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June 27, 2018 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:57:52
Joe Rogan Experience #1137 - Duncan Trussell
Participants
Main voices
d
duncan trussell
01:32:36
j
joe rogan
01:20:34
Appearances
Clips
a
andy stumpf
00:01
b
barack obama
00:08
j
jamie vernon
00:45
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
I'm teaching Duncan the ways of a Windows laptop.
duncan trussell
I fucking love it.
joe rogan
Mac's keyboards can go fuck themselves.
Those are terrible keyboards.
They're not designed for comfort and writing.
This whole idea of get it thinner, man.
Get it thinner and thinner.
Get it so it's a piece of paper and it magically unfolds and expands to the right side.
This is not too thick.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
How come they can do it?
How come you guys can't do it?
How come you only offer one shitty-ass fucking keyboard?
Find out if your MacBook qualified for Apple's keyboard repair program.
I don't want you to repair the same shitty keyboard.
I want you to make a real keyboard where it's got a little bit of a U-shape to it, where your finger goes into the center.
What is that called?
How do they describe that?
And the keys have like a little bit of a dip to them in the middle.
You feel where they are.
Yeah, dimpled, perhaps.
You feel where they are.
They have travel.
So your fingers know what's going on.
You get tactile feedback.
More tactile feedback than this little clickety-click thing, which you might as well be doing it on an iPad.
You know how you have an iPad keyboard?
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
And it kind of works, but it kind of doesn't.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because your fingers are all feeling the same thing every time.
duncan trussell
Sure.
joe rogan
You want individual buttons that give you individual feedback, so you don't have to think about what's happening.
You can just think about the words.
duncan trussell
It feels like they hired an alien at Apple that forgot that humans like to push buttons.
We like it.
It feels good.
It feels good.
They're ignoring a basic human trait, which is like, have you seen those dumb cubes nervous people get?
They've got buttons and shit and you spin it around.
It was the same thing as this thing.
It gives you this tactile little thing where you take all that extra energy and you put it in your stress ball.
People like to punch and press and click and switch and that's what Apple forgot.
It's like when I'm typing, man, I like that click, click.
Like in The Shining, when you hear, that means I'm typing.
I like the sound.
The flutter of the keys as you're writing.
That fucking Apple keyboard, man.
When I went in, I was so ready to buy a brand new MacBook Pro.
So excited.
Really excited.
Mine's from like 2014 or 2015. I mean, not to be a fucking Apple fanboy, but I will say that when I went in there with it, instead of trying to sell me the new MacBook, she looked at it and was like, what are you doing on the thing?
And I'm like, oh, I edit sound.
And she was like, I don't know that you even need a new one outside of the fact that it's new.
unidentified
Whoever you are, young lady.
joe rogan
Odin blesses you.
duncan trussell
Odin blesses you.
joe rogan
Odin blesses you for your truth.
duncan trussell
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
And for your wisdom.
duncan trussell
Dude, I was so shocked.
joe rogan
We don't need this computing power.
duncan trussell
I was stunned, man.
Because I've never...
And that moment has kind of made me perpetually love Apple.
Because they're training their employees not to pressure sell shit, but just to actually help.
joe rogan
They probably were out of stock.
Yeah.
She couldn't sell you one anyway.
She's like, dude, you don't even want one!
duncan trussell
She's probably quitting.
She's quitting.
She's sick of her job.
For the last four days, she's been telling everyone, no matter what they came in to buy, she's like, you know, you don't need this.
joe rogan
Her boss has been saying creepy shit to her.
She's been ready to quit for a while.
He's an asshole.
duncan trussell
Yeah, yeah.
No, okay, Mark.
Okay, I'm gonna go out on the floor, Mark.
Jessica, I've noticed your sales have gone to zero.
joe rogan
Hey, move those new laptops, will ya?
unidentified
Yeah, sure, Mark.
joe rogan
Mark's got a creepy wink.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Can you get away with that at work?
What can you do now?
If you're like, hey, Susie, make sure you have that copy done to personnel by two.
duncan trussell
No.
joe rogan
Can't do that.
duncan trussell
Hell no.
joe rogan
You can't wink and go.
You definitely can't do the gun.
duncan trussell
Nope.
Unless you're doing it to everybody.
If you're in a meeting, you could go.
joe rogan
No, because then you're a mass shooter.
duncan trussell
Oh.
joe rogan
You can't do it to one person.
You can't do it to a group of people.
You can't make the finger gun anymore.
The finger gun's gone.
duncan trussell
You can't do...
You know, we're both...
We have cool jobs, dude.
So, like, I have to imagine that that's gone.
Like, you know, in my house, the finger gun's not gone.
I shoot my dogs every day in front of my wife.
I like looking at her cavaliers and being like, bam, bam, dead.
Now what?
Now what?
joe rogan
You can't even play around anymore.
duncan trussell
I love those dogs.
joe rogan
But it's like there's no room for nuance.
Because there are crazy people that do shoot people, you can't pretend to shoot people anymore.
duncan trussell
Dude, this is it, man.
This is exactly the fucking problem of being interconnected by technology, is that we are paying for the sins of the small percentile of absolute dumbasses on the planet.
And because of that, you know, anytime I look at a sign, Any sign that's got an obvious thing in it, don't shit in the hot tub or on the roller coaster, don't get out of your seat.
When I look at that, I think, that's because of dumb, dumb, dumb, because there might be a person who's in the roller coaster who's like, oh, stand up!
It'll be more fun!
Didn't mean to do a southern accent, by the way.
I'm from the south.
I don't think they're all dumb.
joe rogan
This is too many people talking.
There's too many people talking in this world.
Didn't used to be like that.
This is a new thing.
For the last 10 years, people started talking.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Nope.
The average person didn't have a voice 20 years ago.
There's great things to anyone having a voice.
Great things.
duncan trussell
Great.
joe rogan
Great things.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
But we're gonna have to relearn human communication.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
We can't use the old rules for today.
It just can't work.
It can't work.
unidentified
And it's too easy to be an asshole.
joe rogan
People gotta stop seeking that out.
The lashing out at people for no reason.
It's so crazy how many people do it.
You'll see someone post something and someone will be like, fuck you, you dumb piece of shit.
Don't you realize that this is why this and that is why that?
duncan trussell
You know Stephen Kotler?
He's been on the show a few times.
He's awesome.
He's doing this new psychedelic study, psychedelics and flow states.
So I retweeted Because he's like, they're doing research right now.
They need people to fill out a survey.
So I retweeted that to help Steven out.
Just like, ah, cool.
Yeah, that's a cool thing.
I think psychedelics probably do induce flow states.
I'd like to find out for sure.
But within like six comments, it's still up there if y'all want to look.
Some dude wrote to me something along the lines of like, You're hurting people and don't even know it.
That's six down.
It's like, hurting people?
I can't remember what language he used, but it's like, what the fuck?
This is a survey, dude.
What are you talking about?
Maybe he means by retweeting surveys, that sucks, because no one wants to see that on their timeline, but I think he meant you're hurting people by demystifying and destigmatizing psychedelics.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Little do you know, you're funding cruelty.
duncan trussell
Funding!
Funding cruelty!
joe rogan
I like how you just said, huh?
duncan trussell
Because I want the explanation because it's like when someone says something like that, it's so terribly, absolutely, impossibly wrong from my reality tunnel that it's like I want to get in their reality tunnel and hear because that guy really believes it.
Or he's a troll.
joe rogan
It could be he's a troll.
It could be that he's had terrible experiences with psychedelics.
That's, you know, maybe he's one of those guys that had a real, you know, look.
When people get really into something, they want everybody to get into it.
I'm a terrible example of that.
I'm telling everybody, you gotta do yoga, you gotta do yoga.
duncan trussell
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
This happens with everything.
duncan trussell
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
And people that get sober, like, people that have a real problem, they have, like...
We all know someone who's gone off the deep end with drugs, right?
When they come out of that, some folks turn into evangelists for sobriety.
And it gets super annoying.
And one of the things they do is they demonize all positive experiences that were with the same substance as their negative experience.
In their fucking crazy head, they've decided because they had a bad trip, every trip is bad.
The millions of people tripping all over the world, taking mushrooms, finding God and love and companionship and harmony with the universe and acceptance of their mortality, all that doesn't count because Billy couldn't keep his shit together at the Pink Floyd concert because this fucking asshole decided to eat the entire...
The entire bag of mushrooms.
And he tripped his balls off and was screaming they had to take him to the hospital.
And he called his ex-girlfriend and cried to her for hours.
And now her boyfriend, the new boyfriend, wants to beat him up and he doesn't even remember doing it.
That guy's an idiot, okay?
There's a lot of those people out there.
A lot of them.
A whole lot of them.
And there's people that just aren't geared for psychedelics for whatever reason.
You know, there's people that are like really close to losing their shit with regular reality.
duncan trussell
For sure.
joe rogan
And for them it's not a good idea.
It's not a good idea.
duncan trussell
Absolutely.
That's definitely something that like in my old age I want to put in like Italics and underlined, that's what you just said.
Because when I was younger, when you're younger and you are in that evangelical part of your psychedelic life, you can become, like, if you're not careful, ridiculous and irresponsible, and you start throwing out there this, like...
Idea that is not only fundamentally wrong, it's fundamentally wrong in everything, as far as I'm concerned, which is there's not really one cure to your troubles.
You know what I mean?
But with psychedelics, people think, this is the answer.
This is the answer.
This is it.
This is what we need.
And it's like, well, it's part of what some people need.
But if you've got manic depression, for example, if you've got bipolar, you know...
Dude, I had this moment where some parents came up to me and were, did I tell you about this?
They came in to talk to me at a show and they were like talking about how their kid liked my podcast and And it was really sad because he had been at one of my podcasts, and I think he'd come on stage to ask a question or something, and they were looking for a recording of the live show because they thought maybe they could hear him talk or get some, like, his laughter or something.
But anyway, what happened was he—I think he had some kind of— Bipolar, I'm not sure what, but one of my friends, Raven, he uses the term gyro.
His gyro was off a little bit, you know?
Something was off a little bit.
But anyway, the kid went and did ayahuasca in Peru.
He did an eight-night...
You know how they're doing these?
I don't know how they do it every night or every other night.
Eight-night retreat, drinking the medicine every night.
And then after that...
Went to some kind of, like, other shaman or some woman.
I don't know who it was.
I'm not sure of the deets.
But then he came home and he jumped off a waterfall and killed himself.
Because what had happened is he was in a manic state.
It triggered a manic state.
And he killed himself.
unidentified
Jesus.
duncan trussell
That was ayahuasca.
You know, that's like the medicine, right?
And so it just for some reason, I think some people are de-emphasizing what it means to be healed by a psychedelic or to be worked on by a psychedelic or to enter into that state because it's becoming, thank God, de-stigmatized.
joe rogan
Much more so.
Do you remember how it was 20 years ago?
duncan trussell
Dude.
joe rogan
You couldn't even talk about it.
duncan trussell
Couldn't talk about it.
Couldn't mention it.
It was bad, bad, bad drugs.
It was heroin.
joe rogan
Yeah.
duncan trussell
It was on the same level as, like, if you were taking LSD, that was like heroin, man.
Yeah.
joe rogan
People would look at you like you're crazy.
And then there's also, you know, there's real problems that people have with being tested at work.
A lot of people get tested at work and people are worried about losing their jobs.
So drugs don't just become a thing where you could fuck up and, you know, and get addicted to them.
But now they become a thing that could take away your livelihood.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Take away your livelihood.
They check your pee.
They put this state of paranoia on their employees.
Just imagine that feeling.
You're working for some office.
You probably don't dig the gig anyway.
You don't even like it.
And they have to check your piss every now and then.
They don't let you know when.
Duncan, can I see you for a moment?
Hi, Duncan.
It's that time of the year.
Random drug test.
So I'm just going to have to go with you and watch you pull your penis out and put it into this cup and give me a little sample of your body fluids.
duncan trussell
Okay, baby.
joe rogan
Okay?
duncan trussell
Yeah.
Whatever you want.
joe rogan
What if that didn't work anymore?
What if they figured a way around it so they had to collect your shit?
I need to see you shit.
I need to see your asshole open up.
And I need to see that tube come out into this Tupperware container.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
And I'm gonna be there.
duncan trussell
Yeah, that'd be...
Thank God.
In a way, thank God that's how they detect drugs.
Thank God it's through the piss.
Thank God it's not like you...
You know, like, probably, I don't know this for sure, but I bet every asshole has a thumbprint.
Like, you know, everybody has a different thumbprint.
I bet, like, if you took asshole prints, every human would also have, like, a different asshole print.
And, like...
joe rogan
Can you imagine if that was true?
If you could see in fingerprints, like, oh look, it gives you the ingredients.
This guy's like 60% asshole.
duncan trussell
It says it.
joe rogan
We just didn't look at this.
duncan trussell
No, I don't mean asshole.
I mean the literal asshole.
joe rogan
Oh.
duncan trussell
Like if you take a person's asshole and put like...
joe rogan
Oh, like an asshole print, like a retina scan.
duncan trussell
Put it on ink.
Yeah, like a retina scan.
joe rogan
It's the brown eye retina scan.
duncan trussell
Everyone, for sure, probably the asshole has a thumbprint.
joe rogan
Probably, for sure.
duncan trussell
For sure.
So if you took psychedelics, and it caused that thumbprint to change a little bit, and that's how they told words, they don't even want to look at your shit.
They have to scan your ass.
The print changed.
You did mescaline.
We're lucky it's in the piss.
But also, if you really think about the fact that we are in a...
World where people have to go, To work, to do a job that, by the way, man, if there is a dude you need to get on this podcast and there's a book that you would love, David Graeber wrote this book called Bullshit Jobs.
This guy is a fucking genius, man.
And this book, Bullshit Jobs, breaks down the phenomena of how many, many people are working in jobs that don't do anything for the world or the company they're working for.
And it's not like this judgmental thing where he's like, Yeah, that's a bullshit job.
You're a blah, blah, blah.
He's like an anthropologist, so he's very precise.
But one of the qualifications for your job to be a bullshit job is you know that it's really kind of a worthless job.
It's not really doing anything.
And companies have gotten so fucking big That they end up having departments or people running departments or extra employees that don't really need to be there at all.
And they have to pretend to work.
That's what he writes about.
He writes that if you really want to torture a person, not only give them the job of pouring a glass of water in an empty glass and pouring it back, But then add to it that they have to deceive their boss into thinking that they're doing an important job or they lose their job.
So not only are these some corporations and companies scanning your piss to see if you're taking a substance that is allowing you to connect with home what you actually are, they're also demanding that you spend many hours a day lying to To them that you're doing work that you're not doing.
If you're fucking efficient, you know, and this is another thing Graeber writes about.
Forgive me, David Graeber, if in any way I misconstrue this, I read your writings stoned.
The other fucking element to it that is absolutely atrocious and fucking horrible is that these substances are connecting us to home.
They don't want us to be in those states and they're asking us to fucking lie all day.
And you know what psychedelic means?
The etymology of psychedelic?
joe rogan
No.
duncan trussell
It means mind manifesting or soul manifesting, right?
So a psychedelic connects us potentially with the truth, what we are, our identity, right?
And these companies, they're asking us to lie, to be the opposite of our identities, to wear a weird suit or some kind of dress code, and to sit in a desk where, because you're efficient, you get your job done in 45 minutes, and for the next six hours, you've got to sit and...
Type and pretend that you're working knowing you're a person and knowing that this is unethical.
But if you go and tell your boss, hey man, I don't really have much to do.
You might get fired.
In the book, he cites one person, because he did a survey, and he cites one person who went to her boss, and she's like, hey, I can finish my job in two hours.
Can I have other stuff to do?
And her boss is like, don't talk about that.
Stay quiet about that.
Yeah, man.
That's the fucking world we're in right now because of automation.
There's less to do.
Computers are making shit fast.
Why are we working the exact same amount of time we were when there were no computers?
joe rogan
But you have to be there to get paid.
duncan trussell
And you have to act like you're doing something or they can you.
joe rogan
Yeah.
How many people right now are doing just that while they're listening to this?
duncan trussell
A lot.
joe rogan
A lot.
duncan trussell
And by the way...
joe rogan
If you had a guess...
What percentage of people are listening right now that are really supposed to be doing some bullshit job?
And they're kind of sitting in front of their keyboard with earbuds on, just barely paying attention, trying not to get caught looking at porn?
duncan trussell
Yeah, yeah.
Probably all over the planet, over a million.
Over a million in the workforce, probably.
joe rogan
When do you think companies had to put in rules that you can't look at porn at work?
Like that wasn't a thing in the 70s.
It wasn't a thing in the 80s.
It wasn't a thing in the 90s.
Then all of a sudden, you could just find porn online.
And people, they have a work computer that's hooked up to the internet.
Like, when did companies start going, oh, yeah, we didn't know about that.
Yeah, you can't look at that.
duncan trussell
Dude, I mean, I'm sure it started with, like, Penthouse, right?
Like, when they had Penthouse, like, Penthouse magazine, like, when you had fucking, like, you know.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
duncan trussell
For sure it started with magazines.
You couldn't bring your Penthouse, your fucking hustler, to work.
joe rogan
That's true, but looking at something online is so much easier than going to the store and getting a hustler.
Like, the access is universal, instantaneous.
Everyone has the ability to just go and download it.
duncan trussell
You know, if we're gonna, like, ask questions that are impossible to answer, like, how many people right now do you think listening to the podcast are in their bullshit job jerking off to porn while they listen?
joe rogan
At least one dude.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
For sure, that's what dudes do.
duncan trussell
If they can get away with it, they jerk off.
joe rogan
Especially a guy with a bad job who could find a way to jerk off somewhere.
Let me just keep five minutes in this bathroom and jerk off so I don't have to think about this stupid fucking job.
duncan trussell
Dude, come on.
joe rogan
That's like sexual assault.
Jerking off in an office?
duncan trussell
What if you scream?
joe rogan
Everyone knows.
Hey, I'm gonna go in there.
I'm gonna jerk off.
When I come, I scream.
That's sexual assault.
duncan trussell
Oh, for sure.
Well, that is.
I fucking feel like suing you right now, man.
That's fucked up.
joe rogan
Can you imagine?
You work with some guy and he's like 300 pounds and you're like 150 pounds.
And you're like, hey man, I need to figure out how to fix this computer.
We're going to have to unplug everything for a while.
He goes, okay, cool.
I'm going to go in the bathroom, and I'm going to jerk off.
And when I come, I scream.
duncan trussell
Dude, I don't know why you even have to add the scream to it.
joe rogan
What I'm saying is just even for a dude, it's a terrible prospect.
duncan trussell
I think it's interesting, too, because when you consider the act of shitting versus the act of jerking off, it's far more repulsive.
You're expelling foul-smelling toxins from your body into the toilet.
And if you say to your friend, hey, I gotta go take a shit, man, your friend's probably going to be like, well, you didn't need to tell me that.
Like, okay.
But your friend's not going to be like, whoa, dude, what?
And yet, jerking off, really, if you think about it, it's like you're giving yourself a hand massage that ends with a little spray of cream coming out.
Horrific.
But in our culture, no!
No!
Don't do it at the office!
My God, John!
Don't do it here, John!
joe rogan
I'm just picturing John, just with an itchy trigger finger, just ready to reach into his pants.
duncan trussell
No!
John?
Did you do it again, John?
It's a gross relationship that the worker has now with the corporation, and it's an unnatural relationship, and it's a relationship that seems to have, like, Do you know what Ari told me?
What?
joe rogan
You know, Ari studied the Talmud and did it for like 12 hours a day when he was a young man.
He told me there was one passage where in one of the ancient texts where it was talking about battling a dragon.
And he's like, this doesn't make sense because everything in here is supposed to be a story that actually happened.
Like, what is this dragon?
Oh, the dragon is a metaphor for masturbation, they tell him.
So the dragon that takes away young boys, it is a metaphor for masturbation.
Did we talk about this on the podcast?
Yes.
Dude, it's...
You know, Ari knows about as much as anyone you're ever going to meet about...
Orthodox Jewish traditions and the religion and the texts.
He really did study that shit every day, 12 hours a day for years.
duncan trussell
In Israel, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
So when he tells you about it, he got the actual translation of the metaphor from a guy who's a scholar.
duncan trussell
Yeah, dude.
Yeah, that's a bad metaphor.
I think if I wanted, for whatever reason, to dissuade people from jerking off, I could come up with a way better thing than a dragon to represent it.
There'd be some other thing, like a...
I don't know, man, like a...
What's like a...
What would be like the creature version of a rolled up ball of dried cum that you've thrown next to your bed and someone walks into your bedroom and sees the rolled up ball of dried cum Kleenex and it's just kind of like, that's gross, you didn't clean up your cum Kleenex.
joe rogan
It would be like one of them Ghostbuster villains.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
Like some sort of plasma thing that just jizzes all over you.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, they'd get Ghostbustered.
duncan trussell
What do you think about the anti-fap movement?
joe rogan
Anti-fap movement?
duncan trussell
Fap.
joe rogan
F-A-P. Oh, no jerking off?
Yeah.
duncan trussell
No fap, not anti-fap.
Anti-fap's a different movement.
joe rogan
Well, there's good and bad.
The good thing is sex will be way more pleasurable.
The bad is it'll be way more desirable.
So, like, to mitigate your sexual urges so you don't do stupid things and hang out with stupid people and have sex with people you don't really like but you think are hot because you're horny.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
And they're willing, which is a lot of people.
They get roped up in these relationships with these guys and gals that they're not really in love with, but they like to fuck.
duncan trussell
Right.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You know, you know, it's like, what do you think about it?
duncan trussell
Well, I think that there are, Well, something I always think back on is when you were sponsored by Fleshlight.
And this is when we were doing the podcast from your house and you'd come to do your podcast and you'd walk away with a Fleshlight.
So I ended up with like, I don't know, three or four Fleshlights.
And like at first I just wanted, like you had different types.
And at first I just went for like, oh, the one that looks like a pussy.
Right?
But then, like, you know, it's like, oh, I got that one.
But then you had, like, one that was like...
I don't know, man, like some kind of like gargoyle alien thing.
It was really not...
unidentified
Blue or something.
duncan trussell
It was really fucking weird, man.
But anyway, you know, I fucked those things.
And when I think back to it, it's like the first time I did it, it tricked my brain.
The second time or the third time I did it, it wasn't getting the same effect.
Whereas when I have sex...
With a human, it's a completely different...
It feels like it's a completely different series of chemicals that must be being released in my mind.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're uniting with someone.
You're bonding with someone.
You certainly get that oxytocin from orgasming together.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
That bonds people.
duncan trussell
So I've always thought...
Generally, if I'm in a period in my life where I'm jerking off a lot...
Usually there's something imbalanced in there.
I don't mean to apply a sin to it at all.
I'm just saying, personally, it feels a little dissipative when you're doing it a lot.
I don't know.
joe rogan
No, I completely agree.
That's the balance.
But the balance is also, you don't want to just be horny all the time.
duncan trussell
No.
joe rogan
Because when you're horny, you make shitty decisions.
So you'll date someone just for sex.
duncan trussell
I think that there is something to be said for figuring out how to deal with that kind of energy.
That's an energetic state.
Being horny is an energetic state.
It's energy.
If you're really horny and you sit and watch the feeling itself, it's electrical.
You can feel it moving around in your body.
It can almost make you twitchy a little bit.
It's like a very potent, energetic state.
Theoretically, the question would be, is there a way to release that energy That isn't through the tip of my dick in the form of DNA. Is there a way for me to release that energy in other ways or is the only way, the only valve on that to come?
That's a question.
What do you think?
joe rogan
I think there's when this natural buildup happens, it makes people more easily aroused.
It makes people more concentrating on sex.
And I think that that can put you out of balance, too.
You can be put out of balance both by too much masturbation.
You can definitely be put out of balance by too much desire for sex.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because you're just horny.
duncan trussell
Sure.
joe rogan
You can just take care of it yourself and you'd be relieved.
And then you can think clear.
You know, I think the body needs a balance, right?
That's why I'm a big proponent of exercise.
I'm a big proponent of meditation and mindfulness.
Those are toxic words right now.
Meditation and mindfulness.
duncan trussell
Are they?
joe rogan
Yeah, they've been thrown around by too many knuckleheads.
There's something about it that's like, oh, that's kind of a bullshitty word.
duncan trussell
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
You're like, oh, I'm just all about mindfulness.
Like, oh, you're annoying.
That's what you are.
You're the annoying guy.
duncan trussell
I saw a book just yesterday in one of these boutique stores.
Someone had made a sarcastic kid's book called The Grown-Up's Guide to Mindfulness.
And whoever wrote that fucking book hates the word mindfulness.
Definitely has an obnoxious friend who's into mindfulness because the book is just like a...
First of all, the guy doesn't seem to really understand what it is in the book.
He seems a little confused about the nature of it.
And I remember looking at that and being like, oh, I guess people are getting annoyed with the word mindfulness now, like the pendulum swinging that way.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's one of those words that people love to say.
It sounds good, and it makes you seem like a spiritual person.
When a word gets moved around and used too much, like something happens to a word, it gets icky.
Because it's like it becomes popular and then people start using it.
And then you see like a bunch of phony guru type dudes at seminars using it.
What's important here is mindfulness.
It's very important.
You know there's like typically unique behaviors.
You know what I mean?
Yes!
Especially when it comes to like people that are full of shit.
There's like a typical uniqueness.
Like there's just a thing that a lot of people adopt.
And it sounds like everyone else.
And it's just a way that people do it.
And I hope you understand.
Like, what are you doing?
Why are you doing that?
You're adopting this weird, funky thing.
And, you know, I think it's really important that we practice mindfulness.
It falls into that.
It falls into that.
Even though it's an excellent practice.
It's very important.
duncan trussell
I took on, for lack of a better word, I'm working with an actual teacher of the Kagu lineage of Buddhism, which is like Chogyam Trungpa's lineage of Buddhism, and he's amazing.
And he's teaching me mindfulness meditation practice, this guy David Nicktern.
joe rogan
How does he deal with masturbation?
duncan trussell
What's cool about him is if you asked him, he would tell you.
He wouldn't be like, how dare you ask me that question!
But I think that probably, I can't answer for him, I think it would fall in line with what you're saying with balance, you know, which is that it's really like sort of the concept with it is The thing that's happening right now, whatever it may be, you can just apply mindfulness to it.
You could apply being in the moment and being with the thing that's happening right now.
And so the thing he's teaching me, I love it so much, dude, because it isn't woo-woo-y or out there or crazy.
It's literally this...
It's a very simple way that you meditate, the way that you sit, which is you sit on a cushion, you put your hands on your knees, and you sit back.
And the word they use in this Kagu lineage for it is the warrior pose.
And what that means is that it's a kind of confidence.
It's the way people who are confident sit.
So you sit like that when you're meditating, your legs are crossing, you sit in a chair if you want.
And you look straight ahead, about eight feet, nine feet, and you watch your breath.
And when you go into your thoughts, which happens, of course, you go, you think, thinking, and then you go back to your breath.
That's it.
joe rogan
You say thinking?
duncan trussell
You don't say it, you think it.
joe rogan
Think thinking.
duncan trussell
Thinking.
So what you start realizing when you start this practice, and full disclosure here, man, you know me, Joe.
I have problems with discipline, and I have problems with sticking to stuff over and over again.
And working with this guy has been incredible because it's actually getting me to do it, right?
But still, I have like...
I did it today.
I didn't do it yesterday.
I don't want to get out there with some nonsense that I'm spending all day long meditating.
But what you start seeing is When you're doing it, is you realize like, oh, there's a cycle happening in my consciousness, in my mind.
There's a cycle that's happening in my life, which is that I kind of blink into the moment, following the breath, and I blink out of the moment into the thought realm, right?
We're like little fireflies.
We flicker into the moment.
We're here.
Now we're here.
We're not lost in our thoughts.
We're not thinking about the next thing we're going to say.
We're not thinking about the next thing we're going to do.
We're just here in this moment, and then bloop, We're off, you know, off and running, like thinking about the bills, thinking about the girl, thinking about the thing, thinking about that, and then that leads to another thought and another thought.
Next thing you know, you've been thinking for three years straight, you know what I mean?
Or three minutes or five hours or whatever, and then you come back.
And that's the cycle.
This is a cycle that happens.
So mindfulness Is starting to pay attention to that cycle.
And the breathing thing is kind of like a respiratory mnemonic device, which is that suddenly what's been happening to me now is I'll just be like walking down the street and then notice my breath.
Oh, shit.
I'm back.
Oh, I'm here.
I was totally up in my head.
Oh, I'm back.
That was thinking, you know?
That's all.
It's very, very, very simple.
But he's just teaching me the basic shit right now.
It does, I think, get pretty interesting.
joe rogan
On my own, thinking about my own life and observing other people's lives, I've come up with this thing that I bring up all the time, the momentum of your past.
Like, so many people, as they're going down the street, so many people, as they're interacting with people, they're carrying the momentum of all the fucked up things that are going on.
on bills that they have to pay, and things that they forgot to do, and a career they never chased, and a girl they never called back, and a thing that they lied about, and a thing they stole, and the reason why they got fired from work, and maybe if I call my boss, and all this craziness you're bringing with you into everything.
And that is so hard to escape.
It's so hard for people to escape the momentum of the past.
You know, people sort of, they get into this thing of defining themselves by failures.
By past failures and never just learning from them.
Go, oh, I'm that fucking loser.
It's a real problem.
It's a real problem with people to be able to learn from something and to just look at yourself.
And it's painful to look at yourself.
So everybody wants to pretend that they didn't do anything wrong.
Everybody else is an asshole.
Yes.
And so what you're doing by doing that is you're stunting your own growth.
You feel like you're protecting yourself because you're protecting your ego.
You're like, you know, I didn't do anything wrong.
Fuck him.
He's the asshole.
But you know you could have avoided that.
You know you could have done better.
Yeah.
Everybody has moments like that in their life.
The more you avoid those and don't take credit for the ones that you actually fucked up, the more you actually hurt yourself in this ironic thing because it seems like you're protecting yourself.
No, I'm exonerating myself from guilt.
Fuck it, it wasn't me.
I didn't do it.
But you know you did.
So in your head, you're the guy who lies about making mistakes instead of you're the guy who mans up to your mistakes, realizes it was a mistake, and then vows to do better.
duncan trussell
Yeah, man.
That's beautiful.
joe rogan
It's beautiful.
You just have to be able to say you're wrong.
You have to be able to say, I'm sorry.
You have to be able to...
And you've got to be able to look at yourself all the time.
Not just when you fuck up.
Because you can avoid some of those fuck-ups.
Just look at yourself critically along the way.
But we all have to understand that we are all an evolving process.
I had this conversation with Dennis McKenna.
It's a crazy conversation because it's a ridiculous thing to say.
He was talking about Donald Trump And I was saying, isn't it possible that he could grow and learn?
Like, why do we give up on people?
Why does a guy get to a certain age and we say, oh, he's 60. He's set in his ways.
He's 70. He'll never change.
He'll never evolve.
You don't ever say that about a 20-year-old.
You see some asshole who's a 20-year-old.
You say, he just needs discipline.
He just needs love.
He finds the right people in his life, right person to love.
He'll be okay.
He's gonna mature and eventually he's gonna be a solid man.
But you get to a certain age, we just give up on you.
We're just like, you're still alive, but you've passed the cycle that I usually enjoy people to be ready to like sort of interact as valuable, creative, loving members of society.
You pass that by.
You're still thinking about yourself only deep into your 60s.
This is stupid shit.
This is shit you're supposed to do when you're 17. By the time you're 70, you're supposed to be going, oh my god, I don't have much time left.
Oh my god, what have I done while I'm here?
What is important?
What do I feel the best about?
I feel the best about love and companionship and friendship and real warmth and interaction between people that you care about.
This money thing, man, this is not – you can't keep chasing this.
Can't keep chasing power.
Can't keep chasing money.
You're going to reach a point where it's not going to matter because you're going to die.
So you really want to be that guy from the bumper sticker, he who dies with the most toys wins?
Because this is literally what you're working towards.
You're working towards a joke.
duncan trussell
Yeah, well, one thing I would add to that is that...
So what you're saying here, and you're right, man.
But the one thing I think I disagree with you on is that you're creating a situation where that's it.
You die and that's it.
It's like the momentum goes into a black hole.
It's gone.
The momentum vanishes, that momentum, right?
But the way I've been taught is that actually that momentum...
It keeps going.
That momentum doesn't just stop because your body stops, right?
So that momentum keeps going.
And in fact, what's really beautiful is, and it's good that you call it momentum, that's exactly what it is.
joe rogan
It's what it feels like with me.
duncan trussell
It's a tendency.
We have a tendency towards a certain thing.
We have proclivities and tendencies and habituations.
And if you just kind of like, if you put you and me in a room and put a bunch of different objects on the floor, right?
You're gonna go towards something, and I'm gonna go towards something else, right?
You know, if there's fucking VR goggles in a goddamn badass, like some kind of badass compound bow manufactured at fucking DARPA, you know what I mean?
And there's VR goggles manufactured by DARPA. I don't know.
I'm going for the VR goggles.
You're probably gonna go for the cross or the bow, right?
So we have proclivities.
That's the momentum, right?
Is one way you can understand what karma is, right?
So that's the momentum.
That's the moment.
So that thing that you've got right now, when you begin to really look at it and think about it, You could ask yourself, when did this start, this momentum, right?
When did these proclivities and tendencies and things that I'm being, like, sort of pushed towards, when did they start?
And a lot of it is, you know, your parents taught you certain things, but...
joe rogan
Well, let's talk about a super common one that's horrible, cigarettes.
You got hooked by that bug.
Ari got hooked by that bug.
Redband's still hooked.
Joey Diaz kicked it.
You know, that's a really, really, really common one, man, that sort of defines people.
I'm that guy who smokes.
I'm going to walk into this store, and even though I know these things cause cancer, I'm going to buy a pack.
I'm going to go outside, and I can't wait to light it up.
I'm just not even thinking about that right now, man.
I'm trying to relax.
You get that thing in your mouth?
duncan trussell
Yeah.
There you go.
joe rogan
And you take that drag and you feel that cancer-causing chemical rush.
duncan trussell
Yep.
joe rogan
And you're like, I'll take it.
I'm all right today.
No cancer today.
And you take a big deep breath.
You blow it out.
You look at the other fellow cancer dodgers and they're just looking at you and smoking together.
And everybody's just, they're just really good at dodging cancer.
duncan trussell
So, you know, another one way you could actually say it is like every time you do that, you're planting a seed.
So every time you smoke a cigarette, you could imagine that you have this field, right?
And the field is your health.
And in that field, anytime you like exercise or do something, you know, decide instead of eating the fucking ice cream, you're going to eat the seaweed chips or like anytime you do that, you could just imagine.
Obviously, it's not the way it works exactly, but you could think I'm planting a seed in this field, right?
So If I keep planting certain types of seeds in any type of field, and I cultivate those seeds, they're going to grow into something, right?
That's karma.
So for a person, when the cancer comes, when the muscles come, when the failure comes, when the success comes...
If you look at that moment, you realize this is actually the flowering of a thing that's been growing for a very long time inside of me or in the world or in time.
So that's the idea.
People already have within them planted all of these seeds that haven't been expressed yet into time because they're still inside of them.
Like the dude with the...
Like imagine a guy with the guy who like shot the guy because he had road rage, you know?
That guy...
For years, had a really bad anger disorder, and he knew it.
He would think at times in this very calmest moment, I sure get really angry all the time.
I don't know if this is normal.
joe rogan
A lot of those people were beaten when they were kids.
duncan trussell
That's it, dude.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Super common.
duncan trussell
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Super common.
duncan trussell
Trauma.
So, yeah, man, that's like cigarette smoking, any kind of behavior that, like, is risky or over time produces some kind of negative result.
It's just planting seeds.
And so the momentum you're experiencing right now is the sum total of all those fucking seeds that you planted and that were planted inside of you over the course of your life.
That's what you are.
You're like a walking field of karma at varying stages of growth, growing varying types of vegetations.
And some are good and some are bad, but it's like that's what you are right now.
And what's beautiful about that is that means that you can start cultivating that field.
You don't have to just let it grow wild and pretend every time you smoke a cigarette or do some stupid shit, you're like an unconscious farmer.
I just throw it seeds everywhere!
Oh my god, what?
joe rogan
Can't believe I'm drinking and driving again, but I gotta get home.
duncan trussell
Oh shit!
Oh my god, the DUI plant grew again in the field!
I wonder why that thing keeps growing in my field!
unidentified
Well, because you keep fucking drinking and driving, dude!
joe rogan
The DUI plant.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
duncan trussell
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
duncan trussell
You can cultivate it.
That's what's beautiful about it.
You know, you can cultivate the field.
You don't have to let it just like have fucking weird random weeds spring up.
They'll let a patch or two have some weeds because those are fun.
joe rogan
Imagine spending that tobacco money.
Imagine spending that money.
Thinking about all that cancer.
Just spending all that money.
duncan trussell
God.
joe rogan
Just buying a big castle with all that cancer money.
Look at it all.
duncan trussell
Castle cancer.
joe rogan
Hey, the people want it.
They want it.
In this country, you've got the freedom to buy whatever you want.
duncan trussell
Well, yeah, right.
I mean, it's a person's choice, but to get back to what you were just saying, the ethics of the fucking thing, how about this?
How many people who run big tobacco own stock in companies that make chemotherapy drugs?
There's a big question.
Like how many of those people in their portfolio that they barely know about, they're like, well, you know, like a really big investment these days is gene therapy for cancer.
Really?
Is cancer out of hand these days?
unidentified
Huh?
duncan trussell
Really interesting.
I wonder what could be going wrong.
joe rogan
The problem with cigarettes is that they're addictive.
Not just that they kill you, but that they're addictive.
Like, I've smoked a cigarette before, and it gives you a head rush.
You get like a nice little weird rush.
duncan trussell
And also, the other problem is, nicotine is a medicine, and it has like some health benefits if used in the right way.
And also, it's a nootropic.
So, it's like, it's not just like it gives you a rush.
It's somehow focusing you a little bit.
joe rogan
Stephen King said that was one of the most difficult things when he quit smoking, was not having one while he writes.
duncan trussell
That's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because that's the nature of addiction.
It's like kudzu does to trees.
It wraps around your favorite thing in life and tricks you.
joe rogan
What's kudzu?
duncan trussell
Kudzu is a plant that was introduced from Japan, I think from Japan, into the South.
And it's just a growing wheat vine that when it wraps around trees and it covers them up completely so the trees can't get any sun and the trees just die.
Yeah, it wasn't native to the United States.
So sometimes, I don't know, maybe they took care of kudzu, but when I was a kid, you would drive by these beautiful forests where the trees were just covered in fucking kudzu.
Yeah, like that.
joe rogan
Holy shit, dude.
That's crazy.
It's like they got eaten by other plants.
duncan trussell
That's right, man.
And those trees are dying.
They can't get the sun.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
That's insane.
duncan trussell
And that's a great metaphor for addiction.
What?
joe rogan
That is a perfect metaphor.
Oh, my God.
That's insane.
How did I not know about this?
duncan trussell
I don't know.
It definitely seems like something you'd know about.
It looks like they're alive.
It looks like people.
joe rogan
Dude, there is just too much to know.
There's too much cool shit.
duncan trussell
A lot of shit out there.
joe rogan
Look at that.
Go to the one above that.
No, above that.
Above that one.
Right above that.
There.
That one.
Look at that.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Look how green that is.
That's insane.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Dude, that does something weird to your brain.
duncan trussell
It's beautiful.
joe rogan
It makes you feel like you're on a drug.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
If you were standing there and it was that green and that vibrant, you'd be like, oh my god.
duncan trussell
Yep.
Yeah, you would.
It would feel so good.
joe rogan
When do you ever see anything that looks like that?
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
I say let those fuckers take over.
duncan trussell
Let the kudzu take over?
joe rogan
Those bitch-ass trees can't fight off the kudzu.
They don't deserve to live.
They have to fucking evolve.
These kudzu are cooler.
They're offering you a cooler look.
You're like, hey, you want to look at your boring-ass fucking gray bark and your bullshit leaves on the ground?
Or how about we just take over everything, motherfucker?
We cover the floor!
It's like a carpet!
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
We covered the floor and the hillsides and all the trees.
Everything.
Green as fuck.
What kind of green?
Like flow green, man.
Like vibrant flow green.
If you smoke weed there, you're going to trip balls.
duncan trussell
Yeah, look at that.
joe rogan
What is that?
It covered its statue?
Is that a golf statue?
duncan trussell
I think that's just a telephone pole.
A light pole.
It seems like someone could have sculpted that a little bit, though.
joe rogan
Maybe.
Or maybe it's just really covering a light pole.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cut to, man.
There you go.
So that's like a really funny thing that like alcoholics will get their alcoholism wound up in their social life or like their creativity, their creative cycle.
So they will think like, fuck, man, without the booze, I don't think I'm going to be able to write as well.
unidentified
Right.
duncan trussell
Or, you know, whatever it is, like, mostly it's just people have this, a really smart way to avoid getting healthier or the learning curve associated with getting healthier.
And it's a really intelligent trick to play on yourself, which is to imagine that, you know, whatever it may be that's currently out of balance in your life, if you remove that, You're not going to be able to be as good as a person.
There's a lot of alcoholics out there, performers who think, oh, if I don't drink, I've got to have a beer on stage, man.
Where it gets hardcore is when it's actually fucking wrapped up in the art publicly.
I don't know if you're aware of this rapper who died named Lil Peep.
You know about Lil Peep?
joe rogan
I heard about him.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
In one of his videos, it just shows the floor of his car, just pill bottles scattered everywhere, right?
So part of the identity he was projecting into the world involves the romanticization of addiction to pharmaceutical medications, right?
And so that's where it gets real.
Or like big comics, when all their jokes are about being fat.
Yeah.
So they don't only have to like...
They have to worry about being fat.
They have to worry about, if I get healthy, I don't know if my jokes are going to work anymore.
So you know what I mean?
That's how insidious it can get.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a good one.
That one does creep in.
I actually heard Kevin James.
I heard someone say that to him.
You lose weight, you're losing roles.
duncan trussell
God, someone just told me it's like, you either need to lose 15 pounds or gain 15 pounds if you want to get in the movies.
unidentified
Yeah.
duncan trussell
I don't remember who said that, but it's like, yeah, it's like, you know, you become this, like, character or something like that, and the next thing you know, your fucking addiction is, like, just riding you around like a horse, whispering in your ear, without me, you won't know where to go, and now you're fucked, you're fucked, yeah.
unidentified
I'm your comfort blanket when you're all alone.
joe rogan
When you're drinking alone in your hotel room, ooh, dark.
duncan trussell
That's dark, but then when you get into it, too, when you're not just drinking alone, but you're like...
joe rogan
Telling stories to yourself.
duncan trussell
Celebrating it.
You're pretending...
Anytime you find yourself pretending you're fucking Hunter S. Thompson...
Look out, baby!
joe rogan
Yeah, if you get a cigarette holder.
duncan trussell
Unless you're writing like him, you ain't Hunter S. Thompson, alright?
You're having fun, no doubt.
But I know in my life, the times where I've been like, it's kind of like Hunter S. Thompson.
It's like, dude, you need to go to bed.
Stop.
You're tricking yourself.
Just don't trick yourself.
By the way, if you want to be a self-destructive alcoholic, drug addict, whatever it is, Be that thing.
But don't fool yourself into thinking that's not what you're doing.
joe rogan
It's romantic.
duncan trussell
Yeah, yeah.
Don't like, as you're plummeting towards splattering all over the fucking ground, pretend that you're flying towards the earth.
Well, maybe you could.
Maybe that's actually a cool way to die.
unidentified
Maybe that's a good way to die.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's a good way to think about it.
Right before impact.
Maybe that's what the water tower guy did.
duncan trussell
Yeah, dude, maybe so.
joe rogan
I mean, who knows what you see when you do eight days of ayahuasca?
Who knows what you see?
That seems like eight days of any potent psychedelic.
I've never done that.
I've never done more than one day in a row.
I've done one day in a row, take a break, maybe a little pot the next day.
duncan trussell
Sure.
joe rogan
And then I don't do anything for, like, months.
That's how I've always done it.
I've never done, like, big session followed by big session.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, we can only speculate.
I don't know exactly what that would be like.
I mean, I can imagine.
joe rogan
Couldn't imagine.
duncan trussell
Dude, I had this crazy...
Like, idea.
Crazy idea.
Now, this is a lens.
I don't know if it's true or not, but obviously it's probably not true.
But I got this crazy idea that, like...
And again, with you, I could just say this, and I don't have to preface it, but since people listen to your podcast, I have to preface it by saying, I do not believe this.
I am not going insane.
But this is a fun thing to think about, you know?
It's okay to imagine shit in your mind.
It's okay.
Like, you can imagine stuff.
So I was thinking, like, inspiration, right?
Specifically, I was thinking like J.R.R. Tolkien.
When you read Lord of the Rings, it's like that guy went over there.
That writing is so beautiful and so perfect and so interdimensional.
It's fucking old.
joe rogan
It's an old book.
duncan trussell
And it's beautiful, his writing.
And I was thinking, oh, that guy...
Tolkien.
That inspiration is outflow from the DMT realm into this dimension through the processor of his meat computer.
And this is like a kind of drip coming out of a dam, right?
The dam is something that's been constructed by power structures who want to keep that realm out of here, right?
And so Over there, you get usually a kind of message, right?
And the message is usually something along the lines of, we need to love each other.
We could love each other here.
There's something more important than money.
That's to really be very reductive about it.
But some version of that story that usually involves some kind of Desire to no longer harm people or to reduce suffering or to be a better person or however you want to put it, right?
So there's a dam that's been built and the dam It's built by the people who scan your piss for LSD. It's people who have created an intentional, legal obstruction between one realm and the other,
which is the realm, mechanical hyperspace, in the realm that we're currently existing in, which is where there's a lot of scientific materialism, where people only believe that there is only matter here.
There's only matter.
That's it.
There's nothing else.
No spirit, no soul, right?
joe rogan
The gatekeepers.
duncan trussell
The gatekeepers.
I used to think of them as gatekeepers.
Now I think of them as dam builders, right?
And what happens is, from time to time, a big crack in the dam opens up, right?
That's when someone like fucking Martin Luther King appears and is standing in front of so many people telling them, I think that We're all the same, is what I think.
I think we're all the same.
And he's doing it in this very charismatic, beautiful way, right?
That's a big fucking crack in the dam, because over on this side of things, they don't want us to be all the same.
They want us to be separated by a lot of different fucking things.
They don't want us to be all the same over here.
So the cracks in the dam open up, and the big cracks Bam!
The little cracks, they're like the good art, the good poetry, the great movies, the inspiration.
And now what's happening because of the fucking internet is all these fucking cracks in the dam are opening up.
They can't seal them up anymore.
It's like you can't seal the fucking dam anymore.
And the singularity that McKenna was talking about, the apocalypse, which actually means lifting of the veil, What that is, is when the dam reaches Like a point where the structural integrity has been permanently compromised and the DMT realm flows into this dimension in the form of some kind of technology that either unifies all of us or like rips a hole literally into whatever that membrane is that separates us
from the infinite.
And that is what, for whatever reason, over in this dimension, people have been trying to stop.
joe rogan
Because it impedes progress in terms of like making money.
Building businesses.
You can't be building businesses if people are doing LSD on their breaks.
duncan trussell
I don't think that's true.
I think you could run a wonderful business.
joe rogan
No, no, no.
They're going to come back and they're not going to be concerned with productivity.
duncan trussell
Well, they're not going to be...
No, no, no.
If we get a group of people together...
And start building something amazing, not for money?
joe rogan
Oh, no, I'm just being facetious.
duncan trussell
Oh, I know.
joe rogan
It certainly can be done.
duncan trussell
I'm arguing with the devil's advocate.
joe rogan
Okay, let me play the devil.
duncan trussell
Okay, nice to meet you, finally.
Can I have my soul back?
joe rogan
No.
duncan trussell
Damn it.
joe rogan
This whole thing of you exploring hyper-dimensional space and all that stuff, all that does is make you stupider, and you show up at work, and you're less disciplined, and you're not interested in getting the job done, okay?
This company is built on teamwork, okay?
And it's built on everyone pulling their weight.
Now, if you're off fucking off in hyperspace from Friday night to Sunday morning, and you barely get six hours sleep over the weekend, you show up Monday, I'm going to test your piss.
unidentified
Alright.
joe rogan
Yeah, and if I find psilocybin in there, or anything else, fuckin' squirrely.
duncan trussell
Do you mind if I show you Professor David Nutt's study on the Lancet about the dangers of the variety of drugs?
I'm talking to the devil here.
Do you mind if I show you this?
unidentified
Please do.
duncan trussell
If you notice, sir, on this chart, they, again, published in the Landsat, it's peer-reviewed.
This is a very important study.
Professor David Nutt, of course, has since, I think, been disbarred in somewhere and accrued some kind of horrible punishment for being an advocate for psychedelics.
But anyway, sir, forgive me, but if you'll notice on this chart, psilocybin is considered the least I'm not interested in harmful, sir.
joe rogan
I'm interested in productivity.
I want this place to run fast.
We're in competition and we're losing jobs overseas.
Do you know they're going to start to make Harley motherfucking Davidson motorcycles in Thailand?
duncan trussell
Yes, sir.
joe rogan
Yeah, what kind of shit is that, huh?
It's a goddamn American bike and they're making it over in fucking Asia.
Why?
Because the people in the factory over here didn't kick ass, okay?
They're over in the fucking park taking their magic mushrooms and tripping balls when they should be thinking about how they keep this company active.
This company feeds and houses 150 families.
You understand that?
duncan trussell
Yes, sir.
joe rogan
Now it's a hundred.
Are you happy?
duncan trussell
No.
joe rogan
You still want a fucking raise?
duncan trussell
Sir, before I forget, I picked up your prescription for Oxycontin.
Speed!
Oxycontin.
joe rogan
I'm on speed, motherfucker!
I don't take none of that Oxy bullshit.
duncan trussell
That's for pussies!
Yeah, you're on Adderall.
You're on methamphetamine.
joe rogan
Yeah, 100%.
Well, yeah, right, so...
duncan trussell
So, right, so the answer to it is that – oh, I'm talking to you.
Well, here's the problem, sir.
You don't realize this, but you're kind of a low-level priest in a religion that is spread far and wide, and in this religion – It's not really the money that you're interested in as much as it is the power,
because you've become a servant of a being called the Demiurge, which is essentially attempting to create a sort of authoritarian hierarchy in this particular dimension that's been separated from another place known as the Galactic You can call it whatever the fuck you want, but it's the aliens.
It's a galactic civilization that is about to pour into this civilization.
And so it really doesn't matter what you do because within the next 20 or 30 years through technology and through the unification of people because of that technology, you're going to either come to our side or go completely insane.
joe rogan
Okay, the counter to that, of course, is the only way you're gonna get there, you fucking lazy hippies, is if we make you go to work!
And we get shit done, and you buy things, and you keep this fucking country's economy healthy.
That way the technology innovates, that way we make the hyperspace gateway.
You lazy fucking hippies tripping balls on your lawn furniture, you're not creating shit, okay?
You show up for work on time, you get the job done, eventually we'll get our portal.
duncan trussell
Well, it sounds...
Okay, can I just address something you just said, Satan?
joe rogan
Yes.
duncan trussell
On time.
Now, this is a very funny term.
Thank God I'm reading David Grape.
Here's a great term, on time, right?
So, like...
unidentified
Time.
duncan trussell
Boss, the problem is that, like, the thing you're doing with time or being on time...
That's a relatively new imposition into society.
And it started with clock towers.
During the Industrial Revolution, they put clock towers up so that people always knew what time it was so they wouldn't be late for going to work in a factory, you see.
There was a time when people weren't, like, obsessed with their fucking watch because the idea that you could sell time...
Here's what it is, sir.
You think you and I have entered into a contract where for some ridiculous reason I've agreed to sell you eight hours of time, my time per day.
It's essentially a form of slavery.
It's a kind of like slavery, except I get to go free for a certain amount of hours per week.
Yeah, we can call it that with less of the power I can leave anytime I want.
Indentured servants, I don't think they could because they were kind of trapped.
joe rogan
Certain jobs are kind of trapped.
duncan trussell
Well, you could quit most jobs.
I mean, that's kind of the rationalization that people use is they're like, you can leave anytime you want, bud.
You can leave anytime you want.
joe rogan
The hard jobs are those jobs where people work for salary and their time is just whatever the project takes.
Like, do you ever talk to somebody who works on video games?
duncan trussell
Right, no.
I've met very few people.
I mean, I've met a few, but it's like they don't work in the big companies.
joe rogan
Dude, the hours that they put in before a video game is released is insane.
A lot of them just sleep in the offices.
They're working 16 hours a day just coding.
They're all living on top of each other.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Dude.
duncan trussell
Brutal.
Dude.
Brutal.
Brutal.
Yeah, brutal.
joe rogan
That's not a job.
You're asking for someone's whole life.
duncan trussell
That's right.
joe rogan
You're asking for the whole life.
You occasionally can get away from me and go camping.
You occasionally get away from me, have a picnic with your family.
You occasionally can get away.
But for many, many months, I want you all the time.
I just want you there all the time.
And in exchange, I'll give you some money.
duncan trussell
Conceptually, I don't think that this is like a terrible situation as long as the person is really into what they're doing, right?
And then what we have is just like a kind of like a, I guess you could say what a capitalist commune or I don't know what you'd call it.
It's like a group of people communing together, seeking to like extract money from the universe.
But also, like, you know what comes to mind?
Sorry, anyone from Blizzard who's listening who doesn't like your job there, but I went on this tour of Blizzard, and they fucking...
joe rogan
It's a company that makes video games.
duncan trussell
They make the best video games outside of, like, the only game I notch up with it right now.
I'm into God of War.
It's so fucking good, but...
joe rogan
It looks pretty badass.
duncan trussell
It is amazing.
It is amazing.
joe rogan
Look at you.
duncan trussell
Look at you.
Dude, it's the first Triple-A game I've liked in so long.
joe rogan
What's a Triple-A game?
duncan trussell
It's called Triple-A, right?
Triple-A. It's a really expensive game to make.
It's like a hardcore, big-time...
joe rogan
Pull up a video.
Let me see God of War.
duncan trussell
God, it's so...
joe rogan
The graphics are pretty fucking incredible.
duncan trussell
Dude, dude.
It's beautiful.
Don't get me...
Fuck the alien damn bullshit.
God of War is like...
It's so good, man.
And like, I'm stuck in it right now.
joe rogan
So you put on the HTC Vive today, the new one that we have, but you didn't get into a game yet.
There's some games in it where you're just like, whoa, I see where this is going.
And I saw that from yours.
But yours was...
When I was over at your place, what was that?
Two or three years ago?
duncan trussell
Probably two years ago.
joe rogan
Look how good that is.
duncan trussell
Kratos.
joe rogan
Look how good that is.
You can see the dirt on his hands.
It's like you're watching an episode of Vikings.
duncan trussell
Dude, it's really good.
And it's like...
joe rogan
It's our bitch-ass fucking thing freezing up again.
Here it goes.
So this is actual gameplay?
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
See, why is this doing this?
duncan trussell
That's fucking gameplay, dude.
That's gameplay.
joe rogan
That's gameplay.
That's amazing.
duncan trussell
Yeah, it's incredible.
joe rogan
It's amazing.
duncan trussell
She's so hot.
joe rogan
She's very hot.
duncan trussell
I know.
joe rogan
Do you think you could hang out with a chick who's like cut people's heads off with swords?
duncan trussell
Yes.
Absolutely.
unidentified
Look at her.
joe rogan
Look at him, brother.
Her.
unidentified
Look at this.
joe rogan
This is fucking badass, dude.
duncan trussell
But it's not just...
Dude, what's great about this game is not just the graphics, which are incredible, or the fight mechanics, which are also incredible, but the fucking story is really good, and the acting is really good, and the relationships between characters are really intense.
This game will make you tear up, man.
Damn.
joe rogan
Holy shit, you see what he just did?
Chopped that dude in half with an axe.
Holy fuck.
He just got smashed by a giant.
duncan trussell
He got smashed.
He gets smashed a lot.
But he's Kratos, the God of War.
He doesn't give a fuck.
joe rogan
Does not give a fuck.
duncan trussell
Man, that...
joe rogan
This is incredible.
duncan trussell
I wouldn't even show much more of this.
It's spoilers.
I don't want anybody to see any of the characters or to know what's happening because it's that good.
Like, it's such a good game.
Most games, the way I've played video games, is I try to rush through it for some reason, which is really dumb, to be like, oh, I gotta win this thing.
This one, you want to hang out.
Look around.
Like, see the...
The landscape.
You get really into it.
It's a glorious game.
To get back to what we were talking about, at Blizzard, one of the people working there told me, we...
I like building World of Warcraft because we like playing World of Warcraft.
We've created a dimension we want to be inside of.
We enjoy it.
They love it.
And that's why the game is so good, because it's being made by people who enjoy playing the game.
So I don't know how many hours they work at Blizzard.
I imagine it can be a pretty brutal schedule.
But...
And anything you do, even things you love, I know, become grueling.
But I think that example of a company versus a company where you're, like, either doing something that you don't even need to be there to do.
Right.
joe rogan
No comparison.
duncan trussell
No comparison.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
I mean, it might be massive hours a day, but I bet you're having a great time a lot of the time, and the actual result's insane.
You know, I was friends with a lot of those guys from id Software back in the Quake 2 days, and played Quake 3. I got to play Quake 3 before it ever came out.
duncan trussell
I was with you.
That's right.
That's right, in Dallas.
joe rogan
Cliff.
No, that's Cliffy B. Id Software is Doom and Quake.
Cliffy B is Unreal.
duncan trussell
I was with you when Cliffy B gave us a tour.
I didn't see the Quake tour.
Sorry, dude.
joe rogan
They're both amazing.
We got to see Unreal Tournament.
When they were putting that together and they were putting together this new engine that wound up being used in a bunch of different games afterward.
But it was fucking crazy.
We get to see the graphics like as they're designing things and same thing with the Quake Studios.
But those guys all were crazy gamers.
They would get LAN parties and sync all the things.
We played at the id Software.
We got to play death matches between everybody in the studio.
It was awesome.
To play Quake with the guys who made Quake.
duncan trussell
Fucking cool.
joe rogan
The funnest shit ever.
duncan trussell
Fucking cool, man.
joe rogan
And, you know, I mean, what they did was...
If you've never played one of those games before, the three-dimensional games when you're running down, you hear things over here behind you, and you can turn around and sneak around corners, and people are chasing around the map, and sometimes you can walk and it doesn't make any noise, or you can run and you can hear the footsteps.
duncan trussell
Fucking cool.
unidentified
Fuck!
joe rogan
It's the crazy...
There's so adrenaline-packed when you're playing those games.
These guys...
I'm so terrified we're putting a LAN in here.
In the next couple weeks?
duncan trussell
I know you are.
joe rogan
Oh, you and I, we're gonna have some fun.
duncan trussell
Well, no we're not, because you're gonna beat me at fucking Quake.
I suck at shooters, dude.
joe rogan
I haven't played in forever.
duncan trussell
Please.
joe rogan
I haven't played in forever.
I'll probably be terrible.
For at least the first 16 hours.
duncan trussell
If I like had a shrink ray and shrunk you like into like an eight-year-old, you would still beat me at shooters.
I suck at fucking shooters, man.
joe rogan
What is your thing?
What do you like?
You like those role-playing games?
duncan trussell
I don't want to say it, dude, because you're gonna make fun of me.
unidentified
I won't.
joe rogan
I won't do it.
Come on, fella.
duncan trussell
I like Hearthstone, man.
joe rogan
What is that?
I don't even know what it is.
duncan trussell
I fucking fell for it, man.
I didn't even fall for it.
joe rogan
I'm being sincere.
I don't know what it is.
duncan trussell
It's an online fantasy card game.
joe rogan
It's like a furry thing.
Like furries?
duncan trussell
I love comedians so much.
Because it's like I knew you were going to insult me.
I just didn't know how.
And the way you did it was way worse than I expected.
joe rogan
Like you pretend to be a fox, right?
You're like foxkin?
Are you otherkin?
duncan trussell
No, it's not like fucking furries!
joe rogan
Is that what it is?
You just get a kick out of it?
Do you ever do it in your footy pajamas?
With like a little bunny rabbit tail on?
unidentified
I'm in the woods, and I'm a rabbit.
joe rogan
I've got to be clever to get away from the fox.
duncan trussell
Let me tell you something.
It's a wonderful fucking game, and it's deep, and it's got a lot of strategy, and I love playing it, man.
I really do.
I'm not good at it anymore.
I went through a period of being good.
I haven't played it in a while, because I've been playing God of War.
joe rogan
Oh, look at this.
Is this it?
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
This looks like death.
What is happening?
What is happening here?
duncan trussell
Let's see.
joe rogan
They're cards?
duncan trussell
Yeah, they're cards.
Basically, I'm not going to explain the rules of Hearthstone on your show, dude.
Please don't.
It's a great game!
joe rogan
This is killing me.
duncan trussell
It's a great, very fun, very enjoyable game.
joe rogan
It's a good game for nine-year-old girls.
That's what it looks like.
I get it for my kids.
duncan trussell
I'm just thinking, like, all I had to do is save StarCraft, or I could have lied, but I knew I had to tell you the truth.
joe rogan
But I knew you were addicted to that.
You had a real problem with that.
For a while.
You and I mirror each other in our video game addictive tendencies.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
We're both like...
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Gotta be careful.
duncan trussell
But, dude, you know, this is something I was thinking I wanted to bring up during the podcast, man.
It's like when we first started hanging out.
You told me something I've never forgotten, and it's from The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi.
And you mentioned something from that book, which is that learn one thing.
And you'll know how to do a lot of other stuff, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
duncan trussell
So he would, apparently, he was a samurai.
And so he recommended for samurai not just to learn the sword, but to learn poetry, learn how to paint, learn how to do this stuff.
Because in the meta process of learning, there's something in there that fits onto all forms of learning, right?
joe rogan
You don't want to be too hard, but you don't want to be too soft.
You want to be a balance.
In a balance, you have to be artistic and destructive.
You have to be loving and hating.
He played games with his opponents.
He didn't just fight nobly.
He was an asshole.
He would show up hours late for duels and make the guy wait.
So he knew the guy would be freaking out.
He would show up sometimes with wooden swords instead of metal swords to fuck with their heads.
One time he whittled a sword out of an oar of the boat that he...
Rode over to the beach where he's supposed to have the sword fight, showed up hours late, fucked the dude up with an oar.
Yeah, he would play games with people.
He knew that there was psychological warfare in him showing up late.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
You know?
duncan trussell
Right.
Yeah, and do you remember the first sentence of the book?
joe rogan
I do not.
I remember the quote that you just were talking about because I say it all the time.
It's like the reason why I have this tattoo on my arm.
This is Musashi, you know?
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's once you understand the way broadly, or once you know the way broadly, you'll see it in all things.
duncan trussell
That.
joe rogan
Yeah.
duncan trussell
Which is also as above so below.
It's another way of saying that.
So it's the concept that if I practice something, for example, like right now, like I'm learning how to do modular synthesis.
Like I have modular synths.
They're badass.
It's like for making music, right?
I'm 44. I'm not like thinking to myself like, man, one day I'm going to be fucking...
Space Nectar!
I'm not thinking that, you know what I mean?
I don't even think I'll perform live with them ever.
But I got sucked into it, and now I'm taking it seriously.
So I'm learning how to do it for real.
And then that pulls you into, like, music theory, right?
So now you start looking at, well, what is this song?
And why does this song...
Why is a song set up like it is?
And what are notes?
And what's a tone?
Right?
What's an oscillator?
What are these things?
And then, like, from that you get pulled into, like, Pythagoras, you know?
And then suddenly you're, like, reading, like, shit by Pythagoras, who, like, had another great quote, which is, do not take the roads traveled by the public.
That's pretty awesome.
Which means, isn't that badass?
But anyway, the point is, like, Because I've been studying the modular synthesizer, now when I sit down and play guitar, I'm a little better at it.
But then where it gets fucking weird is, when I sit down and play like God of War, I'm a little better at that too.
And then when I'm thinking about cutting tomatoes, for example, something really basic, and the pressure I'm exerting to cut the tomato versus the sharpness of the knife, I think about music, and I think about, whoa, in a weird way, my knife is like a...
You won't know what this is, maybe.
Like, my knife is like a CV gate, which is like...
If you have a tone, like...
A gate might be an on-and-off, like, switch that makes the tone go...
Right, right, right.
So suddenly the shit you're learning from like, and by the way, synth nerds out there, I don't know what I just fucking said.
I've already fucked it up.
I'm sorry.
I'm learning.
Synth nerds.
But what I'm saying is it's like what he was teaching is so powerful, which is like you don't just get good at one thing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
duncan trussell
It bleeds into other shit in your life too.
joe rogan
Sure.
duncan trussell
That is an incredible thing for me to realize, man.
It's been pretty intense because...
Like what you were saying, if you're a 20-year-old, people expect you to be learning something, this or that.
But when you're in your 40s, you could trick yourself into thinking like, I don't need to learn how to do anything anymore.
And then you're basically turning down all the lights in your life, because when you start working on something, This is why I was going to ask you, man.
Maybe even video games.
joe rogan
Oh, for sure video games do.
We dismiss them because they were thought of as frivolous exercises and we embrace chess and go and all that.
And even poker.
Because we know that it's an intellectual pursuit.
Real poker players are all super fucking smart guys.
The guys that were really good at it.
I think that we do that with video games because at one point in time they were just Pong and then they were Mario Brothers and they were silliness and fun.
You get the mushroom and have a good time.
And Pac-Man and all that shit.
But now, when you see God of War, you're like, okay.
Well, clearly your brain is firing on all cylinders when you're doing that.
duncan trussell
That's right.
joe rogan
You're swinging that axe and switching to the spear and doing this and jumping there and chopping this dude in half and getting away from the guy with the fucking flying log he's throwing at you.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's your brain.
Your brain's firing left and right.
The idea that this is totally useless seems stupid.
duncan trussell
Yeah, so I think that potentially through anything...
The problem with video games is you can play them and actually not get better at them because you just are slashing and pressing buttons and shit.
You can focus, but I think when your attention and focus gets put on improving anything, Like, theoretically, I imagine if you just started working on drawing a circle, or drawing like a perfect circle, and just spent day after day working on that pursuit, sounds insane.
Like, you'd look crazy to your friends.
But potentially, Other shit in your life, you'd start improving at too.
Your mind gets a little sharper, maybe.
Maybe it's just some kind of neurogenesis or something.
I don't know.
joe rogan
It's exercise.
It's exercise for your mind.
For sure, your brain is very, very active when you're playing a video game.
You know, I know when I would play Quake, my hands would get so sweaty that I would put antiperspirant on my hands.
I would spray antiperspirant all over my hands and then I would blow on them to keep them from getting so sweaty because my fingers would barely, they would slip around all over the keyboard.
I'd leave puddles in the keys.
My mouse would get soaking wet.
I would be dripping all over the mouse pad and the ball would get stuck.
Then it eventually became a laser beam, laser tracking.
First it sucked, then it got way better.
First it was like you wanted that ball.
You wanted to feel the ball underneath the mouse.
Because you got that tactile sensation.
But then it got to a point where these laser ones were so much more accurate.
And they never fuck up.
They just became better.
duncan trussell
That shit has always been really odd to me when you look at a gaming mouse and it says how precise it is.
Oh, dude.
joe rogan
The DPIs.
duncan trussell
Yeah, the DPIs.
joe rogan
Yeah, the DPIs.
I remember Razormouse had one that was 2,000 DPI, the Mamba, and it was crazy.
You'd play with the thing and be like, Jesus Christ, it was so fast, but it was an odd shape, like it was a duck foot.
Do you remember that?
jamie vernon
Yeah, I was going to say, wait, see, the ones now, there's a button on it, you can switch mid-game depending on what you're doing or what you need.
You can set up your DPI from up to 8,000, 10,000, 16,000, down to 200, 100. I wonder why you would need it slower.
joe rogan
Why would you want it slower?
jamie vernon
There's some games, like, you don't need to be moving that much.
It might be a sniper, so you need very small adjustments, and you can make big moves with your hands and have still a small adjustment.
joe rogan
Yeah, some guys, when the adrenaline would kick in, they would like a slow mouse speed and a big mouse pad, and they would move the pad around like that, and they felt more precise that way than they were with a small pad and a high speed.
Because some guys used to, like, do little wrist flicks with, like, super high speed, and you would try their mouse.
You'd be like, hey, man, Can I try your setup?
Because everybody's setup is different.
And I would try their setup and be like, Jesus, how do you even concentrate?
This is crazy.
You're moving so fast.
They would have their speed just jacked.
And they would have mouse acceleration.
You know what mouse acceleration is?
Yeah.
So if you move faster, it actually goes faster.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Almost like you're throwing a whip.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
I know, dude.
You need that in StarCraft.
joe rogan
You do need that, too?
duncan trussell
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
It's very important, getting your mouse set at the right speed, and then you get used to that speed.
So if your mouse is fucked up, you're definitely going to make bad decisions.
But I never got...
Okay, it's StarCraft.
I think I got up to like, I don't know, maybe Silver League or something like that.
joe rogan
What does that mean?
duncan trussell
It's not a big deal.
joe rogan
Would you have a purple belt?
duncan trussell
What's the belt after white belt?
joe rogan
Blue.
duncan trussell
What's the one after that?
joe rogan
Purple.
duncan trussell
It's probably blue.
joe rogan
Blue belt?
duncan trussell
Because Bronze League is where I stayed forever.
joe rogan
That's the white belt stage?
duncan trussell
Yeah.
Mercilessly getting my fucking ass handed to me in Bronze League.
And then, like, finally I figured it out a little bit.
Enough where I popped into the Silver League.
And then you want to go back to the fucking Bronze League.
Because once you get to the Silver League, you can't do a fucking early game baneling rush.
You can't, like...
joe rogan
Can't do that?
duncan trussell
Fuck no.
You can't do any of that shit.
And when you try it, they're going to make fun of you.
They're going to kill you.
No, but they're also going to be like, what?
What are you doing, you fucking noob?
Fuck you.
Why are you doing that shit?
I wanted a real game.
You're going to do some early game bailing rush?
joe rogan
You know when people would get super mad when their fucking connection would time out and they would be stuck in the game and you'd fuck them up?
They'd be stuck frozen and you'd just light them up.
You know, like, sometimes you'd use your smallest gun and just slowly pick away their health.
Or you'd punch them.
Remember in the old Quake games you could punch dudes?
duncan trussell
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was some video that popped up of that new game, Fortnite Everybody's Playing, and it was on Reddit.
It was like the worst Fortnite player ever because it's someone who clearly got up to go get chips, and the dude's shooting at them and can't hit a still person.
Yeah, man.
Games are badass these days, man.
I really love them, but I do think to myself, probably just because I'm like...
An older person, I do think there's like a hierarchy of like, what's good to do.
And I think it's better.
For me, it's better.
I like learning music right now.
I like sitting down, picking some basic thing about music, figuring out one little thing about a module, one of my synths and what it does and understanding it and then like unfolding that into something bigger.
And that can lead to hours of it.
Whereas like if I sit down and play God of War, You know, that's also going to lead to ours.
But at the end of it, I'm going to know more about a story.
Whereas the other one, I'm going to know a little bit more about math and like how sound works in general, which is a fascinating thing altogether.
You know, so I don't know.
What do you think?
Is like they're a hierarchy of shit to do?
joe rogan
No, I don't think there is.
I think there's a hierarchy in elevated passion levels.
It's like, what are you passionate about?
Say if you were doing something and you were very apathetic about it, but then there was this other thing that you did that once you started...
For some people, the World Cup was on today.
I went to get a cup of coffee and they had the World Cup on.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
And all these guys are gathering around watching the World Cup.
To me, it's just some dudes running around.
I don't know what's going on.
I like it.
It's fine.
It's great.
It's good.
But for them, there was clearly, and for the world, for all the people watching in the stands, there's an elevated level of passion for that.
Now, if that was your thing, I would say, maybe you could be a commentator, or maybe you could be a player, or maybe you could be someone who produces one of those soccer shows or something like that.
There's plenty of gigs for that.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
But if that's your thing, and instead you get into...
Shoe sales, like Al Bundy, you know, after a while that shit chips away at you.
You're like, this is not what I like.
What I like is, I want to play soccer, I want to watch soccer, I want to talk about soccer, I want to commentate on soccer.
You gotta find the thing.
And you're like, oh, not everybody can commentate on soccer.
That is true.
But it's also a loser mentality.
Like, someone can.
Yeah, not everybody can.
But how many people try?
That's the other thing.
Like, people say, not everybody can be a successful comedian.
You're right.
How many people try, though?
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
Not that many people try.
More people could do it than try.
I think there's a bunch of people out there that could.
I've told you about this guy, my friend Dave Dolan, who was my boss.
He was a private investigator when I was a kid.
I got a gig driving him around.
He needed an assistant.
Really, he got a DUI. They took his license away and needed a driver.
He was the funniest guy I've ever met.
He was right up there with Joey Diaz.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
So funny, man.
And, you know, no aspirations for comedy at all.
And his cousin was Billy Downs, who was one of the owners of the Comedy Connection in Boston.
So his cousin was a former comedian who owned a comedy club and just randomly became friends with him from an ad on, like, you know, like one of those newspaper ads for a job seeking a private investigator's assistant.
I'm like, that sounds like a cool job.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But this guy easily could have been a comic.
Like, 100% could have been a comic.
He was a funny fucking dude.
And he was always the guy that if a bunch of people were saying around, he would say something totally ridiculous, look you in the eye and say it, and everybody would be laughing.
It was just natural.
He was just a naturally funny guy.
Just didn't do it.
duncan trussell
Did he like being a private investigator?
joe rogan
Loved it.
duncan trussell
There you go.
joe rogan
Loved busting people.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
Cheaters.
joe rogan
Mostly people who were cheating on their insurance.
That was mostly.
There was a few.
He had one guy who kept asking him to take pictures of his girlfriend getting fucked by this giant bodybuilder dude.
And after a while, he's like, hey, dude, enough with this kinky shit.
I'm not giving you any more fucking pictures.
He threw it at the dude.
He's like, get the fuck out of here with this.
He goes like, what else do you want, bro?
I got the pictures.
You're not gonna get more pictures, you fucking idiot.
duncan trussell
That's so funny.
That's so funny.
Why didn't the guy just hire a photographer, right?
joe rogan
Well, he was this really wealthy, but diminutive, very non-masculine man.
And he had this bombshell girl that he had figured out a way to get a part of.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
But she was just getting drilled on the side.
duncan trussell
Did she know he was getting pictures taken?
joe rogan
I don't think she did.
No.
duncan trussell
I don't think she did.
Because that's what it sounds like to me.
It sounds like a fetish game where he's like...
joe rogan
It seems like it, but I don't think it was.
I think it was just a weak guy who didn't know what to do.
Because they would be on the beach.
He'd get pictures of him on the beach making out and stuff.
Like, he got enough pictures.
duncan trussell
A lot of these guys, I mean, I don't, yeah.
I don't know, man.
That to me sounds a little bit like...
joe rogan
Well, that's what he thought a little bit.
He thought the guy was a little bit of a freak.
But at the end of the day, he was like, look, come on.
You know, with his fucking heavy Boston accent.
Bro, I got you your fucking pictures.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Make a move.
Right.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Not taking it anymore.
duncan trussell
Right.
It's hilarious.
Thank you.
joe rogan
See you later.
duncan trussell
That sucks.
That's a shit job.
I wouldn't want to do that.
joe rogan
He loved busting people.
That's not his thing.
He didn't really like it.
That was rare.
Most of the time he worked for insurance companies.
Most of the time it was like, say if you were married and you were a woman and you had a different maiden name, you would get injured on the job and then you would start using your maiden name and take a job on the side while you're getting workman's compensation.
So people would get double paid.
unidentified
Whoa!
joe rogan
Yeah, and they would have to leave their jobs.
People would leave their jobs super early in the morning.
So we would camp out in front of people's houses where we would get there at 4 o'clock in the morning When everybody's asleep, we'd sit in the car across the street, and we'd wait.
Sometimes earlier.
And we'd wait.
And we'd wait.
Five-thirty roll around, and then you'd see some light go on, and then you're like, he's up, he's up, he's up.
Here he goes, here he goes.
This motherfucker's going to work.
And this is a guy who's supposed to be laid up in bed, and we'd catch him working as a roofer.
duncan trussell
Holy shit.
joe rogan
Carrying shingles up a ladder.
And they're getting disability insurance.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
So that was a really common thing.
Most of it was disability insurance.
duncan trussell
Man, what a fucked up state of life to get into where you're doing insurance fraud.
That's a sad existence to get into that spot where you're like, I'm gonna give it to the man.
I've come up with a scheme, honey.
You know, someone from the comedy store.
I probably can't mention their name.
joe rogan
But sometimes it's not like that, man.
See, this is the thing.
It was nice people.
They just didn't know better.
And I don't say that like they're stupid.
I say that like they didn't think they were going to get caught.
They didn't think it was that big a deal.
They didn't think through it very well.
There was one lady who was so nice.
He had a scam.
This was a scam.
Say if your license plate number, he would write down your license plate number and then write down one that was really close to it and write down another one that was really close to that.
And then he would knock on your door.
They'd say, I hate to bother you, but my girlfriend was in a car accident, and the police report where they had the witness's driver's license number, some coffee got spilt on the report, and they don't know exactly what the license number is.
We've checked these two.
It's not them.
I have a friend who works in the DMV, and they hooked me up.
And then you tell her an injury.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Well, what happened to her?
Is she okay?
She's okay, but she did this.
Oh my God, I had that same injury.
You tell them the injury that they had that's giving them workman's compensation.
Yeah, I had the same.
That's terrible.
Do you guys want to come in and have a cup of coffee?
She invites us in the fucking house.
Strangers.
This is what people did in the 80s, dude.
They invited people in the house like pilgrims.
This lady invited two guys into her house and...
He spins her a yarn about his girlfriend being injured.
And she said, I have the exact same problem.
And he said, well, what happened?
She said, well, I was on the job as a flight attendant and I fell down and hurt myself.
And he goes, well, you're getting paid, aren't you?
And she goes, oh, not only am I getting paid, but I'm also working under my maiden name at another job.
unidentified
And he's like, oh, yeah, great, great idea.
joe rogan
Way to do it.
Lady's so nice.
And we got out of there and I was like, man, we can't turn her in.
He's like, fuck.
Fuck her.
She goes.
duncan trussell
Wow.
joe rogan
She goes.
She's a fucking crook.
He goes, that lady's a fucking crook.
I go, she's so nice.
She let us in her house.
She gave us coffee.
Fuck her.
duncan trussell
I love that shit, man.
How, like, being nice.
Has somehow become synonymous with not being dangerous or a crook.
That's a really funny thing.
It's true.
It's like, because being nice is like, that's like a really great costume to put on.
Like, if you want to camouflage yourself and you're a predator, you know, the way the tigers...
joe rogan
She wasn't a predator.
She was just a lady who didn't think it was a big deal to rip off a corporation.
People grow up thinking corporations are faceless, nameless entities, and you can extract money from them.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's the way people think of some liability lawsuits.
Like, you slip on some water in the hallway in a big building and you fall down like, oh, I'm hurt.
I'm real hurt.
You guys didn't protect me.
My balance was compromised.
duncan trussell
I know.
joe rogan
I fell on your ground.
Yeah.
Somebody put some water on your ground.
I'm not responsible for this.
I'm going to sue, sue, sue, sue, sue.
duncan trussell
Yeah, it's fucked.
It's bad.
That woman was making a terrible mistake.
And your friend, Dolan...
joe rogan
Dynamite dickless Dave Dolan used to call himself.
duncan trussell
He helped her.
He helped her.
He helped her out.
Because that kind of shit, that kind of life...
joe rogan
Stealing.
duncan trussell
You want to create...
joe rogan
Yeah.
duncan trussell
Like you want to create a version of that woman where like inside she didn't feel at least a little bad, a little bitter, a little weak, a little off balance.
unidentified
Of course.
duncan trussell
But reality, the reality is she didn't feel good about that probably.
And that's not a great way to live, man.
And so by getting corrected by the universe in those ways, You know, I think it's a good thing.
I'm glad that, you know, some things aren't illegal, for example, but they are.
You know, like, obviously, like, we agree on some of these things, right?
Those things it's fucked up to bust people for.
But if you're stealing, you know, in that way, I don't know, man.
joe rogan
No, you're right.
No, you're right.
But I would have never turned her in.
I would have said, I can't.
I would have never been a good private investigator.
I feel like a lot of those people, and I was 20 at the time, 21 at the time, at the most, 21 I think.
At that time, I was really well aware of like...
The neighborhood where my grandparents grew up in, and being around them, and being around my parents who grew up in the 60s, and then my grandparents who grew up...
I mean, they were here in the Depression.
And there was a different attitude about opportunity.
Everybody was poor, right?
So everybody would take advantage of every opportunity.
And if you got an opportunity to run a scam, you did it.
And that's a terrible thing that happens in poor communities, is that people do think of insurance scams, this kind of scam.
You've got to think about it like it's a score.
Think about it like it's a score.
I've heard guys say that to me.
duncan trussell
I know.
joe rogan
Older Italian guys, look, you got to think about this.
This is a score, okay?
You can't fuck this up.
You got an opportunity here.
All you have to do is you go to the fucking chiropractor.
My back hurts.
They can't tell you why your back hurts.
Nobody knows why your fucking back hurts, which is true.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, you would go to a chiropractor every day and say, my back is fucking killing me.
I got shooting pain down my leg.
They can't prove it or disprove it.
Next thing you know, you get a $35,000 check in the mail.
duncan trussell
Right.
Yeah.
You know, man, here's the thing.
Number one, I feel like I have to say this.
I would not have turned that woman in if I was not a private investigator.
Of course you wouldn't.
And Dolan ethically had to turn her in because if he didn't, he would be guilty of stealing from the person who was giving him money to do the job.
joe rogan
There was never a question.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
I mean, that's what he did for a living.
He was turning her in.
duncan trussell
Yeah, but the main problem with stealing Like, you know, sometimes I've been hanging out with people, you leave a grocery store, and somehow they didn't charge for, like, I don't know, a bottle of water or whatever.
Like, they didn't see it in the car, right?
And the people, some people are like, yeah!
I did it!
Free water!
They fucked up, right?
And, like, man, I think those people are unaware of this, like, weird law in the universe, which is that you seem to, like, have to – you get shit back times three, it feels like, maybe a little bit more than that.
joe rogan
When you give.
duncan trussell
Or take.
joe rogan
Or take.
duncan trussell
So, like, if you steal a $2 bottle of water – now, this is my superstition – You're gonna end up paying like at least six bucks for that bottle of water in some other way.
joe rogan
Some karmic way.
duncan trussell
Some shit's gonna happen.
You're gonna get a parking ticket.
You're gonna get some weird fucking thing.
So I think a thief is unaware of a metaphysical economy, which is like you think you're gonna get away with that, but you're not.
Like if you could really get away with it, It would give me pause.
But like, I've noticed, man, all my friends who are really successful, they leave giant fucking tips, crazy tips, crazy tips.
You know a few of these people, Joe.
Tips where it makes the waitress cry.
And also, I've noticed they will dodge out of a place before they can be acknowledged for leaving some insanely massive tip.
joe rogan
Dude, I'm right here.
You don't have to talk about me like I'm not here.
duncan trussell
I just don't want to fucking embarrass you, man, because it's like, you know, a lot of, you know, I don't want to, but the main thing is like...
joe rogan
But that's a love bomb.
That's what I always call that.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
You leave a love bomb for the waiter.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah.
duncan trussell
But I think also there's another side to it that is more than just like the feeling you get of knowing you've been generous and you're not that attached to money.
joe rogan
No, it's not even that.
It's like you get an opportunity to give a nudge in a positive.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
They feel good.
So if they feel good, if someone gives you a $100 tip for a fucking cup of coffee or something, they get this feeling like, holy shit!
All of a sudden, a beautiful feeling out of a normal situation, just a normal interaction.
I give you this, and you give me that, and I say thank you, and I go.
Well, in that normal interaction, all of a sudden, boom, you get this beautiful gift from a stranger that didn't have to do that for no reason at all.
Just a little love bomb.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's even better when you're not there, when you're in the car driving and they realize you left it for them.
duncan trussell
Right.
See, that thing right there, man, that, if you go back to what we were talking about, about momentum.
joe rogan
Yeah, it puts little ripples out there.
duncan trussell
Yeah, and those ripples spread.
joe rogan
Yeah, and it's not just with that, obviously.
unidentified
Oh, the only way to do it is with money.
joe rogan
No, it's being nice to people.
Sometimes I've had days where I'm just walking somewhere and someone looks at me and they go, hey, how are you?
Everything good?
Yeah, man, everything's good.
How you doing?
I'm doing good.
I'm doing good.
Enjoy the day.
Just a nice little friendly interaction with some person you never met before and for no reason just wants to be a nice guy.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Those make you feel good, man.
duncan trussell
Yeah, dude.
joe rogan
Those are nice moments.
And conversely, weird moments that I've had where people that are distracted and they're looking at their phone, they're not paying attention.
Like, look at this fucking dummy that almost ran into me.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, and I don't have to think that way.
That's a dumb way to think.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
But I do think it.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
Especially if it's like a kid.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
You know, some fucking kid just trying to, pussy, where's the pussy?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And they almost run into you like, hey, dude.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Your phone.
duncan trussell
Right.
They're radiating this momentum into the world.
joe rogan
They're not interacting with people that are there.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Versus a person who's like genuinely nice.
It's like, just see someone walking down the street and they say, good morning.
You're like, good morning.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
And everybody feels good.
That's like just a nice little thing like that.
duncan trussell
That's right.
joe rogan
Those, man, those spread, that person might do it to the next person they meet, and then boom, everybody's saying hi to everybody, everybody's hugging everybody.
duncan trussell
This is it.
Yeah.
We talk about this probably every time, because we both agree that this is like, probably, if there was going to be a non-violent revolution...
In this country that wasn't based on voting, it's going to start with that.
And what is that, you know?
And the thing I'm being taught is like that thing you're talking about, it can be cultivated and like refined.
So you can sort of – that's why it's called a practice.
Like when you're sitting and you're watching your breath and you're learning how to be in the moment – Instead of thinking, I'm doing this for this reason or that.
I'm doing this because when I'm talking to somebody, they're going to think I'm spiritual.
I'm doing this because I want to be more focused.
I'm doing this because I have an anxiety disorder.
I'm doing this because of this or that.
That's great.
But there's another reason to do it, which is that if you get really good at being in the moment with people, and also when you're sitting with yourself, And learning who you are, you have to start applying a lot of compassion to yourself because you're gonna sit, man, and some shit's gonna float to the surface of the stream that you wish had stayed under some rocks, man.
You're gonna see not just shit that's been done to you, But you're going to see shit that you've done to other people.
And you're going to have to deal with that, right?
And the way to deal with that is not to do like, I don't know if you do this at all, but sometimes I will remember something from when I was very young and be like, you fucking dick.
I'll say it out loud to nobody.
Yelling to someone like 15 years ago, right?
joe rogan
And you're yelling at you?
duncan trussell
My past self, like you motherfucker, you know?
joe rogan
What have you gotten me into with my memories?
duncan trussell
Jesus Christ, man, why were you doing that?
Why'd you do that?
And like, so that's like the opposite of compassion for the self, right?
So anyway, the point is, if you can like sort of cultivate compassion for who you are right now, that's not to say Use that as an excuse to not try to become a kinder person, but I'm saying cultivate compassion for the fact that like,
man, your dad had PTSD and your fucking folks got divorced when you were three and your dad remarried An abusive woman who hated your fucking guts for seven fucking years and she did some really bad things to you over the course of that time that you were way too young to...
joe rogan
Process.
duncan trussell
Process.
You had no way to deal with that and now...
When you're in your 20s or your 30s, you're realizing that you seem to be kind of a selfish cunt.
And it's like, well, yeah, the reason you're being a selfish, quote, cunt is because you had to build up a very high-powered...
Defense mechanism to deal with the fact that you were abused for almost a decade when your brain was forming more neurons than it ever will at any other point in its life.
And now we can start having compassion for ourselves.
Instead of thinking I'm a selfish cunt, we could think Oh, I've got too big a force field up.
I've developed a thing to protect me from an environment that I'm no longer in.
And then the point is, once you start becoming compassionate to yourself, that's when you run into the person who's being a selfish cunt.
Who you can look at and say, oh, I see you.
I know who you are.
I don't know what it was.
I don't know if it was an abusive parent.
I don't know if it was a heartbreak.
I don't know if it was something you read.
I don't know if it was something...
I don't know.
Maybe genetic.
I don't know.
But I know from looking into myself enough to know that you deserve more compassion than you're getting.
That's it.
joe rogan
So we have this agreement that everybody can learn up to a certain point, right?
We agree that pretty much everyone who's normal and not impaired mentally can learn how to read, right?
We agree this.
We agree to this.
duncan trussell
I think so, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, we agree to simple mathematics.
Everyone can learn how to...
Add and subtract and multiply.
And after that, it gets a little squirrely with division.
But we're agreeing that with minimal paying attention in school, we can all achieve a certain level.
But there's very little, very little attention ever paid.
To considering how you behave and how you think and how you observe yourself and how you correct mistakes and how you learn from the past.
It's never taught.
It's one of the most important things I've ever learned in my life.
Is to not cling on to the past but don't forget it either.
duncan trussell
That's great.
joe rogan
Remember that you fucked up.
Don't do it again.
But don't live in this world of 20 years ago or 30 years ago or whatever that one instance where you wish you didn't say this one thing to some person or hit some person or drive your car where you shouldn't.
Whatever the fuck it is.
Whatever thing that it was that you still sit back and go, God!
I rear-ended somebody once with my car when I was on my way to selling it.
And I wasn't paying attention to the red light and my car, I think it was a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass.
And the front end, I crunched this guy's bumper with the fiberglass part of my car.
I didn't do shit to his car.
He had a truck.
But I fucked up my car on the way to selling it.
And I brought it to this person and the grill was like half hanging off.
And I remember in my car just going, FUCK! Fuck!
I just fucking...
I was so broke and such a loser and barely keeping it together.
And on my way to selling this car, I fucked it up.
And I was just like, you fucking loser!
And I remember being in my car screaming at myself, you fucking loser!
And I remember the guy bought it anyway.
He just took a bunch of money off of it.
I forget what we agreed on.
But...
But this feeling would haunt me for months for months I'd be doing other things and I would think of rear-ended that car not paying attention fucking up the front because it wasn't even like an accident It was like I left my foot off the gas and I just slammed into somebody because I wasn't paying attention Yeah, man.
I let my foot off the brake, rather.
It was something that I literally was defining myself by for months.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
I was thinking that I was a loser because I did this.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's it.
Right there.
joe rogan
It wasn't like, hey, asshole, don't let your foot off the brake.
Pay attention to what you're doing.
You're driving a fucking car.
I know you're only 18, but pay attention to what the fuck you're doing.
It wasn't that.
It was, you fucking loser!
You fucking loser!
I'd be screaming at myself.
duncan trussell
Dude, I was talking to this dude at one of these Ram Dass retreats who's in his 20s and I'm really, by the way, this wasn't at a...
I'm really veiling a person very, very deeply here.
But the point is, this person was telling me some shitty thing that had happened to them when they were a kid, right?
And, uh, real young.
And, uh...
It happened at a doctor's office.
It was like a shitty doctor or something.
I don't know, but the doctor slapped the kid, right?
Jesus.
Yeah.
joe rogan
For what reason?
duncan trussell
Well, there's no reason, is there, Joe?
Like, there's really no reason to slap a kid who's come to a doctor's office, right?
Oh, for sure.
But what was the reason the doctor had?
Well, that's the thing my friend said.
My friend said, well, I was squirming around.
Oh, Jesus.
unidentified
Right?
duncan trussell
He hadn't considered.
He hadn't even considered that...
He was five.
So like I said to him, I'm like, hey man, when was the last time you picked up a five-year-old?
Do you know how small five-year-olds are?
Do you understand that you didn't do anything wrong?
That that was a shitty doctor?
That was a crazy fucking doctor?
And your whole life to rationalize the fact that sometimes...
Big people are crazy and slap little people.
You try to apply some logic to the act itself, right?
Now, that's a heavy burden to carry because if you think you're a bad five-year-old, you're probably going to think you're a bad 30...
God knows you're going to think you're a bad 35-year-old with all the crazy shit you can do when you're 35. So it's like that mentality of...
Looking back on our former self and hating it is the very same reason that we hate others.
It's identical.
If I'm going to hate myself, definitely I'm giving myself permission to hate everybody else around me.
So the work is, let's figure out how to Be compassionate to our former selves.
And not just when we were fucking kids in a doctor's office.
And not just 10 years ago.
And not just 20 years ago.
Like, start now.
Like, right now.
Because you're sitting on top of a card house made of memory, right?
And it's like, you're the entire thing.
So you gotta love it all.
And then if you start doing that shit, I have noticed Your degree of country drops by a lot.
It's not gonna go away.
joe rogan
It will definitely at least for me I Mean one of the things that people I've had many guys asked me before like why do you?
Why do you so insist on exercise?
I said It's a big one.
Do you really think it helps you?
I'm like, I know it helps me.
It's like jerking off, but for the body.
Instead of this thing that you get when you jerk off, this relief from the need for sex, there's unnoticed tension.
That's constantly in your body that flavors the way you think about things.
It really just does.
duncan trussell
Yes.
joe rogan
Last night my daughter was upset at something.
She got into a little tift with one of her friends.
Super upset and really, she thought her friend was being mean and just didn't, you know, trying to deal with it.
We went to the garage and I said, let's just go, we'll work out, you'll feel better.
And I put the pads on and we started moving around, started throwing some kicks and punches, started breaking a sweat, really getting into it.
Pop, pop, whap!
And getting, woo, this is fun!
And then laughing and joking around.
And then we talked about it.
Because now you can talk about it rationally.
Because now it's not fucking with you, too.
You have this energy that's just pent up.
You've got to let that energy out, and then you're left with the thoughts.
But too many people get stuck with the energy and the thought.
And the energy is overwhelming the thought.
And it's like, oh, this fucking emotion!
unidentified
Oh, this craziness!
joe rogan
And run around the block or fucking hitting the heavy bag or hitting the pads or skip some rope or whatever you're into.
Take a yoga class, whatever you're into.
Drain the stress out of the body and then look at the object or the idea for what it is.
And this is a fucking important method of managing the way you think about things that people overlook.
They overlook the impact of physical tension on the body in your decision-making process.
duncan trussell
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Do you believe that trauma is stored in the body?
You think that's bullshit?
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
I mean, I know that trauma is something that clings inside your subconsciousness.
Your subconsciousness is a part of your consciousness.
Your consciousness supposedly resides in your body.
So why wouldn't it be in your body somehow, way, shape, or form?
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
You know, there's also the idea that there's parts of your body that retain memory, not just your brain, but there's neurons in your body and perhaps they retain memory.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
Like there's the concept that there's some type of neuron in the heart.
Right?
duncan trussell
Yes.
joe rogan
And this is what a lot of people believe was responsible for this idea of, like, follow your heart.
Follow your heart.
Maybe if those are your memories and your database of collective emotional ideas, if there's really something to that, like, maybe it's not just in the brain area, but also in the heart area and in all the neurons, maybe we just think because our consciousness resides in the brain that all of our memories reside there as well and that they're not in various areas of our body.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
People that get transplants, man, one of the weird things that they say is they find that they have cravings for things.
That the person who donated the organ...
duncan trussell
Right, right.
joe rogan
I don't know if that's real or not, because obviously I've never gone through a transplant, but...
duncan trussell
I've heard that shit a lot, man.
joe rogan
I've heard that too.
duncan trussell
And someone was explaining it to me like, well, like, oh God, here comes fucking bro scientist Trussell.
unidentified
Yeah.
duncan trussell
Get ready, gang.
Here we go.
joe rogan
I'm ready.
duncan trussell
Dr. Trussell, I've got a fucking master's degree in bro science.
Do you?
Oh, yeah, dude.
joe rogan
Hey, are you working tonight?
duncan trussell
You doing anything tonight?
unidentified
What's that?
duncan trussell
Yeah, dude, I am.
unidentified
You got a gig?
duncan trussell
Yeah, why?
What's going on?
joe rogan
Ice house.
duncan trussell
I can't do it.
joe rogan
That's okay.
duncan trussell
Dude, thank you so much, though.
joe rogan
Anytime.
duncan trussell
I was just thinking, right before I do my bro science thing, man, your daughter's fucking lucky.
Goddamn.
Your dad's like, let's go to the gym in the house and fucking kickbox.
You're upset.
That's super cool, man.
I was just thinking that.
The other thing...
joe rogan
Well, it's only cool if they like it.
The thing is, she likes to do it.
This is one thing that I think is extremely important.
Because I see people that get their son to play football because they played football and the kid doesn't want to play fucking football.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Man, you gotta let your kids be who they are.
They get super resentful.
I've seen people raise their kids and try to force their kids into holes.
You gotta support them and love them and let them find their path.
You have to.
You have to let them find their path.
You can't decide they're gonna be a doctor or decide they're gonna be a lawyer or decide they're gonna be whatever the fuck you want them to be.
They gotta be what they are.
We're all so different and you are literally robbing a kid Of their future if you over influence their choice making in terms of like not following their passion or their dream or their ideas.
Yeah.
And it can be done.
To say that it can't be done is, oh, so many people can't do it.
So many people don't get their doctorate.
So many people don't ever become scientists or astronauts or fucking mathematicians.
A lot of things are hard to do, man.
A lot of things.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
But you can't decide.
The way that kid's brain works.
You're not in there.
You're not in there.
And it's different than yours.
And hers is different than his.
And this brother is different than this sister.
And the mom's different than all of them.
And you gotta let people be.
You gotta let them be.
You have to.
And people don't.
And those fucking people hate their parents.
Those people develop this fucking resentment.
Because there's no freedom.
Their fucking mom is always on them.
Mom, I don't want to do that.
Will you just stop?
I raised you.
I didn't raise you to talk to me like this.
You're my son.
I don't want you being a loser.
Do you understand it?
unidentified
You're like, I don't want to be a doctor.
joe rogan
I'm so disappointed in you.
I know friends where their parents don't talk to them anymore because they changed majors.
Yeah, they changed majors and dad stopped talking to them.
duncan trussell
What?
joe rogan
You don't want to take on the company business?
You don't want to take on the company?
unidentified
The idea was we were going to send you to go to school and you were going to take over the company business.
joe rogan
I want to be in a band.
You fucking loser.
duncan trussell
Some people have a really...
It's like we got to be so much kinder to people.
Just thinking shit like that helps you understand how people are.
You run into just about anybody, man, and it's so easy to have someone in your life.
And enjoy the idea that they're an asshole and they deserve it.
But if you spend just a speck of time thinking about it, it sucks.
In a weird way, it sucks.
joe rogan
Just wait until you have kids.
Then it gets really, really interesting because you start looking at people like they used to be babies.
That's what happened to me.
duncan trussell
I got a baby boy coming, man.
I know you do.
This is the first place I've said it.
Holy shit.
Duncan's gonna be your daddy.
She said it's okay.
When you're in the early months, I don't know why.
joe rogan
People are scared.
It's such a sacred thing.
It's a vulnerable thing to talk about.
It makes you feel vulnerable.
It makes you feel nervous.
Because of that energy, you're worried about talking about it.
duncan trussell
I fucking love it, dude.
It is the most transformative.
You know, like, you hear...
All the time.
To the point where I was suspicious of it.
Stan Hope has done this joke for a while, so I think I'm allowed to say it.
Or are you not?
What's the rule of that?
joe rogan
Yeah, he doesn't do any of his old stuff.
duncan trussell
He's got some of my favorite jokes of all time.
Many of them.
But he's got this killer fucking joke about how...
Pregnant people are like heroin addicts.
They're like, just try it.
You'll love it.
Just try it.
And then when you do it, you're stuck, you're trapped, which is how I used to think.
But man, it's so humbling to realize that all the shit you heard Was true in the sense that you hear people say, oh no, it's psychedelic.
It's psychedelic.
Now, I always associated that with like when the baby's born.
There must be some serotonin or dopamine that gets released, not just in the woman.
We know the woman's brain is flooded with oxytocin and a variety of things, the mother, the bonding chemicals.
But, you know, I thought, well, that clearly would happen for the father, maybe just not in the same level.
So when people say it's psychedelic, that must be what they mean.
But now I know, you know, the birth hasn't happened yet, but just being in the presence of a person who's growing a life inside of their belly And realizing that the bonding that's happening there and the sacred duty is coming up of you being a father and that a soul is coming into this dimension that is going to be completely dependent on you.
And my wife, of course, wanting to keep her safe.
And then...
Man, the combination of all these things is so incredibly psychedelic in the most beautiful way and so humbling because it's like, boy, oh boy, did I fucking tell myself that I'd figured out something really smart.
And that was like...
Reproduction is a trick of the DNA and this marriage thing and the baby thing is some kind of vestigial societal organ like the appendix.
We don't need to do that.
There's nothing to it.
Obviously I wasn't using that voice but like it was such a pretentious Fucking pompous, ridiculous place that I was standing at, which is to judge people for reproducing.
Enjoying the ability to judge because my parents reproduced, you know what I mean?
So it's so humbling to realize like, oh, I was wrong.
But I wasn't just kind of wrong.
I was deeply, fundamentally, completely wrong about this phase of life and this...
What's the word for it?
This...
Well, I like in Hinduism, they call it an ashram, like a monastery.
It's called the Grihastha Ashram.
It's like a temple.
It's considered to be like a temple, the family.
Holy fuck, man.
It's real.
The rubbers hit the road, man.
And it's like, it's really, really beautiful, though obviously a little scary.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's love.
It's real love.
And it's love where you know you're going to be able to love your children unconditionally in a very strange way that we really have a hard time with other people.
And I think the thing about it is not just that you're bringing a life into this world which is very psychedelic, but that your love bond with this kid is so ultimate.
It's so intense.
The love that you have for each other, too, raising the kid together.
There's a thing that happens with people when they are just really deeply connected at a DNA level.
This is a little person that has literally come out of nowhere from two bodies.
And it makes you realize how precious life is, how vulnerable we all are.
And it makes you realize that, I mean, it's such a cliche phrase, the actual power of love.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
And it's not just the love of this kid or the love of yourselves, the two together and the family together and all the other people that you love.
It's the love of all people.
It's the love.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
We just really have a hard time loving people.
We have a really hard time trusting that people are gonna love us back or they're not gonna get in our way.
They're not gonna be overly needy or annoying or they're not gonna be intrusive or they're not gonna tell you what to do.
Which is why people hate their fucking parents telling them what to do.
Oh, love comes with this bullshit.
Love comes with this nonsense.
Love comes with fucking rules and I have to be annoyed all the time.
I have to wear my suit on Sunday.
Fuck love.
Fuck it.
I don't want it.
And then that carries on.
You develop these shields that you put up for the whole world because of that.
That's one of the most common things that people do in terms of our definitions of love.
We define it by the people that were supposed to be the lovers in our lives.
But the just unconditional kindness and love So few people are balanced in the beginning of the relationship.
It's just lust.
And then after a while you get annoyed with each other and you can't wait to get free and find somebody else who's gonna make you happy.
They don't make you happy either.
And most of us in the early years of our lives, in particular, we bounce around.
You know, we try to find a new person that's gonna make us happy.
duncan trussell
That's right.
joe rogan
And we attract the kind of people that are the most destructive for us.
I mean, for some strange reason, we're always looking to be distracted.
duncan trussell
Yes.
joe rogan
And I think when you can learn how to abandon that, and it's not a learn like now I know.
It's a slow, gradual process where the instances of cuntiness occur less frequently.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
Less and less and less and less frequently to your more and more and more kind.
And then you get it as good as you can get it on any given day.
And that's part of being the hairless ape in this strange land of electronics and concrete buildings.
We're still trying to figure out the rules to this completely new way of living.
And part of this completely new way of living has shifted over the last 10 years, and that's where the internet comes in.
The last 10, 20 years, no more than 24 years, The whole world's changed, topsy-turvy, up to down.
I mean, the whole thing is just different now.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's a different reality.
Anybody from any point in the past, if you transported them to today, they'd be living in some fucking...
Blade Runner movie.
I mean, it really is a Ridley Scott film.
For sure, if you were living in the 1950s and someone brought you to 2018 and picked you up from the airport in a Tesla, you're on a plane.
Seems normal.
You're on a plane, just like planes.
What are these screens on the seats?
Holy shit, there's screens on the seats and someone picks you up in a Tesla.
It doesn't make any noise.
It's electric.
There's a giant laptop in the front of it that shows this huge map and you're driving around and people are taking phone calls in the air.
Hey, what's up, Mike?
You're like, what?
You're talking in the car?
What the fuck?
Driving around to all these different places and you see the mass of humans and the architecture change and people would freak the fuck out.
duncan trussell
Sure.
joe rogan
And this is the world that we've totally, completely become accustomed to.
duncan trussell
That's right.
joe rogan
No one's prepared for this.
We're all just playing it on ear.
And the worst aspects of it, some of the chaos and the social upheaval and the infighting between people, people getting kicked out of restaurants.
You see Maxine Waters telling people that if you find people that work for the Trump administration, you find them in a restaurant, you find them anywhere.
You go and you get together a group of people, you build a crowd, and you let them know that you don't agree with their policies.
Like, whoa!
We're calling for gangs.
We're calling for gangs of people randomly in the street to interrupt people's meals, interrupt people in stores, get a crowd together, don't let them be safe in public because you disagree with their policies.
unidentified
Woo!
joe rogan
This is getting crazy.
And I know one of the policies of the immigrants, the children of immigrants being separated from their parents, which I'm 100% with you.
It's immoral.
It's disgusting.
It saddens me that it's even considered an option.
It makes no sense.
I don't give a fuck if they broke the law.
You don't take parents and kids and separate them.
You just fucking don't.
It's disgusting.
There's other ways around it.
If you're saying, well, they shouldn't have broke the law.
Maybe they shouldn't have broke the law.
You don't get to do something that's a thousand times worse than crossing a line in the dirt.
That fucking imaginary line in the dirt, crossing that is nothing in comparison to your crime of stealing a baby from its mother.
That's fucking insane.
That's not America in 2018. That's just insane.
And we wouldn't be doing that to Canadians.
If Canadians came over here with their beautiful, cute, blonde-haired kids, we're not stealing them from their fucking parents.
And that's one of the reasons why it's sick.
The whole thing's sick.
It's chaos.
So, on one hand, I understand where a lot of people are outraged, and I understand where they're coming from.
You shouldn't separate parents from their children in any way, shape, or form.
But the way to fix that is not...
It's saying anybody who's on that team and working for that administration should be chased by a mob of street vigilantes.
And you should encourage this mob.
Make a crowd.
Get everybody together.
Make a crowd.
Make some noise.
Let them know they're not welcome.
Like, whoa!
duncan trussell
Well, isn't it like one of the problems with it is that now we have a little bit of a slippery slope.
Like, let's, you know, I don't want to play Mob justice ping-pong with you.
joe rogan
Right.
duncan trussell
Because if I start playing that with you, then that ping-pong could potentially turn into a civil war.
joe rogan
Do you know there was a recent USA Today poll that said 31% of America thinks that we're close to a civil war?
duncan trussell
Right.
Now, that being said...
And also, people who, like, fantasize about a civil war, I don't know if they've really thought it out all the way, like, what that looks like.
joe rogan
I can answer that for you.
They definitely haven't.
duncan trussell
Right.
joe rogan
They definitely haven't.
Because if they did, and they thought it through and thought it was a good idea, they're out of their fucking minds.
They're crazy or they're stupid.
duncan trussell
Yeah, but...
joe rogan
I was really passionate about that.
duncan trussell
Yeah, man.
Well, I mean, because he wants to fucking be in a goddamn civil war.
But, you know, for me, when I see shit like that going down, I... See, I've like come up with like, I didn't come up with, I got it from the fucking Dalai Lama, but I've come up with like a good little equation to go back to, which is, does this reduce suffering, right?
So like, and I don't think it reduces suffering.
And these people who are really upset, On both sides of the fence are suffering.
We're really looking at a world where a lot of people are deeply upset and deeply suffering and really scared and really, really, really freaking the fuck out.
And as I've been watching this thing emerge on the internet, on Twitter, where people tweet things that paint...
You look at it and you think, It's almost as though you're living in another world than I am.
The world that you're talking about Man, it's fucking terrifying.
It's scary and it's really fucked up.
And maybe the reason I think that is because I started doing LSD when I was 16. So when I was 16, I became brutally aware of the fact that the current government and the past government Was repressive.
And something about that drug, which I don't do anymore, because it's illegal.
I was a crazy kid.
But something about that drug really shows you the conditioning, right?
And so I knew From a pretty young age, I was like, oh wow, I don't think the United States is dropping bombs on other countries because of justice or some threat.
It appears to be that some people are making money off of this shit.
And I don't think these drugs are illegal because they're bad for you.
you.
I think they're illegal because somebody doesn't want the herd to experience these states of consciousness because it will make them more difficult to shear.
joe rogan
I had this conversation with Hamilton Morris yesterday, and he strongly disagrees because he's talked to the people actually in the DEA.
He's talked to the people in drug enforcement.
Oh, sure.
That what really is happening is they have zero experience with these drugs, but they know these drugs are illegal, and so they pursue it as if it's a viable target.
And we talked about it in terms of the real problem with law enforcement being that it's a game.
I've always said that the real problem with cops is not cops.
The real problem with cops is human nature.
This is a bad guy.
I get a point if I take him out.
You start looking for bad guys.
You start looking for bad guys that aren't even there.
You start forcing situations.
duncan trussell
Yeah, I know.
We get into this a lot.
And I don't mean the DEA. I've heard the exact same thing about the DEA. But I don't even think people above them have experience with it.
I'm not even talking about people above them.
I'm talking about tendencies.
So if an individual has a tendency, right?
Tendency.
So a person has a tendency, then a group of people might have a tendency.
For example, if I get a group of Swedish people together, and I bring them to the World Cup, they're going to have the tendency to cheer for Sweden, right?
I'm going to bet on that and gamble on that.
There's a tendency, right?
joe rogan
Right, right.
duncan trussell
My boss fucking sucks.
He's a fucking asshole, right?
unidentified
Right.
duncan trussell
Then you think back to the way all your other bosses acted and you realize like, wait, there seems to be a tendency when people are in that position of power to behave in a certain way, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's hard.
Hard job.
duncan trussell
But what I'm saying is, is the person who's in the position of power...
Is that thing coming from inside of them, or is it that there's something, like, built in to the DNA of a leadership position?
They say that, like, in the same way, like, when you've got a pregnant wife, some new thing kicks in, and I was reading about it.
Built in, it feels like, where it's like, I'm getting a fucking...
You know what I mean?
I want to make her safe.
I want to make sure that we're saving money.
You know what I mean?
I'm working harder than I've ever worked in my fucking life because I want to make sure that there's plenty for her and plenty for the kid and something kicks in.
There's a tendency there, right?
So what I'm saying is there seems to be a tendency that happens when there is a A convergence of people in power, right?
It starts behaving in a certain way.
It builds walls.
It starts taking people to jail who don't belong in jail.
It dehumanizes, essentially.
That's the fucking tendency, right?
And so when you're taking a psychedelic, And you look around and you realize, oh, I see.
The government, though, it's filled with people who are wonderful.
There are people in the fucking DEA who listen to your show and guaranteed love the show and are like, you're fucking right, man.
I don't want to enforce these goddamn laws arresting people for a thing that is like being shown not only to be harmless, but potentially therapeutic.
There's people in all branches of government, and there's some people who just need a job, and maybe there's some assholes in there.
joe rogan
Well, there's some people that want to bust crack dealers.
They want to bust assholes that are killing people.
They happen to also be drug dealers, and this is part of the job.
duncan trussell
Right.
So I'm not talking about the individual atomic structure of the power structure.
I'm talking about the sum total convergence, the gestalt of the thing emanates certain behavior patterns.
joe rogan
Right.
duncan trussell
And those fucking behavior patterns, those behavior patterns have been going on for a very long time.
And so...
joe rogan
Forever.
duncan trussell
Forever.
joe rogan
As far as we know, right?
There's always been kings.
duncan trussell
So, now, I'm not saying, like, therefore, your fear or your terror is unjustified.
I just think maybe because of the garishness of the current administration compared to, like, Obama, who is, like...
You know, we know what happened with Obama and the NSA. We know what happened with Obama and the drones.
We know what happened.
Well, we don't know what all the shit that probably happened with Obama, but we do know with Obama, and I remember hearing this and then looking it up and then looking it up again.
He apparently deported – in fact, maybe please find out if I'm wrong about this so I don't have to deal with 7 billion people calling me a fucking motherfucker for the rest of my life.
But apparently he deported more people than any – than all American presidents combined his administration did, right?
joe rogan
Deported more people.
duncan trussell
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so now Trump, he's at the beginning of the fucking deportation race.
Like by the time he's done, he might have beaten Obama's score by a fucking long shot.
I don't fucking know.
But the main thing is, what I'm saying here is like, I think I've been aware of the fact that That there is something wonky going on.
And it's wonky in the most rotten, brutal way.
It's wonky in the sense that it kills people.
It separates children from families, not just of immigrants, but of farmers.
Some people were growing marijuana and guaranteed their kids are in foster care now and they're in fucking jail, right?
This has been going on and on and on and on.
I think maybe now it's great.
About the fear that we're seeing and the hyper reaction is, if there is anything great about it, is that people are waking up to the fact that our government right now, the American government, is out of balance.
We've been at war for 90% of our history, right?
And there's a lot of shit going on in there that doesn't need to be going on.
And we're waking up to it.
It's just some people are like, they're waking up to it like they were asleep and someone threw water in their face.
And they're Like, holy fucking shit!
Holy fucking shit!
This is like, you know, this happened.
This sounds condescending.
I don't mean it to be.
But when I was like 18 or 17, looking at a fucking dollar bill, tripping balls, looking at that fucking green pyramid and the weird symbols, and then thinking like, wait a minute.
This is covered with occult symbology.
joe rogan
All over it.
duncan trussell
All over it.
And then thinking like, wait a minute, wait, there's something.
This isn't really worth anything.
Like, this is just paper.
And then setting it on fire, you know, just to do like the worst thing, like igniting it.
joe rogan
That's a joke, obviously, because it's illegal to set it on fire, right?
duncan trussell
Yeah, of course it's a joke.
I would never fucking do that, man.
No way.
I never ever in a million years would ignite currency.
joe rogan
Not with all glory.
duncan trussell
Not with all glory.
Not with the fucking money.
But I guess what I'm saying is like, if there is something positive about...
And the mobs of people doing this or that are the hyper outrage, almost as though we're looking at an immune response that's kind of going overboard, right?
joe rogan
Yes, exactly like that.
duncan trussell
But if there's something positive in it, it's that it seems that huge swaths of people are becoming familiar with the machinations of the American empire and understanding that here's how it's working right now.
joe rogan
Well, not only that, this illusion that it worked far differently when Obama was in office.
Have you seen that video where Obama was running for president and he started talking about how to deal with immigration and immigration policies?
duncan trussell
No.
joe rogan
It's a disturbing video.
Because it's a Republican viewpoint.
The way he's talking about it, it sounds like someone running for a conservative position now.
It's not like this democratic socialist idea of eliminating ICE. You know, there's a lot of people that their idea is that immigration, customs enforcement, those people are monsters, and we should eliminate the position, we shouldn't have it anymore, and we should have open borders.
And those same people would love to have Obama in office.
You know, they would think that it would be great if Obama was here.
Boy, it was so much better when Obama was here.
unidentified
We should get him back.
joe rogan
Play that video.
Find the video of Obama.
I think it was...
I want to say 2007 or 2008 or something like that.
Something like that.
But it's one of those ones where you're like, whoa, wait a minute, what?
2005?
You watch it and you go, what?
Wow, like this sounds like a Republican.
Like imagine, let's just imagine.
And imagine this is a young, blonde, white man.
Who's saying this in 2018. Right.
Listen to this.
Listen to his position.
duncan trussell
Or a dude with one of those, like, square mustaches.
unidentified
We all agree on the need to better secure the border and to punish employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants.
barack obama
You know, we are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States, but those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law.
duncan trussell
Wait, can you pause that?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
May I ask for a pause?
What's the date on that video?
joe rogan
2005?
duncan trussell
That's for sure the date on the actual upload?
joe rogan
Flashback 2005, Senator Obama on illegal immigration.
duncan trussell
Published on January 31st, 2000. What is that?
17. Okay, now here's the thing, man.
His lips look...
joe rogan
That might be bullshit.
duncan trussell
I've looked up that Obama has deported more people than any American president, but we have to be very careful these days, because if you look, his lips aren't tracking...
joe rogan
Oh, let me see.
Let me see.
duncan trussell
Yeah, go back and look at...
unidentified
They are showing disregard for those who are following the law.
Oh.
You simply cannot...
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
There's not tracking at all.
Well, why don't you...
Well, someone would know if that was a real C-SPAN thing.
duncan trussell
Well, I think we need to...
unidentified
...to better secure the border and to punish employers...
duncan trussell
I don't think that...
unidentified
...who choose to hire illegal immigrants.
duncan trussell
I'm not saying this because I'm shocked that...
joe rogan
Yeah, but it's just off, but it's the same words.
unidentified
We all agree on...
joe rogan
He's saying the same words.
duncan trussell
Well, can we Google?
joe rogan
Let's find a version of it where it doesn't do that.
duncan trussell
Sorry, you guys.
These days, man.
No, that's right.
And this is a problem we're going to deal with even more.
And also, I'm not saying, like, you would never do that.
I'm just saying, like, that looks a little fishy.
But you can just look up, did Obama deport more people than...
jamie vernon
That's what I was looking up before you asked me to find the video.
And I'm finding various problems in that statement or statistics.
So Snopes has it, but they've changed it to a mixture instead of being true or false because the definition of a deportation was changed at some point in the last couple of years.
duncan trussell
The point is he deported a lot of people.
He wasn't Justin Trudeau.
joe rogan
He wasn't just opening borders and letting everybody in.
duncan trussell
But, dude, let's please find out if that fucking clip was actually...
joe rogan
I think we would know.
We would know if that clip was bullshit.
There's no way they would just let it slide.
If Obama never said that, there's no way they would just let that stay up.
duncan trussell
I'd just like to see one where it was synced.
joe rogan
Well, you would kind of know, because that's a pretty famous clip, and it gets used all the time.
unidentified
We all agree on the need to better secure...
duncan trussell
Okay, sorry guys.
joe rogan
What's up with the fucking thing?
unidentified
It's the player.
You know, we are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States.
jamie vernon
Still off.
So yeah, you guys are also watching a version that's going through three different machines.
joe rogan
Are you watching it?
jamie vernon
Okay.
duncan trussell
When was it published?
When was that uploaded?
jamie vernon
This was uploaded in 2005. Okay, great.
duncan trussell
Perfect.
Sorry, you guys.
You gotta be careful these days, though, man, because they're fucking putting out shit that looks real that is not.
joe rogan
I listened to that Radiolab one where they were showing how good it is today.
It's fucking terrifying.
duncan trussell
It's fucking intense.
joe rogan
It's close.
It's real close to being indistinguishable, especially for you and I. Yeah.
You and I have hundreds of hours of us talking shit and saying things that are ridiculous.
duncan trussell
Oh, my God.
joe rogan
I mean, you and I together probably have over a hundred podcasts we've done.
duncan trussell
Wait till you see the stupid shit people make us say, man.
It's gonna be so fucking embarrassing.
joe rogan
Well, here's the thing.
It's embarrassing for you if you watch it.
Like, there's a million things to watch.
You know, watch people put words in your mouth?
duncan trussell
Yeah, you don't have to watch that.
joe rogan
Just keep moving.
Keep moving.
duncan trussell
But dude, let's get back to this.
I like this topic here that we're talking about, which is that there's an imbalance here.
joe rogan
There's definitely an imbalance.
I think that imbalance is being exposed by people's real opinion.
And this is one of the reasons why actual education and actual...
Raising of human beings is going to be critically important, whereas we ignored it as being non-important for a while.
Well, it's way more important now because the community has gotten closer than ever.
The community of humans.
And by not respecting this community and not Really concentrating on the way people behave and think rather than what they own or what their job title is or what degree they have.
Instead of concentrating on one of the things that's most important for us is the way we interact with each other.
We have created this issue where now that everyone has a word in, You've got all these broken people chiming in, throwing in insult bombs.
And look, any time a woman is in the news who does something remotely questionable, the cholera cunt brigade comes out in full force on Twitter.
And it's all these fake accounts and eggs, and some people in real accounts just want attention, and they just attack.
I mean, this is just a real thing.
It's not just women, but they do it to men, too.
But to women, it always takes on a particularly vile, creepy quality.
It's like, finally I get to say this thing.
And what has happened there?
Well, somebody got raised badly.
Somebody did a terrible job raising a man.
They got him to this position where there's this broken bundle of emotions and memories, and they're all fucked up with no self-esteem.
And they find some little target online, whatever it is, and fuck You Duncan Trussell, you fucking sellout faggot, and next thing you know, they're attacking you, and you might just be about to go to the movies with your wife.
And you read that, like, what the fuck is this guy's problem, man?
I didn't do anything.
You put your phone down, and you go into that theater, and you're all pissed off.
I should fucking tweet him back.
But you shouldn't.
You can't.
There's too many people.
unidentified
No way.
joe rogan
And the bad thing is, you're gonna miss a lot of the good people.
But the good thing is...
You're going to put a lot out.
You have to put a lot of good out there, but you can't dwell too much in the back.
We're going to get through this.
This is a tumultuous adolescent stage of human interaction.
duncan trussell
Yeah, that's right.
joe rogan
That's what's happening.
We're going to get through this and reach a much higher level of understanding of each other and a higher level of understanding of community.
This is why all these school shootings are happening and all this chaos and people driving trucks into crowds and shit.
It's because people are feeling out of this project of civilization and culture.
They feel horribly suicidal and depressed and confused and hateful and angry.
And they're filled up with chemicals and pharmaceuticals and loneliness and despair and anger and resentment and religious fervor and whatever the fuck.
What the fuck else is pushing them through this life?
And then they react.
They explode.
More explode all over the place.
We've got to take away the tools of explosion.
No, you've got to figure out why people are exploding.
How come no one is concentrating on why people are exploding?
The women want to go, oh, it's toxic masculinity.
And the men want to go, we're raising pussies.
And nobody wants to figure out what the fuck it is.
And they just hope that it doesn't happen again.
And then it happens again, and the argument starts up.
And Ted Nugent calls everybody a cuck, and the people that want the guns taken away, they all fucking storm in, and they demand, and they shriek in front of the senator's house at 2 o'clock in the morning.
duncan trussell
The fucking cunt brigade rolls in.
joe rogan
The cunt brigade rolls in.
They start tweeting up a cunty storm.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
This is where we're at, where we're not examining the behavior and the development of the human being.
It's a non-issue in our culture.
It's one of the most important things about being a person.
You've got to wait until you get to be 30 and you take a fucking Anthony Robbins seminar and try to get your shit together with some voodoo preacher down in Malibu that's doing some rock and roll church Christian thing.
And all the cool people go, I want to go and sing along.
Jesus, I love you.
Oh, it's amazing.
The guy plays piano and he fucks everybody he can.
It's chaos.
This is where we are.
This is where we are.
We're this tumultuous stage where all this information's flowing around and we gotta come up with management skills.
Management skills for behavior and communication.
duncan trussell
That's right.
joe rogan
And we have to recognize that we're all in this together.
duncan trussell
Dude, I love that description.
It's such a perfect description.
And I think that's the main thing for everyone who's freaked out to remind themselves of.
It's like, yeah, of course you're freaked out.
joe rogan
Of course.
duncan trussell
You should be freaked out.
This is the right way to feel.
In a snowstorm, you're going to feel like I can't quite see what's up.
So definitely...
I have to be more compassionate when I see people are super freaking out, because sometimes I judge them.
And we all have to be more compassionate to ourselves.
But then, so if this is the state of chaos, and you're talking about management skills, so to speak, this is a thing...
This guy Jack Kornfield, who I have in my podcast sometimes, taught me.
This guy's amazing.
He's a Buddhist teacher.
But he says...
Tend to the part of the garden that you can touch, right?
And I think that is such incredible, incredible instruction.
joe rogan
That's a great way to put it.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's a great way to put it.
unidentified
Yeah.
duncan trussell
So it's like in all that chaos that you just described, where like you see the thing and you realize like whatever it may be, the thing, the school shooting, the immigration, the bus, the whatever, and you really – you get this – Sad feeling.
There's nothing I can do about that.
And so you end up online.
You're scared.
Fear in Buddhism is cold anger.
When fear gets hot, it turns into anger.
So you're going to be angry because you're scared.
And then you start firing these shots online.
And the entire time you're doing that...
The entire time you're doing that, your mother, who lives at the other, you know, somewhere in the middle of the country, is living by herself in a house where she doesn't have enough money and the house is dilapidated and you haven't been paying attention to her.
She needs your fucking help, right?
It's not time for you necessarily, even though your aspiration to rebalance a democracy is beautiful and we all want that.
You're fucking neglecting one of your best friends, not your mom.
You know what I'm saying?
Someone you know is exhibiting some fucking behaviors that are off a little bit.
Or somebody in your neighborhood.
So it's like the whole time your mind through anger is focusing on the fucking press secretary.
Who, by the way, Joe, I don't think the press secretary...
I could be totally off on this.
But you want to talk about shooting the fucking messenger, man.
unidentified
That's such a perfect statement.
joe rogan
She's the messenger.
Literally.
duncan trussell
Yeah, you know what I mean?
That woman, that is a messenger.
Does she have the most pleasing personality?
Do you agree with her politics?
Probably not.
But come on, man.
I'll tell you this much.
joe rogan
Can you imagine if she did?
Yeah.
his name Acosta whatever his name is but that guy gets heckled everywhere he goes now they put signs up behind him to say CNN sucks there's some really fun things about the Trump administration some really fun things and one of the fun things is these people that are journalists that take themselves super serious are the for getting shit on for the first time I mean they're getting you know they're getting called out for some of their ridiculous behavior like yelling out questions during a press conference like your question is more important than all the people around you that
You've decided.
The world needs to know!
The world needs to know!
And they're going to hold these people, hold their feet to the fire.
Okay.
Maybe.
Maybe this is not the way to communicate with people, ever.
Maybe this Maxine Waters idea of getting people to protest, people in restaurants, and build a crowd and let them know that they're not welcome.
Okay, maybe that's the only way, right?
Let's just play devil's advocate.
If you're looking at all these people that are imposing these immoral policies, separating children from their parents, which seems to be the most egregious, that's the one that bothers us the most.
Everyone.
duncan trussell
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's the one that's most horrific.
duncan trussell
Way more than bombing them.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's crazy.
Well, that's far away.
That's not here.
andy stumpf
But how do you stop that?
joe rogan
If you just let it happen, these smiling demons just pass these laws and laugh in your face and there's no pushback?
That doesn't work.
So what's the pushback?
How do you get pushback?
Well, this is where it gets weird.
They might have a point.
Okay, if you're dealing with something that's that disgusting as long as there's no actual violence if you're dealing with something that's so heinous Right, you're separating poor people from their parents that are just coming over here trying to take a chance to get a Migrant labor work job.
Yeah, they're trying to pick strawberries or something Yeah, and then you have ice come in and steal them from their kids and steal their kids from them Yeah, no you don't you can't come over here.
Who are you protecting man?
Who's?
Who are they competing with to get these fucking strawberry picking jobs?
Nobody.
This is bullshit.
How do you stop that from happening?
Well, what about the law?
So in the middle, until this law gets changed, until we reconsider the humane aspects of this law, how many people's lives are going to get ruined?
How many thousands of kids are going to get traumatically separated from their parents and develop to become a more fucked up person who truly resents and hates the United States?
duncan trussell
And get molested by some ICE agents.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus.
Could that happen?
duncan trussell
It did.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
duncan trussell
It already happened.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
I'm not surprised.
I don't even want to know the story.
But how would you stop that?
I don't know how you would stop that, but one of the only ways that I could think of being really really effective in getting a message across is to make it super uncomfortable for people that push that message through sure what people that support that policy people that think it's not a big deal Jeff sessions gave a speech where they made a joke about Separating kids from their families and the audience laughed pull it pull that up It's it's on it was on the cover of like every
news source today.
Here we go fucking sessions But this poor little fuck It's the same thing with him.
Like, this guy, he just stopped evolving.
And he got into this, and he's not getting information.
He's not getting it.
He's not interacting with people.
He's not evolving his ideas.
He's stuck on this, people who smoke marijuana are bad people phase, which is like some 1930s shit.
duncan trussell
I know.
joe rogan
He's a moron, you know, in a lot of ways.
And this is the product of his environment.
It's the product of his interactions and the ecosystem that he exists in.
He exists in this bubble.
Jeff Sessions speaking out about separating families.
unidentified
From the other side on this issue, as on many others, has become radicalized.
We hear views on television today that are on the lunatic fringe, frankly, and what is perhaps more galling is the hypocrisy.
These same people live in gated communities, many of them, and are featured at events where you have to have an ID to even come in and hear them speak.
I like the little security around themselves.
And if you try to scale defense, believe me, they'll be even too happy to have you arrested and separated from your children.
It seemed like that joke was actually written for him.
duncan trussell
Says the fucking guy getting people arrested for marijuana.
What a loon.
joe rogan
You know, obviously you're a fucking dummy.
There's a bigger difference between someone breaking into your house and breaking into the country to try to get a job.
You're not saying that people should break into people's houses.
duncan trussell
The main thing is, Jeff Sessions represents something in the world.
And what that thing is, is a force that is actively trying to reduce love in the universe.
And it's fucking real.
And so if you want to come up with a nice war, Or a name for what's happening, this revolution that's happening, and it is.
We're pushing back against that.
joe rogan
Okay, can I be the devil's advocate?
I'll be the devil again.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
That's not what he's doing.
He's supporting the law.
We have a law, and this is how we keep a beautiful country like America.
The reason why we have nice, clean streets, the reason why we have cops, and social security, it's because we have rules.
And as soon as we just allow people to bypass those rules, people that don't agree with our way of life, they don't support our way of life, they just want to come over here and mooch off the system.
That's harder for you, it's harder for him, it's harder for everybody, Everybody else, all Johnny Taxpayer out there, has to pay for these migrants that you don't even know.
They're not even a part of your clan.
They're from another close-by clan.
duncan trussell
I know, Jeff.
But here's the bigger problem.
This is the big problem, man.
Everything you just said, Mr. Sessions, Too legit to quit?
As far as like the rules of the game, in some ways I guess it's true, but like if we look at it from a bigger perspective, which your type really doesn't like at all for some reason, but maybe it's just because you're old and your body probably hurts a little bit and also that fucking butt plug that I would bet $200,000 that you have shoved into your ass All the time, you think?
I think all the fucking time.
And I think it's like, I get a big BDSM vibe from that dude, but that's just me.
I don't think it's true.
I don't know.
Here's my point, man.
There's a bigger thing happening.
And that bigger thing is just, for a lot of people, it's unpalatable because it's so complex and we don't yet know how to do it.
But we live on a planet And you say this all the time, where we are all people.
We are planetarians.
We are earthlings, right?
We happen to have been born into a country, this country or that country.
Some of these countries have big fucking walls around them because there's prosperity inside that country.
And there's prosperity inside that country and there's not prosperity in other places.
And people are suffering.
They're suffering bad, dude.
Bad, bad, bad suffering where it's like, there's like, they can't They can't live in some of these places without getting killed for sure.
The chance of them getting killed is high for whatever reason and they're just doing what any living organism does.
They're trying to get to a better spot.
Also, Mr. Sessions, you probably don't believe in it, but once those fucking ice caps melt, holy fuck!
When the cities in the next 50 years or so become inundated with water and people have to start moving more and more and more from places that are becoming uninhabitable.
joe rogan
What do you think that's gonna happen?
duncan trussell
I don't know, man, but let's make a long date.
joe rogan
So what do we do, Duncan?
We just open up the borders for everybody?
duncan trussell
Mr. Sessions, I don't fucking know, but I can tell you this.
If we start approaching this from the perspective of love, which is the perspective of, like, we don't need to separate them from their kids, and there might be a way to do this that eases their suffering a little bit more.
I don't know what it is, but from looking at what you're doing right now, that ain't it!
And I think we can do it better.
I don't know what it is, but I think if we get a lot of people together and really think about it and figure it out, I'm not talking redistribution of wealth or some kind of crazy communist shit.
I'm just saying, I know for sure we can do better than those goddamn aluminum blankets you're putting on those fucking kids.
Can we get a guitar player in here?
Hey, maybe we can get some beds in here.
Is there a way to like, you know, there's just all kinds of shit we could do, I think, that's better than what we're doing.
joe rogan
Why would that help?
duncan trussell
No, I'm not saying play the guitar to solve the immigration problem.
If that worked, I'm sure the immigration problem would be solved.
I'm just saying that the current methodology seems to be a little more sadistic than it needs to be.
That's all.
I don't know the answer.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know we're converging as a species, and I would imagine that is...
Technology continues to connect us.
We're going to be transcending nationalities in a way that aren't going to be palatable to people like Jeff Sessions.
And I think that that's what's happening.
joe rogan
So what do we do now?
Like, honestly.
I'm not Jeff Sessions anymore.
I'm me.
Now I'm me.
Hey, talking to you again.
What would you do?
duncan trussell
Okay, I'll give you my...
Response to that which isn't gonna be right because I don't really and I don't understand the issue at a level deep enough right so can I just say like one I There's many there's it's a complex situation.
Yeah, there's not one answer to it, right?
joe rogan
You just let anybody in who's not a criminal?
duncan trussell
See, here's the thing.
joe rogan
It's hard to get in.
duncan trussell
How do we detect that?
joe rogan
But we'd have to have some sort of faith in their records.
So we would have to help their record keeping.
So really, what we want...
Really, the way to do it correctly is, first of all, anyone who's attached to us, whether it's Mexico or Canada, make sure they're okay.
Make sure that they are viable and stable and help them.
That's the real thing.
Treat them as if they're a colony of the United States.
They're, like, not that they're not sovereign, that they're still Mexico, but, like, treat them like they are connected to us and we don't want them to be fucked up and crazy.
Instead of building up a wall, make it so that nobody wants to come over here.
Like, that seems to be the prosperity way to go about it.
Like, to say, hey, you know, Mexico's fucking beautiful.
There's a reason why people vacation in Mexico.
It's fucking amazing.
You go to Punta Mita or fucking Puerto Vallarta or Cabo or Tulum.
It's fucking beautiful.
The idea that it's beautiful and also dangerous and scary and filled with crime, that's fucking stupid.
So then you would go, well, what's the problem here?
Well, the problem here is that drugs are illegal.
Drugs are illegal, and the United States wants to buy a bunch of drugs, so all these people are making billions of dollars selling drugs.
There's only one way to do that.
You've got to kill cops.
You've got to kill cops.
You've got to kill rats.
You've got to kill rivals.
You've got to kill whoever the fuck you've got to kill.
And you've got to send a message.
You've got to hang people from fucking bridges and shit.
You've got to do things to send a message that you're ruthless and you're here to get that money.
And there's a lot of that going on, and that is no different than Al Capone during the fucking prohibition of alcohol in the United States.
There you go.
to a thriving criminal economy with no management of it whatsoever other than bullets.
Right.
So occasionally they throw some bullets into these people and then they come back stronger than ever because there's more drug money and there's less of them and the one person gets stronger and El Chapo digs a fucking hole a mile through the ground and gets out of jail again.
unidentified
Awesome.
joe rogan
The whole thing is crazy, but this is what we're next to.
And so instead of saying, hey, we've got to make a fucking wall, what we should be saying is, what do we have to do to not just fix Mexico, not just help them and come up with some sort of strategy and a plan to build them up almost as equals, but we've got to fix our fucking poor neighborhoods.
We've got to fix these fucking neighborhoods that have been drenched in poverty since the 1920s.
How about fix them?
Fix them.
Put some energy into it.
Put some planning.
Hire people.
The same way Halliburton hires people to fucking rebuild shit we blow up in Iraq.
They should be hiring people to figure out how to rebuild these communities.
Figure out how to give people jobs.
Figure out how to develop community centers so that kids have somewhere to go there where they can learn and be productive so you're developing less losers.
Giving people hopes and dreams, giving them things that they can put their energy to that make them feel good about life, right?
Give them skills and games that they can play, and things they can do where they get good at it, where they develop self-esteem, which is one of the most terrible things about growing up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, gang-infested neighborhood, is you feel like you're nothing.
You're nothing.
Your life can be taken away at any moment.
You gotta be careful where you go.
Bullets are flying.
People are getting killed.
People are killing people over words, and insults, and fucking territory for drugs, and your aunt's on crack, and your uncle's in jail, and it just seems like there's no fucking hope.
And no one does anything about it.
A few people do things about it.
A lot of people dedicate their lives to it.
But it's not enough from a governmental level.
No one in the top of the organization is looking at this big thing and saying, they're all going, hey, we gotta drill more oil.
Hey, we've got to do it with the resources.
What about our greatest resource?
Human beings.
The greatest way to make America great again is to have less losers.
The way to have less losers is you've got to find the spots that are sick and heal them.
duncan trussell
Yes.
joe rogan
Yeah, find these communities that have the momentum of poverty and crime and violence, and it's existed for as long as we can think.
For decades.
Fix them.
Fix them.
And have a concerted effort to fix them.
And bring everybody together.
Bring everybody together.
And instead of this idea that we're all separate and we're all fucking two-party right-left nonsense, this civil war between Trump supporters and people who want to kick people out of restaurants, How about we all realize that if we're going to treat each other as Americans, we're going to agree that we're on this team, we've got to start acting like teammates.
duncan trussell
That's it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So you don't like what the coach is saying?
Let's find common ground.
Instead of always searching for the negative in things, instead of reinforcing ridiculous ideas because you know that that's what your team supports.
Like I see a lot of people online talking about this immigrant issue and they either don't have kids or they don't think it could happen to their kids.
Their ideas hey shouldn't have fucking come over here.
You get those kind of people broke the law Shouldn't have fucking come over here if you kid you didn't want to get your kids separated if you were in the presence of a Woman who came over here from Guatemala and she's poor and she's starving and they're taking her baby away and she's wailing and screaming from a primal a primal place in her her DNA that the one thing she loves more than anything is being taken away and A baby!
If that doesn't freak you the fuck out, you're not a part of the team, man.
You're missing it.
You're missing it.
What are we here for?
We're here for a hundred years of whatever.
That's what we're here for.
If you want to spend a hundred years saying, hey, she shouldn't have fucking broke the law, I don't want you on the team.
You're an asshole, right?
And I don't give a fuck if you're right or left.
I don't care if you're religious or I don't care if you're an atheist.
If that's what you support, you're an asshole and we don't want you on our team.
Okay?
But if you agree with certain economic policies that I don't agree with, and we could have a discussion about it, we could figure out why you agree, and we could figure out why people are allowing all this money to get into politics.
Why are we allowing all these special interest groups and lobbyists to interfere with our laws and influence our politicians and create all this shit that we don't want?
Well, here's the number one reason.
You can't just vote online.
You can't just vote.
It's not one person, one vote.
It's the Electoral College, and there's a lot of checks and balances that are in place.
It's all wonderful and groovy, but it's not giving the trust to the people.
The trust to the people that are informed, that they can make their own decisions, that more people should be able to make these decisions.
But they're happening now.
That 28-year-old girl who won...
duncan trussell
I know!
joe rogan
In New York, 28-year-old democratic socialist.
Whether I agree with her or not, and I don't know if I do or don't.
I bet I agree with her on a lot of things.
I think education should be free.
I think we should figure out a way.
If we could pay for bombs, we could pay for schools.
I think this idea that everybody should have health care, it's a great idea.
Who the fuck wants people to not be healthy?
Who wants people to be hurt and not be able to fix it?
Are you really saying that struggling people should have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get fixed when we can maybe chip in and help members of our team?
That's stupid.
Can you fill it up?
Figure it out yourself?
I had to.
You got lucky, bitch.
You got lucky you don't have leukemia.
You didn't break both your legs when you were 18. Your parents are dead.
You got lucky, piece of shit.
These are people on our team.
I'm not talking about people who are lazy, good for nothing, losers, mooching off the system.
You're going to have that, too.
Well, we got to figure out how to educate people so that that happens less and less.
That's what we got to figure out how to do.
duncan trussell
Dude, that's...
It.
You just described it.
I mean, that is it.
I don't know what to call that thing you just talked about, but that's happening everywhere.
That's not just happening in the United States.
That's a global shift that's happening.
Did you see the video of when she found out she won?
joe rogan
It's amazing.
Play it.
It's like one of the realest moments.
And look, people are angry.
28-year-olds, what the fuck does she know?
What she doesn't know, she'll learn.
duncan trussell
Let's find out.
joe rogan
Let's find out what she learns.
Maybe she knows a lot.
duncan trussell
That's ridiculous.
joe rogan
I like the fact she wasn't supposed to win.
I like the fact that the guy who was an incumbent was a 10-term incumbent and that he spent 10-to-1 versus on her.
How much money she spent?
duncan trussell
10-to-1.
Grassroots got her elected, man.
That can happen.
joe rogan
Dude, she's a kid.
And she's pretty.
She's a pretty young 28 year old.
I mean, watch this.
Watch this shit when she wins.
Play this.
duncan trussell
She's looking at herself on television right now.
unidentified
How are you feeling?
Can you put it into words?
Nope.
I cannot put this into words.
duncan trussell
She won.
joe rogan
There you go.
And look, you know, I don't know if democratic socialism is the answer, but I know it's a part of the conversation.
duncan trussell
Yep.
joe rogan
And this is the thing, that locking out any ideology in this team as part of the conversation, like what does democratic socialism entail?
Like what does it entail?
I don't buy all this the market will take care of itself bullshit.
I think there's a certain amount of us we have to chip into the community pile.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I think that's real.
The real problem is how efficient and good is the community pile?
Are there a bunch of lazy cunts in the community pile?
Is there waste and nonsense and bullshit?
And these people that have those jobs you were talking about earlier that are told, slow down, slow down.
I know you could do this in two hours, but you can get an eight-hour day out of this.
Just don't fuck this up.
How much of that's going on?
I don't want any of that going on.
But if the community pile is taken care of and managed in a...
An honest and a way that's trustworthy and great for all involved and beneficial to the community and supportive of community values and love and this idea that we're all on a team and that you're gonna be okay.
Did you break your leg, Duncan?
Hey, you're gonna be okay.
And we make fun of Canada's healthcare and it's not the best.
It's not the best.
I have friends, my friend Jen, she broke her fucking knee.
She had to get a ACL reconstruction and they kind of botched it and they had to go back in and fix it again.
She had to wait forever.
It's not the best.
But it's there.
It's something.
And maybe that can be improved.
Maybe improving that is better.
duncan trussell
Let me throw this in.
joe rogan
I also have options, but I also believe in options for people to do it better.
Like the surgeons that you can get in the United States.
There's a guy, Dr. Gettleman, the guy who fixed my knee.
He's a fucking wizard.
This guy's really good.
He does a lot of pro athletes.
I mean, he did a great fucking job reconstructing my knee.
He's an artist.
I don't think there's anything wrong with someone like that getting paid more.
I don't think someone else...
I think...
LeBron James should get paid more for playing basketball than me.
If I was playing basketball, I shouldn't get paid as much as him.
He's fucking way better, right?
And I think that there's that with doctors as well.
I think with everything as well.
But I think that it's a lot like...
There's a lot of people that are state-funded prosecutors or defense attorneys where people can't afford it.
What is that called?
duncan trussell
Public defender.
Public defender, yeah.
joe rogan
There's a lot of people that are really good.
Really good.
Young, hungry, very good at it.
They're going to put in their time in the public sector or doing it for the public defender, and then they eventually go on to maybe even not do that.
Maybe they just get satisfaction out of helping people that don't have any money.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't have high-priced lawyers as well.
And it doesn't mean that people shouldn't be able to pursue excellence and be rewarded for that excellence and be able to do whatever the fuck they want with it.
Whether they want to be charitable with that money or whether they want to be selfish with that money, if they're pursuing excellence and through their excellence they manage to amass an extreme amount of wealth.
Playing the guitar, whatever the fuck they do.
There's nothing wrong with that either.
We've got to stop thinking there's something wrong with that.
Chipping in and everybody putting into the company pile is, in a sense, some form of socialism, right?
Like, we agree on some kind of socialism.
When you consider the fire department, the police department, this is like social things, right?
We put money into it.
It's not a total redistribution of wealth, like deciding how much rich people should make, but it is deciding, you gotta chip in.
We all got a chip in.
Everybody's got a chip in.
We just don't feel like the chipping in is good.
We feel like it's all fucked up.
We feel like there's a bunch of dummies out there like this Jeff Sessions guy.
That guy gets paid for my chip!
This fucking dummy!
And all these fucking people that are robbing the system with their two hour a day jobs that they're stretching out to eight hours.
That builds resentment.
It's poor management.
And it's also people that are listless.
They're not valuable jobs.
They're not like a job that commands the same sort of attention as some of the more attractive jobs that people seek out.
duncan trussell
Yeah, man.
All of it's true.
I just think it's what people think is, let's wait for the government to do this.
joe rogan
Yeah.
duncan trussell
And that's where I think the problem is.
Instead of thinking like, okay, yeah, all that's true.
Let's figure out a way to get more taxpayer money out of the military industrial complex, out of the prisons, and let's put it in the neighborhoods that need it.
Let's get it for funding education.
All of that is really beautiful.
But it's still...
And you want to vote and make all that happen.
Grassroots movements, all of it.
But...
Also, think of the term socialism, right?
Just what is it?
Social.
It's like you don't have to wait for the state to come and start figuring out ways to tax people to make that pile of money happen.
This is where I think it's an interesting thing to start exploring the idea of intentional communities.
I'm not saying starting a commune or anything like that, but you can actually push your friendship group To the next level.
Like, it doesn't just have to be a random group of friends who knows each other.
Like, you can start that pile of opulence with a group of friends.
Where it's like, you know what I mean?
A group of friends can just agree with each other.
Like, hey man, just so you know, you're not going to be homeless.
I got you.
I'm not going to fucking give you money all the goddamn time.
And if you, like, you know, if you're, like...
You don't even have to say any of this shit.
Except, hey, we're...
joe rogan
You're always okay.
duncan trussell
You're okay.
joe rogan
You're okay.
duncan trussell
I gotcha.
Right?
joe rogan
Dude, that's what you and I did when you moved in with me.
duncan trussell
I know, Joe!
I know, man.
joe rogan
I forget about that sometimes.
We lived together for like six months.
duncan trussell
I don't forget about it.
And that kind of thing, which is what I'm saying is like everyone right now, And I understand why, man.
But to me, there seems to be something demonic about the public fixation on the state.
It's like the state is this, like, dragon.
And it's like, God, like, it's a, well...
joe rogan
I think it's a daddy.
duncan trussell
It's a daddy.
It's a multi-armed daddy with a bunch of fucking laser pointers that it's got the entire population watching, like, cats running around, right?
We're all like, oh god, they did that!
Oh my god, he did that!
Oh my god, they did that!
When will this change?
When will this change?
Your phone's ringing.
Guess who's fucking calling?
Your dad.
When was the last time you talked to your dad?
Three months ago.
Call your fucking dad back.
The whole time you're like, I got to drive!
The whole time you're neglecting your family.
You're neglecting your neighborhood.
You're walking down the street, looking at your phone like, holy fuck, he said that?
unidentified
I'm writing a fucking blog about that!
duncan trussell
Guess what you're walking by, dude?
You're walking by fucking plastic bottles, piles of fucking trash, three fucking meth addicts, and some fucking woman who just...
Got beaten by her husband and is now living on the streets for the last couple of weeks.
And you've got fucking $40,000 in the bank account.
Liquid!
I like saying that.
joe rogan
Ten to the garden you can touch.
duncan trussell
Yes!
Yes!
Ten to the garden you can touch and do it in an organized way.
And then like maybe...
joe rogan
Okay, but don't you have a garden that you can touch that's giant?
Like think about that.
Think about what you've done during this podcast and some of the things that you've said.
You basically touched an enormous garden.
duncan trussell
Sure, that's a really easy way to do it, because I'm a yappy motherfucker.
I'm talking about like...
joe rogan
No, in your life too, but that counts too.
duncan trussell
I think it does count, but I think that it would be easy to do things like that and still forget about something that's really basic, which is now that I'm talking about this shit, I'm thinking to myself...
Right now, like, in my neighborhood, I'm thinking like, wait a minute, like, what am I not doing?
I don't know what it is yet, but I guarantee there's something that I could do.
And I like that, man, because you know, like...
Tithing to the church.
joe rogan
Yes.
duncan trussell
So to me, I think we may have talked about this before, but I get it and all.
But that has always seemed like a really boring way to do it.
The plate comes by, you throw some money in, it goes to church stuff, you don't know.
But the idea of tithing.
I think there's something to it, which is like if you just kind of look at your income and you think, all right, 5% of this shit is going to get spent or 10% or whatever you're comfortable with, I'm putting that in a pile.
And that pile is going to helping people in my neighborhood or my friends or my family.
And I'm just going to give that away.
And I think there's something to be said for that because right now I think we were a little too fixated on the daddy state helping us.
And I think it's more important that we start helping each other and forming communities that are based on love and friendship and just figure it out.
Some of the communities are going to fail.
Some of them are going to get a couple of assholes in there who are con artists and trick everybody or lazy people.
But the main thing is, let's start thinking in terms of Organizing into communities that aren't based on a fixation on the government right now.
And then let's see what happens.
joe rogan
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude another episode of the Joe Rogan Experience.
I'd like to thank my guest, Duncan Trussell.
Thank you.
The great Duncan Trussell.
Praise Odin.
duncan trussell
Hare Krishna!
joe rogan
Young Jamie on the mic.
And the work of the keys in the background.
And all of you fucks.
duncan trussell
Love you!
joe rogan
Love for everybody.
We can do this, folks.
duncan trussell
We are doing it!
joe rogan
We're doing this.
We're gonna be okay.
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