Bryan Callen and Joe Rogan explore how societal struggles—like nuclear threats in the 1960s-70s—fueled creativity, contrasting it with modern complacency. Rogan argues the internet democratizes deep discussions on purpose, criticizing politicians as corporate "hookers" while praising comedians like Bobby Kelly and Dane Cook for their humility. He links Charlie Sheen’s cocaine addiction to creative stagnation, earning $2M per Two and a Half Men episode yet failing to innovate, while marijuana offers safer artistic liberation. The era’s existential stakes, they agree, bred more meaningful work than today’s hollow rewards. [Automatically generated summary]
If you knew that you were now in heaven, and you get to bang some chick anytime you want for the rest of your life, and you get to eat all the food you wanted for the rest of your life, you think that it would be awesome.
It's part of, we are some sort of a monkey that creates things.
And if we don't create things, whether you create ideas, whether you create relationships, whether you create houses, whether you create jokes, whatever the fuck you put forth, that's what makes human beings happy.
If you're just living in the clouds, banging chicks and eating food, you would fucking live in hell.
You don't think you would, but eventually you would be in hell.
You would be in some weird situation where a giant part of what it is to be a human...
And it just goes back to what we talked about with welfare.
You've got to work to get something.
You can't just get it.
There has to be a struggle or you don't evolve.
And as soon as you introduce the option of no struggle, you introduce the option of...
You know, and people think that the struggle is over financially.
It's one of the reasons why when people are successful, a lot of people go, oh man, he sold out.
Oh man, you know, he's not hip anymore.
The struggle is never financial.
The best part about overcoming the financial struggle is now the struggle gets to be about thoughts and ideas.
Now the struggle gets to be about creating shit.
Now the struggle gets to be about getting to the center of what the fuck this is.
Getting to the center of what is this life.
And you can, guess what, you can think about what is this life a whole lot more when you're a comedian that gets to wake up at 1 in the afternoon and doesn't necessarily have to do anything all day.
And you can sit in front of your computer drinking coconut juice and smoking pot and reading online.
You can think things through in a manner that the average person does never get a chance to do You never have that opportunity.
He was really good at jiu-jitsu and we were hanging out together just because we took classes together and he gave me some private lessons and tied me up in a knot.
I was training with this other guy.
I was taking private lessons with this black belt.
He was a very nice guy.
He had good intentions but I could roll with him but I knew his game.
And you get to a certain point where you could roll with a guy like, you know, I could tap him out.
Very rare, but occasionally I could get him with something.
And part of it was him rolling nice with me and rolling easy with me and letting me get things.
But also, I knew his game.
Well, when you start rolling with someone else, you realize, oh, you've got to roll with a bunch of different people.
You can't just roll with one person because Eddie Bravo just went right through me.
He just destroyed me.
Part of it was because he was way better than me.
And really an amazing jiu-jitsu guy.
He's a genius.
A jiu-jitsu genius.
A true genius.
In every sense of the word.
But it was also because I sucked.
I thought I was good because I knew how to wrestle with one guy.
I knew his weaknesses.
I was physically a little faster than him and I can do things.
But then I started rolling with other people and I was getting tapped all the time.
I was like, oh, okay.
I've got to join class.
Eddie said, you know, I'd be happy to give you some private lessons.
I said, oh, awesome.
So we went out, we got some lunch, get some private lessons, and we started talking about creativity and life and music and stuff because he's a musician.
And he said that he writes his best stuff when he's stoned.
The moments in my life where I'd been drunk, I was embarrassed about those moments.
I never looked back at the time I was drunk like I can now.
Now, we're like, we're fucking hammered and we're talking shit at the bar.
It's fun.
To me, I'm in control of my shit now.
So if me and Brian and Joey Diaz do shots in the green room in the Portland Helium, we're I don't feel bad about that.
I feel like we had a good time.
It was crazy, the next day I had a headache.
You know what I mean?
But back then I was embarrassed about anything that I did that wasn't positive.
And anything that I did that might make me a loser.
Anything that I did that might keep me...
Make you vulnerable too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he was so adamant about how weed made him, like, really creative.
And I was like, all right, let's do this.
Come on, pull over.
So we smoked pot, and then we had some ice cream.
And it was amazing.
It was the greatest ice cream I've ever had in my life.
And I couldn't believe that marijuana made this ice cream so fucking good.
I had an ice cream sundae with hot fudge, and it was the most incredible.
The sensation of eating the food was so heightened, I felt like a fool.
I felt like I can't believe that all my life...
Yes, that was it.
I was talking to him, and he's this fascinating guy.
Eddie is a very fascinating guy.
He's a free thinker.
He had a really hard childhood, man.
My childhood was not terrible.
It wasn't ideal.
I had a lot of shit happen to me.
I think a lot of us did.
All of us here did.
But his was horrific.
And because of that, he developed this ability to just fuck you, push people away, focus on his goals, and see things in a different way.
He's got this ability to look at life and break things down.
And a lot of times when we have conversations, he comes at it from a completely different angle than I do.
And I like that about you, too.
You will often do that, too.
And Duncan will do that all the time.
I love when people, like when I have a friend that's a close friend that's very smart, That will take things in a different way.
And I don't necessarily always agree with them, but it's a fascinating thing.
It's almost like if you value their opinion and if you talk to them about things, it's like you have one more you out there interpreting the world from another possible angle.
That's so important.
Yeah, and so I met him and right away I knew.
I'm like, this guy's smart as fuck.
He's a weirdo.
He's figured out some shit about jiu-jitsu.
And if you can get that good at jiu-jitsu, I'm like, you can get that good at a lot of things.
It goes contrary to the idea of being, or what makes you funny in the first place.
Yeah.
But being a part of the community, like having people like you as a friend and having people like, you know, Nick Swartzen come over and Carolla come over and all these people that I'm like, wow, Nick Swartzen's hanging out here.
I always feel like, you know, boy, when you've done the road and when you've been on stage and, you know, faced audiences who are so different, you don't know how they're going to respond.
Eastside Comedy Club in 1991. He was killing Doris Roberts and she was in the audience.
She was like, how old are you?
She was 91 when she did this show.
How are you drinking?
Are you drunk, sweetie?
He was killing everybody.
This black woman was in the thing and she was really old.
He goes, look at her from the Civil War.
It must be so different now for you, isn't it?
I mean, killing them.
He was amazing.
He's just so irreverent, but he was fucking killing the room.
And then we were all backstage, and I'm with Gary Shanling, and all these guys are in some ways big.
They've done a lot of stuff in comedy for 20, 30 years.
And they were all talking about how they just all have so much reverence for comedy, and it's still not easy no matter what, and it's still a challenge, and you're still...
Actually, what they say was that he could strangle a girl and everything else, and then he made fun of Chuck Lorre on that radio show, and that's when he got fired.
If you're not being challenged as a grown man, you're going to give yourself a fucking problem.
You're going to find a way to challenge yourself.
You're going to create a problem for yourself.
That shit happens all the time.
Somebody gets exactly what they want and they're a little too young to handle it or they get exactly what they want and they don't have the imagination to figure out where else they can grow, they get into fucking trouble.
Too much money, no imagination, and you didn't earn it?
Comics, what they do is the comics will interview him.
There's a video of him interviewing Russell Peters where, Russell Peters rather, interviewing Charlie Sheen where Charlie Sheen talks about accidentally leaving his gun out and Kelly Preston was living with him and she dropped the gun and shot her.
How about what Zeppelin did, but it's under 24. I mean, like, you hear them, like, Cashmere and Led Zeppelin 1. They were like 23, 24, 25. That's ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
Like, think about that.
They were right in fucking...
They were all, like, educated.
They all read a shitload.
Jimmy Page has a whole fucking library, like a huge library on black magic and stuff.
But the point is that I think when you live in times of great uncertainty, And times of great hope and times of great violence.
Remember, in this country, we'd come off a number of assassinations, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, and it goes on and on.
I mean, there was this notion that we were in a real battle and a real social battle for our souls, man.
You had government sending young boys off to die in a war.
Most people hadn't even heard of that fucking part of the world.
And there was this idea that we gotta get in the streets and say something and do something.
More importantly, if we do so, shit will change.
And people were getting hosed down and black people didn't have the vote until 1964. It was only 10 years old.
So when you think about how extreme Things were not only that, but how uncertain and how it was the beginning of so many different ideas that were competing.
When you get a society in turmoil, usually, and what's very positive about it is you want a cross-current of ideas.
You want ideas bashing heads like fucking rams.
And when you have that, provided you keep the violence out of it, but there's always going to be a little violence, but when you have that and people where they're fighting for their souls with an idea, You're going to get something pretty fucking cool.
And you're going to get certainly very volatile artistic expression.
And a lot of that expression can very well be Miles Davis who was saying, I'm a black man in America and I still don't feel free or whatever it might be.
Well, Bieber is candy compared to, think about it, how much music counted back then.
Jazz was the only place that a lot of black people could really express themselves honestly, through a fucking horn.
So if your heart's broken, you either sing it or you shoot it through a horn because if you say otherwise, you're going to get fucking hung or shot or arrested.
That's what it was to be black in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and even the 70s for a lot of them.
That's the bottom line.
It goes on and on.
So things were way more extreme.
And I think in today's world where everything's at the touch of a button, where everybody has plenty to eat, even if it's not healthy food, and we feel safer.
And I think we're cynical.
I don't believe that what we do and what we say can really change the world.
And one of the things about stand-up is the fear of bombing also gives you another added incentive and motivation that I think some artists are without.
And it's not, it was just, I mean, look, just life is temporary and we all need to wrap our fucking heads around that.
If we all just step back, this whole world is moving on momentum.
And that is our number one problem as a race.
We're moving in the way that our ancestors have been moving.
No one ever just stops and goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's just settle down and talk this over.
Let's have a 30-day summit where the leaders of the world get together and try to figure out how are we going to redesign the human race to make us all function together?
How is there going to be a reasonable distribution of the natural resources of the earth so that One country doesn't grow rich because they have the fucking missiles and the nuclear bombs.
And somehow or another it's distributed amongst everyone so we get some sense of fairness and all work together to make sure that people don't have too many fucking babies so we don't run out of food on this crazy rock.
Let's organize this thing and let's do it together.
The only way that's going to happen is the kids that are in college right now who are listening to shit like this, who are going online and researching the world and looking at things in a way that we never had the ability to and the access to information that we never had access to.
And they're getting a chance to see the world from a fresh eye and fresh perspective and realize that this is some weird thing where we're all running in the same direction hoping that someone knows where we're going.
They're the future.
You, you college motherfucker with the bong right now.
There will be some in the system right now that will be sensitive to it and the next wave will integrate.
And the next wave of people that are trying to be politicians will be like Gary Johnson, will be like Ron Paul.
They'll realize there's freedom and love in telling the truth and really trying to do the right thing instead of being some bitch to a corporation, which is what most politicians are.
Most politicians are little hookers.
They stick their ass up in the air, and some corporation comes by and drops some money in their pussy.
And that's what they are.
And that's what we have to realize.
You don't have to be like that.
What the fuck?
Who cares?
The Fear Factor guy and the guy from The Hangover 2...
Not to say that this is why we're doing it, but I hear it all the time that this podcast changes the way people think.
And I think having a guy like you in my life has definitely changed the way I think.
And I think all of us together, we help each other.
And I'm very happy and very proud that we can put out this resource, not just for entertainment, this podcast, but also, you know, it gives you an opportunity to hear another point of view that you might not come in contact with in your life.
I don't know too many people like you.
And it's hard to cultivate them.
I've done a real good job of trying to keep as many interesting people in my life as possible because I think it's enriching.
You love conversations with you.
We have the craziest fucking conversations.
But we have had more on a regular basis since I put together this podcast than we have in the last few years.