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June 3, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:01:18
Joe Rogan | The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special Ep. 4
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We're trying to strengthen the way we view the world and take in as much information as we can and see that information for what it truly is, not what we want it to be. - Well, here we are on the Sunday special here we are on the Sunday special with Joe Rogan, We're going to jump into the interview in just a moment because this is awesome.
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OK, so here we are on the Sunday special with Joe Rogan, the granddaddy of us all in the podcast space.
I mean, this dude made the podcast space the podcast space, and he's awesome also.
So thanks so much for stopping by.
I don't think I did that.
I think Adam Carolla did it.
Well, I'll have to have you guys fight it out.
I came in after.
I love Adam too, so I'll have to, but there's no question that right now you're dominant in the space.
And it's an amazing thing because you're a really gifted guy.
I mean, you can sit there for three hours with somebody and talk about the most random topic and make it really interesting.
So I need the backstory.
So all of my listeners and people who are fans of mine might not know your work as well, might not know kind of your story.
So how did you get to be doing what you're doing right now?
Like give us the whole history.
Well, with the podcast thing, it just started out doing a video thing with just Ustream.
We're just doing Q&A, like people would tweet questions, we'd answer questions, just for fun.
I did it once.
And I actually did it a couple of times backstage in between shows years before that.
There was a thing called Justin TV.
Which I'm not sure what that is now.
It became a new company.
But we would just show backstage.
We'd have like a webcam going and would just play around and talk to people and have fun.
And then we did the one Q&A and I said, all right, I'm gonna do it again next week.
We'll try to do it regularly.
So I did it again the next Monday and then it became a weekly thing.
Then we started uploading it to iTunes and then we started getting guests and then I said, OK, I got to get out of my house.
All these weirdos were coming over my house.
Like, I'll just get a studio somewhere.
So I got a studio.
And then after the studio, I'm like, well, the studio's kind of little.
Let's get a bigger studio.
So then I got a bigger studio.
And then now it's somehow or another it's a business.
And you've got a monster studio you were telling me about now that's just awesome.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
It's indoor archery range and a full gym.
And it's pretty nuts.
I've totally gone wrong with this studio.
There's no question about it.
So what got you all the way to the podcasting?
I mean, like, start from the beginning, from childhood, from birth.
Like, what's your whole backstory?
Well, from high school on till I was 21, I was competing in martial arts tournaments.
That was my background.
I was a taekwondo instructor.
I taught at Boston University.
I competed in all these different national tournaments.
I traveled all around the country.
Most of my formative years were spent Traveling around the country fighting in martial arts tournaments.
That was basically all I did with my entire day.
Like, I was obsessed from the time I was 15 until I was 21.
When I was 21, I started doing stand-up comedy.
And I went from- Pretty big shift?
Yeah, well, you know, I was realizing that fighting was really bad for your brain.
And I was realizing that from, I was getting a lot of headaches and there was a lot of sparring.
I was getting into kickboxing.
I had three kickboxing fights.
And I was realizing that this was going to definitely have a negative effect on my consciousness.
There was no way around it.
And the quality of my thoughts and the way I think about things was always It's one of the most important things to guide you through life and I'm like I am putting my future brain in jeopardy and I was seeing it around me from a bunch of other people that were in the gym that were professional fighters and that were getting brain damage.
I was essentially seeing them starting to slur their words and I was seeing this effect.
And I knew I had to get out somehow or another.
And luckily, one of my friends, my friend Steve Graham, who I'm good friends with to this day, talked me into doing stand-up comedy.
Talked me into going up on an open mic night when I was 21.
That's amazing.
And you've been doing that ever since.
I mean, you're still doing shows today, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So you've got the special that's on Netflix, which is awesome.
Yeah, I have one special that's on Netflix.
Well, two of them that are on Netflix now, but then a new one that I just filmed that'll be on Netflix in September.
Which is really exciting.
So I want to ask you, actually, a little bit about the MMA stuff.
Because you still cover MMA.
You're still big into MMA, obviously.
You're a big analyst over there.
Do you think that there is... I'm worrying about this about the NFL, and I wonder if it also applies to MMA.
Do you think that there is always going to be MMA?
There's always going to be NFL boxing?
Do you think these things are always going to exist, or do you think that as a society we're going to transition away from those as people start to become more concerned about brain injury, for example?
Like, I've seen the NFL's ratings decline because people seem to be really worried about concussion levels.
Yeah.
I think in the recent future we're going to have these things, but I think in the distant future we're probably not going to.
I think we're going to move away from them because of the damage that they do.
Unless there's some radical new medical technology that can regenerate brain tissue to the point where you don't have to worry about brain injuries, which is not outside the realm of possibility.
Medical science, what they're doing with stem cells and exosomes and all the different therapies that they're using on people today.
Who knows?
I mean, who knows what they're going to be able to do 50 years from now?
But I think it's entirely likely that until then, until some radical new technology comes on, I think there's probably gonna be less and less people that are interested in having their kids sign up You're seeing that now.
Definitely have less and less people interested in fighting since traumatic brain injuries have been revealed to be, you know, really Prevalent in kids that are involved in, like, football, even at, like, Pop Warner and high school levels, and in fighting, I mean, just from the time a kid can hit hard, you know, like, you're in, you know, like, one of the good things about martial arts, teaching kids young, is when you teach them young, they can't really hurt each other yet.
So even when they're hitting each other, it's all very light, and they're learning technique and movement before there's real consequences.
And then as they get older though, you know, if you're sparring when you're a teenager and you're sparring when you're, you know, in your early twenties, you're absolutely giving yourself brain damage.
It's just part of the package.
You have to just be able to figure out, okay, when have I, when have I suffered enough?
When, when am I getting out?
And that is the big question for a lot of fighters.
When do I jump off this ride?
because it's so exciting.
And what they're doing is such an incredibly thrilling and glory-filled event.
When you're competing against another person, they lock you in a cage.
And the way I describe fighting, I mean, a lot of people like to think of it as a barbaric thing.
I call it high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.
And that's really the best way to describe it, because you're trying to do something to someone who's trying to do something to you.
And genetics and knowledge and technique and discipline and drive and focus, these are all factors that are mixed up in this thing.
And you're trying to figure out who's going to come out on top.
I mean, I wonder if maybe that's the reason that MMA is going to keep growing as the NFL declines, is honesty in marketing.
When you watch MMA, you're watching people get the crap kicked out of them.
You're watching people bleed and your bones get broken.
The NFL has been promising for years that basically everyone's fine, that it's all just watching people hit pillows.
And then you see them later and they can't walk and they're falling apart.
MMA, I do wonder if there is a certain element of channeling just the human drive, particularly the male drive, for aggression in watching these kinds of sports.
Because I know a lot of genteel dudes who Yeah, it's genetic.
It's definitely in our core.
there's part of just the human psyche that needs to watch people get their ass kicked.
Yeah, it's genetic.
It's definitely in our core.
I mean, it's what led people to overcome being invaded by foreign villages that snuck in it in the middle of the night.
You had to be able to fight with your hand.
How people fought over mates.
How people fought over territory and property.
It's just a part of the human experience.
And to have it boiled down into a martial art.
Then it's like you get all the satisfaction of watching combat, but at the end of it, people are friendly, they hug.
You know, they shake hands, they raise each other's arms up, the audience cheers and claps, and it's very thrilling.
And, you know, some could say it's actually cathartic that it actually releases this desire for aggression and violence.
I think there's a good case to be made for that, especially because you do see that in the animal kingdom.
You see chimpanzees sparring with each other basically just for a show of dominance, and you certainly see it among young boys.
I can see it with my two-year-old now.
Sure.
Like constantly just wants to fight.
Like the four-year-old girl, she wants to sit there and be nice and play with her toys and read.
And my two-year-old boy wants to kick some ass.
I mean, he is hardcore.
And which gets us to, you know, one of the topics that you and I have talked about before, which is sort of these gender differences between male and female.
As you've been watching the last, it's been probably a year and a half since we last talked.
What do you think of sort of the movement that's continued to pace to get rid of these gender differences that you've been seeing in society more broadly?
It's very strange because it's science denialism.
And the left is all about science until it comes to gender.
And once it comes to gender, they don't want to hear about studies, they don't want to hear about genetic differences between males and females, they don't want to hear about preferences or any studies that show that People with higher testosterone tend to go towards certain activities.
People with lower ones tend to... They don't want to hear about that.
They want this weird thing where you're not even having the Boy Scouts anymore.
You just have the Scouts.
Like, there's this bizarre desire to eliminate gender as even...
Even a variable.
Very weird.
And I don't know why.
I don't know where it's going.
I don't know what's causing it.
I suspect it's people that don't enjoy certain aspects of male versus female competition or male versus male competition.
And the way that they feel like they can sort of diminish that is to try to make the whole subject seem like as if it's fruitless and there's nothing there.
Let's leave it on.
There is no difference.
It's a weird, weird time when it comes to discussing gender.
Gender all of a sudden, which was something that was just, oh, there's a boy, there's a girl.
I mean, our whole life.
Within the last half a decade, it's become this hugely politically charged subject where you, what, like I saw, my wife was reading this thing that she had to fill out today and she goes, look at this.
She goes, it says, what do I identify with?
Male or female?
She's not, it's like, state your sex.
It used to be state your sex.
Now it's what do you identify with?
And I'm like, okay, what percentage of the people are we placating with this?
And it's so bizarre it actually has medical consequences.
So I know a lot of doctors because I've said many times my wife is a doctor and there are cases now where doctors are walking into a room and it says on the chart that somebody is of a particular sex and they're not of that sex because they're writing the sex they perceive themselves to be.
Well that changes your diagnosis.
You have a completely different body.
So you know I heard a story about one patient who came in and was having lower abdominal pain.
Well, if you're a boy versus you're a girl, that's going to make a pretty large difference into how that diagnosis goes.
Shouldn't at least a doctor know what sex you're born with?
It's totally wild and it's all this attempt to level, I think.
Everything, the attempt to just get rid of natural differences between human beings and pretend they don't exist.
Like, we all want everybody to obviously have equal rights and equal liberties, but that's not the same thing as saying that everybody is going to be equally strong in a fighting ring.
What do you think is causing all this?
I mean, I think what's causing all of this is that there's a deep desire right now in a free society to try and figure out why some people succeed and some people fail, and we're never allowed to say that there are natural issues at stake.
And I understand the resistance to it based on race, right?
So for example, you see a lot of people who will say you can't ever talk about racial differences in IQ because That is going to lead toward this racist conclusion that your race defines your IQ, which is, you know, a silly conclusion.
Like, there are racial differences in IQ based on kind of group statistics, but that has no relevance to the particular individual standing in front of you.
And so you saying this black guy is stupid because he's black is racist.
You saying there are group differences in IQ because every study ever done has shown group differences in IQ, not even based on racial groups necessarily, but based on different groups generally between Between, you know, age groups.
There are differences in IQ, actually.
If you show that, at least from young age 2 to like 12, if you mention any of these things, then you're overriding the idea of a tabula rasa human being who can be created in whatever image you want.
Like, what people really want is to correct the cosmic imbalances, as Thomas Sowell says.
I don't know, what do you think is behind it?
I think you're hitting the nail on the head, and I think there's a tremendous amount of white guilt involved in it as well.
I mean, because basically what the IQ tests are showing when they do study differences in IQ and races, you're showing the rise of the superiority of the Asian race.
I mean, Asians dominate those things, and everybody is sort of just like, well, let's not talk about that.
Let's talk about white and black, because that's more convenient, and it's easier, and they could find a victim, and they could find a perpetrator.
And what you're also seeing, like, there's a lot of Asian groups that are furious because they're getting discriminated against about getting into colleges and universities.
They have higher standards, because they have such a high percentage of Asians that are getting into the universities.
It's very strange because they're not vocal about it, and they're not publicizing it, and they're not screaming racism in the streets, but they're the victims of it.
They actually are the victims of hard work and success and excellent genetics.
That's a great question.
And the differences in culture are really the place where we should be putting most of our focus, because when it comes to natural imbalances, there's only so much that you can do, right?
I'm not going to be fighting you in a ring anytime soon because I'd just get destroyed.
But when it comes to cultural differences, that's the stuff that we can correct for.
And instead of doing that, what we tend to do is we tend to pretend that the cultural differences are not brought about by immediate decision-making by parents.
Or by immediate communities.
It's something out there, right?
It's racism in the ether, or it's discrimination writ large.
It's something.
It's something out there.
We can't put our heads around it exactly, but it's something that's making us imbalanced.
And so the way to fix that is by getting rid of all imbalances that we see.
And so if there's an imbalance between men and women, we'll just pretend that that doesn't exist anymore, and that it must have been caused by something that we can't quite control.
Yeah, it's definitely not an objective way of approaching the issue.
I think there's a host of different factors that play into every community, right?
There's the echoes of the poor behavior of the people that live there before you, all the consequences of other people's actions that have affected all the people around you.
People going to jail, people that have experienced racism, people that have experienced poor treatment by law enforcement, massive distrust around you, very difficult to excel in those environments.
You're constantly like running away from gangs and headed home.
I don't think we should hold those people up to the same standards as we should.
People that grow up in very safe middle class communities where they don't have to worry about all this stuff.
I think there's a bunch of different factors and everybody's looking for one.
Exactly.
The one factor that appeals to their ideology.
Yeah.
And that's a real problem.
It's a problem also anytime you mention IQ everybody goes nuts.
Yeah.
Because immediately they suggest that what you're saying is racist.
And the truth is that Whatever IQ differentials there are, it's unclear how much is explained by genetics and how much is explained by environment.
But some is clearly explained by genetics and some is clearly explained by environment.
As soon as you say that, everybody suggests that you are operating in a racist space.
So it's as you say, when it comes to data, like this happened with Sam Harris when he was being interviewed by Ezra Klein.
Right, Ezra Klein just went after him for suggesting that science is science.
Well, science is still science, even if you don't like the science, and it seems like the same thing should apply when it comes to biological differences.
In a second, I want to ask you about the comedy world, because that's obviously the other area in which you exist.
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Okay, so, John, I want to ask you about the comedic imbalance.
So, I know that later this week you're scheduled to have on Roseanne.
We're pre-taping this a little bit.
So, you're scheduled to have on Roseanne.
What do you make of the Roseanne follow-up?
Do you think that ABC was right to dump her show after her bizarre tweet about Valerie Jarrett?
Well, what's interesting is just saying that she was going to be on my podcast, she said it, and then I got all these tweets that were saying, boycott Joe Rogan, the UFC should fire me for having this racist on my podcast.
Like, no, I'm going to have a conversation with one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time, a person who I deeply respect, who I think is mentally ill.
She is on a host of different medications.
She's taking Ambien and drinking.
She was pushed to the brink of exhaustion doing that television show and she's made some very poor choices with some of the things that she said.
She would be the first to tell you that and I don't think that you, I don't think you could get an understanding of her from a tweet or from, you know, a one sentence description of what she did, I think you need to hear her and hear her talk.
She's going to be the first person to tell you she's crazy.
And she is.
She's essentially, at least functionally, mentally ill.
You know?
But it's also why she's such a brilliant comedian.
And she's always been what you would call a sh** stirrer.
You know, if people don't remember, like when she used to, when she sung the national anthem and grabbed her crotch and spit on the ground and everybody went crazy, that's Roseanne.
You know, and I think people wanted to turn her into this lovable mother.
There's this, like, thing that people do when life gets weird, which is, like, where it's at right now, where they want to look back to the past, where things just made sense.
Can't we just bring back the Roseanne of old?
Look, John Goodman's there too.
This is amazing.
Everything was safe when I was a kid.
And that's what they're trying to do.
And they don't realize, like, she's tweeting crazy shit about someone looking like they're from Planet of the Apes, which, by the way, she said she didn't even know that that woman was black.
And she's just telling this to me on the phone.
She goes, I'm not stupid.
Do you think I would say that about a black person?
She goes, I thought she was Jewish.
She goes, look at her.
She looks like my relatives.
It's what she said to me on the phone.
I believe her.
I believe she makes some terrible choices.
Someone sent me some stuff this morning, like, look at this crazy shit she's tweeting.
It was something about George Soros.
As soon as I read Soros, I just put the phone down and walk away, because it's all, like, lizard people, and Alex Jones, and interdimensional child molesters, and George Soros is patrolling the marijuana.
I can't.
I'm out.
George Soros, to me, is the line that I will not cross.
My DMZ of conspiracy theories.
As soon as you get into Soros, Soros is hiring those Women's March people.
They don't even want to be there.
They're all being paid.
I'm like, how much money does this guy have?
There's a million people in every city.
What's he paying them?
A dollar?
Even if he paid them a dollar, that's a significant amount of money.
And they're not going to do that for a dollar.
You're going to have to pay them a lot of money.
Are you sure they're being paid?
But it's like that Soros guy.
As soon as you start tweeting and talking about Soros, my brain just checks out.
Is there a big problem with Roseanne?
A lot of celebrities, the attempt to mainstream them as normal human beings, and you see this from both sides.
I think to a certain extent, you saw the Republicans did this with Kid Rock, where suddenly Kid Rock is going to run for Senate in Michigan.
And he could have won.
And he definitely could have won.
And you see Kanye West, they're doing the same thing now.
Kanye West is a grand expositor of the Constitution of the United States.
And listen, I'm happy for anybody to think for themselves, if Kanye wants to talk about voting Republican, I'm Republican, I'm happy with that.
That's fine.
But to pretend that entertainers, I mean, I've lived out here my entire life.
The fact that entertainers and show people aren't a bunch of crazy people is just nuts.
Thank you.
The level of nuttiness in this town is so high, and yet the halo effect that we have about celebrities is that, well, if they're famous and I see them on TV, that must mean that they're smart in real life.
No.
No.
Well, it's a biological trick.
And what it is, is when you evolved, when all of us lived thousands of years ago, we'd look to the most successful member of the tribe, the one who was older, the one that everybody revered.
He was the best hunter.
He was the smartest warrior.
He was the one with the scars in his face that had survived battle.
And he could relay to you the lessons of a life well lived.
This is what I learned.
This plant's poisonous.
That snake will kill you.
And all of this stuff now gets relayed to someone who's on a giant screen.
Now we see Brad Pitt.
His head is 20 feet tall.
There's music playing when he talks.
His lines are all carefully constructed by a team of writers.
And we get sucked into it like he's a real hero.
And we do that for anybody that gets attention, whether it's Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift.
We see these people and millions of people are paying attention to them.
So we assume that there's some quality behind everything that they're saying.
There's something special about them.
But there's not.
It's a biological trick that is perpetrated through, and this is not by a grand conspiracy, but through media.
Through being able to put them on a YouTube screen, or on a television, or a laptop, or wherever you're digesting it.
And the knowledge that when you're watching a clip where Kanye West is talking about running for president, and you look down at the number and it says, oh my god, 24 million people have watched this.
And there's 15,000 thumbs up.
What the fuck?
And this is the world that we're living in today.
So you say, well, it must be, God, Kanye's going to win.
Kanye's going to win.
And this is exactly how Donald Trump got into office.
We have a popularity contest to see who becomes president, and we have the very first ever popular person enter a popularity contest, a guy who was a longtime media personality who knew very well how to manipulate that.
He was charismatic.
He's a bold speaker.
He's not afraid to piss people off.
He knows he has a bunch of people that like what he has to say, and he can rile them up.
And this is what's strange about taking the word of celebrities over the word of professors or of public intellectuals or of people that have actually carefully considered all these things that they're discussing and have a lot of information.
And they're basing these conclusions and these statements on a long history of research.
And this is not what you're going to get from Kanye.
He's a guy who doesn't even read.
He doesn't read.
And they're like, he's our guy.
He uses your incorrectly all the time.
He uses the wrong your.
Like, Piers Morgan, I mean, we both have our thoughts on Piers Morgan, but one of the things he wrote, like, he corrected him, and he's like, no, you're never going to be president, you know?
He shouldn't tweet that, because that's exactly what Barack Obama said about Donald Trump.
Exactly!
Exactly!
And then now Donald Trump's president.
Exactly!
So give me your take on, last time I talked to you was before the election, I think.
Yeah.
So what's your take on President Donald Trump, since we now have a year and a half of Donald Trump in office?
Everyone sucks at that job.
Hillary would have sucked at that job too.
It would have been a disaster.
I think her health would have failed.
I don't think she would have made any difference in the world.
I don't think he's going to make any difference in the world for the positive.
I think what we need is a council of wise people.
And I think that this idea of one alpha chimp that runs the whole thing based on a popularity contest is crazy.
I think it's a terrible idea.
I think it was a good idea in 1776.
It's a terrible idea in 2018.
I just don't think it works.
And I think you should be able to vote online.
I absolutely think you should be able to vote online.
If you could do your taxes online, if you could bank online and do all the different things that people do online, you should be very easy to register.
And you'd get a much more balanced percentage of the population than we do now.
By having these barriers, like you've got to go to a physical location, you've got to sign up long in advance, they're preventing certain people from voting.
Whether that's good or bad is up for debate.
But I think if you want to get a real understanding of how all grown adults in this country feel about certain issues, they should be able to vote online.
And having one person run the whole thing, like a president, and be able to do some of the things that Trump has done, like strip the EPA of a lot of its power, give the thumbs up to offshore drilling.
A lot of things that scare the shit out of people because there's real consequences for many generations in advance.
Forget about the...
What he's doing with the financial institutions and how he's opening up doors for businesses.
That's debatable, good or bad.
You know, whether it's good for the economy, is it bad for the middle class?
These are good questions.
But I think what's good about having someone who is widely regarded as being incompetent as president is that it's entirely possible that we might come to a point where we have to rethink the way we run and structure our government.
So I'm actually more encouraged by his presidency than you are.
I think one of the reasons is because the checks and balances worked.
So I think when last we talked, we said, you know, is Trump going to just run roughshod over the entire system of government?
And the reality is that no, he's done some stuff at the executive level, but the stuff that he's done at the executive level should never have been at the executive level anyway.
It should have been all legislature stuff.
So when you talk about what he's done with the EPA, my feeling is that we should have a Congress that makes the actual law on the environment.
We shouldn't have a group of unelected bureaucrats who make the actual law on the environment who we can't get rid of if we don't like.
It's a good point.
And so having them write these broad laws that are then delegated to Donald Trump's friends over in the executive or Barack Obama's friends over in the executive to then interpret and change and do all this stuff with takes power out of the hands of The human beings who are actually elected to do it and who we can throw out.
I can't throw out the EPA administrator.
So one thing that's been good about Trump is, and this is the argument I've made to people who don't like President Trump is, you don't like President Trump?
Totally fine.
I didn't like President Obama.
Thought he was garbage.
Here's a great idea.
How about none of these people have a lot of power?
How about we just devolve a lot of the power all the way back to the local level and to the states?
And I understand there are environmental issues where they cross boundaries, they cross state lines, for example, and you're gonna have to have some federal environmental regulations.
But a lot of this stuff can be done at the local level, whether you're talking about financial institutions or whether you're talking about environmental stuff.
Most environmental damage is being done at the local level.
It's not being done across state lines.
So it's, I've been encouraged by the fact that the system is more durable than I thought it was.
I think that the founders were smart enough to build in a bunch of checks and balances that the president, as much as we tend to think of him as the guy who runs everything, I mean, let's be real about this.
President Trump is sitting on the second floor of the White House.
He's not even in the Oval, right?
He's on the second floor of the White House, watching Shark Week.
And everybody downstairs is actually doing a lot of the work, trying to put together policy with Congress.
Some of it gets done, some of it doesn't.
And even a lot of those people are spending a lot of their time online, trying to figure out how Kim Kardashian can visit the White House.
So, the question, I guess, really is, for your money, do you want to see a more active government or a less active government?
Because I'm kind of happy with the gridlock, I'll be honest with you.
I kind of like the fact the government isn't doing anything.
There's definitely some pros to that.
I think it would be better if we had a more competent system.
And I agree with you that the checks and balances have... We've shown that he can't just throw everything out and just run Trump mania all across the country.
I think there's definitely some positive to that gridlock.
All the above.
- So, okay, so what changes would you make to the system?
'Cause you talk about the system being a process.
You talked about online voting.
Do you mean online voting direct on issues, or you mean online voting for representatives? - All the above.
- Okay, so you like the referendum system in California? - I think if you have opinions on things, I mean, first of all, this is really unpopular.
I think you should have to show that you have an understanding of what you're voting on.
You should probably have to take a test.
I'm fine with this.
If you want to get rid of the ID requirements and retain the actual you need to know what you're talking about requirement, I think I could live with that.
I think you should take a test.
And if you understand what the consequences of your decision are, you understand what What is being voted on?
Then you can vote on it.
But if you just read, if you just go check yes, check no, just do it haphazard just because you're a crazy person and you happen to be 18.
I think that's pretty ridiculous.
But to have a test and have someone say, well, you have to be required to understand, have a rudimentary understanding of what you're talking about in order to make an opinion that could literally affect 300 million people.
A lot of people would say that's bad because then what about, are you saying that people have to have a certain intelligence level in order to vote?
Is this like, are you at the door of eugenics?
Like, where are you going with this?
Well, I think it's not a bad idea to say that if you're going to vote on really important issues, like whatever those issues are, whether it's funding the military or abortion or whatever it is, you should have an understanding of the subject.
I don't think that's unreasonable.
But people don't want any extra work, and they want things to be very, very convenient.
They want the virtue signaling also.
Being able to vote.
Half of voting right now is just virtue signaling, like demonstrating to the public at large, to people at large, what this vote means to you.
So as Hillary Clinton campaigning on, if you vote for me, you'll show that you voted for a woman.
And if you vote for Barack Obama, you've shown that you vote for a black guy.
If you're voting for Donald Trump, you're sticking a middle finger to the system.
It's all symbolic voting.
Very little of it seems to be about, like, what's this guy actually going to do once he's there?
Yeah.
And that's a serious problem.
Okay, so I want to turn to kind of the political correctness.
How do you do your job in a politically correct universe?
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Okay, so you make jokes for a living, right?
You make lots of jokes for a living.
How are you going to survive in this environment making jokes for a living?
Piss people off?
I mean, you're gonna always have people, you're gonna have more people upset with you and there's more righteous indignation, I think, than I've ever seen in comedy.
I've had more people furious at me for what are clearly jokes than ever at any other time in my career.
And this is the hardest thing, right?
Because you make something that's clearly a joke and then somebody writes down the transcript of the joke and now you have to explain the joke.
Well, that immediately kills it because as soon as you explain a joke, it's no longer a joke.
So if you make a joke that's politically incorrect, and then they write it down, and everybody who heard you at the time knows that you were making a joke, if they write it down and then you have to explain it, you've automatically exited the realm of jokes, and so now you're trying to explain the statement as true or decent, and that's not the point of the joke in the first place.
Yes, exactly.
And you miss the context, you miss the way it was delivered, you miss the tone, you miss everything.
But what they're doing is they're just trying to find targets.
And I think that's one of the things that's happening with Roseanne, that's one of the things that's happening whenever anybody screws up in the media.
You just get these people that they want a target.
It's a game.
And the game is take someone down.
The game is call someone out, take someone down, shame them, you know, get the Twitter mob and the Facebook mob.
Get them after them.
Let's go.
Let's move.
Let's start a hashtag.
Let's attack Morgan Freeman.
I heard he told a joke.
I mean, this is like... I mean, did you read the woman's account on CNN?
With her interview with Morgan Freeman?
I think we covered it, but I can't remember it.
He was playing God in a movie.
You know, he's played God in a movie.
And she asked him, if you had magic power, what would you do with it?
And he said, you wouldn't have a stitch of clothes on.
That was the joke.
That was it.
And she was like, God, you mess with the wrong girls.
And I'm number 17 out of all these girls that have come after you.
And it's like, wow.
You know, like, he was on the spot.
He's being interviewed.
He's on a red carpet.
He tries to crack a joke about you being naked.
Like, is this really the worst thing that's ever happened to you?
Is this really this, or is it just a joke?
And when I'm looking at it, even in text, I find it to be silly.
But just a joke is dying, obviously.
Just a joke is still just a joke!
It's just a joke!
Well, I think there is that backlash happening.
It's one of the reasons why you've become incredibly popular, because you just don't care, right?
Well, I feel like if you have f*** you money, and you don't say f*** you, then who's going to?
Who's going to?
I'm a good person.
I'm a nice guy.
I pay my taxes.
I have a bunch of great friends and loved ones.
You have kids.
I have kids.
I try to be nice to people.
That's what I try to do.
But if I see something that's ridiculous and I make fun of it and people get mad at me for that, that's on you.
That's on you.
So there's a picture of you along with the rest of the intellectual dark web in this big New York Times piece by Barry Weiss.
I don't know, were you standing in a bush or something?
Like, for some reason everybody was in foliage taking these pictures.
So what do you make of the whole intellectual dark web contingent?
And there's been this now huge backlash by a lot of folks, particularly on the left, saying, what's up with this intellectual dark web?
It's just a bunch of unacceptable, deplorable people talking with each other and they don't have anything to say.
What do you make of the whole phenomenon?
Well, the name is all Eric.
Right, Eric Weinstein, yeah.
Yeah, Eric is crazy and he loves like all the cloak and dagger and all the hidden... just the name of it.
Intellectual dark web.
It's like he concocted that.
Soros, yeah.
Oh, was it?
Is he behind it?
But Eric, he's brilliant.
I love him.
I love his... Eric is the smartest person I have ever met and I can't understand half of what he's saying.
Yeah, he's a very intense guy, but he loves all this stuff.
He gets a kick out of it.
And I think there's a certain amount of silliness in calling it the intellectual dark web.
I mean, you and I are essentially in some sort of a super group.
What are we in?
We're super friends.
Exactly.
Yeah, and what I felt was fascinating was that a lot of people were trying to label us as like deplorable conservatives.
And like when they were saying this is a group of renegade conservatives.
I'm pretty liberal, like pretty liberal across the board.
If you want to talk to me about gay marriage, you want to talk to me about gay rights, women's rights, drugs, you go down the line.
Universal health care, universal basic income.
I mean, I'm pretty liberal, but it doesn't fit the narrative.
I look like a Trump supporter, right?
Is it white and buff or what?
Yeah, I'm a white, bald guy.
It works out too much.
There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of need to label someone into an easily dismissible category.
And that category is conservative.
Like, ruthless, nasty, mean.
A person who's not kind.
You're not a person who's caring about other people.
You're a conservative.
You're a mean bully.
Mean mad white man.
What was his name that said that to Jordan Peterson in the monk debates?
Michael Dyson, I think his name was.
Oh, Michael Eric Dyson.
Yes, that's who it was.
Oh, Michael Eric Dyson.
He called Jordan Peterson a mean mad white man.
Or Mad Me, one of those.
But there's this need to categorize.
Right, except for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christina Hough Summers and half the people who are members of the club.
Maajid.
Exactly.
Dave Rubin, who's gay, right?
Yeah, it's hilarious.
It's this really bizarrely diverse group.
And really ideologically diverse, too.
Because it's a bunch of people, like Brett Weinstein, who's a member of our secret group.
He's a socialist.
He backed Bernie Sanders in the last election cycle.
Dishonesty.
It's dishonesty.
So what do you think generated?
Was it just the political correctness, the insanity of the hard left that threw everybody out?
Dishonesty.
It's dishonesty.
It's the same thing that led to what happened with Brett Weinstein at Evergreen when they had this day of absence where they wanted all white people to stay home.
And he's like, hey, this is racist.
Like you're absolutely targeting people based on their race and saying you're not welcome here.
This is a day instead of it being a day of absence where people of color stayed home voluntarily and weren't chastised if they didn't.
Instead of that, it was, no, white people have to go away.
And if you don't, you are a racist.
And this is what happened with Brett.
And it's a terrifying story.
And when I interviewed him on my podcast, it was before he had left Evergreen.
He was still employed there.
And he was talking to me about mobs that were wandering the parking lot with baseball bats.
And they were looking for him.
And it was terrifying.
He had to take his family out of the state.
And who is this?
Are these Nazis?
Are these the KKK?
Are these these right-wing thugs?
No, they're extreme progressives with pink hair who are, you know, non-binary sexually.
Like, it's very bizarre.
And there's a lack of reality that you have to adhere to this narrative.
And if you're not adhering to this narrative, then you are some horrific person who is a product of the past, and you're a part of the patriarchy, and it's not an honest discussion.
If you see all the people that are involved in this, you know, air quotes, intellectual dark web, the one thing they have in common, all of them are going, what in the f*** is everybody talking about?
Like, what is this?
What's happening here?
Like, why are we pretending that men and women aren't different things?
Why are we pretending that to tell people that you have to stay home because you're white?
It's f***ing racist.
That is absolutely racist, by definition.
That's what racism is.
You're discriminating against someone based on their race.
Not based on their character or their job position or anything else.
You're just white people.
Totally agree.
I mean, I think that the concepts that seem to have united this group of people, who again are all over the place on everything from religion to free will to politics, is one, we all like data and we're interested in data.
So if you present us with data, we're all happy to take a look at it and maybe change our opinions based on the new data that you're presenting to us.
That's very important.
And two, that we're willing to have conversations about those data without regard for the political niceties.
Yes.
And three, that we're all, I think, big into the idea of treating people as individuals.
That if you're going to treat me as a member of a group, I'm really not interested in talking to you, and I'm not interested in being labeled as a member of a group either.
So we're a group of people who don't like groups, basically, which is kind of hilarious.
That is exactly what it is, a group of people who don't like groups.
But we're also very friendly and kind.
And I'm sure you and I disagree on a bunch of things, but we agree on a lot of things as well.
But what I like about you is you're a very reasonable, intelligent person.
You're a very polite person.
The way you talk to people is very polite.
Thank you.
I think that's something that's missing.
The little part of my reputation, me being polite.
You are a polite person.
You're a very kind, polite person.
And I think that there's something missing with this idea war that people are engaged in, where they want to demonize people that disagree with them.
Instead of just sitting down and talking with them and saying, well, why do you think this?
Okay, let me try to look at it from your perspective.
This is why I disagree.
And have a polite exchange of ideas.
Instead, everyone's fighting for their life.
As if, you know, whether or not trans people can use the f***ing girls room is going to change the course of history.
It's strange.
It's strange.
Like these battlegrounds, the lines that people are drawing in the sand, and if you're on the other side, you're the f***ing enemy and you need to be shut down and stopped.
It's a very weird time. - The level of anger is really, really troubling.
I mean, and that's something that I do feel like is kind of new.
So I've spoken on college campuses for a long time because I'm 34 now, but I started doing this stuff when I was 17 or 18 years old, and I was speaking on college campuses when I was 20.
And I never had to bring security with me to any of these college campuses, ever, until the last three years.
The last three years, I now have to have at least a two-man security team at every college campus.
And usually it's more than that, based on what the police are telling us about reports in advance.
Now, half the time nothing materializes, but a few times things have materialized, and it's been trouble, and that sometimes happens.
Where do you think this level of anger is coming from?
Because it appears to me that that's what's new.
Like, these political divides have always existed.
These political divides between right and left, or political divides between people who are more interested in collective solutions versus individual solutions.
Why do you think people are so pissed all the time?
I mean, they're just... You can feel it in the air.
Like, the eagerness to stomp on somebody's face is really strong.
That's why when the Roseanne thing happens, it can't just be like what you're saying, where, okay, she's a mentally ill person, maybe you have to take the show off the air, maybe that's the proper response, but...
She might actually have a problem here.
She certainly does.
What I think it's coming from is toxic tribalism.
That's what I think.
I think people, they're on a team, they want their team to win, and they want their team to win by any means necessary, and they feel disenfranchised because we have a president You know, Donald Trump, I mean, he is who he is, and he stands for a lot of things that they find abhorrent.
And you have a lot of people now that are calling themselves Antifa, and they're literally by their own actions acting in a fascist manner, and they're calling themselves anti-fascist, and they're putting bandanas in their face, they're hitting people with bike locks, and they're engaged in violence.
And the left is using violence as a means to solve These differences that we have in ideas and opinions.
They're shutting people down like Christina Hoff Summers.
Just yelling out at her.
A woman who's, her whole life has been a feminist.
Her whole life.
And she calls herself a factual feminist.
Because she wants women who are empowered and who are intelligent to be held accountable for the actual facts behind what they're saying.
And, you know, to discuss this, to empower people with reality.
And by doing that, she's become an enemy.
I mean, it's very strange to watch her get shouted down by other feminists that think that she's the wrong kind of feminist.
It's really bizarre.
But the anger and the vitriol and the violence that's attached to it is something that's completely new and was always associated with right-wing thuggish mobs.
It was always associated with hate groups, like the KKK or something along those lines, you know, neo-Nazis.
But you're seeing this level of violence from the left now, these weird, like, university professors and these dorky people that are saying, burn this motherfucker down, and people are cheering in the streets, and white people are the problem, and there's so many people that are tenured professors.
That are getting away with saying, like, ridiculous, crazy sh** and calling out for violence.
And it's completely irresponsible.
And it's, it's, it's foolish.
It feels weird, too, because, you know, back in the 1960s, at least there was something to fight over.
At least back in the 1960s, if you were gay, you said, okay, I don't have my rights, there's something to fight over.
Or you're black, and you say, I don't have my rights.
True, there's something to fight over.
Or you're female, and you say, well, feminism hasn't, hasn't done what it needs to do yet, there's something to fight for.
But right now, Country's pretty good.
Like, things are pretty good for the vast majority of people in this country.
Put aside the economics for a second, because people always fail or rise in economics.
It just happens.
And some of that is natural and some of that is stuff that's fixable.
But one thing that is certainly true is that the notion of a governmental invasion of rights against any of these groups, this is not something that is commonly happening.
It's not that the government is cracking down on black people or Hispanic people or, at this point, even gay people.
And yet there's this level of anger that feels like riots in the 1960s.
I want to talk a little bit more about that in just a second.
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All right, so we're talking about sort of the levels of chaos, and I have a theory.
I'll lay it out for you.
So my theory, and I don't know where you stand religiously.
Are you agnostic, atheist, religious?
More agnostic than anything.
I grew up Catholic, and I abandoned it when I was a young boy.
I went to Catholic school, and that cured me.
So here's my theory.
My theory is that everybody has broken down into tribalism because it used to be that we were a larger tribe.
Meaning that the way that you defeat local tribalism is by creating a larger tribe that everybody feels a kinship to and a membership to.
So in the United States, you had people who've had tribal kinship to state governments.
And then after the Civil War, that basically went away because the federal government stepped in and stopped slavery through war making power.
And people felt a general kinship to the federal government.
You were American now.
It wasn't that you were Californian or you were Texan.
You were now American.
And the same thing goes back to biblical times where you have all of these various tribes.
You have the tribe of Manasseh and the tribe of Ephraim.
But they're the Jews.
There's a bigger tribe that eats them.
And it used to be that the tribe for America was called America.
And that tribe was bonded by a certain set of creedal values, values of individual rights, values of personal virtue, that these things had to be combined.
You had to be a good person to your neighbors, but at the same time the government had no right to come in and take your stuff and force you to be a nicer person.
So the idea was that You voluntarily were going to be a nicer person to your neighbors because you thought that was the right thing to do, but it wasn't the government's job to come in and force you to be nicer to your neighbors because that would be fascistic and overbearing and tyrannical.
And that's gone away because people don't feel like they have to be nice to their neighbors.
And I think part of that has to be connected with lack of communal institutions that, you know, I'm not saying everybody has to go to church, but people who are in churches tend to get along better with each other in the church.
And people who are outside the church and people inside the church.
Doesn't mean that you got to pick a church, but it does mean that we have to have some sort of communal institutions.
And right now we are savagely tearing apart each of our communal institutions up to and including things like the NFL, where suddenly things where we would bond over that, like Super Bowl Sunday was a bonding time for the country.
And now we can't even bond over that.
We can't bond over anything right now because all of these creedal values have been dissipated by our own personal malevolence toward each other.
I think that's a great point.
I think it's a great point, too, about the benefit of religion is that you do have these ideas and values that are shared amongst this community and group.
And when you are an atheist or an agnostic, I mean, you don't really have that group other than, like, what you're getting from a lot of atheists.
You get this really hardcore, progressive ideology that is, in many ways, like a religion.
And I think there's probably some real merit to what you're saying.
Robert Putnam makes this point in his book Bowling Alone.
He talks about this new fascination with diversity, and diversity is our strength, and this whole line.
And he was a big believer in this, Robert Putnam, this professor of sociology.
He's a big lefty.
And he says that diversity was our strength, was his guiding kind of notion.
And then he did the research into it.
And what he found is that as diversity of a census tract increases, the only thing that he found that increase are protest marches and TV watching.
That's the only thing that actually increases in a particular area based on ethnic diversity.
He said the only area where he could see that ethnic diversity actually made things better was in the context of broader groups.
So in the army, for example.
Then ethnic diversity is great, because then you get a bunch of people who are fighting for the same purpose, and the guy next to you is your brother, doesn't matter if he's black or white.
You see this with people who you talk to who are in the military all the time.
When they talk about people of different races in the military, this is usually the way they talk about people of different races in the military, which is very different than the way people talk about race in the United States more broadly.
You also see this in churches, but communal institutions have declined so markedly That the only way I think that we're going to be able to have a system where we can all live with each other is to reestablish some sort of, some form of communal talking with each other.
Even if it's just forums like this one, where we're talking with each other and, you know, if we did this live, we'd get thousands of people to show up just to hear us talk to each other.
Even those sort of communal institutions need to exist.
Otherwise, we're going to completely polarize.
I mean, I think it's one of the dangers of the Internet.
I love the Internet.
I've made my living on the Internet.
You make your living on the Internet.
But one of the dangers of the Internet is that it's all personal to you.
You don't actually have to go out and be with other human beings.
You get to hide behind the screen and tweet nasty things at each other.
Yeah, you also can find this group of like-minded people and you share an echo chamber.
That's another real issue for confirmation bias.
I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense and I think that we do need community.
And I think the more people like you and like Sam Harris and Eric and Brett Weinstein People who are open-minded, people who are willing to discuss things politely with people and not shove their ideology down other people's throats.
The more we exchange information with each other, the more this idea of being able to communicate like this becomes popular.
And I think there's real benefit in that.
I think there's real benefit in these kind of podcast-style discussions because of that.
Because you can sit down with a person that maybe doesn't share the same opinions with you and you can talk things out and maybe disagree, maybe argue, but be polite to each other and realize that a lot of these ideas that we have, we have these predetermined notions of the way we think things should be.
And if you don't fit with my predetermined notions, then there must be something wrong with you.
It's never just Examining these notions and finding out where are these ideas coming from and why am I so married to them?
And what is the solution to make everybody comfortable?
Is there a solution?
Can we stop demonizing people that disagree with us?
I think the principle that I think also unites everybody, and this is why everybody's getting labeled conservative really, Because everybody that we've been talking about here, in the end, actually does believe in personal responsibility.
Believes in taking responsibility for your own actions.
And you can be on the left and still believe in taking responsibility for your own actions, but it seems like so much of the left has dumped out of that.
And you're seeing that increasingly on the right, too.
I think that a lot of President Trump's appeal during the actual election cycle is him saying, I'm going to come in and solve all your problems.
Yeah.
No, that's a very good point.
Yeah.
Yeah, why are we all considered conservatives?
The only way your life's going to get better is if you solve your own problems because there are very few people who have had their problems solved for them who actually are able to have a successful life in the aftermath of having all their problems solved for them.
Yeah.
No, that's a very good point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why are we all considered conservatives?
I mean, Jordan Peterson is an interesting example, too, because as much as he calls himself a classic liberal, you know, people have a hard time deciphering what that is.
They don't even bother looking it up.
And he is, more so than I think anybody in that whole group, is getting attacked.
Oh, he's getting destroyed right now, yeah.
And his words are getting taken out of context, his positions are getting distorted, even in debates, during the month debates.
That Kathy Newman debate.
Oh, that was amazing.
Oh my goodness.
That was amazing!
Did you read the New York Times profile on Jordan?
I read a little bit of it, but it was a hit piece.
That piece was so astonishing.
My favorite part of that piece was there was a part of that piece where they suggest that Jordan Peterson is in favor of what he called enforced monogamy.
And so their suggestion was that Jordan actually wants to shackle women to men.
It's like you're...
Like, use Google.
It's an anthropological term.
It's talking about the difference between biological monogamy and socially constructed monogamy.
That's not what he's talking about.
But the left is so out to destroy him that they're willing to take him out of context at any level.
It's just nuts.
Well, he's also willing to engage with people and discuss things that he's talking to reporters that are looking to get him.
And he's openly discussing intellectual ideas and puzzles.
Like, how do you fix this?
I don't know.
Maybe it's enforced monogamy.
Like, this is not... I mean, this is like a weird way of engaging with the press, but he's so comfortable with these idea puzzles and bouncing them around and using them almost as intellectual exercises that he'll do it publicly with someone who is looking for flaws in his armor.
This is what you do so well, by the way, on your show.
I was trying to explain to somebody why your show is so popular, because it's a unique thing, what you do.
And what I said to them is that when I look at you as a host, or when I look at you as a thinker, you're somebody who's taking people along an intellectual journey, and you're taking the journey with them.
It's like being on a road trip of ideas with you on your show.
Do you think that's a pretty good description of what you do?
It's what I try for, in a way.
I want to know how they think.
It enriches the way I think.
When I have smart people on and I go through their thought process, I feel like I get a little rub from that.
I understand the way they're viewing the world with their completely different life than me.
I think there's a great value in that.
I think that's one of the things that people get out of the podcast, is they're getting the same thing that I'm getting while I'm sitting there talking to these people.
So what's your big plan here?
You can continue what you're doing, obviously, but where do you think you are in five years?
There's no plan.
There's no plan to get here.
There's no plan to stay.
I have zero plan.
I mean, I might abandon it.
I don't know.
I might decide people are too crazy.
It's just too difficult.
I really don't know.
Golf hunting in the wilderness?
Yeah, I'll probably just get a shack somewhere and just bow hunt.
I don't know.
I really have no idea where it's going to go.
But I am enjoying the fact that because the podcast is popular, I can get really interesting people on, like Howard Bloom, or Jordan Peterson, or you, or all these fascinating people and have these great conversations.
And I really enjoy conversations.
It's taught me a lot about the The way to communicate with people, allowing people to talk, actually listening to what they're saying, engaging them on their ideas, not just waiting for my time to talk, which is what so many people do.
I mean, it's also led me to understand how rudimentary most people's conversation skills are.
When I'm watching people, even in really important meetings, just talk over each other and disregard what each other is saying, there's no lack of...
Solid communication skills that I think you really foster on a podcast.
And these conversations that we have, I think one of the best things about them is that you're getting an insight into how other people think and it allows you to examine the way you think.
And you, just by virtually listening to this person through your headphones or in your car, you're comparing your thought process to their thought process.
And I think, ultimately, we're trying to strengthen the way we view the world, and strengthen our clarity, and take in as much information as we can, and see that information for what it truly is, not what we want it to be.
So in that journey of what you're doing, you have a very wide variety of guests.
I know you've gotten flack for a lot of the guests that you've gotten on various sides, including flack for having me on your show.
How do you perform the gatekeeper function?
How do you decide who is just not worth having on your show?
Or is there anybody who you think is just not worth having on your show?
I just I like talking to people you know I mean if I want to talk to someone I want to have on my show I'm gonna like I told you I'm gonna have Ted Nugent on my show that's probably gonna be the most pushback other than Alex Jones of anybody that I've ever had but I don't think it's my job to not talk to people that I want to talk to I think it's my job to even if someone's I mean, there's got to be some horrible people out there that I would never want to talk to.
That I just don't like the way they speak.
I don't like what they stand for.
And maybe Ted's one of them.
I don't know.
I have to sit down and talk to him.
But as long as I feel that I'm interested in having a conversation with that person, I'll air it.
And look, there's a lot of them out there.
I mean, I do three-hour podcasts and I do four or five a week.
If you don't like one of them, good.
Don't listen to that one.
I mean, I have ones on with MMA fighters, and I'll get, like, people always like, oh, I hate those ones.
So I said, OK, let me just take those, and I'll have a separate podcast.
I'll label them the MMA show, the JRE MMA show.
So now you know.
You know, if I have Kat Zingano on, or George St.
Pierre, we're going to talk about fighting for a lot of the time.
And then if I have on Jordan Peterson, or Sam Harris, or whoever else I might be interviewing, or Robert Shock, or you, we're going to talk about different things.
You know, you can like it or you don't like it, but there's plenty of people that like it, so I don't care.
Again, you have that eff you money, so you're in good shape, so who cares?
But having that, the wherewithal to understand that if you're enjoying it, if you like what you're doing, that's contagious.
You know, these conversations, interesting conversations are contagious.
Like, I am interested in people that are engaged in interesting conversations.
And when I listen to podcasts and I listen to people discussing things, and I know that they're really locked into this conversation, it's fascinating to me.
I mean, and we don't get enough of that.
In this world, we are dealing with, you know, you're in offices, you're in cubicles, you're dealing with human resources, and there's demands on the type of things you can discuss and what you can get in trouble for.
And most people, for at least eight hours out of their day, they are locked down with this rigid, conformed way of communicating and speaking.
And it's very frustrating.
It's very frustrating and it doesn't represent your thoughts.
It represents these patterns that you're expected to follow in the world of business and commerce and, you know, office space, you know, politics.
And I just think it's very, very frustrating for people and it's not natural.
And I think that's one of the reasons why people yearn for uncensored conversations.
Well, I mean, that's what you're going to get if you go to the Joe Rogan Experience, and it is amazing.
If you haven't listened to it, first of all, if you're listening to this, I'm sure you've listened to Joe's show.
But if you haven't, go check it out.
It's the Joe Rogan Experience.
Joe, thanks so much for stopping by.
It's amazing to have you here.
Thank you.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is produced by Jonathan Hay, executive producer Jeremy Boring, associate producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Caromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera, and title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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