Michael Yo recounts his brutal COVID-19 battle—double pneumonia, ICU, and 103.8° fevers—after New York shows and Vegas auditions, questioning why hospitals didn’t retest patients before discharge despite lingering symptoms. They critique conflicting public health messaging, like WHO’s early denial of asymptomatic spread, and debate systemic racism through Ahmaud Arbery’s 2020 killing and New Orleans’ prison labor exploitation, where inmates earn just $13/hour while striking workers demand fair pay. Yo’s near-death experience reshaped his view on life, while Rogan links health disparities to genetic engineering risks like Neuralink, warning of widening inequality before equitable access. [Automatically generated summary]
As soon as I landed, I did Wendy Williams on Monday, and then I flew back and went to Vegas for a day as soon as I got back, and then I had three auditions.
It was, I performed, I was there Wednesday, which would have been, I'm guessing, a date's May 4th.
I mean, yeah, March 4th.
March 4th.
I performed the 6th and 7th, stayed the 8th, did Wendy Williams on the 9th, flew back that Monday, went to Vegas Tuesday morning, came back that same day, then...
So you leave Wednesday, you go to New York, you do a couple of different TV things, then you do the weekend at Gotham, and then you fly home, and then you go to Vegas on Tuesday, and then you drive home on Wednesday.
Then Saturday, I was like, Okay, this is my rest day.
And then I woke up and something just didn't feel right.
So I was going, okay, it's probably the road.
You know, I'm stressed road.
So it's about during the day, I hang out, I isolate myself, but I'm between 100 and 101. Second day, I'm like 101, 102. But I'm still like, look, I'm gonna beat this thing.
They say stay at home, because at that time, they said if you have symptoms, stay at home, because they're taking the more serious cases.
So, the Sunday, Sunday came around, I kind of went down a little.
I was taking aspirin, a lot of aspirin, because one doctor at the time said take it every four hours.
And I was also taking aspirin and something else to bring your temperature down.
This is what I keep hearing, and I don't know if this has been substantiated, that you shouldn't take ibuprofen while you have this, for whatever reason.
So double pneumonia and you have corona, we believe.
But we got to test you.
So they swabbed me and stuff.
But they took all the precautions like I had corona.
I was the first corona patient at this hospital.
This is how early it was.
You know, so they took me to ICU, and the doctor came in, and I go, hey, this is escalating real quick, and I still can't breathe.
I go, am I going to make it?
And he goes, we'll know in two days.
It's going to go really good or really bad, and we'll know in two days.
And every nurse or doctor that came in, when they can't tell you if you're going to make it or not, They try to comfort you, but they can't really say you're going to make it.
And I was in the worst pain I've ever felt in my life, too.
It's either you're going to make it, you're like, and it was so bad where you want to think about your family, but I was in so much pain.
You know, I thought about them, but it was, I can't make it.
This is the end, and I can't see my family because they already told me that no one can come into the hospital.
And I'm texting my wife, lying to her, saying, hey babe, I'm going to make it through, I'm going to make it through, where I'm talking to my parents, going, this may not go well.
And my parents, the first thing I texted my parents is, I'm scared.
I've never texted them something like that.
And they knew how serious it was.
And I said, look, Claire, my wife Claire, is at home with the two kids.
I can't let her worry about this.
She was already stressed out enough.
She saw enough.
You know, so I'm in there and the doctor says that no one can come see you.
So I'm going, if these are the last two days of my life, I'm going to die alone in this hospital.
And it just broke me up so bad that, you know, I've taken care of myself.
I've done everything I can, you know, to take care of myself.
And why am I lying in this bed right now?
You know, and it was a thing where When I did think about my wife, it was, I will never see my wife and two kids again.
And he had an inkling that he might test positive because he had a family member that had it.
And he was super healthy, ready to fight, but had it in his system.
And so they removed him from the card, and he had been wearing a mask and gloves the entire time he was there.
And everyone else had wristbands on.
The wristbands showed that you'd been tested.
They had temperature monitors.
They had all these different things.
But everybody had been tested thoroughly.
Tested for antibodies.
I got the swab up the nose.
I got everything done.
And then when I got home, I immediately got swabbed again.
I got a swab yesterday.
And then I got the vitamin drip and everything like that.
But I didn't get much sleep.
Saturday night because I was flying back 8 o'clock in the morning.
Fights were done.
I was back in my hotel around 2.30.
So I crashed, woke up early, got to the airport, took off, landed, and then just kind of took it easy yesterday.
But until I got the vitamin drip, I was dragging.
I was feeling...
And that's what happens when you fly.
And you had flown a couple of times in a short period of time.
And then that drive to Vegas.
All that stuff...
You have to think of your immune system like troops.
You really do.
If there's a battle to be fought, look, if your body was like your mom's, where you had a good night's sleep every night, no traveling, you can fight off a lot more shit.
But when you do those trips, especially, this is one thing that I'm getting out of this quarantine, is man, I feel so much better when I don't travel.
I think Justin had a game plan and he executed it brilliantly and I think Ferguson, he's always going to be Tony Ferguson.
He's one of the toughest men that's ever walked the face of the earth.
But I think he was preparing for a grappler.
He's preparing for Khabib Nurmagomedov, and that fight didn't take place.
It was supposed to take place in April.
So he had been training for Khabib.
By the way, this is the fifth time that fight was cancelled.
The fifth time the fight with Tony and Khabib was cancelled.
Tony's been training for Khabib for fucking years, right?
So he's ready for this elite grappler who takes everybody down and smashes him.
He's thinking of cutting him from the bottom.
He's thinking of submitting him and scrambling and getting leg locks and all these different things that he's thinking of.
And then he's fighting an all-American wrestler who does not want to go to the ground and who has nasty striking.
So it's a totally different game plan and he has to make an adjustment over a period of just a few weeks.
Justin always fights the same way.
Justin's adjustments weren't nearly as big as Tony's.
Tony had to make some big adjustments, but Justin just fought a masterpiece.
The way he fought was just magnificent, and he listened to his coaches so well.
There's a point during the fight where Trevor Whitman is telling him, you're hitting him too hard.
You're swinging for the bleachers.
He's just take about 10% off your punches hit him with good clean shots and he immediately made that adjustment and then his cardio leveled out because he was getting tired towards the end of the second and Because he was just throwing just bombs every every shot of trying to take Tony Ferguson's head off But you can't knock Tony out with one shot.
He's inhumanly tough inhumanly tough so Justin backs it off a little bit and just is throwing clean shots and then winds up just dominating him and then they stop it in the fifth round.
Out of all the people that could be here to watch one of the greatest fights of all time, I felt super fortunate that I was one of those people that got to be there.
I felt real fortunate for that.
Everything about it, I was taken in the moment and really cherishing it.
This is amazing.
Not a lot of people get to do this.
Not a lot of people get to experience this.
Not a lot of people get to do commentary for the UFC, period.
But to do commentary for championship fights in this arena where there's no one there.
So we're in a 15,000 seat arena and there's maybe 10 people in the audience.
I think as long as I take the right precautions, I'm tested a lot, and I'm keeping my immune system in check and making sure that I don't do anything that wears me out.
And I did kind of fuck that up by flying home with just a few hours sleep on Saturday.
But I took care of myself on Sunday and just hung around with the family.
And we, you know, didn't do much.
Just went on a hike and hung out and enjoyed the summer and enjoyed the weather.
It's beautiful weather out here right now.
It's not quite summer yet, but spring.
But I think as long as you do that, I think you can be okay.
I think when you put yourself in a position like yourself, when you warn yourself out, or if you have a compromised immune system, this is my thought, and this is from talking to numerous doctors, including my own personal doctor, who's very critical.
My personal doctor is very critical about the way we're handling this crisis.
What he's saying is the most important thing is education on how to keep your immune system healthy.
He's like, this is something that you're not hearing.
Everything is social distancing.
Everything is cover your mouth.
Everything is use hand sanitizer.
He goes, that's wonderful.
He goes, that's all good stuff.
But we need education on how to keep your immune system strong.
We need education.
I have Dr. Rhonda Patrick coming in later this week to try to school people on what the actual clinical tests, the actual real knowledge, what we really understand about the immune system and supplementation and heat shock proteins, cold shock proteins, all the different various methods that we know are actually legitimately provably effective.
I think it's interesting how all these different facts are coming out.
Because when I was at the beginning of it, I've heard from so many, after I went through this, and big shout out to your fan base, because they reached out to me and showed me so much love when I was in the hospital and I just got out.
But so many doctors reached out to me too and said there's so much misinformation out there.
And I texted you about one that people should know about.
When people get out of the hospital, With Corona?
Like, there's no magical time.
They're saying 14 days.
Literally, when I got out to the hospital, I was in the hospital for eight days.
The last three days, I didn't have a fever, so they let me go.
They said six days after that, I would be fine.
But another doctor told me, look, after you're cleared, after 14 days, people still have corona.
They're taking the chance that it's not contagious.
And that's why hospitals don't test people.
And he said that this is why hospitals don't test people before they let them go, is because they know they still got corona, but hopefully it's not contagious.
So that's why they never test.
Because if they did, that means people got to stay there two to three weeks longer.
And that's the real reason.
He says we would never...
Can you imagine when New York was going through that really bad?
I mean, they're still going through it, but when it was at its peak, if they tested everybody that left, most of those people would still have corona, so that would back up the system even more.
And then insurance has to pay for an extra three weeks.
So I learned that.
I learned that my other doctor said this whole pre-existing conditions is bullshit.
He goes, you came in.
He says, this is how much bullshit it is.
You came in.
If I would have died in a hospital, they would have said my pre-existing condition was migraines.
Well, he's saying, though, they're using that pre-existing conditions, and I say it in quotes, to let healthy or other people almost like, oh, well, if you don't have this...
Pre-existing conditions, you're going to be fine, but it's not true.
He's like, they're using it to calm people down.
He goes, it's not true at all.
He says, I see people that are fine, just like you, Mike.
I see people that do have pre-existing conditions.
I see the whole gamut.
It's not just people with pre-existing conditions, but they're finding those people and highlighting those, and they're even adding deaths to that pre-existing conditions total.
Well, I played college football for University of Arkansas.
I got so many concussions, I couldn't play anymore.
And this was before the whole concussion thing.
So my mom made me quit.
She was like, you're not playing anymore.
So it was a thing where...
But it wasn't a condition.
I have one every five, six months, maybe.
But he says...
Would you come in with, since I had migraines, and they didn't know my history of migraines, but he goes, we would have had to say that was a pre-existing condition.
I haven't heard that, pre-existing condition being migraines, but I have heard diabetes is a giant factor, obesity is a giant factor, emphysema, people who smoke cigarettes.
But then there was an article recently, something I got super suspicious, and I didn't even read the article.
It was an article that said that nicotine may help people with coronavirus, and I was like, that's the fucking cigarette industry.
Did you ever see the documentary, Merchants of Doubt?
You know what's crazy about morphine is my migraine was so bad in the hospital, they came in and go, we're going to give you morphine and we'll knock it right out.
This is one of the things that's been infringed upon by this whole lockdown thing where people, you know, they're being told they're not allowed to assemble.
It's a gigantic part of who we are, the ability to assemble, the ability to protest.
But I don't think that's just what they're doing.
When you're showing up with guns, you're letting them know that you're ready to take over.
You're ready to do something.
You might shoot somebody.
If you're threatened, you might use these guns.
It's like, okay, if we're in that way, you're escalating way past where we're at.
You know, if you're in a situation where someone's saying, hey, your family has to starve to death, hey, you have to stay home, hey, I don't give a fuck about you, okay, then I understand why you want to show that you have guns.
And you get to get a bunch of people together and go, hey, we need to stay alive here, and our rights are being infringed upon.
But if you go back to the backstory, you find out, like, I don't know all the facts, but I know these people that showed up to this rally, they didn't put on that rally.
It was by another organization through Facebook or through some social media outlet that put it together.
Well, we like to – I mean, that's one of the problems with having just two parties in this country and having liberal and conservative, which is crazy because there's a lot of people, myself included, that float in between both of those.
Well, if you go on Fox News and you're a liberal, people will shame you and get angry at you for using that platform.
And I've seen it, even with presidential candidates like Tulsi Gabbard and even Bernie Sanders.
I think that we're in a weird place in this country where it's easy to adopt a predetermined pattern of behavior, a conglomeration of ideas, whether those ideas be conservative or liberal.
And the real problem is these people that adopt these ideas, oftentimes they sink into these ideas because they're comfortable.
It's easy to get, if you, like, say if you decide people in your neighborhood are conservative, I'm going to be conservative too because that's going to make them like me more and I'm going to say the things they want to hear and, you know, I trust in God, I trust in God too.
And you say these things so that people will like you more and you'll fit in your community better.
And it just, it's a signal to the people around you that you're complying with the group ideology.
And that is more of...
That's more the case than people simply rationally and objectively going over these ideas.
You know, there's certain people that decide they don't want gay folks to be married simply because people around them have decided that they don't want gay folks to be married, and marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman, and you can't tell me any different, and the Bible says, and this and that, and I agree.
And if you agree, well, that community will accept you.
But if you're a person who goes...
Hey, Bob, why do you give a fuck?
You know, if two men are in love with each other, like, they clearly, they're not pretending.
Like, I don't care if, like, obviously I have tattoos everywhere, right?
I don't care if you want to get tattooed.
If you want to get tattooed, get tattooed.
If you want to be like fucking Takeshi69, that dipshit, and cover your face with flowers, I don't care.
But some people will look at other people's choices that don't affect them at all and decide that somehow or another it's an affront to their values.
Like if two men are in love with each other and they decide to get married, somehow or another that affects you.
I don't understand how it affects you any more than I understand someone wearing shorts versus pants affects you or someone driving a red car versus a black car.
It's nonsense.
It's not your life.
If somehow or another people being in a man being in love with a man and marrying a man or being with a man and living and you know having a relationship if somehow or another that like killed all the trees You know I'm saying and like cause gas prices to spike Then you have a case.
unidentified
Yeah, and fucking all of a sudden there was something wrong.
So as a person who believes in liberty, I feel like you hear all these Republicans that talk about liberty and, you know, I believe in liberty and I believe in...
Well, he was always on talk shows, and he would go on Letterman and shit, and he would even go on those talk shows and talk shit about Rosie O'Donnell, and people thought it was funny.
And now it's horrendous.
It's like the same things that he has always done.
Now, when you're in a position of being the president, you're supposed to be a different person.
They don't believe in hate and all that, but it's a thing where certain people say certain things, and when I got all these messages, God had your back, God had your back, and I'm thinking about the dude I saw rolled out.
Here's the question that nobody can answer for me, is that if God gets all the applause for something great happening, he should get all the blame for something bad happening.
Because, obviously, from what I'm told, Look, I'm not a scholar on the Bible, but if something great happens, we all praise Him.
But we never tend to not praise Him or say...
We never tend to criticize Him when a whole plane blows up.
And that's the only problem with the religion I have.
Well, I feel like we live in a completely different world because the interconnectedness that we experience today didn't exist before.
So today we have access to information and to the vast body of work That people have written about philosophy and ethics and morals.
And I think we can understand why it's good to be a good person without having to invoke a higher power or some sort of divine spiritual entity that's watching over everything.
Before, that wasn't the case.
Before when we were establishing civilization and we were moving from primitive groups that live in tribes, which we all came from.
Look, the one thing that we have to take into consideration is that we are here because some people did some really violent shit and they made it through because some other people were trying to do some violent shit to them.
That is why we made it here.
We made it here to this day in 2020 because our ancestors were better at violence That's really the truth.
I mean, there's no getting around it.
We are a warlike race of beings that have consistently throughout history conquered each other and done awful terrible things to each other and took over land and took over resources and took over cities and took over women.
I mean, this is what people did that got them to this point and whatever we needed To get people to act in a more moral or ethical way, whether it's a higher power or whatever it is, to get people from just stopping, just raping and pillaging their way across the world without any repercussions whatsoever.
Whatever that is, I'm all for it.
And it was religion.
And I think many people probably successfully have.
I'm not really aware of it, but I would imagine, I'm not the first person to bring this up, that religion is in many ways sort of a natural creation of the human mind and the human psyche to try to move us past our primitive tribal monkey tendencies and move us towards some more cooperative way of existing.
Well, you know what order exists when you don't have religion?
You have the order of might, and that's what you have in China.
Okay?
In China, you have a religion, and the religion is the state.
I mean, China, people have religion over there, but the reality is what's running China is a dictatorship.
It's a military dictatorship, and the king is the ruler.
This is what they look towards, and the state is the ruler, and the law of the state.
I mean, they do horrible shit to their people over there, and they do this horrible shit openly in front of everyone, and they still run a billion people.
Well, they're using religion to get—they have, in the past, used religion to get people to do horrible things.
And, you know, this is the argument against fundamentalism, you know, that it exists.
I mean, it existed in Christianity in the past, you know, the Inquisition.
You can go throughout the history of some horrific things that were done in the name of Christianity, some of the most horrific things ever.
But really, it's people doing these things.
And if they decide that their religion— Is enforcing this behavior, then they can justify these things.
And you see this, I mean, it's what you get with cults when, okay, forget about religion.
I mean, we cannot...
Whether or not a religion is a cult, I had a bit about it, where a cult is created by one guy, and that guy knows it's bullshit.
In a religion, that guy's dead.
That's the difference.
Remember the people, the Heaven's Gate cult?
They all wore purple Nikes, and they cut their balls off, and they killed themselves when the asteroid was coming, or whatever the comet was coming.
That is...
That was a way where someone used something, this crazy ideology, and got people to do ridiculous shit.
And you could say Jonestown was another example of that.
That was another cult, and it was where this guy, He figured out a way to talk these people into poisoning their brothers and sisters and then gunning down federal agents and killing people.
And they did it all because he had them convinced that this belief system that he was espousing was accurate and correct.
Well, other people would say, people that are more skeptical than yourself or not interested in religion at all, would say, well, we take it one step further.
Why would you believe that?
Like, why would you believe that there's some sort of a superpower that you've never seen any evidence of?
Some sort of a mythical, mystical power that's looking out for everybody.
Like, why would you think that when there's no evidence of that?
The evidence that we do have is evidence that people in community, in friendship and love, that there's a great benefit We're good to go.
That's real, you know, but the reality is, is there a God watching?
A doctor got killed by wild dogs yesterday in Georgia.
I felt like, in a lot of ways, like, look, I don't know my dad.
And because of that, I have this weird thing about taking care of things, taking care of people.
I felt like I was abandoned.
I haven't spoken to my dad since I was seven years old.
And I knew him before that.
So, like, all my life, I've sort of had this thing like, hey, that can happen.
Well, you could be abandoned.
And it's one of the reasons why I've always had this very liberal and charitable outlook on things, even though a lot of people confuse me with being conservative.
I'm not very conservative with people, because I know that things can go wrong with people.
I also know that some people are lazy fucks.
And they need to go to work.
They need to get their ass in gear and stop making fucking excuses.
But these are like little mental traps that people have fallen into.
And oftentimes they just don't have the right tools.
They don't have the right information to sort of make these corrections and adjustments.
So...
I'm a hard-ass in some ways like that like some people need to just get their fucking shit together But I also I'm charitable in a way like I don't think they understand How to get their shit together when you see someone who's obese and smoking cigarettes like a lot of that is education and information and just the way their body has The way their life has gone the things that have happened to them outside of their control before they even became a fully formed adult and Just like this poor cat.
This poor cat didn't ask to be shit out under a fucking apartment building and then have this wild life where it's gotta eat rats and shit and try to take care of itself.
He's a former Navy SEAL who is one of the most inspirational people that I've ever met in my life.
And now he writes books on leadership.
And Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
And, you know, every morning, he gets up at 4.30 in the morning, trains, takes a photo of his watch, takes an aftermath photo of puddles of sweat on the ground and the tools he used, and then takes pictures of the sunrise and the sunset, the beach that he earned.
Now, if I could go back, I would have loved to try to be a Navy SEAL. But I guess if you don't have it, if you didn't have that desire, but I just think that's...
I was working so hard, because those two days in the hospital, when I said if there was that eject button, and then your mind just like, no, keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing.
And after three and a half days, finally, everything started, my lungs and the fluid in my lungs started to settle.
But it's amazing what you learn when you come out of a situation like that.
It's what you value.
I'm a changed person now from that.
I hate to be cliche, but you appreciate the little things.
I've always been a good guy, a hustler, but just opening my eyes in the morning, it's a different game now.
And a lot of your fans was like, hey, it wasn't your time.
You got great things to accomplish.
And I really believe that because I see the death total going up and I go, oh, I'm here for a reason.
And I think when we go through life, you'll hit a down point, you know, but you need something to get you back on track and say, yo, you're lucky you're still here.
You need like I've always valued my family.
I'm a family guy.
But now it's like, oh, you want to go for a swim?
Let's go for a swim.
You to my son.
You want to do this?
Let's do this.
And I think it kind of lit a fire under my ass where I was I wasn't coasting.
I was doing well, but I just appreciate everything, and I appreciate people more.
You know, because, man, when I was laid up in the hospital, I saw comics and different people drop off shit to my house through the ring cam.
And I can't tell you how much that meant to me.
You know what I mean?
Like, just people going out of their way to make sure your family is okay.
And even the text, even the DMs, Those little things, when nothing tragic has happened in your life, I don't think you really appreciate it.
You're like, okay, that's great.
But then when something happens to you, and these people don't know you, but they're reaching out, giving you positive vibes, and then people you know really well give you those vibes, it means a lot.
You don't understand how much it meant when I was laying in that hospital bed.
Fighting for my life after I got over that hump to read all these positive messages from your fans, from comedians, from close friends.
Look, comfort is wonderful, and civilization is wonderful, and love and friendship is all wonderful, but I think to really appreciate it, you almost have to at least almost have everything taken away, or know it can be taken away, or know how fortunate you are, know how lucky you are.
Look, man, all throughout human history, it was impossible to take a fucking shower.
You know?
I mean, to take a hot shower?
Who the fuck did that?
Like, when did that first start?
Was it 100 years ago?
When was it?
So people have been around for, what, hundreds of thousands of years in this relatively similar form?
And then, like, 100 years ago, someone figured out how to...
Yeah, dude, I went camping with me and Brian Callen.
We went camping in Montana.
We did this hunting show back in 2012, and it was freezing out, fucking cold as shit.
Nine degrees at night and you're in a sleeping bag and huddled.
And then finally after like six or seven days, whatever it was, we got to Billings and it was the end of the trip.
We had a successful trip and then we got to a hotel.
I took a shower.
A hot shower.
And it was like, oh, it was a bullshit hotel, too.
Like wood panel walls, just a skanky fucking weirdo hotel.
Ordinarily, if I was a comic, like working in that town, I was like, oh, look at this shithole I'm staying at.
I'd be like, well, I guess I'm roughing it.
Here we go.
But for me, it was like heaven.
I was in that shower like, oh, it was so warm.
The water was so good.
And to feel the soap and to get the stink off me because I hadn't washed myself in seven days.
It's like, ah, you really appreciate it.
You don't appreciate it until you lose it, until it's gone.
It's something that too many people are missing.
You know, and I like to give myself my own struggle.
You know, it's one of the reasons why I work out so hard.
Because when I work out hard, not just because it calms me down and it does whatever vanquishes whatever demons are inside me through exercise, but also...
I appreciate peace because when I push myself, I push myself in a ferocious, horrific way where I'm fucking exhausted.
Like when I'm running hills or I'm hitting a bag or whatever I'm doing, I'm doing it hard, man.
So that when it's over, I mean, I'm hands on my knees, heaving, and then the rest of the day is beautiful.
Because I made my own bullshit.
Instead of dealing with fucking hordes of barbarians coming over the hills or starving to death or all the real problems that people have dealt with throughout history that have kind of balanced out their perspective, I created myself.
I think today's society is taking away challenges.
It's not pushing people, because it's fine being fine today.
One thing interesting you said to me last podcast we did, you go, you know, yo, you really never, and you exactly said it, you never been through any struggle, because I was telling you, my life has been pretty good, and you go, what makes you is you would never take away your struggle when you were younger, because it made you who you are today.
And after going through something like what I went through, It's changed me so much that I know that struggle is going to change the rest of my life.
It's even the mentality of myself has already changed.
It's like, I'm going to take risk.
Because you never know how long you're going to be here.
And no one wants to say that to those people, but that mentality literally is like if life is this wild rush to the finish line, and I'm not sure it is, but if it was, those people are not supposed to make it.
They're not supposed to cross the tape.
They're supposed to sit back at mile three and take a nap.
And it's also supposed to be a lesson to you, the person who keeps going, to see, like, See these lazy bitches that they ruin their life and wind up falling apart and they keep exhibiting this self-destructive behavior?
Don't do that.
You don't have to do that.
You see them do it?
Learn from them.
Learn from the people that cry for no reason.
Learn from the people that fall apart.
Learn from the people that don't know how to pick themselves up.
No, but what I'm saying is, to me, the celebrity audience that celebrated her losing the weight Was saying people that say you should feel great no matter what size you are.
Well, I think it's great to lose weight because when you lose weight you get healthy.
But there was a lot of people that were saying that we shouldn't do that.
Because one thing that I read that was hilarious was saying that it's actually fat phobic to celebrate her weight loss because we don't know what she's going through.
She might actually be going through a hard time right now because she just got divorced and maybe that's why she's losing weight because she's not doing well and she's ill.
Like, my whole thing is, if you're gonna, I just hate who, I hate people, and this is a lot of celebrities, and this is a lot of, it's like, no matter what size you are, we love you, right?
And then a girl lose weight, and then you really see who they are.
What I'm saying is, don't put out this message that body image doesn't really matter, and then when a girl loses weight, you're like, oh, it really does matter.
There was whatever, the wiring of his mind, it wasn't going to work.
He was going to eat and he was going to keep eating and whatever it was.
I don't know what the demon was, but whatever his demon was, maybe he could have shifted and changed and people have, but it didn't happen while he was alive.
It's like if you have a friend and that friend is an alcoholic and they die of liver cancer, you gotta go, you know, I love them, he's a great guy, but no one's shocked that that was the result.
And that's the same thing with obesity.
It's like no one's shocked when you do that to your body and then you wind up dying.
I know what you're saying about the celebrity thing, but I really think that it's along the lines of what we were talking about before with religion and political ideologies.
People that are celebrities feel like...
They're putting out this thing that helps their image.
And the thing is, you can't say anything even remotely controversial.
If they do, people come down on you.
And if you're going to say something controversial, it should be controversial that leans towards the side of being liberal and being open-minded and being compassionate.
I don't think that being dishonest about the real negative health consequences of being fat is positive.
I think it's negative.
I think ultimately, if you can...
Look, fat shaming is a real thing, right?
People get mad when people fat shame.
But let me tell you something.
When someone fat shames you and you feel bad, you lose weight.
If you want to act on that, a lot of people do.
It's a bad feeling.
That bad feeling makes you feel like shit and you go out and you do something about it.
The reason why they make you feel like shit is because it works.
I tell you what, if Twitter and Instagram, people going after people, if there was work involved with doing that, if you actually had to go through steps and work to do that, you would have no comments.
If people actually had to work To put a comment up?
And if you have a business together and this is your partner and your partner is fucking off and not doing the stuff they're supposed to do, when you tell them, hey, we got to take care of X, Y, and Z, and like, I don't want to do that.
Like, oh my God, I'm in business with this fucking lazy fuck.
That's a terrible feeling.
But if you're in business with someone and they're like, I'm on it.
He works for the Department of Water and Power in Oregon.
He gets up every morning.
He doesn't have a day where he doesn't run 16 miles.
Every day he's running 10 miles.
Oftentimes we'll run a marathon a day.
He runs ultra marathons.
He runs these fucking 240 mile races that take three days.
Works a full-time job.
Also one of the best bow hunters in the world.
And every day, you go to his Instagram, every day, it's him lifting weights, it's him running, it's him talking, it's him saying, have a great day, everybody.
He's got a different approach to Jocko.
He's not screaming, you know, failure's not an option!
He's got a different approach, but that motherfucker gets after it every single day.
So if you ever feel like, like, oh, you know, I think I do too much, go to Cam Haynes, go to his Instagram page, Cameron Haynes, Cameron R. Haynes on Instagram, and you'll go, oh, I don't fucking do anything.
There was this one lady though that she took a whole lot of shit because she had a kid and she posted her being pregnant and then she posted what she looked like a couple months later working out and she was saying don't be lazy.
There's a difference between being 50 today and being 50 in the past.
There's a great picture of one of the Golden Girls that said, it says like 50 in 1985, and then it has a picture of J-Lo swinging on a pole.
It's like 50 in 2020. It's fucking different, man.
There's people exercise today, people take care of their bodies today, and they never didn't.
As long as you never went through this period where you slacked off and ate cake and slept all day, if you never went through that period of alcoholism and drug abuse where you wrecked your body, man, you could hold on a lot longer than anybody ever thought you could.
I tell you, when I first got out, when they first cleared me in my neighborhood, because everybody knew, like literally I would walk outside and go for a walk.
They would scatter.
They would run inside their house.
If their kids were outside playing, they would call them in to go inside.
I went to my, I'm not going to say the name of the coffee place, but I went to my local coffee place.
And since I didn't post, I was cleared.
They, the manager of the store, sent me a nasty, on my Instagram, sent me a nasty message.
How could you endanger all our workers by coming in and you have corona?
But the World Health Organization has been in bed with China from the beginning, and it's really a big part of the problem with this is that the disinformation that the Chinese government had put out to try to alleviate some of the blame, I mean, that's their game.
Their game is alleviate blame and take control of the narrative.
So the World Health Organization was in bed with them.
I mean, that's why Trump, although it's widely criticized that he stopped funding to the World Health Organization, this is his rationalization for that.
I think the problem is so many people do so little with their body that even when, although we're saying asymptomatic, for a lot of these people, it's like they don't ever push themselves.
So they don't even know their body is operating so weakly.
What I'm saying is they don't push themselves to the point where they find out that their body's at 60%.
If you're a person who exercises all the time and you're used to, you're in tune with your body, and then you're working out, you're like, God, I'm fucking dragging ass.
That happened to my friend's son, and he had it.
And the way they found out, his mom had it, but he had it, and the way he found out, he was like, he's dragging ass when he's working out.
I'm saying the doctors are confused right now because the normal oxygen level is between 94 and 100. There are people checking in with corona that don't feel well, but they're at 60% oxygen level, which you shouldn't be able to function.
I don't know the technical, but this is what the doctor's saying where you could look it up, but you shouldn't be able to function, but they're texting, they're acting like nothing's wrong, but they're sick.
The stereotype of the lazy, mouth-breathing southerner came from massive amounts of people that were infected with parasites.
And these parasites were extremely common, particularly when people walk around barefoot and they would get these worms.
These worms would get into their system and one of the side effects of these worms was a decreased brain function.
So that's a real stereotype that came from a real thing.
Wow!
Yeah, pull up a hookworm in the South and then stereotypes.
Because, yeah, I forget who told me this.
Then I wound up going on a deep dive one night and just reading article upon article about this where...
They didn't even find out that this was a thing until I think it was like the 1960s.
They found out about this hookworm parasite and this parasite that was extremely prevalent in the South.
This thing is many of like how hookworm gave the South a bad name.
Hookworms once sapped the American South of its health, yet few realize they continue to affect millions.
So this worm would infect people.
Make that a little larger, please.
For more than three centuries, a plague of unshakable lethargy blanketed the American South.
It began with ground itch, in quotes, a prickly tingling in the tender webs between the toes, which was soon followed by a dry cough.
Weeks later, victims succumbed to an insatiable exhaustion and an impenetrable haziness of the mind that some called stupidity.
Adults neglected their fields and children grew pale and listless.
Victims developed grossly distended bellies and angel wings, emaciated shoulder blades accentuated by the hunching, all gazed out dully from sunken sockets with a telltale fisheye stare.
The culprit behind the germ of laziness, as the South Affliction was sometimes called, was Nectar Americanus, the American murderer.
Wow.
Parasites lived, fed, multiplied, and died within the guts of up to 40% of the population stretching from southeastern Texas to West Virginia.
Hookworm stymied development throughout the region and bred stereotypes about lazy, moronic southerners.
That's why you do it.
That's why we all do it.
We do it because it was a real thing.
And it was a real thing because these poor people were sick with parasites.
Laird Hamilton seems to think that it isn't and I listen to him a lot when it comes to these sort of things because he does a lot of sauna work and breath work and things like that and he said he developed some real skin issues from infrared saunas.
The studies that were done, is it Norway that did those studies on sauna use?
They did studies that showed a 40% decrease of all-cause mortality for people who regularly use the sauna, using the sauna four to five days a week.
They showed a 40%, so four to five days a week, I think it was 160 degree temperature.
For 20 minutes, and they showed a 40% decrease of all-cause mortality, cancer, stroke, heart attack, everything, all the different things, because of the body's production of heat shock proteins from regular sauna use.
So I have not skipped a day, not one day of sauna since this happened.
I'm very lucky that I have one in my house, and I have one here.
At the studio.
So I've been doing it every fucking day.
And I've talked some friends into getting ones where they didn't have room for it in their house.
Costco sells them.
You can get a fucking outdoor sauna, a barrel sauna, like a thousand bucks.
I'm like, think of all the shit you spend money on.
And if you can afford this, please get one.
Because I think it's massively contributed to my health.
That will do the show, leave the club at 1, and then get on the 6 a.m.
And that's what I did, too.
Well, I did Wendy Williams, so I flew out that night, but usually the two weeks before that, I do the late show, first flight out, because I want to be with my family.
I'm 100% in belief that it's made a big difference.
You feel the same?
Yeah.
It works.
It does something.
Yeah, Dr. David Sinclair had been here from Harvard, and he explained it to us, what NAD does and NMN, which is a precursor to NAD. You could take that in pill form as well.
They think that in India they have a completely different strain that will, if they come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus that we have here, it won't be effective on the coronavirus that they have in India.
I do fasted exercise, so I'll not eat for 16 hours, and then I get up in the morning, and I'll either run, or I'll do yoga, or on a crazy day, I'll do both.
I'll run with the dog for an hour, and then I'll go and do a yoga class for an hour and a half.
No food.
But I'm pretty wrecked by the time the yoga class is over.
But then the Pentagon finally, look, in the middle of the pandemic, what a great time to just admit there's UFOs.
Because one of the things that I said on my Instagram, I was like, in any other time in history, if the government came out and said there are flying saucers that defy our understanding of propulsion and physics, the world would go crazy.
I had him on the podcast and he was explaining the whole thing to me.
Like his experience off the coast of San Diego, running into one of these things.
I mean, there's people that are debunkers, but they need to understand this is not just visual.
They had very specific, like, actual real data, including radar.
They tracked these things.
They used sophisticated military tracking.
These are real objects.
There's a lot of dummies out there that want to debunk everything.
And they're just as much of a religious person as someone who's a true believer.
They're a true believer that everything can be explained.
Well, not everything can be explained, and these things can't be explained.
When they're explaining how these things traveled, they went from like six feet off the ground to 60,000 feet in a matter of a couple of seconds.
They fly in some way that these military aircraft pilots can't explain.
They don't understand it, and they don't know what they are.
Now, whether they're from another planet, that's never been proven.
They might be interdimensional.
They might be something from here.
They might be some super sophisticated top of the food chain, top secret stuff that they're exposing these people to just so they freak out and, like, let's see if they can get an explanation for this.
Let's launch these things and have them fly past people at these preposterous rates of speed and see what the reaction is.
We're going to trust some dipshit who wins a popularity contest.
Trump's a perfect example of that.
Here's a guy who's not even a politician.
Lifelong businessman who wins a popularity contest gets to be in the most powerful office, most powerful position really the world's ever known.
President of the United States, commander-in-chief of the greatest army this entire planet has ever seen.
You're going to tell him?
You're going to tell Trump?
I mean, he believes Obama's from Kenya.
A lot of people believe that.
But, you know, look, you see those birth certificates.
It's like, well, is this real?
Who knows?
And by the way, Obama's, when he was in college, his publicist for his whatever book he was publishing or whatever, I forget what it was, but wrote down in his bio, Born in Kenya.
So it wasn't just a couple of people.
It was literally somebody who was working with Obama wrote down that he was born in Kenya.
Does that mean he was born in Kenya?
No, it doesn't.
It might mean that the publicist thought it would be cool to say he was born in Kenya because it would make, wow, this guy's gone so far.
Well, if you look at what Obama said before he got into office versus what he did when he got into office, there's two possible scenarios.
One, he got into office and then he got compromised and he became corrupt and he became a part of the system.
Two, his understanding when he was running for president of how the world really works is vastly different than how the world actually works.
And then once you get in there, you realize that the huge spectrum of threats to the United States and to people that are coming from all around the world all the time and what needs to be done to mitigate these threats.
I'm more inclined to believe the latter.
I think it's more like that.
I think you have these idealistic perspectives that once you get into office, they get sort of dashed and you go, holy shit.
I think the pressure that they're like, what the fuck?
I think the whole world's barely keeping it together every day every day of the year barely keeping it together you got like this fucking Libya is a failed state and they're having Slave auctions on YouTube and you've got Isis is plotting these fucking These attacks here and this group and Boko Haram is doing this and fucking Al Qaeda is doing that and the Taliban and All day!
China's doing this and North Korea's got that!
I think every fucking president deals with a new series of potential terrorist attacks, a new series of religious fanatics that want to blow things up and kill people, and you've got white nationalists that are going to Christchurch in New Zealand and shooting people in a mosque.
It's like all day long you've got madness.
And if you're the one person that won the popularity contest and all of a sudden you're sitting in the fucking control room and they're explaining everything to you, you're like, the situation room with Wolf Witzer.
Well, you've got to think, once he assumes power, and people realize, like, this guy's just born into power, and there's probably a lot of people plotting against him, a lot of military people plotting against him, and that's a dark country where they all plot against each other and they all rat on each other.
It's built into the system, you know, that they're all supposed to tattletale on each other.
And a lot of the reason why it's the way it is is the United States' interference.
You know?
I mean, if you look at the history of North Korea, like how it got started and why they became this horrific military dictatorship, you can kind of trace a good chunk of it to American policy and what we did in Korea during the Korean War.
I was telling my wife, we just did that the other day.
They're building a house and we just, oh, let's see where this is.
And then he jogs on.
Didn't steal anything.
Didn't have anything.
Just jogging.
Now, how do we come to a point in our country where two men can chase him down with guns and then get in a fight with him and then say it was self-defense?
If you've got a 25-year-old just kid who's out jogging and these guys pull out with shotguns and tell them to, you know, hey, we want to talk to you, like, fuck.
You said something at the Comedy Store, and it may have been in one of your specials, where you were talking about something, and you said, that's only four people ago.
And this is when my dad was telling me when he was growing up, My dad said he didn't even know he was poor growing up because they never left the area.
They couldn't go anywhere.
He never knew they were poor.
He never saw white people because they weren't allowed to go anywhere anyway.
You know, I was reading this horrible story about even after slavery was abolished, one of the things that they would do was they would capture black men for loitering and force them into going into labor camps.
So they would literally enforce slavery but do slavery by having them in prison and forcing them to do labor.
Now, the reason why I bring this up, right now, There was a garbage strike, garbage workers strike, and so they brought in prisoners.
They kicked, find out where this is.
They, this is, I don't remember where it was, but I was reading it.
I was like, what in the fuck?
So these guys, the garbage men made $10 an hour.
They fired all the striking garbage men and brought in prisoners to do this.
Here it is.
Prison labor replaces striking garbage workers in New Orleans.
Stop and think about that.
They said, you know what?
You want more than $10 an hour?
I got a better idea.
We'll get people to do it for free.
So they're essentially reigniting slavery in New Orleans when it comes to taking care of garbage.
But the fact that they think that's okay, that this is like, well, I got a solution, and the fact that you don't think someone should get more than $10 an hour to fucking take care of people's garbage, it's insane.
Metro Services Group has long been an advocate of helping persons who have been incarcerated return to society in a meaningful and productive way, said the City Sanitation Services in a statement.
Metro makes no apologies for this policy as a core element of our commitment to being good corporate citizens.
Under state rules, prison inmates employed by metro services would be paid only 13% of what garbage workers make.
Classism, or it'll be a financial thing or an intelligence thing.
Unless they get to genetic engineering, unless genetic engineering reaches a point where literally there is no disparity in human beings in terms of intelligence, looks, all those things.
And unless we figure out a way to make it fair, which is almost impossible, there's going to be prejudice, there's going to be disparity, there's going to be...
Look, one thing that I talked to him about, Elon, that I thought was really interesting, he's got this new thing that he's working on called Neuralink.
And this Neuralink is going to rapidly increase our ability to access information.
And he literally said, we're going to be able to communicate without talking.
And I had talked about this on the podcast before, that we're going to be able to read each other's minds.
And I've said this, stoned as a joke.
It's not a matter of what we want.
Do you think the chimps were like, one day we're going to have cars that pollute the earth.
The chimps are like, do we want that?
They didn't sit around and think that.
They're like, do I get a gun?
Fuck yeah!
I'm gonna go to the fucking Michigan Capitol!
And with my gun.
You know, I mean, this is just what happens.
Whether or not we want that, this is what happens.
And what he's saying is essentially that one day...
With this Neuralink, you're going to have incredibly boosted powers of cognition.
You're going to be a different thing than you are now.
So my take on it was, okay, well, what would be the difference?
He goes, well, you'd have so much more access to resources.
You would be able to get so much more done.
You'd be so much more productive.
But what I was saying is, but what about the people who can't afford this?
The people that can afford it would get so far ahead that the people, you know, like...
Before cell phones were around, do you remember the movie Wall Street?
But there was a long period of time, years, where only wealthy people had cell phones all the time.
Now everyone does.
But if Neuralink happens and some wealthy people have this insane access to resources and this insane bandwidth and this ability to communicate without words long before people like you or I get it, if those billionaires get it first, They'll be so far ahead of us.
To me, when hate is involved with it, you know, I think that's where we should draw the line.
But that's more of where I'm going is, like, how many people from us, like, where it's just, you don't just kill random people jogging down the street, you know?
It's hard to imagine that that still goes on today, right?
But then when you hear about your dad and that your dad went to college in a place where he couldn't eat at the same places as white people, you're like, what, on campus?
And some black people, I don't want to say just black people, but some black people, when they go, ah, you know, my dad hears this, and he always gets mad about it.
He goes, when some black people go, it's no better than it was way back in the day.
And one of the things that he gets criticized for is showing how much less violent the world is today, how much less crime there is, how much less rape, how much less murder.
This is essentially the safest place, the safest time ever in human history.
And people are like, you're discrediting all of the horrors that happen.
He's like, no, I'm not.
No, I'm not.
I'm not dismissing all the terrible things that happen in the world.
But we're saying, even though those things do exist, they exist at a far less frequently than did 100 years ago, 200 years ago, any time throughout human history.
There's a trend, and that trend is that society is getting safer, and people are getting nicer, and people are getting better.
Well, I also think now, like I'm from my family, my dad's side, I'm the first person that dealt with, like I would say I deal with racism, but not on the scale my dad dealt with it.
And my dad didn't deal with it on the scale his father, my grandfather dealt with it.
So it's kind of like, and I'm teaching my kids not to be that way.
So I feel like these kids that are young growing up, they're going to be so much more sensitive to Towards other people than we were.
Because we were still I wouldn't say like in it, in it, but we were in it like in my household.
You know what I mean?
Like my dad, you know, would tell me stories of what happened to him.
And I was like, wow, you went through that.
But I went to a school in Houston, Texas, where I stood out.
My parents were the only mixed couple.
I was the only mixed kid at our school.
I believe because I didn't it wasn't even a thing.
You know, like people go, you look different.
They're like, kids would come up to me and go, what are you?
And I was like, mom, what am I? My dad was like, tell them you're black and Asian.
It's what I was, but nobody on my block were interracial.
It was either black couples or white couples.
And my parents were like...
Like before the trend, you know, and it's a thing where I saw what happened to my mom didn't teach me to be, my mom didn't teach me anything about my Korean heritage, because people made fun of her accent.
So she didn't want me to go through that.
So she tried to Americanize me as fast as possible.
My dad, he's that I don't give a shit guy.
He's like, there's ignorant people.
I don't care.
They can say what they want.
His favorite word is the N-word.
You know what I mean?
So he loves to watch movies.
My dad is so crazy.
He loves to watch movies with the N-word in it.
Because he says, that's real.
That's how it really was.
I think that Leonardo DiCaprio movie with Samuel L. Jackson, The Band of Eight or something like that it was called.
This is one thing that I... When, you know, people complain about social justice warriors and the ridiculous calling out of everything being racist and everything being sexist.
I agree.
But...
The fact that that is the trend that a lot of these young people are going in, it's too far in a lot of ways, but it'll all balance out.
You've got to have that sort of overwhelming left-leaning ideology and then this overwhelming right-leaning ideology for people to say, what is rational?
What's rational?
But the trend seems to be In a positive way.
It seems to all be going in a positive way.
It seems to be like racism is way less tolerated amongst most of the people that are in the middle.
Most of the people that aren't crazy and aren't overly sensitive.
Well, she had breast cancer and they, you know, they do the scan and they found like the second time I remember we having this big thing, because she beat it once, I was younger, and I didn't really understand it.
You know, I was like nine, so you don't grasp it.
But at 31, it really hurt me, and she's really into Jesus.
Because when you're on a treadmill, you don't even notice what's going on.
You know?
Like, if you're watching something, if you're watching something entertaining, like I was saying, I was watching Tiger King while I was getting an NAD drip.
You know?
You don't even notice?
As long as you're watching something.
I learned that when Ari and Tom and Bert and I did that Sober October thing, you could get so much more cardio done while you're watching a movie.