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June 21, 2016 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:07:55
Joe Rogan Experience #812 - Russell Brand & Jim Breuer
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jim breuer
23:42
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joe rogan
01:20:07
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russel brand
01:19:21
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andy stumpf
00:02
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Speaker Time Text
russel brand
I know you guys are banging to your coffee.
joe rogan
And we're live.
You're jumping into swamps and English royalties homes.
You've got to be very careful.
russel brand
This is how I like to be introduced, Joe.
joe rogan
You've got to be very careful when you get into those sort of predicaments.
Who knows what's in there?
russel brand
There's a beheading around every corner once you mess with the royal family's private swamps.
joe rogan
Yeah, especially if you're doing it for some sort of a psychedelic purposes.
You're trying to elevate yourself, like freezing yourself in their cold, swampy waters, freeing yourself.
russel brand
If you're embarking on a journey of personal shamanism on royal territory, yeah, your life's in your hands.
Your life could shrivel up as quickly as my sex organs did in that particular predicament.
joe rogan
It's definitely an added element.
unidentified
Yeah, it is.
joe rogan
You have to consider it.
russel brand
It's not a place to go for pride.
But as soon as I, like, yeah, as soon as I was sort of submerged in it, that's what, like, you know, because even though it is just, in this case, just an example of me, a man simply jumping in a cold lake, and I do have a tendency to over-poeticise the mundane experiences of my everyday life, but...
Why not?
What else are we going to do while we're here?
It did make me think we are living on narrow lines, narrow train tracks of existence, never to have heard myself go, an animal noise.
I'm capable of that.
It's almost like an anti-orgasm, like a negative orgasm.
joe rogan
Repeat, if you would, what you said before you got on camera, how it represents the subconscious and that going into the murky depths.
russel brand
I thought you'd like that, mate.
joe rogan
Yeah.
russel brand
What it is, is in fairy stories, myths and religion, personally, if you're not into him already, I reckon you'd well love, is a man, an American scholar called Joseph Campbell, who is a cultural mythologist, and he studied various religions and folk tales and found corollaries and comparisons and consistencies and sort of...
It's said that where there are consistencies, there's truth.
If there's some Icelandic myth and it's telling basically the same story as some African story or some Native American story or some daft Celtic folk tale, why are human beings dislocated all over the world, coming up with the same stories, coming up with the same experiences?
Well, often in these stories, the forest is used as the unconscious.
Not only...
The forest represents the unconscious.
Often in mythology, when a character has to go into the woods, that means you've got to go into yourself.
You're going to have to go into new territory.
And also, under the water.
Similarly, also represents unconsciousness.
And what's interesting about it all, Joe, is not only ancient mythologies and old stories, but also personal dreams.
If you yourself have a dream, like this is where the work of Joseph Campbell, in its sex with a work of Carl Jung, that good.
He noticed that people in their personal myths, like Joseph Campbell said, dreams are private myths, myths are public dreams.
In people's personal dreams, they come up with images, archetypes and stories that can also be found in fairy tales.
You know, just someone asleep goes, oh, I was just walking and I went into the woods and I met this old woman in the woods and she told me that everything was going to be okay and then she put up a hood and when she took her hood down again, it was my mother's face.
It's like people are inventing their own mythology.
Because, of course, all culture is created by consciousness.
So on some level, it's in us.
It's in us individually.
joe rogan
Yeah, Joseph Campbell's work is amazing.
And when you do look at all the different stories and how they coincide and how many similarities they share, it is really interesting to see what are people trying to accomplish with these archetypes?
Like what are they trying to sort out?
Because it seems like that has to be some things.
Lessons passed down to children, lessons passed down to other people so they can learn things without having to experience the woods themselves.
But then there's also some sort of archetypes that they're sort of defining the reality around them in a very similar way all over the world.
russel brand
I suppose what I reckon, Joe, is the more diverse our culture...
It's weird, isn't it?
Because we're experiencing on one level globalisation and homogenisation, where culture through corporatism is coming uniform throughout the world, but also there are many, many, many disparate experiences.
But on some level, as human beings, If we're anatomically as similar as we are, perhaps it's safe to assume that we're psychologically comparably similar.
Like, you know, even though you and I are sort of different body types or whatever and look sort of at a glance kind of different, we're both ultimately got the same organs, we're running in pretty much the same way.
Or perhaps we have the same psychological palette.
So throughout the world, people are Everyone's having a very similar experience of being human, the anxiety of not being good enough, the fear of death, constantly looking for something in the outside world that's going to solve the problems, that's going to answer your questions.
In a lot of these ancient texts that I've mostly got at through Joseph Campbell or Hinduism for beginners, that's normally my entry point, I, like you, am an autodidact, self-taught person.
That's one of the things I like about your podcast.
You can hear, this is a person educating themselves and continuing to educate themselves Well, one of the things that I picked up in that is that in them very, very ancient texts, there are people that, the same way as in our time that's defined by science and technology, there were times where people defined themselves through meditation and experiences in consciousness.
Those people that wrote, say, the Upanishads, whoever the hell they were, these Rishis, these ancient Indian yogis that went into deep, deep meditative states and came back with mantras and truths.
Those people are as diligent and as fastidious as a scientist in a laboratory that comes back and goes, well, look, we've, you know, we've broke down, you know, Watson and Crick breaking down the DNA. They come back and go, this is what it is to be a human.
You are going to die.
You need to get, you need to come to terms with the relationship between your contrary self and your material self.
That's the, for me, that's the stuff like, that's the conversation that I'm into, and that's why whenever I find it, whether it come from Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung or even checking out this podcast, like a lot of the stuff, Hancock, Graham Hancock's into.
That always, it presses something deep in me.
That's what I'm always looking for, you know, Joe.
There are moments where you think, that shudder you get, ooh, there's truth in there, you know.
joe rogan
Yeah, well those paths that you're talking about, those paths that are carved in, that we sort of normalize all the experiences that we have so they look totally sane.
If you just stray off those paths and jump into that lake and freeze your dick off and get out and you just, why did I do that?
You broke your little chain, the little chain of programming that's going on in your brain.
You did something completely unusual.
And sometimes just little things like that, little deviations off of that path will take you into a completely different place.
russel brand
Are you still doing that kind of thing in your life now?
joe rogan
Yeah, sure.
All the time.
russel brand
Whether it's the cryo chambers or the isolation tanks or the experiences...
joe rogan
Are you into ayahuasca and DMT? I haven't done ayahuasca, but I've done a lot of DMT. The DMT is the more potent, shorter-lasting form, obviously.
russel brand
I've read accounts on it.
I've never done it.
I'm in recovery.
joe rogan
Allegedly things can be arranged if you're in recovery.
The problem with recovery is, you know, if you want to maintain complete and total sobriety, the only way to allegedly have that experience, and apparently it is possible, is through Kundalini.
According to people I know that have done both, they've done DMT and they've also done Kundalini, it's virtually the same thing.
russel brand
Oh my god, that's pretty amazing.
joe rogan
You just have to be completely dedicated to the Kundalini practice and you have to go to a very specific state that's achievable once you have some mastery over the meditation and the meditation.
The yoga principles.
russel brand
I've done a fair bit of that Kundalini.
I've got to bang into it.
In fact, this tattoo on my forefinger here is an illustration by Carl Jung of the Kundalini serpent.
The energy that rises up, your animal energy can become the coronated serpent.
It bloody hurt getting that tattoo done and I woke up in the middle of the night severely regretting it.
jim breuer
Ow!
russel brand
My finger!
unidentified
Why?
russel brand
Why did I do that?
It was mostly because Mark Mahoney, the L.A. tattooist, I became somewhat besotted with him because he was kind of like some sort of living skeleton Elvis.
He was so charming and enchanting that I kept getting myself tattooed just so I could suss him out.
He appeared briefly in that film Black Mask, that Johnny Depp film.
I don't know if you saw it.
joe rogan
I didn't see that.
russel brand
Whitey, whatever his name was.
jim breuer
Whitey Bulger.
russel brand
That movie.
Yeah, he's...
As a cameo in the beginning of that, he's sort of got a blue rings over his head.
He's sort of a fascinating guy and a literal, you know, artist.
A proper tattoo artist.
People have, you know, he's tattooed like gangster crime overlords, you know, presidents, everybody.
He's done sort of like a lot of people, but he's got a very easy way and a sort of gentle kindness.
He told me this story once...
God, I wonder if you'd mind me repeating this in the media world.
When he used to be an intravenous junkie, he was in New York City and he was wandering along on the way to a party and he saw a homeless fella doing paintings and he sort of thought, oh man, I'll get those paintings.
And he bought these paintings off this homeless guy and then he went on to this party and then he went and shot up in the bathroom and then he heard a flurry of excitement at this New York party because Andy Warhol, the great Andy Warhol, was arriving...
At the party and Warhol came upstairs and he said he could hear like the acolytes around Warhol and he said he's just banged up and he's getting a hit and his eyes are rolling and he's like feeling fantastic and he hears Warhol outside the room and Mark Mahoney had left some of his paintings out there along with the works of that homeless guy and he hears Warhol go oh my god that's amazing like looking at this stuff and he goes wow look at me I'm the coolest guy in the world says Mark Mahoney I'm laying here banging up smack in a bathroom Warhol's out there digging my work and of course when he went out it was the homeless guy stuff Yeah,
he's a man with an anecdote or two.
I love that guy.
Your coffee's good, mate.
I'm buzzing my tits off.
I've only been here five seconds and I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.
unidentified
It's amazing.
joe rogan
It's amazing that it's that powerful for you.
russel brand
This is it, because I'm drug-free for 13 years, Joe.
Oh, so as I was saying, kundalini.
I've done a lot of that kundalini.
joe rogan
Did he ever take you to a crazy place?
Yeah.
Psychedelic state?
russel brand
When I was using drugs, I did psychedelics, and I've never had that kind of like, oh my god, because I loved drugs.
joe rogan
You never had a breakthrough moment on psychedelics?
russel brand
Yeah, I had that realisation that what I considered to be myself was a construction and it wasn't real.
That my memories and my perception and my desires are just a conglomeration of biochemical impulses that I'm merely a conduit of pure consciousness.
Now that's too heavy to deal with when you're bloody 16. All my mates were just doing it at school and carrying on.
Like me, I need to do psychedelics in a hospital with a person monitoring my heart.
You're going to be alright.
I can't do it under normal conditions.
joe rogan
So how old were you when you went clean then?
27. So from 27 on, nothing, just coffee?
russel brand
I'm 41, yeah.
A lot of coffee.
Of course I was a pretty committed sex addict for a decade.
unidentified
You might want to dip your feet back in the pond.
russel brand
See, you say this, Joe.
I don't know where your addictive tendencies come out.
joe rogan
Well, I have them for sure.
russel brand
Where do they come out?
joe rogan
Um, games.
I get addicted really badly to games.
russel brand
Video games.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Archery.
I'm addicted very badly to shooting bows and arrows.
unidentified
You good at it?
I used to be cool.
joe rogan
Yeah.
russel brand
You can shoot.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm pretty good at it.
russel brand
Proper Robin Hood style.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, I don't use a recurve bow.
I use a compound bow.
Like a very complicated, high-powered apparatus.
Shoots very accurately out to 70, 80, 90 yards.
But I practice it all the time.
Yeah.
It's fascinating.
It's a meditation.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because there's something about when you you require so much concentration when you're pulling a bow back and anchoring and Relaxing and centering the bow and making sure everything's level and relaxed and there's no excess movement whatsoever as you release the arrow It's all this very very difficult little dance of the synapses that you're doing and in that dance There's no room for any extraneous thought you can't think about your bills your bullshit your life death you don't think about anything but No movement.
Release that arrow absolutely properly.
Watch it sink into the bullseye.
And when you do it, it's incredibly satisfying.
russel brand
It must be, mate.
Is there some visualization involved in that?
joe rogan
Yeah, definitely.
And a lot of people actually get better from not even practicing.
They get better from visualizing more than practicing.
They just go over the actual physical mechanics of the shot, visualize it, locking in.
But it's a big thing with competitive target archers, the visualization aspect.
They go to hypnotists and they really work on a very specific pattern that they visualize, like a very specific pattern of drawing the bow back, finding your anchor point, perfect release, arrow flying perfectly.
And in doing that, they sort of condition their mind and their body to make that perfect shot over and over and over again.
But it's so difficult to do that even the best people fuck up.
The best ones in the world, in the Olympic archery, they'll occasionally get just out of the line and get a 9 or an 8, and they don't know why.
They've been doing it 7 hours a day for fucking 20 years.
It doesn't matter.
It's so difficult that there's no mastery.
You never totally master it.
jim breuer
You've got to be addicted if you're going to a hit and a tist and trying to hit a bullseye, man.
joe rogan
Well, imagine if that was your life.
unidentified
You're deep in it.
joe rogan
Imagine if that was how you made a living.
jim breuer
How much are you making to be an arrow shooter?
Competitive archer.
joe rogan
It's a good question.
I mean, I know there's the Olympics, right?
And so you can get sponsors from bow companies like Hoyt and companies that sell arrows and things along those lines.
And it's a practice that a lot of people engage in.
So I would imagine there's probably more money in it than you think there is.
jim breuer
Okay.
joe rogan
But, yeah.
jim breuer
I just haven't seen it even at the fairs.
Like, $200 for...
joe rogan
Well, here's what the tricky thing is.
It's not like...
Like, if you're a professional boxer, you have a very specific set of skills, right?
jim breuer
Right.
joe rogan
You know how to box, you know how to move.
Like, Floyd Mayweather is pretty goddamn sure he knows exactly what the fuck he's doing.
But this isn't like boxing.
You could teach anybody to do this.
jim breuer
Right.
joe rogan
It doesn't take any ridiculously coordinated athletic movements, some unusual genetics, some fast twitch muscle fibers.
No, you just pull the bow back and you release the arrow.
So to make a living doing that, to decide that I'm going to do something that I could teach anybody to do in a day.
I could take any regular person and work on their footwork, their stance rather, and their positioning and teach them how to shoot an hour.
unidentified
Breathing.
joe rogan
Yeah, breathing, how to concentrate and relax.
You get them shooting fairly proficiently inside of four or five hours.
Now imagine taking that to a level where you're going to travel the world and compete and just shoot at bullseyes for your kid's food.
jim breuer
That's what I'm saying.
joe rogan
Against a bunch of other people that are no different than you.
I want to meet that guy.
I know a lot of those guys.
I know quite a few of those guys now.
jim breuer
You introduce me?
joe rogan
Yeah, I'll introduce you for sure.
jim breuer
I would love to meet a professional guy like that.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'll introduce you to the guy who trained me, John Dudley.
Next time he's in LA and you're in LA, we'll make it happen.
He's a good dude.
jim breuer
I want to learn about that madness.
russel brand
What is your motivation, Jimbo, to unravel this man?
Don't harm him mentally.
Not a person who's devoted their life to hitting the bullseye.
You might unpick the stitching that led him to this point of mastery.
Don't make him feel insecure about the hypnosis session.
joe rogan
Do you do yoga at all, man?
Do you do like regular yoga or just Kundalini?
How often do you do it?
russel brand
I try and do yoga.
My exercise regimen changed not entirely unrelated to listening to your podcast.
Now I do kickboxing once a week.
I do jujitsu once a week.
Honestly, it's influenced me.
My mate Nick got me into your podcast.
A lot of people that I hang out with, as you obviously know, but even in the UK, in the mixed martial art world, this is a very central cultural artefact and how it intersects with thinking outside the box and a new vision of what it is to be a man and living outside of state ideals and conditioning.
That's what I'm fascinated about.
It's these new ways of being a man, of having tenderness, awareness, awakeness, but not being afraid or indeed ashamed of the aspects of masculinity that have somehow become cleverly maligned over the last few generations.
May I say, a shout-out to Dean Northway and Paul Busby, because they're the people that I do.
joe rogan
Shout-out.
russel brand
That's a shout-out to them.
I was ridiculed there for Englishness.
That was a hate crime.
You saw that, Jim.
That's going on the hate crime list.
joe rogan
I was giving them a shout-out as well.
russel brand
Actually, that's a great honour.
joe rogan
There's no doubt that the English accent is the greatest accent.
That's why we use it for all It's true.
Any time there's a god or any time you're speaking in a foreign language that we've translated to English, they have an English accent.
unidentified
You're right about that.
joe rogan
They could be speaking in anything.
It's authority.
Game of Thrones, Gladiator, everybody speaks with an English accent.
russel brand
After all of your revolutions, after all of your economic success and global dominion, when it comes to an authority figure, you still go, well, it might have come down from on high.
You still can't have God go, well, thanks, buddy, it's great.
joe rogan
Yeah, exactly.
russel brand
Still have a sort of sense of...
joe rogan
Regal-ness.
russel brand
Yeah.
joe rogan
Game of Thrones.
russel brand
Reverence for the regal.
joe rogan
They all speak some strange language.
They're in some place with dragons.
It's all artificial, right?
But yet they all speak with an English accent.
russel brand
There's no reason why they should not be from Detroit.
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Why don't they speak?
Hey, you fucking guys are coming over here trying to fuck our broads.
unidentified
Look at your fucking boss and his kid.
jim breuer
Comes over here with his fucking dragons.
joe rogan
Get your fucking shine box and your dragons.
unidentified
They ship all over.
Ask you to leave the court because you've really lowered the tone somewhat.
joe rogan
So it's like the opposite of going off the course.
It's going so deep into the course that everyone's wearing powdered wigs and they're all aligning with some ancient scrolls that they've pulled out of a jar in a fucking cave in Qumran somewhere and it has been decreed.
And you say everything's got to be proper.
russel brand
Yeah, it's getting deep.
joe rogan
That's what we count on you guys for.
russel brand
You can rely on us from now for time immemorial.
Sorry for burping during that statement.
I go do jiu-jitsu once a week at a level that, you know, I mean, I don't even know if it would qualify for the term jiu-jitsu at the level that I'm practicing at at the moment.
I'm doing kickboxing where I had to go to what is called a leisure center.
Do those words exist in your language?
joe rogan
Leisure center.
russel brand
Yeah, leisure center.
joe rogan
Oh, like a gym, a community center?
russel brand
Yeah, like a gym, but like a community one to do my...
Like a YMCA? Yeah, like a YMCA. I was lined up with 10-year-olds to get my white belt just to get on the ladder, do you know what I mean?
I've done that quite recently.
And as well as that, I do yoga.
So I'm using this time where I've stepped out of the madness of Los Angeles, the madness of media, the intensity of it.
And during the time, I thought, Another thing that Jung talks about is the shadow self.
All that I am not, I also am.
If you think of that, and I suppose a simpler way of saying that, is I've lived this life that's been very focused on comedy and the pursuit of individual success.
Think, what are all the things I've not done as a result of that?
When I was a kid, I was too shy and too ashamed to get into sport-type things.
I was embarrassed about that kind of thing.
I've started to do kickboxing and jiu-jitsu and even football or soccer, as you call it.
I've started to do all of those things now to start to learn about them as an adult man.
joe rogan
Well, it's a beautiful thing when you take chances and do things with other people that are taking chances and doing new things because you realize that it's really a lot of it is about the sort of acceptance and the embracing of vulnerability.
When you learn a new thing, it's very important to learn new things.
russel brand
Is that you, right?
Because I hear you say that, and I know what that means, but do you actually, because I've got certain, yeah, I suppose prejudice is about you as a sort of black belt martial artist and as someone who's embedded in the MMA world.
You are a person who is happy and accepting of vulnerability.
Where in your life do you feel that you are embracing that vulnerability, Joe?
joe rogan
Well, I think every time you try something new, I'm like, in the archery thing, I've only been doing it for four years, but one of the things that I really loved about it is how fucking terrible I was when I first started.
And I was like, there's something to this that I have to figure out.
Yoga's a big one.
I've been really serious into yoga, like where I go several times a week, at least once a week, for about...
A year and a couple months, a year and like two months or something like that.
And one of the things that I really enjoy about it is that I'm not very good.
And I still get nervous before classes.
Fuck yeah, man.
Yeah, it's weird.
It's one of those weird places.
Like a yoga class is one of those weird places where...
There's almost a sacredness to it.
Like, you go in there, and no one can leave until the class is over.
Like, they tell you.
They lock the front door.
No one comes in to visit the studio.
Everything's locked in.
No one watches.
You go in there, and we don't talk.
No one talks.
You don't talk for 90 minutes, and you go through this...
Series of poses that are incredibly difficult, you're sweating like pounds and pounds of water up.
I mean, I'll weigh myself before and after, and I'll be down like four or five pounds, just from one class.
And it's very difficult, but it makes me nervous, you know?
I do get nervous before I do it, because it has this...
I think it's difficult to do.
I think I don't necessarily physically enjoy it while it's happening, but I enjoy the effects after it's over.
But I think it definitely imparts a feeling of vulnerability.
russel brand
Because I always assume that if you are really good at...
This is perhaps because of where I come from.
I always assume that if you are dead good at some sort of fighting thing, that that is a highly transferable skill.
And I don't mean in a practical way, if you're good at kickboxing, you will also be good at yoga.
I just mean that if you're good at kickboxing, you don't give a shit that you're not good at yoga.
That would be right.
That's always...
That's been my assumption.
Whereas if you're good at yoga, you're not meant to say you're good at yoga, but by Jove I'm good at it.
I don't sort of like, when I'm in the MMA gym, start going like, well, you may be strangling me now, my man, but wait till we get to down with dog.
You know, I sort of feel like, alright, humility in a jiu-jitsu situation for a beginner is an absolute humility.
You recognize, you know, because I'm doing it with people that are good, and like, you know, they have to do it like they're doing it with a little kid, you know, like, and I'm very aware that they're doing that, you know?
joe rogan
Well, I think that if you get really good at martial arts, the only way to get really good is to be completely objective about where you are.
And if you're completely objective about where you are, and learning and trying to improve upon your skills, you apply that same feeling towards everything else.
So the feeling that you get when you're totally vulnerable in martial arts, you apply that same feeling when you're learning yoga.
Because that's the only way to get really good at it.
The only way to really do it, to 100% do it, is not to sit here and go, this doesn't mean shit, because I could choke out everybody in this fucking room.
unidentified
Yeah.
russel brand
That's not going to help in yoga.
joe rogan
It's not going to help you at all.
As a matter of fact, it'll hurt you.
It'll hurt you and it'll focus more on your own ego instead of the ego dissolving beneficial properties of the poses.
russel brand
It will ruin the ambience in the yoga studio if you would say that out loud.
This doesn't mean shit.
I could choke everyone in this room.
joe rogan
Before I start this class, I just want you all to know I can fuck you up.
So, settle down.
Don't get crazy about your stretching.
russel brand
I don't know if you've read the scriptures, but there is no violence.
Actually, there is quite a lot of violence, but it's usually a metaphor.
joe rogan
A lot of hash, too.
That was the thing that McKenna always used to talk about, that that's really what a lot of the ancient yogis were about.
They were about smoking chillums of hash and then doing all these poses.
And if you've ever done yoga while intoxicated on the edible variety in particular, marijuana, it's a beautiful thing.
russel brand
I haven't because I only started yoga because I'd stopped eating edible hash and all other drugs.
The thing is with me, mate, is when I was taking drugs, that was what I was doing.
There wasn't room for now I might pop to yoga.
joe rogan
You were a fucking pro.
russel brand
I was a full-time, dedicated pro, 100%.
That's it, every day.
I can't take time out.
joe rogan
What was the big drug?
What was the problem?
russel brand
I progressed through an escalation of drug use that could be on any Republican leaflet.
unidentified
It's like I started with like...
russel brand
Kids, don't smoke pot or you will become a heroin addict.
That's literally what I did.
I started with recreational drugs, was unable to...
And the reason is this, because it's not the fault of the drugs themselves.
There's a component within me that is looking to find a solution that doesn't have...
You see, when you have that perspective on going into a place and being willing to go in there and be vulnerable, that kind of thing for me, that makes me very sort of what I call hot, you know, like scared.
Like, oh, fuck, fuck.
So for me, drugs were always a thing that I trusted to make me feel a little bit better.
And so when I was smoking weed, it was like, oh right, there's that thing I found that makes me feel relaxed when it became coke and heroin and crack.
It was the same reason.
It was an attempt to nullify, medicate, And contend with an inner sense of disconnectedness and discontentment, which I think is a thing that comes up a lot on your show in other guises, because I think that's, in some way or another, we're all looking for this sense of connection, this sense of completion.
I think, in fact, the thing that led me to be a drug addict, or sex addict, gambler, whatever kind of addict you are, I think the thing that's driving it is this need for connection, this sense that Is this life?
Because this don't fucking seem right to me somehow, this system you've got this living by.
Like, give me the real deal.
What's the real thing you're not telling me?
And that's why I'm fascinated by people like Terence McKenna, who says, like, if you, you know, what he called don't stay on the pedestrian levels of consciousness, there's deep shit down there.
There's fascinating stuff.
There's machine elves.
There's corridors of kaleidoscopic wonder to explore.
There's union.
There's God, you know what I mean?
joe rogan
Well, for a guy like you, that might be the best argument for trying to do it the Kundalini way, because you have to earn it.
russel brand
You're right.
I knew it would be harder for me.
I've got to do it by stretching and aggressive breathing.
Maybe.
Instead of hitting that DMT shit, double half, ten doses...
Bashing it into my leathery old lungs!
jim breuer
You just take three.
joe rogan
You just take three and then you sit back.
Tell me what you see in there.
You can go back in in about 15 minutes.
It can't be described.
russel brand
It's beyond language.
joe rogan
Yeah, if I describe it, it's just my stubby fucking stupid ape fingers trying to draw God with a crayon on a patch of dirt.
It's not even a proper canvas.
russel brand
That's the problem of all religions.
jim breuer
Sure.
Just a question.
If you do see what you were actually looking for, what do you think is curious?
Once you're there and you discover it, what do you come back and aren't we just back to all this?
russel brand
You know, you're right in a way, Jim, because I have had moments in both sobriety recovery and in active addiction where I've gone, oh my God, I feel truly connected.
Now, I've had a lot of those moments in what I would call unhealthy highs, like, you know, sort of sexual kind of, oh my God, this is so amazing, I want to live in this moment forever, or moments on drugs where I've felt sort of pure bliss.
But nowadays, I tend to find it through bloody altruism and kindness and service.
Sometimes when I think I'm being truly useful, I feel this sense of connection.
But you are right.
It is not sustainable.
There is no Viagra for enlightenment.
You can't stay hard.
You feel like, oh, that's it.
I understand it.
Right, from this moment forth, I'm enlightened.
That's it.
I'm never going to be anybody's bitch again.
I'm never going to do anything straight for the money.
I'm never going to care what other people think about me ever again.
That shit's behind me.
But then someone will say something or someone will do something and I feel like, oh, I'm back here again.
Capture the Divine.
I've had in my life moments of it.
I practice yoga on my own.
I practice yoga this morning.
There's positions where you go upside down and stuff.
If you were just determined to describe things in a material and secular way, you'd say, well, you were just dizzy.
What I feel is, I go upside down, and when I come up straight again, I feel my own individual consciousness, my sense of myself, I feel it sort of disappear, like I can't remember who I am for a moment.
It all goes away.
And then I feel this secondary awareness in the back of my mind, like a sort of a grid, an awareness, and I sort of think, hold on a minute, I'm not me.
I'm not me.
There's something else inside of me.
And the thing that, you know, my big sort of...
When I was doing that internet series, The Trues, for a while, that got me into all sorts of interesting scrapes and challenges over the last sort of 18 months, two years, it was the idea of, you know, there's someone inside, our own consciousness is not free.
We are not free within our own consciousness.
We've been conditioned to the point that we don't know that we're conditioned anymore.
And I think that that sort of, you know, you notice it in lightning rod moments when there is sort of like an election and you think, oh my God, are people really into this fucking shit?
What is...
What's going on?
unidentified
Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage.
Sorry, continue.
russel brand
That's the perfect riff to score that moment.
Thank you very much.
Is that Rage Against the Machine?
No, no.
joe rogan
Pumpkins.
jim breuer
Smashing pumpkins.
russel brand
That's the Smashing Pumpkins.
joe rogan
Dope song.
jim breuer
Can I ask you, since, because you found your outlet, you said you're putting, you're finding just good, something good.
russel brand
Yeah.
jim breuer
Have you, I'm just a question, since you've been putting it out there, have you noticed There's more and more is coming back or it's like, eh, I'm noticing it more.
It always was there.
I just chose go the way.
I don't know.
These are just questions.
russel brand
Well, mate, right?
It's still like, you know, if you read any bloody, when you read this stuff in religious books, like say in the Bible, like it's sort of, it's going, look, become good and get to the point where even being good, you're not even doing it for that reason anymore.
You've become detached from outcomes, you know, like in from Buddhist terms, you know, like that you're, you're, No longer about fear and desire.
You're no longer trying to just fulfil yourself, right?
I'm not bloody there yet.
You know, me, even if I do something good, like go to a homeless shelter and help out for the day and all that sort of thing, a little bit at the back of my mind's going, look at you, helping out at this homeless shelter.
jim breuer
Well done!
russel brand
Well done!
And if someone went by and saw me helping at the homeless shelter, I'd be really pleased.
Why is no one seeing me help in this fucking homeless shelter?
jim breuer
Don't touch me!
unidentified
You stink!
russel brand
So I'm still a little bit looking for rewards.
That's a very hard...
But this is the thing as well about being a comedian, is you can't get too fucking sincere and earnest that you stop being bloody funny.
Do you know what I mean?
Don't you find that?
That when you're stuff that you're really passionate about and you really believe in...
Because comedy, I think, is constantly ripping down.
You sort of set up a premise and then you rip it down again.
I think comedy is the energy of constantly going, no, this is all bullshit.
This is all fucking bullshit.
So when you're sincere, you...
joe rogan
You've got to be able to differentiate between your forms of expression, like your art form, like a piece that you're creating, and you yourself as a person.
And sometimes, I used to think when I was younger, man, I can't be fucking around with meditation or enlightenment because it's going to ruin me.
All my favorite comedians were junkies and crazy people, you know, like Kinnison and Pryor and Hicks.
Crazy people and junkies.
You can't get enlightened.
You just gotta fucking be a wild man.
That's how you get comedy.
I'm not so convinced anymore.
And I think the creating of these memes and these characters that you can mock and make fun of inside your act is a piece of art.
You're doing something.
Just like a painting doesn't make you a madman.
You could paint a Frazetta, Conan the Barbarian painting.
It doesn't make you a mass murderer.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like you're creating a piece of art and sometimes the more points of view that you've considered, the more it enhances that work of art.
russel brand
You raise a good point there because in certain In the sectors of the art world, that has always been accepted, that, you know, Heronius Bosch doing a triptych of hell don't mean, oh, I mean, this guy's fucking crazy!
You know, he may have been, I don't know.
But, like, when in hip-hop, you know, like, people talk about, you know, popping caps and whatnot...
It's taken a lot more literally.
You're not afforded it.
And it's a comedic persona.
Comedians get it a lot.
British comedians as well.
There's a few comedians.
Myself.
There's a Scottish comedian called Frankie Boyle.
When people are very shocking...
I can tell sometimes that comics are saying things to detonate territories of consciousness.
Fucking hell!
Bill Hicks did that a lot, I think.
He would say things to him and let you go, whoa, steady, and then he smacked you in the mouth and then he gently tells you that it's just a ride or whatever it is, now that he's got you where he wants you.
But people, I think we live in a culture now that's very prohibitive about where we go with those kind of ideas.
So people are very quick.
I've myself been on the receiving end of a lot of, what do I want to say, judgment.
And I'm like, hold on a minute, I'm fucking joking.
joe rogan
But don't you think that that's also because we live in this new media world of social interaction, this new social media world where anybody can chime in at any point in time?
And it's the first time ever that that's happened.
russel brand
Yeah, you might be right.
A friend of mine in England made a documentary about what has happened to the idea of the great man.
You know, like in American literature, like, you know, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth...
Or like, you know, Muhammad Ali, rest in peace.
Like, nowadays, people don't rise to that position anymore because there's thousands of Lilliputians pulling them down with tiny arrows as soon as their heads above the parapet, innit?
No one's allowed to be.
You know, people will be, oh, well, Martin Luther King had affairs, oh, Malcolm X, he was inside, he'd done this, that, and the other.
You know, like, it's, like, yeah, there are so many good things that have come from social media, so many good things, you know, the possibility for communication, the connection, instantaneous, all those things, it's wonderful, but it does, all things in the end become an expression of the dominant consciousness, you know, and if people are doubtful, cynical, pessimistic, then that, the palette, you know, that shit ends up on the canvas.
Yeah.
joe rogan
It also might be a case of, you know, everybody's always worried about wealth inequality in this world.
There's also a possibility of consciousness inequality, and that these people that have grown up with shitty parents and shitty neighborhoods, they feel left out by even your ability to seek peace and altruism.
Like, who are you, this guy?
Why are you so lucky?
You're financially fortunate, you have beautiful jeans, you're handsome, you have a wonderful...
jim breuer
Every time I walk in a fucking magazine shop, I gotta look at your face.
I mean, I love you, dude, but come on.
joe rogan
Banging starlets.
unidentified
Enough.
joe rogan
This motherfucker.
And so why is he so happy?
Why is he allowed to have this happiness come to him so easily?
So there's anger at that.
The same kind of anger that you would get at the elite upper class, like the billionaires and the one percenters of the world.
People will also look at a person like you and, like, there's a consciousness inequality.
There's also a starting point in equality.
I'm sure, like you were saying, you were insecure when you were young, and it was difficult, and I certainly was, and Jim and I knew each other when we were young and insecure and starting out as comics.
We've been friends forever.
But that sort of, this experience where you are you now, and people look at that, and they're upset that, well, why does this guy have so much?
Why is this guy in this place where you can so conveniently search for truth, where I have to pay my fucking bills?
And I'm in student loans, and I'm in a shitty neighborhood, and my kids are sick, and my wife's a cunt.
You know, this is like...
And then they get on Twitter, and they're like, FUCK YOU RUSSELL! You fucking cunt!
I hope your ponytail chokes you in your sleep!
jim breuer
Right.
russel brand
Well, it never will, because I put it into a bun.
I can actually understand that level of discontentment because, to be honest, I'm subject to jealousy and envy myself.
I spot it when it comes up, when I feel myself go, oh, why is that not me?
I should be having that.
But now I try not to justify feeling shit.
As soon as I start feeling bad, I don't think, well, this is why I feel bad, and I'd like to stay feeling bad.
I try and go, hold on a minute.
If you believe that the external world is an illusion, that it's temporary, it's transient, and what's real is your deep connection to your inner self, and you can express that in myriad ways, and we're here to have this experience as an animal, and I'm fascinated by the numerous ways that you're into doing it, and it's something that I really want to learn more about, is loads of the stuff that goes on on your show.
But, like...
I can well appreciate people seeing, particularly as the way it's presented, seeing me on television thinking, fuck that guy, fuck that guy, because they don't automatically know where I came from or what I had to do to get here, or the fact that I get here and think, hold on a minute, this isn't what I thought it would be.
Almost as soon as I got those things, I was like, this isn't real.
You can't make yourself happy.
I don't want to be poor again.
I'll be straight about that, because I hated it.
It was really frightening.
You cannot resolve those inner issues.
I now know that, empirically, for a fact.
I'm really lucky, and that's why I'm fascinated by the addiction model, and that's why I am reluctant to smash my mind to a piece of DMT, although it does sound fun.
I would really, really love to do it.
joe rogan
Don't pee a pussy.
russel brand
I'll do it!
Peer pressure, you say.
I'm in.
It's because I know I've tried fame, I've tried money, I've tried drugs, I've tried sex, I've tried all of those things to make myself feel better.
And oddly, none of them have worked.
None of them have worked.
I'm not, oh, poor me, poor me, while there's fucking refugee crisis the world over.
unidentified
No, you're just being honest.
joe rogan
You're just being honest about your experience.
russel brand
Yeah, yeah.
And I would, like, what I am now thinking, Joe, is what is the most, they say that, you know, happiness is where what the world needs meets what you have to offer.
Well, the world needs what you have to offer.
And I think, God, is there a way that I can communicate some of the things that I have learned about connecting, about letting go of my flaws, taking responsibility for the problems that I am creating?
Is there anything about that that I can convey?
Can I convey it, hopefully, in a comedic and accessible way?
And that's sort of where my focus is beginning to fall.
And I'm assuming that's...
What you're already doing, isn't it?
joe rogan
That's what I'm attempting.
I think everybody who's trying to better themselves is attempting some form of that.
But it's also what you're dealing with when you're talking about the criticism of you.
They're trying to define you based on one interview or one article or one thing that you said in response to one piece of current event.
So it's real.
They're quote mining a lot of times in a lot of ways, looking to have a more concentrated form of that That jealous expression that we were talking about?
Like, there's gotta be something about this guy I don't like.
That's it.
I don't like how he went on Fox News and mocked America.
Yeah, you're mocking the journalism?
Yeah?
You think you're better than these people that are here telling the truth?
russel brand
Well, I think the way that works for me is that that is a thing that is called confirmation bias, isn't it?
You've already feeling something inside yourself, and then you're sort of unconsciously, you're scanning data.
To get confirmation of, like, so if I feel insecure because you're super good at MMA and have black belts in jiu-jitsu, instead of dealing with my own feeling of, oh, fuck, if this becomes a fight, I'm not going to be able to deal with it, I would rather go, no, this guy's...
And I'll find something to complete that.
Oh, he had advantages that I didn't have.
If I had this, I would have been...
But, like, you know, like...
But really, the feeling is in me, and this is what my personal experience of actually getting clean from drugs has taught me, is that what other people think about me is none of my business, and it's something that's happening in their own consciousness, and they're always looking for some coordinates upon which to project those feelings, and I know that because I fucking do it.
If I start getting jealous about some super successful guy or someone who's super good at fighting or whatever, I'm dealing with something inside myself, so now I try not to bring that shit to the world.
I try to go, right, Russell, you better deal with this feeling of inadequacy or this feeling of jealousy or this feeling of insecurity because otherwise it's going to ruin your experience of being human instead of going, no, the problem is this guy or that guy or this person having a successful podcast.
I try to go, no, no, Russell.
Connect with yourself.
You know, I'm trying not to blame the outside world for my shit anymore.
joe rogan
Well, I think in a lot of ways, yeah, these are really complicated thoughts that we have and in many ways we're almost a victim of this constant need to evolve.
Like the body and the brain is set up to constantly be comparing ourselves to others and to feed off of each other, whether it's through jealousy or inspiration to try to achieve higher and higher levels of competency at anything.
To develop more social credibility, to develop more clout in the community, to feel better about your own existence.
It's almost like what we're dealing with is some sort of a programming that is constantly set up to innovate and to continue to get better and better at everything.
So if I see you in some movie, I'm like, How come I'm not in these fucking movies?
I don't even get these auditions.
I need to fire my manager.
And these ideas, they motivate movement.
They motivate momentum.
russel brand
Yes, yes.
joe rogan
And you could use them or not use them, but we don't know how to handle them.
And no one's telling us, and our parents didn't tell us, and their parents didn't tell them shit.
jim breuer
Back to the slavery!
We're all just tribal.
And at the end of the day, what you're supposed to do is help other...
There's no better feeling in the world.
Then encouraging another human to live right, and they live right.
Those are the moments you remember in life.
Go ahead, Joe.
joe rogan
Getting your dick sucked on a Learjet while you're pouring champagne on both of you.
russel brand
Oh, no, that is relaxing.
joe rogan
And fucking Jay-Z is playing in the background.
unidentified
No, it is nice.
russel brand
On the Learjet, getting your dick sucked.
No, that's quicker.
If you can't get a Learjet...
No, I'm going to Tibet!
I am going to get to Tibet!
Take that out of your mouth!
You raise a good point, because what you were talking about there is how biological imperatives, whatever that force was that made us divide from one cell to two cells, to ten cells, to fish, to frog, to To mammals, to cities, to all these architectural Wi-Fi wonders.
That force, as you say, is still in us.
Now, these imperatives to grow, as you were saying there, Jimbo, if you're living in a tribal society, it's a necessary function.
But what's happened to our species?
Do you know that cliche, you are what you eat?
And it means if you eat shit food, you'll be shit, and I 100% agree with that.
But in a different way, you are what you eat.
If you look at what we eat now, we eat monoculture foods, like we're in a Swathees, endless fields of wheat across...
God, I drove through...
What state would that have been that I drove through?
It was one of your crazy...
jim breuer
Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas.
russel brand
Man, it was nothing but it!
It was like the whole country was made of it.
joe rogan
You know what else is there?
unidentified
Go on.
joe rogan
Jesus.
russel brand
Oh, I love that guy.
No, he'll cheer you up.
As long as you understand what he was saying.
The main thing that I think he was saying was, don't be gay.
unidentified
That's what I picked up.
jim breuer
I got from him, just be cool.
unidentified
No, no, he said don't be gay.
jim breuer
That's what he said.
russel brand
Yeah, a lot of people have missed the point with this be cool thing.
It's don't be gay.
Let's focus down on this, as yet not mentioned, don't be gay.
And then, of course, the way that meat is consumed, endless abattoirs and slaughterhouses of condensed animals, not consumed as they would be tribally, picked off here and there, eaten once a week.
I'm a vegetarian myself.
So we have fields full of wheat, abattoirs full of meat, And we ourselves are similarly what we eat.
We have become cells of energy, trapped in cities, not free to be tribal beings anymore.
We've become so disconnected from what it's supposed to be, to be this primate, that now these biological imperatives, the desire to procreate, the desire to have status, the desire to even get high, all these things have become permutated because they're no longer anchored in a reality for which we were designed.
joe rogan
And imagine your position, where you're in a completely unique position even in the Western world.
You become a media superstar.
You become a movie star.
You become someone when you show up, people have cameras and you walk and they take photos of you.
You get out of a car and everyone cheers.
It becomes this really unusual event when you just arrive somewhere.
So it sets you up for an incredibly high dose of this sort of toxic celebrity feeling that you have to sort of navigate, and you have to navigate it based on the other people that have mostly unsuccessfully navigated it before you.
If you start and think about how many fucking movie stars wind up in a pool of their own vomit, Or, you know, covered in whatever the fuck they're doing.
I mean, it's a large number of famous people wind up fucking it all up, but they can't handle it anymore.
They go Heath Ledger or a million different ways.
You know, it's pills or just fucking implosion or whatever the fuck it is.
jim breuer
Would you like to feed my giraffe?
Sorry.
joe rogan
Previous podcast.
jim breuer
You start losing your mind in the vanity.
russel brand
For anyone that's listening to this podcast just because I'm on it, and I can't imagine there's very many of you, there's a reference there to a giraffe that even I'm struggling with in this moment.
joe rogan
I just think that your unique perspective, and it's a very unique perspective, because not a lot of people get to become movie stars, is it's...
Something that the average person is trying to put it into a perspective where they can grasp the amount of pressure and the weird way that you have to interface with the world, where people worship you and everywhere you go people love you and you don't even know them.
That's a very strange thing.
russel brand
This is the thing.
We have to think of problems, I think, in terms of their essence, not of their scale.
You see, like, because if you, like, how I stop myself, like, you know, when I was more immersed in Hollywood and fame and stuff, like, it isn't, like, you walk in a room and, like, you know, when I was single and I'd get lots of attention from women, obviously that's a short circuit, that, because you do tend to fulfill that one.
You say, oh my god, I'm able to have sex with people.
joe rogan
I'm going to do it.
Also, it doesn't make sense.
All of a sudden, they want you.
russel brand
Yeah, how did that happen?
That was amazing.
joe rogan
Subverting of the natural process.
russel brand
The matrix is broken.
Oh my god, I'm allowed to do what I want!
Fucking hell!
Yeah, I lost myself.
joe rogan
I wonder why you're an addict.
It's normal.
Look, it's called Pussy is Awesome.
russel brand
That is a difficult truth to overwhelm, Joe.
joe rogan
It's impossible.
It's impossible to avoid the pull.
I mean, you're talking about the gravity of Jupiter.
It sucks in asteroids.
I mean, that's what it is.
It's just too goddamn strong.
The compulsion to breed and the compulsion to be special so that you can breed more than anyone else and you can have the choice.
That's what your DNA calls.
russel brand
It screams.
But can we overcome our nature?
unidentified
You already have.
jim breuer
You have.
russel brand
Hey, thank you.
Hey, look at you.
This is the best podcast I've ever been on in my life.
The affirmation is flying at me.
joe rogan
But think about what you're doing.
You've decided to step away from all the bullshit, move away from Hollywood, and sort of take a break while you can financially and you can with your position in life and just relax and get a look at this.
russel brand
Because what?
joe rogan
Get a look at it from afar.
russel brand
Really ego thing of people giving me lots of attention.
Quite quickly after I used to get a lot of fame attention, I'd think, if someone else more famous than me came in, then all this attention would go there.
So what is it really?
What is it really?
I can't feed on that.
And even if I don't have that, even if I don't literally have the experience of basking in a spotlight and then Justin Timberlake walking in and see the light disappear from my face and being plunged once again into the shadows of my youth, even if I don't have to actually have that experience, I know that when I get home, I'm still just me, that none of it is real, that you can't...
There's no nutrition in it.
You can't get any...
It's not like, oh, right, this amount of fame hasn't worked.
I'll try and get even more famous.
It's because the essence is the thing.
The essence is the thing.
It's to try to connect what I am doing or what you are doing or what one is doing to something that is...
That feels beautiful to you.
That feels nutritional to you.
And for me, that is really, really hard.
Because it's very hard to enjoy those pat on the back things.
Particularly if you felt inadequate and insecure.
It's very hard to break off of that track.
joe rogan
Of course.
russel brand
And I feel...
Lucky, but it's not over for me.
I feel lucky to be awakening from that thing.
I feel lucky to be awakening from it, but it's not over for me.
I still feel it.
I still feel it.
If another English comedian, if Ricky Gervais came in now, I'd have to go, oh, right, okay, Ricky Gervais is here.
unidentified
Right, shit.
russel brand
I've got to adjust for that with Sacha Baron Cohen.
Right, okay, right.
Now, this is happening now.
I'm aware that in this moment I have a cachet of being the only English person and all that sort of stuff.
But it's not...
If those are the things I'm using to prop up my identity, I'm fucked.
joe rogan
But you being aware of those facts, aware of the fact that you're constantly struggling in this, is what's going to help you.
I mean, it's not like you can avoid the sound of the...
What are they?
The harpies?
What are those things that pull the boats into the rocks?
unidentified
Sirens.
joe rogan
Sirens that call the boats into the rocks.
It's compelling.
It's absolutely compelling, but you understand what it is now, so you don't have to do it.
You don't have to gravitate towards it.
You know that if you just went and got a bunch of hookers and some coke and you hold yourself up in a hotel room, there'd be some moments that would be pretty goddamn good about that.
But also there'd be the repercussions, the fact that you've slid back towards addiction, the problems, so you avoid it.
That's right.
But the pull is always going to be there, especially when the girls have big tits and little waists and big asses.
It's like a party unless they can keep a secret.
russel brand
Yes, yes.
It's very difficult.
That's why I live in the abstinence model.
That's why I try not to press those buttons because that stuff is, you know, you can't mess, don't rattle the cage, don't wake that guy up, leave him alone.
Like Hulk, innit?
Don't make me angry, he won't like me when I'm angry.
Just let me be little Hulk.
joe rogan
Yeah, just let me chill.
Yeah, I mean, look, as we've gone over, you're navigating some waters that very few people get to go through and there's no books written about it.
No one has gone through what you've done and achieved some sort of a yogic state of enlightenment where they've sort of expressed it to everybody else and said, this is the roadmap.
This is the path.
jim breuer
I have to just say, just knowing some addicts, to me, what you're doing is more powerful than when you were the ultimate, ultimate star.
Because I'm telling...
This guy, sometimes...
I mean, we all feel that way.
I'll get really...
For a little bit, I'll go, you know, I can't believe...
That guy?
I'm trying to do this.
And that guy, he's...
I think he's 15 years now.
And he'll turn to me and go, Jim, I've been to your house.
You have so much more.
Because you have so much more in your life.
You don't want...
Trust me, you don't want that.
It's a struggle.
But when he says that, those statements are so powerful to me.
Because he can see that...
Vanity and wanting to be...
That's why I said the giraffe, because that defines my success.
You know what successful I am?
I bought a giraffe.
I had it shipped here.
I'm successful.
That shit is worse than heroin.
I learned it's worse than heroin.
I can't imagine.
His ladder was...
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
Is.
It was...
Was, still is, up here.
joe rogan
But in a similar way.
jim breuer
Up here!
That's a lot to live on.
I don't know.
I tip my hat to you.
You were going through a tornado!
joe rogan
You've done it in a similar way as well.
Not on his level.
Maybe not on his level, but Jim was on Saturday Night Live.
He's one of the best comedians in the country.
He's one of the best stand-up comics in the world, really.
He fucking crushes.
He's so goddamn funny.
But he decided, and we've been friends forever, he decided a long time ago, you know what, fuck this, I'm going to live in New Jersey, I'm going to do gigs, and I'm not going to worry about nothing.
I'm just going to have a good time and perform and not worry about fame at all.
I'm just going to step the fuck away and just work on my act, work on performing, having a good time, and trying to enjoy my life.
And that's a very admirable thing, too.
What you've done is a very admirable thing in a lot of ways.
jim breuer
But when you first walked in here, you just kind of mentioned that.
And you said, ah, I'm suburbanized.
I'm suburbanized.
You said that a couple times.
Domesticated.
Domesticated, I'm sorry.
You said domesticated.
joe rogan
They don't have suburbs in England.
They have the country.
jim breuer
But that domesticated...
unidentified
The Volca.
jim breuer
To me, it's more...
You get more gratitude out of it.
And the end of your days, those are the moments...
You're going to remember those little moments, whether it was your friend or whatever.
There's nothing wrong with that world.
unidentified
And you can always come back once...
jim breuer
Most of the responsibilities are done.
joe rogan
That's the problem, though.
unidentified
I warn my wife all the time, like, listen, kids got a couple years left?
jim breuer
Kids are out of there.
And I tell them, don't get fucking pregnant, man.
I'm 20 years from going ape shit.
And I will have that right to go ape shit.
I watched my father, World War II vet, go into 80s years old, and I watched him go, I'm just going to go ape shit.
I don't give a shit about anything anymore.
So what you're doing is, to me, that's...
I cheer you on big time.
And I know this is corny, but I saw you on a couple of interviews.
As soon as you were, I mean, you were all over the place.
And I can see you in that room trying to find who you were while everyone else was trying to throw out a completely different character.
Maybe I'm crazy and I'm in the woods right now.
But I would see that and I'm like, oh, they're coming at this guy.
joe rogan
Well, you had the awareness to say, this is all weird.
russel brand
It did feel weird.
jim breuer
It's weird as fuck.
unidentified
It's weird!
joe rogan
How can it not be weird?
You're a movie star.
unidentified
It's creepy!
russel brand
It's a very unusual experience.
Like you were saying about going back to Jersey and saying, what I'm going to do is my job.
I'm going to do comedy, and I do the comedy to get the money, to pay for the food, to feed my family, to take care of my life, and I love doing it, and I can bring joy to people.
If I'm honest about myself, I always had the ingredients for obsessive behaviour.
The more I look at it, I was trying to resolve something.
I thought, if I get there, then I'll be worth something.
I can get that thing.
But when I got there, I thought, hold on, this isn't even real.
It doesn't feel right to me.
It doesn't feel right.
And that's not like...
There are people, I think, very high-profile, high-level people that are making big contributions.
Can you sweep away all of mainstream culture?
Can you say the sole function of pop culture is to keep people bewildered and distracted and intoxicated while a political elite in conjunction with the corporate powers saps the energy of the great and powerful people of this planet?
Yes, you can.
You can.
joe rogan
But do you think that that's a conscious decision by the cultural elite or is that a conscious decision by the people to avoid reality itself and be distracted by goofy television shows and music?
russel brand
It must be complicit, Joe.
It must be complicit.
unidentified
100%.
russel brand
It must be both components.
It must be both.
But like you said, implied or said even earlier, we are still evolving.
Evolution is still happening.
It's not over, is it?
No.
So what I feel like is...
What information can we impart?
How can we...
This is an extremely successful, as I said before, cultural artefact.
You can just keep pumping alternative ideas into people's heads.
If people start to hear again and again, you're being lied to about civilisation.
It's much older.
You're being lied to about the nature of consciousness.
You're being lied to about your options.
On a very simple level, I've had, as I'm sure I've gathered, quite a lot of therapy over the course of my life as a result of the substance misuse addictions and then just out of ongoing bloody curiosity...
And they say the function of therapy is to increase your choices in life.
Because none of us lives in reality.
Anyone who's bloody done DMT will know we don't live in reality.
We live in a narrow, tiny bandwidth of reality.
So if you just live in a model of reality, not reality itself, then you should take responsibility for remodeling your reality, particularly if you're not bloody happy in it.
You can change it.
You can change your consciousness.
And for me, at the moment, that means quite mundane things.
It means that when I arrive here and my suitcases don't arrive, I have the choices of, do I now become a cunt and make people's lives fucking miserable, or do I just accept the cases are not here?
This is the reality.
Or when I arrive at the airport and I ain't got my green card and I nearly miss the flight, like all of these, I just go, oh, this is happening now.
The only choice I have in that moment is the choice of whether or not to start being a dick.
joe rogan
Yeah.
russel brand
And I try not to now.
And in the past, I was like, fuck you.
I'm entitled to this feeling.
joe rogan
Well, it's so easy to just get absorbed in it.
My friend Tony V said this once, and I know I've repeated this on the podcast before, but my friend Tony V used to drive from...
You know Tony V, stand-up comedian?
jim breuer
I don't think so.
joe rogan
Boston guy, hilarious.
unidentified
I know.
joe rogan
Hilarious guy.
He used to drive from New York to Boston all the time, like almost every day.
He was constantly driving.
It's a pain in the ass.
It's like two and a half hours up, two and a half hours back, whatever it is.
jim breuer
New York to Boston?
joe rogan
Yeah, what is it, three?
jim breuer
Five.
joe rogan
No.
jim breuer
That's a good four and a half.
joe rogan
You drive like a pussy?
Shut the mic off.
jim breuer
You had a lot of PBA cars yourself.
joe rogan
It's not that far.
jim breuer
It's four fucking hours.
What are you talking about?
joe rogan
I would say it's three at the most.
Anyway, he drove it all the time.
And he was talking about what he did was he just went in Zen.
And he said, this is what I'm doing now.
The way he dealt with it, he's like, now I'm driving.
There's no upset.
This is what I'm doing.
I'm doing this.
And if the cars are all stopped and we're all going five miles an hour, this is what we're doing.
unidentified
Yes.
russel brand
That's perfect.
That is literally Zen, isn't it?
Not to resist your reality.
And I don't think that means becoming some doormat that people can walk all over.
But when you are in a city, a traffic jam is the perfect example of a situation over which you have no control.
In this moment, you getting angry cannot influence or determine that situation in any way.
And then I think that once you've realized it on a mundane level, like a traffic jam, how far can you extrapolate that?
When someone goes, I'm in love with someone else, I'm leaving you.
Oh, okay.
I wanted to speak to that Eckhart Tolle.
Do you know that guy, Eckhart Tolle?
He wrote like...
unidentified
Sure.
russel brand
Now, he speaks like this.
He's a German person, and he's so relaxed, he can barely be bothered to talk to you.
And like, some mistake, some, again, glitch in the Matrix.
I managed to get his phone number right.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus, you and him together.
unidentified
Yeah.
Initially...
russel brand
I'm going to have to ask you to stop calling me now.
I'm changing my number.
So I just got his number and it was meant to be for one interview.
But then I thought, fuck me, I've got access to this Buddhist guy.
I'm going to tap him up every time I have a fucking problem.
Right, my girlfriend, she's really pissing me off.
Eckhart, Eckhart, what do I do?
Hello, Eckhart!
You're lucky I started to bother him.
joe rogan
You're beyond hell.
russel brand
Please, there is nothing that can be done for you.
It was fascinating to talk to him because I was having a hard time with a woman that I was seeing and I was like, what am I going to do?
And she's done this and she's done that.
And he goes, well, perhaps you will resolve this conflict and you will become married and you will have children and then both of you will die.
Because he knows that actually you're gonna die.
That's the end point, really.
So wherever you invest your energy, be fully well aware that at some point it is going to be relinquished.
joe rogan
Yeah, it might work out, or death, but definitely death.
How many hours does it take to get to Boston?
unidentified
Three hours, 40 minutes or so.
joe rogan
So we're in the middle.
jim breuer
We're in the middle.
unidentified
Depends where you leave from.
jim breuer
In the middle.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And if you don't drive like a pussy.
jim breuer
My mother and father would make me aware that we're going to be dead.
russel brand
How do you mean?
jim breuer
And my mom would always say, I'm going to be dead one day, so you need to this, this, this.
And I would...
It would...
I couldn't handle that.
russel brand
How old was you, mate?
jim breuer
I want to say I was five to seven, you know, five, six years old.
russel brand
It's quite young to introduce Jimbo to the concept of mortality, five to seven.
I was still struggling with a goldfish concept.
Where's that goldfish gone?
Oh, don't worry, we're going to...
joe rogan
Isn't that a good idea to start those thoughts off early?
Let's accept this and get over these goddamn things.
Let's figure out what the fuck we're so terrified about that we have to create a land in the clouds that we're definitely all gonna go to and meet up after the fucking show.
jim breuer
But that put me in check of the whole thing.
I gotta say, it made me sob.
Just the thought of, where are we going?
Where are we going?
What happens?
Is it just blackness?
And my father, towards the end, he just literally went, eh, you know, that's it, you're dead, and that's it, show goes on.
And as simple as that, I'm like, oh my god, we forget about that.
russel brand
That's bleak.
I'm not down with that one.
I mean, listen, the Cloud Kingdom...
But the thing is, Joe, you know before when we were talking about your DMT experiences and you said it would be like sort of a caveman with a crayon trying to draw God, right?
unidentified
On dirt.
russel brand
On dirt.
Not even on a canvas.
I remember very specifically you said it.
You can rewind the podcast.
You can listen to it again.
That's what Joe said, right?
joe rogan
With a stubby crayon, too.
russel brand
Stubby...
I think you said your fingers were stubby.
I don't want to be overly meticulous in that particular...
Right, so like...
When people talk about the kingdom of heaven is within, or in the afterlife there'll be 72 virgins, me personally, I see these things as metaphors.
It will be as if you will be in such a blissful state when you are free of the shackles of the material realm, when you are liberated from your body.
I've spent...
I don't know if this is...
This is another thing that sort of makes me look good and maybe it makes me look savage.
I was doing one of my bits of altruism the other day, you know, like how I dole out bits of altruism.
I told you, I've already mentioned going to a homeless place.
I don't know if you're picking it up.
I'm a pretty nice guy.
I was at this other place that was like an adult learning difficulties place, right?
joe rogan
Right.
russel brand
And for me, the term learning difficulties was polite because these people were like, you know, fucking seriously mentally ill.
I mean, they were beautiful human beings and everything.
But anyway, I had a really fantastic time there.
It made me feel incredibly grateful for my own life and all the things one would imagine that you'd feel in such a situation.
And I was chatting to the people, and one person was like, people were getting various certificates for various kind of achievements, whether it was in the art, doing some drawings, or whether it was doing some cooking or whatever.
And I started to feel this impulse of Sort of a bit of patronisingness of like, oh, you're getting that certificate, are you?
And then I thought, oh, in a minute, this ain't no fucking different from someone who's doing like a four-year MA in religion in global politics, really.
I mean, if you can imagine supreme consciousness, if you can imagine the realms experienced on DMT or the realms that are being described with people that have dedicated themselves to meditation or kundalini, have dedicated themselves to, you know, Terrence McKenna, get into them super states of consciousness accessible to individuals, and our birthright, some people say, that our little achievements of, I've got myself a giraffe, for example, Or a new car or the things that I'm proud of today.
You know, like, we similarly are on this little pedestrian level.
You know, like, we're sweet little darling things, really, with our material achievements, with our accolades and our awards.
And it changed my perspective of it, of like...
Bloody hell, the difference between me and someone that's not in what you'd consider being the normal strata of the mental health field, it's not that bloody different.
Not in infinite space, not with Jupiter sucking in meteors, all that shit going on right now.
What's the difference between me and someone that life is confined to cooking projects?
It's not hugely significant, except I'm not that good at cooking.
In a way, they're better.
I would never have got that certificate.
joe rogan
Well, it might not be hugely significant in your perspective when you look at the infinite, but it's very significant in terms of the two of you relating to each other and trying to work this life out and trying to be sort of compatible, try to communicate, try to be friendly with each other and work out all the weird cultural differences between everybody and try to get to the essence of what it means to be a person.
And we're all going through some weird sort of struggle.
No one escapes the struggle.
Not even Johnny Depp.
russel brand
Not even Johnny Depp.
joe rogan
Even Johnny Depp.
russel brand
After everything.
jim breuer
I have a hard time believing Johnny Depp.
joe rogan
Johnny Depp got dragged into the golden triangle of pussy problems.
And he's in there right now.
jim breuer
Oh, really?
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
jim breuer
You didn't hear?
Because he did the Rockstar...
Did this happen during the Rockstar tour?
unidentified
Right now.
joe rogan
Didn't you hear this recently?
His girlfriend said he beat her.
And he's saying his girlfriend is fucking...
Doug Stanhope's getting sued because he wrote a whole article saying that he's really good friends with Johnny Depp.
And Doug Stanhope wrote a whole article about how the woman has been blackmailing Johnny and threatening him, and he brought it up before the whole thing came out in the news that she wanted...
She had certain demands if he didn't reach...
Who knows who's fucking right and who's wrong.
But at the end of the day, you know, whether Johnny's telling him the truth or not, but at the end of the day, even Johnny Depp can't escape.
The fucking pussy problems.
The reality of the world.
jim breuer
You know, he's touring.
I think for the first time in life, you would see him with images of rock stars that he loved, but now he's touring.
joe rogan
So he's doing music with them?
jim breuer
With Alice Cooper.
joe rogan
What?
jim breuer
Yes, he went on a rock tour.
joe rogan
Wow.
jim breuer
What?
I'm telling you.
joe rogan
Alice Cooper's selling hot dogs in Arizona.
jim breuer
Nah, dude, I'm telling you, look it up.
They got a name, they did a rock tour, and I went, huh, Johnny Depp, and they did a lot of cities, and maybe he's...
joe rogan
Wow.
jim breuer
That's the one thing he didn't get out of his system.
joe rogan
I don't even think that's it, man.
I just think Johnny Depp is just being Johnny Depp, just having a good goddamn time.
jim breuer
Maybe he's like this all the time.
joe rogan
What's it called?
The Hollywood Vampires.
jim breuer
Yeah, Hollywood Vampires.
Johnny Depp is the guitarist.
unidentified
Wow.
Alice Cooper.
joe rogan
Pretty badass.
That's Johnny Depp over there on the far right with the goofy hat?
russel brand
Or is it him on the far left?
joe rogan
That's him on the far left with the goofy hat.
Wow.
Good for him.
Johnny Depp's living a goddamn exemplary life.
jim breuer
And I think that's Joe Perry on the right.
joe rogan
That is Alice motherfucking Cooper.
Look at that.
russel brand
There they are.
unidentified
School's out for summer!
joe rogan
He's been selling hot dogs in fucking Arizona.
He has some Cooper Dog or Alice's Dog's place.
He was a radio DJ in Phoenix, too.
He had a radio show.
jim breuer
He's addicted.
See, he goes to movies and he only sees the premieres.
And then he goes on the street and people are like...
This is the first time he's in front of hundreds of...
There's a big difference between...
Holy shit!
joe rogan
So you're trying to say that him doing these shows...
jim breuer
This brought him to a high...
He probably didn't know.
He's probably having a ball, but...
I'm not saying that was happening, but...
joe rogan
Maybe.
jim breuer
Could be.
That simple.
He...
That's a big high, boy.
I just stood on the stage and watched 100,000 people go nuts.
unidentified
I was like, I wanna do this.
joe rogan
It's also the only time that you're allowed to dress like that.
You can't dress like that in real life.
You have to go on stage to dress up like that.
Go to some of those photos.
If you come over my house with fucking leather pants on and a shirt like that, I'll fucking choke you.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You can't come to my house like that.
What are you doing, man?
jim breuer
Why are you wearing makeup?
joe rogan
Why are you dressing like you just came over on a boat from Spain?
russel brand
There's some sartorial risks being taken without a Hollywood vampire on the backdrop.
joe rogan
He's got lace!
He's got lace around his wrists!
russel brand
Come on, man.
joe rogan
But you can pull that off if you're in a band.
jim breuer
Johnny Depp!
joe rogan
But he always dresses like that.
It's like he's wearing his regular clothes.
Like, for Johnny Depp, he's wearing his regular clothes.
But he does have his sleeves rolled up, and...
jim breuer
See what I mean?
joe rogan
It's an effectation, for sure.
He's definitely working on that image.
Do you think he must his hair up on purpose?
Like, not musty enough.
jim breuer
Come on, man.
joe rogan
He's gonna must it up a little more.
Spray a little shit in there, stick it up.
jim breuer
Hey, listen.
More power to him.
I want to do that, too.
joe rogan
Why not, man?
jim breuer
Just so I can go to Germany?
Just, like, we're getting paid.
joe rogan
I think you can just go to Germany.
You can probably just go to Germany.
jim breuer
I could just do that, too.
russel brand
There is no restriction at the stage on entering Germany, Jimbo.
You're free to go.
Okay.
Get tired in lace if you choose.
jim breuer
But I want it dressed like that.
joe rogan
You can do that.
We're looking at, in his situation, whether he's navigating it successfully or not, he's definitely in a strange path of the river.
He's in a strange, deep, wide channel with incredible rapids, and he's riding on a fucking inner tube down this stretch of river that nobody gets to ride.
The Johnny Depp stretch is like the Tom Cruise stretch or the Samuel Jackson stretch.
Like, whoa!
These motherfuckers can't go anywhere.
Yeah.
Stan Hope told me he hangs around with Johnny Depp and they can't go anywhere.
andy stumpf
They have dudes with earpieces everywhere.
joe rogan
There's people constantly circling him, making sure he's okay.
And he'll go into a restaurant.
There's people that are guarding the doors.
They're making sure people don't go in the room.
It's very, very different than even regular fame.
He's in that Pirates of the Caribbean fame where it's just, can't go anywhere.
jim breuer
That's an expensive product, bro.
I need to protect that product.
joe rogan
Well, it's also, he's super vulnerable.
Like, people lose their fucking minds when they're around a certain level of celebrity.
Like, does a Tom Cruise...
Like, Tom Cruise can't go to the movies.
jim breuer
Right.
He's gotta...
joe rogan
Right, he's gotta block out the streets.
If he went to the movies, he would leave the movie theater and people would be trying to grab him as he was walking out of the theater just to touch him and take pictures with him.
It's not like you can't just interact with people.
russel brand
I had done a film with Tom Cruise.
It's an intense experience.
joe rogan
What was that like?
What'd you do?
russel brand
It was a film called Rock of Ages and it had Tom Cruise in it and Alec Baldwin.
Lots of really, really famous people were in it.
And a monkey.
The monkey, when I read it, there was no monkey in it.
And at some point Tom Cruise said, there's going to be a monkey in this film.
And from that point, there was a fucking monkey in the film.
Even Marseille, the monkey was in scenes that Tom Cruise weren't in.
One with me, and the monkey was an arsehole.
It was a baboon.
It's wearing a nappy that was tied on with electric tape.
It was very aggressive.
It jumped off of the shoulder of the guy that was meant to be looking after the monkey.
The monkey had a trailer with five other monkeys in it that it could fuck in its time off.
I was saying, who's doing the monkey's fucking contract?
LAUGHTER If you watch that film, you can see there's a scene I'm in with the monkey.
I ain't even doing no acting at all.
All I'm doing is it's just a man nervously looking at a monkey.
So I'm thinking that thing could get down off that shoulder at any point now.
joe rogan
And fuck you up.
russel brand
Yeah, it could fuck you up.
Tom Cruise, he's like a travelling king.
He's got many, many trailers.
But he's so...
You know, you arrive in a situation and you think, right, here are my prejudices about Tom Cruise, all the things I've read, all the things I've heard.
Go Prejudice.
But, like, we meet him, he blasted me with such affability and charm that they melted away, like ice cones, the pure heat of the man's sweetness.
Like, on the sort of, like, it was my birthday during that film, I've got a big basket full of, like, you know, yoga-related things and stuff like that, these sort of thoughtful presents.
You remember, you know, he shakes your hand, remembers your name, sort of remembers details about you.
He's like, if you mention your auntie or something in the conversation, the next conversation, he'll mention that auntie.
I went round his house for dinner, I was really, really late, because of that fucking monkey, actually.
It was playing up, like he was not working that day.
I went round his house, when he was married to Katie Holmes, and there was that little famous Tom Cruise, Suri Cruise was there and all, all lined up.
I went there, I was very, very late, and they'd all eaten.
And they goes, oh, well, do you want to still eat?
I went, yeah, yeah, and I will eat.
And I had to, like I'm sat with you now, Joe, opposite Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and the little darling one, I was fucking eating spaghetti.
And that's a complicated thing to eat in front of Tom Cruise as well.
It's long, isn't it?
And I was trying to meet that lady in the tramp, shoving that shit in.
And then the next course, I think, was lasagna, which was weird, because that's two pasta courses.
Then I think there was cupcakes and stuff involved.
All the way through it, just sat opposite Tom Cruise talking about communism, which I brought up as a topic, which in retrospect was a mistake.
unidentified
Why?
russel brand
Well, because don't bring up Communism.
Because, like, what I said was, I goes, well, look, I'm down with fairness, right?
I goes, you know, communism, yeah, surely it went a bit, it got a bit out of control.
No one's arguing with that.
It went a bit hectic.
I'm not down with massacres or genocides under any flag.
I was going, but fairness and justice, I'm fully up for.
And Tom Cruise goes, oh, I don't know about that, the communism.
I goes, yeah, but Tom, you were born with this thing.
You've been born with this thing.
I goes, that's like being born an aristocrat.
The thing that you've got, that drive or whatever, people aren't like you.
I tried to explain it to Tom, but it was hard for him to take me seriously because I had spaghetti down my shirt and all that kind of shit.
But I had a good go of saying it's probably different to be Tom Cruise than other people.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
But what was he saying?
That communism is a bad idea and you were saying that maybe sharing more would be a good idea.
Isn't it weird that communism is connected to dictatorships, which is kind of the opposite of communism?
russel brand
It really is.
I think anything, as soon as people start to implement ideas, it gets into fucking trouble, doesn't it?
Power!
Yeah, the power, of course, mate.
Because all of these political ideas and religious ideas, it's supposed to just be, we're here, we're going to die, should we try and make it as nice as possible?
And part of that's going to be not being out of order to each other.
But all of them interface with our problems, the problems we've described, those biological and mechanical drives.
So I'm trying to...
All I've said is, like, the communism...
There's a socialism and communism that's different from the depiction of communism that a lot of Americans and English people would have because we were on the other side of the Cold War.
So we got a very, very negative impact.
And, of course, that was...
A version of communism that's pretty fucking brutal in places, as is capitalism, you know?
So I'm sort of like trying to kick around these...
I'm saying like, yeah, but really, all communism is a sort of a version of Christianity in that it's saying we are all brothers here and all of us have rights and we should be trying to build a society where we love each other.
That's sort of what he's saying.
You know, where it goes wrong is it doesn't allow room for individualism and the myriad distinctions between different human beings.
But I wasn't concentrating on that bit.
joe rogan
But that's not really communism, though.
That's really more of dictatorships.
russel brand
That was dictatorships, yeah.
You can dress it up how you want.
I'm not a scholar in communism, although I am going to do a degree in religion and global politics.
And for me, I'm going to spend the next three years doing it part-time.
You don't have to pop in a day a week.
Actually, I've not done it yet.
I've got to go for the interview next week.
I'm hoping they're going to let me in just on the basis of, come on, let me in.
I've been on the fucking telly.
Give us a break.
Anyway, but my point I was trying to make is...
Look, things get convoluted and complicated by, you know, bureaucracy, ideology, and demagoguery, but ultimately, we're just meant to be sharing.
It's not a bloody complicated idea, really.
joe rogan
Yeah, the dictatorship aspect of it is almost like that same inescapable drive that causes someone to want to be the monkey with the five monkeys that it could fuck any time it wants.
russel brand
There's always someone going, I'm going to be the monkey that's fucking fine.
Whether it's any sort of religious extremism, there's always some guy at the end of it going, I'm going to be fucking five monkeys in my trailer.
And that person's ruining it for the rest of us.
Because whenever you see a religious cult, I've started a religious cult, we all live here together and we grow our own vegetables, everything's organic.
Yeah, alright, that's lovely, mate.
Are you fucking everyone?
Oh, look, I don't get into that.
A little bit, yeah.
A little bit.
I've got a monkey trailer that I'm spunking up in.
joe rogan
Everybody else's wives.
Yeah, that's one of those weird, inescapable things about being a person.
About these drives that you have to figure out how to hold them together.
I think communism would work.
Look, if this was a community, if we were the only four people on an island, just us four, we would be communists.
We would all just get together and we would talk, like, how do you guys want to handle this?
Like, what do we do?
How do we gather fish?
russel brand
I like this.
jim breuer
And what are you capable of pulling off?
joe rogan
Yeah, hey, I'm pretty good at climbing trees.
I know where the coconuts are.
Okay, cool.
And we'd figure it out and we'd share it all together.
russel brand
Do you need any poems?
Because I could probably provide those.
joe rogan
We would all share, right?
And if we didn't, we'd have to have a conversation.
We'd have to say, hey, Joe, you're not fucking digging enough holes or you don't catch enough fish.
We've got to work this out together so we all contribute an equal amount.
You can't be lazy and exist off the fruits of your brothers and sisters' labor.
russel brand
That's really good, isn't it?
joe rogan
We have to all contribute.
jim breuer
What's the difference between that and being tribal?
It's the same thing, no?
russel brand
That tribal thing as well.
Now, have you heard this thing?
That in chimpanzee societies, they have about 75 chimps, right?
And once it gets to about 80 or 90, things get edgy.
And they normally break off and go, fucking hell, we better have Another little breakaway chimp community, because this is getting too heavy over here.
And so the assumption is that we, as great apes ourselves, similarly should be living in manageable communities.
We're so overstimulating.
When we're joking about the power of women and femininity, you're not meant to be exposed to that kind of stuff.
You're not meant to be exposed to that kind of imagery that is present in pornography.
You're not meant to be exposed to that kind of variety.
We're meant to be like there's 50 or 60 of us.
All right, these people are good warriors.
These people are good fishermen.
These people are good at...
You know what I mean?
You just find mysticism.
You find little roles in it.
But again, since we've lived in this monoculture where people are like little cells, batteries, all sort of stacked up together in cities and suburbs, then how do you access that?
We're not having an authentic human experience.
So that's why there's so much...
What do I want to say?
Disease.
joe rogan
Well, it's an authentic human experience, but it's a very new one.
It's a very different thing.
And I've tried to figure out what it is we're actually doing, but it seems to me that everything is getting more and more connected, right?
So what we're doing in these cities is we're connecting 20 million people into this mass of buildings.
And then we're connecting them all with the internet.
And we're connecting those 20 million people with the 10 million people in this state and 5 million people in that state, and we're all becoming one sort of weird, gigantic group that's very, very dissimilar from the original tribal groups that allowed one alpha male To run things, one alpha female community, everybody knowing and understanding each other.
And when you talk to archaeologists, have you ever read Sex at Dawn, Dr. Chris Ryan?
Really interesting book.
But what he maintains is that this idea even of monogamy that didn't exist in these tribal cultures, they shared sexuality.
Everybody swapped around, and people banged everybody.
And that's one of the reasons why they stayed intimate, is that they all probably were polyamorous.
russel brand
They were polyamorous!
I knew it!
joe rogan
And they didn't understand.
Well, it speaks to our nature because we don't want to be monogamous.
It's a struggle.
But the polyamorous thing also speaks to this idea that before we understood genetics and we understood DNA, we didn't know whose children they were.
So if you had a child, if a woman had a child and I fucked her and you fucked her and you fucked her, we all would assume it's our kid.
No one knows.
They didn't understand it.
They didn't know.
russel brand
There will be certain clues along the way, Joe.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
People get it.
They figured it out after a while.
russel brand
That kid's straggling a lot of people.
joe rogan
Well that's a weird thing too, is how children maintain some sort of talent traits that their parents have.
Like there's things that get passed on through children, through DNA. Obsessive behaviors, like desire to grow and learn, people like have kids that are very similar in personality, that seem to be like inherent to the child, that seems to come through the DNA. Yeah, but wouldn't that be a little bit too of the kid that's all he knows growing up, and if he's watching a parent that's obsessive, he's either going to go, I am not being that, or I'm that.
Sure, it's possible.
It's totally possible, but there's also a pattern that they follow.
My middle daughter is obsessed with things.
She gets obsessed with things.
She's read six Harry Potter books.
She's eight.
She just keeps reading them.
She'll read hours and hours every night, and then all she wants to talk about is Harry Potter.
She's all fucking totally Harry Potter'd out, like, all day long.
She'll explain something to me.
I'm like, is that a Harry Potter thing?
She's like, yes, it is.
And then she'll...
She's just obsessed with Harry Potter, or gymnastics, or whatever the fuck it is.
She's very much like me, like, where she gets something.
She's just doing cartwheels in the living room all day long, and fucking back handsprings.
She never stops.
She's just obsessed, and she gets on these things and just rides them out.
And she doesn't even necessarily know that that's how I am.
I don't think she sees that, because I'm not like that when I'm around her, really.
russel brand
So you're observing her, and it's the same as saying, oh, wow, she's got my eyes.
You can see that she is exhibiting traits that she's not being taught.
joe rogan
They're very extreme.
It's very extreme.
It's not like, oh, it's similar.
Because my youngest daughter is just silly.
She's not like that at all.
She's not obsessive at all.
She's just a fun little kid.
But the middle one is kind of fucking crazy.
russel brand
How does that...
Does that make you feel like you've got a different type of connection with that kid?
joe rogan
No, no, no, no.
jim breuer
No, no.
joe rogan
There's the connection with all of them.
That's the interesting thing about having children.
The connection with all of them is just so spectacular.
It's not like, I connect with this one more than that one.
I connect with all of them.
But it's interesting to observe your own bizarre personality traits manifesting themselves almost in a genetic level when a kid.
jim breuer
Yeah.
My middle one's like that.
My middle one is identical to me.
Sometimes I like it, sometimes I love it, and sometimes I go, oh, I like that.
russel brand
How old is she?
jim breuer
She's 14, so she's really blaspheming.
But you know what?
The one that does all the gymnastics and all that, I noticed too with kids, they express happiness in different ways.
My oldest one, the only time I know she's truly happy, and she's 17 now, is when she's bouncing, singing...
Doing a cartwheel outside.
She's got an instrument.
When she's silent, I go, oh man, something's up.
This kid's been silent for two months.
joe rogan
Her dad's so expressive.
You think about it.
Who's more expressive than you?
You're this joyful guy who's always got this crazy laugh.
By now, at 14, she's super aware that you play these places all over the world.
People come to see you and laugh.
I mean, that's got to be bizarre, too.
What does your dad do for a living?
Oh, I fix his pipes.
What about your dad?
He just talks shit in front of people and they laugh their dick off.
You know, it's a very bizarre thing for a kid to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, you could do that, too?
jim breuer
Right.
joe rogan
And they see that.
And also, I'm sure you're not restrictive in how they express themselves.
You probably want them to have fun and do cartwheels and laugh and joke around a lot.
Yeah, I mean, so that gets encouraged.
And then I think happiness, like self-reflection and all these other things, these are muscles.
And you can work on those muscles.
You can develop them.
russel brand
I think you're absolutely right about that.
The image that I've been using is like of circuits, like how it must be neurologically.
Of course, I'm speculating about neurology, which is probably not something that someone who knows nothing about neurology should do.
joe rogan
Lucky none of us do either, so we'll just follow you on this.
russel brand
You know, if you're continually activating certain neurological pathways or creating synaptic relationships, then that's going to fire up more regularly.
I mean, I notice it with some of these new things I'm doing.
Like, initially, when people were explaining stuff about getting out of half-guard and how even to shuffle on the floor, you know, that shrimpy stuff, I was like, I ain't ever going to be able to do this.
Because soon it seems like it's making its way behaviourally into a different aspect of my consciousness.
And I suppose when you talk about happiness or misery or addiction, if you're continually living in that circuit, people talk about programming.
I feel like when I'm aware of my programming, there's certain things that if people say them to me, I can't help the reaction I have.
Obvious ones, if I'm exposed to certain sexual images, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
I feel all those feelings before I make any decisions.
If someone makes me feel insecure or says something, I have to really watch that moment, because otherwise, before I know it, I've gone down a path of behaviour.
And I think that perhaps what we can do on an individual level is learn, and this is hard for people who are living in total fucking crisis and dreadful poverty, and like you said before, I personally am in a privileged position where I can begin to bring my consciousness to those kind of things, of like, right, I want to live on that circuit now.
I don't want to always have...
I don't always want to feel fearful in these moments.
I want to learn to plough that neurological pathway so that it's easier for me to stay there.
Programming is necessary and if you're not living on a program that you've taken control of individually, you're living on someone else's program, you're living on that program that's out there, that constant bombardment of negativity and fear and anxiety and division and you're different from people and you're not good enough and by this otherwise you're not going to be good enough.
You're going to need pretty strong defences, I think.
With the diminished role of religion in our life, with the diminished role of political ideologies that we can trust, what are people supposed to do about being alive and not feeling good?
Who do you go to now?
joe rogan
I think you're doing it.
I think you're a part of it.
I think there's a lot of other people that are doing it, too.
It's like you're trying to re-examine the patterns that you're stuck in.
And how many of these patterns that you or I or Jim or anybody here created for themselves?
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
You've created a lot of your own prison bars.
And that's a really common thing with people.
You know, whatever defenses that you've...
Put up whatever patterns that you've instinctively followed because of jealousy or fear or inadequacy or any weird feelings.
You've set these neurological patterns and they're very difficult to break once you've set them yourself.
It's almost like you've built your own prison and now you're complaining about it.
russel brand
Yes, I agree with this.
Now, do you think we could introduce to that a kind of a compassion?
Because, like, you know, earlier on we were talking about, like, we can understand people's sort of jealousy or irritation at, like, people being famous or rich.
Because, you know, there's no doubt.
There's too much inequality.
There's too much injustice.
It's not something that can really be questioned.
And, like, so what I'm trying to do is bring bloody compassion and tolerance to places where I find it hard.
Today, someone's...
Like, you know, I told you I didn't bring no clobber.
I left my suitcase.
I fucked up.
So I went in the shop, and this is a problem of great privilege, but I went along to a pretty cool shop in Los Angeles, and the security fella goes, oh, the shop ain't open yet.
Then he recognised me, and he goes, oh, no, no, no, the shop is open, right?
And I was like, oh, thank you, mate, and I felt all special for a moment.
Then we got to the doorway of the shop, and the guy that was inside the shop, he, I don't know, he's having a bad day or whatever, and he goes, oh, you know, maybe you can't come in, right?
And I immediately thought, you fucking...
The reaction I feel inside myself.
Like rage, actually.
And the security guy, to his eternal credit, overrode the guy in the show.
Just let him in.
Just let him in.
And then I got in the show and I felt better about myself.
But in that moment, I felt special.
I'm allowed in.
I had so many little things sort of triggered in me in that sort of short momentary interaction and feeling of like, oh great, the security guy recognises me.
Oh no, this guy don't let me in.
And it's very hard for me, actually, because I'm still in my mind judging that guy that didn't want to let me in a little bit.
I'm carrying I've got the perfect thing like a silver bullet.
joe rogan
And then you get there and he goes, hey man, I'm really sorry if I was rude earlier.
My girlfriend broke up with me.
russel brand
Don't apologize yet because I thought of the perfect thing to destroy it.
joe rogan
And then you go, oh, this poor guy.
russel brand
Perhaps if you would let me in!
joe rogan
This poor guy's working retail.
His girlfriend's fucking some football player.
unidentified
Poor bastard.
jim breuer
Right.
Those are moments too where you're going to a club and you're so fucking rich.
I thought in my mad success, I'd reach to the point where I can walk to a place and say, you're not allowed in here.
And I turn around, I'm going, fucking, I'm going to buy this fucking place.
And then I'm going to fire you.
That's how fucking work.
joe rogan
That's what Tom Cruise does.
jim breuer
That's why he's so happy.
joe rogan
Just buy his place.
russel brand
It's a lot of admin just to sack someone, isn't it?
You've got to go for all of them.
Right, okay, the surveyors are coming on Monday.
joe rogan
Mortgage, yeah.
russel brand
Right, Jesus Christ.
Health and safety people coming to chat.
Right, and now could you bring in Dave?
We can't bring in Dave because he's at his chemotherapy session.
joe rogan
And they might have some weird laws of who you could fire and not fire.
russel brand
You can't fire Dave.
He was here on a charter.
jim breuer
He's been running for union.
joe rogan
Imagine now you buy the building and this fuck has to keep working for you.
jim breuer
Oh my god.
russel brand
Now you're stuck with him!
joe rogan
And then he sues you for discrimination or harassment or something.
russel brand
I didn't know that Dave was missing a toe when I tried to sack him.
That was a mistake in retrospect.
joe rogan
So did anybody from the Tom Cruise camp try to convert you?
russel brand
No one made even the remotest effort to convert me to science.
I couldn't have made it more clear that I was a man desperately in need of an ideology.
Oh, Tom, if only they were...
I guess I'd get so lonely, Tom.
If only they were something to believe in.
Some structure.
Some simple...
jim breuer
Look, just for fuck's sake!
russel brand
Give me that dialectic book or whatever it's called.
joe rogan
Yeah, there should be a way, right?
russel brand
There was no interest.
It's like, do you know what I felt?
I thought they felt that I would ruin Scientology, and they didn't want me in.
That's what I thought.
Yeah, that's what they did.
They didn't, but there was no invitation.
No one said, come on, mate.
You need a bit of L. Ron Hubbard in your life.
There was no interest.
There meant to be an expansionist religion.
No one brought it up at all.
And if ever there was a candidate for a religion...
joe rogan
I think they tread very carefully on those waters.
You have to start asking questions yourself.
Or, there's certain levels perhaps, this is also possibly, where they don't necessarily really want anybody new to join.
russel brand
That's what I fucking thought!
I thought I didn't qualify!
I'm going to that fucking celebrity centre, I'm gonna kick the bloody door in and say, oi, come on, take my money!
joe rogan
They've been burned.
Too many times.
They are very careful about who they allow in, who they don't allow in, I would imagine.
russel brand
There's a lot of pillorying of science.
I'm always starting to feel sorry for him.
unidentified
Really?
russel brand
Well, like, poor sods.
They're just trying their artists to make up a religion.
I mean, I don't know, actually.
joe rogan
Did you see Going Clear?
russel brand
Yeah, that was...
joe rogan
You'll stop feeling sorry for him when you watch Going Clear.
You're like, what in the fuck?
russel brand
I like that guy, Paul Haggis, who went like, when they showed him that, right, this is the thing we actually believe.
joe rogan
Handwritten manuscripts.
russel brand
He was like, he looked around for like, oh, come on, this is the test, right?
If you believe in this, they go, no, you fucking mug, that's not the real thing, you idiot, get out.
joe rogan
Well, he was a madman.
I mean, L. Ron Hubbard, whether or not he's correct about Scientology, wrote more fiction than any person that's ever lived.
russel brand
Even if that was his only qualification, he was just making stuff up all day.
joe rogan
Constantly making stuff up, and then he wrote this, and no red flags?
Nothing.
No one goes, hey, maybe he made this up too.
No fucking chance.
russel brand
On Monday, he's in Guinness World of Records for making shit up.
On Tuesday, he starts a religion, and no one goes, is this connected to Monday's activity in any way?
joe rogan
Not only that, just a chronic liar.
Just his whole life was just full of shit.
russel brand
Also, I didn't like his rubbery, wet lips.
Like a sort of Ronald McDonald mouth.
Sort of wet, slobbery guy on those fucking cruise ships dressing people up.
joe rogan
I'm not a big fan of dudes with captain's outfits on either.
russel brand
Unless you've served actual time.
joe rogan
Well, he did.
He was in the Navy.
And he did command ships, apparently, but he was apparently not very good at it.
russel brand
He badly commanded ships.
joe rogan
He was removed from his duty.
But the point is, after he got out, decided, I'm still rocking this captain's outfit.
russel brand
I'm not letting this go.
joe rogan
Fuck.
russel brand
You're not a genuine captain.
jim breuer
They'll believe anything's higher.
Trust me.
unidentified
I got a boat, bitch.
I'm gonna make some shit up and I'll have them for quite a while and make a good business of it.
jim breuer
Dare watch me.
Hi Skipper!
joe rogan
There he is.
jim breuer
Hi Skipper!
joe rogan
Madman.
jim breuer
Look at that!
unidentified
Fascinating.
russel brand
You see what I mean about the liquid around the mouth?
Anyway, but I suppose people that are Scientologists will say this is our religion and you're taking the piss out of our religion.
joe rogan
It's an ideology that is also a very positive one in the sense that it's dedicated towards self-improvement and eliminating all these psychological barriers that are holding you back.
And in that way, people find a lot of benefit in being a part of that religion.
And I think when they find a lot of benefit in being a part of it, then, you know, they can justify all the other nonsense and just sort of ignore it.
Because what L. Ron Hubbard, according to the Going Clear book, Lawrence Krauss book was trying to do was self-medicate.
He had a lot of psychological issues himself, and he was trying to cure his own issues.
And in using these methods to cure his own issues, he translated them into a religion.
This is a big part of what Scientology initially was, was his own attempts to self-diagnose and treat his own psychological ailments.
russel brand
Quite a good idea, really, in the beginning, and sort of worked really well.
And there are, I suppose, people that it's working for.
A quote I heard that I liked was, be quick to see where religious people are right.
It's all really obvious where religious people are wrong, because we hear about it on the news.
But where religious people are right, togetherness, selflessness, It's a relationship with a deeper self, acceptance of death, and the possibility of transcendence of the, you know, human primal self.
Those things are all really beautiful ideas that have kind of lost their way in a science, you know, that term scientism, the idea that science has got into territories that science can't really handle, because we come to a judging full stop at certain points, you know, like, what happened on the Tuesday before the Big Bang, you know?
Right.
unidentified
Materialism...
russel brand
Materialism and individualism are hard things to overcome.
If we have as our dominant mindset, I'm only going to believe shit that I can prove, then you are just an individual and you may as well just do it.
Why not just spend your life fucking as many people as you can and accumulate in as much material as you can because nothing exists unless you can see it, measure it, weigh it, contain it and fuck it.
If that is the dominant belief system, which...
Sort of materialism, consumerism, capitalism, I think all dovetail on that premise.
You know, this is all that's real.
That's how you can have the chronic ecological disrespect is because it doesn't matter what happens after you're dead.
Well, what about my fucking children?
Even just on a practical level, I've got to live on this fucking pebble in infinite space.
But if you're just like, well, we've not really thought about that.
You know, sort of an inability to accept, you know, like certain...
And I know that you're sort of like a...
I don't wholesale buy any dominant theory, but it's clear to me that...
Do you know what I believe in?
On an individual level and on a cultural level, if something is possible, you should be trying to fucking do it.
So as soon as people realise, hold on a minute, that's having a negative impact, or hey, this is a better way of using our resources and our utilities, as soon as you realise it, you should be moving towards it.
They say wisdom is acting on knowledge.
Once you've recognised, oh, fossil fuels are running out, it's like right...
Fucking hell, we better start working on the basis that we're fucked.
We better start looking at alternative energy sources.
We better look at different alliances.
Knowing those things and not doing them, it makes me very, very uneasy.
Because it makes me think, who benefits from ignoring this stuff?
Who's running this show?
If it's creating all this rage, all this unease, all this fear in your country and in my country now, times of great, great disease and uncertainty for people, really looking for something.
And these institutions are just saying, just, you know, carry on.
There's no sort of alternative.
No one now is going to see himself as part of a religious community in the same way or as one of the dead ideologies of the last century.
And meanwhile, we're in this sort of peculiar state of looming crisis that feels kind of fucking mad to me.
joe rogan
Well, we're definitely in a state of looming crisis, but to unpack this whole thing, you started off with this idea of what happened the Tuesday before the Big Bang and how science can't really answer that.
Well, they can't answer it yet.
The problem is, once they gather more data, it might be a hundred years from now or a thousand years from now, they can say, oh, well here, we've done the calculations and we understand now that it's an infinite cycle of birth and death and the universe is constantly expanding and contracting and this is the process that we're a part of.
It's infinite and it's never started and it's never ending.
It goes on and on and on.
russel brand
I think you're probably bloody right, mate.
But that idea that you just espoused is in 5,000-year-old fucking documents called the Upanishads.
Those ideas are there already.
So when we fucked off religion 100 years ago because it was causing too much arseache, we kicked out of some of the ideas that are only now just being discovered.
joe rogan
Right, but those ideas are just to be contemplated right now and to be considered, whereas science is trying to find definitive evidence that they do or don't represent the reality of our timeline.
And once they do, then they'll be able to talk about it.
But right now, what they're doing is they're examining the evidence that the Big Bang exists and what could have possibly caused that.
russel brand
Yeah, that...
See, what might...
What the difficulty is, is when any ideology behaves dogmatically and prohibitively, like prevents further exploration.
joe rogan
What's an example of that?
russel brand
The nature of consciousness.
No one knows why consciousness impacts It doesn't matter in the way it does in the sub-quantum world.
We've come to a point where it's like, oh fuck!
The famous double-slit theory that an observed particle behaves differently.
joe rogan
A particle and wave can change its essential nature depending on whether or not it's Misrepresented, though, when it's been explained to me by people who actually understand it, what it really is is that we're measuring these particles, and in the act of measuring, you're changing the results because you're using something to measure it.
russel brand
Yes.
Yes.
joe rogan
But it gets represented as all this woo-woo craziness.
russel brand
But what I think is interesting, Joe, is somewhere between this woo-woo craziness and the kind of a flat, mundane, look, this is life, you're born, you die, you eat food, shit comes out your arsehole territory.
Somewhere in there is a mystery that behind your eyes, behind Jimbo Jamie's eyes and my eyes, there is a constant, there is this consciousness, there is this awareness, there's this inexplicable experience that you've had on DMT, Right.
That suggests to me that consciousness itself is the dominant force.
Consciousness is not just one more phenomena, it is the seat of all phenomena.
And when people are saying, oh, there's this thing that's God, what they are saying is there is an absolute consciousness and all is contained within it.
All matter at some point has come from consciousness.
These realms that are experienced through psychedelic or extreme, you know, personal experiments like your cryogenic things or your flotation tanks all suggest a A phenomenon beyond individual consciousness.
There's something else there.
And the very fact that consciousness, even by the process of measuring, is influencing and impacting reality.
I'm not taking that to the extremes.
I know what you mean, mate.
Some people go, oh, that means your mind can control shit.
I don't think it means that.
It means that reality is only reality when you look at it.
That's what it's kind of getting towards.
A bloody good book that I reckon your listeners will be banging to is called Biocentrism by a man called Robert Lanza, who he did the best breakdown I've ever read of that double-slit experiment and made me understand for the first time that reality is happening within your own consciousness.
It's not an external phenomena at all.
He explained it in very ways that I could understand.
He went...
Think of something totally mundane, he went, like the experience of going into your kitchen in the night and turning the light on.
Is your kitchen fridge still there when you go back downstairs?
He goes, well, when you do go into your kitchen and turn the light on, parcels of photons come down, they interact with the optic nerve, they're inverted in your consciousness.
So whatever it is that's in your kitchen when you're not looking at it, it ain't the same as when you are looking at it.
It's an interpretive reality.
And one of the ways that I've sort of reduced this down from my own simple understanding is this, that if none of us had a sense of smell, if you didn't, I didn't, Jamie didn't, and then how would the concept of smell make sense?
How would you go, oh, there's paint, there's bacon?
None of us would have the instrument to receive it.
So that whole thing would be off the agenda.
So I think that there are...
Streams of energy, streams of data for which we do not have the instruments to receive, so we totally discount it because we simply don't have the instruments to receive it.
And I said once in my stand-up, as a matter of fact, my cat doesn't know there's an internet.
The internet does not enter the realm of my cat's consciousness.
We're out here having all these fucking experiences and like all those realms that we're experiencing in these various sort of psychedelic states or you know however they're achieved is an indication to me there's another reality.
Now where does that become fucking relevant to what we're talking about?
For me what it does is one of the continual ideas that keeps re-emerging to connect us back to where we were with Joe Campbell at the beginning is there is this fucking sense of oneness and believing ourselves to be individual and believing that the dominant thing in our lives to be material That fucks us up because people will kill each other over that material.
And once we sort of realise, no, the true thing about us is the consciousness, is the inner self.
That's the real thing.
Now, we're all out here.
We're all in the game.
We're all going to do shit and we're all going to make mistakes.
But let's not have the material idea as the dominant social idea.
Because everyone's agreed with that, whether they're communists or capitalists or fascists or whatever.
Everyone's saying, no, the main thing is this shit that's out here.
And it's like, that connects to those primal drives.
Because, you know, if that taps into your sexual drive, you can never have enough pussy.
If that gets into your status drive, you can never have enough status and power.
You know, so, like, we're all going to still feel those things.
I'm still going to be a cunt 25 times a day.
But it would be nice if the cultural ambience was, oh, don't worry, Russell, you'll be back to your normal self in a minute of feeling that we're all one and we're all connected.
Not...
Yeah, well, of course, I'd feel like that.
And that's what frightens me about the culture of our countries at the moment, is it's endorsing the worst aspects of our nature.
It's acculturating the worst aspects of our nature instead of the best aspects of our nature.
And for me, there's no fucking difference between left and right in the current political sphere, because they're all making the same argument.
They're all saying, come and live out here in the material world.
joe rogan
Yeah, it seems to me that the material world and this idea that we should be accumulating possessions and status and all these different things is universal.
It almost seems like it's a natural progression from ancient tribal civilization life to this weird city life to this integration of electronics in our life and this symbiotic relationship that we have to computers and the internet and information itself.
It seems like this is One of the things that drives that is this desire for material possessions.
Because when you have a desire for material possessions, it ensures that you're going to continue to innovate and come up with newer and greater and better.
Because you always want to keep up with the Joneses.
You always want to have the newest Tesla because it goes zero to 60 in two seconds.
And you want to have the coolest fucking house with the biggest TV and the fastest internet.
And all those things sort of compound this technological innovation cycle that we're on.
So my thought has been, for a long time, that what we are is some sort of an electronic caterpillar that's going to give birth to some artificial life.
And that all of our desire for material possessions and status and all these different things is really just us pushing forth this electronic agenda.
And that this innovation and the construction of artificial intelligence that's inevitable Hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Flipping over cow patties looking for mushrooms, that we are a part of a process.
And then if you look at it objectively, all these traps that you or I or Tom Cruise or Jim Brewer have been caught up in, whether it's traps of ego or jealousy, all these things sort of ensure movement.
They ensure movement, they ensure interactivity, and that is going to ensure innovation and progress and competition.
And all those things that even when we look at it, we go, this is so pointless, this is so foolish, but yet it's so incredibly prevalent.
Not glorifying it or saying it's definitely the way to go, but objectively, if you weren't a human and you're stepping outside of this thing, looking at it from a distance, you're like, these fuckers are making something.
They might not even know they're making something, but they're making something.
unidentified
That's interesting.
russel brand
I understand the same way that bees or ants may not be...
We're aware of the hive consciousness and the common drive.
But where I disagree with you, Joe, is that you see the end point as being the materialisation of a super consciousness through technology.
I see the end point as being a realisation amongst us as a species.
It could be both.
There is no, you know, there is no reason to, you know, we are just another fucking, are we just another species on this planet?
Are we really know better than dogs and cows and monkeys?
I don't, you know, how can we possibly...
joe rogan
We most certainly are, if the very sun that heats us up has a lifespan.
russel brand
Yeah, where are their inventions as well, the cats and the monkeys?
They've done fuck all of them.
unidentified
They're cute.
joe rogan
They invented being cute.
russel brand
I mean, they're real darlings.
joe rogan
They sit in your lap, you pet them, you like it.
russel brand
They need to fucking contribute.
joe rogan
No, they're contributing.
Pick a dog for a walk, you come up with good ideas, you rub his belly, you feel good.
russel brand
That's fair enough, I do love my dog Bear.
But, hold on, what was my point there?
joe rogan
Well, I think you want to pump the brakes.
What you're saying is we should pump the brakes.
We should pump the brakes of this possession and this idea that we're trying to accomplish these great things by accumulating things and status.
And it's all bullshit.
And it's really about consciousness more than anything.
russel brand
In fact, Bill Hicks, I think, already said it when he said that we can explore space in and out together in peace.
That idea that if we looked at our common drives, it's like Hancock all the time.
I've heard him on your show saying that really what's happened is a bias towards a particular aspect of our own consciousness, the problem-solving brain.
And those drives are amazing.
They're trying to get us somewhere.
Technology is amazing.
The very fact that people bloody hear us, I don't understand anything, it's fucking wonderful.
But the dominant idea behind it, one of profit, that dominating idea.
Profit in itself is not necessarily negative, but profit at all costs, profit at any cost.
So, like, really, I'm not saying we should as a species fucking slow down and dress in felt and fucking, you know, like, grow around vegetables.
There's no fun in that.
I want human beings to be glorious.
But what I'm saying is that our bias towards this one particular materialistic idea is preventing us from realising that glory because part of our consciousness has been ignored.
jim breuer
Yes.
But you, from the time...
russel brand
How can anyone say yes, but?
jim breuer
Yeah, no, no, no.
I think we all agree on that.
And I hate to dumb it.
I'm dumb.
So I dumb it down.
And I go back to Pink Floyd.
We don't need no education.
You don't have a chance.
Where your back is against the wall from the time you come out of the womb.
Because you're saturated with false images.
In our society...
God is money and success.
And there's no soul there.
And it takes people like you and I to go there and go, there's nothing.
It doesn't fucking matter.
Because it's so oversaturated.
That's why Kardashians are huge.
And this person's huge.
Because it's almost laughable.
Because the more you put it out there, the harder they attack.
Oh, hit them on their cell phones.
Well, here's phones.
The kids are going to be on it 24-7.
It's massive overload.
It's the more your brain goes this way, the more they go...
unidentified
Yes, yes.
joe rogan
Well, we're not designed for this amount of information coming in, that's for sure.
unidentified
No!
joe rogan
We're not designed to be connected with seven billion people all over the world.
We're not designed to seeing a camera placed on someone that doesn't have anything good to say.
Anything interesting to say at all, but they're constantly on camera, and they're editing it in the way that your short attention span is sort of connected to this thing, because every 15 seconds they're giving you a new camera angle, and that's by design.
It's like it interfaces, like, they figured out how to do these reality shows Where they edit the shows, like a music video, where you're constantly changing the angle, so you're constantly stimulated.
If you just had Kim Kardashian sitting across the fucking table from her mom, and they were just sitting there for like three hours talking like a podcast, you would want a fucking meteor to come from Jupiter and slam right into that goddamn house.
End this now!
Stop this before it spreads!
What are they doing?!
But if you keep them going back and forth, and then you cut to a single of them by themselves, bitching about my mom, as always, and then going back to her, well, she thinks that she can do this.
And then, look at my shoes.
Look at that watch.
Oh, premiere.
Cameras.
And constant changing of angles, and constant fucking introducing of a new thing to pay attention to.
jim breuer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Go ahead.
jim breuer
On a stupid small note, on a tiny, tiny note of how powerful and how far I went.
My oldest daughter, and I hate to admit it, she sat there and her lips, she came in the room and I told her 20 times, don't do that.
She saw something on the internet, sticking her lips in the bottle, and it blows her lips up.
And for three days, and everyone's doing it.
And it wasn't that I was mad at her.
I went, wow.
This is how many...
My kids part of that banana land is just...
It's almost like they're laughing at us now.
Watch what I can make them do now.
joe rogan
But no one's pulling those strings.
We're pulling our own strings.
unidentified
Right!
jim breuer
But that's how...
It's a visual.
Oh, I see it and that's where I want to be.
Right.
Oh, look at that image.
It has to be that image.
joe rogan
You know how many women want to get fat shot into their ass so they look like Kim Kardashian?
There's like a whole trend where women are waist training, where they're wearing these corsets and tightening down their fucking organs, and then they're having fat shoved into their ass.
They're extracting fat from areas of their body and then reintroducing it into their ass.
In order to develop this round, ridiculous thing that looks like you're wearing a fucking diaper.
jim breuer
To be relevant in our society.
joe rogan
To imitate the same way, you know, the Suri women have fucking plates in their lips.
We're imitating patterns that we see.
They don't necessarily have to make sense, but we're this weird animal that sort of imitates what our surroundings are.
We imitate our atmosphere in some strange way, and we can sort of create our own hell.
We reproduce this thing around us that's not just unsuccessful, it's unsatisfying, it's weird, it's depressing, and we do the goddamn same thing.
russel brand
We've become too good at adaptation.
We've adapted to a sort of a mutated state, and that's what we were trying to say earlier with the influences, the paradigm, the template that we're moving towards is too predicated on the material to the point where, yeah, it's ludicrous things.
I do like you drawing the comparison between the neck things and the earring things and the Kardashian ass things.
joe rogan
That power that we're harnessing all seems to center around innovation.
When we're pursuing material possessions, when we're pursuing physical items, we're not talking about vintage things.
I'm really into handmade things.
I love a handmade bag or a handmade knife.
I love the idea that someone created something and crafted something.
But those things are the same...
Like, if you buy a knife that some guy made hammering in one of those vats of fucking fire and bang, bang, bang...
He's doing it the same way people have done it for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
There's something fascinating about that and interesting about that.
But in terms of like...
Progression and innovation.
It's like you can't compete with these goddamn laptops or phones or any of these things.
Those things are getting better and better at this staggering exponential rate.
And at the end of that line, if you extrapolate, if you look at it from a distance, you pull yourself away from culture and civilization and look down.
What is this super-being, called the human race, what is this super-organism doing?
Well, it's creating better and better things.
Well, why is it doing that?
Why is it ignoring the very ocean that surrounds it?
Why is it sucking all the fish out of the ocean and shitting all the fucking dirt and dust up into the air, but ignoring that while concentrating on the possession and the innovation of all these electronic gadgets?
Well, it's got to be something to do with that.
It's like a pull.
And McKenna used to call it an attractor.
That we're being pulled towards some future attractor, some singularity event, some moment that we are creating, whether we're aware of it or not, but that part of all of our ridiculous behavior in terms of our ego and our drive for success and attention and love and affection, all these different things, is really sort of pushing this innovation further and further and quicker and quicker.
russel brand
That's an extremely interesting idea.
One of the things I was thinking when you're saying that is like...
Every time that's happening, the creativity, where are these things before they exist?
Things exist in this unrealised realm, what Plato referred to as the realm of ideas, that there's an idealised form of all things before they are realised in the material world.
Someone designing a knife has to consciously conceive of the knife before bringing it into the material world.
There's this constant need to pull from this unrealised...
Whenever I see babies now, I want to go, where were you?
Where were you before?
Where was your consciousness?
Tell me what it's like.
I was friendly, and hopefully still am, friendly with David Lynch, the filmmaker, and he told me that a friend of his were outside their kid's nursery and they had a three-year-old kid and a six-month-old kid, and they heard their three-year-old go to the six-month kid, I need you to tell me about heaven again because I'm beginning to forget heaven.
That's creepy, isn't it?
And it came from David Lynch, so it blew my mind.
Where is consciousness before it's realized?
joe rogan
But I'm beginning to forget.
russel brand
It freaked me out a bit.
joe rogan
As a person, and Jim, you can back me up on this, as a person who has kids, one of the most bizarre aspects of child raising is that when you have them and they're babings, these moments when they're little and tiny, you think, I'm never going to forget this.
This is the most powerful moment of my life.
This is amazing being around them when they're so little and their first words and they're talking to you, but you fucking forget it.
You forget it all because you know them as the them they are now at six or at eight or at 10 or at 14.
And those incredibly powerful moments, you forget.
But, meanwhile, you remember some cunt who cut you off in traffic 14 years ago and you're like, I should have kicked that fucking guy's ass.
I saw him at the red light and I didn't get out of my car and it haunts me to this day.
I want to drag him out of his car and feed him his fucking teeth.
You remember that.
But you won't remember your daughter being too dancing to some music...
That's on television and everybody laughing and cheering along.
You have to see it.
You have to look at a fucking video that you saved on your iPhone and watch it and you go, oh yeah, that's right.
Oh my god, what an amazing moment.
Somehow or another, almost like dreams, those ideas are erased from the accessible memory in some strange way, or many of them are.
So when you hear a three-year-old saying that to a six-month, that is fucking crazy because it makes you wonder.
Because that's one of the properties of DMT, by the way, which is the psychedelic that's created by your own brain.
One of the major properties of that dream is how profound the visions are, incredibly powerful, but then they slip through your hands.
They are gone.
They're gone just like a dream.
When you wake up from a dream and you try to explain it to somebody, you have a very small window where you can explain that dream.
russel brand
So what the fuck is going on in consciousness?
jim breuer
Yeah, there's powerful moments, though.
joe rogan
There's an eraser!
jim breuer
Yes, but there's also powerful, really good moments that I've had with each one of my kids that I can literally, out of all the moments that I've said, I don't remember this.
russel brand
You've stored them in the museum of your mind.
jim breuer
I have forgotten most, but there's a handful That I remember as if it was yesterday that was on a deeper, spiritual, conscious level where we just locked eyes, and it was a moment, and we just knew everything about each other at that moment.
Maybe I wanted that moment, but that's how it felt, and I can count that with each one of my kids where I always go back to going, wow, I really know who you really are, and I'm trying to get you back to that.
Does it make sense?
joe rogan
It does.
I think that we have an accessible database.
We have a hard drive.
We have a certain amount of space.
And that's been proven when it comes to how many people you can know and keep in your life.
They say that you could keep about 150 people in your life.
And you can sort of remember these people, and you can hold these people.
But once you go past 150, it gets fucking slippery as shit.
And you must experience that, because you're constantly meeting people, and people know who you are, and you don't remember them.
And after a while, you can go, nice to meet you.
And they go, we already met.
We met three years ago.
And you're like, oh, I forgot.
russel brand
Yeah, I can't maintain this many connections.
joe rogan
It's a hard drive issue.
It's a literal hard drive issue.
I forget, what is the fucking, I know, it's not Bode's Law is the size of planets.
It's, uh, I forget the principle, but the principle is 100, whatever the word is, it's 150 people.
And you keep those 150 people in your head, and that's it.
russel brand
It correlates to what we were talking about with the old chimpanzees and anthropology, that there is an ideal size for a community before it becomes like, oh, this is too hard to deal with.
But those things you were talking about with your children there are like transcendent moments.
joe rogan
Dunbar's number, that's it.
russel brand
Cool.
You're talking about moments where it didn't matter that you're individual A and that's individual B, that there's a clear connection, that something passes between us.
jim breuer
And it was overpowering and beautiful just for that moment.
And that keeps me going in certain moments of time, even though I'm 15 years later and 20. No one can describe it to me.
I just know, wow, that was a deeper moment.
russel brand
And on some level, that can be broken down, I'm sure, to sort of oxytocin and like, oh, this hormone was triggered by that.
There There is a sort of mechanical or material component to even the most beautiful experiences of a sunset or whatever it is.
But to return to what you were saying, Joe, before, of how we favour negative information, there's a clear evolutionary bias for negative information has to be stored because, you know, is that a tree or is that a lion?
You know what I mean?
Yes.
It's a lion, so negative information does have priority.
But where you say about this continued technological evolution, what I think is that there's an imperative to have a comparable spiritual evolution revolution.
unidentified
Yes.
russel brand
How I think that can occur is, like, the more that I meditate and spend time doing that sort of stuff, it gives me more of an awareness of the kind of phenomenon you're talking about, about the positive things, and, like, you know, about, oh, my God, I must hold this moment in my heart, the moment where my dog done that, or the moment I found out my girlfriend was pregnant.
Don't fucking let this go.
Make this part of who you are as a character and try to prioritise it over negative things or when someone hurts you.
And I think that one has more determination over that, more authority over that if you have meditation as part of your life, if you have a spiritual component.
When I was a teenager, I noticed that my mates...
When I was hanging out with my mates, we were smoking loads of drawers, then we'd get in the car, we'd go out, they'd go to work, my mate worked in a car factory, and then he'd go and work doors, doing security.
And I thought, this guy never ever is just in reflection.
Still.
Yeah, he's never still.
He's never in reflection.
He's always engaged with some external thing.
He was a really lovely guy, as a matter of fact, he was.
But I became aware then that that's myself.
Part of my addiction was these uncontrolled drives always wanting something.
Approval, sex.
I was unable to be still and be in the cell.
And so many fucking things.
I'm not a Christian, but there's so many biblical things.
You know, the kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth, but man sees it not.
The kingdom of heaven is within.
Be still and know that I am God.
You know, sort of like, for me, all the fuzzy fucking rapture cloud kingdom bullshit, you know, that's no use to anybody.
But when people are saying to you, it's in there, it's in there, it's there already.
You know, like, there's no...
Of course we are also living in a material world, and I am a material girl, so we can't sort of like...
We can't drop the drive to continue to create great achievements as a species, but a part of it has got to be learn how to connect to yourself, learn how to connect to your emotions, learn how to store positive experiences and learn how to let go of negative ones.
If that data isn't out there, we've all got our paths, haven't we?
We've all got our individual attributes and skills, like you said if we were on communism island.
You know, you need people to be realising what is their part of the divine.
What is the little part of you that's trying to realise itself but life's kept fucking knocking you back and the systems kept breaking you down and you've not got to realise that thing that you can feel like a tree you're trying to grow into.
That's the part of it that I think can only happen as part of a spiritual evolution.
And I think you can only get the ticket to the spiritual evolution if you learn to deal with this fucking mad stimulating bullshit that we're jacked up on.
jim breuer
It's what you said.
You meditate, you gotta turn it all off.
It's really hard.
You gotta turn it all off.
Nothing.
And then your mind will have a chance to grow.
joe rogan
I also think that that's where the compelling feeling to gravitate towards that comes from, a dissatisfaction with the material world, dissatisfaction with this idea of possessions, and that there is some sort of a weird ebb and flow and a yin and yang to the world, and sometimes you have to see the fucking disastrous effects of just giving in to material possessions and the compelling feeling of wanting attention and nonsense and just gathering up items and living in the biggest house.
You have to almost...
Feel the emptiness of that to gravitate towards a spiritual approach.
And I think that's one of the reasons why those things are there.
It's almost like people who do horrible things, like sometimes I feel like horrible things when they're manifested by the human race, they sort of, they can give birth to a lot of positive reactions because people don't ever want to be like that.
And they see that and they go, well this is definitely not the way to go because we're kind of all going through it together.
One of the things about the human mind and the human experience, like being a conscious human, is we assume that we're this static thing.
Meanwhile, we're very well aware that evolution exists all throughout the natural world, and we're also well aware that we've only really been this thing for like, what, a half a million, quarter of a million years?
It's not been that long that you could go back and find an ancient human, and they look like you could put it in your clothes and put it in a movie theater and we wouldn't freak out.
It's not that long.
It's a short amount of time.
So if you think about the fact that we know that these animals and these things are constantly evolving and changing and adapting all around us, why would we assume that we're in some sort of a static state?
I think that our own gravitation towards material possessions And our own use of this new form of interacting with each other through social media and the internet and movies.
But all those things are new.
We have to understand that mass media is fucking new as shit.
All of it.
Newspapers are new as fuck.
Everything's a couple hundred years old.
The oldest shit is a couple hundred years old.
Photographs, couple hundred years old.
We're dealing with really, really, really new influences on the mind.
And the mind is developing and expanding and reacting to all these new things.
And sometimes it reacts in a very negative way.
Like it gravitates towards the Kardashians.
And it goes towards fucking possessions.
And it wants the shiniest new thing to show everybody that you've arrived.
And it's a part, a cog, an unconscious cog in this machine that's just producing new items.
And then sometimes there's a guy like you who sees that and goes, there is no soul to that.
I'm going to jump in the fucking lake near this royals house and I'm going to experience what it's like to freeze my dick off and I'm going to carve a new path.
And I'm gonna separate, and I'm gonna try domesticity, and I'm gonna try abstinence, and I'm gonna try to find some sort of a new way of addressing my dissatisfaction with the current state of the world that I find myself in.
russel brand
Oh, I like that.
That was a fucking good rant.
jim breuer
I need a nap.
russel brand
That was deep.
jim breuer
It was.
I need a nap.
russel brand
It happens a lot in here, doesn't it?
jim breuer
It does.
I need a nap.
joe rogan
But there's a part of that in all of us.
We're all just going, this ain't it.
Maybe this is it.
This ain't it.
Maybe it's yoga.
Maybe it's Scientology.
Maybe it's being a Mooney.
Maybe it's this.
Maybe it's that.
Maybe this fucking chick is holding me back and I need a goddamn divorce.
Get the fuck away from me.
I'm going to wear a captain's outfit now and I'm going to find some chick who lives by the beach.
unidentified
Yeah.
russel brand
We've got to the captain's outfit.
joe rogan
We've reached captain outfit.
I've always wanted to live out of my car and travel around the world.
I'm going to put a bed in the backseat and, you know, it's like dissatisfaction with the currents.
jim breuer
And it's been happening forever.
unidentified
Yes.
russel brand
Can I go to the toilet, please?
You forever maniacs.
unidentified
Please do.
joe rogan
Go right through there.
Yeah, right through that door.
First door on the right.
unidentified
It's going to seem weird.
russel brand
It's going to seem right.
jim breuer
No, no, because I've got to pee.
Can I be honest with you?
I was trying to be a man.
russel brand
I mean, for me.
It's going to be weird to be in another room that ain't got you slot's voices in it.
joe rogan
No, don't worry about it, man.
Don't worry about it.
jim breuer
You've drank three waters.
I've drank two in one and I've got to piss like a horse.
joe rogan
And I can hold this shit in for another day.
It takes a strong bladder to do a podcast, Jim.
By the way, I should just say while we're doing this, one of the reasons why I really got into doing a podcast, there's a bunch of them, Opie and Anthony were a big one, but your fucking show was a big one, man.
When I did your show, and we did it at that joke place on Ventura Boulevard, remember you were in LA? Yeah.
And you were in town, and I had done your show calling in before, but we'd never done together.
I was like, this is so fucking fun.
Just hanging.
jim breuer
Well, what I loved about that one, too, is what that thing allowed me to do is, believe it or not, thought-provoke and let other people...
To me, one of the greatest moments ever was you called in...
And we wrote we were all sitting there and I think you went into this whole thing of these are the times of truth and this and that and I think you spoke for 45 minutes straight and I just kept looking everyone going don't just let him go this is this is this is fascinating let him go where else can you have this and one of my guys Made like this whole Pink Floyd music and he put it on the internet.
I said, you got to get that on the internet.
And I think I remember calling you or telling you going, Joe, this is...
That was the most fascinating thing I ever heard in my life.
joe rogan
High as fuck.
So high I thought I was going to die.
jim breuer
But it doesn't...
I'm sure you were.
And...
But...
You never were allowed to even think like that on radio.
unidentified
No.
jim breuer
And one of the things you said too, which was my favorite part was...
And again, I end up fearing it because I didn't want people to think of it, was our opening song, which just explained...
It was just the four of us, we came out, two of the guy musicians, and you came in and you're like...
Bro, that is the greatest theme song I ever heard in my life.
And I was like, really?
Yeah.
What was you?
Well, it was me and the guys.
And we were just really just talking and we riffed it.
And I said, don't even change it.
Let's just do that.
joe rogan
It was perfect.
But it was real.
jim breuer
Yes.
And then I knew when I heard you...
You need to be in this world.
It's great to have you in this world.
It's refreshing.
It's thought-provoking.
It's powerful.
I love it, man.
I'm very, very...
I love it.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, I love it too, man.
It's a unique time, you know, that we can have something like this.
And when I was on your show, I was like, man, I need to get one of these satellite radio shows.
These are the shit.
I didn't know there was going to be an internet version of that where you don't have any bosses.
No bosses.
And it reaches even more people.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
Somehow or another, a path has been carved through the information highways that people have never been on before.
It's only like 10 years old.
And through that path, you reach everybody.
And it's free.
Like, it violates all the ideas of capitalism.
You don't have to pay for it.
It's massively successful.
And there's 500,000 of them?
jim breuer
And it lives forever.
joe rogan
Yeah, forever.
Forever.
jim breuer
So people can constantly discover it.
joe rogan
Allegedly.
jim breuer
Allegedly.
unidentified
I mean, what I'm saying is, like, we might not make it.
joe rogan
You know, asteroid hits.
jim breuer
Well, whatever.
Until that happens...
It'd be nice to know that someone that's never even heard of you, and 20 years down the road, they're going, you need to listen to this conversation.
You know, Russell Brand was in there on this day.
Listen to that.
And 20 years from now, they're going, you know, that makes a lot of sense.
It's pretty awesome.
This is the great part of social media.
joe rogan
Well, it's also that it's all free and that they're all available.
You can get 800 plus episodes of this thing anytime you want it.
jim breuer
And when things are free, you can be more honest and more passionate about what you're putting out there because no one's paying you to say anything.
joe rogan
Well, did you ever get any pressure when you were doing the satellite show?
Did anybody ever come to you and go, Hey, Jim, we listened to that show and you guys are, you got to fucking tone it down.
jim breuer
Never.
joe rogan
That's amazing.
jim breuer
Never.
That's amazing.
I have to honestly say never, never, never, never.
joe rogan
Because Opie and Anthony got suspended a couple of times, even from satellite radio.
jim breuer
They were getting, first of all, they were getting a lot of commercial money.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yep, they certainly were.
jim breuer
And they rubbed the wrong side of the madness.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
You know, it was all over Fox News, like, you don't do that.
joe rogan
Well, they were kind of compromised in some sort of a weird way, whether they wanted to be or not, because they were making a fuckload of money.
And as soon as a company is paying you X amount of money every year, and they get upset about something, or they feel like the advertising revenue is going to dry up because you guys have said something crazy.
Remember when they had that homeless guy on?
Who said some crazy shit about Condoleezza Rice?
jim breuer
No!
joe rogan
Yeah, they got suspended for like a year or like a month or something like that.
They had some- might be a week.
I'm making up numbers.
They had some homeless guy who came on and said he wanted to rape Condoleezza Rice.
jim breuer
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
And they were like, what the fuck?
And they just had some crazy guy off the street and he talked all kinds of crazy nonsense and he left and, you know, it's all live.
jim breuer
So it's happening live.
There's nothing you can do about it.
joe rogan
They got a homeless guy in the air.
I mean, what the fuck are they going to do?
jim breuer
It's not.
joe rogan
L.P. didn't say it.
Anthony didn't say it.
Norton didn't say it.
But because it was on their show, they pulled the show.
And it was probably because of political pressure or pressure from the Bush administration.
This is also, coincidentally, during the time where, I mean, Howard Stern, it was just after the time of Howard Stern getting sued over and over again by the government.
Remember, they would give these massive lawsuits and that drove him to satellite radio.
jim breuer
Right.
joe rogan
And even in satellite radio, they weren't safe.
So even in satellite radio, he moved to satellite radio, he moved to Sirius.
They were on XM at the time.
I think it was before the merge of Sirius XM or maybe right afterwards.
But either way, they weren't free even under the banner of this free thing on satellite radio.
The political machine still had influence.
jim breuer
Yeah, we never were told, don't say this.
joe rogan
That's amazing.
jim breuer
Don't do that.
joe rogan
Because you had some wild fucking shows.
jim breuer
They would do.
They would go, hey, listen, you know, ratings time.
It looks good if you guys were to come up with a biggie kind of entertaining show.
And then that would, like, that we can get out there and the, uh...
joe rogan
Did you get to choose guests?
jim breuer
Um, yeah.
unidentified
Like all of them?
jim breuer
They weren't running to us, trust me.
joe rogan
But did you get to veto anybody?
jim breuer
Yeah, I couldn't tell you who.
There was a million guys like, I don't know anything about this guy.
I don't want to talk to him.
Oh, okay.
What am I getting out of that?
joe rogan
So they bring suggestions to you?
jim breuer
This politician, I'm just going to be a dick.
joe rogan
Yeah, see, that's a beautiful thing about the time that you were involved in it, too, because you were involved in it back when I was on Fear Factor because the stunt guys fucking loved your show, man.
I had to do this thing where I got in the truck.
We had to drive to some location and was hanging out with these stunt guys, and they were playing your show when it was on Raw Dog.
jim breuer
Yeah.
joe rogan
And they loved it.
And they were like, dude, Brewer Show is the fucking best.
And it was really wild and raw.
And I was like, you maybe couldn't even do that today.
jim breuer
Well, those are my best friends growing up.
And my best friends was Jimmy Shaka, who was deep.
And we would have these conversations for hours.
And it really bothered me that there was no outlet for this anywhere.
You had to be a freak or weirdo, a hippie or whatever.
And then I had another best friend on there...
Who works for FedEx.
He had the blue collar.
He's stuck in that blue collar neighborhood.
He's a little racist, but he won't really...
But this is just who he is.
And then you had Corrielli, who's just...
He'll say whatever.
He'll just go and say whatever and do whatever.
So it was great to have all these different views, honest views.
And the big rule was no news, no pop culture.
If you bring pop culture on the show, you're out.
We're anti-pop culture.
You're out.
You're fired.
Get that name, you're banned forever.
joe rogan
Well, that's beautiful in a lot of ways.
jim breuer
But it was a hang, too.
joe rogan
It was a hang.
jim breuer
I was trying to get it back to...
Tribalism, whatever.
At the end of the day, isn't some of the best times you have conversations like these?
Or when you're with the people you trust the most.
That could be the kid you grew up with.
It could be anyone, a family member.
Someone you just met.
And you're just hanging out at the end of the night.
You don't care what this one's doing or that one doing.
And you're just hanging out.
There's a fire.
You're talking.
And at the end of the day, it's all the same shit.
What's out there?
Who really knows?
What's this?
Who really fucking knows?
Let's talk about it and try to figure it out for three hours, and when we get out of it, who really fucking knows?
Time for bed.
My kid's getting up in six hours, but it felt great.
joe rogan
But you feel good that you're all doing it together.
jim breuer
You trust each other.
Am I crazy for saying this?
I might be.
He'll tell me, dude, you're fucking crazy.
Why would you say, that's stupid.
That's stupid?
Why is that stupid?
And just, that was pretty cool.
joe rogan
You bounce things off of each other and they make more sense that way.
If I trust you and your instincts and your mind and I tell you something that I believe and you refute it and I go, oh, okay, I have to consider his point of view.
Because if I trust your point of view, and your point of view differs from mine, well, how did he come to this conclusion, and why is it so different than my own?
And by absorbing a bunch of different points of view like that, it gives you a much more nuanced perspective of this existence.
jim breuer
And you have to be open.
I'm not out to win the conversation.
Right.
We're just here to learn from it more.
joe rogan
That's important.
People have to be open with that, and I think we've all been guilty of not being open to that before, wanting to be right.
But it's important to not just embrace being wrong, but try to understand why you were wrong.
Try to understand what it was, and not be connected in some weird ego way to your ideas.
jim breuer
It's hard to get through that, Joe.
joe rogan
Fuck yeah.
But it's like all those other things that we're talking about.
I mean, like you saying that you have this gravitation towards expelling all of these ridiculous notions that everybody's just sort of accepted as fact and truth and trying to connect with a much more spiritual life.
Well, that means you've got to think about it.
It's got to be a conscious thing.
And the same thing with...
Not holding on to your ideas and not being married to them and not being invested in being correct or incorrect, but just sort of accepting them as just ideas and be able to go, yeah, I think you're right.
Why was I thinking that?
And that's hard for people to do.
jim breuer
I know this is stupid, but I saw a statement.
It was a tourist spot, but I passed the tourist spot.
I went in the house.
And there was a statement in there.
It's simple, but it just blew my mind.
It said, one person could change the whole world for a better as long as they don't give a damn who gets that credit.
russel brand
Oh my god.
They have a fucking date.
jim breuer
And I thought, if you just want to sit back, you just want to see things better, And you really can change it for the better, but you don't have to worry about going, you know, so-and-so said that, or so-and-so set that up, or so-and-so did that, because now you're doing it for a different reason.
russel brand
That's amazing.
Yeah, I'd never heard that before until yesterday.
I saw that quote and that's a problem that I continually have.
jim breuer
All of us!
russel brand
All of us!
This kind of thing is not really...
Like you said, the fast-moving, fast-cut soundbite TV just bombarded with an artillery of mostly erroneous information.
You don't get to hear people hour after hour talking, examining, discarding, as you said, who really knows, and returning to that point.
It's sort of encouraging, because I've had like...
You know, like, as I, like, I've always thought, like, you know, I don't, like, agree with, like, Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity or those guys, but I've always kind of thought, I bet I'd think they were alright if I hung out with them.
joe rogan
Yeah.
russel brand
Like, there's something about Bill O'Reilly, like, he's, like, a curmudgeonly kind of, oh, come on!
Like, I think he was kind of okay.
joe rogan
I think you would joke around with them and you guys would probably start laughing about some things.
russel brand
And that's kind of a reassuring thing, isn't it?
To not be kind of...
I think that's what's kind of ugly about both liberalism and neoliberalism.
You can see it's people just forcing their idea and they've lost touch with...
I do it all the fucking time.
What is it that we're genuinely here for?
And that thing you said of you can change the world if you're willing to do it, if no one knowing about it.
That's like...
The pang that I feel in my gut shows me how much my ego is still involved in the shit I do.
joe rogan
Well, the lack of discourse.
jim breuer
I just saw it.
I didn't say it.
I literally saw it.
joe rogan
Yeah, but the lack of discourse, like we're talking about being one of the more important things about podcasts or one of the best things about podcasts.
I mean, I'm really hoping that that's the trend of the future.
That people understand that there might not be a right way or a wrong way to do a lot of these things.
And that your point of view, whether you strongly believe it or not, might not really work for the way I see the world.
It doesn't mean that you're right or I'm wrong.
It doesn't.
I mean, there's some certain truths like, hey, don't rape people.
Hey, don't murder people.
Those things are obvious.
But there's some other things that aren't obvious.
There's other things that are not obvious.
Like, maybe you shouldn't hurt people's feelings.
Maybe you should mock them.
Because what they're doing is preposterous, and in hurting their feelings, you actually elevate all of us to realize the humor and their folly.
And I'm a big fan of folly.
I enjoy human folly.
It's one of the things I enjoy most about humans.
I'm the quickest to make fun of my own self, so if I can't make fun of them, what kind of a fucking goofy-ass world are we running?
We run in some super-sensitive world where everyone's a perfect snowflake and we can't shit on them?
Like, nonsense.
jim breuer
You need humility.
joe rogan
You need humility.
Humor is real important to unpackage things.
Because there's a lot of things that are going on right now in this world that are a little fucking weird.
And one of the reasons why they're weird is because humor hasn't had a chance to dissect them.
russel brand
Wow.
I heard John Cleese talking about comedy and he said that people are very anti-humour because they know it's powerful and they often use the idea that, hey, don't joke around, this is serious.
But you're supposed to joke around about things that are serious.
And he said they have mistaken seriousness for solemnity.
And the reason they want to be all solemn about stuff is because they know it prevents people that have got that comedic switchblade from getting into the argument where you can detonate shit.
I'm not taking that seriously.
I'm not playing by those rules.
joe rogan
And they've also taken away your special power.
russel brand
Yes.
jim breuer
And it's a special power.
unidentified
They don't have it.
joe rogan
It is a special power.
Both of you guys have it.
Like, they don't have it.
So if you come in and you deflate their argument with a quick switchblade, oh, this piece of shit, why are you joking around about something really important?
Maybe your white privilege is showing.
Maybe you should consider the fact that your humor is offensive to a lot of people.
And what you're doing is bullshit, and it's not helping.
It's very regressive.
russel brand
And they always try to use humor, though, huh?
They always stitch it into political discourse.
joe rogan
Here's one of the real problems with the left, and especially the regressive left and the people that think that they're going to change things.
They're fucking unbelievably mean when they're mocking the right.
You're talking about compassion.
I've seen some of the least compassion, meanest, angriest shit, come out of people that consider themselves to be liberal and progressive.
And their idea is to close down discourse.
What they're going to do is going to shit on you and insult you and then gang up in some sort of a weird bully pulpit to attack all the people that don't agree with them.
russel brand
When I got involved in politics in my country, doing that thing, The Truth, and I wrote a book as well called Revolution, and in that book I talked about it was basically a book that was meant to be for younger people, and it was like, this is my perspective on why I don't believe in this stuff and why I believe in this.
It was relatively simple, and again, I'm a self-taught person, so it's not a book by a fucking academic, right?
The worst vitriol and the worst condemnation came from the kind of newspapers and liberal organisations that I would think would be supportive of such, of like, you know, it's good that this guy from the world of popular entertainment, who's not classically educated, is trying to do that.
No, they came in like Get the fuck out of our territory!
joe rogan
Shut up!
jim breuer
Shut up!
russel brand
Who do you think you are?
More than any kind of right-wing organisation, they almost see us going, oh, jolly good!
Interesting.
People that I thought might be allies, organisations that I thought might be encouraging, were very condemnatory.
joe rogan
Well, you gotta realize, what is the mechanism that they're distributing this information with?
What are they doing?
They're writing their own stories, they're promoting their own blogs, they're doing their own radio shows, and, in fact, feeding their own ego, like we were talking about before.
That green monster of envy that sees this fucking guy with a beautiful bone structure and a beautiful accent, now all of a sudden he's philosophizing.
unidentified
This piece of shit.
joe rogan
He had the wherewithal and the power to go on a sexual rampage, chose to back off of it, and realized he was like, all these fucking goddamn things he's got going for him, he's a fucking movie star?
Fuck this guy!
Fuck this guy, I'm tearing him down!
I'm tearing him down, honey, and he's sitting there with his potbelly, fucking taking his antidepressants, and tapping away mean shit on the keyboard, hoping.
I'm hoping that these mean words hit your mind and they enter into your consciousness and he can affect you in some sort of a horrible way.
jim breuer
Oh, God.
joe rogan
The extreme lack of compassion from some people on the left and the green light to attack this fact that, oh, here's this guy and I don't agree with him and I think that what he's doing is sex.
And it's misogynistic, and it's enabling, and let's get him!
We got a fucking target right on his back.
Attack!
Oh, he's doing press?
Oh, well, I'm gonna be involved in this press.
I'm gonna throw my fucking hat into the ring as the arbiter of intelligent ideas to dismay, or dismantle, rather, all these fucking stupid thoughts that this shithead with his perfect bone structure and man-bone is pumping out.
Fuck him!
Fuck him.
jim breuer
Professional wrestling.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
Professional wrestling.
joe rogan
Well, it's people, man.
People jockeying for their own little fucking shining moment in the darkness.
jim breuer
Pizza Front.
See, I go conspiracy.
Pizza Front.
All right, here's what our magazine's about.
joe rogan
Conspiracy?
jim breuer
Is it conspiracy?
unidentified
No.
It's just a thought.
jim breuer
Why does it have to be called conspiracy?
I think the word conspiracy is a conspiracy.
russel brand
Well, that's deep.
You just cubed conspiracy.
joe rogan
You might be the best at this.
russel brand
We're through the looking glass now.
But conspiracy in itself is a conspiracy.
joe rogan
Damn, he'd fucking shut it all down.
unidentified
Shut it all down, he knows!
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some real conspiracies, but I think that there's just a natural emphasis or a natural inclination to shit on people that are doing better than you or shit on people that have something good going on.
And also, when you're writing a story about something, how much fun is it writing a story that's positive?
And how much more satisfying is it to unhappy people to write a negative review about something?
It's much more exciting.
It's much more fun.
I've seen people distort people's ideas in really horrific ways because that's the old way.
Because the old way, you could write a blog about something or an article in a magazine or whatever about someone and distort it in horrible ways, and they really didn't have any recourse.
But that old way doesn't really work anymore.
russel brand
It doesn't work.
Access because of media like this.
joe rogan
Sure.
russel brand
So I'm thinking that I would like to start a podcast.
Fuck yeah!
joe rogan
You should definitely do one.
russel brand
Dude, you've never done a podcast?
Yeah, do one in my country.
joe rogan
Oh my gosh, you can do it anywhere you go.
jim breuer
You can do it wherever you want.
joe rogan
Yeah, you can bring it everywhere with you.
jim breuer
You can do it whenever you want.
joe rogan
I've done them in Australia.
I've done them all over the world.
You can do it anywhere you want.
All you have to do is have a phone.
You can do it into your iPhone.
jim breuer
Exactly.
I just talk on my phone.
I just talk on my phone.
I like how you're dumping it.
You don't have to edit.
It's on your phone.
Your podcast is on your phone.
Dude, you're designed for this.
Yeah, you are.
joe rogan
And not only that, you don't even have to have a guest.
You can have a guest on if you want, but you don't.
You could have a guest on if you want, but like, Bill Burr is one of the best podcasts in the world, and Bill Burr just rants.
jim breuer
Unbelievable.
joe rogan
He rants for like, he'll just sit down for a fucking hour and a half and just go off about this and that, and it's a stream of consciousness.
He goes from football to his wife or his fucking dog and baking, and his internet sucks, and he's tired of construction workers, and his driveway's a piece of shit, and he just, he'll go on and on and on.
You could do that too.
russel brand
What are your main things you've learned from doing this?
What are the main things you think, right, this is how you do a podcast?
What are the rules, the structures that you have learned?
joe rogan
Man, I've learned so much.
I've learned how other people perceive me.
I've learned how I perceive other people.
I've learned what maybe my own problems in perception are.
I've sort of tried to examine as many things as possible.
It's not a master course in human interaction for me.
That's what I've thought of it.
I mean, I've had 800-plus podcasts where I'm interacting with all sorts of different people.
So it's a...
It's a fascinating way to understand how people think and to just chunk data, just chunk data about how people react and talk and communicate.
russel brand
How has it evolved from your original vision of doing podcasting to how it is now?
Have you become more free with it, less formulated?
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't think it was ever formulated, but I've been better at it.
I'm just better at it.
But when the podcast started out, I just wanted to figure out a way to do something.
Like, something free, where you're just doing it with a camera, or you're responding to Twitter questions, or just trying to...
My thought was, I've done a bunch of radio shows everywhere I go.
Everywhere I go, I promote a comedy gig, I do a morning show, I had a great time.
God, I would love to do one of those, but that was so much fun.
Like, I would love a radio show, but I don't want a boss.
And I was trying to figure out, how the fuck can I do this?
And then, doing Jim's show, and doing the Opie and Anthony show...
jim breuer
Opie and Anthony.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was the greatest.
It was the greatest.
Because when they were together, their show was a hang.
Like, if I could call Jim and I'd go, hey, I'm doing Opie and Anthony tomorrow morning.
He's like, fuck, I'm doing it too!
I'm like, oh, it's going to be so much fun.
And we would see each other and get a bagel in the morning and fucking high-five and go up there and just laugh.
jim breuer
Right, and you were able to do your own thing.
No one's trying to out, you know, it was...
That place taught me everything.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was a hang.
It was a hang.
jim breuer
Yes, that was the original hang.
I never heard anything like that.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was the only radio show that was a real hang, where you go in there and everybody's just hanging out.
And then Jim started doing his show, which is very similar.
When I could get to you, your show was a hang, too.
jim breuer
It was a hang, because I wanted that model.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
I loved going into Opie and Anthony and just sitting down, and they're like, what's up, night?
You didn't have to be on.
unidentified
Yeah.
jim breuer
They didn't like if you did bits.
joe rogan
Right.
jim breuer
They didn't want you coming.
Don't come in and do a bit.
russel brand
Don't do a bit.
jim breuer
Don't do a bit.
Just talk.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
We wanted...
And that...
That goes probably what you went through, too.
russel brand
What were you going to say, Russell?
Authenticity, then.
It's sort of about, like, being, trying to be, like, just being normal and being who you are.
joe rogan
Yeah.
russel brand
And not imposing, like, right, coming right up in five seconds.
We've got to do the, you know, like, all of those things, like having a boss and having a structure and having, like, commercial interests that you constantly...
jim breuer
And you're an intelligent person and people like listening to the real you.
And you don't get that opportunity a whole lot.
They gave you that opportunity.
You're like, whoa, this is a whole different...
I never knew this side existed from this person.
I don't like this person's...
I'm sure people hate my...
Fucking Bruce talks.
unidentified
But I like when he talks real.
jim breuer
So that opens up the opportunity for all of that.
It was...
I'm going to say it was like a revolution.
It was pretty intense.
russel brand
I've been on their show, and I can see what you mean, that that was sort of part of the transition, and like Howard Stern, surely you would say as well, like someone that was...
jim breuer
For me, yeah.
russel brand
Someone that was sort of pioneering what this medium is becoming.
joe rogan
Howard was absolutely the original.
Case closed.
He's the first.
He's the most important guy in the history of radio.
Because he was the first guy that got arrested or fined, rather.
I mean, he got in some serious legal problems because of the things that he was saying on the air.
And kept doing it.
jim breuer
And he was the original guy who would just be blatantly honest.
And he was the first real reality show.
He'd call his wife.
He would call.
Oh, the guy's working on the light.
Let me talk to him.
Let me talk to the guy.
And you say, like, he's going to talk.
God, I want to talk to the guy.
joe rogan
And he did all this on regular radio.
jim breuer
Right!
joe rogan
When no one was doing that and everybody was playing music.
They would have these little things that they would do and then they would play a song.
And he had to do that in the beginning.
He had to do the songs and he would make his humor in between the songs.
But eventually he was like, fuck these songs.
I'm just gonna be me and have a good time and talk shit.
And he figured out how to do it.
He was more rigid and structured.
Whereas Opie and Anthony, when they would have guests on like...
Like Brewer and I would be on, maybe Burr would be on, or some other people would be on, and we'd all be on together.
And we would just go in there and we would hang out.
And it was literally like the time would fly so fast.
It wasn't a matter of not having enough content.
It was like too much content, not enough time.
jim breuer
And Howard didn't have that.
It was almost like they wouldn't...
Howard didn't have that opportunity at the time, where he just came out in a different way.
And then once he went to the internet, I think that blew up to another hole.
That blew him up to an...
Everyone said, ah, you know, where is he now?
I think he's ten times, a hundred times bigger and more powerful.
russel brand
At that point, it became...
He evolved in terms of content, or do you mean in terms of impact?
joe rogan
Everything.
jim breuer
For me, everything.
Everything.
Conversation, thought.
joe rogan
Well, as soon as things get on the internet, then they can spread freely.
So the merit of the conversation, what's interesting about the conversation, then it just gets passed around.
And as soon as things just get passed around like that, then someone calls them out.
Oh my God, you got to hear Jim Brewer.
He was on Howard Stern.
Holy shit, is it funny.
Have you heard it?
You got a link?
And they send you a link and bam.
And the beautiful thing about podcasts is someone could tell me, dude, Russell's got a podcast.
You got to check it out.
Oh, let me check it out.
And then you go on your iTunes app and you go, Russell.
There he is, bam!
And then you're playing it!
Like, in seconds, you're in your car and you're playing it, and it's free.
jim breuer
And now, if I just discovered you, I'm gonna go, I wanna hear more, I wanna hear, oh, you gotta listen to one of his first ones, where he wasn't even ready, he didn't know what he was doing, you gotta listen to where he went from here to here.
Once they're in, they're in, they love you, they know you, they feel like they're...
joe rogan
It's all exposed.
russel brand
What experiences have you had that you've, like, were hard?
Or, like, you know, like, seeing because you've not got bosses or anything, was there ever times you've gone off, we should never have had that guy on, that was a mistake?
joe rogan
Yeah, just a couple minor ones.
russel brand
Really?
joe rogan
Nothing serious.
russel brand
Nothing anecdotal?
joe rogan
Nah, just weird conversations where you just kind of learn better about how to handle those moments.
It's almost like you're learning on the job, right?
It's like, I never did a radio show before.
I never just spoke.
Open and as a form of entertainment.
How arrogant.
Not just to think that you should be able to speak.
I mean, of course everybody should be able to speak.
But the fact that you think that your words are so interesting that other people are going to listen to them?
Instead of talking themselves, they're going to just listen to your talking?
Why the fuck would they do that?
They're not even there.
You know?
It's not like someone's right in front of you and you're talking to them and you're trying to be polite so you let them talk.
No, you're downloading their shit so you can listen to them talk and then you're not going to talk while they're talking.
Like, what?
This is madness.
russel brand
Right.
joe rogan
So, in learning how to broadcast in air quotes, learning how to do that, you're kind of learning by feedback and also by listening to yourself and listening to other people's podcasts.
You'll see other, like, things that grate on you about what other people do.
russel brand
What like?
joe rogan
Talking over people, that's a big one.
We all do it.
We all shouldn't, but we all have an idea that we want to get out.
We don't know when to do it.
It's hard to figure out because we're all freeballing when to jump in and when not to.
Also, some people don't listen to the things that other people say.
They just wait for their turn to talk.
That is a real issue.
That's a giant issue because then you ask them about what you just said and they're like, I wasn't listening.
Like, how can you not be listening when we're talking?
Like, this is, okay, well then now we're not really having a conversation.
We're just exchanging rants.
You know, and I'm waiting for you to get your completely non sequitur rant in and then you're gonna impress people with your quotes and how much you know about this guy or that guy and that's a real common thing is like using it as an ego springboard instead of looking at it in a podcast is really essentially a piece of art.
I mean, it's a grandiose term, but you're creating something.
And you want to create it the best way you can.
And you could fuck it up by being loud and stupid and saying a bunch of dumb shit that doesn't feel good to anybody to hear.
Or you could say some cool shit that when they listen to this podcast after it's over, they go, Fuck, that Russell Brand said something that's going to change the way I look at the rest of my fucking life.
And that's possible.
And that's one of the cool things.
russel brand
Do you think that this is entirely like...
Do you think then this is entirely your authentic self?
Is there stuff that you withhold when you're in this situation?
Because I've come from more conventional media.
joe rogan
Private information about loved ones.
But that's it.
That's it.
I don't withhold anything.
I don't want anybody else's feelings to get hurt or things along those lines.
I've made those mistakes.
Have you?
It's not their choice.
You have to withhold certain things.
And some people just want to be private people.
They don't want to have any part of your fucking parade, you weirdo, out there talking to the world every day.
russel brand
Have you had any negative consequences as a result?
Because you have to work in other industries and all of that?
Is that only positive?
joe rogan
I don't give a fuck, so it doesn't really matter.
Yeah, I feel like if you have fuck you money, you don't say fuck you, you're wasting fuck you money.
So if I have some real thoughts and I don't express them because I'm worried about job opportunities, like I'm already in prison, whether I like it or not.
If there's something important that I have to say, and then the jobs that you do get or the employment opportunities that you do get, they'll be looking for your authentic self.
Unless it's some, like, the same sort of situation with some crazy woman who likes to take some guy and change him.
Oh, he's a fixer-upper.
Like, they're not going to grab you and go, I know this Russell Brand is talking a lot of crazy revolution type shit.
Once we get him in the network, we put him in a nice suit.
unidentified
Uh-huh.
joe rogan
He's gonna be the best talk show host ever.
He's the future Jimmy Fallon.
jim breuer
And at the end of the day, yes, if it comes to entertainment, you're a number.
So it doesn't even matter what you say, they believe it or not believe it, and you get these people, it doesn't matter.
unidentified
I think we should put him in this movie, because he's worth...
jim breuer
This much!
And think of, we'll make this much, and this many people automatically buy tickets because his following is...
You almost start controlling your own destiny.
russel brand
But hasn't that happened as a result?
Haven't you got...
Hasn't things happened to you?
unidentified
It's like, fuck me, that podcast is powerful!
jim breuer
I... I don't...
Well...
unidentified
What do you mean?
russel brand
Like having someone gone, why don't we put fucking Joe Rogan in this action movie?
He's got a fucking massive...
joe rogan
Yeah, but I don't...
I'm not interested in doing anything.
I'm interested in doing less things.
I'm not interested in anything new.
I don't want to do any movies.
I like doing stuff that has nothing to do with work.
I like doing yoga, and I like doing archery.
I like writing comedy.
I like performing stand-up.
I like doing podcasts.
I like just doing stuff.
I don't want to do someone else's stuff.
If some movie came along and it was really interesting, and for whatever reason, it was a short amount of time I would have to work, I would consider it.
But I've passed on a lot of stuff.
I just don't have any interest in it.
russel brand
You've taken control of your life through this.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, I'm doing what I actually want to do instead of when, you know, and Jim and I were in a pilot for the very first TV show that I did in 1993, and we've been friends for longer before that, way long before that, but...
You come here and you think, now I'm going to do this project.
Oh boy, I'm in.
I'm on a TV show.
And then you get on the TV show and you go, you know what?
I don't even like this that much.
I like doing stand-up.
Why am I doing this?
But you're doing this because they keep coming to you.
unidentified
Like, hey, we've got a game show and they're going to eat animal dicks and you're going to shoot them out of a rocket.
joe rogan
What do you think?
And you're like, I'm in.
It's on TV? I'm in.
That's what I'm here for.
jim breuer
And the money's real fucking good.
joe rogan
And you do it after a while and you go, hey, you know, that's not what I enjoy doing.
What do I actually enjoy doing?
Well, I'm just trying to do the things I enjoy doing.
What I enjoy doing, I like doing podcasts.
I like doing stand-up.
I like doing all those extracurricular things that I do.
The things that I do that are just interests in life.
And then I don't want to differentiate between interests that I do for financial gain or interests that I do for mental exercises or for spiritual growth or whatever.
I just want to do things that I enjoy doing.
russel brand
That's really important, isn't it?
You get sucked over in life and so many people don't have that kind of freedom creatively or on any level.
The freedom of, I just want, that should be part of more people's experience of life.
Yeah.
I'm happy doing this.
joe rogan
Yeah.
russel brand
It makes me, like, it's really beautiful to hear that, that what you're led by is joy because that is another Joseph Campbell thing.
Follow your bliss.
Find the thing in you that you're connected to and follow it.
And when I think of how many times in my life I've lived out other people's ideas, as you say, like, oh, right, no, this is, Hold on a minute.
This is what I'm supposed to do.
Again, like Bill Hicks says, look at my money.
unidentified
This has to be real.
russel brand
It has to be real.
Because you're bombarded with it and then you realise, oh my God.
So if you are lucky enough to get to a position where you can just do things that you enjoy.
Do you think that idea that you've applied to your own creative lives can be applied if you're...
Fucking living a normal life and you're trapped in a job that you don't fucking like.
How do you think you get out of that situation?
joe rogan
Well, I think it's like everything else.
It takes small baby steps to move out.
You've got to move towards that direction.
You have to have an absolute game plan and you have to have an actual thing that you enjoy doing.
Like, say if you're some guy that's trapped in some job, but, you know, like, to bring up something we talked about before, you enjoy making homemade knives, and you think, you know, I would love to just be able to make arts and crafts, to be able to create something that people buy, maybe pottery or something along those lines that would really feel, like, spiritually and creatively satisfying to me, to be able to express myself in an art form.
To do that for a living would be amazing.
And there's a lot of people that start off in regular jobs and they figure out a way to get to that place.
And it's not easy.
And people will fucking bitch and moan at you and tell you how not easy it is.
Yeah, you're saying it's making it seem like it's easy.
It's not easy.
A lot of us have problems.
We got mortgages and children and I need a health care package and...
Everybody has resistance.
There's always resistance to anything that you're trying to achieve in life, and everybody's setup might be different.
Everybody's needs and requirements might be different.
They're all different.
But if you find whatever the fuck it is that you can do, I guarantee you, you have some time in your day that you can dedicate towards making that a reality.
It's a matter of making that time a priority to try to change your current state of existence.
How do you do it?
I don't know.
I don't know what your existence is, and I can't tell you anyway.
Because the way I do things and the way you do things is fucking totally different.
Everyone's gonna do things different.
I'm a kamikaze person.
I'm like, let's fucking cut ties, pull the chute, let's go!
I'm like, let's get out of here, let's quit, you know?
But I've always been like that.
I've always been the burn the fucking house down, you have to make another one.
My thought has been just abandon ship.
Let's get out of here and find the fucking new thing.
But you can't do that when you have a wife and children.
Luckily for me, when I was young and taking crazy chances and moving towards a career and doing something I actually wanted to do, I didn't have anybody else that counted on me.
Once you do, it becomes much more difficult, but not insurmountable and completely dependent upon what it is you're trying to achieve.
russel brand
I like that.
jim breuer
Well, you could start good, Russ.
russel brand
Well, I was going to say, how do you bridge it?
Like I said that thing to Tom Cruise that time of being born with that drive, being born with that knowledge of I'm going to do this.
Because I identify with that crash and burn thing, and it's been problematic in my life with relationships and stuff.
I've got a survival instinct in me that's like, right, this is fucking mad.
jim breuer
I'm out.
joe rogan
But that's good.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
How many people fucking stay and get tortured?
russel brand
Right, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
And they're happy when that heart attack comes.
Finally I get away from this cunt!
jim breuer
Goodbye forever!
You fucking bitch, I hope you're happy.
russel brand
See, my thing is that I would like more people in the world to have that opportunity.
It makes me sad that people will be listening to this thinking, I fucking want that.
I want to make my fucking art and craft knives.
If you've not got a place for that in your life, then like you were saying, then you were in prison.
You're fucking fucked anyway.
And there are certain systemic changes that could be brought about that would mean that more people would have that opportunity.
That's the other thing that makes me sad.
joe rogan
What's systemic changes?
russel brand
What I mean is that if we didn't have a culture that was entirely dominated by one economic idea, that more people would be able to sit around making art and crafts.
Think of the things that keep coming up again and again in this conversation.
People should live in small tribes.
Why the fuck are we not trying to do that shit now?
Why are we not going?
Another word for tribe is Soviet, and people did have a go at that.
It went terribly, terribly wrong.
But what I'm saying is that these kind of ideas, I mean, look now.
I wonder if that's the template.
What's the next level of this?
It's like, right, well, let's try and work on that then.
Let's try and bring some of these ideas like you have as an individual.
Like, can this be collectivised?
Can this be brought forward?
So that more people, like, you know, do you take that leap of faith that, fuck me, if we did get 150 people together, of course there's going to be problems and challenges.
There's problems and fucking challenges now.
We're not competing with perfection, we're competing with a defunct system that's really causing a great deal of negativity and problems.
What would happen if people did start to try and create alternatives?
I tell you what would happen, you'd be killed.
joe rogan
No, I don't think you...
russel brand
You don't think so?
joe rogan
No, I don't think there's any...
russel brand
You don't think you'd be Waco'd right out if you went, right, we're setting up a system, 150 people, this is our new podcast experiment, we're setting up a utopia.
joe rogan
Only when you become a threat, and you have to become a threat financially, or you have to become a threat militarily.
One of the things about these fucking Waco type dudes, they always gather guns.
They fuck everybody's wives and they have a stockpile of ammunition.
Then you become a threat!
russel brand
David, what's the stockpile of guns and the fucking everyone's wives thing?
Oh no, just focus on the Jesus.
unidentified
It's Jesus.
joe rogan
That's how Jesus rules.
unidentified
Right.
jim breuer
Once you become a threat.
And that's the only way...
Violence is the only real threat.
russel brand
It's also dangerous.
You don't think it's a threat to expound those ideas and spread those ideas?
joe rogan
It's controversial, but I don't think anybody looks at it and says, you know what, this motherfucker is going to take money out of my bank account.
I think people are so engrossed in their own life, in their own progress, in their own path of conquering.
I don't think they think about it that way unless you cross them.
Unless you say, you know what, goddammit, this Rupert Murdoch is fucking up the world and I'm going to expose him and I'm going to let the world...
Then you've created an issue.
Then you've gone into battle with a man with unfathomable resources.
russel brand
I tried that.
joe rogan
How'd that work out?
russel brand
Not good, Joe.
unidentified
Now see here, Lord Vader.
russel brand
I'm a bit bloody sick of all this.
joe rogan
You see his wife?
He's got a hot wife.
russel brand
Of course he has.
unidentified
Amazing.
joe rogan
I love how stereotypes just play themselves out over and over and over.
Ellie Donald Trump's wife, I go, that's what I like to see.
unidentified
There you go.
joe rogan
I like to see the same thing over and over again.
jim breuer
I'm tapping out.
I'm in pain.
I gotta pee.
joe rogan
Go ahead, man.
No worries.
Yeah, I think one of the things McKenna said that always resonated with me is that so many people do the man's work for the man.
And they're so worried about the repercussions of being free or expressing themselves or discussing psychedelics.
They do the man's work for the man.
russel brand
By not...
joe rogan
By being scared.
russel brand
...unshackling themselves, ourselves.
joe rogan
And expressing yourself in a way that makes sense.
You know, like, I think one of the things that's most interesting about McKenna's lectures, where he was in sort of the infancy of the internet, where he did a lot of them, is he expressed himself in a way that's kind of really similar to, like, podcast rants.
But way before their time.
He was doing it in front of these groups of people, and someone recorded it.
So he would have these meetings.
You know, the people come to hear him speak, and he would have these meetings, and a lot of times he would open up the room for questions, and he would just sort of rant.
And, you know, he was a consummate consumer of cannabis.
So he's high as fuck, and he's having these bizarre conversations, these rants, where he's exploring these ideas, and he got better and better and better at them all throughout these rants.
When he's doing these, he's essentially doing a podcast that takes a long time to hear.
russel brand
Do you think of him as sort of a modern, secular prophet?
Because if you've been into the comedy of Bill Hicks and then you listen to Terence McKenna, you can see, like, oh, fuck, he's clearly influenced Hicks.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Well, the way I found out about McKenna was through a Hicks bit.
Because Hicks had this bit about what he said, what Terrence McKenna would describe as a heroic dose of mushrooms.
So I was like, who the fuck is Terrence McKenna?
And this was, you know, the 90s when I heard this.
So I'd seen Hicks live a couple times, three or four times, I guess, in Boston.
russel brand
What was that like?
joe rogan
It was amazing.
First time I saw him, it was an accident.
First time I saw him I went to see some comedians that were like local Boston guys and Hicks had come in from out of town and I don't know if he was supposed to be there the next night or what it was but no one was there to see him they didn't know who he was and he went up on stage And was just so weird.
He was doing this bit about Tiffany meeting Jimi Hendrix at the mall.
You know, like this music that they're promoting, this pop culture bullshit music.
And he was at the Comedy Connection in Boston.
I think I saw him there first, and I saw him at Nick's and a couple other places.
But he was doing some new thing.
I was like, okay, this is a new kind of comedy.
This is like Sam Kinison, but...
With like much more of an emphasis on the realization that the patterns that we're all following into, whether it's pop culture patterns or that these things are actually detrimental.
These things are a foolish way to approach this world.
This world is incredibly complex and we can all look at it together.
And I was like, this is a new kind of comedy.
russel brand
How was it going down in there?
joe rogan
Really good and really bad.
I saw him bomb horribly, but bomb with grace that I've never achieved.
He bombed like he didn't give a fuck about bombing.
I've never been able to do that.
He bombed like a guy who almost knew the future, knew he was going to have some sort of an impact on the culture, and knew that this was just a footnote in that incredibly impactful experience on the art form of stand-up comedy, and also knew that eventually he'd find his own audience, which he did not have at the time.
Because he was at a small comedy club, Nick's Comedy Stop in Boston, which is a couple hundred people.
And there was a guy who went on before him who was a real hack.
Nice guy, but just hacky, hacky, bullshit, cop donut jokes, that kind of shit.
Just everything you've already heard before.
Nothing original.
And he was killing.
Killing with all this simple stupid shit and then Hicks went on afterwards with this like really bizarre Interpretation of modern civilization ever is like fuck this guy and people were getting up and leaving in droves and Kept going through the whole thing and me and Greg Fitzsimmons was there and a bunch of other comedians watching him bomb were laughing our asses off so he was Playing to the back of the room, the comedians that were still there laughing were laughing hard in support, but people were getting up in giant chunks and leaving.
At the end of the show, you know, the show was whittled down from like 250 people to like 40 people in 15 or 20 comics.
That was all that was left, and we were howling, laughing.
And he got off stage like nothing happened.
russel brand
He would not compromise.
joe rogan
No.
He was an interesting guy.
russel brand
So that's what he kicks you off into the McKenna realm.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's the one who introduced me to McKenna by that joke, just by saying that.
And then in hearing Hicks' references, there was a few other guys that he sort of referenced their ideas, like Noam Chomsky was another one.
One of the things that Hicks was famous for saying was actually a Chomsky line, was about the Iraq War, that it's only really a war when two armies are fighting.
russel brand
That's a direct Chomsky quote.
joe rogan
It is.
I don't want to say it's plagiarism, because I bet if you asked him, he would tell you it's a Noam Chomsky quote.
But he was introducing that concept and that idea to these people through the world of stand-up comedy.
And then from there, he expanded on that with all of his material about the Iraq War and all the new weapons that they're doing.
russel brand
Farming equipment.
joe rogan
Yeah.
russel brand
And that Shane bit.
And I think you give him that because the stuff he was doing was so innovative and incredible and funny.
Say you look to Kinison or Lenny Bruce before that.
From what I've experienced of them, and I'm not by any means an authority, Bill Hicks did make it more densely humorous.
Maybe not when you see him live on that, but by the time he was recording specials and stuff.
joe rogan
Oh, sure.
russel brand
Also, I've always thought that Bill Hicks was extremely refined and honed work, wasn't it?
You can see incarnations of the same content many, many times with him.
At least in the stuff that I saw, because I've only ever seen him record stuff, he wasn't doing lots of spontaneity.
They were beautiful, very articulate pieces of work.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And sometimes they didn't even make people laugh.
You know, I watched it with this girl I was dating at the time in like 1993-ish, something like that.
And she was like, yeah, he's not really funny, but he's really fascinating to listen to.
Like she didn't find like some of the things he was saying were funny.
But I think that was also the Revelation show, which he filmed in London, which was one of those weird shows where you're doing an HBO special and you have one show ready go.
And there's some weird pressure that's involved with that and it doesn't necessarily always come off loose and like the feeling that you see him when he's at a club where he's expressing himself in a much more free way.
russel brand
I felt that a lot of his comedy high points across his content came from his ability to do characterisation.
He'd do a long bit that used to be like, oh my god, this guy's just hitting me with data.
But when he said, I believe God created me in one day, those things were always like, ah!
joe rogan
Looks like you rushed it.
russel brand
I think he does let you off.
I think that Revelations was the first thing that I ever saw of his when I was a kid.
When he does the marketing rants, I couldn't believe his sincerity.
I couldn't believe that someone would hit you with that much heart, quit putting a dollar sign on every damn thing on this planet.
That someone would talk, that someone meant it.
That was from the heart.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, well, it resonated.
Whenever something resonates and stays...
I mean, it's also...
There's so much mythology involved in him now because he's passed on and he died young and we always sit back and wonder, like, what would it be like if that guy was alive today?
You know?
jim breuer
He didn't have the outlet then.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
Where that's...
Again, now you can go back and look at a guy like that because it's there.
But back then, you weren't ready to handle that.
Who was talking like that?
I'm coming to Comedy Club.
I want to...
I want to laugh.
I don't want to think tonight.
I got my date.
I don't want to hear this shit.
What?
You know?
What were you saying?
joe rogan
Kinnison opened the door for Hicks because he was one of the outlaws.
And Kinnison had a lot of bits that were like that, but...
They were more humor-based than point of view-based.
Like, he had points of view, but the points of view had to be really funny.
Whereas Hicks had a lot of points of view that was like, there's gotta be a way to introduce these ideas into people in the form of stand-up comedy that maybe not even aren't that funny, but are very important.
Whereas, like, Kinison was, everything was, I mean, he had some ridiculously funny bits, and he did it in this totally unapologetic way that I think Hicks kind of absorbed.
And when I first saw Hicks, it was one of the things, he had a lot of Kinison in him.
Like, we all have influences, and when we're starting out, we, like, you hear other comedians that you really love come out of your own mouth, almost like with the intonations and the inflections, and you almost kind of mimic them in your delivery.
And Hicks did a lot of that.
When I first saw him, he was doing a lot of Kinnison.
And it was interesting.
It's like, this guy's clearly influenced.
You don't know whether or not he was influenced by Kinnison or Kinnison was influenced by Hicks, but most likely it's probably a little bit of both, but more Kinnison than anything.
Because Kinnison...
Was much more successful earlier on, like several years before Hicks really took off and was revolutionary.
When Kinison came on the scene, he was completely revolutionary.
So I think him taking Hicks with him, you know, because they were part of that Houston group that originally expanded and then came to LA, I think he just showed that there's just some undeniable power in being that controversial but on point.
russel brand
Because stand-up is one of the original American art form, isn't it?
It's precedent prior to being in the United States.
That art form didn't exist in the same way.
It's got gestures and musical.
It didn't exist.
We can exist in that kind of way.
Podcasting is a very natural medium for a comedian because it grants you that long form.
I've always thought that the more...
It can be that the more truthful you are and the more articulate it becomes, the more you reduce your audience.
When you think of hitting up rooms of 2,500 people or 5,000 arena gigs, if you want to go in and wade in there with fucking Noam Chomsky bloody quotes...
unidentified
You better have a dick joke to finish with.
joe rogan
Exactly.
You've got to have some way to connect those things with humour.
Almost like scaffolding in between ideas.
russel brand
Yeah.
That's the thing I think about keeping the ball above a certain level.
In a way, this medium, you are relieved of that.
You are allowed, it's like, Yeah.
Just sit back for a while, listen for ages.
The aspect of comedy that I think is so important of authenticity, you know, when you're a start-up comic, people go, oh, you've got to find your voice, you've got to find your authenticity.
And like you were saying, that you hear the musicality of comedians you admire in your own voice.
When you're doing five-minute sets or tens or twits, it's extremely difficult, isn't it, to become robust enough with that.
But here, I guess, you get to...
Really explore what you are authentically in a kind of a long, safe form.
joe rogan
Especially 10-minute sets, those little short sets you do, you can get a bit out or a series of funny things that you can say.
But as far as any real depth, and part of what comes out that's really funny is if you watch someone like Jim Part of what his comedy is, is you'll understand after you see him for 15 or 20 minutes, this is how he makes fun of things.
This is his personality.
So you kind of get his vibe.
And then another subject comes up, and you're laughing before he even starts talking about it, because you're kind of following where he's going to take this.
russel brand
Yeah, you've signed up to that.
Oh, I enjoy this perspective now.
joe rogan
You tuned in.
Yeah, you tuned into his perspective.
jim breuer
Kinison was a huge influence.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
I loved Kinison.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
Why?
He was the first...
Hands down, he was revolutionary.
It was like seeing Metallica for the first time.
Like, what?
Look at the way these people are reacting.
I never saw an audience, a comedy audience.
He made them nuts.
He made them almost want to go in a mosh pit.
And...
No, I don't think...
Carlin would dance around being Catholic and kind of expose things, but not...
I mean, Kennison comes out and he just, in a biblical way...
I thought I... My mom tried to make me go to church and make me a good person.
I learned more...
About biblical and just how common sense wise, listening to him.
He made me think about it.
He'd come out like, you know, Jesus is never married.
No wife is going to buy the resurrection.
And he'd go into this whole thing about, he leaves on a Friday.
He's with 10 of his friends.
His wife is pissed.
Where's all those losers that call themselves disciples?
Everyone that says, I believe, I believe, we put up and feed them.
I'm sick of it!
And I sat there and went, holy...
Dude, the common sense of this is...
Why doesn't anyone talk about the common sense of this?
He just put it balls out there.
He can get away with it because he was a preacher.
And he knew the Bible.
And he knew everything about it.
And he would sit there and he comes home on Monday.
He looks like shit.
There's dirt all over his face.
And he sees his cross out on the lawn.
And she's like, where you been, Mr. Savior?
unidentified
Yeah.
He says, well, I don't have nothing, but I was dead!
jim breuer
I'm fighting death!
unidentified
Decomposure!
jim breuer
I'm in the spiritual world, and I gotta get back, because she don't know where I've been!
And then he went into this whole thing about, oh, they doctored this whole Last Supper.
Like, Jesus, me, am I gonna betray you?
And he'd say, oh, suck my dick!
You know who the fuck you are!
Oh, we can't write that.
We'll say, drink of this blood and...
But just the common...
He dumbed it down to and made me really think about that one.
Yeah, this is...
joe rogan
It's also like we said about Metallica, the force of his delivery was unprecedented.
No one had yelled out punchlines before, the way he did it.
jim breuer
You married?
russel brand
Yeah.
unidentified
You were?
jim breuer
You married?
I'll hold you back two years.
unidentified
Good.
jim breuer
Remember this face.
unidentified
Ah!
jim breuer
No one came at you like that.
But it was more than schtick.
It was freaking hilarious.
And it made a lot of sense.
They talk about the devil coming down and teaching you.
It was sick.
I remember him talking about...
Well, you said becoming famous.
unidentified
Because you know how fucking hard it is?
jim breuer
You finish your show.
You're trying to stay married.
She comes up...
unidentified
I want to strike your day.
No one will ever know if I got two fingers in your ass and me and my friends will fucking fuck you too.
You can't even fucking breathe.
And then you go home to your wife, no one will ever know.
Like, you know what?
jim breuer
You know, I'm married.
She's on her period.
And we're in the middle of a really difficult time.
But thank you.
unidentified
Thanks for the effort!
jim breuer
Get the fuck out of here.
joe rogan
Yeah, he was a real wild man.
He was like, he introduced rock and roll sensibilities to comedy.
jim breuer
That's what I was attracted to.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
That whole rock, crazy, loud energy.
joe rogan
Well, he was also so different than everything else at the time, which was like the roll your sleeves up.
You know, did you ever notice?
You know, ever notice, hmm, how come when you get a cup of coffee?
You know, there was like this sort of observational comedy boom back then, and he came along with this roaring monster.
unidentified
Yeah.
jim breuer
His first bit ever on TV ever, I think, was the African bit, which was huge here.
Please, help these poor children.
Help these poor children.
And he comes out, and he's gone, I'm sick and tired of seeing these commercials.
unidentified
Trying to make you feel guilty.
jim breuer
You're sitting there watching.
unidentified
How can You sit there in your air-conditioned room, heat, and your cupboard full of food.
What kind of sick?
jim breuer
Fuck!
Give him a dollar!
And then he goes into the whole thing.
Don't send them another thing.
unidentified
They live in a fucking desert!
joe rogan
Don't send him money.
Send him someone like me.
Send him someone like me.
Someone's gonna go there.
I've come here 500 miles and we realized we wouldn't have to travel this far if you people live where the food is!
unidentified
Come here!
jim breuer
You live in a desert!
unidentified
Come here!
Taste it!
Taste it!
joe rogan
It's sand!
unidentified
You know what it's gonna be a hundred years from now?
Fuckin' sand!
We got deserts in America too!
We just don't live in them, asshole!
Two trits!
Get the trucks!
jim breuer
Get you the fuck out of the desert!
joe rogan
And that was one of the best examples like people always like this is a fucking trend now but good comedy should always punch up Comedy should always punch up bullshit bullshit bullshit nonsense comedy should be comedy It's it's it's just like rap music or fucking gangster movies.
It's indecipherable You cannot decide what's funny and what's not funny and that is one of the best examples of it that African bit.
jim breuer
Oh Huge.
Roars.
It's simple.
It's funny.
It's a real topic.
And I actually sat there and thought, why are they living in a fucking desert?
Are they retarded?
Why can't they move?
This is stupid.
I don't get this.
unidentified
Why don't you help them?
joe rogan
You're right next to them!
jim breuer
Don't feed them yet!
unidentified
Don't feed them yet!
jim breuer
Didn't get the shot!
unidentified
The goddamn light was not ready.
joe rogan
The fucking mosquitoes!
Get the fuck out of here!
Such a great bit.
And again, a great bit if someone did it in 2016. But in the 84?
It was revolutionary.
jim breuer
Yeah.
joe rogan
85 maybe?
Maybe 85?
Fucking revolutionary.
russel brand
It's releasing you from the sanctimony.
There's so much sanctimony that you're weighed down and you're not able to have an authentic reaction.
There's so much of yourself that you're repressing and it takes him.
You see, again, to return to that archetypes conversation we had, that the trickster, the role of the trickster that comes up in Native American myth is like the coyote or the raven, or they say that even Christ is a trickster in moments in the Bible.
People that go, that's not reality anymore.
That's a trickster function to go like, you know, you know that there's a prescribed way that you're supposed to respond to that African commercial.
Well, look, there's this alternative way of responding to it and to present it comedically.
So, oh, you freed me.
You freed me from reality.
It's like an unchaining.
joe rogan
And you know what's interesting about him?
Did you ever read his brother's book, Brother Sam?
jim breuer
No.
joe rogan
His brother wrote a great book about Sam, and one of the things that he said is Sam's emergence of who he is came out of a car accident.
He got hit by a truck when he was a little kid, and it changed his personality radically.
He had a serious head injury.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
He got knocked the fuck out and came back fearless.
And that's a common thing.
Impulsiveness, fearlessness, and rage.
These are constant themes that come out of head trauma.
So it's interesting, like, one of the most important figures in the history of stand-up comedy might have literally been birthed because of trauma.
Like, physical brain trauma.
russel brand
That's brilliant.
jim breuer
I never heard that.
russel brand
What intervention?
It's a brain-damaged pioneer.
joe rogan
Yeah.
russel brand
Not for that head injury.
This whole scene would never have been discovered.
joe rogan
They said he was a different person.
Like, before that, he was, like, quiet and shy and a normal kid, and then, bam, he gets hit by a car, fucked up, put in a hospital, the whole deal.
Comes out of that, and he doesn't give a fuck.
jim breuer
Well, he just tastes death.
joe rogan
I don't think that's it.
russel brand
But he still becomes a preacher, though.
jim breuer
Right, yeah.
russel brand
Like, you know, so, what the fuck's he doing with that head trauma during the sermons?
joe rogan
But that was how he delivered.
unidentified
And if you say here, in the name of Jesus!
joe rogan
He had this explosive sort of dynamic delivery.
And I mean, I don't want to attribute all of it to the head trauma, because obviously there was some genius involved in his creativity.
jim breuer
You definitely blew my...
unidentified
I'm a little...
No, no, no, no.
joe rogan
It's not a negative thing.
unidentified
I know, I know.
joe rogan
Look, I've dealt with a lot of brain trauma, because I know a lot of people that have gotten fucked up from fighting.
You know, there's a real thing that happens to people, and you hear about all the time when they do these shows on NFL players who become explosive, and they get crazy and impulsive, and they get very violent, and some of that has to do with repeated trauma to the head.
Well, just one event, one car accident, one thing like that, can literally change your personality.
Because there's a very fragile dynamic of synapses and personality, neurochemicals, the brain's actual, like, the flow of chemicals, of neurochemistry, and the physical body itself, and the way your personality manifests itself.
All those things are directly connected.
And an event, like what happened to Sam Kinison, literally reshaped an art form.
russel brand
What about them people that get head trauma and suddenly can speak perfect French?
Have you seen them on the internet?
joe rogan
Yeah.
jim breuer
What?
russel brand
Yeah, they get knocked over the nut, come back with perfect French.
It's a common phenomenon.
It can be checked out online anytime.
joe rogan
Is that true?
I've known that they get really good at math, but I don't know they speak French.
Does someone have to teach them French?
russel brand
It's almost worth the risk.
I want to belittle head trauma.
I mean, there's definitely a downside, as you've said.
You may come back extremely aggressive.
joe rogan
Or you might have a headache forever.
That's also possible, too.
jim breuer
It's a lot easier and quicker.
It's a much quicker satisfaction than getting them stupid books.
I don't have patience for them books.
joe rogan
Foreign accent syndrome.
An accent.
A rare medical condition when patients develop what appears to be a foreign accent.
russel brand
Chinese teacher wakes up to stroke speaking English.
What about that?
unidentified
Whoa.
joe rogan
How about that?
But it's the Daily Mail.
unidentified
They might have just made that up, so we'll click on it right now.
russel brand
Yes, yes.
joe rogan
These motherfuckers.
I don't know.
I do know.
We have to end this, though, unfortunately.
It's 4.20.
russel brand
You're joking.
How long have I been in here?
joe rogan
It's 4.20.
russel brand
I can't remember the rest of my fucking life.
We've been here for three hours and 20 minutes.
I don't think I'm going to adjust to...
I've got to go and see my girlfriend and stuff and be a normal person.
joe rogan
Well, you're going to have to continue.
russel brand
This cavern.
joe rogan
You're going to have to keep doing podcasts.
It's 4.20.
russel brand
What time did we come in here?
joe rogan
Jim and I have been here since 10am.
jim breuer
This is five hours.
This is like six hours.
joe rogan
Yeah, you and I have been doing this for six hours.
jim breuer
Oh wow, I gotta make some calls.
Too bad.
joe rogan
Listen, man, if you're ever in here again, you got an open invitation.
Of course, you know you have an open invitation.
jim breuer
Thanks, Joe.
joe rogan
Anytime, man.
Please.
We gotta do this more often.
russel brand
Thanks, man.
joe rogan
Alright, you fucks.
That's it.
I hope you enjoyed it.
unidentified
Bye-bye!
russel brand
My mind.
My poor mind.
unidentified
Wow.
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