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June 26, 2020 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:23:34
Joe Rogan Experience #1498 - Jon Stewart
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joe rogan
36:22
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jon stewart
45:35
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
Hi, Jon Stewart.
jon stewart
Hi, Joe Rogan.
joe rogan
What's going on behind you?
What is all that jazz?
jon stewart
Oh, it's all my...
When my kids were younger, this is their...
I'm in the attic.
joe rogan
Oh!
jon stewart
When they were younger, I came up here with their cousins and doodle, and I got kicked up here.
It's my office now, and I'm here with the bunny and the guinea pig and the rat.
joe rogan
Hey, man, I miss you.
I miss you on TV right now.
I really do.
This is a perfect time for you.
It's kind of crazy that you're not hosting that show anymore.
jon stewart
But there's so many people doing that.
I really did burn out.
I felt like it's just redundant.
The nice thing for what you do is you get to curate and kind of be more active and to follow your own rhythm for it.
I was really tied to that rhythm of The 24-hour news cycle.
joe rogan
Right.
jon stewart
And how fucking redundant it is and how cyclical.
And at a certain point, I was like, I don't know what else to do with this.
And so I didn't want to stay just because I could.
I'd just done it long enough.
And so I thought, well, let me just...
It was just time.
I felt like the audience needed a fresh perspective.
I needed a fresh perspective.
Like, I just felt done.
Like, I was more mad about shit than...
joe rogan
I appreciate that you decided to go out literally at the very top, but it seems like...
Especially right now.
John Oliver's killing it, and Trevor Noah's doing your show.
There's so much to mock.
It's almost like an overload.
And doing real commentary on politics today, it's almost like you're doing commentary on pro wrestling.
This is a rigged game, and you're out here pretending this shit makes sense.
It really is.
jon stewart
You're right.
Well, it's also because that's...
The economic system that's been set up around politics is the very same that Vince McMahon set up around wrestling.
You create...
I mean, it is a kind of, you know, kayfabe.
It's a sort of like...
There are characters.
You know what it's like.
When you're trying to produce something every day, you're going to go with kind of a boilerplate structure.
So you're going to say, all right, our show revolves around...
You're from the right.
You're from the left.
Whatever comes in, we're going to filter it through that.
We're going to keep it producible.
But it starts to, like you say, it becomes inauthentic.
But the same thing would happen to me sometimes with, like I'd be doing shows and you would know you weren't necessarily feeling the Outrage of something or that the commentary was going to be as spicy or as deep as you might want it, but you might kick it up a notch anyway because it was performative.
I always had to fight that instinct to not give in to the gravity of what was expected of me.
joe rogan
Well, it's such a tightrope to walk because you're commenting, you're doing comedy on something that's actually serious.
And it's great to mock the ridiculous aspects of it, but really, if you're doing The Daily Show right now, we really are in a legitimately troubled time.
It's not like a troubled time of ten years ago or eight years ago.
This is a real troubled time.
jon stewart
No, and I think as that builds up, it becomes harder and harder.
But I can recall, you know, people will say sometimes, and look, I think there's a certain nostalgia that people...
View my time on the show has.
And I'm not being self-deprecated.
I just mean, you know, when you walk away from something, I think a kind of nostalgia about how, you know, I took a fair amount of shit while I was there.
But the point is, like, Charleston happened when I was hosting that show.
Ferguson happened.
The Iraq War happened.
9-11 happened.
joe rogan
Jesus.
jon stewart
These types of things were always...
And what would happen is you started to feel like you were expected to say something profound about it.
And you knew that you didn't really have that in you at times or just that's a bar that was beyond, you know, you really did just want to help your staff get through it more than anything else.
And so these events would come up and the weight of Feeling like you had to say something meaningful in that moment for people because that's the role that either they had, you know, let you know that you had in their lives or that the show kind of took on, you know, became kind of difficult to navigate.
Because the shit is so cyclical.
Man, I could go back and do you my 10 War on Christmas bits when that shit would flare up.
But at a certain point when things like Charleston happened or Eric Garner, I had nothing in the tank comedically.
All I could do was stare into the camera and just express sadness and help us.
You know what it is?
It's impotent rage at a certain point.
You rage against it, but over a period of 16 years, if you feel the thing you're raging against grow stronger and kind of collapse on top of you and you not make headway, nobody likes to piss in the ocean.
You like it, but at a certain point, if that's your job, I think people began to look at the show like it was supposed to change things.
And that's a hard place to be for a comedy show.
joe rogan
Well, it's because you're reasonable.
And there's not a lot of that out there.
Legitimately.
And people are like, please, you do it.
Look, people are begging for The Rock to run for president.
This is how desperate we are.
People have asked me to do it.
Look, I'm a fucking bona fide moron.
You don't want me running anything.
You certainly don't want me running the country.
And if enough people have actually asked for that, you just know there's a feeling of desperation in the air.
And...
When you were running that show and you were doing great comedy about real shit, and as this real shit compounds and piles up and it doesn't seem to have any effect on this real shit, all this great comedy, after a while I can understand why it would start to feel like...
What am I doing here?
How long?
Do you know who, what is that guy's name who was doing the resistance, the guy who was in the basement of GQ? Ken Olbermann?
Keith Olbermann, sorry.
Keith Olbermann.
unidentified
A little unhinged.
joe rogan
He was doing this thing in the basement against Trump, and he's like, it's just days from now when Trump is going to be arrested.
And I could feel that this was also kind of what he was doing.
He was trying to make some sort of an impact, but it just kept not working.
It kept not working.
jon stewart
It's all thirst.
joe rogan
Yeah, and it's still all chaos.
And he's like, fuck this.
And then he just walked away from it.
You know, it seems like trying to enact change is so difficult that when actual change happens, it's one of the reasons why it happens in such a big way.
It's like there were so many people bounding at the wall and pounding at this wall that when, boom, when the George Floyd protests broke through, then all of a sudden it's, we've got real change.
Let's take down these fucking statues and light everything on fire, and there's this feeling Of change and of chaos that is also representative of the fact that it takes so long to turn our cultural battleship.
It's like to actually get a real turn is so hard.
Everything stays the same no matter how mad people get.
jon stewart
That turn, even at that point, that's still the easy part.
joe rogan
Yes.
jon stewart
The turn is the easy part.
Like, this shit's not going to get fixed by HBO Max pulling Gone with the Wind.
Like, it's fine.
When you pull a movie, nobody was planning on watching on a streaming service nobody can find.
We're still at the symbolic stage.
We're still doing the shit that is symbolic.
This is where leadership becomes such a crucial component.
You have this great Awakening of energy, it has to be channeled into something lasting and meaningful, and we have to diagnose the real problem underlying this moment so that we don't make a mistake in just changing the window dressing and the gilding on the buildings.
This has to be foundational.
In a way that will create something lasting.
And that's the hard part.
joe rogan
It seems like the shift is big enough that something is going to happen in that regard.
It just seems like this shift is nothing like anything we've ever seen in our lifetime.
And it's worldwide.
Which is really crazy.
Like the George Floyd death sparked all these protests worldwide.
Which has really never happened before with anything that really has taken place in America.
And it just seems like...
There was also a lot of frustration during the bailout period of the COVID crisis that all these corporations were getting so much money that people got one $1,200 check and then there was no more talk.
jon stewart
You don't know where the money...
There's really no accountability even for where that money went.
joe rogan
Right.
jon stewart
That's a great point, Joe, because that's...
So that's what I'm talking about by structural change.
I feel like in this moment, this horrible...
A crime and murder sparked something.
But what's underlying that is not just the racial inequality and the inequities, but this whole idea of we build our society economically from the top down.
joe rogan
Yes.
jon stewart
Like, that's the shit that's got to change.
joe rogan
Right.
It's a rough game.
jon stewart
Well, like, when you're in a pandemic, right, and tens of thousands of people are dying, and then we say to ourselves, all right, Well, who are the essential workers?
Who are the ones that are the fabric of our society and culture that keep the wheels turning and the trains running?
Who are those people?
Well, it turns out they're the most poorly compensated people in our society.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
Because we've flipped the paradigm for some reason since the 80s.
The investor class has gotten the break and the working class has gotten minimized.
We've devalued work while overvaluing investment.
joe rogan
It's such a good point.
jon stewart
I don't think we can have the structural change until we flip that.
Like, fuck, man.
When people talk about freedom...
And liberty?
What's more for freedom and liberty than not having your health insurance tied to your job?
What kind of freedom do you have to make decisions in your life when you fear that if I take a chance, if I go for something, if I try and change my lot in life, my kids will no longer be covered by...
All the things that we built up to accept, I think we have to...
Turn it over.
And it has to lean more.
People should be able to have, like, a dignity...
You should be able to work a job and not be poor.
You should be able to work a job and not need food stamps.
Like, that's where we're fucked.
We spent...
How much in this pandemic?
Like, three trillion dollars?
Something like that?
Four trillion?
joe rogan
Something along those lines.
jon stewart
Who knows if a hundred million of it went to Coca-Cola?
Like, we have no idea.
joe rogan
Right.
jon stewart
But you got 80 bus drivers in New York who were dead because they had to keep going in the middle of the pandemic.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I think you're making a really good point about what's essential as well.
When we found out what the essential workers are, right?
People who work at supermarkets, people who build homes, like all these essential jobs.
jon stewart
Bunker down.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
Can't afford to.
Right.
jon stewart
You're putting yourself in...
You know, it's funny, I was talking, a friend of mine named DT, who is, you know, he was really, like, grievously wounded in war, right?
And I was talking, we were talking about, like, coronavirus, and I was like, I feel like I'm in fucking danger when I go out.
And he was like, yeah, welcome to being downrange.
You know what I mean?
It's just not, it's not something that we as Americans would ever consider We're really sheltered in a lot of ways to what a great vast majority of the world faces, but also what a vast majority of our own citizens face in terms of having lives that they feel are built on sand as opposed to granite.
And so his point was like, yeah, you know, that's what it feels like when you're in a war, but I signed up for that.
But like bus drivers and grocery store workers, like, They had to fucking decide, like, I need this money more than I need to protect my life and maybe the health of my family.
unidentified
What a terrible position to have to be in.
joe rogan
And unprecedented, and we're ill-prepared for it.
It really did highlight what's essential, though, which is, back to your point about this idea of income equality.
People will balk at that, like, hey, this is a game.
If you want to figure it out, figure out how to make more money.
Invest and do this and become a banker, and you fucked up and you wanted to be an artist, or you fucked up and you wanted to be a carpenter, you should have been a, you know, whatever.
And Oh, my God.
If you don't have healthcare.
All that stuff is not...
None of that money means anything if the fabric of society deteriorates to a point where literally everybody has to stay in their home and you can't work.
And that's what happened.
And it really flipped the whole thing on its head because we had to consider survival.
We had to really consider survival instead of just existence.
We were saying, oh my god, we have to protect ourselves from this viral attack.
jon stewart
And what it makes you realize...
Is how much money it takes to ante up to the American way of life.
What I mean by that is like, if you just want to buy in to play a hand, right?
What's your ante?
Well, now they say you've got to go to college.
So you're talking about a $200,000 ante.
It's to get in the fucking game.
joe rogan
Right, to get a job when you get out where you're not going to make a fraction of that every year, so you're going to be behind the eight ball for the rest of your life.
jon stewart
Now think about, you know, black people not being able to build equity and wealth through generations of, you know, government policy that excluded them from, you know, from whether it's the Homestead Act or the Federal Housing Administration or the GI Bill.
You know, all these government interventions...
Socialism, if you will, entitlements, if you will, were made to help white families build equity, right?
Over generations.
Black people were explicitly excluded from that.
So add that on top of the amount of money that you're going and you start to see the hole that we've dug for people.
And if we don't address that hole, I don't care how many fucking...
Comedy sketches we pull, and how many things...
We're not doing anything.
joe rogan
Yeah, we haven't addressed the hole that exists from being 150 years removed from slavery, which is crazy.
That's a blink in time.
It's nothing.
jon stewart
And how crazy is it that...
I always hear it from the butt people.
They're like, the George Floyd thing.
Yeah, that was terrible.
But...
As soon as they say the butt, I'm like, no, no butt.
No, but he wasn't an angel.
No, but he was...
It doesn't matter.
And when you're upset that people are pulling down Confederate statues, people have been begging for that.
Those things got put up in the 1920s to really lock in Jim Crow.
Those things aren't there.
They're not memorials to the dead.
They're hagiography to a war for slavery.
We shot the movie down south, man.
So I saw these monuments.
You would think they would say, like, here's a statue of Robert E. Lee.
This motherfucker.
To keep people slaves.
And then we built this thing in the 20s to make black people kind of afraid so that they knew they couldn't take it.
But it doesn't say that.
It said, this great man.
Of course people are going to pull him down because they've been begging for us to do something about it.
For a hundred years.
joe rogan
It's also the origins of those.
A lot of those statues were actually put up during the Civil Rights Movement.
And they're cheaply made.
They were put up as a middle finger to the Civil Rights Movement.
jon stewart
No question.
But we need something.
There has to be a process.
I always think about what South Africa did.
unidentified
There has to be a process.
jon stewart
Because I still think to this day, and I don't know how your experience with this is, but like, I still think there's a large swath of, you know, white people in society who feel like they blame black people for not being able to get out of this hole that we put them in or that white people in society who feel like they blame black people for not being able But they think it's a problem of culture and virtue.
Like, hey man, if they would just pull their pants up and talk different, you know, they wouldn't have such a hard time.
Hey, why don't you just work harder?
joe rogan
It's a ridiculous perspective and it's also not based...
You don't have...
Anyone who would think like that doesn't understand how human beings develop and grow.
If you have someone...
jon stewart
It's widespread.
I would say it's widespread.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a dangerous narrative whenever you blame people for their circumstances, if their circumstances are grossly out of their control and really severely limit their progress.
And that exists also for, if you want to talk about coal mining populations in Kentucky.
No plus.
We don't all start out at the same starting block.
So all you pull yourself up by your own bootstrap, motherfuckers, you're lucky you have arms.
There's people out there born with no arms.
We should all be thinking of ourselves in this country as a community, not as a bunch of people in competition with each other.
We're all piling our money together every year.
We throw our taxes into the mix to try to take care of the infrastructure and the government and the housing and all the different things that get paid for by our taxes.
We're a community, man, and we're not thinking like a community.
We're thinking like a bunch of people that don't want other people to have the same shot in life.
jon stewart
I think you struck on something, though, that's very important in all this, and that is a theory of limited resources.
A lot of the conflict between what you would consider the more nativist wing of American politics and The more progressive side is this idea of resource guarding.
I work my fucking ass off.
I play by the rules and they're going to take all my labor and they're going to pour it into these people.
And I do think we have to address that idea that we're here to build equity.
Let's all get together and the project of this next generation is to build a stronger foundation, a granite bearing for everyone to stand on so that there's a few people standing on Mount Everest.
and everybody else is in sand and quicksand isn't the way that we run the society.
And think of these programs not as entitlements, but investments.
If we invest in dignity of work shit and start building that up, well, food stamps and welfare start to go away.
Because we're building something more substantial.
unidentified
We built a great middle class in the 50s for white people.
jon stewart
We have to do the same now for the country.
And also reassure people who are resentful of that.
That they're not being left behind either.
joe rogan
that nobody is saying and your lives are fucking cake it's not like it's going to change your life that much either man this this mentality that oh bernie sand like when i was a supporter of bernie sanders when he was running i got pushback from people that were like uh so you want to give your hard-earned money more of it away to the government and you think the government's going My perspective was, if you just looked at it this way, if you could give...
Let's just get crazy.
If you could give 25% more money to taxes, but the world would be 50% better, wouldn't you want to invest in that?
I understand that people are check to check.
I understand.
But if people like me, people that earn a good amount of money are the ones who are going to be hit the hardest.
If you wanted a better world...
Wouldn't you be willing to invest some of your money into that better world?
And if that money goes to making sure that no one has to do this in the future and that we develop this It's a question of, you know, when you look at the greatest anti-poverty program we've ever put in place, it's Social Security.
jon stewart
Now, the flip side of that is what they'll say is that the problem with some of this is they don't trust the mechanism by which that money is going to be invested.
joe rogan
Of course.
jon stewart
Because they've been sold, to some extent, a little bit of a lie that this trickle-down theory.
So every administration that comes in is going to stimulate the economy.
They all do it.
We don't have a free market.
The Fed right now is driving so much money into stocks.
You're talking about zero interest rates, negative interest rates.
They're driving everything away from bonds and savings so that the stock market, which for some reason we've come to look at like a pulse oximeter, Of the nation, which it's not.
It's, you know, oh my God, we lost 300 DAOs today.
Like, we've come to look at it like it's our temperature.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
So everybody's going to stimulate the economy.
So what did, let's look at what Trump did.
So $1.5 trillion tax cut, right?
Overwhelmingly, though, it went to people who already have a shit ton of money.
And then we cut the corporate tax rate from, I don't know, I think it was 35 down to 21, right?
Right.
Supposedly, they were going to reinvest it, but they mostly did buybacks.
So they're increasing their investor wealth through that as well.
So you're talking about trillions of dollars of stimulus, right?
That are just going to that same theory.
Take those trillion dollars and let's invest.
Let's stimulate the economy, but not from up there, from down here.
Let's take that And fucking Marshall Plan our country.
And build it so that it's sturdy on the legs.
You know, you know you're a fighter.
Sturdy on the legs.
If you're not sturdy on the legs, you got nothing.
joe rogan
My idea is we should get Dick Cheney involved and we should hire Halliburton to fix up the inner cities like it did all the places we bombed in Iraq.
Give him some no-bid contracts.
Pour that money back in the community.
I mean, I'm joking about Halliburton.
But it is a business.
There's something there.
jon stewart
Well, I had a thing.
We're trying to do this thing for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who've gotten sick from burn pits.
Are you familiar at all with burn pits?
joe rogan
No.
What is it?
jon stewart
So, in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, I mean, this will go back generations, but in Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of the...
They would build these sometimes 10-acre, 20-acre pits.
Everything would go into them from mess waste to hazardous materials to computers to everything.
They light it with jet fuel and they burn it.
So now you've got guys that are downrange that are also down...
I mean, they're living...
They're basically camping out in a toxic waste dump, right?
Oh, Jesus.
So they come home...
And you're starting to see pulmonary issues, cancer issues.
These guys are dying.
And they're not being...
They have to advocate against the government.
So we're trying to put together, working with this team coalition, wounded warrior groups and people, VSOs and groups like that, to address this legislatively similar to what was done for the 9-11 community, right?
So I thought...
Because it's always about money.
You know, we always have money for war, but we almost never have money to pay for what are the absolutely could have seen coming a mile away consequences of what our veterans face when they come back, right?
We don't take care of them.
When they're out of sight, they're out of mind.
And so my idea was you have all these profiteers, Raytheon, Halliburton, all these groups, make them kick in 10% big.
A contingency in war so that when these guys go home and the government backs away, there is money there to take care of what is the natural damage that's done to these people in the name of fighting for our country.
So that they don't, and their families, I mean these people have to become their own lawyers.
They have to go in front of medical boards and they have no support.
Their families are oftentimes caring for them, whether they have health issues or traumatic brain injury or, you know, other kinds of invisible wounds.
And they're kind of hung out to dry.
joe rogan
Yes.
Not kinda.
Very much so.
You know, the UFC had a program back in the day where we were working with the Intrepid Center for Excellence to work with traumatic brain injury patients and to raise money for them.
And we were doing this UFC fight for the troops to raise money for it.
And what got me sick was, how is it that we have to do this?
Like, how is it that this isn't something that's taken care of in the budget?
Clearly, in advance, you're right.
You're blowing people up and you're not preparing for people to come back injured.
You're sending young, brave women and men to die for their country or risk severe brain damage and you don't have enough money set aside to treat them when they return.
I'm like, that's insane.
jon stewart
Everybody thinks that soldiers come back and they've got health care for life.
joe rogan
They don't.
No, they don't.
jon stewart
You've got a five-year window, but if you get something that they deem was not service-related, so you could have been There's a guy in Texas, we work with his wife Rosie and Leroy Torres, who's literally like, his case wouldn't be, they denied his case in front of the Texas Supreme Court.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's evil.
This absolute intention to deny healthcare, and it goes all the way back to Desert Storm.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
You remember the whole...
jon stewart
To Vietnam.
joe rogan
Yes.
jon stewart
There are people who are still fighting the government over Agent Orange.
joe rogan
Right.
jon stewart
And still being denied.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's crazy.
And the depleted radiation sickness that people were getting from the Iraq war.
jon stewart
Right.
And the guys that went, you know, that K-2 base.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
And I think it was Uzbekistan.
And it was a toxic weight.
Like, these soldiers literally had, like, irradiated tar on their boots.
Sick as shit.
And they can't get, you know, there's blue water.
I'm telling you, like, every war, inevitably, and they're always told the same thing.
Hey, we don't have the science yet.
And, you know, it's going to take us 20 to 25 years on the science.
But you do have the science.
Because you got the science from, like, jet fuel burned at the Trade Center.
So, like, the science is in.
Use that science.
Like, stop fucking with these people and help them.
joe rogan
Yeah, the jet fuel burn at the Trade Center is another excellent example of first responders, right, that were terribly sick, and many, many of them died because of the fumes, and people in the surrounding areas.
In fact, Donna Summers died of lung cancer, and she lived near there.
jon stewart
I don't doubt that it's related.
joe rogan
It could be related, but many people did.
jon stewart
Jimmy Zendroga, he was a cop, and he got really sick.
I mean, Those guys developed the pile cough like a day into the search and rescue, but Jimmy's and Joey, he gets sick, and they kept trying to tell him that, A, first it was in his head, and then it was, it had nothing to do with where you were and working on the pile in 9-11, and then they tried to say, like, it's from snorting drugs.
They fucking, you know, ruin this man's reputation as he's dying.
He dies, they do an autopsy, in his lungs.
Everything you could possibly imagine from a pulverized building.
unidentified
Jesus.
jon stewart
Asbestos, limestone, cyanide.
Like, it was an utter disaster.
And they just keep fighting people.
And they're doing the same thing to these veterans now with the burn pits.
And it's, you know, the whole thing's just got to stop.
There's got to be a presumption.
for these illnesses so that these guys don't have to fight so hard to get.
joe rogan
I think along the same lines we're talking about reform of the police department, there has to be some reform of the healthcare system that deals with veterans because it seems to be just this long history of doing it a certain way to save the most money possible and the idea that these guys are sacrificial anyway.
They're sending them off to potentially die if they come back alive.
They do their very best to not treat them and to not spend any more money on them.
It's sick.
It's amazing we have so many guys that are still patriotic, that still want to go and do this, considering the fact that they're treated so poorly when they return.
jon stewart
Yeah.
And they lose, you know, listen, being in the military is isolating in the first place.
It's just not that, you know, it's only less than 1%, I think, of the population.
Put on top of that, when you get out, you know, you're used to being with a unit, you're used to that camaraderie, you're used to all pulling for the same, you know, working as a team.
Well, now you're removed from your unit, and if you're hurt, that's even further isolating.
You know, and in that moment, to have to then, you're worried about your future, your family's future, and in that moment, when you, when that's when the government should step in and go, hey man, You fulfilled your service to us.
You fulfilled that covenant.
We will fulfill that covenant to you.
We will send that.
We'll do the right thing.
And they do the opposite.
joe rogan
They do the opposite.
jon stewart
Some of the shit is so simple and fair and obvious.
And you do wonder, like, how has this system become so corrupt and corroded that we can't Anymore as a people, do the right thing.
Just do the right fucking thing.
How did we get here?
joe rogan
Well, I think, again, this speaks to what's going on in this country in terms of revolt.
That we realize, like, all this stuff, whether you're talking about the healthcare system, whether you're talking about police reform, whether you're talking about impoverished communities that are stricken with crime and drugs, it's not changing...
Under the normal conditions.
Something has to happen, and something has to happen in a big way to change it.
And all these things need to be addressed, right?
Healthcare of soldiers needs to be addressed, reform of the police, reform of these communities.
It has to be addressed.
If you're going to spend trillions of dollars to bail out these large corporations, you've got to work on these other problems too.
You can't just ignore them because they're not the ones who are funding your campaign.
jon stewart
But that's a huge issue and that's the thing that's got to stop.
Look at even 2008, right?
So we have this enormous economic collapse in 2008. The housing market sinks and these derivative mortgage things go down.
And the world economy grinds to a halt.
Thousands of people lose their jobs, foreclosures all over the place.
So they come in and they pump billions of dollars into the organizations That sunk the fucking ship in the first place.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
That's where the money goes.
And I remember asking the Treasury Secretary at the time, you know, this is a mortgage question, right?
Because the derivatives made it like a geometric problem.
So if they're bundling mortgages and 8% of those mortgages go underwater, it sinks the derivatives market, which is trillions of dollars as opposed to billions of dollars.
So I said, you know, with all that money, what if you just made those mortgages that were underwater hold?
Because the moment you do that, doesn't that fix your derivative problem?
Haven't you just made, and plus then people get to keep their houses?
What he said to me was, you can't do that because of moral hazard. - Huh? - So moral hazard is a theory that you can't incentivize bad behavior.
So what he's saying is the people that took out mortgages on their homes that went underwater, that's their fault.
So you can't bail them out because that would be sending a hazardous message morally about the economy.
So I said, what's the moral hazard?
Of then making the people that actually blew up the economy whole again.
What's that?
How is that not moral hazard?
And he said, the plane was on fire and we had to land it.
unidentified
But they were the ones who lit the plane on fire.
jon stewart
You're rewarding them for that.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've heard both sides of that argument.
I've heard the argument that nothing's too big to fail, let it fail, and then I've heard the argument that if it did fail, it would be so catastrophic.
jon stewart
But I'm saying it wouldn't have failed, so it was a failure because they bundled more.
joe rogan
Yes, oh yeah, they did it all to themselves.
jon stewart
But if you made the mortgages at the base of that, okay?
So let's say 10% of the mortgages were underwater.
So let's say you had a $200,000 mortgage and now the house is only worth $150,000.
So instead of giving a million dollars to AIG at the top, give $50,000 to that mortgage, bring it into line with its value, suddenly that thing's not underwater anymore.
It's like putting ballast into a ship that's sinking.
Put the ballast in, the ship comes up, rather than just saying, alright, we'll buy you another fucking ship.
joe rogan
That almost seems too logical, though.
unidentified
Right?
joe rogan
That's kind of part of what's the problem with all this.
jon stewart
That's what I was saying.
That's moral hazard.
I was just like, I don't even know what to do with that.
joe rogan
Incentivizing bad behavior doesn't count when you're the ones who tank the economy.
It's like what you're talking about today.
If someone tried to say that these small businesses that are going under because of the COVID sanctions, because everybody's been locked down, if those people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it's a great example why that analogy sucks.
Because there's nothing to do, man.
You can't work.
There's nothing.
What do you want them to do?
There's no opportunity.
Everything's shut down.
If you go under at this time, it's not your fault.
It's one of the rare times.
jon stewart
If I'm the government right now, here's something I could do that's like, again, it seems like a simple solution, which is just suspend and extend.
So the country's shut down, right?
What's people's oftentimes biggest worry?
My rent or my mortgage?
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
Suspend and extend.
You know what?
We're going to do a six-month suspend.
And if the landlords need to be helped out, that's where we'll focus.
We'll make sure that the landlords don't go under from having to pay too much in taxes or having to pay too much in repairing.
Attack the problem at its core, which is people's insecurity about they're unemployed.
unidentified
They have to still pay the rent and their mortgage or other bills.
jon stewart
Let's take a big chunk of their nut.
Oftentimes for people, mortgage and rent is one of the biggest nuts.
Just fucking say, like...
Because clearly we have the wherewithal and the money.
We're suspending and extending.
Everybody, like...
Give people a chance to breathe just for a moment.
And for the landlords, I'm not trying to dick them over.
Like, give them some kind of rent, a real estate tax break, or some operating expense.
Keep everybody...
You know what?
It's almost like you're a patient on a ventilator.
Like, Until we get past this moment, because they keep saying, well, we gotta reopen the economy.
We are the economy.
Corporations may be people, but corporations still can't catch COVID. We can!
So, I don't understand why they don't do something that seems simple and addresses a real concern, grassroots, on the floor.
joe rogan
Again, you're speaking too logically.
I think it's just a...
It's such a difficult time, too, politically.
Because the ideas get segmented into left or right, right?
Like, even the ideas of how to address COVID, how to address the economy, how to address all the...
Everything becomes politicized.
And it's...
jon stewart
I mean, that's...
joe rogan
Terrible.
jon stewart
You know, that's unfortunate.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
That's...
It's really unfortunate because...
Well, it's even...
Yeah, it shouldn't be that way, and I'm not sure how it started that way, and it's really unfortunate.
joe rogan
There's got to be more emphasis on testing, and there's got to be more emphasis on showing people how to keep their immune system healthy, and then recognizing people that can't do that, and doing what we can to protect them.
jon stewart
You're going to wear a mask.
I'm Joe Rogan.
He's saying out loud, I'm going to wear a mask now.
joe rogan
I've always been...
I was fucking with Bill Burr to try to get him to rant.
People think I'm really serious about that.
I was like, what, are you going to wear a mask?
And I see Bill over there steaming.
I'm like, here he goes!
Here he goes!
Like, I wear a mask whenever I go out in public because it's the law.
And I don't want anybody yelling at me.
Also, though, when you...
I get tested all the time, too.
On a side note, what?
jon stewart
How great is Burr?
joe rogan
He's the best.
I love him.
He's so funny.
jon stewart
He's so funny and so prolific.
But here's the thing that I almost love even more.
He'll just send me a video of a great drummer that he loves.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, yeah.
jon stewart
I took it up, but he's really good.
But I just love that dude.
unidentified
He's so good.
joe rogan
He's great, and I love getting him wound up.
That's what I was doing with the whole mask thing.
And people think I was really arguing, you shouldn't wear a mask or you're a bitch.
God.
But that's also the problem with soundbites on Twitter.
jon stewart
Yeah, it's, you know, it exists.
It's the content factory.
And, you know, anybody that creates content, you know, then that goes out into the world.
And look, they're looking for eyeballs too.
And that's why I always feel like Like, I take shit, but I can't complain about it, because that's...
joe rogan
Part of the game.
jon stewart
Right, that's part of the game.
It's what I do for a living.
So, like, when people say political correctness, it's overwhelming.
I just say, like, hey, man, it's just other people pushing back and getting to say their shit, and that's exactly what they should be doing.
The internet has democratized, you know, outrage.
And there's more speech now than there's ever been before in the history of the world.
Like we all know, you know, it's like that.
What's the movie with Mel Gibson where he knows what women, what women think?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Right.
jon stewart
So he had ESP.
Twitter and the Internet is just we all have developed ESP.
And now we know what everybody is thinking.
It's all, every day we're just bombarded by what everybody's thinking.
joe rogan
Well, you're also bombarded by the people that spend the most time doing it.
Because there's a lot of mentally unwell people that spend their entire day camped out on Twitter having arguments.
And if you want to venture into that world and risk your consciousness and your health, your literal mental health, by communicating in this really crude manner with text messages and, you know, arguing over semantics with people that you don't even know.
It's a terrible way to exist.
jon stewart
Are you on Twitter?
Do you have a Twitter account?
joe rogan
No, I have a Twitter account, but I don't read it.
jon stewart
You don't read it?
joe rogan
No, I post things on Instagram.
They go to Twitter.
Occasionally I'll post things on Twitter, but I don't read it.
It's just too toxic, man.
I get it.
And I know when I've fucked up, and I know when people are mad at me when it's legit and valid, and I know when they're mad at me for nonsense.
And I am my worst self-critic, so I don't need other people yelling at me.
I know what I did wrong.
I stay clear.
jon stewart
That's a healthy...
I think that's the only approach you can have in this environment.
I think it's a healthy way to look at it.
I always try and keep myself...
You figure when people are coming at you, there's probably going to be something constructive in there.
Sometimes I have the energy to find it, and sometimes I'm just like, I really can't do it.
joe rogan
Yeah, sometimes you can't do it, but yeah, there's value in criticism.
It's very important, but not too much.
It's like anything else.
There's value in a little bit of snake venom.
You develop a tolerance, but if you get a big fat dose, you're dead.
In many ways, it's the same with interacting with people that are upset with you.
There's going to be people that are upset with everybody for no reason.
No matter what the story is in the news, even if it's clear-cut to you and I, there's going to be someone who has a violent opposition to that idea.
It doesn't mean they're right, and it doesn't mean you're right.
It just means people have a lot of different fucking ways of looking at the world, and if you want to exist in conflict, in perpetuity, stay on Twitter, and stay on Twitter all day long, and just argue with people.
I don't want to do that.
And again, it's not that I... I don't have any room for improvement.
It's not that I don't appreciate or accept or recognize the value of criticism because I definitely do.
It's that it's not healthy.
It's not healthy for me.
It could directly affect the kind of content I put out.
It's not good.
jon stewart
That's what I was about to say.
Do you feel like one of the hardest things to do is to maintain your kind of creative barometer so that you don't let those kinds of things When you feel like they're not constructive, pulling you too far to the outrage world or some other things, like to maintain that.
And that's why I think it's good, like what you do in terms of conversation, like you basically say, you know, I'm going to do long form because that, you know, feels like, at least from my perspective, The healthiest form is conversation.
joe rogan
But even in that case, people will take long form, edit things out of context, and then it becomes the same problem that we have with Twitter and with everything else.
You get these little sound bites, these little video clips, and you don't understand the full context of the conversation or what was actually said.
And then people get outraged at that.
You know, we are living in a very strange time, and I believe it's an adolescent stage of communication.
And I think it's going to give...
Our frustrations for this are going to give birth to a better form.
And I think one of the things that podcasts, what it's in response to, the popularity of the long form, is in response to people being upset with like these...
Traditional late night talk show things where there's a window here with one guy on the right and a window here with a guy on the left and there's a person in the center and they're yelling at each other and then you cut to commercial.
And you don't really feel like things got resolved.
So the response to that where people are gravitating...
It's theater.
Yeah.
I think there's the same...
jon stewart
Was it hard for you, you know, when we came up as comics, it was also at that point, like, it was sort of a gladiatorial environment, you know, and I remember, you know, the Boston scene, you know, was always like, that's a tough scene.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
And you'd come up and it was kind of gladiatorial, but you had that audience and you developed kind of that thick skin.
Is it hard to then make that switch?
In your mind to this different form that's so much more considered, so much less about conquering the stage.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
It is about being open.
And is that something that for you, what was the switch for you from those two forms?
Because that's an interesting switch.
joe rogan
Well, in the beginning, there wasn't a very good switch.
You know, it's like one of the reasons why the early episodes sucked.
It's like I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't think anybody was listening.
It was just for fun.
And there was a lot of just hanging out with comics and just doing what comics do.
If we were at a diner somewhere, just talking shit and making each other laugh, but we were doing it and videotaping it.
And then along the way, I started interviewing actual interesting people and talking to them and having conversations and not...
There's a place for comedy, and then I make a really big point in never trying to force comedy into places where it doesn't belong.
I do that also with the UFC. When I do commentary, I'm never funny.
There's no reason to be.
It's not what my job is.
And then when I'm doing a conversation with someone, I just try to talk.
I don't try to be a comic.
I'm a human.
I want to know what they're talking about, and I want to get them to expand upon their ideas as best as they can.
And I want to be engaged.
That's all I'm trying to do.
So it wasn't that was a big transition.
It was that I had to learn how to do this thing that I didn't think was a skill.
I thought that being on the radio or podcasting was just talking.
That's what I thought.
You're just talking.
And then I realized, no, no, no.
You're talking in a way that people want to listen.
You're making it entertaining.
You're keeping your ego in check.
You're moving the conversation along while not being overbearing.
You're not letting people ramble too much where it's boring you.
You've got to figure out how to juice things up and push them and massage them and move them around.
It's a skill, and I didn't think it was a skill.
And like I said, that's one of the reasons why my early episodes sucked so bad.
There wasn't even any consideration to the fact that people were listening.
It was just fun.
We were just doing it for ourselves.
And then along the way, and this also speaks to the value of criticism, I read a bunch of criticism about what was wrong with the podcast.
You know, that we talk over each other, I talk too much, whatever it was.
And I took it to heart.
And I would think about it.
I'd go, okay, I've got to consider that people are listening to this.
This isn't just what I want to say.
It's what I want people to hear.
Just like stand-up, you want the joke to easily enter into a person's mind.
So it's so well-written and so perfectly timed that the audience goes, Jon Stewart's got this.
I'm just going to sit back and let him take my thoughts on a ride.
And that's what really good stand-up is.
I mean, it's one of the reasons why Dave was able to do that 846 special that way, where he has this long, drawn-out story with so many important points, and a few laughs thrown in there, but so engaged.
And he's so...
You just go with him.
You just let him take you.
Just let him take you.
And that's...
Everything, whether it's someone giving a speech or, you know, I mean, even like just almost every conversation that we have.
There's a skill to it that we're not taught.
I mean, you know what it's like to talk to someone where they're not even really talking to you.
They're just kind of waiting for them to talk.
They're waiting for you to finish so they can talk about themselves.
That's a real problem with people and communicating.
And I had to learn how to be a better communicator, really.
jon stewart
It also had to be Authentically you.
Because there is now, like, I think the best measure sometimes of art or of stand-up or those things is when you hear things or see things that are uniquely that person.
Like, nobody could have delivered 846 but Dave.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Perfect.
jon stewart
It's just authentically, uniquely him.
Your voice that you develop authentically, uniquely.
And that's a hard thing to develop.
It's funny because I feel like That's what stand-up helped do for me.
Because when you do that in front of an audience, even I'll give like Boston as an example, you know, when we'd be working Knicks, you'd do that, that run of Knicks is like the Framingham and the other ones, you know, but you go to the one in central Boston first.
And I can remember, I hadn't played The Room before and I was a young comic and I'd just done Letterman, I think.
I'd gotten like a big break.
And so the guys at Knicks booked me on that run to be a headline of my first run on those Knicks properties.
So I came into Knicks and they were just going to throw me up on stage.
And what they did was such a learning experience because you kind of think like, I'm on Letterman.
I'm just going to walk into this place.
I'm coming up from New York, hotbed of comedy.
I'm going to fucking strut my stuff at Knicks.
And they threw up before me I think it was Lenny Clark, Kenny Rogerson, and Sweeney.
And I walked down the room and it was like Dresden.
They had so blown that room out with brilliance.
And then it was like, from New York, a Letterman guy, John Stewart.
And it was like...
They were clubbing a baby seal.
I was just helpless.
Man!
joe rogan
They did that to everybody.
jon stewart
But so wonderfully humbling.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
Because it makes you realize in that moment, like, oh right, I've got a shit ton of work to do.
joe rogan
Yes.
unidentified
Just murder it with brilliant shit.
jon stewart
And it was just like, oh boy.
joe rogan
Yeah, if you want to be humbled, the Boston comedy scene in the late 80s and the early 90s, that was the place to be.
It was a great place to develop, too, though, because it lets you know.
I mean, you never want to be overconfident.
It's one of the worst things you could be in anything.
And you never want to be lazy.
Especially when you're delivering something to people that are actually paying to see you talk.
Right?
Like, man, there's such an important connection that you have to those people.
You've got to do the work.
It's got to be your best version.
And if you're not doing that, and they know you're not doing that, they get angry at you.
It's like, it's the anger that an audience has towards a comic that's bombing is very difficult to describe.
They're mad.
They can do that too.
They can talk too.
Why the fuck are you talking?
That's right.
There's real valuable lessons to that as a comment coming up that you do apply to, whether it's podcasting or hosting any kind of a show.
jon stewart
Yeah, no, there's a fragility to it.
And if you don't stay on top of it, the energy of that room, it is a bear that will get up and walk out of the room if you're not careful.
But it's interesting also that now, so you're known now, Stand-up when you're known versus stand-up when you're not is also a different experience because you walk into a room when they know you and there is, you know, you don't have to be as sharp if you don't want to because of that.
And that's a discipline as well to kind of make sure that you're not coasting on things.
Maybe some goodwill that they had for you based on something else.
joe rogan
That's very dangerous.
That's one of the reasons why the comedy store is so important.
Because when I go there, it's not my crowd.
It's my crowd and Anthony Jeselnik's crowd and Ali Wong's crowd.
There's a lot of people there coming to see everybody.
And you're going on after all these murderers.
So when you're in that kind of an environment, you sort of have to dot your I's and cross your T's.
You've got to do the work.
jon stewart
Are you still really involved?
Because for me, once I started the show and once I had kids, I don't really get to the clubs anymore.
So it almost feels like old-timers day when I show up.
But I wish I could get out there more.
Every night it would be like 8 o'clock and I'd be like, oh shit, I should just drive up to the city and go work the cellar.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, the way I had been setting it up at the store was all my sets would be after 10 o'clock for the most part.
Except rarely.
Rarely I would do an 8 o'clock show.
So everybody would be in bed.
So I'd leave my house and my set wouldn't be probably until 11. So I'd leave my house and everybody would be asleep.
And it was perfect.
And that's also my favorite time to write too.
I would come home from the store and everybody would be asleep.
Fire up a joint and sit in front of a laptop and come up with some ideas.
I had it down to a science before the lockdown.
jon stewart
Right.
Has the lockdown messed with your routine?
joe rogan
Are you a creature of habit?
I mean, for my comedy routine, it certainly has.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm doing my first shows this weekend in Houston.
I don't know what the fuck's going to happen.
I don't know if I know how to do it anymore.
It's going to be very strange.
jon stewart
I think Houston is like, you couldn't go more into the belly of the beast.
joe rogan
Right now, yeah.
jon stewart
It's like being on the surface of Venus.
It's off the charts with this thing.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm going to go on stage with two bottles of Lysol.
You know how girls do that thing where they spray perfume and they walk through it?
I'm going to do that with Lysol on stage.
jon stewart
A little bit on the roof.
joe rogan
I mean, I think it's really critical to strengthen your immune system, and I do a lot of things to do that, and I think that that's something that people need to really concentrate on, and I really wish that our elected officials were talking more about that and having speeches with doctors and...
jon stewart
You're doing the opposite.
You remember Michelle Obama tried to put kale in something, and everybody was like, what the...
I'm sorry, we're going back to tater tots.
unidentified
Fuck that.
joe rogan
I mean, just the science on vitamin supplementation and how critical it is for your immune system, particularly vitamin D, that could literally save lives.
And that knowledge is not secret.
That knowledge is out there.
jon stewart
You did those episodes on the Game Changers with James Woods.
And it was fascinating to watch because I watched that movie.
And, you know, nutrition is also like diet is such an important part of What we do to ourselves that we don't think and especially in a time of COVID where so many people like you say like when you see what this does to people with type 1 diabetes or with other kinds of you know conditions that might be caused from either poor diet or lack of access to you know healthier options and things like that you realize like shit we've put ourselves in a very
unidentified
vulnerable position Yeah, very vulnerable.
joe rogan
Andrew Schultz had a really good point.
He said this pandemic highlighted the vulnerabilities both in our economic system and in our health system, like the way we are as human beings.
Who's vulnerable?
The obese people, people with diabetes, older folks?
I mean, it highlights all these issues where...
We really need to concentrate on for the future.
If you want more people to survive this, there are strategies that can be implemented and we really need to talk to people about just being normal stuff, being well hydrated, making sure you're not dehydrated, well rested.
Teach people meditation techniques.
It's not hard to learn some breathing exercises that have been actually proven to increase your immune function.
It's not hard to teach people about vitamin D and supplementing it if you can't go outside.
jon stewart
So how do you get people then to take action?
Because here's the other thing you remember.
People's lives are hard.
When you're talking about what we talked about earlier, like economic inequality, it's hard to go into an area And be like, so here's what we're going to do.
We're just going to sit and breathe quietly for five minutes.
It's a really difficult, it's like hierarchy of needs.
joe rogan
How do you work into the idea that those types of theories are actually important to the betterment of like Yeah, that's an interesting point, and I think what you have to do is it has to be, first of all, told by people who are doing it successfully.
So people that are doing it, that maybe were struggling with their immune system, If you see someone who is in the situation that you're in currently, and they turned it around...
jon stewart
You already look like that.
joe rogan
Well, not me, but listen, I've been working out my whole life.
I've never stopped.
But if someone is fat, I'm talking from their perspective, and they see some guy who's really thin and chiseled, then it's not going to make sense to them that they could ever be like that.
But if they see someone, there's a lot of...
Really fantastic photos and Instagram and Facebook pages online where you can get inspiration from someone who actually stuck to a diet, actually stuck to an exercise routine, and then speaks really well about how much it improved the way they feel, their emotions, their depression.
All the aspects of their life.
And that's, I think, one of the more, like David Goggins is a great example of that.
I use him all the time because he's this incredibly inspirational guy who is a Navy SEAL. And at one point in time, he was 300 pounds.
He was drinking milkshakes.
And he puts those pictures of himself on Instagram all the time just to let people know, hey, I'm not some alien.
I'm a person who is weak just like you.
I was lazy.
I got fat.
And then I figured out how to train my mind to be disciplined.
And I We've figured out how to be happier.
And I think that that's really important for people to see that we're not in a static state.
We're all in a constant state of improvement and growth, hopefully, or deterioration if you're not careful.
jon stewart
But does that, you know, the thing that I worry about those sometimes is similarly to economic distress.
Does it make a person's health be a function of their virtue?
Does it take something that is beyond a lot of people's control?
Isn't that a little bit of like...
Hey man, if you just pull your pants up, you could do it.
joe rogan
No, it's not.
You know what it is?
I know what you're saying, but it's not.
It's, I did this, and I can show you how I did it, and maybe you can do it too.
That's what it is.
We don't have to look at every success as somehow or another thumbing in the face of people who can't achieve a similar goal.
But there are enough people out there that can.
That we should concentrate on that because I think it'll have a significant improvement on the overall health of us, again, as a community.
And I think this is really how we have to look at the United States and human beings on Earth in general.
We have to look at each other as a bunch of people that could very well be neighbors.
We're a community.
And if you're my friend and you were fat and you were willing to listen, and I used to be fat too, and I can tell you, hey man, this is what I did.
I stopped drinking soda.
jon stewart
There are people that are...
I mean, I understand the point there.
Look, I'm an advocate for plant-based stuff.
I think it's a healthy way to do it.
But obviously, eating is such a personal experience that I hesitate to ever impart that in any other way.
But I just feel like sometimes for people, it's almost more debilitating for that mentality of...
This is how you do it.
You just got to get your shit together and go through this way.
I do think you have to present more options but know that it's maybe more complicated and people can be overweight or whatever and be healthy.
It's not necessarily...
Something that's corrosive to them.
joe rogan
Well, it is, though.
Being overweight is necessarily corrosive.
It's not healthy for anybody.
It's less healthy than being at an optimal weight.
That's what's important.
It gives you some sort of a burden.
Whether that burden is sustainable is debatable.
Maybe for some people it is, for some people it isn't.
Look, some people can smoke until they're 90 and they're fine.
Other people get pancreatic cancer like Hicks and die in their 30s.
It depends wildly on the person.
But the idea that you can be fat and you can be healthy, I think, is a dangerous narrative.
Because you're telling people, listen, don't improve, you don't have to.
You can be healthy and be obese at the same time.
But the medical science does not really support that.
The more weight you lose up to a certain point, if you get to a healthy body mass, your body works better.
It's really simple.
It doesn't tax your immune system as much.
It doesn't tax your heart as much.
It's better for you.
It's better for your joints.
It doesn't mean that we should ignore people that are overweight and pretend that they're not worthy or they're not good folks.
jon stewart
I have a very emotional reaction to that because I feel protective over people.
You're a sweetheart.
joe rogan
It's great.
It's a good thing.
No, it is.
The reason why you're thinking like this is because we're talking...
We're talking about people doing well, and you're like, fuck, what about the people who can't do well?
Let's reach out to them and offer them an olive branch.
Yeah, I get it, man.
You're right.
You're right.
Look, I have very good friends that are morbidly obese, and they don't want to listen, and there's nothing I can do.
I just hug them when I see them, and I hope that one day they come to grips with it and they change.
But they don't have to.
You live this life for a certain amount of time, and if you want to live it eating cake and drinking beer...
That's you.
You do whatever you want.
In the end, we're all going to be on the ground.
It's all pointless.
jon stewart
Wait a minute!
We just had an hour-long conversation about...
Optimistically taking this country and turning it around and got very fatalistic all of a sudden.
joe rogan
Well, that's true.
In the end, we're all dying.
That's how the story ends.
We're all dead.
So the story, what I don't want people to do is suffer and I want people to feel better while they're alive.
And I think that's something that's missed in the message of health improvement.
You will actually have a better experience on earth and it'll help you mitigate stress.
It'll help you have better relationships because you won't be burdened down with a lot of anxiety and stress that literally comes from a physical release of energy.
I look at the body like a battery.
I think that some people's batteries are just overflowing with corrosive material because they never exert it.
They never blow it out.
A battery is a bad analogy, but there's a certain amount of physical requirement I think your body has.
And if you don't give that Let me ask you a question because now this is I'm
jon stewart
wondering, because you're talking about sort of evolving to a place where your body...
And, like, when you had James on, and he was talking about plant-based, do you have moral qualms about meat, or do you not...
Like you said, we're hunters and that.
Is that ever an issue for you, or is it purely a health issue?
joe rogan
There's both things.
There's a health issue.
There is a moral qualm with factory farming.
There's not a moral qualm with hunting.
because i know the reality of the life of a deer if you don't kill that deer it's going to die a horrible death from a wolf or a coyote or a mountain lion or whatever the fuck gets a hold of it it's going to freeze to death it's going you can either die quickly by the hand of a person you respect that life and it'll nurture your body and the bodies of your family our problem is a disconnection more than anything and let me tell you something when the covid lockdown happened i got more requests from friends and more requests for information about hunting and gun ownership
how do i protect myself and how do i feed myself and how do i grow food those were three really big questions that i kept getting from people it's funny i have such a different perspective on it in terms of just the um The relationship between myself and I didn't.
jon stewart
I was a big meat eater.
I was a big like deli guy.
Pastrami and corn beef and all that.
My wife got into rescue and these types of things.
And we ended up with a farm with pigs and goats and sheep and things like that.
And it became untenable for me to make that decision.
You know that sort of that decision of I think you'll be better off If I kill you.
And it became, it was something I could no longer manage once I knew the process of it.
And that was a hard, it's been a very hard process for me.
It's only been about four or five years.
joe rogan
How was your health?
jon stewart
I mean, I'm an old Jew, so baseline, pretty much, we don't age well to begin with.
joe rogan
How old are you now, John?
jon stewart
We age a bit like avocados when you leave them out.
unidentified
I'm 57. I'm 52, so we're in similar boats.
jon stewart
Similar boat.
Yeah.
But, I mean, it's hard to know I feel good.
You know, if you look at markers like cholesterol or blood pressure or those things, it's better.
But like you said, I don't know enough about how the body processes to know if I feel better.
The numbers say I'm better.
But, you know, genetics I'm sure plays a part in it as well.
But the funny thing is, like, I don't even think about it anymore.
I just don't even think about it anymore.
joe rogan
Well, once you get into a custom, and once your gut biome changes, you know, you really get accustomed to whatever you're eating, good or bad, unfortunately.
And that's one of the reasons why people have such a hard time quitting sugar and bread and pasta and things along those lines.
So your body just craves it.
That's what it wants.
When you start eating healthier food, your body does crave that.
jon stewart
You can go off of meat and still be incredibly unhealthy.
Like, you know, you can be vegan and just exist on Lay's potato chips.
unidentified
Right, yeah.
jon stewart
So it is...
And it's a tougher road, and the world is certainly not built for that, and it certainly feels a little bit...
Of a narrower lane that you have to do.
And I also think it's an incredibly emotional topic.
Like, very little that's as emotional and personal as what people put in their bodies and how they eat and what they do.
And I'm always very respectful because I also, I got no leg to stand on, man.
I, like, this is what I'm doing.
It feels better for me, but I, I always say, like, but It's such a personal and individual choice, and everybody's got to do for themselves.
The only thing I would say is, I do think it's important for people to get educated on it, to read up on, like you say, factory farming, or what might be the nutritional cost of it, or what are some of the things that are in it, or what maybe is it going to do to our immunity when we use so many antibiotics.
The meat production.
That's the only thing I say.
Try and educate yourself to how your meal gets to your table.
That's why I'm a huge advocate for local farming and agriculture because those are the people that are just growing their food and they're bringing it to your table.
I find that incredible.
But I also try not to take a position of judgment on people because I feel like that's unfair.
joe rogan
Well, I think that's very wise of you, and I think that there's a lot of people that share your position on animal death, and I think that's one of the more promising aspects of laboratory-created meat, as long as it can be done in a way that's actually going to be healthy for us.
It seems like there's some real science behind that, and they're very, very close to releasing that on a large scale, so it would be actual meat that doesn't come with death, which is really fascinating.
jon stewart
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
jon stewart
You're talking about, like, the one that they had.
I saw, like, it's a tank, and he pulls out, and it's like...
$20,000 for a chicken breast.
joe rogan
They did that, yeah, it was really expensive at one point in time, but they've gotten it down to a burger now.
Like, they can actually make a burger out of this stuff.
And they feel like as this technology improves, they, I mean, essentially flesh, when it's not...
unidentified
If you could still have...
jon stewart
The part of meat that you like, but it came without death.
Do you think you would make that switch, or is that something that...
joe rogan
Well, I certainly would with domestic animals.
The difference between that and hunting, there's a conservation aspect of it.
One thing that leads to protection of wildlife habitat is actually the money that comes from hunting tags and hunting equipment.
There's that.
There's also the type of...
The relationship you have with your food when you actually work very hard and hunt it and kill it is very different than buying food from a store.
And I would say in a similar way, growing.
jon stewart
Whole Foods.
When you go to Whole Foods, sometimes you really got to stop that.
There's a lot that goes into the trip to Whole Foods these days.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's hard to find a good parking spot.
jon stewart
That's right.
joe rogan
Yeah, I get it.
Growing your own food in your backyard is very satisfying, too.
And I would say to people, that's a microcosm.
It's a very micro form of what it feels like to hunt an animal and then eat it and feed your family.
If I shoot an elk, I eat it literally for a year.
So one animal death equals a year of my meals.
You know, there's also the moral high ground position.
You know, I think a lot of people love to look at the moral high ground of eating vegetables and only eating vegetables as being a superior way to live their life.
And that's a good decision.
I understand where you're coming from.
I understand that there's people that look at life very differently than me.
They maybe don't have this sort of fatalistic perspective, even though it's respectful.
I have a very fatalistic perspective when it comes to just all organic organisms competing for resources and for life.
These animals, I mean, I've run into them when they've killed each other.
I've seen animals that have been taken out by other animals.
I've come across their bodies torn apart by wolves in the woods.
It's a wild, wild thing out there, man.
man.
And I think we're so insulated by it in the, in our culture of today, that it's one of the reasons why veganism and all these things are becoming so attractive.
I would hope that along with that, we're going to be nicer to each other, that we're going to be, we're going to grow to be a kinder human race.
I really hope that.
jon stewart
Yeah, because I think it's about consideration.
You know, for me, I think it was, there was a certain part of consciousness that I never ascribed to animals to some extent.
I mean, it's funny because I always thought of myself as, oh, you know, I love animals.
I, you know, always had dogs and cats and, you know, you find a bird with a broken wing and you stick him in a box and two weeks later he flies away and you're a hero.
But I never really ascribed, like, individuality to them and I think that was the change for me was interacting with In an individual way.
joe rogan
On your farm.
jon stewart
On the farm.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
You know, I always tell my wife, once we named them, but it's fun.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jon stewart
You watch them, like, they'll play.
And it just changed my relationship to what I wanted it to be with animals.
And it just made it untenable in that moment for me.
But I truly understand, like, That that is a really individualized, personalized experience that I made.
And like I said, I would love it for people to make that connection because I think it's profound.
There is something about that connection for people that when they do see it, you know, it's funny, I'll talk about the pigs and they'll be like, you know, Where they just eat everything.
They're like, no, they're really playful.
They're smart.
joe rogan
They're like dogs.
jon stewart
They do belly rubs.
Yeah, it's...
But that was shocking to me.
I didn't know that.
I just thought, oh, it's like a blob.
But they're beings.
joe rogan
We're talking about nature, John, and there's nothing natural about a farm.
That's part of the problem.
I mean, it's an animal prison and they're domesticated because we give them food and we kind of remove the natural fear that they would have of any...
Eyeball-facing-forward predator, which is what we are.
jon stewart
You know what's interesting about, too?
Their health.
Having our farm with sheep and goats and pigs, and they're all rescues, is like having a nursing home.
You can't believe the fragility of factory-farmed animals.
They are poor.
To be sick, like pneumonia, like genetically designed to gain too much weight for their legs.
It really is, you know, the island of Miss Victoria, like they've genetically modified or done whatever they've done.
And the health of Yeah, that's why I prefer hunting.
joe rogan
If you're eating an animal that's a wild animal, you're eating an athlete.
I mean, they're sinewy and thick and they're strong and they've survived.
And they're so much more nutrient dense.
When you're talking about factory-farmed animals, you're talking about, I mean, factory-farmed animals is the worst version of what human beings are capable of.
They were capable of ignoring suffering to the point where we lock them all in warehouses, their piss goes down in a tunnel and fills a small lake up, and they've flown over these places with drones.
It's horrific, right?
The pig farms in particular, they're horrific.
But when you're talking about what you're doing on your farm, of course you can't eat those things.
They're your pets.
That would be...
I mean, you're naming them and feeding them and touching them.
jon stewart
But I extrapolate that now.
So I think what happened was I went, oh, right.
That's in the same way that, like, I love my dog.
But if you have a dog, I wouldn't kill your dog.
Because I look at dogs now in a different way.
So I think I extrapolate to...
The animal kingdom, in a way, a different...
I feel like because of my wife, and she's a much kinder, smarter version of me, so because of her kind of showing me that relationship and experiencing myself, it's just changed the way that I view it.
And it kind of takes us back around to the earlier part of the conversation, because when you think about animal agriculture and you talk about those hog farms, where are they located?
They're located in the poorest neighborhoods.
They locate, and the environmental damage that they do is also damage that's done to poor rural communities that live around them.
Now, I'm not suggesting that there's not economic, there's an economic incentive and an industry around it, and certainly not, you know, you don't just end industries, but reform, again, like, it's sort of like, uh, George P. Bush said this.
He was talking about Donald Trump.
He goes, I'm going to support Donald Trump because Donald Trump is the only thing standing between America and socialism.
And I was like, the only thing standing between America and socialism is an inability to meaningfully reform capitalism and its more damaging effects.
And if we can't do that, then the people take to the streets.
I think reform, like Bernie was talking about and those other guys, that will save capitalism.
That will save democracy by showing that we recognize that there is collateral damage to the systems that we use to gain wealth and to gain power.
And if we can reform those systems meaningfully for the people who suffer most terribly under them, we save it.
But if we can't, The Bastille gets stormed.
That's just what Kennedy said.
If you make peaceful evolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable.
So I think at some point, we have to demonstrate the will and the stamina to be able to attack these problems.
And that's why I'm voting Joe Rogan.
joe rogan
Ha!
Yeah, no, I think everyone agrees, but everyone feels like their hands are tied.
And again, I think that's one of the reasons why these protests and just this whole explosion after George Floyd has been so transformative.
Because people recognize that this is a real moment of change.
And of course opportunists and looters and all kinds of other crazy shit happened along the way.
But it speaks to the fact that there's so many people in the street.
It speaks to this, like we can actually do something now.
We've got momentum.
Let's keep it moving.
jon stewart
Are you hopeful?
joe rogan
Yes, I'm always hopeful.
I'm very optimistic, even though I have a fatalistic perspective.
jon stewart
It's the exact same.
People say to me, in these terrible times, how do you remain hopeful?
And I'm like, because better people outnumber shitty people.
joe rogan
They do.
jon stewart
That's just the truth.
Sometimes we're powerless, sometimes we may act out of fear or resource guard, whatever that is.
Better people outnumber shitty people by a long shot.
joe rogan
And we're in an adolescent stage of our evolution as a civilization.
It's growing and changing.
There's never been a civilization like us today, and we're growing and changing to try to suit our real sensibilities and to try to get better at this fucking thing and not just accept this old, crazy, corrupt structure that's existed forever.
Right.
jon stewart
Thank you.
You've put a little fire in my belly.
Good.
unidentified
Beautiful.
jon stewart
I've been coming around doing the thing, but I've really enjoyed the conversation.
joe rogan
Listen, man, I always enjoy talking to you.
I appreciate you very much.
And I don't get to see you enough.
jon stewart
Alright, my friend.
And hopefully when this all ends, everybody can gather again at the store and do a good set and talk some shit with each other and have some fun.
joe rogan
Let's do it, brother.
Take care, my friend, and good luck with your film.
Irresistible is out when?
unidentified
Now?
joe rogan
Tomorrow.
I'll watch it.
John Stewart, ladies and gentlemen.
jon stewart
Thank you, my brother.
joe rogan
Thank you, sir.
unidentified
Bye.
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