Kevin Smith praises stand-up comedians like George Carlin and Sam Kinison for their long-form storytelling, admiring Cosby’s sharpness despite his age and avoiding live testing. They debate psychedelics—Rogan highlights Terrence McKenna’s theories on mushrooms shaping human evolution, while Smith shares a near-death weed experience. Future tech speculation includes neural implants stronger than concrete, folding phones, and Atlantis’ possible crystal-lens civilization. Smith credits creative encouragement over adversity, comparing it to martial arts’ transformative potential, as Rogan teases upcoming events and guests like Patton Oswalt. The episode underscores how art thrives on connection, not just struggle, and the internet’s role in amplifying fringe talent. [Automatically generated summary]
You sit there and you can watch a video version of it that I believe exists, but I always listen to it.
And it was just magical, the idea of like a dude who's essentially telling one very long joke that has highs and lows, emotional beats, and makes you sad, and it gets real.
Like every once in a while, he throws, and you're laughing, and he'll just stop you dead, but like, my mother killed herself, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And he just derails the comedy.
And you forget, like, oh shit, this dude's not a comic.
He's literally storytelling.
And so I appreciated that, and I appreciated Bill Cosby.
One of my favorite comedy bits of all time is the one side of that album to Russell, my brother, who I slept with.
I don't know if you've ever heard it, but it's so fucking hysterical.
It's Bill Cosby's, I guess, how long was the side of a record back in the day?
Apparently, even now, today, stand-up is still great.
I've heard people that, like, Chris Rock was on TV talking about it once, about how he'd just gone to see him.
And he was, I think it was in the movie Comedian, the Jerry Seinfeld movie, I think that's what it is, which wasn't that long ago, you know, 10 years ago.
And the crazy thing is, I don't even think he goes anywhere to try his shit out.
I think he just writes it all down, writes it at home, you know, and then he even said it, like he does stand-up on The Tonight Show, and he literally doesn't practice the stand-up.
The relationship shit he did was really, really fucking genius.
Carlin in his book, in that sort of biography book, I think he talks about Kenison.
Either that or I was watching an interview that Carlin did with Jon Stewart before he was Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, for some anniversary or maybe at Aspen Comedy Fest.
And he said that Kinnison was the one that made him step his game up.
Carlin was just like, he's very rarely a comic like Blown Boy, and he loved comics.
But Kinison was the one that made him go, oh shit, why didn't I do that?
I don't even know how they fucking got him to do this.
But they had in school, they started this in school advertising shit even back then.
We're talking 1988. And they'd have billboards where they would put posters in where there was some celebrity talking about Reed and it was sponsored by some fucking company and shit.
Everyone made out somehow.
But ultimately the message was good, whatever the message was meant to be for a high schooler passing by in the hallway.
Sam Kinison was on one of them.
And to think about that, Sam Kinison on an inspirational high school poster, if you know Sam Kinison's work at all, it's just lunacy.
We went up to New York City to when they were in Manhattan down the village.
What was that place like?
Vintage, not vintage vinyl, it'd be a record store, but it was about clothes, old clothes, vintage clothes, and bought old trench coats and shit, trying to look like Sam Kinnis.
I remember being, I was born in 70. And so it was very easy to do the math because, you know, every 10 years, whatever the decade was, you were kind of going to be that age or at least have the number involved.
So I would always say, like, in the year 2000, I'll be 30. Because I could do that very simple math.
And that seemed like such a far away fucking concept.
And now we're 11 years past it.
11 years past, like the oldest I ever imagined I could be.
Well, I'm still in very good shape, and I take care of my body, and I work out, but I have to.
If I don't take care of it, it drops off quick now.
That's what I'm noticing.
If I get injured...
And I can't work out for a couple weeks now.
Whoa.
When I come back, it's like I'm fucking starting from scratch, man.
I come back, I'm a pussy.
Like, really, just two weeks.
Two weeks, I lose like half of my cardio.
It's crazy.
Two weeks, you get exhausted like really quickly.
And it's like you have to build your body back to some sort of artificial level of functionality in order to do like martial arts and things at my age.
For me, it's like, you know, some people go and they play basketball.
Some people go and, you know, they'll meet some friends and they'll go play golf together.
I go and do jujitsu.
To me, it's a normal thing.
It's like, you know, going to and training in martial arts, it's like, you know, it's how I get my aggressions out.
It's how I straighten my mind out at the end of the day.
It's how when, you know, when you're in the face of something very difficult, like sparring with someone when you're doing jujitsu sparring, you're forced into this Sort of a moving meditation sort of a zone.
Where you can only think about what you're doing.
You have to figure out a way to manage your resources.
Because you're in a hand-to-hand combat battle with a skilled man.
And you guys are going back and forth with each other and you're trying to choke each other.
And it's very intense.
But in doing that very intense thing, you lose yourself in the movements and you hit this sort of a zen state.
And you can only hold it for like a certain amount of time before you get fucking exhausted.
And the key is holding that moment for as long as possible.
Keeping it going for as long as possible.
So you got to do like strength and conditioning and chin-ups and dips and fucking kettlebells.
And all this shit is just to get in there so you can go deeper and deeper with the jujitsu.
So you can Tap people when you weren't tapping them.
Avoid being tapped when you were getting tapped.
So you have to tune.
It's almost like your effort and your will is what powers your race car.
Instead of just being able to go to the track and get a new engine or whatever the fuck you do.
No, your effort and your will determine what your physical body can do.
So it's this crazy game that you get stuck and get addicted to.
I love working with different kickboxing trainers and learning new shit.
Because when you learn anything, I believe it elevates everything.
I really believe that.
I believe that the more excellence you can get in your body, in your mind, in your day, the better everything is.
I think that the better you'll feel, the better you'll be...
You'll project better energy out there.
You'll be nicer to people.
They'll be nicer to you.
I really believe that.
I think in getting great at something, in finding, even in just attempting to improve at something, you're always going towards the right direction.
You're always using positive energy.
You're always using discipline.
You're always getting results.
In improving anything, when you see those results, That reinforces this notion in your whole existence to push forward and be positive and create and resolve things and figure things out and reach your pinnacle.
So I think all that stuff, that's why I got this tattoo.
To live a life like that, fighting people with fucking swords, and to have done it successfully, I think it was 62 times was the number that he supposedly killed.
The philosophy of hockey is kind of the philosophy of life.
You have a goal, someone's in your way.
Don't let them stop you.
Score.
That's very basic.
I don't think it needs to go much deeper.
I think that's kind of the beauty of the poetry of it.
Now, you tie that to one of the most graceful, beautiful games on the planet and played with physical excellence.
I mean, I understand it.
You've got to be on your fucking game to step into a ring with a dude who could fucking kill you with his fists.
But when you dial it down to a game that's less lethal and more just about moving a ball and or a puck around, that sport is probably the greatest athleticism, I think, to play any sport.
Because think about it.
Just to stand in skates, you're using more muscles than most people actually use on a regular basis.
So even if you're not doing anything in the game...
You already have to be athletically inclined just to stand there.
Now add to it, they play tops, what, two minute shifts?
Usually some one minute shifts too, hardcore.
Think about how hard you have to skate in order to go back and forth.
Think about the running that you'll do on a football field, or a basketball court rather.
Let's go with a basketball court.
You know, it's foot on track.
You're used to running.
Now try that with skates.
Now stop.
Now go back quick.
Now wait.
Go back the other way.
You're puck chasing the whole time.
Like, that's why they have those quick shifts because who could stand that?
You have to be so physically in shape to do that.
And it's beautiful to watch people do that.
Beautiful, graceful.
Look like they're skating across the giant diamond or some such shit.
And they're on water.
There's this miracle, this element of like, what do you mean it's water?
If you're going to commit to a lifestyle, you give up on short-term a lot, where you're just like, I'm going to need help.
I do that a lot.
I don't know if you ever do this on stage, but I tell such long, fucking convoluted stories that invariably, once, twice per night now, I'll be in the middle of something and just be like, I don't freeze, I don't get scared anymore, but I just literally go, what the fuck was I talking about?
I'm so sorry.
And someone will be like, it was J.M.U.'s in a bathtub.
As long as they're there to help, but if not, dude, there are moments where you're just like, oh my god, like I was on the Tonight Show earlier, and I sat down to tape the Tonight Show, and I wasn't nearly stoned enough for that, you know?
I wish I'd been more stoned because I would have enjoyed it more.
The whole time I'm sitting there just thinking, like, I look fat on the show.
I know I look fat right now.
I know I look fat.
And in the midst of it, I did have those moments where I wasn't stoned, but I had a moment where I was like, what the hell?
There's a lot of people that aren't honest about the positive effects of it, and they treat it like it's a trivial thing.
One of the things that I was upset with Dr. Drew about, and I do really love Dr. Drew, but he's like, ah, you want to go smoke your weed, smoke your weed?
He's like, look, I'm not telling you not to do it.
He's like...
But it's dismissive about it being a positive thing.
It's always like, yeah, you want to go do whatever you want to do with your life.
I'm for free will.
I'm for you having a good time.
And if you want to ruin your thing and go right ahead, I'm for...
But that's not...
You're not taking into account all the people that talk about these amazingly positive benefits that they have from it.
And some people will be like, oh, is it fuel your creativity?
I say, no, quite the opposite.
I don't think I've ever gotten a new idea from weed that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
What weed allows you to do is chase the good idea.
Embrace it rather than let it go for fear that someone will judge it or for fear that it won't work or, hey, this hasn't been done yet.
So I find weed doesn't make me creative as much as it knocks down the inhibitions that block creativity.
Like the reason you don't go further on that cool idea because you're afraid it's going to be judged or it won't turn out or who will ever buy this or what am I thinking or I can't pull something like this off.
Weed, you could smoke away those inhibitions.
It's very important, man, no matter how long we're here, to push down all those, even the dopiest fucking fears, the things that you're like...
Anything that boxes you in.
Like you were talking about, people like to sometimes keep that box tighter and tighter than their eyes.
But it's more important to kind of understand why things happen.
And you were the one telling me, I think it was when you were on the show, you were the one telling me, like, the drug that, or the brain kicks in with something when you're about to die, they say.
It's produced by the liver, the lungs, and they believe it's produced by the pineal gland.
They're actually doing these super specific studies on this shit right now because throughout all Eastern mysticism, they've always talked about the third eye.
And they believe that this is what they call the seat of the soul.
They believe it is the factory of the most potent naturally produced psychedelic chemicals.
We don't know exactly because you have to cut into the fucking brain like within 15 minutes of someone being dead to find it I think.
There's some crazy roadblock to finding out exactly what today's technology, where the DMT is being manufactured in the brain.
So they're trying to figure out and invent new technology to directly monitor it so they can absolutely prove it.
But even if they don't prove it, where it's manufactured, it's known that it exists in the body, it's known that it's produced by several different organs, and it is known that it's intensely psychedelic.
Well, it's supposed to be scary because, as you said, when you heard that your father screamed to death, you only get one shot at this.
And that fear is the fear of losing control, which is absolutely inevitable.
You know it, I know it.
What the psychedelic experiences are like is like it allows you to almost go through a death experience several times.
Not to the point where you feel dead, but to the point where your whole view of the world is so shattered.
Your ego is so...
Your actual worth and your actual peace in this puzzle is made so clear, and it's so humbling, and it's so confusing, and it's so enlightening, and it's so encouraging, and it's so loving, and it's so frightening, all at the same time, all impossible to describe.
The images and the feeling you get literally probably are responsible for human evolution.
And he had this documented down to climate change.
He believed that the reason why human beings evolved from other hominids is that they started experimenting with new food sources and eating psilocybin mushrooms.
And he has it all down to when the rainforest receded and became grasslands because of the climate change.
That's when the monkeys ran out of food.
And they started in grasslands.
It's not as rich as the rainforest.
So they had to fucking experiment with new food sources.
And that's when all these cows were walking around eating the grass.
Cows shit out the shit.
Shit grows mushrooms on them.
Monkeys eat the mushrooms.
Monkeys figure out all kinds of different shit.
Like language and coordination and how to make tools and how to fucking throw rocks at things and kill them.
In any event, these dolphins, they found them like, they thought they used to go under the cock shells to fish out anything that wasn't living in their fish or what have you.
But they've discovered that they're using them as tools, as trapping tools.
Like using them to kind of herd fish and then cup them and then eat out of it.
If you eat it, you have to eat it with an MAO inhibitor, and you've got to know something else how to brew that correctly.
You can't eat it.
When you take it in orally, you see, DMT exists apparently in so many different plants that our body has a built-in defense mechanism for it.
It's called monoamine oxidase.
So when you eat something, like say if you eat grass that has DMT in it, sheep, if they eat that grass, will die.
It's really kind of crazy.
Like, sheep, if they eat grass that has DMT in it, they just fucking fall on their back and stick their legs up and they tremble in the air.
It's really kind of nutty.
But human beings have figured out a way to process it in our stomachs, and that's what this monoamine oxidase is.
That's why we can eat it in so many different plants, but yet it's not psychoactive.
Well, these guys in the Amazon, they figured out a way to make it psychoactive when you eat it by combining this This is a plant that has this one drug with an MAO inhibitor, so it kills the monoamine oxidase in your stomach, and it allows your stomach to absorb this drug directly.
You really shouldn't have food in your stomach, but as long as that is the only food, it'll probably diminish the effects very slightly, but ultimately it's all going to get into your bloodstream.
When you have something that's really fucking with you, it's such a primary focus inside your mind that when you open up these doors to psychedelic dimensions, your mind is going to grab that shit and shove it in your face and go, what the fuck is this?
Why are you hiding this from me?
Why don't you get this shit out of the way?
Why do you think Oscar De La Hoya came clean and said that he was wearing women's underwear in those photos and it was real?
Because every night that the fucking truth is knocking him on the head, dude, you were in chick's underwear, just fucking say it!
I can't!
He can't!
I can't!
Tossing and sweating.
If he ate a pot brownie, he would have been forced to admit it, like, right away.
You see what they describe as the wiring under the board.
You see things in a different perspective.
It's an impossible perspective.
First of all, it shouldn't exist.
And second of all, it shouldn't be so easy to get to.
All you have to do is eat this stuff.
You eat this stuff and wait an hour and 20 minutes, and all of a sudden you're literally in an impossible described different world that shouldn't exist.
It can't be real because it violates everything you know about life.
When you're closing your eyes, everywhere you look is something more and more impossible, and there's information coming at you, all the answers to all the world's problems, but it's like slippery fish, and you're standing in a river, and you can't Fucking hold on to many of it.
There's just too many fucking fish coming your way, man.
And there's the water and the information is hitting you like the fucking river.
It's all about these ancient structures that point to the very plausible idea that the human race has been around way longer than we like to think and that civilization has had peaks and valleys where we were almost wiped out and we had to rebuild anew.
Sure, but in his case, it was more of like, I think what he, they're mostly pointing towards giant cataclysmic disasters that have, you know, all but wiped out a huge percentage of the human race, and then people have to start all over again.
I mean, the concept of what if today, okay, 2011. Like the Matrix, like the third Matrix movie, where Was that it?
That's based on an ancient Hindu system, or it's an Indian system.
I don't know the full thing.
Our friend Duncan's an expert in this shit.
But the way he explained it to me is that this is Kali Yuga.
And the Kali Yuga is the most chaotic...
The next stage of the human existence, and we have this normal, natural progression from sensible to wild to crazy to completely out of control, which is where we are now, until the next stage is some sort of an enlightenment, some sort of a learning from this, some sort of a next passage that goes through, and that the idea is that humanity is in this continuous cycle.
And that it's, you know, we like to think of ourselves as having a direct linear projection from monkey to human being in 2011. But in fact, it may have hit this peak thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago and then been shut down by some horrible disaster that killed almost everybody.
And that almost everybody forgets about it because you kill like half the fucking people.
And man, you know, good luck.
Good luck piecing things together, writing things down.
You know, paper gets...
Disappears.
They burned the library of Alexandria.
They lost all the records for Egypt.
Everything they have left is just shit carved in snow, or carved in stone, rather.
It's like, you know, you want to really get the full history of the human race.
It's really complicated.
It's like, we don't really know what happened 10,000 years ago.
We don't really know what happened 15, 20,000.
And in the course of the universe, or the course of the life of this planet, that's a It's almost like as a race, we have woken up at a certain level where we started writing things down.
We'll call it a thousand years ago, whatever the fuck it was, where people really started writing things down.
It's almost like we're just slowly piecing this fucking thing together as it's moving.
It's moving in a direction.
People are just starting to write things down.
Okay, this is what happens and this and this and this.
Then the next people come along and they go, okay, they already figured this out.
Okay, what else can we figure out?
Then we've got to figure this out.
And they're all moving along as life is moving.
Constantly trying to re-add to this fucking pile of awakening.
To try to describe this life that we're just born in the middle of, mid-momentum.
Hit the ground running.
As soon as you could walk, you'd go off to school and you're a fucking cog in the wheel.
Boom!
And very little time to sit down and think about what the fuck it really is.
If you just look at the idea that we're constantly creating new things, constantly trying to improve on the technology, it's going to reach some fucking nutty point sometime in the future.
I read the, I forget either, Time or Newsweek did a wonderful article on it, but the way they described it, I thought it was very evocative in as much as they said, Think about how, like, the first computer, you know, filled a couple rooms, and its equating power wasn't even a tenth of what your phone can do right now.
And that was going back to, what, how many years ago was that?
She was supposed to be arrested in Houma and they arrest her in Gotham instead.
And Swamp Thing is like, we want her released.
And they were like, we can't.
She's, you know, she committed a crime.
She's going to be healthier on trial and whatnot.
And Swamp Thing slowly takes over Gotham.
He warns them.
He appears from...
He can make himself, as you know, out of any vegetative material whatsoever.
Turns into a giant head and is just like, release the woman or I will take the city.
They end the one issue, part one, of you see Gotham start falling into jungle.
He just over-vegetates everything and people just go back to fucking nature.
He takes the city and turns it back into the jungle in the last panel.
There's a high view of all this, of course, and standing on a gargoyle is the one motherfucker who does not want anything to go back to the jungle.
And it's Batman.
Powerful fucking book.
But at one point, second issue, Swamp Thing has this line where he goes just like, if nature but shrugged, you'd all be gone, or something very powerful like that.
But it's the if nature but shrugged line that always got me.
Because he was talking about...
We think we command everything.
We think we've mastered shit.
We know what we're doing, but it's just like you talked about before, a cataclysmic event that wipes out half the planet or something like that.
That's if nature but shrugs.
It happens out here.
You know, when we feel the tremors, the earthquakes, we're reminded all the time that surface fleas, as George Carlin described us.
But when you see nature going crazy with the weather and whatnot, you start sitting there going, Oh, like, do you remember that George Carlin bit where he talked about how the planet's fine?
The people are fucked.
I mean, it's a legendary bit, but yeah, you know, he starts theorizing on like the planet, trying to pick us off with disease and shit like that.
And you start...
Every time I see a natural disaster, it's all I can think about.
You know, the Mayan pyramids, they weren't smooth like the Egyptian pyramids, but they all went into that same shape, essentially.
Well, they found it in Guatemala, covered in jungle.
I mean, this is just a totally lost, amazing civilization covered in jungle.
And they think there might be thousands of these.
Thousands of these all throughout South America.
Thousands of lost temples and pyramids, this incredible civilization that existed that made these immense structures in a place that's so nuts that the jungle just overgrew everything to the point where they thought it was a mountain.
They thought it was a mountain and they start excavating it and find out it's the biggest fucking pyramid by volume on earth.
They had it on CNN. Somebody just posted it recently and I tweeted it.
It says, the thing on YouTube is world's largest pyramid discovered.
They lost this whole thing, man.
People had moved out of there so much to the point where there was nothing living there.
It was just trees and the whole thing just filled with grass and trees and someone had to come along thousands of years later and kick something over and go, what's this?
Dig a little hole.
Hey man, this is a brick.
Hey, bring over a shovel.
And the next thing you know, they're like, what the fuck is this?
But the shock that this could be left behind, the shock that this is, you know, thousands of years ago, we can't even really wrap our heads around that.
They built this shit and then it all went bad and the fucking jungle overtook the land.
Well, there's some archaeologists that believe they found it off of Spain.
In fact, they have concentric rings that they've found in a satellite view of the ocean.
Somehow or another, they can see the topography of the ocean from space.
And in this satellite view, they found this place that literally matches the geography, matches the area that it would be, matches the local layer, matches, you know, there's folk layer that is attached to it, you know, that you could be attributed to history, you know, you could say it's actual history.
I mean, we know that some big ones have hit, I believe, up as far north as like Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
Like hundreds of years ago, that place got fucked up by tsunamis.
It's real possible.
I mean, the ocean is gigantic and it's right there.
But if...
My point is that if a few hundred years go by and there's no tsunami, that's not unusual.
So if this civilization was allowed to prosper and grow in a few hundred years, it could have been super advanced.
We know that they could do a bunch of things back in, you know, 10,000 plus years ago that we didn't think they could do.
And we're more and more figuring out as time goes on that they might have been way more advanced than we ever gave them credit for.
They might have even had telescopes.
There's people that believe that they found lenses that they could attribute to being ground down.
And some say that they're not strong enough to actually work as a telescope, but it could have been one of many.
They could have evolved it.
If they came up with this initial idea and you found a bad version of it, just the fact that they had figured out that they could make something out of crystal and look through it, that's some pretty advanced shit.
And a totally different way they did it from the way we did it.
We have this whole petrochemical way of viewing the world, and we think that's the only way to do it.
And it may not be.
It may be that there are some civilizations that have reached some staggering heights without the use of that, and we just don't know how the fuck they did it.
We don't know how they moved a lot of the great stones to make giant structures throughout history.
That's this guy Graham Hancock.
That's like his specialty on this thing.
And he wrote a book called Supernatural all about his experiences with this ayahuasca, this drinking this brew, and all his experiences with psychedelics and how empowering they've been to him and how he believes that it's very likely that they are the source of human culture and human knowledge and human growth.
Source of self-awareness that it probably started with psychedelic experiences.
And he's not the only one to say this.
McKenna believed it, as I said before, and a lot of people echo it.
But I just think...
I think everyone who's creative, everyone who is an artist, everyone who is a thinker, you deserve to go through an experience with someone who knows what they're doing.
That's why it should be legal, and there should be shamans, and there should be someone who runs a center that can evaluate whether or not, first of all, you're psychologically capable of handling such an experience, but give you the proper dosage, give you supervision.
It should be something that people encourage because it makes you a better person.
You just have to give up ego, and you have to be willing to accept less.
You've got to manage your expectations.
Something I learned by being with my wife all these years.
This was a chick who didn't want to marry a fat guy, but she met one who she really liked.
He is good in all other ways except for that one.
She managed her expectations, and it all worked out for her.
You know what I mean?
I can deal with that, but the rest of the package is good.
You manage your expectations and you can do that sort of thing.
So for me, I always try to keep the ego in check, manage the expectations.
Expectations in this business are everyone should be paying attention to me, I should be at the epicenter of everything and I'm what's hot and blah blah blah.
And I've always accepted the fact that that was never going to be me, so I was always content to just dwell out here on the fringes.
And when you're out here on the fringes, I wouldn't say you're incorruptible, but People aren't that interested in corrupting you.
And you can also watch the corruption go on deep in the center of the bullshit, as you say.
And so while you're kind of not above it, but just outside of it, it's a lot easier to see it happening and stay away from it.
Yeah, I got one in Red Bank, New Jersey, called Jane's on Bob's Secret Stash.
We had one out here in Westwood for a little while, but my friend got bored of running it, and then we wound up shattering it.
But the one back east has been open since, like, 97. That podcast, Tell Them Steve Dave, that my friend's got the show of on AMC, they record that at that comic book store.
And they're predisposed to say something positive.
Every once in a while, of course, you get a random sniper jackass, but generally it's just like, oh my god, I just watched Clerks and it was great.
I've never seen it before.
I had a real shitty day.
Listen to the podcast.
Feel great.
Thanks.
Today has been the last two days.
Well, I mean, last week, two weeks, well, with the Canadian tour, but the last day, like not even full day, last 12 hours, Red State been on VOD since I woke up this morning, which was about...
I think I got up at four.
Ironically, I wake up around 4.20 every day.
I got up around four-ish and I started reading positive feedback because people can watch it on VOD at their fucking house or on their computer.
So people are watching it, tweeting me while they're watching it.
And, dude, it's like a never-ending series of great job patting you on the back.
Like I was saying before, it costs nothing to encourage an artist.
And the yield, the potential yield...
It's indescribable.
Think about it.
You encourage an artist.
One day they write that song that becomes that most important song in the world to you on that day that your parent fucking dies.
The song that says it all that you'll always be dialed into.
That person maybe writes a blog that puts the shit you always wanted to say right into perspective and you meme it out to everybody.
It becomes your mantra or they make a movie that is that movie that changes your life.
Whatever, man.
There's all upside to encouraging an artist.
Nothing good comes from the flip side.
Discouraging an artist.
Now, people will be like, well, you should discourage some fucking artist like Huey Bull or Kevin Smith.
Bullshit.
You know what I'm saying?
There's nothing bad.
Nothing good comes from that.
You tell some motherfucker you stink, don't do it anymore.
What are they going to do?
They stop, and maybe you don't like them, but maybe they don't inspire somebody else or make somebody else think, hey, I can try it.
And also, but think about it, as a fighter, you have to get over...
I know you say the primal brain is somewhere in there, but you've got to get over the brain that we've been dealing with for so many years, which is like, don't get hurt.
I forget how he described it in terms of just not being where the punch is going to be.
And knowing that sooner or later you will get punched.
But...
The more you're in this moment...
Once again, it's so...
What I find fascinating about it is people who can fight or people who get in a ring and get physical and not just like, oh, we play some pickup basketball and shit.
But usually people get into boxing, fighting...
They could be so poetic about it because you are channeling into something, I guess, that most people don't.
We don't live in a world where we go around fighting people or getting into physical altercations involving our body.
So I think you guys do dial into something because every one of you is when you describe it for just a second.
I go like, yeah, man, I should fucking fight.
But I know I am not that guy.
In a minute, I'd get in the ring and be fucking taking...
The thought of getting hit would make me queasy and I'd pass out.
But fighters, people that do it, people who've actually been in a ring and fought or continue to do it are so poetic about it that they can almost sell you on it to the point of like, wow, I should give that a shot.
And you have to learn how to harness all of your potential, everything together, psychological, physical.
You've got to tune it all together.
You gotta make sure that your mind doesn't overwhelm your body with information.
You gotta make sure that you keep your heart rate steady and stay calm and see things exactly as they are, not exaggerated because you're under some adrenaline, heightened fear.
You gotta keep it together, man.
But what it really is is a vehicle for developing your human potential.
Martial arts or something, anything that's really difficult, man.
I think anything that's really, really, really fucking hard to do.
In doing so, you learn a lot about yourself while you're doing it.
And you learn about your potential.
You learn what you could push yourself through.
You learn how much focus you have in you.
You learn how to project it, how to keep it strong, how to keep it going, how to stay heightened, stay in a heightened state.
And that's what you get from that.
You learn excellence from anything, whether it's martial arts or fucking playing the violin or anything.
When shit's really difficult to do, you learn something about yourself in it.
But when there's a chat and you want people, like people want to like send you something that you'll read, they'll just say the most obscene, ridiculous, retarded shit.
So there was like a lot of people doing that, flooding things.
Ladies and gentlemen, this has been an amazing podcast.
I've had a great time.
If you're still alive out there, if you're awake, if you haven't listened to us and driven your fucking car off the road and into the woods because we droned on and on for four hours, I'm sorry.
But I said, the last time you won my thing, I said, I want to do a podcast every week with Rogan just called Centered, where we just get stoned and they go, that's called the Joe Rogan experience.
My grandmother used to watch Carol Burnett's show.
At the end of the show, she'd stand out there and do a Q&A. Yeah, at the end of her show.
Sketch show.
Not every episode, but when she did it, it was fun because she was literally no masks, no disguises, no costumes.
She literally came out on stage and was sitting there talking to the audience.
She'd tug her ear, say goodbye to her grandmother, whatever that meant.
But it was, I don't know, it was just informal, casual, and she seemed so fucking quick.
Like, she always had a great answer and stuff.
And Shandling was on the show, when Gary Shandling was on our show a couple weeks ago, he said that he was talking to Carol Burnett about that show, and she said, she goes, do you know how that worked?
It's like all of a sudden we've gone off the normal pattern of what's going to happen here tonight and they're just having a good time and fucking around.
Dude, you're the shit.
Thank you very much.
We're going to do this all the time, folks.
This is a new empire we're building together or something.