Kyle Kulinski and Joe Rogan dissect media bias, exposing how Biden’s 2012 debate sharpness (vs. Paul Ryan) contrasts with later dismissals of his cognitive struggles, while Trump’s policies were framed as character flaws—yet both critique systemic failures like healthcare price-gouging and NAFTA’s job outsourcing. Kulinski warns direct democracy risks mob rule, citing wolf reintroduction backfiring in Colorado, but argues UBI and Medicare for All could be funded by redirecting military spending and corporate subsidies. They also clash over COVID origins, with Rogan mocking partisan science, like Fauci’s mask flip-flops and Disneyland’s lax protocols, while Kulinski defends lab leak theories despite backlash. The episode reveals how tribal loyalty—whether in politics or combat sports—blinds followers to flawed systems, from cults to media narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
We were talking about it afterwards, and we were trying to put our finger on why I think it was the best, and I'm interested to hear what your thoughts on this are.
But I think you said at the beginning of the show, I am fucking high as balls right now.
We'd probably put you in the moment a lot more and then makes it so that, like you said, you were exercising some things and going down some paths you wouldn't normally go down.
And I think that was one of the things that made it great because I know that whenever I'm less coached myself when I'm about to do a segment and talking about politics, it always comes off better than when I'm very rigidly Going through the motions, you know what I mean?
So there's something about the off-the-cuff thing, which it felt like you were very off-the-cuff, that really the room was locked into you and you were doing a great job.
Yeah, I think I'm working out stuff, so I have bits that are already formulated, but some of them I'm not really happy with, so I was trying to figure out different ways to do them, and that's what I was doing last night.
It's just fucking around and trying to figure out new ways to talk about things.
I'm curious, what percentage of comedy do you think is just delivery?
Because there were a couple people who had good material, like if you write the jokes down, the jokes are good, but then with the delivery, there was something off about it, and they were either rushing through it, or there wasn't confidence behind it, and it just fell flat.
And so it makes me feel like...
Like Tony Hinchcliffe, for example, I was telling you this last night.
He's like...
He's a master at how he delivers it because it's so confident but also calm and deadpan that it just lands.
When he talks, it lands.
And then there's other comedians where they have to be at that higher level of energy in order for it to land.
You know, you always used to say Sam Kennison was one of your favorite, and for a little bit he was on top of the world comedy.
It's interesting that the delivery seems to be almost the majority of the material.
It's not even about the words, it's about how you say the words.
Yeah, I feel like I learned that lesson the hard way when I was the loud mouth annoying kid in college talking about politics and debating the teacher.
But what's interesting about me, and people are always surprised when they hear this, is that I'm actually probably the most introverted person you've ever met in your life.
I do talk for a living, but the thing is, I get more energy and more happiness from just being alone than I do when I'm with people.
When I'm with people, it's like a drain on my energy and I need to get away and relax.
But when I'm by myself, I have endless amounts of energy.
And that's, you know, according to some psychologists, that's the definition of an introvert.
Even for my show, I mean, I have two different shows, Secular Talk and Crystal Kyle and Friends, but for Secular Talk, which was, you know, the original, all I'm doing is monologuing for two and a half hours.
And if you're able to monologue for two and a half hours, you actually need to be somewhat introverted because I have nobody to bounce off of.
So I just got to go in my own mind and like branch off of other things I say.
And so it surprises people when they hear that.
But yeah, I know how to talk, but I'm very introverted.
It's funny because for me, it feels like the opposite.
So when I'm talking on my own and monologuing, I could just go.
When I have one other person I'm talking to, like us right now, that's still pretty comfortable and relatively easy.
Then when I get to three and you actually have to talk for one third of the time, I struggle with that because there are times like, I want to jump in here, I want to jump in here.
Yeah, there's a lot more to it than people would guess.
So, yeah, when I do my podcast with Crystal and we're interviewing our guests, it's sometimes, it took me a while to get used to it before I could, like, sort of relax and know when to talk.
Whereas when I'm on my own, I just go.
Or when I'm talking to you, it's relatively smooth as well, you know?
Well, I feel like when you think about late night talk shows or any of the things in traditional media that we've been exposed to that were people interviewing people, they didn't have to develop that skill.
Unless you're talking about maybe Charlie Rose or someone who did fairly...
Diane Sawyer or some of the people that did like longer form, Barbara Walters, longer form interviews.
I don't know how that format ever really took off, because through today's eyes, it just looks like an inferior product and viewing experience, where you have, you know, two people sitting there, like the way David Letterman or Jay Leno used to do it, and that's not a knock on them personally, it's just the format of the show, it's a contrived conversation in a three or four minute soundbite, and then, you know, you cut to the fucking band, and then you cut to the audience and see grandma like, ah!
It just seems so contrived and so fake.
And when you compare that to today with podcasts, even if I don't necessarily agree with whoever the podcaster is, whether it's political or comedy or whatever, you still get something that's more raw.
And just the fact that it's more raw lands more because it feels more real.
Like, it's a normal kind of a conversation, whereas a Tonight Show type deal, where someone's at the set, I mean, all that stuff is really stolen from Steve Allen.
Ernie Kovacs, he started in 56. So Steve Allen started The Tonight Show in 1954, and it went on until 1957. Then Ernie Kovacs only did it for a couple of months.
There was a theater right down the street from my friend Eddie's house.
He used to live in West Hollywood.
And it was always the hardest of hardcore porn.
Gay porn that they were playing there.
And it was all like...
Black poles white holes like that kind of shit and it's like that's what was on the marquee You know the boys of summer and you know you'd have like all these guys like wearing Bikinis like hugging on each other and you would drive by it like I would always laugh at the different titles of the So here's a question.
But it's funny to me that like, and they also have those porn star expos, and there's people who follow these porn stars in a way that's like, they base their identity around it.
Like there will be porn stars who are very niche famous, and they have a line of dudes who are like a thousand long, who are just waiting to get their one moment.
Imagine if you're that gal and you got to take a picture with these guys and they put their hands on you and grab you and some of them probably have jizz in their hands.
I wonder how big they really are, though, because it's, I mean, still, you feel socially like a lot of that stuff is underground, but is it really underground?
And people don't feel, you know, I mean, credit to them, but people don't feel, like, weird going in there and being seen at them and being around other people who are like, hey, I'm fucking horny.
He's legitimately falling apart, and it's really sad.
You know what's really weird, though, is the media is, first of all, the left-wing media completely ignoring how odd it is the way he behaves.
Like, the one nine-year-old girl that was sitting there with her legs crossed, like, look at her over there, look at her.
Like a 19-year-old girl with her legs crossed.
Like, what the fuck are you saying?
Like, what is that?
But then they'll, like, pretend things are happening that aren't.
Like, Glenn Greenwald called it out today on Twitter.
I was reading his Twitter feed.
Some guy was talking about how...
Putin and Biden shook hands and then how Putin looked away and then Biden's looking him in the eyes as if he's trying to say that in any way Putin It's scared of Joe Biden.
That Joe Biden is like dominating Putin.
Like, what if bizarre...
Like, and Glenn described it perfectly.
Like, go to Glenn Greenwald's Twitter, because it's so strange.
Because they do this thing where these world leaders, they shake hands and they look at the camera.
And they shake hands and they look at the press.
And so in that moment...
Biden had forgotten to look at the press.
And he's making it seem like Biden's staring him down.
He's showing him what a real man's like.
It's like a bizarre fantasy.
Like, almost like a pro wrestling thing.
Like, you know that you can't possibly believe what you're saying is true.
That Putin, who's a fucking straight-up killer.
Literally.
And a judo black belt.
Who's the fucking head of the Soviet Union, well, whatever.
So it's interesting because this is why people hate the media, right?
Everybody feels like they're arguing more from a narrative than they are just sort of objectively describing what's happening.
And with Biden, it's particularly weird because early on in the Democratic primary, when the media was convinced it's not going to be Biden, it's going to be Pete Buttigieg, or it's going to be Kamala Harris, or it's going to be, you know, whoever, fill in the blank with whoever imploded and was terrible.
They actually were open and honest about the fact, for example, that Joe Biden's sort of sundowning and he's not all there and he can't really complete full sentences.
So they actually were the ones who brought it up in debates with him, for example.
Julian Castro very famously was like, do you even know what you just said like five seconds ago?
Even though, you know, I was the biggest Bernie supporter out there and I was like, here's a compilation of Joe Biden clearly having some mental issues.
And so it was just incredibly dishonest.
And to your point on...
Yeah.
Vladimir Putin's puppet.
Yeah, you know, and they're actually incorrect for both of those things.
So in terms of what Trump was doing, Trump bombed Syria, who's Russia's top ally, Trump rejected this pipeline called the Nord Stream pipeline, which would have greatly helped Russia, Trump armed Ukrainian rebels on the ground who are fighting Russia, Trump did a NATO buildup on Russia's border.
Now, I don't agree with those policies.
But those policies are incredibly hawkish and raise tensions with Russia.
Now, in the case of Biden, Biden actually just approved the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is a pipeline that's going to greatly help Russia because it makes it so that Russian oil and gas is going to be used in Germany now.
And so that's a very peaceful move.
That's not hawkish.
That's not raising tensions.
So he's basically giving Putin something that Putin wants, which again, I actually agree with that.
I see no problem with the pipeline, but they're framing it as if like, Joe Biden, he's so weak and he's, you know, Vladimir Putin, or excuse me, Joe Biden is so strong and he's dominating Vladimir Putin.
There is a backlash to it, but some of this stuff lands.
I saw a great Pew poll the other day.
when it came to donald trump it was like over 70 percent of the time they talked about him they would talk about his like character and leadership qualities or lack thereof yeah and so when that's how you're talking about the person you can say whatever the fuck you want because what does that even mean let me talk about this person's character it's subjective somebody could say i think he's got great character somebody could say i think he's got terrible character so it was always out of the realm of policy right and then that same poll
it was like 60 or 65 percent of the time when they talked about biden they talked about policy so it's it there was this huge dichotomy in how they they discussed the presidents and obviously the ones who they like they'd go a little softer on and when it came to trump and they despised him they would talk about And the thing that drives me crazy, Joe, is that there are a lot of ways to go after Trump that are actually very intelligent that I would agree with.
When you stick to policy, I disagree with him on almost everything when it comes to policy, but they didn't do that.
They had to, and I said this too with the Bernie debate as well, I really, and this is all speculation, I just want everybody to know, I have no facts on this, I'm talking out of my ass.
But yeah, I think he was on some sort of upper that allowed him to be sharp.
So I had to be probably high school age, maybe a little bit younger than that.
I started reading Noam Chomsky.
I started reading Richard Dawkins.
I got really into...
You know, it's interesting because I always sort of...
Even though I'm on the left, I always sort of had a...
A wide variety of media stuff that I took in.
And so I remember when I was younger watching Bill O'Reilly and being like fascinated that his delivery was so compelling, but the substance was fucking dumb and terrible.
Arguing for war, making shitty points, but I'm like, this guy's a fucking compelling speaker.
And you hear this argument from a lot of people, this idea that there's so much complexity in the universe, but there's so much order as well in the universe, that like, well, how can this come out of nothing?
It's impossible for this to come out of nothing.
You know, there's plenty of people who believe that.
Yeah, there's a great counter-argument to that that I found really compelling, a counter-argument to the God point.
Like, if God created everything because everything's so complex and needs to have a creator, then that God who created everything would need to be infinitely more complex than the thing that they created.
So then you're just passing the buck and saying, well, now was there a super God who created the God?
And then was there a super, super God who created the super God?
I don't think it is, just like he's saying with Bill O'Reilly.
Like, there's a representative asking if the...
The Forest Service or land management can change the orbit of the moon so that climate change can be alleviated.
unidentified
The Forest Service and the BLM, you want very much to work on the issue of climate change.
I was informed by the past director of NASA that they have found that The Moon's orbit is changing slightly, and so is the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
We know there's been significant solar flare activity.
And so, is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the Moon's orbit or the Earth's orbit around the Sun?
Obviously, that would have profound effects on our climate.
One of the theories as to how we started to exist is some sort of meteor or whatever coming from Mars and landing here in some primordial soup, sparking some sort of biological organism.
So that would mean we're all technically Martians, if that's true.
Paul Stamets explained it to me in a way that I will not be able to recreate, but that the psilocybin mushrooms, maybe it was Dennis McKenna, psilocybin mushrooms in particular are so unusual that they're not connected to any other life form on Earth, like in a direct way.
I mean, so there's a lot I want to ask you about psychedelics.
Because, you know, I was telling you before the show that...
The last time we spoke, I told you I'm notorious for getting way too high and feeling paranoid, and I would say that 50 or 60% of the times in my life that I smoked weed, I didn't do it a lot, but, you know, whatever, 20 or 30 times, and at least half the time, I felt really paranoid, to the point where I'd be, like, curled up in the fetal position on my bed, afraid that something's gonna happen, and it's like, what am I fucking afraid?
I'm totally fine, I don't know why I'm afraid, but I was just afraid!
Yeah, so what I would feel is the most prominent thing that happened every time I did it is I would forget everything that happened in the day previously to that point.
So whereas previously I'd have some sort of subconscious map of my whole day and where I was throughout the day, it made it so that that was all gone.
And now I was just in the moment in the here and now.
The other thing it did is, I describe it as heady.
It made me very analytical, but analytical in the moment, where I was thinking of things I wouldn't normally think of.
And other than that, it's sort of like, Relaxed me.
And it also makes, I feel like it makes touch feel different.
You feel a little calmer, a little more connected to things.
You feel like a little alleviation in anxiety.
There's some work that's been done in the past.
God, I can't remember the scientist's name, but McKinney used to bring him up all the time.
That showed an increase in visual acuity and edge detection, meaning when people were on low doses of psilocybin, you can detect, like you see I have two parallel lines and one deviates slightly, you would be able to tell quicker with psilocybin than you would in sobriety.
Because if you were talking to a neuroscientist and you describe the effects of psychedelics, they would probably say something is severely perturbing your visual cortex.
It's involved With all these chemicals and you're getting this distortion, you're getting this hallucination, and it feels amazing because, you know, you're going...
It seems real because it's like these compounds are affecting the actual visuals that you receive, especially when you close your eyes.
You see these wild, crazy, like, Egyptian iconography and weird, crazy stuff, but...
A hardcore cynic would say, this is just because a chemical is perturbing your consciousness.
And it's just whatever exists normally that interprets the world around you, now it's interpreting through this stuff that's not supposed to be there, and this stuff has a wild reaction.
Now, if you were more, I would say open-minded, but really the word is probably like true believer.
That's the better expression.
Like some people go, this is a chemical gateway to enlightenment and spirituality.
I'm like in the middle.
I'm like, I don't know.
I don't know what's happening, but...
Here's my thought on it.
If there was a thing that you could do, like a doorway you could go into or a pill that you could take, like imagine if, you know, angels came down from heaven and they said, listen, we have a pill that you can take any time you want to experience divine wisdom.
And it's real.
You'll experience divine wisdom.
You'll be in the presence of God and pure love.
And all of the souls from all of the people that have ever lived will caress you with wisdom and honesty and knowledge, and then you'll come back down to normal and exist in normal life.
The experience you would have is exactly the same as the experience you would have if you're on a heavy dose of psilocybin.
So whether or not it's real is super subjective, because you're talking about an experience that's absolutely happening.
But is it real?
Well, what's real?
We look at real in terms of like this coffee mug is real.
If I put it on a scale, it will register.
If it's full, it'll be heavier.
This pen is real.
This table is real.
I can move it around.
You're real.
I shake your hand.
I give you a hug.
We're real.
But that's only like physical experiences that are tactile and measurable here on, you know, conscious earth.
This experience that you have when you're on psychedelics is insanely vivid.
You are taking it in.
Something is happening.
Even if that something is non-material, and even if that something exists only in your imagination, It still is real.
It's a real experience.
It's almost like you're splitting hairs.
Whether or not you're actually encountering wise entities from another dimension, or whether or not you're just out of your fucking mind on mushrooms.
The same experience occurs.
And when you come back, you do have this sense that you have been in the presence of something far wiser than you.
It's exposed all of the things about you that perhaps you're ashamed of or maybe you're lying to yourself about or shielding yourself from Or maybe you're too hard on yourself and it wants to embrace you with love.
Maybe it allows you to look at some of the anxieties maybe you're carrying around and say, these are unnecessary.
And maybe it allows you to look at the impact that the world, the human beings are having on the world.
That's one thing that comes up over and over again, particularly on psilocybin, is that people have this Sense of that humans are destroying the world.
It's almost like you get these visual images of pollution and strain on the Earth's ecosphere and strain on all the ecological environments, whether it's the ocean or the jungle and people, these wild visions of the horrible things the Earth is doing.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting to me because you talk to some people, I talk to a lot of people, and they're like, this just flat out changed my life completely.
Like, I used to feel like this, now I feel like this.
I used to have this outlook on life, my outlook has totally changed, you know, it helped me shed some anxiety or depression or whatever it might be.
There's a lot of people in that camp.
And then...
There are people who've had, like, bad trips on various psychedelics, and so I wonder what, does it really just come down to the comfort level of the setting that you're taking it in that would determine whether or not you have a bad trip or whether or not you have, like, a profound life-changing experience?
I think set and setting is something that people always emphasize because I think it is important.
Set and setting and going into something with an intention.
Like maybe going into something with an intention of like maybe you're over anxious.
Or maybe you're dealing with like a heavy-duty life decision.
You're trying to figure out what's the correct path, which way to go.
You're at a crossroads.
And so going into it with an intent and going into it and experiencing it in the right setting can have a profound effect.
But I think another part of what affects people when it comes to bad trips is the ego and whether or not you choose to try to control it.
You know, it's kind of the same thing with weed.
But weed is a much more mild example of it.
When you get too high and you're like, oh my god, I'm so high, and then you start freaking out.
If you can stop yourself from freaking out, you can control your anxiety during those experiences, especially if you have a lot of experience doing it.
If you've gotten that high a bunch of times, you can like, oh, been here before, know what to do, just relax, you're going to be fine.
But those mushroom experiences and DMT in particular, they're so bananas that if you try to control them, you're fucked.
You cannot control them.
I've seen people freak out on psychedelics because their ego was trying to control the situation.
Yeah, they're trying to tap out of that mindset that they're in at the moment.
I think I'm generally a happy person.
But I guess there is a little bit of a fear that if I go too deep on any of these psychedelic substances, that I'm gonna dig something up that perhaps is like really buried deep down that I don't even know that I'm hiding.
So let me just give you a random example here.
There was one time I had a dream, and every, like, the dream was, you know, I don't want to get gross or anything, but it was a particular kind of dream.
Right in front of me, just whatever the scariest face of a demon you can imagine is, like that.
They changed to that.
And I remember being so scared that I woke up in a cold sweat, and I was scared for like an hour in the conscious world, and I kept thinking to myself, How the fuck was that buried in there?
Like, what is that?
I didn't know that was somewhere in my mind.
Like, I had no idea where that came from.
Because I normally don't have scary dreams.
I normally don't have sex dreams.
I don't have anything like that, right?
So I guess the thing I'm afraid of with the psychedelic substances is like, am I going to get the equivalent of that bad dream if I uncover, if I go too deep and I uncover something that actually is bothering me?
And do I even want to do that?
Because if I view myself as generally happy, which I do, then you can see where my drug preferences now come from.
I like uppers.
I like downers.
I like to tweak my mood a little bit.
But to just go into a different dimension is like a really scary thought.
Well, I'm not a dream analyst, but if I was, I would analyze that and say, you're probably worried about getting really close to someone who turns out to be a fucking nightmare.
That you may have some, like, either some memories or some experiences with people in the past where, you know, like, sometimes in a relationship, a person presents themself as one thing, and then the relationship gets intense and hot and heavy, you move in together, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh my god, I live with a psycho.
And you didn't know, right?
That's happened to a friend of mine.
He had a really hard time getting her out of the house.
They got too quick, they went too fast, and the next thing you know, you're living with a psychopath.
And you're like, I gotta get the fuck out of here.
And I think he wound up moving out of his own house.
Crazy story.
But anyway, more people have had experiences where you think this relationship's gonna go one way, and then as time goes, how many people...
You know, like that's that old Billy Joel song, The Stranger.
You know, it's like kind of based on that, like that you get close to people and as you get close to them, you know, they take off the mask and you find out what they're like.
So you like, you're a busy guy.
You're also a very ambitious person and you're very involved in your work.
And I think most people that have a very involved career and they have a There's a lot going on.
They're terrified of some massive distraction, some massive monkey wrench that gets thrown into the gears and fucks up their life, and it happens to people.
And it's funny because, you know, at the time I had that dream, I was single and had been single for a very long time.
Now I'm not, and I'm the happiest I've ever been.
So, you know, it's weird because that dream came at a time when there was seemingly nothing that could...
Because I wasn't...
Not only was I not with anybody, I wasn't even looking for anybody.
And so for that dream to hit me at that time, that gets back to the point about psychedelics, which is I'm afraid there might be something there if I go too deep that I'm going to uncover.
And then I don't know...
Is there any putting that genie back in the bottle if I go down that path?
You know what I mean?
Which is why a micro-dose I think is a good idea.
You start with a micro-dose, see how you feel, dip your toe in the water, and then take it from there.
And maybe you were worried that one day they would find you, and you would be so busy with your work that you wouldn't be paying attention to all the signs, and then they would, getcha!
Yeah, it's funny, because I had that same thought with my friend's dog one time, because it just felt like there was almost like a weird connection, like, he was thinking like a human.
And then I remember the day after that, I'm sitting in the living room, and the dog, like, brings me a fucking dead, decapitated raccoon and puts it at my foot.
And I'm like, I was a fucking idiot for thinking you're like a human.
And it's interesting how generally cats have a very different disposition than dogs.
Like, your average dog is much more, you know, outgoing and jovial, and your average cat is much more, like, independent and, like, pessimistic, you know?
It's not domesticated like the way, you know, a fucking, an actual dog is, but it's more calm than a wolf you'd meet on the mountain because it has a relationship with you.
It says right there, only the blue light makes it out.
Baboon's butt tissue is arranged somewhat like the illustration above, so that blue photons are reflected and all of the other photons, like the red ones, are absorbed.
Only the blue light makes it out and gets into our eyes.
No, but he's an expert in a lot of things, but his main course, main specialty is he believes that in earlier tribal societies, before we understood lines of paternity, that human beings engaged in polyamorous relationships.
And that there wasn't possession.
And then as soon as a male recognized, that's my kid, then it became a problem.
And then they wanted, you know, this is my woman, that's my baby.
But before, people just mated with each other and bred with each other.
And it also is a way that they bonded together.
And he cites some pretty interesting statistics and some pretty interesting facts.
about human beings in general like fighter pilots like a lot of fighter pilots would wife swap and they think that one of the reasons why they did that was not just they were bored or they're kinky but there was this real recognition that perhaps they could die And they love their wife and they wanted someone to love her the way they love her.
And the way to do that, to ensure that, was to have these sort of open relationships.
You know, I don't know because I don't know to what extent how we are now is nature-driven versus nurture-driven, specifically in the realm of sex.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's possible that modern society functions the way it does when it comes to sex and marriage because it's really just all social convention and these bullshit rules we made up and it's tied to, like, Christianity and property rights and all that.
But it's also possible that, you know, maybe there were people, even when they were having sex with other people's wives and whatnot, maybe there were people in those tribes who were like, no, I sort of want one person, and I want that one to be my own.
So I don't know.
I don't know.
The funny thing is, I feel like human beings have both instincts.
And so it's really like, almost like pick which one wins out, which one is more powerful, which one do you feel like is the correct one for you.
I have to admit, I've never thought too much about this stuff, but my instinct is always, especially when it comes to people's jobs and people's well-being, it's like everybody pump our fucking brakes, and let's have some regulation around how much these robots and these machines can take over.
I mean, isn't, like, truck driving the number one job in the United States of America, and now we're getting to the point where they could just have a fucking robot do it?
Real close.
I mean, we're going to be at the point, eventually, where, like, 70 or 80 percent of the economy It could just be overtaken by AI and overtaken by robots, and there's no way we can do that and have it go smoothly unless we do the thing that Stephen Hawking said, which is, you have to do a radical redistribution of wealth, because you can't have 80% of the population with fucking nothing, and then the robots doing all the work and giving all the money to the top 1%.
Yeah, Hawking said, before he passed away, he said something along the lines of, We can either have a utopia or a dystopia in the future.
It all depends on what we do with this technology.
So if we take the technology and harness it for the well-being of everybody...
So in other words, if you have robots assigned to people and they do your work for you and then you get the benefits of the robots' work and you have a relatively equal distribution...
It doesn't have to be fully equal.
We're not talking anything crazy here.
But relatively equal distribution...
That'll make it so we avert a worst-case scenario.
If you don't do that, if you don't do a radical redistribution of wealth and have good rules and laws along with the technology coming along, then you're gonna have...
I mean, we already have worse income and wealth inequality than the fucking Gilded Age right now, and it's only gonna get worse.
It's only gonna...
I mean, right now, what is it, 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined?
I wonder if, ultimately, I mean, we're really attached to the idea of competition.
We're really attached to it, you know, because it's what propels It's what propels the genome, right?
It's what propels human beings in terms of like their ability to secure a successful mate, or to secure a great income in their job, or in their ability to transcend the current state of their existence in terms of like their Financial situation or where they live and you can you could actually work hard and you can actually get a better existence So we're really attached to this idea and it's also It's
the way we separate from the pack But as we evolve, and we are clearly evolving, something's going on, and I think our real steps of evolution are going to come in the form of some sort of embracing of technology, some sort of an integration with technology, whether it's a Neuralink-type deal or something along those lines.
But we're so rigidly connected to the idea of competition, like that is life.
But isn't life A lot of things, but the competition thing seems- Yes, that's the point.
And this is coming from a person who's very competitive and have been involved in competition my whole life.
I'm not knocking competitive people, because I think that's what a lot of people do.
A lot of the knock on competition and a lot of the knock on meritocracy comes from lazy people, and that's a real problem, because their knock on competition is that they suck at it.
Because they suck at it, they want to knock it down.
I'm trying to look at it objectively and say that I think that it's a core component of who we are and what we are.
I mean, that's why the deer have the antlers and they smash into each other during the rut.
They're trying to have competition and to win because they want their genes to pass on.
I mean, we could see the archetype.
We could see that the patterns exist all throughout nature with fucking beetles and squirrels throwing each other out of trees.
We know that these patterns exist.
I wonder if human beings are going to get to a point one day where all breeding is done through genetic engineering and that all of our sex and all of our whatever emotional connection we have with each other,
whatever compassion we have and affection we have for each other is all going to be enhanced by technology in a way where we're willing to give up this idea of a woman Carrying a baby inside of her body and and then it coming out like that I wonder if we can get past the point of where we're at now with You know like it's kind of whatever we're doing now It's working in terms where Life is better than it was 100 years ago,
and it's better than it was 200 years ago, and we're getting better in so many ways, but we're still plagued by so many of the primate, dominator instincts that we've had from the beginning of time.
It's like we're evolving in real time, moving on to a different stage in our evolution.
But I like your point about competition because...
There are people who would argue you just can't base a society around that and you shouldn't have that as part of the society.
I don't agree with that.
I think you need some semblance of competition because obviously people, to one extent or another, have innate preference for competition in many respects.
But the thing is we also have...
A feel for community.
Everybody wants community.
Everybody wants to be part of something bigger than themselves.
So the thing is we're a walking contradiction.
We have a lot of these things naturally within us.
So in my opinion the best thing you could do given that reality is create a system that allows All of the things about you to thrive and you harness those things for good and so that's why you know for the longest time on my show I've been a big proponent of social democracy because social democracy is this idea that you set up a system where you take the basics off of the table So you say, you know what, if you're in the society and the society is sufficiently wealthy enough, you're gonna have healthcare.
You're gonna have education.
You're gonna have paid vacation time by law.
You're gonna have all these things which will make it so that you're not just living to be part of the economy.
You're not just living to serve some sort of fucking corporation.
But after that, after people have their basics met, do I have a problem with competition being part of the engine that helps drive humanity forward?
I am 100% with you on that, that I think that if our country really looked at itself like a community, and we really wanted everyone in the community to have their needs met, and we all agreed on that, Because there's this idea that some people are lazy, and this is why welfare doesn't work.
I was on welfare when I was a kid.
I remember it very clearly.
I remember my parents being on food stamps.
I remember drinking powdered milk.
I remember it being a part of our life.
We got out of that, and we stopped living in poverty because my parents worked hard and they got out of it.
But that is what we're talking about, like where someone steps in and helps people get by.
If everyone's needs were met when it comes to food and shelter and education and healthcare, I think people that are competitive and people that are ambitious would still be so.
So you can't have...
You can't have a quality of outcome, because you're not going to have a quality of income, or excuse me, you're not going to have a quality of effort.
Because of crime, because when they're on the street, sometimes they have to go to the hospital, they have to go to all these different places.
If you give everybody a roof over their head, it doesn't have to be a fucking mansion or a big house for all these people, but if you give homeless people a roof over their head, studies show it saves the taxpayer money in the long run.
So you're doing the right thing, not only morally, but you're also doing the right thing economically.
So it's an interesting thing when people argue against that.
But yeah, I want to get to the point where if somebody doesn't make it, I can blame them.
I want to get to that point.
I want to be at the point where I'm like, you didn't make it because of your own efforts.
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say why someone makes it or why someone doesn't.
I think if you look at how someone did make it, you could draw a pretty clear assumption.
But if you look at why someone didn't make it, that's when things get complicated.
Because you're dealing with, like, emotional trauma, and you're dealing with abuse, and you're dealing with, like, maybe their father always told them they're a fucking loser, and they're, like, shell-shocked, or maybe they're beaten up by their older brother.
You made a great point about welfare there, because you reminded me of this new study that came out not that long ago about universal basic income, and there's this mayor in Stockton, California, that did this trial run.
He gave a bunch of people $500, and they have some really good data on this now.
So they found that the percentage of the money that went towards what people view as vices, so like drinking or gambling or whatever it may be, 2%.
Americans of all different political stripes are like, that's great.
I want to give grandma some money to make sure she's okay.
All we're talking about is social security for all.
And it's not going to make the economy collapse.
If you're concerned about the cost of it, I got fucking news for you.
You better look at the Iraq war.
You better look at the Afghanistan war.
You better look at all the corruption in our government.
You better look at...
I mean, that's where we're wasting our money.
They pumped trillions of dollars with a T into the stock market at the height of COVID because they were afraid that COVID was grinding the economy to a halt.
Nobody said dick!
When they pump trillions in over COVID.
But now all of a sudden when we talk about a much lower figure when it comes to making sure people can afford food, now everybody's concerned about the cost.
Fucking spare me.
We spend so much money on our empire.
We have a 90% civilian drone death rate.
This is where our money's going towards.
You know, it's going towards permanently occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.
Wasn't the problem with that is that they had to give these people bonuses and if they didn't they would have left and went to other banks and they were worried about losing their top criminals.
That's like you have a basketball team and you never made it to the first round of the playoffs eight years in a row and you say we got to keep them exactly as they are.
It's about all these politicians, Democrat and Republican, take money from corporate America.
They take money from Wall Street.
They take money from the military industrial complex.
They take money from big pharma.
And then guess what?
They turn around and do favors for them.
I mean, there was a great Princeton study that came out.
Shit, probably a decade ago now, that found that there's a direct correlation between what the corporations want and the top 1% wants, and policy, and there's almost no correlation between what the bottom 90% wants and policy.
So regular people don't get what they want, but the corporations do and the billionaires do.
I wonder what it would really cost to give, like, legitimate healthcare for everybody, free education in terms of college-level education.
If we decided to subsidize all the universities and if we decided to give people a universal basic income, what would that look like in terms of the restructuring of people's taxes and how much money would have to go to that?
I mean, we've gotten really accustomed to the idea of war, right?
And spending money on war is just, well, that's what we do.
Because it's always been what we do.
To make people have this monumental shift in where the money goes and the way it gets allocated in our country would require people to kind of rethink things.
And we'd have to accept it and there'd be a lot of debate.
Well, actually, there was a poll at the peak of COVID. Now, this number may have dropped since the peak of COVID, but at the time, it was 55% that were in favor of UBI. Because everybody was struggling, nobody had money, and they were like, fuck, that sounds like a great idea.
Now, to answer your question about cost, so there was Bernie Sanders introduced a bill when he was running for president.
I believe the number was $60 or $65 billion to have free college.
And so they did a comparison.
They did a great comparison in The Intercept showing that that same year that he proposed it, I think it had to be like 2017 or 2018, Just the increase for the year in military spending was $80 billion.
Is it only kids that are getting out of like, what if a guy is like maybe 35 years old and he wants to attend night school after work twice a week to try to better his education, to get a better job?
But also, to answer your question on Medicare for All, because you said this is an easier sell, definitely is an easier sell.
60% of the American public is already there.
There was even a poll that came out a while ago that showed more Republicans want it than don't want it.
Now, to be fair, yes, that's before the massive propaganda effort where they do the, how are you going to pay for it and it doesn't work and all this stuff.
But there was a study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst which found that Medicare for All saves $5 trillion.
I probably would agree with you on how dumb the college kids are there.
In terms of the academic study coming out of there, I'm pretty sure, because think about it, Joe, the way the system works now, you have a giant, rapacious, for-profit middleman who is, they're just a mafia in between you and your doctor, and they take their cut.
The whole idea of Medicare for All is just get rid of the mafia.
Why would doctors have an incentive to become an orthopedic surgeon if they're going to get paid specifically the way firemen or cops do?
They wouldn't.
So you wouldn't get the best kind of surgery.
The kind of surgery you get when you go to a real expert, a guy who works in the Lakers or something like that, some fucking wizard at reattaching ACLs.
That guy needs incentive to become who he is.
Those super ambitious doctors that are the top of the food chain, those are the ones that people seek out.
Would that guy be able to still charge a lot of fucking money for those surgeries?
And that is one of the reasons why they're so good at it in the first place, is because that guy can have a Ferrari and live in a big house in Beverly Hills.
And this has always been the system.
That's the reason why people come...
I have friends from Canada that will come to the United States for surgery and pay for it out of their pocket because they want to get better doctors, more incentivized doctors.
It's also true that it works the other way, though, as well.
Remember when Rand Paul went to Canada to get some surgery, and this is a guy who's notorious for blasting, you know, their socialized medicine system?
It's usually the exception to the rule, because more people are coming from Canada to the United States to get surgery than are going from the United States to Canada.
I'm just asking you, is it your contention that Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Australia, Canada, all these places that have universal healthcare systems, that they don't have the same level of high quality surgeons and whatever that we have here?
It's very possible that there's a reason why the Saudi princes come here when they want stuff done, not contesting that at all.
The part that people don't want to talk about, which is actually, I think, the way more important point, is that anywhere from 45,000 to 60,000 Americans die every single year because they don't have access to basic healthcare.
But people want a private defender because the public defenders are overburdened and all that stuff.
I mean, again, the point I would make is that it's a funding issue.
So if you were to pay those public defenders more and attract more talent...
So in other words, can you craft a universal healthcare system where there's sufficient compensation for the experts that you're talking about?
I say absolutely.
Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to funding, like you're saying.
Yes, if you want high quality, you're going to have to pay for that high quality.
So you should set up the system so that, yeah, I don't want doctors making...
Next to no money or making less than what they would make under this system now You want to have it so that you are incentivizing these people to stay here and treat here And you absolutely can craft a system like that and even if you do that you end up saving money because there's just such a I mean it's a fucking black hole here Joe forget insurance companies who are you know mafia criminals in their own respect Hospitals as well are really fucking bad.
I remember covering a story on my show at least five years ago where I went through line by line this medical bill that became, you know, it blew up and went viral because they were price gouging for everything.
They even had this line for cough suppressant aids and they charged like a hundred dollars for it.
Healthcare costs in the U.S. are also notoriously difficult to determine prior to procedure, and plenty of patients have received bills that can be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars over what they expected to pay.
That's to the point of not only are the health insurance companies price-gouging people, it's also the healthcare providers who are price-gouging people.
So really we have a scam within a scam on top of a scam in the U.S. healthcare system.
Another perk of going to Canada is that Shoulders offers a resort-like setting for recovering with fresh meals, an exercise program, on-site massage, and relaxing views.
So we heard it was a nice spot to go and you save a little cheddar.
Yeah, so, I mean, this is one of the things I talk about all the time on my show, is that I really don't think people fully understand, because you're not taught this stuff, just how much you're getting screwed in this country if you're a normal working person.
If you're a normal working person, like, this is the only developed country that doesn't have paid vacation time by law.
Every other country, the second you get a job from day one, within that first year, you can get, it varies from place to place, but anywhere from like two weeks to four weeks off, paid by law.
Whereas here in the U.S., if you happen to get some time off, you should, it's just because your employer's being nice, and oftentimes it's not paid, it's, you know, it's unpaid.
And it's little things like that that just drive me fucking crazy, because we're one of the richest countries in the world.
This country, the last time we had a government that really looked out for regular Americans, for working people, it was the New Deal era.
The New Deal era was a long fucking time ago.
You know, so we were able to get, well, between the New Deal era and you could argue the war on poverty as well, so maybe a little dash of Lyndon Johnson in there with FDR, but you have Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
We're like coasting off of the little bit of help that we got from the previous generation from the Great Depression.
You know, like Biden did those $1,400 stimulus checks, the one-time $1,400 stimulus checks.
That's it.
All the impacts of it are already done.
It was a one shot of adrenaline and people are going to go right back to where they were before.
There's a few issues I think that really would unify Americans, and I think somebody should run for president on those particular issues.
So the first one would be, we need a new version of the New Deal, and somebody should run on making the United States of America the envy of the world when it comes to our infrastructure.
I think we should have the best airports in the world.
I think we should have the best bridges and roads in the world.
I think we should hire millions of people in rebuilding our country and making it beautiful, making it A++ infrastructure.
Listen, it's terrible, it's wrong, it's evil, but you gotta hand it to them in that it's the new evolution of imperialism.
There was a time when people would just show up on people's shores and be like, This is now ours, and you can fuck off.
Then we evolved that a little bit to, we're not going to go in there and tell you all this shit is ours, but we're going to put a puppet dictator who's from your land in there, and then that person's going to have a deal with us and sort of give us that stuff under the table.
Now this is the new version of that of, what if I actually helped you out a little bit and built a couple roads?
And I think that during COVID, it was probably pretty bad, too, because a lot of companies, they bought controlling stakes in, they started buying into the stock market in a big way.
We really need to bring back manufacturing here in a serious way.
I think it was a real, horrendous, corrupt decision when the government decided to do NAFTA, decided to do permanent normal trade relations with China, decided to do all of the terrible so-called free trade deals that they did, which are really outsourcing deals to enrich the corporate overlords and send overseas all these good-paying jobs.
And as a result of that, it's been a race to the bottom.
And now you have, you know, I just drove across a lot of this country.
You see all these towns are just crumbling and the jobs have been outsourced and you see these things that have been left alone for decades and you think, this doesn't have to be like this.
This was a choice made by the corrupt politicians to outsource the jobs for more profit.
They'd rather pay somebody pennies on the dollar in Bangladesh than pay an American worker a living wage and give them health care.
So, I mean, you have to fix that.
If you don't fix that, it's going to continue to be a race to the bottom.
The other idea that I was going to tell you, which I brought up on the podcast before, is that I wish we had a direct democracy law in this country where people could vote directly on the biggest five or so issues every time they vote for president.
So then everybody would decide, hey, I want to legalize weed, I want to pay a $15 minimum wage, I want to end the wars in Iraq, or whatever.
And we'd be in a lot better place if we had that, because that's a way to go around the corruption.
You know, because, again, all the polls show the American people are relatively united on a lot of these basic issues, but...
The political overclass doesn't do any of the things we want them to.
So how would we go around that?
One way is to actually get the corruption out of the system and make it so the politicians are more beholden to the people than the donors.
But that's a long-term thing to fix, and I think they're always going to find some workarounds.
What they can't really work around is if we had a direct democracy law where what the people say goes.
And that's not on every issue, to be clear, because if you have a right, the people can't vote to take away your rights.
You know what I mean?
So it needs to be a constitutional direct democracy law.
So we have a constitution.
These things are off the table.
You always have a right to free speech.
These are all things that they can't just vote away.
But on economic issues, on foreign policy issues, on social issues, people should have a right to vote on that.
You need to have good schools and good education that gets people to the point where they did learn this stuff.
But we can't have a system where up front we say, you have to learn X, Y, and Z before you vote, because if we do, you end up with...
Poll tests and literacy tests and a lot of the former Jim Crow and segregation methods where you try to exclude the undesirables and the lower class folks up front.
And that's what they would do.
They would do that with poor black folks and of course they would try to do that with anybody who's lower income these days.
So you can't really have a system where only like the educated elite can vote because I got news for everybody.
And so they're naturally making their way from Wyoming.
They walk down into Colorado.
They didn't think that that was possible, but it's happening.
But in Idaho, they've developed such a wolf problem.
They're trying to kill 90% of them.
Because they're attacking all this farm life and the thing about it is like they're really hard to hunt like once they get a sense that people are hunting them they find them they they're scarce they take off they're smart yeah they're really fucking smart and they they have some weird way of figuring things out and they know how to stay the fuck away from people so even though they're opening up hunting people saying like Idaho wants to kill 90% of the wolves yeah but they're not going to be able to like you don't understand This is to make it
legal for people to, whenever they want, go out and hunt wolves.
Good luck finding one, and good luck hunting them.
This is not like deer hunting.
This is completely different and wildly ineffective.
The reason why they extirpated wolves way, way, way back in the day...
Was they used dead animals filled with strychnine, and they left them around.
And there was a lot of collateral damage.
They killed a lot of wolverines and a lot of other animals and scavengers.
It wasn't just the wolves.
They killed a lot of coyotes.
They killed everything else that would eat that stuff, too.
But that's how they did it.
That was the only way they could figure out how to do it.
And just by shooting them with guns, you're not going to be able to.
But the impact on livestock has been significant.
They're losing a lot of livestock.
The impact on elk populations is very significant.
The impact on mountain lions is significant.
They found out that mountain lion populations have dropped down to 25% because the wolves are stealing the kills of the mountain lion.
So say if a mountain lion kills a deer, wolves come along and chase the mountain lion away, then the mountain lion has to kill another deer.
So the mountain lions are killing probably more animals And they're eating less, and some of them are starving to death.
Because wolves are smart.
They'll just follow that mountain lion around.
Go ahead, kill something else, bitch.
And then they'll run after the cat and chase it away, and then eat the cat's deer, and then the cat has to go kill another deer, and then, you know...
So are the laws from state to state on stuff like that, are they trying to do a balancing act when it comes to population control with certain animals that could be a very big issue for people and agriculture?
But what about things that would directly affect, like what if there was some sort of a vote to bring back coal-fired power plants because we can increase jobs and then you're going to, you know, we could take a little bit, we've got a chart here that shows that an increase in carbon doesn't actually do anything.
Turns out we just plant more trees and everything's fine.
So, you're 100% right about this, and that's both the beauty and how messy democracy is.
Because, yeah, I would contend that if you give people a direct vote, the majority of the time, bar some sort of insane propaganda campaigns, the majority of the time they're going to get stuff right, but of course they're going to fucking get things wrong.
Of course.
That's just the nature of the beast.
It's like when, you know, in Gaza, when Palestinians voted, who'd they pick?
And, you know, of course, the West was like, we don't fucking like that.
We'd rather have them pick Fatah.
But it's like, if you believe in it as a matter of principle, then you win some and you lose some.
Just like how Democrats were distraught on the night Trump won in 2016, and Republicans were distraught on the night Biden won in the last election, by the way.
Didn't I nail it with every single thing I said in that podcast?
I went back and I watched it.
I was like, fuck, I'm more right than even I realized.
You so nailed it that anybody that had like conspiracy ideas about why, well, how come Trump was winning and Biden wound up winning after they counted in the mail-in votes?
I go, Kyle Kalinske called the entire thing from the beginning of the night.
It's got a great cover, but, dude, it's all about Alan Dulles and the CIA and how Alan Dulles really killed JFK. This guy is the fucking CIA's worst nightmare.
I mean, they despise him, and we had him on Crystal Kyle and Friends.
Listen, I don't want to sound conspiratorial at all, but there is a thing called a deep state.
And by that I mean there's people who are there from every administration.
You know, who are, they're at the CIA, they're at the FBI, they're permanently there, and their jobs are not contingent on an election that happens every four years.
You know, and so they're calling a lot of the shots, particularly when it comes to foreign policy, if you're talking about the Pentagon, if you're talking about the CIA, these guys make a lot of the decisions.
So yeah, there's going to be some clashes behind the scenes.
There always are clashes behind the scenes.
Somebody made a great point.
They said...
We know, as a matter of fact, it's a historical record that the United States during the Cold War overthrew all these South American governments that we didn't like because they were leftist and we wanted to put in, you know, right-wing puppets who were more sympathetic to our ideology and allow capitalism to exist there.
So we overthrew all these governments.
What makes anybody think that we would just draw the line here at home?
Like what?
We're so magical and we're so special that the CIA people would be like, no, I have a moral stand against overthrowing our own president, even though we just overthrown 17 before lunch.
I've had conversations with people about it and what they're willing to accept is so dumb.
Like, the magic bullet theory is literally one of the dumbest fucking theories.
Here's why.
Not that a bullet can't travel weirdly through people's bodies.
It definitely can.
The fact that the bullet came out pristine and there's more fragments in Connelly's wrist than are missing from the bullet and they just found that bullet magically on a gurney...
Oh, okay.
You found it.
And the only reason why they had to make up this magic bullet theory in the first place is because a guy got hit under the underpass with a ricochet.
And that guy, when he got hit under the underpass, he got hit and they go, okay, well, obviously one bullet hit this curb and it hit this guy.
So now we have to make one bullet go through two people and have all this damage.
When a more likely scenario is more fucking bullets, more gunshots.
And then also, like, the Bethesda, Maryland autopsy report is very different than what they described in Dallas.
In Dallas, they described the hole in his neck as an entry wound.
In Bethesda, Maryland, it was a tracheotomy.
And then they doctored his head.
They did a lot of stuff.
It's like his fucking brain was missing by the time he got to Bethesda.
David Lifton's book, Best Evidence, is fantastic about it, but it's terrifying.
Because as you get into it, deeper into the book, you start sweating.
You start going, Jesus Christ, these fucking people got away with it.
NASA was filled with Nazis, and a lot of those guys in the government at the time would tell you the real threat, the real enemies were the Soviets, it's not the Nazis.
Like a bona fide, dyed in the wool, hanging out with Hitler Nazi.
And all those fucking guys that came over in Operation Paperclip that had dueling scars on their faces.
Do you know about the dueling scars?
No.
Nazis had this thing where they would they would put goggles on and they would have sword fights with real swords like rapiers real thin swords and they would slice the fuck out of their faces and it was a thing that they would do These these like dueling contests were like these scars were a badge of honor and so a lot of these guys would walk around with these Horrific facial scars.
And that was to let all these other people know these are bad motherfuckers that did the dueling thing.
of the top Nazi brass were into what's called Norse mythology.
It's like this version of paganism.
And so it was kind of like a pseudo religion in a way that they crafted around Hitler.
It had to do with a lot of like, they really believed.
So a lot of people think, oh, they believed in a false science of eugenics.
It was both a false science of eugenics, but also it was tied to this Norse mythology, this paganism.
And they had this rigid hierarchy of like superiority in human beings.
And of course, the Aryans were on top.
And then you know, you go down the list.
It's really crazy stuff, because it was not only is it dictatorial fascist, but the fact that it was also had a dash of like, extreme religiosity and mythology makes it even creepier.
Well you know a lot of people think that whenever you get someone who's involved in running a country that has this sort of powerful cult of personality thing going for them, like Hitler, that they craft a kind of a religion.
Around that person.
That person becomes a savior.
That was what a lot of people were worried about with Trump.
The really dumb people that were into Trump looked at Trump like Trump was a messenger from Jesus.
They really thought he was sent here to do something really special because God was tired about all the sin and the way people were treating each other and the way people were living their lives.
He was going to send Trump, of all fucking people.
The New York Times released this thing where they showed, like, all the searches for him when he was still on Twitter versus now the searches now that he's off Twitter.
And not only that, people will tell you, who are long-time listeners of my show, hey, I used to put the autoplay on, click one of your videos, and it would play 20 of your videos in a row.
Now you put the autoplay on, you click one of my videos, it goes from me to John Oliver, or me to fucking Trevor Noah.
So they take people who are almost like the fake outsider voices, and they're like, ah, that's outsider enough, I guess.
Put that in right after Kyle, and they'll probably watch that.
So not gonna lie to you, Joe, it's a giant hit.
I went from...
I lost, what was the number?
Jackson Hinkle looked into this, another great YouTuber, and there was an 88% drop in new subs in one month.
Listen, I have, now for the first time in my life, I've always been outside of the traditional media system, but now for the first time in my life, I have first-hand experience with how this stuff operates in corporate media, and it's even more gross than I thought it was.
So, when I launched, we launched Crystal Kyle and Friends, my new podcast with Crystal Ball.
It's an interview show that we do.
They were basically on the way out at the Hill, the corporation that they worked for.
Now, they're one of very few people who've actually maintained to create a really, really good show within the confines of the corporate media system.
Like, they're a real outsider voice that somehow slipped under the radar and were on corporate media.
So, when they were going, when they were leaving, they had their goodbye video ready.
They were going to put it up.
At the last minute behind the scenes, the higher-ups at the Hill changed the title on the video.
To something incredibly vague, hoping that nobody would watch.
It was like Today on Rising or something like that they put, as opposed to what it was supposed to be, which was a big send-off for Crystal and Sagar and, you know, they're starting a new venture and all that stuff.
Not only did they do that, they changed the video from, it was supposed to be what's called a premiere video on YouTube, which usually gets more views and gets some more eyeballs.
They changed it from a premiere video to a regular video.
Again, to try to decrease the view count.
Then, after it was up for a couple days, they pulled that video down.
To try to like, if people tune in to the show Rising for Crystal and Sagar, they wanted to sort of bury the fact that Crystal and Sagar are gonna be gone permanently, and so they took that video down.
Then I did a video calling that out.
And they put it back up a day later.
Now, that's just the stuff that's like public for everybody to see.
What they don't know is that behind the scenes, Crystal basically had to beg the higher-ups, for the love of God, please let me put our show on YouTube.
So in other words, they said, no, you can't put it up when they thought it was a bad idea.
They finally let her put it up.
Then they turn around.
After she's become phenomenally successful, and Saga's become phenomenally successful, and Rising has taken off, and now that Crystal wants to start a new show with a new host, me, they view that as competition.
So they're like...
You're not allowed to put the new show on YouTube, even though we gave you the okay to put it on YouTube.
So what happened is they were in the new negotiating phase for a new contract, and in that new contract it was like, we're not coming back if I don't get to put this thing on YouTube.
And so they were like, okay, fine, you can put it on YouTube.
Well, they were in the negotiation part of the- Oh, so they didn't actually sign it.
That's exactly right.
So, the worst part is, so I launch it and tell my whole audience, and we're so excited, we get a lot of views on the first one, and we tell them, this is how it's going to work.
Audio's free for everybody, but if you want the video and you want it a day early, you pay $5 on Substack.
After I told my audience, they tell Crystal, you're not even allowed to acknowledge this new podcast's existence.
So now, and by the way, Joe, we decided we're going to take no ad money.
No, we're not going to read any ads.
We're not going to have any YouTube ads.
We're just doing it, the subscription model, small dollar donations.
And then they tell me, she can't mention it to her audience, even though she even had more subscribers than I had.
And so we build this new thing.
We're making 25% of what we could make, 50% of what we could make.
And they say, by the way, we're going to cut off your access to half or more of the fucking people who would want to watch your podcast.
And this is why it's so amazing that Crystal and Sagar have left and done this Breaking Points show and the show...
Became hugely successful right out of the gate.
Number one political show in the country.
Immediately.
And that's because it's really good.
And look how they're doing it.
They're just doing it by themselves.
They don't need anybody to be their executive.
They don't need anybody looming over their shoulder, making decisions for them, telling them what they can't do, putting restrictions on them that are arbitrary.
And then also extracting exorbitant amounts of money.
The difference in the amount of money that they were making there versus on their own Is mind-blowing.
Now the money that they're making, it's all independent.
It's all organic.
It's all the audience saying, we love you and we want to reward you.
So in the case of Crystal and Sagar, they pay the $10 a month and get the perks that come along with breaking points.
In the case of Crystal Kyle and Friends, they pay the $5 on Substack.
This is the way it's supposed to work.
And people have gotten so fed up with the old system and the rigid hierarchy and the assholes who don't know what the fuck they're talking about or what they're doing trying to control us.
Do you have any idea how pissed I was, Joe, when they told me she can't even mention the existence of the other podcasts you have on their show?
And I watched one segment that they did, Joe, and they were talking about, you know, the IRS leaks where we found that billionaires were paying 0.1% in taxes, and the most any of them were paying was like 3.5%.
The first segment I watched is them saying, I'm so outraged, we need to crack down on whoever leaked this.
Well, Colin and whoever he was talking to in the video I saw, when I watched it and they were saying it's an outrage that the whistleblower leaked the stuff on the billionaires.
The way old media works is, you know, people are applying for jobs and they're regular people and they have some background in politics, but do they have the same sort of passion and independence and ideology as Crystal and Sagar?
I talked about this the other day on the podcast, but you really should watch this and smoke a little pot before you watch it.
This documentary, The Anthropocene, about the human race and the impact the human race has on the earth and what we've done in terms of strip mining.
It shows all these different...
It's really vivid.
It's shot with drones, a lot of it, so you get this overall perspective of the mass of some of these mines and where they're tearing down these old churches to make room for more mines.
It's like, Wild shit.
And I was sitting at home by myself going, whoa.
It just gives this sense of ominous doom.
Like human beings left unchecked would just continue to destroy everything in front of them.
When people at some point know that what they believe or what they're doing is bullshit, but they just can't get out of it because they're like, I've invested years and years and years into this.
You know, I recognized that in martial arts when I was a kid, you know, because the martial art that I was doing that I was really good at was Taekwondo, and it turned out that's not a really good one to learn.
When I started boxing, I thought I had a way distorted perception of what I could do with my hands.
I was like, I know how to punch.
But I just...
I was getting murdered in a boxing gym.
And I was like, oh no, this is terrible.
Especially when I couldn't kick guys.
Like, kickboxing, I could kind of hold my own because I was a good kicker.
But then when leg kicks were introduced and then boxing was introduced, I was like...
I wasted a lot of time.
Turns out it wasn't necessarily true because once I learned all those other things then the Taekwondo was a huge advantage because I have all this power from kicking and I have this ability to use my legs and like you get leg dexterity from Taekwondo that's really difficult to get from other things because you you're constantly throwing kicks and you're very rarely throwing punches so a lot of people like there's a girl named Michelle Waterson she's a she calls herself the karate hottie it's hilarious but she has that That kind of karate leg dexterity,
similar to Taekwondo leg dexterity.
Steven Wonderboy Thompson is a top welterweight contender.
He's got that kind of leg dexterity, too, where he can do crazy shit with his kicks that most martial artists that just start out just doing MMA don't really develop.
But by itself, as a standalone, it's not good because it's just too easy to take people down.
Wrestling is number one, I think, because wrestling can dictate whether or not you can take a person down.
And some jiu-jitsu guys are not good at wrestling.
So they can't take you down, and then you can beat them up if you have wrestling because they'll try to clinch with you.
And that was Chuck Liddell's thing.
Chuck Liddell was a really good wrestler, but he would use it to stand up.
He would use it to make sure that you couldn't take him down.
So the ability to take someone down is probably the most important thing.
But it's all dependent upon how good people are at each individual skill.
But the point being, to just get good at Taekwondo was not good.
And it was a real wake-up call for me because they were all brainwashed.
All the Taekwondo people were absolutely convinced, all the people that I trained with, that this was the best martial art because that's what they had dedicated their life to.
And I was like, fuck this, I'm out.
Even though I had dedicated my whole life to it, I was only 21, and I was still flexible.
I was like, I gotta get out of here.
My life had still some flexibility to it, so I bailed.
But I know that feeling when you're completely committed.
But I remember one of the first times I was boxing, where I was sitting there with a bloody nose, just got lit up in a sparring session, and I was sitting there going, fuck!
And then the avenue in professional kickboxing paid so little.
And then I had one of my friends that I was training with that went on to become, he was a New England middleweight champion.
He actually became a pretty good pro boxer.
He beat Howard Davis jr.
He was an Olympic gold medalist.
He beat Vinnie Pazienza.
His name is Dana Rosenblatt.
He was one of my main sparring partners and he was also one of the reasons why I stopped doing it because I realized like he's way more dedicated than I am like I used to be this dedicated But now I'm seeing this kid and he was a couple years younger than me.
I think at the time I was 21, I think he was 18, somewhere around there.
Maybe I was 22 and he was 19, something like that.
But it was in that same range where it was like he was all in.
That was his whole life.
And I remember thinking, man, this is not my whole life.
I'm bullshitting myself.
Because it was before, when I was younger.
And I kind of thought, I'm still that dude.
Because I knew...
I had it in my head...
Victories that I'd already achieved and guys I had knocked out.
I thought about it in my head, but then the reality of watching someone who was actually living that life and getting up in the morning and running five miles and then eating really healthy and then going to the gym and doing rounds in the bag and then sparring.
And I was like, okay, he's more dedicated than me.
I gotta get out.
Because I didn't want to be...
There's a thing about combat sports that's different than anything else is that if you're not obsessed with You become a victim.
I was trying to think of what else I was going to say about him.
But my point is...
When I left Taekwondo, I remember thinking like, God, I dedicated so much of my life to this nonsense.
And then here it is, like, staring me in the face that I've wasted time.
And so someone who joins a cult and really believes that some guy is like the re-embodiment of the Buddha...
And then you find out, no, he's actually a pedophile or he's actually a drug addict or he's actually just a completely delusional psycho con man.
People find that out deep into these situations.
And people are so fucking malleable.
And you find this out, and the reason why I'm bringing this up in relation to this conversation is you find this out with the way people approach parties, political parties, the way they approach lifestyle choices and ideologies, the way they view the world.
People get so attached to the tribe that's involved in whatever thing it is, whether it's a political thing or a religious thing or...
They get sucked into it, and they take this comfort in that there's others that agree on the same parameters and sets of rules that they do.
So I love that you made that point, because I have firsthand experience with something about exactly this, and it happened recently.
So on my show, when the former head of the CDC came out and told CNN he thinks that COVID-19 likely came from the lab...
He comes out and says that I cover it on my show, and I listen to his whole argument, and then I listen to Sanjay Gupta's response, and basically my commentary was something along the lines of, I have no idea what the fuck happened, but this guy makes a compelling case, and I lean slightly in favor of thinking the lab leak theory is probably true.
And then you had people in my own audience, now granted I almost never read the responses because I want to maintain my sanity, but it got to me somehow that people in my own audience were disagreeing with me.
Not a crazy amount, but enough where it was an issue, it was interesting.
And the fact that people almost tried to make me feel like I'm making some sort of huge mistake by saying this.
I mean, it's silly, and really what it broke down to was a few things.
Not just partisanship and Trump and anti-Trump stuff, but it also came down to there are some people on the left who fear that this is going to be used for a new Cold War against China.
And so they feel like you've got to be against this up front to stop the march towards this new Cold War with China, which we shouldn't have.
And I mean, listen, my position has been very clear from day one.
I lean in favor of thinking that that theory is true, but there's zero political implications to that.
I'm 100% against a Cold War with China, and what we're talking about here is an objective empirical question where we're just looking for what's accurate.
The political implications, we can debate those after, and I'll always be on the side of, I don't want to escalate with China and I don't want to escalate with Russia.
But, like, these are separate questions.
We have to be able to tell the truth, even if the truth makes you feel uncomfortable.
The way the left has formed their arguments and dug their heels in on certain ideologies where they're not even willing to look at things, it's so fucked.
Like, I read something yesterday that hydroxychloroquine actually has some benefit in treating COVID patients.
And by the way, the funny thing is, I think there was U.S. funding that may have been involved in the research of the bat coronaviruses that could have led to the spread of COVID-19.
The NIH funded this other organization run by Peter Daszak, and they funded...
This gain-of-function research, and then when Fauci's on TV saying, that is absolutely categorically incorrect, we did not sponsor gain-of-function research.
I don't, you know, that guy, I don't understand the cult around him.
I get that the idea was like, oh, he's the science guy, and he's in Trump's administration, but he sort of positioned himself against Trump, but liberals made him this fucking hero.
Maybe it's that, or maybe it's just the actual viral load that you take in.
Like, maybe when you're breathing through that stupid thing, it takes enough of it out so that your body's immune system has a better shot of fighting it off.
So maybe there's a bunch of people with masks on that got close to folks, but it wasn't enough.
Whereas, like, no masks...
Somebody close talking to you, you're getting the full blast.
And the other thing is, like, nominally the idea was once people get vaccinated, if they go somewhere and say, I've been vaccinated, it's like, okay, then you're totally fine.
But nobody even asked for the card.
You know what I mean?
It's just whatever the rules are, they are, and it's totally separate from whether or not you got the vaccine.
I don't think the states can make laws about interstate travel because I'm pretty sure the Supreme Court says you can't have borders between states effectively.
But didn't they have a thing when New York was saying you can't go in there unless you have either a COVID negative test within 24 hours or So a bunch of states have this thing where they say like waiting periods or whatever like you're alluding to now.
I was listening to this doctor give this lecture, and he was saying, there's no such thing as flu season.
He's like, really?
He goes, there is.
But why do you think flu season is always in the winter?
Well, it's because it's a vitamin D deficiency season.
He's like, no one's outside.
He's like, you're not outside.
You're covered up with clothes.
You're in and out of the outside quickly, especially if you're in northern climates or if you're in the northeast where everything's covered with clouds.
He's like, you're not getting any vitamin D. Dude.
Like, black people are protected because of melanin, but because of that, they have more of an issue with vitamin D. That's one of the reasons why black people and brown people were disproportionately affected by COVID in a lot of places.
Because my friend who was a doctor said that when he was doing his practice in New York, that he was testing a lot of black folks, and they were, like, unrecognizable levels of vitamin D. Like, you couldn't measure it.
And he was like, this is a giant problem.
He goes, because when you have dark melanin in your skin, you can go outside, or when you have dark pigment, rather, you can go outside and you can take in all that sun rays because your body's protected.
Because, obviously, their ancestors came from Africa.
But if you're one of those people, like, your ancestors came from Scotland, the reason why they're so white is you're basically like...
You're a solar panel for vitamin D because there's no fucking sunlight.
So you got super pale so that what little time your skin was out there, you sucked up as much vitamin D. It's your body craving for vitamin D is what it is, which is really wild that vitamin D is really what dictates the color of human beings' skin.
Just to make sure that your bases are covered, you should supplement with a certain amount of it.
Some people say 5,000 IUs a day, some people say more, but supplement with a decent amount and then get blood work done.
Find out where your blood levels are at.
Everybody should do that every few months for anything anyway.
Just find out if you're healthy.
It's not hard to do, but that's one thing of many things.
People should be supplementing with a host of different vitamins.
It makes a giant impact on your health.
It really does.
And for the longest time, asshole doctors, and when I say asshole, I mean they're really mean.
I just mean they don't know what they're talking about.
They say, well, you get whatever you need from a balanced diet.
And you see there with their paunchy gut and their fucking skin hanging off their face.
I'm like, bitch, you don't have a balanced diet.
What are you saying, balanced diet?
You tell me how you're getting vitamin D from a balanced diet, stupid.
Like, they don't have any education in nutrition.
So what they're, you know, if you're a general practitioner, the amount of time you spend in medical school learning nutrition is very small.
And it happened decades ago.
And the idea that these guys are supposed to be on point today with all of the research, you know, you need to talk to someone who's like a legit, bona fide, right-now nutritionist.
Someone who's been studying nutrition.
All these different peer-reviewed papers.
There's so much going on.
Like, every time Dr. Rhonda comes in here and she reads off shit, you're like, Jesus.
Like, she's doing it all off the top of her head.
And she's rattling off these statistics and information.
All these different studies.
And now we know about this.
Now we know about that.
And so you should mix this with your diet.
And this has had a profound impact on cognitive decline.
Like, you know, in that Mexican joint that I was telling you about, they would have, like, pickled jalapenos and onions on the side, and you'd, like, get those on the side.
I'll cook up a bunch of meat, and then I have leftovers, and then when I eat the leftovers, I take a plate, I pour a bunch of habanero sauce on the plate, and then I take slices of meat, I dip it in the habanero sauce, and I eat it cold.
Because we know you're, you know, when you talk, it's something you really believe and you're not thinking of anything, you know, personal or about your ego.
I don't know if there's another one, but Gore Vidal versus Buckley was great, but I think Chomsky versus Buckley was even better, because Chomsky never resorted to attacks or insults or anything.