Joe Rogan and Patrick Bet-David clash over censorship, with Rogan condemning platforms like Twitter and YouTube for suppressing right-leaning voices—e.g., banning Brett Weinstein’s Unity 2020 or demonetizing Ivermectin debates—while Bet-David questions private vs. government control, citing Hunter Biden laptop suppression. Rogan warns vaccine passports risk a Chinese-style social credit system, mocking California’s post-Newsom recall policies as "communist overreach" while praising Florida’s DeSantis for resisting mandates. They debate whether ideological unity (e.g., an Obama-Trump podcast) or open dialogue—like Bet-David’s forced communist-imperialist family reconciliation—can bridge polarization, with Rogan dismissing the former but valuing curiosity-driven content. Ultimately, they agree media monopolies stifle free speech, contrasting Spotify’s support with YouTube’s restrictive policies, and argue competition is key to preserving diverse perspectives. [Automatically generated summary]
People who have character and discipline and people who have carved their way through this life.
It's important.
It's an important thing for young people in particular to see coming up that you can be a person of character and discipline and you can get far in this business with drive and you can get far in life with drive in all businesses, really.
There's still the same characteristics that make up a human being still exist, but there's pathways for excuses that exist today that didn't exist before.
There's pathways for victimhood.
You can have—there's credit in victimhood, social credit in, you know, well, I didn't get a break, or I didn't get this, or these rich people have that, or these successful people have all the breaks.
And there's a lot of clout in actually being a person who has been either denied or— Pathways are unavailable to them, so they get to bitch about it and complain about it.
There's a sense of, instead of dealing with the hand that you've gotten and trying to move forward in a positive way and trying to do your best with what you got, because everybody has a different starting point in life.
Life is not fair in terms of- No question.
But some people look at what they got, and they go, okay, this is what we got.
Let's figure out how we move forward.
And other people go, well, other people have this, and I don't, and other people have that, and fuck them.
We need to tax them, and we need to do this.
There shouldn't be any billionaires.
There shouldn't be any rich people.
You can live off of $50,000 a year, and then all that money would feed everyone and house everyone in the world.
But it's still something that's being taught in universities.
It's Marxism and, like...
That kind of leftist thinking is very common in universities, and the idea is that it hasn't been done right.
And what you could say that would argue for that is like, well, democracy, you know, I mean, obviously the Greeks had democracy and the Romans had democracy, but it eventually fell and turned into a dictatorship, right?
America was the first legitimate democracy that actually succeeded and still exists currently, right?
We were the first that, like, sort of got it right.
Maybe this could be the first socialist government that works.
Well, I don't think it would ever get to be 80% taxes, because the people that would get her into the position to be...
You're seeing compromises already, right?
You're seeing compromises.
If you're a person that pays attention to politics, you already see that she's sort of compromising her opposition to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the people that are at the head of the party.
They've already sort of started...
Corrupting and making deals, like this hard-line leftism is tempered by this need to be a part of this very powerful political party.
And that's kind of what happens, it seems, to every politician once they get into office.
That's what happened to Obama, right?
Obama was the guy that we all thought was going to change the world.
I think it's compromised once you get in there and you realize, first of all, all these ideals that you have, if you really did have those ideals, if those were real and they were not just political talking points that allowed people to love him, if you really did have those ideals, once you get in there and you find out, Mr. President, have a seat.
We're going to tell you how fucked the world really is.
And they read to you all the things that are going on in the world, all the different operations that are currently Being underway.
You get to see all the threats from around the globe.
You think it's more a guy who grows up with, let's just say, not money, but he's popular and he likes power and then eventually he has certain values and principles he lives by.
Then a guy with money comes and tries to buy him.
He's willing to flip.
Or a person who's left alone, they go make their money, and they make their independent money.
And then later on, a person comes in and says, I'm going to give you the most powerful position out there, but I want you to change your way of thinking.
Which one do you think is more likely to change?
I don't know if that makes sense or not.
So for example, think about Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy or a Lincoln, let's just say, or a Trump, right?
One thing those, say, the three have in common, I don't know about Lincoln, but the three have in common, Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and Trump.
They all had money.
It's not like they were struggling with women or money, right?
Reagan, you know, Mary Jane Wyman, John F. Kennedy, I think at the end of the day was with, what, three or four women in his lifetime, whatever the number is.
He's been around.
He's had his fun.
His father set the example.
He had a great time.
So to him, what party has he not been invited to?
Or Trump, he did what he did.
Then he gets into a position of power.
Then the real power people behind closed doors, let's just say you and I don't know about, the quiet power people.
They come in and say, Reagan, Trump, Kennedy, I want you to change the way of thinking.
I think you need people around the world that are monitoring terrorist cells, that are paying attention to rogue states, that are paying attention to dangerous places like China.
You need information.
You need intelligence agencies.
I'm not an anti-intelligence agency person.
I think people that are naive.
I have friends that have worked for the CIA and I've had long conversations with them about what it's like in private.
There's dark shit in the world.
There's some terrible places in this world and you gotta pay attention to all that and you have to have contingency plans and you have to have preparation.
It's a good question because they're elected by essentially, it's a personality contest.
Whose personality do you like the most?
The quote, who do you want to have a beer with?
That's what it's always about.
If you're going to have a popularity contest every four years, How much can you tell that person?
I would imagine it would take a long time to get the trust of the people that are in the highest of high positions, the people in the smoky rooms that Bill Hicks talked about.
I don't know.
I don't know if you should tell Trump where the fucking aliens are.
I'm going to take that back, because if someone really did take me there and said, I'll show you but you can't tell anybody, I think I'd keep my mouth shut.
You know why?
This is why.
Because if I don't keep my mouth shut, I don't get to see it.
So I might not be able to tell people But at least I can operate from the position that I know for a fact there is life somewhere else, whether it's from another dimension, whether it's from another galaxy.
If you're contacting a general of an opposing army and you're saying, I'm worried that our leader might do something, so I'm going to consult with you rather than consult with him.
I think what you're kind of saying is you don't respect the commander-in-chief of the army.
If Trump didn't exist, DeSantis would be a massive star.
If he didn't exist, you know?
If there wasn't this automatic...
This rejection of anything that's on the right that's strong and that has these views that are in opposition of a lot of what's going on right now in this country in terms of giving away power to the state.
Which is, for some strange reason, the left in this country over the last year and a half, two years during the pandemic, has decided that they trust the state and they're willing to give up power to the state and willing to give up power to pharmaceutical companies and allow things to happen that they would have never allowed to happen in the past.
I think a lot of that is because of this opposition to Trump.
And their opposition to Trump, I think, made them crazy.
It made the polarization of this country so much more extreme than we've ever seen it before.
And then when he would give these speeches, like, you know, talking about corn pop and how he's got hairy legs, and you're like, what the fuck is he doing?
Well, I definitely think that Trump would have been more likely to follow up on a threat, right?
But Biden did launch a drone strike in Kabul that wound up killing an innocent person, wound up killing someone who was delivering water to school children, and it killed this man, and it killed a bunch of kids.
And I say Biden did, it's not like Biden pushed the button, but he did give the orders.
The drone strike thing is A really scary part of military encounters because the amount of people that die that are innocent is off the fucking charts.
I mean, I believe during the Obama administration, it was in the high 80%.
And I think the drone strikes went up.
There was even more drone strikes during the Trump administration.
I mean, it's a scary way to do war.
Because it's not...
Imagine if there was a thing that we did where there was a bad guy in, say, a market.
And we walked in and just sprayed the market.
And killed the bad guy, but also killed 35 other people.
And we saw a person do that.
We would be horrified.
But to do something with a drone that winds up killing 35 innocent people, it gets no coverage.
It's very strange because we're disconnected from it because it's a robot that shoots a missile by remote control.
Rule of thumb about retaliation, no matter who the president is, if you retaliate to an enemy and you kill kids, moms, innocent people, even the side that voted for you doesn't side with you.
If you retaliate and you kill innocent people, the people that voted for you don't support you.
It's strange how, and that's another thing that I think that came from the Trump administration, the opposition to Trump is so strong that the support of Biden is almost absolute.
Like, he has to do something unbelievably bad to get any criticism in the mainstream media, in the left-wing media.
I mean, in the left-wing media is most of the media.
The only media that's right-wing is Fox.
He's got to do something really, really atrocious.
And even then, the criticism is very mild, and they move on.
I know they're trying to put it on Russia saying, oh, the number one enemy is Russia because they have the most nuclear.
Fine, that's fine.
I mean, that's the truth.
They do, second to most to us.
But to sit there and say, yeah, it's just a phone call, and you make it on, I don't know about that.
There's 50,000 people that you can call above the person you called, but you called.
That doesn't make any sense to make that phone call.
It doesn't matter who the president is.
So I don't know what's going to end up happening.
That's the biggest thing.
You know, the whole thing with law and order or justice.
I lived in Iran for 10 years, okay?
So when you look at, I had a guy on, Gordon Chang, who's a lawyer, and he lived in China for 20 years.
He's Chinese, and he says the biggest thing that changed with China was in 1984, China only had like two law schools.
This is what he said.
In 1984, they only had two law schools.
So it became more because you need law and order, right?
There needs to be certain law and order for people to feel like there's fair way of competing.
And then India didn't have that.
Now they're getting a little more law and order.
Capitalism works.
So capitalism without law and order does not work.
People can bully each other.
It goes back to competing a few hundred years ago.
But if we live in a country where people can get away with stuff and nothing happens, how do you trust law and order?
He's going to go to a congressional committee and speak in front of them.
What is that, a commercial?
Is that just a conversation?
Is there anything that's going to happen?
How many times do we have to see stuff happening like that?
But Alexander said a long time ago, I have met the enemy at his eye.
I think the only thing that's going to take this country down is not going to be external.
It's going to be all internal.
I think something's going to happen internal here where people like yourself were sitting out there talking to your team and one of your guys brought up Rumble or Bitchute.
He said, hey, this is a place they can upload content because what if...
They censor certain people, right?
And a lot of people are like coming after you constantly.
I can't believe Joe did this.
You know, he may have never had COVID. That was just a publicity stunt.
He didn't do that.
And why did he take that, all this stuff?
But if they silence you, who can't they silence next?
So if they go after you and they silence, say Joe Rogan doesn't have a voice anymore.
You can't go on Spotify, you can't go on YouTube, you can't go on Facebook and talk anymore.
But just natural immunity without the middle finger, it says, posts for natural immunity have been limited because the community has reported some content that may not meet Instagram's community guidelines.
So this is Big Brother shit.
They're looking out for you.
They're telling you what you can look at and not look at.
Just with a grain of salt, that could have been one of those hijacked hashtags by one of those bad players from another country that wants to get people talking in crazy ways.
They could have paid a bunch of money to just fuck with it.
Yeah, I think that's insanely unusual that something like this exists.
It's unprecedented.
There's never been anything like a YouTube before or a Twitter before or a Facebook before or Instagram that can completely control the narrative and decide, for whatever reason, decide whether or not you can use a hashtag.
Decide whether or not certain subjects can be discussed.
She called out Fauci because her and Fauci worked on a project together in 1984 for AIDS and she called them out in a major way and within six days that video was taken down.
Can I just challenge that and just maybe follow up on that?
Okay.
I don't disagree with that.
I'm at a point right now that my wife and I were talking.
She's like, oh, babe, I thought you said when we moved to Florida, you know, you're gonna be coming home.
And she's like, I've never seen her work this hard because now I'm like, shit, she ain't lying because we got four kids.
I got a nine-year-old, seven-year-old, five-year-old.
I got a 12-month-old kid.
I'm running multiple companies and I'm traveling back and forth.
So I understand what you're saying.
It is a challenge.
For sure it is a challenge to be able to do all those things.
And you've earned a point right now in your life.
We get to do whatever the hell you want to do.
You're at that position in your life that nobody can tell you what to do.
You're Joe Rogan.
You've earned the right.
You paid the price.
You've gone from the beginning to where you are today.
You're probably the ultimate renaissance man in America.
U.S. Open Taekwondo Championship.
When Eddie Bravo went to Brazil and he beat the Gracie, he hugs you.
You were there, you're supporting your body.
You're like the friend.
You're like the guy.
But at the same time, this is where I'm kind of going with this.
If you don't lead it, totally get it.
That is a 16-hour day job for 10 years.
You're right.
One million percent.
But maybe a guy like you ought to entertain the meeting of the minds.
So here's how I process this.
And maybe I'm wrong, challenge me.
I'm actually curious about being challenged in this area.
I think if there's one thing, last night I was having dinner with Chaz Palminteri, you know the guy from Bronx Hill, the actor, you know who he is.
And we're talking politics.
I don't talk politics.
I took him to Casa D'Angelo.
We're having a good conversation.
By the way, Casa D'Angelo has good elk.
So next time you're in Fort Lauderdale, on Thursdays, they do elk.
So I'm sitting there, I'm talking to this guy, and politics comes up.
I said, here's what I believe.
Maybe I'm wrong.
So the conversation about Lincoln Project, how Bush called out Trump just last week when he talked at the 9-11 memorial, I don't know if you saw that when he kind of gave his speech, and Obama was there saying, yeah, and Democrats are behind Bush because we got a Republican guy that's going against Trump.
I believe, I believe, I may be wrong, I believe Democrats are party over God and country.
I believe Republicans are God and country over party.
Let me say that one more time.
Democrats are party over God and country.
Republicans are God and country over party.
Which means what?
One side is about having control of their political party.
So whether AOC and Bernie Sanders And Elizabeth Warren disagree with Biden and disagree with Hillary and disagree with whatever they say.
Who gives a shit?
Let's just get together anyways.
Let's make sure that guy gets out of the office.
Versus Republicans are like, yeah, no, I can't vote for him because of McDougal or because of, you know, whoever the other would store me.
I think there's a certain amount of party loyalty that's based upon survival.
It's all dependent upon what they think is necessary for this stage of the game, wherever the pieces are in play at the moment.
When you've got a guy who's as polarizing as Trump, and he demands loyalty, and he's kind of the head of the Republican Party right now, you see that these people realize that the best chance for victory is to go with Trump.
That's why you got guys like Marco Rubio, you got guys like Ted Cruz.
He shit all over.
Shit all over those guys.
And they still stepped in line behind him.
Right?
That's why they did it.
They did it because it was the best move for the game.
I think what united them was their hate for Trump.
I think that's what united them.
What united them is they're realizing that this one incredibly polarizing figure, this alpha character, who dominated media and tricked them, really, said outrageous things like, build that wall, all that kind of shit, and they're like, can you believe what he's saying?
And then, unfortunately for them, particularly for CNN and MSNBC, he became their vector for ratings.
He became the thing that they would focus on and it generated massive amounts of income for them.
So during the time when Trump was in office and they could talk shit about Trump all the time, their ratings were through the roof because all it was was them complaining about Trump.
As soon as Trump's out of office, their ratings fall through the floor.
So what they're doing is they're saying the things that the party wants to hear, that the people on the left want to hear, particularly the people that are outraged at Trump.
But what they didn't recognize is that they were giving Trump publicity.
So the people that thought it was funny that Trump was saying all those things, the people that didn't like the left, they didn't like their politics, they didn't like their approach, they were happy that there was this guy who was this strong character who was pushing against them.
So if you were to, let's just say, you're saying, Pat, I don't want to do it.
Don't put that onus on me.
I don't want that kind of pressure right now.
I want to live my life.
I want to go hunting.
Okay, I don't want to do this shit.
Let somebody else do it.
If you were to host a symposium, hypothetically, Joe Rogan is hosting a symposium, okay?
It's called RoganCon, okay?
Instead of Comic-Con, whatever, all these shows, it's called RoganCon.
And this is a small little buy invitation only of people you invite.
Some of them have a lot of influence in media.
Some of them have a lot of influence in real estate.
Some of them have a lot of influence in, you know, insurance, finance, talent, Hollywood, technology, software.
And they come to the meeting and you say, guys, I have no desire to do none of this shit.
I'm Joe Rogan.
But here's what I think we need to do.
I think we need to go find the right people to produce something here, here, here, here, here.
Let's start recruiting because we need competition, okay?
That doesn't put the onus on you, and I think there probably would be a way where guys would give you five or ten points on a back end because even at the back end, if you sit on a board, you don't do shit.
I'm talking about bringing the greatest minds together.
I was in Chicago at Ritz-Carlton.
I walk up.
I'm like, there was 2,000 African-American kids at this hotel.
This was like 9, 10 years ago.
I said, what's going on here?
And every one of them was suited up like you wouldn't believe.
Good-looking men, women, eloquent, well-spoken.
I was blown away.
I said, what's going on over here?
He said, we're the future lawyers of the African-American community.
We're the future leaders.
And one by one I'm talking about, I said, who put this together?
Who do you think put it together?
Barack Obama put it together.
So he may not be the guy that's going to do it, but he's leading the charge.
I don't know.
I just think if there's a guy in the world that can pull the greatest minds together and challenge them to do something with some of these areas, because I do agree with you.
This is a real threat with the virtual government.
I think if anyone's fully qualified to do that and just hold the meeting and not do anything anymore, I think it's a man named Joe Rogan.
I don't know if anybody could do anything about the amount of momentum that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google, the amount of power that they have.
The amount of power that they have is unprecedented.
Anything short of some sort of regulation, and this is where it gets really squirrely, you're going to allow the government to regulate these companies?
I think we might almost be better off allowing the companies to regulate themselves.
Yeah.
Anything short of government regulation that says that you cannot censor.
Because what's going on is it's not just being censored, it's censored toward a particular ideology.
It's censored almost entirely towards the left.
I mean, some left-leaning people get censored as well, especially if they step out of line politically, like my friend Brett Weinstein.
Had a podcast by the way with a great price.
Yeah, he's awesome.
Yeah, and as is his wife Heather They had a movement that they were trying to do called unity 2020 where they were trying to bring the best candidates from the left and the best candidates from the right and create some sort of a third-party Alternative where you could get a Tulsi Gabbard and a Dan Crenshaw together.
That was the ultimate goal They were banned from Twitter for no reason For no reason.
Twitter just decided they wanted Trump to win so badly that they're going to come up with excuses to ban a company or rather a group of people that decided it would be a good idea to organize people from opposing sides that have similar ideologies and morals and ethics and put them together to try to find a better alternative to the two-party system that we currently are stuck with.
So they were banned off Twitter.
It's crazy.
But that was something that was done to people on the left, right?
So it's a very, very weird time when YouTube can just decide that they don't like what someone says in your video and ban it.
But it's a person's opinion.
There's a lot of offensive things said on YouTube every day, all day long.
You can go on YouTube and find things that you disagree with, things you think would be problematic for our culture and our communities.
It's all over the place on YouTube.
But because of this current pandemic, they feel like there's this heightened sense of responsibility that they have.
To control the narrative.
And that's very disturbing to me.
And what's even more disturbing to me is how people, when they agree with that narrative, don't understand where this all goes, and they're agreeing with that censorship.
They're like, yes!
Censor those people.
Get rid of those voices.
De-platform people that I disagree with.
And they don't understand where this goes.
It's like where people are saying, the people that have been vaccinated, that want a vaccine passport, yes, we should have a vaccine passport.
I've been vaccinated.
That's not going to change.
It's only going to help me.
I did my part.
I took one for the team, and I went out and got vaccinated to be a good citizen.
It 100% can happen in our lifetime, because people will step with it.
As long as it benefits them, and as long as it aligns with their ideology, they will ignore the dangers of a social credit system, and they will embrace it.
I never thought people would be...
Look, six months ago, the White House was saying there's no way we would ever use some sort of a vaccine mandate.
In a state where hurricanes often strike, like Florida or the Gulf Coast or into Texas, A vital part of preparing for hurricane season is to get vaccinated now.
Everything is more complicated if you're not vaccinated in a hurricane or natural disaster hits.
I've heard of other things, but not because of the vaccine.
So, okay, so that's that part.
All right, so she goes up there and she says, I don't want to take it.
On her live, Joe, you got to listen to her live.
It's so funny because she puts the camera and the camera's at the ceiling.
You never see her face.
You're just talking.
It's alive, right?
And she says, let me get this straight, because she put it out on Twitter that I got a call from the White House to go and have a meeting at the White House with the health secretary and, what do you call it, with Fauci, right?
Meeting with Fauci.
And she said, I would like to come, but I would like you to be live.
Instead of me traveling, I'd much rather not travel, let's do a live.
And they say, yeah, we don't mind doing a live, we just don't want it to be recorded.
She says, no, I want it to be recorded because I want my audience to see whether this is, you know, so I'm honest with the audience.
They say, well, let us think about it.
She has her PR rep on it and her agent on the call, so it's not like she's by herself.
Then the White House comes back and says, no, we never told you that you're going to be doing this live, right, because she tweeted us and I got a call from White House.
And she says, why can't I have the choice to not do it?
Why can't I not have the choice?
The biggest contradiction for me- To not do the vaccine?
I don't want to take the vaccine.
They're forcing her to do it.
And you heard a couple of the folks from, I don't know what it was, when they came out and they said, who was the lady that we were talking about?
She said, I got 2 million followers, girl.
I'm not at your level with 22 million followers on Twitter.
You can do better, girl.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for doing this because now people are not taking a vaccine.
So she comes back and she says, just because I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it.
So why do I have to do it?
I may end up doing it because I have to go on tour and I have to do this part.
But if you're going to a point, Joe, yourself, where you're talking about 100% this is going to happen in our generation, then I ask you, Are you okay with that?
I said 100% it could happen that we have a social credit score in this country.
The same people that are accepting a vaccine passport, my position is I do not believe once the government has the ability to control your movement, what you do, and when you do it, if they can put limitations...
On your freedom, and that is what it is, that it makes it easier to control people.
Once they do that, I do not believe they're going to leave it at a vaccine passport.
Well, that would be problematic, but all those things could be designed into a social credit program where you could see in a person who has poor social credit, a person who's been to jail for armed robbery, a person who owes taxes, that person would have a lower credit score and they wouldn't be allowed into certain buildings.
It's having the ability to tell people what they can and can't do.
Having the government, if you're a free person, I mean, you've made mistakes or you're trying to do better in your life, but you've had some horrible scenarios in your past.
You're supposed to be free to try to navigate and do better in your life.
If you're restricted and very clearly restricted by a set of parameters that's decided by other people that doesn't have to do with law, like it's not like you need to be locked up because you're a criminal.
You have a social credit score like they're implementing in China.
What it does is it keeps people scared and it keeps people in line and it's a fantastic way to control the population and that's what it's used for.
He's the gentleman, H-O-B-A-C-K. He's the gentleman that produced that HBO documentary on QAnon.
And one of the big parts of our conversation yesterday was discussing privacy, social media power, and how these algorithms are essentially pushing people towards division.
And we talked about the movie The Social Dilemma.
They really highlighted how these algorithms are polarizing people and causing this.
There's a real problem with algorithms.
There's a real problem that we have those.
But there's also a problem with the amount of money that these social media companies have been able to generate by selling your private information, selling your data.
This is where all this division is coming from.
It accentuates the division.
And I don't think the division would be nearly as strong if people were allowed to communicate freely and if there wasn't this sort of massive amount of income that could be derived from division, from people fighting with each other.
Because do you think, like, go back to the days of, we're going to protest.
I want to protest.
Strike.
What are we going to do?
We're going to get off Instagram?
We're going to get off YouTube?
We're going to take a month off?
Like, you know, I was like, well, I'm not going to go use the gas.
I'm not going to go do this.
It's just not going to work because we're addicted because of social dilemma.
Kids are addicted to it.
Living a life without checking Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Rogan, Spotify, I don't know if we can do that.
So then the next part for me becomes, do you think when Dana White and the two investors, when they bought the UFC for whatever the number was, two million bucks, the guy, when they bought it, did you think they thought ever that UFC was going to get to the point of boxing, if not bigger?
It's pretty much there if you think about it.
It's not at the boxing level.
If a big fight happens, people are going to watch the boxing match.
But nobody thought UFC was going to compete at the level of boxing.
You know, Pride was fighting.
Everybody was going out.
You had Fedor.
This is your world.
It's not my world, right?
The point of...
Where I'm going with this is the following.
Sometimes as we age...
I read an article about...
Time Magazine.
It talked about, you know, millennials and how they're minimalists.
And he was bashing all these guys.
And so, you know, these guys are doing this and all they care about is themselves.
All they want to do is see themselves in a picture on Instagram.
And they're such narcissist kids.
All these guys are kids.
And then at the end, the article ends with, if you think...
These guys are kids and they have it easier than we had it.
Maybe it just means you're getting a little too old.
Which means like we forgot that somebody told us how life was harder for them than it was for us.
I guess where I'm going with that is the thought of many people I talk to don't think it's possible to beat a Facebook today or YouTube or Google or any of these guys.
Many people are like, it's over.
You can't compete with them.
But what's the alternative if we take that mindset?
If we say, yeah, you can't beat those guys.
I think if today we had two YouTubes, we had two Googles, we had two Facebooks that are competing against each other, we'd probably be a little bit better off.
I have to go back to the beginning and figure out what the fuck you said at first and then you worked your way into the UFC and social media and then it got to Apple and Android.
So, all these platforms, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, the amount of people they have using them and using them all day long is insane.
I've had conversations with Jack Dorsey, both on camera and off camera.
He is not a man that advocates censorship.
However, he works for a company that does, and he's a CEO of a company that does, and it's a very unusual position that he's in.
He's an advocate for a Wild West Twitter as well as a regular Twitter.
So like a Twitter that's got some form of moderation, very heavy-handed moderation in my opinion, versus another Twitter, like a possible, like a 4chan type Twitter.
That's his thought.
Like he thinks there should be like almost two Twitters.
It's just something where it's just wild and wild and open.
I think the problem with that, of course, is illegal stuff.
You know, the problem with that is child porn.
The problem with that is the same problem they have with 8chan, right?
It's child porn and doxing and illegal things, illegal videos.
So it's like, what is the solution?
Managing at scale seems like an incredibly daunting task.
And they have to do it with AI. They have to do it with machine learning.
I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces involved, whether it's Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or Google or any of these platforms.
They're so big and there's so many users.
It creates a problem in and of itself and I think part of the censorship aspect Is just to try to manage this massive influx of data that they have to sift through all day long.
So they make these hardline choices.
Then I think they get pressure from political parties, like the Hunter Biden laptop situation.
But do you think there's a part of it where if a fight were to break out, And it's a good friend of yours that calls you and, you know, I say, hey, Joe, we're going through some shit, man.
I kind of need your back.
I would assume that if a friend of yours called you, you're going to be like, dude, what do you need my help with?
What do we need to do?
And you'd go out and do it.
You just seem like the guy that you're a friend.
You're the guy that's going to back up your friend.
I think this is a real shit going on today.
I really think this is serious stuff with what's going on in America today.
But you know what happens when one of those things emerges?
What's that?
First of all, they say they're going to be uncensored, and then they get compromised because people jump on board and they say a bunch of reprehensible things on those platforms, whether it's some sort of agent provocateurs, right?
So you would have people from organizations that don't want that to succeed and they would jump into that platform, say a bunch of horrible shit, post a bunch of Nazi stuff, post whatever the fuck they want, and then a bunch of newspapers would step in line.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Those newspapers and those social media sites, or excuse me, those media sites would then print stories like the right-wing, Nazi-loving thing that Patrick started.
I think they've done that with some of these other social media networks.
I think for sure there's people that whenever you have something uncensored, like sort of a 4chan type deal, whenever you have one of those places and they're anonymous, like there was the thing we talked about yesterday with 8chan, with Colin.
When you have something like that, You're going to have people that hop in and say the wildest, most fucked up things because they're bored at work and they want to press buttons.
Shitposting keeps other people from wanting to post on there.
What Twitter has done is create this environment where hostile dialogue is...
Commonplace.
Most of the dialogue that you find on Twitter is people being angry at someone, shitting on someone, making fun of someone, talking terrible about someone.
That's like a large percentage of it.
But they've eliminated the type of dialogue that you would see if you had a completely, like the fucking Hitler frogs and all that kind of stuff.
They've eliminated all the incredibly offensive stuff.
But meanwhile, they have hardcore porn, which is weird.
He's in a weird situation where they started this thing up and no one anticipated where it was going to go.
And there's parallels to that and this podcast in a lot of ways.
Obviously, Twitter is much larger than this podcast, but the parallels are when I started doing this podcast, it was just me and my friends talking shit with a laptop.
And then somewhere along the line, it became me interviewing presidential candidates and scientists and philosophers.
And here's the thing that's uncomfortable for people.
Is a certain amount of censorship necessary to keep order?
Or would you rather have, like, mad chaos?
And if it is, why is it only certain amount of...
Why is the porn thing still okay?
Nobody has a fucking problem with the porn thing.
I don't...
Let me be clear.
I'm not an anti-porn person.
I think you should be able to do whatever you want to do.
If you want to post that into your timeline, I don't think there's a problem with it.
I don't have a problem with it.
But I'm a grown man.
If my five-year-old daughter is going through a phone and she sees someone sucking someone's dick, I'd be like, whoa, I don't think she should see that.
Here it says, maybe you're wondering if we agree with Twitter's policy update.
If porn is so bad, negatively impacting a person's brain, chasing sexual taste to be more aggressive, harming relationships, negatively affecting mental health and more, wouldn't it be better to ban it?
We are passionate about sparking new conversations and changing porn culture.
But the short answer is no.
Even though we are an anti-porn organization, we are not trying to ban porn, and here's why.
That's interesting.
I think they should apply that same logic to speech that they don't agree with.
They should apply that same logic to right-wing ideology.
Look, I am a firm believer that the answer to bad speech is better speech.
I think all those people that were banned, whether it's Milo Yiannopoulos or Alex Jones, or all those people should be on Twitter.
I think they should be on Twitter, and if they want to get in arguments with people, and if people want to disagree with them, there should be a robust exchange of ideas.
If you're going to look at deaths versus grabbing ass...
Like, both of them are bad.
One of them's way worse.
The 12,000 deaths that he hit, that's a much more egregious offense than doing creepy shit that politicians have been doing since the beginning of time.
But, you know, when you got the President Obama coming in, they're making videos for you and campaigning for you, and none of them are talking about your track record.
They're just talking about the fact that Larry Elder could be potentially this and potentially that.
I think the things that bother people the most about California are the homelessness, the traffic, The taxes and the overreach of government.
All those things are not going to get better.
They're going to get worse.
And that's how you saw immediately after Newsom won the recall, he immediately implements the vaccine passport thing.
I think what you're going to have is a bunch of people that realize that the grass is greener.
That you can live in a place where there's less people, whether you go to Nashville, anywhere you go.
California has some amazing weather.
There's some great people.
It's very open-minded in some ways.
Politically, it's very locked up in a lot of ways.
People are very, I don't want to say brainwashed, but there's no better term for it.
They literally have this perspective on anybody who's Republican or anybody who's right wing.
They have to be a knuckle-dragging moron.
I mean, they're like blue no matter who.
I mean, that's just a big part of what California's all about.
But the untenable things, the unchangeable things, like the homelessness situation, has gotten so out of control.
And then you find out the amount of people that work On the homelessness, like how many people have a job that's involved and how much money they make.
There's people that are working on homelessness in California that are making a quarter million dollars a year and nothing's changing.
By the way, you know what's weird is, the first thing when Newsom won and he put a tweet out that he won, hey, let's get back to work and make it great, you know, some kind of a message like that, right?
First thing I did is I went and saw the response to his tweet just to see what his supporters are saying, right?
Meaning what they voted for.
And it wasn't close, by the way, 63.9%.
So it wasn't a close call.
They got 5 million more Democrats in that state than Republicans.
And you saw his supporters saying things like...
So happy for you.
Can we now please make masks and vaccine cards mandatory everywhere?
And then, by the way, it wasn't one or two or three or four or five.
It was like back to back to back to back to back with people asking for that, which means that's what the state is asking folks there.
How do you exist in California if you're a Republican?
How do you exist in California?
How do you live in California if you're a capitalist, free thinker, you kind of want to be left alone, and maybe you're not planning on taking a vaccine?
If you look at Israel, Israel has more people vaccinated than anywhere.
They have an incredibly high vaccination rate.
And then they're finding now the people with the vaccines, the vaccines are effective at stopping people from dying.
They're effective at keeping people from getting really sick.
But they wane in efficacy over time.
So now they're not even considering it vaccinated unless you have three shots.
Now you have to be three shots to be fully vaccinated.
And we're looking at a future that doesn't have a clear path.
Maybe there'll be a new therapy that they invent.
Maybe there'll be a new thing that if you get COVID, you just take this, whether you're vaccinated or not, and that's going to kill it.
That's going to cure it.
We don't really have that yet.
And I wonder what the world's gonna look like in a year, in two years, when we're taking four shots, five shots, six shots.
I don't know.
I don't know where that's gonna go.
I don't know if it's clear.
And some things that we know to be effective are not being encouraged.
There's no encouragement of vitamin supplementation, particularly vitamin D. There's no encouragement of exercise and losing weight, which is a huge factor, a huge factor in COVID morbidities or comorbidities, rather.
This thing where the pharmaceutical companies are your only way out is not real.
It's one of the only ways out.
It's one of the major tools to help us get out of this pandemic.
It's not the only tool.
So when everyone's like, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, yes, but also fitness, but also diet, But also therapeutics.
But also, there's a lot of things.
This Regeneron stuff that I took.
The monoclonal antibodies are making it more difficult to get for some reason in some places.
DeSantis hammered Biden administration for overhauling the distribution of monoclonal antibodies in a way that will severely hamper the treatments of availability in several Republican-controlled states.
Wow.
Why would you do that?
Why would you limit the amount?
Department of Health and Human Services alarmed authorities in several southern red states.
Why do you even have to say that?
What does that have to do with anything?
Where the antibodies are widely used.
They should be fucking used everywhere.
They work.
After announcing Monday that the agency would be changing how the COVID-19 treatment is distributed...
Previously, distribution sites could order the antibody treatments directly from the supplier.
Now, the federal government will decide how many doses each state will receive and leave it to state governments to ration it out among locations.
DeSantis warned that HHS new equitable distribution plan for monoclonal antibodies is very, very problematic and warned patients are going to suffer as a result of this.
How weird does it have to be to be an athlete today?
Did you see what Bill Belichick said the other day?
They asked him about the vaccine.
He says, look, we have a lot of people that have the vaccine and they ended up getting COVID. And we have some players that don't want to get the vaccine.
And he says, so those who don't have it sometimes are staying stronger than those who have it.
Those who did take the vaccine.
Then the guy asked a question from Bill.
He says, can you tell us which one of your athletes haven't taken the vaccine?
Michael Chandler is a UFC lightweight contender and he's in the process of this thing right now because he discussed not being able to fight in New York City.
It turns out he can fight in New York City.
In order to be in attendance for his fight, you have to be vaccinated, which is kind of crazy.
But an athlete from out of state is allowed to compete.
They can't mandate what happens to these athletes from out of state.
The crazy thing is, they're not taking into consideration at all this, air quotes, hashtag, natural immunity.
Meaning not that some people are just immune to the disease.
But that people who have recovered from the disease have a natural immunity.
They have antibodies to the disease that are 6 to 13 times better than the actual Pfizer vaccine.
This is all from this study that came out of Israel.
They're not taking that into consideration at all.
If they were, it would make sense.
If they said, this is a three-tiered approach.
We want Say if you're going to do, like, I've got a show at Madison Square Garden, and unfortunately, everyone has to be vaccinated for my show.
If you are going to do that, that doesn't mean those people are COVID-free.
I have a friend who had COVID, and he gave it to 12 other people I know.
He gave it to a bunch of people, and two of them, also vaccinated, wound up in the hospital.
It's not a guarantee, if you're vaccinated, that you're going to not be sick, and that you're not going to be contagious.
So you have this entire room of people, thousands and thousands of people that are vaccinated, which gives them a certain amount of protection, but does not eliminate the idea that they're going to be sick.
How many comedians today, and because Nicki Minaj said, she said, they're asking me to get the vaccine.
She says, I'm probably going to end up getting it because to go on tour, I have to be vaccinated, is what she said on that one 14-minute live that she did.
But because she's a performer, she's working with a lot of people.
So in order to ensure, like say if you're in a band, like my friend is in a band, and he's on tour right now, and when he's in this band, they have a bubble.
No one's allowed to go anywhere, they all get vaccinated, and everyone stays together.
And so they all get tested, and they have to deal with this bubble.
If I'm traveling, I travel with one or two other people.
I travel with my friends.
If we're doing a show together, there's three of us.
We test each other.
I bring tests, by the way.
I test everybody.
And then we go do a show.
But if you're in a band or you're a performer on stage, there might be 30, 40 people in that production.
There might be a large group of people, including managers, agents.
There's all these people on the set.
There might be an insurance clause that forces some people to be vaccinated.
So some of these smaller comedians, one of the guys locally in Fort Lauderdale, she had this tour, like 10 cities she was going, a smaller person that's going through places.
And she was asked at half of these locations to be vaccinated or else she can't perform.
What happens if, like right now, Fauci said last week, I think he said, I think airlines should mandate, what do you call it, vaccination passports.
That's what Fauci said like a week and a half ago.
What happens if that's the direction we go?
What is somebody that doesn't want to get the vaccine?
Some people have like serious autoimmune issues and...
You know, I don't know.
It's a real good question.
It's a real good question.
Because, again, the vaccine passport does not take into account people that have recovered from COVID who have better immunity than people who have been vaccinated.
It's not logical.
But people are stepping in line to support it, and they're stepping in line to shame other people that haven't been vaccinated.
No, I think it's entirely possible that we can bring it back around.
I think it's totally possible.
But something major has to happen.
Something has to happen with our culture.
Something has to happen with our decisions that we make about the way we communicate with each other.
Because right now, people are just becoming more and more polarizing.
Like we were talking about Don Lemon on TV telling people to shame people and all that.
That's foolish talk.
That's not the talk of an enlightened, intelligent person that wants the world to be a better place.
That's the talk of a person who wants people to listen to what he has to say and hasn't thought it through.
And that kind of thinking and that kind of speech, it just leads to more division.
It's not going to help anybody.
And you've got a lot of that right now.
There's a lot of noise.
And there's a lot of unwise people that are speaking about these things.
And they haven't thought about the greater good in terms of the future of this country and the way we talk to each other.
If we encourage polarization, if we encourage this divide, it's just going to make things worse.
If we encourage communication and love and friendship and we encourage community, encourage talking to each other, Then we have a chance.
Then we have a chance of realizing we're all incredibly fortunate.
You know this because you come from Iran.
You come from another country.
When you look at the options that are available to people in other countries versus the options that are available for people in America, it's still a very unique place.
Historically, it's unprecedented.
There's never been a place like this before.
It's an amazing place to be.
We are extremely, extremely lucky to be able to do what we do in the United States of America.
What I saw in California was an erosion of freedom.
I saw these draconian measures being taken into consideration, and I saw it getting worse and worse, and I got the fuck out of there.
And that's why I came to Texas.
And when I came to Texas, one of the first things I did, I had dinner with the governor and I talked to him.
And his positions on these things are you got to let people run their businesses.
You got to let people live their lives.
You got to let people make their own decisions.
And this is not a good thing, like this virus.
This is not good.
But we're going to do our best to protect the people that are vulnerable.
And we're going to do our best to allow people to have the freedom to live their life the way they choose.
I'm friends with comedians and jujitsu guys and a lot of veterans.
I like wild people.
I like people that have experienced life and people that take chances and people that don't necessarily believe that the way the world is run right now is the only way to run the world.
That you can...
You could have a better way of life.
You could allow people to have freedom.
You could still have order.
You can be kind to each other.
You still disagree with each other and still be friends.
I have friends that are basically socialists and I have friends that are hardcore Republicans and I get along with all of them.
And this is a skill that I've developed over time.
This is not something that was inherent.
It's not something I was born with, the ability to talk to people and disagree with them but still be friends.
But it's being nice is one thing, but also it's recognizing that you are not your ideas.
You're a human being.
You're not your ideas.
And so many people are married to their ideas.
And when you argue against their ideas, they think you're arguing against their very existence, against them as a person.
And they fight like those ideas are a part of them, like you're trying to take away their hand.
It's a foolish way to look at the world, I think.
And it's a way we're taught early on growing up.
You're taught to argue.
If you win the argument, you're good.
If you lose the argument, you're fucked.
I've learned from doing this podcast in particular that you're way better off being completely separate from your ideas and looking at your ideas the same way you would look at a lighter.
Like, I'm not going to defend this lighter.
It's a lie.
I didn't make it.
Seems good.
I don't know.
But if you say that lighter sucks and here's why, I'm going to go, well, tell me why.
And then you go, well, because it releases certain gases in the air and it's actually baffling.
I'm like, oh, really?
Oh, I didn't know that.
So I thought that lighter was good, but it turns out that lighter's bad.
I mean, not this lighter.
This lighter's fine.
But, you know, what you think about a thing and the way you think about an object and the way you think about an idea, that's not you.
What you are is this conscious life form that's experiencing this incredibly fascinating and complex world around you.
And you will cling to things, and you will think of those things as being a part of your identity, whether they're the suits you wear, or the way you talk, or the ideology that you espouse, or the diet that you have, or even the martial arts that you choose, like the fucking kind of phone you use.
And they come to the house and they're sitting there and...
Dad walks in.
Mom walks in.
I said, okay, you guys are good?
They're shaking, looking at each other.
No joke.
It's like they can't.
Because it's the clash of ideology.
Their ideas, they can't.
One says rich people are bad.
One says poor people are lazy.
That's just how the mindset is, right?
Anyways, eventually, they go back and forth.
And I said, Jennifer and I are going to step out.
You guys need to talk.
If you guys are not good before we leave, you ain't coming to the wedding.
So we step out.
No joke.
We step out.
We're out.
We're walking maybe for five minutes.
My dad starts screaming, Patrick!
He's screaming my name.
And I'm like, oh shit, something happened.
They're probably going to fight.
And I come back and he says, we're good.
We're going to be okay at the wedding.
Do you agree?
Do you agree?
Yes.
So obviously they don't agree, but they're going to make it work.
Anyways, wedding day comes.
Thank God they were good.
But the best picture is when we took the family picture and my dad's on this side, my mom's on this side.
If you can see the look on their face, I swear to God it's priceless because I'm cracking up because I know they don't want to take this picture, but it's classic.
You know, the whole story behind this is the fact that, you know, Getting the right people in the room together before we make a big decision.
I'm getting married.
I want to get these two guys in the room together because we got to figure out a way to unify.
So this wedding is not going to be a politically crazy wedding.
Who are the people you think we need to bring in the room that can potentially help unify America?
If there was a couple people, who would those two be?
I don't think there's a lot of value in having the two of them together.
Tell me why.
Because I think Trump would put on a show.
I think the real value with a guy like Obama is to talk to Obama one-on-one and to just have a long-form conversation with him and allow him to expand on why he did what he did, why he changed his position on whistleblowers, what it was like getting into office versus what he thought it was going to be like.
What it was like when he realized that he is, in fact, in charge of this crazy country that's...
In this unprecedented moment in history.
If you wanted to talk to a guy like Obama, you'd want to talk to him alone.
And if you wanted to talk to a guy like Trump, you'd probably want to talk to him alone too, but you'd want to wear him out first.
Trump would be like a dog.
If you want to teach a dog a trick, you've got to throw a ball for him a bunch of times and wear him out and then get him to relax.
I don't have the level of credibility to give, but just even technically watching the guy fight, it's like a dancer.
It doesn't even look like boxing.
It's very weird when you watch the guy fight.
But, you know, there's certain people, like the people who got a chance to watch Frazier fight Ali at their peak, I mean, you're the luckiest people alive to see that, right?
The people that I got a chance to see Bird Against Magic.
I never had a chance to see that.
I came to the States November 20, 1990. It was the move that Michael made like this over Sam Perkins.
That's when I came to the States, right?
So, some people got a chance to see those big sit-downs, big fights, big bouts.
You know, if we were to say the bigger debaters, both Trump and Obama, they're both very proud of debating.
So you almost put him in a place where he's not accustomed to it because to him, it's kind of like, you know how you saw Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel when they were doing their monologue when there was nobody in the audience?
It was so uncomfortable watching it when Stephen Colbert was like, please stop.
This is just not working, right?
Even as the audience watching it, I don't know what it's like as a professional doing it.
As the audience, it doesn't make sense.
But I think that also takes one of your weapons out because a reaction validates a funny bit.
A reaction validates a great point, right?
So what if we took that?
Here's what I did a couple months ago, and this was two weeks after Fourth of July, three weeks after Fourth of July.
I came out, I said, $5 million I'll put on the line if Barack Obama and Trump are willing to do a long-form interview.
Three hours, okay?
And here's the format.
One hour, I ask the questions and we go through.
Second hour, maybe we bring some of the stuff from the audience that are asking some questions.
Third hour, the two just talk to each other and I don't say nothing.
They're just having a conversation.
The only thing is you have to be respectful as they're going through it.
That created some attention.
And the next thing you know, we're talking about it on some media platforms.
Invited me.
I want to talk about it.
Then people came in and they said, I'll match a half a million dollars.
I'll give $100,000.
We raised around $6.5 million, right?
To do this, what do you call it?
This sit down with Obama and Trump.
All I'm thinking about, Joe, is I don't know if I'm right, if I'm wrong, if it works, if it doesn't work.
For me, as a person that's looking for a resolution, when you're running a company and you have ideas, dude, maybe 20% of your ideas work.
But it's like a, let's try to see if this works.
Okay, shit, this didn't work.
Let's go to the next one.
Let's try this and work.
get these two men to sit down together and the right questions to be asked and they hold each other accountable, I sometimes wonder how the world sees that.
Does that help us be unified?
Do they get to say things to each other that called each other up because both sides are still hanging on to it?
Would Obama say something like, you still think I wasn't born here, huh?
You know what I'm saying?
Like, would Trump say, do you remember that one time you dropped the mic after you said, at least I'm a president when you were doing the tweet, you know, the mean tweets, whatever?
What you'd want to do with those two is, I wouldn't even necessarily have to be there, nor would you.
I think just those two talking for hours, that would be the way to do it.
I don't even know if you need a moderator.
I don't know if it's a benefit.
It might.
It might be to stop the talking over, because that was one of the things that, I guess it was Chris Wallace that had to deal with, with the first Biden-Trump debate, was that Trump would just talk over him.
He would just interrupt, and that was a real problem.
His problem is that his general personality that he's cultivated his entire career in media has been this guy who says, you're fired.
Shut the fuck up.
This is what you tell the China.
Listen, motherfucker, you're gonna pay.
You remember when he did that?
Like, that's Trump, right?
So he's developed this sort of battleship persona that just cuts through all the bullshit and guns blazing, and that has led him to victory, right?
The problem with that is it creates a lot of division, and it creates a lot of people who oppose him, who look at him like not just the opposition, but an enemy that must be defeated for the sanctity of the nation.
He becomes an incredibly dangerous prospect, a dangerous Polemic, polarizing monster that has to be beaten, and that's not necessary.
Yeah, when they were talking about assassinating him, and they were calling him a traitor and all those psychos that stormed the Capitol where they had fucking zip ties, they were looking for him.
But if he was, I don't know what his relationship with Trump is.
But for him to balance out the bombastic personality of Trump and to have some sort of a message from the right, which if you get the Trump from the second debate...
Where Trump is a calm, cool demeanor, but also keep the humor, but stop all the aggressive attacking antics, because those are what create more polarization.
And all the people on the fence, the people that are, you know, I don't know if I can, they'll go towards his side.
Biden has a hard time communicating.
That's just a fact.
And unless he drops out and unless Kamala comes in with someone else, it's a very difficult situation to try to get people to revote for him, especially after Afghanistan.
Was that the Pineapple Express or something that he was doing?
There was a couple of other guys involved.
Yeah, again, true patriot.
True patriot.
I salute what he's doing constantly.
But going back to it, so Trump dissent is those two going up, If Biden stays till the very end, them two going up against Trump and DeSantis, the only question is going to be of DeSantis.
There was an event that Trump was bringing up DeSantis.
I don't know if you saw this one, where Trump's building him up.
So he says, you know, next person I want to bring up is Governor DeSantis.
He says, not going to lie to you.
First time I saw him, I thought he was a little bit out of shape.
I thought he had to lose some weight.
You know what?
He's a little too heavy.
I saw him.
I said, this guy's a little too heavy.
And I'm not going to lie to you.
When I went up to him, we started talking.
I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, wait a minute.
This guy's muscular.
So then I realized he can't be your governor.
So with that being said, bring up Governor DeSantis.
I've never heard anybody bring anybody up like that.
But I think DeSantis, with his measured, calm demeanor, and the way he's handled the pandemic, whether you agree with it or not agree with it, A lot of people disagree with it, right?
But what he has done is give people the most amount of freedom possible while still doing his best, what he believes is his best, to protect the vulnerable.
A lot of people criticize this.
A lot of people criticize what he did versus what other people did.
But if you look at the numbers, especially when you adjust for age, because Florida has a very old population, the numbers are actually better than the numbers for California.
They'll walk from the stage, like when you're doing an arena in the center, like, so I'm gonna do an arena in a round, so there's like, say if this coffee cup is the stage, this table is the audience, so you gotta walk through the audience to get to backstage.
So it's just high-fiving all these fucking people and breathing all their air while they're screaming at me.
Which shows that where natural immunity is superior too, because I was with Laura Bites, my friend who's very hilarious, and Tony Hinchcliffe, who's also very hilarious.
Tony has had COVID.
Tony was the only one of the three of us that didn't get COVID.
People don't like it when I have right-wing people on the podcast.
They say you're platforming people with their terrible ideas.
They don't like it when I have Ben Shapiro on or anyone like that.
And I just think that that's a foolish way to look at the world because I think that you should be able to communicate with people that have opposing viewpoints or different viewpoints, and you should try to find out why they think what they think.
I've had some really interesting conversations with Ben over the years, and I like him as a person very much.
I don't agree with him on everything.
I don't agree with him on a lot of things, but so what?
Forbes called him the leading socialist professor in America.
How was that?
Fascinating.
Let me tell you, that's a fascinating conversation, him and I. Probably one of my favorites.
I had a professor from Riverside Community College, he changed his name, Aster, Aster something, and he came out and he said, the two of the greatest leaders in the history of mankind ever are Mao and Stalin.
And I sat him down and I said, I got a question for you.
I said, if a kid is listening to this podcast right now and he's 22 years old, he has a choice between being the next Jeff Bezos or being the next Stalin revolutionary.
And then she was asked the next day because she got trashed for it.
I don't know if you saw the pushback she got.
And she came back and said, all you people that are saying, you know, well, you're making $175 a year to many people in America.
You're rich.
I'm not talking about people like me.
I'm not rich.
I'm talking about people that are worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars and the people that are worth billions.
It's always the person that's slightly richer than you that's rich.
It's always that.
You know, hey, Joe's worth this.
No, you know, I'm only worth 10, like Elizabeth Warren, you know, who makes $400,000 to give one speech to university, whatever, you know, she goes in, she's a professor, makes all this money.
But no, what's rich is somebody that's worth more than $20 million, because I'm worth $5 million.
Text the rich, but first I'm going to have a time of my life partying with them all at the most extravagant, over-the-top part of the year that is essentially a celebration of richness.
I'll be the first because it's a there's a real weakness in not being able to recognize other people's strengths and the people that try to diminish other people's strengths or Whether it's their their creativity their power their greatness whatever it is They try to diminish it because they they feel like they don't like that person They're looking at it through a distorted lens what you don't realize is when you're saying something that other people know to not be true you are You're making
all your future statements, you're holding them to this standard that you've already fucked up.
You've already fucked it up by denying the existence of...
Like, if you try to say, ah, Jimi Hendrix wasn't a great guitarist.
What the fuck did you even just say, right?
You say that, everything else you say, I'm gonna look at it through the lens of what you said about Jimi Hendrix was so fucking stupid.
So, you gotta be able to look at reality 100% unedited.
100% Undistorted by your own ideology, your own personal feelings about that guy, the interactions you've had with him.
You've got to look at it for whatever the fuck it is.
It is what it is.
You've got to be able to say what something actually is.
If you cannot do that, people will not trust you.
Whether you like that person or you don't like that person.
I don't have to like you to know you're awesome at something.
I could see someone's a total dick, but they might be the greatest sprinter of all time.
I think it strengthens you, whether you believe it or not.
I think it strengthens you to give credit to people that you might not necessarily even like.
And it also, you realize sometimes that there's conflicts that you carry on in your own mind with other people that are completely unnecessary conflicts.
You don't have to have them.
Even if they keep them, you can let them go.
You know, people could talk shit about you and go, Well, sorry feels that way.
I wish him luck.
Wish him well.
The amount of real conflicts you have in this life, you should limit that as much as possible.
The best thing about the card game that changed is there's a grading service called PSA. So PSA that's based out of Newport, they're not even taking any new cards right now because they can't.
It takes 12 months for you to get graded.
They're that busy right now.
No joke.
And it costs like $50, $40, $100 to get cards graded depending on the quality of it.
You send it to them.
They look at it.
And then based on that, like you see this here that says the PSA stamp, they give it a score, there's a VIN number to it, and then there's a, not a VIN number, but a serial number to it, and then this has got a value.
So PSA changed the game.
Beckett Grading Service changed the game.
BGS, because it used to be dirty.
There would be guys that...
Would sell the fake cards and, you know, counterfeits.
It was all over the place.
But kind of changed the game the last few years.
You got cards and NFTs to date that are...
I don't understand NFTs as much as I understand cards.
If you get an NFT expert reaches out to you who's got credibility, he knows what he's doing, you probably got $10 million of NFTs you could sell the next six or 12 months.
I'm not super convinced that that's going to be the way it goes, but there will be that day when you're sitting there drinking with your friends like, what do you got?
What do you got?
Well, I've got...
Holy shit, you've got the Elon Musk, Joe Rogan moment.
But if it's a print, like a photo, if it's a photo of the Mona Lisa and you have it on your phone and you say, look, I bought this NFT of the Mona Lisa.
So you know how if you use an image on your podcast and the next thing you know, Getty Images comes back and says, you have to pay $500 for this or $1,000 for this or whatever it is because your guy, let's just say, didn't go take the right route to go get that picture.
That's really what that is.
You can get that picture, and you can find it on Google, and you can use it, but you have to pay the $500 to the person that owns it.
If I'm interviewing somebody, my guys would have access to it.
One day, one of my guys, Mario, says, Pat, why don't we create a live YouTube channel?
See what we can do with this.
I said, okay, cool.
So we started a channel and was called Two Minutes with Pat, is what the show was.
We did 100 episodes in two years.
Only one of them was two minutes.
Everything was 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 15 minutes.
And the complaint was, Pat, this show's a lie.
It's not Two Minutes with Pat.
It's like changing 10 minutes with Pat.
So I said, okay, we gotta change something up.
So one day I stepped back.
I'm like, I don't know what we do.
I say we call it Valuetainment.
So we changed the channel.
We called it Valuetainment.
And the main focus became capitalism and business.
So everything was around business.
And then eventually, a couple years later, we're running companies, all this stuff.
My life is so busy.
I'm like, dude, I'm done creating content.
I took a break.
And I took 90 days off.
We were at like 450,000 subscribers at that time.
Then while we're taking a break, life is peaceful.
I have more time.
This is a lot of work.
People just think you get on here and do podcasts.
This is a lot of work for what you do on creating content.
So eventually I said, if we come back, I'd like to interview people because I'm so curious.
I like people.
I like to talk to people.
I want to know what makes them tick.
So then we started doing interviews.
We interviewed, I think it was Jordan Belfort.
We interviewed Michael Francis.
And then that became the process of then you got Kobe and all these other guys that came about.
So it was business, entrepreneurship, interviews with unique personalities around capitalism, CIA, politics, sports, things that I'm interested in, bodybuilding, and then it became what it is today.
And just like a year ago, we started a podcast, which is a complete separate channel than the Valuetainment Channel, and that's the podcast we started about a year ago.
Well, I don't remember who the first guest outside of that was.
I really would have to go back and look at it.
But it was slowly...
I got people...
I mean, the podcast back then was so small.
It was just...
They were being charitable to come on it and do it.
And I remember Graham Hancock was one of the first ones.
I was very, very interested to talk to him because I was such a gigantic fan of his work and...
You know, I've always been so fascinated by this idea of lost civilizations.
And Graham Hancock's idea is that civilizations at one point in time were at a very high level of sophistication, but were most likely wiped out by some sort of a natural disaster, whether it's an asteroid impact or most likely an asteroid impact.
And they look at it and he got together with this guy named Randall Carlson and Randall became a frequent guest as well and but Graham was one of my- Randall's an expert on asteroid collisions and common impacts and some of the things that have happened to the world like undeniably happened over the last you know X amount of thousands of years and then they they looked at their two work and they combined them together and they found sort of a working map of what's very likely to have happened To civilization somewhere around the neighborhood of 12,000 years ago there was
like a reset that was probably due to impacts and it coincides with they do soil samples core samples of the earth where they find somewhere around that same time period of 12,000 years you find the stuff called tritonite which is nuclear glass that happens when meteors impact with the earth and Same sort of stuff happens when they do, like at the Trinity test, where they do nuclear explosion tests.
It's this glass that happens when, you know, the impact, the immense heat.
And so there's a lot of, like, physical evidence that points to this.
So Graham was one of the very first guys that I had on, and we talked about a lot of, like, these really amazing ancient artifacts like Chichen Itza and the things that the Olmecs left behind in South America.
Amazing, amazing stuff.
And so he was probably one of the first.
And then Anthony Bourdain, he came on shortly after that.
I started getting really interesting, compelling guests.
I'm very interested in the way people think and what makes a person very good at what they do and how do you think about things and how does the way you think about things differ from the way she thinks about things.
Let me hear her talk about it.
And then let me hear him talk about a similar thing.
I want to hear opposing viewpoints.
I like to hear the way people's minds work and the way they...
First, I got Robert Greene, which to me was very interesting.
Robert Greene, the 40 Laws of Power, 33 Strategies of War.
I got him.
We sat down.
I'm like, and then we ended up becoming friends.
It was very interesting talking to the guy.
And by the way, politically, he's very on a complete opposite side of where I am.
But we had great banter together.
And we had him on, again, a couple other times.
That was probably the first one.
Clint Hill was very interesting to me because this whole thing with JFK, I'm also very curious about what happened with JFK. Oh, the assassination?
Yeah, so I brought Clint Hill.
I know you're big on that as well, wanting to find that.
I brought Clint Hill.
He was one of the first...
There was four people in the room when they were dealing with his brain.
There was four of them that were in the room.
He was one of the guys, one of two that held JFK's brain, Jim Jenkins, and he stayed quiet for 50 years.
Quiet guy, married to the same wife, didn't want to say anything.
And the stories he said, very interesting stories he said.
That was Jim Jenkins.
And then I interviewed Clint Hill.
Clint Hill was a Secret Service agent, the first guy that jumped on the car when JFK got shot.
And he gave me his perspective, and that interview was fascinating with Clint Hill.
And then it led to many other guys that we had.
But obviously, if there's interest, the audience will feel it.
Just like probably when you do an interview, there's an interest.
There's a part of it that's going to pull because of you.
That you're interesting, but there's a part of it that's also going to pull if you're really interested in the topic that the individual is talking about.
You know, I remember one time I had a conversation with a guy that was from space, you know, was an astronaut, and what was his name?
Scott Kelly, okay?
And we had a conversation together.
It was a 35-minute interview.
I was like, within 35 minutes, I'm like, yeah, I'm good.
There's no more interest here for me, because I'm not one that's fascinated by space at that time.
Then how about you and I sit down and let me see your perspective.
How about you and I dinner?
I would never interview with nobody.
Do you remember the last time I got any of it was with Diane Sawyer?
Do you know what happened in 1994?
What makes you think I would interview with you?
Cut to.
Yeah, cut to.
Cut to.
We first met him.
We go to this building in Phoenix.
And he says, meet me at this place.
Give me address last minute.
I go there.
And walk into this building.
Keep going.
Walk into the building.
Keep going.
Room's getting dark.
At this point, we're like, some shit's about to go down.
This isn't my career.
So I'm like, call my wife and tell her, babe, I love you.
Exactly.
And then there he shows up.
You know, there is Sammy.
We had the conversation.
Finally, he agreed to do the interview.
And then now Michael and Sammy...
Rudy Giuliani and Chaz Palminteri are doing the, what do you call it, the narrating, and that's now the sit-down between the two that's coming out.
The mob world is interesting, how they do what they do, their world, what values they live by, what happened to it.
It's an interesting world.
Everybody has a different thing.
That's fascinating to me.
And then accidentally different topics show up.
Iran became very interesting to me because of the life I lived and what happened with Jimmy Carter after he did the toast on December 31st of 77. He leaves.
Twelve months later, Kissinger says, don't worry, Shah, we have your back.
And the greatest revolution of all time without the main four criterias that cause the revolution happens in Iran...
And then the Shahs kicked out, exiled, after he changed all the things with Iran.
Yes, he had Savak.
Yes, he didn't do everything right.
But then that takes place and you wonder why that happened.
And then you realize in 1954, the guy signed a 25-year deal with Germany.
With the UK, with US, and I think it's Italy or France on an oil deal that these guys had a meeting in 77 to figure out where to get rid of him because he knew the oil prices were going to go up if Shah was going to be there.
All of these interesting things.
It's like you're digging in because part of it is your history.
Part of it is my history and I'm curious to know what happened there.
But that's this world.
And if other people find interest in what you're interested in, then you're lucky because you find the audience that's interested in the same things you're interested in.
Well, I'm interested in things that people are passionate about.
Like if someone's just into making tables and the way they talk about making tables, if I can listen, If I can listen to someone talk about anything, rolling cigars, whatever the fuck it is that you're interested in, when someone has a passion for something, it resonates with you and the way you think about the things you're passionate about.
People are fascinating.
And I think the more people you talk to, the broader your understanding of yourself is.
Because you get a chance to see these different human beings and the way they interface with reality.
It's very educational.
I've had a better education from doing this podcast over the last 11 years than anything else I've ever done in my life by far.
What that does is, that's a form of competition, what you just said.
That is a form of competition for YouTube.
Because you leaving YouTube, they're like, shit, what do we do next if the next guy wants to leave that business model?
And that's kind of why I think, you know, Twitter, Facebook, some of these guys need some competition because if it doesn't want workplace, you know, they're going to go to a different place option-wise.
But that's where Spotify draws the line, which is incredibly reasonable.
What YouTube is doing is arbitrary.
They're censoring people based on what they believe people should and should not talk about, like someone who's talking about, like Robert Kennedy, who has differing opinions about vaccines, or like whatever the fuck it is, whether it's about election fraud or lab leak theory, whatever it is, that they were censoring They're removing from YouTube, QAnon stuff.
I can't really tell you what to do or what not to do because, look, Brett Weinstein and Heather Hying, that Dark Horse podcast, the whole podcast has been demonetized.
Based on because they're saying controversial things about certain therapeutic drugs that are used for COVID. Haven't both of them also taken vaccine, though?
No, but because of their discussions about Ivermectin, because of their discussions about, initially, the lab leak theory, because of their discussions about...
There's some other controversial things that they've discussed.
Viruses mutating.
There's a lot of different things that they've discussed that, whatever it is, the powers that be, have decided that these conversations can't take place on YouTube.
Now, they can't stop them from taking place on YouTube because they're not saying anything that's technically wrong.
And they are evolutionary biologists, so what they've decided to do instead is to punish them.
One of the reasons why I left is I had an opportunity to be...
The way Spotify looks at it, when I do well, they do well.
I'm under contract with them.
It's a good thing for them if the show does well.
YouTube's under contract with a fucking billion people.
If they can tell one guy, shut the fuck up, you don't talk about Ivermectin, or shut the fuck up, don't talk about Fauci, or shut the fuck up, don't talk about the election, they can do whatever they want.
They can do whatever they want.
And they just demonetize you.
And in doing so, they encourage people to self-censor.
So when the subject of certain things come up, to this day, there's independent news channels on YouTube that when they discuss, like Ivermectin, for instance, they don't say the word.
They won't say it.
Because if they say it, they'll be flagged.
So they say, you know that drug that we're not allowed to speak about.
I'm watching a human being that's actually engaging with other human beings in a very honest and provocative way and you're having these conversations that are interesting and I'm getting something out of it.
You know, only talk about absolutes if you know them to be true, right?
Like, if there's certain things that, like, there's certain things that, if you have an area of expertise where you know this to be an absolute rock-solid fact, like, here's a fact.
Absolutely iPhones are made at the Foxconn factory in China.
There's absolutely nets around that factory because people were committing suicide so often they had to put fucking nets around the building.
So those kind of absolutes, like if you know things like that, yeah, say them.
But if you tell people you absolutely should do this, you absolutely should do that, no.
I think you should speak Truthfully as often as possible you should really do it always and when you can't be truthful just keep your fucking mouth shut It's good feedback.
Older attractive white lady who's very well-spoken, and they did that one interview where Trump got up and walked out, a 42-minute interview, some interview like that.
That lady's telling Susan, why are you letting just anybody create content there?
I mean, can you imagine?
Like, hey, because the professionals at CNN, MSNBC, these are the professionals.
Let them do the professional job.
Yeah, the cat videos are fine.
Yeah, the bodybuilding videos are fine, but not people who have opinions that are going up against professional experts like us.
You know, they did a Brian Stelter, they now analyzed one of Brian Stelter's shows and the big audience, you know, the 18 to 54. It was like 100,000 people.