#2031 - Luis J. Gomez
2023-09-06 02:31:54
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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Are we on? Are we just on? Are we on? Yeah, all right, we're on. Sweet. I didn't know if we were talking on the podcast or just being dudes.
That's the beautiful thing about podcasts.
It really is, yeah.
It's kind of just hanging.
Yeah, but yeah, I smoked weed since I was like 17 and it was illegal. And you just all these like formative years spending my life being afraid that a cop was going to come and arrest me. And I've been arrested for smoking weed like 10 times in New York City.
Wow.
Because I'm an idiot and I just, you know.
Right?
And it's just a game of numbers. I would just we would roll a blunt in the park. You smoke it and every time, for some reason, the cop would always take me. All my friends, they'd be like, you know what, we've got to take. One of you and I'm the only brown kid in the group. So every single time they were like, we're going to take you.
And then they'd take you to central bookings for a day.
They would literally say, I have to take one of you, yeah, oh my god, yeah, and none of your friends.
Hey, you've got to lose the last three times.
Not once. Dave Smith I've been arrested, I was arrested three separate times. And Dave Smith watched me get put into the back of a car. And he was like, bye.
Oh god.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah. And then I remember I went to Amsterdam when I was 22 and it was the first time I ever smoked legal weed. And I just, I was like, this is great, this is the way it should be. It was nuts.
I was just like smoking in the street, I was talking to a cop, I was on mushrooms. I was like, this is so peaceful and nice. And then I came back and I remember I was in a stairwell smoking a blunt like the day.
I got back and I was like, this is fucking a wild thing. And then here we are. Years later, in New York City, it's legal, there's literally you could buy weed in just delis on every corner in New York City. Now it's crazy.
Yeah, I remember the switch in California because for a while I was medical, so I used to have to go to a doctor. And the doctor would go, Oh, you need weed, and then he writes some shit down on a piece of paper, then you could buy weed.
And I used to go to this place called the Englewood Wellness Center, which was in Englewood and it's a shady area. And back then, I don't know if it was credit cards yet, I think they might have been able to use credit cards. But I know they also had a lot of cash on them. And they got robbed and the guy that I used to buy weed from got shot.
Oh, shit.
And I was like, all right, done with that spot, I'm going to have to find a new spot. But there wasn't that many spots you would have to find. These places and they looked like shut-down stores. Most of the places that were dispensaries, they were super low-key.
You had to know people and you would go in there and there would be some fucking doctor. One time I went to this doctor and he had dreadlocks, and this dude had, like, long dreads. And he had a volcano bag, you know, in the volcano vaporizer bags. Yeah, yeah.
But it was like an extra-long bag. And we walk into the dispensary and he's like, Man, you need medicine? He just immediately goes, You need some medicine? I go, Yes, sir, I do thank you.
I'm very sick, I'm very sick.
And he took us to the grow room. I don't know if you've ever been in a grow room when you're high.
No.
But they seem to be intelligent. There's an odd feeling that you get when you're high on marijuana and you walk into a grow room filled with, like, hundreds of plants. It was a big-ass room with lights, you know, hydroponic lights or whatever hanging from the sky.
And it just has a weird feel to it.
Yeah.
It has a weird feel like not a regular room. It doesn't feel like you're walking into a room. It feels like you're walking into a room with beings.
Oh, really.
Yeah, like they feel alive in a weird way. Yeah, and I know I was super high. That's good weed that you have, I mean.
Vaporized pipe. But it felt real because it didn't feel like that when I was in the other room, right when I was in the other room, where they had just like couches and shit, you know, seemed normal. He takes us back and we go into this back room and I'm like, Whoa?
Like, these things are conscious.
Well, they say that, don't? They say? Plants are conscious to a certain degree. If you like, sing to them and talk to them, or if you yell at them, they don't grow. Or I don't know. They do, like experiments with shit where, like, people are like, nice to plants.
I've seen it on like TikTok and like reels.
I've never looked into that.
Yeah, it has to be bullshit. There's no way. If you're just nice to a plant, it grows better.
Well, what an unethical experiment, because then you'd have to be really mean to another plant.
Really racist to the plant.
Fucking ficus piece of shit. I fucking hate ficuses. I kill them every time I find them.
Not in my yard.
And he's just stuck in the dirt in your house. If plants really are conscious, and they're stuck in the dirt in people's houses. And the people are doing math and shooting each other, these plants would be like, I got to get the fuck out of here, how am I stuck in this house?
It's like, that, what's that Metallica video? One where the guy's like, just stuck in the bed and he could, but he's conscious and he could hear everything. It's from a famous movie, I think.
I don't remember that.
He was, he's like, Dude, you definitely remember this? It's such a famous video, it's the Metallica One video. It was, Johnny, get Johnny, get your gun or something is the movie.
And it was a guy I guess he was hurt in war, yeah, and he was conscious and he could hear everything, but he couldn't communicate.
Oh, wow.
You know, it's.
This is the life of a house plant right here.
Dude Metallica had some bangers, yeah. But the thing is, it's like they know that they communicate with each other. That's what's really fascinating. They communicate with each other through the mycelium in the ground. So it does say they grow better.
Look, it says. For most plants, playing classical or jazz music cause growth to increase, while harsher metal music can do stress. Wow. This may be because the vibrations of metal music are too intense for plants and stimulate cells a little too much. We think of this as massaging your plant with a song. They prefer a gentler touch.
But how do we know?
I want to know the boring bitch who wrote this article.
A gentler touch. How do we not know that? It's not that at all? How do we not? I mean, that's an assumption.
That's like minimalizing their ability to recognize what's going on, cause, right, like, put that up again, like how it's explained.
Because the way it's explained, it's like it's here, it says. This may be because the vibrations of metal music are too intense for plants and stimulate cells a little too much. Like, How do you know? how do you know? The plant just doesn't think that music sucks, could you imagine?
It's like, you know, when they were torturing Noriega?
Yeah.
They would fucking just blare horrible music at him forever. Remember that?
Yeah, they did that with, Uh.
What was the big group that was like? There was like a standoff, and then they did it with Billy Ray. Cyrus song Achy Breaky Heart. There was some, yeah, it was some like some, like some dude who had like a bunch of people captive and they played Achy Breaky heart to.. ..
Oh god.
To fuck with him, yeah.
I do have to say, though, that at least shows a sense of humor by the police. Yeah, I think that's pretty funny, that's fucking hilarious, that's funny.
You fucking can't play bad music until this dude fucking moves out of the house with the hostages.
But I know they did it with.
99 sure, they did it with Noriega. I forget what the songs were, though. see what they did with Manuel Noriega, because I'm pretty sure they surrounded his house in Panama and just played horrible music.
Yeah, let's see, I fought the law.
Oh, that's pretty good, the clash shit. Panama by the stadium.
I guess any song, over and over and over again, would drive you out of your mind.
They played Panama by Van Halen. You too's All I Want Is You.
Bruce Cockburn If I had a rocket launcher and they just kept playing it over and over again. Yeah, and the Howard Stern Show, oh, and the Howard Stern Show, so at least they gave him some entertainment while he was contemplating death, yeah.
Is he dead? Noriega Yeah, did they kill him or did he go to jail?
That might be even more wild than when they killed him. They take these dictators and just stick them in a cell. Bye-bye, never hear of him again, bye-bye.
And then it stops being a news story and nobody cares. Bye-bye, yep.
Bye-bye, Mr. person who ran country.
Have you ever been in a jail cell, Joe?
No.
You've never been arrested for anything ever.
Nope, never.
Damn.
Noriega's mug shot after a surrender to U.
S Forces in 1990, age 56. How many people had that guy killed?
You've never even been in cuffs.
No, damn, I'm a good boy.
You are a good boy. It's the worst.
I could only imagine I'm always very respectful to cops.
I'm super respectful to cops too, because at that point they're arresting me and I want to get out of it. I want to get off of the warning. I've never done anything real, I've never done a real crime. It's always for smoking weed or....
They said, Expunge all those.
They did.
They did, they always should've fooled everybody with that. We should wake up as a country and realize those laws are immoral, they don't make any sense.
I couldn't go to Canada for years, I couldn't go to Canada.
If we can drink, why can't we smoke? It makes zero sense. You guys are out of your minds, you don't smoke weed, you don't know what you're talking about.
That's part of the problem is that the people that are making these laws, they don't have any experience with these drugs. I'm good, there's a certain I think you should know what you're talking about.
If we lie about it, then people are going to be more likely to abuse it because they're not going to think there's any problems. You've got to be fully straightforward with it. It's probably one of the safest drugs you could use if you're not a schizophrenic, if you're not a person who has that fucking missing, screw. And then the weed takes you over the top because there's a few of those guys.
I know some people that they're not good on it. I know I'm probably better as a human when I'm not smoking weed. Just in terms of productivity, just being a little bit sharper. But I'm also miserable and depressed and fucking anxious. So it's a trade-off.
I like the walk, the dance, I like the walk, the dance between high and sobriety, I like it, I like both of them. I think this idea....
I mean, look, if you're a person who's an alcoholic, sobriety's your choice. That's the way to go, for sure, and you don't need it. And look, you can get high doing yoga.
You could feel pretty good when you run, but if you can handle it, and if it's for you. It provides you a different window to the world. And I think it changes and shapes the way you think about things.
I agree with that, but I think just the difference in thinking does that as well. So if I, I smoke all day, every day, right? So if I stop smoking for like, a week, it's like I'm seeing the world differently.
Your brain gets to clear out a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, and it's just a different perspective. It's kind of good to do that. Yeah, I just, and then the other thing, now that I'm getting older, I'm 41 now, I still don't. I mean, I could probably research this.
Does weed just not cause cancer? Does it not like nobody's talking about weed giving them fucking cancer? I smoke a lot of fucking weed and I'm just in my head about it. I'm like, dude, I'm going to get lung cancer because I've been smoking blunts and weed for so long.
It doesn't seem to, and I don't know why it wouldn't. If cigarettes do now, here's a question is there a difference between those natural cigarettes that people enjoy, like those American spirits, and like Marlboros?
Dude, I don't think they're natural, that's good branding, because they even have Joe Rogan going, dude, those natural cigarettes, it's the same shit.
But that's the name of them, isn't it?
American spirit dude, I think it's just some we assume they're natural because American Indians make them, I think.
Is there a bunch of shit in there? Our research shows the majority of natural American spirit smokers incorrectly believe their cigarettes are safer than other cigarettes. The truth out there, they're just as dangerous as any other cigarette.
Yeah, dude, that's.
I always thought....
Yeah, it's a cigarette.
Like, light cigarettes were safer, and they're not at all.
No, that's probably even worse, like, what is in those? okay? what are menthols? what's going on there?
I don't even know.
What is going on? They're trying to outlaw that in California.
Yeah, well, because it's like.
Did they outlaw it?
I think they did a lot because they say they're going after.
Like any of the flavored tobacco shit, like, you can't get flavored blunt wraps in New York City anymore. Because I guess the angle is they're saying that kids are more likely to buy flavored stuff, which is just, I think that's kind of stupid as well.
What about flavored liquor?
Yeah, yeah, well, you're not taking away anyone's liquor anymore.
How come you can still have flavored liquor? What are you talking about? like, there's syrupy liquor?
Yeah, yeah, all the smoking laws are kind of good, too. In a weird way, though. Oh, they do, because I smoked cigarettes in New York when they started....
They were just like, we're going to just charge you a fucking crazy amount. For cigarettes, it went from like $3 a pack of cigarettes to like $15 a pack in like a year. And they just priced a lot of people out. I was just too broke to fucking spend $15 per pack of cigarettes, it was crazy.
Wow, it was like 75 cents per cigarette, as like a broke young kid in New York City. It just wasn't going to happen. So they made it the age 21, and then they started charging a fucking arm and a leg for it. And just kids just couldn't afford them anymore. So I think a lot less kids are smoking today because of all that shit.
But yeah, I mean, when I moved to New York City, you could still smoke inside of bars. And then they changed that, like a year later. And I remember being like, No, this is crazy. Who cares about the employee's health?
I don't give a fuck, dude. People did get upset that they couldn't smoke indoors. Yeah, I remember when you'd go to comedy clubs, they were filled with smoke, every table had an ashtray.
Yeah, they were filled with smoke, but you would hear stories about, like, waitresses that didn't even smoke and they would get cancer. Yeah, that's when it gets scary.
It's like people that are forced to breathe that smoke all day and they don't even smoke. Yeah, that's fucked. That's an office hazard or a job hazard. you can't force someone to work in those conditions.
Yeah, now as an adult. But when I'm a kid where I just want to smoke a cigarette in the back of a bar, it's like, you're not. But now we all smoke weed in comedy clubs. That's a weird thing. We just started smoking weed, like, I don't know, like, eight years ago in comedy clubs. And nobody said anything.
It was never legal, we just decided we were going to do it. It was because Chappelle was smoking cigarettes, and then somebody was like, No dude, we can smoke. It's part of the act, right? And nobody said anything.
But nobody's been busted.
There's definitely way more acceptance of weed, people understand what it is now, and there's so many people that are like, right-wing people use weed. That's the big shift, because it used to be that weed is just like for hippies and losers.
But a lot of people that are in pain use it, a lot of people that get headaches use it. A lot of people that it helps them sleep. They like edibles, it helps them sleep.
They like it.
Yeah, that's the way to go. All kinds of people, I've got to switch to edibles, I've got to switch to edibles. Because I think putting anything in your lungs over an extended amount of time, there's no fucking way it's good for you.
There's no way edibles are totally different, though, you know, it's a totally different drug.
What do you mean?
It's a totally different drug.
Like, your body metabolizes it differently, yeah.
Yeah, it becomes 11-hydroxymetabolite, right? that's what it is. It's processed by your liver, and it's just a way more potent, psychoactive.
Oh, and that's probably not good for your liver, I don't know.
I don't think it's bad for your liver, I think, especially if you're not, like fucking blasting it every day. I've never heard that it's toxic.
There's got there's. It can't all be good, weed can't just be the perfect drug, there's got to be something negative.
Right, I think it's negative for some people.
Anything in life that's good, you almost have to, like, pay for it in a way, right? Yeah, so that's. I'm just trying to find the angle on why I should stop smoking weed. Because I still haven't heard of anybody getting lung cancer. I'm not hearing about any negative effects. Everyone's just cool and high and it's cheap now.
Yeah, I haven't heard any good arguments, yeah, but for some people, they don't. They're not productive when they're on it, they can't get anything done, they just want to veg out all day.
But I think it hits everybody. CBD may be harmful to your liver, but it probably won't affect your kidneys or your heart. CBD may raise levels of liver enzymes. This could indicate liver damage.
In most cases, this happens with very high doses of CBD, when it's taken with certain medications, or when it's taken with certain medications.
This is all like this shit.
That's crazy, I wonder, what? How much CBD fucks you up?
The problem with medical shit like this is you never really know. They have to give you like the whole spectrum. And they're like, Oh, no, this could happen, just so, you know, right? But I feel like....
And it could be the anti-CBD lobbies. Who knows? yeah, who knows.
Who fucking knows anymore with these people? But yeah, I mean, CBD has always been. I've always used it, I've always used it on. Like I have a knee injury right now, I use it on my knee.
It's fucking great.
Yeah, it's really good.
It's great when you got like aches and pains.
How much CBD do you get from just smoking weed, though?
You probably get some, right.
Probably get a decent amount, right? I don't know. I think they make strains that are like higher with CBD or have more CBD than THC.
Yeah, I know a lot of people who just smoke CBD joints, yeah, where it doesn't have any THC at all. Which is like, what kind of Franken-medicine are you doing over there, man?
Those people I would love to meet that person and try to sell them anything.
Bro, they're making new life. If plants really are intelligent, and we're making like splicing them together and giving them superpowers, it's weird what botanists can do.
I was in Costa Rica a few weeks ago and like, I'm never like in nature like that, like, and it's a really dude. It's really cool. Like we were at a place called Manuel Antonio Park, I don't know if you've been there before, and it's just like a huge like nature reserve.
Massive, massive park. And one of the more interesting things were, like, the trees, right? And we had a tour guide and I don't know shit about this. But there's certain trees that start attacking each other, and, like one tree would wrap around the other tree and kill that tree.
And then the other tree started growing specific roots that break that other tree. It was the coolest thing I'd ever, I was also high, but it was the coolest thing that I had ever fucking heard of. And I was like, there's so many like, and they have like a bazillion plants there, and like, it's just such a crazy, crazy world.
That's some fucking real, like alien life shit. When you move away from like animals and you start looking at like plants, there's a lot of crazy plants out there.
Yeah, there's a lot. Do you know that? They splice different species of plants together? I think it's avocados and pistachios. I forget which one is the bottom and which one is the top. This is counter to what I just pulled up about liver.
Oh, marijuana may protect the liver from alcohol. Yeah, it says those liver enzymes can protect against alcohol.
Just two articles that disagree.
Marijuana's the perfect drug.
It's the same fucking internet giving us two different things.
But that's like smoking it versus CBD the CBD thing is almost mostly edible. Oh, it just said that they didn't know which strain they were using, so they didn't know exactly what part of the cannabinoids were protecting, so they needed to do more research. But they did 320,000 people, yeah, that's the thing that used to suck about those THC pills.
Remember they had those THC pills? What the fuck was that called? There was like a synthetic marijuana that was invented?
Oh yeah, do you remember that? Like, spice or some shit?
There was ones that you could buy in, like Delis back in the day, that was like they looked like weed.
No, no, no, wasn't there like a pharmaceutical. It's like a real thing, yeah.
What was the purpose of that? Maranol, Maranol, that's right.
It was a pharmaceutical version of cannabis. Is that what it was? It was in? I remember it, but I don't remember what it was. Do you remember this?
No.
I've never heard of it.
Yeah, there was like a weed pill.
You guys were out in California, though, you guys got a lot of shit that we just didn't get.
But I don't even.
Okay, cancer treatment? Okay, it treats nausea and vomiting caused by cancer treatment. So instead of giving people actual marijuana, they gave them this maranol shit.
And people were diagnosed with AIDS. The medication comes in capsule form, you could take by mouth as directed. The brand name of this medication is Maranol.
Yeah, that's what it was back in the day, right? It was for nausea. Yeah, that's why people would smoke weed. That was the only thing, really....
When they first started talking about medical marijuana, it was like, for cancer patients, for nausea, it would help you eat. And then they started figuring out all the other shit that it's good for CBD, especially, right? Yeah, so yeah, maybe that's why it doesn't cause cancer, maybe it's fighting your cancer simultaneously while you're smoking it.
Well, there has been.
I don't know, but you gotta wonder, like, what's causing cancer? maybe it's just like decreasing inflammation in general, and that's probably what's protecting you from cancer.
Maybe.
What am I guessing about cancer? I'm fucking terrified.
I'm terrified of cancer.
It's terrifying. it should be terrifying. Yeah, you should be terrified of all kinds of things, like asteroids.
Ice Ages.
I'm not terrified of asteroids, I've never once thought about it. You always hear about them, like, Oh, they miss the Earth by like, it's always like, 100,000 miles. That doesn't seem that close.
Yeah, it's just a time thing, Lewis, It's just a time thing.
What do you mean?
It's just a time thing, we're going to get hit, it's inevitable. It's happened thousands of times, probably while human beings have been alive.
Look.
Some of them are big.
If an asteroid hits Mars and we hear about it, then I'm going to go, all right, fuck, we're in trouble.
Well, they had a big one hit Jupiter once. Oh, really, yeah. And they really were surprised because the impact was, like, far larger than they thought it was going to be. But it was an enormous one, apparently. That's what protects us.
Jupiter is so massive that it like sucks up most of the asteroids and comets. That's what allows us to not just be pelted all the time, because there's like hundreds of thousands of these near-earth objects.
Joe, why are you trying to scare the audience right now? I don't really know.
I'm not trying to scare anybody, this is just what I think about all the time. The gas giant regularly absorbs hits from comets and asteroids, protecting their inner solar system worlds. Damn, yeah, I think they have the photo of it getting hit.
But it got hit by some just fucking dinosaur killer, some big one boom.
Yeah, something like that.
That's a wrap so that you could see it, you could actually see it get hit.
There's just no control with that, like, there's nothing that I can do. If we get hit by an asteroid one day, that's that. I'm not, you know, I can control not giving myself cancer by smoking blunts every day.
Or maybe that's what's making you not have cancer?
Damn.
Maybe this is my Jupiter.
My Jupiter, Yeah, that's your Jupiter.
There we go.
Yeah, just space. In general, it's like the most insane prospect ever, this infinite thing that we exist in. And there's rocks flying through it that occasionally slam into the planet and cause civilization to reset.
Is that actually what happened with, like, Big Bang theory, right? That's the idea, that's what killed the dinosaurs.
Well, Big Bang theory is the beginning of the universe. What killed the dinosaurs is one of these asteroids.
I'm an idiot.
Yeah, you're not an idiot. I don't know about any of this stuff. You don't think about asteroids all the time.
I don't think about asteroids, you think about them all the time.
I think about them all the time because I've had these experts on, they've fucking permanently mind-fucked me, especially Randall Carlson. He's this dude that along with Graham Hancock, they've come up with this theory that human beings got hit by asteroids somewhere around 11,800 years ago.
And civilization just reset, and we were basically like savages for thousands of years, which totally makes sense. And then the civilization that emerged from that, like Babylon, Mesopotamia, the first civilizations we know of, like Sumer, those were probably a reboot, like thousands of years of chaos, before they figured out how to calm down and develop civilization again.
Yeah.
I don't know about any of that. Shit. Dude, how do you talk to these people? You're a fucking comic. Were you always this dude? You were, like, super interested in, like everything.
Because I watch you interview people and you're really fucking good at, like, having these conversations with these people in all of these fields. And I'm going like, Goddamn dude, like, how do you have the capacity to take that all in and fucking just be interested?
But it's only things that I'm interested in.
Because no comic that I know does that, like literally every other comic, is a fucking idiot. Who's just smoking weed or drinking beer and just trying to show up and get some pussy at the end of the night. And I think, look, you know, to compliment, because it really is. I think why you created something so big is you're so interested in so much stuff that I think it made like. It gave you this like mass appeal. But was it, like, always that way, or was it doing the podcast that turned you into that?
Well, I've always been curious, but then doing the podcast allowed me to have all these conversations with people. It's like getting an accidental education.
Yeah.
It's like about just a broad range of subjects.
Yeah.
But for me, it's just interesting, like I like listening to people and talking to people and finding out how they tick, yeah.
Who was the most interesting person you had on the show ever?
Man, there's probably not one most interesting. There's been a lot of them that are interesting. Yeah, you know, Elon's pretty fucking interesting. That's a rare, one-of-a-kind human being.
Yeah, you know, like they don't make many of those, yeah.
He just said, I'm going to buy Twitter. Yeah, that's crazy.
And he overpaid for it by a lot. It's gangster as fuck, man. But he really, truly believed that we're in a very pivotal moment in our civilization when it comes to what is happening, particularly with censorship.
And when you have something that's essentially the town square for the world, which Twitter is. If you prevent people from other ideologies or other points of view, or other political parties. If you prevent them from using this space, and only people that agree with you can use that space. That's dangerous and he recognized that, and I think we all do, it's fucking dangerous. I know you think you're doing it, whoever's doing that, because it's the right thing and we have to protect people from bad ideas. But that never ends.
Well, it just doesn't end well. You're going to give that control to someone next after you're gone, because that's going to be a thing we do now.
You're going to give that control to new people and they're going to turn it the other way. They're going to use it on you, they're going to use it against causes that you believe in.
Before Elon bought Twitter, we were headed in a really weird, it seemed like very dangerous direction for comedy. For anybody who wasn't super left-wing liberal, if you were trying to create shit online, it was scary. And we do. Legion of Skanks, most offensive podcast on earth. We say a lot of fucked up shit. But I was like, we are not going to be able to even put shit on the internet anymore.
Forget just Twitter or anything else. I think they're going to scrub it all from the internet. And then Elon came in and he kind of made people go, like, wait a minute, hold on, we were getting crazy and people kind of paused.
You see, Shane has a special out on Netflix. Now. I feel like we've sort of calmed down a little bit. And that was a big part of it because it was like, well, no, we need to even the playing field a little bit. We need to hear all opinions and hear both sides.
So I was actually legitimately worried, and now it seems like this is a little bit of a pause in that.
It's definitely a change, of course. The problem is, all the other social media platforms are essentially run by people who think the same way, they have the same opinions on things. There's no one social media platform that stands out. That's like a huge place where other than Twitter now or X, where you could just say whatever the fuck you want.
Like people are saying, Michelle Obama is a man. Like you say the earth is flat, there's like plenty of people that are talking about the earth being flat.
Yeah, that's also fucking crazy.
Say whatever the fuck you want, and there's only one platform like that.
Yeah.
Like all the other ones, it's not like there's a bunch of those. It's like you can go and say whatever you want on Instagram. No, you can't.
They'll put a fucking thing saying fact check or this is incorrect and misleading information. And even sometimes I've gone to some of those fact checks, I'm like, you didn't fact check this at all.
Right?
Like, this is just like, not approved, this is a not approved message.
Yeah, that's why I try to disconnect from it as much as possible. I think everyone should. I think it's truly like, the downfall of society is social media. I think we're sharing ideas too quickly, too dangerously.
I don't think it's that, but I think it's transforming society. I think we better catch the fuck up, we better catch up.
Well, we will. And look, I think part of it is a lot of these. They don't really know how to handle it. It just moves too quickly, right?
Right, so I think that we're going to look back at this time and we're going to go, Oh yeah, that was like a real it was. It was just us getting a hold of the internet. The internet just fucking came out, and then we got social media and it's just transformed everything, the whole world, we're all connected. I mean, dude, we're, it's the world is tiny now.
Like, it doesn't even feel like, but I think we're going to look back and go like, yeah. We were like irresponsible with it. We were like trying to destroy each other, We were trying to hurt each other with it. It's like it became like warfare so quickly. Um, I put a. I tweeted out a joke the other day, said Dumb joke about Amber Heard.
I don't, I don't have a dog in the race, I don't give a shit about Amber. Heard Johnny Depp. That whole thing, like, from my perspective, it looked like two crazy people abusing each other, right?
It's kind of hot, right? But who gives a? The whole joke is that Amber Heard is so hot that. I would let her shit in my bed, I would let her shit on my couch, on the kitchen counter. I, you know, dumb joke, very mild dude.
All of these fucking chicks that are Amber heard supporters are coming after me on Twitter. Still, to this day, three days later, nonstop, just kind of like, you don't know, Amber heard she was abused. And I'm like, This is fucking psychotic dude. Like it is digging up my old tweets, they're like looking up anytime I've said anything questionable and they're reposting.
I'm like, idiot, I posted that it's public.
Are these real people? You think I don't know, or is this like a media campaign company?
I think it might be a media campaign company because they all have, like, a hashtag stand with Amber and their thing. I didn't even post her name in it, I just posted the joke.
I'm not accusing her of this, but but, you know, that is absolutely a real thing.
Yeah.
That is absolutely a real thing. There's a way that you can just like defend a person or attack a person with bots.
I think, yeah.
I think they're for sure using it. Look, we know the Russians are using it, we know that the. And they always find these troll farms like one of them. They found that 19 of all the top 20 Christian sites on Facebook were run by Russian troll farms.
Really.
When I found out that they were like Russia, like interfered with the election, like with like social media and shit, I was like, that's kind of fucking awesome. It was badass.
I wonder. They certainly tried, and I'm sure we try with theirs. The question is like, was there like real interference? Because the thing was like the Russia hacked our election? Like, I don't think that's true.
I think you can push information. I think they, I know Trump and Biden both did this right, they they both had massive social media teams. I'm sure, yeah.
I know, I know comedians who have massive social media teams, so I'm sure that they both had, like, the best of the best. And yeah, they both went in and manipulated algorithms and did whatever they had to do in order to get their message in front of the most people possible. And that's the game now, that's a big part of it.
Yeah, that's definitely a big part of it, but it's also it's just like, this is not going to stop right here. This is what freaks me out. We, you know, this introduction to social media, like the whole country, kind of freaking out, but it seems like more calm now.
Right, like, what's next? like, what is the next thing?
Well, the next election cycle is going to suck the election cycle, it just sucks for cause, you know what it is. People on the left, they start attacking, like movies and comedy and music, when they, when they feel like they're under attack. And when Trump was in office, the left was like, Dude, we are under attack.
This is like, we're losing the world. So they had to just anything, dude, any, any podcaster who, you know, I mean, dude. It was, it was, it was articles being written about comedians like Shane and the Legion of Skanks. It was really crazy, and it was just because Trump was in office. And they just felt like they were at war. And they had a win, they had to get their wins where they can get them.
And right now, when Biden's in office, people are really leaving comedians alone, and I'm telling you, I think they'd scar it. We, we, we, we have this win. We don't really need to go after comics.
I found this yesterday, I found it. It's kind of relevant, uh, when Rockefeller Center was, like, empty in the Thirties and forties, the British Security Coordination Organization came in, so part of the British Secret Service.
And as it says here, that they've used like. That space was their head offices, the 35th and 30th, 36th floor of Rockefeller Center, where they disseminated and controlled part of the media for at least a year or two before World War Two, it seems like.
Wow. Disseminated stories picked up by radio stations played before the American.
Public stories.
Yeah.
That was always the thing.
They've always been fucking with us. Oh, I wanted to ask if this is true because someone was trying to convince me the other night. That those stories of like bricks being left off in neighborhoods where protests, has that been substantiated?
I lived in New York during that time, during it was, during the whole um, it was. There was a BLM protest. Yeah, it was during the BLM, BLM protests. And without a doubt, there was just fucking huge piles of fucking bricks in multiple places in New York City.
I saw it with my own eyes. Weird, just. There was no construction happening, there would just be a fucking massive stack of heavy, fucking cement bricks.
Jesus.
And it was out of nowhere. Somebody put them there, as it relates. Just side note.
I remember one time before the riots, had you ever noticed piles of bricks like construction sites?
You would see a construction site and you would see, but they they always with a construction site. And once again, I smoke a lot of weed in public, so we were always looking for, like, back alleys and shit, to smoke weed in stairwells. I used to sell comedy club tickets on the street, that's how I got my start in comedy in New York City.
All throughout, you know, the early two thousands. And um, you can't really get into construction sites, it's always chained off, they always have. The the sites are pretty controlled because people will steal shit, right?
Of course, you wouldn't just leave your bricks out. Bricks are valuable. Yeah, cause.
Then if someone's coming home, they go, Look, there's a fucking pallet of bricks, grab them.
That was definitely true, and I don't know, you know, the.
So you saw more than one of those, more than one with my own eyes.
Wow.
Cause I was, I was having this conversation, I was like, how is that? was that real? like, why did I hear that? Some of that was bullshit, but.
Well, because the.
But I didn't look into it, so the conspiracy was led into it.
Sorry, the conspiracy was that, um, like the police were leaving it out, or right wingers were leaving it out, so blm blm protesters would use it and look worse. That was one of the theories.
Huh, was there another theory that they wanted to accelerate the possibility of chaos by giving people readily available weapons? That's the better theory. Add to the conspiracy, for sure. NYPD commissioner says bricks are being placed and then transported to peaceful protests.
What councilman then calls them construction debris, what?
I also saw a bunch of BLM protests and they were legitimately peaceful. I'm sure the ones in New York City were like, it was, you know, they, they were just protesting, they were banging fucking drums.
Yo, that's crazy, they just left bricks out there.
What is that? That's definitely different than all the other stuff we saw where it was like a giant pallet. Yeah, there were right, but this is plenty of, plenty of rocks that someone just dropped off and left with the box tops open.
Yeah, you remember people were putting like rocks and milkshakes, cause the whole thing was debris. throw milkshakes at, like, people.
Nazis Yeah, Jesus Christ man, this is insane.
But it's like, Yeah, I mean, and I think the internet is a big part of the hysteria, people get worked up, people just didn't. If you have to give a fuck right before, you had to get a book, or you had to go, like, really research and shit, right? You had to go out. If you cared about something, or you had to care, you had to really put in the footwork and physically care.
Now people can sort of pretend to care while they're just being addicted to the their phone, while they're being addicted to Twitter and all these other social media platforms. And they're being tricked into just, you know, looking at advertising, cause that's what it's all about. They get to also pretend that they care, they get to feel like they're doing something. And then it just starts to snowball and then it turns into fucking like, real chaos. And people at each other's throats about shit that people don't even really give a fuck about. If you go to the supermarket, like, people are just cool, like in real life, you go to the supermarket. Nobody gives a fuck about who voted for who.
Nobody cares about, you know, what would your political beliefs are? We just coexist and we do what we do in real life, and then we jump on the internet and we just fucking it's a war.
Well, I think it's also got exacerbated during the pandemic, right? Cause everybody was stayed, stayed in. They were at home, their anxiety is high, they didn't know if they're going to be able to work again.
Like, who knows what the fuck's going to happen?
Yeah.
People were freaked out, and then they got more freaked out on social media. And you're on it all day, cause you don't have a job, you're at home now. So that you're just kind of fucking weirding out in front of your Twitter all day. You know, people have lost days and days of their lives, just staring at other people's opinions all day long.
I'd be embarrassed to tell you my screen time number. it's embarrassing. Do you know what yours is? No.
I don't know what it is.
It's fucking, mine's like nine hours a day. Wow, it's bad.
That's not good.
It's really bad. You can look at these type in screen time to the, uh, the search bar screen.
Maybe not, I don't know. Yeah, it's like nine hours, it's like eight or nine hours a day.
It's crazy.
Whew.
It's wild, you got to think, Oh, I'm getting some things done.
You pretend you're working.
Yeah, but also I'm tuning into the world, I got to, I got to check in on the world and see what's going on. I'll turn the news, but really just hitting that button.
What a weird addiction, yeah.
That that was that documentary where they talked about like they designed it that way. When you refresh it, it does like a little physical, like, like little blip, and you want to see it.
You want to see like, another interaction, and it's like they, they compared it to a slot machine, right? And you go, boop, did I get anything? did I win?
Did I win? Did I win? Oh, I got likes, I got replies, I got whatever.
And uh, yeah, it's super addictive.
It's also kind of, in in some ways, we're kind of there's something dehumanizing about it. Because more and more people are just communicating through like text messages and online social media and stuff, and not communicating that much in real life.
Yeah.
I think kids are sending each other text messages more than they're talking to each other.
Oh, yeah, you don't mean my son just got a phone for the first time, he's 10, uh, just got his, uh, his iPad for the first time. Um, I. It was a conscious decision that me and his mother made. We said we're not going to have him be addicted to a screen and staring at a screen all the time.
You see kids in restaurants. As soon as they sit down, they give them a pad or a phone, and they are disconnected from the entire conversation. They're not having, they're not making eye contact, right? I wanted to give my kid every chance possible in the world to be successful, and he's, I mean, he's such a bright kid.
He, he shakes people's hands, he looks them directly in the eyes. I mean, he's just a little gentleman, he's, he's the fucking best. And I think a big part of his is the fact that we just didn't enable him to do that.
And we didn't allow him to do that. Um, but yeah, that's. I'm super fucking scared of my kid growing up, also, I'm just scared of my kid finding all this shit that I've said online. I have to like, fucking, I have to like, dude. I'm telling you right now, I think about that every day, every day.
I'm like, Dude, he's going to fucking he's, cause he's, he's from this new generation. He's a good kid, he's a sweet kid, and he's obviously 10 times more woke than I'm ever going to be.
Right, he's just, it's just the generation, and I just, I'm so afraid that he's just going to look up. The shit that I say. And out of context, just not really understand, you know why we say stupid shit to make people laugh, yeah?
So, you know, I'm, I'm. So I'm just secretly trying to make him racist. I whisper things in his ears at night when I put him to bed.
Did you imagine your kid doing standup? Would you even encourage it?
I would not encourage it, but I would not discourage him from doing anything that he wanted to do, like literally anything, right? Um, and he has done standup, um, really.
Yeah, cause he, he. So we did the Roast Skank Fest in Houston for me, and we, uh, me and my my uh. Ex-girlfriend wrote him a few jokes, and he, he did the jokes, not at Skankfest. He did it like a video, um, and then so he was really into that.
And then I was at the stand one night with Um, just at the comics table. I brought him and Bonnie McFarlane was there with, you know, and she's got kids as well. Bonnie's awesome, I'm rich boss's wife and um.
He was like, Oh.
I want to go on stage. I was like, James, you're not going to stage if you want to go on stage. I was like, I w if you really want to go on stage in a few years. I was like, you can write some jokes, take it seriously, go to an open mic, do it the way that a comic would do it right. And he was like, Okay, yeah, you're right, dad.
And then I went on stage, and then two minutes later, Bonnie McFarlane comes in the room with him and she's like, here, put them on stage, and she shoved him up on stage. And yeah, he just started roasting me and talking shit about me, and he did well.
Um.
You know, he's a he's a little performer dude, he, he, he's in like, musical theater, and he's like, super well rounded kid. Yeah, he does jiu jitsu now, he just won his first jiu jitsu tournament, gold medal, first tournament.
That's awesome.
The best thing I've ever experienced as a father in my entire life was watching my son win a jiu jitsu tournament. There's not, dude, there's nothing fucking better, better, better than the day he was born. By far, it was the fucking best.
That's amazing.
He dominated another dude's come, that was that. my calm went in there and dominated another dude's come. I did that, really.
That's my metal, I wear the metal around the house. Um, but it was really, really fucking. That was the coolest thing I've ever experienced in my life.
That's very cool, sounds like he's on a good path, that's awesome.
Yeah, he is beautiful.
Man.
But yeah, I mean, I, you know, fucking. I feel I feel bad for like this next generation because I don't even think they realize that. You know what's happening with that. It's just that that addiction to your phone. I, well, that's really. What I think is going to be is eventually we're going to. Everyone's going to have this sort of opinion and attitude because people are starting to get wind of it that it's bad to be to be on your phone that much. Um, and I think just parents are going to just start saying, like, yeah, no, you can't be on a fucking cell phone all day.
You can't be, and I and I think it comes down to us. I think we have to make a decision to do that with our kids.
Yeah, you got to teach them discipline for sure, but also rest, recognize that everyone is using these things and it's a part of civilization now. I I really feel like if we could see the writing on the wall, we would be terrified. I think human beings are are we're slipping into some weird place where we're for sure within the next few years going to be connected to computers.
Oh yeah.
How we're going to do it, I don't know how they're going to do it. Whether it's something you wear or something that's in you, but it's common, kids.
And it's almost like all these things are falling in line at the same time. Like all these, uh, endocrine disruptors and plastics that are fucking up people's reproductive systems. And.
And then at the same time, we're all getting addicted to phones. And not as personal, you know, because people aren't really communicating, hanging out, just talking to each other without checking their phone every five seconds.
It's going to be the future, is going to be us looking at each other and downloading each other's thoughts. Cause you could air, drop pictures and shit. Now it's literally going to be like, here, take this picture just with a fucking thought, Yeah, and it will.
100 is going to happen. They're already, they're already doing shit right, they're already making devices that can go in your body that connect to to other shit. I'm sure I do, I'm sure it's so much more advanced than we even know.
Think about it, think about how much we don't know, right? There's gotta be some crazy shit going on out there, sure, unethical shit.
That's going on right now. Hey, what is? um, what? What was that?
I want to see Elon Musk basement. What are the experiments that he has going on right now?
Probably 18 miles deep. Um, what, what is that? A thing they did where they, uh, where they recorded, uh, human thoughts, like someone was watching something and they got a recording of that from something this person was wearing.
I saw it, I saw it.
Yeah, bro, that is that is like, just think Morse code was not that long ago.
That was not that long ago.
Yeah, and it seems like technology will just move now with AI, it's just it's, it's just moving faster and faster and faster. It's like, it's really cool, but it's also fucking terrifying.
That's the shit that I'm terrified of. Fuck asteroids, dude. This shit that we're talking about right now is the shit that keeps me up at night.
No, is this it? Scientists record a Pink Floyd song from patients brainwaves. Yeah, this is it. The tech could eventually allow for communication without words.
What?
100 of these eggheads keep going, we're fucked.
Oh yeah, dude, it's we're going to be doing crazy shit. That's the really like. And then you got to figure, like, it's going to be who's rich, who has the best, you know, computer built into their body? Because the same, the same guy who can afford, you know, a fucking Lamborghini is going to have a super brain, you know? And his computer is going to be faster than your computer, he's going to be able to download and upload information faster than you.
It's kind of wild.
Well, like, now you're going to have to be an early adopter, right? You would have to be like one of the people who gets the brain operation first, and then you'd be, like, way ahead of everybody.
Yeah, but that first one we're going to fuck, it's going to.
The night before the operation. Are you sure this is going to work, Harry?
Harry.
Look me in the eye, you're going to cut it into my brain.
Are you sure?
I'm pretty sure, I don't want to hear, pretty sure, Harry.
Yeah, dude, any dude, it's fucking nuts. That's like, those people on that, uh, that went on that, um, you know, the fucking submarine thing.
Yeah.
It's like, Yeah, what a cool thing. That must've been to, like, sign up for you, like, dude, we're going to go to see the Titanic and then.
Ooh.
That's fucking wild, dude. That could have been you Joe. you could have been down on that thing, no?
Not a fucking chance in hell.
There was one that was a Mr. beast, he said, that they invited him to go do it.
I am not hopping in that fucking backyard smoker and drop it into the bottom of the ocean.
Would you go to space? Right now? I'm like, one of those charters.
No chance, son, you love space, those things blow up. you have to go real fast to go into space, kid, those things blow up.
I'm not interested. Not until they get that shit down like an electric car, when they get a spaceship that moves like a Tesla. Just okay, I'm in.
Yeah, just not worth it.
I get it. look, your starry nights are beautiful. I get it. I get it. I get. You'd want to, like, go out, get real high and come back down.
I'm good, you can keep that, I trust that it's up there, I don't have to jump at the top of a cliff, I'm good.
I'll just sit down and look at it from here. Like, even as high as we get, like what we're calling space, like, look, we've made it into space, we're like that far off the Earth surface, yeah.
There's so much. Is that what? uh, is that what the those tours are? You just go into space for a second.
You just go like, come back down, no, like, you don't like, go to space. I want to go land on the moon, I want to check out Mars. You're not going to Jupiter.
Yeah.
I could dodge some fucking asteroids.
You know, what I bet they will be able to do, probably really soon, is to give you a VR representation of what it would be like to travel through space.
Oh, I bet it already exists. I, I went, I had, um, yeah, there was a NASA thing that I had on my Oculus. It was super cool, I mean, it was like it was just a movie, essentially.
It wasn't like I didn't get to like free move, but it was like I was on, like, um, like a space station type thing. So you were like, moving all over. It was really, really cool. Is this it?
No, what is this, Jim? I just looked up space, tripped, outer space. That's the first thing that popped up. Get the fuck out of here.
Joe, you would go in that I'm looking.
This is a space elevator and it's going to fall and everyone. It's a balloon. Okay, so you got a little bit of extra, bro? I am not going in a fucking balloon.
Look how comfortable it looks. What if it gets hit by an asteroid?
This looks like your studio, Joe.
Oh my God, that's what it does. Podcast in a balloon, no rockets, no G force, no. Listen, you got it? They have to do it a thousand times before I even think about doing it.
A six hour journey.
Cocktails six hour journey see.
That's crazy if it's, bro.
I am not going up there. Perfect, perfect place to fall to your death.
Like, how many, how many fucking fail safes do you do?
Nothing.
I should say, for the record, I'm sure it's safe.
Yeah, do you? do you do anything dangerous? uh?
A hundred.
125,000.
Oh, what?
Refundable deposit. So 125 grand to go up in a balloon. Yeah, well, I hope it works.
In six hours, I feel like that's kind of disappointing. It's like space should be more than six hours away in a balloon.
I'm scared of anything that people are trying out, like flying cars. I'm like, just drive that for a while, you, you drive it for a while.
I'll be over here. Even like this, just a self-driving cars that fucking go like you hear about once in a while, they'll just fucking go haywire like the mistakes happen.
Yes, mistakes happen.
And then you're just in a car that you can't fucking stop, and it's like mowing people down. It's a nightmare.
I have a Tesla, I never put the self-driving on. Yeah, I mean, I do sometimes when I'm on the highway just for koofies, yeah.
And it just drives itself, but I keep my hands on it.
So it's it completely self-drives.
Yeah, completely self-drives, up to a point, but I don't let it, you know, it's just it. Just to me, it's just like I'd rather just be really tuned into what I'm doing and paying attention.
My car because I fall asleep if I drive for more than an hour and a half, I don't care what time of day it is. I start to doze off immediately, I get like a road hypnosis, they call it.
Do you have sleep apnea?
No.
No, you sure.
Yeah, I don't think so.
Do you ever get a sleep study?
No.
Just guessing?
Yeah, no, no, no. Do you have to? do you have to snore to have sleep apnea?
I think, so, yeah, yeah, I think that's part of it is because you're choking, hmm.
Super common with guys, especially guys that work out.
Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't snore at all.
Or guys that are overweight, yeah.
But yeah, no, I so I I on my car, I have an Audi and it has, like, all the lane change or the lane correction shit. So if I start to doze off, it'll just automatically shift back into the lane. Jesus Christ. It automatically keeps a certain distance between the car in front of me and the car behind me. Oh, wow.
Yeah, um, and I've still been into five accidents since I started driving again after I moved. I moved out of New York City during the pandemic 2020, and I've been in five accidents with this car. My insurance is $1,800 a month, Joe.
What the fuck, dude?
Yeah, it's wild.
Why are you so bad at driving?
Joe, I have.
Is it your fault?
I get road hypnosis and I fall asleep all the time. No, that hasn't been it. It's always, dude, I'm just a fucking pothead dude and I'll just back up and I'll just there's a fucking car and I hit it. And it's never anything bad.
It's always like, Oh, you know, Fender benders, Yeah, yeah. But I called up my insurance company. I was like, what the fuck is going on?
This guy was mad at them and I was like, they're like, So you've been in five accidents, we shouldn't even be insuring you.
And then I changed insurance companies and now it's like $1,200 a month for car insurance.
Yeah, there might be a bargain.
Maybe.
Depends on your activity. Dougie That's not good, though, dude. Is it? Because you just didn't drive for a long time before you lived in New York, and now you're back driving?
I drove when I was 16.
I moved to New York when I was 19, didn't drive for 20, some odd years.
Oh, that's what it is.
And then I just came back and then I just I got a little bit too. Like the the the all the bings and the dings. When you're like, backing up and you're almost hitting shit, it's great. But then I, I started depending on, like, a little bit too much, and I just stopped paying attention. And then, you know, my phone will ring, I'll look down and then here we are.
I'm going to fender, bender.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's not good.
I feel like I'm a good driver, no?
I bet you're not.
But every guy thinks he's good at whatever. I'm a fucking awesome driver, bro.
Well, how do you play tennis?
I'd be number one.
How do you find a good? How do you define a good driver? Right? Like, fine, if you take out my accidents, I feel like I'm good at steering the car and turning it on turns.
That's like, if you're saying to your teacher, if you take out all my f's, I only got a's.
I'm careless, I think I'm, I think I'm, I'm a bad person.
But I'm a good driver.
That's the problem.
The careless part is a bad driver. Yeah, like, by definition, Joe.
You're winning me over on this argument.
You have to on that one, you got to let it go. It's like you can't be good.
I'll say right now, I'm a bad driver. I've never said it publicly before. I've never admitted that to anybody. But I will say it to you right now. Joe Rogan I am a bad driver.
It's okay.
Yeah, you can be good at other things.
It's normal, especially taking that much time off, man, that's gotta. That's a big readjustment as an adult, 20 years plus of not driving, and also you're driving. If you did road gigs, would you get rentals?
Say that again.
If you did road gigs, did you get rental cars?
Uh, before when I was living in the city.
Yeah, during the 20 years, yeah.
Noted No, I would do public transportation Uber. I mean, really, I'm also a bad Uber rider.
Like, I'm bad, I have the worst, my Uber rating is like, abysmal.
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