Whitney Cummings and Joe Rogan explore how childhood trauma—her "bad upbringing" and his untreated broken nose—fuels adrenaline addiction and societal dysfunction, from comedy’s validation-seeking roots to veterans’ 22 daily suicides. She contrasts U.S. healthcare with Vietnam’s untreated cleft palate cases, while Rogan ties military interventions (like Afghanistan’s lithium mining) to profit-driven motives. Their conversation spans evolutionary quirks—sperm allergies, hypermobility injuries—to coyotes’ survival tactics and mountain lions’ predatory threats, revealing how human behavior mirrors nature’s extremes. Cummings’ ambivalence toward fame underscores deeper struggles with abandonment and control, leaving Rogan teasing UFC star Misha Tate next. [Automatically generated summary]
Yeah, so there's this charity called Operation Smile.
And I usually work in animal charities because people, I think, are usually the problem.
And helping people just seems to make more proliferate.
And in terms of charity stuff, I think that just why I started wanting to get more involved is, if I'm going to be perfectly honest, I started not liking the person that I was.
I started realizing I was the person who was like...
God, traffic is like crazy today.
And like, oh my God, Starbucks is out of soy milk?
I think it's like, you know, doing like working with animals and like, you know, going to sort of parts of town that I wouldn't normally go to, to rescue animals and dogs.
You start going like, oh, there's a real world outside this Truman show that we live in of the fake sets and the fake this and the fake people and the fake, you know, makeup and the fake clothes and everything.
I was just like, oh, like that.
I live in a funhouse.
You know, sometimes when you're in this business.
I mean, stand-up keeps me, you know, a real person.
I think it's writing fake scripts about fake people and fake lots and fake houses and, you know, fake edit bays.
And I just was, like, really concerned about, you know, and knowing you know way more than I do, but...
What I do know about neurology is that our brains acclimate to whatever environment we're in.
And I was like, if I'm in this environment all the time, my brain is just going to start acclimating accordingly.
I find it in little ways.
If I have a small purse, I only need a small purse.
If I wear a big purse, all of a sudden I've filled it up with shit.
It's like you kind of acclimate to what you have.
And so I was like, yeah, I don't like the things that come out of my mouth.
I don't like my inner monologue.
I don't like the fact that I get annoyed when my Uber's not on fucking time.
So I kind of wanted to get some perspective and really get out there and not just give money for my own selfish guilt shit.
Like, oh, I'm just going to give money.
And so I went to Vietnam for two weeks and did this...
I went to Tokyo for a couple days before then, which was actually really interesting.
I went and got to watch the surgeries.
It was also cool because, I don't know if you ever went through this, but I think I got sick of myself.
Like I just kind of was like, I'm sick of my voice.
I'm sick of my making jokes.
I'm sick of being funny.
I'm sick of like, and there's something about being around people that don't speak English that kind of strips you of your like persona.
You know, of your, all the things that you just, because some, I mean, I just, I don't want to go through life like a sleepwalking zombie who's just like doing a bad impression of myself every day.
Right.
Because it's so easy to do.
And I find, I felt like life was a little bit groundhog day.
But get up, work out, jokes, jokes, jokes, jokes, bits, bits, bits, you know.
Insecure, insecure, you know.
And I got a little bit sick of that rhythm.
And I was like, there's got to be something more.
Deeper.
And, you know, we're seekers and I was like thinking about my next special and the next thing I'm going to write.
And I was like, I don't want to just...
And I felt like my brain was...
It had this...
There was like patterns and rhythms that I was like, I keep going to the same place for, you know, creatively.
And I was like, I want to go to a different place entirely.
So I got to like...
Challenge my brain and throw some new shit at it.
And being around people that don't speak English is really...
And first of all, have no idea who you are, which is another experience when you're used to people knowing who you are and having expectations of you and thinking you're going to be funny or...
You know, when you're known, all of a sudden you have the power, whether you want it or not, in a room.
You know, you walk into a room and you have the power.
Whether you're interested in having it or not, you just do, right?
Joe Rogan walks in, everyone's like, oh, Joe Rogan, see everyone be cool and everyone's trying to impress you.
Everybody changes, right?
So you never get to see people's authentic self because you inherently affect them with your presence.
You know, there's some, I can't remember the term in science where it's impossible to measure the thing because the measuring tool affects the amount.
So you never know how people really are because your presence actually affects them.
But if they've never heard of you, which in Vietnam, no one ever heard of me.
Not a lot of fans over there.
And so you're just like...
You know, you can't rely on any of that shit that we've become used to relying on.
And talking to people that don't speak English, all of a sudden you're like, oh, I can't use all my go-to strategies, charm, manipulation, jokes.
Like, no one cares.
And so it was really pretty cool.
Vietnam in general, we'll talk about.
I'm sure you have your thoughts on Asia.
Mine, I think, are...
Kind of probably going to be polarizing and get me in trouble.
I think it's a fucking mess over there.
But there's also I think that when, you know, I mean, you have kids, you have more of a Insight into what's real and what's not.
I also noticed that when both of my parents had strokes, which was awful obviously, but I liked the person I became after it happened.
I was like, all of a sudden when something tragic happens to you, things become clear, your priorities become clear.
If someone asks you to go to lunch that you don't want to hang out with, you say no.
You're not like, sure, I guess I'll...
Like, you're just...
Everything becomes very black and white.
Do I want to do this?
Do I not?
Is this an effective use of my time?
Is this not?
So I was like, oh, if I just expose myself to a little bit more...
Not tragedy, but maybe, you know, and stop hanging out with a bunch of people with fake problems and hang out and surround myself with real problems, then maybe I'll stop thinking I have a bunch of problems I don't really have.
And I was going to do ayahuasca last year, but I had been on antidepressants.
And yeah, and I only went on them.
It's such a bummer.
And I actually want to talk about this in my next special because they were given to me because I was having trouble sleeping.
I had insomnia, which I recently learned about how insomnia sort of came about, and it's actually really important.
And I wish that there were doctors out there who studied shit like that.
Like, insomnia, usually people are insomniacs.
Fucking thousands of years ago, people in the tribes, My tribal life, before street lights and alarm systems, there were people who were responsible for staying up while everybody else slept.
They were called the night watchers, basically.
And night watchers would breed with night watchers.
But it's also it's a mental loop thing Like if you go to bed and you have a mental loop like I gotta get this I gotta fucking get my shit together I really have to do this.
I really gotta start this diet.
I really gotta start.
Yeah journal There's a book that I need to write.
I know I need to write it I need to fucking start should I get out of bed right now and start writing it and then that loop Will fuck with you and keep you up especially someone like you who's so hyper ambitious You always have like 15 different irons in the fire and you've got a fucking fireplace bellows and you're stoking that And you're on the phone at the same time.
I had the same thing just happen with a manager who hadn't heard from me because I went to Vietnam and I got back and I was just like, I recently learned that when someone calls or texts, you don't have to respond.
Like, I think we get in this obligatory sort of thing if we have to respond to everything.
And it was actually interesting going to Japan because that culture is so...
I'm using this word probably inappropriately, but for lack of a better word, codependent.
It's so like having to take care of everybody's feelings.
I was talking to this guy on a plane.
There's so much respect for other people's feelings and status.
I went on the plane on the way over.
I sat next to this super interesting guy who creates tools for animators.
I know, like the stuff that makes cartoons.
I don't even have the vernacular to explain it.
But he said it's really hard to do focus groups in Japan.
You know, focus groups is when you go around and say, is this working?
Is this not working?
Because no one will respond until an elder responds and everyone just agrees with the elder.
You're not allowed to disagree with someone older than you.
There was an article about a lot of the, I think it was a couple of Malaysian airline flights that went down.
They say it was pilot error because the co-pilot was afraid to disagree with the pilot.
The pilot was wrong, but because of the inherent respect for your elders thing, he couldn't say, like, dude, we're going to crash if you fucking do that.
And the plane went down.
So it's so interesting.
And I came back and I was like, oh, God, at least I'm not.
And I mean...
I think I was a little bit saddened by this culture of shame over there.
We have it in different ways, but if you disgrace your family, you just jump off a building.
So many people were jumping in front of trains.
That the only way they could get them to stop jumping in front of trains when they shamed their family was saying, if people jump in front of trains, we're gonna bill your family for the cleanup.
So that got them to stop, because they were like, oh, I don't want my family to have to get this bill, because that will disgrace them even more.
So they had to use their shame against them as a way to get them to stop committing suicide.
I mean, in China, Apple had to put nets around the building.
Well, that's a real issue in and unto itself, because Apple's paying these people, and they're living in this building, and they're paying them dog shit.
I mean, they don't have...
These factories over in China because it's an awesome place to build phones.
They have these factories over there because they could pay people virtually nothing and have them work all day.
What terrifies me is that that's probably an ancient way of thinking and behaving.
So like we look at today and we look at this world that we live in today and obviously we have a lot of issues with equality and we have a lot of issues with racism.
I like that there's all these different cultures because I think it's fascinating that there's different parts of the world where people have figured out a different way to behave and they follow this different pattern.
And all the young people follow into this groove, give or take.
And I think that's amazing.
I mean, when you look at different parts of the world and you experience their culture or you look at how they're behaving and how they dress and how they speak and how they live their lives and their traditions, it is absolutely fascinating, these patterns of repeatable behavior, repeating patterns that exist all over the world and that they're so different.
They're different in Thailand than they are in Germany.
So this is, they have thousands of years of history that we don't have.
And, but it's like, how can you hold on to the really cool traditions and patterns and then release the more backwards ones and evolve and grow, you know?
It's like, you know, it's just wild.
I mean, in Vietnam, it's like, everyone's like, Vietnam is so beautiful.
You're going to love it.
And I was like, yeah, it's definitely beautiful, but I see poverty and air that no one can breathe.
Everyone's wearing masks because they can't inhale.
There's no emissions regulations.
I was like, oh, right, white trust fund kids are like, Vietnam's beautiful.
And they say that because they can come back to Korea.
A lot of it's our fault of what we did in the 70s, but it was like...
It was...
It gave me a lot of anxiety, you know, because it was like, I mean, it was just like the hospitals.
I mean, we were in a hospital and, you know, we needed four of this machine that puts babies to sleep.
Pediatric anesthesia is very different than regular anesthesia.
And it's essentially bringing people to the brink of death and then bringing them back.
It's like incredibly fascinating job.
And they had one of the machines that they needed.
The pediatric anesthesiologist was like, we need four.
And they're like, we don't have them.
We just don't have them in this country.
We just can't do surgery on babies.
It's just not in our purview.
It's not in our, you know, so back to the, you know, the kids come in with cleft palates and cleft lips, which the baby is essentially, they have trouble breastfeeding.
It's cleft palates just, you know, just kind of this opening here and a separation.
What causes that?
Malnutrition.
In the womb?
Yep.
Exposure to genetics.
Exposure to pollution.
I'm sure all that napalm we dropped in the 70s didn't really help.
But yeah.
And in America, it still happens, but it's handled right away.
It's handled.
It comes out three months later.
It's fixed.
No big deal.
Over there, sometimes it's never fixed.
I mean, you see adults.
you see men that are 50 come in with giant, giant cleft lips and palates.
And they've, and it's even worse in third world countries, especially African countries, because there's such a stigma attached to it.
Not only is it, you know, in our brains to go like, he's different than me and ostracize or stigmatize someone, but, um, a lot of more religious countries think you're the devil or you're, you know, you can't get a job.
You're, you And I think, and this is going to sound super corny, but I guess for me I connected so much to, maybe it's because we're comedians, I was like, look, It's one thing to grow up in a third world country.
It's another thing to deal with poverty.
But if you can't smile, like the basic, the only real medicine we have, you know, everybody has universal medicine of like laughing and smiling.
It's how we connect to people.
I mean, that's fucked.
Like that was frustrating.
And it's so easy to fix.
That's the other thing that's like frustrating is it takes like 30 minutes.
Because I'm obsessed with this, because I'm already, like, I'm not close to having a child.
I froze my eggs.
So if anyone wants to send some sperm, Jamie...
Now that I'm learning about your...
That's why I'm asking, where are you from?
Okay, where are you from?
Slovenia?
India?
I'm really just trying to ascertain everyone's DNA and how strong it is.
But is that...
I just read a book called The Continuum Concept, which is like a parenting thing about babies.
They can be held by anyone.
It doesn't have to be their mom necessarily, but babies should always just be being held.
Men and women kind of weren't supposed to live together.
We're supposed to kind of fuck, and then you go off, and then all the women live together and help raise all the kids.
So there was something interesting in that because in the first three years, a child's ability to believe in their own faculties, essentially, to trust other people and to feel like they are heard and seen depends on how much eye contact and physical touch they get.
Yeah, because basically touching is going like, I see you, you're here.
And the less touch and eye contact they get, the more invisible they feel and the more dangerous they feel the world is for them.
Yeah, and there's this great, you'll love this, John Bowlby's theory of attachment, like when babies crawl, it's the same as...
Venobo Apes is they'll crawl a foot and then they'll look back and see if dad's still looking at me.
He is.
I'm going to crawl another foot.
He's still there, right?
Babies turn around and check in.
And then if on the fourth foot I turn around and dad is looking at his phone, I go, that's as far as I can go.
And then it's dangerous after four feet.
That's as far as I'll go where he'll still be there for me.
So then we also, our sort of world and comfort zone is designed based on when your child loses your eye contact.
So I've just been sort of learning about that, especially in lieu of like cell phones being the new alcoholism for kids.
I feel like parents just on their phone while their kids are- On the playground.
For a while, I was trying to give free tickets to people who couldn't afford them.
So I'd always say my comps, like I have 10 comps in like the middle of nowhere.
This actually happened in La Jolla.
And I would tweet out like, hey, so if you can't afford to come to the show, send me an email, tell me why and I'll get you tickets.
And I would check it myself.
You know, Whitney, some email.
And one time this guy emails me, just a testament to exactly, you know, give an inch, take a mile.
And he emails me and gives me this long story.
He's a, you know, a vet.
You know, he's in a wheelchair.
He can't drive down.
He's going to have to get a cab and he can't afford to come.
And, you know, the health insurance, the vet health insurance is a joke and all this whole thing.
And I was like, such a no brainer.
I was like, yep, you got it.
Two tickets.
Can't wait.
And literally he started the email with like, This probably isn't even you, so Whitney's assistant, like, you know, no problem, and I'm such a big fan, and da-da-da.
I write back, two tickets, all set.
I don't hear back from him at all.
I'm not checking again.
Right before the show, I'm looking through my emails.
It's 7.45, the show's at 8. I get an email back from him.
It went from total awe and respect and adulation, you're probably not even going to check this, and I'm sure this will never happen, to I became his assistant.
All the security guards are open-mikers who are like 21. Bless their hearts.
They're stoned out of their fucking minds.
I mean, it's just so unsafe.
And there's a lot of tension down there.
I don't know if it's because there's the navies down there or there's a lot of military.
Is that it?
There's a lot of money.
There's a lot of entitlement.
It's a beautiful area.
But for some reason, La Jolla is always...
I don't know.
There's always a fight.
There's always a fucking girl who's like, fuck you!
Like, a couple breaks up.
I'm like, what the fuck is happening?
I always have to kick people out of there.
And so this guy's in the front row, and Kevin Christie is opening for me.
And Kevin's very incisive.
Like, he's very...
Like, he's this comic, you know him.
He's, like, kind of quiet, and doesn't speak a lot.
But when he does, it's just exactly...
It's just the truth.
Like, he's just so real like that.
And he said something once, because he was on the road with me for a while, and, like...
35-40 minutes into all my sets at the time a guy would just snap and start yelling at me and he's like I think what happens is like they're like loving it funny funny female comedian funny it's funny but like 40 minutes in you just become their wife or the girl that wouldn't fuck them or their mother or something and they just see you it's like all of a sudden you just become a woman who's yelling at them and they're not allowed to talk back One guy just will snap.
It always happens.
And I had one guy storm the stage at me once and be like, who the fuck do you think you are?
I do think there is this thing, the same way women sometimes meet a man and they're like, I can fix him, when he's probably not broken and is happy and fine.
Or like, I'll whip him.
I hear my friends say it all the time.
And I'm like, no, no, he's fine.
He's happy.
You don't need to fix him.
He doesn't think he's broken.
And I think sometimes guys with me are like, I'll tame her.
Like, I'll break her.
You know, like, I'll...
And there was this comedian who sent me a message on, I guess it was when I was on Facebook, or it wasn't MySpace, it was one of those, who I would always see around.
And I'm pretty elusive.
Like, you and I, we haven't got to hang at the comedy store that much, but I'm in and I'm out.
Less so now.
I would hang now because cool people are there now.
But when you were gone, it was kind of...
It's toxic in there and intense and not fun.
Now it's a little more fun.
And so I would just get in, do my set, and leave.
Because I was trying to do a couple sets a night.
I would just be like, hey, what's up?
And we wouldn't flirt, but it would just be like, hey.
And the kind of person who wants to give you tags.
And I get this message that was like rage, like a rage, rage email that was like, you know, you don't know what your, like, you know, the basic gist of it, I don't remember how it started, but it ended in like, you don't know what makes you cum.
They find a way where they can sort of express themselves.
It's almost like, see, I told you!
I showed the world!
They never come to a neutral point.
They never get over their childhood where they go, okay, well, what am I doing?
Is there a benefit to what I'm doing here?
Should I just stop if I'm healthy now?
Should I just stop what I'm doing?
Or should I use what I'm doing and just enjoy it and have a good time and then realize that I probably got here because of an unhealthy obsession or because of a bad childhood or whatever, but now that I'm kind of moving past that, maybe I could use this position to just have some fun.
Exactly what you're saying like you just made it so clear to me what I was not being clear about in the beginning of like the You know if you bring unfunny people on the road you're really funny Comparatively and so all of a sudden you've created this little world for yourself where you become this king of the idiots Yes,
but if you were to step outside that world You're all of a sudden at the bottom of the food chain like you create a world where at the top of the food chain Which is like why it was important to me to Go to other countries, be around people that have no idea who I am, that I don't pay, that don't think I'm funny, that can't even understand what I'm saying.
It's just very humbling.
And then you're like, oh, who am I without all this stuff?
You know, without achievements and money and car or a car, whatever it is, you know, because I'm afraid that I might do that by accident.
What you're talking about is navigating all these landmines that success can set up for you, which are better landmines than failure, but still landmines.
And the landmines of fame are particularly intoxicating because when someone has a bunch of fans that say, oh my god, Mike Fuckface is here.
Yay!
Oh my god, it's Mike!
And they go run up to you.
I can't believe you're so amazing!
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Do you want to take a picture with me?
I'm cool with that.
It becomes this thing where you get accustomed to that.
And if Mike Fuckface is around Tony McDickface, and Tony McDickface is more famous, like Tony McDickface has a movie out now, then Mike Fuckface gets really mad.
No, I literally found myself, because it's also, if you do achieve anything, it doesn't matter because you're just comparing yourself to someone with more achievements.
So I'm recreating this feeling of failure at every level of success and recreating this unhappiness at every level where I have no real problems.
These facilities, they're creating these state-of-the-art facilities to deal with people with traumatic brain injuries.
And so they showed us all these guys and it's unbelievably heartbreaking.
You see these people with their wives and their children and their families and they're trying to rehabilitate them and they're going through all these steps.
But what was more disheartening than anything was to realize that all this stuff is privately funded because the United States government just...
They don't allocate enough money to treatment of these troops when they get home.
They just don't.
So we have to raise all this money for these people.
So while we're doing this, they wanted us to talk about it at the beginning of it.
And I have to measure myself because it's on television and what I want to say is this is fucking crazy that we have to do a fight to raise...
We're going to give people brain damage so that we can raise money for brain damage.
You know, it's like the amount of brain damage you get from MMA is so minuscule compared to an IED. Yeah.
It's also, why the fuck do we not set money aside for this?
Find out what every congressman gets.
Find out what every senator gets.
Chop a chunk of that shit out and send it to the Intrepid Center.
I mean, there's got to be a way that there's got to be some fucking red tape and bureaucracy that you can cut and you could send some of that money to help take care of these people that you're forcing to go overseas and fight these battles.
And also, from the little I know about it, and then the drone guys is a real nightmare because there's all this, you know, normally when you are in combat and you come back, you do a, is it called a neutralization period?
Like you go to Germany for like five days and they chill you out before you go back to your family and kids after you've just been in combat.
But these drone guys, not only is the technology so advanced that they're seeing all these women and children, they're not in the fog of war, right?
They don't just see, like, threat, threat, threat.
Because when you are getting shot at, a kid might as well be a guy with a gun.
So these guys are seeing these people getting shot super close up.
They're seeing their own guys get shot.
But like they're seeing it and then they go upstairs to their wife and kids and there's just no period for their brains to acclimate to it.
And it's there's a serious atrophy of drone pilots and they're just raise the wages of it so that it'll attract more because so few people want to do it.
Well, from what I've talked to with guys that were in the SEALs or Rangers, special operatives guys, is that those guys have way less issues than, SEALs and Rangers.
Also, to your point just now, I never thought, of course I hadn't thought about it, I'm not smart enough to, but I have never known that humans are not designed to be at the top of the food chain.
We're only at the top of the food chain because we have weapons.
And the reason we have weapons is because we have really large brains.
Which was actually not helpful at all.
It's really inefficient and uneconomical for energy because I guess our brains burn like 25 or 30% of our calories or something.
So chimpanzees and apes had smaller brains.
They were able to climb trees and avoid threats.
Like a big brain is like a disaster, except that we invented tools.
So we sort of, not based on merit, we superficially, once we invented tools, jumped to the top of the food chain, but we don't deserve to be there because without weapons, A lot of species would kill us.
Well, you know, when you think about what made a human a human, it's really fascinating.
Because it becomes like, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
Like, what were we like when we were Australopithecus?
You know, they have these depictions of us and what we looked like all hairy and with fucking sloped foreheads and shit.
We were pretty close to people, but not really people.
And when you really look at the fossil record, what they understand at least, we're only talking about this kind of person, like you and I, for a couple hundred thousand years.
So I'm really afraid that if I admit this, although I'm going to lose my foot fetish demo, but I had this pain in my foot and I think we're probably a little bit similar, you much more so, but I have a pretty high tolerance for pain.
I didn't go to doctors growing up.
It's just like, suck it up.
That's what I caught on fire.
I went to school.
That's basically how my family was.
You just suck it up and you man up.
So I had this pain in my foot, or my big toe and then my third toe, once every two weeks, real bad.
And it would be just a stabbing, awful pain, but I just was like, oh, that's my foot.
Like once every two weeks, my foot has like a spasm and it lasts for like, I don't know, like two minutes and then I get through it.
And I was in a writer's room one day and my feet were up on the table and then I was like, had the pain came and I was like, and I'm like screaming.
And two minutes later, I'm like, anyway, so act three, what should we?
And everyone was like, what the fuck was that?
I was like, oh, I have this thing.
I have this foot spasm that happens once every two weeks.
It's just like my foot.
And everyone was like, no, that's not a thing.
That's not a...
You have to go to a podiatrist.
First time I've ever went to a podiatrist.
And he gave me an extra.
And he's like, oh, you have an extra foot.
I'm sorry.
You have an extra foot.
You have an extra bone in your foot between your second and third toe.
And he's like, it's basically just remnants of being a Neanderthal.
But these Chumani people, Rinello was there, and he was walking through the woods with these people, and he was like, this is incredible, because they've never had shoes.
In Boulder, one of the things that I found, and I was only in Boulder for a few months, but one of the things that I found when I was there was people drive way more polite.
They're way nicer.
They let people in and they don't cut people off as much.
So when you have a small community, first of all, there's less diffusion of responsibility because you and that person are probably going to see each other again.
Got it.
So if I give someone the finger on the highway on the 405, what are the odds I'm going to meet that dude again?
Like there was these people that were pushing their car the other day and they were on the side of the road and I was thinking, fuck, should I get out of the car and help them push the car?
And I think I watched them do it.
I'm like, yeah, they're okay.
They got it.
It's up on the hill.
It's up on the curb.
They're going to be okay.
But I was thinking, if this was a small town, for sure I'd pull over.
And I was thinking that at that moment, because of the time that I spent living in Boulder, I was amazed at how polite people were.
And also, the less people in the town, like when I was in this town in the mountains, they would wave when you would go by.
People would lift their hand up when you would drive by.
You know, as you were driving this way and that person was driving that way, you lift your hand up and you wave to them because there's not that many of you.
See, in LA, I think there's so fucking many people that we lose the idea of value of our fellow humans because our fellow humans become a burden.
I mean, it's not as much of a car culture, but there's a weird—I wonder what part of its cultural and whether cars play it, because it's really—everything is Times Square.
Tokyo is, like, a big Times Square.
But there's, like, this concept of space, and it's not like— When I go to New York, it's like, fuck you, fuck you, excuse me, you know?
And it's like you're just like in a rat race.
Whereas in Tokyo, there was this weird harmonic sort of, it's almost like choreographed.
There's less of a like, I don't know what that, less aggression.
Yeah, maybe it is that cultural thing we were talking about earlier, but it's less of like, maybe it's because we live in a capitalist society where it's all like we're competing with everybody.
And it's weird because it makes you feel like you're going to be robbed because everyone's like, how are you?
Can I help you?
It's like the service is like, you know, as you said, it's all about honor and dignity and taking pride in your work, which I'm all about fucking shortcuts.
This is a real samurai sword from the 1500s, like legitimately.
And if you look at that blade, that blade was made by some guy who took steel, pounded it, folded it over, pounded it again, folded it over, pounded it again.
I mean a weak person who stabs you in the wrong spot with a small knife is probably not going to get it in.
But somebody who stabs you with that fucking thing, the odds of that not going through your ribs, pretty small.
If you're a strong person, most likely you're going to penetrate their entire body.
But it's also mirrored in archery, like in bow hunting.
That's like one of the most important aspects of bow hunting is to have a heavy arrow, That has a sharp blade with a powerful bow, so it goes through bone.
So it goes through the ribs.
If it doesn't go through the ribs, if it stops at the ribs, then you just have a wounded animal.
My nails, my hair, it's like, in that same book, it talks about how bone marrow, human brain growth, exponentially went up when humans started eating the bone marrow of animals.
It's very controversial, but the idea is that human beings come out of the womb with so much body fat, and we're so different than chimpanzees in that regard.
Like, a chimpanzee baby is like a chimpanzee adult.
And the idea is that we were in water and that we developed and we possibly evolved around water to the point where babies, like if you throw a chimpanzee baby in the water, they fucking drown.
They just, they breathe water and they drown.
You throw a human baby in the water, they instinctively hold their breath.
But one of the things you realize, it's a very natural thing to hold your breath.
Yeah, it's instinctive.
Yeah, it's totally instinctive.
And so the aquatic ape theory theorizes that at one point in our evolution, we were primarily water bound, and that maybe we went into the water to get away from predators, or that maybe we figured out a way to develop in the water as lower hominids.
And our fingers, when our fingers get all wet and wrinkly, there was this interesting study about how fingers, after being in water for two hours, could pick up more marbles than dry hands, which kind of means that we must have needed to be in the water a lot.
I just, I'm so, I'm such a klutzy, like, I'm afraid I'm just like, and just like, slice his fucking head just in half.
Scientists think they have the answer why the skin on human fingers and toes shrivels up like an old prude when we soak in the bath.
Laboratory tests confirmed the theory that wrinkly fingers improve our grip on wet or submerged objects, working to channel away the water like a rain treads in car tires.
And I think, you know, those people, a lot of them are very fit.
But I think that like a lot of things when you take certain aspects of physical activity like Steve Maxwell who's a good friend of mine and is a strength conditioning coach.
He said it best that physical fitness like lifting weights and engaging in exercise activities He doesn't believe is a sport in unto itself.
He He thinks it's good at getting you strong for other sports.
Now when you turn into a sport, like who can do the most clean in presses?
Who can do the most, you know, whatever, deadlifts in an hour?
He doesn't think that that's healthy.
Because, and this is, he's far more qualified than I am to answer this, so I'm using his rationale.
He thinks that powerlifting and bodybuilding movement, or powerlifting and weightlifting movements, like deadlifts or like cleans and presses, you shouldn't do them for like sets of 30 and 40 and 50 and having these competitions to see who can do the most.
He's like, it's just not beneficial.
It's not, he's of the school of thought that you should like strength, Lifting exercises or strength producing exercises should be done with low repetitions and, you know, you should take breaks in between them and it's about building the physical strength of your body.
It's not about performing them in a contest.
Now the CrossFit people, I think if I could speak for them, I think they think of it as a healthy lifestyle and that this competition is It makes them work harder, and they all work out together.
And I definitely see their point.
And if you follow CrossFit people, and it's one of the things about CrossFit people that they say, like, if someone's a CrossFit and they're a vegan, what do they talk about first?
It was like a chalkboard that was in front of a coffee shop.
Yeah.
Well, it's one of those things when you get excited about it.
Like vegans, the most proselytizing vegans when you talk to them.
Like one of the things I've found, because a lot of vegans get really upset with me because I eat meat.
But one of the things that I've found with a lot of them is that I'll go to their Instagram page after they shit on me and I say, I just found a bacon fucking sandwich that's four months old.
And they think that if you look at the horizon, like there's videos, there's like a video that shows like the 200 reasons why they can prove that the earth is flat.
Look, there's countless examples of people creating these behavior patterns that other folks are forced to follow.
And these ideologies, you see the way people think.
And I think, to a certain extent, there's a lot of what people call the regressive left.
Like when people get mad at a white guy for wearing dreadlocks and they say this is cultural appropriation, you're taking black people's culture.
Like that sort of same thing is akin to religious people that want to force women to dress a certain way or want to force gay people to act a certain way.
There's parts of certain ideologies that literally exist because someone is trying to exert control over other people and they think they can because it's a rule.
Right, right, right.
It's a bad example that I used about the dreadlocks because it's so fucking stupid.
It's so stupid, but it's a new way that people can get upset at certain groups.
And the left, especially a lot of people get upset at that term, the regressive left, but it's a good term.
And the reason why it's a good term is because, first of all, they're attacking white gay men now for having privileges.
I've read this whole article about white gay privilege as opposed to black men and people of color who are gay, who don't get to experience the same freedom that white gay people do that live in white neighborhoods and have, you know, adopt white babies.
I think that sort of thinking, I don't want to call it religion, because I think it's a pattern, and patterns in these ideologies, I think it's problematic when you label it, like, this is because of God, this is...
But it's these patterns that people force their mind into.
Well, some people force themselves into these patterns where everything is a fucking conspiracy.
And this is how you get to this, like, delusional state of mind that would allow you to think that the earth is flat.
Or that, you know, the government's run by reptilians.
And if you think something and someone proves you wrong, you will be angry and you will defend that original idea as if it's a part of you that someone's trying to steal.
Did you see the latest, this thing that I tweeted yesterday, that they've given approval to people to use stem cells to try to regenerate dead people's brains?
The thing I like about it, that attracted me to it, there's no endorsement deals, nothing's being promoted, it's just people that want to fucking fight each other.
So I think the people at CrossFit, no, I mean, I'm not negative about CrossFit, but the kind of people who have to get that energy out, I worry where that energy would go if they weren't getting it out in competing or fighting or boxing or whatever.
Kickboxing to me is, like, I feel like even boxing is more, as long as you're sparring with people who you know are not going to hit you hard, at least you've got a little bit more control of this situation.
It was actually something that needed to happen because I pushed myself way too hard.
I had no respect for my body.
I just routinely abused it in so many ways.
The people I surrounded myself with, the things I ate, the way that I lived, I didn't sleep, and it was like I needed to be proven the fragility of my body.
Well, that's one of the best things about kettlebell training, in my opinion, is that they're so awkward that it forces you to understand how to use your body as a unit.
There's a lot of people that do bodybuilding-type workouts and the isolation exercises, although they make your muscles bigger, they don't allow your body to synchronize and use itself as one individual unit.
Yeah, maybe Dr. Audrey PhD, but I just mean like some benign friend of your girl or whatever.
And then, because it's also, that's something that I love about Like, if you're fixing something, I want you to only be focusing on that.
Guys don't multitask in the same way, you know?
I just think that calling guys dumb, it's just as glorifying, like, a neurotic, multitasking, you know, overworked or glorification of busy type that's the new thing.
Guys that are just, like, simple, you know, I just...
I know, I'm like, I know a lot of alive people who need that, but, um, yeah, that is, uh, I mean, I imagine it's because it doesn't have a brain and blood.
It doesn't have to be warm.
Like, embryos don't have to be warm.
Humans, I guess, have to get a certain body temperature.
But even a cell, to me, I mean, if it was an individual cell, like if the egg had been fertilized and it created one cell, the idea that you could freeze that fucking cell before it divides and becomes a full-on human being, the idea that you could freeze that one cell and then regenerate it, that's crazy.
Honestly, I don't know how people do like it's so I guess that's why I tried to read so much shit because I'm like I don't understand how I can't even understand what these people are doing and I'm not even doing it.
I mean, which is so really fascinating because if you brought this concept to someone 200 years ago or even a hundred years ago, they think you're out of your fucking mind.
Well, also, there might have been some severe desperation in her life that made her take this position as being a surrogate mother in the first place.
And the money that they gave her might have alleviated a lot of the problems that were causing her to be so desperate that she wanted to have a surrogate baby.
I remember reading it, and while I was reading it, I was like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
I mean, I don't want to live like that, but it makes a lot of sense.
Well, it's something about how if you want to stay in love with someone long term, because if you have too many orgasms, you produce dopamine, and then after—because essentially we're designed to procreate, like you said— And then the female starts producing oxytocin, but the male starts being less interested and the brain is like, okay, now you have to go procreate with someone else because our brain doesn't know that there's six billion people on the planet and we don't need to fucking procreate with a lot of different moms.
So it's something about if you want to be in a relationship for a long time.
So I think, and I mean that in the best way possible, but you're very smart and you're very ambitious and you're interested in a lot of different things and you have to have someone who's similar in some ways.
Well, there's a lot of benefits to your type of behavior.
Obviously, that's why you're so successful.
There's a lot of benefits to the way you think.
But the negative, the side aspect of it, where I would say it's going to be problematic is someone has to, like for companionship, someone has to be able to keep up with you or understand you or accept you.
And the way you think and the way you approach life is extremely different.
It's not the way most people do it, and not the way most women do it, for sure.
And if men are used to this certain type of patterns that some women follow, and then you have this pattern, they're going to be like, I just want to grow with complaints about Starbucks.
Yeah, so they put on a fucking song and dance for the first couple weeks of the relationship until, like, a buddy of mine had this girl that he was dating for a while, and then his car broke down, And he needed her to help him.
Like his tire blew out.
And I forgot the whole story.
But she helped him in some sort of a way.
Like she came and got him or something like that.
And then she stayed over the house.
And then the next day she texted him like five fucking times in a row.
And he didn't text her back.
And then she...
Left this crazy message about now she's going to need therapy and she has trust issues.
And so he was like, what the fuck?
He was working all day.
He was like, I was working all day.
I had one day where I tried to put my phone aside and concentrate on my work and you're just blowing up my fucking phone and I didn't text you back and now you need therapy.
There's certain people that you enter into any sort of an intimate relationship with them, and you're taking on the burden of all this psychological fucking...
Which is, I think, exactly why all this self-aware shit, maybe it comes off super masturbatory and narcissistic, but I was like, I am done being crazy.
Well, it's also worse now, because it's like, if I text you and you don't text me back, and then I see that you posted on Instagram, there's this whole new fucking thing.
But I mean, there's this new thing of how I can see all the other things you're doing on your phone instantly, so I'm now all of a sudden like, well, you fucking responded to these tweets, you know, from fucking Rhonda, but you didn't text me back.
Do you think that like with every day and every hour and every time you obsess and all these things and all these different paths that you go down, like every day gets a little better?
I don't know what magical fucking addict thinking I'm doing, but I literally will just look down at my phone and I rear-ended this guy and I was like, I'm so sorry.
Totally my fault.
And I was like, that's going to be my rock bottom.
And that brings it all back to you going to Vietnam and you experiencing another possibility that you or I, we're both really lucky they were born in America.
Probably, but it makes me think of the one, because I was thinking, this isn't a bit I do, obviously, but I just remember after being in Vietnam, I was like, we should just walk around all the time and be like, that's awesome!
I went for a run with this motherfucker who, back to your point about flat feet, he's like the marathon guy who's like, you're supposed to run barefooted.
So he's barefoot run guy.
And this was the first non-barefoot run he's done because it was in Vietnam and there's just like, you shouldn't have Yeah, just nightmares.
Just dead animals.
Just dysentery.
Just babies.
By the way, also just kids everywhere.
I'm like, do you have a parent?
Like, I mean, there's just like three-year-old toddlers just running businesses.
Excuse me.
Do you work here?
I'll send you some of the photos.
You'll see a kid just in a store alone and you're like, what is happening?
It's so fucking dangerous.
And everyone's in masks.
They can't breathe the oxygen there.
And we went for a run and I came back and I felt like I had smoked four packs of cigarettes.
And I came back to LA and even just doing that was like a little mini miracle.
There's a story that was written about Mark Zuckerberg, who was in China, and he went for a run during one of the worst days, one of the worst pollution days, and he's out there jogging around, and you look at the air behind him, it's like you're jogging into an exhaust pipe.
I think that I also, like, once you see that kind of pollution, it's like, you know, because there's so many charities and there's so many fucking problems, you can't try to solve all of them or be, you know, such a small...
But I was like, oh, this is the first time that I was like...
I need to like only buy, you know, there's like carbon neutral companies and companies that, you know, put less emissions out and stuff.
And you're like, yeah, I should start voting with things I buy.
And, you know, it's the first time I got this app that tells you what companies don't emit as much pollution, you know, stuff like that.
And I'm like, I never really thought about that before until I was breathing in like viscous toxic air.
A lot of the batteries, they're getting the minerals from places that are like...
There's a real issue with where they're getting these minerals to make these batteries.
That's one of the big things about Afghanistan.
One of the big things about Afghanistan, they found trillions of dollars worth of lithium in the mountains.
And they believe it's one of the reasons why we're there in the first place.
Really?
There's all sorts of natural resources that the Soviets wanted out of Afghanistan.
The natural gas pipeline, it's one of the main reasons why they believe that some of the neocons were very interested in protecting and invading Afghanistan.
It's not just the poppy business, which is huge.
Look, it's a giant fucking business.
And the idea that, well, we wouldn't have anything to do with that because it's not illegal, or because it's illegal, well, that's not true.
Because if you look at what happened in Vietnam, Vietnam, a big part of the reason why people were in Vietnam, why some people supported being in Vietnam, It's because they were profiting off controlling the heroin trade.
That's a fact.
There was a fucking trillion dollars made during the Vietnam War from heroin sales and where it was made and why and who got the money and where the corruption took place and where the money was being handed out.
That's all open to speculation and research and maybe someone will eventually have it all figured out one day.
But the reality is there was a massive amount of fucking heroin that was being moved.
And I think that the amount of minerals that are in these fucking car batteries is something we really need to look at, because I was reading this whole piece about conflict minerals and how non-green electric cars actually are.
If you stop and look at it, like, yeah, as far as, like, our environment, yes.
For sure.
They definitely pollute our environment less.
But if we look at the actual repercussions of creating these things, like how are these minerals being sourced?
How are they making these batteries?
What's the adverse effects of creating these batteries?
It's not clean and free.
So people run around saying, I drive my electric car and I only eat organic and so I'm free of any...
But, yeah, but when I was in, yeah, in Vietnam, the stuff that there was, like, jellyfish and squid, it was a lot of, I guess, what's available in that region is probably...
Well, bugs to me are really a fascinating thing because one of the things that we found out when we were doing Fear Factor is that allergies, like if you have an allergy to certain shellfish, you also have an allergy to roaches.
That guy, he was super depressed and was like suicidal, I guess, and was in his midlife and was like wondering what's the purpose of life and got fascinated by the concept of rewilding.
So he got fascinated by this reintroduction of predators, keystone predators, into areas like Yellowstone, which they definitely have their purpose, and they're definitely important to the health of the environment.
They kill the weaker of the thing.
The problem with things like wolves is they can get overpopulated as well, and someone needs to manage them, and that's where things get weird.
So wildlife biologists have established these guidelines.
There's a guy named Dan Flores who has this amazing paper that he wrote called Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy.
And really groundbreaking paper on bisons and livestock and wild animals, rather, that live in North America or lived in North America.
But he wrote this new book on coyotes.
Coyotes and just what the plains used to be like.
This George guy, this Montabayat guy, however you say his name is, the Wolves Change River guys.
He wants to reintroduce megafauna to Europe, like lions, because he's saying that at one point in time lions and hyenas used to live in Europe and that we could use these large segments of unused land and let these animals loose and reintroduce them to this area.
So he doesn't want to just take an animal that was extirpated because of human intervention.
Wolves were taken out of the...
Wolves were poisoned.
This is what they used to do.
They used to take a carcass, they would shoot a buffalo, and while the animal was still barely alive, They would inject strychnine into its arteries.
That way the poison would get through all of the meat.
Then they would take a wolf that they shot and they would rub its scent all over this carcass so that the wolves knew that other wolves had been there so it was safe.
And my two encounters, one time they were drinking out of my pool, and I came outside, and I literally opened the door, and they just looked at me like, what?
And then I was like, oh god, I gotta call animal control.
I'm gonna have this fucking dead, broken coyote on the other side.
And I go on the other side, it's just gone.
It just flew off.
And, oh, they were explaining to me, I was like, well, look, if there's a coyote, I'm going to hear them, you know, killing my dog, I'll be able to hear it.
You know, I'll just leave the door.
But he goes, oh, no, no, no, you don't understand.
Coyotes work.
Coyotes are so cunning.
The way that they kill a larger animal is they befriend it first.
So it'll play with your dog for 45 minutes and then the other five will descend around it.
So it ingratiates.
It knows I need to ingratiate myself with you first and then kill you.
And they tire them out.
So this happens a lot in Runyon Canyon.
People's dogs, they'll just see them chasing a coyote and then the coyotes will just run and run and run until the dog is tired and then everyone will descend.
And they're hungry and they're desperate and they do not give a fuck.
A friend of mine up Doheny was walking his dog, like a small dog, and saw a coyote face to face and picked up his dog and had to flex on it to get it to run away.
But the balance that this George Montabiot, I think that's how you say his name, like his take on Wolves' journey, like the people love that video because he's English and he's got a beautiful voice and it's a fascinating story and it's interesting.
It's important to have keystone predators because they keep the populations of these game animals, like wild undulates, they keep them healthy because they control them.
But when wolves get too populated, they get crazy and they do what they call surplus killing.
They killed 19 elk recently in Wyoming and they didn't eat any of them.
They just went on this butchering run and just killed.
If they come over the top of a hill and they see a herd of elk, have you ever seen a herd of elk?
They're amazing.
Sometimes they're huge.
Sometimes a herd of elk could be 100, 200 strong, and it's amazing.
You'll come over a hill.
I've only seen maybe 30 of them together, but it's quite a sight.
The first time I saw one, we were hunting them in BC and we saw this female and it was like that scene in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum sees the dinosaur for the first time.
He talks about how when they eat dogs, they're not really eating dogs because they want to eat them for like a meal as much as they want to eliminate predators.
Like competing predators, especially cats, because most of what they eat, like coyotes eat a lot of bugs, they eat a lot of grasshoppers, they eat a lot of rats, they eat a lot of rodents, rabbits, but the cats compete with them, because cats are a Fucking murderers.
So is it better to go and get a steak from an animal that lived in captivity, or is it better to shoot an animal as it goes to get water?
Well, it's not as good as going to the woods.
Like, you go into the woods, you go shoot a wild elk, that elk might not even know what a fucking person is and hopefully doesn't even see you coming and you shoot it and kill it.
That's like the ultimate goal is to instantaneously end this wild existence that if you didn't kill it, it would be killed by bears or wolves or something else.
That's the idea.
Or they freeze to death or they kill each other.
There's a lot of killing each other.
These antlers, they're not like for digging for fruit.
Because you have these people that are living over there that they have to risk their lives to try to poach these animals for meat, for food, and then there's the fucking, the horrible trade, like rhino horns and things along those lines.
I have had friends that have gone over to Africa, and one of the things that they say is, like my friend Justin Wren, he goes to the Congo, he stays there for months at a time, and he's building wells over there.
He's an amazing guy.
He's the guy who just got malaria for the second time.
It's like, you don't even understand what poverty is until you see how these people live, these poor people.
So, I don't blame them for poaching.
I mean, if it's between selling a rhino horn and feeding your child...
Moment where you realize the problem is not as simple as why do people want to go over there and hunt?
The problem is this breakdown of what we call civilization in this area where you have people that are impossibly poor and they're surrounded by animals and the only value around them is those animals.
So it's either you're involved in the tourism business that has people coming to look at these animals or you just have to fucking kill them for what they have.
There was a beautiful article that was written by this woman who lived in Zimbabwe right after the Cecil the Lion thing.
And it said, in Zimbabwe, we don't cry for lions.
And it was explaining how they terrorized her village, how they killed her loved ones, and how people were, when they would go out into the bush, there would be a very real concern that they would be killed by a lion.
And it's not that the lion is bad.
It's just that that's what lions fucking do.
That's what they fucking do.
And you can't have too many of them.
You can't.
You can't have too many of them.
And the only way to control their population is human beings.
If a lion, since I have no ability to even understand how anxious it would make me to be in a room with a lion, a lion is probably faster than me picking up a gun and shooting it.
In the Navy SEALs, one of their training is, you know, they put a bag over their head and take it off and disorient them so that they can quickly focus their eyes.
Because when something's moving around, it's just like, it's a muscle to be able to...
Like they'll have competitions and during the competition, they're talking shit to each other.
And the idea of it is you're just trying to disorient a guy and it helps them like guys welcome it because it actually helps them concentrate on blocking everything out because the moment when you're actually having to shoot an animal.
So, Oh, yeah.
Your heart is fucking pounding.
You can't get any air in.
You freak out.
So it's nothing like that for someone to talk shit, but at least it's better than you being calm.
Like, Delia came offstage at the Improv the other night, and he was getting offstage, and I was walking in the room, and he came up, he gave me a hug, and he goes, dude, worst fucking crowd ever.
I did a road gig once at a restaurant in Massachusetts where the intercom that the restaurant used to call people's tables was the same system as the microphone that I used on stage.
So I'd be in the middle of talking about something.
There was literally a fucking fountain between you and a bridge and like a koi garden, like a little Chinese garden, and then a bunch of people and then they always had MTV jams on television.
There were televisions on every wall and people were just watching MTV jams and then you were just yelling.
I remember one time Duncan Trussell got on there and we couldn't even, we didn't even know people could hear us and I was like, I don't think anyone could even, like, did we, are we bombing or can they just hear us?
And then Duncan also got on stage and started basically yelling the most offensive things imaginable, and nobody responded, and we realized, like, oh, they just can't hear us.