready for it to happen before the segment even started. Yeah, I'll go with that. I think there are also sociopaths that get involved in philanthropic ventures to make themselves look good. Oh, sure. I I absolutely 100% believe that some people do some philanthropic so that it

48:36makes them look better. And and and this is this is like sort of to mask the the psychosis that bubbles below the surface of their skin that they're trying to hide from people. Like you can't go after me. I work with the firefighters, you know? I'm I'm I I support the first responsor. you the responders, you know, I'm down with the firefighters. You can't call me a plagiarist, but you can't like like Sanduski like look working with little kids, helping all these little kids. Well, surely that guy's not them. How could he do that? He loves their children. I mean, that that is the kind of that happens with a lot of evil people. So, this is interesting. So, for comics, then it really is particularly bizarre because there's the approval thing, right? And comics want approval just the same way actors do. But comics are also the good ones and unfortunately there's

49:21not many of us left that you're supposed to stake out controversial positions. So that goes against the sort of mass approval thing, but it doesn't in comedy, but but right now is counterculture cool right now. Does does any is there any comic? There's a couple people I guess that are doing some counterculture stuff that are getting credit for it. Define counterculture. Well, counterculture that you'd be you'd be really against the government. You'd be against the administration. you know, you'd be fighting more for some of the things that I think we're doing with the social justice warrior stuff, fighting for free speech relentlessly. Um, fighting against bad ideas. So, you could be fighting against the ideas of Islam without being racist or not even a race, but without even being without being bigoted towards Muslim people. Like right now, I think partially

50:08because of Obama, it's cool to like the president. You know what I mean? Just by his by be he's black, he's cool. I'd love to play basketball with him. I'm sure he'd be fun to have a drink with. So, it's cool to like the power right now. So, in a weird way, I think if we have a Republican president next time, comedy is going to get a lot better real quick because it's going to be a lot easier to attack. But is it cool to like him if you look at the facts? Is it cool to like him when you look at the way he's attacked whistleblowers? But nobody's talking about that. That's my point. People are there's plenty of people are. They are in podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I know a lot of really smart people that are attacking it. All right. Duncan Trussell, Duncan Trussell, Kurt Mezer. I know a lot of like very smart comics that just think it's it's gross that you've got a guy

50:52that's killed more innocent people with drones or been responsible to for being the lead the commander-in-chief of the greatest army the world has ever known that has caused thousands of people to die innocently through drone strikes. You know that look, they're shooting at cell phones. They're shooting missiles at where a cell phone is. And that's what that's what metadata is. Look, we just blew up that hospital. I mean, we blew up that hospital and you know, we could get into we get a whole thing about the about the Middle East, but like there there's terrible The whistleblower thing, I think, is is a good spot because Did you hear Edward Snowden on um Neil Degrass Tyson's show? No, I didn't. You should listen to it. It's amazing. Okay. It's great. But please go on. Yeah. I mean, look, that's what Obama's doing right now. That's what he's doing. There's a reason that

51:35Obama, you know, a lot of people on the left, the progressives when Obama got in immediately were like, you know, he has to try, you know, Cheney for war crimes and blah blah blah. And there's a reason why he didn't. That wasn't just about power. It was also because he's killing a lot of people with drones right now in 20 years from now, he doesn't want that president, President Willow Smith or whoever it's going to be to come in and be like, Willow Smith, is that like Jade Jaden? That's sister, isn't that sister? Is she going to win? probably maybe I guess Jaden probably would be the president first or I don't know but like whoever it's going to be in it's going to be one of them. You know I might vote for Will. How about that? You'd vote for Will? I might vote for Will Smith. Yeah. Is he running? I don't know. But he's a smart and I like I like when I listen to him talk. Yeah. I think

52:16he's a balanced and intelligent guy that expresses himself very well. He's extremely well read. But is he a is he a Scientologist? Uh I don't think he's a Scientologist, but I think he's dabbled. So is Jerry Seinfeld. Hey, look. I bought Dionetics. I bought it on online. Not even online. Um I I got it from one of those uh late night infomercials in 1994 when I first moved to Hollywood. I remember those commercials were all the time in the middle of the night. Yeah. Meanwhile, I'm in the middle of Lawrence Wright's going clear. Holy. I can't read it for too long, man. I go to other books cuz I read it for like a few chapters and I go, "Fuck this." And I put cuz it's so crazy. Well, did you watch the thing on HBO? I watched I started the book first, then I watched the thing on HBO, and then I keep going back at the book, but I haven't finished it. It's got It's got like probably I'm

53:02probably halfway in, but I I can't You know what's weird about Kindles? You don't see that you're halfway in like you see numbers like I like I like a thickness thing where like I'm down to the bottom. I got like a very thin remaining endame. But even the numbers on that doesn't mean anything to me. those numbers at the bottom that show, you know, you're on page 100 or 500 pages. That's not it's not registering. How do you how do you decide as someone in this space how much information to put in your brain? Because that's one of the things that I do. Huge problem. Yeah. I I struggle with this all the time because I love politics and I I told you I've been going to the spin rooms. We can talk about some politics stuff later. Um and I love all that stuff and I love current events and I love Middle East politics and I love talking about religion, all of this Like I love all of it. That's

53:47that's what I'm here for right on this earth. That's what I'm here for. But I do find sometimes I can't. There's just too much coming into my brain. Yes. And then when you have my, you know, sitting on the couch and I'm watching Seinfeld, which I should be should be the time that I can shut my brain down, right? An episode that I've seen 150 times before that I know every line coming out. and I have my iPad and I have my iPhone and my laptop's there and I'm doing this and it's like it's like Minority Report from hell, you know, and I really struggle with that like shutting it down sometimes and you know, I'm not even just talking about the devices, but just actually the stuff that you're putting in your brain all the time and you got to know your you know, it's tough. Well, fortunately, I don't necessarily really have to know my because No, but you know your But I all I have

54:39to do is say I'm not sure about that and I'm okay cuz I'm a comedian like right we do but you know what I mean like if like especially in these sort of conversations like you and I we exchange some emails about some stuff that'd be cool to talk about but we don't have a format obviously we're all over the place we're gay discos and Ben Affleck's a douche and you know Bill Mars formats are antiquated and you know there's you can only have so much information in your head and this is part of the problem that I have with this going clear book. Why I keep going to it and then going to other is cuz I feel like why am I reading so much about this sociopath nightmare crazy cult leader dude that that that has formed this insane religion because I can't part of me can't put it down. Part of me I start reading about all the crazy that he did and how nutty this guy really was and how many people

55:32followed his wacky ideas. I just like it becomes fascinating. You could be talking about Scientology or any religion. I could. Yeah. You know, some wacky guy with some crazy ideas that thought somebody was talking to him. Next thing you know, Yeah. followers and a lot of cash. Well, there's you know, obviously there's different ones and some of them their followers like like Mormons are like notoriously nice people. Like it's a that is one of the weirdest religions cuz they're so nice. But then like if you go to Islam, Muhammad was a warlord. Yeah. And it's you got a very different type of religion when first of all you're dealing with the environment that these people live in is extremely hostile as far as like the the temperature is extremely hot. the the the the battle for natural resources is very difficult is and you're also dealing with the cradle of civilization and I have this

56:23bit about Islam that never really came to fruition but the not even Islam but the Middle East rather but that the Middle East is essentially like they're the townies of the world because that's where culture was created and everybody look human beings were created in Africa that's where the first human beings came from by however method whether you believe in evolution an alien that dropped some I saw Prometheus. Yeah. terrible. I watched it the other day. I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be good. I w I watched the beginning again, you know, with the with the guy and he comes down and he splits the thing and and I was like, what is what what happened here? Yeah. The idea is that he seated the world with his DNA and then he knew somehow or another would develop into human beings. But why did Charissean not move a little to the left when the thing was falling?

57:10Remember the end? Oh yeah. There's the giant ship and it's falling and all she has to do she's running straight and the ship's falling this way and it's slow. Real slow and all she had to do is go a little panic attack. She just freaked. She freaked. She locked. All right. She panicked. I don't know. This We could get into that all day. She made up for it in Mad Max cuz that was awesome. Um what was my point? What the were going on? I took you somewhere there. Prometheus, beginning of the world, Mesopotamia, you know, came from this. I mean the the the the most ancient version of a human be like they I think they think that we're in this current form correct me if I'm wrong but I think they're thinking it's like 250,000 plus years right so whatever that was at one point in time they left Africa and a lot of them settled in the Middle East Egypt of course is a part of Africa but it is in

57:57the Middle East officially and they spread out all throughout the country but the the oldest what we know today as far as we know the oldest written language the oldest uh uh agriculture. The oldest government structure was Sumeare and that's where Iraq is. You know, you're dealing with like 6,000 plus years ago. That's that's Iraq. I mean, that is that's that's the cradle of civilization. It's a hole. A crazy, wacky, up civil war. The Muslims are fighting the Muslims. The Shiites and the Sunnis are blowing each other up on roadside bombs. And it's it's chaos. It's chaos. And when you get to these parts of the world that are amongst the most ancient cultures, you have what I call the echoes of savages is like the the the culture has lasted for so long and the reverberations of these ancient ideas that have been long disproven and they're still there. They're they're

58:55permeated. Look, that's why the Middle East especially, we could also talk about Israel Palestine if you want. All of it is such a cluster because so you could take someone like Sam who will talk about it from the religious part, right? And he'll mostly blame religion and then you can take a lot of my friends on the left and they say it's all geopolitics and they usually blame the United States. The truth is and as I said before we have to have two thoughts at once and I know it's very hard for people to be able to do that. It's both. It is both in the most extreme ways. Look, first off, Iraq and Syria right now are not even countries. You by any estimation of what a functioning country is that would partake in in the world thing, right? Nor is Libya. Libya is not. And look, we did. So, think about Libya for a second. Obama did that. No congressional authorization, right?

59:40Everyone goes crazy on Bush about Iraq. Now, obviously, in retrospect, the Iraq war is pretty bad and you can clearly make a line to it led to ISIS, which then has now destabilized the whole thing. But he at least had congressional authorization. Now, maybe he lied or we know now know that they were planting evidence and all that, but Obama went into Libya right when he became president with no congressional authorization. I have no idea what's going on in Libya right now. Is it a Is it a country? Have you seen uh Bourdain's show on it? The CNN show? Uh I I don't think Has there been a Libya one? I was just watching it last night about uh Ethiopia. Yeah, that show is amazing, by the way. But, you know, it's the the it was it was when Gaddafi was running it. Obviously, it was a horrible, horrible place and he was a terrible evil dictator. But when you

60:26remove a dictator, you create a vacuum and that vacuum gets sucked up by people that want to try to claim power. Yeah. Well, this is this is the strange thing about the neocons, right? So, neocons believe that we should use our American power to either nation build or, you know, look, I know everyone on the left will say, "Well, they're doing it because we want their natural resources." Like it's again it's one of these things that there's a zillion reasons why everyone wants some piece of that part of the world. Um but people will say well Iraq was better off with Saddam. He was doing horrible things to his people. He was using mustard gas on the on the Kurds right? I think it was the Kurds. Um so we've we've helped we've backed leaders. Mubarak in Egypt was our guy. We backed him. Then they overthrew him. Then we backed the Muslim Brotherhood. Then they overthrew them.

61:15Now we're backing another Mubarak guy. Like we just our policies are all crazy. It's all military-industrial complex and it's just this endless cycle of craziness over there. I mean, you can't get any crazier than having a guy like Dick Cheney as the vice president who is a CEO of Halbert in a company that bu rebuilds places that we blow up. It sounds like a Schwarzenegger movie, right? Like he's the bad guy in a Schwarzenegger movie from the 80s or the bad guy in Rambo. I mean, it's really Yeah. It's almost so obvious and that's why we can't believe it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Cuz they're showing it to us. Exactly. Here's what it is, guys. No big deal. Hallebert. And by the way, they're doing a lot of in Iraq right now. You think it's a coincidence? Not only that, they got no bid contracts. They have to bid. We have to bid. They have other people competing.

61:59What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? We hope that information and the the distribution of information, it's available today, that was barely available when Bish Bush was in office. Yeah. And we hope that the spread of that and the understanding of that will balance out all this And I'm hoping that that's the case with social justice warriors. I'm hoping that's the case with these right-wing fanatics that want to blow up and bomb and invade everything that doesn't believe in Jesus. I I'm I'm hoping that all that stuff gets balanced out because I think the amount of change we've experienced in our lifetimes is unprecedented. Cultural change, um, informationational change has been the big one. the the in the invention of the internet. I f I fully believe that when we go back and historians look at this point in time, they they see it as an explosion of change like a veritable

62:46explosion of ideas and of the ability to express themselves and your show represents that. Your your podcast represents that. You don't have anybody telling you what to do. You could talk about whatever you want. There's no there's no studio execs to come and go, "Stop, Dave. We got to get off this subject. Dave, you can't talk about Ben Affleck. We're doing a film with Ben. One of our subsidiaries is very upset with this and that and that. You know, the affiliates are calling in right now. They want to cancel our program. We're going to have to figure out a way to do this better. You said some bad things about Ailify, and Ailify is one of our new sponsors. And you should ask your doctor about it because maybe you need it. Yeah. And then my cloud gets even bigger that's hanging over me all the time. It's really But yeah, I'm with you. But do you think we've gotten to a

63:26breaking point with that? Because I think one of the one of the reasons that I wanted to do this with you and I've been harassing you to come on my show forever is because I see the things that we're talking about and our audiences are so interlaced, right? And I really really believe it has a lot to do with the Sam thing, but I think there's been we're close to the tipping point of of defeating the social justice warriors. I really think it's eating themselves, right? Well, because that because identity politics ultimately has to eat itself. That's that's the fatal flaw. So that they'll take someone like Bernie Sanders who stands for every progressive principle known to man. He doesn't want money in politics. He's everything that the left wants. And what what happens? He has Black Lives Matter people grabbing the mic away from him a month ago screaming he doesn't care

64:13enough about black lives when when there's no reason to believe that. But if but if you parse everyone down to their one issue. So if you say that these people are only going to care about Black Lives Matter and these people are only going to care about abortion and these people are only going to care about Islam or whatever it is, you have ultimately you're go you're just a group of people who ultimately have interests that have nothing to do with each other and you're going to destroy each other. And that's why I think the reaction to this is so good and so powerful. And I think it's it's real. It's happening right now. I could feel it. Well, when that Black Lives Matter thing happened, those girls were screaming and and he was saying, "We're going to give them the microphone afterwards." Like, what? That is not how you get to express yourself. That's not

64:55how you do it. You don't interrupt and decide that your message is more important than their message. Yeah. And of course, in their format, in their place, with their microphone, at the same time, what did they probably end up doing? I don't have any empirical evidence on this, but they probably ended up strengthening the people that don't like them. You see what this what what this is doing, you know? So there there's so much to it, but that's why I really I think the social justice warrior thing and it has a lot the Sam thing in the way that they treated him. I'm talking about, you know, Glenn Greenwald and Reza and my former boss Jenk who I know you've had on here. The way these people treated him and this dishonest attack on ideas that it came from the left. We're supposed to debate ideas, right? We're on the left. So what what does liberalism stand for? We

65:37believe in the debate of ideas. You could say the people on the right, well, they're more dogmatic. They're more religious. They don't want to debate ideas. So, I can't deal with those people. The the right went off the deep end a long time ago. What I have to care about as someone that's on the left and that believes in liberal principles and doesn't want to see gays thrown off the roof in Syria and all that Doesn't mean I want to invade Syria. Doesn't mean I want a nation build, but I should be able to talk about that without being called a racist or whatever it is. And and I think we've we've hit something here. I think one of the things that we've hit is there are people that are balanced and that are socially aware and that are fun and interesting to talk to. And then there's social retards. And social retards that form on the left, they tend to be unbelievably aggressive

66:23and douchy about really good ideas. Yeah. Like whether it's Black Lives Matter or whether it's supporting gay rights or whether it's transgender rights or any of the the ideas that I'm sure you and I could both agree with. M what what they're doing and the way they're doing it is they found something that gives them the green light to be an And one of the things they're doing in being an is they're making up for being picked on. They're making up for being rejected. They're making up for the abuse that they've suffered at other people's hands that have caused them to have this unbalanced social persona. And that's what it's all about. It's about social retards with really good points. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you're on it. So, you could use the gay rights thing as a great example of that. So, you know, look, we didn't have gay marriage until officially. It was June

67:0626. Happened to be my birthday. Uh, congratulations. Thank you. On my on my birthday, the Supreme Court said, I wasn't, you know, I was engaged already at the time, but I kind of like the idea of getting gay married when it wasn't fully legal cuz then I thought I'd be like running from the law or something like that had some sort of banner. You're going to be a rebel. Yeah. I was going to be like hunting a guy with one arm, you know, who killed my wife. None of it made sense, but I had this idea of something in my head. But anyway, if you take that that movement, look, it happened pretty damn quick. I know gay people have wanted rights for a long time, but if you take the last five years, the way this thing has evolved and now it's cooler. Look, you're you're a straight uh white man. Pretty much the worst thing there is, right? I mean, that's that's what I hear. Yeah. You're

67:45just awful even sitting here with, you know, very grading for me. But, uh, if you look at the gay rights thing, the left was all about it. And I and they they love gays. They love gays. They love gays. But at the end of the day, now gays have equal rights. Now, I know there's still job issues and there's some stuff, but we got What about that lady in Kentucky that Yeah. Oh, we can we can get there, right? So, there's still all kinds of I I don't I don't mean to say that everything's perfect. There's resistance. But the point is the Supreme Court, the law of the land now is equal in terms of marriage, but what I realized sort of halfway through that was it's not that the left really cares about gays as much as sort of this idea sort of of what you're talking about. Because at the end of the day, now that gay people have equality, well, guess what? Suddenly, gay people might start

68:30voting Republican because they might want to vote on taxes, they might they might, you know, so the identity politics thing is only good for a little while and then once everyone's equal, it's it's just it's just a way of pitting people against each other. Yeah. Then you really just become a fat person with pink hair. Yeah. That's all you are. You know, you're not this amazing person with this moral high ground that stands above and gets to proclaim how they've been fighting for rights and screaming and yelling and crying. You're screaming and yelling and crying cuz you're socially Cuz why are these people, by the way, why are they all anonymous? If they're so lofty in their There's plenty of that aren't. No, no. I mean, I know there's public ones, but I'm not talking about them. But I mean, the people that'll be yelling at me over some social justice What

69:15the right Oh, yeah. But that's what I mean. I'm not defending. I think people sort of think that somehow I'm defending the right. There is nothing I agree with these people on. You know what I mean? I have to clean my house and my house is on the left. So I want the left to be better. I fully believe now that the regressives, which is what the progressives have become because their ideas are now regressive, not progressive, that they are the Tea Party of the left. And if the Republicans, if the average conservative, whether you agree with them or not, 5 years ago, when the Tea Party was gaining strength and and we're not going to negotiate with anyone and government shutdowns and all that, if the average conservative had said, "These are our principles, whether you agree or not. We believe in limited government, all of that stuff, low taxes, whatever, strong defense." If

70:00they would have said that, they might have been able to reel the Tea Party in a little bit, but instead, they just went to their worst, the worst piece of them. And I see it happening with us on the left and that's why I'm so against the regressive left. We got to bring them back because otherwise we're going to have the regressive left and we're going to have the Tea Party and guess what? The gig is up. Yeah, I I agree. But I think that is it's what you find in the universe. You find this extremely broad range. You find a spectrum and in that spectrum you have completely psychotic on one side and completely psychotic on the other side. That horseshoe thing, right? And then at the end they're the same. Yeah. And then this It it really is. I mean, and then there's there's a balance. And I think that a lot of I I think a lot of us given different circumstances could be

70:45swayed to have different points of view and different ideas. And I I'm also pulled not in a sense like logically, but I find myself compelled when I see people that are really religious. When I listen to like some Muslim guy that's that's speaking with great confidence about the power of Islam and the truth of Islam, I find myself compelled. I don't believe it. I don't I don't support it as an ideology, but I'm fascinating by the natural human Yeah. compulsion to want to join that the natural human like there's something about someone who is unbelievably confident in what they're doing is the right thing and is is proclaiming it publicly and loudly through a microphone that makes you go wow maybe he's right Islam is the truth and kind of like Hitler exactly like Hitler but that's but that's why we human nature thing it is human nature and look if if that's why they attract

71:41all these people there there's no doubt that that's what's going on here and what we have to do. I listen, I don't know what's going on in the universe in the scheme of I I have no freaking idea. But that doesn't that's fertile ground for someone having to make that leap of faith and being like I don't have any idea. So yeah, just it's the 10 I'm going to follow the Ten Commandments. I mean, I'm pretty much f I don't believe in religion in any way whatsoever, but I get if we were to have the Ten Commandments here, I'm probably sure I'm pretty much following them because they're just basic. I don't kill people. I don't covet my neighbor's wife. That's a gay thing. But you know, like that was actually a a property thing, you know. Oh yeah. The neighbor's wife was his property by coveting mean like taking her. Yeah. But but I mean the point is that you can live your life as I think

72:26both of us do and probably most of your listeners do by you can have a set of principles that has nothing to do with religion and which is what waking up is about. Yeah. That's exactly what waking up is about. And that's that's the crazy part of what the left is doing here. you know, there's this onslaught against new atheists. So, against Sam and Richard Dawkins and uh and Hitchens, even though he's not around anymore, and I didn't know what new atheists were even, so I started asking some people and my friend Kyle said, he said, "I think it's just an atheist who's finally saying I'm here because for a long time, atheists wouldn't even say that they were here." And now you have the far-left is the ones that are attacking atheists. Isn't it supposed to be the far right attacking the people who don't want anything to do with religion? It's It's incredibly warped. Yeah, it is

73:12incredibly warped and it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And there was a real really recent um Have you seen Sam Harris's uh there's something I tweeted a few days ago. Uh Sam Harris on it's on something called Secular Talk. It's on YouTube. Yeah. So Kyle is the guy So Kyle that I just uh he's the friend that said to me about the new atheist thing. Yeah. So they picked up basically where our conversation ended because when I did that and then you're going to play a clip. No, no, I'm not. But I was going to say that Sam snapped. He snapped. I wouldn't say snapped, but he Yeah, he said snapped. That's how he described it, too. But he expressed himself about what's really going on with these people, whether it's Greenwald or I'll let him, you know, pick who it was and what it, but if you listen to it, it's the the thing the the the channel on YouTube is called Secular Talk. Yeah.

74:00And the title of it is Sam Harris on progressivism, torture, religion, and foreign policy. It's fantastic cuz he's so elegant, so eloquent. Elegant as well, but eloquent, and he just nails it perfectly. He expressed what's going on. So, is that the inherent problem then? Because what I see when I did my sit down with Sam, I laid it out very clearly. I said to him, Sam, let's take the five things that people misquote you about the most and let's make it very YouTube friendly so that when these crazy people are screaming about you, anyone on Twitter can be like, "Here's a link. Give it five minutes." So, we did it. And he laid out uh, you know, the profiling. He laid out the nuclear first strike. He laid out all Muslims uh, verse Islam. you know, all that Islam is the motherload of bad ideas, which he did backtrack a little bit because again, it's about it's about ideas, not the

74:44slanders, right? So, that's how we laid it out. And then we and then we did the whole thing. And I felt when I was done with that sitdown, again, this was my first episode of my show. I was like, I'm done with this topic. I I felt I had added a little something to this. I had helped the discourse a little bit. And then suddenly, right after that, they all were worse. All of them. Glenn, Reza, Jenk, they all doubled down. Literally, Glenn retweeted a misquote from our interview that that Sam said it was something about Sam mentions profiling and he's talking about Jerry Seinfeld. He's talking about Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian Jerry Seinfeld should not be profiled. That this is a guy who should be able to walk right through because it's a silly use of resources to have Glenn retweets something where they said people who look like Jerry Seinfeld. completely not

75:33what he said. Well, first of all, Jerry Seinfeld easily could be Arab, so that's ridiculous. I think I think one of his parents is Syrian, actually. That's that's a ridiculous thing to say, right? So, not look like him. By the way, when Sam does the profiling, he talks about how he should be profiled based on his own looks. Yeah. Because because he's a he's a middle-aged man, and if a middle, you know, a middle-aged white guy, whatever, he's not even talking about the the race in this instance. That if me or you if me and you were right now going LAX, that we should be profiled. They should look at two guys of a certain age and whatever whatever their criteria are, not based on race or religion, but there should be some more uh they should look at us in a more curious way than perhaps an 80-year-old Dutch woman that's in a wheelchair or, you know, like he's trying to have smart

76:20profiling or what he calls anti-profiling. The problem with profiling really is you're getting profiled by people that are so dumb they work for the TSA, right? So that that's that's a real issue cuz I read this whole thing that they give people like recognizing facial expressions like get the out of here. Have you ever you ever like paused for a minute when you're looking for something and been a fly on the wall while the TSA agents are talking to each other about what they want to eat or what this is saying to Minnie and barely paying any attention. They're just folks working a job. You know that's what they are. They're folks folks that got a job. Well, to that point, I mean, look, if we really wanted to profile in the in the way that profiling should be done, then you have to do it the way the Israelis do it, which is that you're they have cameras

77:01on everybody watching every bit of body language and every bit of nuance. I mean, even I went uh I went to Israel, I think in 97, and I to get in had to go in a separate room, and they asked me every question you could possibly think of. I'm a Jew from Long Island. I was profiled, you know what I mean? Like that be they're not doing it out of fun. They're not They just don't want their planes to explode. And I had to explain something about where my bar mitzvah is. I mean, really crazy But I'm pretty sure they would prefer not to have to do that, right? And I didn't walk away going, "Oh man, profiling like that. That's the worst thing in the world. There there are certain things that are these this is this is a very difficult discussion to have because the social justice warriors make it so that even when we're talking about this now there's this feeling that somehow I'm

77:50for profiling. I mean I think they should just be ignored the these so-called social justice warriors. And I think that as time's going on they're becoming so ridiculous that they're easel. There's a great story that I tweeted uh a couple days ago. um anti-feminist speaker disinvited to uncomfortable learning in quotes lecture series because she made students uncomfortable but don't safe spaces but listen to this man the thing is called uncomfortable learning that is this the lecture series okay and they disinvited her because she made students uncomfortable I mean this is madness I mean this is exactly what we're talking about here also think how dangerous it is to do this to college kids more than anything else because first off, you're drugging the kids, right? We know we know that they're all on rolin and all that right? They're on all that. Now, they go to college. Even the ones

78:43that aren't on that if they go to college, college is supposed to be where you figure out what your sort of base ideas are before you go out into the real world. If you're going to sil you know, they colleges, Brandeise University silenced Ion Hersy Ali. Yes. Think I have her on my show next week. Like, I want to go into that. Like, what insanity, you know what I mean? Could they it I mean it's perverse at the highest. What is their their dispute? Well, because I think their the argument was that she doesn't like Islam, but she was raised in it. Almost killed. Her coworker Van Go's grandson or whatever was killed. Yes. On the street in Holland. Um for a cartoon. Yeah. And she's talking about ideas again. She and this is what Sam says all the time. We have to talk about ideas, not people. I What other set of ideas would be we be afraid to talk about? What is going on

79:30in universities though? Is it the students that are dictating the policy by by protesting and is it the the professors? I think I think it's coming from the professors partly for what you said before about Affleck. Like there's this idea if you want to be a professor sort of and Gad Sad talks about this a lot because he is a college professor and I know he's had his struggles as someone that is outing this I think he's had his professional struggles. I I think in our interview he talked a little bit about some exchanges he's had with other professors where they don't want to touch some of his ideas because of he not that he's talking about anything really controversial at the end of the day. They don't want to touch it but it's because of the professor the pressure rather from the students. No, I think it's coming first. I think it's coming first from the professors or or even

80:13whatever is above that. I don't know if it's the administrations or even whatever is above that. Like I don't know how high you have to go with it, but I don't think it's the kids that are doing it. I think they're being fed and they're being fed fear and stupidity and then they just bound, you know, they just sort of rally around it. Well, there's also a real problem in in colleges, I believe, that these people that operate in academia have only worked in academia and they don't really understand the real world because they they aren't in it and they're in a position of power with young people. So, their ideas have incredible influence. They're standing on this stage teach teaching these lectures, teaching these classes and they have these young impressionable people that are listening to them. This gives them a gigantic ego boost. They have this platform and

80:55they've never competed in the real world. They've never contributed to the real world other than teaching children. Yeah. And there's a lot of them like that that have gone through the educational system and then gone from the educational system directly into teaching and then this is their this is their universe. This is how they exist. And these people are pretty much all part of the regressive left. I mean, they are they are pretty much all part of So you could think here's a simple example of this. So there's a difference between debating ideas and hate speech. So let's say somebody that that hated Muslim people wanted to speak at a college and was going to talk about how we should kick them out of the country or we should whatever do horrible things to them. I could see absolutely protest that person. use your right of free speech and free assembly to protest that

81:40person's ideas. Should the college not let them come? You know, if it was purely hate, I suppose, but I know that's that's a really slippery slope because everyone, you know, versus you could take any of these people, Ayan Hers Ali, she's not against Muslim people. She's against the doctrine, these ideas. And if we can't make the distinction between hate speech and someone who wants to debate ideas, if you can't do that in college, then where the hell else can you do that? Not only that, try getting some inflammatory quotes by Ian Hersy Ali that you could argue against that aren't really well thought out, that aren't articulate, that aren't based on her personal experiences growing up in this religion, her understanding of the scripture. like try try try finding some ignorant hate in that you're not going to these guys don't want to debate ideas it's it's really as simple as that so at

82:37the very personal level I can tell you so you've had Jenk on he was my former boss for two years at TYT he watched the original thing with Sam and then sat down with Sam for three hours did you see any of that I did I watched the whole thing three hours I watched that thing I was working for him at the time literally like my I was like this the entire time because it I was having a headache because I could not believe that this person that I work for, who I respect, who I play basketball with every Sunday that he was so dense to the ideas that Sam was portraying. And at the end of it, just as I said to you before that, at the end of mine, I thought I had made this conversation a little bit better. Jenk only doubled down on all of this because they don't want to debate ideas. They want they just want Sam to be discredited so that their ideas win. And that's why we have to fight against it

83:29because if Sam disappears, as I said earlier, if Sam disappears tomorrow, it's not about him. It's about all the ideas that we'll all be afraid to talk about. That's why Charlie Hebdo cartoons, you should be able to Family Guy can do whatever the they want on Jesus, right? Every episode there's, you know, there's an episode where Jesus is bathing with porn music in the background in front of Stewie, a baby. Nobody had a problem with that. Try doing that with Muhammad. But we can't have, we can't just pick. You can't pick. Say whatever the you want about Judaism. big goddamn deal. What is it with Jenk? What I mean, you you know him. I that that was really perplexing to me because I usually feel like whether I agree with him or don't agree with him on other things. I feel like he's, you know, he's got an opinion. He thinks about it. He talks about it. He

84:11tries to be open-minded. He's passionate about these ideas. But with that, it was so confusing to me because it was almost like he was just trying to win. It was like he was trying to find a way to beat someone who is, you know, Sam is an intellectual black belt. I mean, like a highlevel world champion black belt of the the spoken word. And I think that Jenk is not at the same level as Sam when they come when it comes to debating these ideas. At one point about 20 minutes in, Sam does lays out some basic probability stuff and Jenk just says he doesn't believe in it. I mean that that sort of explains it right there. Like Sam wasn't laying out. He was just saying this is sort of how probability works, right? And and Jen was like, "No, no, that oh no, I don't I don't believe in it." I I don't know. And just for the record, I I get no pleasure even talking about this because

85:03you know you know what you know what it's like. Did you debate Jenk or have a conversation with him off the air about this? No, we didn't because it just it just never materialized. You know what I mean? A lot of times when although I did do the main Young Turk show with him a lot, most of the time as I was on it, it was because he was out of town, so I was either filling in or something like that. So there wasn't really the forum for that. Um, and then it really had a lot to do with why I left because I just could not believe it that I mean there's there's people that have edited things where Jenk says one thing directly to Sam's face and then days later is saying the complete reverse thing, sitting down with Reza Aselan and saying that yeah, he means all Muslims. And it's like you you just said to his face, you just said to his face that you know that's not

85:48what he says. And I think it's partly it goes to that Affleck thing that he's trying to be this he's trying to defend Muslim people that he feels are being abused and and there's a lofty goal there somewhere. But if you use the tactics of dishonesty and slander and smearing and all that to get there you it's not good. It's not good. So So I don't know. It's awful. But I really like him. It's what me up. I I feel completely the same way. And and actually I in so when I left I just let the thing be and I was like all right that's it you know I left we left on good terms we went out to breakfast we were good to go and then he just kept on Twitter kept lying about it misrepresenting ideas and people and tons of his own fans were turning on him. So I ju finally after months I was like I can't take this anymore. I've got to do something. And I didn't know what

86:39I didn't know what to do because you know what it's like? It's like here's a friend, here's a co-orker, a contemporary, like how do I do this in a respectful way? And finally, one night I I laid out like eight or 10 tweets in a row. I thought them all through first. And I was like, JJ, here's what I think is going on because I needed it to be public because if I had just sent him an email, I you know, he could either not respond or respond, but what does that do at the end of the day if me and him get to our mayulpa, but it's not public, right? So, in a very respectful, not attacking way, I laid out some stuff. He completely ignored it. Couple weeks went by. Finally, I did something again. Finally, he responded, but then just kept doing the same So, I don't know what the answer is, but I but this is what Glenn's done. This is what Rez has done. I I don't get it. I look,

87:23these are tactics. Um, these are tactics they're using to win. Majin Noaz, who I had on my show, who co-wrote Sam's last book, it was a discussion about Islam called the future of tolerance. Islam and the future of tolerance. So, I'm pretty sure these are people on the side of tolerance, right? Um Majid, who by the way has been treated worse than anybody, you know, like one of these guys that works at at the Intercept for Glenn, called uh Majid a porch monkey while he was sitting next to Sam. You know what I mean? Like, because oh, you don't believe what we think you're supposed to believe as a Muslim person and you're with an atheist. You're his porch monkey. I mean, think if that came from the right, how we would rightly re react to that or how these guys on the left would react to that. Um, so anyway, so so sadly, and that's what leaves me with such like conflict here, is that I

88:11don't think it's going to stop. And I and I think they've learned, you know, what's that Hitler quote? Like the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. I think they're partly operating on that that the opportunity cost for Sam, for you, for me, for anyone that cares about any of this to clean up the mess is is way too much for just Sam's a racist. That's that's the one that's easy. But now Sam has to clean it up. And it's and it's a two-hour frustrated conversation that he had. And yeah, as you said, if you listen to it, brilliant. Brilliant. it it's a two-hour conversation that is trying to balance out x amount of months of disinformation. But I think that ultimately in the long run his ideas are more accurate. They're more like what he's saying is well thought through and his opinions are better considered. I think when you can win can that with

89:05who? One with you, one with me. Sure. And it won and it won and it look it won to the point that I as I said before I think there's a tipping point coming because I do think our side is getting stronger. I really do. But the amount of effort and energy he has had to put into this and and when you see I think it's there's a chilling effect when they when people see the I'm not talking about us. When the average person sees what has happened to this guy again you've sat with him for probably 20 hours never thought he was a racist before. When the average person sees what they've done to him, it causes the average person not to want to speak about something. I get emails, I'm sure you get them. I got an email a couple days ago from someone in Sweden saying, "I am terrified to talk about any of this stuff. I'm terrified to talk about what's happening in my

89:48country right now, you know, and and I'm getting all emails from all over, literally all over from Saudi Arabia and all over the place, people saying, "You're talking about stuff that people are afraid to talk about." I'm not doing it for any other reason other than I feel like I have to. It's not, you know what I Like I feel like I'm on this road because it it just appeared before me. This wasn't where I really wanted to go. Yeah. My standup was a lot about Transformers and G.I. Joe and stupid you know? Right. I I So I don't know. Yeah. I don't know either. I don't know either. But I think that it when guys like Jenk do say things that are easily discredited when you say like, "Look, you said this one thing two days ago when you were talking to Sam. Now you're saying something completely different when he's not here. That is so bad for people's perception of your

90:36ideas. It's so bad for your own credibility. It's so bad when you express opinions about other things. Like you can say something you like as a comic, you can say things and you can joke around them and I can know that you're joking. So I can I Okay, he doesn't really believe that and you're around. But that's this this isn't around. So you're being held to your ideas, right? Your ideas, you're held accountable for your ideas. And when your ideas are massively inconsistent and contrary days later and when you you're expressing an idea that you have to know is incorrect. Right. So that's the part that I don't understand because look, I I have up. We've all done up things in our life. We've all uh we've all lied. We've all have Maybe you, bro. Yeah. Not you. Not you. I know. But you know what I mean? We've we've all we've all made mistakes, you know. Look, Brian Williams made some

91:32stupid part ego mistake, part whatever you want to call it about. No, they found like 15 different li but but everything being equal, they weren't like cataclysmic lies in the scheme of what you know what I mean in the scheme of things. They were about his little adventures that he exaggerated partly because of the media because the media wants you to be a star too. So he has to go on the Tonight Show and talk about being on a helicopter when actually would Walter Kronhite have done that? Probably not. I I don't know. Well, you know, I'm I've got a friend Steve Renazi and I think you know his story, the 9/11 story. Um and I I think they're really similar to the Brian Williams thing and that like both original stories were actually pretty impressive and these guys doed them up and turned them into this epic thing that ultimately cost them a shitload of credibility, if not

92:21all their credibility. with Brian Williams. He was actually in a helicopter in Iraq. The helicopter in front of him was shot at. So like that's scary as You're a reporter. You're getting shot at. You You're hearing gunshots go off. The people in front of you are hit. That's a good story. Your helicopter had to get hit though because ultimately these people are full of and they have to exaggerate and and and and jazz it up. They don't and because of that you can't trust what they're saying. Right. So then that then it has that effect where you go ah this guy did this what happened but think about it my actually my point was actually the reverse of that because what I was going to say is that his his lies were little additional details you know like a little I'm a little cooler details what these guys have done have been to blatantly distort yes someone's views

93:11we're talking about an opponent that's the difference right because it's a competition between Jenk and Sam right so so what do you do with that so so what I can't Well, I I like Jenk, but I'm not turning to him for advice or ideas now. Yeah, I can't when I listen to his when I listen to his opinions about things, I unfortunately have to take into consideration that he's been massively inconsistent about this one thing. So, when when someone is caught or exposed or whatever you want to call it to have so severely misrepresented someone else's views, how are you able to separate that from the other the rest? So, let's say you like 80% of of his views or anybody, we don't have to make it about him. How how do you separate that? Because I at this point I don't know how I do it at all. And I know Sam has said that about Glenn even when it comes to the uh the NSA stuff.

93:59He's like, I don't know what to make of that now because I know what this person is capable of. I think that's a really interesting point. It's a very interesting point. It's a very important point because I have people on this podcast all the time that I don't agree with and I want to hear their thoughts. I want to know why. Like I had this conversation with Mark Maron the other night at the comedy store and he was like, "Why'd you have that guy on? you know, that guy's a this and he's a that cuz I want to find out what makes him tick. I want to find out what goes on in his head goes on in his head. But there's a difference between someone I don't agree with and someone who I know is distorting the views of another person like changing someone's words, changing someone's intent and and doing it for their own benefit. doing it so that they can win this ideological

94:40conversation, this argument. That that becomes a real issue. And it also becomes a real issue is like what if I having a conversation with you and then two weeks later you distort what I say? Exactly. I don't want to do that. I don't I don't I don't want to have to defend my ideas because you've mislabeled them or mis mis, you know, misconstrued them. You know, it's funny. It's it's also what is so cool about being in the digital space because as I said people are first off people are clipping things you can clip on Twitter here's what you did here's what you did and they can expose them. So first off you've imp the the people at the bottom of this that are just consuming it are now able to get their voices heard to fight the and I think that there's been a real wave with that which is incredibly inspiring to me. It's so different than ever before. Yeah. And

95:24looks, if someone came on here, if I come on here and I said something that was profoundly dishonest or was smearing of someone else, I would never hear the end of it. And and hopefully people would tag you on Twitter and you'd retweet the out of it until everybody had seen you see what Ruben did and whatever. I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen at the end of this. But you it doesn't benefit you. You know, it doesn't benefit because you can be exposed. That's what I don't understand about these guys. How can you do this? How can you retweet memes implying that Sam wants to uh nuke the entire Middle East when if you first off, you know, his whole thing on nuking the the First Strike thing? It's at the end of End of Faith, it's about a page and a half. Mhm. That's how much time he spent on this topic. And they've made it sound like this is his goto

96:07position. Yeah. And he's he's talking about a horrific scenario where some ISIS type civilization has control of nuclear weapons and there's a real threat that they're going to use them on other people. Yeah, that's what he's talking about. An apocalyptic regime. That's what he's talking about. You have to consider that if that's a possibility. If it's a possibility that there could be a regime like that somewhere in the world, you have to say, "Well, what would we do? What are the options? What could you do in that scenario?" To not debate that is to like dig your head in the sand. Yes. And that's that's the bigger problem. Look, what do you think Barack Obama thinks on this? We have nukes right now, right? We know we have nukes. We're the only country that's used nukes. Do you think that Barack Obama would only wait until we were nuked to use nukes? Probably

96:52not, right? I I don't know. I mean, I couldn't imagine. I don't know, but there's at least a discussion there. Yeah, there's a discussion there. And I think that's the that's the deal. It's like a discussion. I think when you discredit people with with dishonest statements, when you say things that you know are not true, um it it becomes a huge issue. Not not like what you're talking about when you said, "Well, I'm pretty sure no one's going to find contradictory statements by me." Well, it's because there's no benefit in it. Yeah. Like you like Jenk is not going to really gain points by distorting Sam's perspectives on things. He is only going to gain points of people who don't actually know Sam's perspective. He's going to lose massively when people do listen to what Sam says. Yeah. Because then you all of a sudden whatever goodwill and whatever love and

97:47appreciation people have for your ideas, that's going to go out the window when they find out that your ideas have been distorted. That your your points of view rather of other people's ideas have been distorted. Yeah. I've had that happen to me on this show. I I had a show this show with a guy that I actually like even though he did this this guy Jamie Kilstein and uh we did this I know him ancillary we did he's he's a social justice warrior the whole deal I don't think he's a bad guy I really don't I like him as a human being every time I talked to him I enjoyed talking to him but we did a podcast together and we disagreed on a bunch of things then he went on his podcast and completely distorted everything that I said and changed the entire conversation to him being a victim which is which is 101 for the and then this guy online put together the actual conversation and

98:34Jaime's perception of the conversation and it said it was I forget the like the the Killilstein delusion was the name of the uh the video and because of that he received so much hate and I think that made him aware of that and he said it was like the low moment of his life and he completely stopped doing that and he doesn't do any of that anymore and you know he's rebounded and now he's happier than he's ever been before but I think that that type of behavior is not just standard. It's a it's accepted. It's almost expected. Yeah. You know, it's like what they do. And that's if you're part of that victim culture, the perpetual victim culture. That's how you do it. You you you make it seem like people were yelling at you and there was people and they were so upset with me and all I was doing is trying to say that women shouldn't be raped. That's not what happened. It's

99:19not what happened. That must have been incredibly validating for you, right? Like because because it's personal, too. And that that's why you can see my my body language probably when I talk about Jenk that I doesn't I get no pleasure out of this. This is not how I int I didn't go to work for this guy and agree with so much of you know get money out of politics you know his his like core stuff. I didn't go there for my feelings ultimately to be this but but that's where we're at. So in a case like you're talking about with Jamie it's extremely validating that you create a space based on a certain amount of principles. Someone goes against them. your audience then calls them out and then there's like a teachable moment to him. It's pretty it's pretty pretty great. I think in that way it's great. I don't I didn't take any pleasure in the fact that he got up emotionally because of it.

100:06No, not that. But the the hate that you get online, especially if you're like a super sensitive person that's really trolling for love, you know, you got all your lines in the water and you're trolling for love. That's what you're doing. And in saying that and even becoming this victim, you're trolling for love. I mean, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to get people to Joe Rogan. that transphobic, homophobic, racist, sexist, misogynistic Like, throw them all out there. Throw them all out there. I mean, but that's what's what what's going on when someone's and you got to realize that when you distort people's perceptions or distort people's uh positions for your own personal benefit, you do yourself a horrible disservice because you now have ruined any validity. Any any anything that you have said in the past that may resonate with people, you've ruined that because now

100:56you you've poisoned that. Well, yeah. So, it can be so laid out clearly like this. Let's say just two of the the five things that Sam, you know, those controversial things. So, the profiling thing, right? Um, are we belaboring this point already or because I think it's so I think there's so much to it. Yeah. Okay. Um, but let's say Sam would argue that because these are debatable ideas, we should debate them. So imagine if subsequently, so they do the three-hour sit down, he and Jenk, and after that, instead of saying he wants to profile Muslim people and blah blah blah, and all that bravado and and whatever, imagine if he had said, you know, Sam and I really disagree on this. I fear that Sam's use of anti-profiling or profiling, whatever you want to call it, I fear that ultimately it will lead, if you know, for for good, you know, the road to hell is paved with good

101:48intentions. I think that he's trying to do something good, but ultimately it's going to lead to Muslim people feeling persecuted, feeling like the other. But if he had laid that out like that and had an intellectually honest say, we believe different things here and that's okay. You have you have a pretty great place to be. Yes, you have a pretty great place to be. people who who pretty much agree on most things and that we can move forward and go we disagree, but when you do what he did, you've you've just you've ransacked the the playing field. Yeah. And now and now you just have burned and that's what it's become. So that's why when you mentioned Kyle's podcast, uh that's why Sam that's as frustrated as I've ever heard him, but as you said, it was still pretty eloquent and pretty elegant. Um but he's pissed. He's pissed and I think rightly so. And that's why that's why

102:38I've been so defensive over the guy cuz I know it's like let's have this if we can't do this now it's only going to get worse. I have as well. I mean I've been very defensive of him as well. And unfortunately I have a good friend Abby Martin who I love dearly as well but she and Sam have gone back and forth about this and you know I think she in some ways distorts his perceptions. I I mean I've seen I've seen her distort I I don't know her that well so I I don't want to I've seen her distort a lot of facts on air too about about different things. She gets very passionate and I think you know sometimes she misses the mark on certain things but she's a very good person and I think she's ultimately she has all the right intentions but but the intentions that hell the p the road to hell it's paved with those things. You see what I'm saying man? Yes it is. It's like with a guy like Jenk

103:27though, I think he's his own worst enemy in that regard because you once you start doing that then you have to sort of double down just to try to figure out a more eloquent way of reestablishing your position. And when you do that like people don't take you seriously anymore, right? That's the problem. That's a real problem. You become your own enemy. Yeah. You throw out that bomb of Yeah. And now you're not going to be There was a point. There is anytime. Look, if you said something that was completely untrue or or you smeared somebody, right, and then two weeks later you thought it through, even if even if you knew you were lying when you did it, but two weeks later you're like, "Wow, I really shouldn't have done that." Like, I intended to do something good there. Yeah. You could backtrack you with the value that you have in your name and your fans, they would follow

104:14you back. Yeah. A couple people would be like, "Fuck him." But but people would go and if you calmly explained what happened, you could. The problem with these guys is they've gone and they kept going and kept going and kept going that they're so off the range now. In my view, there's nothing they could do to ever fix this situation. It's like a guy saying, "I know where I'm going, but you really don't." And then you just keep saying, "I know where you're going." You're lost further and further in the woods. Like, dude, you're so far from the road now. You're going to have to shoot yourself and come back as a baby and live your life again because this this is a disaster what you've created. Yeah. Yeah. I just I don't know. I don't I don't know how to fix that, but I know what it is. is when I see it. Yeah. Well, I think this is fixing it. I I think this is fixing it.

104:53That That's actually when I woke up this morning and even when I went to bed last night, I I was like in a great place cuz I was like I knew I wanted to have this conversation and I tr I've had it in little bites on my show, but I don't like, you know, in a not that this has really been about me because this is about some big stuff, but we're having a little more of a of a lofty thing here than than I would. It is. It is about you in a way because you're a part of this big stuff and also when you're doing your show like the Reuben report what you're doing is you're expressing yourself and you become a credible portal to these ideas and information. So it is about you in a way because it's about all of us and it's about your credibility as that portal. Yeah. And you you you have to defend that. That that's that's Look, I'm wrong about all the time. But if I'm

105:42wrong about dude, I'm the first person to tell you I'm wrong about it cuz I'm horrified if I unless it's like some simple stupid mistake, you know? But when I'm when I'm making if I make a mistake, I want to be the first guy to talk about it. I don't I don't want anybody believing anything that's not true to help my ego. So, you've had Carara Santa Maria on, right? Yes. So, she's she's a good friend of mine. worked with me at at TYT and I am not Yeah, I love her too. She's fantastic and she is a science communicator. That's the way she describes herself. Um I think she had something to do with this brain surgery live thing last night that was on Matt Gio. So she's doing really good stuff and I really respect her and like her. Uh many I've said to my audience many times, you know, I know a lot about politics, current events, all this stuff. I'm not a science guy.

106:26Like you know, I can understand basic stuff, but I'm not a scientist. So I have to trust people that know about science to tell me things. So many times I've brought her on just to clean up messes that I've made. Sure. So I never go with the uh I never go with the presumption to my audience that I know everything about everything. I'm going to bring on some people and look then so when I've done things on GMOs with Carara, she she is she firmly believes in GMOs and that's a whole that's a whole other thing, right? Um but I know a lot of people don't like her stance on GMOs. But I say here's my science person. Here's what she said about this. And I'm actually trying to find someone that's a little more against GMOs now to come on and and refute some of that stuff. We don't have as the interviewer, as the guy on this side of it, we don't have to know everything, which is what

107:10you said before. That that does give us a little bit of a leash, right? Because we're sitting across from someone and we're just bouncing ideas. We're also talking about so many different subjects. You you it's impossible to be an expert in all of them. Yeah. I guess this actually goes to your point about the the format of real time in all these shows that look at look at where we bounced here already. You know what I mean? There's only a couple areas where I feel real comfortable and saying I'm an expert. I'm an expert in standup comedy and I'm an expert in martial arts. And even in martial arts, there's there's certain aspects of martial arts where I have to defer to other experts. Yeah. You know, there's just there's too many styles. There's too many different there's, you know, there's some different weird Filipinos. There's celot. There's there's different stick

107:53fighting styles and like you can't know everything. You can't well you can't not only can't know anything but if you want to see how the thing that you consider yourself an expert in how it how it all sort of leads to one road look what you did with Mensia because you had a set of principles right you had a set of principles in something that you love standup right I mean is there anything you love more than stand up a besides wife and kids like is that it yeah friends wife kids health so the but in terms of the other things like stand up's right there and and and what you did with menia which I'm sure you've talked about a bajillion times already. Uh do you remember we met once actually? We met at the Young Turks. You were going on to do Oh, that's right. We were going on to do Anna's show and we were we were talking for a few minutes and obviously I knew

108:37who you were but I didn't want I'm a comic too. Like I just didn't so we just shot the for a few minutes and we talked about that a little bit. But my point is that you you use the set of principles that are guiding you right now to do this show are the same principles that you use to defend your art in in that moment. you know, so all of these things, they all come together one way or another in some ways. Um, the the real problem with uh that Mensia thing was that the the art form was being compromised not just by him stealing from other people, but him creating an environment where people were terrified to express themselves. Like I mean, look at that social justice warrior, right? That's the same thing that they've done by jank yelling racist. Now, what have you done? Well, sort of. He was you couldn't express yourself because he would steal those ideas and call them his own. I mean

109:22that's why but there was literally like a signal that people would do where you know like you'd be on stage for 5 minutes you had a 15-minute set and all of a sudden 5 minutes in the light would be on like why is the light on? I have 10 more minutes to go. It's cuz Vincia's in the room and they would let people know. They would flash the light. Incredible. Well it was it was a problem. It was a real problem. It was also the people that were running the comic store were as well as the people that were running these agencies were like the the conversation that I had with my agents when they were telling me that I had to either apologize to Msia or that they were going to drop me. I go, "Do you guys understand what you're doing?" Because you're making a decision right now. You're calling it business. You're making a decision that's going to affect the rest of your life. You're

110:03supporting a criminal and all you sell is art. All you sell is art. That's all you guys do. You don't you don't produce widgets. You guys aren't building cars. You guys are you you're sellers of other people's art. That's what an agent is. And what you have here is a guy who's stealing art and selling it. You have a vampire and you're you're taking this vampire. He will suck the blood off the creative geniuses that you have on your roster. But meanwhile, the opposite happened. Louis CK left them immediately. David Tel left them. Nick Schwartzson left him. People that found out about him went, "Fuck this." Then he left them. So the whole thing was a disaster for Gersh, you know, for for the agency at the time. And you know, they they've really never recovered. I mean, it's it's always that a little bit. I left for for other reason. It was a disaster for them. I mean,

110:52they lost a fuckload of money because of that one conversation that we had over the phone where I would have stayed with them. I'm like, if you want to defend this douchebag, you know, I don't give a This has been my agent for years. You know, I like the guy who I'm not I'm going to name him. He's a good dude. But he was being put in a position by the guy who owned the company that like, "Look, this guy is calling me up saying he demands that that Joe apologize to him and he wants it to be a big deal and like you." I'm like, "I'd rather be homeless." And basically for people to really understand that the reason was because at the time he was a bigger star than you, right? So ultimately that's where the power play was. Yeah. He was on but I was big enough star that I couldn't be hurt by it. I was rich. I'm like, "What are you going to do? I'm I I was on Fear Factor at the time. I had

111:35all this money and I'm like, you can't hurt me. And he tried he tried to get me he got me banned from the comedy store. He tried to get my agency and this is a person, you know, in me where I'm already untouchable in that sense. Like you really can't you really can't dig in. Like what are you going to do? You're going to try though. So if I was a young comic coming up, he would have had some real damage. Yeah, he could have done some real damage to me. Well, I'm sure there's probably untold amount of young comics that he lifted from that you have no idea. Well, a lot of them contacted me while that was going on and some of them didn't want to be named and some of them didn't mind if I named them. But I think honestly that most likely he stole almost everything he did and that he stole it from different sources and changed it around. But you've got that with a lot of comics.

112:21You got that with a lot of a lot of like really shitty comedians make it. And one of the ways they make it is they take other people's ideas and they move them around. just enough. And look, look, even good comics. Look, Robin Williams, who's, you know, has more talent or had more talent in his finger than I probably have in my whole body was well known to steal. I know I know a comic personally, you probably know him too, but I won't name him for the purpose of this, but who Robin stole a bit from, didn't he told him, but then just sent him a check. I think he sent him a $15,000 check. He did that to a lot of guys. Yeah. Well, Robin was much better as a performer than he was as a creative guy, as someone who came up with the ideas. Have you ever heard that the phrase parallel evolution? Has that uh parallel thinking? I heard that. I had a comic when I was working in New York

113:08that I worked with almost every night and he started lifting from people and we all kind of knew it and he did exactly what you said. It was like he would take the premise but then just tweak it enough that every time I'd be watching I'd go can't, you know, like but we all knew. And one night I I finally confronted him. He's still doing stand up by the way and we've since become friends and he's sort of apologized and whatever. And he said to me one night, he goes, "Dave, Dave, don't you know about parallel evolution?" The premise being that we these jokes just evolve over, you know, if you're talking about sort of current event type things, we're all going to a certain amount of it's just going to evolve at the same time. I said, and I said I was about to say his name, but I said uh I said, "Not only are you lifting jokes, you also made up a theory."

113:49Like that's pretty if you could apply that sort of creative thinking to your jokes, maybe we wouldn't be in this problem. And that is part of the problem is that a lot of these people, they they have a self-defeating tendency. And that self-defeating tendency is that they don't they're not willing to put in the work because they're afraid of failure. So instead, they see success and they just duplicate it. And they literally duplicate it in the premise. They duplicate the premises. They duplicate the pathway to getting to the end of the joke. But the one thing they can't duplicate is you. You know what I mean? And that that's at the end of the day that's all we have. Forget whether it's standup or whether it's radio or on air like what you have the thing that at the end of the day they come to you is something that you can't really quantify right like you just people understand a

114:30certain series of things about you that they like. So if the average person well why do you like Rogan? They could lay out a couple things but there's that other thing that just is there. They can't duplicate you. But in the case of a guy like Robin Williams, he can duplicate all the things that you do that people like and that becomes a problem because if he goes on before you, and that was one of the Msia things that he would do, he would steal someone's bit and then bring them on like because the comedy store you tag team, which mean you would go on and you would say, "Thank you very much. Good night. All right, this next comic is, you know," and you'd bring up your friend, right? So no MC kind of. Yeah. No MC at the Comedy Store. and he would bring on guys right after he did their closing bit and he would do it to with them and he would do it because he

115:10had some power, you know, and because the Mexican community is desperately looking for star comedians. I mean, they have uh they have a few of them. I mean, there's like George Lopez was always a big one and Gabriel um Gabriel Glacius is a big one. He's sells out everywhere, but he's a really nice guy. And the difference being that Menio is not really Mexican. That was, you know, it was he was completely concocted. Yeah. And that's what really did him in more than anything. People found out it was a fake name. What? Wait, what was his real his real name's Nedness? Something. And what about what's the other one? Uh the one of the redneck guys for what's his electric bob or the refrigerator s? What the hell is his name? Larry the cable guy. Yeah. And what's his real name? And he's Dan Whitney. And it's like, yeah, but Dan Whitney stealing jokes. I don't

115:54mind someone like Dice Clay's real name isn't Dice Clay. Yeah, it's Andrew Silverstein. I was at a I was at a party a couple weeks ago and and uh Dice was there and I was never a huge huge fan of his but I do remember around whatever that was maybe 89 90 maybe a little later when he sold out the garden and when he was in that you know that year of just insanity I remember watching that and thinking like this is incredible like it was one of the things that really sparked me with standup because even though I didn't love the material and I understood that how stupid the jokes were sort of but I was like the power of this is amazing. Yeah. And so I went up to him at this party and I tapped him on my shoulder and I just said, "Hey, Dave, comic, blah, blah." He was like, "Yeah, good." And then walked away. Like I was like, "Wow." Cuz I've had such good I'm sure you've

116:41had this too when you when you've met comics over the years that you really admire. Yeah. Pretty much every single one that I've ever admired. When I lived on the Upper West in New York, I lived about two blocks away from Seinfeld. So I'd bump into him a lot and he was a little hot and cold, but like basically like there was the comic bond, you know what I mean? Like And I was just Dice was just like he was so over it. That's unfortunate. He's he's become his persona. I like Dice. Well, he's dressed the way friends with him, but you know, he wasn't always that guy. Like that dressing that whole thing that was a character in Andrew Silverstein's act. Yeah. Like the dice man was a guy he would do that was basically Jerry Lewis and the Nutty Professor. Like if you've never seen The Nutty Professor, it's a great movie. And one of the things that's great about it is Jerry Lewis is

117:27like this nerdy guy who takes a potion. It was a potion I think it was. And he becomes this super cool daddyo guy. You know, this is like 19 whatever it was 50 something probably. Yeah, probably. And it's a hilarious movie because, you know, ultimately this guy, you know, becomes this guy that the ladies love and then the potion starts wearing off and he goes back to being his nerdy self again. And Dice is that guy. I mean, that's that's who he is on stage. Well, it was only a part of his act and then it became the best part of his act and then it became his act and then it became him outside. It's like so now you see him walking around the street, he's got the weightlifting gloves on. He's got a gold gym jacket that's it's got all the glitter on it and It's bedazzled. I mean that's he's uh I I I h I'm happy he exists though. I enjoy him. Oh, for sure. And and think about like the fact

118:20that at that if you watch that Madison Square Garden special, which it's all on you on YouTube, you can watch it. People are announcing the jokes before he even finishes the premise. Like that's that was the power. That's where it showed to me the power of standup. Like I always love I remember what got me into standup was I was four years old 198 or six maybe 1983. I saw Bill Cosby himself on HBO and I was on the floor even though I probably didn't even really understand what he was talking about. I thought this was the greatest thing ever. Yeah. You know, you're grown up, by the way, when uh your childhood hero becomes a a serial rapist. Maybe the most successful serial rapist ever of all time. Yeah. Um but that that sparked it in for me. That sparked laughter and and wanting to make people laugh and loving comedy for me. Uh but the dice thing was like, "Holy

119:09this is a real now I understand the show, too." Um, well, his standup was different in that not only did you know the punchline, but the whole audience would sing it like a song. Yeah. So, they wanted to hear the same jokes again, which is very different from other standup. With standup, most of the time you want to hear the new bits. Yeah. That's what people want to hear they haven't heard before. Sure. And I know that even talking about Cosby, it's like hard to do at this point because everyone associates such terrible stuff. But I I did see him live a couple times and one of the most amazing things that I ever saw a comic do ever was that you know everyone knew that whole himself special every comic loved it pretty much. So many from Chris Rock to Seinfeld to a zillion people credit that with like being one of their seminal things and the records and all

119:51that and I saw Cosby maybe 10 years ago in Jersey and he was doing all new stuff and you know it was kind of you know by his last 10 years haven't been that kind to him and even just the way he looks and he's had some health things like just what none of it was that great but then at the end he goes I'm going to do one old bit for you and he said I know you all know it I know you all know it but I'm going to do one old bit for you and he did the dentist routine and everyone knew it, but he was such a master that he was it was like watching him. It was like watching someone with clay because he could take the laughs before they were coming and then just change it enough to keep them going more. And they weren't yelling out the punch lines because it wasn't as you know like didactic or just set as as uh Dice, but like it was it was amazing to watch to do comedy and invent your old

120:39bit that you've now reinvented a thousand times and they know it all and it was like as good as ever. It was it was amazing to watch. Well, his old stuff, I mean, in the time it's and that is a thing that you need to take into consideration when you watch standup is that standup is sort of a it's sort of a time machine. It's a time capsule. And like that's why you can go back and listen to Lenny Bruce, who is arguably the most important standup comic ever, and he's not very funny. Yeah. It's just not it's not very good today. And this is coming from someone who has Lenny Bruce posters framed in his house. And I have Lenny Bruce live at the Fillmore in in my uh my office. I mean the he's in my opinion the most important guy ever. Well, he changed the art. He simply he just tore the thing down. We are not going to do jokes like that. We're going to talk about real And he

121:24opened it for everybody. Yeah. Period. And I think that's often the case with uh a lot of the greats. Like a lot of the old Carlin stuff is in that vein. Like I understand its position in the history, but if you watch it or listen to it today, it's really not that good. Interesting. That's the case with Cosby as well. So So Cosby for well and especially now Cosby has this other thing attached to him that it's it just becomes impossible to remove. It it's so lined up together. Carlin. So, I had Kelly Carlin on this week, who's uh George's daughter, who's a good friend of mine, and we talked a lot. We talked about that and we related it all to everything else we've been talking about here, the social justice stuff and language and words and, you know, being afraid to hear certain ideas and all that. So, it was a really, really interesting conversation and uh I

122:11watched a bunch of Georgia's stuff just in preparation. I've seen it all a thousand times, but I thought actually a lot of it still does stand. some of it. Yeah, the seven dirty words sort of seem ridiculous now in a certain way, but it's still pretty good. Like, and even his last HBO special is perfection. It I I I've asked her this before. He knew his health was failing at the time. I don't think he knew he was uh going to die only a few months later. But in a lot of ways, if you watch it knowing that he perhaps thought it was his last special, it it brings it to a whole other level because he ends it really just wrapping up like wrapping up a 40-year here's what I think about everything. It's it's pure brilliance. Well, he uh did a new special every year, so when you have that much material, you're going to have some hits and some misses. But he certainly had

122:58way more hits than he had misses. Sure. He had he had like a fiveyear I think sort of lull I guess maybe in the mid '9s or something where I thought it became just too much about cursing and whatever. But be beyond that that guy well I think that represented a lull in his life though you know he had some issues in his own life personal life but I what I was referring to was his old stuff. If you go back to when he looked like a weatherman oh you're talking about before he became the car for sure. Yeah. If you go back and put that time capsule and try to like watch that today, it's not really that funny. You know who is really interesting? The old stuff is Woody Allen. Woody Allen's old stuff. First of all, he's a a total pervert in his old stuff. Well, it all sort of leaked. Wow, this is so weird. Yeah. Well, look, it all leaked into his movies like all his strange

123:46sexual stuff and young girls and, you know, daughter, you know, how old was Marielle Hemingway in in Manhattan? She was Well, first off, she played underage and I don't know how old she was. Yeah, I think she was like 17 or so. How old was she? Well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. But yeah, um but comedy isn't in a weird way like here's here's a good example. Uh Eddie Murphy Raw at the time was like this monster standup thing that everybody had to see. Oh my god, I saw it. I was crying. Try watching that today. First of all, you want to talk about homophobic. Not just homophobic, but violently aggressively homophobic. Yeah. Which is really weird when you consider all the allegations that have surfaced since with him and transgender people and transsexuals and picking up hookers that were men. Like it's it's very very strange. Isn't it funny that we try to get Look, who was

124:37it? Oscar Wild said, you know, if you want to tell people the truth, you have to be funny. I think it was Oscar Wild. Maybe it was Lily Tomman. Am I totally It's somebody. I can't remember. I think it's one of them. I don't know how I It's the dice man. I said it. Oh. Um, but you know, it's funny that we try as as a society, like so many of the people that of course that we admire, but that that everyone admire are comedians because we're supposed to tell the truth. We are supposed to tell the truth and then at the same time, comedians are often either the sad clown or severely emotionally crippled or wanting that approval thing before and all the lines that you were talking about and it's a really bizarre place. So then when you get you suddenly get all that approval and then it's like how can you still also grow as a human while you're getting approval for from

125:23something that came out of some dysfunction. Yeah. You know I know this is the endless comedian discussion. Yeah. You have to adjust what why you do it. You know you have to do it for other people instead of doing it for yourself. And you have to do it for the for the art for the work. Yeah. And the work is profoundly enjoyable for people that love standup. It's like if you're a painter and you only paint for yourself. Well, you know, at a certain point in time, you're running out of to paint. You know, when you're painting, I guess expressing yourself for the desires of other people. I think then it becomes different. Yeah. I saw George Carlin uh once just a little bit before he died also on the view and he was talking about the art. Oh, good lord. Poor old man. Poor guy. That probably took years off his life. We maybe still have George today if he didn't make it.

126:05Come to think of it, I think he died that later that day. Um um but he said he said something that I thought was really great. He said, you know, he said, "When I became a good comic was when I got over the need." Yeah. And I think that it's a good lesson for humans in general, just for people, like getting over the whatever the need is of yourself. And we all struggle with this. Of course, I struggle with it as a person and as a comic and a host or whatever it is, like we all have that and and wanting all that approval. But when you can get over that and just and really do things for the right clean reasons and and live in a and at the same time live in a way that honors all those things that you stand up for. I I think that's like the secret. Like that's the that's the sauce. Like that's what we should all be trying to do. And it transcends, you know, profession. It transcends comedy

126:56and it transcends everything pretty much. Yeah. I I think you're I think you're on to it. And I think also that that process of like the need is is it's that's the fuel that gets you off the earth and away from the effects of gravity. And then the momentum of that sort of carries you on, but you don't necessarily have to keep that jet engine fire under your all the time. Yeah. It's But that doesn't that explain sort of like uh why angst and being up or whatever it you know when they say comics are all up or whatever. You need a certain amount of that. Oh, you do to get going. You need it. And for look, I did stand up. Think about this. I did stand up. We've only known each other for whatever it is two hours now. I stand up for about 10 years in the closet now. I was mostly doing political stuff and social stuff. It wasn't like I wasn't like outwardly lying all the time and being

127:47like I this chick and that, you know, like it wasn't like that. But like I constantly was avoiding the truth on stage or if you know if I was getting heckled there were easy ways that I it would in imply that I was straight or and I'm sure time I'm 100% sure there were times that I made it seem like I was straight or something like that. But that that angst and that fuel really made me successful really quick. Like I was passed at the comedy seller like a year into doing standup and then and then a couple years later like it basically all crumbled on me because I realized that my life my person life was way behind where my art was. And then I ended up doing gay shows which is another nightmare because if you're a gay comic they have like one at every club, right? Like there's there's sort of one like stereotypical gay comic and then suddenly I was the gay comic

128:36and I don't act that gay, whatever the hell that means. So, I wasn't even gay enough for them. Then I ended up then I ended up on a gay TV channel on Here TV, which was this like premium gay channel. And then I ended up on the gay channel on Sirius XM. I wanted to talk about politics and instead I was interviewing Real Housewives and, you know, all of that And it had nothing to do with anything I wanted to do. So, everybody's path is is crazy and weird. Well, your path's always going to be crazy and weird because we're human beings. And I think you you've you're on to it as far as like this up aspect of you that needs love so badly. You want to go on stage with a spotlight on you and a microphone that amplifies your voice. Pay attention to me. And then once you get to that position, it's up to you to figure out the trick. Because if you're a mi a magician and

129:29you believe that you're really pulling a rabbit out of a hat, you're an idiot. You know, like you're you're the guy with the trick. And the trick is, you know, your voice is amplified. You're on the stage. You figured out the cadence and the hypnotic rhythm in order to get people to laugh at your stuff, but what what what are you actually trying to do if you're still trying to fill holes? Well, you you missed it, son. That's just supposed to get you to the dance. And once you're at the dance, then it's supposed to be about creating the art. Then it's supposed to be about trying to figure out what is the best way to make something really funny. What is the best way to make something? So, I I contribute to culture. I contribute to people's entertainment value. They go out, they can say, "Hey, Dave Rubin is at the Ice House tonight. Let's go on out and have

130:11a good time." And they they leave there and they go, "That was fun. Oh my god, that was great." And that's the goal. The goal is to you're changing the way people feel. And you can do that with ideas and you got to work them through. But yeah, what gets you to the dance in the first place is your up past, your angst, your insecurities, your all that It's a matter of the people that cling to those things and that never get them never get rid of them, then they make it and they don't know what the to do. So that that's the the really interesting part to me because So I lived on the upper west as I said put this microphone closer to you. You'll hear people will hear it more cuz we can hear each other. Yeah. Yeah. When I get deep I start leaning to my left. Um so I lived on the upper west which is like a bastion of comedians. There's just a zillion comics that live

130:59up there. Seinfeld lived up there and Ela Booler lived up there and Taylor Negron who I met right before he died. Didn't even know I met him just a couple weeks before. He was going to do my show. He was a great guy. Great great great guy and just a Z and a lot of younger comics, whatever. But one I used to see Greg Geraldo all the time. He lived a couple blocks away from me. And so I think you'll find this really interesting. I didn't I didn't know him personally, but he knew I was a comic. We just sort of nod when we were walking by. And uh one day I saw him walking his two kids. He had his two young sons hand in hand and he was walking between them and I thought, "Wow, like that there there's a guy who I respect as a comic. Like doing good He's funny. He's real. You could always tell there was like some pain there, but like doing it, you know, he's getting certain chances.

131:42Like I think he never got like maybe whatever would have been his big chance, but like it he was in the mix and respected." Anyway, then the next day after that, I saw him. I went to Equinox was the gym I went to on the upper west and I saw him there and he was working out and I was like, "Look, there's a guy. I just saw him with his kids. He's working out." Like, it's all seems like it's working for this guy. Like, it actually gave me hope. Like, oh, I can become like a functioning person. That weekend, that weekend he was dead. I mean, but I I don't know enough about him to Well, I know him. And it was it was a pill thing. It was a drug thing, you know, and that's um incredibly unfortunate. I knew him when he had a television show cuz when Greg had he had a show um cuz you know Greg started out as a lawyer and he had a a show on one of the networks. I think NBC I think right? I

132:33don't think so because I was on NBC at the time and I don't think we're on the same network. Okay. Um I think it was ABC but that doesn't matter. What matters is we were on the same lot. We were both on that Sunset Gower lot that I was talking about and we were next door to each other. So I'd hang out with him, you know, we're just fellow comics, you know, and that's the bond that we shared is that, you know, he had a lot more responsibility than me because I was on this giant ensemble where I was, you know, the fifth or sixth person on the when the credits would roll, you know, it would be like Phil Hartman or Dave Foley Mor. So I had no pressure, but he he had the Greg Geraldo show. I don't remember what it was called, but it was it was his show. And uh you know he went from that and then he you know was really a big part of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. There's that great

133:19moment where he shut down Dennis Liry on uh on Tough Crowd. It was like one of my all-time favorite moments on Tough Crowd because uh you know Dennis was getting upset that Greg Geraldo had written jokes. He had funny things to say about certain things. He goes, "Yeah, Dennis, that's what we do. We write. We write jokes." And it was just a classic moment. Dennis is wearing sunglasses. It's inside, right? Like Greg's like in the prime and Dennis is coming in. Like it's just horseshit. Yeah. Um but he he was a guy that I think was really respected by a lot of other comedians and was really good at roasts. And in today's day, you know, I mean, he died a few years back. He probably would be just right now crushing it like Bill Burr is, you know, he right now like be in his stride because I think that what he was doing and what he was was really good. Yeah. But that that goes to that

134:09demons, man. demons. I mean, think about that. Literally, the day before, I'm looking at this guy going, "Holy shit." Like, he's doing it. That pill demon is a different different monster. The the opiate addict, you know, that's a different monster. You know, the the person who does meth or coke or, you know, the people that go hard, that's a totally different monster. Yeah. That scares the out of me, man. I mean, I smoked a ton of pot in my day. Like, that smoked a ton of pot yesterday. Yeah. I got my card a couple weeks ago, actually. Yeah. I went to the 420 doctor on Melrose. You know, you know the 420 to get a prescription, isn't it? I thought you have to go through a battery of tests. Oh my god. It was like a day of like probing and I thought I was being like taken by We're joking. By the way, folks, you have to be a idiot to not get a prescription. So, I

134:54could not believe how easy it was. I mean, I I could I went in I literally I was like, "Ah, well, I guess like I just wanted weed to smoke weed. I don't have any real physical ailments." But I was like, "I'll tell him I would get headaches, so my knees hurt after I play basketball, back pain." I mean, the woman looked at me like, "Shut the up." You know, and then I went into I had never been to one of the stores, one of the dispensaries. Went in there for I I still can't believe I've only been there a couple times now, but I can't believe like just the level of it's a real salesperson, you know, and candy and edibles and oil, you know, she wanted oils and uh uh so there's oils. What else? A wax. I was like, "Do you have any weed in weed form? Like, is there any is that it left anymore? Like just some buds?" So, I got I got oil, though. It's all there's it's available.

135:39But yeah, the problem is once you uh once you go down to the first floor, you want to go, "Well, is there a basement down there?" Yes, there is a basement. What's that door in the basement? Ooh, that's the subb. Yeah. Let's look in the subb. And then you start going deep and next thing you know, you're in a spiral staircase. How much pot do you smoke? Um, I smoke a fair bit depending upon whether or not I'm at the comedy store or not. I I enjoy getting high and going to the comedy store. Uh, I like to get high before I do jiu-jitsu. I like to get high before I give the misses a stabbing. I like to get high before I get in isolation tank. Isolation tank. I want to talk about that. I need to do that. I like I I I enjoy marijuana. It's one of my friends. So I Yeah, I could tell you're whole. I mean, you lit up. It was I like it. It's great. And you know, also also I like the fact that I

136:26represent the opposite of the stereotype, you know? Right. You're doing Yeah. Well, I don't buy it. I don't buy that marijuana makes you lazy. I think you're lazy. I think you could be lazy and and eat Cheetos. Does that mean Cheetos make you lazy? You could be lazy and watch TV. Does that mean TV makes you lazy? I don't buy it. I think we're looking for some reasons why people have flaws in their personality. And I don't think you could say it's marijuana. Does marijuana have all good aspects to it? No. Like many things, it's it has good and bad. The bad thing is the memory. You know, the memory thing is a bad thing. Like what what were we talking about? But that's fleeting, you know, like long-term memory, my long-term memory is fantastic. It has to be because with the UFC, look, I have a a bio when I do the UFC, which uh will tell me like a fighter record, tell me who they're

137:14training with, and tell me. But when the matches are going on, I'm not leafing through papers. If I start talking about a fight that happened seven years ago in another organization, it's because it's in my head, you know? And when I talk to people and they're like, "What kind of preparation do you do?" I'm like, I don't I'm not doing any preparation. The preparation that Well, I am, but I'm not. The preparation that I'm doing, I would do anyway. I want to watch their fights because I know they're coming up. So, I'll watch their if I need to know about some of their training methods. But those those are things that I will do because I'm curious about I want to I want to broaden my understanding of what their preparation is that because I want to enjoy the fight more and I enjoy the fight more if I do that and then I express that. But all that stuff is off memory. It's

137:55there. Yeah. So when I'm doing like how much how many notes do you have in front of you that I write? Zero. I don't of any. So if you hear me talking about old matches and stuff like that, all that is in my head. So I have to have good memory. And if I really thought that pot was with that, I would stop smoking pot. But it doesn't. But it'll with like what we just talking about, you know, that it'll do that. Well, you think Twitter's doing that, too? I'm I'm a firm believer in that. That all of these things and having this phone constantly that that's fraying. I mean, I'm talking really just splitting and disintegrating people's memory and and especially short-term memory. I see on my show all the time now comics or anyone will be on just talking about anything and suddenly they forget what they're saying. I'm not talking about 70-year-old people. I'm

138:34talking about 30-year-old people. You know, there used to be a time if you were going to meet a buddy out for or you're going to meet a girl for a drink or something, you're waiting on a corner and she's going to be and she's 5 minutes late, you'd have to stand there and just Yep. and wait think about some and look at the sky and the people watch and whatever. But now you immediately do this. And not only do you immediately do it, you can immediately scroll and see and approval, approval, approval, approval. Oh, they love me. They love me, they hate me, they love me, whatever it is. And all of that, and it goes to what we started with this whole thing about and six-second videos and all of this And this bounceback of why people like this now is because all of this I really think is is they've done studies where it's actually rewiring synapses and all of this stuff. It's changing people's

139:18brains. Uh, and that's the internet is actually having a physical effect on us. That's not just our necks are hung over. And that neck thing is real, man. They're worried that people are going to like older people of our generation and before are are going to have real issues with their neck cuz they're always looking down. Yeah. And that in looking down like that, you're stretching the ligaments and stretching your your neck and putting pressure on your discs. I feel it. I feel even when I'm holding my iPad, I feel like I've done something to my pinky. Like my pinky has like a little I'm not kidding. Like I've got like two little indentations here cuz I'm holding this thing all the time like this, you know? I mean really people you do all kinds of weird you know how if you're writing I'm a lefty so like uh if I'm writing like I have a little indentation on my index finger because

140:01the pen is always laying there like you actually can physically change your body by some of this technological unquestionably I used to have uh from writing from drawing I used to have a big callous on the inside of my you finger a little extra well it was not it was not that but I mean it's just from I drew like hours and hours every Hey, when I was young and I always had these like big calluses all over there and they've all gone away now. It's interesting how that happens. But you got to start drawing again. Yeah, maybe. But the neck thing is a real real concern. The eye things got me. I mean, obviously, uh, your eyes degenerate as you get older. That's an thing about close vision. But with me, I I think it's got to be connected at least somewhat to staring at screens. I know that's bad for you. Focusing on any short term, like something that's really close to you. Mhm. And um who the

140:51was it that was on the podcast that referred to it as like a cast? I don't remember who it was. Oh, it was uh shortterm memory. Who is um uh who sleeps on the ground? Remember the chick who uh she doesn't sleep on beds and she's got this interesting Kathy is her name Kathy? Um what Jamie will find it. But anyway, the way she described it was she was saying that when you're staring Kathy Bowman. Yep. Yeah. Katie Bowman. Katie Bowman. Thank you, Katie Bowman. She that she said when you're staring at one distance all the time, like the distance between your face and your laptop or your face and your phone is that your your eyes are supposed to look at close things and far things and and look at this broad range of distances and instead you're only looking at something right in front of your face and it with literally the shape of your eye. Yeah. That it's your your your

141:45body doesn't know what the to do. I mean, think about it. Our grandparents or even our parents, when my dad was born, there was no such thing as television. I'm 39 years old. That's insane, right? So, our grandparents had no screens. They didn't even have radio, right? Radio had just maybe started, whatever it was. When did radio start? Give me early, right? Okay. So, my grandparents were probably World Wars. Was that 1920s? Yeah. So, I mean, really think about that. how we've ch in a hundred years and as you were talking about earlier about how the internet's going to change us and and we're learning so much more faster and all that that now it's so involved in this digital I mean it's the matrix is becoming real like ultimately we're just the batteries for these things to keep going you know like there we're just putting information we're putting

142:33whatever our spirit is whatever whatever you want to call that is just the battery for this digital thing to exist do you know who Marshall McLuhan I don't think so. Was a fascinating thinker and author from like the 50s and 60s I think it was and he he was a part of uh he was a part of the counterculture in a lot of ways. A lot of people quote him but one of the things that he said about this is technology before computers. He said human beings are the sex organs for the machine world. The idea that we we exist to create these machines. And I I firmly believe that what we're doing is we are some sort of a technological caterpillar and we're giving birth to a new life form. I really really believe that. And I think that Elon Musk and what he said about summoning the demon in the form of artificial intelligence, I don't think that's off at all. I think there's going

143:26to come a time whether it's a hundred years or a thousand years, human life and this biological the biological limitations of our own cellular bodies, it's going to be ridiculous. We're we're going to we're just going to get rid of them. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's going to be that long. 100 or forget a thousand. We're going to be long gone from this this earth. But I don't even I don't even think people won't be around a thousand years. Uh I think we'll have I think No, I think a lot of people are probably going to die here on our dying planet. And you know, rich people mainly are going to be able to escape with with spaceships. Yeah. We're gonna go to where we going? We're going to Well, I guess we've given up on the moon, right? Now, you know, we're going to but we're going to go we're going to find something we are going to find something that has some of the basic building

144:10blocks of life like Earth. You know, look, you know, Carl Sean, our our our sun is not spectacular by any stretch. And we know that there's billions and billions of suns in this galaxy, in this universe, you know, that whole thing and it endlessly extrapolates. And all we are are just a tiny rock with that had the right distance from the sun and the right amount of chemicals to make all this happen. We're going to find something that's going to be similar to this, but maybe it'll it'll all be 10 degrees hotter and because of that, everything will have evolved slightly differently. Or maybe, you know, you could pick like I love Star Wars. You could pick any of those planets, you know, like it just evolved differently. There'll be a planet that's all, you know, mostly water and we'll have to eventually learn how to deal with that. Unless the guys get here first and kill

144:52us. That's possible, too. That is possible. But I think that our own biological limitations, our own organisms are so acutely adapted to this environment, to the environment of planet Earth, that it would be insanely difficult for us to colonize another planet. Insa insanely insanely problematic when it comes to dealing with whatever life is already there, dealing with the environment, dealing with that. It's be better to just fix this spot. Like I hope this spot's falling apart. Like we're like we have a a shitty old car and we're like let's just abandon it and leave it on the lawn and uh move to the neighbor's house. I mean that's really the idea, but the neighbor's house is on fire all the time and uh it gets pelted with asteroids. I think we're going to put all of our effort into flying to some other planet and on the way there their sun's going to supernova and then

145:44we're going to blow up in the middle of space and all all hope will be lost. That's what I think. Wow. I've been feeling so inspired by this conversation and now you've people back here on Earth are just going to regroup and go you know what let's stop trying to go to space and just clean the ocean. Yeah. I I really think our something about humans something about look right now like even if we cut and again I'm not a scientist but even if we cut our greenhouse gases here in America and we do all this stuff India these developing nations China they're going through what we went through 60 years ago. So when we have the UN meet and try to get everybody to come up with uh you know numbers that we're going to allow to put out this much smog and this much all this it's like what right do we have to tell them not to do everything they can to advance just the

146:30way we did 50 years ago. So no matter so it's funny and I live in West Hollywood. There are no plastic bags, right? And they don't even want to give me a paper bag at Trader Joe's anymore. You know, you have to pay for it. You have to pay for it. So I mostly just pay for paper bags at this point. They hate me too because I never bring my own bag. I'm a badass. I pay that 10 cents for that bag. They hate you for that. You see it in their eyes? Yeah, you can see it. The judgment. The horrible judgment. I need those paper bags. I use the paper bags. I know. I put my recycling in them. Yeah. Well, that's also how I I light the fire when I use my grill. I stuff the paper bag underneath the little charcoal chimney. That's what I use. Yeah. Well, they'd hate you for that. Oh, them. Um, short-sighted Yeah. There. Anyway, the I I just think the the Earth I I don't know.

147:12I don't know. I think 100 years it'd be hard for me to believe that things could still be going on around here. Well, a 100 years ago you'd be amazed at what progress has taken place socially. You'd be amazed. I mean, think about that. Think about 1865 was the last time that slavery was legal, right? Think of that. Think how that's not a long time ago. That's not a long time ago. You know, that's almost a hundred years exactly from when I was born. I was born in ' 67. So 102 years later, I was born after slavery. That's nothing. 100 years is not that much time. I think that a thousand years from now, who the knows what kind of technological capabilities we're going to have as far as our ability to not just not create waste, but to use up all the waste that we have created and use it in a positive way. Just because you burn gasoline, it creates pollution. It doesn't mean

148:01that's the only way you can get energy. And just because pollution is in the air, carbon dioxide is hitting record levels, it doesn't mean that can't be maintained or regulated. I think there's got to be a way that people can figure out how to live sustainably. If it's possible to live sustainably in a small community, it's possible to live sustainably globally. So, when you do it for yourself, like when you hunt for your meat and you were telling me you have chickens before, when you when you do all that stuff, do you feel that you're doing it for yourself or you're doing it for your community or is it 5050? Zero. I'm I'm being totally honest. Zero for my community, zero for the earth. I'm just thinking, what's the best way? This is just my my intent going in. I understand that it's better for the earth, but my intent going in is like I don't want to rely on other

148:47people for my food. I don't want to rely on some farmer to not shove antibiotics and hormones into food. I want to be able to eat clean, healthy food. Also, ethically, I don't want to be a part of the factory farming system. I think when I watch these YouTube videos, these peeta videos on how they raise pigs and cows and it's it's it's evil. I'd rather shoot a wild pig. I'd rather I'd rather eat moose, you know? I think it's better for you, too. The protein wise, the protein content of elk and moose is far higher than the protein content of beef. It's better for you. You can eat smaller portions. You get more out of it. I just for me, it it gives me a better feeling. I know where everything came from. When I eat a steak that I cut from an elk myself, that is such a different feeling than when you go to the supermarket and you get something of ambiguous origins in a

149:40plastic wrapped container and you just take it home, you cut open the plastic and you slap it on the grill and I'm out here grilling like a man. So, you know, at Trader Joe's that when you get just chop meat from Trader Joe's, it comes from four different countries. They have four countries of origin on it for beef. for beef go right now countries really. Yeah, you could Google maybe we can Google it the that it it's coming from you know United it's something like the United States, Canada, Mexico and then like something that we're not even geographically connected to and then I guess they package it all here. But think about that like you know how we're so disconnected from our food that when you eat a freaking burger from Trader Joe's it came from four country. I'm not making this up. We I believe you. I didn't think I wouldn't think you were making it up, but I shouldn't say I'm

150:30surprised because if it's cheaper to do it that way, that's how they're going to do it. And Trader Joe's is known for having, you know, fairly inexpensive food. I shouldn't say cheap because it's all good, but like um Whole Foods, one of the things that I like about Whole Foods, people say Whole Foods is expensive. It is expensive. It is expensive, but they'll show you like the farm where the beef is being grown and you can choose how you want it. like you can choose like I did uh Bourdain's show the other day where uh we're hunting feeasants in Montana for an upcoming episode and we were talking about steak and he was like you know what I everybody says oh you have to have grass-fed grass-fed he goes I like a fatty steak he goes I like steak that's uh that eats corn I think I think it tastes better in a lot of ways but they give you options right they give you

151:14that tiered system shows you exactly where the meat is coming from how it's there's a photo of the farm Like they show you the farm where these things are being raised and and it's more expensive to eat sustainable food. It is it's more expensive. These hunts that I go on, those aren't cheap, you know, and it's the effort is way more. I mean, if I if I shoot an elk, it's going to take me five or six days to put it all together to to get one. And then you have to process the meat and carry it and freeze it. And do you do all of that or do you have people I assume you have somebody helping you? Depends. On some of them, I've done all of it. And on some on on other ones, if I'm traveling, I'm flying, what I can do is do a lot of it and then bring the remaining pieces, I'll quarter it and bring the quarters to a meat processor and ask them to turn into steaks or turn it into sausage or

152:02have things like that done. But the big cuts like the the back straps and the tenderloins and stuff like that, I do all that myself. The heart and the liver, I cut all that stuff out myself and then I I bring it with me. I freeze it. You know, if you want to see how crazy the the food system is, also you could check, you know, there's so many documentaries on this, but the amount of laws that we have that protect the factory farming from simple things like having cameras in where the chickens are, illegal, the things that Purdue is getting away with. I always think Purdue to me is like the the the worst of the worst. Because if you watch their commercials, this goes to what we're talking about with the with the drugs and the happy people during the day and then they're having diarrhea and killing each other, whatever. Like the the the Purdue commercials, you got this guy

152:45come out. He's a hanging out with chickens. You know, he's talking to them. Oh, there's Bernardet. And they still have those. Yeah, they still do all that stupid He or sometimes it's a cartoon and he walks in and good morning. What he doesn't say is that he just he's about, you know, it's like a holocaust going on in there. He's killing all the chickens and he's going to kill them. But we have somehow it like that's how marketing is so crazy. We don't let cameras in to watch them rip the beaks off and burn not let them in. It's illegal. It's so think about that. You can get arrested. What does that have to do? Why would the government Why would our government that's supposed to have our uh best interest at heart, right? I guess that's what government's supposed to have. Uh why would they pass that kind of law? There's a lot of money to be made. Exactly. If you want to go to General

153:30Motors and you want to film them putting together a Camaro, of course, they don't give a Cool. They love it. They Yeah. Look at what Look at take on a tour. Yeah. This is how we do it. Why? Because no babies are getting crushed while they're making Camaros. But if you want to go to a pig farm and film it, you can go to jail. Like these are new laws that have been passed because of whistleblowers. And uh those laws are evil. That's evil. You They should be transparent 100%. You should be able to know exactly where your food is coming from. There's only one way to do that. Yeah. I mean, we've done so many things between feeding these animals all sorts of that they shouldn't be eating. Have you ever drove up I think it's a five if you're driving up towards like San Francisco and you pass Harris Ranch. So, Harris Ranch, I think if I'm not mistaken, it's the largest

154:17uh meat producer in the United States or the largest meat producing ranch in the United States. And when you pass it, they call it cowwitz. I mean, that's how there is so much. It stinks of death. I mean, pure death, right? You you smell that for a good mile or two. You can see it in the air. You see these dirty animals that can barely move. I mean, I love meat. On my Twitter from last night, I had grass-fed steaks cooked on a Himalayan salt plate. I love meat, right? But after that, I was like, Jesus, like, this is serious. That's that's when I got on at least doing the grass-fed free range thing. I was like, I can't be part of this, but I know it's about money. Well, it's not just about money. It's about volume. Like, when you have a community of 20 million people like Los Angeles and none of them are growing their own food, they're going to need food. And where's that food going

155:07to come from? It's going to come from somebody else that grows that food. And well, how are they going to grow that food? They're going to grow that food in the most cost effective and efficient way possible, which means stuff these animals into these cages. Unless you demand something different. And well, if you do demand something different, you're gonna have a higher price because then these companies aren't going to be making much money. So, they're gonna have to charge more money for the meat and then people can't afford it and then it becomes a problem. But if you want to be able to go to In-N-Out Burger or In-N-Out is not a good example because it takes a little time. But like Jack in the Box, pull in, get a a a groundup beef sandwich within 30 seconds. Yeah. Like there's only one way to do that, you know? You got to do it with a massive factory. You have to

155:46be churning these out, hanging them by their ankles and putting pest piston, you know, through their brain every 30 seconds. I mean, that's that's got to be chunk chunk chunk chunk. You got to be constantly whacking them out because there's so many people that are hungry. Yeah. How do you think we get people to wake up on this? Cuz we do we cover we cover it on my show sometimes. It's one of the things that I bring on Cara to talk about our food sources and the way that these, you know, you we're eating sick animals and then we wonder why we're sick. Like it's all of course it's all connected. You open up a thing of meat and it's gray. Why is it gray? Why would you put that in your old Yeah. Why would you put that in your body? But this is one of those things. It's like our our the level of our discourse in America and the level of the nonsense on cable news and they can keep us

156:29distracted with Kim Davis issues and they can keep us distracted just with all of this nonsense. And I don't think it's necessarily like some big conspiracy of keeping us distracted as much as it it's what we are as humans is this endless distraction. There's just this endless distraction and you got to pill for some truth out of it. You got to pill for some way to find something that works for you. So I don't know that they can ever fix it because it's we're we're just in it. We're just I don't even know if it's an endless distraction. I think that life has too many variables. It's almost impossible to consider all the variables. Are you going to build your own shelter? Are you going to figure out your own electricity? You going to run your own wires? Are you going to fix your own washing machine? You going to build your own washing machine? You know what?

157:12What? Where you going to get it? Where you going to get the parts? How you going to forge the metal? It's like there's so many things involved with living a comfortable, healthy life in 2015 in a city that I mean, are you going to be responsible for all aspects? Are you just is it just going to be food sourcing? What about sewage? What about waste disposal? What are you going to do about all that stuff? You gonna you gonna look into that or you just going to like flush your down the toilet and hope the guy at the other end knows what to do? I mean, that's essentially what it boils down to. This super complicated civilization that has been created. You could say we've created, but it's we're we're riding on the momentum of the people that came before us. And those people that came before us oftentimes didn't know what the they were doing. Didn't plan for the

157:53future. Certainly didn't think that. I mean, when I was a kid, okay, in the the 1970s, there was like a hundred million less people in this country. Think just think about that. Think about the numbers between like 1975 and 2015. There's more than I think it's more than 100 million more people just in this country. The baby boomers had all those kids. It's insane. And then there's India that's exploding population of China. massive population to the point where they're they're trying to limit the amount of babies that people have. I mean, we we live in a very very strange time in that people are awakening to all the problems that have been created by this massive amount of people and this incredible need for resources. But at the same time, you're working 8 hours a day plus plus commuting plus hobbies plus sexual needs and entertainment needs and friendships and every pull and

158:52push and oh well you've got to have civic responsibility. Guess what, Dave Rubin? We need you for jury duty. You can't catch up. You can't catch up. And we we we operate on this constant momentum with very little quiet time. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I love. Yeah. Goes to this thing. That's what I love the most about the sensory deprivation tank is that I get that quiet time that you don't get, you know, I get I get time for reflection. How often How often are you doing it? Well, I have it in my house. Oh, man. So, I do it all the time. Wow, that is really cool. Yeah, you I think everyone should do it just to try just to feel what it's like to just be alone with your thoughts cuz it's the only time you're actually alone with your thoughts cuz you're not your body isn't even registering. Is there a lock on that thing? No, I I would be freaking out the

159:36entire time. Why would it be locked? Well, I know, but it doesn't make sense. But like, would there be some reason that it could lock? Yeah. I There's not even a latch. There's not even a latch. There's no There's not a door handle or anything. It just pushes open and pushes closed. And how long do you go in there for? As long as I want. Usually at least an hour usually. Really? But sometimes two hours. I know. For the first like 20 minutes of being in there, I'd be like, "Is this thing locked? Did I get locked?" Like it would be a lot. Even if I was alone, you know what I mean? I would just be fearing. That's funny. Yeah. You'd get used to it. It's like everything else. It's not scary at all. It's relaxing. What does one of those run you? It's expensive. You can get a cheap one for like Well, I think there's a company called Zen Float that makes a a small personal one that

160:15Duncan has in his house. And I think that one is still fairly expensive, but it's like 1,500 bucks. I got the top-of-the-line Bad Mama jama float lab version, which is like 30 grand. Wow. You know, they're really expensive. But mine is 7 feet tall and 9 ft wide and it looks like a meat locker. It's It looks like a gigantic freezer that you step into. But it's perfect. It's I'd like to see the compound that you live on. I feel like there's a lot of cool between the chickens and the deprivation. Yeah. Like a lot. And there's elk body part. Yeah. Yeah. Have a full archery range. Goes out to 100 yards in my yard. Rubber pigs and rubber elk and rubber. I have a uh I have an IKEA couch outside. Did you build it yourself? Did you hire someone? No. No. I built it. I don't want to I don't want to brag, but it's an L. It's pretty pretty sweet. I was reading this thing that was uh they were talking

161:02about uh people they experience more satisfaction in the ownership of things like IKEA because even though it's not like good furniture, it's not like the best furniture. The fact that they put it together themselves gives them a sense of satisfaction that I think we're kind of missing in part of our our culture. Like someone who built their own house and built their own furniture and they sit in their own house, their own furniture probably gets like a deep feeling of satisfaction about that. Well, I can tell you as someone that has almost all IKEA, you know, it's funny. I It's taken I started I'm 39. I started standup in uh right when I got out of college 98 had radio shows. Like it's been a long a long journey. I finally for the first time in this past, it's really in the past six months and only in the last couple months that I really feel like I'm sort of on the other side

161:48for the first time. And I know that that feeling never goes away and I probably just jinxed it. Other sideway. Well, the other side meaning like I feel like I'm I'm here somewhere like I'm in this. You got a career. Yeah. Like I Yeah. Like I really have something and know what I'm saying and know what I'm doing and being rewarded for it um you know financially and personally and by my audience and stuff. But I'm not rolling in dough by by any stretch. I'm not I don't make six figures, but like but I'm I'm doing good, right? You're not scared. I'm not. Yeah. And but the fear it's always there. It doesn't, you know, the fear factor, so to speak. It's I think it it probably never leaves the I I have a friend of mine who's on a huge sitcom. She's making a boatload of money. And she talks to me about it all the time that like she's like, "It could be gone tomorrow." Yeah. And then what? Then

162:30what am I left with? So I have some money now, but like you know, what am I left with? Um, but I do aspire my my house is pretty much 90% IKEA. Like I want to get to 100. No, I want to get to the point when there's No, I want to get to 10% IKEA. You know what I mean? Like my couch is IKEA. My bed is IKEA. My futon's IKEA. The in my kitchen is IKEA. Like it's that would be to me success. Success. Like designer furniture. Well, because the IKEA couch more than anything is is painful. Not good. It's not good. That might be why my neck hurts. It's not cuz of my eye. Could be that as well. Yeah. But that but but you know, like I'm joking, but also like there's a lot of truth in that. Like that I feel like it sort of started working. And I was just looking around my place the other day like maybe the next phase will be like a little bit more something. Well, I feel like it's a

163:23rabbit hole. You have you have to be really careful whether you step in because it will suck your time up. Yeah. You know, like this this hunting thing has sucked my time up. if I went into the manufacturing my own furniture thing, like cutting my own wood and milling it. And so, and unfortunately, I have friends that are professional woodworkers, you know, I I know like that it is possible to learn all that stuff and then build furniture. You could do it, but then you'd have to say, "Okay, well, am I going to weave my own cloth to cover this furniture?" Are you in your own butter? I mean, what are we talking about? Am I going to use the elk that I kill for the leather that covers the couch? And I'm gonna have to kill quite a few animals to populate my house. The whole thing would be a blood bath. It would be nuts. It's a lot of work. Yeah, it's a lot of work. Or am I

164:06gonna, you know, get one of them crazy Indian weaves, you know, where you like have the yarn, you pull it through and you push it down and make your own cloth. Yeah. It's a lot of work. Do you feel like you're there? That that place that place on the other side where you've sort of built what you wanted to build and and your life and your work and all of it is sort of lined up. Do you feel there? Um, no. I don't think I don't think like that. Yeah, I don't think like that when I ask you that specifically. I don't worry about money. Yeah, I don't worry about money, but um I worry about work in in that I want to make sure that everything I'm doing is good. Whether it's podcasts or whether it's standup or whether it's uh doing my commentary, I always want to make sure that I'm not doing bad stuff and that if I if I have done something that's not that good, I make sure that that doesn't

164:51happen ever again or that if it does happen again, I learn from that one too and then it gets better even there. So, there's that. Like it's not like I got to pay my bills. But I do remember that feeling bad. And I also remember the moment that that went away, how free it was. Like uh I got a development deal when I was like um I don't know how many years in the comment, but it's like 93 and I got a big check from Disney of all people and uh all of a sudden I didn't have to worry about how I was paying my rent. All of a sudden for at least the next year or so or a couple years it was paid and I there was like this silence like this weight just literally a physical weight felt like it lifted off my shoulders. And then I thought about it and I said man you know what some people never get to that place. They live their life from cradle to the grave constantly under the

165:40pressure of bills check to check and that that freedom of not worrying about your bills is massive. And people trip themselves up by putting themselves in debt and by getting it over their head, giving themselves a bunch of that they don't need, then they have to pay for it or they buy it on credit. Then they have to don't worry, I'll I'll figure out a way. And that that pressure is overwhelming for people. Yeah. And that when that pressure went away, it was replaced by the pressure to try to do good stuff, to try to do things that I could be proud of, to try to do things where But weren't you doing that already? Yeah, but I was trying to do it and I was worried about making money at the same time. And as soon as the worry about making money kind of goes away, yeah, then you're you're left with a pure sense of why you're doing it. So, isn't that for all the things

166:28that now we put out there, podcast, video, audio, all that stuff, owning your brand, all the all the things that you do. It's sort I know I hate it, too, but own your brand. You've done amazing things with your branded brand. When people say that, I want to run from them. Yeah. How do you manage your brand? Somebody asked me to do a seminar on that really recently. Well, you're not worried about money, so I guess you didn't have to. Pretty good. I don't think you make much money in those seminars. Yeah, seminars pay. You know who who gets money? The people that run the seminar. They get money. They're doing they're the pimps. I'm sorry. Yeah. No. Uh but that that's the beauty of all this stuff. So, you you built this whole thing and then you're free. You you answer to yourself. Yeah. you know, and this is a very unique time for people like us because finally all of

167:10this exists so that we can control our destiny, you know, and I'm I'm attached to a network or has been really good to me as you said at the beginning. They let me do whatever I want. I mean, literally, they sat me down the day before the show started. An executive who I had never met in person before said he's like, "I have one thing to say to you. Make the show you want to make, not the show you think we want you to make." What is your show on? What is it on now? So, we're on Aura TV, which is Larry King's digital network. Larry King has his own digital network. Larry King with partners with Carlos Slim. You know, Carlos Slim is They say no, he's he's even richer than that guy. They say he's the rich he is either the richest or second richest man in the world. He's a Mexican telecom billionaire. Yeah. He partly owns the New York Times now and a bunch of other stuff. So they're they're

167:52part digital network and part production company. So William Shatner has a show there. Jesse Ventura has a show. Um does it pay? Well, um I mean, as I said, I'm not I'm not I'm not making six figures. I'm not I'm not making six figures. Um but they let me do whatever I want. Larry King, he's almost dying. Come on, cash. Oh. Oh, come on. Release the hounds. Yeah, he's been very good to me. You know what I'll tell you? Whatever. I'll tell you what. I want to hear better numbers. Uh believe me, I want to hear better numbers, too. But actually, this is the first deal that I ever had my agent close for me. And because I'd always done, even my Sirius XM deals I did by myself and my podcast deals, I'd always done everything. And when my agent did this, it was I didn't realize how hard it was going to be for me to let go and be like, "Oh, I'm supposed to trust you to actually do a deal." Oh,

168:42yeah. And that that was really hard for me to actually say, you know, but that's but that's how you mature in this thing. You got to Well, you got to have a good agent. You know, I told you my issue that I had with the agent when the Mia thing went down, how horrible that was. But I've had the same manager, scrub. I was just a kid in my early 20s. Didn't know what the I was doing, but I was able to since I was an open micer. Wow. That's where I got really lucky. My manager, he found me in Boston when I was make people laugh and he saw something that he thought and we worked together ever since. And we've been he's one of my best friends. He's a great friend. Yeah. So, but a manager, a manager could be people, I think people always confuse sort of the manager agent thing. A manager really is sort of like in a lot of respects should be your friend and your guru and your sort of,

169:29you know, helping you down that road. The agent is getting you gigs, but sometimes they're not. I mean, I have friends that have just really up relationships with their managers and and when you're not doing well, the manager can be a real and hard to get on the codependent relationship. Wait, you're saying the people in this town can be fair weather friends? That is insane. Exactly. I can't believe we're Listen, we're almost out of time, but I really before we leave, I have to talk to you about one thing that you told me that I think is and when you do start doing well, then you they're your buddy. Like, it's an incestuous weird very strange codependent relationship. Wait, you're saying the people in this town can be fair weather friends and not as we're Listen, we're almost out of time, but I really before we leave, I have to talk to you about one thing that you

170:11told me that I think is incredibly fascinating. You came out literally the to someone for the very first time the day before September 11th. The night it was it was about midnight of September 11th. So meaning September 10th it had just rolled into September 11th. The first person I ever came out to a brilliant comic who you've never heard of and I don't even know what happened to him. This guy Mike Singer was one of the best comics that I ever knew. We worked for years together. This guy was wickedly funny. I think he lives in Colombia now or something. Not doing standup. Anyway, he was gay and he was so I in a way I was ahead of my time in terms of being out as a comic. That doesn't necessarily play into every stereotype and all that. This guy was really ahead of it because he was 15 years older than me and had done it already. Anyway, we were in the Times

170:58Square subway. I was going back. I lived on the Upper East at the time. I was walking to the uh shuttle thing to go to get on the east side and I had I was just a complete mess. It it's it's incredibly hard to live one life, right? Like to live one life on this planet is is a hard thing. Try living two at the same time. And that's what I was doing because I had my life that everyone knew. And then I had this secret life where I was out, you know, hooking up and and it was I was lying to people constantly even though I I never intended to lie. I would be somewhere and I'd bump into a friend and I'd be with a guy, a gay person, and I could just, oh, that's my cousin. Like it just it was incredible. I I never really I mean this I never intended to lie to people or it just became this really horrible game of cat and mouse and I was depressed and I was smoking a lot of pot

171:50and all this Anyway, um and then when it when it really so as I said to you earlier, you know that that it was the fuel for good comedy for a long time and then eventually it just started sputtering. It was like I wasn't happy. I wasn't full. I was and couldn't bring those things to the stage anymore and just my life was a disaster. Anyway, uh about midnight, just 8 hours before the first plane hit, I'm in this Times Square subway station with my friend. I told him I was gay. I don't think he realized, even though this guy knew me for years, I don't think he realized that I I don't think I said, "Oh, you're the first person I'm telling." or something like that. like I just said it and we just we talked for two or three minutes and he's like, "All right, I'll I'll talk to you later this week or something and I go home and I woke up and I turned on the TV and

172:38America's under attack." And I kid you not, like I was smoking a lot of pot time. I was not mentally right like I wasn't I I remember probably a few weeks before that I was walking to the subway and by living two lives I felt I felt like a crazy person. It's hard to describe. The only way I could describe it was I remember walking uh down Second Avenue and it looked like all the buildings were shaking. Like I was I felt centered. Like I was okay. But literally it felt like the world was being ripped apart. That was like the the level of disconnect I had with reality at that point. Like you know what I mean? Like if you can't express your love properly, if you can't, you know, that's why a lot we started this whole thing talking about all these guys that are jacked and working out all the time and whatever. It's like, that's why I said it's very sad to me because these are people who

173:26could not express a very human thing in a proper way. So, they end up acting out at 45 in a way that they should have acted when they were 15, you know, or they're partying and having a great time. Milo Yiannopoulos, what do you have against meth? Well, Milo, who you had on a couple weeks ago, and I had him on the day or two after. I mean, we argued about that. me as the liberal, the gay married liberal who's for that traditional thing, and him as the off-the-wall British gay conservative who's against gay marriage because he wants to talk about drugs and partying and sex and whatever. So, it's that's why I love talking to him in all honesty. And I really enjoy talking to Milo. He's trolling in so many different ways simultaneously. Well, he's winking at you the entire time. Exactly. That's the audience. I think the audience is aware of it. And if he was sitting right

174:11here, he would The audience isn't aware of it, I don't think. Well, these people are idiots. Um, but anyway, so you So I woke up and I I kid you not, Joe. I kid you not. I thought it had something to do with me. I thought we were like the world was attacked or we were under attack because that I finally expressed this thing that I this secret that I had had for that it's so bad that that being out caused the world to collapse. Yeah, I know that even saying that now, I've only told this publicly maybe twice. Like it sounds completely insane. And it's that was and it is insane, but like that's where my head was at. And and interestingly after that, the way I dealt with coming out was I would tell someone and then I would get this little burst of feeling better. I would suddenly cuz you I was like constricting my heart. And when I would tell someone, it would it would open up a little and

175:02I'd feel better and I could I really could feel like I could breathe better, like really felt better. And then I would wait until that pressure would start building again. Sometimes I would wait months and then I would tell someone. And then I would do this over the course of like two years. And then eventually I realized I was like, you know, every time I tell somebody this thing that I think is horrible and they're pretty much okay and I feel better, I was like, I got to end this. It's time to end this now. And that's that's basically when I told the remaining people and and that was it. It's a weird secret because the people that do care, that don't like it, they're not worth knowing. And nobody literally nobody nobody that I told you know my dad struggled for a little bit or you know whatever this and that my a lot the thing that mostly people got was

175:44that nobody believed I was gay that was like my main but you play basketball you know what I mean you play basketball like you do you know like that so nobody could believe like they just well you don't seem gay like I don't like to dance I don't you know just gay dancing that's hilarious I learned my dancing from Cosby like that's my move you know like so all of that like it did. So that was the main thing. Everyone was just sideswiped. So a lot of times people will say to me, you know, you're you act straight or you're straight acting or something, which in the gay community is thought of as like this great thing, you know, that if you're straight acting, you're masculine. It's really great. But I don't I don't take it that way cuz every time someone says it to me, it makes me feel like a freak. You know what I mean? Like why am I Yeah. Because I am who I am. This is it. You know what

176:28I mean? Like Like I had gay sex last night after I had that grass-fed beef, you know? And so I'm gay. I'm married to a guy. That sounds like a gay person. That That's a pretty gay person. You're married to a guy, I would say you're gay. Yeah, it's pretty gay. That's what I realized. I was like, "Oh, I'm marrying this dude. Like, I guess I'm gay." But but you know what I mean? You realize I was like, "Holy shit." Like, I guess, well, you know, no turning back now. Yeah. Um, it was a phase. I was experimenting. Yeah. This is a long phase. I'm really like, you know, dragging out this phase thing. But I realized that if that if I felt better when I told people that that there had to be some value in that in a way that I couldn't understand things. But but to the to the straight acting like so I don't it means nothing to me when I meet guys that are completely flaming or if I

177:14meet guys that are that you'd have no idea like I like people based on their values and their sense of humor and like like that. I never as do all people that matter as as Yeah. And you know what, that's sort of a great way to bring this all around because that gets away from judging people on what you're supposed to think about them and all that social justice warrior and regressive versus judging people on the content of their character. And also it gets back to what we were saying earlier that it's like it's just being aware socially, being a good person to communicate with versus being socially and just looking for those Ben Affleck brownie moments. Yeah. Let me let me toss in one other thing that sort of ties into this really nicely. So, one one time when I was on uh The Young Turks, uh and I'm not going to mention names here, but I was on and they were showing a clip from Fox News,

177:59and they were talking about how the black host that he was such a token black guy. He was such a token black guy. And I actually know the guy. It's this guy, David Webb, who I used to work with at SiriusXM. I'm pretty good friends with him. I had dinner with him last week. Uh he is a black conservative. He is a conservative. I I know him. I know what this guy believes. He spends hours on the air every day professing his beliefs. And that's when that was another this happened a little bit after that whole Sam Harris thing, but that was another moment when I realized how perverse this whole regressive thing is. That here you have people on the left that are supposed to be about ideas, looking at the color of that guy's skin and saying, "Well, because you don't believe what I think you're supposed to believe as a black person, you're a token black guy." You

178:44know, and we've all done that. You know, like when they showed like a Republican convention and there's one black guy applauding and you're like, "Oh, there's the token black." But I realized that's actually racism. Like that was that was really a seminal moment for me that really changed my thinking cuz I was like, "This is crazy. I know this personally. This is a friend of mine and I know he believe he's not doing this because he's a token black. This is this is what he believes." And you as the on the left are pointing at this guy and saying, "You're different than what I think you're supposed to be, black guy. So you must be a token or you're an Uncle Tom or a sellout or something and all. So all of this when you the gay stuff, the social justice or the the regressive stuff like judge people based on what they say, what they say and what they believe. Nothing else. That That's

179:28it. That's it. That's it. Wrap it up. Dave Rubin, thank you very much, man. I'm glad we got together. I've never had to pee as badly as I do right this second. Go run. I'll wrap. If I had peed, I could just keep going. It's fine. People have done it a bunch of times. Um, how do people get your show? Thank you. My my pleasure. Really, this was beyond a pleasure. Um, how do people listen to your show? How do they get a hold of it? Uh, YouTube/RubinReport or TV oraura.tv/rubin Report. RubenReport on Twitter. My branding. I told you the branding. Keep that brand alive. Thanks, brother. All right. Thanks, brother. All right, ladies and gentlemen. We'll be back soon. See you. See you. Have a lovely life. Kiss your friends. Bye-bye. Wait, I seriously got to be Open the door.