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March 4, 2014 - The Joe Rogan Experience

02:52:12

Joe Rogan Experience #463 - Louis Theroux

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01:38:01

louis theroux

01:06:32

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joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Hello freaks, here we go again.
		This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is brought to you by NatureBox.
		NatureBox is a company that sends healthier snacks to your door.
		Now I really appreciate my message board because every time anyone claims anything now, people fucking crawl up their ass with a microscope and find out what's cracking.
		And one of the big things about NatureBox is people go, this stuff's not healthy.
		We're not talking about kale or grapes or blueberries.
		It is healthy err and quite delicious.
		I'll tell you what, I'm smitten.
		What are these things?
		I'm smitten with these things.
		I may get addicted.
		They're sweet blueberry almonds.
		Oh, they're so delicious.
		I'm not sure what's in there because I don't have my glasses on.
		I need glasses to read fine print.
		Why the fuck do they put fine print on packages where they know that anyone over 12 can't read that shit?
		All right?
		That's ridiculous.
		Put some print on.
		I know it's a legal thing.
		They're putting print on so that you, you know, like you, they can get away with it.
		But you should have it on there where people can fucking read.
		So I asked NatureBox, what's the deal?
		Is it healthy?
		And their response was very reasonable.
		They said their products are all natural and contain a much higher quality ingredient than the typical vending machine food ingredients, which makes them healthier.
		They have over 100 snacks to choose from.
		And if you're looking for something for certain dietary needs, like wheat-free, which I'm a gluten-free person because I'm very trendy, low-sugar content, gluten-free, which is basically the same thing.
		I don't know why they had to be redundant.
		They have it too whenever possible.
		They also try to use non-GMO food as well.
		Although, that's the thing about GMO.
		It's not necessarily unhealthy to eat GMO.
		It's very tricky.
		Anyway, their products are made from wholesome ingredients and are nutritionist approved.
		They abide by strict quality standards.
		No high fructose corn syrup.
		No partially hydrogenated oils.
		No trans fats.
		No artificial sweeteners.
		No artificial flavors.
		No artificial colors.
		All sounds good to me.
		And like I said, I've been enjoying these snacks.
		They're very delicious.
		It's good to have laying around things that you don't feel terrible about eating.
		And as I said, they do have things like pretzels, okay, which are impossible to make healthy.
		They're fucking pretzels.
		And that was one of the things that was brought up on my message board.
		But again, I appreciate you guys.
		You guys are fact-checking motherfuckers.
		But check out NatureBox.
		They have some really delicious stuff.
		Barbecued kettle corn, which is really good stuff.
		South Pacific plantain chips.
		That's another one of my favorites.
		Zero trans fats.
		Zero high fructose corn syrup.
		Nothing artificial.
		And with free shipping anywhere in the U.S., NatureBox is busting up the vending machine's monopoly on your midday hunger.
		They got rid of that dumb thing where they said that they deliver just like nature does.
		They deliver for free.
		That was like something they were doing for a while.
		They gave that up.
	So try NatureBox right now and get 50% off your first box by going to naturebox.com forward slash Rogan.
	That's naturebox.com slash Rogan.
	So go get some, enjoy it, and get 50 bucks off your first box.
	Naturebox.com forward slash Rogan.
	We are also brought to you by Squarespace.
	Squarespace, one of my favorite podcast sponsors, because I have many friends that have used this sponsor to make their own websites.
	And I recently met the people that are responsible for this company in New York.
	Excellent folks.
	And the product is really fantastic.
	For the longest time, if you wanted to have a professional website, you really had to either learn HTML or you had to hire someone to do it.
	And it was a huge pain in the ass.
	Squarespace offers you a very simple drag and drop solution.
	That is quite excellent.
	It also works on everything.
	It works on iPads.
	It works on Android phones.
	It works on Windows.
	It works on PC.
	They offer 24-7 support.
	And they've even launched a logo creator.
	If you're thinking about opening up a company and you want a logo, they have a very simple logo creator where you can create a clean and simple logo design yourself in minutes.
	You can start an online store quite easily.
	Not difficult at all.
	Brian Redband, who's not here today, has made dozens of websites while we've been doing shows.
	During commercials, he's actually constructed.
	Oh, that's good, Jamie.
	You learning from Brian.
	You said Brian's name and you did just like him.
	The drag and drop interface is super easy to use.
	You could literally make websites during the time that it takes to do a commercial.
	No bullshit.
	They also have a new help website that will deliver better customer experience.
	And for a free trial, a free trial?
	Is that a child or is a trial?
	It's a hybrid of a trial and a child.
	For a free trial and 10% off of your first purchase, go to squarespace.com and enter in the code Joe.
	So for 10% off your first purchase and a free trial, go to squarespace.com and enter the code word Joe.
	Another thing I like about Squarespace, they allow you to try it out before you enter in your credit card information.
	So if you're thinking about making a website, you're like, let me see what this Squarespace shit is all about.
	You can actually enter in, you know, all the stuff, build a website, and then say, I like it.
	Then you put in your credit card.
	It's a beautiful thing.
	Squarespace.com, use the code word Joe.
	Save yourself some money.
	We are also brought to you by Onit.com.
	O-N-N-I-T.
	Onit is a human optimization website.
	We basically sell things to allow human beings to reach your potential, whether it's physically, strength and conditioning equipment, whether it's cognitively, which I don't think is a word, through things like alpha brain or new mood.
	What new mood is, is a 5-HTP supplement.
	If you've never heard of 5-HTP, 5-HTP is actually a supplement that allows your brain to build more serotonin that actually can enhance your mood.
	So much so that people who are on SSRIs, which is a serotonin something re-uptake inhibitor, people who are on antidepressants, essentially, they tell you not to take things like new mood because new mood and the antidepressant together might actually Give you too much serotonin, which is not good.
	But if you're interested, go.
	All the science behind all the supplements are available at onit.com, whether it's AlphaBrain, whether it's New Mood, any of the supplements are explained with science and also with the research is posted with references.
	We recently completed a clinical test, the first of another, we were in the process of doing another one right now, a much larger one.
	The first one was a pilot test.
	It was 20 people.
	A couple dropped out, so I think we were left with 17 or 16, but we had excellent results.
	And the results are published at onit.com.
	That's O-N-N-I-T.
	These are all very expensive to do, and the process of selling supplements is a very controversial thing because there's a lot of bullshit out there.
	I personally believe in supplements.
	I've been taking supplements my whole life.
	Not my whole life.
	When I was a baby, I took nothing.
	How about that?
	Took mom's milk.
	I guess that's a supplement.
	But since I knew about vitamins and supplementation, I've always been interested in optimizing my health, optimizing my fitness, optimizing the way my brain functions.
	And I've been a big fan of nootropics.
	I got turned on to them by Neuro One, which is Bill Romanowski's company.
	Bill Romanowski, if you don't know who he is, he's a former pro football player who was experiencing a lot of what we're hearing about today in the news, about pro-football players.
	A lot of these guys get busted up from football, develop a lot of cognitive problems, and he wanted to combat that with nutrition.
	So he developed a product called Neuro One.
	That was my introduction to the world of nootropics from Alice from Sarah and No Name in San Francisco.
	I got into that and then started researching all the various supplements before we ever created Alpha Brain.
	Alpha Brain is what I believe is the best combination of all of the known ingredients that can increase cognitive function.
	And again, if you go to onit.com, all of the science behind all the various ingredients individually is referenced.
	And then on top of that, all the research that we've done and the study that was just recently completed is also referenced.
	We also have a 100% 30-pill, 90-day money-back guarantee at Onit.
	We're not trying to sell you any bullshit.
	And the last thing I personally want is anybody feeling ripped off.
	That is also the last thing Aubrey wants, who is my partner in this.
	We sell you the best shit we can find, and we try to sell it to you at a reasonable rate.
	That includes strength and conditioning equipment, like kettlebells and battle ropes.
	And that includes health and nutrition things, supplements like hemp force protein powder or hemp force bars.
	All of it is available at onit.com.
	That's O-N-N-I-T.
	Go there, enjoy it, get your freak on.
	All right, ladies and gentlemen, Louis Thoreau is here, and I'm very excited to talk to him.
	So let's just get cracking.
unidentified		The Joe Rogan experience.
		Drink my day, Joe Rogan.
		Podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can you not hear the headphones?
		Is that what you're just too loud?
		Too loud.
		Jamie, why don't you hook them up?
		This is probably something that we should do before the podcast starts.
		Do, do, do, do.
		Is that better?
		Is that better?
		Is that beautiful?
		Louis, first of all, thank you very much for doing this.
		I'm a huge fan.
		I've enjoyed your work over the years.
		You have had probably one of the most unique views of Americans as an outsider, I think possibly ever.
		You know, your shows are all about What he's done is found the wackiest Americans ever known and put them on television and shown just how fucked up we really can be.
		But your shows are really excellent.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't remember which one I got turned on to.
		It was many, many years ago.
		But I went on a marathon last night.
		Last night I watched the wrestling one.
		I watched the African hunting one.
		I watched the Indian Gurus one.
		I watched the Born Again Christian one.
		I went on like a five-hour Louis marathon last night.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		And live to tell a tale.
		That's a lot.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What got you started in exploring all these bizarre human beings?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man.
		I've always had a kind of fascination with the dark side of human nature and with life's outsiders.
		And, you know, it goes so deep with me that I don't remember ever formulating a conscious decision to explore weirdness.
		For me, it just came naturally from, you know, from when I was very, very young.
		I remember my dad having things about the Ku Klux Klan lying around the house and reading them and thinking like, wow, that's so weird.
		And then I used to subscribe to a magazine called The Unexplained that was all about conspiracy theories and UFOs and ESP.
		And I remember I subscribed to that.
		And so it's always been just part of my natural environment.
		And then my dad's American, so it felt very natural for me to come to America at a certain point, after I left university.
		And then once I was here, I just felt like I was tuning into something different and strange.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're a perfect guy for what you've done because you're so friendly and so amiable.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like when you're around these bizarre fucking freaks, you put them at ease to a certain extent.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
		And again, it wasn't something I sought out to do consciously.
		My natural mode is to try and be ingratiating.
		I mean, I'm not a confrontational person.
		I'm quite a cowardly person.
		And I try and avoid conflict.
		And so I have a natural strategy in life.
		It's not something I just do on my programs.
		In life, I try to get along with people and put people at their ease if possible.
		At the same time, I also have a kind of inquisitive side.
		And so sometimes I get my questions answered by asking a difficult question politely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't think you're a coward at all.
		I mean, I think you're being very self-deprecating right now because you might avoid conflict if you could, and I do as well.
		But you're also very brave in the situations that you've put yourself in.
		You've thrust yourself into some very bizarre circumstances.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, maybe I am cowardly, but I'm more afraid of the consequences of somehow not delivering on a creative idea than I am of the danger that fulfilling it involves, if that makes sense.
		So sometimes you're in a spot with a story.
		You know, people say like, you must be afraid when you're out on location.
		You know what I'm afraid of is going home without a story.
		Like, that's what keeps me awake at night.
		Like, are we actually going to get any usable material?
		So I was in Johannesburg doing a story on crime in Joburg, where the police are hugely under-resourced.
		And so private security agencies go around policing the streets.
		They're heavily armed.
		They're accountable to no one.
		And yet after, so we went out to do this story.
		And after about two weeks of being there, we hadn't really seen any violent crime.
		And I was getting to the point of, you know, we've got to go and cause some crimes ourselves if we have to.
		Like, we've got to get the story.
		And so I tended to thrust myself into dangerous situations just out of a sense of panic, you know, that we weren't kind of doing what we were supposed to do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's hilarious.
		So essentially what's going on in South Africa is like a lot of what happened, where it was criticized.
		The American military started using mercenaries that were accountable to no one, Blackwater and the like.
		And that was a huge, huge issue because these folks were doing a lot of things that if soldiers had done them, they would be responsible for war crimes.
		But they fell into this very strange and gray area because they were mercenaries.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It was a great story.
		And in fact, we spent a long time looking at trying to do that story and getting into Blackwater.
		They rebranded themselves as something else now.
		And the fact that these private citizens, essentially, because they weren't servants of the state, they were citizens of private companies, but they were still in Iraq, but accountable to no government because they could commit crimes, more or less, in Iraq, but go unarrested and unprosecuted because they were in this legal gray area.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They changed their name twice, actually.
		Blackwater was XE.
		Then they changed their name to Academy with an I at the end of it.
		Well, I think they don't understand the internet, so they probably didn't know.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		The only thing is that may work for people, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		For a little bit.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		For a bit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		For anybody who doesn't use Google, yes, it'll work.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That's why con artists change their names.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
		I mean, it's interesting that I mean, but this is how beautiful the internet is.
		I didn't remember what the name was.
		I found out while you were in the middle of a sentence, and then by the time you were done, I had the answer, which is pretty incredible.
		We live in strange times.
		I have a friend who went to Blackwater.
		He was in the Marines.
		He was a sniper, and then he got a job with Blackwater.
		And he didn't like to talk about any of the stuff that he did, but he did it for money.
		And he went over and made a tremendous amount of money.
		He did more than one tour with Blackwater.
		But it's very disturbing that that is this gray area.
		And these words that we use, like insurgent and contractor, those are also disturbing.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Very much so, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Contractor, you know, like, oh, you're a contractor.
		You're a mercenary?
		No, no, no.
		Contractor.
		Contractor to me is a guy who fixes your house.
		You know, a contractor to me is a guy that you hire and he builds an addition on your home.
		It's not a fucking sniper.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But it's across the board as well because I've done several stories on prisons and there are private prisons as well.
		And if I can make a general observation, it's that what I found in the course of making documentaries is that nine times out of ten, you get more access and more accountability from a public agency.
		I mean, I've been inside and spent weeks inside San Quentin Prison and Miami Jail and a Maximum Security Mental Hospital for paedophiles here in California.
		And all of those opened their doors to us and let us wander around and document what was going on in a way that I thought was very laudable.
		I didn't agree with all the practices that were going on.
		And yet, if there are private prisons, they don't feel like opening up their doors.
		They don't feel the same sense of public trust.
		That's just a personal observation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, they also, they're a business, and that's a real issue.
		Anything that you say that's negative could negatively impact their bottom line.
		They can make less money because of you, and so there's no benefit in having you there.
		Whereas the public outrage in a public institution can have a real impact.
		You know, the public can actually vote to get people out of positions that are causing certain rules to be into effect.
		You can't really do that with private prisons.
		Private prisons are, in my opinion, one of the most disturbing aspects of the current situation that we're in right now because so few people are actually aware of what's going on.
		Most folks who have nine to five jobs plus whatever commute time and family, they don't have the time to research any of this stuff.
		And they're really unaware of what's going on that we have this good percentage of our prisons in this country are actually businesses.
		They're making money.
		And even more disturbing, they're lobbying to make sure that certain laws are in place so that they can ensure that they have more people in their prisons and make more money.
		It's very creepy.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Scary stuff.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It really is.
		You've been to the public prisons?
		Yes.
		No private prisons.
		They wouldn't let me.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you could just talk into the microphone.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'll turn it towards you like a little bit better.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's a story I'd be...
unidentified		Yeah, much better.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's a story I'd be interested in telling, but very hard to get.
		I'm a victim of access.
		I can only really tell the stories that I get inside.
		I'm like a vampire.
		I have to be invited in.
		I don't really like that analogy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's only so many horror movies, though.
		I mean, that's my issue with the recent trend in vampires, that they just fuck around with the rules.
		Like, Blade was the first, where the vampires could wear sunscreen.
		They could go outside.
		I remember I watted a piece of paper up and threw it at my TV when I saw that.
		I was like, get the fuck.
		You can't fucking wear sunscreen.
		You changed the rules.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And Wisley Snipes was a vampire, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was half vampire, but he was a daywalker.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was allowed to be able to.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did he have to wear sunscreen as well?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, he did not.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was allowed, because he was half vampire.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He'd be a good guest for your show.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, he would.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I would enjoy having him.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Is he at liberty now?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Because he was doing time for tax evasion.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I wonder what he can say or what he would say.
		If I was him, I'd probably keep my mouth shut.
		They locked him in a cage for several years.
		Did they?
		And not only that, they didn't allow him to just pay the money back.
		They imprisoned him, which is really disturbing to me because if someone owes you money, you should just have to pay that money back.
		And the government is different.
		When you owe money to the government, they decide that we are going to put you in a cage.
		And he had gotten a...
		I've never met Wesley, but he had gotten some really shitty advice from someone.
		And if you're...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think he was part of a religious group.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And there was some kind of Egyptological dimension to it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And there's a, I think there is a pyramid somewhere outside Atlanta in Georgia where they worship.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Does this ring any kind of bells with you?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I knew that his...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		In a weird way, it kind of aligns with certain aspects of the sovereign citizen movement where you see yourself as not beholden to the federal government and an independent entity.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know his production company was like Amon Ra Productions, I believe.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, that would make sense.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he's got a big thing with Egypt.
		But I believe his thing was constitutional, his argument against taxes.
		You know, there's a bunch of people in this country that state that federal income tax is actually unconstitutional.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So for him, it was a philosophical position.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if it was or was not.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think it was.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it was a ridiculous position.
		I mean, you just can't fucking not pay taxes in this country.
		Without a doubt, this country is run by money, without a doubt, right?
		They need money.
		And anyone who comes along and fucks up that system and says, hey, you know, we don't have to give money.
		What percentage of the United States runs on taxes?
		A pretty large percentage.
		If someone comes along and fucks with that, they're just going to throw you in a cage.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, it doesn't work on kind of ethical grounds because, well, if you're driving on the roads, you're using tax dollars.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And on pragmatic grounds, it doesn't work because they will send you to jail.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Pragmatic grounds are the most important.
		The ethical grounds about the roads, there's a large argument for that for sure.
		But then there's also weirdness, like in New York, where it used to be that they set up the toll systems on the bridges and the tunnels.
		And what was going to happen is once the bridges were paid off, then the tolls would stop.
		But the state and the city obviously got addicted to all that money that keeps coming in from those tolls.
		So even though the bridges are long since paid for, it still costs like nine bucks every time you go across, whatever the fuck.
		It's really ridiculous now.
		When I was living there, it was much less.
		But it's a substantial amount of revenue that they're just not willing to give up.
		So it doesn't matter if it's paid for.
		The money has to keep coming in.
		And then, of course, the money funds this bloated bureaucracy that keeps expanding in order to keep itself alive like any other organism.
		It continues to expand and just gets more and more ridiculous and needs tax money to stay open.
		So a guy like Wesley Snipes comes along and says, I'm not paying taxes, you know, it's hard for everybody to be sympathetic to that because here's a guy who makes millions of dollars, doesn't want to pay taxes, and the regular folks that have to pay taxes and make a fraction of that, they don't have any sympathy for a guy like that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Plus, he's half vampire.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Indeed.
		Yeah, indeed.
		So I don't know what his current situation is.
		I may have a chance to meet him in Dallas, apparently.
		There's a martial arts thing that is going on in Dallas.
		There's a UFC event, Ultimate Fighting Championship event.
		And there's also something that he may attend.
		I might get a chance to meet him.
		If I get to talk to him, I would definitely bring him on here.
		I was supposed to fight him at one point in time.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Get off.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We were supposed to have a mixed martial arts fight several years ago.
		Before he went into jail, he owed a lot of money in taxes.
		And a promoter, one of the original promoters for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, apparently he contacted them and wanted to have a mixed martial arts fight in order to make some money.
		And they contacted me and offered me some ridiculous amount of money.
		And I said, yeah, I'll fight that guy.
		I'll fight that guy for that much money.
		But he changed his mind after time went on.
		And I'm sure he was embroiled in legal battles, and there might have been some chemicals involved in his decision-making.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Have you fought?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I mean, is that something you do?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I used to be a taekwondo champion before I was ever a stand-up comedian.
		And I've done martial arts pretty much my whole life.
		I've got a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a black belt in Taekwondo.
		I've kickboxed.
		I've fought probably 100 Taekwondo matches somewhere around there.
		From age 15 to 21, that's pretty much all I did with myself.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Since you've been an older man, have you seen that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, no.
		It's not advisable to do unless it's absolutely necessary.
		And I wouldn't do it now if I was given the same offer.
		But back then, it was like five or six years ago.
		It was a tremendous amount of money.
		He doesn't know jiu-jitsu.
		He doesn't have a background in that.
		He has experience in striking.
		And if you don't have an experience in grappling, a person who does have experience in grappling can pretty much have their way with you.
		It's very disturbing.
		I found that out firsthand when I first started taking jiu-jitsu in 1996.
		I thought, you know, I knew martial arts.
		I was going to take jiu-jitsu.
		I'll get fucking awesome at this too.
		And I just got strangled and manhandled over and over again for years.
		It was a long, brutal, painful, humiliating process of learning.
		And it's one of the things that was sort of exposed in the very first Ultimate Fighting Championships.
		If you don't understand grappling, if you don't understand jiu-jitsu and submissions, you're almost helpless.
		And that's kind of what I was banking on.
		I was banking on just kind of grabbing him and choking him.
		And my background was stand-up martial arts was striking, too.
		I mean, I had competed, and I knew he had never competed.
		He just was a trained martial artist who was apparently really good, like in the gym.
		But I thought it was probably a good idea to do.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Sounds like he got off lightly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Who knows?
		I mean, anything can happen when people are throwing punches and kicks at each other.
		It's a crazy business.
		I've been doing commentary for the UFC since I started...
		So many, many, many years.
		And I've learned along the way that crazy shit can happen.
		People are throwing bones at each other.
		Have you ever done a show on mixed martial arts?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's an interesting question because it's one of the few times when now and then we approach a story because it feels like it should be right for us and then it doesn't pan out for whatever reason.
		So I'm well aware of your work with the UFC and about three years ago we spent a couple of months really trying to crack it as a story.
		And then what happened was we didn't get, well we were trying to do MMA and we didn't get access to the UFC or not good enough access.
		So we were looking at the second tier but it's quite a big drop-off from the UFC down to the smaller leagues.
		There was a guy we were dealing with called Terry Treblecock.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I know him.
		You know him?
		King of the Cage.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I always liked that name, so that was why I remembered it.
		Yeah, Treblecock's a great Treblecock, you know, I wonder if he should get together with Gene Triplehorn.
		But he ran, I don't remember what his league was called.
		Do you know what it is?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		King of the Cage.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		King of the Cage.
		So we spent a bit of time with them.
		They were doing a series of fights up in northern Michigan.
		And it was kind of interesting.
		But there was another one we would, and part of the same shoot, we looked at an outfit that was, I want to say it was cops versus cons, or does that ring a bell?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow, no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure it's out there, though.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And they did felony fights as well.
		Beware of them.
		Ex-felons really wailing on each other in a way that was hard to watch, teeth literally popping out.
		Have you seen any of those videos?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I saw one where a guy bit a guy's face.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He held the man down and bit his face.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Some of it's horrible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Horrible.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, really horrible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The full range.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you have a spectrum of fights, that's probably the darkest.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But the guy in charge of it had got religion, and he'd started a new outfit, and he was in the awkward maneuver of trying to edge away from the brutal, super brutal, horrible stuff into a lighter mode, more acceptable fare, but still kind of trying to keep his brand viable.
		And his new thing was called something like cops versus cons.
		And the concept was it was law enforcement personnel fighting representatives of the criminal fraternity.
		Does that not ring a bell?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was going to help him with Jesus?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That was his, because it was like, he wants to show how there was some rationale, like he wants to show how we can all be on the same team and kind of fight and then shake hands at the end of the day.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And there's not a big difference between cops and the street brawlers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that sounds like a spin to me.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It was a kind of a spin, but when it got down to it, it was nowhere near as brutal as what he'd been doing with felony fights.
		And the reason we didn't pursue the story was it became clear that it was actually a sport.
		And if anything, to my mind, and correct me if you think I'm wrong, but less brutal than boxing, that you take more punishment because boxing bouts are so long and possibly because of the gloves as well, you're getting more brain injuries through boxing.
		And that compared with boxing and even maybe, you know, NFL football and stuff, it wasn't that questionable what the UFC or the MMA guys were doing.
		They were just going out there fighting and then shaking hands.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's certainly less animosity between fighters and much more camaraderie.
		In fact, two men who are probably two of the best in the world, Leota Machida and Chris Weidman, who are going to fight for the UFC middleweight title.
		Wideman is the current champion.
		They met recently at a seminar or some convention, and there's a photo of them together smiling, holding like arm in arm.
		I mean, these guys are in a couple months, they're going to try to kill each other, but yet they're smiling and very friendly.
		It's very common for people to be friendly both before and after the fights.
		there's with martial arts the true martial art mentality is not one of a thuggish nature it's not one of it's Those are that Wideman, the guy on the left with the Monster Milk shirt on, is the current champion.
		And the other guy, Leoto Machida, the one on the right, is the number one contender who's two amazing fighters who are going to fight.
		And you see them hugging and smiling before they're about to fight.
		And Wideman, who is a wrestler, which I consider one of the very best martial arts, and Machida is a karate master, a true martial artist, Machida.
		He really embodies what you expect from a martial artist in the bowing.
		He practices kata.
		He's very disciplined, meditates, and really is what you would expect in a sort of a movie version of a martial arts competitor, a martial arts master.
		Except, you know, he really truly is a real deal.
		But I think that that attitude, the martial arts attitude, is one of the more appealing aspects of fighting, where it's not like a Mike Tyson, you know, the sort of the thuggish, you know, insulting.
		There's some of that in MMA as well, but it's very rare in boxing that you get someone who has the martial arts ideals and ethics that sort of competes.
		But when it comes down to whether or not it's more or less dangerous, it really depends upon the bouts and it depends upon the style that a person fights in.
		If you look at like a Floyd Mayweather fight, Floyd Mayweather is probably like the least hit boxer Of all time.
		If you wanted to argue that boxing is a super safe sport, watch a Floyd Mayweather fight.
		Watch how he fights.
		He rarely gets hit.
		And he gets hit and hurt much less than mixed martial arts fighters.
		I would think that his style of fighting is probably arguably one of the safest styles ever.
		But what martial arts and mixed martial arts provide is more options.
		When a boxer gets hurt, they're not even allowed to hold on and clinch.
		Whereas with MMA, that's the number one strategy.
		If you get hit and you get stunned, you grab a hold of your opponent and try to take them to the ground and fight on the ground.
		And having all these different options, it definitely gives you less head impacts, but not really much less.
		There's still a lot of stand-up fighting involved in that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Is there any evidence of degenerative brain injuries stemming from MMA?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Most certainly.
		Yeah, most certainly.
		From long careers and from a lot of training, hard training.
		There's also a bit of evolution going on right now in mixed martial arts as far as how they train, how fighters train.
		And there was a lack of knowledge and understanding about the proper way to go about training in the old days when it was first starting out, where people would just try to be as rough and tough as possible.
		So they would spar in the gym at 100%.
		They would basically have fights in the gym.
		They weren't just sparring matches.
		They were like full-on fights.
		Your mic is on, so when you do that, that click is making noise.
		They're full-on fights where they don't do that anymore.
		Now, it's very wise to rarely spar at 100%.
		Most of the time, spar at a lighter impact rate and work much more on technique and much more on strategy and positioning and preserve yourself inside the gym.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And so, as I say, we abandoned it almost because of a sense of feeling like it seemed healthy and normal in a non-like kind of masculine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you would only go after it if it was a freak show.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know, with that story, we needed some extra dimension.
		And I think that possibly if we'd got to the top tier, like with the UFC, then there would have been a sufficient sort of show business gloss to it to feel or just a sense of stakes.
		But the guys we were meeting were all part-timers.
		They were guys who worked during the week as mechanics, teachers, personal trainers.
		And every couple of weekends, they would fight a few bouts.
		So it felt like a, I mean, I'm not disrespecting them, but they were not full-time fighters.
		And it was missing some kind of sense of scale or something.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's interesting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you decided to just not pursue the story?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		We left that one.
		We spent a few days on it.
		We thought, well, you know, it might be that there's a way of coming back to it at some point.
		Like I said, the UFC side of it seemed more interesting.
		The sense of the personalities and the ways in which it intersected with this multi-million dollar business that they were running.
		That felt maybe more...
		Do you remember a guy called, there was a guy called Dadda something?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Dadda 5000.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Dudda 5000.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or 3,000 or whatever the fuck his name was.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		There was a scene in Florida of backyard bounce.
		So we were, that was going to fit into it.
		And then they call them smokers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Do they still have smokers?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They still do that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Like a true smoker is going to be a sort of no gloves.
		What is a no gloves?
		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A classic smoker.
		Kickboxing and boxing is where smokers really came from.
		And what it is is essentially fights that would take place in the gym.
		And what they would do is they'd wear headgear, boxing gloves, like sparring gloves, shin pads, which you don't see in regular kickboxing.
		And they would go at it, essentially full clip, in front of family and friends.
		And it would be unsanctioned amateur bouts.
		The problem with a lot of these smokers is there was oftentimes no medical care whatsoever.
		And they were just, you know, hoping that no one got badly injured.
		And regulatory commissions frowned upon them because they were really competitions, but they were being labeled as non-competitive sparring.
		They were calling them sparring bouts.
		So I've also had smokers where they had full MMA rules with little gloves and no pads at all.
		They've done those.
		And I'm sure they've had smokers where they had bare knuckle fights as well.
		Especially during the formative days, like from 93 on, there was a lot of evolution in mixed martial arts.
		There was a lot of things going on.
		And there was a lot of ways to skirt around the rules.
		Like for the longest time, it was illegal in California.
		And that's one of the ways King of the Cage shined is because King of the Cage would put on bouts in Indian reservations.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When they would go to these Native American reservations, the Native American tribes could form their own rules.
		And so I went to see a lot of the King of the Cage bouts in the 90s.
		And when we would go see them, they were all on Native American reservations.
		Then they also started doing a thing called pancrease fights.
		And what pancrease fights were, there was this strange rule loophole where you were allowed to fight, but you could slap.
		You couldn't close your fists and punch to the face, but you could pull your hands back and hit with the palms to the face and then kick full blast to the face, kick full blast to the body.
		So there was a lot of those fights going on in the United States as well when there was no regulatory body for that.
		It just sort of fit into some strange loophole.
		But King of the Cage is still one of those places right now where young fighters, when they're looking to get experience, they'll start.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		They come up through that, and that's still going, is it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yeah.
		I mean, I don't know how many bouts that guy's had.
		Terry Tribblecock.
		My friend Bud Brutzman, who's a good buddy of mine, was also one of the original owners of that.
		And he got out and he became part of Shark Fights for a while, which is another organization, but I don't think he does anything with MMA now.
		But Triplecock's still going strong.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Another one that we never quite figured out was bare-knuckle gypsy fighting.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if you ever saw a documentary called Knuckle.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's one of my favorite documentaries about Irish traveler families and the feuds that go on between these families spanning generations.
		There's the Joyce family and another family, I can't remember their name, but and the strange dynamic, it's just really weird.
		Like the families, they're very traditional, they got no money, like very close to the soil kind of families.
		And they issue these like fight videos, like calling each other out into the fights, saying like, you come and see me and I'll tell you, you never insult me.
		I'm like, you're a bager shit.
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're a bagger sit.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and they're very secretive.
		And we spent about three or four months trying to get into that world.
		I always found it fascinating.
		And the code of honor and the defending your name and the strangeness of the rules whereby there was always this whole code of rules about if you were called out, you had to fight.
		If they insulted your dad, you had to fight.
		And then the kids getting groomed into it very young.
		And we could never build trust with the families.
		But the guy who made Knuckle, do you remember how he gets in with the families?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, I know.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He gets invited to film one of their weddings as a videographer.
		And so he films the wedding.
		He's like, this is really interesting.
		These families, they're wild.
		They're kind of drinking and fighting and getting married.
		And having done one wedding, he maybe does another wedding.
		And then he builds trust, access through the wedding videos.
		He parlays that into shooting the fight videos.
		And so, I mean, I was glad someone did it.
		You know, it's really worth, if listeners who haven't seen that, should check out Knuckle.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a fascinating, fascinating documentary.
		And there's so many of those call-out videos that are available now.
		They put them up on YouTube now to really embarrass the person that they're calling out instead of just a video where you hand a cassette off to somebody else like in the olden days.
		Now they put these videos up on YouTube and they're damn hilarious.
		They're beautiful.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Amazing stuff.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't want them to stop.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Does that exist in the States in the same way as far as you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm sure there's probably a few people that have called people out to fights over the internet.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Like traveler fights, gypsy fights?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, it's very different.
		It's very different.
		That's a uniquely European thing.
		I love it.
		The language that they use, it's just so unique and unusual.
		I also feel like that culture, the gypsy culture, it's probably a culture that's not going to be around too many more generations.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's very odd.
		People sometimes ask me what the strangest or the most difficult story I've ever done.
		And one of them was definitely this gypsy one.
		And it wasn't for lack of a story being that the story was there, but we just couldn't figure out how to get to it.
		And there was just no sense of, you'd be having these conversations with the guy, you know, there was a guy who was very high up in the gypsy community, and he had a number of sons, and he was big in the fighting world, and he was just connected in various ways, both legal and probably not legal.
		But you would have conversations with him, and you couldn't figure out what was real and what wasn't real.
		And there was a slight sense of, you know, they call non-gypsies gorgeous.
		That's a phrase they use.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Gorger.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Gorgeous.
		I think it's G-O-R-G-I-A-S.
		Or maybe, I mean, the spellings could vary, but we were gorgeous.
		And I always felt that because we were gorgeous, you know, non-gypsies, that he as a gypsy just felt like no real sense of needing to tell the truth to us a lot of the time.
		You know, I'm not trying to generalize that or be, you know, say that's true for all gypsies or travelers, but for him, it was like, because we were gorgeous, it felt like, you know, we just didn't count.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Well, it makes sense.
		I mean, what a tight-knit culture.
		I mean, these people are living in these caravans, these, what do they call those?
		They don't call them trailers.
		They call them something else.
unidentified		Well, caravans would be caravans.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they, well, was that movie Snatch sort of highlighted it a bit with Brad Pitt.
		But these people, they travel, you know, and they set up shopping places.
		And I have some friends from England, and they have friends that live in this wealthy community, this suburban community outside of London.
		And these people apparently just moved into the area, set up their caravans, set up shop, and just started destroying the area.
		They started putting garbage everywhere.
		They started robbing people.
		I mean, and they can't do anything about it.
		Apparently, there's like massive protection of these people in England, and they're trying to be polite about it and the way they go about dealing with the situation.
		And these folks that lived in these multi-million dollar estates are really kind of fucked.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's one of these situations where it's very hard to find the right line because on the one hand, we're talking about a community that is heavily discriminated against, is deeply poor, has massive dislocation in various respects, very high rates of illiteracy, of children not going to school, their children's health not being good, and massively out of work.
		And then, so, you know, by all normal sort of barometers, you'd think that's a community that needs help, but also there's various social vices that go along with that.
		And so then I think it's fair to say many of the traveling folk are not well liked in rural areas.
		And they are, and there's a cultural thing too, where they say, like, it's not in our culture to stay in one place.
		We have to roam around and we have to be allowed to build a house in a field where you're not supposed to build houses.
		So it's like one of these, you know, they can sort of make a cultural argument, say, like, we're culturally, you can't, our tradition is, it's like, you know, it's like Native Americans saying like, we have to be allowed to kill whales.
		You know, like, you know, there's these debates and there's a spectrum of, and there's a point where you say like, well, it's your culture to mutilate female genitalia, but it's still illegal and you can't do it, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Or what you say, it's your culture to hunt whales.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, well, we don't really want you to do that, but maybe you can hunt deer Instead, it's our culture to, you know, so you've got to try and find, it's a tricky area.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's very tricky.
		The area about the hunting whales is a very unique one because I believe there's certain Inuit tribes that are still allowed to hunt certain animals, like seal.
		They're allowed to hunt seal.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And whales, I think.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Whales.
		I don't know.
		I don't know.
		Maybe some type of whales.
		I think in Alaska they allow certain Inuits to hunt certain type of whales.
		I think it's a very weird area, though, where for anyone else, it's very illegal, frowned upon, endangered species.
		The fact that they're intelligent mammals, you know, you can't hunt dolphins.
		But these people that have this long history of doing that, somehow or another, it's preserved as a cultural artifact.
		It gets very tricky.
		And the female genitalia mutilation is a very good example of that.
		But my friends who are from England, it's a horror story.
		These people that live in this community that is besieged by these gypsies, I don't even think you're so allowed to say gypsies.
		I think gypsies is like a sort of a negative term.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think it's again, like, I'm not sure.
		There's a big show in Britain called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.
		So that made me think maybe it was okay.
		Maybe it's not.
		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think some of them have a problem.
		Well, the Eskimo is one that apparently Inuits don't like the term Eskimo, but yet they call themselves Eskimo sometimes.
		It's very tricky.
		But the people that I know that have friends that live in England, I mean, to them, it's like this horror story.
		They lived in this beautiful, peaceful countryside, these elegant manners and beautiful states and multi-million dollar properties.
		And these people have just sort of destroyed it.
		And now people are moving out and selling their homes.
		And it's pretty devastating, according to my friend.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's, I mean, you've got to have a law, you know, laws.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		We do need a few laws.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We certainly do.
		But, you know, what is, you know, culture, that's where things get strange.
		You know, what do we accept?
		Clearly, you know, we moved, we, meaning North Americans, whoever came here from Europe and wherever, when they migrated here, encroached on Native American land and sort of changed the whole rules.
		So what are the rules remaining?
		And that's where this whole Indian reservation thing comes into play here.
		We allowed them to set up shop in these areas, usually that sucked, places that the new people didn't want at all.
		They allowed these Native Americans to have these areas and then they allowed them to sort of establish their own rules in these areas.
		So then that was fine for the longest time and they just sort of lived in poverty until they started making casinos.
		Then it got really strange because then non-Native Americans were allowed to invest in these casinos and then they established these crazy businesses where they make millions and millions and millions of dollars and they allow gambling, which is frowned upon everywhere else.
		And again, it's very strange.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Very strange.
		That's another one that I'd like to do a story on.
		I didn't figure out a way of doing it.
		But you know, in talking about this, I think what the realization I had was in the end, the stories I do aren't about wackiness, in my view, or even stuff that's sort of ethically dubious, although I sometimes go into those areas.
		What I'm interested in is angst and the deepest kinds of human angst, where you are facing issues that emotionally take you to the core of your being and your soul.
		And in some cases, it's, you know, it could be stuff that seems kind of dubious, like the world, I've done a story on brothels, or I did a story about porn performers, and it's the strangeness of taking the intimacy of the sex act and putting that on TV.
		And then in other cases, it's stories where the angst is something where you're presented with a choice that is really through no fault of yours.
		Like you've got a parent who's got dementia, serious Alzheimer's, or a loved one, let's say.
		Your husband, who you've been married to for 50 years, doesn't recognize you anymore and is having sex at his old people's home with some of the other women there.
		Are you still married to him?
		I mean, we did a story about dementia.
		And again, so that's not really about a choice.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Old people homes that get down?
		Is that what happens?
		Is that common?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		We're in the post-Viagra era.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ah, so they can get Viagra and the old people.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And some of the homes, as I understand it, there, I mean, we didn't actually film elderly people having sex, but it was clear when one of the women I was spending time with was visiting her husband of 30 years.
		Whenever she visited him, he would take one of his new girlfriends out.
		They'd go out for a meal and they went out as a sort of threesome because he didn't remember that he was married to his wife.
		He thought he had a new girlfriend.
		And so, I mean, but I'm just taking that as an, so when I come to this question of why didn't the story about the mixed martial arts work out, I think it was to do with, like, there wasn't a great deal of angst there.
		It was kind of healthy and people just venting a little bit of male aggression.
		Does that make sense?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So I'm trying to give you the DNA of, we started out by talking about wackiness, American culture, but the DNA for what I do is much more about the fundamental existential kind of the irresoluble.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Oh my God.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that a word?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's let it be a word.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Like those sort of like those deep conflicts that we have as human beings from which that are just bundled into the whole package of being human.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you find it limiting in that you have to have conflict in order to have a story?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can you have a story where you're pursuing conflict?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		The conflict is like, to me, the conflict, that's what I live for.
		I thrive on experiencing conflict vicariously through the medium of reporting on the stories.
		Like I couldn't see a story.
		Like, did you see this film, Her?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, I did not, but I heard about it.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So a lot of people love that film.
		I got a lot of respect for Spike Jones, but I didn't get that film at all because There was no conflict in it.
		It was just like a love story.
		Like a man falls in love with his operating system and then she kind of evolves to a higher consciousness and they break up.
		But they're just having a lot of cozy chats.
		I sort of ruined it for you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You fucking spoiled it, man.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But they kind of have a lot of cozy chats, and I'm watching this, like, okay, I'm not getting, where's this going to start?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And I think like, and maybe I'm programmed in a different way from some people, because I could not watch that film and get what people were getting out of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you require conflict in order to be engaged.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You must have it.
		Now, well, I found one of the things that I found really fascinating about your show was the episode on Indian Gurus.
		That was my favorite.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just so fucking bizarre.
		The American physicist was the most bizarre to me.
		There was first.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Was he called Mike?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That was a long time ago.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Mike from California.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There was a guy, Swamiji.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Swamiji, yeah.
		Sri Ganapati Satyananda Swamiji.
		I love those names.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the Indians have fantastic language.
		Their names are amazing.
		But there was this character who is this yoga master, quasi spiritual leader, whatever he is, you know, without judging.
		And there's this guy named Mike, who was a devotee, who lived in this guy's ashram, I guess, and believed that this man could materialize jewelry and objects.
		And the story of him stomping his foot down and a 50-pound note appeared in his hand.
		This guy's a fucking physicist.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is so strange.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That was a good one.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was my favorite.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One of my favorite moments was you sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to him, and you asked him whether or not, you said, try not to take this the wrong way, but did you have sadness in your life before you met this guy?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And he took it amiss.
		He didn't like that question.
		And he said something like, are you asking me, am I a burnout?
		Am I a burnout?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, his quote was fascinating because it was about fundamentalism.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he says, like, I always say that having a breakdown is like the precursor to fundamentalism.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I thought he was going to say that he had a breakdown.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so I sort of went with the question, like what he said.
		I felt like he was setting me up for that, but he didn't see himself as a fundamentalist.
		And it was a really, it was a misunderstanding.
		I normally try and get into the difficult questions a little more gracefully.
		And because I'd misunderstood what he was saying, I don't think you did.
		I slid into it a bit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I really don't think you did.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think he changed gears.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You think?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think he was sort of aware of.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know what happened?
		The deep story there is that I spent, that was at Weird Weekends Days, which was about 10 years ago.
		And I used to try and spend, it was like a little rule of thumb.
		I'd find a contributor who I could relate to the most.
		Like, you take something that seemed really out of whack, like something that on the face of it, you think, how could people really think it's cool to move to Idaho and not pay taxes and think the UN is going to invade?
		How could people really think that an Indian guru is going to manifest Rolex watches, they call them Siddhis, by meditating and cure cancer by jamming on a keyboard, right?
		An old Bon Tempe keyboard.
		And so, but the technique we used was to try and find the most likable, reasonable, seeming person who exemplified that belief system.
		So you take a weird subject, but cast it normal, like cast it a person who's likable and relatable.
		And Mike was the guy, we thought.
		And when you found that guy, I'd say, and I'll move in, I'll spend a night with them.
		It was like supposed to signal my commitment to the story as well.
		So in that story, I spent the night at Mike's ashram.
		But they had very thin mattresses.
		Although I later found out there were different thicknesses.
		Depending on how committed you were, you would choose a thinner mattress.
		So you can choose a thick one.
		But I just found a thin one.
		So I put it on.
		And I had one of the worst nights of sleep in my life.
		And I woke up the next morning kind of groggy.
		And as you are after a night's sleep, not just kind of bad-tempered, but also just my chi wasn't flowing right.
		And I wasn't in tune with what was going on around me.
		And so when he asks, he says something about if you, you know, if you're a fundamentalist because you've had a breakdown.
		And I think, oh, he's saying he had a breakdown, I think.
		So did you have some sadness in your life?
		And then he kind of flips out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's play that.
		You can find that.
		You can find that, Jamie.
		It's that video that you just showed.
		If you back up about three or four minutes before that, find it is you'll see Louis getting out of bed and he looks very groggy and then he communicates with this guy and they have this sort of a weird breakdown.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That's also the one where I try and call, because then the guru says he's a big fan of Siegfried and Roy or David Copperfield.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		David Copperfield, yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He says he went to Vegas and I took that as a kind of slightly very subtle coded possible admission that he takes an interest in magic and therefore what he does is a kind of conjuring.
		So I sort of was trying to edge towards getting him to admit that, you know, like we know that you can't make a Rolex watch appear out of thin air, right?
		And so why not just let's just get that out there and admit that, you know, that's what you do.
		But he's a guru, so he couldn't really admit it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this is...
unidentified		he comes here.
unidentified		You know, he doesn't He's working on a cosmic level.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Don't take this the wrong way, Mike.
unidentified		But was there any sadness in your life before you came to see this Swami and committed to him?
		I've always have a little saying.
		Fundamentalism is the aftermath of a nervous breakdown.
		You know, it's a little bit coarse, but no.
		Did you have a nervous break?
		No.
		Yeah.
		Would I come up with that?
		Yeah, please.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		No, I know.
unidentified		Meaning like pause this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		All this, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And then he goes, MIRBERN.
unidentified		yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But I think these are all tells.
		I think he changed gears on you.
		I really think his statement, his initial statement, fundamentalism and about nervous breakdowns, I think that's what he's really saying.
		I really do.
		And then when you confront him on it, he realizes he's on camera.
		That's why all the you know, you know, you know, he's thinking too much.
		He's trying to come up with a way to spin that story in a better light.
		He's not just free-flowing what's going on in his mind.
		He's dancing around the subject, trying to wrestle it into a more acceptable, palatable form.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think I agree.
		But I think what I see, my take on it is he's emotionally, you know, close to the surface and probably has been through a lot of difficult things.
		I mean, I'm getting dangerously close to kind of diagnosing him in absentia, but I also think he's trying to step outside it.
		He's trying to say, I agree with you, but I'm not one of them.
		Like, I don't think he thinks that he did have a breakdown.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it could be both.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He's trying to play it off.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I think.
unidentified		Maybe.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He was a lovely guy, though.
		He was from the Bay Area.
		I hope he's doing okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He seemed like a very nice guy, which is one of the interesting aspects of it.
		He also seemed fairly intelligent.
		But he also claimed to be a total, complete skeptic.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But look, you know, Isaac, I mean, I don't want to go on a little lecture, but Isaac Newton believed in alchemy, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did he?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And spent like the last 20 years of his life, having made probably the most important scientific breakthroughs, you know, of all time.
		the last 20 years of his life, kind of calculating the dimensions of Noah's Ark based on biblical information.
		I mean, just wacko stuff, and believed in the philosopher's stone and the idea of...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sir Isaac Newton, didn't he also have an issue with sexuality?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I believe he was asexual or something.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think he was something like that.
		He was a pretty weird dude.
		And then, I mean, at the same time, it may have taken someone with a certain credulity or a willingness to believe in occult forces to come up with the notion of gravitational pull through a vacuum at a distance, when until then, they'd been grappling with science as mechanistic.
		In other words, what I'm saying is gravity, nothing explains why gravity exists.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know, I mean, why do objects attract one another at a distance through a vacuum?
		They just do.
		Like, there's no prior cause before that.
		So in a strange way, his mind may have been predisposed.
		Am I going totally on the screen?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, you're not.
		And I don't think there's anything...
		He might have thought that there was some sort of a scientific basis to alchemy that he just couldn't hunt down.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, exactly.
		I think that's what I'm trying to say.
		And at that time, the paradigm of science in the 17th century was that all that nonsense that they used to believe in the Middle Ages was nonsense that you didn't have, and even Aristotelian ideas of things going up.
		Everything could be explained mechanistically.
		It was a mechanistic that objects banged into each other, and that's why things moved.
		So it took a leap of faith to say, you know what, maybe objects move each other through forces that are invisible and can't really be explained.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's also important to note that most scientists were religious back then.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Most scientists were Christians.
		Or Islamic.
		It was very common to be a Christian, very, very uncommon to be an atheist.
		In fact, anyone espousing atheistic ideas was thought to be a fucking nut, which is really interesting.
		Today, where you look at the vast majority of scientists, a huge percentage of them either are agnostic or claim to be atheists.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know, I think it would be comparable to saying, nowadays, saying I'm a pedophile.
		You know, I think actually being an atheist in the 17th century was so outside the norm of what people considered acceptable.
		I mean, I think that's the only way we could get our brains around thinking you would be shunned.
		People would look at you and think, like, what is wrong with you?
		Because it was just taken for granted in all levels of acceptable society.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it's really interesting just going back into our past, just recent past, that we have with recordings and television and watching how different our culture is from today, say from the 1920s and 1930s, even films from the 1940s and 50s.
		They vary.
		There's so much of a difference.
		I'm a stand-up comedian, and when I go back and I listen to the stand-up comedians of the 1950s and the 1960s, I mean, it's incredible how much different culture is between now and then.
		The greatest, probably the most important comedian ever is Lenny Bruce, in my opinion.
		But if you try to listen to Lenny Bruce today, it's really not funny.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		No, it's not.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's not funny at all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's almost blasphemy to say.
		But it's true because our culture has changed so much since then that it's just not relevant anymore.
		The things that he's saying and the way he's saying them, the humor, the shockingness of it then, it's so normal today.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Do you find any old, like, do you find the Marx Brothers funny or Chaplin?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		There's some physical comedy that's still pretty funny.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's okay, but if it was new, it would suck.
		You know what I mean?
		If it was released today, if someone tried to release a Three Stooges movie today, you'd be like, what a piece of shit.
		And that's a person, you know, I have great respect for the Three Stooges.
		It sounds crazy to say, but I think that it's an evidence of the references.
		Our culture is just extremely different now.
		And I think that's one of the more challenging aspects of trying to look back on the 1600s and trying to imagine what life was like, trying to go back to the days when they used to have to put skirts on table legs because they were thinking that people were going to be sexually attracted to table legs and piano legs.
		It's hard for people to imagine that that was a real thing.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		What about thinking of 100 years in the future and what we'll look back on now as culturally weird and that we take for granted?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there'll be so much.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There'll be so much.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		What would it be?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there's massive amounts of contradictions that we have in our society.
		I mean, I think, first of all, the way people dress will be bizarre.
		Women's high heels will be laughed at.
		Women's high heels, like when you see women walk around with spikes, you know, and women love wearing stilettos and pumps and all these really bizarre feet-distorting shoe wear or footwear.
		I mean, I think that's one of the things that's going to be looked back upon.
		Ties.
		People look back on ties the way they looked at powdered wigs from the George Washington era.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So strange.
		I mean, and racism was normal in the 19th century.
		And even someone like Lincoln, who we think of as being a hero of the civil rights struggle, freeing the slaves, the Emancipation Proclamation, made a number of deeply racist statements.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the world was different.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The way they looked at the world was very, very, very different.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Have you followed the whole story in Britain about show business celebrities being accused of sex crimes based on behavior in the 1970s?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I did.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I followed the whole thing about that one guy who was that famous talk show host.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Jimmy Saville?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Wow.
		That is fucking crazy.
		That guy was a pedophile, and apparently for decades, and it was covered up, much like the Jerry Sandusky case in America.
		A lot of folks are aware of that.
		The Pennsylvania state, the guy who was a coach, a football coach, who was just a massive pedophile.
		And they covered it up.
		They covered it up so much, so I don't know if you're familiar with that case, but the DA, the guy who was a, the prosecutor was trying to try to find out information.
		He turned up missing.
		He turned up missing, and they found his laptop in a river with no hard drive.
		They killed that fucking guy.
		They killed the guy that is investigating Jerry Sandusky.
		Someone did.
		And you would go, well, why would someone do that when you're talking about a pedophile?
		Well, then you find out how much money the school makes.
		And the school makes from their football program.
		The school makes from people who went to that school who donate to the school.
		And it's an insane amount of money.
		It's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But did you know that I was the only person who lived with Jimmy Saville on and off for two weeks and made a documentary about him?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		In 2000.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You could find that on YouTube.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was that like?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, see, it's been a matter of a lot of soul-searching for me because of the strangeness of then discovering that he had this track record of apparently sexually abusing.
		Were you that keen and excited?
		Oh my goodness.
		He's talking and it just appears.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So go ahead, play some of it.
unidentified		No difference.
		That's not a bad double.
		Between us, we should be able to do something.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		When Louis met Jimmy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you spent two weeks with that guy?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		More or less, yeah, off and on.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Over about three or four months.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		For Americans who are not aware of this story at all, it's not a very popular story.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Explain who he is.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So there's no exact cultural figure in America to compare him with, but he was mainly known as a DJ.
		And from the late 60s right through to the 90s, he was just on the radio a lot.
		And then he got a TV show on the back of his DJing career where it was called Jibble Fixit.
		And people would call in with requests for special fix-its, which were dreams that he would make come true for them.
		So kids would say, I've always wanted to box with a big box, you know, meet Muhammad Ali or drive a ferry or whatever it was, dance with Shawadi Wadi, or, you know, like just, and they would come on and he would fix it for them to do their things.
		It was a very popular mainstream TV show for 20 years.
		And all, so everyone in Britain knew who he was and he was very, very, in his appearance, he was very odd.
		You know, you could see him there, but even more so in his younger years, he had this helmet of hair.
		And so you always looked at him and thought, God, he looks really odd, like something not right about him.
		But at the same time, he became a knight.
		He was very well in the establishment.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He became a knight?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he was knighted and he raised millions and millions of dollars for pounds for charity.
		So he was like this unique cultural figure.
		And then after he died, it turned out that he had sexually assaulted a number of women, and many of them were underage.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it was a women thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I thought it was boys as well.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's been alleged.
		And I don't know, you know, with all this stuff, the truth is not kind of been completely established.
		Because he hasn't been, you know, he's dead.
		He can't be tried in court.
		But some men have stepped forward and said that they were abused by him when they were children.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it was all children, boys and girls.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		When you say women, it was some of them.
		Some of the people who said they were assaulted, they said it happened when they were in their 30s, 20s.
		And then if he had a victim profile, it seems to have been younger teens.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God, wow.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, so that's a whole other can of words.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But I just, since you mentioned it, I felt I should mention that I had a connection with you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what was your experience when you were with him for two weeks?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was a scene.
		This is the scene.
		You should play this bit.
unidentified		In the sense of today, i.e., you're talking about the body, you don't bother with anybody else, etc.
		No, never.
		Never.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Not even for like a week.
unidentified		No, not even for a week.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So he's saying he never had a girlfriend?
		No.
		Meaning he wants to fuck other people.
		Well, he says, don't bother with anybody else.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think, yeah, basically, that's what he's saying there.
		He's saying that I've never had a girlfriend, I've only kind of flitted from girl to girl.
		He says, friends that are girls, thousands of them, but girlfriend, no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And he's like 70 there.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But so I didn't really, even at that time, I didn't, I mean, you decoded that straight away.
		At the time, I wasn't really sure exactly what he was saying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Because I think because he'd been so confusing and he'd said so many different things about the nature.
		I mean, he'd been so evasive on the subject.
		But yeah, absolutely.
		He's saying there that he had lots of different girls who he would sleep with.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But this line of conversation leads me to believe that you were suspicious about him, that there's something wrong with him.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It was well known that his interests were unclear.
		Like, in other words, it was well known there was a mystery.
		I would say that.
		No one ever, people always said, like, what are his interests?
		I don't understand.
		He's never had a girlfriend or a wife or, you know, maybe he's gay or maybe he's celibate.
		Maybe he's asexual.
		And so I knew that there was a blank spot, like a gray area, a space where he kept his sexuality kind of.
		And if you questioned him on it, it was clear there was a secret, and I didn't know what the secret was.
		And there were rumors of him being attracted to underage girls was one of the rumors.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		So this is not something that just dropped after he died.
		This was something that was...
		Because the fact that he was knighted?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Not for me.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I never felt inhibited from asking tough questions.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you wouldn't.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's your nature.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Was culture, were they- I don't think, you know, there wasn't like a memo that went out saying, don't touch him.
		He does a lot of works for charity.
		But there was an atmosphere of feeling that he was doing good works for charity and that he was a VIP.
		And, you know, I think abuse victims, even when it's not a celebrity, there's a lot of pressure on them not to come forward due to embarrassment and a misplaced sense of guilt.
		And when it's a prominent member of the celebrity world who's viewed as a kind of a benevolent philanthropist, even more so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was the issue with Sandusky as well, that he worked in charities, charitable organizations that helped a lot of young kids that were orphans.
		And he took a lot of these young kids on trips.
		And this was apparently when he had sexually molested them, allegedly, what have you.
		I don't know if he's ever admitted to any of this, but of course he's obviously guilty of something.
		But that was his thing, that he had helped all these kids, and he was involved in all these charitable organizations.
		But there were suspicions about him, and there was stories about him for a long time.
		And someone had protected him.
		And the idea is the reason why they had protected him was because it would take down Penn State, this enormous money-making machine, this huge cultural, it was a huge business, and it was also like a big part of the community.
		I mean, Penn State is this institution, this established institution that would be brought down by this.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And victims had come forward and gone to the police or gone to the university authorities?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a good question.
		My friend Dama Reira is actually friends with the prosecutor, the one who chased him down at the end, not the guy that turned up missing, but one of the ones who was involved at the very end when he did wind up getting prosecuted.
		That guy, he's in jail now, right?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Who Sandusky?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he's in jail, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The whole thing is very disgusting, but it's so disturbing to think that they protected him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, that was the whole thing about this Joe Paterno character who was the much legendary coach.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Who knew what was going on?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Allegedly, yes.
		Yeah.
		Allegedly knew.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And he took early retirement.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He died very quickly afterwards, too.
		Yeah, I mean, I think the news was just absolutely devastating.
		And when he was, I don't think he took early retirement.
		I believe he was removed.
		I believe he was removed as a coach.
		And that's when everybody went crazy.
		I mean, there was like riots when they removed him as the coach.
		And then the news came out.
		And then when the news came out, everybody was like, oh, fuck.
		And then he died shortly afterwards.
		And I would probably safely say that a good reason why he died was not just old age.
		The devastating effect of this all becoming public was probably just unbelievably hard to deal with.
		Of course, you know, not minimizing what happened to those kids is much more difficult for them to deal with it.
		The whole thing is just totally disgusting, but fascinating in some sort of a strange, bizarre way that human beings are capable of doing something like that, that they're capable of shielding this monster.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Hideous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It really is.
		And so, but I'm curious about the fact that you enjoyed the guru story.
		Because I look back at that and it's not one that I would, I feel is kind of one of my finest moments.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I loved it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I also loved the part where you met the woman who was this guru, this female guru, and she hugged you.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right, and I had a sort of transcendental experience.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What happened there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was that?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's hard to explain, but, you know, sometimes I think, you know, in a male way, I'm not that connected to the deepest sources of my emotions.
		So I don't really know what it was, but I do think that being hugged is a very simple, and it's a physical act, but It creates all kinds of emotions inside of you, and it just sort of welled up from nowhere.
		It's just really odd.
		I don't really know exactly what happened.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I thought about that quite a bit after I watched it, and one of the things that I took from it was the emotions and just the whole group of people waiting in line to hug someone, the anticipation of it, and the love that's in the air.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's sort of this group-minded thing that's going on.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And there's a lot of music, loud music.
		There's a lot of people around.
		There's a very heightened atmosphere.
		And then she gave me a sort of turbo hug, too.
		Like, she gave me the executive platinum card hug.
		And I think they whispered to her, like, give this guy, you know, the works.
		The works.
		And so she hugged me for longer, and she was actually muttering things into my ear.
		What was she saying?
		Not words that I recognized, but it was like, it was sort of like, So is it Punjab?
		Comforting noises.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the word.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Punjab is the word for their language, right?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's several languages.
		She may have spoken Hindi or there's a few others too.
		Too many to mention.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I would think that just the experience itself of being around all those people that were in this sort of dancing, joyous state and this long line to get to this woman.
		And she probably had some sincere, loving gesture towards everyone as well.
		I mean, imagine what it would be like to be adored by so many people and such a large group of people that are established there to come see you and get in line to hug you.
		And then you did it.
		But you were really like moved by it.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I was, yeah.
		I mean, I think as well, I was under a lot of pressure.
		You know, when I'm doing those stories, I feel very pent up and I'm aware that I have one chance to kind of get the thing that I'm trying to get.
		And it was one of those classic things where I was supposed to hug her the day before.
		And then we took a crew break and went for an Indian meal.
		And then when we arrived at the hugging tent, they'd packed up and left.
		And I was like, oh my God, we missed the hug.
		And then it turned out she was doing two nights.
		She was doing like two dates in that city because she was on tour, like hugging her way around India.
		So I was like, oh, we're fucked.
		How are we going to get the hug now?
		Just because like our crew wanted a nice meal.
		And so it turned out, oh my God, they're here another night.
		So it was like this long lead up to getting the hug.
		And so it was a tightly wound coil of anxiety.
		So when I finally got there and had the hug, it was several levels on which I felt just sort of relieved.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow, that's fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But you know, religion's, you know, it's one of life's mysteries.
		And I'm trying to do a thing on Scientology at the moment.
		And that's proving quite a difficult road.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, religion is certainly one of life's great mysteries.
		I think there's also group states of like-mindedness that I find quite fascinating.
		And you can get them when people...
		It was a UFC fight for the troops.
		And they sang the national anthem.
		It's in the middle of the Iraq war.
		And when they sang the national anthem, the intensity and the feeling in the air, the patriotism, just the emotions involved.
		You're dealing with thousands of people in the audience who have lost loved ones, lost friends, maybe been wounded themselves, maybe taken lives themselves.
		Many of them, I'm sure, taken lives themselves.
		And the palpable, the patriotism and the emotion.
		And I am a person who was absolutely against all of these wars, whether it's the Iraq invasion, the Afghanistan war.
		I thought the whole thing was about money and the whole thing was ill-advised.
		I thought that the idea of going in for these supposed weapons of mass destruction was incredibly transparent.
		And then I thought that the government and the military-industrial complex was capitalizing on a horrible event in September 11th and using that as an impetus to go and invade these countries and take over, you know, resources.
		But that moment when that thing was happening and that person was singing the national anthem, was a soldier that was singing the national anthem and everyone was standing there proud and the energy in the air and the cheer when it was over.
		You were ready to go to war.
		I mean, you were ready to support the troops.
		You're ready to not just support the troops, but support the war.
		You're ready to back them.
		I mean, there's this weird thing that happens, these group-minded sort of states that...
		I felt something for sure.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did you cry?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did you feel something?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I could have easily cried if I coaxed myself into it or if I entertained those thoughts.
		I mean, I was working at the time.
		I was there for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
		But the state of mind, the group state, was fucking intense.
		And it was palpable.
		It was tangible.
		It was in the air.
		And this is coming from a person who I believe that it's very important to have military.
		I believe that there are bad people in the world.
		I believe that there's sometimes no other solutions.
		I don't believe in pacifism when you're dealing with thugs and evil people in the world.
		But I also believe that there's good people that are sent into bad situations for all the wrong reasons by people that are trying to make money.
		But in that state, in that state, being there with all those soldiers, being there with all those people, man, you got swept away by it.
		You just carried away by this intense feeling of patriotism.
		It's indescribable because you could feel the emotions of those people that are in that room.
		And I wonder if that's similar to what you were experiencing when you were there.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure.
		I'm sure, very close.
		And it's not the only time when, I mean, it's the only time I think I felt that exact sort of emotion of whatever that was, sort of religious transcendence.
		But I've, you know, there's plenty of times when you are around people.
		I mean, in a way, a lot of the stories I do are about the altered consciousness of being exposed to people who believe things passionately and the slight sense of Stockholm syndrome that sets in when you're there for prolonged periods, you know, and the weird change in consciousness that takes place.
		You know, I did a story where I was with the Phelps clan, the Westboro Baptist Church.
		I spent three weeks with them.
		In fact, I did two different things, but for the first one, I was there for three weeks.
		It was called The Most Hated Family in America.
		And it was really odd because when you're inside their little compound in their castle, imbibing their air and their doctrine round the clock, stuff that seems really weird and hateful on the outside starts to seem mundane.
		You know, you're still able to step outside and say, I'm here to do a job and this is wrong, but you get anesthetized.
		Your mind starts to get influenced.
		It's really strange.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I would imagine it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I found the Phelps one very fascinating because of the one guy that came there to film a documentary on them and then became one of them.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He joined up, Steve.
		Yeah, he's very high up there now.
		Steve, and his daughter left a couple of years ago.
		We went back and did a follow-up because a couple of the people we featured in the first one then left.
		But Steve almost, you could argue, by dint of having been born outside the church, was compensating by being even more hardcore because he was the fiercest and the most, in conversation, he was the hardest and the most abusive, I guess, most verbally full of bile.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And he also, when you questioned anything that he was saying, would start insulting you.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and aggressively insulting you.
		And I found that fascinating as well.
		It wasn't just that you could have questions.
		It was that, what are you fucking idiot?
		It was like immediately this aggressive sort of.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He told me I was the most, I can't remember the phrase.
		He said, it sounded like the most iniquitous or the most evil man in the history of the earth.
		Or one of the three most evil men.
		He said, you're right up there with Pontius Pilate.
		Like I was one of the three most evil men of all time, like, you know, way beyond Hitler.
		And the reason was because I'd been exposed to the teachings.
		Like, I'd been given a special opportunity.
		Like, I was blessed beyond measure because I had been exposed for three weeks to the pure teachings of the only people preaching salvation on earth.
		And having seen that and still rejected it, then that put me way beyond the pale.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I found it incredibly fascinating how effective a guy who sucks at speaking is at running a cult.
		Like, he's a terrible orator.
		He's not like this really charismatic.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Gremps, the main guy.
		You know, he's very old now.
		Like, he's in his time, he could do it.
		I thought he was, I think you're being a little unfair.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You remember the bit where he says, you're going to eat your babies?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Like, he's still, he's very old and kind of decrepit, but he still cranks it up and he goes, you're going to eat your babies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		See, I don't agree.
		I felt it was so one note.
		It was like death metal.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You're going to eat your babies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You didn't mind your babies?
		Yeah.
		I mean, it was just so obvious.
unidentified		It's just, there's...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You like Billy Graham?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Like, what preaching style do you prefer?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sam Kinnison.
		That's my favorite.
		I just think that there are people who are better at it than Phelps.
		Phelps is so negative and so abrasive.
		I think there's almost his slow build.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He starts, dearly beloved.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He has a slow build, and then he ramps it up, and then he hits his kind of power chorus of you're going to eat your babies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think there's something when someone's unbelievably evil and aggressive where you don't want them to be angry at you.
		So you're willing to sort of like bend your mind to what they're saying and accept it and allow it in.
		And that's what I felt watching that guy.
		And I've seen that in him before in his speeches.
		I've tried to sort of rationalize or understand what's going on when he talks.
		Why would anybody get sucked into all this evil, hateful talk and not question it?
		But I think he's so over the top and so aggressive that he's frightening to people.
		Like when you sat down with him and talked to him.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Here's the thing.
		I mean, by and large, they don't really make converts.
		They make a few, but he's not trying to recruit new personnel.
		If anything, it's the opposite.
		They view it as a confirmation of their holy status and of their salvation that they're rejected because there's some verse somewhere in the Bible saying, ye will be hated of men and people will throw things at you.
		It's somewhere in the Bible.
		And so every time someone says, you're full of it, you're scum, we hate you, what they hear is, yes, we are saved.
		So like 90% of the people in there were born into it and are family members.
		And in fact, they hemorrhage membership constantly.
		They kick people out.
		So when he's preaching, he's not thinking, how do I get new followers?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not saying that he's thinking that.
		I'm wondering the effectiveness of retaining anyone ever.
		Well, you would know, obviously, much more than I. You were there for three weeks, deeply embedded into that organization.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He hated me.
		Gramps did.
		And he was one of the few times where you try and do an interview with someone who clearly can't stand you.
		And I said something like, how can you really believe that there's no, like, even if you accept that what you say is true, you know, their position is there's no other church in the world that is preaching the doctrine.
		I said, how would you even know?
		Like, there could be some tiny church in Nigeria that's preaching the exact same message.
		How would you know?
		You wouldn't even know.
		He goes, like, and he says, I know about them.
		And I asked another question.
		He goes, asked and answered.
		And I asked him another question.
		He goes, asked and answered.
		And he just kept saying asked and answered.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Which is a legal term.
		I mean, and you know, what do you do?
		What do you do then?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's nothing you could do.
		He's the epitome of a closed-minded person.
		I mean, he is closed-minded.
		Not just that, but this arrogant assumption that he's the man with the word of God and that it comes out of this angry old fuckhead's face.
		You know, it's an amazing thing that this guy is able to put together this group.
		I mean, I just, this is the moment where you sat down and talked to this guy.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know, it was true.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How long have you been with him by then?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think this was, I'm trying to, I think it was the end of a, we made three trips each of a week.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		This was the second trip last day.
unidentified		If you had just a little knowledge of the Bible, you would know that what you just said is stupidity in space.
		I don't know how to deal with a question like that.
		You're just too dumb.
		Sorry.
		And you've got the duty to know the Bible as well as I do.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Why?
unidentified		Because you're a human being.
		Because God Almighty made you.
		And God Almighty is going to send you past to hell.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Is it accurate to say that you regard the Whisper Baptist Church as the only church that's giving biblical preaching according to the Word of God?
unidentified		Just three minutes.
unidentified		No, the answer to your question is yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		No, it was five minutes.
unidentified		Well, but I've already talked to you, didn't I?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So there's three left.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Do you believe in Westboro Baptist Church you're preaching the only preaching that is according to the word of God as far as you know?
unidentified		I asked and answered next.
unidentified		Next question.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		As far as you're concerned.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		We got it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this is this angry, old, shitty man who's able to get a bunch of people to listen to him.
unidentified		I find his kids and his grandkids.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, how many people were there?
unidentified		It seems like there was a little 20 or 30 people or 19.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's a lot.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he had 11.
		He had, I think, I want to get this right.
		I think it was like 12 kids, but four of them had left the church.
		And each of them had had quite a few kids.
		But I think if you're an egomaniac, number one, number two, if for whatever reason you cleave to a certain kind of dogmatic religious outlook, it's probably not that difficult to run, to have a cult.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's unfortunate, but I think you're right.
		It's shocking, but I think you're right.
		I've often said that all you have to do is speak confidently and clearly, and most people will be like, I can't do that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and have no compunction about saying that you speak the word of God or whatever it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's really all you have to do, right?
		You have to be the guy with the answers.
		You have to be the guy that absolutely, not just the answers as a human, but the answers from above.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I mean, have you read the new Menson book, the new Charles Menson book by Jeff Gwynn?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It came out last year.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, I try not to read anything that comes out about Manson.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I'll ask you why in a second, but when you read it, it's like, oh my word, you just have to be kind of come out with a few kind of riddles that you've learned from street pimps, and people fall into your lap.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Or so it would seem.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You made me.
		I ate your garbage, man.
		You people made me.
		I'm your product.
		All that fucking maniacal shit.
		I think that that guy's the Bob Hope of serial killers.
		You know, because Bob Hope was a comedian that never really made anybody in my generation laugh.
		Like, we always knew him as a comedian, but it's like, just really wasn't funny.
		Manson was never scary to me.
		Like, there's some real serial killers that were fucking terrifying.
		But when you think of serial killers, it's always Manson, Manson.
		Manson is the guy, the crazy guy, the wild guy, because he carved a fucking swastika in his head.
		if you I mean Henry Lee Lucas the guy from that they made that movie about him Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer allegedly killed somewhere around 60 people you know Right.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He got other people to kill.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, because he got the children that he sent them out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Tex Watson was his big killer, right?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Tex Watson.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Become a born-again Christian.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I think he writes children's books or something fucking creepy like that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And you know what?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		A number of them still believe, you know?
unidentified		That Charlie's still, yeah.
unidentified		Of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Otherwise, they're idiots.
		They're fucked up.
		Well, what he did, what they did do to Sharon Tate, you know, Tate LaBianca murders is fucking unbelievably horrific.
		I mean, cut a baby out of her body and smeared blood all over the walls.
		And it was all really, really terrifying shit.
		I mean, don't get me wrong, but I mean, there's been a series of really, really evil people that almost no one knows about.
		And it's bizarre what becomes popular, what becomes famous in the world of evil people.
		You know, and sometimes it's just a name, you know, Manson, you know, and everybody remembers that name.
		They're too lazy to kind of like investigate and find out about other names.
		But there's been a, you know, there's so many goddamn serial killers in this country or have been.
		It's bizarre that that one guy gets so much ink.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, Geraldo can take his share of responsibility.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was Geraldo's fault?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, he did a number of landmark interviews in the, I guess in the 70s or the early 80s.
		You can see them on YouTube where he sort of turned him into a celebrity.
		I mean, I guess the cases were big at the time, but then he Geraldo did some shows.
		I think Diane Sawyer might have done an interview.
		And then they passed laws to say that you couldn't, basically you couldn't interview Charles Menson anymore.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's fascinating to see what Geraldo has become.
		Do you know that Geraldo was like a counterculture figure at one time?
		Geraldo was the guy who introduced the world to the Zapruder film.
		He had Dick Gregory on his television show, and he showed the world a Zapruder film, essentially establishing the idea that it was more than one person or someone else other than Lee Harvey Oswald that killed Kennedy.
		Now he's on Fox News.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And what happened to Dick Gregory?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Dick Gregory's still around.
		He's not really a comedian anymore.
		I think he does some shows, but he's more of an activist.
		he's very, very old now.
		But I saw something recently where Dick Gregory was sitting down with Paul Mooney, who's a great old comedian from Los Angeles, who was a writer for Richard Pryor and just a great comedian.
		And the two of them were sitting around talking about racism and culture.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Some of his jokes back in the day were pretty good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was very good.
		Dick Gregory was very good.
		But he was also not just a comedian.
		He was an activist.
		He was the guy who somehow or another got a hold of the Zapruder film.
		The Zapruder film was made, obviously, in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated, but it was bought by Time Life magazine, I believe, by whoever owns Life Magazine or Time at the time.
		And they just put it on a shelf for years.
		The 1970s is when Geraldo had it on his show.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Before that, it had never been aired?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Never.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		They just made a TV show about it, I think.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		About the Sapruder film?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, like a Paul Jamantika.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Look at the way they're dressed.
		75, so think about that.
		Eight years later.
		Crazy.
unidentified		If you're at all queasy, then don't watch this film.
		Just put on the late night movie because this is very heavy.
		It's the film shot by the Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruda, and it's the execution of President Kennedy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		By the way, hurrah the hospital.
unidentified		Bob, and just to please narrate what we're seeing as we show this film.
		Now, this is the Zapruder film.
		Okay, so the cars are coming along now into Dealy Plaza.
		Yes, these are the lead motorcycles of the motorcade.
		All right, now with the President and Mrs. Kennedy is also Governor Connolly.
		Right.
		Now, before he goes behind the sign, the President is waving to the crowd.
		When he comes out from behind the sign, he is shot.
		Then Governor Connolly is shot.
		He's already been hit.
		He's already been hit.
		And now at the bottom of the screen, the headshot.
		That's the shot that blew off his head.
		It's the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in the movies.
		Now, the Warren Commission said that all of the shots were fired from behind by Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone assassin, firing at the president.
		And as you can see clearly, the head is thrown violently backwards.
		Completely consistent with the shot from the front, right.
		Now this is an extreme blow-up of just the president from the film.
		Coming out behind the sign, he's shot.
		He's hit from the front here.
		From the front, too.
		From the front.
		Now, Jackie doesn't realize what's happened yet.
		She goes to his aid.
		And now?
		He's hit again the violent backward motion.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I've never seen that bit.
unidentified		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You've never seen a Zapruder film?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Just like the bits they showed in JFK, you know, the Oliver Stone film.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I had never seen...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I mean, it's pretty common.
		It's available.
		I mean, they've broken it down.
		It's been enhanced.
		There's a variety of different bits.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Do you believe there were two gunmen?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think there was probably more than two gunmen.
		Yeah.
		But I don't think it's in either or.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Was one of them Woody Harrelson's dad?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It very well could have been.
		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		Isn't that fascinating?
		I don't think it was in either or because everybody wants to say that it was either Lee Harvey Oswald or it was other people.
		It could have been Lee Harvey Oswald and other people.
		And that's, I don't understand why people have to have everything black and white.
		And everybody says, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
		Like, why do you think that?
		Why do you think that?
		Like, why would anybody think that he acted alone?
		If you look at all the injuries that Kennedy had to his body, first of all, the shot in the neck, it's an entry wound.
		In Bethesda, Maryland, they called it a tracheotomy.
		But in Dallas, Fort Worth, when he was first administered by, taken care of by doctors, they said it was an entry wound.
		They changed what the wound in his neck was in order to fit with the established narrative of Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone shooter.
		That's one reason to think that there was more than one person.
		The other reason to think there was more than one person was a single bullet theory.
		And I've heard a lot of people say that the single bullet theory could have happened, that bullets can act very weird when they go through, and they absolutely can.
		People have shot people and bullets shot someone from the front and the bullet has ricocheted inside their head and come out their eye and landed in front.
		I mean, that has happened.
		Bullets take very strange paths when they ricochet off bones.
		That's not what's weird about the bullet passing through two people.
		What's weird about the bullet passing through two people is, first of all, why did they think that one bullet did that?
		And the reason for that is because a bullet hit the underpass, ricocheted off a curbstone, and hurt some person that was standing in the underpass.
		So they had to attribute one of the shots, one of the three shots, to that bullet.
		They knew that Kennedy and Connolly had both been hit, and then they knew that there was a headshot.
		So those are three bullets.
		One bullet that hit the curbstone, the other bullet that passed through two bodies, and then the headshot.
		That's the reason why they had to make the entry wound on the neck a tracheotomy.
		And that's the reason why they had to say that one bullet had caused these wounds on two different people.
		They found the bullet on the gurney, in Connolly's hospital gurney, when he was administering the hospital.
		Oh, look, we found a bullet in pristine condition.
		If you've ever shot a bullet and that bullet hit bone, when bullets hit bone, they distort.
		The idea that that bullet came out like that after going through two people's bodies and hitting bone, it's ridiculous.
		It doesn't make any sense.
		That's the reason why I think that more than one person was involved.
		And that's the reason why there's a book called Best Evidence by a guy named David Lifton who goes into great detail.
		He was a bookkeeper and an accountant.
		And he had some assignment involving the Warren Commission.
		And he was such a meticulous guy that he actually read the entire Warren Commission, which is some insane number of pages.
		But he read it, and he wrote a book called Best Evidence, all about all the contradictions in the Warren Commission report and why he thought that the entire thing was established to make a predetermined conclusion and to establish that with the American public.
		And he thought it was all horseshit.
		So I don't think so.
		I think more than one person was involved.
		But it could have been Lee Harvey Oswald, too.
		That's what people, I don't understand why people have to have either Lee Harvey Oswald killed them or there was other people.
		Like it has to be either a lone assassin or other people.
		I think Lee Harvey Oswald clearly was a fucked up guy who had some sort of a connection to the government.
		He went to Russia, lived in Russia, and then came back to the United States, got a passport till he was living in Russia, and then was readmitted back into the United States and had some dubious connections to the world of government.
		It was a very strange, strange story that in this day and age, you know, all these years later, we're most likely never going to get the full details.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		How many impacts do you see in that video?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's hard to say.
		When Kennedy is holding his body like this, most likely he had been hit.
		But they're saying that it was from the front.
		How do you know it was from the front?
		It was from behind the sign.
		He could have been hit from the back.
		It's hard to tell what happened.
		I mean, he's going like this.
		You're assuming that that's because he was hit.
		But it might not have been.
		I mean, he might have dropped his fucking pen.
		I mean, he might have been like, where's my shit?
		And then got hit in the head.
		I don't know.
		You know, I don't know.
		It's very difficult to tell from that video how many times he's been hit.
		But the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone seems the least likely of the scenarios.
		And then the photos of E. Howard Hunt, who was arrested allegedly, along with a bunch of people that were quote-unquote hobos that they had arrested behind the grassy knoll, but then they were all released.
		They were hobos, but they were dressed normal.
		They were dressed like regular people.
		And then Woody Harrelson's dad, who is a known murderer, who supposedly has some sort of a connection to it.
		I don't know.
		I don't know.
		But there's a guy who wanted to get rid of the Federal Reserve.
		There's a guy who wanted to get rid of the CIA.
		He wanted to pull out of Vietnam.
		I mean, there's a lot of shit that Kennedy wanted.
		He wanted to put us out of Vietnam.
		He wanted to disrupt the military-industrial complex.
		He wanted to do a lot of things that were very unpopular.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I mean, in a way, you could pose the question as not why would he have been assassinated, but why aren't more presidents assassinated?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, look at a guy like Obama who gets in office.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's amazing to me that given the level of vitriol that's directed at him from quarters in the far right, that someone – But I think every day there are threats, and probably some of them are credible threats against him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		I'm sure the CIA or rather the Secret Service does a great job of stopping a lot of assassination attempts.
		I mean, if we lived in a time like during the Lincoln administration when everything was very just, you know, they just didn't have the type of security that they have today.
		They didn't have this sort of technology, the ability to track people, the ability to keep an eye on questionable folks.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did you follow...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did you know that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Question with...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, about Obama.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He got a visit from the Secret Service.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he said that he would wind up in jail if Obama was elected again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He would wind up in jail.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And that was construed as a threat.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think it was a very interesting thing.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		when they visited him.
		Because I made a program about...
		I started out working at TV with Michael Moore.
		He gave me my break on TV.
		And I worked on a show called TV Nation.
		And one of the early segments was with Ted Nugent.
		I've always had a sort of fascination with the far right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he's a very fascinating guy on the far right because there's been so much bizarre shit in his past.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He adopted some 17-year-old girl or became a legal custody, took legal custody of her so he could have sex with her.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Is that right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And his parents allowed it, or her parents.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I know that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It said in a recent New York Times story that he had admitted to having, I guess, unlawful sexual relations with underage girl or girls.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Does that ring up?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there was something that Courtney Love said that she gave him a blowjob when she was 12.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, apparently.
		Allegedly.
		He's a fascinating character.
		He's a radical far-right sort of a guy.
		But what he said about Obama was clearly a joke.
		but you can't have jokes about Obama.
		Like, we had a guy on...
		Racist?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, this was a different occasion.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		This was when he called him a subhuman mongrel.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Yeah, well, that's not what we're talking about.
		I don't think that was the reason why he got a visit.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		No, that's not what the visit.
		Yeah, sorry, I switched the subject.
		He was more recently in the news because of this comment.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the visit was before the re-election.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He said if Obama got in office again, he would wind up being arrested.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure that was a joke.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So the CIA visited him, and I think he's just talking shit.
		I think he just talks a lot.
		He does an incredible amount of media.
		I'm pretty fascinated by that guy.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He does an incredible amount of media.
		When I was with him, he said that I said something about the Oklahoma City bombing.
		I said, why is your flag at half mast?
		And he said, because of the Oklahoma City bombing.
		It was at the time when it had just come out that Terry Nichols had had some relationship with Timothy McVeigh.
		And I said, well, it seems as though the suspects that they have in custody, it was pre-trial, have the same sort of profile as you, Ted.
		They're pro-gun rights members of the Michigan militia who you say you support, which was kind of a cheeky question.
		If I was asking it now, I'd ask it in a different way.
		But he kind of went nuts and started shouting abuse at me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What did he say?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He said he became loggeric.
		He became incapable.
		He was so angry.
		He didn't hit me or anything.
unidentified		He just went, but you see that this is what the media does.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did I mention you could kiss my ass?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Like he said that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a good Ted Nuji impression, by the way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You even took the tone.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He said, and then he said, I said, what do you think about Janet Reno?
		He said, she's worse than Hitler.
		And I was like, worse than Hitler?
		Like, even if you hate Janet Reno, she's not rounding people up and sending them to their death in the millions.
		And then he had a moment.
		He said, well, no one's worse than Hitler, I suppose.
		And he kind of climbed down from it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think there's a thing that he does where he just talks a lot.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I think when you talk a lot, you just need to keep talking.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He's also very angry.
		He talks a lot and he's very angry.
		He's just very keyed up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But he watches.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He's kind of a likeable guy.
		Like, he's actually quite...
		And he can be quite...
		And he's capable of being kind of a mellow, interesting dude as well.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
		And that's what I was going to say.
		Like, you watch him on his hunting show.
		He seems very happy.
		Like, I hunt, and I've watched his hunting show many times.
		And it's his hunting in quotes is very odd, too.
		And this leads us to another subject that I wanted to cover with you.
		He hunts in his yard.
		He's got a fused-in compound of 300 acres in Texas.
		And he's got one in Michigan as well.
		And he leaves out food and waits in a tree and shoots these animals.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So it would be considered canned hunting then?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		100%.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But he's using a bow and arrow, which to me, I've got more time for bow and arrow hunters in the sense that it's so much more difficult.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Unless you're leaving food out and the animals are eating food 10 feet away from you and you're hiding in a tree.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right, that helps.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It helps a lot.
		It's a very controversial method of hunting.
		And there's two types of people when it comes to the hunting community.
		There's people that are fair chase hunters and people that believe in high fence operations.
		And sometimes they're interchangeable.
		Sometimes people support both.
		And this is the way I feel about it.
		I think that it's a great way of acquiring meat.
		It's probably way more ethical than being a farmer.
		You know, if you're going to look at it that way, you're going to say, well, this is how I acquire my meat.
		I leave food out for them and then I shoot them.
		Okay, I see that and I agree with that.
		I think it's better than farming in that sense.
		But to call it hunting the same way you would call hunting, like climbing up to the Alps and looking for a mountain goat that lives in the wild or going through the Rockies and chasing down a moose that lives in the wild, it's two completely different sort of endeavors.
		When you've got these animals fenced in, you have an account of how many are there.
		There's 300 deer here.
		I need to kill one of them.
		And that's not really hunting.
		And one of your shows, which I found very fascinating that I watched last night, was about canned hunts in Africa.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that was really fascinating.
		What a contradictory and complex subject.
		Because for folks who don't know, Africa was on the verge of a lot of the animals that are now being hunted were on the verge of extinction.
		Now they have extremely high numbers, all in these high fence operations.
		And these people go over there and hunt them.
		And that guy that you had that owned that operation, that got crazy with you and put his hand on the camera and pulled it down, was very emotional.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I was making the exact same point you just made.
		And I think the phrase I said, you know, if you've got a fence up and the animal knows it's going to be fed, and you just hide in your little bunker until the warthog or the lion shows up knowing that the food's out, and then you take a pop at it.
		I said, it's like tennis without a net.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And that was what he took exception to.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You said it's very artificial.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Something very...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And he agreed to it.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But then what was fascinating to me, he was like, you don't understand Africa.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Africa's fucked.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Africa is fucked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I hate fucking elephants.
		They don't eat the shitty bush.
		They always eat the tall trees.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		I hate fucking elephants.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And he goes on a rant about Africa is fucked because we eat everything and we kill everything.
		And he's sort of...
		I mean, it's a great moment because he...
		In the act of asking, I don't think the question was that cheeky.
		It was a fair question.
		In fact, he'd said similar things to me about, you know, is it real hunting?
		No, it's not real hunting, but some people don't want a big flesh card.
		They want a little shitty car.
unidentified		Right.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know, that was his analogy.
		And I said, so when I say tens without net, he would agree.
		But he was kind of a little tweaked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think his point, though...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And his point was well taken.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And it set him up to deliver a very impassioned monologue on many of the problems that are very real, you know, in Africa.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, most certainly.
		I also found it incredibly fascinating when you guys were feeding the lions.
		Because I saw both sides there.
		On one side, I saw, like, this is so strange.
		There's this enclosed, fenced-in small area where these lions are being bred.
		And they're hurling these calves, these dead calves, over the top of the fence.
		And these lions are eating these calves.
		And you were talking about how clean they looked.
		And he's like, yeah, they don't fight.
		They have food.
		Here it is right here.
		I mean, but the other thing where he was saying is, like, you think these things are your friend?
		Like, if I put you over there, if you went through, they would tear you apart, like, instantly.
		Tear you apart.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And play with your clothes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and play with your clothes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was fucking dark.
unidentified		All that will be reminded of the top part of your skull and your boots.
		The rest, they will eat everything.
		And they will play with your clothes.
		Oh, that's so fucked because it's so true.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		When you're close to them, it's like, just to get close to that fence, like, I'm probably, you know, 15, 20 feet away.
		But just to get, it was something in you that almost prevents you, like, you know you're safe.
		Like, there's a fence.
		He's not going to knock the fence out.
		But you just physically, there's something really embedded in the psyche that tells you don't get any closer.
		Like, lions, when you're up close with them, they're petrified.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Pull that video back again, but a little bit earlier, when you see the, when you throw in the calves over the fence.
		And you get to see the looks in their eyes when they're staring at you.
		They're fucking so terrifying.
		You don't need to put the volume on it.
		Just to show the images of it.
		They're so terrifying.
		It's such an unbelievable, and it's very different than the zoo.
		The zoo is a different experience.
		And I don't know if it's because the animals get that food slid to them underneath.
		I mean, it's a plate of food.
		It's not an actual animal that they're tearing apart.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I, you know, I don't know.
		I think, I don't know.
		Maybe they, I think he kept his lions a bit hungrier than the ones you find at the zoo.
		I think maybe the zoos get handled.
		So they're used to human contact as part of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't think they get handled ever.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		At zoos?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		They can't, you can't handle lions.
		I mean, you can if you train them.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But I don't think they're trained.
		I did a story about, I mean, you know, Seek Freedom Roy.
		I mean, it illustrates both sides of the equation.
		I did another story.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Those are tigers, right?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Tigers.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But same thing, basically.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think tigers are a little easier to train than lions.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I don't know about that.
		But I know, I did a story called America's Most Dangerous Pets.
		And it was about people.
		I don't know if this is true now, but at the time it was true that there are more tigers in captivity in Texas than there are in the wild in India.
		I mean, there's thousands and thousands of tigers in America and kept as pets in people's backyards.
		And what I heard again and again was like, I will get in the cage and stroke my tiger or my lion and cuddle it.
		And that's fine.
		But I am not getting close to my monkeys.
		The big fear was if you have a, especially chimpanzees, like they are, don't go near the chimpanzees.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They'll fuck you up.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		They will rip your nose off, rip your balls off, and eat your face.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's something really creepy about chimpanzee attacks, too, is they're too aware.
		They're too intelligent.
		Like, they go after what makes you a person.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		They can plan.
		And they know that you, at some level, they know you are the one keeping them in there.
		But also, I think they're intelligent enough to become seriously neurotic and dysfunctional from confinement.
		Yes, yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a good point.
		Whereas a tiger, I don't say it's a good life for a tiger, but a a tiger doesn't necessarily become dysfunctional from being pent up but a um a chimpanzee is like a person and you need you need stimulation yeah and not only that they also know to go cut the video they also know to to go after your fingers they go after your balls like they know what you want yes well you want to keep your fingers so they bite your fingers off like there's there's a certain intelligence to their attack that's very disturbing,
		as opposed to like a tiger that just wants to kill you.
		Tiger will bite your nails.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I read a thing about a chimpanzee attack at a zoo.
		Like, before I went out to do the story, I was reading up on chimpanzee attacks because I knew for the story to work, I'd probably at some point have to cuddle a chimpanzee or something like that.
		And it was making me nervous.
		Like, it was making me more nervous than the idea of going into a prison cell or a jail cell where, you know, you know there's enough rationality on the part of the prisoner that he's not going to attack me and bite my balls.
		I mean, he's not going to shiv me.
		There's nothing in it for him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know, why would an inmate attack a journalist?
		It doesn't make any sense.
		But the chimpanzee is not going to think like that.
		And I read an account of an attack at a zoo, a chimpanzee, and the local news turned up and the chimpanzee ran over and bit the cameraman's balls off.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, fuck.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And so then we're there filming.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I'm like, I just don't want to get in the cage with the chimpanzee.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ.
		Yeah, no desire.
		No desire.
		Animals are fucking terrifying if they're violent, man.
		You know, really crazy animals.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That was a small one.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I was like, okay, I'll cuddle this one.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We had a small one on news radio once, a sitcom that I was on.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, I remember news radio.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And he was only two years old.
		Or excuse me, less than two years old, I believe.
		He was a baby.
		He was small.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He's got a little zapper on him there.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		They give him electric shocks.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If he gets out of line.
		The one I had a hold of was a little smaller than that one.
		And he climbed on my back and fucking slapped me on the back.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Just so strong.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's so strong.
		It was so small.
		It was a small chimp, a baby chimp, but it was...
		Like a person, like a full-grown man on your back.
		It was a baby, but it had the strength of a man.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like the way it moved me around.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That would make sense because the cliche, and it may be true that gets passed around, is that a full-grown chimp has the strength of seven men.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A 500-pound man is what I've heard.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		See, that I would pay to see.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Like a UFC guy against a full-grown chimp.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you would have to take the chimp's main weapon away, which is its mouth.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You would put a mouth guard on it or something?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you would have to.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Are there guys that would do that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure there's an idiot out there that would do almost anything that you came up with.
		Those guys that you interviewed that were pro wrestlers that were beating each other with fucking barbed wire, I'm sure if you put a mask on one of those dummies, they would get in there and scrap of the chimpanzee.
		But my point that I wanted to get back to was the complex, contradictory aspect of those canned hunts in Africa.
		You had a draw on a warthog.
		You were thinking about shooting it, and you're like, I can't do this.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it didn't make any sense.
		It wouldn't make any sense.
		I mean, it was just the whole situation, the idea that I'm going to take the life of this animal just to indulge my own sense of either what I think I need for this program to work or my sense of like, oh, I'm going to experience this to see what it feels like to take the life.
		It didn't feel like, I just didn't feel an urge to do it.
		Like, I could have forced myself.
		If you'd put a gun to my head and said, do it, I would have done it, of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or if you were starving to death.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		If I was starving, but just to do it, oh, I want to see what this feels like.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It didn't feel right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You captured some of the more disturbing aspects of hunting on that show because those people were not doing it to acquire meat at all.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And you...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they were trophy hunters and they weren't doing it to acquire meat.
		These people were doing it to have this, to kill things.
		And the video of them being all joyful and happy when they all got together and compared notes after their individual hunts, like several individual hunting parties had went out.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		They all came out like after the second day, their first full day of hunting.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And we do an inventory of, they'd got like, you know, three zebras, two kudu, a gazelle, you know, and there was an inventory of kind of, and they, and you can sort of pick them out like they're on a shopping list.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And they know it's like $5,000 for a kudu and it's $3,000 for a zebra and it's $20,000 for a giraffe and $50,000 for a rhino.
		And stuff I thought was endangered is you can actually, I guess, not endangered.
		And you just, you pay enough.
		I said, I thought rhinos were endangered.
		The guy who Rian Fosslewa, who ran the place, he said, if you want 20, I can get you 20.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, how fucking crazy is that?
		Well, there were $100,000 American in which well that was what was going on in America.
		There was a big issue recently all over the news where there was a safari club that had auctioned, it was in Dallas, and they had auctioned off a hunt for an endangered rhino.
		And the idea was that all this money that they had auctioned off would go.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		There was a controversy about it, that's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		And it was also controversial because they were going to have to do something with that rhino because it was an old rhino.
		And the old rhinos will kill the young males.
		They don't breed anymore, but they're still, they're very aggressive and territorial.
		And they'll destroy the breeding male population.
		They'll actually kill some of them.
		And so they had to remove them.
		They had to remove this rhino in order to keep the herd healthy.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is the thing.
		If you want to see the most grisly, way more grisly and upsetting than any kind of UFC show, it's watch a nature program with the elephants getting lost in the mist and getting attacked by, you know, like the level of gore.
		It's like they're like snuff films, in a sense.
		Sure.
		And so, and I think one thing that Ted Nugent used to say when I was filming with him was he objected to the Disney of our experience of the natural world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think he's got an excellent point there.
		I mean, he's got an excellent point.
		I mean, think about the animals that we take this weird approach with, like polar bears or, you know, grizzly bears like yogi.
		We turn them into our friends.
		You know, polar bears are the weirdest ones.
		You know, Polar bears are like Klondike bars.
		What would you do for a Klondike bar?
		Or they're fucking drinking Coke.
		It's like this weird thing that we do with the anthropomorphomorphizing these really violent, dangerous animals.
		And some of the more violent, more dangerous animals are the ones that we make them cuddly and cute and bizarrely twist their nature up.
		And that sometimes is the only exposure that people have to these animals for a long time.
		Like my children.
		My children, I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old that are just starting to understand that the animals that they see in cartoons are not real animals and that real animals don't talk and real animals are very different.
		I mean, they obviously see the five-year-old especially sees that.
		But I'm starting to explain to her that if you ever see a bear, like bears are not to be approached and they're not cuddly.
		They're not your friends.
		And there's a real big difference between a bear that's trained, like a bear in a movie, and a bear that you see in the wild.
		And so then they're like, well, are there dogs in the wild?
		Well, not necessarily.
		Sometimes there are.
		And if you see a wild dog, they are dangerous as well.
		Because the only thing that's not dangerous about dogs is that they are pets and that we train them, we get them used to people.
		So there's this weird relationship with animals that I have to sort of relay to my children.
		And in doing so, I start to review this bizarre thing that we have, this weird relationship that we have to certain animals.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		I mean, I don't think we really know how we feel about a lot of animals.
		And if we gave half as much thought to the conditions in industrial, in factory farms, in the way chickens and pigs are raised, as we do to endangered species,
		I mean, I'm more concerned about that in a way, like the conditions of how our food is created, that pigs get fed their own minced up piglets, you know, and just all kinds of hideous practices.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, it's very hideous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's a great deal of disgusting practices that are involved in agriculture and farming and taking care of livestock and mad cow disease, which England had a huge issue with.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Because they were being fed their own offspring.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and brain tissue.
		When an animal eats brain tissue, that's the same disease that cannibals developed, that Jacob Kreutzfeld disease, which is a lot of data.
		That's how you say it?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that is the way to say it.
		I mean, that is exactly what it is.
		You have these animals that are eating brain tissue, the same thing as humans that cannibalize.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yikes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's fucked.
		It's fucking crazy.
		It's really crazy.
		It's a weird, weird thing, you know, that we dehumanize.
		And we also allow ourselves to put money above humanity, above ethics and morality.
		And when it comes to animals, it's more profitable to stuff them into containers where they can barely move and just feed them their own bodies and fatten them up and then sell them.
		Otherwise, that body, the dead babies or whatever the fuck they feed them, goes to waste.
		The parts that we don't use for hamburger and what have you goes to waste.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And did you know, I mean, probably everyone knows this, but do you know in the world of raising chickens for eggs, all the male hatchlings get mashed up within a couple of days of being born?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did you know that?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And then so there's about, I don't know what the figure was, like 10 million baby chicks every year are sent straight into meat grinders.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's fucking crazy.
		It's crazy.
		It's really weird and hard to deal with.
		It's hard to wrap your head around the fact that people can detach so much from what they're doing to do something like that.
		It's just to take a person who knows what's...
		I mean, we have...
		You started giving a cow cow brains and cow meat, and mashing them up and feeding them to each other.
		Someone would go, what the fuck are you doing, man?
		Why are you doing that?
		Cows don't eat cows.
		Like, what are you doing, man?
		I'm making some more money.
		Oh, man, really?
		That's how you're going to maximize your bottom line?
		You're going to feed them cow brains?
		And then they see the cows all shaky and fucked up because their neurological system is rejecting this notion.
		They're rejecting this practice.
		Nature actually has a whole system set in place to sort of discourage cannibalism.
		And that's really what it is.
		I mean, you cannibalize and nature fucks your nervous system up.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's crazy.
		I wanted to ask you about news radio, though, because you may not know this.
		But when I started out trying to break into TV, my first objective before I had my own show was to write for news radio.
		And I actually wrote a spec script and sent it to Paul Sims.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ha ha, that's no kidding.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's amazing.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I got a meeting on the back of the script, and it was on the Sunset Gower lot.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You remember that?
		Taping there.
		And in the end, I went off to do my own thing.
		But I just thought it was funny.
		That was my dream was to back in the Phil Hartman days.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Do you keep up with those guys at all?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Occasionally.
		I just was communicating with someone who worked on the crew last night.
		We're emailing each other back and forth.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Do you know what Sims is up to?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I think he's working on Boardwalk Empire.
		That's what I'd heard.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		As a writer?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's writing on Boardwalk Empire.
		He's such a fascinating guy.
		Brilliant, brilliant guy.
		But just a curiosity.
		He was a Real eccentric.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He'd come off.
		See, he'd worked at Spy, where I'd worked, the magazine, and people kept saying that I looked like him.
		And I fixated on it, and I thought, wow, and everyone said, oh, he was so funny.
		And he didn't stay very long, but he was so talented.
		And he went on to do Letterman.
		And then from Letterman, he went to Larry Sanders.
		And Larry Sanders at that time was viewed as sort of the pinnacle of kind of smart, funny TV.
		And I thought, wow, if I could get on Larry Sanders, that would be amazing as a writer.
		And then he went and started his own show, which was News Radio.
		And I thought, so, well, maybe that'll be a smart, funny show as well.
		That's what I should do.
		So I wrote a script and went up.
		But I remember going along there and all the windows were blacked out with tin foil, with aluminum.
		He said, come along for a meeting.
		I said, what time?
		He said, well, normally I get in around six in the evening.
		I thought, whoa, that's the time people go home, isn't it?
		So I went along and he was hanging out with a runner or PA or something called Spider.
		So Spider.
		He's like, it's me and Spider.
		And he's like, what kind of music do you like?
		And I'm like, is this the interview?
		Like, he's asking me what kind of music.
		And then I just, and I thought it was just weird.
		Like, so there was no sense of night or day.
		No natural light.
		Windows all blocked out.
		He's hanging with Spider.
		I just thought this is kind of...
		I was getting kind of slight, like very faint cult vibes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I was like, well, there's a little of that going on, but in a good way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They would work all night.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Those were his hours, I guess.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And everyone had to fit in around that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		If you had a family or something like that, you were fucked.
		Because they wouldn't.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But that didn't affect you, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, it didn't affect us at all.
		The actors, well, there's sort of union rules for actors.
		They couldn't make us start work at 2 o'clock in the morning.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But it's Fiend to be like, you were a writer and then you turn on his like, yeah, we work from 6 in the evening till 4 in the morning and we like to hang out with Spider and we basically, we all play Yahtzee for a couple of hours and then we work for half an hour.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it wasn't literally that, but it was kind of like, oh my God, it's like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the kid is in charge of the family and they're all like, oh, we're having a great time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, he had a method to his madness.
		And the method to his madness, he's very talented.
		But the method to his madness was that you get silly when you are in sleep deficit mode, when you're really late and tired.
		And oftentimes that's when the most preposterous ideas are allowed to come.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That was his theory?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was the practice.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it really did work.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He didn't, but was that, in other words, like, did he articulate that or was that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He definitely articulated it, yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So it was, but it's kind of like Werner Earhart saying, like, after you've stayed awake for 48 hours and peed your pants, then you have an enlightenment experience.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, sort of, but.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Maybe there's another way of doing it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They were definitely, in a lot of ways, they were definitely lazy.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Can I tell you my theory?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Is that like if you haven't made a creative breakthrough by 6 o'clock in the evening, then, hey, why don't you go home and have a good night's sleep and try again the next morning?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think they liked the idea of working under the wire as well.
		I think they would oftentimes deliver the script for the run-through, like we had a run-through in the morning or a table read.
		So if the table read was Monday morning, Sunday night, they would still be working.
		Like if we had to be at the table read at 9 a.m., they would be writing at 8 a.m.
		Like sometimes we would get, we would, we would go to rehearse, we'd have no table read, and we would wind up rehearsing the first, the first like five pages.
		That's all they had.
		I mean, we wouldn't have a full script.
		We would have five pages.
		And then while we were rehearsing, you know, like Josh Lee would come stumbling down barefoot, his hair would be all fucked up, be smoking a cigarette.
		Here's the next 20 pages.
		And we'd have the next, you know, the next X amount of pages.
		And we would go over that.
		And then the next day they would.
		But it always came together as a really solid show.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's a good theory.
		Michael Moore was a little like that too.
		It was the feeling that unless your guts are on the floor, you know, then there's a chance you might have been able to improve it with more work.
		Do you know what I mean?
		Like stay late and worry and worry and worry and stay late and work on the weekends until you just despair and you just think, I can't give anything more to the process.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, everybody has their own method, you know, as far as the creative process.
		And I'm not saying that their method was the best, but it was fun for them.
		And part of what made them funny.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		They weren't family guys.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're all single.
		There's a few guys that were family guys that had real issues and wound up leaving.
		But they were having fun, and that having fun led them to be funnier.
		And I think whether or not it was a consequence of their laziness that it was so good, or whether there was a method to their madness, I mean, you would really have to take that up with Paul, and he would have to really soul search to find the actual correct answer.
		But it worked.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It really worked.
		And it was an amazing cast as well.
		Like, it was you, Stephen Root, who I always thought was a superb actor.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Very, very awesome actor.
		Dave Foley, too, who is one of the secret producers of that show.
		I mean, I've had Dave on the podcast before, and I'd love that guy to death.
		He's so fucking talented.
		And if you ever want to hear one of the worst divorce stories of all time, listen to the podcast with him on and just what kind of a nightmare divorce can be.
		Ruined his life.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I'm researching a story at the moment about divorce.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Listen to the podcast with Dave Foley because Canada has some wacky laws.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, I wanna do it in LA though, but is it, But where he got divorced in Canada or here?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Canada.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he was married in Canada.
		And Canada has some crazy laws where the wife has access to the bank account for a full year while you're getting divorced.
		You're not allowed to get divorced until you're separated for a year.
		Or at the time, this was the...
		His child support was based on the highest income he had ever made in his life, an unbelievably unrealistic sum.
		It was the height of his career when he was on news radio.
		So he's making an extraordinary amount of money.
		And that was what his child support was based on.
		So he had to pay that for the 18 years that his children were alive.
		And it was all going to his wife.
		And his wife was redecorating the fucking house and painting Morocco.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did you hate her?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God, yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So don't you like that?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I just love that whole...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You love someone, you love them so much, you're willing to sign a legal contract with them, and then they become your sworn enemy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And of course, obviously, I dealt with that with Phil Hartman and his wife, where his wife shot him in his sleep.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, they were still together, though.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, they were getting broken up.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But they were living together but separated?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They were living together, but he was leaving.
		He was breaking up.
		They had gone through some they had broken up, and he had a boat and slept in his boat for a while and then came back to her and wanted to keep the family together and was trying hard to work it out.
		Yes.
		Yes.
		Very sad.
		So when people just are committed in that sort of a situation where they have to stay, or if they do stay, it's devastating to their lifestyle, devastating to their emotional state.
		It's very troubling and very scary when they start attacking each other as well, when they go after each other to try to hurt that person.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Did you get on with Andy Dick?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I got on occasionally with Andy.
		We had a love-hate sort of a situation.
		He, to this day, maintains it was all my fault.
		You were so angry.
		You're always angry.
		Well, the guy was pulling his dick out in front of me and jerking off my trailer when my girlfriend was in there.
		He would show up so fucked up he couldn't read the script and he would forget his kid and leave him on set.
		But on the other hand, incredibly talented.
		Unbelievably funny.
		I had more laughs like rehearsing scenes with that guy and doing scenes with that guy than anybody in my life.
		He's an unbelievably talented guy.
		And deep down inside, he's a sweet guy.
		But he's very troubled.
		He doesn't even remember his childhood.
		Like he's missing up until like before like age seven or something like that.
		He literally doesn't remember it.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		He was adopted.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He walked it out.
		Yes.
		He had some hard times.
		You don't create a guy like Andy Dick because everything turns out perfect.
		He's the product of a lot of angst and a lot of issues and a lot of what have you.
		But looking at the glass half full, he's a brilliant guy.
		Brilliant, brilliant comedic actor.
		And it disturbs me when I see him go off.
		And he was sober when he did my podcast and we talked about it.
		But then six months later, he was arrested for doing this and that and getting crazy and doing drugs.
		And he's just a really constantly troubled guy for a variety of reasons.
		But at his best, one of the most brilliant comic actors ever, I think.
		He was fucking hilarious.
		So fun.
		And that show, News Radio, just really figured out how to utilize him.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Very much so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And we were very different people back then.
		I was very different.
		I was a much younger, stupider, angrier version of who I am now.
		And I wasn't very tolerant of people like Andy.
		It's like easier for me to snap at him.
		And, you know, I'm sure I would handle him much different now if we ever did.
		If I was thrust into that same situation with my current personality.
		But that's that.
		Brilliant, brilliant.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Is that show still on in syndication?
		Does that still get to work?
		You still get money from it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure.
		It's not much, I'm sure.
		It's one of those things, the initial payment, you get a chunk, and then it gets less over time.
		It's one of those things.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I reached out a little bit to Andy Dick last year because we were trying to make a bunch of shows that were all set in LA.
		Since I was living here, the idea was let's do sort of LA stories.
		And one of them was going to be stand-up comedians.
		And we were trying to find intriguing guys, guys who sort of represented something about, I couldn't quite figure out what it was, but I thought it was something to do with the pressure on someone who's their own producer, their own writer, their own performer, and whose performance is the performance of themselves or a version of themselves.
		And that that entailed a certain kind of vulnerability and a kind of high-stakes professional maneuver that you go on stage and it's just you and a crowd of people and whether you might face heckling and whatnot.
		So that was how I'd formulated it in my head.
		And also that you might be cannibalizing your own life to some extent for material and whether that imposed a certain set of strains and whether being funny itself came from some angst or something in your background.
		Anyway, so that was how I figured.
		But it was very hard for us to kind of find the right people.
		So it's sort of, we reached out to Andy and a few other people.
		And he always said, like, I really want to film with you.
		Like, oh, yeah, that's perfect.
		I'd love to do something like that.
		Come on.
		You can meet me after the show.
		And then he'd never show up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's not the best example.
		You would want to get a guy that's actually a writer, that actually does write a lot and perform a lot.
		He does Bill Burr would probably be good.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Bill Burr would be good.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But Andy does his own material, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm sure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, you want to call it comedy.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right, that was the thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's performance art.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, is it actually comedy?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That's the thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, it's funny sometimes, but it's also very strange.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's a very different kind of what just sort of blurs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, sometimes, and sometimes he prepares things.
		And, you know, I mean, but I think he's a very...
		I'm just saying that his style, if you wanted to find a stand-up comedian, you wouldn't necessarily categorize him as a stand-up comedian.
		You would categorize him as a performer who occasionally works in stand-up comedy clubs.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And so that's a good way of looking at it.
		And that may have been one of the reasons.
		But, you know, in our keenness to, eagerness to get intriguing people, we perhaps stretched the categories a bit in a way that wasn't helpful.
		And that may have been a clue that it wasn't quite the right story.
		Or do you think there is a good documentary to be made?
		It felt like, when I was doing it, it felt like the world was not too close to my own world in an odd way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's certainly something to describing stand-up comedy.
		I mean, it sort of kind of has been done in a way, in some ways.
		I guess.
		Has it?
		I am comic.
		I didn't see that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I watched them all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, they didn't get it.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I mean, they've all got their moments, but it's almost like...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That's the best one.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was a really good one.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was really open about the creative process.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Ornie Adams.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Showed, well, I think Ornie was kind of used there to make Jerry look a lot more likable.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there's a reason why they chose Ornie, you know, in the middle of his struggle and angst.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Do you know Ornie Adams?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I know very little, very little.
		You know, I know him from that, and I've had, you know, a few, hi, how you doings in real life?
		But I almost felt like he was kind of thrust into that situation.
		He seems like quite troubled in that documentary, and it's almost like they're putting him in there to make Jerry look better.
		In comparison to Jerry, he's fucking crazy.
		And it makes Jerry look like this really likable, affable sort of together dude.
		Well, not that I don't think Jerry is, but I just found it weird that they would choose that guy.
		Like, why would they choose that guy out of all the comedians in New York City?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It was like he lacked a certain level of self-knowledge, which I think made him a spectacle.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, a spectacle is an excellent way of putting it.
unidentified		Yeah, he's fucked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In that documentary, at least.
		I don't know him, you know.
		But it's just, you know, comedy is a tricky thing, man.
		You know, it's a very bizarre art form where you...
		There's so many different styles of comedy.
		There's so many different ways you can go about it.
		And you're the only one who really knows your best way, and you have to find it.
		And the only way you find it is in front of an audience.
		It's one of the few art forms that you require other people's input.
		You require them to be there while you're creating it.
		You write on your own.
		I write all my stuff.
		Either I have an idea and I write down notes or I actually physically sit in front of the keyboard and I write long form and then cherry-pick ideas out of those long forms and introduce it.
		But it doesn't really come alive unless you do it in front of an audience.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		If I'd approached you, I don't think we did because I'd remember, but if I had approached you to be in the documentary, what would have been your thought process?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It would probably be intrusive.
		I probably wouldn't be interested.
		What would be the plus side of it?
		It would seem like I would have to pay attention to all this.
		And there's something about observing something and filming something and recording something which changes the nature of the thing itself.
		And I think that in stand-up comedy, what's really important to me when I'm creating it, especially, is just getting it right.
		This is like working on it and getting it right.
		I wouldn't want cameras there and observing the whole process of it.
		Then I would have to think about that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So there's me, where do you write when you write?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I write at home.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or on the road of writing at home.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Assuming we did, which sounds like we're not going to.
		But if I was there today, like, Joe, where do you write?
		This is your room.
		Can we see your notebook?
		Can you read out some of the things?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't do that.
		No.
		I just sort of tell you what my process is, but I wouldn't want, and I don't even like people filming things at my shows when I'm working on shit because I don't want it getting on YouTube or whatever.
		It's not done.
		It's like, you know, it's a sketch.
		And then if that gets on YouTube and then someone sees it like three months later and it's better, they still know where it's going.
		Like part of comedy is you want new stuff.
		When you go to see a band, you go to see the Rolling Stones, do you want to hear new Rolling Stone songs?
		Fuck no.
		You want to hear the classics.
		You want to hear Sympathy for the Devil.
		You want to hear satisfaction.
		You want to hear the songs you already know that you can relate to.
		Comedy is the exact opposite.
		You want to always hear new stuff.
		Like I have a stand-up comedy special that premiered on Comedy Central Friday night.
		And one of the points that I've made in advertising all these current shows that I'm doing is it's all new material.
		Like if you saw the thing from Saturday night or Friday night that aired, if you go see me live next week, you're not going to see any of that material.
		That material is done.
		It's gone.
		Throw it away.
		It's filmed.
		It's out there in the internet and the ether and Comedy Central and it's there forever.
		But what I do on stage, now I'm on to new stuff.
		So I don't want my process to be a part of what's like record because it's not done.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I get it.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know, and that's why we didn't do it in the end because that's a very understandable reaction.
unidentified		I don't say we would have got that across the board, but I think you could describe the process.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I would describe it, but it's boring.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That's not a TV.
		That's not something I could document.
		No.
		And then so we figured it's too much work.
		Why?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It takes away from the finished product, I think.
		When you know the whole process behind it, I mean, for someone who's like a comedy nerd or a dork, but I say that in all loving terms, like there's comedy nerds that come to dozens and dozens of shows every month, and they'll have seen me three or four times in a period of three or four months.
		I've had people come up to me and say, I love watching the material grow.
		I think it's amazing watching you add new bits to it or come up with new things.
		And I'm always uncomfortable about that because then the last thing you want to do is see someone in the front row two nights in a row.
		Like that happens.
		Like you'll see someone, like you'll be in Portland for the weekend and you see a person in the front row Friday and then they're Saturday too.
		And you're like, shit, this guy knows all my fucking jokes.
		They know all the setup.
		So you feel artificial when you're setting up the bits.
		You would like people to see your bits when they're as close to done as possible.
		When they're as close to the finished form as possible.
		That way they're going to get the best show.
		You have the best economy of words.
		You have the best manipulation of language, the best setup segues.
		All that stuff has been fleshed out.
		It's been worked out on stage countless hours examining notes, listening to recordings, and then performing.
		That's what you want.
		You want people to get the show at its best.
		And which is why when someone releases a special, like right after they release a special, it's oftentimes not the best time to go see them because all the material is like fucking scattered and they're trying to put it all together.
		And then you see the same person six months later and it's just fucking just boom, boom, boom.
		It all comes together.
		It's a long sort of a brutal process.
		But exciting.
		It's challenging and it's got a lot of downs to it.
		But the ups are awesome when it's done.
		In a nutshell.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I feel like we made the documentary.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		That was great.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I want to talk to you about Scientology.
		What is the issue that you're having in trying to pursue this?
		And what exactly is the reaction to people in the Scientology community now?
		Because it seems like the Internet has sort of exposed that religion in a way that before it was always like, What Scientology?
		What is this?
		But now the internet is sort of all the Tom Cruise recruitment videos have been released, and all the craziness is out, and the people like that have wrote like going clear that book.
		I'm reading that right now.
		Lawrence Wright's book.
		The whole religion, call it a religion or whatever the fuck it is, the whole movement seems to be in a very state of flux right now.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think that's probably true.
		At the same time, I think for students of, I guess, religious oddity or new religions or whatever you want to call it, it's known and it's out there.
		And you're reading Lawrence Wright, I read the Lawrence Wright, but there's a vast mass of kind of mainstream people for whom they still, all they know is that thing that Tom Cruise is involved in.
		It's kind of weird, you know?
		And so they don't know.
		So I think there's a huge, so I think step one for a lot of people is like, what is it?
		You know, it's something to do with UFOs and Tom Cruise and John Travolta and maybe his sexuality.
		But beyond that, they don't know it.
		So part of it is trying to convey what it actually is.
		I mean, I've been studying in the area for, you know, like reading all the books for about 15, 20 years.
		You know, before Lawrence Wright's, there was one by Janet Reitman called Inside Scientology.
		There's a whole laundry list of books about Scientology.
		I still don't quite get what it is.
		Do you?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I do in a sense.
unidentified		What is it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a cult, unquestionably.
		It's also tax exempt.
		That's fine.
		But it was created by a science fiction writer.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but say that's true.
		Still, like, there's lots of cults out there.
		Beyond that, how do they practice?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do they practice?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Meaning what?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		What do they, like, we know with Catholics, they go to church, they have confession, they eat crackers, and it's the body of Jesus Christ, right?
		And they believe in the Pope, and we know roughly what their sacrament is, and they read the Bible, and they believe in Jesus, and so on and so forth.
		So what is it with Scientology?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a good question.
		I don't know if they have ceremonies.
		I think when you look at that Tom Cruise recruitment video, which is fucking fantastic, when he's standing out there.
		Have you seen the one where they give him a medal?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is just fucking just so rich.
		It's a giant medal, many times larger than an Olympic gold medal.
		He's wearing this medal, and he's standing there in front of a fucking...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		called the Freedom Medal of Valor.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And he's standing in front of all those people, and he's such a charismatic person.
		There it is, right there.
		Oh, Jesus Louis.
		Look at that fucking thing.
		Come on.
		Just the lack of understanding how you come across that would allow you to wear that.
		The lack of objectivity that will allow you to put that on and be able to do this fingertips down thing on the desk, like you're making a very important point while you're wearing a fucking frisbee, a gold frisbee around your neck.
		It's almost like he's trying to convince himself by tricking all these people.
		I think there's something to that.
		There's something to...
		you know, all the other wacky shit that they believe.
		There's something to that where he's putting on this massive performance, not just for them, but for himself as well.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I mean, to me, it's a bit like the Oscars.
		Like, that's when I was watching the Oscars last night.
		I was like, wow, it's like a Scientology event.
		You know, it's that level of, I think that's like the kind of, the performance or the, that's the semiotics of it.
		You know, like both Oscars and the freedom, you know, he's wearing it around his neck, but like, is it any more silly than having a little gold man?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, my friend Greg Fisimmons posted this something on Twitter, and I retweeted it.
		He said, I hope the Oscars get beamed to the troops so they could see all the people get rewarded for brave and courageous work this year.
		Which is such a great tweet, and especially if you know Greg, who's a brilliant comedian himself.
		But it's such a great tweet because it's so fucking right on.
		It's so pompous and self-rewarding and self-aggrandizing and so ridiculous.
		They're wearing suits with fucking special ties and, you know, formal attire.
		And it's preposterous.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		And, you know, not to say they shouldn't be, I mean, you know, do whatever the fuck you want.
		And my point is, though, is that so, like, with Tom Cruise, okay, he's got his fingers down.
		But in the end, like, so why pick on TC and Scientology, but we're letting the Oscars, you know, we say that, we'll give that a pass, but we can't have guys wearing little golden ones around their neck.
		They have to be little men.
		You know what I mean?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
		Well, and also, why is it okay to pick on Tom Cruise, but it's not okay to pick on Jewish people with curls and their bobbing up and down, and that's their religion.
		That's their traditions.
		This is just a tradition where it's not a real religion in our eyes.
		We know the guy who wrote it.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Right.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Good point.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the thing that people have.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And I think what I would try and do in making a documentary about it is to try and see past a lot of the things that people find weird or ludicrous about it, you know, which is, you know, the fact that they have big glitzy Scientology events and get to the core of what it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is craziness, is what it is.
		There's nothing, you can't get to the core of it.
		The core of it is this established sort of pattern of thoughts that allow people who are not normal to feel normal.
		Allow people that are troubled, allow people that are searching for some sort of a structure.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Do you think TC is normal?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I do not think he's normal.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Based on what?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, based on the fact that he's so fucking famous, it's impossible to be normal.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		But he was in it before he was famous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and it helped become a bad person.
		I don't know about that.
		I believe he got in it when he was still a pretty early star.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And I think JT got in it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		JT.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		In the Cotter years.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Maybe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Very early.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's also the ambiguous sexuality aspect of it.
		There's the rumors of homosexuality that are attached to famous male Scientologists that they shield them, you know, and especially the John Travolta thing.
		Do you got to get out of here?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Pretty soon.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's almost 3 o'clock.
		We're almost wrapped up anyway.
		I think there's a lot of weirdness going on.
		And there's also the people that, if you talk to people that have done exposés on Scientology, what they say is that during the auditing process, when they audit you, meaning you go over past life experiences that are quite troubling, you repeat them over and over again until they lose their meaning.
		Like the same thing is like, if you say fuck around someone who never says fuck, they're like, oh, say fuck around a priest, they'll act like it's some horrible thing that you've done.
		But you say fuck around your friends, you don't even, it doesn't even register.
		It's like, oh, this fucking thing.
		It's another word.
		It just, it has no power because it's so used so much.
		And I think maybe that's a bad analogy, but in a sense, it works because what they're doing is repeating these stories over and over and over and over and over again until they lose their meaning.
		But in the process, they're recording all this shit.
		So they have all this dirt on you.
		They have all these crazy stories.
		If you're going through the process earnestly, you're telling them all the secrets of your life, all the crazy gay orgies you've been a part of, all the nutty fucking cocaine binges, whatever the fuck you've done that you're ashamed of.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And you think that does that get released at the point you decide to leave, you think?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a good question.
		I don't know.
		I know that.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		They are adamant that that is held under a priest-penitent bond of confidentiality.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Of course they are.
		But, I mean, what's the mother of all rumors?
		The greatest rumor of all time.
		Pre-internet.
		Yes, thank you.
		Richard Gere.
		Do you know when that rumor was released?
		When Richard Gere left Scientology?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I didn't know he was in Scientology.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He dabbled.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Are you serious?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, he dabbled in Scientology, and that rumor was released.
		When the Tom Cruise or the John Travolta massage therapy stories were released, allegedly, that's when John Travolta was having issues with Scientology.
		It's a way to keep you under wraps.
		This is the rumors.
		Obviously, completely unsubstantiated.
		I'm talking out of my ass 100%.
		But that makes sense, doesn't it?
		I mean, if you have a powerful organization that gets a certain percentage of the amount of money that you make every year and they have a lot of crazy shit on you, you like to go and get massages and talk these guys into letting you fuck them.
		I mean, I would think that would be something that, you know, maybe if you were going to leave and take all that money away, they might bring, you know, assuming the organization.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Any damaging confidences about Leah Remini?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Leah Remini.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		As far as I know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, Leah Remini had that situation where she was saying that the leader of Scientology's wife was missing.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Shelly Miscavige.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what's the story there?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, Leah, is it pronounced Remini?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Remini.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		She alleged that David Miscavige's wife, who hasn't been publicly photographed allegedly for a number of years, maybe even sort of five or ten years, was being held captive or had been disappeared in some way.
		And that she'd been at Tom Cruise's wedding to, who would it have been at that point?
		Katie Holmes in Italy, I think, and said, here's David Miscavige.
		Where's Shelly?
		Why aren't you here with your wife?
		And it became a scandal within Scientology.
		People felt it was disrespectful to the head honcho, David Miscavige, to be asking where his wife was.
		So she got into trouble and then she left.
		And then after she left, she initiated a police inquiry.
		She filed a missing person's report.
		But then the police, after a couple of days, said, no, she's not missing.
		So I guess she's not missing.
		The fact is she must be in a retreat somewhere.
		I think there's people who know know where she is.
		Scientology watchers say there's a certain church headquarters up in the hills.
		I can't remember.
		Somewhere in Southern California, and that's where she's living.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Maybe she just doesn't want to be public.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		So maybe she just wants to live on her own without going public.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I think that's more likely than the idea that she's being held against her will.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Could be.
		I don't know.
		But I think this kind of goes back to the Swami G. Is that what his name was?
		The guy who was the supposed physicist who's living with Swami G. I think people love being a part of a group, whether the group makes sense or doesn't make sense.
		I think people, they find comfort in that, and they also get addicted to being a part of a group.
		And then when you're a part of something as powerful as Scientology, especially when you look at all the examples of people who are Scientologists who are greatly successful, my old neighbor was a Scientologist, and we had this really weird revelation when it came out, where he and I were talking.
		He was talking about buying a piece of land in our neighborhood.
		And he said he couldn't buy it right now because his wife was going clear.
		And I said, what are you talking about?
		Like, what does that mean?
		And he said, well, we're Scientologists and my wife is going to go clear and it costs $50,000.
		And I was like, this is a guy who's a contractor.
		He builds buildings.
		He's not a wealthy man.
		he does fairly well, but he made $50,000 is a giant chunk of his income.
		And he was talking about how his wife is going to be no longer affected by outside influence, and that by going clear, it eliminates all the negative impact of people talking shit about you or, you know, fucking traffic, anything.
		Nothing was going to get in anymore.
		was clear of all that stuff, that she was going to be removed from...
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's like the reactive mind is removed so you can make decisions without any interference from your reactive mind.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what the fuck?
		I guess.
		Yeah, I don't know.
		I mean, but this poor guy was going to spend $50,000 on this.
		And he had this sort of glassy-eyed thing about him, this sort of lost thing.
		I think being a part of a group, we have these ancestral instincts that I think are passed down from the time where it was very important to be a part of a tribe, to stay alive.
		If you're by yourself in the hunter-and-gatherer times, it was very difficult to get enough food to stay alive.
		It was very hard.
		And I think we have this bond with being a part of a group, whether it's fucking Mac users, man.
		I mean, people that love Mac, they hate PC users.
		People that love PC, they hate Mac.
		They get in these groups.
		The Protestants versus the Catholics.
		You know, there's Chevy versus Ford.
		People are weird that we have these weird desires to be a part of groups.
		And I think someone like the Westboro Baptist Church or someone like Swami G's disciples or someone like Scientology, part of the appeal of that is being in a group.
		And then when you have Scientology, I'm not too familiar with what Scientology does do that's beneficial, but you look at a guy like Tom Cruise.
		Sexual stuff aside, you're talking about a tremendously successful person who looks great.
		He's fucking 50 and he looks amazing.
		I mean, he's in great health.
		He seems like really optimistic all the time and very, very charismatic, very appealing to be a part of a group that that guy is in.
		If he is benefiting from Scientology and from the principles of Scientology, surely it can't all be wrong.
		Surely it can't all be bad.
		That's what he's doing.
		Louie, you're awesome, man.
		You got to get out of here.
		And this is, I think we're done anyway.
		This is, we're run out of, three hours in, we turn into a pumpkin.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		It's three hours the normal length?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my goodness.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Crazy, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't know.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Does it get edited?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Nope.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, it's live.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		And people listen to the whole thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes.
		Sometimes they listen to five minutes and they go, fucking bullshit, liberal nonsense.
		Fucking fuck these people.
		There's that too.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for having me on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was really fun.
		I would love to do it again.
		If you ever have anything that you're promoting, please don't hesitate.
		We have you in in a hard part.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		You know, one of the reasons I came was, well, there were two reasons, but, well, more, there were hundreds of reasons.
		But one was I was saying before I came on, there was a couple of guys outside Trader Joe's, and they were like, you've got your own cult.
		You know, they were like brainwashed moonies advocating on your behalf, saying like, you got to go.
		I love your stuff.
		I said, how have you seen it?
		It's on YouTube.
		I said, how did you find out about it?
		Joe Rogan was talking about it.
		I said, oh, you listen to the Joe Rogan podcast?
		Yeah, oh, it's so awesome.
		There's so much information.
		So I was like, wow, he's obviously got a lot of pull out there.
		And just more generally, I love getting feedback from people who've seen me on YouTube.
		And so I'm trying to kind of put the word out that, you know, I think it's illegal, actually.
		I don't think people are supposed to have it up there, but I'm okay with it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why is it illegal?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because BBC.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Technically, it's BBC.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How else would they get it, though?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the whole thing.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		I don't think they could get it otherwise.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it on Netflix or obviously?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		In the UK, it's on Netflix and on different, around the world, it's on different channels, but the BBC is trying to monetize it.
		So they want to retain rights and keep selling it.
		But as far as I'm concerned, it gets a lot of hits on YouTube, and it's nice to for people to see it.
		I mean, it puts no money in my pocket, but I'm fine with it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you've done some brilliant work, really fascinating stuff.
		I've enjoyed it.
		I've gotten countless hours of entertainment out of your programming.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So I really appreciate having you on.
		It was really enjoyable.
		Thank you very much.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		See you next week.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you got coming up that people could say?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there anything they can?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've got three shows going out in Britain, new ones going out at the end of March, and so they'll probably be put up quite soon.
		And it's the thing I was telling you about, LA stories.
		The first one is about stray and abandoned dogs and our attempts to rehabilitate them using controversial dog therapy.
		You know, it's like turning criminal dogs and bringing them, rescuing them, bringing them into middle-class homes, and then sometimes they attack their new owners.
		And then thousands of them are killed every year in the shelters in LA.
		There's a huge stray and neglected dog problem in LA.
		Second one is about the hospitals where people are sort of under pressure to keep trying new, like they're close to possibly dying, but there's a new experimental therapy and they have the insurance to pay for it.
		And it's this weird 21st century conundrum of when do I stop and say like, I just want to have a peaceful death?
		When am I allowed to say like I don't want to try any more chemo?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Are these on BBC America?
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		No, they're on the UK BBC, normal BBC.
		And the third one is about sex offenders living down in South LA, especially around Torrance, who live in these hostels with electronic bracelets, heavily monitored lives, and the whole strangeness of having done something so terrible.
		You know, they've abused their own children or some of them are rapists and so on.
		But they've done whatever or 10 years in prison and they've come out and they're on parole.
		And to what extent, if any, do we give people like that a second chance?
		Like, given that they're out, we are living alongside them, you know, more or less with certain restrictions.
		How do we relate to those guys?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, those are three fascinating subjects.
		I'm just saying that.
		I can't wait to watch those shows.
louis theroux ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really big fan, man.
		Really appreciate you coming on.
		Thank you very much.
		All right, folks, you can follow Louis on Twitter.
		It's Lewis, L-O-U-I-S-Thuru, T-H-E-R-O-U-X.
		Follow him on Twitter.
		And thank you to everybody.
		Thanks to everybody tuning in.
		Thanks to all the nice people out there that send me kind tweets and Facebook messages and all that good stuff and come to shows.
		And I can't say enough about so many positive people I run into because of this show.
		Thank you all.
		Thanks to Squarespace.
		Go to squarespace.com and use the code word Joe and get 10% off your first purchase.
		Thanks also to NatureBox.
		Go to naturebox.com slash Rogan.
		That's naturebox.com slash Rogan.
		Get 50% off your first box.
		Thanks also to onit.com.
		It's O-N-N-I-T.
		Use the code word Rogan.
		Save 10% off any and all supplements.
		Tomorrow, Robert Green is going to be on along with Aubrey Marcus.
		And we're going to learn about mastery.
		Should be fascinating.
		And then Wednesday, Greg Proups, the fabulous and hilarious and awesome dude, hilarious comedian.
		Greg Proops is also a brilliant guy with his own podcast, the smartest man in the world.
		And lots of good shit coming on.
		And we'll see you soon.
		Much love.

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