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March 20, 2014 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:53:33
Joe Rogan Experience #472 - Shane Smith
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Main voices
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joe rogan
01:24:35
s
shane smith
01:22:20
Appearances
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brian redban
01:38
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
Oh, sweet baby Jesus on a pogo stick.
This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast is brought to you by Ting.
Ting is a no-bullshit mobile service.
What does that mean, ladies and gentlemen?
What does that mean?
It means Ting eliminates all the shit that's annoying about going to a regular cell phone provider.
But at the same time, they give you the same service that you would get if you had Sprint.
Sprint is their backbone.
That's what they use.
So all of their data, their phone calls, everything is done through Sprint.
But you don't have to deal with contracts.
You don't have any early termination fees.
No bundling or ride-along services.
No overages on charges or penalties.
The way Ting has it set up is you pay for what you use.
If you use less, you pay less.
If you use more, you pay more.
And it all makes sense.
It's real easy to follow.
And I personally believe that it is the model that all cell phone companies will be forced to adopt in the future.
Contracts are nonsense.
It's gross.
You don't want to use them anymore, so then all of a sudden you have to pay.
What is this LG Flex?
It's a curse.
unidentified
Curved phone.
Have you seen that?
joe rogan
Is it totally curved?
unidentified
Yeah, look at that.
joe rogan
What if you sit on it the wrong way?
The shit breaks instantly.
unidentified
Probably.
brian redban
But it's probably good for your front pocket.
unidentified
It probably just curves right around your leg.
It probably feels great.
joe rogan
Maybe.
unidentified
Put it sideways?
Put it right on your cock bag and take a lot of texts.
That's interesting.
joe rogan
If you're one of those Doug Benson characters.
Doug switched it, but he used to have it.
So every time someone would tweet, it would show up on his phone.
His phone would buzz.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
You'd tweet his name.
He fixed that.
He got...
He wised up.
Anyway, the phones that they do have on Ting, they're all the top-end Android phones.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which is what I have.
They have the HTC One, which is pretty fucking badass as well.
They have the Galaxy S4, which is another outstanding phone.
Ting has basically everything you can need as far as cell phones.
All the top-end Android phones.
And as far as service, they just cut out all the bullshit and they save a lot of people money.
98% of people would save money on Ting.
And if you go to rogan.ting.com, you can save $25 off of any new device.
It is an outstanding cell phone service.
It is a service that many of our friends use and are very happy with.
I've never had one person complain about it.
Absolutely the best Android phones that you could buy as well.
All the cool ones.
All the new shit.
unidentified
Do you think you could do this for a month, have one of these flip phones?
joe rogan
Could if I was like one of those contrarian guys.
I was hanging around a bunch of old dudes in Dallas, these old karate guys, and they all had flip phones.
It was hilarious.
Yeah, Chuck Norris is a fucking flip phone.
Chuck Norris flips open his phone.
Bob Wall from Enter the Dragon, a little flip phone.
brian redban
I think there is something nice about the idea of it only being a phone.
unidentified
Imagine having a razor right now.
You know how nice it was to have a razor in your pocket?
joe rogan
But it's also nice to be able to do everything from one device.
Send text and all that.
Imagine if you had one phone and then you had to send someone an address.
Send me the contact information.
Ugh, shit.
You can't copy-paste.
You can't do anything.
Fuck all that, man.
That's just the past.
You don't want to have a carrier pigeon either, alright?
Fuck a smoke signal.
That's what I'm saying, Brian.
Fuck a smoke signal.
You heard me.
I'm controversial.
I don't know about this LG Flex, though.
unidentified
I don't know.
It might be cool.
joe rogan
It might be annoying, too.
Seems cool.
I think eventually they're going to have roll-up phones.
It's going to be like a scroll, like a parchment.
Hear ye, hear ye.
You're going to roll out your phone.
brian redban
It's going to be one of those flip bracelets that the kids wear.
Have you ever seen it where it's like a big metal thing that you snap on your bracelet?
joe rogan
Aubrey has one of those electric cars, one of those Teslas.
I thought those things were nonsense until I got in one.
Holy shit.
They have the dopest screen I've ever seen in a car.
It's the whole front thing is a screen.
Like the panel in the middle that does the air conditioning and the radio, it's a giant computer screen.
Dude, it's pretty wicked.
unidentified
That shit freezes up your whole car.
joe rogan
Yeah, your car is probably going to crash, for sure.
Yeah, and if there's any sort of electrical shortage or anything like that, if your car gets hit by lightning, it's toast.
unidentified
What is that, first year model?
That's crazy.
joe rogan
I think it's...
They've had cars before because they had the Tesla sports car, which was also a battery-controlled car.
But that was a tricky car because all the batteries were in the ass end of the car and it's a really light car.
So it's like one of those old Porsches.
The old Porsches have the engine hanging out back and...
It changes the dynamics of the handling.
When you go around corners, the ass end wants to pop around.
It's called oversteer.
Some people like it.
It's kind of fun to drive like that, but you have to get used to it and know what it's going to do.
If you're used to driving a regular car, and you're used to going sideways in a Corvette or something like that, and you get in one of those things, it's a very different sort of dynamic.
They look cool, though.
You've seen those little plastic things?
unidentified
They look like little fun matchbox cars.
joe rogan
Yeah.
They look like a little lotus.
That's what they look like.
And apparently they're pretty fast, too.
And all electric.
You know, which is cool.
In LA, you can actually really do it electrically because you could have solar that's charging your car.
I mean, a lot of people have that now, where they have just a solar charger to their car, so their car's not hooked up to the grid at all.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah, pretty wicked.
Has nothing to do with Ting, though.
Rogan.Ting.com.
Go get yourself, bitches!
It's an awesome cell phone service, and we love them.
We're also brought to you by Onnit.com.
That's O-N-N-I-T. If you have not been to Onnit, then you obviously are not optimized.
Bitch!
What does that mean?
It means that's what Onnit is about.
Onnit is a human optimization website.
That's a nice way of saying we sell shit that makes your body work better.
Whether it's strength and conditioning equipment, whether it's supplements like hemp protein powder or foods, rather, like hemp protein powder or supplements like New Mood or Shroom Tech Sport or any of the products that we provide.
We sell things that we use that we think help you work better, whether it's things like kettlebells or batter ropes or whether it's different kinds of supplements and healthy snacks.
We started selling these new things called Warrior Bars.
They're fucking awesome.
They're made out of buffalo and cranberry in an ancient Native American recipe.
It's no antibiotics, no added hormone, completely gluten-free, and it gives you 14 grams of protein in each serving.
And they're fucking delicious.
It's literally a no-guilt snack that tastes yummy, with no MSG, no nitrates, no antibiotics or added hormones.
Super awesome for you and tastes delicious.
We just try to sell you shit that's cool.
Anything that we find that's good, find the finest hemp protein powder available that we bring in from Canada because our corrupt politicians won't let American farmers make some cash.
That's how we roll.
Go to onnit.com, O-N-N-I-T. Use the code word ROGEN. Save 10% off any and all supplements.
Ladies and gentlemen, Shane Smith is here.
Why fuck around any longer?
Oh, we have a show Friday night at the Ice House.
It's called Thunder Pussy.
If you've never been to a Thunder Pussy show, it's not a regular comedy show.
You can get a bunch of fucking windows open.
What Thunder Pussy is, is...
It's a show where no one plans what they're going to say.
Everyone goes on stage fucked up, the audience calls out ideas, and everyone just starts talking shit.
Sometimes it's awesome.
Last time it was awesome.
unidentified
It's cool because it's a unique comedy show.
brian redban
You'll never see these comics doing these bits because they're just making them up on the fly while they're on stage.
joe rogan
Yeah, and you can't come on stage with some fucking material.
unidentified
No, that's one of the rules.
You're not allowed to do that.
joe rogan
You're not allowed to use any material.
Boo!
That's a joke.
You wrote that, you weak bitch.
It's a lot of fun.
And I'll be there.
And Eleanor Kerrigan, Jeremiah Watson, Rob Gleason, Omar Nava.
I don't know who that is, but I like the name.
A lot of people.
A lot of fun people.
unidentified
Jason Rouse.
joe rogan
Jason Rouse.
unidentified
Yeah, Rouse.
He's the one that did that website contest that we had.
And he was so wanting to win.
Every day he checked with me.
He's like, did I win?
joe rogan
Oh, the Squarespace website contest?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Those are some fucking dope websites.
There was too many websites.
A bunch of people should have won that contest.
We should have had 100 winners.
Anyway, Ice House, Friday night, and it's the little room, too, which is like 90 seats.
It's a really sweet spot to hang out.
All right, that's it.
Onnit.com, co-word Rogan, Thunder Pussy, Friday night.
That's it.
Everything else, go to JoeRogan.net for all my tour dates.
I got a lot of shit coming up in Miami, April 3rd.
I'm in Miami, bitch.
unidentified
No, it's going to be fine.
joe rogan
Orlando April 18th with Joey Diaz and then Baltimore on the 25th of April also with Joey Diaz.
Alright, that's it.
Let's play the music.
shane smith
Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
unidentified
The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan
Powerful Shane Smith, world traveler, internationally known, locally accepted, bad motherfucker, out doing ridiculous shit all over the world and not slowing down anytime soon.
Are you the new Rupert Murdoch?
unidentified
I keep hearing that.
joe rogan
I keep hearing you're the new Rupert Murdoch.
What does that mean?
shane smith
I don't know why I keep coming on here.
unidentified
You love me.
shane smith
All I get is shit.
I love you.
I love everybody in this room.
No, I'm not the next Rupert Murdoch.
joe rogan
What's the latest, man?
Where the fuck have you been?
Where are you getting back from?
Every time I've emailed you or talked to you or Twitter or text messaging, you're in the middle of fucking nowhere.
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
In some dark places.
It's so funny.
We were talking before the show and he's like, yeah, I should get you to do some of these things.
I can send you the North Pole.
I'm like, bitch, I'm not going to the fucking North Pole.
You don't know me, man.
shane smith
That's a good one, though.
unidentified
What?
shane smith
That's an easy one.
joe rogan
What are you saying?
The North Pole is not good or easy.
That's ridiculous.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
There's polar bears up there, right?
Is there South Pole polar bears?
Which one is polar bears?
shane smith
North Pole, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah?
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
One of them has penguins, one of them doesn't.
shane smith
South Pole.
joe rogan
South Pole is penguins?
shane smith
Penguins.
joe rogan
North Pole doesn't?
shane smith
Polar bears.
unidentified
Why would that possibly be easy?
shane smith
Well, it's a bitch to get to because you have to, like, fly a thousand times and then go, you know, with...
joe rogan
A sled and dogs.
shane smith
And ice helicopters and shit and whatever.
joe rogan
Jeez.
shane smith
But it's a crazy story, what's going on there.
Like, that's like, you know, World War III happening up there.
joe rogan
So this is the place where...
What's going on in the middle of the North Pole now?
shane smith
So the ice is melting.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
And...
A, that's leading to two things.
One, opening up of passages so Russians can come right across, which is great because now it looks like we're going back to the Cold War.
But it's also just tons of oil, tons of minerals can now be sort of, you know, mined.
Yeah, fucked up the environment.
Well, just fuck it up even more.
So what's happening is everyone's amassing huge sort of caches of arms.
So, you know, the Russians obviously are getting up there...
Everyone's planting flags on the seabed floors.
This is ours.
No, this is ours.
So the Scandies are trying to get in there.
Canada's trying to get in there.
Both are being destroyed by the Russians and the Americans.
Chinese are in there.
Everybody's getting there with subs.
Lots of naval buildup, but huge arms buildup going on there because that's going to be the next sort of...
Not only the sort of transportation routes, but also, you know, all the sort of natural minerals, rare earth minerals, oil, etc., etc.
joe rogan
So essentially, it's just like when the Bering Strait back during the Ice Age was connecting the United States to Asia and then it went away.
Now new passages like that are opening up.
shane smith
Correct.
So the whole North Pole is melting.
So you can, what's happening now is you can actually, you know, when a lot of the earlier explorers were trying to get to China by going around the north, you know, and now that's opening up.
So it's opening up north of Scandinavia so that Russia can actually go right around Scandinavia because they never really had a freshwater year-round port.
And so that's a big deal for them.
But, you know, Same thing for Canada, same thing for the States, China.
They're all trying to get up there and lay rights to all the minerals and all the oil that's up there.
joe rogan
How does that work?
shane smith
As well as the passage.
joe rogan
How does that work?
Who decides who owns...
What was it before?
Was it International Waters?
shane smith
Well, yeah.
People had laid claim to it, but you couldn't know when he went there, so who the hell cared?
What does it matter?
You couldn't get through because it was all iced up.
So now what's happening is a massive land grab.
People are just planting their flags and saying, no, this is ours.
No, this is not yours.
This is ours.
And they're sort of fighting it out.
But basically up there, might makes right.
So if I got my ships up there, I got my guns up there, I got my Air Force up there, guess what?
It's mine.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
And it's so fascinating how over the last few years they've discovered all these massive, massive supplies of oil up there.
shane smith
Huge, yeah.
joe rogan
Huge reserves of oil, shale oil and weird oil that you have to fucking...
What's the kind in Utah that they found where you have to burn it and it creates all this horrible carbons being emitted into the environment in order to process it?
shane smith
Yeah, there's all different...
I mean, the worst oil that they have for the environment in Canada is the tar sands.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
Where they have to take all the fresh water, boil up the sand.
To get out the oil.
To get the oil out costs tons and tons of money.
But because oil is so expensive, now it's become economically feasible.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
And that's the stuff that pollutes the environment pretty heavily.
shane smith
Well, it all does.
But, I mean, tar sands is shocking.
It's like really, really bad.
joe rogan
I think that's what they were talking about in Utah.
I'm not sure, but they're trying to figure out a way to block it.
shane smith
It could be tar sands.
joe rogan
They found more oil in Utah, ready for this, than humans have ever used ever.
unidentified
Wow.
Seriously.
joe rogan
So there's no way you're going to keep those fucking dirty criminals from pulling them out of the ground and fucking up everything.
I mean, that amount...
shane smith
If it's tar sand, I don't know about Utah specifically.
I know about Canada.
It's very, very bad because they take the whole Lake Athabasca sort of watershed and they use the water to boil out the oil and then you have all of this sort of Chemical sand that they have to chuck, you have all the waters destroyed, and then obviously you got the oil.
joe rogan
It's oil shale, that's what they're saying.
shane smith
Shale, yeah.
joe rogan
Shale, so that is...
shane smith
Shale oil.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what's...
shane smith
Well, that's what you got to...
You got to go down, and there's fracking to get natural gas, and there's fracking and blowing up to get the shale oil.
joe rogan
Well, there's a lot of that shit out there, apparently.
It's interesting that they're just finding this over the last decade or so.
shane smith
Well, they knew about it, but it was too expensive.
unidentified
Oh, I see.
shane smith
It wasn't economically viable, but now because it's $100 a barrel, they're like, fuck, blow the shit out of everything and get us the oil.
joe rogan
So they knew about it in Utah, too?
They knew about all these reserves?
shane smith
Well, they knew that you could get it.
Like, fracking isn't anything new.
You know, oil sands, tar sands aren't anything new.
Shale oil isn't new.
It's just, oh, you know, we can, we can, it's now economically viable to actually get this shit out, because it was too expensive before.
It's the same thing with using CO2 and water to sort of frack or to pump out the rest of the oil in wells because we didn't get all the oil out before, only what was pressurized.
joe rogan
There's a thing that comes up when you talk about anything that causes some sort of environmental hazard where you have two different types of people that automatically jump on the argument.
There's a type of people that are like, oh my god, we have to save owls and olive trees or whatever the fuck is growing up there.
And then there's these other people.
These other people that almost universally are not financially successful, but support hardcore Republican ideals, including the sacrificing of the environment for some sort of an economic gain.
shane smith
I don't understand it, and I just did a piece on Greenland that's going to be airing on our HBO show tomorrow, and I've been doing a lot of press around.
It's interesting because I did a piece on Sea Level Rise last season, and Generally, about 90% of our comments are like, you guys fucking rock.
It's great.
And then there's 10%.
And like 80% of the comments all of a sudden on the environmental stuff were negative.
And I was like, how is this even happening?
And...
There's a study that was done that if the first four comments on an environmental thing or any news piece are negative, then people negate the actual piece.
So they spend hundreds of millions of dollars for bloggers and people to just go out and do comments so that anything launches, they sit there and they say that this is bad or not true or whatever.
For me, look, here's the deal.
I talked to scientists all the time for this Greenland piece, I talked to the chief climatologist at NASA. And I said, okay, so how much of this is man-made?
Because I went to Greenland and it's melting.
And Greenland is going to melt and it's 24 feet of sea level rise.
So if the sea level rise is 24 feet, then 80% of the world's cities go underwater.
So I said, okay, you know, how much of this is man-made?
And he's a conservative scientist.
He's like a NASA guy.
He's not like some crazy tree-hugging guy.
And he's like, well, 100%.
I said, hold on, what do you mean 100%?
It's natural.
No, it's 100% if you look at it.
And I actually, when I was talking to him, he's like, if we cut our carbon emissions by 80%, It's still going to continue for the next 500 years, global warming, or at least, but we just slow down the pace of it.
And I'm like, well, how much of Greenland's going to melt?
He goes, well, all of it.
It's just a question of how fast.
Is it going to be 500 years?
Is it going to be 50 years?
Is it going to be 150 years?
And so I actually kind of got mad at the scientists because I'm like, he's saying this as if it's boring.
And I'm saying, hold on, this is a global scientific consensus.
Yeah.
And then I'm like, well, people in America don't understand that.
I don't understand that.
And I do this for a living that, you know, because we did a thing on the Texas drought because we, you know, there was a drought here in California.
Everybody's like global warming, global warming.
And in Texas, they've had a drought for three years and they denied climate change.
Like Rick Perry said, it's not true.
Governor of the state.
And then you sit there and say, okay, well, how is that possible?
So we went to talk to people and they're like, yeah, climate change has been denied.
I mean, it's been disproven.
And that I find insidious because they know it's not true.
The fossil fuel companies know it's not true.
The car companies know it's not true.
The politicians know it's not true.
They know what the global consensus is, the scientific consensus.
And yet they fund and say that it's not happening.
And that's bad because they're fucking all of humanity and the future of humanity for short-term profits.
And that's what's insidious about climate change denial.
joe rogan
It's very insidious and it's very fascinating to me this play on these people, these no-nonsense type people.
There's a mentality that people adopt where they don't want to be fools.
shane smith
Right.
joe rogan
And it's the no-nonsense mentality and I've documented this.
This is like something that I've really been studying for quite a while.
There's people that, in spite of all the evidence in front of them, they want to believe the official story on almost everything and almost always take the conservative viewpoint.
And a lot of times that conservative viewpoint is who they are, the very type of people who they are, it's against them.
And yet they still support it.
A lot of them are hard-working, blue-collar people, and they have this idea that somehow or another in the future, They want to be able to make money freely.
So, you know, I don't want the government stepping in and stopping all this shale because I could step in and maybe do a little shale mining myself and start making millions of dollars and right now they're not.
Right now they're the ones who are being punished by a lot of these ideas and they're pushing forth themselves.
It's very strange.
shane smith
But if you ever talk to, and I agree with you, and I've always found it incredibly...
Yeah.
And we just did this story on vets returning from Afghanistan and Iraq and how they're over-prescribed, over-medicated by the VA. It's a huge problem.
joe rogan
Well, it's working folks who support big business.
shane smith
Well, that's it.
And if you talk to the disillusioned veterans, veterans of which I have tremendous respect for, by the way, but coming back from these wars that were fought for economic reasons, for oil.
joe rogan
Mm-hmm.
shane smith
And when they realize that, they're like, oh, we were duped.
We went over there to fight the good fight.
There's no good fight.
There's no good fight.
We went over there to fight for oil.
joe rogan
And by the way, there's never been a good fight, right?
shane smith
I mean, look, you could say World War II, Nazis, bad, very bad people.
I would say that Iraq now is pretty much a given.
There were no weapons of mass destruction.
He wasn't doing anything with al-Qaeda.
It was a secular regime.
They were enemies.
We went in to get oil.
And I think if you look at Afghanistan now, we just did a piece on Afghanistan.
And the Taliban are running South Afghanistan.
And the Northern Alliance are running Northern Afghanistan.
And the minute we pull out, it's going to be the Taliban take over the South just like they did before.
And a trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives...
Are just going to be wasted for nothing because Al-Qaeda is going to be in with the Taliban again, which is why we went in there in the first place.
What I'm trying to get at is I think that a lot of the mentality, you know, people are used, you know, for economic purposes.
And that I find insidious.
People should not be used for it.
joe rogan
It is not just insidious.
It's maddening because a lot of those people who really signed up to serve their country were real, legit heroes.
unidentified
Correct.
joe rogan
And they were used.
unidentified
Correct.
joe rogan
And if you go back and read Smedley Butler's War is Just a Racket from 1930-something, he was a major brigadier, major general character.
I forget what his exact title and rank was, but he was a well-respected military man who spent his whole life in the service of the country and then realized when he was retiring that he only existed to go out there and make sure things were safe for bankers, clear the air for oil manufacturers, but he was a well-respected military man who spent his whole life in the service of the country He thought he was over there promoting freedom and keeping America safe.
And he wrote this fascinating and very damning piece and this is in the 1930s.
So it's always been like that.
It's always been this double hustle that even the people involved in it don't realize they're a part of the hustle.
The very most important part, the machine, the hammer itself, doesn't realize it's part of the hustle.
The very guys pulling the trigger.
shane smith
Well, if they realized that, they wouldn't go fight.
joe rogan
It's so insidious that you could figure out a way to get someone to do that.
And the way you get them to do that is actually get them to love their country.
Actually get real heroes.
Wow.
shane smith
You're preying off patriotism.
joe rogan
It's that thing, too, though, man, that I'm a good person, and I'm a no-nonsense good person, and that's the same shit that gets preyed upon with this whole global warming denial thing.
shane smith
But I don't understand, because whenever I talk to someone, I'm like, okay, I'm a gambling guy.
Even if it's a 1% chance.
So you're so sure.
It's 100% sure.
It's 100% it's a fucking hoax, right?
What if it's 1%?
What if it's 5%?
What if it's 10%?
Don't you want to fucking hedge your bet?
And say because total global environmental disaster and breakdown versus, okay, we're all okay.
Don't you want to hedge your bet?
Wouldn't you want to hedge your bet against a complete environmental disaster?
I would.
I'm a gambler, man.
I'll bet 1% to say, okay, it's like insurance when you play background or when they've got a 21. Okay, I'll take that insurance because even if it's 1% true, I'm convinced it's 100% true, but even if it's 1% true, don't you want to hedge your bet?
joe rogan
I think it's a confirmation bias issue that these ideas fit into their no-nonsense mentality.
The no-nonsense mentality is almost like a religion.
It's, come on, Oswald acted alone.
Stop it.
It's the same guy.
They're not even looking into it.
They just go with this no-nonsense idea, even in the face of all sorts of...
shane smith
Well, it's interesting in Texas, because you have a loss of a whole way of life.
Because all the cows are dying.
They've had a three year drought.
They've either sold them off or they've died.
And so you sit there and say, okay, in the face of all your fucking cattle, which was Texas for the longest period of time, you know, dying because of this prolonged drought.
Now you have people who were like incredible deniers and people saying, no, no, no, no, it's not true.
Saying, actually, there might be something to this shit.
And I don't know what it is, but we got to look into it.
I mean, we can't just pray for fucking rain anymore.
There's been Congress, there was a Republican congressman that we talked to who said, like, I was just a climate change denier because Al Gore was for it.
Therefore, I was a guinit.
And then when I did the research, I realized, holy shit, there's something to this.
And he got drummed out of the party and lost his seat.
unidentified
Wow.
shane smith
And look, it's big political business down there, and it's an oil state.
It's an oil state now because there's no more cattle.
So all the water, they have no water for the cattle they're using for fracking.
So you sit there and you say, look, it's gotten so bad now.
That even people who have been deniers for so long are saying, you know what, fuck, okay, what the fuck are we going to do?
joe rogan
Have you seen the photos of, I think it's Lake Travis.
shane smith
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Lake Travis.
shane smith
It's not down to nothing.
joe rogan
There's like boats that were like sitting on the shore in front of these people's million dollar estates.
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
And now these things are in the middle of this field.
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like there's grass growing up.
I mean, it's not going back.
shane smith
And by the way, that's green Texas.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're right.
shane smith
West Texas is Saudi Arabia.
joe rogan
That's Austin.
We're talking about Austin, which is about as rainy as it gets.
Look at that.
That's a kind photograph.
That's happening in California as well.
We were at Lake Tejon, and Lake Tejon used to have some of the best bass fishing in Southern California.
It's a great spot.
They had this great lake there.
It was just filled with largemouth bass, and it's a private...
The whole ranch, 270,000 acres is private, so you couldn't just get in there to fish.
So they would let people come in and fish.
The employees would fish.
People would pay to fish there.
It's fucking gone now.
It's gone.
Almost all the fish are dead.
The water is like six inches deep.
You can walk across the entire lake now.
Literally, it'll go up to your chest.
shane smith
I have a question for you.
When that happens, when lakes are disappearing, Lake Travis has disappeared, all these places are disappearing...
And people still say, fuck you, Joe.
It's fucking natural occurrence of things.
This is bullshit.
There's no climate change.
Fuck you.
What do you say to them?
joe rogan
Well, the guy, the last guy that I had a conversation with that told me that it was just a natural cycle, he's a guy from jujitsu.
And I was like, you know, I said, well, there's always been natural cycles.
Absolutely.
It's true.
You know, there's the climate on the earth has varied widely.
shane smith
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
But it doesn't mean that human intervention and what we've caused can't play a big part in accelerating that and accelerating it in an unmanageable way.
And he didn't really have an answer to that.
Because he was a no-nonsense guy.
He was just a young military kid who has this idea in his head that, you know, there's a lot of hippie bullshit being flown around there about the environment.
shane smith
Well, I think that's the problem.
unidentified
You know, Al Gore made a billion dollars telling everybody that.
joe rogan
He's the first green billionaire.
Did you know that?
Okay, it doesn't mean he's totally wrong.
shane smith
Well, the interesting thing about Al Gore, and I find it very interesting, not that I'm an Al Gore lover, I came up actually hating Tipper Gore because she was censorship, etc., etc.
joe rogan
All the rap lyrics you go after.
shane smith
Exactly, exactly.
But you've got to look at Al Gore and say, he wasn't...
Like a big liberal.
He was like a sort of tobacco guy from the South, like, you know, centrist.
You know, in most countries in the world, he'd be sort of center-right.
Conservative dude.
He came out of politics being an environmentalist.
Now, he didn't do that...
I don't know the guys very well, but, you know, he came out freaking out about the environment.
Why?
Because all the shit that he learned in...
All the behind-the-scenes shit that we don't know about freaked him out so much that he said, I'm going to actually go out and do this movie and say the environment is fucked.
Hey, by the way, this isn't like a Greenpeace dude.
This isn't a hippie.
This is a tobacco, southern dude, conservative in America, but you know, whatever, conservative in the world.
And he comes out and says the environment's fucked.
What's interesting is he wins a Nobel Prize, does a good movie, all this stuff, but then gets vilified to the point that now Al Gore is a joke.
And when we say, oh, you know, fuck, you know, he's this and it's Al Gore.
And by the way, isn't that a great fucking triumph?
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
For deniers, because they're like, Al Gore is now a joke for doing a movie that says, hey, by the way, the environment's fucked.
joe rogan
Yeah, isn't that weird that they can do that?
That they can turn someone into, like, he's almost like...
Remember when Richard Gere, you'd say Richard Gere, you thought gerbil up the ass.
shane smith
Right.
joe rogan
Right?
That's all anybody thought.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, when you talk about Al Gore now, especially around certain circles, he's a joke when it comes to the climate.
unidentified
He's a joke.
joe rogan
Was there anything that he said that was debunked or was it all bullshit?
shane smith
No.
No, they just attacked.
Nothing.
They kept attacking him, attacking him, attacking him.
That's fascinating.
And by the way, it's fascinating because what there is is...
Anyone says anything we don't like, we attack their character.
And once we attack their character and they're on the defensive, then we fucking won.
Because then it's not about what they said.
It's about, well, fucking this person, we can't trust what he said because he'd like to finger up his ass on it.
joe rogan
Yeah, absolutely.
And that is a fascinating thing they do with comments on videos, like especially your kind of documentaries that expose things.
Oh, we get it.
And they attack.
And it's been proven now.
I mean, that was part of the Snowden deal.
We actually got to see fact that they spend money on propaganda trying to influence.
They go to websites, message boards.
They go to social chat.
They go on Twitter.
unidentified
There's a lot of people that probably— I've got another question for you.
shane smith
Why isn't there more fucking outrage about the NSA listening to every fucking phone call, every tweet, every fucking email, everything, and saying, we live in a goddamn police state.
We signed away...
Well, we never even signed it away, but...
Our rights and freedoms.
Look, I came to this country because it's the land of the free home of the brave, fucking beautiful country.
I love it here.
Gorgeous place.
Why is there more outrage at the NSA? Watching everything we do and doing it illegally?
joe rogan
I think there is outrage, but I think people feel like they are waiting for something to happen and they don't know what they can do about it.
They don't feel like they have any real legitimate power.
They can express their outrage.
They wait for the politicians to make some announcements.
I mean, what is the only thing that Obama said that they're going to try to slow it down somewhat or do something differently in some way?
What are you doing?
Oh, fuck all those people.
You can't listen to those people.
How dare those people.
unidentified
I didn't know we were on the TV. Don't worry about all those people.
joe rogan
They complain too much.
And they love it if you react to them.
unidentified
Oh, Brian moved the thing because of me!
joe rogan
I'm a ghost producer!
I like looking at him hiding.
That's why I feel like it's a metaphor for his job.
Sneaking around behind things.
Reporting on the reality of the situation.
Where were we?
What were we just talking about?
NSA! NSA being a horrible, terrible, scary thing that people are outraged about.
shane smith
I'm surprised that people don't freak the fuck out.
I think they are.
joe rogan
They just don't know what to do.
They're in this holding pattern.
shane smith
They're waiting for something to happen.
Because I gotta tell you what, like...
It's just bad and it's getting worse.
We just did this interesting story in Camden, New Jersey.
joe rogan
Yeah, no cops.
shane smith
No cops, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
They ran out of money for cops.
shane smith
So yeah.
Highest crime rate, highest murder rate.
Ran out of money for cops.
unidentified
So what did they do?
shane smith
they hired like a tech company to come in and they put cameras everywhere and hidden microphones and they can triangulate like gunshot sounds and they got like cameras everywhere and they know where everybody is so like oh yeah we know this guy we know where he's going he's probably going to commit a crime so we're going to pick him up it's like what's that tom cruise movie minority minority report like they figure out like everything before it's going to happen but but i'm like hold on as i'm watching it i'm like that's not even the scary part
that's pretty scary but they have recorded and filmed everything that's going on in that fucking town 24 hours They know everything that's going on there, right?
And it's been such a success.
It really just put it underground, but whatever.
It's been a success because the crime rate dropped that Chicago, New York, all these big cities are doing it now.
So not only are you going to have the NSA listening to your phone calls and your fucking, you know, whatever, your social media, everything.
But you're going to be filmed and listened to everywhere you go.
And that's not 1984. That makes 1984 look like a fucking children's fairy tale.
You're always going to be watched every fucking thing that you ever do.
If that's not the definition of a police state, I don't know what is.
joe rogan
No, it's most certainly the definition of a police state, and it's almost inevitable because of the expanding reach of technology.
shane smith
Correct.
joe rogan
Once they have the ability to send drones everywhere they want to, they're going to have drones that are the size of bugs.
They're going to have HD capability.
shane smith
You're a smart dude because I was just at this tech conference and there's all these CEOs and this thing and we were talking about it and I got into a fight with one of these big dudes there, an old dude, big powerful guy, and he said, you know, who wouldn't jail Snowden?
I said, me, I wouldn't jail him.
What's the difference between Snowden and Woodward and Bernstein?
Woodward and Bernstein...
And the presidential papers, like they were the punks of their generation, but now they're heroes because it's the baby boomers and Snowden's...
Fuck you.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Anyway, we got into this fight.
joe rogan
What's his argument?
shane smith
It was just, he's bad.
The same argument.
He's weak in this country.
He's a traitor.
joe rogan
I'd kill myself if I was in front of him.
shane smith
And so we got into this fight.
But the interesting thing about that is, A, the fact that a lot of people whistleblowing is seen as un-American.
I see it as that's what's going to keep democracy safe.
But this sort of overreaching, and I said, look, I didn't come to America for it to live in a police state, and this is the definition of a police state, is that they can watch everything that we do.
And it was all these tech guys, and the tech guys just sort of rolled their eyes and said, it's already happened.
The tech is already there.
The government has already made the deals.
It's a de facto thing.
You can't change it.
And then I got kind of worried because you're exactly right.
You're 100% right.
The tech is so pervasive that you can't fuck with it.
joe rogan
Well, there's also a future tech that they're working on that is essentially tiny Wi-Fi-powered cameras that are the size of grains of sand.
shane smith
Sure.
joe rogan
And they're going to scatter them.
shane smith
Nanotechnology.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're going to scatter them all throughout cities.
And they will literally have access to video, audio, everything...
From these grains of sand that'll be all over the beaches, they'll tune into them.
shane smith
If you go to Camden, it's already happened.
That's the whole scary thing.
joe rogan
So it's a battleground for testing.
shane smith
It isn't science fiction anymore.
They can triangulate sound from any point in the city, like inside houses.
Like anywhere.
They can listen to anything.
And you're just like, holy fuck.
For those of us who get up to some nefarious activities, that's not great news.
joe rogan
Well, even not so nefarious activities, like people who like to fuck in public.
Have you seen that video?
There's a video to this couple on St. Patrick's Day.
They were banging behind a dumpster.
And these people drove by and got video of it, put the video online, and now the cops are looking for these people.
shane smith
No.
unidentified
Like, oh, you're going to save us from the bad people that like to fuck?
shane smith
But that's the problem is, okay, so now we have information about everybody at all time.
What are we going to do with that information?
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
You know that some bureaucrat, major, general, captain, some bullshit artist is going to be sitting behind some computer thing saying, you know what?
I think that's bullshit.
I'm going to fucking take that guy away.
That's a police state.
That can't happen.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, it's gonna, unfortunately.
shane smith
But then democracy goes out the fucking window.
joe rogan
I think it goes out the window anyway.
I think it's gonna shift.
It's gonna shift, but...
shane smith
Is this turning into a depressing...
joe rogan
No, no, it's not.
But here's the issue.
Because what's going to happen is the same thing that has sort of happened with cellular...
I mean, obviously, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, just as a caveat here.
What's going to happen is the same thing that's happening with cellular communication.
At one point in time, cellular communication was a giant brick that you had to hang on to.
You used to have a fucking suitcase you carried around with them, you'd hold them in your...
And now you can go to the Amazon and people have cell phones.
You can go to the poorest third world countries and people have cell phones.
I think that right now, the information, the access to all this stuff, the ability to know what's going on everywhere all the time is terrifying to us because we don't possess it.
The only people that possess it are the people like the NSA or the people that are monitoring Camden.
Eventually, that technology will become so pervasive it'll be like Wikipedia.
It'll be like everything else.
It'll be all the time.
And you will have no privacy.
But they will have no privacy either.
shane smith
You know who's going to have privacy?
joe rogan
No one.
shane smith
I don't believe that.
I believe the rich will have privacy because they'll be able to pay for tech.
That can protect them.
joe rogan
They'll try.
New shit will come up.
You're going to have a phone.
They're going to know where your phone is.
You're going to have an internet connection.
shane smith
This is going to be blocking technology.
joe rogan
I'm going to take it to another place.
I think it's going to get even crazier than that.
Because I think that when I extrapolate, when I get really high and I think about this, especially when I get into the tank, I come into this one conclusion.
And this one conclusion is that money in its current form It's not resource-based.
The economy is essentially based on confidence and numbers.
Well, that's just information.
And at a certain point in time, technology is going to hit a bottleneck.
And that bottleneck is going to be money.
The bottleneck is that technology, as it progresses, So what are your thoughts on Bitcoin?
Well, I think that's a part of it.
I think that's just one part of it.
You know, I think Bitcoin is being for sure tampered with.
For sure fucked with.
I think all these people like this guy that had the Mt.
Gox and fucking $300 million goes away and it's crashed.
That is most likely a bunch of things.
I'm sure incompetence.
I'm sure shitty programming.
Probably sabotage.
Let's be honest.
If they really thought that it's possible for a new currency to come along...
Antonopoulos is coming back on again, too.
Yeah, he's coming back on soon, in April.
Without a doubt, someone would step in and try to do that.
Why would they not try to do that?
Were they going to just sit by and twiddle their thumbs and hope that their money is good enough to compete?
Get the fuck out of here.
These are criminals.
These are fucking swashbucklers and buccaneers.
They're assholes.
They're digital buccaneers.
And just like the same people send people out to diminish climate reports by leaving shitty comments, they're going to also go after Bitcoin any way they can.
shane smith
Did you hear about this Silk Road shit that happened?
joe rogan
Yes, yes.
unidentified
What?
shane smith
Did you do anything on that?
We're doing a film on it right now.
joe rogan
For folks who don't know what Silk Road is, tell them what it is and what happened.
shane smith
Well, I'm not the biggest expert in the world.
We're doing a film on it, and so I only know the sort of pitch versions.
What's a website?
Yeah, it's a website.
It was a service that was the dark web.
A lot of shit went down.
And basically, where they made their money was it was a door-to-door drug dealing service where they made the majority of their cash.
And it was high quality.
They guaranteed the quality.
And you didn't have to leave your house and someone would come and they would take a sort of charge on both sides.
joe rogan
And they would like deliver coke and guns to your house.
shane smith
Correct.
Anything.
Anything.
It was like dark web sort of Craigslist.
unidentified
Like murder even.
shane smith
Well, so this is where it gets interesting is the guy who started, he started when he was like 21 years old.
He's like this nice kid or whatever.
Apparently a real nice kid.
Yeah.
They talk to his parents and shit.
They're like, we're such a nice boy!
unidentified
Now he's living in the North Pole with your fucking reporters, hiding under an igloo.
shane smith
Now he's 20 stories down in the CIA building.
They got him.
This is my favorite part of the story.
He's a young kid, right?
He sets up Silk Road, which is basically a sort of peer-to-peer, whatever the fuck you want to have happen on the second economy.
A lot of drugs.
Basically drugs.
But yes, there was arms.
Anything sort of illegal was going through this thing.
Now, what happened was, you know, very cinematographic moment.
He's in a public library, right?
Using the public Wi-Fi.
He's running the whole thing from his laptop.
And they know if he closes the laptop, it'll be encrypted and then it's a brick and he's fucked.
So everyone in the library, the person looking at the books, the librarian, the freaky dude sleeping in the corner, they're all fucking FBI, right?
And they're all watching this kid who's a really young guy as he's running this Silk Road thing.
And they had to get him before he closed his laptop.
So he literally stood up to grab something and the whole library went into motion and they got him.
Now what they found out was...
He was just a guy trying to run a business.
He's like, okay, you know, you bring the drugs here and you bring the drugs there.
And if people started fucking with the business, much like Bitcoin and shit, they started trying to fuck with it.
And, you know, by the way, you deal with a lot of criminals.
They're going to do some criminal shit.
They're going to try to put it over on you.
Now, one of the things that Silk Road did was it was like a Craigslist for like Hitman and shit.
So he was like, okay, you're on my Silk Road.
I'm going to...
This guy's bad for Silk Road.
He's dealing shitty heroin or he's being bad or he's saying some shit.
So he just would have them killed.
Allegedly.
Allegedly would have them killed.
Because he was trying to maintain the sort of quality of his product.
So there was assassinations, hitmen, arms dealing, drug dealing, all on this sort of dark web shit that was going on.
Then they caught the...
joe rogan
Is there an earthquake?
Is there an earthquake?
unidentified
What are you doing?
joe rogan
Is that like an effect?
unidentified
I was going to switch cameras, but then it was...
joe rogan
I'm like, what the fuck?
Is this an effect?
Is this a new artistic angle?
shane smith
What I find interesting about this is it's just an example of this whole second economy, the grey economy, the black economy, black market, that some people have estimated is up to a quarter to a half of what the global economy is because if you put in all the drugs that are dealt in the world, All the arms that are dealt in the world, right?
All the secondary quote-unquote gray electronics, the seconds, the stolen IP that's coming out of China.
All of that stuff, because if you go to India, everything is a $20 pirated smartphone, right?
Hundreds of millions of these fucking things have been sold.
All of this gray economy is being run somehow, and there's Bitcoin, and there's Silk Road, and there's all these different crazy fucking things that are out there running this shit.
And that's why I was talking.
I agree with you.
I agree with what you're saying because All money is now is just data.
This bank has this many credits and that bank has that and we swap them up.
It's not based on a gold standard.
It's not based on anything.
And so Bitcoin or virtual currencies are interesting, but they can be hacked as we just saw in Japan.
But also, what can you actually buy and sell with them?
Because what they're doing is they're actually using the old drug dealers or slash terrorists.
I've got some corn in Tunisia and you've got some flax in Pakistan and those will just be wiped out and somebody then in Afghanistan will get a case of AK-47s.
And that's what Bitcoin and that's what Silk Road and that's what a lot of these things ended up doing.
joe rogan
And didn't one guy wind up going to jail because he gave bitcoins or he sold bitcoins to someone who wound up using those bitcoins to buy drugs?
shane smith
See, this is the deal.
And that's a very good point.
joe rogan
He didn't even buy the drugs.
shane smith
Because after 9-11, what happened was the...
Government said, and by the way, they pretty much know everything.
So they went into mutual funds.
They went into Switzerland.
I have a house in Costa Rica, and there was this development fund in Costa Rica.
A lot of foreigners go down there and retire there, and they were investing in the country.
But because one guy in the fund had ties to a drug cartel, they just took all the money.
It was like two and a half billion dollars.
They just took, oh, well it's a drug laundering fund, so we're going to take all the money.
So all these gringos lost all their retirement funds.
unidentified
Whoa.
shane smith
And by the way, what's interesting about that.
joe rogan
Who took that money?
shane smith
The American government.
joe rogan
Sure.
shane smith
After 9-11.
And by the way, they took trillions of dollars doing this.
It's not on the books.
It's not on the books because they just took it in.
joe rogan
So what do they do with it?
shane smith
Well, there you go.
joe rogan
They're allowed to do whatever they want to do?
shane smith
Right after that, they went around everywhere and they used the world's sympathy to say, okay, now we're going to take this money.
We know it's drug laundering.
We know this is this.
We're going to take it all.
And they just took it all.
joe rogan
Wow.
How hilarious is that?
They use terrorism.
They use mass murder as a pretense of stealing drug dealers' money.
shane smith
And everybody else is around.
Like, if I invested in this thing, and then some dude I never even met invested, who one time dealt drugs, then they get to take my money too.
joe rogan
Do you know what that, there's a quote about capitalizing on any sort of a moment that it's...
shane smith
Negative moment.
joe rogan
Well, any negative moment that it becomes even more negative if you don't capitalize on it.
That's the idea behind almost every government.
They don't look at negative moments and any sort of a mass casualty event.
They don't look at it as just a tragedy.
They also look at it as an opportunity to use that tragedy to further whatever ideas they have.
shane smith
Realpolitik, zero-sum game politics.
There is a winner and there is a loser and I'm going to be the winner.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I think what we're dealing with right now is the adolescence of the emergence of instant technology, the emergence of instant information.
And right now, it's only a few people that have their greasy paws on this kind of shit.
And when Edward Snowden comes out with all this data, when WikiLeaks comes out with all this data, and then everybody's like, wait, what?
I've been calling this generation the wait what generation.
Because I feel like that's what's going on.
I feel like a lot of us are in the middle of going, wait, wait, what?
shane smith
What I like about it is that it's proof.
You sit there and you say, oh, it's not true?
Here it is.
Here's the NSA. Here's the FBI. Here's the CIA. These are the files.
This is what it says.
Here's the proof.
joe rogan
Yeah, and it is.
I mean, people used to call Alex Jones a fucking complete crazy person, and it's weird when a ranting lunatic is right 90% of the time.
That's scary.
shane smith
That's when it gets scary.
joe rogan
He's right about so much shit.
I mean, so much of what he called in the 90s, by the way, when I met him, I met him in 98, and he was calling all this shit.
He was saying, they're going to be monitoring your emails.
I'm like, what the fuck are they going to get from my email?
You know, where I'm going to go to do comedy?
What are you going to get?
shane smith
100% true.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, what we're dealing with right now is a few people that have this power.
And I think it's gonna come down to a point in time where as this technology increases, if you just looked at it, don't look at it in the context of culture, don't look in the context of what we're accustomed to as far as our, you know, expectations of privacy, but instead look at it as it's a wave that's moving in a certain direction.
Well, where's it going?
What's it doing?
It's moving in a direction.
What's the direction?
Well, the direction is information being passed freely.
What's money?
Information.
What's going to happen?
It's going to hit a roadblock.
And the roadblock is people want to keep a hold of their money.
They want to control the money.
There's going to be no control over the money.
The whole thing is about access.
The whole thing is about access to this information.
And as this whole thing grows and expands and becomes more powerful and more prevalent and more pervasive, it's going to reach a bottleneck.
And I think that bottleneck is money.
I really do.
shane smith
So I've got another question.
Re-money.
Mm-hmm.
2008, right?
Recession.
What sparks out of that is riots in Europe, Arab Spring all across the Middle East, riots in Southeast Asia, riots in South America, riots around the world by Gen Y, because they completely disenfranchised no future.
You take someone's future away, what they're going to do, they're going to smash shit up.
Why wouldn't they?
That's what revolution has been historically.
Okay.
So now, you know, China's fucked.
They're slowing down and they're in real trouble.
India's rupee is collapsing.
You know, it's not a question of if it's a question of when.
What happens when you have another economic downturn and the people who have been sort of treading water and just are starting to see some light go down again?
What happens then on an economic level when you have these young people who have been fucked for the past eight years say, okay, fuck, I'm going to have to tighten my belt for another eight.
joe rogan
I don't know what the economy is.
I don't understand it.
When you talk about one house being worth $5 million and one house being worth, in Detroit, $500, and this is a valuable place to live, and this guy gets paid $100,000 for the same job that this woman gets paid $30,000 for, and they both work the same amount of hours.
At a certain point in time, it's like, what is our economy?
shane smith
It's a construct.
joe rogan
Well, what are we selling?
What are we buying?
And where is it all coming from?
shane smith
It's a construct.
We made it up.
joe rogan
Right.
But here's the question.
If it worked in 2006, okay?
In 2006, if everything was rosy and people were buying houses and everything was great, you'd buy a house, you'd sell it a year later, you'd make 50 grand.
What is that?
unidentified
What...
joe rogan
What's different now?
What's different now?
You talk to people that are economic experts and they give you some sort of an explanation of how people extracted money from the system, how the banks banked on the fact that the loans they were giving...
And then somehow they made money.
What does that mean?
What does it mean?
The same people are working.
There's the same amount of stuff.
There's the same amount of cars.
There's the same amount of buildings.
There's roughly the same amount of furniture.
What the fuck is going on that all of a sudden everything's terrible and no one can get a job?
shane smith
What I love...
joe rogan
I mean, I'm obviously being very simplistic about this.
shane smith
What I love about it is recently somebody came up.
It's a very good idea, by the way.
To try to explain economic disparity.
And there was a time when the aristocrats who were, you know, benighted by God, and they owned everything and everybody else worked for them.
That's how it worked.
They could fuck the firstborn daughters before they got married.
They could do whatever they want.
They were the law.
They collected the taxes.
It was a mafia system.
We collect the tax here and pay up to the king over there.
What's interesting is they just did a thing on there's more economic disparity today than during the Downton Abbey era of the aristocracy owned everything and everybody else was like, you know, screw, which is when the, you know, Soviet revolution started and the big socialist wave around the world because the aristocrats owned everything.
And there's more economic disparity today than there was then.
joe rogan
Is it because the people, like the people that know how to fuck with money, the 1%, they just have accumulated insane, impossible to imagine wealth?
shane smith
The aristocrats were given.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
They were God-given, right?
We own the land.
Because at the time it was horizontal production, as I have to make more carrots, you know?
And so the only way of getting more carrots was to have more land.
So I took over your land.
That's why there was constant warfare.
Then it went to vertical production, which is technology.
So now whoever owns this sort of technological means can sort of, you know, write their own ticket.
So you're exactly right.
So the 1% now...
I know how to game the system better than most.
joe rogan
Well, here, to put it into perspective, what we were talking about earlier when I was saying that I don't understand the economy.
I mean, I understand competition.
I understand if one person is better at their job, they should make more than another person who's better at their job.
But when you look at...
unidentified
Big money.
Big, crazy money.
joe rogan
Where's it coming from a lot of times?
Who's capitalizing on it?
The people that work with big money.
Bankers.
Like, what are they doing exactly?
They're not digging holes.
I mean, what the fuck are they doing where they have a trillion dollars or whatever the fuck a Lehman Brothers guy has who has one of those giant 100-acre estates on the Hamptons?
shane smith
Well, where...
joe rogan
Who are they?
shane smith
Where do they make their money?
And this is very interesting.
Again, I'm going to put it into gambling terms because I'm a gambler.
If you could go to Vegas, right, and you could say, okay, I'm going to bet a billion dollars or a trillion dollars, but let's say a billion.
Let's say a million dollars.
I'm going to put a million dollars on black.
Well, I lost.
Okay, I'm going to write that off.
I'm going to put a billion dollars on black.
I lost again.
Okay, I'm going to write that off.
I put a billion dollars.
Oh, I won.
I get to keep that money.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
I play that every day.
I would play that game every fucking day of the goddamn week.
But guess what?
They don't let you do that game in Vegas, but they let you do that game on Wall Street.
joe rogan
It's unbelievable.
It's so hard to wrap your head around when you really try to think about the amount of money being exchanged.
shane smith
That's mind-boggling.
It's mind-boggling.
joe rogan
The fact that this argument was thrown about that they're too big to fail, and then the government comes in and bails them out.
Taxpayers.
shane smith
The government doesn't have any money.
joe rogan
They steal it from the taxpayers.
shane smith
The government gets its money from taxpayers, and that's what...
You know, I just did this thing on Afghanistan, but that's the tip of the iceberg is how much money the government throws away.
And by the way, I pay a shit pile of fucking tax.
So when I see that, I'm like, oh, well, my tax just went down the fucking toilet.
joe rogan
Like thrown away in what way?
What do you mean?
shane smith
Well, so for example, the piece I did in Afghanistan is we've spent $100 billion in reconstruction there, and the majority of it, if not all of it, has just been flushed down the toilet.
For example, a billion dollars were spent on helicopters that don't fly.
You know, billions of dollars are spent on culvert denial systems.
This is a long story, but basically to try to stop IEDs from being put into culvert...
They were never built.
We're paying money directly into the Taliban's hands.
We build power plants that are never used because they're inefficient and too expensive because they use diesel.
You can't power power plants with diesel.
And by the way, guess who collects the fees are the Taliban because the places where we go in to collect the fees are too dangerous to actually go into.
So we're just throwing hundreds of billions of dollars down the top.
That's just Afghanistan.
Not to mention Iraq, not to mention, by the way, DOD, not to mention here in America, etc., etc., So you sit there and you say, we're paying all this money in tax.
Taxes are going up, up, up, up, up.
And where the fuck is the money going?
The money's going into the fucking toilet many cases.
And you sit there and you say, that's not fucking good, man.
unidentified
No.
shane smith
That's not good.
joe rogan
And it's a sort of a symptom of what happens when money's there.
When money's there and it's legal to extract it, all of a sudden a bunch of people start going, well...
shane smith
Well, I think unless we question...
It's our money.
See, this is the whole basis of democracy.
It's our government and it's our money.
And what's happening now is the government is acting with impunity, with no...
And like you said, I'm like, what about climate change?
What about war?
What about all of a sudden you're like, well, people feel disenfranchised.
They can't do anything about it.
A. B. It's their money that people are spending and...
And we're going, well, fuck, they shouldn't be spending $78,000 hammers.
That's not fucking cool.
Well, the basis of democracy is you don't do that.
The basis of democracy is you can't do that.
But what's happening now, and this is what I find another problem in our modern age, is, okay, this is a fucking huge problem.
Yet we feel we can't do anything about it.
And I've said this before, and now I'm into my drink, so I'm going to say it again.
That's why these podcasts are important.
That's why media is important.
That's why journalism is important.
Look, you started out in a different way.
You came at this from a different way.
I came at this from a different way.
The reason why we're doing this now is because we're frustrated and we're saying, look, I don't want to talk about, you know, shoes fucking every day of the week.
You don't want to just do stand-up or your MMA shit, both of which are amazing, but you want to do something, holy fuck, dudes, I'm going to fucking talk about shit because this shit is important.
The reason why we have to do that is because we can't be complacent.
We can't just sit there and say, you know what, fuck, it's too much money or it's too much shit because they are taking money to do bad things with it.
They're taking our fucking freedoms and spying on us with the NSA. And it's guys like you and guys like me and guys like, by the way, everybody out there and the fucking Death Squad and Red Band and all these motherfuckers.
And we have to be the ones to get out there on a grassroots movement and say, fuck you.
Stop fucking tapping my phone.
Stop taking my money to fucking throw down into the Taliban's hands in Afghanistan.
Stop this shit because unless we do, then there's going to be no more democracy in America.
joe rogan
I think you're certainly right in some ways.
And I think also what's going on is this idea of us versus them is completely ridiculous.
And I think people that are in positions of power are going to be forced to realize this.
You are us.
All of you people that are congressmen, all you people that are senators, all you people that are mayors, all you people that are cops...
You are us.
There is no us and them.
shane smith
Correct.
joe rogan
Especially when you're dealing with those sort of positions, positions of political power, positions of authority, that you are us.
You're not even profiting off of this.
If you want to put yourself into a position where you sell your soul to profit off it, then you're not us.
But for right now, anybody jockeying into any sort of a political position, understand that it doesn't have to be this way.
Understand that you are us and that you are people who have wives and children and families and jobs and dogs and property.
shane smith
At the end of the day, we're all human.
joe rogan
We're all human.
And I believe that we can somehow or another construct an economy that's based on ethics and morals.
I really do.
I don't think there's anything that says that everybody has to be greedy.
I don't think there's anything that says that people have to capitalize on every single fucking loophole and fuck everybody over along the way.
And I think one of the reasons why they've been allowed to do this or able to do this for so long is because of the lack of access to information.
I think they were able to secretly hide so much shitty wrongdoing in the past that it became policy.
It became habit.
It became what you were taught when you were young, when you joined a company.
Hey, this is how we do it.
You want to fucking play golf with us and drive a Ferrari?
All right, I'm in.
And next thing you know, you're compromised.
Just sort of like Leonardo DiCaprio's character was compromised in The Wolf of Wall Street.
I don't know if that's how it actually happened in real life.
shane smith
Right.
joe rogan
But he started in with good ideas and was invested into a completely corrupt system and then became a part of it and became a part of the corruption.
That is essentially, most likely, what happens in every form of government.
Essentially, there's good people that eventually join this thing and then realize, oh, this is a completely compromised movement.
There's no way to fix it.
I'll just be one of those guys and I'll drink every night and take Xanax.
I think it's going to.
shane smith
It has to stop.
joe rogan
I think it has to.
I agree.
But I also think it's going to stop because you're not going to be able to just write it off.
It's going to be everyone.
The same reason why you can spy on people in Camden, New Jersey, that is the echo of a future event that's going to happen that's going to remove all privacy.
And it is inevitable.
shane smith
But I'm going to say, on a personal level, you've done well.
I've done well.
We're two guys sort of sitting at the nice end of the spectrum saying, hey, it's got to fucking change.
If you and I are saying it's got to change and we're at the winning end of the fucking scratch-a-win...
Then guess what?
Shit is fucked up.
joe rogan
I agree that you and I, we're both comfortable.
We don't have to worry about feeding ourselves or housing our families.
But what happens at a certain point in time when you make enough money that you don't have to worry about your bills, you, at least I, start contemplating what is important.
Correct.
What's important, this is so corny, but what's important is love.
What's important is friendship.
What's important is, you know, it's nice to walk down the street and say hi to your neighbor if your neighbor's happy.
If your neighbor is being held at fucking gunpoint and they're dragging him in the house, it's not so fun to say hi to your neighbor.
Oh, hi neighbor, you have a gun to your head.
Oh, sorry.
shane smith
What did you do wrong?
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm over here.
Sorry, I'm having a great time.
shane smith
I'm going to go watch TV. I didn't do anything wrong.
joe rogan
The game's about to be on.
It's only fun if everybody's having fun.
That's what community is all about.
It's one of the reasons why human beings evolved into the point where we're at right now to the point where we have cities and cultures.
We had to make it at least safe enough that everybody could coexist and share.
shane smith
Well, we grew up in a village mentality.
We all grew up in villages and everybody hung out together, went to the pub together and did all this shit together.
joe rogan
That's how we operated our best.
shane smith
Exactly.
And then we sort of separated into this sort of Suburban thing.
But now, it's like, you're exactly right.
It's this community.
We're part of this community.
What I find interesting, and every time I do this podcast, I'm always blown away by it, is there's so many people out there that think exactly the same way.
And we all sort of believe the same things and think the same things, and we're all interested in the same things or pissed off about the same things.
Yet, like that's millions and millions of people, literally millions of fucking people.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
shane smith
And yet it's, there's this sort of frustration as to what the fuck you do with that.
joe rogan
Yes.
shane smith
What does that mean?
joe rogan
Well, there's never been anything to do before.
You had to wait for representatives to do you justice.
You had to vote for people that were going to disappoint you.
You had to get yourself to the polls and hope that all your bitching and moaning at work and all your, you know, reading the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, somehow or another made a difference.
And most of the time it didn't.
shane smith
It didn't.
joe rogan
Because there was walls.
shane smith
It didn't and it doesn't.
joe rogan
What's the wall, though, that's not there anymore?
The wall is the distribution of information.
The same thing we're talking about with money.
Podcast is essentially just a distribution of information device that's never been available before.
Vice is a distribution of information device that's never been available before.
There was never...
Some crazy fucks from Canada that were going to the Congo looking for dinosaurs and talking to cannibals in Liberia.
That shit never happened, man.
True.
The most radical shit you had was John Stossel asking a pro wrestler whether or not he was real and getting smacked in the head.
Oh my god, he hit him in the head!
That was like radical journalism on television, on mainstream television, just a few decades ago.
I mean, that was a hard-hitting journalist.
You know, there wasn't anybody.
You know, we're gonna go to Waco and watch from the background as the government takes Sherman tanks and rolls over houses.
But what's really going on there?
No one's going in.
No one's fucking playing guitar with David Koresh and finding out what the fuck is actually happening.
You guys, David Cho, would be sitting right next to David Koresh as they burnt that fucking building down.
You know, he'd be wearing asbestos underwear.
Jumping off the fucking roof with a camera, you know, running to you and you would upload it online.
shane smith
True, true, true.
joe rogan
It's a different world.
A guy like you is not supposed to be in the position that you're in.
shane smith
You're right.
joe rogan
It's true.
A guy like me is not supposed to be in the position I'm in.
shane smith
Correct.
joe rogan
I'm easily marginalized.
I marginalize myself at every point in time I can.
I want everybody to know that I'm a fucking schmo.
shane smith
The fact that you have a huge grassroots...
Uprising at your back pushing you is fucking amazing, which is why I love coming here.
joe rogan
Well, they just know that I'm a lightning rod.
That's all it is.
I'm exactly like everybody else.
shane smith
You don't give a shit to say what you want to say.
joe rogan
I've been hitting the head too many times, dude.
There's something wrong with me.
I've got issues.
For sure.
I'm impulsive.
I don't make smart choices.
shane smith
Come on.
What I love about you is you don't give a fuck.
You're going to tell the truth.
You're going to say whatever it is.
joe rogan
I wish that I could back you up on this, but the problem is I can't remember a time where I ever gave a fuck.
I don't really think it was a conscious decision.
shane smith
That's good.
joe rogan
This lack of raising.
I was never raised.
I was raised by wolves.
I was thrown into the wild.
I think really that's what it is.
I never developed a sense of decor.
I never developed a real sense of how you're supposed to behave and act.
shane smith
Right.
joe rogan
My parents were always fucking busy.
The people I hung out with were derelicts and then fighters.
It was all just chaos.
Right.
From the time I was a young boy, there was never anything that made any sense to me.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
So I never figured out how to integrate.
I was never integrated into any system.
So it's almost like I was designed for this.
There's only one way to make someone who actually has money, who's so stupid, they'll say anything.
shane smith
What's ironic about that is that you integrate so well because you're funny and people like you because you're funny.
You know more about MMA than anyone I've ever met in my life, which is the fastest growing sport in the world.
You're like the most politically astute dude around.
You know more about more shit than anyone I've ever met.
So you're saying I don't fit in?
You probably fit in better than anyone I've ever seen.
joe rogan
Well, it's the system that's broken.
It's not...
shane smith
You're correct.
joe rogan
What I have been very fortunate is that I grew up like this in a time where you could access enormous amounts of information.
And during the last 20 years, because of this access to enormous amounts, my...
My perspective on the world has changed radically.
My view has broadened in an insane way that's impossible to describe.
But I think that I represent one portal that almost everyone who's a part of the system, whether they grew up in a way where they were forced to sort of integrate and they did things that I didn't do because they had a better upbringing, whatever it was.
They also see it.
But my position, my job, is the lightning rod.
I'm the guy who's got a door open.
I'm like, come on, let's go.
I mean, that's all it is.
What you guys are doing is way crazy than what I'm doing.
What I'm doing is talking about what you guys are doing.
You're off going to fucking North Korea and having lunch with these fucking psychopaths.
And you're going to visit slave camps where they think they're in North Korea, but they're actually in Russia.
Was that where they are?
shane smith
Yeah, Russia, yeah.
joe rogan
They think they're in North Korea, but they're actually in Russia.
shane smith
Yeah, they're in slave concentration camps in North Korea, but they're actually in Russia doing slave labor.
joe rogan
Yeah, see, you're going to all these places like the North Pole.
Well, you're not going to see me there, but I'm the lightning rod.
I'll stay right here.
unidentified
All right.
joe rogan
Keep the lights on.
Anytime you want to come by, we'll hit the switch and we'll broadcast.
unidentified
Wow.
shane smith
I love coming.
brian redban
Has Vice done anything about the cove or anything about the dolphins' situation up in Japan?
shane smith
Yeah.
I noticed your hat there.
Yeah.
We have, actually, and we're doing a lot more on Not just the cove, which is a tiny problem.
It's actually a global problem in the fact that we've overfished everything, so there's no more fish left.
And so now what we're doing is just, you know, completely...
The only fishermen left are the sort of, you know, the bad ones who are, like, pursuing and taking the whole...
Almost like pirates.
Exactly.
They take the whole tuna pod and they move the whole pod in one go.
And the dolphins and everything that hunt the tuna and sharks, everything, they all get killed.
They just kill the fuck out of everything.
Like, we're really good at killing the fuck out of everything.
joe rogan
Well, the Japanese are ruthless when it comes to that shit.
shane smith
Quite frankly, we're all ruthless.
joe rogan
We're all ruthless with dolphins?
shane smith
We're all ruthless.
joe rogan
The United States is killing dolphins?
shane smith
Every single nation that fishes, so I'm from Canada originally, And there was a time when the ships, the joke was the ships couldn't get through the Grand Banks off New Brunswick because there were so many fish.
There's no fish left anymore.
And by the way, you're people who deny everything.
They're like, the seals ate all the fucking fish.
joe rogan
Fucking seals.
shane smith
So we should have the seal hunt.
It wasn't the Portuguese, the Japanese, the Canadians, the Americans who fucking persigned it for fucking 50 years and ate all the goddamn fish and threw everything else out.
No, it wasn't that.
It was the fucking seals.
Anyway, we have destroyed the fish stocks.
There's no more fucking fish.
Now everything has to be farmed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
There's no more fish in the Grand Banks.
It was the biggest fish stocks in the fucking world.
unidentified
Why?
shane smith
Because we used to fish, you know, we used to fish a certain way.
Then we just said, fucking take all the fish.
Take everything.
Just scoop the fucking whole fucking side of the ocean and we'll just take it.
joe rogan
Is it because of just a need?
unidentified
Economics.
joe rogan
People need more fish?
There's more people that need fish?
shane smith
If you go to any store, this is an interesting thing that I, you go to any store in the world, any store, you can be in Congo, you can be in Australia, you can be in Vietnam, Myanmar, you can be here in America...
You know what they're gonna have on the shelf of any shitty bodega in the fucking world?
Tuna.
Canned tuna fish.
So it's like a staple.
And when you realize the stakes that we're talking now, like I was doing this piece on fake food in China.
They have fake eggs, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, what is that?
shane smith
And I'm like, you have fake eggs.
So they're making a fake soy construct for the shell and a fake chemical thing for the thing and the yolk.
I'm like, how much does a fucking egg cost?
Like, an egg is free.
You get a chicken, the fucking eggs come out.
How much does it take to make a chemical egg?
It must cost a lot more than the actual egg itself.
It doesn't make any sense.
There's no eggs in China.
There's no milk in China, so they're just buying all of the dairies in France.
It was a big article today.
They need food, so they're making fake food.
unidentified
Wow.
shane smith
But you sit there and you say, okay, tuna.
It's on every single country in the world that has tuna.
Well, there's no more tuna.
We ate it all because everybody eats tuna.
When you start saying that everybody has to have that one thing, because you're like all these biggest corporations in the world, what do they sell?
Light bulbs, tampons, toothbrushes, shit that everybody needs.
Every single person in the world needs a fucking toothbrush or light bulb so they make billions of dollars.
Tuna, right?
There's no more tuna.
So what the fuck do they do?
They say, well, just take everything.
Take the kids, take the eggs, take the fucking, you know, the adults, take the breeding females, take everybody, chop it up, put it in a fucking tuna can.
Wow.
And that's the problem, is food, and by the way, this is happening now with beef.
I know you're into grass-fed beef.
Beef now is a huge problem.
Price is, you know, skyrocketing.
Why?
Because now everybody wants beef.
People have a bit more bucks or whatever.
And so now beef prices are going through the roof.
joe rogan
They're also getting sneaky with their grass-fed.
shane smith
100%.
joe rogan
Like what they're calling grass-fed.
You could go to Whole Foods.
They have this new thing that they're doing.
They call it pasture-raised.
Have you seen that?
shane smith
Look, beef is fucked.
Fish is fucked.
Protein in general is fucked because it's expensive.
It's expensive to fucking rear and make happen.
But fish, by the way, is the scariest because we've overfished to the point where unless it's farmed, we're fucked.
joe rogan
And it doesn't seem like there's any light at the end of the tunnel either.
shane smith
Well, this is the thing, and I keep saying this when I come on the show, is where are all the adults?
Like, okay, if the option is we can stop eating so much fish for a little bit and then have fish forever...
Or we can just keep on eating all the fucking fish and then never have fish forever ever again.
Wouldn't it be the same...
unidentified
Decision.
shane smith
To say, let's eat a little bit less fish so we can all have fish forever.
No.
We're actually doing the opposite and saying, well, no one actually has the...
Because if we don't do it, then the Japanese will do it.
And if the Japanese are doing it, then we have to do it.
So we're all going to just eat all the fish.
joe rogan
Well, you don't hear about that story because it's important to talk about Miley Cyrus twerking.
It's very important.
We don't have time for your tuna nonsense when young Miley...
She was Hannah Montana and now she's twerking.
Yeah...
It's disturbing that you don't hear more of it, and I think that's an issue with most people that follow the mainstream media.
Most people that work a 9 to 5 plus commuting time, they simply do not have time.
shane smith
And it's hard.
joe rogan
It's very hard.
shane smith
Life is hard.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
And you don't want to come home and have a couple of old motherfuckers like us going, guess what, all the fish is gone, you fucking dirty bastard.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
Stop eating your fucking tuna fish sandwich.
joe rogan
You don't want to be on the fucking subway listening to this.
shane smith
Look, it's hard.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
It's difficult, but the problem is, is the bill is not only in the mail, it's been fucking delivered.
We did a lot of bad things for a long time, and now the bill has been delivered, and we're sitting here going, there's no more fish, boys.
Sorry.
Like, and by the way, guess what?
We're not going to wake up.
This is the sad thing about you.
We're not going to wake up until you walk into the Quickie Mart or the 7-Eleven or whatever the fuck it is, and there's no more tuna on the shelves.
You go, what happened to the fucking tuna?
Yeah, we ate it all.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a weird thing about us, isn't it?
We have that issue.
We don't recognize things until it's like...
It's like they say about addicts, that addicts have to hit rock fucking bottom before they'll stop doing drugs.
Like, they have to have overdoses where they're almost dead...
shane smith
Change addicts with humans.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
I think it's a similar thing that we do.
When we get into patterns, like guys who are gambling addicts.
You ever met a gambling addict?
shane smith
Me.
joe rogan
Well, you know, you're fine.
Listen, you're fine.
unidentified
David Chow.
joe rogan
No, he's fine, too.
But you're talking about two wealthy guys.
The scary gambling addicts are the guys who are broke who have to fucking bet.
I knew this guy.
His name was White Plains Charlie.
White Plains Charlie.
shane smith
Good name.
joe rogan
White Plains Charlie might have weighed 50 pounds.
He used to hang out at the pool hall that I used to go to, and he was a real good pool player.
He was an old man who was a gambling junkie.
He used to steal candy bars from the pool hall.
You'd see him fucking sneaky.
I mean, he just needed some form of nutrition.
All White Plains Charlie would do all day was gamble in one way or another.
He lived in a boarding house.
He had a room somewhere or a bed or somewhere.
And he was probably, when I met him, probably deep in his 60s.
White Plains Charles used to go to the fucking horse races every day.
And he would come to the pool hall after he went to the horse races, and like, this motherfucker!
unidentified
I bet this horse, this fucking, I'm like, come on, you cocksucker!
joe rogan
Always, same story.
Always losing.
And if he did have some money, you could tell.
Because he was all squirrely and...
He could see him, and everybody knew, and then he would wind up gambling and losing that money.
But these poor fucks, man, they could never just get a job, get their shit together.
They were addicted to these weird thrills, and they would hit rock bottom and just scrape together enough money.
And then they decided, somewhere along the line, Charlie decided to just live at rock bottom.
Like, rock bottom was where he was.
He always smelled...
He would take cigarettes out of ashtrays and light them up again.
And he was essentially not homeless, but might have well been homeless.
Was always broke, always bumming money, always asking someone to stake him.
unidentified
This motherfucker can't beat me.
I'm going to play this motherfucker.
I'm going to rob him.
We're going to make a lot of money.
Come on, man.
Come on, man.
joe rogan
Back me up on this.
And he was just addicted to it.
He would crash and just keep going.
And there's a lot of people like that when it comes to anything.
And I think that's a human characteristic.
This denial and this ability to rationalize the position that you're in.
And I think as a species, we do that.
shane smith
Well, I forget.
I'm going to misquote this.
I'm going to butcher it.
But there's a definition of insanity, which is we go to bed every night with the same thing facing us and the same conditions facing us the next day, and we wake up thinking it's going to be different.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the simplified version.
The definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing and expecting a different result.
shane smith
Correct.
Which is basically the definition of humanity and the definition of history.
joe rogan
It's also one of the reasons why we're such bad motherfuckers.
That we're able to put things aside and trudge ahead.
shane smith
It's also the definition of religion.
Because they're like, yeah, it's shitty again today.
But guess what?
When you're dead, it's going to be awesome.
unidentified
Jesus will be there.
shane smith
You had another bad day.
It sucked again and you worked real hard.
But when you're dead, it's going to be hard.
joe rogan
Can you imagine?
Fred Phelps is dead.
You know that?
The Westboro Baptist Church guy?
unidentified
Oh yeah.
joe rogan
He died.
Imagine the day, if Jesus is real, the day that that guy meets Jesus.
And Jesus is like, that's not what I meant.
unidentified
Right.
shane smith
You know what I love about it?
I travel a lot to hardcore Islamic countries, and they're like, yeah, you're going to jihad and suicide bombers, and you're going to go to paradise, you're going to have virgins, and you're like, yeah, it's fucking crazy.
And you come back to America, and they're like, those motherfucking Taliban and Al-Qaeda, they're crazy motherfuckers.
They believe they're going to fucking die in jihad and go to heaven.
What do you guys believe?
unidentified
We believe in Jewish zombies that walk on water.
shane smith
I believe that I'm going to work every day and have a bad life every day of my life, and then I'm going to fucking die and go to heaven.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, we don't believe in virgins, so it's less ridiculous.
shane smith
I don't get 70 virgins, but I live on a cloud and eat Velveeta cheese.
joe rogan
Our shit is more reasonable and updated.
Their shit is very ancient.
I believe that what's going on in the Middle East is that the Middle East, I've said this before, is the cradle of civilization.
That's where Mesopotamia was, Babylon, that's where Sumer was.
shane smith
Everywhere.
joe rogan
I think Turkey, I mean, the oldest known civilization that's built complex structures is in Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, this new thing that they found over the last decade, incredible structures.
The people that are still there, I think, are the townies of the world.
That's what I think it's like.
It's like when you go back to where you grew up, and all those assholes that stay, they're just so backwards and outdated.
I go to where I grew up, and I see my friends that still live in the same town.
I'm like, fuck, man.
You guys gotta get out of here.
unidentified
Yeah, these fucking fags wanna get fucking married and pay taxes.
joe rogan
You're a town.
shane smith
Where did you grow up?
joe rogan
Newton, Massachusetts.
Newton, Upper Falls.
That's actually a great place to live.
I'm just talking shit.
But what I'm talking about is that there are certain people that live in an area and that area has an ideology that's very rigid and they never get out of it.
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
This is because their ideology was created 15,000 years ago.
They have the echoes of that retarded civilization that thought the world was flat and they worshipped goats.
shane smith
The interesting thing about Islam, though, is it was created, much as you say, as a...
It was basically a...
By the way, watch a jihad be announced or a fatwa on me.
It was created because Muhammad went to Judea and said, oh, there's this new Christian thing going on.
So it was this monotheistic thing, saying, oh, there's this new one God religion, I'm going to take that on.
So Judaism, actually in the Koran it says the people of the book, there's the Jews and the Christians and the Muslims, and they're all the same because they're monotheistic.
And you say, oh, okay, well that's interesting, people of the book, you know, we're all in it together.
Why the fuck have you been, you know, fighting us, you know, the whole time?
Well, we have different versions of heaven.
joe rogan
Well, how about the Islamic people themselves have two different sects of Islam that battle each other to the death?
shane smith
Well, there's a lot more than two, but yeah, two big ones.
joe rogan
The big one in Iraq.
The Sunni and Shia that we didn't know about in Iraq.
When people started blowing each other up in Iraq and we found out that it was Islamic people attacking rival Islamic sects, we were like, wait a minute!
How crazy are these fucking people?
This is a civil war amongst Christians.
shane smith
Exactly what I was trying to get to is Judaism, Christianity, Islam are basically the same religion.
They started the same...
joe rogan
Yes.
Well, similarly rooted.
shane smith
Exactly.
There you go.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
And so the people of the book, etc., etc., and you sit there and saying, your definition of heaven is different than my definition, or your definition of this is different...
Or Jesus was a prophet, but Muhammad was a real prophet.
And you say, okay, because of all that, we're going to kill the fuck out of each other for a long fucking time.
And at that point, you're like, well, this is just fucking stupid.
joe rogan
Well, it's all fucking stupid.
shane smith
Because we look at them and say, oh, you're going to get 70 virgins because you blew yourself up with the suicide.
72. 72. You're fucking ridiculous.
However, I'm going to go to heaven and live on a cloud with my fucking savior, Jesus.
How is that any fucking different?
joe rogan
It's just as ridiculous.
But you know the term 72 virgins, apparently what they mean when they say 72...
Raisins.
72 is like you would say a fucking kazillion.
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know?
Like you would get 72 virgins.
It's just the ideas of bounty.
shane smith
There's one thing that actually meant 72 raisins.
joe rogan
Raisins?
shane smith
The fact of the matter is that we...
Yeah, it was raisins.
joe rogan
That's not enough.
shane smith
Look that up.
Google it.
joe rogan
72 raisins is a fucking skimpy little box.
shane smith
I want you to fucking back me up on this.
joe rogan
If I bought a box of raisins that was only 72, I'd be pissed.
shane smith
Five bars!
joe rogan
Yeah, that bit.
That old school bit.
Yeah, the idea that 72 raisins is a lot of raisins is just as insulting as 72 virgins in heaven.
shane smith
But what's interesting is those religions were created.
joe rogan
Muslim martyrs get 72 raisins instead of virgins.
Oh, God.
shane smith
Is that up there?
unidentified
Yeah.
shane smith
Hey!
joe rogan
Well, we believe you.
shane smith
You're good.
You're very good, Redback.
joe rogan
Google's good.
It's not like you went out and read books.
The kid didn't go out and get an encyclopedia.
Ran outside with his library card.
shane smith
I just typed.
joe rogan
In the future, you won't even have to type.
unidentified
But there you go.
shane smith
It's tying it back to information.
How about the fact that we have all information in the world, in the history of the world, at our fingertips at all times?
joe rogan
Scary as fuck.
It's crazy.
shane smith
You're exactly right.
When you said the freedom of information...
unidentified
It will save us, but it will change us.
shane smith
It's going to change everything.
joe rogan
It will change us, but it will save us.
Look, it was just us.
This is something I like to do all the time.
I like to play this game.
But it was only us four.
It was Brian, Jamie, you and I. We were the only people on Earth.
shane smith
We'll be in trouble.
joe rogan
You can read my email.
Who cares?
I'm emailing you guys.
You could borrow my food.
There's only four of us.
If there's only four of us, all the food we have, we better fucking share it.
All the vegetables we have, we better fucking share it.
shane smith
Why wouldn't we?
joe rogan
If you build a dope house and you spend all your time building that dope house, that's your house.
I should probably build my own house, but we would help each other.
unidentified
Correct.
joe rogan
You couldn't really build a house on your own.
We would need each other.
shane smith
Why wouldn't we?
joe rogan
Right.
We don't necessarily need each other when there's 300 million of us.
And so we have a real issue.
unidentified
Or 7 billion.
joe rogan
Or 7 billion.
And we have a real issue.
But we're going to be able to read each other's minds, man.
That is coming.
And we're going to need real...
Not purity of thought, because there's nothing wrong with being perverted.
We have to understand that...
shane smith
We are perverted.
joe rogan
Humans are perverted.
Yeah, the things that people enjoy.
Sex and talking shit and jerking off and...
And all the nonsense that we enjoy is a part of us.
It's a part of our animal life.
And we hide a lot of these things because of our culture.
We hide a lot of these things because of, you know, we want to have jobs and we want to have, you know, there's another bottle of that Jack over there.
Oh, shh.
There's another bottle of Jack-O-Lantern Sody Pop with extra vitamin C. Of course.
It's a part of what we are, and we're shielding ourselves from our sexuality and our reality by hiding and bullshitting.
All that bullshit and hiding.
The things that I don't have to do because I'm a comedian, the things that Brian doesn't have to do, we can say crazy shit about what we've done and what we do and drugs and...
Sex and nonsense.
We can talk about all that because there's no expectations on us to be normal.
We're comedians.
We're entertainers.
We're crazy people.
But for the average person, the average person with a fucking corporate job can't make a YouTube video about doing DMT and getting blown by angels.
shane smith
But did we talk about this before?
I don't know because my brain is softening.
joe rogan
It's hardening.
shane smith
I don't know if we talked about this.
It's a good thing because I've just forgotten my question.
joe rogan
What I was saying was that the expectations on guys like me and Brian, they don't exist because we're already silly.
We're ridiculous people.
It's fine if we talk about drugs.
It's fine if we talk about sex.
shane smith
Oh, yeah.
That was the thing.
You were saying that, yeah.
So I don't know if we talked about this before, but what I find disturbing about political representation is I've done a lot of crazy shit.
I left home when I was like 13 and a half.
I've been a bad boy.
I've been a robber.
joe rogan
You are a bad boy.
shane smith
I did a lot of bad things.
I did a lot of drugs, did a lot of crazy things.
The fact that our politicians, and this is one thing that freaked me out a bit, Mitt Romney, is here's a guy who didn't ever do anything.
And by the way, I don't want someone who never did anything.
I want someone who's done everything.
I want someone who reflects me.
So when people say, you know what, Shane?
You fucking did drugs, and you fucking did this, and you fucking whacked off, and you fucking cums, sodden bastard.
I'm like, yes.
I'm fucking human.
joe rogan
Human.
shane smith
And by the way, I would like a politician to say, yeah, I whacked off and came in my fucking bag.
Yeah, no way.
unidentified
Because that's how we are as humans.
shane smith
Normal.
The fact that we have people who have to be squeaky clean, which nobody is, by the way.
And the fact that you have to be...
To me, if you're squeaky clean, you've got 20 fucking dead bodies in your goddamn basement because I don't trust those motherfuckers who are squeaky clean.
joe rogan
Or you're crazy.
shane smith
I've never met anyone who's squeaky clean and nor do I want to.
We're human.
And what you're saying is exactly right.
You're fucking freaky business.
I've got freaky business.
Everyone's got freaky business.
Now...
Do I want everyone in the world to know that I've had some freaky business?
unidentified
Probably.
shane smith
Probably not.
joe rogan
You say not, but that's because everybody else can hide their freaky business.
shane smith
Look, there's some things I don't mind about.
There's some things I do.
What I'm trying to get at is what I would like from my representation is humanity.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
Right?
Like, we all fuck up.
We all do crazy shit.
We all do some fucking thing.
If I look back, well, you fucking admit to everything.
You're like, I'll fuck everything.
joe rogan
Wouldn't it be nice if, like, that Wiener guy, if the guy who was running up against Andrew Wiener, if he went, hey, look.
shane smith
Yes, I did.
joe rogan
Who cares?
shane smith
Yes, I did.
joe rogan
I sent a picture of my dick.
But not even him.
The guy running against him.
What if he said, who cares?
The guy likes to email chicks pictures of his dick.
What do you give a fuck?
It's just sex.
What does that have anything to do with the economy?
Well, his character.
shane smith
His character is suspect.
But that's what they do.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what they do.
shane smith
The thing is, they go after character.
And my thing is, when they go after my character, I go, yes sir.
I did that.
unidentified
I put it in the bum bum and I don't feel bad about it.
joe rogan
I've never done that.
You don't have to be a squeaky clean guy because the expectations aren't on you in that job.
But we have this weird expectation that our politicians are saviors.
shane smith
And why?
Politicians should represent us.
And if they never do anything bad, then they don't represent us.
Because we all do bad shit.
By the way, what's bad?
We all do human shit.
So why the fuck aren't our politicians representative of who we are, which is all doing human shit?
joe rogan
Well, let's put it into perspective.
This will probably help this discussion.
This whole idea of voting for someone is 200 years old.
Human culture has been around for 10,000, who knows how many thousands of years.
Voting for someone is really new.
It's a popularity contest instead of a monarchy, instead of a dictatorship.
shane smith
I wish it was a popularity contest.
It's a name recognition contest because you don't know the other fucking names.
That's why it's all these commercials and all this bullshit.
joe rogan
It's a rigged popularity contest between two parties that are both represented by the same monopolies and giant corporations.
But it's still this new thing that they're trying to figure out.
To us, it'll go through our whole time, and I'm here quoting Smedley Butler, war is just a racket.
Well, that's just because the politicians have really only existed in this forum for a brief...
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
Spasm of time.
A twitch.
A twitch.
shane smith
The king was born into power.
joe rogan
Exactly.
shane smith
Now we have to find these fucking guys.
joe rogan
And they always have.
Or they usurp the power.
shane smith
Everyone's like, oh, Hillary Clinton's going to win.
You're like, why?
Because they know her name.
They know the fucking name.
joe rogan
Unless it comes out that Hillary Clinton is stuffing babies back up her pussy and smothering them.
shane smith
Well, that'll come out.
joe rogan
Unless that comes out, yeah.
unidentified
She's got a good shot.
shane smith
I quite frankly don't think that she'll run.
joe rogan
I thought you were going to say, I was quite frankly, I don't think she stuffs babies up her pussy.
I'll go, listen, man, this is not, I'm not being literal.
shane smith
I don't think she'll run because I think, I think, look, Name recognition is there.
Maybe she'll run.
I don't know.
But I don't think she'll run because she's old.
She's sick.
Things are coming out now that she's got health issues.
joe rogan
She is?
She has health issues?
shane smith
What is it?
By the way, I don't even know if the health issues are true.
They're making a big deal about them.
joe rogan
Well, she's an older woman.
shane smith
She's older.
joe rogan
Older men, older women, they have health issues.
She's in her 60s, right?
How old is she?
shane smith
She's quite old.
Well, let's look it up.
I don't know.
I don't want to get caught out on that.
joe rogan
I'm going to guess.
unidentified
I'd say she's 62. I'd say 68. 69. You got it?
joe rogan
You fucking asshole.
shane smith
No, that's what I would say.
joe rogan
No, that's what he said.
She's quite old.
shane smith
Bill Clinton's a very old guy.
joe rogan
She's 66 years old.
Yeah.
So, look.
She gets elected at 68. That's when people start dying.
Yeah, 68's old.
I mean, we used to make fun of Reagan.
Reagan was in his 70s.
shane smith
How old was he?
joe rogan
He was in his 70s.
shane smith
Look that up.
Was he in the 70s?
joe rogan
I believe so.
I believe he was in his 70s when he was president.
shane smith
Because he was a bit of a...
joe rogan
Because it was that Dennis Miller joke.
shane smith
He was a bit daughtery.
unidentified
My grandfather was 72, and we don't let him use a remote control for the TV. He was a bit daughtery.
shane smith
Now everybody's like, oh, fuck, Reagan, Reagan.
joe rogan
He was the best.
shane smith
Oh, my God.
joe rogan
He was the best.
shane smith
Can I ask you another question?
joe rogan
Please do.
shane smith
The Republicans are all getting in line to say, I'm a Reagan Republican.
Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.
Why isn't the Democratic Party lining up saying, I'm a fucking Clinton centrist, fucking took the worst deficit in American history to the biggest surplus in American history, best president fucking serving in the 1900s?
Why is he so vilified?
unidentified
The scandal.
shane smith
Is it Monica Lewinsky?
joe rogan
100%.
shane smith
That's it.
Character.
He got a blowjob, so the fact that he was probably the greatest president of the last century goes out the window.
joe rogan
He disparaged the great office of the presidency with his penis.
unidentified
Do you know what he would do to women?
He would get them alone and pull his penis apart.
shane smith
As opposed to every other president, except for Ronald Reagan, because his penis didn't work.
joe rogan
I wonder what the standard move was before Viagra.
I wonder if at a certain point in time you could trust the president because they didn't get hard-ons anymore.
shane smith
There's a book by Plato called The Gorgias where the mean guy in it says, I only became a good politician when I put all the passions behind me because he's like 70 and he couldn't get his dick hard anymore.
joe rogan
And he can just be reasonable.
shane smith
And that was the foundation of democracy was, my dick doesn't work anymore, so I'll just start democracy.
So ruin everyone else's lives.
That was the founder.
Maybe that was Gorgias.
That was the first book of Plato who, Socrates never wrote anything.
Plato wrote it all.
He said, Socrates said this.
And then that was the foundation of democracy.
joe rogan
It didn't really ruin it for anybody because back then their ideas of civilization were pretty fucking loose compared to what...
shane smith
Correct.
joe rogan
I mean, Socrates and Plato were both fucking little boys left and right.
shane smith
Yes.
And it was only the dudes, you know, there was like 100 people, slave owners, and you could vote.
So it was like, we're going to base it on their democracy where...
They went to the AGRA and said, yay or nay.
brian redban
Do you think the future presidents would definitely embrace the whole Clinton thing?
shane smith
Because look at Obama with doing that video with Zach Galifianakis.
unidentified
I don't think so.
joe rogan
What do you mean like the whole Clinton thing?
brian redban
Well, Obama just did a video with Zach Galifianakis that he's getting a lot of heat from, and that's kind of showing a really cool president, in my opinion.
joe rogan
What do you mean by getting heat?
You mean in a good way or in a bad way?
shane smith
He's been getting heat.
joe rogan
He's been getting heat for doing that video.
But what do you mean by heat?
unidentified
Bad way, bad way, bad way.
brian redban
Saying that there's a lot of people that think, like Fox News especially, think that the president shouldn't be put in that kind of situation.
unidentified
Even though that he was like on, you know, presidents in the past have done Jay Leno and shit like that.
They just don't understand.
joe rogan
Remember Clinton?
He got on Arsenio and played fucking sax?
unidentified
Yeah, played sax.
Right, exactly.
shane smith
I wish that Democrats would embrace Clinton as Republicans have embraced Reagan.
Reagan, when I grew up, was a joke.
He was a doddering old guy who didn't know shit.
joe rogan
Yeah, me too.
shane smith
And now they're like, oh, fucking, I'm better.
I'm more Reagan than you're Reagan.
joe rogan
Well, I grew up...
shane smith
Whereas Clinton, everyone's like, get the fuck away from him.
And you're like, hold on a second.
This guy took the largest deficit in the history of fucking America and turned it into the largest surplus.
Now, they credit Reagan for that, but it was under Clinton.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
shane smith
And this guy was like a consensus politician.
He worked with the Republicans.
The government actually worked, which it doesn't do now.
Why wouldn't Obama?
Why wouldn't the Democrats say, I'm a fucking Clintonist?
They don't.
Because...
The Republicans did such a fucking great job at, by the way, an amazing politician and a consensus politician being destroyed because he liked to fuck.
joe rogan
Well, people helped him other than the Republicans.
The goddamn Democrats helped him.
Women helped him.
Democrat men who are pussies and white knights, they helped him.
Everybody helped.
They all pointed at him.
I wouldn't do that.
He fucked up.
Maybe you would.
Maybe you would if you're a fat guy with a giant penis nose who was all of a sudden president and everybody wants to touch you.
Yeah, you'd probably do some crazy shit.
You probably can't even believe you're doing it.
While you're doing it, you probably can't believe when you're alone and they shut that door.
Good evening, Mr. President.
Have a good night.
They shut that door and you're alone in the Oval Office.
shane smith
Get the fuck out of here.
But it started before that.
unidentified
I'm sure it did.
shane smith
I was reading this amazing article recently about Hillary Clinton and the Clinton presidency and the lead up to the Clinton presidency.
It was like they have been implicated in murders.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
shane smith
They've been implicated in...
There was a push for impeachment, sex with men, sex with women, scandals over millions of dollars.
And you're like, that's House of Cards shit.
joe rogan
Well, who knows how much of it is true.
shane smith
But you know what it is?
It doesn't matter if it's true.
Because perception is reality.
But what is true is there's a fucking PR war.
With all those...
What's the thing on House of Cards?
joe rogan
I haven't watched that show.
shane smith
I just watched the first episode.
It's so fucking good.
joe rogan
Don't be a spoiler person.
shane smith
But anyway, all this sort of PR shit that goes on.
If you fuck with me and don't vote for this, I'm going to PR attack you and I'm going to get my super pack to attack you on this shit and I'm going to do this, whatever.
And the thing is, what's interesting is they're taking real life shit that's happening in American politics and they put it into a thing that we can understand.
I love it.
I don't like a lot of the...
joe rogan
Gay sex?
shane smith
No.
That I love.
No, the tricky sort of directorial tricks.
But what I do love is taking real life shit and saying, here's what's actually happening and we're going to put it into a drama.
And it's actually like Shakespeare.
It's like Macbeth or something.
And we're watching our own politics as a play.
And it's insane.
And when you read, actually, what they've been through, what they've done...
And by the way, what's good for the goose is good for the...
They're not fucking...
They're not blameless.
Of course they're...
joe rogan
No one's blameless.
shane smith
No one's blameless.
joe rogan
Not the left, not the right, not the center.
No libertarians, Green Party.
shane smith
They're all freaks.
100%.
They're all freaks.
And by the way, if you're running for politics, you're a freak...
Full stop.
joe rogan
Well, that's, I think, also one of the reasons why nobody wants to get behind the Clintons, is you start looking into their past, the Whitewater stuff.
Sure.
Whitewater, is that the right name?
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
Is that the right term?
shane smith
I don't know, but I know what you mean when you say it.
joe rogan
What was Watergate?
Yeah, Whitewater.
Watergate was Nixon.
shane smith
Whitewater.
joe rogan
I get the two of them confused sometimes.
But did you ever read The Strange Death of Vince Foster?
shane smith
No, but I read about the fact that they were implicated in a death.
joe rogan
Yeah, The Strange Death of Vince Foster.
shane smith
What are you doing over there?
joe rogan
Death of Vince Foster is a very interesting book that I read.
I really have to go back and re-read it because I haven't read it in a long time.
But it's an investigation of this guy, Vince Foster.
And Vince Foster worked with the Clintons and it tied...
Bill and Hillary Clinton to the alleged murder of Vincent Foster.
And what's really interesting about this, for sure, this fucking guy, for sure, was moved.
They found his body, gun in the hand, which you never find in suicide.
The gun is never in your hand when you commit suicide.
When you commit suicide, boom!
The gun goes flying, your fucking body spasms.
This gun was like stuck to his thumb, like...
There.
shane smith
This was in the thing.
Suicide, murders.
This is House of Cards.
I'm not going to fuck with you on it, but we've got to stop talking about it because it's House of Cards shit.
joe rogan
Well...
I want to watch that show.
shane smith
But, you know, it's about that shit.
It's about, like, they're involved in some seriously...
And you're, like, watching this thing saying, it's like Shakespeare, it's like whatever, like, it's Hollywood.
And then you read, actually, what happened and you go, oh, fuck.
Like, there's some truth to that shit.
joe rogan
The only problem with this, I think a lot of it was compiled.
Kenneth Starr's investigation was part of the conspiracy.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
Starr was a patsy for the Clintonites.
And when people think about Kenneth Starr, they think about a guy who goes after Clinton, right?
I mean, he was part of what was, wasn't he the guy that was investigating Clinton and chasing after him with Monica Lewinsky?
But they're calling him a patsy for the Clintons.
I don't know, man.
The whole fucking thing is when you start realizing like, oh, they might all be murderers.
They might be just par for the course.
Just like these people, anyone, just think of this, anyone who's willing to say, yes, we should go to war on some shaky grounds, you're a murderer.
shane smith
But also, anyone who's saying, I'm going to go and try to get elected and not have any bad shit from my life ever come out.
I don't know anyone in my life that I've ever met that hasn't had some bad shit.
joe rogan
Well, the only way you can do that is to kill people that know bad shit about you or scare the fuck out of them so they can't come up with all that bad shit.
shane smith
Exactly.
joe rogan
They were involved in some shady real estate deals.
First of all, the big one is Mena, Arkansas.
Do you know about all that?
Do you know about...
Mena, Arkansas is a fucking trip, man.
Mena, Arkansas was where Barry Seal, who worked for the CIA, was dropping all the cocaine that he got from South America.
They would fly in on these fucking planes and drop packages off in Mena, Arkansas, and then land.
Then they'd go pick up the packages.
Well, they dropped these packages.
You know, they're dropping fucking millions of dollars worth of cocaine.
And these kids...
Who lived in Mena, Arkansas, were hanging out on these train tracks.
They found these packages.
The people, whoever the fuck worked for the CIA, found these kids, murdered them, and then laid their body on the train tracks.
The autopsies were done.
The kids were high.
They fell asleep on the train tracks.
The parents didn't believe it.
They said, look, these kids didn't get high.
This is bullshit.
So they hired an independent investigation.
The independent investigation finds that the kids had been murdered.
The kids had been stabbed.
Okay?
So it wasn't a matter of them dying from train tracks.
Their bodies were laid on the trains post-mortem.
So then they start digging deeper, and they find out more and more shit, and then this guy Barry Seal gets popped.
And it turns out that Barry Seal had been flying back and forth from the fucking South American Coke dealers.
Forever.
shane smith
Hold on a second.
He died.
joe rogan
See, they murdered him in his car when he was on his way to testify with George Bush's phone number in his fucking pocket.
Okay?
That guy literally sold drugs for the CIA. Okay.
Like, literally.
Like, testified, gave all these accounts of it.
shane smith
I want the movie rights to this story.
That's crazy.
joe rogan
Oh, you'll never hear it.
There's all these pictures of him with all these South American guys, like fucking, what's his name, Manuel Noriega and Pablo Escobar.
There's photos of this fucking guy with everybody.
shane smith
Holy shit, dude.
joe rogan
They were bringing in coke money.
And this was all happening in...
Arkansas!
The guy whose state is bringing in fucking kazillion dollars in coke money every year winds up...
First of all, how the fuck do you run a shitbag state like Arkansas?
Sorry, no offense, Arkansas folks.
I'm sure there's some good spots and I'm sure you've got great barbecue.
But let's be realistic.
How the fuck does the governor of Arkansas wind up to be the king of the entire country?
shane smith
You need a lot of money.
unidentified
How?
joe rogan
You gotta get a lot of fucking money!
And if you had a lot of money, why would you be running for office in Arkansas?
Like, what's Arkansas, man?
Why are you in Arkansas?
shane smith
I've got a question.
joe rogan
What's going on?
shane smith
If you had that much money, it takes billions of dollars to run for president of the United States.
joe rogan
Billions?
shane smith
Billions.
If you have that much money or that much support, why the fuck would you want that gig?
Because I don't know any president besides Reagan, which, by the way, is a construct, because when he was in power, it was a fucking disaster.
But you go, okay...
Like, why would you want that job?
No one comes out unscathed.
No one comes out like, you know what, that fucking president was awesome.
joe rogan
Well, Reagan didn't even come out unscathed.
shane smith
No, no, no, he came out fucking, he was a dog until we said, you know what, he was the best one ever.
But the thing is, is you sit there and go, why, they're going to put everything you've ever done under a microscope.
joe rogan
Well, not only that.
shane smith
Everything you've ever met is under a microscope.
Everything you've ever said is under a microscope.
Why the fuck would you want that fucking job?
joe rogan
Well, not only that.
I mean, that's certainly got to be impossible.
An impossible task for any normal human being, especially a man.
Any man with a functional penis is going to have some fucking terrible stories in his past.
But that said, forget about all that.
The idea that any one person should be like that is what's most ridiculous.
Exactly.
Not even the idea that they're going to look all this stuff up and find all this.
unidentified
And then there's the idea that any one person- Clinton should have killed somebody.
joe rogan
Just JK. Just JK. Just the idea that one person really can run the whole country.
Like, we need a head guy?
Like, why do we need a head guy?
Do we really still need that?
shane smith
I don't know.
But what I'm saying is, to get there, those motherfuckers have to be shady.
Because if you look at, like, George Bush Sr. He was like a backroom bureaucrat, but he was head of the CIA. He's like our fucking Putin.
And then he gets in, and he's just like this sort of non-effectual, sort of like nothing fucking dude.
But he's like the head of the fucking CIA. And you sit there and you just go, I don't even know what the fuck's happening here anymore.
I don't know what you're writing over there.
joe rogan
What happens if presidents become like tuna?
unidentified
Ha!
joe rogan
We get to a point where nobody wants to be president.
shane smith
I don't want to be president.
joe rogan
Everybody's like, fuck this.
shane smith
You know what's funny?
unidentified
We get to a point where there's literally no one running for president.
joe rogan
We have the presidential elections today.
unidentified
That's good.
joe rogan
And everybody's like, fuck it.
shane smith
Whenever I do political pieces and shit, they're like, you should...
By the way, I've seen it with you too.
On Twitter and shit, they're like, you should run for office.
You guys should run for office.
Joe Rogan for president, et cetera, et cetera.
And you're like...
Are you fucking crazy?
joe rogan
Well, not only that, forget about...
shane smith
Are you fucking crazy?
joe rogan
What kind of a fucking stressful job, even if you were the most perfect Yoda, Buddha, angel that made it to age 45 and never did a crime and never smoked a joint and never did a bump, whatever, you know, even if you were, what kind of crazy pressure would that be to all of a sudden, you're the guy who's deciding whether or not military action takes place.
shane smith
Right.
joe rogan
You're the guy who's deciding whether or not a policy is going to be instituted like Obamacare that people are going to fucking freak out.
shane smith
Do you even want that responsibility?
I don't.
joe rogan
Dude, if you make a YouTube video that people don't like, they want you to die.
Could you imagine what it must feel like to be the guy who invented Obamacare?
I have personally seen people freak the fuck out.
get purple-faced, sweat flying off their head, talking about the nonsense that is Obamacare.
I don't understand it.
I don't know who's right.
I don't, I'm not a small business owner in that sense, where they have a higher, you know, a bunch of people and pay for their, I don't know what's good and what's bad.
I don't know even, I don't even understand why it was instituted in the first place.
shane smith
Right.
joe rogan
I'm not sure I totally get it, because I've heard too many different versions battle it out.
shane smith
Are we supposed to do something, by the way?
This is like the last week.
joe rogan
You have one week left.
Well, you guys are taken care of.
You don't have to worry about anything.
shane smith
Do we have to say yes or no?
unidentified
Because they make it seem like you're going to get fined if you don't do the right thing.
joe rogan
I think for individuals, I'm not sure how it works.
But I know that you guys always had insurance.
So I think it's essentially the same insurance.
Is it essentially the same?
shane smith
I don't know.
You're all going to die.
joe rogan
I don't think it's any different.
unidentified
No one knows, though.
I bet so many people are going to get fined.
brian redban
This is going to be the most money that the government's ever made by not telling us about this.
joe rogan
I don't understand it.
shane smith
Well, we don't have to get bogged down because I'll just go off for hours about this.
joe rogan
But what I was just saying is that I don't think anybody should have that kind of responsibility.
I don't think any person should have the weight of the world like that on their back.
I think there has to be a better way to collectively decide what's going on than to give one guy white hair.
shane smith
It's crazy.
joe rogan
Poor motherfuckers, man.
Nobody can do that gig.
shane smith
Here's a guy.
joe rogan
He's you, man.
How old are you?
How old are you?
shane smith
44. He's just a little older than you.
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's nonsense.
shane smith
I don't know about that, because older people are even more crazy than me.
joe rogan
But that's absolute craziness.
shane smith
What I'd like to say is, I agree with you, that we're going to vote a collective me to try to make those decisions, because there is no collective me.
joe rogan
What I mean by he's you, and I mean by he's the same age, what I mean is, I'm just putting it into perspective, that I don't feel anyone ever...
Is the guy.
shane smith
100%.
joe rogan
It can't be done.
It's a ridiculous proposition.
shane smith
He's gonna go toe-to-toe with Putin over Crimea?
If I'm going to go toe-to-toe with Putin over Crimea, I'm going to say, you know what, I lost.
Because that guy used to run the KGB, he's got all the guys on the ground with all their weapons, he's already won, he's got a...
What the fuck am I going to do going to stop it?
joe rogan
Could you imagine if they had Obama, if they did something to Obama?
Could you imagine if something happened where, like...
Well, you know that guy that got poisoned in Russia?
shane smith
No, in Ukraine.
joe rogan
In the Ukraine, yeah.
unidentified
His face was...
joe rogan
Yeah, his face turned into this horrible...
Steel, scaly.
Horrible, horrible, poisoning.
Like, the guy came very close to die.
Well, I don't know about all that.
unidentified
I wasn't there.
joe rogan
But what I'm saying is...
shane smith
It allegedly was Putin.
joe rogan
Could you imagine if we found out that some...
You know, not even Putin.
Some crazy person out there had it in for Obama and was actually going after him.
shane smith
Well, I'm sure there's...
A thousand.
joe rogan
I mean, we've never had an American president assassinated by anyone in a foreign country, and the closest to it was from a foreign country, blaming Lee Harvey Oswald, who had gone to the Soviet Union, for killing Kennedy.
But other guys who've killed presidents before, whether it is Abraham Lincoln, or how many presidents have been assassinated?
Was it three?
shane smith
Why are you asking me?
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
You don't know?
You're not even from my country.
I figure you have to learn those things.
shane smith
The Queen of England once wore a dress that was...
joe rogan
Either way, I don't think anyone has ever been...
Any of the murders, this is relatively small, were blamed on a foreign enemy.
shane smith
Right.
joe rogan
It's so fascinating, man.
The idea that there might be a new war cooking and it might be with Russia.
shane smith
Well, I've been saying this for a number of years, thank you very much.
I go to Russia and I'm like, what the fuck's going on?
Because I went there and I said, I don't understand.
I don't get the politics.
What is Putin?
Like, is he communist?
Because the communists like him.
Is he sort of right-wing?
Is he left-wing?
No, no, no, no.
He's pro-Russia.
And you're like, okay, I get he's pro-Russia.
Everyone's pro-fucking whatever the country they're from.
What the fuck is his politics?
Because the communists support him, the fucking fascists support him, everyone supports him.
And he's like, no, he's pro-Russia.
He's anti-West.
So pro-Russia equals anti-West.
And when you go there, you realize these people, a whole generation or more now, because it's the new generation, were, it was the Cold War.
It was like, we, on our side, were like, oh, commies eat babies, and you can buy a house for a pair of blue jeans, all that horse shit.
unidentified
Yeah.
shane smith
They grew up on all that being like American gangsters fucking, you know.
unidentified
Right.
shane smith
And so what happens is Putin comes along and just goes, yeah, America fucked.
It's not our economic crisis.
It's America's economic crisis.
They fucked us up.
It's not us being fucking the oil bitches.
It's Saudi Arabia who is run by America.
The Cold War rhetoric in Russia never stopped.
That's one thing that we don't realize here.
They are saying America is to blame for all of our shit.
joe rogan
Did it never stop or did it take a break and then rekindle with Putin?
shane smith
It took a small break.
With Yeltsin.
joe rogan
Because that guy was hanging out?
shane smith
Well, Putin's been in like 16 years now.
joe rogan
But do you remember when Yeltsin would come over and he would hang out?
He was drunk.
Was he?
Was he the guy that had the thing on his head?
No, that was Gorbachev.
shane smith
Gorbachev started it.
Yeltsin took over, pushed it real fast.
Everyone loved him because he was a democracy dude.
But he started all the oligarchs.
Putin was head of KGB. He came in and now has been basically running shit for a long time.
But the interesting thing about Putin is now he's just like, fuck you.
I don't know if you saw the Crimean address, but he's like, you guys put it up on us.
NATO put it up on us.
You guys put your missile defense systems along our borders.
Fuck you.
Crimea is ours.
You want to go to war?
Let's go.
It's like he's been sort of training in silent, like I'm going to fucking punch the punching bag and get ready.
And now he's ready to go.
And this is this whole thing in the North.
It's here.
It's Crimea.
He's like, I don't give a fuck what you say.
I don't give a fuck about the West.
I don't give a fuck about America.
I don't give a fuck about your sanctions.
And this is why we're going back to this Cold War rhetoric that's not even Cold War rhetoric.
It's beyond Cold War, rather, because he's like, fuck you.
I don't give a shit what you say.
joe rogan
Now, is this because he's looking out for Russia and Russia's in a bad economic situation and Russia needs all that oil?
unidentified
No.
shane smith
They have oil.
joe rogan
They have oil.
shane smith
They have tons of oil.
joe rogan
They have tons of oil.
shane smith
That's their whole thing.
In fact, all of the energy in the Ukraine is supplied by Russia.
The majority of natural gas going into Western Europe is from Russia.
joe rogan
So what's going on here?
What is the underlying motive for why this is escalating?
shane smith
Well, Crimea has been their only freshwater port since Peter the Great.
So it's their only place they can get to the rest of the world, and someone else ran it, and they didn't like that, the Ukraine.
Ukraine...
If you draw a line, the western part is pro-Europe.
The eastern part is pro-Russia.
So they said, well, fuck you.
We're just going to take it back.
And what happened is they did the same thing in Georgia.
All of the old Soviet republics, they're now taking back.
And Crimea has been...
They wanted it because it's strategically important to them for their naval base.
But basically they just cut...
A big chunk of Europe, quote-unquote Europe, out and said, it's ours now.
And we went, yeah, okay.
joe rogan
So we just don't want to start any bullshit.
shane smith
We can't.
joe rogan
We can't.
Nothing we can do.
What are you going to do?
shane smith
It's like saying, New Jersey said they don't want to be part of fucking America, so Russia moved in and we're going to fucking...
Right, right, right.
Can't happen.
joe rogan
Yeah, that would be interesting.
Yeah, if Russia said we can't take New Jersey...
unidentified
Exactly.
shane smith
And then, by the way, what are you going to do?
Send in troops?
It's not going to happen.
joe rogan
What is it going to take for our culture to move past all these things that are holding us back?
Like this kind of gangster behavior that all countries do.
Not just the United States.
Not just Russia.
Pretty much any country that has a lot of power.
They just decide they need some resources.
They decide they need this, they need that.
I mean, it's always been what we're seeing is just a really complicated sort of propaganda skewed form of it.
shane smith
I agree with you, and I say that the only way we have any real power is consumer advocacy.
What does that mean?
Whatever we buy, that's the power because that's economics.
Economics runs everything.
And as long as Europe is buying Russian energy, then Russia is going to say, I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want.
Russia is redrawing the borders of Europe with Europe's money.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
Because they sell the gas to Europe.
We're in the exact same position, right?
We're sitting there saying, okay, well, we're going to do this, we're going to do that.
unidentified
Why?
shane smith
Because we use Google, because we use fucking Facebook, because we buy Nikes, because we buy Ford, because whatever.
What's going to happen is people realize, whatever I buy, that's the real power.
And when I say that, what I mean is, if you look at pre-2008, number one sellers, Escalade, Hummer, all the big SUVs.
Post-2008, Prius.
Because all of a sudden, gas fucking tripled in price.
So the only thing that really moves policy is how people vote with the dollars.
Because if you fucking start voting with dollars, with Unilever, with Procter& Gamble, with Ford, with GM, with Exxon, then you're going to move policy.
You can move policy decisions tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Because these guys have lines to power and they say, fuck, these people aren't buying Fords anymore, they're not buying Exxon gas, they're not buying whatever.
joe rogan
The idea that oil is so, it fluctuates so much has always been baffling to me.
shane smith
It doesn't fluctuate that much, but yeah.
joe rogan
But it fluctuates enough.
shane smith
It fluctuates between profit and crazy profit.
joe rogan
Well, do you remember when you were talking about the gas hike?
You remember there was right when Bush was leaving office, when George W. was leaving office.
And right when he was leaving office, it became like this weird feeling.
Like the gas was so expensive that it became like this weird feeling.
People who weren't conspiracy theorists were going, wait a minute, are we getting fucked?
Like is he leaving and in the process, does he have like...
Some crazy three-month grace period where they just start sucking money out of people because it just started going up and up and up.
And you're like, well, sorry, we have to pass on this loss to the consumer.
Oil is more expensive these days.
Wait a minute.
Why is oil more expensive?
What exactly is going on?
Why is it coincidentally coinciding with you leaving office?
We couldn't dig into that then.
That would be very difficult to pull off today.
If the same situation was happening today, It would be much harder to pull off.
10 years from now, more difficult.
20 years from now, impossible.
That's what I think.
I think that all this creepy shit that they've been able to do and fuck people over and clandestine operations like that, I think you can't hide it anymore.
That's why they're so mad at guys like Edward Snowden.
That's why they're so mad at guys like Julian Assange.
Those guys, they broke the first holes in the dike and the water's coming through.
I don't mean that kind of thing, Brian.
shane smith
Yes, because if you look at it, you say, if you look at after 9-11, the Saudi royal family who are living here in America were flown out.
Why?
Because whenever we have problems with oil prices, we just go to Saudi and say, make more.
And the prices come down.
Just because they own the most reserves.
The easy stuff.
The beautiful crude.
joe rogan
When is that?
What year is that?
shane smith
2008. Wow.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
shane smith
So what happens is if we have a problem with supply, we go to Saudi and say, what OPEC should have been, which was how can we drive prices up?
Saudi Arabia actually deneutered because they said, okay, we're going to fucking drive prices down whenever the states say yes.
That's what's interesting.
unidentified
Yeah.
shane smith
Because that's why Al-Qaeda exists.
Because we are Saudi Arabia's friend, and we use them to go up and down, Bin Laden, who comes from one of the fucking richest families in Saudi Arabia, said, fuck you.
We're the land of Mecca and Medina.
We are the land of fucking Islamic purity.
We're not going to kowtow to the Americans.
That's where it all comes from.
It all comes from Saudi Arabia because of oil and because we force them to, you know, lower oil prices, which makes us money, which then they see as we're in cahoots, and then boom.
That's why there's resentment against us.
joe rogan
When you find out about these, you know, small countries that were doing terrible up until oil production, and then they became like this most incredible magical land where everything is essentially free.
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, the amount of wealth that people in those lands acquired.
And not in a long period of time.
A fairly short period of time is when you look at human history.
All of a sudden, they have...
shane smith
Not human history.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Modern culture.
Yes.
Yeah, anything, really.
Essentially one of the...
shane smith
Abu Dhabi.
If you fly into Abu Dhabi, which has the two largest mosques in the world, you fly in and there's a picture from 1957. And it's a mud fort and like four huts.
unidentified
Yeah.
shane smith
And then you drive into Abu Dhabi now, which looks like Las Vegas on steroids.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
In fucking 50 years, they've built...
New York.
joe rogan
Well, someone on my message board had that point.
They were saying, you know, that I always go on and on about the pyramids.
I'm fascinated about the pyramids.
unidentified
Well, yeah.
joe rogan
And some guy showed this aerial photo of Dubai.
And he was like, fuck the pyramids, man.
Look how crazy this shit is.
I was like, you know what?
shane smith
It went from nothing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah.
shane smith
50 years.
It went from zero.
A mud hut to...
joe rogan
Yeah, he's got a point.
One day, if we ever found Dubai.
The more impressive aspect of the Egyptian pyramids is we don't understand how they were built.
We don't get it.
So we look at just the sheer size and the numbers of stones, and we're like, fuck, how'd they do that?
But what happened?
What happened to the voice?
Did it pop out?
What happened?
Check, check.
There it goes.
But the difference between the amount of structures they had...
shane smith
How did you even know that happened?
joe rogan
I felt the sound stop in my ear.
It was just the cord.
unidentified
Whoops.
Great.
shane smith
No.
joe rogan
No, I didn't get it.
Don't worry.
I almost got my laptop again.
shane smith
Oh, God.
joe rogan
I'm a fucking fool for this.
unidentified
Paper touch right here.
Right to the right of you.
joe rogan
Anyway, where were we?
shane smith
Pyramids.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
shane smith
We're getting into it now.
joe rogan
If you flew over Manhattan, you know, if Manhattan was abandoned in the desert, it would be like ten times more insane than finding the pyramids because the structures, there's so many of them.
shane smith
What I find crazy about pyramids and actually Bronze Age weapons is that we can't build weapons like that anymore.
joe rogan
Like what weapons?
shane smith
There was a thing I was watching, so therefore it has to be true because it was on TV, about Bronze Age swords that were so insanely strong.
Because I always thought they were shitty lead swords or copper swords or whatever.
They had Bronze Age armor and Bronze Age swords and they would shoot like a Bronze Age armored vest with like a modern day rifle and it couldn't penetrate it.
Really?
And I was like, how the fuck is that even possible?
joe rogan
That sounds like nonsense.
shane smith
No, it isn't nonsense.
And swords that are like still Bronze Age swords that can cut through like crazy.
Actually, it sounds like nonsense now that I say it.
Can you do me a favor?
You're just laughing your head off.
Can you do me a favor and look up Bronze Age armor slash Bronze Age weaponry?
joe rogan
That's just nonsense, son.
Well, hold on.
shane smith
Until fucking I get verification, I'm not...
joe rogan
Well, they certainly spent a lot of time making weapons back then.
shane smith
I don't know how we've devolved into fighting over Bronze Age weaponry.
It's definitely not my number one sphere of expertise.
joe rogan
How much time do you think they must have spent building a samurai sword?
All the time.
shane smith
Because what I was about to bring up with you is This is what you want right here?
joe rogan
Bronze Age swords?
shane smith
Yeah, but what I want you to do is there's got to be an article about Bronze Age weaponry being more sophisticated than modern day weapons.
joe rogan
That's silly.
shane smith
Not guns and shit.
joe rogan
Metallurgy?
shane smith
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Well, maybe with our modern day bronze, because we figured out bronze kind of sucked.
shane smith
Well, correct.
joe rogan
We moved on to some better shit.
shane smith
But there's a thing about Bronze Age weapons.
Armor.
joe rogan
What's the thing?
shane smith
That it's super strong.
joe rogan
That it's dope?
shane smith
I don't know.
I don't want to get too far off on this.
Because I'm not...
I just...
I read a thing about it.
That's all.
joe rogan
Well, I believe that they certainly had some knowledge.
Hold on.
I was about bows and swords.
And there's a lot of weapons that they constructed back then that were pretty advanced.
unidentified
You know?
joe rogan
They figured out some shit.
shane smith
I had a thing that we were going to...
I was going to fucking bring it up.
I lost it.
I've had a few ales.
This is the problem with the end of our goddamn...
joe rogan
There's no problems.
shane smith
Our podcast is...
brian redban
What do you guys think about the pastor that recently died?
unidentified
The guy that attacked all the gays?
brian redban
Do you think that it's...
The gays and everyone should attack his funeral?
unidentified
Why?
joe rogan
Or do you think they should take the higher ground?
Show that they're just like him?
unidentified
Yeah, or take the higher ground.
What do you think about that?
joe rogan
That's a ridiculous question.
Of course he shouldn't attack his funeral.
We should ignore that poor old fuck.
brian redban
Yeah, but it might shock their whole family and their whole cult to be like, oh shit, now I see what you're talking about.
shane smith
That's fucked up.
joe rogan
No.
No, you'd be a hypocrite.
And also, you're not going to shock their family.
Their family was under the, like, they were under the reign of a dictator, like a religious dictator, an old cunt.
He was an old crazy asshole who screamed to people and scared the fuck out of them and had them all believing that his way was the only way.
He's the God Hates Facts guy.
He's the guy who holds up those signs.
Okay, he's just a crazy old dude.
That's all.
shane smith
You don't know House of Cards and I don't know this guy.
joe rogan
Well, Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church is a pretty big story.
shane smith
I'm going to put up my hand because I know we wrote a lot of stuff about it for Vice, but I don't know shit about it.
joe rogan
Anyway, the bottom line is that the guy was an asshole and now he's dead.
It's unfortunate that people get roped into that sort of hateful organization like that.
shane smith
You know, my whole thing is it takes all sorts.
I don't know what you do over in your compound.
joe rogan
Well, it's not just that because this guy would go out and he would attack people.
He would go out and they would protest funerals of veterans.
shane smith
What I'm saying is he was going out there being a bad guy.
I'm saying I don't try to look in my neighbor's next door yard and...
joe rogan
Oh, like he was doing, you're saying?
shane smith
Or anybody does.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, you know what, man?
It's just sad when people get...
Some people are easily led, and instead of finding some nice religious leader who's put together a nice community and they all have picnics and shit, they found an asshole.
I mean, that's really essentially what happened.
They got roped into some shithead's gravity, and now he's dead.
Yeah, they definitely shouldn't protest his funeral, man.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Just, you know, he's a lesson.
shane smith
You're just trying to start shit alone.
joe rogan
No, I'm not, man.
It's a really legit question.
brian redban
Trust me, I believe in dynamic fasteners and all that, like, karma, high, like, positive stuff.
joe rogan
Dynamic fasteners?
What are you talking about?
unidentified
Do you know what dynamic fastener is?
joe rogan
No, what is it?
brian redban
Dynamic fastener is something that he's like a huge sponsor for all these UFC fighters.
joe rogan
Right, but what is it?
shane smith
It's just like parts.
brian redban
It's like screws and bolts, but this guy's just a big UFC fan, so he just pays for all these people.
joe rogan
You can't just say that.
No one's going to know what the fuck you're talking about.
I didn't know what you're talking about.
I've seen the ads, but I had no idea what your connection was.
unidentified
It's so ridiculous.
joe rogan
I don't know what it is.
I never looked into what that was.
brian redban
It's really interesting because the guy's just a fan.
And then you realize it's not that expensive to be a sponsor for one of these fighters.
So this guy that just owns this part guy, he's just a fan.
So now everyone's coming out in shirts with this dynamic fastener on it.
shane smith
And it's just like nothing.
joe rogan
Well, it's his company.
There's another guy who does that too.
A technologies guy who does that.
I asked him once.
I was like, why do you advertise?
He goes, I just like it.
Like seeing the name of my company.
shane smith
I think it was like the real world or something.
And it was like the biggest show on TV at the time.
And it would show at like 3 in the morning when most people would get home in New York.
And there was the guy, the Brooklyn Clown.
joe rogan
The Brooklyn Clown?
shane smith
He was a clown.
But it would be like the number one show on TV, but people would come home at like 3 in the morning, and he was a clown who would buy like the advertising spots for like a grand.
And so it was this huge show that millions of people would watch, but all the advertising would be about the Brooklyn clown.
It's actually really cheap to get advertising late at night.
That's what I was trying to do.
It's like Tito's Tacos.
Seriously, you know how many tacos it costs?
You were saying the fastener guy can get in there and get the thing.
This guy was super smart because he's like, oh, here's this time slot that everyone's getting home to watch the real world.
It was some big show.
joe rogan
Well, how weird is it when they give away their whole channel or when they have a fake show?
shane smith
There you go.
joe rogan
That's the weirdest shit ever.
You're like, am I with Montel Williams?
Is this a real show, Montel?
shane smith
How about Trudeau, right?
joe rogan
What's going on here, Montel?
shane smith
30 years you got, right?
In jail?
joe rogan
Trudeau?
No, 10. He got 10 years.
shane smith
You got 10 only?
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
Have you done a mirror?
joe rogan
No.
No, I wouldn't have him on.
I would never have that guy on.
shane smith
Well, because I watched a lot of those infomercials.
joe rogan
I met him.
He's a nice guy.
I met him because he put a bunch of money into something called the IPT. It was the International Pool Tour.
And he put on these gigantic events in Vegas.
Like, the most money people ever got paid from professional pool was Kevin Trudeau.
shane smith
Really?
joe rogan
Yep.
And he put together a television show.
And he was going to have these guys play, and it was on television, and they were playing pool for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
They had done it full blast.
Like, he put the pedal to the metal, spent millions of bucks that he had robbed from little old ladies who thought they were going to lose weight.
unidentified
And me.
joe rogan
With secrets they don't want you to know about.
shane smith
And me.
joe rogan
But he spent all this money under the premise that there was laws that hadn't been instituted yet.
They didn't know that they existed.
They were going to write them about internet gambling.
So when they made the business model, they factored in internet gambling.
People would be able to gamble on these pool matches and we'll profit from that.
And then there'd be residual.
We'll have a bunch of gambling junkies associate our site with a good place to gamble.
You know, because there was all these online gambling poker places.
All those people that got arrested and had to move to Costa Rica.
Well, this is all part of that, okay?
So when they came in and shut down online gambling, he was fucked.
So he lost shitloads of money.
Oh, spilled it again.
Had to give people their money back, had to pay off these pool players in fractions on the dollar.
I mean, I don't know what the fraction was.
It was 75 cents on the dollar.
Some of them got paid all their money, but he didn't pay all of them.
Maybe they all got paid eventually.
It's a long struggle you're talking about, right?
shane smith
That's some interesting shit.
joe rogan
So then, Poole takes this big fucking slide afterwards, but everybody sort of hopes and prays that this guy gets his shit together and comes back to Poole.
He's like the savior of Poole, this fucking crazy guy who rips off old ladies.
shane smith
I actually want to do that story as a movie.
That's the most insane thing ever.
Because he did this pool thing, it blew up in his face, and then he said, I'm going to cure cancer with cigarette ash.
joe rogan
No, no, he always had the nonsense.
The nonsense was always there.
He always had nonsense.
He used the nonsense to make his money.
shane smith
Because I get home at like four in the morning, so I watch late night infomercials.
And I'm weak at that hour.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
I'm not the strongest.
No, no.
I'm not the strongest mentally.
joe rogan
Oh, I see.
I see.
shane smith
I don't know why that came up.
joe rogan
We talked about you getting led down a dark road because of one of these infomercials.
shane smith
You come up, you're wasted.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
And he's going, you know what?
It's fucking powdered asparagus.
That's what's going to do it.
I'm like, you know what I'm in?
joe rogan
Coral calcium.
shane smith
Remember that one?
I need some coral calcium.
That was the one.
I didn't know.
joe rogan
It's coral calcium.
unidentified
Japanese people have thick, dark hair until they're dead.
shane smith
I would have put it in my eyeballs.
Because it's 4.30 in the morning.
You're ready to go.
You're like, fuck, I want coral calcium.
joe rogan
It seems like it's something that's missing in my life.
shane smith
Yeah, I need that shit.
joe rogan
Yeah, when it's really late at night, you're like, you're convinced.
shane smith
He got fucked, though.
joe rogan
Yeah, 10 years is a long-ass time.
And, you know, he had done some time already.
He'd done like a few months.
He tried to tell the judge that he's changed his ways.
shane smith
We gotta get, you know, we gotta do his, we gotta Wolf of Wall Street, that shit.
joe rogan
Well, you know, I have a good friend who worked for him for years.
shane smith
Fuck off.
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
Let's make that.
joe rogan
If you want to make it happen.
shane smith
We've got to do it right now.
joe rogan
I mean, I don't know.
shane smith
Everybody, we want to do the movie.
joe rogan
Stop.
I don't know if my friend signed any NDA, so I have to be careful that Trudeau doesn't get out of jail and throw heat at him.
shane smith
He might fucking escape.
unidentified
That would be great.
joe rogan
Even if he told the story truthfully, though.
The story the Shawshank Redemption the truthful story is actually quite fascinating You know that the actual truthful story of him spending all that money on pool You're blowing my fucking brain acts because pool players are a fucking bunch of maniacs crazy guys out there scrambling and hustling and wearing fucking wearing overalls and pretending they just hopped off a farm just anybody I don't know Yeah, I mean that that's what half of those guys grew up doing, you know
Half of those guys, that's where they get their experience.
And so all of a sudden, they're wearing tuxedos and they're playing on TV. And it was one of those weird TV channels, too.
It was on one of those burgeoning...
shane smith
We have to make a movie of this fucker.
joe rogan
It's interesting stuff, man.
They were good events, too.
He really did get the best players in the world.
shane smith
It's also like a global news event that this fucker got.
joe rogan
Ten years, yeah.
shane smith
So, anyway.
We shouldn't talk about it anymore, but we should make this fucking movie.
joe rogan
Yeah, listen, man.
You should make the movie, and I'll tell you with a story.
I'll connect you to people.
I'm not making any movies, man.
I got no time for that.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
That story is kind of unique, though.
It's unique also that Pool is a tragic fucking game.
It's a tragically haunted game, and I'm not exactly sure why.
It seems like somewhere along the line, Pool fucks somebody over.
shane smith
First of all, it didn't fuck anyone over.
It's a barroom game that you bet your...
Pitcher money on.
And all of a sudden it was legitimate because of an awful, but amazing, Tom Cruise movie.
And then you're like, why isn't it snooker?
joe rogan
Well, it was way bigger before the Tom Cruise movie.
In the 1900s, the turn of the century, there was a thousand...
Snooker was snooker.
No, no, pool.
There was a thousand pool halls in New York City at the turn of the century.
Pool was huge.
And no, the term pool doesn't mean pocket billiards.
Pocket billiards is the game.
The term pool is gathering up all your money and betting it, pooling your money together and betting it on games.
So pool was, the name pool, in fact, it was inherently connected to this derelict bachelor lifestyle.
shane smith
I'm screwed now.
joe rogan
Why?
shane smith
Because I got you on the subject of Poole.
The only thing that you know, like, he knows more about MMA than anything, except for Poole.
joe rogan
Well, there's a lot of people who know a lot more about Poole than I do, but I know enough.
I know enough.
In 1962 is when it became really famous, though.
It was The Hustler.
shane smith
The Hustler, fantastic.
joe rogan
Jackie motherfucking Gleason, who could play his ass off.
Jackie could play really good, for real.
Paul Newman was making it.
shane smith
He played Minnesota Fats.
joe rogan
Mm-hmm.
shane smith
And then Paul Newman lost to him, but then beat him.
I was thinking about that, I can't be beat tonight.
Just that line, because I was on a roll, I was fucking giving people shit, whatever, and I was like, I can't be beat tonight.
And I was like, where's that from?
joe rogan
This is my table, man.
I own it.
That's Paul Newman.
Paul Newman couldn't play a lick.
shane smith
He was terrible.
joe rogan
But you could tell he couldn't really play.
It was offensive.
To a real pool player, you watch his goofy stroke and shots that he'd make, you're like, get out of here with that fucking combination bank shot.
That's nonsense.
Nobody really shoots that shot.
shane smith
So you're going to say that?
What about Tom Cruise?
joe rogan
He can play.
shane smith
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, Tom Cruise, he apprenticed with Mike Siegel.
Mike Siegel, who's a multiple-time world champion, and also was a lefty like Tom Cruise.
Mike Siegel, who's a friend of mine, is a brilliant pool player, literally one of the greatest of all time.
And he mentored Tom Cruise and taught him how to play.
shane smith
You just destroyed my brain.
joe rogan
Tom Cruise is a maniac.
shane smith
Vince.
joe rogan
He fucking took that dude and he taught him how to play, and he looks like a pool player.
He doesn't look like a great pool player, but There's a fluidity of motion to someone who's truly good at something.
shane smith
I have an open bridge.
So I'm going to tell you a true story.
When I was a young kid, there was a lot of pool playing in Montreal, like for money.
And I had a girlfriend who was a girl.
joe rogan
A girl and a friend.
shane smith
But she was a fantastic pool player.
But she was like, if you ever see anyone...
Who has an open bridge?
You've won.
That was the whole thing.
And so Paul Newman has an open bridge.
joe rogan
Well, that's not really correct.
There's a lot of really great players.
Rob Saez, one of the best in the world, plays almost exclusively with an open bridge.
Very rarely closes his bridge.
He just prefers to cite the cue that way.
Once you get really good, it doesn't matter.
There's certain shots where some guys prefer a closed bridge, but there's some great snooker players that never close their bridge.
All the guys that came over from snooker, snooker's all done with an open bridge.
shane smith
Sure.
joe rogan
And they have the best fundamentals out of almost any pool player.
shane smith
It's so far in the fucking pockets.
joe rogan
Tiny pockets, tiny balls.
It's a very precise game.
So the mechanics have to be absolutely perfect.
So snooker players have...
shane smith
Are you a better fighter or pool player?
joe rogan
At this point in my life, I suck at both at this point in my life.
Whatever.
unidentified
You suck at both.
shane smith
No, I suck at both.
You're like five times Taekwondo champion.
joe rogan
State championship, I won four years in a row.
shane smith
That's fucking big.
joe rogan
But that was 1988. 1989, 1990, 1991. It still exists in the world history.
shane smith
85 to 88. So you're one of the best...
Lovers?
Taekwondo, guys.
Are you better at pool or taekwondo?
Come on.
joe rogan
I was definitely better at taekwondo.
shane smith
Okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, I was way better.
At pool, I got marginal at best.
At pool, I'm a decent, what do you call it, beat player.
shane smith
Would you play for money?
joe rogan
Yeah, I'd play for money.
It's fun.
It's fun.
But I'm not good enough to beat anybody that's actually good.
Pool is something that you have to literally play eight hours a day.
shane smith
Can you win right off the rack?
joe rogan
What do you mean?
Can I run out?
Yeah, I can run out.
It's just not that consistent.
I can break and run out, but I might not do it the next game.
I might miss it.
You really need to put in the numbers, the hours, because what you're doing when you're playing, when you get really good, is you are so in tune with the amount of effort that it takes to knock your stick into this ball that you're literally counting the revolutions with feel that the ball's going to make.
It's like archery in a lot of ways, in that when you're actually executing, it requires absolute complete concentration.
And there's something that's very attractive to me about anything that requires absolute complete concentration, whether it's martial arts, whether it's pool, whether it's archery.
I think there's something deeper that's going on.
I think my brain is recognizing that it needs some intense stimulation.
shane smith
But that's what I like about the hustler and color of money is...
When they're going, there's a rhythm.
They're just popping.
They're just doing it.
And when they're not, they're like, oh, I'm hitting shots.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
But when he's going, he's like, I can't be beat, motherfucker.
joe rogan
Well, did you ever see there's a scene in The Hustler where he plays this guy, or in The Color of Money, where he plays this guy, Grady Stevens?
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
Remember that?
There's a shootout.
shane smith
It's only worse.
joe rogan
Well, that guy, it only gets worse, doesn't it?
That guy is one of the best pool players ever.
Especially money players.
That's Keith McCready.
He's a real, legit, big money player.
And he was a real, unique player because he started playing so young that he couldn't reach over the table.
So he started playing with his arm cocked out to the side.
And he stuck with that forever.
And he was just a world beater, this guy.
And that's what he used to do.
He used to walk into pool halls with a shirt that said, the world gets the eight.
You know what that means?
That means he spots you in a game of nine ball.
He spots you the eight ball.
That means if you get the eight ball in or the nine ball, he wins only with the nine ball.
So he's giving professional players an advantage.
He's like, that's how confident he is.
shane smith
Right.
joe rogan
And it was a real guy.
So when he's playing this Grady Stevens, to the people that know the game, it's very appropriate.
It's perfect.
That movie really represented a lot of the craziness that gambling and pool and being on the road is.
None of them ever get it right.
shane smith
You know what?
I hate all remakes, especially of classics.
And The Hustler is such a great fucking film.
It was an excellent follow-on of a guy who was just like sitting there in his own shit just going, I'm going to come back now.
It's awesome.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, Walter Tevis is the guy who wrote both of them.
And he wrote The Hustler and he also wrote The Color of Money.
But The Color of Money, the book, is a very different book.
It's a very different ending.
It follows Fast Eddie.
He goes around by himself.
There's no Vince.
There's no Tom Cruise character in the book.
They made the Tom Cruise character because they wanted to jazz it up.
It was a good move for Poole.
For Poole, it was a huge movie.
Fantastic.
But since then, video games came along and kicked pool in the dick.
unidentified
Was that book hard to follow?
shane smith
I can imagine a pool book being like that.
joe rogan
Well, that's just you, though, because you're not into pool.
brian redban
Yeah, but I mean, like, did they explain, like, the ball rolled down?
joe rogan
No, it's not really about pool.
See, that was the thing about The Hustler, too.
Did you ever see that movie, The Hustler?
shane smith
A long, long time.
joe rogan
It's really not about Poole.
What it's about is about a guy trying to prove that he's worth something in life and fucking up and making colossal mistakes along the way.
It's about two romantic losers.
unidentified
He meets a girl who actually takes care of him.
joe rogan
She's got a limp.
I mean, there's a lot of dark shit to this movie.
She was a drunk.
shane smith
He was a drunk.
joe rogan
He's a drunk, and Jackie Gleason is a drunk.
I mean, these gamblers and fucking murderers and all these people that they were interacting with, it was so much of it was just a character study And that was the fascinating thing about that movie.
The pool playing, like I said, was dog shit.
Paul Newman looked like he couldn't make a ball.
Jackie Gleason could play.
He could play better than all of them.
Better than Tom Cruise, better than Paul Newman.
Paul Newman, who was just a brilliant actor, just didn't put the time in.
You would have to put a lot of time in to look like a real pool player.
Because there's like a gentleness to the stroke of a real pool player.
shane smith
Jackie Gleason in that is classic.
joe rogan
Oh, Jackie Gleason really was an amazing cat.
shane smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, and an unabashed drinker, too.
Yes.
They would ask him, like, why he drinks.
He goes, I drink to get fucked up.
shane smith
You know what's weird about Jackie Gleason?
I was somewhere recently.
I was in Guyana.
I was in Guyana doing this garbage thing that we're doing.
And I watched this old French film.
It's a huge French film.
Like, successful, like, massive, like, cultural French film.
The star of the film...
Jackie Gleason.
unidentified
Wow.
shane smith
He doesn't say a word.
He plays a mute janitor who picks up a sort of French prostitute and takes care of her in her young kid.
And it's this French classic film with Jackie Gleason as the star who never says a fucking word.
And by the way, it's like Burt Lancaster did the same thing with The Leopard in Italy where it was a huge successful film where he spoke in Italian and he did it phonetically.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
They would just say it into his ear and he'd say the same thing.
unidentified
Wow.
But Jackie Gleason was just like- So he had an earpiece while he was acting?
shane smith
No, no, no.
They would just say like, Cento famiglia, vente une.
And he would, and then they'd say, Roll it.
They would just say it in his ear and he'd just do it phonetically.
joe rogan
Oh, okay, okay.
shane smith
There's no earpiece.
joe rogan
So he just repeated it.
shane smith
Yeah.
And then, but Jackie Gleason has this, like, huge French, like, you know, film, like, that's, like, French fucking, like, cultural, where he's the star of it as this janitor in a building, and he never says a word.
joe rogan
When I lived in New York, I had a friend who, one of his friends knew the guy, it was a fucking cockeyed connection, and But they were all in the music business, like rock and roll guys, like one of them was in this band.
He knew a dude who somehow or another knew someone who bought Jackie Gleason's old home.
And Jackie Gleason, this is the story.
Jackie Gleason is obviously third hand.
Could be total horseshit.
That's it.
The story was, and it's a fun story, that Jackie Gleason was drinking with Nixon.
And him and Nixon were buddies.
And they're talking football and throwing back some fucking Jack and Cokes.
And Nixon's like, you want to see a fucking UFO? They get in Air Force One and they fly to some military base where they've got a crashed flying saucer.
And Jackie Gleason from then on becomes a crazy UFO believer.
And Jackie Gleason has this backyard in upstate New York and he has a fake UFO designed and built in his driveway to replicate the thing that he saw.
He hires a bunch of people to try to recreate something.
He puts it together in his head, sort of like a crime sketch.
Like, you would try to reenact it.
shane smith
I want to live there.
joe rogan
That's the fun story.
How do we buy that house?
unidentified
Do you believe it?
shane smith
I don't know.
joe rogan
I would like to find my...
I did fuck up my computer.
It's not working.
Luckily, I got a backup.
shane smith
Joe, you're Spilly McSpillerson.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You're drunk.
brian redban
Why don't you get that chemical that you could just put on your computer?
joe rogan
That's probably a good idea.
shane smith
Alright, buddy.
joe rogan
But I don't know if Jackie Gleason really did.
Why don't you Google it?
Find out.
Did Jackie Gleason really into UFOs?
Was Jackie Gleason into UFOs?
Well, Joe Rogan once said...
I spread my own fucking Wikipedia information.
shane smith
I like that story a lot.
joe rogan
I'll make up a story, not even realize I made it up, put it out there, and then I'll find it on Wikipedia and I'll use it as a reference to prove when I tell the story again.
Trip to the alien morgue.
Ooh, you got it.
Wow, so this is a real rumor.
unidentified
To the moon, Alice.
There was a time when you could say that phrase.
joe rogan
Scroll that down.
unidentified
Stop.
joe rogan
Go back.
unidentified
Collaborate.
Listen.
joe rogan
Stop right there.
You're fucking drunk as shit, dude.
There was another size Jenkins, extremely serious, armchair UFO researcher, and prided himself on a huge collection of UFO-related books, which numbered into the thousands.
See, I call bullshit.
You know why?
I doubt there's thousands of books written on UFOs.
shane smith
Especially back then.
joe rogan
Put that back up.
What more could you say?
Like, oh, you know, and then he saw a light, too.
As soon as the new...
Title came out.
Even in Europe or the UK, Jackie had a copy.
Hmm.
Well, I don't know if it's true, but that was the story that this guy told me about the guy's house.
shane smith
I like the story.
joe rogan
It's a dope story.
shane smith
I like the story.
joe rogan
And if that's true, if Jackie Leason really was some sort of a crazy UFO fanatic, and that's the root of it.
shane smith
I like it even more.
joe rogan
Imagine if it's fucking true.
shane smith
Oh, it's all true.
What a beautiful thing it would be if they really did have like a hangar 18. You know what I want when we're old and we're sitting on the cove drinking our drink, looking at the water, just me and you, gray, old silverbacks, and someone's going to go, you know what?
Fucking Jackie Gleason went to Area 51 and saw that shit.
joe rogan
I wonder.
shane smith
What's going to happen?
joe rogan
Yeah, I wonder.
I wonder.
shane smith
It will happen.
joe rogan
I wonder if they really do have something.
I mean, that would be...
I would wish one person who was legitimately intelligent, who was dying, would spill the beans.
shane smith
I wish.
joe rogan
Every dude that spills the beans, you're like, man, I don't know.
You're a freak.
You fucking weirdo.
It just...
I'm not...
shane smith
My one thing is how impossible would it be to keep a secret?
It would be too impossible.
unidentified
You know one person would say something.
joe rogan
I don't agree with that because they kept a secret when they were making the Manhattan Project.
shane smith
But that was a different era.
One thing I will say is maybe those movies and TV shows and leaks and everyone...
Because we're all like, oh yeah, Area 51, of course, it's the aliens.
Like, maybe that's...
Maybe that's part of it.
joe rogan
Well, look, we know that secrets can be kept.
Secrets totally can be kept.
Because we didn't find out about the Gulf of Tonkin until way, way late.
There were some people involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
When did it become mainstream news?
30 years?
40 years?
shane smith
Secrets can be kept.
But nowadays...
It's pretty different.
joe rogan
If secrets could be kept though, wouldn't the most important secret be we found aliens?
That would be like one of the biggest secrets you would ever want to keep.
The last thing you want is these motherfuckers just freaking out because there's aliens.
shane smith
I like the movies though where it's just a given.
They're like, yeah, well we just got the spaceships from Area 51. Yeah.
Done.
joe rogan
How many movies are that, though?
shane smith
A lot.
joe rogan
Most movies, when they try to depict what it would be like if we were attacked, it's fucking terrible.
shane smith
I like the fact that we started off with saving democracy.
joe rogan
Well, you got drunk along the way, and so it shifted to Alien.
It's standard.
Bigfoot's next, bitch.
When are you going looking for him?
Come on, you and Dean Cain.
Fucking get up.
He's got that show on Spike.
shane smith
I'll do it.
unidentified
Has a girl ever squirted on you before?
shane smith
Are you reading my brain?
unidentified
Are you part of the NSA? Is this what's happening?
No.
joe rogan
Brian's drunk.
shane smith
The NSA has given you all my information.
unidentified
It happened recently.
shane smith
Alright.
I love you guys.
joe rogan
Wow.
Brian.
shane smith
I love you, champs.
joe rogan
Brian, next time, one less drink.
Seriously.
Just one less.
Keep it together.
shane smith
All right, my diamonds.
joe rogan
What is next for, can you remember right now, if we shake your memory, what's next for your show?
What do you got going on that we should know about?
shane smith
Tomorrow night is Greenland, the world is sinking, and modern-day slavery.
David Cho, who comes on this show, is doing a thing on scrapping, which our metal is going to build China.
joe rogan
This is what we talked about last time you were here, I believe.
shane smith
Yeah, he's up on the air.
joe rogan
I believe we talked about it last time.
shane smith
He's up on air next week.
joe rogan
They're taking metal from old factories in Detroit and using them to build new factories in China.
I mean, but one place where it's really an issue is Detroit.
shane smith
Yeah, it's gangs, like street gangs.
How we heard about it was...
Like Crips and Bloods and shit.
We're not going to sell crack anymore because there's not enough money.
We're going to go steal like copper from old Packard plants in Detroit.
But like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, all the Rust Belt.
And it was a pretty good story until we, you know, figured out who was buying it, which is China.
It's our largest export.
$11 billion a year.
joe rogan
The largest export is scrap?
shane smith
From America to China, yes.
joe rogan
What's number two?
shane smith
I have no idea.
Oranges.
unidentified
Porn.
shane smith
No, I don't know.
But number one, by a long way, is scrap.
joe rogan
It's one of those dark things they don't like to talk about.
shane smith
And so, Cho finds it out and then hangs out with these Chinese buyers.
And it's pretty fucking insane.
It's really good.
We talked about genetic passports.
Anyway, I don't know.
We have a lot of shit coming up.
joe rogan
How many episodes do you guys do there a year?
shane smith
12. Wow.
We're probably going to do 24, actually, now.
joe rogan
Now, does HBO give you any directorial notes?
Nothing.
Zero.
That's how they do it, right?
shane smith
Yeah.
They give you money and you go make it.
I've been trying to get you to come do a segment with me for a long time.
joe rogan
Yeah, but you always want to take me to somewhere that's dangerous and terrible.
shane smith
We've got to go find that.
joe rogan
Let's go to Malibu and look for bad plastic surgery.
Okay.
You find a story.
shane smith
I want to go do a story with you.
joe rogan
Okay, what do you want to do?
shane smith
Force him.
joe rogan
He can't do shit.
shane smith
No, no.
joe rogan
What would you really want to do?
shane smith
I was actually just looking at him, but thinking of the nation.
joe rogan
What kind of a show would you want to do?
shane smith
I don't know if that means we're done on time.
joe rogan
No, that's just Brian.
He's drunk.
unidentified
I thought you would enjoy the fucking North Pole story.
joe rogan
You're out of your mind.
Yeah, you got me wrong.
shane smith
You don't want to go get the six-foot chip, which, by the way, you brought up.
joe rogan
The six-foot what?
shane smith
Chimp.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm scared of that chimp.
Because the chimp's in the middle of the Congo.
We have a friend.
So where do you want to go?
I want to go.
shane smith
Cuba.
We'll go interview the Castro.
joe rogan
You go to Cuba and then they check your underwear drawer for the rest of your life every time you check into a hotel.
shane smith
Correct.
joe rogan
You've got real problems if you go to Cuba, man.
They look deep up your asshole.
The last thing you do is go to Cuba and talk about how you're going to Cuba.
unidentified
Where will you come with me?
joe rogan
I'll go to Miami with you.
That's about as close as I get to fucking Cuba.
Yeah, I'm not a good guy for your show, dude.
I'm telling you.
I'm a good guy for you to come on and talk about your show.
I can help you there.
shane smith
Someday, I'm going to convince you to come with me.
joe rogan
I'm trying to do less and less things.
That's my goal.
My goal is to do less shit as I get older.
And just more shit where I can just do whatever I want.
shane smith
You know what I get more than anything from this show is one time when I got wasted, as opposed to now, I was like, you know what?
We're just trying to get to the fucking cove.
I must get...
Five tweets a day of like, I'm trying to get to my cove.
I'm trying to get to my cove.
And by the way, I just came back from a long trip doing a shoot and I spent three days on a boat in the middle of a cove and I'm like, I'm trying to get to my cove.
I'm trying to get to my cove.
I just kept repeating that because I'm just trying to get down there, get to the cove and fucking chill the fuck out.
joe rogan
Well, I think everybody ultimately has this ideal image in their head of some golden retirement or some point in time where everything's going to be still.
I don't think anything's ever still.
I agree.
shane smith
But you've got to try to get there.
joe rogan
You've got to find a balance in the ride itself.
That's what you've got to find.
You can't wait for the rest stops.
These rest stops are bullshit.
It's not happening.
shane smith
But you have more energy and power in your spine.
I'm an old man.
I'm like, you know what?
I'm trying to get to the cove.
joe rogan
I know you are.
And I'm not anti-relaxation.
What I'm saying is that I think if you really did do nothing, if you really sat somewhere and did nothing, you would only like it for a few days.
shane smith
You're right.
joe rogan
You're a guy who likes to investigate things and stimulate your mind, and you like to be a part of something that's bigger than you.
There's a reason why the universe chose you for this role.
I mean, that sounds like total hippie bullshit.
shane smith
No, no, no.
But I do want to get to the cove.
I'm sure you do.
joe rogan
Well, it's because you probably are a little bit imbalanced.
You work so much.
It's probably the cove becomes like this ultimate magnet because you're fucking redlining shit all day long.
Trying to sleep with the knowledge of Liberia's general buck naked running around when he'd killed how many fucking kids and eaten their hearts.
You know, you're fucking hitting the gas all day long, man.
You need to go down to Peru, get some ayahuasca, cleanse your soul, reboot your system.
You've probably seen way too much shit, man.
shane smith
I'm in.
joe rogan
That's why you're down with this cove idea.
shane smith
You want this cove so bad.
I'm going to build the cove and you're going to come.
joe rogan
Do you ever consider that, that everybody has this sort of crazy role in this weird machine that is life, this weird complex algorithm that's the human race?
shane smith
Yes.
joe rogan
And do you ever wonder why you're in the position that you're in?
shane smith
No, but I think that everybody, you're right, I think that everybody has a sort of role to play in the grand algorithm of life.
My position, not really because, I don't know about you, but I'm not any different than I was five years ago when no one listened to me.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
And...
You know, money is the modern-day report card, and I have now a lot of money, but I'm actually giving all that away.
I'm putting it in trust.
Because you're like, well, I didn't actually do it for money.
I don't actually give a shit about money.
And I didn't actually do it for fame.
Because I don't know about you, but when people come up to you in the street and say, hey dude, fucking awesome.
You're like, I don't know you, I don't know anybody, I don't know whatever.
But what I will say is, you sit there at some point and go, this shit, I spent 40 years turning the other way and saying, I don't give a fuck, or I'm going to just get drunk, or I'm going to drink a beer, or I'm going to go get laid, or I'm going to just fucking do what I do.
Because getting through the day is hard.
And at a certain point, you get a little bit older.
You have kids.
For me, it was kids.
And you go, yeah, I can't do that anymore.
I got to sit there and say, this is bullshit.
You know what they're fucking doing over there in Iraq?
It's bullshit.
What they're doing in Afghanistan is bullshit.
What they're doing here fucking in the Gulf of Mexico with Correction is bullshit.
And so now I'm like, you know what?
I waited for somebody else to fucking say this shit, and nobody's saying it.
And I'm not the best person, and I'll tell you right now, I'm not the best person to be saying this shit, but we have to start saying shit, otherwise we're fucked.
joe rogan
But you are the best person.
shane smith
I'm not.
joe rogan
But you're not, because you're...
Look, no one's the best person, but you are about as good an example as you're going to get, because you bridge the gap.
You're a regular human who lived a regular life, who got to a point in your life where something mattered to you much more than it mattered before, when you had children.
And then you took a stand.
A lot of people would go the other way.
A lot of people, when there's the coward point of view, is you get to a point where you have children, and then you just want to shut up.
You just want to be quiet.
You want to, don't make a lot of noise.
shane smith
Well, you know how it is.
joe rogan
You have kids?
Yeah.
shane smith
All of a sudden you're like, look, you could have had the best life ever.
Just keep doing what you're doing.
I could have done the same.
When you have kids, you're like, what the fuck, dude?
That's when the environment becomes important because you're like, okay, I'm going to die.
It's going to be okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a certain selfishness that a single person will...
For sure.
It's not even selfishness, really.
It's just thinking about yourself is a natural thing.
The idea that we made being selfish...
It doesn't mean you don't think about other people as well.
So you should be self-aware.
shane smith
But having kids is selfish because I'm selfish because I want my kids to fucking be able to swim in a lake or go outside.
joe rogan
But is that selfish?
I mean, and is the ultimate goal.
shane smith
Oh, because they're my kids.
joe rogan
But isn't the ultimate goal to, like, see how much you love your kids and say, man, if the whole world could love each other the way I love my kids, we would have no fucking problems.
Any problem we would have, we would work out.
But isn't the reality that people don't even do anything when they have no strife?
When they have no thing they're battling against?
They don't really fucking strengthen their resolve.
They don't really get their shit together.
It seems like we almost need resistance in order to get anything done.
We almost need someone to oppose us in order to strengthen ourselves to a position where we move forward.
shane smith
I agree.
And I also think that If left to our own devices, you're like, it goes back to that zero-sum game like we were talking earlier about saying what we've gotten to is this realpolitik zero-sum game.
There isn't a zero-sum game when you have kids.
There isn't just there's a winner and a loser and I kill you and then you are dead.
When you have kids, everything becomes like, well, I won, but guess what?
They don't have any water to drink.
So, I don't know, I shifted.
My whole brain shifted when I had kids, because I was a different guy.
And then all of a sudden I had kids and I was like, actually, motherfucker, I already knew that that was bullshit, what you were doing.
I knew fucking, you know, $78,000 hammers were bullshit, but I used to go, ha ha ha, $78 fucking hammer.
And now I'm like, no, fuck you.
$78,000 hammers, that's bullshit.
I don't want to fucking pay my taxes for that shit.
And I just got angry.
Because all the bad shit, all the stuff that you roll your eyes, all the shit you say, you know, this is fucking bullshit, this is stupid, we shouldn't be doing this, I got serious.
Because then you're like, okay, it's fine.
Guess what?
Climate change is undeniable.
The fucking oceans are rising.
You want to have a debate?
You want to have a fucking war?
You want to have a fucking...
The fact that it's even a debate is a fucking joke.
And guess what?
We don't have the time anymore because our kids are fucked.
So guess what?
I can't fuck around anymore, snorkel all night, fucking wear my fancy jeans and get wasted.
I gotta go out there and fight these motherfuckers because otherwise my kids don't have a fucking future.
And by the way, not my kids.
Everyone's kids.
joe rogan
Did you see that NASA report when they looked at climate change and a bunch of different factors and they were talking about the future of the human race?
They made this extrapolation.
And they're like, we're doomed.
shane smith
If you talk to most scientists, and by the way, real scientists, not these dudes in the play of Exxon, it's like a given.
This is why I get pissed off.
It's because I'm like, you know who's done a bad job?
It's the scientific community at messaging the fact that, okay, if there's a fucking loophole, if there's like, well, it's this or this within 6%, and then everybody else goes, well, 6% is this and this, you're like, hold on a second.
We are 60 years ahead of our worst case projection.
The worst case projection of the IPCC 10 years ago.
We're already 60 years ahead.
60 years ahead.
And I was talking to the global scientific community and I'm like, what the fuck?
Why doesn't anyone know about this but you guys?
They're like, well, it's a given.
It's not a given with anyone I know.
joe rogan
Most people have no idea.
Most people have no idea.
They just go to work and they hear bad things about the economy, but then they hear 150,000 new jobs were created last quarter.
shane smith
But you know as well as I do what's happening in California.
joe rogan
This is what it says.
NASA Back Study says human civilization is headed for irreversible collapse.
shane smith
Yes.
joe rogan
According to the new NASA... I don't know what that means by NASA Back Study.
It sounds very fancy.
But I'm not exactly sure.
shane smith
But you understand NASA is like conservative.
Like there's scientists out there that are crazy for sure.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
Like whenever I talk to scientists, I try to get the most conservative motherfuckers because you know they're going to come after you.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
But the thing is, is what's happening now is we are en route for a global cataclysmic environmental catastrophe.
Right.
And everyone agrees to that.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
Everyone.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
But we're like, why aren't we trying to stop it?
joe rogan
Do you think there's any way that something can be done along the way that we never saw coming that could fix the whole thing?
shane smith
Yes.
joe rogan
What do you think that could possibly be?
shane smith
So, this is probably bullshit, but I was at the Google Zeitgeist conference.
There was this kid.
Did I tell you this story before?
He's 13 years old.
He builds a reactor in his...
Did I tell you this guy?
joe rogan
I believe so, but it's a great story.
Keep going.
shane smith
Okay.
So he blew me away.
He built a reactor when he was 13. 17, he came up with a way to find radioactive waste.
Anyway, so he came up with this...
Which is true, that 90% of uranium isotopes, you know, 235, etc., which we can't dispose of.
The majority of their energy is still left in there, over 90%.
So he's like, okay, we've come up with these reactors where we can take the old energy rods that we can't even dispose of, deplete them, and then that will fuel the Earth's energy needs for the next 10,000 years.
Because all of those energy rods from the Soviet Union, from us, uranium-235, we can all do it.
Now, maybe not true, He's 23 years old.
joe rogan
Right.
shane smith
I don't know.
But if that's even like a.0001% true, that he can take all the shit that we can't even dispose of and power the world with it, fuck yeah.
That's technology.
unidentified
Right.
shane smith
Now, I don't know if that's true, but I'm hoping for some sort of technological solutions.
joe rogan
Well, I'm hoping along the way he doesn't create something even more fucked up while he's trying to burn that uranium.
shane smith
Which might happen.
joe rogan
Which might happen.
shane smith
I don't know.
But what I'm hoping is for some tech solution that comes along to say...
Because you know what the other alternative is?
joe rogan
We're fucked.
shane smith
We're fucked.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think the tech people are our brightest hope.
They seem to be self-policing.
I mean, look at the big companies like Google.
They actually...
They spend a lot of money on their employees.
They kind of had global ethics.
At least they try.
Yeah, you don't think of an evil company at all.
shane smith
At least they try.
joe rogan
You hear that there's some issues with certain censorship in certain countries and things along those lines.
But when you connect Google, you connect them to the idea of a giant corporation that's committed to innovation.
shane smith
They're not bad.
joe rogan
They don't seem bad.
shane smith
They're not Exxon.
joe rogan
But...
That seems to be something that you find more of in the tech community.
And I think it's because you're dealing with some really hyper-intelligent human beings.
And along with that hyper-intelligence and that connection to each other that they have because of the internet, I think you see people that have a better moral company.
shane smith
Well, they're also trying to solve global problems by using technology.
Now, I'm not good at technology, but...
joe rogan
You're awesome at it, dude.
You have Vice.com.
How dare you?
shane smith
If I had...
The ability to figure out the world's energy problems by depleting old uranium rods?
joe rogan
Yeah.
shane smith
Fuck yeah.
joe rogan
It seems like a good move.
shane smith
Seems like a good move.
joe rogan
Dude, we run out of shit.
shane smith
I love you.
joe rogan
We never run out of shit to talk about.
We just run out of time.
unidentified
I love you.
joe rogan
I love you too, buddy.
unidentified
I'm drunk.
joe rogan
It's fun.
You're hammered.
shane smith
I have to go to bed.
joe rogan
You should probably go to bed.
shane smith
I love you.
Joe Rogan, Death Squad, Red Band.
joe rogan
ShaneSmithVice.com ShaneSmith30 on Twitter.
Send him some love.
shane smith
Send me love on ShaneSmith30 on Twitter.
joe rogan
Go to Vice.com.
shane smith
I always forget that.
joe rogan
If you've never seen anything, start with the story on Liberia.
What's the Liberia one called?
shane smith
I don't know.
joe rogan
And then go with Vice Travels about that dude who lives up in the middle of fucking nowhere in the Yukon and lives by himself.
Heimo's Arctic Adventure.
I like the North Korea one.
That's a great one too.
unidentified
North Korea.
joe rogan
I found out about Vice from Heimo.
What a great story.
You guys have awesome contact.
shane smith
Joe Rogan.
joe rogan
I love you, buddy.
unidentified
Did you have sex with a North Korean when you were there?
joe rogan
Best content online.
Vice.com.
Thanks to our sponsor, Ting.
Go to rogan.ting.com.
Save $25 off of any of their cell phone devices.
Thanks also to onnit.com.
Go to O-N-N-I-T. Use the code word ROGAN and save 10% off any and all supplements.
We'll see you guys next week.
Much love.
Have a good weekend.
Big kiss.
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